Method- Chicago Studio Student Journal

METHOD Chicago Studio 11/13

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Method

Chicago Studio Journal 11/13 Director: Andrew Balster Editors: David & Rachel Dewane Contributing Editors: James Heard, Chelsea Kilburn & Matthew Ridgeway

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Gallery

Design as a Social Catalyst

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Redefining the Blank Canvas

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Cenotaph?

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Interview with Katherine Darnstadt

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Wrigley Roost

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Local Interview 1

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Making Cities

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Room(s) and a Garden

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Local Interview 2

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Detroit Half-Full

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Fragmented Sullivan

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Playing Field

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Field Notes

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Sliced Cinema

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Drawing from Phenomena

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Adaptation

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Mobility Networks

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Re-Scaling

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Urban Web

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Mies is a Classicist?

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Carved Community

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Context

Glance vs Gaze

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Director’s Note

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Student Notes

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Glance vs. Gaze

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Director’s Notes Andrew Balster CHICAGO STUDIO is an innovational learning environment for architecture and design that actively links education and practice. Students learn the art of building by personally witnessing the process and environment where architecture is created. It provides the opportunity to experience contemporary practice first-hand, with all of its complexity, beauty and inevitable shortcomings — giving students the confidence, tools and inspiration to become future leaders in the profession. CHICAGO STUDIO should become a part of a greater movement in higher education that makes academic and professional methodology less divided and more aligned, which will create stronger fields collectively. Two entities that are inherently connected never benefit from a lack of dialogue or participation, and there is serious opportunity for the advancement of our profession through the creative exchange of ingenuity and experience. CHICAGO STUDIO provides this exchange in an extraordinary environment where students work next to innovative professional teams and visionary leaders.

The model challenges the idea that learning only takes place in classrooms or on campus, and it exemplifies an effective partnership of the architectural profession and the academy. Virginia Tech does not have a campus in Chicago — they do not own buildings or rent any offices or have a single dedicated facility. The design studio, lecture halls and classrooms are located in public spaces and private offices. The physical network of design firms, civic institutions and private organizations, share their facilities, resources, expertise, and most importantly, their time. Every day, professionals with a broad range of expertise critically engage with the students in the design process and advance the expectations of conceptual and technical rigor. This builds design ability, confidence, and social skills that simply cannot be replicated in any other environment.

The design projects are located in particularly challenging areas for the City of Chicago, teaching the students about the greater process and responsibility of architecture. In a city so rich with architectural legacy, the students often prompt new discussions with their creative ideas and discoveries, drawing eager participation from civic leaders, politicians, real-estate developers and industry professionals. Phil Enquist FAIA, and Partner of SOM said, “CHICAGO STUDIO has developed many innovative ideas for the City of Chicago, while at the same time, introduced this great city to many young designers. The program has created an effective bridge between the city, the Chicago practices and Virginia Tech students.”

Today, there are over 200 professionals involved in the program — many of whom are globally recognized leaders and a large number that are were trained at Virginia Tech themselves. This collective network is advancing the potential of this field by breaking down the common barriers between education and practice, and embracing a unified partnership that betters both the students and the profession.

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Design as a Social Catalyst

forced architects to implement alternative practices, have created exciting opportunities for the future of architectural practice.

Kelly McFadden

Relevant Design

Public architecture has the ability to serve as a platform for social improvement if it is rooted in a community driven design approach. A deep understanding of context is important to creating stimulating settings for a free exchange of ideas leading to enlightenment, social improvement, and an better quality of life. The inclusion of end users in the design process can be as equally empowering as the architecture itself. In order to improve the impact of public architecture, we must be critical of the processes and architecture within the field.

Rapid globalization of society has sparked debates on ‘critical regionalism’. By its nature, architecture is not autonomous, and therefore must be contextually relevant. The experience of a building is woven into the fabric of its cultural, economic, and environmental context. Understanding all aspects of a project’s local context is integral to creating architecture that strengthens communities by empowering its users.

The power of architecture lies in its ability to become a physical manifestation and platform for community aspirations. Providing people with good design promotes dignity. If people feel that they are respected and deserve quality design, they will respond positively. People with dignity want to be more active in the community, and this mindset is contagious.

The nature of today’s society and economy has led many architects to alternative methods of practice. Only a few architects can afford to wait on a call from wealthy clients. Many architects use professional skills to tackle problems they have noticed in their own environment, whether or not they seem to be related to the field of architecture.

In projects that branch into other fields, such as social work, urban planning, or environmental solutions, it is critical that architects involve clients and community members in collaboration throughout the design process. Difficulties facing society, the economy and the environment have

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While architecture is historically rooted in vernacular design methods, the need for architecture to be contextually relevant has never been more present. In the past, architects worked within their own community, as knowledgeable and invested participants. In today’s rapidly globalizing society, the profession has widely adopted what Tom Fisher refers to as a ‘jet set’ model of architecture.¹ This phenomenon is highly inefficient for a variety of reasons. Most significantly, there is a major learning curve to understanding the cultural, economic, and environmental conditions of a foreign place. While there are methods of researching these conditions and engaging local community members, due to time and budget constraints, these aspects are often neglected.

If a building lacks cultural relevance, community members cannot relate and will not use the building to its fullest potential. Likewise, if it is environmentally or economically unsuitable, it will become a drain on a community. In either case, not only is a project unsuccessful, but it is a waste

1. Fisher, Thomas. Personal Interview. 12 April 2013.

of time and resources of all those involved in the design, construction, and maintenance of the project.

Consequently, it is crucial that architects invest in developing an understanding of context and combat the negative consequences of globalization.

The opportunity of this new reality of the profession lies in the ability of architects to practice with a global mindset while still acting on local conditions.

Architects today have access to a much wider library ofsuccessfulandunsuccessfulprojectsandprocesses.

It is our duty to stay attuned to the profession and learn from the work of our contemporaries, as well as our own.

Collaborative Processes

can be carried into other neighborhood outlets long after the architect leaves the conversation.

Inclusion of community members in the design process can also instill a sense of ownership in a building, which happens if individuals feel they have played a role in the birth of the architecture.

This insures community members remain invested in sustaining the building throughout its life. True beauty lies in the way in which community members may constantly reinvent a space in ways neither party could have imagined.

Lavezzorio Community Center In designing the Lavezzorio Community Center, Studio Gang Architects used a collaborative process

The power of architectural thought lies in its ambiguity. From the beginning of our architectural education, we are faced with problems that have no definitive answer. Architects are constantly questioning and testing methods and solutions, until it is clear that the best conclusion has been reached.

Our architectural education has allowed us to not only be problem solvers, but problem identifiers.

A collaborative process is important because as designers we can help communities recognize problems and formulate beneficial solutions.

The collaborative process can yield magnificent outcomes beyond beautiful architecture. In its most simple outcome, collaboration helps architects design to the interests of future users. Through collaboration, architects can help communities envision their future and learn to make decisions for themselves. Then, the process of design becomes a metaphor for the old adage, “If you teach a man to fish...�. This process is sustainable in its ability to create a sense of empowerment in citizens that

Š Steve Hall @ Hedrich Blessing

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to create a community center that proposes new architectural concepts and creates an enriching environment as a catalyst for social development.

The center provides a home to the Chicago chapter of the global non-profit organization, SOS Children’s Villages, which aims to provide safe and supportive environments for foster children.

The building is situated in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the Chicago’s South Side, an area with one of the highest crime and murder rates in the country. Studio Gang was selected because SOS Children’s Village saw them as a firm that would inspire and challenge the community to progress, not only through the architecture, but also through the process of designing the architecture.

Studio Gang set out on a collaborative design process, meeting with parents, children, and other community members. Developing a deep understanding of context and the end users was the first step in creating an architecture that would be an anchor for the neighborhood and the children raised in the center. As the organization’s CEO, Tim McCormick explains, Studio Gang empowered the community through this process: Architects are innately well positioned to bring out creativity in a project. Our architects from Studio Gang helped us understand how to be more creative with the resources we have; they taught us about flexibility and adaptability.

The building was designed under strict budget constraints. Most materials had to be donated, meaning there was a constantly changing palette of materials available to the architects. When a shipment of bricks of fell through, the firm was left with a hodgepodge of concrete mixtures, donated by various contractors. Instead of allowing this to compromise the integrity of the design, Studio Gang saw an opportunity to challenge construction methods and lend beauty to the facade. The entry enclosure, coined the ‘strata wall’, was constructed in varied bands of different colored concrete, and became the identity of the building and an icon in the neighborhood.

Many children in the village have been victims of abuse, behind the closed doors of their former environments. Lavezzorio features fluid open spaces and immense windows to create a sense of openness, which fosters a sense of physical and emotional safety for the children. By using architecture to subdue their insecurities, Studio Gang allowed the

2. John Cary. The Power of Pro Bono. Metropolis Books, 2010. 124-130.

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Print.

children to direct their attention to play, interaction, and learning, all key factors in development and growth.

The architecture serves as a bridge between foster and neighborhood children. Large gathering spaces and a playful central staircase provide a platform for impromptu teaching and encourage interaction between children. The design provides a playful and uplifting environment that has proved to be transformational in the lives of its occupants.

The power of good design lies not only in its immediate impact, but also in the ripple effect it creates in an environment. By designing the center with the same respect and rigor as a high profile project in the office, Studio Gang made it clear that the residents of a neighborhood ridden with violence and poverty were as equally deserving of quality design as any other client. A respect for the local community and context has stimulated a sense of dignity in its community members.

The neighborhood has adopted a sense of pride and ownership in the center and the adjacent areas.

Community member attendance at the community center has jumped. Neighbors utilize computers to find jobs, engage with others, and better their lives. Since its completion, residents have taken initiatives to improve landscapes, buildings, and pedestrian conditions in neighboring spaces. Studio Gang’s Community Center has empowered this neighborhood on Chiacgo’s South Side by engaging members in the design of a culturally, economically, and environmentally appropriate architecture.

Critique The built environment is a powerful tool that

can alter human experience and behavior, inspire thought, and encourage interaction. Reversely, poor design can have detrimental affects on a community.

We must be critical of its implementation as we actively analyze previous engagement processes and constructed buildings.

Analysis of recent public architecture is often light.

Projects are too often commended on humanitarian impact, even if its architectural innovation and conceptual rigour are weak. It is not always clear if the architecture has stimulated a community, or if it merely holds an active program. With a society in need of sustainable solutions, it is important that architecture be a driving factor in inspiring communities, as program and users continuously change.

Because many public projects are non-profit or pro bono by nature, they do not produce the revenue or publicity of high profile projects.

