SCI-Arc Magazine 12 — Summer 2016

SUMMER 2016

Entrepreneurs

DIRECTOR’S LETTER ALUMNI ENTREPRENEURS

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PUBLIC PROGRAMS

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CLOSE-UP EXHIBITION

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NEWS

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LETTER FROM THE ALUMNI COUNCIL

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ALUMNI NEWS

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CLASS NOTES

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IN MEMORIAM ZAHA HADID

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Entrepreneurial ambitions are part of what “Speculation” should be – to envision the capacity of transformation that the ever-expanding world of architecture is today

DIRECTOR’S LETTER

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Where some in the field of architecture may be content to return to basics these days, one of the goals of SCI-Arc is to create a forum for discussions about the challenging, multifaceted issues facing architecture, design and cities today. By doing what it always has done, and continuing to reshape the possibility of a discursive environment that does away with all of the traditional hierarchies of the academy, SCI-Arc instead focuses on creating an ecstatic celebration of the potentials of architecture.

Rather than reverting to an examination of the elements we know, SCI-Arc has always offered the opportunity for experts and beginners alike to convene and take on the complexities of the contemporary world.

Entrepreneurial ambitions are part of what “Speculation” should be—to envision the capacity of transformation that the ever-expanding world of architecture is today.

SCI-Arc will always aspire to exist as a progressive alternative to the architectural status quo of any era. Pursuing the latest innovations in materials research, fabrication, software, and representational media, combined with an ongoing broadcast of theoretical lectures and discussions on the web, live stream and social media, SCI-Arc will enact the cutting edge. It will define the cutting edge of architectural practice and thinking by simply being it; by being the incubator for design, business, industry, and politics to experiment, innovate, create and connect to the world.

A teach-in and a be-in—this is how speculative work can modify reality.

The emergence of these consequences alone is enough to justify the constant rethinking of the role of design in this age. Far from questioning the obvious fact that technology is proliferating at a vertiginous rate (slowing) or retreating naively (stopping), many young designers are inventing new ways to use, implement and to think about possibilities.

We want to emphasize the importance of developing a strong attitude in regard to those tools and escaping the homogenizing effect of being mere users. We will always argue for neo-humanism in the digital era. We want content and ideas and purposes to be prominent, and for tools to be what makes them possible.

Hernan Diaz Alonso SCI-Arc Director/CEO

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Samsung Think Tank

Archinect

Culinary

3DS

Lab

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Alumni Entrepreneurs

SCI-Arc’s pursuit of architectural innovation often drives its students to engage techniques and technologies well beyond the disciplinary ken. While most set off on these expeditions into (often uncharted) interdisciplinary terrain in order to discover and import alternative materials and methods into the architectural studio, several recent graduates have turned the tables on this habit to productively export architectural intelligence into neighboring design fields.

For this issue, SCI-Arc Director Hernan Diaz Alonso and faculty member Todd Gannon met with Paul Petrunia (M. Arch ’99), Brian Harms (M. DesR ’13), and Liz and Kyle von Hasseln (M. Arch ’12), to discuss the role of architectural education in extra-disciplinary entrepreneurship.

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Paul Petrunia is the director of Archinect, an online publication founded in 1997 to establish a more connected community of architects, students, designers and fans of the designed environment. Paul is also the founder and director of Bustler.net, a resource for architecture competition, events and related news stories. Petrunia studied architecture at the University of Oregon and SCI-Arc.

Archinect

ALUMNI ENTREPRENEURS

Hernan: What is Archinect?

Paul: That is a very difficult question, and the answer to that, depending on whom you ask, is usually very different. To many people, Archinect is the place to go to find a new architecture job. To other people, Archinect is the place to go to learn about what school to apply to. To other people, it’s a place to read the editorial that we write, which is unique and original and offers content and stories that our audience is seeking. It’s a place that is intended to bring together people inside and outside the field of architecture, to become more engaged with architecture, and to become more familiar with what architects do.

Hernan: You founded Archinect in 1997 when you still were a student. I’m assuming you didn’t anticipate that 20 years later, it would become what it is now.

Paul: In 1995, I don’t think I would have seen it coming, but it really was the perfect storm of an opportunity that happened at that time. I grew up totally passionate about contemporary architecture and then the only way that I had access to find out what was going on in the world of architecture was to get on my bike and ride to the university, and visit the library. I was completely detached from that world unless I put that much effort into accessing it. I began studying architecture at the University of Oregon where I independently picked up web design skills and I saw a lot of potential there. When I moved on to my studies at SCI-Arc, I experienced an entirely new type of creative freedom that I hadn’t yet felt. It seemed like the perfect place to experiment with new media, and new tools.

With the emerging medium of the internet at the time, and my increasing interest in learning how to develop and design for the internet, I put all those forces together and created a platform that would break down the boundaries that had previously held me back from becoming more connected to the contemporary world of architecture. I thought that was something that could greatly impact architecture in general and help people like me who wanted to become engaged with the field of architecture without having to study at an architecture school or become an architect themselves. That was the impetus.

When I was at SCI-Arc studying architecture, my goal was to become an architect. I was learning how to design spaces, but when I started putting together websites, I recognized there were a tremendous number of similarities between designing physical space and designing digital communication space. The kinds of spaces that facilitate activities on a screen or in a connected network are very similar to activities that you facilitate in a built environment. I found that my experience at the school—what I was learning, what I was practicing and experimenting with in an architectural way— very easily transitioned into creating a presence in the world with this new medium.

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Hernan: How did this evolve from something that was a work of passion to becoming a full-fledged business?

Paul: I was not interested in starting a business with Archinect.

It was purely my passion for it that was my incentive. I worked on some of the first SCI-Arc websites and I got more experience. It became a business without me trying. I think it’s due to the fact that it was driven from the beginning by passion.

Every decision that I made was not about how to monetize it; it was really about how to make the best thing that I could make, and to realize the vision that I had from the beginning.

Hernan: When did Archinect become your main focus and interest?

Paul: It was a transition that happened between 2004 and 2005. That’s when I realized that my love for what I was doing was clearly in Archinect. I decided to go with my gut instinct and focus entirely on Archinect. It’s my belief that if you’re doing something that you’re passionate about, that the only way that you can really achieve its full potential is if you just jump in and put all of your energy into it.

Hernan: Any entity that deals with information critically has to build some sort of code regarding ethics, content, what is published, and what is not. How did that begin to take shape with Archinect?

Paul: That’s something that we’ve had to struggle with, because when I started Archinect back in the ‘90s we wanted to provide every opportunity. We wanted to have a discussion forum to bring people in and talk about issues. We wanted to share work. We wanted to report about what was going on around the world. We wanted to open up a blogging platform to let people blog about their own things. That’s not a model that is easy to launch right now. Today people want to go to a website or a blog to see very specific things. Or they want to go to a discussion forum. They don’t want sites that have everything together. So we’re currently working on evolving our business model to diversify our brand into more highly specific channels.

Hernan: As you start to build criteria, what do you choose to focus on?

Paul: Generally we try to anticipate what our audience wants from us and how we can provide that. Right now if you look at websites, you’ll see that there’s a very consistent type of content being distributed. There are a lot of the same new projects that are presented in very similar ways. There’s a lot of content that’s picked up through Facebook or Twitter. I would love to see more websites getting influence from outside of the internet. I think the internet has now become what I felt the architecture industry was back in the ‘90s, very insular. Everybody’s looking for inspiration among themselves.

So we try to stay original, and we try to provide content that is different.

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Hernan: In relation to the articles and pieces that you publish daily, what is the life cycle of discussions right now?

Paul: I think journalism is in a very difficult place right now. I think that the solution to making good journalism work is yet to be discovered. The problem is that a lot of publications have taken on the Buzzfeed style of journalism. The reality online is that advertising is directly proportional to how many people read your piece. The reality is that you can post an article with 10 photos that you find on the internet of funny cats, and that’s going to generate probably 100 times more money than a really well thought out, theoretical architectural piece that somebody spent two weeks writing.

