LOOK INSIDE: Pressing Matters X

20 20 University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design Department of Architecture

212 Meyerson Hall 210 S. 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104-6311

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020 021 215.898.5728 www.design.upenn.edu/architecture/graduate/info archdept@design.upenn.edu

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INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION Already number TEN, Pressing Matters X is a special issue reflecting a year of reflection and change, after several waves of the pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests and newly developed hybrid teaching methods. It follows last year’s Pressing Matters 9 that was completely rethought with the aim to present an Open-Source publication that shares the Department of Architecture’s concept of design-research, an integral approach of critical thinking, rigorous research, and design, representing a deep understanding of the complex layers of architecture. Together with Jonathan Jackson & team of WSDIA, a more integral design was developed, allowing input from research [ARI labs], students, faculty and Penn’s special events. This anniversary of Pressing Matters X is celebrated by adding the ‘decade’ color of silver to the usual recycled cardboard cover of Weitzman’s Architecture publication. It also represents a year of new opportunities brought by the completely rethought education through the introduction of remote learning, zoom lectures and meetings, and a more inclusive, diverse approach. This difficult year also came with some small light points; a much larger international group of diverse jurors, experts and critics could be invited as travel was no hindrance for attendance, which really expanded the dialogue and drastically increased diversity and inclusion.

After a summer of protests the Department realized it crucial to create a DEI committee, that could assist in restructuring its curriculum, refocus the reading lists, and to also focus even more on an inclusive and diverse student and faculty body. The department also instigated a free summer school for the students as internships and jobs were hard to come by. The generous support of the great group of diverse external experts, critics, and speakers advised and consulted the students in their design for a temporary Covid testing station, where issues such as prefabrication, social equity and race and gender were discussed and inspired the student’s exquisite designs and awards generously published by Surface Media.

In conjunction with the 17th International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia, CityX Venice, a virtual exhibition of new and recent work by leading architects and designers from around the world, opened online last May. I was honored to serve as one of the Creative Directors for the Virtual Italian Pavilion with City X under guidance of Tom Kovac and Alessandro Melis. For this exhibition the six architecture faculty members, Laia Mogas Soldevila, Dorit Aviv, Karel Klein, Ferda Kolatan, Masoud Akbarzadeh and Robert stuart Smith presented examples of their design-research under way at Weitzman. This also led to a great Log’Rithmn panel discussion with Cynthia Davidson under the theme: “the Science of Architecture.” It was fascinating for me to moderate the discussion with the six speakers who expanded on that title in three ways: ‘The material and ephemeral,’ ‘Irrealis Manu factum,’ and ‘Embedded aesthetics.’ Some 3000 attendants followed the dialogue and discussion that day.

The Department of Architecture will also host the ACADIA conference in Fall 2023. The conference theme, “Hybrids & Haecceities,” asks how technology enables, reflects, and challenges established disciplinary boundaries and design practices. Haecceities describes the discrete qualities or properties of objects that define them as unique,

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It is an exciting time to be studying architecture; challenges in society have impacted our lives and our profession greatly, environmental and natural disasters have put us on edge, and digital technologies continue to transform the means and ends of our field. The Department of Architecture actively engages in these issues, and our goal is to train our students to be the future leaders in these fields. Our students have proven to be extremely competitive in winning awards, such as Metropolis Future 100, and in finding internships and jobs, as evidenced in the Architecture department’s ranking as the fifth place in “graduate architecture schools with most hired students.” Collaborations with important innovators in advanced material fabrication and experts in the architecture field also give our students a direct connection to advanced practices and experiences.

INTRODUCTION

while Hybrids are entities with characteristics enhanced by the process of combining two or more elements with different properties. The conference invites contributions on how hybrids & haecceities pose new ideas and approaches to design — be they computational, material, aesthetic, robotic, genetic, biological, environmental, or theoretical.

Our fast-growing faculty includes world-renowned architects such as Thom Mayne, Ferda Kolatan, Marion Weiss, Scott Erdy, Billie Faircloth and many others. Our lecture series and panel discussions include a great cast of worldrenowned architects and innovators. We recently opened our brand-new Robotics Lab, connected to the Advanced Research and Innovation Lab (ARI), and our new MSD-RAS [Robotics and Autonomous Systems], where students join advanced classes in robotic design, and faculty and students develop design-research projects. Faculty members such as Robert Stuart-Smith, Andrew Saunders, Dorit Aviv, Masoud Akbarzadeh and Ezio Blasetti have been collaborating on a variety of innovative projects, including the development of a Nomadic House [Robert & Masoud], supported by alumni Hanley Bodek and Cemex, that will be built on the Pennovation grounds later this year, and Ezio Blasetti’s research with the students for a carbon-fiber Pavilion to be located in the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023.

The Department of Architecture is part of a multi-disciplinary School of Design and an exceptional research University.

This is only a small glimpse of what is going on in the Department of Architecture. We hope to see you at Weitzman to inform you more completely in the near future!

Winka Dubbeldam, MSAAD Miller Professor and Chair Department of Architecture Weitzman School of Design University of Pennsylvania

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CONTENTS

FOUNDATION 501 FOUNDATION 502 CORE 601 CORE 602 INTRODUCTION

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8–56

MIXING CHAMBERS

40–43

58–104

EVENTS

90–93

106–152

EVENTS

192

154–200

FALL NEWS

202–205

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EVENTS

EVENTS

CONTENTS

ADVANCED 701 ADVANCED 704 MSD–AAD MSD–EBD MSD–RAS IPD PHD THESIS

206–280 281–283

284–336 318–319

338–359

360–365

366–375

376–383

384–387

388–392 392–412 7

SPRING NEWS

FOUNDATION 501

FLOURISHED IMPRESSIONS Kyle Troyer In an age of the Picturesque, John Ruskin employed theories of ornamentation that transformed the vapidness of Modernism into an art of fragility. While focusing on the honesty of the craftsman, his theory of ornamentation began with massing and ended with veiling, transitioning between the natural textures of the mass and artificial ornament. Unlike his sequential layering of mass to veil, this project challenges the agencies of ornament and texture and their relationship to volume and space; something that Ruskin’s watercolor sketches explored perhaps unknowingly.

The archive finds itself embedded in embellished surfaces of imperfection and variation. This language not only mirrors the complex aura of the artifacts within its walls but extracts it to begin building a dialogue for architecture and its tectonics. Ornament and texture pervade the project, vividly contrasting the museum’s white, vast walls.

The filigree of the embellishment and ornamental geometry is no longer subordinated by the spaces in which encapsulate it; rather, it begins to form space itself while allowing natural light to penetrate the interior. By revisiting John Ruskin’s theories of vital beauty, the archive extension begins to transform the ways in which a museum can operate and house artifacts of complex histories.

