Contact: Maridith Geuder
Using paper pinwheels, first-hand observation and ingenuity, two Mississippi State University architecture majors are bringing home national recognition.
Tracey Johnson of Biloxi and Kyle Wagner of Southaven are among only three student teams recognized in the Vital Signs Student Competition sponsored by the Energy Foundation and administered by the University of California, Berkeley. Johnson is a third-year student in the five-year bachelor's degree program; Wagner is a second-year student.
Nearly 300 students representing 19 schools participated in the competition, which involved the examination of an existing building's physical performance.
Wagner and Johnson won third-place for their investigation of passive cooling at Waverley Mansion, an 1852 historic home between West Point and Columbus owned by the Robert Snow family. Their entry--the only bachelor's-level project recognized--earned a $500 prize for the students and $250 for the School of Architecture.
In addition to terming the Mississippi State team's approach "inventive" and "energetic," the judges observed that it "generated more discussion than any other" entry.
First place went to a University of Wisconsin doctoral student who examined an Egyptian villa. University of Arizona graduate students studying the Phoenix City Library took second.
Johnson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Elijah M. Johnson, is a 1994 Biloxi High School graduate. Wagner, son of Mr. and Mrs. George K. Wagner, is pursuing a second degree at Mississippi State, having earned a bachelor's in mechanical engineering last year.
"I encouraged the students to find a building and topic indigenous to Mississippi," said assistant professor Jane B. Greenwood, who taught the independent study class in which Wagner and Johnson developed their project.
"They decided on Waverley as it reveals a strong dogtrot influence," Greenwood said. "Their challenge was integrating the study of ventilation in an historic building."
The students decided that some suggested measurement techniques, such as using smoke or incense, would be unsuitable for a historic structure. They chose, instead, to develop techniques other students easily could duplicate.
Employing 100 handmade paper pinwheels strung on all four levels of the 8,000-square-foot building, they sought to test how well conventional passive techniques cool the building. Of particular interest was the 52-foot central atrium's effect on adjoining living areas.
"We wanted to determine if Waverley cooled itself through cross-ventilation or through thermal buoyancy, the rising of hot air that escapes through openings placed high on walls," Wagner said.
Because of changes made to the structure over 150 years, the students also built a historically accurate scale model to test their theories. From both sets of tests, they concluded that the building successfully cools itself through cross-ventilation.
"Our project was about observation, not so much about scientific analysis," Greenwood noted. "Through personal experience, I wanted students to understand that building performance can influence the making of architectural space."
Their winning entry is now posted on a Vital Signs web site at http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/cedr/vs/act/1996comp/winners.html.