Unfortunately, these projects may not be given the same attention by architects, leading to a lack of architectural integrity. Underfunding or a variety of other constraints are used as excuses for less than exemplary buildings. As architects, it is our responsibility to create beautiful architecture within any set of constraints.

In ‘Going Public’, Sarah Whiting proposes that over-attention to ideologies of inclusiveness and accommodation have led to compromise, which can be detrimental to the profession: “Our altruism may well have become the enemy of architecture’s forward motion, even at the very moment when our understanding of the public has entered a vastly more sophisticated era.”³

3. Whiting, Sarah. “Normative Urbanism.” Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction. N.p.. Web. <http://www.holcimfoundation.org/ Portals/1/docs/ F07/WK-Norm/F07-WK-Norm-whiting02.pdf>

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In public projects, architects must design in response to community desires while simultaneously exploring new architectural concepts.

In the realm of public projects, there is often a shortage of resources, which calls for a highly efficient approach to design in this field. While architecture cannot be universally applied, there are common factors that have consistently proved effective or ineffective. Looking at completed projects with a more critical eye, whether as a self or peer evaluation, will lead to a more efficient practice and more effective architecture.

Conclusion A challenge to designers’ sense of social responsibility and their approach to the public realm of architecture is best put by Sarah Whiting: We know now that the public realm is a heterogeneous field; let’s exploit the possibilities of our own architectural expertise. Rather than lose ourselves among its heterogeneity, we should aspire to change this field’s topography. In order to do so, architects must engage, lead, catalyze — act, rather than only react.4 Architects are responsible for understanding context, program, and function and designing an architecture that responds to these conditions in a beautiful and meaningful way. Architecture is not purely functional. It is expresses cultural identity and human dignity. It has the potential to be much more than an artistic expression or simple enclosure.

“Architecture is powerful. The time is right for an ideological architecture that does good by being good.”5

4. Whiting, Sarah. “Normative Urbanism.” Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction. N.p.. Web. <http://www.holcimfoundation.org/ Portals/1/docs/ F07/WK-Norm/F07-WK-Norm-whiting02.pdf> 5. Gamez, Jose L. S. and Susan Rogers. of Change.” Trans. Array Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism. New York: Metropolis Books, 12

2008. 18-26. Print.

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Redefining the Blank Canvas Danielle Hoge My feet trace the lines in the concrete pavers.

The voids in the steps are perfectly maintained; I follow the paths of those ahead. Weaving through crowds of people, the outside world drifts into the background; weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re pulled in by a common belief.

Light floods in, dancing across the benches. The murmur of voices sifts through the rows and the mosaic tiles in the altar glitter against the morning sun.

Shadows float over the cracks in the concrete pavers as grass peaks through the voids. The street is empty.

A hand undulates across the fence. The outside world canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t reach the interior, separated by an absence of faith. Broken glass crumbles on the floor.

Rumors of singing slip from the lifeless walls. The mosaic glass glitters against the wooden floor.

The squeak of an abandoned swing set creates a rhythm. The wooden roof gives way allowing the outside in; nature has won. Invisible, a structure once filled with life surrenders.

Structures gradually become sewn into the fabric of their surroundings. They form relationships with the street, bordering buildings, and the people who move through and around them. While some buildings become recognizable fixtures, others form a long-standing relationship with the neighborhood and community. Questions begin to arise at the very nature of this relationship. Is it possible for a building centered on this conversation with the community to exist independently? Once a link has been formed, can this tie be severed and perception changed to accommodate adaptation. In a way, a

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structure designed specifically to foster the growth of a culture, becomes the antithesis of its original design intent once devoid of its communal roots.

Areas are subject to intervals of intense change, influenced by culture, economy, and changing demographics. This ultimately comes down to an issue of time. While cities and cultures quickly fluctuate and transform, architecture represents a slower force, left up to the devices of necessity.

Radical reshaping of communities, with the rapid influx of populations, leads to the forceful alteration of structures that had once been molded from the aesthetics and need of its time.

The central question is the very permanence of a design, a building, a community, and a neighborhood. Structurally, these are places built to last. Yet the purpose and focus of any structure is bound to change over time.

Our lives, much like communities, oscillate between periods of extreme change and intervals of calm. Moments of pause allow us to shape our environment. Marks are added to door frames as we grow and our personalities become manifested within the spaces we frequent. While moments that force us to pick up and go, leave behind peeled paint from picture frames and scratches where furniture once rested.

With change, comes a trail of abandoned parts.

Books and music collections gather dust in attics, old clothing finds it way into thrift shops, toys exchange hands at a garage sale, and the structures we leave rest in a hiatal state. Sometimes this state of pause is brief, with a new occupant ready to add their roots to a dense lineage, while other structures surrender to their suspension.

What happens to the structures that are subject to this slower medium; structures whose lives were dependent purely on the existence of a congregation to give them meaning? Are they subject to being completely erased due to a lack of connection to current standards? Or can something so seemingly permanent provide an opportunity to take cues from the former life and breathe a new life into the structure?

Perception becomes a determinant factor. If a structure is trapped in its past, can it have a successful future? If its perception is modified, can it welcome the changing community?

As designers itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s critical to constantly evaluate the effect our designs have on the built environment.

Whether designing a new structure or bringing new life to an older structure, changes can drastically effect how a community functions. This secondary life provided a unique opportunity to create a program, which constantly synched with the community. Instead of being a pas- sive force, it allowed roots to form and slowly weave through the rich context.

With a developing knowledge of human culture and our ability to adapt to changing conditions, the structures we inhabit must also begin to reflect this condition. Today, there is an overabundance of structures left abandoned, while new structures are built to accommodate rapidly changing conditions.

These structures fixed in this state of pause, form opportunities to peal back the layers and create a new condition, which fuses the old and new. At the same time, it is our responsibility as designers to consider a shift towards an architecture that is readily adaptable and not so settled in its permanent roots.

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Cenotaph?

Teatro Vista Theater

45 W Devon Ave Gregory Catron, John Kneutson & Daniel Murrow w/ G.R.E.C. Architects

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Interview with Katherine Darnstadt Joanna Cofer, Dani Hoge, Chelsea Kilburn & Melanie Kwon Group: Could you start off by telling us a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are now?

Katherine: So Latent Design, I started with that about three years ago. That I started because I was laid off. I had this period of about eight months where I was promoted, licensed, laid off, got married and got pregnant.

From that, it was started out of an opportunity and a need to create some sort of income for my future family, but then also, I had this stark decision on, this is a total crossroads in my life right now to be unemployed, and at this point. So, do I either want to be an architect or do I not, you know, so I kind of thought very cut and dry in that way. I made that decision to move forward and try and pursue a career of architecture not know- ing where it was going to take me. Before then, I worked on a variety of projects at a firm that had work in affordable hous- ing, predominantly. I worked on afford- able housing projects here in Chicago. From there, I went to another firm that did more development. I saw more of the architectural side and the development side of that - I wanted to learn more of those front end pieces of how the buildings actually come to be, before we even get to design the building in the projects. It was from that position that I was laid off. My interest in affordable housing started in school.

I studied abroad in both Paris and Copenhagen and the way that they treat affordable housing in Copenhagen is widely different in the psychology of housing and also in the design of housing than we do here in US. So when I came back to the US, I wanted to start to find out why we don’t have the same design standard and the broad base belief that affordable housing can be for a variety of people, not necessarily only for the poor minorities, here in Chicago, and in the US across the board. In Copenhagen, five or six years ago when I was studying there, they were looking at it as, it’s temporary, it’s a stepping-stone, it’s for young adults, young families, individuals, sure that are at the lower socio-economic pyramid, but it’s for a much broader audience. And also in terms of design, they use the design as an equalizer. They wanted affordable housing to be just as well designed as any other type of housing and some say it’s a mixed income model. It was designed for the person who was getting it at the market rate, not at the affordable housing rate. That is definitely a one-eighty of how we viewed affordable housing in Chicago at that 18

time and it’s starting to change. And it’s changing because the client face for affordable housing has shifted. There are more individuals that are coming out who do qualify within that income bracket and then the client base for some of the non for profit organizations who deal in this, from either the Chicago Housing Authority and even the non for profit developers, they are seeing that we need not only folks who live in the communities, but we want to retain the existing housing stock and retain existing community members. But we also need new individuals to our communities or else we are going to keep continuing to experience population decline. So they have to change their perception of it or else they are going to always have more houses. Then, you are going to consistently have this vacancyissue,andyouarenotgoingtostarttochipawayatit.

G: We’re all working on projects in Uptown, so it’s pretty interesting to see just from the four months that we have been here, the push towards gentrification that has been happening and so the population that does live there and how they’ve been pushed from all these other areas into basically into the corner that’s Uptown. Are you from Chicago originally?

K: I was born in Chicago. I grew up about a half-hour outside the city limits, so from the downtown area.

Then I came back to Chicago, I studied first at Depaul University. I was studying English and Philosophy.

And then there I went over into the Architecture at IIT. And so I switched sides of the city too.

G: So what made you switch, why did you want to become an architect?

K: I wish I had a good answer for that. I think there were a few pieces that caused me to switch. I always blame that was my existential crisis because I was studying philosophy at that time and felt that there was really few opportunities for me to make a career out of philosophy or out of English.

But then when you are starting to look at, you know how do you shape yourself and how do you shape the context of the world around you. There was this idea, well maybe I need to get in a career that does do that, and then at the same time I was also referencing back my father who is an engineer, and so there was all this confluence of what I grew up around, job sites. I grew up in the back of a shop and went up in truck and so I had the built environment as part of this passive learning experience, just from growing up. Looking at those two pieces together, if I want to have an impact on the world and shape an environment, I knew one way to shape an environment is through architecture, engineering and construction. So that’s where it came from. It was kind of that cut and dry “I’m going to be an architect.” I chose IIT because it had a five-year program; having that professional bachelors degree made sense to me. And then also, I liked the materials-based program and craft-based program, from how I understood it. Then going there and seeing the building and the space and everything going on in the neighborhood, I liked at that time the neighborhood was at the cusp of this transition.

Now, you see the back end of it and it’s still on the upward swing of gentrification. It was dirty, it was gritty and it was totally unsafe and you’re like, this is exactly where I want to be, because it was 180-degrees different from Lincoln Park. Rich poor has that top in the early 2000s so it was widely different from Lincoln Park and it was, yes that is where I want to be. How does this neighborhood go from

one to the other and back again. I was really there and lucky to be on that transition especially as they took down all the affordable housing to the south of the school. That’s what really started to shape that because you have this massive urban planning project and whole city transformation happening literally a block away from your school and we are not having any conversations about it, at our school.