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8 – Flourished Impressions by Kyle Troyer, Elevation 9 – Flourished Impressions by Kyle Troyer, Choisy

10 – Flourished Impressions by Kyle Troyer, Axon and Ground 11 – Flourished Impressions by Kyle Troyer, Exterior Render

“Ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied.”

— Edward Said My project attempts to physically construct a power system, resembling the system behind the Penn museum as a cultural institution. This system dominates the museum’s narratives of their collections, its presentation of cultures, and, thus, our perceptions of the museum exhibits. By physically constructing this power structure, I aim to remind people of the omnipresence of power relations and the impossibility of fully dissolving the hegemonic saturation of power dynamics albeit any attempt at a “decolonizing practice.”

The power structure in my design is actualized through the highlighting of a hierarchical relation between the observer and the observed. The museum wing and the courtyard carved underground together form a giant “amphitheater,”

while an overpass is built on top of the museum to form a peripheral ring for the audience. As the overpass invites people to look down, the amphitheater-like museum wing maximizes the exposure of the different scenes, inviting unhindered visions to reach the core of the spectacle. Thus, every participant in this space becomes a performer and a director of a scene subjugated to the visions of the potential observers standing on the overpass.

Daniel Markiewicz

DISPERSIVE CENTRALIZATION Echo Ma

To ensure a dynamic spectacle across the stage, I designed several modules, including jungle gyms, swings, pet shelters, hammocks, climbing ropes, etc. to foster interactions throughout the space. When bodies encounter a playful presence, a drama unfolds — an intentional but unpredictable drama. The flexibility of the spatial activities aligns with the flexibility of the building form, which is transformable.

The grid scaffolding that upholds the museum wing is the only permanent structure, since the building’s body and “play” structures can change form to adapt to various activities and events. With the grid as the underlying logic that defines the space, every enclosed, semi-enclosed, and open space forms a merely transient presence that is interchangeable with its surroundings.

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12 – Dispersive Centralization by Echo Ma, Study 13 – Dispersive Centralization by Echo Ma, Interior Render

14 – Dispersive Centralization by Echo Ma, Axon 15 – Dispersive Centralization by Echo Ma, Exterior Render

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MIXING CHAMBERS

EXCAVATING HISTORY IN DESIGNING “MIXING CHAMBERS” FOR THE PENN MUSEUM

Vanessa Keith (Lecturer): MArch, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Fine Arts (2000) – Master of International Affairs, Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs (1995) – Concentration: Economic Development – Focus Area: Urban Planning B.A., Columbia University (1992) – Major: Religion and Non-Western Philosophy – Minor: Fine Art (Printmaking)

Students entering architecture school often think of design as linear, says architect Vanessa Keith (MArch’00), who joined the faculty in the Department of Architecture this fall. They tend to want to move forward in stages: first the floor plan, then the elevation, and so on. But “creativity doesn’t work that way,” says Keith, who is principal at Studioteka in Brooklyn.

This reality is reflected in the way the first-year graduate architecture studios at the Weitzman School are organized, so students become nimble at moving between perspectives and scales, and thinking through the ethical and political implications of their work.

“If you’re constantly changing the way that you’re looking at a thing, then as you’re changing the way that you’re looking at it, you’re learning, and you’re also progressing in your ability to do design,” Keith says. “And I think it’s really important that design be beautiful but also meaningful.”

Keith taught one of six sections of the Architecture 501 studio, in which students designed new spaces for the Penn Museum in the context of wider conversations about systemic racism and decolonization in cultural institutions. As the 40

It’s the second consecutive year that students engaged intensively with the Museum’s collections, through a partnership initiated by Associate Professor of Architecture Andrew Saunders, who directs the MArch program, and Anne Tiballi, Mellon Director of Academic Engagement at the Museum.

The studios last year were organized under the banner of “Curious Cabinets,” in reference to the colonialist concept of the cabinet of curiosities. This year’s studios took on the theme of Mixing Chambers, “enclosed spaces intended to foster the combination of two or more discrete elements.”

MIXING CHAMBERS

syllabus notes, the Penn Museum is among “many monuments and museums [that] were built a century or more ago by people who took colonialism, racial hierarchy, and slavery for granted.”

As part of the studio, students worked on three projects. In the first, they each chose an artifact from the Museum’s American Section — which includes items like dolls, jars, baskets, bowls, boxes, whistles, and pipes crafted by North and South American indigenous culture—and designed a container to hold and display the object. The second project had students, in teams of four, design and fabricate “mixing chambers” housing all four of the artifacts they selected. The results of that project were displayed during midterm presentations as a public exhibition in the Penn Museum courtyard.

Finally, each student designed an Archive and Research Extension for the Penn Museum American Section, envisioned in the syllabus as “a new public gateway or threshold to the museum” facing the courtyard.

Keith says the assignments were organized to let students work at different scales while maintaining a certain continuity of purpose throughout the semester.

“If you do three completely different projects over the course of a semester, it’s exhausting and overwhelming, whereas with this one, they were able to sort of build on an idea and go up in scale,” Keith says. “And then at the end of the semester, they’re working at the largest scale, and they’re also working independently for the first time.”

Each of the six studio instructors had an original interpretation of the “mixing chambers” concept. For Keith, who studied religion and non-western philosophy at Columbia as an undergraduate, the studio was organized around “Chaos and Cosmos.” She aimed to push students to “explore 41

MIXING CHAMBERS

the relationship between the artifact as simultaneously precious physical construction and scanned digital simulacrum, as well as its deeper connection to ancient and contemporary systems of meaning.”

Keith asked her students to create a “DNA strand” based on their artifact containers, which they then combined with their teammates’ strands during the middle portion of the semester to create the mixing chambers to be displayed in the Museum courtyard. She also asked them to select a legend or creation myth from the culture where their artifacts originated, and to research the histories of the site — from Indigenous languages spoken in the area to historic environmental features like underground streams and creeks — and incorporate those elements into the design. The goal was to have students combine the physical qualities of their artifacts with the cultural histories of their origins and the constraints and characteristics of the museum site to create a design that told a story.

Jesse Allen, an MArch student who studied economics and environmental science as an undergraduate, said he wasn’t sure what to expect from his first graduate architecture studio, and that he tried to keep an open mind about learning new processes. Working in a team with students Jenna Selati, Leah Janover, and Xinlei Liu Allen designed Hollow Hierophany, reimagining the cave from the Caddo Nation’s creation story “to reinforce the active present and future of the artifacts and their originating cultures.”

“It was interesting to see what each group member saw as ‘essential’ at each step, whether in determining their own artifacts’ DNA or what aspects of other DNA strands they incorporated or emphasized in each iteration,” Allen says.

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Keith organized a workshop for students in WebVR, a platform that allows designers to build work in a virtual environment and experience it from different angles, above, below, and within their designs. The platform also allows students to share work with each other and with anyone else who has a phone or computer. And it’s a preferred tool of many of the artists and designers that students studied and worked with in the course, including many indigenous futurist artists.

