In the summer of 2024, I was one of approximately 50 students chosen from across the United States to participate in a course at Purdue University entitled: Developing Tomorrow's Infrastructure: An Introduction to Civil Engineering. While I was there, I worked in a group to apply what we were learning in class about infrastructure resiliency to the design of a tiny house. At the end of the week, we presented our project to faculty, corporate sponsors, and university administrators.
The project consisted of a floorplan, proposed resilience features, cost estimate, and embodied carbon estimate. Each group was given a set of natural hazards to design against.
Final Presentation
Credit: Brad Caffery
Final Presentation
Credit: Brad Caffery
Working in the Computer Lab
Our Floorplan
Key characteristics of our design are a centralized, concrete-walled bathroom to provide a storm shelter for residents and a seismic base isolation system. To balance costs, all plumbing fixtures are on the same wall and the frame is entirely timber.
A Conventional Seismic Isolator
Our Final Poster
*Images on this page for which credit was provided are under the CC BY-ND license. They can be found here: CE 299: Developing Tomorrow's Infrastructure by Purdue University Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering - Exposure