Our Academic Leadership informs our practice.

green wall at LEAFHouse

high performance skylight at LEAFHouse

wetlands bisect the shed forms at WaterShed

solar thermal array at WaterShed

deep overhangs at Watershed

connections to the kitchen garden at WaterShed

liquid desiccant waterfall at WaterShed

Our Academic Leadership informs our practice. Matters of sustainability and building craft that guide our approach to architecture find expression in our teaching.

Amy Gardner has been a faculty member at the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation since 1989. She was the lead faculty adviser to the University of Maryland’s LEAFHouse 2nd place entry to the 2007 Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. She repeated this leadership role for WaterShed, UMD’s winning 2011 Solar Decathlon entry, working closely with a faculty team including Brittany Williams, a Gardner Architects LLC project architect and also a lecturer at UMD. Amy’s work on the Solar Decathlon grew out of her efforts to build an integrated design curriculum. Collaborating with faculty colleagues in architecture and across collateral disciplines, Amy was the founding coordinator and driving force behind the courses Arch 600/611 Integrated Design Studio and Advanced Technology—a program accorded multiple honors including: an AIA Education Honor Award; an ACSA Teaching Award; a Lilly Center for Teaching Excellence Award; and an NCARB Prize for the Creative Integration of Teaching and Practice in the Academy.

Brittany Williams’ focus is on a detailed oriented, multidisciplinary approach to the synthesis of sustainable active and passive strategies at the residential scale. Many of Brittany’s academic pursuits, including her experiences with the Solar Decathlon, an international design-build collegiate competition, have centered in the integration of environmental stewardship in the architectural curriculum. As a lecturer, Brittany served as one of the faculty advisers for the University of Maryland’s Solar Decathlon 2011 first place entryWaterShed. In 2013, Brittany was based at Peking University in Beijing where she served as the competition manager for Solar Decathlon China 2013, sponsored by the US Department of Energy and the People’s Republic of China National Energy Administration. Brittany continues to teach at the University of Maryland as a lecturer.