Amidst finals season, seven senior students continue to work on their senior design project: Site Zero Energy Manhattan Yacht Club. The senior design team, named Blue Liberty Engineering, consists of three Mechanical Engineering students, Adrian Leszczynski, Eva Westphal, and Tage Paray, two Civil Engineering students, Johanna Pluymers and Sarah Hoogenboom, and two Engineering Management students, Johan Geldart and Brianna Perez.
The team decided to work together due to shared interests in resiliency and the SU+RE House, a sustainable and resilient house for coastal communities, which was designed at Stevens and won the 2015 Solar Decathlon.
In addition to their shared interests, the seven team members also cite that they have a successful team dynamic even though most of the students did not know each other before Senior Design. Rather than having students of different majors work on individual portions of the project, the entire design team provides input and is involved in all aspects of the project.
The project was proposed by its advisors, Professor Leslie Brunell, Professor Clark Snell, Professor Keith Sheppard, Professor Eirik Hole, and Professor John Nastasi. Sheppard has a personal connection to the project, as he is a member of the Manhattan Yacht Club (MYC), a sailing club in Liberty Harbor Marina, and wanted to see his club grow both in the number of members and resilience.
The goal of the project is to complete a comprehensive site design of a new MYC for the Commodore (the head of the MYC) to present to investors, in hopes of securing funding for future construction. According to the group’s formal mission statement, “The revitalized Manhattan Yacht Club will inspire a feeling of serenity and nature. This updated space will stand in contrast to Jersey City’s urban setting by encouraging modern technology within green outdoor and indoor spaces. Movement will be encouraged naturally throughout the grounds, fostering the feeling of an outdoor campus. The design will be self-sufficient in terms of both water and energy production, and resilient towards floods and tropical storms. The site shall draw the eye towards the Statue of Liberty while remaining a long lasting, modern, iconic structure itself in the years to come.” Hoogenboom emphasizes that the team aims to create a Yacht Community that is environmentally friendly and is zero net energy, meaning that all energy consumed by visitors is directly produced on site.
By the end of the Spring 2019 semester, the team aims to complete phase one of the project, which is presenting the Commodore with plans to draw in investors. The second phase of the project will involve further development of the design to achieve a constructible set of drawings, which will be accomplished if the members of Blue Liberty Engineering decide to continue working on this project after graduation or if the project is transferred to another team to continue work in the next academic year. Finally, the third phase will involve the construction and commissioning of the site. However, the actual senior design project is purely conceptual, and the following phases fully depend on the ability to fund the project. Although the project has no funding, the final concept design drawings will act as a bid package, which the Commodore of the MYC will present to the members of the club, and they will fundraise the money necessary to build the project.
In regard to the team’s involvement with this project after graduation in May 2019, Hoogenboom states that “this project has really been eye-opening for me and if there was an opportunity to continue with this project or something similar, many of us would be interested in taking part.” Leszczynski echoes the former sentiment and believes that “this project definitely has the potential to continue after Senior Design ends. I’d love to actually see this through and get it built.” Ultimately, Blue Liberty Engineering’s Senior Design Project ends at the design concept level, but the team hopes that the members of the MYC like their project and will be able to fundraise enough money in order to have the physical clubhouse built.
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