The NC State Physics Department needed to convert an existing Fox Hall storage room to a new physics lab classroom with a collaborative team-based setup.

The new design includes integral furnishings arranged for small team work, storage, screens, A/V, lectern, sink with eyewash, and a TA station. The classroom seats 24 students plus assistants.

The scope of this project included a needs assessment, programming, design, probable costing, construction documents, engineering, and construction. This physics lab is a part of our on-call work with NC State University.

The SAS Hall Recording Studio is a space designed to meet the unique needs of digital instruction. NC State’s Math Department needed to convert its existing reference library to a new TA conference room and recording studio. Spanning beyond traditional classroom boundaries, this studio serves as a hub for creating immersive online learning experiences and fostering remote collaboration among faculty and students.

We crafted the plan around what was optimal for the recording equipment to control lighting, video, reflections, sound, microphones, and wiring needs.  By prioritizing acoustic excellence and technology, the recording studio became a space where creativity can thrive and educational boundaries can be pushed. The studio's innovative design features:

• Black Box Design: The recording studio adopts an all-black appearance to minimize light reflections, creating an environment conducive to high-quality recordings and video production.

• Double-Walled Construction: Acoustic isolation is paramount for recording online courses effectively. To achieve this, the room features double-walled construction, ensuring minimal sound leakage and external interference.

• Specialized Equipment Integration: The Math Department's transition from a reference library to a technologically advanced recording studio required careful planning. We focused on integrating specialty light tables and advanced recording equipment seamlessly into the space, allowing professors to create engaging online courses with ease.

The scope of this project included a needs assessment, programming, design options, special equipment coordination, furniture layouts, acoustic design, probable costing, construction documents, engineering, public bidding, and construction. This recording studio is a part of our on-call work with NC State University.

A new professor in the NC State Chemistry Department was assembling a research group and needed working space that would meet their needs for group work, break area, and a conference room. The existing rooms made for a dark and cramped office suite that lacked natural light and had a lot of wasted circulation space. After fully assessing their needs, we were able to determine the best path forward to achieve maximum collaboration, thus enhancing the faculty and student’s experience and use of the upgraded space.

UNC engaged us to provide a vision for an underutilized second floor space on campus. The office suite is intended as a hub of activity for students, faculty, and visitors. We proposed to engage people at the building entry by opening the lobby stairway, unifying the floors with two-story glass and wood stand board, and adding multiple points of engagement with seating and displays. As people ascend the stairway and enter the room they’re greeted with an open gathering area used for TED-like talks and chance interactions. The second half of the space becomes a collaborative work area with flexible workstations and conferencing technologies.

H I G H L I G H T S

• Sustainable materials and systems used throughout

Awarded the project based on our innovative approach to historic properties, ThoughtCraft is working with the Town and its’ citizens to craft a vision for three historic properties.

They include a pre-civil war farmstead, a tobacco era homestead, and a turn-of-the century general store with warehouses. Through research and many interviews we’ve uncovered and documented the rich history of each property that tells the story of Cary from 1820 to 1960. Cary is not laden with historic properties like some of the surrounding towns. As such, the redevelopment of these properties will serve to preserve and educate future generations of its rich history, while providing new uses and amenities for citizens to enjoy.

How do we create urban furniture with a collective identity while maximizing flexibility for arrangements and vendors?

As citizens work to take back their urban communities, planning departments have been playing catch- up. Shopping kiosks, parklets, push carts, food trucks, guerilla gardening, yarn bombing, and all manner of tactical urbanism have begun to proliferate urban centers. While often welcomed, this proliferation has begun to breakdown the visual coherence of city districts, edges, nodes and other elements that define identity. In response, planning departments have started embracing tactical urbanism as an instigator for renewing street life as well as attempting to write some rules to retain identity and strengthen what Kevin Lynch termed in 1960 as “The Image of the City.”

In 2011 CUBE was approached by the lease holder of a fruit and flower stand located at the prominent corner of the Old South Meeting House (a National Landmark). We were asked to design a semi- permanent structure that addressed security issues for the market as well as respected the historic nature of the building it sits aside. This led to a larger study of the many such vendors in Boston’s Downtown Crossing district, and invited conversations with the Boston Redevelopment Authority which had been struggling with the loss of a cohesive identity in the district. After speaking with the many food and retail vendor cart owners in the area, we begin to define a modular and moveable kiosk that both held identity in its form and graphics for the city, and allowed vendors to customize and graft onto for their own needs. The kiosks could be presented individually or linked in many configurations to form a full market.