That’s the reality, and I’m thinking about how we can change that. A lot of people are trying to figure that out. Maybe that type of journalism needs to feed into some other type of business model, and not rely on page views. That’s probably the most realistic way of keeping the journalism industry healthy.

Our content is segregated between original in-house pieces written exclusively for Archinect, and a news aggregation system where we point to stories that other people are doing; we provide an opportunity on Archinect to have our community get involved and post comments about those stories. We also summarize other related stories, too.

Hernan: How many pieces do you produce in relation to those that get published?

Do you publish every piece that you write and leave the community and the readers to do the selection, or do you select?

Paul: We have a project management system that we use for our editorial where we generate ideas. Everybody on the editorial staff contributes ideas for stories and out of those pitches, we end up using about 10 to 20%, and writing something about them. It could either be a very quick, short form piece, or a longer form investigative article. From the 10 to 20% that we select, about 90% get published.

Hernan: Where do you want to go in the next 10 years?

Paul: Rather than having a single website as we have had for all these years, that caters to the entire world of architects, we are recognizing that there is a lot of value in becoming more geo-specific in how we deliver the content and how we can utilize the existing markets out there that are not associating our brand to their own country’s needs. We have created a joint venture in London with another company that works within the architecture industry in a similar way, but also in a very different way. We’re non-competitive, but we understand the business from the same perspective. Once we’ve established a presence in London as a prototype, our next step is to go to Australia.

Hernan: Jeff Kipnis once said, “Architects should get out of the business of trying to convince people, and start building audiences.” It may not sound like much, but there’s something really interesting about the idea of the construction of an audience, which is what you do on a regular basis. Who do you think is the audience of architecture?

What is the size of the audience? How much of the audience goes beyond the confines of the profession? Do you see that the audience is starting to get more diverse people from outside the world of architecture as players?

Or are we just replacing the model of isolation with another one that’s more sophisticated; maybe it’s a little bit bigger, but it still operates under the same limitations and problems that architecture has historically had as a discipline in terms of communicating with a larger audience?

Paul: In the beginning when I was starting Archinect, I was also very involved with a young collective of web designers that were pushing the boundaries of how to utilize this new web medium to explore new modes of communication. When I started Archinect, I thought, “This is a perfect opportunity.

Bring these people in who are the brilliant designers, and coders, and introduce them to this architecture community that I’m starting with Archinect.” This was an attempt to break down the walls between industries, and have inspiration between people outside of architecture within architecture, and vice versa.

Over the years, I’ve always felt that there needs to be more of an interface between architecture and everyone else. We discovered that our job board, which is the biggest job board for the architecture industry, has kind of forced us to focus on the diversity of people within architecture. We’ve gone back to catering to an audience of architects, but that audience of architects is more inclusive than it was in the beginning.

I think it’s critical that the work of architects begins to have a bigger effect on the rest of the world. Architects should stop working only within architecture, and with other architects. I think architects have the skill and the intelligence and the experience to do a lot more than what they’re doing right now.

There are some architects that are designed to draw details, and other architects that are designed to re-envision a city. I think it’s unique to the individual, but I would like to see architecture have more respect as a creative visionary industry.

ALUMNI ENTREPRENEURS

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The Archinect Team. L to R: Nicholas Korody, Amelia Taylor-Hochberg, Nicole Schiller, Paul Petrunia, Justine Testado, Alexander Walter, Julia Ingalls.

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Kyle & Liz von Hasseln met as high school students in Maine. They both entered the graduate program at SCI-Arc in 2009 and their thesis Phantom Geometry, developed in the Robot House, was awarded the inaugural Gehry Prize in 2012. In 2011, they founded The Sugar Lab while studying at SCI-Arc, dedicated to 3D printing customized, multidimensional, edible confections in real sugar. In September 2013, they sold their technology to the printer manufacturer 3D Systems and now serve as Creative Directors, Food for 3DS.

Culinary

3DS

Lab

ALUMNI ENTREPRENEURS

Todd: Tell us about 3DS culinary lab.

Liz: The 3D systems culinary lab is a culinary innovations center dedicated to exploring how 3D printing can impact the food world. We opened this location in October but we’ve been working on culinary 3D printing for four years.

Kyle: We apply a digital fabrication lens to a culinary environment. That can mean 3D printing in culinary adjacent materials like ceramic or stainless steel, but we also can print directly in food. The process is a lot like mixing a recipe at home.

Here, we mix them in the machine very precisely to produce 3D-printed food.

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Todd: When did you have to detach from available technology and start inventing your own?

Liz: That happened when we joined 3D Systems. When we graduated from SCI-Arc in 2012, we gave ourselves a year to test this idea. At that time, 3D printing was really coming into the public consciousness and as a result, it didn’t take long to attract the attention of this large 3D printing company.

Since joining 3D Systems, we’ve been building a prototype for the first professional grade culinary 3D printer.

Liz: It was as graduate students at SCI-Arc that we were introduced to rapid prototyping in general and 3D printing in particular. Kyle and I both almost immediately became fascinated with the technology and started manipulating the system and entertaining notions of different digital inputs, but also different physical materials and what the implications of that might be.

Todd: Both of you studied at Middlebury College before attending SCI-Arc. What did you study?

Kyle: I studied human and molecular genetics. Liz studied human health, molecular genetics, and biochemistry.

Todd: What was it like to move from the sciences into SCI-Arc?

Liz: I wanted to find a balance between creativity and analysis.

Architecture seemed like it might be a good fit.

Kyle: Both the Robot House and the rapid prototyping tools at SCI-Arc really stood out to us as channels that would be influential in a lot of new fields. We felt like there was some space for us there, entrepreneurially.

Todd: As you started to immerse yourselves in the fabrication equipment at SCI-Arc, at what point did you think, “I’m going to put some food in this thing?”

Kyle: Pretty early on. We recognized that a lot of the 3D printing platforms are amenable to new materials, so we bought a series of used 3D printers to experiment with. Immediately, we started putting in sawdust and wood powder, cements, salt, and sugar. With the first attempts with salt and sugar, we were just trying to find a way 3D print inexpensively. We noticed that they photographed beautifully because of their translucence, so we began printing our own architectural projects in those materials. At that point, we were thinking about it materially, not in a culinary context at all.

Todd: At what point did you taste one?

Liz: That was also pretty early on, but it took us a while to realize that if we made a few more modifications, we could push the technology into new terrain where it wasn’t currently making any impact.

Above: Concept cake created in collaboration with Chef Duff of Charm City Cakes. Photo credit: Liz von Hasseln.

Opposite Page: 3D printed sugar cake topper, inspired by Delft china. Photo credit: William Hu.

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Todd: How does it work?

The printer spreads out a very fine layer of dry ingredients of the recipe, and then it jets the wet ingredients and food coloring onto that dry layer. Whatever it moistens becomes part of the final model. The process repeats over and over and builds up the entire 3-dimensional piece, layer by layer.

Kyle: This process is sometimes called bin-to-bin translation.

For a couple decades, it has been an open-format way of experimenting with new materials. The technology and the platform itself was well poised to be adapted to a culinary context.

Liz: Printers are often developed to work well within specific material ranges. This is no exception. Our work involves a lot of trial and error tinkering both on the culinary side as well as on the hardware side.

Kyle: Over the last year we’ve been working in close collaboration with top chefs. They’ve been highly influential in helping us expand the repertoire of what we do at the culinary lab.

With Mei Lin, winner of Top Chef in 2015, we 3D printed a quail egg out of wasabi with quail yolk jam filling. These sorts of collaborations take us beyond printing beautiful objects to making sophisticated dishes.

Todd: The two of you have moved far outside the discipline of architecture, but it seems that there’s still quite a bit of architectural thinking going on. How does your architectural background inform what you’re doing now?

Liz: I am very lucky to have design play such a large role in my professional life. I prefer the timeframe of 3D printing to that of architecture. We can design something and see it that day.

We can iterate immediately rather than over years or decades.

Working with chefs, who are artists in their own right and also very sophisticated scientists, is extremely gratifying. It allows us to bring formal and geometric design aspects to the table.