So there was this enormous gap. That is when I studied abroad and really started looking at affordable housing because I wasn’t getting that education- what’s going on in my own neighborhood. When I was at school, that’s where I started to shape where I wanted to take my career.

G: Moving from education to the work force, was there any big surprises that you had making that transition?

K: You are never going to spend the amount of time and love towards a project that you did in studio. So just to be able to start to make very rapid and accurate decisions of using those to continue to pivot on and move forward was something that I had to get used to it. I definitely had to get used to the speed of the office versus the speed of studio.

And the level of how do you start to do authentic research and context finding more quickly and in an upfront matter, rather than letting it slowly build throughout a semester.

Definitely the office environment and the technical aspects of going into building was something that was very much lacking in the undergraduate experience and I think that is

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something that is almost across the board. We walk out of there ready to work on buildings, but we don’t know how to do that. So we essentially set up this entire three-year internship program where we learn everything again. And you are lucky if you are able to merge your studio learning and your professional learning together. It depends on the type of the place where you work. Most of the time they end up being two completely separate paths and that’s unfortunate.We need to integrate them together and have a more comprehensive learning environment that actually replicates what we actually experience as practitioners.

G: Could you speak about what you are doing now compared to when you were working in a firm and what that transition was like?

K: What I am doing now is creating a firm. I think it is very similar to the work that we were doing in other firms, in the practical sense of things. We are still writing out contracts, we’re still going through concept design phases.

What is different is the process that I’ve developed over the past three years because I’ve been able to develop the process that that is very much like the process that I was trying to develop in studio and now I’m starting to apply that out in practice. For developing projects in studio, it wants to have certain aspects that we don’t get to replicate in practice- why is that. Not only is it a time piece but sometimes it’s a collaboration piece. It’s a freedom to collaborate and a freedom to use two different pieces of information as your design trajectory and so how I started to frame the context and the constraints that are going to drive the project, which has definitely been different.

Since we also look at a participatory-based approach on developing all the projects and how we integrate our clients or their constituents on project that is very different also. I came from work environments where clients and designers were very separate. The client isn’t an expert in any sort of sense. And that’s kind of the point in that we are the designers. We tell them what they are going to get rather than working with them to develop something that might be different than what we originally came and were contracted for. So that’s a huge piece that is very different.

G: What’s your favourite part of your job and your least favourite part of your job currently?

K: Well, my favourite parts are the project and going out and constantly finding new sources of information in those projects and refining our approach and out practice overall because it’s constantly new and I feel that I’m always learning. I enjoy the continual learning cycle that comes with that. The downside of that is that you put yourself up for the potential for a lot of mistakes and a lot of failure that is a big risk and it’s difficult because when you’re a start up entrepreneur you have to learn how to mitigate that risk and manage other things around that. Some of the things that I see are that we live in a culture where 20

you have to manage your brand. It’s something that I both love and hate, because how do you manage the brand of Latent Design, but then how do you manage your own persona, and I live in a 100% digital environment where things begin to merge together. Now that I’m in a field where everything is merged together it’s hard to separate my passions and my everyday life, so I’m learning how to compartmentalizesomepiecesanddiscoverwhattheyshare.

G: Do you want to talk about some of the more interesting projects you’re working on now just to give us an idea of what you’re currently working on?

K: Well right now we’re working on finishing up conceptual design for the Fisk Power Plant, which was one of the two coal-fired power plants that just closed down here in Chicago last year. The design will be in an upcoming Chicago Architecture Foundation exhibit. We worked with one of the community groups in Pilsent o develop this design that was launched last year with their community’s non-negociables and what they want to see as an overarching theme. Because the power plant is on the river, they want to have an enhanced river front and green space that connects the community directly to the river that is more recreational rather than industrial.

It’s tenatively called the Pilsen Pier. So we just wrapped that up about a week or so ago. We’re also working right now on a community center down in Roseland in

the far south side of Chicago, as well as a co-op style grocery store that’s new construction.Hopefully we’ll be working on an academy for music in the Woodlawn neighborhood, and then we have a variety of residences.

So we have a mix of private and public projects, and when we started we were closely partnered with Architecture for Humanity, and probably 75% of our clients were public, but now it’s shifting as the firm is more established.

someone and figure out what you want to learn and how to meet the goals you set for yourself. A firm needs to give you the benefits of an experience you set out to gain, and professionals need to provide both knowledge and work.

You will then be able to be valuable in a variety of ways.

G: What advice do you have for students moving into the profession?

intersection of design and community development to create social, economic

K: I think there’s a wonderful opportunity for students to intern with firms that are directly parallel to architecture but still influence the built environment, like seeing what a contractor actually does and trying to be on site with them, or with the planning department or with the city and seeing how those pieces influence what you’ll be working on as an architect. It will give you such an amazing insight to their process and where you fit in as an architect. When you look at the entire timeline of a project, architects occupy a slim piece of the whole things, where we go through our concept to construction, but it’s very narrow. You ahve to understand the influencing factors. I think one of the great things you have is the idea of a mentor. Go in and look for someone in an office who will help you understand all you can about the profession. There’s a professional giveback, and people want to share information. So try and shadow

Katherine Darnstadt is the principal of Latent Design, a Chicago based full service architecture firm and strategic design consultancy working at the and environmental impact beyond the building.

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The Urban Machine

1060 W Addison Cody Ellis, Eric Kenyon & Casey McGrath w/ von Weise Associates

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Local Interview Joanna Cofer Uptown Residents of 10 Years Joanna: Where did you live before Uptown and why did you move here?

J: How would you describe your ideal neighborhood and ideal home?

Resident: I was trying to get away from Wrigleyville and Uptown kinda came outta nowhere. The place was refreshingly and one of a kind… well, besides all the halfway houses, crime and druggies… Oh and not to mention the Wilson Stop. You have been there?

J: Yes I have actually, my studio had a project to redesign the stop there. It was interesting to say the least.

R: Its got to have some flavor, not just like every other place. I really like all the background about Uptown and there is just alot of history here. Also, I think that a place needs to have a strong sense of togetherness and pride. Growing up I lived in Brooklyn, New York and it was ok area. It had some sketchy parts but I just remember the sense of pride in the area and togetherness. It was like, no matter what we are viewed as, or what issues arise, we are in this together.

R: Well I can tell you some stories. Underneath all the dirt, Uptown is a thriving diverse place. And it’s pretty darn close to all the yuppie neighborhoods that people love.

J: Thats a really interesting point. I know that Brooklyn has changed alot through the years. Do you see Uptown changing? Do you feel as you are a part of community here?

J: [Laughs] How to do perceive the life in Uptown?

R: This is the longest place I’ve lived in Chicago, by a longshot. For a long time I moved from place to place and all over the north side. I just never felt quite right or felt any type of loyalty to those places until I moved here. I do believe that Uptown is changing.... did you see that Target?! If this doesn’t signify “we’ve fucking made it!” then I dont know what does.

R: So despite the crazies, there is always something to do, events happening, and people to watch, there is alot of passion in Uptown. Things are not always what they seem…

J: Which aspects of the city do you avoid?

R: Haha the shady el stop! I think I’ve seen too many weird things…

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Making Cities Oswaldo Gonzalez Working on a blank canvas has been rare for city planners for much of the last century, yet this is exactly the opportunity given to Peter Ellis and his city design firm, Peter Ellis New Cities Ltd., when tasked with designing the Jaypee Sports City. A private development between New Delhi and Agra, the city is intended to draw over a million people to its 5,000 acre site. The holistic vision had to integrate itself into the cultural fabric of its context. The challenge became finding a unique design process that would help create a city that would truly belong to India and its people. The people were the catalyst for this process.

The struggle between designers and the culture of a foreign place is one that architectTim Swanson understands quite well. Prior to joining Peter Ellis, he confesses to having been frustrated with designing high-rise multi purpose buildings for people and in places that he knew nothing about. The 1. The 2013 Chicago Studio gave students experience of strategizing and designing for Jaypee Sports City was radically the task of proposing adaptive re-use projects different. The Peter Ellis New Cities team travelled to India to gain a better in the Uptown community of Chicago. This 1 understanding of the context and culture for which they would begin designing. provided the eight design teams the opportunity to design projects that had context, history, culture, and a strong sense of community.

The program is different from the traditional design studio as not only were professionals our teachers, but in a sense, Chicago also became our teacher. Here, the culture and place helped shape the decisions we made. In the end, the hope was to generate projects that found themselves between optimism and reality.

The real question quickly became, what defines a culture? In Swanson’s mind, the answer to this question lay in accepting that there is no concrete answer. According to Swanson, “there is only the ability to seek out the answer, accepting that you will never 2. The opportunity to work on a project renovation for a building that we could regularly visit greatly know what it is because it is always changing.” The helped the design process. Surprisingly, getting process becomes the answer. Constant experimentation to know the community took a longer time than and challenging preconceptions of place allows we expected. Completing an urban mapping analysis on Uptown earlier in our process may room for failure and opens possibilities for success. Through observation there is have helped the design team learn more about an awareness of bigger issues and broad ideas of a place, and the design benefits.2 how our project could have actively become part of a larger network. This could have promoted the selection of a specific program for our project or given us better understanding of the demographic that would be using our buildings.

Overall, gaining a clearer picture of the Uptown community before progressing far into the design of our building might have been beneficial.

Swanson notes a fallacy that designers fall into, that we imagine we can look up a few things and suddenly know a culture well enough to make meaningful design decisions. Being in India meant experiencing firsthand its cultural character. As Swanson humbly states, “The most important thing going into India was to accept that it was going to be my teacher. We had to be empty vessels and learn from it and respond to it.” There needed to be acceptance of the fact that success could only be achieved by building on and supporting the ideas 3. The design team might not have engaged that were already in place, fostering what worked and improving what did not.To the local culture sufficiently. Beyond site visits illustratethispointSwansonusestheexampleoftransportationthroughoutIndia: and travelling through Uptown, it is questionable In India you have people who own vans and drive around picking people up, so we have to embrace that. For them, this is a great form of public transportation that has happened naturally so we cannot inherently ignore that and invent an entirely new system. That would be missing the point. 3

whether the team had firsthand knowledge of what the members of the Uptown community were really like. As the final users of the project, their opinions could have been helpful in determining what sort of project they needed rather than what project we wanted for them.

