CEE and AED Alumnus Tony Vasquez Received Commendation as a Key Designer for Catalyst SF
Civil and Environmental Engineering graduate and Architectural Engineering and Design certificate recipient Tony Vasquez recently received commendation as a key designer for Catalyst SF, architecture firm Booth Hansen’s entry in the Architecture at Zero 2013 international design competition. The design received the highest honor in the competition – the Merit Award in the professional category.
The Architecture at Zero competition proposes a site-specific program and challenges designers to find creative and feasible approaches to zero net energy buildings. The 2013 competition site was set on a 22,300 sf vacant lot in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. Entrants were challenged to create a net-zero energy project with both a grocery store and 150 affordable housing units in the dense, mixed-income area.
Named for its innovative use of a hybridized energy management and generation system, Catalyst SF incorporates an on-site catalytic converter to turn collected rain and gray water into hydrogen gas for use in powering on-site fuel cells. Vasquez’s primary role on the team was to carry out the research and design of the system that would allow our building to achieve the net-zero goal, and he also contributed to the design of the building, production of presentation materials, and energy calculations and analysis. Vasquez was joined in the design by Booth Hansen architects Joseph King and Lillian Park.
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