Kyle: SCI-Arc prepared us for this endeavor in a lot of ways. with 3DS culinary lab, we are taking a critical architectural approach to another discipline. We wanted to change the way that chefs, and the public, looked at sugar. As a food, sugar has a history and a legacy. As a form, it is often associated with decoration and tends to be very soft and organic.

Very much in the way we learned to approach projects at SCIArc, we challenged ourselves to make sugar look very different. We wanted it to be mathematically precise, to be very sculptural, to have right angles… all thing that pastry chefs aren’t used to or couldn’t quite do. We wanted to produce really striking images that would help us stand out among other small businesses.

3DS Culinary Lab interior, by Oyler Wu Collaborative. Photo credit: Scott Mayoral.

ALUMNI ENTREPRENEURS

3DS Culinary Lab exterior, from Melrose Ave. Photo credit: Scott Mayoral.

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Samsung Think Tank

Brian Harms is a Senior Research Engineer with the Think Tank Team at Samsung The Think Tank is a small team of interdisciplinary researchers, scientists, designers and engineers located in Mountain View. Their work covers a large time scale, from products that are ready to be massproduced, to ideas that will take many years to come to fruition.

Integral to their approach is the creation of prototypes. Harms received a Master in Design Research in the ESTm program at SCI-Arc in 2013.

He also holds a Bachelor of Architecture from California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo.

Design and Robot Programming: Brian Harms. Project team: Ziba Esmaeilian, Suky Thi Ho, Sara Moomsaz, Sergio Ormachea, Nicole Violani, Jia Zhou Zhu

ALUMNI ENTREPRENEURS

Todd: Tell me about your background.

Brian: I’ve lived in California my whole life. I had always been really excited about architecture, but during my undergraduate years at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, I realized I wanted to do something that was a little bit tangential. Toward the end of my time there, I became really interested in Arduino-related stuff and DIY hobby electronics. I thought it was really exciting to take the digital tools we were using as architecture students and connect them to the physical world to make things move and change.

During my last year of undergrad I had an internship at Griffin Enright, and had a lot of exposure to SCI-Arc through Margaret and John. When I was there, I would go home and work on side projects that were tangential to architecture. On one hand, I was getting serious professional experience at Griffin Enright. On the other, I was doing a kind of passionate tinkering at the fringes of architecture.

After a while, I thought maybe I should go back to graduate school. I looked at the Media Lab at MIT, Harvard GSD, and SCI-Arc. After seeing the robot lab at SCI-Arc, it was a nobrainer. I was attracted not just to the robot lab, but to the way the school had set it up. I liked that SCI-Arc saw potential in this technology, but didn’t have specific expectations about what was going to come out of it.

I joined in the second year of the ESTm program. The robots had only been there a year or so. I tried to carve out my own space, to scratch that itch for doing things that were related to architecture and design, but were more about the processes and the tools involved.

Todd: Prior to SCI-Arc, did you have access to any robots?

Brian: No, but I started using Grasshopper and Rhino to simulate the motion of robots relative to the geometries I was interested in fabricating. I was looking into things on my own and learning as I went, and then a spot opened up in the ESTm program. I met with Marcelo Spina, put my application together, and started right away.

Todd: What did you work on while you were at SCI-Arc?

Brian: My favorite project was a new method of 3D printing using the robot arm that I developed in Peter Testa’s studio.

By moving the robot arm around and injecting resin into a vat of gel in a coordinated fashion, you could print things into this gel, which acted as a support material, or a scaffold.

I was able to work on that project in all of my courses that semester. I was able to leverage all my time in that semester to one project, so I got a lot out of it, in terms of production and research.

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My thesis had to do with using the robots to make fabrication and rapid prototyping more immediate. I tried to see the robot as a 3D sketching tool. I used real-time sensing to inform the motion of the robots to fabricate things in real time.

Todd: You also worked for Testa Weiser for a little while.

Brian: Yes, I was consulting with them to make end-arm tools for the robot for a project that they were working on.

Todd: It’s exciting that the line between academic speculation and professional application became blurred so quickly.

Brian: Yes, but it was important that I was at an architecture school. It was great to have to talk about the work and to have it criticized in disciplinary terms. The dialogue between architecture and my tangential interests was very important.

Todd: That’s a good way to segue into your current work with Samsung. Tell us about that transition.

Brian: I was really lucky. I got an email out of the blue from someone at one of Samsung’s research and development labs, called the Think Tank Team. They were working on a couple of projects they thought I might be a fit for. I’ve been there for two and a half years. The transition was really sudden and unexpected, an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

My team works to rethink existing technologies and also to create new ones. We put things together into marketable ideas, and then try to influence the headquarters to bring them to the market.

Todd: Can you give an example?

Brian: The team has been around only a few years, so a lot of the work we’ve done hasn’t yet been made public. Our team made the first working prototype of the Samsung Smartwatch.

We also developed Project Beyond, which is basically a 360-degree 3D stereoscopic camera. You can put it anywhere and then connect to it via a virtual reality headset. Because of the stereoscopic vision, it really feels like you’re there.

Todd: How does your time at SCI-Arc inform the work you’re doing now at Samsung?

Brian: I think my time at SCI-Arc helped a lot with communication. While I’m really interested in the research and the details, I have to be able to speak to those broader concerns having to do with budget and marketability. SCI-Arc really helped with that ability to speak about the work on many levels.

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Todd: Do you miss architecture? Do you see yourself coming back?

Brian: I do miss architecture. If I came back, it would probably be in a consulting role. It would be fun to bring some of the things I’ve learned back to the architecture. I think staying connected to the field is important. The give-and-take between architecture and design and technology is exciting.

Suspended Depositions, Project Lead: Brian Harms – Project Team: Haejun Jung, Vince Huang, Yuying Chen

Architecture school gives you marketable skills that translate into a lot of arenas. For most of my career, I felt that there was this V in front of me. Within it were all the things that I could do with my skill set. In my time at SCI-Arc, the cone always got wider. There were always more options. That’s what is really great about SCI-Arc—it teaches you how to widen the angle in front of you.

ALUMNI ENTREPRENEURS

SRA Bench, Brian Harms

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Public

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Public

Programs

Programs

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Current

Fall Programming

SCI-Arc Library Gallery Exhibition

Schoolwide Event

JOE DAY, ARRAYS

GRADUATE THESIS

June 3 – July 24

September 9 – 11

SCI-Arc Gallery Exhibition

Duels and Duets

M. CASEY REHM, Control

ELLIE ABRONS + MIRA HENRY

July 1 – July 31

September 28 SCI-Arc Gallery Exhibition

MICHAEL SORKIN October 21 – December 11

Ellie Abrons, Inside Things

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

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Recent Duels and Duets

RAY KAPPE + HERNAN DIAZ ALONSO March 2 Lecture Series

GREGORY CREWDSON March 4 Lecture Series

TIM MORTON March 14 SCI-Arc Gallery Exhibition

Close-up March 4 –May 29 SCI-Arc Library Gallery Exhibition

ELLIE ABROMS / EADO Inside Things March 18 – May 1 Collaboration with the University of Michigan Museum of Art Spring Show 2016

Exhibition Discussion

HERNAN DIAZ ALONSO + DAVID RUY + MARK GARCIA March 25 Lecture Series

Lecture Series

FARSHID MOUSSAVI

JEFFREY KIPNIS

March 28

April 6

Duels and Duets

Lecture Series

BEN VAN BERKEL + HERNAN DIAZ ALONSO

BENJAMIN BRATTON

March 30 Lecture Series

BENJAMIN J. SMITH April 1

April 13

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Left to Right: Steven Ma, Xuberance, DUALITY; Dwayne Oyler & Jenny Wu, Oyler Wu Collaborative, Outtake from 3DS Culinary Stair Detail @ Half Scale; Ferda Kolatan & Erich Schoenenberger, su11 architecture+design, Coral Column

CLOSE-UP EXHIBITION

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Frank Gehry, Gehry Partners The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

On March 11, the group show Close-up opened in the SCI-Arc Gallery.