One such ubiquitous material is fiber cement board, now used on most residential and multifamily construction because of its very low cost, ease of installation, and low maintenance. There are many different manufactures such as Hardie, Nichiha, CBF Silbonit, but they all feel like paper mache and have the look of flat painted drywall.

PATTERNING: In the Canyon house project, we tested various patterning techniques to break down the standard size and find more appealing proportions and effects. We assimilated patterns to the surrounding landscape to visually blend the material, taking on a more organic appearance. A number of rules were developed in the patterning sequencing, and the addition of color reinforced the organic appearance on the hillside.

STEPPING: In the Balakrishnan project we became more interested in creating visual depth in the material. We tested various ways to offset wood furring behind the fiber cement board for a more elegant effect. Accent landscape lighting can be inserted between panels to accentuate and give function to what otherwise is a blank wall. Careful detailing and execution is critical to the final product.

Re-presenting materials like fiber cement board in ways we don’t typically associate them elevates their appearance and function, while still having the low cost benefits.

How can we innovatively reuse a significant mid-century building while respecting the sacred ground it stands upon?

Architect Richard Neutra’s Cyclorama Center, one of his most prized buildings, was located on the Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Its future was in doubt and debated nationally for decades.

Typically, preservation focuses narrowly on retaining a building as is or with minimal intervention, but there are degrees of preservation yet to be explored that lie between maintaining the original condition and demolition. We have devised the groundwork for a more nuanced form of preservation that addresses today’s societal needs while respecting our cultural heritage. Often, new pieces are added to old buildings, but why not invert the formula?

H I G H L I G H T S

• Project Preservation Document

C O L L A B O R A T O R S

Recent Past Preservation Network

How can a historic general store tell the stories of a small town while serving as its new municipal meeting hall?

The Town of Summerfield plans to renovate their signature historic property, the Gordon Hardware Store, for use as its public meeting hall. The building, largely vacant since the 1950s, would house a grand meeting hall with an addition for supporting functions. We engaged stakeholders to assess their needs and define the building’s history.

In its day the general hardware store was the social crossroads of this rural area - providing both necessary goods and daily conversations. Its reactivation would once again allow the citizenry to gather for town meetings and other events. The new supporting addition also adds flexibility for activities, and graphically displays the building’s social history through photographs and storytelling. These displays and the reuse of this building will preserve the cultural history of Summerfield for future generations.

H I G H L I G H T S

• Historic research and interviews

• Programming and needs assessment

•Cost estimating

C O L L A B O R A T O R S

Lynch Mykins | Surface678 | AME Consulting Engineers | Cumming Corporation

The goal of this project is to create a new typology for urban housing that helps address the problem of homelessness in urban centers by providing a stable dwelling place for those coming out of homelessness. Community is fostered through common activities and interactions that build and strengthen personal relationships.

The project provides a core space to foster these relationships and an adaptable framework as community grows and contracts. 12 prefabricated dwelling modules are arranged adjacent to one another to form a central community porch. From street side this gives the appearance of a human-scaled urban building, rather than loosely organized mobile dwellings. The community porch is centralized to increase resident interactions, provide visual and sound connections, and create a sense of safety. A simple wood trellis roof with clear plastic covers the dwellings and community porch like an umbrella. Rainwater is collected from the roof and stored in an underground cistern where it’s used to flush toilets and water the garden. The umbrella roof reduces heat gain from the sun and keeps the rain and snow off the dwelling units. This increases the energy efficiency of the dwellings and extends their lifespan. The trellis and units may be added to or subtracted from as necessary to accommodate the residents.

H I G H L I G H T S

• 144 sf prefabricated dwelling modules

• Rainwater collection

• Sustainable site strategies

• Flexibility for expansion and adjustment

• Communal gardens

How can we reinvent the stereotype of a bus shelter?

Typically, bus shelters consist of an enclosure for protection from the elements and a poured concrete slab to provide a standing surface. The sheltered garden reinvents this stereotype as a pocket park, able to be inserted in new or existing conditions to enrich the cityscape and improve the passenger experience by integrating a large bench, information and advertisement panels, trash receptacles, handicap accessibility, and native grass and plantings. The shelter is an undulating surface composed of a translucent fiberglass roof with perforated cor-ten steel panels below. It takes formal cues from the dilapidated agricultural structures that dot the North Carolina countryside. Like a leaf canopy over a forest, the shelter filters light and diverts water into the garden below. This sustainable approach allows for better storm water management with gravel recharge areas and plants to filter toxins out of rain water runoff.

H I G H L I G H T S

• Sustainable storm water management

• Use of native grass and plantings

• Simplified construction sequence to allow for use in new or existing conditions