Wade Nolan

Building Construction students in Professor Hugh Crawford's Literature class built scale replicas of Thoreau's cabin and Beston's outermost house during Fall Semester 2011. The cabins were built on the College of Architecture's front lawn for the purpose of gaining a greater understanding of Thoreau and Beston's experiences through knowledge embodied in practices and processes.

Inheriting these small houses, the students of Professors, Tristan Al-Haddad, Joseph Goodman & Russell Gentry were tasked with developing racking systems for the deployment of a one kilowatt photovoltaic array. The wooden racking systems, fabricated using a 5-axis CNC router, hold frame-less photovoltaic laminates and are monitored for energy production and temperature. The Beston outermost house's racking system is illustrated here. The racking system penetrates the roof through the ridge only to prevent water infiltration. The PV laminates are attached to a steel pipe that serves as both a hinge for angling the array each month and a conduit for electrical wiring.