Curated by Hernan Diaz Alonso and David Ruy, Close-up examines the impact of digital technologies on the architectural detail and the traditions of tectonic expression associated with it. An often-overlooked condition of digital design technologies is the ability to design objects through continuous degrees of magnification. The consequences of this very basic fact are more significant than we may realize. The traditional premise that some architectural ideas only reside at standardized scales of magnification at this point is nostalgic. The exhibition proposes that technological advancements have resulted in a transformation of how architectural ideas unfold at different degrees of resolution and that tectonics might mean something very different in the 21st century.

Related to this new power of computer assisted observation for both the author and the audience of architecture is the blurring of the boundaries between the virtual and the real and the mutual imbrications of concepts with materials. Ranging from the cinematic to the clinical, the transition from the architectural detail to the architectural close-up implies new formal logics and new modes of reception.

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CLOSE-UP EXHIBITION

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On March 25, Hernan and David sat down with academic researcher and writer Mark Garcia to discuss the exhibition.

Hernan: I wanted to have Mark in this conversation because of an intersection between this show and the work that he did as the editor of an AD issue in 2014 entitled Future Details of Architecture. He asked me to contribute and I put something together called “Close Up” about the notion of the future of the detail in architecture. In a way, that was what triggered the development of this show. It is important to note that when we talk about details, we aren’t necessarily referring to construction details as the presumed default condition. This exhibition is rather about the ‘notion of details’.

Mark: I’d like to start by talking about the curation of the show. In terms of the fact that it’s a cross-section of approaches to the detail, its representation seems very West Coast, I would say. If it is West Coast/SCI-Arc centric, what are the reasons for that?

Hernan: This being the first show under my directorship, there was a desire to broadcast a good number of SCI-Arc faculty members. There was a kind of a political branding, advertising component to it. This was also due to the pragmatic aspect of that decision because all the pieces, with the exception of Frank Gehry’s piece that is a prototype that was already in his office, were produced specifically for the show. But probably the most interesting reason all the details were selected is that they are unbuilt projects.

I would argue that in terms of innovation, there is a West Coast and an LA attitude, which I find, not more progressive, but more aggressive in the pursuit of some of these problems. We wanted to have a higher level of speculation, which tends to be more on the side of people who have more time between working on buildings.

Elena Manferdini, Atelier Manferdini Pulp Fictions

David: It never even occurred to me to attempt an objective global representation. These were merely the people whom I was interested in seeing how they responded to the provocation. I think the topics that are demonstrable in the exhibition are topics that can be discussed all over the world. One aspect that was more of an attempt to be somewhat objective as a modality was to try to address different levels of experience.

We didn’t want to focus only on one particular group of people or a generation, but to try to see how the question was being addressed at different levels of practice.

Mark: I think there’s quite a disjunction between the majorities of the style, form and sensibility of the works on show and the exhibition design itself. It’s a tale of two centuries. It’s modernism and now.

Or the future. Duchamp famously said, “In exhibition design, the individual works should not be allowed to get in the way.” You’ve given them privilege, very clearly. Why is that?

David: I had a very practical thought that it would be good to have something generic as a counterpoint to what I knew was going to be the variety of the objects.

CLOSE-UP EXHIBITION

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Hernan: It was a conscious decision by the two of us to not include ourselves in the show by overly designing the exhibition. The focus is on the objects. The only thing we did, with the reflective surface, was to add another dimension of how to see them. We wanted to produce a much more museum-like environment for the objects. The gallery has been kind of a host to a series of freak shows over the past ten years. So there was a desire to make a clear statement and contrast between the past and the future.

David: I think also it was the unpredictability of what we were going to get from the participants. I think, now that I see the pieces together, if I had to lay out the exhibition again, I might do something a little different.

Mark: There are many things in architecture that are current which are absent from the show. I’m thinking of robots, 8-axis milling, simulations, interactivity, participation, social media and the internet of things. It’s a very stable, inert show. And architecture isn’t these days, in many ways. What are the absences for you, in terms of what you might have wanted, but maybe didn’t get?

Hernan: I would argue that this was fairly intentional. I was interested in something fairly physical, and fairly...”conventional” may be the wrong word. It was a very conscious decision that it would be fairly static. It came across to the participants in our discussions that we really wanted this to be about architecture. Also, maybe right or wrong, there is an assumption in which the technology just exists. We wanted it to be there, by means of production, but not necessarily as a means of being.

David: I think there was also a desire to try to counter the assumption that we should safely locate the architectural thinking in a nice, safe middle scale of form, and assume that when it comes time to detail it, you just give it to the engineer or the curtain wall consultant. I think there was a desire to reject that, and to have a kind of hope that “Okay, maybe there could be some new ideas at the detailing scale that could be a little unexpected.”

For example, I was struck by the Griffin Enright submission, because I remember the project when it was at the competition stage. There were these circular holes in the facade, at the level of pattern, but then with the push to look at it more on the detail scale, the holes turned into a really weird circular packing idea for incrementally giving it rigidity, which I thought was pretty interesting. I really enjoyed that kind of idea, that there could be very strange, unexpected ways to deal with problems if we could just remove them from the kind of urgency of practice.

Margaret Griffin & John Enright, Griffin Enright Architects Guggenheim Helsinki Competition

Hernan: It is interesting that everybody interpreted the brief in a very different way. I think certain architects and certain firms took it very literally and went for a one-to-one or one-

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Thom Mayne, Morphosis Kolon Future Research Park, GFRP Faรงade System Detail, 1:5 scale

CLOSE-UP EXHIBITION

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to-five construction detail, in the way that they would do a building. And some of them didn’t do details whatsoever; they produced something that somehow reflected detail.

Mark: Let’s move on to a word that is very central to Hernan’s article in my AD, which is “virtuosity.” Can you explain what virtuosity in architecture is? Because you quite adamantly and explicitly contradicted that with critical practice.

Hernan: Some of the people in the show would fit into what I was trying to argue, which was about the notion of virtuosity and a monomaniacal quality of looking at something, zooming in and zooming out all the time, with a level of obsession in which you get lost in the own nature of your own work, and you don’t think about in critical terms. I was not necessarily being critical of the critical model, I was talking more about the inadequacy of criticality as a way to define where we are.

I would argue that the majority of the models, in one way or another, relate to this notion of virtuosity.

David: There’s another aspect of virtuosity, too, that might be relevant here. If you take a sample of a virtuoso jazz musician and slow it down enough to analyze it, it’s incredible how much musicality is packed into it. If you took another one, of a total second-rate jazz musician that’s just running the fingers up and down the horn, it may sound similar, but when you zoom in on it, it absolutely falls apart, there’s no content. So, I think there’s that kind of problem here. If we had invited lesser authors, we might have seen that when you do the close-up, there’s nothing.

Mark: Can you pick out any moments where you feel that research and innovation is most evident here?

Hernan: In each of the pieces, depending on the lens through which you read them, you can find those moments. For example in Elena’s piece, the materiality of the object and putting it together was incredibly difficult, which at first glance may not seem to be the case. Or in the case of Thom’s piece: when I see the totality of that project in a museum, it says one thing; when you see the detail, I can see his own trajectory as an architect emerges.

Mark: They are all very unique, but there are also commonalities and affinities between them. What are those affinities, for you?

David: What struck me as an interesting thing that the pieces had in common was that nobody went for hardcore traditional detailing.

Mark: I think Gehry’s is really hardcore, traditional detailing.

David: I find it to be one of the most fictional in some ways.

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About Public Programs All events begin at 7pm unless otherwise noted.

Lectures take place in the W.M. Keck Lecture Hall.

The Lecture Series is broadcast live at sciarc.edu/ live. Lectures are also archived for future viewing, and can be found online in the SCI-Arc Media Archive at sma.sciarc.edu.

During exhibitions, the SCI-Arc Gallery is open daily from 10am – 6pm. The Library Gallery is open Monday–Friday from 10am–7pm and Saturday–Sunday from 12pm–6pm.

SCI-Arc is located at 960 East 3rd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013. The building entrance and parking lot are located at 350 Merrick Street, between 4th Street and Traction Avenue.

Public Programs are subject to change beyond our control. For the most current information, please visit sciarc.edu or call 213.613.2200.

Contact public_programs@sciarc.edu to join SCI-Arc’s Public Programs email list.