Throughout the semester, Keith pushed students to continuously review their work from different perspectives and at different scales, and to incorporate more information about the cultures that produced their artifacts.

MIXING CHAMBERS

“Finding this key aspect or aspects of an artifact or design was challenging, and I thought our group worked well to resolve some of the confusion to achieve a meaningful design.”

“One of the things that’s important is to keep bringing in another element to sort of weave back in,” Keith says.

Keith says the constraints of COVID-19 learning also opened up possibilities the group might not have considered before.

The students used collaborative tools like Bluescape and Discord to work with each other and with the artists Olivia McGilchrist and Tom Watson, also known as Commonolithic, who helped the students learn how to use WebVR. For their final projects, Keith’s students selected nonprofit organizations to partner with on the design of the Museum extensions, including the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, a platform for imagining the future of Aboriginal communities in Canada; the Caddo Conference Organization, which promotes archeological knowledge of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma; and the Philadelphia Archaeological Forum, which works to protect and preserve the archeological heritage of the city. By the time they completed the semester, students had employed a range of design approaches and presentation media, including virtual and augmented reality elements. And they entered into a critical conversation about the role of cultural institutions in creating and perpetuating injustices in society.

“We need to change the planet, we need to live in a more sensitive way, and we need to respect each other more,” Keith says. “So I think that a project like this is really important, especially for beginning students of architecture to then take forward into their lives as designers.”

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EVENTS

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EVENTS

Michael Webb was born in Henley-on-Thames, England, in 1937. He studied architecture intermittently at the formerly named Regent Street Polytechnic School of Architecture (now the University of Westminster) between the years 1953 and 1972; a somewhat lengthy student career. A project he designed during his fourth year at the Polytechnic found its way, owing to a curious set of circumstances, into an exhibition at MoMA New York entitled “Visionary Architecture” in 1960. The following year his thesis project for an entertainments center in the middle of London was repeatedly failed at the Poly; nevertheless, it became widely published, and was featured in November 2009 at the “First Projects” exhibition at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

In 1961, he was invited by Sir Peter Cook to be part of an assortment of young architects who referred to themselves as the Archigram group, publishing a magazine with the same title. The group rebelled against what it saw as the failure of the architectural establishment in Britain to produce buildings reflecting the dynamic changes, both technological and social, the country was then undergoing. For the last 26 years a large exhibition of the group’s work has been touring world capitals; and in 2006 Archigram was awarded the Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Webb emigrated to the USA in 1965. He sees his raison d’etre as deriving from the drawings he has produced over the years: among these being the Temple Island Study, which resulted in an eponymously titled book published by the AA in 1987; and the Drive-in House series. A monograph entitled Two Journeys was published in 2018.

His writing has appeared many times in Architectural Design magazine, Daidalos, and in the Journal of Architectural Education.

October 7, 2020 THE CUNNINGHAM LECTURE: Michael Webb

He has had one man shows at the Cooper Union, Columbia University, the Storefront Gallery in NY, the Architecture League in NY, the University of Manitoba at Winnipeg, and the Art Net Gallery in London. He was a fellow at the CCA in Montreal in 2010 and 2011 and has been honored with grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

He has taught design studios and drawing at Virginia Tech, the Rhode Island School of Design, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Pratt Institute and the Cooper Union, where he occupied the Charles Gwathmey chair.

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FALL FIRST YEAR COURSES

[ARCH 511] HISTORY AND THEORY I Joan Ockman ARCH 511 is a global history of modern architecture from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century taught in the fall semester and required of all incoming MArch. students. Along with ARCH 512, which picks up in the spring with the period after World War II, this lecture course is intended to provide not just wide and deep knowledge of the history of modern architecture but also a critical reflection on the present. Among the large questions taken up in ARCH 511 are the following: How did accelerating processes of industrialization and urbanization transform the practice and profession of architecture? What social and environmental problems attended these transformations, and how did architects endeavor to solve them? What role was played by aesthetic movements, cultural and intellectual discourses, and visionary proposals? How did wars and political upheavals, economic cycles, and ideological cross-currents affect architecture?

In what ways did new attitudes toward public and private space, toward identities and popular culture, and toward nature shape architecture and its imaginary? Questions like these have lost none of their resonance as we grapple with unprecedented changes and challenges in today’s world. The course goes well beyond the familiar canon of names and -isms, aiming to impart knowledge that can amplify and enrich the education of professional architecture students.

More specifically, ARCH 511 engages with historical episodes and theoretical issues that are implicitly or explicitly relevant to the 501 studio with which it runs parallel. Currently, students in first-semester studio at Penn design and fabricate containers for the display of artifacts in the collection of Penn’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (see statement by Andrew Saunders, p. 9). This design problem can be valuably informed by discussions in 511 related to the institutionalization and systematization of forms of knowledge, the history of colonialism, the changing status of the object in the shift from craft to industrial production, the rise of new modes of visuality and spatial perception, modern architecture’s relationship to history, the role of representational and symbolic spaces like exhibition pavilions and world’s fairs as cultural flashpoints, and many others. These shared thematics offer interesting opportunities for integrating studio and classroom learning, from formal and informal dialogues to collaborative research to joint workshops and reviews.

[ARCH 521] VISUAL STUDIES I Nate Hume, Brian De Luna The coursework of Visual Studies will introduce a range of new tools, skills, and strategies useful for the development and representation of design work. Drawing and modeling strategies will be investigated for ways in which they can generate ideas and forms rather than be used solely as production tools. Control and the ability to model in an intentional manner will be highlighted. Likewise, drawing exercises will stress the construction of content over the acceptance of digital defaults in order to more accurately represent a project’s ideas. Documents will be produced

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FALL FIRST YEAR COURSES

which strive to build on and question drawing conventions in order to more precisely convey the unique character of each project. The workflow will embrace a range of software to open up possibilities to achieve intended results and resist constraint of a single program’s abilities.

The course will be separated into three phases each focusing on a different set of topics which are related to the work in studio. These phases will be in a sequential consolidation of techniques and methods. Each exercise must therefore be complete before progressing to the next. The exercises will have specific requirements and be presented by the students, as well as submitted for grading, before the next exercise is introduced.

Phase 01 will strengthen drawing and modeling techniques necessary for working with precise controlled geometry. A workflow will be developed to move from photographs and scans of artifacts to controlled digital constructions. These models will then be used to produce a series of drawings conveying and interrogating the qualities of the artifacts.

Drawing and modeling techniques will be used to amplify conditions and generate additional features. Layout, notation, projection, and post production will be explored to fully represent the conceptual and geometric ideas embedded in the work.

Phase 02 will work through orthographic drawing conventions within digital environments. The orthographic set, namely: plan, section and elevation will be emphasized individually as autonomous entities instead of an interrelated group of drawings to explore the potentials of aesthetics within each disciplinary convention. Existing digital models (501 Pavilion Project) will serve as the test objects to further explore and speculate through the abstraction of planametric, sectional and elevational line drawings.