Such an organic method of public transportation exists because it’s rooted in the way that the people of India

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innately navigate their environment.The systems and structures that are in place tell us something about the way that people use space. Spending time in the area for which we are designing gives us important opportunites for observation.Through observation, we are able to notice patterns and trends in the way that people interact with the city and with each other; we understand how they live. We see 4. Perhaps also missing from our design process what works and what does not. And perhaps more importantly, analyzing was this idea of observation. Visiting the building and observing the way in which people did or did their built environment tells us something about how and why they build.4 not approach it, how the community interacted with it, and what the building did right are all things that could have been studied in further detail. These cues would have made for a more rich project and would have provided intersting support information during presentations.

However, Swanson emphasizes that observation is not the end in itself. It is a tool that helps gather information with which to have a conversation about the meaningful impact of design. This is all part of a longer process.

Swanson explains that the first meetings had more to do with what local people have to say, rather than what the professional consultants had to bring to the table. Traffic experts, other architects, and engineers were purposefully kept out of these early conversations, the aim being to let the intended user speak . The design team listened, observed, absorbed, and analyzed this information, then reconvened to identify issues that may not have been obvious, even to the user. It became clear that the people of India were just as important to the design process as the 5. This point is particularly important, as being in Chicago provided us the opportunity to meet designers themselves. Place has no future without the people who give it cultural identity.5

face to face with people who actually had an invested interest in the projects. Getting to speak with users of the building and people on committee boards gave great insight into what needs had to be addressed by the final project.

In creating an overall vision for the city, the design became a framework of sorts. Difficulty arose as the success of any particular vision is dependent on a colossal number of variables.

The key was to have a clear idea of who the people were and what their culture was about, to have a strong understanding of the many different ways in which the city could grow.6 Swanson says that a way to go about doing this was, “accepting that any vision that we have for the direction of this new city is only one of a thousand.” Once decisions are made based on knowledge and information that is collected, Swanson explains that one of two things can happen: Unfortunately, some groups did not have

6. this opportunity. Perhaps this could have been replaced by speaking with community members near the building, or maybe getting in touch with representatives of committee boards to ask them what their vision for the project would be. Either way, the power of conversation is undeniable and it is what made this experience more real and ultimately more fulfilling.

1. It gets embraced and begins to integrate itself within the quotidian life of the inhabitants.

2. It does not.

Although sometimes a daunting task, “there has to be a willingness to know that we are going to make a move that may or may not be the right one,” Swanson insists. These trials and errors are essential. He asserts that designers need to fail faster, becoming wiser from 7. The format of Chicago Studio allowed the design every mistake and every success. When envisioning and strategizing for people, the design teams to propose ideas that may or may not work, and move forward with the ones that did. This is process cannot happen in a vacuum. Design must be perfectly tailored to its place. The one of the ways the program pushesd both the key is understanding people and having a strong grasp of how the design influences lives.7 students and the projects forward. A new revised proposal was given every week, and with it new ideas and problems were brought to the forefront.

It is Swanson’s view that strategizing the future of a city has to happen with a deep Weekly presentations forced the projects to move understanding of the people who define the place. What is important to them, must be forward at a quick pace and required that the design teams make intelligent decisions quickly. important to us. It cannot be that we are designing for them. Placing ourselves among the culture for which we are designing allows us to see what is missing, listen to what is wrong, and experience the natural way of life. Understanding the way people live is essential to creating the environment in which they will spend their lives. To design for another culture means to respect and acknowledge it.

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Room(s) and a Garden

1050 W Wilson Ave James Heard & Chelsea Kilburn w/ von Weise Associates

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Local Interview Joanna Cofer Uptown Resident of 10 years J: Why did you move to Uptown?

C: I love the muddling of different people. Its like no matter who you are there is a place for you. Actually, a study was done a few years ago that said Uptown was the most diverse neighborhood in all of Chicago… It’s one of my favorite neighborhoods for that reason.

J: What are your favorite characteristics of Uptown?

C: First, there’s Argyle Street. This small strip is filled with Vietnamese restaurants and shops. I also like the music scene in Uptown. I’m pretty sure I heard that the mayor wants to make the neighborhood Chicago’s new “entertainment district,”… Whatever that means.

Anyways, other places that are pretty popular are the Aragon Ballroom, the Riviera, and the Green Mill.

The Green Mill is pretty nice, it’s a jazz club where Al Capone hungout. There are escape tunnels and everything. The Uptown Theater is my favorite building but it’s been closed for what seems like forever. They’re supposed to be fixing it up and reopening it, but who knows. If you like good food, there are a bunch of local

businesses that have been around a good bit. Carol’s Pub and the Holiday Club are pretty good.

J: How so?

C: Well, some of the new residents have an “us against them” mentality. They are concerned with their coffee, bikes and their dogs and they don’t interact much with long-time residents. But y’know… some actually do mean well and understand the real issues in the neighborhood.

But there are alot… I mean alot… of others that feel like they can’t live side by side with me or my neighbor.

J: Is it strange that they want to change Uptown so much? What do you think Uptown needs?

C: Hmm… that’s a good question. I think it would help having reinvestment in the neighborhood. Especially with the residents who want to forge their own path. This come from personal experience, I would love to learn how to start my own business. I think things like that is going to help change the community in a postive way.

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...by arriving before work hours began. Unfortunately, as I looked deeper into the skyscrapers and peered into the windows of the facades, I found myself looking into entire empty, undeveloped floors, or past steel mesh and graffiti-tinted windows into abandoned shops and restaurants. I was comfortably into the most densely built environment of the city, the time pushing 830 AM, but I found myself able to simply walk across crosswalks without stopping or waiting for the lights to change, a habit that would have gotten me run over in downtown Chicago.

I finally walked into One Woodward Avenue and rode the elevator up to wait for my meeting in Gensler’s Detroit office. What I felt like I had experienced were simply the results of decades of actions of which I did not fully understand the root cause. The city itself felt reminiscent of a ghost town: all of the necessary resources, infrastructure, and available space to grow still existed, but they were now mostly left abandoned and decaying. Not even actively being torn down, in most cases, just simply left to their own demise. But even as the small office of Gensler began to fill with employees, the familiar optimism I felt at the bus stop began to creep back into my mind. These weren’t at all people stuck in dead-end jobs and hoping for escape, they were excited faces sharply talking about the promise of the upcoming day. The gaps in the history I was trying to understand began to fill and the biggest piece of the puzzle that I was missing seemed to be a man named Dan Gilbert. “Dan Gilbert is an entrepreneur who owns Quicken Loans. You might have seen that there’s a Quicken Loans in our building. And he also owns the Cavaliers - the basketball team - and some other things. And he’s a very smart business man. He’s been a real catalyst in Detroit for renovations. He came in and he said he’s going to move his campus from Rochester in the suburbs to Detroit and we at Gensler-Detroit worked on how to strategize their headquarters. What they decided to do was they ended up buying existing buildings and renovating them.

So they bought the Chase Building, moved a bunch of people there, bought the building across the street from Chase - which is the First National Building - they bought this building, which was about six months ago, and they’ve been just renovating them very quickly and moving their people downtown. So... over the past couple of years, it’s something like 10,000 workers. It’s been a huge influx of people. He, alone, is doing a tremendous effort to change the landscape of what the built culture looks like.” Bringing it back to the information I had read about the state of financial emergency in Detroit, I was curious about the cause and effect relationship between these moves. “It’s actually been happening independently.They’ve been happening in parallel, [and] honestly, the bankruptcy isn’t really affecting him. He saw that there was all this great empty real estate downtown and, I don’t know what motivates him, you know, if he wanted to live in a city and he never had, or there’s just this opportunity and nobody else is taking advantage of it and he can... I don’t know what motivates him, but this was all going already and the bankruptcy was kind-of independent.” For someone like me who grew up in a flourishing small Virginia town, I had a very vague understanding of how the large cogs in the big-city machine worked. The line between public and private sector economics was beginning to make itself clearer in my head, but I was still at a loss about how these big moves truly affect a citizen at an individual level. “I think that’s what happening in Detroit lately - and the mayor talks about this in his speeches sometimes - that the city can’t do it: they don’t have the money, they don’t have the infrastructure, they don’t have the knowledge to do a lot of major changes and they’re really working in partnership with the business community.” So the contradictions that I had picked up on in my first two hours walking through the city were completely justified. Beginning to understand the power balance between public Adam Compton and private sectors clarified the patchwork of development that I had wandered through in the downtown area: I really had come into the city in a transition stage. But I couldn’t help but feel as if these reinforcements brought in by people like Dan Gilbert were simply displacing the problem without actually positively affecting the cities they were dropped into. Certainly, you can take a successful business and air-drop it into a struggling one and do some good, but now that I was more educated on the economic back-andforth, the next obvious push would be how these installations were actually helping people who had been living in Detroit in the decline, or at least what the relationship was like between entrepreneurs like Gilbert and the existing workforce. “He owns the Madison Building that got renovated and in that building they were trying to attract different creative groups: so there’s advertising agencies in there, there’s a really fun cafe on the first floor, there’s this roof deck that you can rent out and host parties on - it has this great view over the stadium. And General Motors is doing the same thing, because when the renovated the Renaissance Center and moved their headquarters there, they’ve started to request that their suppliers have offices closer to them. So they can meet and it’s easier. And they have enough buying power and are such a big demander of suppliers and goods that their suppliers will just say, “Ok fine, we’ll move downtown.” So one of the advertising agencies I did was actually Agency 720, which works with GM a lot and they were actually asked to move downtown, so that’s why they moved so quickly. The Compuwork building has an arts program and they’ve been commissioning artists to do work in their building and outside their building. They created the community garden on Michigan Avenue, behind Lafayette-Coney Island, that’s open to the public and has this really nice space. You can have lunch out there and it has vegetables for picking and make-a-salad-for-lunch-day or something like that. And in Campus Martius they’ve been programming it with concerts on Fridays and free ice-cream every once in a while, or they’ll have an art paint-by-numbers thing after work: all kinds of things to activate the space and get people going. They have bocce ball and you can check out lawn games and croquet and stuff if you want.” These risky investments in trickle-down style economics seemed to be doing the trick.

Whether investors like Gilbert, Ilitch, or General Motors are self-serving, hoping to take advantage of a low economy, or team-playing saviors of the city is up for debate, but it’s inarguable that their contributions to the city have gotten the ball rolling. Throwing themselves into an economy hungry for growth and desperate for change, they’ve created a platform for other smaller groups to begin work and bring Detroit back into a positive spin in the public eye. Najahyia herself participates in an Urban Priorities Committee, a community within the AIA-D, that has launched an international design competition to create installations at the Riverfront. The space now has a responsibility to interact with the newly revitalized Campus Martius. And in collaboration with the Jefferson East Business Assocation, they’ve paired designers and

Greetings from Detroit

entrepreneurs to create pop-up stores in a series of abandoned storefronts that will be temporary stores throughout the summer. Even if the projects are entirely conceptual and none of them get built right away or even at all, she believes it’s part of her responsibility as an architect to help get the city of Detroit on the global market again and show that they’re looking for high- quality design. Leaving the Gensler office, not only did I now feel significantly more informed about the goings-on in the city, but the tone of Detroit’s future felt a little bit more established in my mind. The city had begun to wake up and I had a bit of time left over before I needed to venture toward my next interview.