Hernan: It’s traditional from Gehry. But it’s traditional because he’s been doing it for a while. That thing didn’t quite exist in 1985 or 1988. Every time architecture tries to tackle problems, there’s always an internal negotiation between what is now and the weight of preceding history. I would argue that most of the pieces didn’t break completely from any sense of historical tradition or trajectory. You can find in all of them things that we already know.

If we send each of these people into the gallery and say, “Okay, can you reorganize and group the show in a different form,” I think everybody will find different commonalities. You could organize it by texture, or color, by voluptuousness of form, through subtleties, by patterning. You see a lot of corners, because everybody said, “Okay, the corner is kind of the most difficult part,” so everybody embraced it.

Mark: Is the corner the most difficult part of architecture?

Hernan: Well, on the surface, one could argue yes. It does have more intersection of pieces. I don’t have any corners in any of my projects, so I never figured out how to solve it. But corner maybe is the wrong word. I will talk about the intersection of multiple complexities. For the most part, everybody went for multiple intersections. Everybody said, “Challenge accepted.

We’ll go for it.”

Mark: The exhibition is very much in favor of form, in favor of style, in favor of aesthetics, in favor of beautiful things.

David: Those are all good things, aren’t they?

Hernan: I would say yes to all of them. Architecture as a cultural practice is a collective thing. So I’m much more interested in the outcome of reading the exhibition pieces all together, than to actually read and judge each of them against one other.

Close-up Participants Nurit Bar-Shai, Nurit Bar-Shai Studio; Ben van Berkel & Caroline Bos, UNStudio; Neil M. Denari, Neil M. Denari Architects; John Enright & Margaret Griffin, Griffin Enright Architects; Frank Gehry, Gehry Partners; Ferda Kolatan & Erich Schoenenberger, su11 architecture+design; Greg Lynn, Greg Lynn FORM; Steven Ma, Xuberance; Elena Manferdini, Atelier Elena Manferdini; Thom Mayne, Morphosis; Lucy McRae, Lucy McRae Studio; Dwayne Oyler & Jenny Wu, Oyler Wu Collaborative; Marcelo Spina & Georgina Huljich, P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S; Theodore Spyropoulos & Stephen Spyropoulos, Minimaforms; Tom Wiscombe, Tom Wiscombe Architecture; Michael Young & Kutan Ayata, Young & Ayata.

Theodore & Stephen Spyropoulos, Minimaforms Emotive House

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NEWS

Undergraduate Thesis Weekend The 2016 Undergraduate Thesis reviews were held Friday and Saturday, April 22–23. The reviews culminated with SCI-Arc Director Hernan Diaz Alonso and Undergraduate Program Chair Tom Wiscombe awarding the newly established Blythe and Thom Mayne Undergraduate Thesis Prize to two students for Best Thesis: Matt Pugh and Shawna Meng. Merit Undergraduate Thesis Awards were also awarded to Jacky Hoang, Zaid Kashef Alghata, Justin Kim, Kathleen Mejia and Kazi Maysun, Jinhyang Park, and Justin Tan. Thom Mayne and his wife Blythe Alison-Mayne established the Blythe and Thom Mayne Undergraduate Thesis Prize this year as an annual award to the best undergrad thesis projects.

A co-founder, trustee and faculty of SCI-Arc, Thom Mayne has been an integral part of SCI-Arc since its foundation in 1972, the same year he established his award-winning experimental design and research architecture firm Morphosis. Among his many personal achievements, Mayne is a distinguished professor at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, is a recipient of the Pritzker Prize (2005) and the American Institute of Architects Gold Metal (2013), and was appointed to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 2009.

Undergraduate Thesis weekend included reviews of the 41 thesis projects with over 60 critics including SCI-Arc faculty and invited guests. Guest critics included Thom Mayne, Sir Peter Cook, Yael Reisner, Winka Dubbeldam, Evan Douglis, Nanako Umemoto, Ferda Kolatan, Francisco Pardo, Alejandro Hernández, Alexandra Cunningham, and Kristy Balliet. This year, thesis projects included the design of housing here and abroad, and several museum and civic projects. Darin Johnstone, Marcelo Spina, Peter Testa, Devyn Weiser and Undergraduate Thesis Coordinator Marcelyn Gow were this year’s advisors to the students. The Special Thesis Advisor was Neil Denari. A reception and Jury commendations concluded the reviews. Selected thesis projects were included in SCI-Arc’s tenth annual Spring Show from April 29 through May 8.

Opposite Page: Merit Undergraduate Thesis Award winner Zaid Kashef Alghata, Advisor: Darin Johnstone Above Right: SCI-Arc’s tenth annual Spring Show on display throughout the school Right: Dan Lu, Advisor: Darin Johnstone

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NEWS

Blythe and Thom Mayne Undergraduate Thesis Prize Winners

Opposite page: Matthew Pugh, Advisor: Devyn Weiser Right: Chenxiang Shawna Meng, Advisor: Marcelo Spina

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Philosopher Graham Harman to Join SCI-Arc Graham Harman, Ph.D. has recently been ap-

SCI-Arc Satellite Launched in Mexico City SCI-Arc Mexico kicked off this spring 2016 with a series of international exchange studios, exhibitions, conferences and symposia.

SCI-Arc Mexico furthers Director Hernan Diaz Alonso’s mission of advancing SCI-Arc’s global presence.

“As part of the global outreach effort that SCI-Arc has embarked on, we are thrilled to have a home in such a dynamic city. The extent to which Latino culture influences SCIArc and the Los Angeles community at large, a presence in Mexico City is the natural next step,” Diaz Alonso said. “And of course because of my own background Mexico is close to my heart. We’re excited to embed the school within the dynamic tradition of Mexican culture and look forward to the anchor that this program will provide.”

SCI-Arc Mexico launched mid-March at 108 Bucareli, a design hub in the up-andcoming neighborhood of Juarez right in the heart of Mexico City. Students from SCI-Arc and Ibero-American University collaborated on a workshop culminating in reviews and a panel discussion featuring Diaz Alonso, John Enright, Elena Manferdini and Tom Wiscombe. An opening reception and SCI-Arc Alumni event celebrating the new program rounded out the launch. Over 65 local architects, educators and visiting SCI-Arc alumni were also in attendance.

Prior to the SCI-Arc Mexico events, Diaz Alonso and Visiting Faculty member Thom Mayne also participated in Mextrópoli,

International Festival of Architecture and City, in Mexico City. For its third edition, Mextrópoli presented a program consisting of lectures, roundtables, exhibitions, installations in public spaces, book presentations, workshops and tours, plus outdoor activities that made Mexico City a world reference for architecture and urbanism.

Going forward SCI-Arc Mexico will include ongoing joint studios between SCIArc and Ibero-American University along with workshops, exhibitions, symposia and other pop-up events. SCI-Arc will also maintain an information and recruitment office in Mexico City. Francisco Pardo, founder of the architectural firm AT103, is coordinating the international program. Pardo, a practicing architect based in Mexico City, received the silver medal for “best housing building” at the Mexican Architecture Biennale and also won the Grand Jury Prize at the Pan-American Biennial of Quito, Ecuador. In 2011, he won first prize in the competition for the renovation of Palacio de Lecumberri, a former prison that currently hosts the General Archive of the Nation. His work has been published and exhibited internationally, and his practice was ranked by Icon magazine of London as one of the 50 design and architecture firms that are shaping the future.

SCI-Arc Mexico will complement SCI-Arc Shanghai as well as upcoming international programs in South America and Europe.

pointed to SCI-Arc’s Liberal Arts Faculty.

Harman, widely known as a key figure in the contemporary speculative realism movement in philosophy and for his development of objectoriented ontology, will join SCI-Arc’s community in fall 2016 as Distinguished Professor of Philosophy.

A prolific writer, Graham has twelve books to his name, including The Quadruple Object, Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things, and Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy, as well as numerous appreciations and critiques within the fields of philosophy, literature, science, art, and architecture. He is currently ranked as one of Art Review’s 100 most influential figures in the art world, and is editor of the Speculative Realism book series at Edinburgh University Press.