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Phase 03 will explore ways of building a conceptual and spatial argument through drawing. Diagrams and analytical drawings are the ways to communicate ideas and design intentions, by reducing a whole to digestible parts and uncovering unrecognized relationships between these parts. On one hand, an analytical framework defines an armature of measureable constraints and observations; on the other, it is a rhetorical device – a selective re-presentation of the object or site that reveals the architect’s attitude toward it. During this phase, parallel projections (multiview, axonometric, and oblique) and descriptive geometry will be used as analytical and generative tools to re-present and explore the individual projects from the concurrent 501 studio.

GALLERY

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GALLERY 51

The Overlap by Zihua Mo Critic: Vanessa Keith [p.38]

GALLERY

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GALLERY 53

External Allusion by Monte Reed Critic: Nate Hume [p.27]

CORE 602

NO NATION EMBASSY Anna Lim and Danny Ortega It is our hope that the No Nation Embassy will act as a tribute towards the broken history of Seneca Village. With the ideology of anti-empiricism, this remake of Seneca Village accepts all as citizens with equal rights through a micro-urbanism of architectural characters united by a common roof.

Characters in architecture inhabit a strange terrain. They are both an object and a narrative operation. They contain traits and features that work in communicating a story.

Much like characters in films, plays, and novels, architectural characters must also represent something more than the mere performance of their qualities. Characters are

location specific, but not necessarily location exclusive.

A character might be deployed in multiple settings, and the change of scenery surrounding a character elicits new meanings accordingly.

In John Hejduk’s Victims (1985), an unbuilt proposal for a pavilion park in Berlin, these characters go so far to have names, in a Faulkner-esque world-building. Such characters became inspiration for the various spaces of the No Nation Embassy. Our architectural characters have taken on qualities of creatures wearing clothing and seemingly engaged in a moment of life. Sometimes they are perched on the edge of a hill about to pounce, other times they are rolling across the water, or nestled into a puddle of water deep asleep in a slumber.

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2 – No Nation Embassy by Anna Lim and Danny Ortega, Interior Render 3 – No Nation Embassy by Anna Lim and Danny Ortega, Axon

4 – No Nation Embassy by Anna Lim and Danny Ortega, Interior Render

Death in Architecture has for an extensive period been explored through the creation of memorials, cemeteries, mausoleums, and cenotaphs. Yet the increasing global environmental crisis has not fared well under the continuous practices for post death. The greater population often has greater needs that must be addressed through more substantial attempts.

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Ecological justice does not cease to exist when human life does. The Seneca Growth Complex attempts to incorporate and diminish the impact humans have by posthumously incorporating donators into new organic materials that will be used to grow, monitor, and sustain the native natural ecology of Seneca Village and of Greater Central Park.

Simon Kim

SENECA GROWTH COMPLEX Diego Ramirez and Dario Sabidussi

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7 7 – Seneca Growth Complex by Diego Ramirez and Dario Sabidussi, Section

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5 – Seneca Growth Complex by Diego Ramirez and Dario Sabidussi, Interior Render 6 – Seneca Growth Complex by Diego Ramirez and Dario Sabidussi, Axon

GALLERY

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GALLERY 195

re·com·posed by John Nedeau, Changzhe Xu, Weiting Zhang Critic: Ben Krone [p.177]

GALLERY 196

Arachnida by Christine Eichhorn Critic: Gisela Baurmann [p.141]

GALLERY 197

Sensatorium by Meera Toolsidas and Ellie Garside Critic: Miroslava Brooks [p.163]

GALLERY

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Seneca Growth Complex by Diego Ramirez and Dario Sabidussi Critic: Simon Kim [p.159]

ADVANCED 701

THE FERMENTED COMMONS Tianhui Zhang and Hillary Morales Robles The Fermented Commons envisions architecture as a character of chemical transformations, and discusses how microbes are the original foreigners/immigrants, drawing its parallel to our human world. The pantheon of fermentation doesn’t glorify the gods in the sky or capitalism, abandons the anthropocentric notions of a fresh, clean and

pristine world. This world-building focuses the eyes on the production of terrestrial grounds that deepens the roots of human-microbes connection in traditional chemical transformation practices. It celebrates the rotten, spoiled and decay. Fermentation offers a spatial connection for dialogue between traditional cuisine practices, socio-political contingencies, transmogrification and the tragedy of the tragedy of the commons.

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9 – The Fermented Commons by Tianhui Zhang and Hillary Morales Robles, Section 10 – The Fermented Commons by Tianhui Zhang and Hillary Morales Robles, Render Close Up

11 – The Fermented Commons by Tianhui Zhang and Hillary Morales Robles, Visual Study 12 – The Fermented Commons by Tianhui Zhang and Hillary Morales Robles, Exterior Render

Carved out of the mountain and buried deep in the earth, our project puts forth an eco-mythic shelter, where children are protected from the external stresses of their physical environments. As occupants of this world, they can climb the walls, run wild among bushes, and play in the slides — It is a

kind of haven for them to play with their fellow occupants.

In this realm, the context is created, guarded and maintained by a god/mechanism called Shan-Shen. It may appear as though the architecture is enveloped by branches and roots that grow out of the mythical creature’s extremities. However, upon further examination, it is a Dougong — the traditional wooden structure — that holds the inner space and caviites of the eco-mythic environment, covering the walls, the roof, the ground.

Simon Kim

ECOLOGICAL DOMAIN; THE SHIFTING REPARATIONS OF SENECA VILLAGE Maria Fuentes and Madison Green

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15 – Ecological Domain; The Shifting Reparations of Seneca Village by Maria Fuentes and Madison Green, Visual Study

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13 – Ecological Domain; The Shifting Reparations of Seneca Village by Maria Fuentes and Madison Green, Aerial 14 – Ecological Domain; The Shifting Reparations of Seneca Village by Maria Fuentes and Madison Green, Section

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ADVANCED 701

UBER – ART CENTER Huajie Ma and Jing Yuan Our site is in Callow Hill, Philadelphia. Our engagement to the site is a part of the untouched railway, an unused land of bushes, and an unrenovated parking lot. As Uber has several greenlight hub that are used for providing aids for uber drivers and enable the company to communicate with its employees and the communities. While inner-city land is expensive to lease, Uber has negotiated a temporary lease without fees to Philadelphia’s rail park district in exchange for providing public outdoor space and a cultural gallery. The UBER – ART Center is a temporary Uber services center combined with art gallery. As Uber Center can provide necessary assistance for the drivers, it also become the destination for drivers to engage to local art works.

Local artist could express their thoughts in this UBER-ART Center. Either attracting more people to see their works

on site or been delivered to more places by Uber drivers.