I took Najahyia’s advice and explored the nearby Guardian Building, Detroit’s eighth tallest structure, which she had informed me had a coffee and breakfast shop with internet access and a lobby that I couldn’t miss. I grabbed a mocha and a pastry to ease into the morning and picked up on another unavoidable contrast between Chicago and Detroit. Everyone was much friendlier here. Maybe my guard has always been up throughout the entire semester, but I never had so many strangers initiate conversation with me in Chicago than I had in this one morning in Detroit. From the barista, a graduate student studying art history who opened up conversation with me unprompted while she made my drink, to the woman sitting at the table next to me as I worked briefly on my laptop, to every single reception worker and security officer I questioned as I inquisitively made my way throughout the city that morning, there was a charming sense of hospitality that I couldn’t recall experiencing back in the Second City. I didn’t feel like I looked particularly like a tourist - I was simply wearing jeans, a button- up, and carrying a backpack - so I chalked it up to that unexplained air of optimism I felt a few hours earlier and made my way to the Rosa Parks Transit Center for a bus pass. My forty-five minute bus ride out into the neighborhoods of Detroit, heading north-west toward the University of Detroit Mercy, was largely uneventful. I spent most of the journey with my eyes out the window, taking in the incredulous rise and fall of houses as we passed. The same scattered effect that I picked up on in the denser urban areas was even more noticeable here - there would be entire neighborhoods that seemed near vacant, followed by others that were consistently populated. My bus ride northwest (which wasn’t even into one of the more dangerousneighborhoods)hadmepassingbyfast-foodplaces,funeralhomes,andliquorstores,butneverapropergrocerystoreorconvenience store. So despite my newfound knowledge about the background economic handling of greater Detroit from my conversation with Najahyia, I walked onto the campus of University of Detroit Mercy toward the Detroit Collaborative Design Center with a new batch of contradictions and questions to press toward the staff there. “The Center is a non-profit architecture and urban planning firm that is affiliated with the school of architecture here at the University of Detroit-Mercy. I was drawn to the Center because of its mission to reach out and provide design services to all people, including folks that may not otherwise have access to good design. We work exclusively with nonprofits and I really embrace the participatory process that is kind-of a signature of the firm here. This firm is very well connected with a multitude of stake-holders and groups in the city and has always been really connected I grabbed a mocha and a pastry with the neighborhoods of Detroit, which have struggled for a long time and will continue to to ease into the morning through struggle from disinvestment and population decline. In that sense, I would say there are the city, feeling as if I had simply a lot of challenges that still remain from the neighborhoods twenty years ago to the sidestepped the bustling crowds neighborhoods now. Some of them are stronger, others are actually worse, so there’s always going to be work for us, particularly in the neighborhoods. that I was used to in Chicago...

The Design Center over the last five or six years though, I would say has diversified in the sense that we work a lot more regularly with city agencies and city economic growth agencies and we’re connected more than we were originally with a wide range of stake- holders in the city beyond just non-profits and neighborhood groups. We’re in regular conversation with folks at the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation as well as folks who are running local Collaborative Design Centers and neighborhood residents, so it’s really nice to be able to engage that range of folks and try to combat some of the challenges form multiple angles. Understanding how the mayor might be thinking and how the Economic Growth Corporation might be thinking, but also understanding what the perspective is of the neighborhood residents and business owners.” Immediately, I was happy to discover that their positions were exactly where I felt the missing link was in the city. “It went through maybe six months of study or so and had its successes and failures. There was a lot of attempted community engagement. I mean, the community engagement happened, but it underwent a lot of criticism. A lot of large town-hall meetings.

The community was frustrated and the meetings were typically volatile and not really productive. After that experience, which left kind-of a sour taste in people’s mouth... There were a lot of rumors and speculations tied in with it, too. People were thinking that neighborhoods were going to be shut down and that the mayor was going to sell part of the city, which I don’t think was ever part of the intention. So the Detroit Works Project, after about six months or so, I think there was a need to rebrand it and start fresh in some ways, because the community engagement experience just wasn’t very successful. There was a lot of, as Christina said, bad rumors going around about shutting down neighborhoods.” While the wheels have been turning for almost twenty years now, Detroit has found itself at the tail end of the planning phases and looking forward to the opportunity for development. “Folks like Dan Gilbert... he sort-of gets it. Probably not totally, because he’s a business person, not a designer, but he gets it in the sense that I think he knows that what’s going to attract his employees to want to work for him is a nice place to live and work. And young folks of our generation like transit, they like historic buildings as well as new buildings, they like street activity, they like retail, they like bars and restaurants, they like strong neighborhoods; so I think that Dan Gilbert doesn’t, at his core, understand all of this, but he understands it in terms of dollars and cents. Like: “For MY company to be strong, it’s probably a good idea that I make sure the neighborhood around me is strong. So that my employees will want to work for me and I can continue to grow.”

Truly, too, folks like Dan Gilbert, they’re businessmen, they’re entrepreneurs, they have, I would imagine, big egos... so he, is like, “saving the city,” and his legacy is going to be his company but also this transformation that he has almost single- handedly done in the city of Detroit. I mean, the ego drives a lot of that, but we’ll take it, of course.” Though the damage done to the city throughout history is steep, the solutions that aim to pull the city back out of that gorge are just as bold. It was only closing in on three o’clock at this point, so I had plenty of time to

Fragmented Sullivan Chelsea Kilburn The present-day’s relationship to architecture of the past is often one of misremembering or projection; destroyed buildings are remembered through glorious images, and various projects have changed program with such frequency that the use no longer reflects the initial intent of the architect.

Louis Sullivan, who, with H.H. Richardson and Frank Lloyd Wright, forms the trinity of American architects, belongs primarily to nostalgic and romanticized era, as many of his works have been demolished and now exist only in images. However, what does remain of his architecture, both built and on paper, has lost a great deal of context. Not only have Sullivan’s surviving buildings lost their once grand scale and presence, but many of them have become symbols-- pieces representing an earlier time of architectural innovation. Now, strangely, Sullivan survives in piles of debris or carefully cropped photographs of delicate ornamentation; in fact, when searching online one can barely find an image of a complete structure, but rather comes across ornament, patterning, and filigree.

In Chicago, where Sullivan’s legacy remains the strongest, the tourism of architecture is particularly robust, yet the collective memory of Sullivan is just as fragmented as his buildings.

From the recreated Stock and Exchange Building room at the Art Institute to a mural depicting the Transportation Building on LaSalle Street, Sullivan appears throughout the city in scattered remnants. This work of collage attempts to address the distribution of Sullivan’s legacy through modern perception by literally fragmenting a variety of

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images relevant to his life and career and then modeling a new image in which the pieces engage in a somewhat chaotic dialogue. The stylized representation of Kurt Schwitters, a European contemporary of Sullivan, is employed to execute the collage. A pioneer in abstraction, Schwitters is said to have created his works from bits of scraps and garbage, which quite literally represented fragments of the surrounding German culture. Likewise, this collage incorporates several disposed-of elements, in an effort to exaggerate the throwaway nature of architecture today.

Utilizing the technique of collage was key in recreating this particular image of Sullivan. Instead of working two-dimensionally, it was necessary to construct the piece as an assemblage of items in the round. This allows the work to function not only as an image but also as a type of model, again suggesting the architectural roots of the concept.

1. Kurt's Cuts: Schwitters in Britain. Hugh Marwood, 17 Mar. 2013. Web. <http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bjhcp0w-qdc/UUXyJ4UY7RI/AAAAAAAAEAw/6ZcO9aRJNyg/s400/schwitters02.jpg>.

2. PaintingDb. Web. <http://paintingdb.com/view/9922/>.

3. WikiPaintings. Web. <http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/kurtschwitters/man-soll-nicht-asen-mit-phrasen-1930>.

4. Kurt Schwitters: Collages and Assemblages 1920-1947.

Ex-Chamber Memo, 16 Feb. 2013. Web. <http://ex-chambermemo5.seesaa.net/article/322553624.html>.

1. Untitled (with Early Self-Portrait), 1937-38

2. Merz 231 Miss Blanche, 1923

Paper Collage, Private Collection

Paper Collage, Private Collection

3. Man Soll Nicht Asen mit Phrasen, 1930

4. Collage with Playing Card, 1940

Paper Collage, Private Collection

Oil and Collage, Private Collection

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1 Destitute and forgotten by the public, an elderly Sullivan wrote his former student, Frank Lloyd Wright, a very humbling letter.

He wrote, “If you have any money to spare, now is the right time to let me have some... I can verily say that I am in a very serious situation; indeed it is now a sheer matter of food and shelter”¹, clearly a serious cry for help. In the collage, this letter, which was pilfered from the office recycling, not only seeks to represent the letter marking Sullivan’s decline, but it is also clearly marked with a Chicago address and an American flag stamp, alluding to the fact that Sullivan was and remains to be one of the finest architects associated not only with the immediate area of Chicago, but with the entire United States.

2 Previously a student and draftsman under Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright went on to have a brilliantly successful career that ultimately outshone that of his former master’s. Here Wright’s iconic portrait is meant to be obscured yet recognizable, just as his talents would have been while working in Sullivan’s studio.

3 This study for the painted decoration of the Sinai Temple appears now only as a beautiful but ghostly fragment.

4 A bright orange price tag, also taken from the office garbage, is placed on the fragmented drawing. This move is meant to speak to the thriving architectural artifact businesses often present online. These “artifacts” are often bought and sold in unsavory ways, and although many pieces do find a way into a curated collection or museum, most of the fragments are taken completely removed from their original context and fetishized for their connection to the past.

5 Although based on unfounded speculation,theillustratedpoppies represent opium production and the possibility of Sullivan using the drug recreationally. Opium, which was popular among transcendentalist writers and bohemians artists, had a foothold in America. Charles Atwood, another architect of renown and Daniel Burnham’s collaborator, is said to have died of complications related to opium addiction. Some of the many effects of opium use are a change in sensation, including visual hallucinations, which are often described as organicandfaceted,characteristics similar to the designs found in much of Sullivan’s ornamentation.