“We are thrilled and honored that someone of Graham’s stature and reputation will join our faculty,” said SCI-Arc Director Hernan Diaz Alonso. “This appointment clearly demonstrates our mission to deepen the school’s Liberal Arts agenda to one of architecture as a human endeavor.”

Tom Wiscombe, Chair of the B.Arch.

Program, said of his appointment, “Graham is a unique and notorious figure in philosophy and the arts. His fresh metaphysical project offers a way of understanding reality not as a product of the human mind, but rather as a cornucopia of independent and vibrant objects, large and small, human and non-human.

Graham is irreverent, with as many adversaries as acolytes; he is at home in the battlefield of ideas. His remarkable imagination and style, and his ability to leap in and out of realms of ideas and aesthetics will be huge assets for our school. In the coming years, Graham will no doubt engage and provoke the speculative design culture of SCI-Arc, as well as being a crucial contributor to our Liberal Arts Program.”

Graham had this to say about his appointment: “During my lectures over the years, I have rarely felt as challenged and inspired as I do when speaking at schools of architecture.

Along with the chance to give whatever I can to the SCI-Arc community, I see this move as a remarkable learning opportunity.”

SCI-Arc Hosted Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon SCI-Arc in conjunction with AWA+D was an official site for the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. The Edit-a-thon is part of an international campaign to improve coverage of women and the arts on Wikipedia, and to encourage female editorship. It is held in March to coincide with International Women’s Day. In 2015 the event had approximately 1,500 participants in 75 locations, during which 400 new articles were created. LACMA also held an Edit-a-thon on March 6.

NEWS

SCI-Arc has also partnered with the Association of Women in Architecture + Design (AWA+D) to host a series of Wikipedia writing workshops in 2016. The workshops are part of the #wikiD initiative, a global campaign for improving and increasing Wikipedia articles pertaining to the lives and works of women in architecture and the built environment. The events are aimed at addressing Wikipedia’s gender gap—less than 10% of Wikipedia editors are female. For more information about upcoming Edit-a-thons, please visit sciarc. edu/events.

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ing device in a feedback loop which engaged simultaneously with the digital and physical world in the now. Building custom UI’s, students actively explored and imagined how they could engage with matter and the space once they were able to move things precisely, intuitively and interactively.

The Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, The University of Sydney, was the Host for the Rob|Arch 2016 conference, and teamed up with prominent Australian Universities to co-chair international workshops: RMIT, Monash University, Bond University, UNSW, and UTS.

SCI-Arc Partners with the University of Michigan Museum of Art

SCI-Arc Leads Robotics Workshop at Rob|Arch 2016 SCI-Arc Robotics Lab Coordinator Michael Jake Newsum along with faculty Curime Batliner and M. Casey Rehm led a workshop at the Rob|Arch 2016 Conference March 15-17, in conjunction with the University of New South Wales. Held in Sydney, Australia, Rob|Arch 2016 featured over 30 presenters from industry, practice and academic institutions worldwide.

The presenters at the conference are at the forefront of new robotic technologies and application across a range of fields from robotic fabrication in the construction industry to human-robot interactions in interaction design and creative practice.

Entitled “Robot UI—User Interfaces for Robotic Live Control,” the workshop explored interactive and intuitive robot motion control as a medium to explore non-deterministic design trajectories and human-robot interactions.

The workshop focused on the development of custom user interfaces, including parametric constraint models and logics. Through iterative design charrettes, students engaged with ‘live’ robotics and in groups built dynamic ideation environments where human and robot actively engaged with the space. Engaging scanning technologies, human interface devices, user tracking, the robot was placed as a mediat-

In February, SCI-Arc announced a yearlong partnership with the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), to showcase the work of emerging architects. Ellie Abrons, a faculty member at University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning, was selected to exhibit in the SCI-Arc Library Gallery. SCI-Arc design faculty Mira Henry will exhibit at the UMMA this summer.

“SCI-Arc is thrilled to partner with the museum,” SCI-Arc Director Hernan Diaz Alonso said. “Joe Rosa has been a long-time champion of innovative architecture. We’re excited to feature Ellie Abrons in our gallery and are eager to see what Mira Henry has in store for the museum later this year.”

“Abrons work is emblematic of an emerging generation of makers that provide a window into the future of architecture,” Joseph Rosa, Director, University of Michigan Museum of Art said. “UMMA is happy to be partnering with SCI-Arc on a year-long collaboration to showcase talented faculty at SCI-Arc and the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning. UMMA looks forward to showcasing the emerging talent of SCI-Arc design faculty Mira Henry this summer.” Henry is the recipient of the Henry Adams AIA Award and Archiprix International Gold Medal for her Master’s research project “Urban Upholstery.”

Prior to teaching, Henry worked as a project architect for Office dA and Monica Ponce de Leon Studio in New York.

Abrons’ exhibition Inside Things, which ran from March 18 through May 1. explored architectural interiority borne from agglomeration and exaggeration. A loose association between inside and out superseded the more typical, clear correspondence of the two. The parts alluded to something familiar—figures imbued with vitality that walked the line between living things and not living things. Abrons is an architectural designer, educator, and the principal of EADO. She is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan where she was the A. Alfred Taubman Fellow in 2009-2010. Abrons was recently selected, as part of T+E+A+M, to exhibit work in the US Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Hsinming Fung Receives AIA Fellowship In February, the AIA Los Angeles announced that thirteen of their members had been elevated to Fellowship (FAIA). Hsinming Fung, SCI-Arc faculty and Chief of Strategic Advancement & International/Special Projects, was among the recipients of the prestigious honor.

“Fellowship celebrates those architects who have achieved a standard of excellence in the profession and whose work has had a profound influence or ripple effect,” according to the AIA announcement. “Election to Fellowship not only recognizes the achievements of the architect as an individual, but also honors before the public and the profession a model architect who has made a significant contribution to architecture and society on a national level.”

Several SCI-Arc alums were also elevated to Fellowship including Christof Jantzen (M.Arch ’89), David Montalba (B.Arch ’96) and Annie Chu (B.Arch ’83). The new Fellows were honored at the investiture ceremony during the 2016 AIA National Convention in Philadelphia May 19-21.

Opposite Page: SCI-Arc Mexico Symposium participants (L to R: Alejandro Hernandez, Francisco Pardo, Hernan Diaz Alonso, John Enright, Elena Manferdini, Tom Wiscombe) Above Left: Student work during the Rob|Arch 2016 workshop Above Right: Hsinming Fung

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Pleated Shell Structures by Zaha Hadid Architects. SCI-Arc Gallery, 2012.

SCI-Arc Alumni Council 2015 – 2016 Bryan Flaig (M.Arch ’05) Beth Gibb (M.Arch ’89) Luis Herrera (B.Arch ’96) Beth Holden (B.Arch ’98) Zachery Main (B.Arch ’13) Jennifer Marmon (M.Arch ’01) Paras Nanavati (B.Arch ’04) Dean Nota (B.Arch ’76) Matthew Rosenberg (M.Arch ’09) Elissa Scrafano (M.Arch ’90) Dana Swinsky (M.Arch ’89) Vlado Valkof (MRD ’04) Naia Waters (’98) Dan Weinreber (M.Arch ’02) John Winston (M.Arch ’04) Michael Young (M.Arch ’10)

LETTER FROM THE ALUMNI COUNCIL

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For three decades now, she has ventured where few would dare. If Paul Klee took a line for a walk, then Zaha took the surfaces that were driven by that line out for a virtual dance and then deftly folded them over and then took them out for a journey into space.

– Peter Cook, quote from his citation for Royal Institute of British Architects 2016 Royal Gold Medal award to Zaha Hadid

Dear Alumni, A SCI-Arc education prepares us to challenge assumptions, critically examine issues and create new ideas for the world. Zaha Hadid captured all of those qualities in her architecture and in her life.

Her sudden death was shocking and heartbreaking for architects worldwide, but especially for the SCI-Arc community.