In relation to site feature with machine vision, we utilized some custom computer vision and multi-agent design methods for generating an initial 3D design from a 3D site scan. We then developed a back-and-forth dialogue between multiple iterations of explicit design by us and machine vision and learning. Our interest was in leveraging machine perception to interpret what we were doing and to contribute further to the design. These machine learning results were used to explore rapid design development through semi-autonomous methods, and increases in complexity, intricacy, color, and texture. Developing unique character for the project from machinic perception. 3D printing would be used for this project. Different parts would be prefabricated in factory so that saving construction time on site. The methods for the construction are Lenticular printing, it is an emerging technique that contains a color shifting quality.

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8 – UBER – ART Center by Huajie Ma and Jing Yuan, Aerial 9 – UBER – ART Center by Huajie Ma and Jing Yuan, Interior Render

10 10 – UBER – ART Center by Huajie Ma and Jing Yuan, Model

With the partnership of machine perception, the project explored a colorful polyscalar volume that is tightly tailored to the site surroundings. Continues with the exterior’s nondirectional and porous aesthetic, the program of immersive theatre challenges the traditional theater in fixed and massive settings. Our project designed five performance spaces linked in multiple routes.

Audiences are meant to immersive themselves in the designed space and explore their own adventure. The tailored choreograph scene with the exiting fictional environment renders an unconscious subliminal aspect of the theatrical world, which engages the senses in a primordial instinctive way rather than traditional consciousness. The project aims not only rekindle an artistic neighborhood but eventually provides a possibility to construct a theatric urban atmosphere in eastern Philadelphia.

Robert Stuart-Smith

URBAN STAGE Saina Xiang and Yuhao Zhang

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14 13 – Urban Stage by Saina Xiang and Yuhao Zhang, Interior Render 14 – Urban Stage by Saina Xiang and Yuhao Zhang, Aerial

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11 – Urban Stage by Saina Xiang and Yuhao Zhang, Style Transfer 12 – Urban Stage by Saina Xiang and Yuhao Zhang, Street View Render

ADVANCED 701

[ARCH 803] GENERAL OVERVIEW OF ALGORITHMIC DESIGN AND ROBOTIC FABRICATION Ezio Blasetti Directly supports ARCH 801 Material Agencies I: Section 1. This seminar will teach students computer and robot programming skills that will be utilized to deliver a complimentary and integral aspect of design-prototyping and fabrication work. Topics will vary in application to suit the studio brief. Participants will be introduced to the Robotics Lab, and will learn to set up ABB Industrial Robot tasks.

Design algorithms will be developed that establish a conceptual relationship to the manufacturing process and attempt to leverage it for creative forms of design expression whilst addressing material and production performance constraints. Examples include computer programming that simulates a material placement and robotic manufacturing process such as additive manufacturing, filament winding or weaving, and utilizes these tasks in a generative design methodology, where design character, variation in material organization is evaluated relative to performance criteria such as material quantities, production time, etc. Submissions will be technical in nature and will also be implemented within ARCH 801 prototypes.

The course provides a foundation for more specialist technical development in Semester 2.

[ARCH 805] INTRODUCTION TO MICRO-CONTROLLERS, SENSOR AND ACTUATOR SYSTEMS Ezio Blasetti Directly supports ARCH 801 Material Agencies I: Section 2.

This seminar will teach participants to design and assemble electronic circuits using sensors/actuators and microcontrollers, and to program digital and analogue means of data exchange. Students will develop a closed or open loop reactive system that consists of embedded sensor systems that will operate within the Design Studio project prototype, and utilizes feedback from sensors to drive designed affects (E.g. kinetic, lighting, variations in porosity.). The course will consider degrees of control, feedback, energy and force in relation to interactions of matter, space and active bodies (human and non-human). Participants will learn how to design electric circuits, solder and weld these and to integrate circuits with micro-processors, sensors and actuators. Exact equipment and methods will vary over time as these technologies evolve rapidly.

At present possible micro-controllers utilized include Arduino, Raspberri Pi, Odroid, Intel Nuc, Atom and others.

Sensors such as flex, pressure and proximity sensors will be utilized. Possible forms of actuation include servo and stepper motors, linear actuators, Nitinol muscle wire, pneumatic actuators. A Programming Language will be utilized to for the writing of simple control algorithms that clarify how input and output data is processed and acted upon, with a particular focus on leveraging physical world actions within a designed control loop where possible.

[ARCH 807] RAS THEORY Evangelos Kotsioris This seminar provides a theoretical context to the program, relating autonomous robotics and fabrication research to architectural discourse, philosophy, science and technology. The course commences with a historical overview of scientific topics including cybernetics, complexity theory, emergence/self-organization, evolution/developmental biology, behaviour-based robotics. The course also critically assesses present and future societal trajectories in relation to technology, exploring socio-political, ethical and philosophical arguments that concern a broader technological shift that has occurred during the last decade which has given rise to our unquestioned reliance on algorithms within our everyday lives (social media, shopping, navigation), and similar impact from Urban OS’s, Industry 4 and driverless car technologies. Readings cover philosophy, computer science, cybernetics, robotics, sociology, psychology, and will be discussed in relation to their consideration within the domain of architectural design and building technology. Examples include: Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Maurice Conti, Norbert Weiner, Kevin Kelly, Ray Kurzweil, Ed Finn, Donna Haraway, Andre Gorz, Bruce Sterling, Daniel Kahneman, Timothy Morton, Levi Bryant. A theoretical written statement related to ARCH 801 Material Agencies I Section 1 or 2 will be produced by participants within this core seminar.

[ARCH 811] THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE David Leatherbarrow The purpose of this course is to provide to students who are embarking on careers in teaching and scholarship in architecture a re-introduction to some of the principal issues and writings of the architectural theory, as they developed historically from antiquity to the present. In addition to introducing recurring themes and primary texts, this course aims to help students develop the practices that are typical of scholarship, the forms and habits of scholarly inquiry. It is a required course for all incoming Ph.D. and M.S. students.

[ARCH 851] FIELD BIBLIOGRAPHY This course is essentially an independent study, undertaken by doctoral students in preparation for the Candidacy Examination. This course should be taken in conjunction with ARCH 852 after all other courses have been completed. Normally a member of the student’s Dissertation Committee supervises this course.

[ARCH 999] INDEPENDENT STUDY This course enables students to undertake self-directed study on a topic in Architecture, under the supervision of a faculty member. Students are required to make a proposal for the study to the Department Chair, outlining the subject and method of investigation, and confirming the course supervisor at least two weeks prior to the beginning of the semester.

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Shan-Shen: The Eco-Mythical by Dekang Liang and Ming Jiang Critic: Simon Kim [p.236]

GALLERY 274

Arachnida by Christine Eichhorn Critic: Gisela Baurmann [p.141]

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Matters of Disposal by Paul McCoy & Matthew Kohman Critic: Ferda Kolatan [p.212]

EVENT

FORMA is a full-service architecture studio founded in 2018 by Miroslava Brooks and Daniel Markiewicz. The design-driven practice is committed to developing projects with architectural clarity and conceptual rigor, aiming for a harmonious combination of order and whimsy.