6 A destroyed room full of debris is all that remains of the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading oom where the young photographer Richard Nickel was killed in 1972. This photograph was an attempt by Nickel to capture the final moments of one of Sullivan’s buildings, but his willingness to be on site led to his untimely death. The remaining archway of the Stock Exchange can be found outside of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a recreation of the trading floor can be found inside the museum.

7 On July 25 of last year, the former Carson Pirie Scott building on State Street reopened as a City Target. The typically big-box corporation, known for their graphic target logo, dealt with the controversy surrounding their move into the historic Sullivan building with what has generally been regarded as respect and grace. A great stir was aroused in reaction to Target’s usually prominent advertising, but at their new State Street location, the logo takes a backseat and appears in the top partition of the elegant filigreed ironwork around the iconic facade of the building.

8 Sullivan’s patterning, which appears in various works, acknowledges the work of European artists and craftsmen of the Art Modern and Art Nouveau movements, along with those of the revived Arts and Crafts school. Textile artisans, such as Robert Morris, and print makers like Aubrey Beardsley, seem to share in the same nature-derived aesthetic as Sullivan, lending him a fresh and modern sensibility in what had previously been a rather austere American building tradition.

9 A beautiful pattern once enclosed an elevator in the Chicago Stock and Exchange building, providing an example of where design is applied to a mundane everyday object.

10 Again architectural artifacts make an appearance in an advertisement for a gala held at an artifacts and antique dealer’s business. Although the idea of turning architectural fragments into trendy collectors items does seem like an act of flagrancy, positive effects include an increase in the value of such pieces as well as a raised awareness about the work of an earlier time.

11 Previously the importance of constructing the collage rather than assembling it was mentioned as being paramount to the making process. Likewise, the incorporation of scraps from around the office added another dimension. These smaller pieces of waste are used to support the more descriptive images, but the variety in textures adds an element of depth to the collage as well as the air of an architectural studio or project.

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Playing Field

1060 W Addison Caitlin Hyland & Chris Morgan w/ Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

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Field Notes Peter Burns IIT Campus Center The railway is used to generate an angled roof and provide context and decoration on the interior.

The portrait of Mies on the east facade entrance acts as signage and clues to the activites held inside.

The building presents a duality in the facade that also increases the contrast between exterior and interior.

The orange glass facade with the combination of light pulls people through the space.

What is presented as texture with raking light across the surfase is revealed as text upon closer observation.

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Field Notes Peter Burns Carson-Pirie-Scott Building In the depth of facade, signage can be distinguished beyond the smallar floral elements.

The building meets the ground rather starkly, while the bundle columns attempt to dimish this reality.

Geometric shapes are used as a framework for patterns at smaller scales.

The top story of the building is adorned with column capitals.

The window frames are decorated to the viewport of those looking out and those looking up from the street.

The cast iron base facade appears to sink into the building from afar but in reality is protruding outward.

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Field Notes Peter Burns Crown Hall The building lays as a horizontal bar in the landscape.

The stairs unfold from the building creating a curiosity in the joints that magically join the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s elements.

The joints in the pavers are highlighted with the vertical I-beam and then follow a strict linear progression.

This path continues into the interior where closer observation reveals alignment with the vertical mullions.

The top half of the facade uses the reflectivity of glass with the hardness of structure to frame the sky.

The translucent glass midway up the wall hints at movement inside while vents provide a more direct juncture.

The bottom of the building creates intrigue as the structure hovers over the ground and joints become lines.

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Sliced Cinema

1345 W Argyle St Peter Burns & Matthew Ridgeway w/ Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

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Drawing from Phenomena Matthew Ridgeway Architectural drawings are prescient interpretations of spatial experiences. They at once create and predict. The content and method of drawings imply distinct ways of conceiving spatial experience. Confronting work by Mies van Der Rohe and SANAA in this way delineates new ground for a phenomenological consideration of their work.

Miesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; drawing for the mixed-use project in Friedrichstrasse begins with an image of the site, delimited by buildings in perspective. The primary source image creates a texture field, in which perspective is embedded. Mies inserts his proposal within this field. The proposal is of the same form as the image, relative to its image-context. It does not make its own compositional rules, but admits perspective.

The drawing for the Court House Project arrives vaguely.

As a sketch, this drawing depicts the becoming of masses in depth. Textures conveyed in color swaths move against lines that mark elements of architecture. Perspective is used intuitively as a device to relate elements to one another.

The drawing for the Barcelona Pavilion makes decisive claims about the technical use of perspective. While the courthouse project used lines and shadings relatively with perspective, in this drawing these elements position themselves decisively against one another. Elements cohere to compositional rules outside of themselves.

Textures assume specific identities. Perspective as the compositional rule denotes the form of the architecture and the spatial relationships to be experienced.

Perspective lines can be traced to assumed depths. It opens up the drawing to interpretation. The first two drawings arrive at once, whole. The sense of this drawing must be found. Its sensorial affect is veiled by its precision.

The drawing for the Ressor house uses the intuition of perspective as compositional rule. It maintains specific

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Van der Rohe, Mies. Drawings Collection. 1929-1938. Graphic. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Web. 3 May 2013.

textures and identities, but places these elements on a field. Relations are specific, but refer element to element, rather than element to perspective composition. A wood panel sets the foreground in front of a painting and a column that occupy a room before a broad expanse of terrain. The field-type relations here compress the experience of depth to one moment. The heightened specificity allows a more clear and distinct consideration of the elements and their affects.

This set of drawings oscillates between immanent and transcendent formulations of experience. The immanence of texture found in the Friedrichstrasse drawing and of depth found in the Court House drawing reveal a visceral understanding of mass and movement. These drawings point to interpretations grounded in the intuitive experience of contingent, shifting phenomena. The other drawings summon elements from these relative phenomena, and place them in distinct relationships.

With these drawings, phenomena are mapped with precision. Together, these drawings suggest a reading of the Barcelona Pavilion as a building of shifting phenomena, mapped by precise relations of elements that change their characteristics relative to their orientation and depth.

Once the Barcelona Pavilion is entered, an orange marble wall cuts across the interior. The marble wall, grounding a black rug and chairs, creates a room. The open floor between the marble wall and a glass wall in the background further define the room. Through the glass wall, an exterior marble wall and the overhanging roof frame the sky. Together, these elements are a backdrop to the room.

Turning, the orange marble wall now becomes the backdrop for the room. The open floor span between the marble wall and the glass wall becomes a passage across the perpendicular face of the wall. The open floor span is also part of an exterior room, as the pressure between the floor and ceiling continues through the glass wall to the exterior, where the exterior marble wall bounds space that was previously only a backdrop.

Turning once more, about the opposite side of the orange marble wall, two previously veiled spaces arise. The wall is now understood as a hinge for circulation across the pavilion. The open floor has now turned, sliding on the left towards a brief interior passage back to the front

Wotjek, Gurak. Barcelona Pavilion. N.d. Photographs. flickrWeb. 3 May 2013.

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doors and leading to the right to the rear doors of the pavilion. Through these doors the long axis of the floor is held by the roof and guarded by the glass wall on the left, as it dissolves in the distance. The glass wall cleaves the floor to establish these two new spaces. In so doing, it contains interior space and brings the exterior to bear in reflecting the vegetation and sky along its face.

The reflective marble on the right frames the exterior conditions, which slip in beyond it.

Past this glass wall, vegetation and sky press in against the pressure between the roof and floor. The length of the longitudinal axis enforces the force of the pavilion perpendicular to the vegetation.

The Glass Pavilion render collage places the proposal on a horizon. Trees assume the foreground, while in the background town-homes and treetops shrink behind the proposal. The building exists between worlds of reality and unreality; it creates an intermediate horizon set by diaphanous blurring held by the gravity of a strong white line. This second horizon is occupied by white figures slipping amongst its layers. The render doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t arrive as an image, but as an invitation to trip into another world.

The whole is conceived with flat senselessness of time, on a field with two horizons.

The De Kunstline Theatre sketch raises itself upward across the drawing space. Intuitive perspective is used to dramatic effect, creating a scene in which elements and figures cohabitate. The depth of the scene arrives as a phenomenon of itself. The minimal construction of the drawing and the interactions of its elements are direct. There are no perspective lines to trace to find the depth or suggest time. There is only near and far, here and above. The low angle of the perspective works to this end, dramatizing the depth of the scene. Figures mark sets within the scene, as areas of occupation and play become the differentiating elements. Intuitive depth and scenographic interaction is the rule of composition, not constructed perspective and textural shadings.

The Louvre Lens collage is sensible at a moment. The drawing acts as a diagram of a phenomenal occurrence.

Grass field, treeline, sky, and people act as props for the imposition. The proposal arrives as a slightly curved plane that intersects and reflects the scene, hazily. We witness the scene, but have no place in it.

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1. SANAA. Competition Sketches. 2005. Graphic. arcspaceWeb. 3 May 2013.

3. SANAA. Musee Louvre-LENS. 2006. Graphic. bustlerWeb. 3 May 2013.

2. SANAA. Glass Pavilion. 2006. Graphic. floornature, Fiorano Modenese. Web. 3 May 2013.

4. SANAA. NOW INTERVIEWS. 2010. Graphic. e-flux, New York. Web. May 2013.

The render for the Venice Biennale Exhibit considers perspective more precisely. It is used to unveil the organization of the proposal, arrayed about column lines.

The thick opacity of the brickwork grounds the context for a fleeting imposition: the reflective floor, small chairs, and monitors. This drawing arrives as an image, directed along axis to allow reading of the organization and juxtapositions of the room.

These drawings re-imagine experience. They present open scenes. Each creates its own world. Time is held lightly, and depth is a quality, rather than a constructive principal. Everything plays. In this way, the glass pavilion may be seen as a series of scenes, continuously shifting relative to a snaking path. Elements and axes are obfuscated in becoming phenomena.

Entering the Toledo Museum of Glass by the event room, the townscape is compressed and reflected in the roomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s floor. The large span of the room minimizes reflections from the glass walls. Walls and ceiling act as clamps to draw the town into the museum.

Moving down the passage, an adjacent exhibit space is first encountered through straight walls. Framed by confused reflections from adjacent curved walls, the exhibition room arrives as a receding field of objects. The slight, dissonant reflections of the objects across this field confuse the sense of the roomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s depth, and suggest a more imminent relationship.

Further along, the walls curve as they leave the first exhibition room, passing in front of the opaque walls of a second exhibition room. Moving along this curve, reflections blur. The field of objects becomes a blurred plane inducing movement and veiling contents.