Zaha Hadid lectured at SCI-Arc on February 21, 1985, which you can check out online through the SCI-Arc Media Archives. During this talk, three decades ago, she described how conventional architectural representation was limiting the discipline of architecture. She explains her design process, drawings and her ideas. She simply stated, “I don’t design in 2D.” At the time, her process was her own and her renderings explored her architectural concepts. It is amazing to hear her discuss her ideas 30 years ago knowing today that she built them.

As SCI-Arc Director Hernan Diaz Alonso said of the late architect, “Zaha was as generous as she was extraordinary. She never apologized for being great and steadfastly lived and worked on her own terms. Her impact on the field is so profound that there is a before Zaha and an after.

She was everything that we can aspire to be as an architect.”

We reach out to each of you to challenge and critically engage with the built environment. Tell us what impact your SCI-Arc education had on you. We invite you to connect with the Alumni Council and help us set our goals for the next years to come.

Sincerely, Beth Gibb (M.Arch ’89) Chair, Alumni Council 2015-2016

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Open Season Student Participation Doubles Nearly 100 students participated in Open Season, which took place on Friday, March 25 in the SCI-Arc South Gallery. Student participation doubled from the previous year and for the first time, students were placed on a wait list due to increased interest. Over 40 firm representatives and recruiters came to SCI-Arc for the annual event with the exhibition of student work remaining on view for the entire weekend. This event proved to be a great opportunity for students to gain exposure and to meet the local design and architectural workforce.

To prepare for Open Season, over 35 students chose to take advantage of the Resume and Portfolio Workshop hosted by the Alumni Council. John Winston (M.Arch ’04) led the daylong seminar which included a panel of nine alumni answering career related questions and sharing advice with the students.

The event concluded with a breakout session to review and work on students’ resumes and portfolios. Small groups of 3 – 4 students were led by one alumnus, a ratio allowing each student enough time to receive individual attention for their portfolios.

Open Season Participating Firms:

—— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ——

AD&D architecture design & development Bien-Willner Architects Carrier Johnson + Culture Creative Resource Associates FORE Architects Gensler HKS Hodgetts + Fung Jagar Architecture John Winston Studio KTGY Architecture + Planning Left Hand Side Leo A Daly MVE + Partners NAC Architecture Net+ P+R Architects Perkins + Will Regency Lighting SmithGroup JJR Steinberg, Shubin & Donaldson Withee Malcolm Architects Studio III Shubin & Donaldson Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP The Santa Fe LA WET

Nick Seierup Endowed Traveling Scholarship SCI-Arc Trustee and alumnus Nick Seierup (M.Arch ’79) has established the Nick Seierup Endowed Traveling Scholarship Fund.

Through his generous contributions, Seirup’s support will ensure that our students continue to have travel opportunities as part of their academic studies while enrolled at SCI-Arc.

SCI-Arc Mumbai Studio Hosts Alumni & Friends Reception A group of SCI-Arc students completed academic work at the SCI-Arc Mumbai Studio hosted by Studio Mumbai and Studio Mumbai Director Bijoy Jain. SCI-Arc Chief of Strategic Advancement & International/Special Programs Hsinming Fung and SCI-Arc faculty Mary-Ann Ray and Robert Mangurian hosted a reception and review of the student work.

SCI-Arc alumni residing in Mumbai, students, and distinguished guests attended the event.

Alumna Receives Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship Sarah Blankenbaker (M.Arch ’09) received

the 2015–16 Douglas A. Garofalo Fellow at the UIC School of Architecture. Named in honor of architect and educator Doug Garofalo (1958-2011), the nine-month teaching fellowship, supported with a grant from the Graham Foundation, provides emerging designers the opportunity to teach studio and seminar courses in the undergraduate and graduate programs and conduct independent design research.

In early April, Sarah led a discussion on her culminating fellowship exhibition titled One and Three. Like American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth’s series, from which Sarah’s exhibition borrows its name, One and Three presents “sets of three versions of the same thing—a photograph, a façade, and a window-to explore the translation of images into architecture and vice versa.” Sarah is a clinical assistant professor at the UIC School of Architecture.

Special Gathering in Honor of SCI-Arc Founder Ray Kappe On March 2, more than 90 alumni, faculty, trustees, friends and students attended a special gathering in honor of SCI-Arc founder and honorary trustee Ray Kappe. The reception followed Ray Kappe’s conversation with SCIArc Director Hernan Diaz Alonso, part of SCI-Arc’s ongoing Duels+Duets lecture series.

Ray Kappe, FAIA is an internationally recognized and published architect-plannereducator who has practiced architecture in Los Angeles since 1953. His much awarded and published work is considered to be an extension of the early Southern California master architects, Wright, Schindler and Neutra. He is well known for his work in the ’60s and ’70s published in GA Houses 1 and the monograph on his work in Toshi Jutaku 8203. His work of the 1980s and ’90s has been featured in many of the subsequent GA Houses books, as well as many other national and international journals and books. In 1998, Images published a book written by Michael Webb entitled Themes & Variations: House Design Ray Kappe. In 2003, a monograph entitled Ray Kappe 1953-2003 was published by the Architecture + Design Museum in conjunction with the Ray Kappe Retrospective exhibit, celebrating his 50 years in architecture, which traveled around Southern California for four months. He established the curriculum and was the first chairman of Architecture at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is the founder of SCI-Arc, as well as its European Program in Vico Morcote, Switzerland, and was SCI-Arc’s Director from 1972 to 1987.

He was Chairman of the Board, and a Board member until 2007.

ALUMNI NEWS

Alumna Receives Syracuse School of Architecture Fellowship Syracuse School of Architecture announced Maya Alam (M.Arch ’12) has been selected as the first recipient of the Boghosian Fellowship. Alam has been an assistant professor at the Syracuse School of Architecture since fall 2014. The fellowship allows for junior faculty members to spend a year developing a body of design research based on an area of interest while teaching at the school. Alam will give a public lecture as well as exhibit her work during her fellowship year.

Syracuse announced, “Maya Alam will explore new possibilities of identity and iconicity in architecture by reconsidering alternative connections between object, observer, and context.” Alam added, “I hope to explore with my students new categories of form and new architectural possibilities in engagement that fall outside the disciplinary conversation, thus replacing outdated concepts of iconicity with more intrinsic socio-political realities.”

Wietsma Alumni Giving Challenge a Success SCI-Arc alumni responded to the year-long challenge made by alumnus William “Bill” Wietsma (B.Arch ’77) in December 2014 and raised well over $100,000. Wietsma and wife Caroline agreed to match all alumni gifts of $1,000 or more. For every $4,000 received, the couple contributed another $1,000. For Wietsma, “Increasing alumni participation is a top priority, and an alumni leadership giving challenge helps to attract alumni donors at the higher levels of annual giving.”

Through the challenge, SCI-Arc was able to increase the number of alumni committed to supporting their alma mater at the leadership level. Alumni that contributed qualifying gifts toward the challenge will become the inaugural members of SCI-Arc’s Director’s Circle, a newly formed group representing leadership donors committed to institutional support.

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SCI-Arc Visits Schools & Alumni in Asia In March, Chief of Strategic Advancement and International/Special Programs, Hsinming Fung traveled to Mumbai where she visited the Balwant Seth School of Architecture (BSSA) and the Indian School of Design and Innovation (ISDI). Fung met with BSSA Dean Triolochan Chhaya who shared current happenings at BSSA and information about the school. A prospective international program with BSSA would consist of a BSSA-hosted workshop for prospective M.Arch 2 students that would model the Introduction to Technology workshop currently offered to incoming M.Arch 2 students at SCI-Arc. SCI-Arc alumnus Samuel Barclay (M.Arch ’04) arranged the visit to ISDI, where he teaches. A prospective international program there could be a series of lectures, panels, and discussions designed for M.Arch 1 students. Fung also visited the Temasek Polytechnic School of Design in Singapore during her visit to Asia. She discussed a prospective collaboration with Temasek which could include a week long workshop based in Los Angeles and in Singapore designed for B.Arch students, similar to Design Immersion Days currently offered at SCI-Arc.

