Man + Water + Fan = Freshman: Natural Process of Evaporative Cooling and the Digital Fabrication of the ASU Outdoor Dining Pavilion (2008)

abstract⁄To the east of Johnson City TX is the Lyndon B. Johnson’s family home. Part of the Johnson Estate2 is given over to a working farm circa 1870 that presents various aspects of domestic practice from the era. This includes a desert fridge which is a simple fourlegged structure with a slightly battered profile that’s draped in calico. Its principle is simple water from an upturned jar is drawn by osmosis down the sides of the calico where it evaporates in wind currents drawn though a ‘dog run’ between two log cabins. Cooled air circulates within the structure and where cheese and milk are kept fresh during the summer. The desert fridge is a simple system that reaches a state of equilibrium through the natural process of evaporation. This system provides a working model for a prototype structure for an outdoor dining pavilion that was designed and constructed on the campus of Arizona State University. The desert fridge is the basis for a ‘biological process'3 of evaporative cooling that has been interpreted in terms a ritual of outdoor dining in arid climates. The pavilion is intended as a gathering point and a place of interaction for ASU freshmen. The longterm aim of this project is to provide a multiple of these pavilions across the campus that will be the locus of a sequence of dining events over a ‘dining season'4 during the fall and spring semester. This paper describes how the desert fridge principle has been interpreted in the program and construction of the dining pavilion. It explores a sequence of levels by which the structure, via digital production process, provides an educational narrative on sustainability. This communicative quality is portrayed by the building in direct biological terms, through tacit knowledge, perceived phenomena, lexical and mechanical systems. The paper also describes how these digital production process were used in the building’s design and fabrication. These range from an empirical prognosis of evaporative cooling effects, fluid dynamics, heat mapping and solar radiation analysis through to sheet steel laser cutting, folded plate construction and fully associative variable models of standard steel construction. The aim of the pavilion is to create an environment that presents the evaporative cooling message at a multiple of levels that will concentrate the visitor in holistic understanding of the processes imbued within the building.5