Rounding out the turn, the exit by the courtyard is encountered. The sky opens up through a curved opening in the roof of the pavilion. This backdrop, through the glass walls, admits a skyward, vertical dimension to the pavilion. Otherwise directed along horizons, here the outside enters, balancing sky and townscape across the roof plane.

The vertical imposition of the sky, seen in sequence with the horizontal extension of the town suggests the scope of fundamental relationships within buildings. Here, it is the context of these extremes, and the modulation of

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them that opens the nature of the glass pavilion. Within these two directions of exteriority, translucent glass shifts about, recreating the world continuously from perspectives of the inhabitant.

SANAA’s installation at the Barcelona Pavilion in 2008 encounters a distinct difference in the phenomenological experience of their architecture and that of Mies. An acrylic curtain that spirals lightly through the center of the pavilion, the installation warps thresholds and rooms inside the Pavilion. Down the length of the glass wall adjacent to the courtyard, reflections and refractions through layers of the curved acrylic impose tangentially into the clarity of that space. The warping of the effects of the acrylic as it rounds the orange marble wall clouds the presence of the wall. These distortions make their own room that circumvents the wall, which becomes phenomenally transparent. Through reflections and refractions across the pavilion, depth assumes an ineluctable immediacy. We sense the marble wall being “over there”, but its precise relationship to here and there is not clear. In this way, the spiraling of the acrylic through the Barcelona Pavilion reveals the sense of depth as a quality intersecting the sense of depth as an ordering principle.

1.Masashige MOTOE. Installation at Barcelona Pavilion by SANAA. 2008.

Photograph. flickrWeb. 3 May 2013.

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2. SANAA. Installation at the Mies Van der Rohe Barcelona Pavilion. 2008.

Photograph. dezeen, London. Web. 3 May 2013.

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Adaptation

5020 N Kenmore Ave Danielle Hoge & Matthew Vibberts w/ Cannon Design

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Mobility Networks Gregory Catron As the global population rapidly expands into cities, our transportation needs change, and the city must evolve to avoid chaotic congestion. Since the implementation of the grid in Harappa and Babylon, mobility has dictated the organization and character of our urban environments. A range of geographic, economic, and social factors influence a response unique to every city, changing the way in which we interact with the cityscape. Like all things in nature, urban trends are cyclical, suggesting we must look at how we lived together in the past to understand how we might better live together today.

In cities like Chicago, the automobile arrived alongside steel construction attributing sudden urban growth and greater opportunity in metropolitan regions with quick accessibility to suburban neighborhoods. The city limits stretched outward with sprawling communities who wished to escape the fast paced urban environment of the city.

But, as the global population reaches seven billion, the average commute lengthens dramatically. The freedom of mobility has become a standard for most American families, and is something most are not willing to give up at the risk of social and economic consequence. The answer cannot be to build more roads, but, perhaps, to improve our proximity to common destinations and change the way we move.

Early cities like Paris typically existed as polycentric nodes, each self sufficient through their proximity to services and goods. Each node is roughly a mile wide in diameter, about how far one was able to carry water on one’s shoulders from its source to the

1. 20 Arrondissements of Paris. Digital image. Mappery. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 May 2013. <http://mappery.com/Arrondissements-de-Paris-Map>.

2. “Google Map Data.” Map. Google Maps. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 May 2013.

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3. “Google Map Data.” Map. Google Maps. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 May 2013.

home. In fact, the node was centered entirely around the home. Everything you might need throughout the day was within a twenty minute walk of where you lived. The result is an even distribution of physicians, stores, cafes, and more throughout the city. Newer cities exhibit far less of an even distribution thanks to our post-industrial model.

Quite literally, the strategy has been to give everyone a car, build roads, spread out and provide places to park. Few new cities recognize the inefficiency of this model, and the ones that do are born simply out of necessity. Squatter cities represent an embodiment of that necessity. They have developed outside major urban centers like Mumbai, India as developing countries are experiencing dramatic migrations into cities. These dense developments exist as polycentric nodes similar to those in early cities like Paris. Each node is roughly a half-mile wide containing the resources and services any family might need to survive from day to day. Tight pathways and other impoverished conditions restrict the ability to travel moderate distances, and result in an even distribution of limited resources throughout.

In post-automobile cities, efforts in reducing traffic between the home and services concentrate on stratifiedstreetscapetypologies.Pedestrianhighways in Boulder, Colorado allow a person to walk across the city without ever crossing a single street.

Inundated with mountain streams, the landscape of Boulder is naturally worn into varied elevations.

These geologic conditions make it easy for the city to elevate highways and roads above pedestrian paths and vice versa. This suggests layering as an important concept for independent mobility networks. Houston and Minneapolis separate their networks into even more apparent divisions. Both with extreme climates, they have implemented conditioned tunnel systems populated with the

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services one might need throughout the day. In the case of Houston, the tunnels exist below the surface of the ground connecting buildings downtown. For Minneapolis, the pedestrian network jumps from tower to tower, elevated about the streetscape. While these different forms of mobility all have their consequences, they address a desire to separate the vehicle from the pedestrian returning the city to a place for people, and not for cars.

The planned separation of these networks is far easier when building new, and avoiding the complication of existing infrastructure. A greater image of its potential can be seen in Walt Disneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s E.P.C.O.T. development. The project employs the contemporary model of separation between

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residential, commercial, and industrial, but recognizes that ease of mobility is fundamental to its organization. In plan, the city is radial with a central transportation hub carrying residents to and from the city. At the lowest level a service deck is designated only to trucks that bring in commercial goods. Above this is a parking level meant for an uninterrupted flow of car traffic. Intended to be the main form of transportation, the electrical rail systems fans out from the city center into the lowdensity residential sprawl.

This is the only form of transportation visible to pedestrians at any point, yet it exists raised above foot traffic. In fact, each form of mobility exists on its own network of paths, unencumbered by any

form of intersection. The city is allowed to exist only for the people living in it, and completely separates pedestrians from the noise, danger, and odor of traditional vehicle traffic.

The idea of separation seems to be the common trend among these examples. Perhaps the grid as we know it will begin to lose its dominance as urban organization no longer depends on the movement of vehicles, but rather on pedestrian travel. For this reason, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important to understand the experience of a city like Venice, which departs from the normative grid due to its irregular boundary and reliance on canals. Not unlike a maze, Venice requires the constant memorization of images, sounds, smells, and textures to establish a coherent navigation through the streets. With the city relieved of mechanical vibration, there is new potential to engage the city-goer at a higher sensory level. The idea of the landmark becomes more essential for navigation, which means contrast is key. The city could even become more regimented in its speed. With further divisions in transportation the cityscape can begin to slow down, while its hidden veins continue to pulse rapidly around it.

These were conditions that once existed in early cities around the world, ones that were dominated by the pedestrian experience. In creating multiple mobility networks uninterrupted by each other, the experience of the city becomes dynamic. We can travel at different speeds, move above and below the ground, and enter or escape critical mass, all the while maintaining an independent condition among each streetscape.

E.P.C.O.T. Plan. Digital image. Epcot Filk. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 May 2013. <https://sites.google.com/site/theoriginalepcot/the-epcot-film-video>.

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Re-Scaled Uptown Center for the Performing Arts

Broadway & Lawrence Jesus Barney, Daniel Hoogenboom & AndrĂŠs Garza Villarreal w/ Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

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Urban Web Matt Vibberts Matt: John, thank you for taking this time. I’d like to begin, if you may, by giving a brief glimpse into the journey you’ve taken from education through your professional career.

John: Great. I‘m glad you saw the blog and were excited by the content. I was with IBM over a decade working with their Smart Cities group by the end of my time there. Basically, implemented physical environments, data analytics for better-managed cities with clients all over the world – it was the early component of thinking of a city as a platform through the use of data, publishing the cities vital signs so that others, outside and inside government, can do useful things. Either to pull out trends to help inform future policies or operational interventions or to just make businesses and residents lives easier. So, it was those later pieces that were interesting to Rahm Emanuel. While he was campaigning for Mayor he invited me in to talk to the campaign about the concept. He knew a great deal about having started data. gov in the White House when he was the Chief of Staff – overseeing the first ever federal CIO and CTO. I was a part of the transition and they asked me to do this role, which is also the first in Chicago – so I landed here. We are generating data that is largely infrastructural.

It is about the environment and what is going on.

M: What does your daily responsibilities look like?

J: I can tell you what it is not – it is NOT operational.

There is a CIO here that handles the systems and keeps the business of government humming along from an IT prospective. I am more on the policy side of things – working on technology policy for the Mayor. So, what are we doing to make it easier for data centers to locate here? What are we doing more broadly across the city and sister agencies so that we have a holistic public wireless experience? Or, what are we doing to create new options for high-speed connectivity in our commercial zones.

M: You mentioned the need to link residents to local businesses easier – can you explain this a little more?

J: There are two pieces – one that exists and then one that does not. The city can only publish the data that it generates. The data.city.org website is hundreds of sets 62

of data that is updated, sometimes, every couple seconds and at the slowest speed once every night. These form the rivers of information that feed a total ecosystem of applications – bus tracking, train tracking are the most common that many people use. There are things like integration with Yelp for our foodborne illness database, which makes a lot of sense that that data is out there. And then there are a bunch of other people out there doing interesting stuff with data like applications that send you an alert to move your car before it gets towed during our street sweeping day. All this data has been here for awhile but it’s really taken a community of users, of the public, to take it and make it useful. That’s one part. The other part is the physical space. We have all these network end points within the public way and many more on the way – the public bike share is probably the highest profile – that will have open DPI just like the data. cityofchicago.org does.

So we really need to start thinking about what are the opportunities for application develop- ment that interacts directly with public objects – the bikes, the bus shelters, those sorts of things. That is new! So a QR code I can see value in these tools. Actually, if you go out on the River Walk down by where CDOT is about to undertake a real expansion of that area you will see on signage with our QR codes that will take you to information about what is happening. Their vision of that is that the QR could take you to a permitting process that a potential developer or builder could apply right then and there. But I happen to believe that QR codes are an interim step. Really they are just machine-readable links and you can imagine a much more responsive public way with other technology – Bluetooth, NFC [Near Field communications], those sort of things.The technology though is not the most important thing and that’s why I like QR codes. They point us in the direction of a one-on-one relationship with an object – with a public object. I think, since these objects are paid for by Chicagoans, they should have the same degree of open- ness that the city’s data does and that’s when you’ll start to see really innovated reimagining of the public way.

M: There seems to be an overabundance of QR codes with advertising on CTA. Do you feel that the public interest with QR codes have been limited by some sort of corporate stigma?

