Current Pilot: Central UMC
The Central UMC pilot is the first concentrated proof of how a BEAM cohort can document an existing building, frame preservation and reuse questions, and produce phased support for real next steps.
Pilot Brief
Central UMC gives BEAM a real building, a real stewardship context, and a real decision environment.
The pilot tests whether a faculty-guided student cohort can produce work that is simultaneously educational, credible, and useful to a partner site.
Scope
The pilot can support documentation, preservation framing, adaptive reuse thinking, accessibility review, and phased implementation planning.
Each workstream is coordinated so the project does not fragment into isolated classroom exercises.
Learning
Students encounter the full complexity of a building with history, public meaning, physical constraints, and institutional realities.
Faculty gain a project platform where teaching, advising, and community-linked scholarship can operate together.
Future
The goal is not only to support Central UMC. It is to establish a replicable method for future BEAM Architecture cohorts.
If the pilot succeeds, it becomes a precedent for how sites, faculty, and student teams can work together across the broader BEAM network.
Continue Exploring
About BEAM Architecture
Mission, model, and why a university-linked practice matters.
Faculty Partnerships
Advising, sponsorship, course integration, and research collaboration paths.
Student Cohorts
How student teams are formed, what they produce, and how they learn.
Project Types
Architecture, preservation, adaptive reuse, fabrication, access, and strategy.