FORMA has completed and continues to develop a range of building types from single and multi-family residences, high-end retail and commercial office, to elementary education and cultural projects among others.

March 31, 2021 MIROSLAVA BROOKS AND DANIEL MARKIEWICZ: Preliminary Plans

Both Miroslava and Daniel are licensed architects and received their Master of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture where they were awarded, individually in subsequent years, the William Wirt Winchester Travelling Fellowship — the school’s most prestigious award. Prior to establishing FORMA, Miroslava worked as a Project Designer at Eisenman Architects, leading the design development of the Yenikapi Archeological Museum in Istanbul, and since 2014 has been a faculty at the Yale School of Architecture. Daniel is a founding member and editor of Project, a journal for architecture published since 2012, and previously worked as an Associate Architect at Diller Scofidio + Renfro Architects, most notably as lead designer of the public spaces of the renovation project for the Museum of Modern Art Expansion in New York City. Miroslava and Daniel teach architectural design in the graduate core sequence at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania.

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EVENT June A. Grant, RA, NOMA, is Founder and Design Principal at blink!LAB architecture; a boutique research-based architecture and urban design practice. Launched in 2014, blink!LAB is based on Ms. Grant’s 20 years experience in architecture, design and the urban regeneration of cities and communities. Her design approach rests on an avid belief in cultural empathy, data research and new technologies as integral to design futures and design solutions.

March 24, 2021 JUNE GRANT: DESIGN, ADVOCACY, AND REIMAGINING AGENCY

blink!LAB has three mandates — A commitment to Design Exploration, Advocacy for Holistic Solutions and the Integration of Technology as a central component for a regenerative society. Because we are designers committed to new forms of knowledge through making, we prefer to situate ourselves in the middle of catalytic design — where new challenges and emerging opportunities are addressed through multi-layered thinking and design.

Open and collaborative, blink!LAB is a small multi-disciplinary design studio with projects bridging architectural form, urban economics, urban design, industrial design, furniture, and digital fabrication towards the creation of regenerated communities.

Ms. Grant is the immediate Past-President of the San Francisco Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (SFNOMA); Board member of ACADIA, a YBCA 100 honoree, 2020 CEDAW Human Rights honoree, and the 2020, 10th Annual J. Max Bond Jr. Lecturer.

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ADVANCED 704

ADVANCED 704 Ferda Kolatan, Coordinator Associate Professor of Architecture

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ADVANCED 704

The 704 Design Research Studios are an in-depth examination and exploration of critical architectural topics through rigorous conceptual thinking and advanced design methodologies. These elective studios are taught by a selection of leading professionals in the field who share and develop their research expertise with the students over the course of the semester. All studio topics and project briefs are devised in ways to support the various objectives of each specific research subject.

The primary goal of this final studio of the Master of Architecture program is to equip the outgoing students with a multi-facetted and robust knowledge base — encompassing design, theory, and technical skills — necessary to participate in the field of architecture at the highest level. The ability to formulate, develop, and conclude a design project based on a larger set of research parameters is a crucial experience toward achieving this goal.

The boundaries for design research have expanded with the increasingly diverse trajectories that define architecture’s territories today. From the effects of global economic markets on cities to the ecological realities of the Anthropocene, we find ourselves entangled in forces seemingly elusive and yet profoundly impactful on our profession. The role of the research studio is to examine such forces in more depth and devise detailed architectural responses, which reflect sensibly on the cultural and environmental circumstances of our day.

Additionally, in recent years, new media and advanced technologies have provided us with uniquely powerful tools that require the integration of unprecedented technical skills and logistical expertise into the practice of design. However, in order to take full advantage of these tools, and to speculate productively on their vast potential to positively influence our world, we need to engage these new technologies in regard to their cultural, societal, and aesthetic ramifications as well. Several of the design research studios are operating within this realm.

Architecture’s unique ability to express physically and conceptually the circumstances of its own environment, to analyze and synthesize, to evoke and provoke, to learn from the past and to imagine the future, is contingent on our ability to integrate research-oriented thinking into our everyday practices. Only through this integration can we assure that design -and architecture at large- can maintain its disciplinary rigor while simultaneously engaging with the most pressing challenges of our contemporary times.

In this spirit, the 704 Design Research Studios are taught with a progressive and explorative mindset and without a default reliance on prior modes of design thinking and making. Each of these studios, in various ways, articulates a unique vision of what it means to practice architecture in the 21st century. The ever-diversifying context and complexity of our world can only be satisfactorily met with an equally dynamic approach to architectural design.

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ADVANCED 704

ICONOCLASH: ARCHITECTURE AND MONUMENT AFTER 2020 DEVELOPING NEW VISIONS FOR THE CLASSIC NEW YORK BANK BUILDING Ferda Kolatan (ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE) Caleb Ehly (TA) Ferda Kolatan (Associate Professor of Architecture): Founding Director of SU11 Architecture+Design – MsAAD, Columbia University – Dipl.Ing., RWTH Aachen, Germany

“ICONOCLASM IS WHEN WE KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE ACT OF BREAKING AND WHAT THE MOTIVATIONS FOR WHAT APPEARS AS A CLEAR PROJECT OF DESTRUCTION ARE; ICONOCLASH, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS WHEN ONE DOES NOT KNOW, ONE HESITATES, ONE IS TROUBLED BY AN ACTION FOR WHICH THERE IS NO WAY TO KNOW, WITHOUT FURTHER INQUIRY, WHETHER IT IS DESTRUCTIVE OR CONSTRUCTIVE.” — Bruno Latour, Iconoclash, Exhibition Catalog (2002)

This studio examines what role, if any, pre-Depression era New York monumental architecture can play in contemporary culture. Six former bank buildings, all landmarked and with rich historical heritages, are re-originated through new conceptual, programmatic, and aesthetic features. Once proud status symbols of the capitalist super-power

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1 – Cryo Vault by Kerry Hohenstein and Alexander Brown, Section

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CRYO VAULT Kerry Hohenstein and Alexander Brown

Iconography stemming from Greek and Roman temples charge an experience based in praise, a higher place, celebration of life, and perpetual desire for the beyond. Our new design uses the fragments of these themes on the facade to drive a related, but more contemporary, interior program: a cryonics facility.

The redesign of the East River Saving’s Bank is founded on confronting subjects of icon, authenticity, design origin, and what they bring to a spatial experience. The rehabilitation to this historic structure was meant to feel empathetic towards its history whilst keeping this structure relevant to its time.

We beg to question authenticity in the eternal — relative to both iconic architectural symbolisms as much as it is for eternal life. Can we maintain relation to an origin or is it rendered obsolete upon its infinite presence? The patients hold the same debated values of authenticity that monumentality and iconography hold to this structure. Are they the original soul simply continuing on, or a relatable visual copy that undergoes a new life upon their reanimation?