J: I don’t think it’s a stigma of corporatism at all! It’s a ter- rible work flow. Have you ever seen the Tumblr pictures of people QR codes? It’s hilarious because there is nothing in it. The ‘L’ is probably the worst place to ask a person to scan a QR code given all the gosling and bumping around. Now, I have seen people take photos of the actual adver- tisement for later reminding but I think it’s an interim step and frankly it’s easier to take a photo or type the URL link or just Google it.

M: Yes, I totally agree. It’s seems that their real purpose is to house information that cannot be searched.

J: Yes. I think QR codes are useful for machine scanning for pallets and assembly lines – the very reason why they were created in the first place. To me, it just seems like a step in the wrong direction away from human legibility.

Especially today, there is no reason that a code for scanning can’t be both human legible and machine-readable.

The concept of a QR code is quite good. We have SMS short codes on all of our bus stop signs which are unique for each bus stop. That’s for people who don’t have smart phones but they still want the bus tracker information they can just text that. That too, even though it is super low-tech, that is conceptually going in the right direction.

You are in- teracting with a networked public object. There are really two pieces of this. One is how much do we make legible and how much do you make writable? Those are two dif- ferent things. In the world of data we have lots of readable data sets – bus tracker and plow tracker are obvious ones - that are updated very frequently to make citizens lives easier in reading that vital sign. A read/write example would be Open311. Yes, I can see the status of my 311 but I can also write back to the system and say “there is a problem right here...”. In this sense you actually put something into the city’s data cloud. We have to ask the same things when we start thinking about actual objects – “What does it mean to write something to an actual object.”

M: You talk about the code being an interim to something else, what do you see the next phase of tapping into information within the public way?

J: There are several things. We are currently building a new fiber network within the city at cityofchicago,org/ broadband which gives us a lot of opportunity in public spaces – plazas, parks, beaches, and places like that. We are requiring that the vendors that we use to provide the objects within the public way - more specifically I’m thinking about the 4000 public bikes and 400 bikes stations that will start roll- ing out in June - those vendors can provide an open API. We talk about QR codes, Bluetooth, NFC and all of that, and they have their uses, but really the ultimate metadata in the city is location – and we already have that in GPS. In principle, you may not be actually interacting one-on-one with an object, but your phone or screen in the bus station knows that you are there and tailors the information – way finding or journey finding – to the very hyper level in a way that Google maps does not. Right? It knows that it is going to drizzle for the next 15 minutes but knows where you are going it will not drizzling. It knows that you should probably stay on the bus for an extra stop because the bike share station is out of bikes where you want to get off. It is those kinds of really granular things that are actually meaning- less one block over. It is what networked public objects gets you. We are actually starting to see apps like this. Have you seen the app DarkSky? It gives you the weather for the next 15 minutes exactly where you are. It’s not about the day’s highs and 63

lows or the front moving in. It’s really about a moment in time. And if you think about urban use cases for that often times that is all you need. You’re like “hmm, should I get off the train and walk home? It’s a 15 minute walk.”

It is that micro moment that is all you really care about.

Pair that with location and often time that is the kind of just-in-time information you want in the urban flow.

M: You’ve mentioned a need for “ a merger of urban design and urban planning with urban informatics, with networked public space” – can you explain this a bit more?

J: The comments at the bottom of that article you are referring to are quite funny. It is a mixture of “hell yes”, “these people aren’t real architects”, but the more interesting ones are the architects that say “oh, this already exists – it is GIS.”What is interesting is that people confusing the technology tools and the tools of the architecture trade which are absolutely high-tech but that’s not actually what I was calling for. I was calling for architecture of the technology, or more design of the technology, to be integrated with the traditional outputs of architects within the built environment. Many of the forward thinking architecture firms and urban planning firms are doing more of the traditional definition of that. They are doing sustainability planning. For example, if you look at Smith + Gill, they are as much a sustainability and energy consultancy in their designs for their clients as they are traditional architects and urban planners. So there is some precedents for taking an adjacent domain - in this case sustainability and clean technology - and weaving it into the process of designing the built environment. I think the same thing applies for technology especially if we can conceive of the city or the building. Buildings are actually further along at this, right?

There are building information management systems.

There are operating systems that are woven into the climate control and the energy usage in a building. That does not exist in an urban scale. You have public safety systems that are run by cities but there is no analog to open data in the public way. You can’t walk up to a city vehicle, and scan a QR code and see what its sched- ule is – but why not? I think there is an opportunity there for architects and urban design firms to jump into this game which right now is primarily big IT companies – Siemens, Cisco, IBM – that are coming at it from a kind of opera- tional management commanding control standpoint, which is fine because cities buy that kind of stuff. Rio de Janeiro bought all kinds of products to better manage resources and safety in advance of the Olympics. However, the other kind of urbanism – the actually urbanism that happens in public spaces – hasn’t really been aided by any of the tech- nologization of the public way. So I think that’s the kind of things urban planners or architects pay attention to. How do people use the city? How do people use a building? It’s not really what the IT companies are doing.

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Mies is a Classicist James Heard To chastise Modernism for turning it’s back on the past is to oversimplify. If the movement abandoned anything, it was a recently war-torn past in favor of an Original Architecture. The Barcelona Pavilion, an icon of modernism, was a formal architecture cribbed from the Greeks and Romans fused with De Stijl geometries. Far from reductive, the Pavilion was richly ornamented and detailed; while spatially modern, it is aesthetically and temporally German Expressionist. The grammar set forth in the Pavilion is echoed in all other works by Mies, and can be seen not only as a convenient origin of an applied movement, but also a thesis statement on the Modern Order.

The years of Mies’ life after the Pavilion were spent appealing to the Nazi party, eyeing a position that would eventually be filled by Speer. The party’s agenda was no secret — rhetoric placed Nazi aesthetic priorities firmly in the Classical. It’s a bizarre claim that Mies misunderstood the Nazi charge, and repeatedly proposed architecture that was diametrically opposed to their core principles. The Classic subtleties of Miesian work were lost on the Nazi party, forcing Mies to launch his career elsewhere. The Miesian free plan conveniently aligned with American principles, opening many opportunities for him after planning the IIT campus.

Classical architecture celebrates organicism as its formal birth.

The modern world has been severed from natural dependence through Industry. Accordingly, a modern Classicism formally embodies industrialism. The ornamental I-beams decorating the IBM building meet aluminum fluted columns resting on a marble plinth. I-beam profiles stud the region directly above the column termination, mimicking the Doric triglyph. Windows between the I-beams assume the role of a metope — miniature snapshots of life, elevated.

Reframing the work of Mies van der Rohe as a step towards a new Classicism shrugs off the burden of Modernism, seen as structural revolution and effeciency. Any perceived rigidness of Miesian work is revitalized with an Industrial narrative. His career explored, analyzed and reformulated the architectural foundations of Western Europe, and his architecture was poised to be the face of a brutal New World Order. If we strip the conventional script of Modernism, we can see Mies van der Rohe again and begin to meaningfully distinguish him from his contemporaries.

IBM Building. BLUEPRINT: Chicago, 14 Sept. 2010. Web. <http://www.blueprintchicago.

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Carved Community

5050 Broadway St Joanna Cofer & Xijue Wang w/ Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

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Contributing Editor’s Note James Heard, Chelsea Kilburn & Matthew Ridgeway Prior to the design of the Chicago Studio journal we all had experience assembling sprawling inDesign documents of personal work. We quickly realized that our individual experience fell short of collaborative design. The initial steps of curating and organizing the content went quickly — we were all familiar with the student work and had inclinations for that which fit and that which didn’t.

Coherency was inherent in the semester of work, so the organization came naturally. Knowing the extent of our editorial liberties took some feeling out. Splitting the design of a single document that contains dozens of formats between three architects took weeks to straighten out. Tackling the creation of the journal collaboratively was the most beneficial takeaway of the process. At the end of this process we think that our editing improved the student work as well as the journal, and we hope that everyone reading agrees.

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Adam Compton / Adam Whipple / Alma Claudio / Andres Garza Villarreal / Ashley Marsh / Casey McGrath / Bill Duke / Bobby Vance / Brett Taylor / Brian Basset / Brian Lee / Bridget Baker-Thomas / Bryan Schabel / Caitlin Hyland / Carl D’Silva / Casey Bilger / Casey Renner / Charles Chambers / Chase Daniel / Chelsea Kilburn / Chip Von Weise / Chris Ames / Chris Morgan / Chris Yetka / Christa Wood / Christopher Birr / Clint Bautz / Cody Ellis / Collin Mickey / Daniel Hoogenboom / Daniel Murrow / Danielle Hoge / David Ervin / David Quick / David Sikorski / Donald Copper / Drew Ranieri / Ed Keegan / Elyse Erber / Eric Kenyon / Eric Rolaf / Eric Zachrison / Erin Meilinger / Esther Chang / Evan Thomas / Felicia Ferrone / Gary Klompmaker / Geoff Walters / Grace Friedhoff / Greg Drecier / Greg Randall / Gregory Catron / Gustavo Mendoza / Iker Gill / Jacob Goeffert / James Heard / Jesus Barney / Jill Kurth / Joan Pomeranc / Joanna Cofer / John Knuteson / John Syvertson / Julian Akogyeram / Keith Besserud / Kelley Folts / Kelley Folts / Kelly McFadden / Kelly Penick / Kelsey Sawyer / Kerry Leonard / Laith Nuqul / Laura Fisher / Laura Minsal / Laura Weirick / Lauren Bogaard / Leslie Taylor / Linda Soukup / Lyle Jennifer / Lynette Klein / Marisa Vinson / Matt Stegmaier / Matthew Jernigan / Matthew Ridgeway / Matthew Vibberts / Melanie Kwon / Merry Marwig / Mike Kulikowski / Mila Cuk / Naomi Berkove / Nate Klinge / Nisha Shah / Nock Melissa / Oswaldo Gonzalez / Pamela Steiner / Paul O’Connor / Peter Burns / Peter Ellis / Phil Enquist / Poyer Conforte / Raj Rajaram / Randy Guillot / Rick Fischl / Rob Calvey / Ryan Boyland / Ryan Von Drehl / Sam Boysen / Sarah Durkin / Sarah Haase / Sarah Malin / Scott Dansereau / Scott Fundling / Sean Witty / Shelton Whitley / Stacy Sarah / Stephanie Fontaine / Susan Schnell / Thomas Hussey / Tim Swanson / Tucker Alissa / Tyler Rush / William Baker / Winn Chen / Xijue Wang / Zurich Esposito

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