“The Systemless Project: Fraser Lake” Studio led by James Huemoeller

View of Fraser Lake

James Huemoeller will be teaching the “The Systemless Project: Fraser Lake” graduate comprehensive studio at UBC SALA alongside John Bass, Joanne Gates, and Inge Roecker.

From wildfires to heat domes to flooding, the climate change related events experienced in British Columbia over the past six months underscore this studio’s focus on resilience. In response to the likely reality that carbon emissions, and with them, temperatures, sea level, and unpredictable weather events, will continue to rise throughout the 21st century, the studio invites you to fundamentally rethink the way architects think about the systems, materials, and human behaviours embedded in buildings. The functional medium for this exploration is a “community service centre” located in the central B.C. town of Fraser Lake. Its teaching, gathering, and maker spaces, its food production facilities, both inside and outside, are local in reach, and aim to offer food and job training for the handful of nearby communities along the Yellowhead Highway. One key resource is the local people - the teachers, makers, and students – who, along with the sun, are the primary source of heat for the project.

Rooted in principles of regenerative design, systemless building actively contributes to the repair of natural and human systems . Systemless building avoids the use of conventional mechanical systems for heating, cooling and ventilation in pursuit of what we call thermal and ventilation autonomy. It calls into question the take-for-granted behaviour those systems enable in a building’s users as well as our decisions as designers. How might we replace the energy-intensive materials (concrete and steel, in particular) and machines (air conditioners, boilers, and fans, for example) that are commonly used in contemporary buildings?

View of Mouse Mountain, Fraser Lake