Shane Scranton ’13

Shane_frame
“It clicked for me when I walked through a campus building I helped design.

“Walking through the Center for the Arts renovation once it was completed, I realized how design manifests itself and affects how people interact. That was powerful. I took my architecture thesis in a classroom I’d spent a lot of time designing.”

Shane Scranton ’13 started a business that uses new technology to improve design efficiency. Lightwell just became an LLC and is growing fast.

Shane came to Middlebury because he wanted to study the environment and could tell he’d have the freedom to follow his unfolding interests. “I wanted to tie environmental studies to something I could latch on to. One spring I took my first Intro to Architecture class and started work on the Solar Decathlon. I knew, hands down, that’s what I should do.”

A series of internships, classes, and projects helped him build different skills and dig deeply into landscape, social, and resource issues. On Middlebury’s first Solar Decathlon team, “I became the 3-D guy,” he says, recalling a summer of 100-hour weeks he spent mastering design and visualization software. He took a semester off to intern with SAS Architects, advisers to the Solar Decathlon, and had real responsibility for renovations to Forest Hall and the Mahaney Center for the Arts. “I was so energized by it. There was this wave of new information coming in and whenever they asked if I could do something I said ‘yes’ and I’d learn it. I felt that the architecture world was now open to me.” Later, a class with Professor John McLeod, also a working architect, and a summer internship at the Organic Garden synthesized for Shane how the best design is rooted in knowledge of the landscape.

Shane says of his work making computerized 3-D images of building designs, “Design paired with technology will make a more efficient planning and building process. From a moral standpoint, this efficiency allows architects to spend more time developing buildings that use green technology and reduce waste. And thought-through design creates a human-centered, user-friendly experience.”

See some of Shane’s renderings:

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