For more than two years, University of Virginia architecture student Marisa Yamamoto has worked with the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe to design a community space known as the Summer Lodge in Sisseton, South Dakota.
She is one of seven students who received travel fellowships from the UVA School of Architecture to conduct design research across three continents during the past year.
In her final year at UVA, Marisa Yamamoto is researching materials at the Computational Tectonics Lab within the School of Architecture. (Contributed photo)
As the Carmen Fanzone Travel Scholar, Yamamoto collaborated with UVA architecture professor Phoebe Crisman and Dustina Gill, an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, to design an open-air structure that could host community events and Indigenous youth camps.
“The design experiments with rammed earth construction, the traditional practice of weaving willow and masonry construction we learned about from the elders,” Yamamoto, who will graduate in May, said. “So, this collaborative process will also hopefully serve an educational purpose for the youth who will use the space to learn about sustainable local materials in their community.”
With her fellowship, Yamamoto traveled to South Dakota to collaborate on the design and experiment with different materials. She also participated in an annual summer camp for Indigenous youth.
The Earth Lodge is rooted in sustainable practice, collaborative design and Indigenous building practices, according to co-designer Yamamoto. (Illustration by Marisa Yamamoto)
“It really cemented my understanding of certain customs and gave me an opportunity to have meaningful discussions and friendships with community members,” she said.
The fourth-year student has completed her graduate school applications and looks forward to pursuing this kind of work in the future.
“I’m really interested in projects that really consider the context and the history of a location, but also experiment with different materials,” she said.
Julianna Mollica investigates how design that connects people with nature can support mental health. (Contributed photo)
Julianna Mollica, a doctoral candidate in 鶹ƽ Constructed Environment program, studies how architecture and neuroscience intersect to influence mental health.
She won the Sarah McArthur Nix Travel Fellowship to conduct an experimental study in Palaiseau, France, using mobile neuroimaging and other methods to study how nature-inspired design influences stress regulation.
The so-called “window study” was hosted at Télécom Paris, a French engineering university where one of her committee members is a professor and researcher, and investigated whether there was a difference in stress recovery if people saw nature through a window versus having it incorporated into the interior environment.
“There is strong evidence that exposure to outdoor nature benefits mental health,” she said, “but far less is known about whether nature-inspired design in indoor environments can produce comparable effects, especially when studied in real settings rather than through proxies like images, videos or virtual reality.”
