Jesus Vassallo
Boston – Shepley Bulfinch, a national architecture firm, announced that Jesús Vassallo, Gus Wortham assistant professor of architecture at Rice School of Architecture, received the Shepley Bulfinch Award during an awards ceremony at the Rice School of Architecture on April 29.
The award grants funding to a faculty member or team of faculty members to conduct research that investigates materials or sustainability. Vassallo was selected for the award for his project “Tall Timber.”
“Anticipating the disruptive potential of mass timber construction systems for collective housing, and capitalizing on what architects do best, which is to innovate in the application of a new technology as opposed to its basic science, this research project will focus on producing a catalog of new applications of mass timber construction systems for mid-rise housing projects,” said Vassallo. “In order to attain this goal, the project will work by rehearsing different degrees of prefabrication and by focusing on the range of scales between the construction detail and the repetitive structural system.”
The research will yield a publication in the manner of a white paper illustrating the results of the project, as well as the models and prototypes produced in the process.
