AAP News is published twice yearly by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University, through the Office of the Dean. College of Architecture, Art, and Planning Cornell University 129 Sibley Dome Ithaca, NY 14853-6701 (607) 254-6292 aapcommunications@cornell.edu aap.cornell.edu
Dean’s Message All the scientific and technological skills of which we can conceive will not solve our world problems if we do not build and adapt a base of human and cultural understanding; ethical and moral underpinnings; sensible rules of law for the 21st century; and integration with the insights, inspirations, and communications of the arts. — Charles M. Vest, president, National Academy of Engineering, quoted in The Heart of the Matter, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2014
Rebecca Bowes, Elise Gold Dan Aloi, Rebecca Bowes, Edith Fikes, Sherrie Negrea, Patti Witten, Jay Wrolstad DESIGN KUDOS Design Collaboratory COPY EDITOR Laura Glenn PHOTOGRAPHY William Staffeld (unless otherwise noted) DISTRIBUTION COORDINATOR Sheri D’Elia EDITORS
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
A flood-prone slum in Altamira, a planned city in the Brazilian rain forest, was one of the sites visited by students in the spring seminar Forest Cartographies. photo / Timothy Ryan (B.Arch. ’17)
COVER
© September 2016 Cornell University Printed on Rolland Enviro 100 Satin, a Forestry Stewardship Council stock. Printed by Brodock Press, Utica, New York. Brodock Press is a member of the Forest Stewardship Council and the EPA’s Green Suppliers Network.
It is not news but worth restating: Our age is experiencing the dramatic rise of the city as home to a significant majority of the world’s population. Fifty-four percent of the world’s population now lives in urban settings, and cities like Tokyo, Mumbai, and Shanghai already have populations exceeding 30 million. Assistant Professor Timur Dogan, architecture, noted that if urban population growth projections are accurate, within 35 years the world must build the equivalent of 750 Romes to house future city dwellers. And the trend is geographically skewed: The U.N.’s World Urbanization Prospects reports that nearly 90 percent of the increase in urban population by 2050 will occur in just two continents—Asia and Africa. It is not hyperbolic to call the urban transition that we are living an “urban turn,” comparable to the Copernican revolution that compelled humans five centuries ago to think in radically new ways about their place in the world. Three years ago, Cornell was challenged by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to think in new ways about teaching this global urban turn. Under the auspices of a nationwide initiative titled Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities (AUH), AAP partnered with Cornell’s Society for the Humanities, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, and the Cornell University Libraries to offer a series of inventive cross-disciplinary seminars for design and humanities students, jointly taught by faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences and AAP, and focused on a specific archival collection of urban representations or on a particular site of urban drama. Undergirding this initiative was the proposition that contemporary urbanism is not fundamentally a technical problem demanding a technical solution, but a deontic problem, demanding an understanding of how cultures ought to coexist, and how populations of differing means and destinies can find common ground in increasingly dense and diverse urban conditions. In this spirit, this semester
and during the past five semesters humanities and design students have unpacked the library’s unique hip-hop collection; studied urban graffiti with artists and writers; experienced firsthand the negotiated water-land boundaries of Bangkok, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, and the Mekong Delta; and most recently, explored Brazil’s Amazonia to discover the extent and consequences of urbanization in the heart of the rain forest (see page 2). The city as both subject and site of study has a long and notable history at AAP. A significant moment in this legacy occurred 30 years ago, when a small troupe from Sibley Hall settled into the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne for the inaugural semester of the now renowned Cornell in Rome program. Three decades of continuous academic programming in the epicenter of Western humanist thought and urban design has yielded one of the country’s premier study abroad programs for artists, architects, planners, and liberal studies students. Students are immersed in all aspects of the city and learn to read the urban condition through classes and visits that take them to museums, archaeological sites, historical and contemporary art collections, churches, and public spaces. This coming spring, we will celebrate Cornell in Rome’s 30th anniversary and reaffirm our commitment to the study of the city though a series of tours, lectures, and discussions. I invite you to come to Rome, reconnect with your classmates, and see the city through the lens of our Rome and Ithaca faculty, students, and distinguished guests for what promises to be three unforgettable days in the eternal city. Ciao,
Kent Kleinman Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Architecture, Art, and Planning
Final reviews for students in the option studio Frontier Urbanities/Amazonia, taught by Visiting Assistant Professor Tao DuFour and Visiting Critic Paulo Tavares. Guest critics included Alberto Foyo (standing, at left), and Michael Sorkin (seated, second from right).