We ask if holding memory is the key to embodying uthenticity and originality. Is it possible to create new authenticities using relative elements?

Iconoclash is analyzed through the provoking ties of imagery between capitol and spiritual spaces via the temple architectural style as well as the structure’s history in the American Banking system playing off the idea of this space being a location to store your valuables. The facade is separated from its original historic ties through its new physical organization, textural treatments, and metaphysical detachment. The key iconic elements that formed a hierarchy rooted in institutional importance is replaced by elements which stack and shift in a new language that is more closely related to the user’s lives in their new eternal state.

New York, these buildings have long since lost their original significance and appear today as displaced and largely useless leftovers of bygone times. To be rehabilitated productively both their iconic image as well as their function needed radical rethinking. Our approach was thus twofold: First, how to alter 2 – Cryo Vault by Kerry Hohenstein and Alexander Brown, Project Description

Ferda Kolatan

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the monumental “image” of these classicist/revivalist buildings to reflect more diverse values rather than that of a single authority, and second, how to program them more adequately for our current time?

restructuring dichotomic value-systems like new/old, mundane/precious, nature/ culture, substantial/banal into architectural “anti-icons.” These new types promote unprecedented forms of participation with architecture and the city but also make us caution and rethink how to design for a future that appears ever more precarious. Rather than embracing yet another “novel” iconic architecture, this studio embraces the existing and defines progressive design as an act of ambiguity and hybridization.

Borrowing a term from Bruno Latour, the studio investigates “icono-clashing” as a design methodology for combining “at odds” elements into newly collaborative forms and hybrid architectures. Unprecedented prototypes and programs for the six buildings are developed by carefully mixing and 287

3 – Ferda Kolatan in Virtual Studio Review 4 – Cryo Vault by Kerry Hohenstein and Alexander Brown, Elevation

ADVANCED 704

CLONED & CLASHED Megan York and Eddie Zhiqi Sheng The question of what is original and what is replicated is posed within the new nature of this artificial landscape. The original and the clone are lost in translation as they interrelate within a new technologically driven environment.

Smaller hybrids of the classical architectural elements clashed with contemporary technologies are integrated throughout the interior; the cupola and dome extend downwards to enclose artificial environments for the host and cloned bees,

and the classical Corinthian column embeds ventilation systems for cloning operations.

The new monument generates a series of dialogues in relation to the power of value in technology, what we perceive as original and replicated, the homage towards the gleam of temples, and the interdependent relationship of the mundane and the spectacular. Columns clash with ventilation, ziggurats clash with machines, and intricate drums clash with new materials and synthetic environments, inevitably redefining the role of the monument in contemporary times.

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5 – Cloned & Clashed by Megan York and Eddie Zhiqi Sheng, Axon 6 – Cloned & Clashed by Megan York and Eddie Zhiqi Sheng, Interior Render

7 – Cloned & Clashed by Megan York and Eddie Zhiqi Sheng, Section 8 – Cloned & Clashed by Megan York and Eddie Zhiqi Sheng, Axon 2

Authentic Replicas, identifies the monument as a singular entity, intrinsically tied to an environment, time, and often specific meaning. Our research seeks to understand the role of hybrid and counterfeit as it relates to the authenticity of monuments, icons, and architecture in the context of our site, The First National City Bank Building of New York. This capitalist temple is challenged by the Canal street subway. The building sits in contrast to the infrastructure that allows the masses to enter New York City and feed into the economy which supports the bank.

Additionally, the now abandoned bank, which stood as an institution verifying the financial gains of selected social groups, has become the background to illegal street vendors selling counterfeit goods. Materials associated with the subway, such as the white tiles and functional detailing are

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We propose that a new institution is created on this site.

One which collects the confiscated counterfeit goods, and takes them to a depository for alteration, to a predetermined degree of differentiation, by local artisans. The seized items are transported to the site via the subway. The objects are collected and stored before being evaluated for reuse.

The altered objects are then sold back to the community as new high-end, limited edition, hybrid goods. This “Counterfeit Bureau” will expand upon the existing economy at work on Canal Street. The ambiguous nature of both the hybrid objects and hybrid architecture challenge ideas of the speed of consumption. It is the lack of understanding of origin that forces us to stare, amplifying the mystification and ultimately the monumentality.

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12 11 – Authentic Replicas by Amber Farrow and Molly Zmich, Section Chunk 12 – Authentic Replicas by Amber Farrow and Molly Zmich, Interior Render 2

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9 – Authentic Replicas by Amber Farrow and Molly Zmich, Axon 10 – Authentic Replicas by Amber Farrow and Molly Zmich, Interior Render 1

brought onto the facade of the bank, blurring the spatial boundary between what others may deem as “low” and “high”-brow spaces. Additionally, this material shift raises questions around monuments, their maintenance and purity.

Ferda Kolatan

AUTHENTIC REPLICAS Amber Farrow and Molly Zmich

ADVANCED 704

CALAMITY LIBRARY Winka Dubbeldam (MILLER PROFESSOR AND CHAIR) Richard Garber (LECTURER) Ryan Barnette (TA) Winka Dubbeldam (Miller Professor, Chair): Winka Dubbeldam is the founder and partner of the WBE certified New York firm Archi-Tectonics NYC, LLC. Dubbeldam is widely known for her award-winning work, recognized as much for its design excellence as for its use of smart building systems, sustainable materials, and innovative structures. Archi-Tectonics’ work is found in the USA, Europe, and Asia. Archi-Tectonics recently won the Asian Games 2022 Design Competition in Hangzhou, China [2018], with a 16-acre park five buildings and two stadiums, that is under construction to open in 2022.

Richard Garber: AIA, is a founding partner at GRO Architects. Bachelor of Architecture from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University.

Sponsor: John Ruga & Team from Northeast Precast NJ

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1 – Studio Review with Winka Dubbeldam

This studio will consider how architects can anticipate and address a series of future conditions that will allow shoreline areas to take on different functional uses, and more importantly develop a design pedagogy that is both forward thinking while also being protective of, and progressive towards, naturalassets.

The students in the Calamity Library Project Studio will specifically focus on such global ecological challenges concerning architecture and water systems in the Anthropocene. Themes like climate change, politics, infrastructure, new economies, and culture will form the lenses to understand the cities

along the river and urban landscapes in the context of a transforming environment. Flooding, drought, and other forms of extreme weather are observed more and more as normal occurrences everywhere on the planet. The impact of urbanization, its global reaches into rural, oceanic, and atmospheric environments, has become immense, and often damaging. Human impact thus forms an ongoing feedback loop of dynamic interactions between the built and nonbuilt environment.

