CEE Graduate Student Joel Freitas Receives Prestigious Scholarship from the American Concrete Institute
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Graduate student Joel Freitas of the UMass Amherst Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department has received a highly competitive $5,000 scholarship from the American Concrete Institute (ACI) Foundation to support his research related to “making brutalist concrete buildings more sustainable.” Brutalism is a minimalist architectural style that showcases bare building elements, such as concrete, in preference over decorative design. As the ACI explained in announcing its 2024-2025 scholarship recipients, these scholarships “are offered to high-potential undergraduate or graduate students.” For more information, see here.
The ACI added that “The ACI Foundation is a non-profit subsidiary of ACI that promotes progress, innovation, and collaboration in the concrete industry through strategic investments in ideas, research, and people to create the future of the concrete industry.”
According to theSpruce.com, “Brutalism is a style of architecture that lasted from the 1950s to the 1970s, characterized by simple, block-like, hulking concrete structures. Emerging from the modernist movement of the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, it originated in England and spread to the rest of the world shortly afterwards.” UMass Amherst built several such buildings during the second half of the 20th century.
Freitas does his research under the guidance of his advisor, CEE Department Head Sergio Breña. Freitas’ research on brutalist architecture involves the following three major objectives.
As Freitas says, “The first objective is to use quick and simple tools to create a template for building owners and building-conservation professionals to use early in the decision-making process for making brutalist concrete buildings more sustainable. The second objective is to determine how the embodied carbon of concrete has changed from 1970 to the present.”
According to Freitas, “The third objective is to study the feasibility of replacing the existing façade of the Lincoln Campus Center, an architecturally significant, brutalist-concrete building on the UMass Amherst campus, with an identical façade that eliminates the thermal bridges that are present in the existing façade using modern construction materials and techniques.”
Freitas also says that he plans to present a case study of how significant brutalist structures may be viably brought into current sustainability conversations. After graduation, Freitas is interested in pursuing a career in both industry and academia.
As the ACI explained, “Our foundation supports a wide range of research and educational initiatives that contribute to keeping the concrete industry at the forefront of technological advances in material composition, design, and construction. (September 2024)