Energy: patterns, planning and architecture

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

And—despite our foot-dragging—the exchange was extremely gratifying to the folks on this end. Because we became acquainted with 12 concerned, capable and rather impressive architectural students. So concerned, capable and impressive that we're now anxious to meet the rest of George's class and we're excitedly awaiting the unveiling of everyone's renderings and models of the forthcoming proposed designs for the Research Center.

Because somewhere in the early stages of our day-long discussion, it became apparent that George H. Ramsey was not your usual bookbound professor of architecture. Why, this guy had just spent the summer actually pouring concrete for a house he's building out in his home state of Oklahoma. He knows what it's like to get his hands dirty! Ole George is all right.

And he has the book-learning and theory too: Ramsey studied at the University of Tulsa, got his Bachelor of Architecture degree from Oklahoma State University and received an Architect DPLG (the equivalent of a Ph.D.) from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts School of Architecture at the University of Paris in France. George won the Medaille d' Argent in France's 1963 National Student Competition for the design of a 500-room hotel, the Medaille de Bronze in 1965 for the "Best Individual Thesis Project of the Year" and (in the United States) a National Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture grant to design and teach a graduate course in Energy Conservation and Environmental Design.

This guy just might be able to inspire a class into designing a first-rate Research Center . . . especially since he's been integrating solar and wind energy systems into his course work for at least two years and since he organized and directed a "first" major conference on Low Impact Energy Systems at Georgia Tech which featured Selwyn Bloom (Energy Conservation in Building Design), Dr. Erich Farber (Solar Energy) and Dr. Phillip Coulter (Wind Energy).

Dr. Ramsey, of course, has many more honors and credits to his name but I imagine you've already read enough to know that he seems to be about as ideally qualified as any professor of architecture in the country to tackle MOTHER'S Research Center. If you need any further convincing, however, the following Plowboy Paper should do the job.

The paper is taken from an address Dr. Ramsey gave in the spring of 1974 at the annual "Tech Today" conference held on the Georgia Tech campus. The speech was written before 12% interest rates and the summer/fall plunge of the stock market. Which is to say that enough of Dr. Ramsey's predictions have already come true to add a certain amount of weight to the rest of his view of the future.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print