Winka Dubbeldam

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River and bypassing New Orleans. The long-term interactions between humans and the watershed will be analyzed and discussed as catchment areas for ecological, cultural, economic and social realities. Topics of spatio temporal transformations like mobility, pollution, and resource extraction will be looked at as water culture that is both human and non-human in order to inform futureoriented design projects. the Mississippi underwent construction measures to control the flow of water over hundreds of years, man changed the appearance of the River and its riverscape. The natural waterways were straightened and narrowed for shipping and flat-bottomed boats and dykes were built as a flood water protection on lengthy stretches.

The Mississippi threatens to explode beyond its engineering structures with the biggest floods recorded, spring flooding is not uncommon along the Mississippi, but last year’s floods were exceptional.

According to the National Oceanic and

River as Generator The Anthropocene flood plane is our field of study, in specific the Mississippi flood planes in theUSA, the world’s fourth-largest drainage basin (“watershed” or “catchment”). The basin covers morethan 1,245,000 square miles (3,220,000 km2), including all or parts of 32 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. During the first decades of the 20th century it saw the construction of massive engineeringworks costing billions of Dollars, such as levees, locks and dams, often built in combination.

A major focus of this work has been to prevent the lower Mississippi from shifting into the channel of the Atchafalaya

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2 – Atlas of Amelioration, Alexander Jackson and Rachael Kulish

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4 – Shelter by Yuhao Zhang and Qiyuan Cao, Interior Rendering

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SHELTER Yuhao Zhang and Qiyuan Cao

Farming is one of the most important industries in this country. However, Pakistan is currently short of food because women are not allowed to farm for some cultural reasons. Enlarging the scale of the farming is the main point.

Specifically, we try to reverse the traditional process and social opinion about female, farming is the first step to let women participate in the social industry. Furthermore, under CPEC policy, we can equip them with all the high technology, education and funding sources they need. We believe all these efforts would bring the revolution to the current society and set up cutting-edge status for local females.

This building is like a fortress to camouflage itself with the surrounding condition as an infrastructure relic. The material inspiration of different metals from the armor would promote and protect the concealed program such as the hydroponics lab, girls’ school and dormitory, which is not accepted by the public.

can be defined as any blending of dissonant elements which creates an original, inexhaustible beauty.

Ali Rahim

from cultural objects. Baltistan is the perfect place to look for these influences that will lead us to various opportunities from the region. Baltistan’s cultural landscape has often been described as homogeneous but with extreme differences. This more fragmented and hybridized cultural reality requires a redefinition of space suitable for the new empowerment of their youth to thrive, allowing them to pursue careers and develop businesses while at the same time creating a new reality far from preconceived ideas of normalcy and success.

Novelty and innovation in Aesthetics with their direct impact on society is directly tied to technique and technology. To be influential and impactful in culture, Architects must understand what technologies are at the forefront in their day, develop techniques that utilize these technologies for novel aesthetics, and find a way to make them architecturally useful and relevant.

Disciplinary Focus: The Contemporary Detail/ Building We will study details in contemporary culture and shift them into the discipline and scale of the detail of architecture.

Within the design process, it is common practice to work from a concept and increase the resolution in ever finer details and at a smaller scale. In this studio we plan to reverse this process, designing the finest detail based on the possibilities of a manufacturing process accessible to the discipline of architecture. We will start with the detail of the surface and expand the detail to a volume and finally to experience.

Architecturally the icon of the region is a fort from the 8th century. One can see the different amalgamations of cultures literally accumulated to form the building. Each area can be echoed as ‘disjunctive continuity’, where different qualities at times collide, overlap or merge to create an unexpected building. Contrasting geometries can be woven into one another. Design techniques derive from visual cues of these various cultures, generating formal, spatial, structural and material innovation. In essence, ‘Disjunctive Continuity’ 303

5 – Shelter by Yuhao Zhang and Qiyuan Cao, Project Description

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DISTORTION Claire Moriarty, Deon Kim and Geng Liu Acoustic deformation explores a dynamic process for additive clay fabrication that leverages varied tensile strength throughout a fabric surface to support the deposition of clay to create a holistic representation of the interaction between their respective material characteristics.

The fabric formwork process utilizes the dynamic relationship between the resistance of a deformable surface and the gravitational force of the deposited material. This process creates shallow sloping surfaces to support the clay at angles otherwise impossible to achieve with unsupported clay deposition. This process highlights the natural tendencies of both materials, the clay’s weight, viscosity and malleable condition as well as the fabric’s resistance and the concession to an equilibrium between the two materials. This dynamic process required preliminary digital simulation, real-time monitoring and response as well as post-production refined digital representation.

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We have used this highly calibrated process to fabricate bespoke, shallow sloping panels for use in a proposed facade design. These panels are meant to connect to create a largely freestanding, double-sided, engaging architectural intervention. The connectors utilize a bespoke panel design to create overlapping areas for connection between the two facade surfaces creating a network of connections between both sides that unify to create an overall static structure.

The connectors not only serve a structural purpose but their unique geometry acts as a distortion device for ambient sound. Like air blown over the opening of a bottle, our connectors refract sound on their interior to distort and amplify the incoming sound waves. We are proposing the installation of our material artifacts in a subway dividing a central platform.

The extreme air pressure change created by trains passing the platform generates intense atmospheric movement. These strong currents evoke the largest response from our ceramic refraction devices.

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6 – Distortion by Claire Moriarty, Deon Kim and Geng Liu, Section, Model 7 – Distortion by Claire Moriarty, Deon Kim and Geng Liu, Section, Model

8 – Distortion by Claire Moriarty, Deon Kim and Geng Liu, Section, Render

11 – Steamed Greens by Yuran Liu, Riley Studebaker and Yuxuan Wang, Model

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Steamed Greens explores the utilization of urban steam waste to support community gardens and the greening of dense urban centers. A distributed series of green facades is envisaged that attaches to existing buildings, and distributes waste heat and water to support plant growth. As each site varies in geometry, solar exposure, and use, a variable design and production method was required. A materially efficient 6-axis incremental forming method for architectural ceramic panels was developed that enables custom doublycurved ceramic panels to be fabricated from flat slabs of

clay without requiring the production of molds which involve substantial material waste and cost. A micro-relief surface treatment method to support plant irrigation was also developed that is adaptive to the geometry and solar radiation conditions of each ceramic panel. These fabrication methods were supported by site thermal and geometrical data capture and a generative design method that enabled for ceramic green-wall designs to be developed that were adaptive to individual site solar radiance and desired plant species growth conditions. Steamed Greens advocates for a situated architecture that is custom tailored to site conditions and can recycle existing urban steam waste.

Robert Stuart-Smith

STEAMED GREENS Yuran Liu, Riley Studebaker and Yuxuan Wang

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9 – Steamed Greens by Yuran Liu, Riley Studebaker and Yuxuan Wang, Render 10 – Steamed Greens by Yuran Liu, Riley Studebaker and Yuxuan Wang, Model

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