Alumna Wins 4th Annual Arcvision Prize – Women and Architecture Jennifer Siegal (M.Arch ’94) is the winner of the

4th annual arcVision Prize – Women and Architecture, an international award for women in architecture organized by Italcementi. The ten-member jury, including Odile Decq (Odile Decq architecture firm), Yvonne Farrell (Grafton Architects), and Martha Thorne (Director of the Pritzker Prize) voted unanimously to award Siegal the prize. She is described as “a fearless pioneer in the research and development of prefabricated construction systems, at low prices for disadvantaged users and areas, who has been able to invent and build practical solutions and a new language for mobile and low-cost housing.”

The acrVision Prize was established to bring global attention to female designers. The annual award, which includes a cash prize, is given to a “female architect whose work includes technological innovation, sustainability and design culture in a harmonious combination of function and style.” The Prize will allow Siegal to conduct a research project and workshop at i.lab, Italcementi Group Research and Innovation Center in Bergamo.

Opposite Page: SCI-Arc students showing their work during open Season Left: Ray Kappe, Mia Lehrer

Office of Strategic Advancement Chief of Strategic Advancement & International/ Special Projects Hsinming Fung Associate Director of Development Maria Robinson Glover Development Services Coordinator Lydia Chapman Development Assistant Kellie Walker SCI-Arc Leadership Director/CEO Hernan Diaz ALonso Vice Director/ Chief Academic Officer John Enright Undergraduate Program Chair Tom Wiscombe Graduate Program Chair Elena Manferdini Board Of Trustees Chairman Tom Gilmore Vice-Chair Kevin Ratner SCI-Arc Director Hernan Diaz Alonso Secretary Abby Sher Treasurer Daniel Swartz Faculty Representative Andrew Zago Alumni Representative Dan Weinreber (M.Arch ’02) Student Representative Deborah Garcia (B.Arch ’17) Board Members at Large Richard Baptie, Rick Carter, Joe Day (M. Arch ’94), Tim Disney, William H. Fain, Jr., Anthony Ferguson, Frank O. Gehry, Russell L. Goings III, Scott Hughes (M. Arch ’97), Thom Mayne, Jerry Neuman, Merry Norris, Greg Otto, Abigail Scheuer (M. Arch ’93), Nick Seierup (B. Arch ’79), Ted Tanner Honorary Members Elyse Grinstein, Ray Kappe, Ian Robertson, Michael Rotondi (B. Arch ’75)

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SCI-Arc Community Celebrates Main Event 12 On March 12, nearly 250 members of the SCI-Arc community gathered at Sound Night Club in Hollywood to raise funds for the SCI-Arc Scholarship Endowment Fund. This year’s Main Event was the first under the new leadership of Director Hernan Diaz Alonso. Choosing to steer a different course, Diaz Alonso welcomed guests through a short film stating, “As you can notice this is not your usual fundraising gala.” With Board Chairman Tom Gilmore featured alongside, Diaz Alonso shared that his intent for Main Event 12 was to reflect the energized “young and dynamic spirit” of SCI-Arc. Another first—and a highlight of the evening—was the sold out silent auction of 3D printed works designed by renowned architects Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Barbara Bestor, Wolf Prix, Neil Denari, Eric Owen Moss and Diaz Alonso.

SCI-Arc thanks to the following sponsors for their support of the evening: Platinum Sponsor the SCI-Arc Student Union; Gold Sponsors Walter P Moore, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, US Bank, Blu Homes; Silver Sponsors Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP, BDO, Joe Day (M.Arch ’94), Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Co., Johnson Fain, Matteo LLP, and So Cal Private Patrol; and Bronze Sponsors C.W. Howe Partners, Inc., Gensler, Scott Hughes (M.Arch ’97), Kaplan Gehring McCarroll Architectural Lighting, Shelly & Ray Kappe, Menn, Van Kuik & Walker, Inc., Offit Capital Advisors LLC, Perkins+Will, Roscoe & Swanson, and Abby Sher. SCI-Arc also thanks diane krön chocolatier for their support and the many individuals who also supported the event: Blythe Alison Mayne Anthony Anderson (M.Arch ’04) Gelareh Arbab (B.Arch ’14) Emmanuel Argueta (B.Arch ’12) Andrea Baena Christopher Banks Herwig Baumgartner David Bergman Ivan Bernal (M.Arch ’11) Stacey Thomas Monique Birault (M.Arch ’92) Jackilin Bloom John Bohn Neal Borsuk (M.Arch ’89) Angela Brooks Cynthia Carlson (M.Arch ’90) Annie Chu (B.Arch ’83) Dana Cuff Mehrdad Dabbagh (M.Arch ’91) Kevin Daly Isabela De Sousa Hernan Diaz Alonso Ramiro Diaz-Granados (B.Arch ’00) Robert Donaldson Esra Durukan John Enright Dora Epstein-Jones

Jeffrey Eyster (M.Arch ’98) Tom Farrage (B.Arch ’87) Bryan Flaig (M.Arch ’04) Russell Fortmeyer Peter Frankfurt Stephanie Gallet Todd Gannon Pavel Getov (M.Arch ’93) Elizabeth Gibb (M.Arch ’89) Russell Goings Richard Gooding (B.Arch ’84) Marcelyn Gow Margaret Griffin Ganna Grininger Kimberly Grueneisen Peter Grueneisen (M.Arch ’90) Arthur Gueiros Ann Gutierrez Mi Ryung Ham Fatemeh Hashemi Sierra Helvey (M.Arch ’15) Keyla Hernandez (M.Arch ’12) Luis Herrera (B.Arch ’01) Sapeer Hillel Craig Hodgetts Paul Holliday Georgina Huljich

Hsinming Fung Vehbiye Inal (M.Arch ’12) Rifat Islam Vic Jabrassian Coomy Kadribegovic (M.DesR ’01) Nerin Kadribegovic (M.Arch ’03) Hannah Kampf Betty Kassis (B.Arch ’03) Borna Khalilnassab Kamil Kos (M.Arch ’14) Elena Larionova Sophie Lauriault (M.Arch ’13) Cara Lee (M.Arch ’96) Lisa Little (M.Arch ’06) Yixin Liu (M.Arch ’15) Michelle Lozano (B.Arch ’14) Hassan Majd (B.Arch ’90) Elena Manferdini Jennifer Hurd Marmon (M.Arch ’01) Tamil Marmon Ryan Martinez (M.Arch ’13) Jake Matatyaou Thom Mayne Marieh Mehrannezhad Luciano Menghini Sara Milaninia William Mohline

Anthony Morey (B.Arch ’14) Eric Owen Moss Stephan Mundwiler (M.Arch ’95) Carmellia Munguia Paras Nanavati (B.Arch ’04) Mitra Nehorai (B.Arch ’90) Jerry Neuman Christopher Nielson (B.Arch ’14) Dean Nota (B.Arch ’76) Ryan Odom Greg Otto Dwayne Oyler Florencia Pita Harold Portillo (B.Arch ’08) Amanda Rahayuningtyas Alexis Rochas Linda Russell Lisa Russo Andrea Sanchez Junsuke Sato Larry Scarpa Elissa Scrafano (M.Arch ’90) Sarasvati Segura Pinar Seven Liu Sha (M.Arch ’15) Lincoln Quinn Shipman-Ahlo William Simonian

Lee Slade Andrew Smith Mohammad Soleimanifeijani John Southern (M.Arch ’02) Marcelo Spina Maxi Spina Manori Sumanasinghe (B.Arch ’14) Dana Swinsky (M.Arch ’89) Guita Tahmassebi Robert Tarr (M.Arch ’08) Julie Taylor Peter Testa Saho-Wen Tou (M.Arch ’15) Constance Vale Elizabeth Van Dyke Tucker Van Leuwen-Hall Jill Vesci Teena Videriksen Devyn Weiser Yvonne White John Winston (M.Arch ’04) Erika Winters Thomas Wiscombe Joel Wong Jenny Wu Ye Xiao Mehrdad Yazdani

ALUMNI NEWS

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Shelly Kappe, Julie Truher, Richard Gooding (B.Arch ’84), Annie Chu (B.Arch ’83), Finn Kappe (B.Arch ’82), Ray Kappe | Main Event Guest, Jennifer Marmon (M.Arch ’01)

Nélson Abreu, Manori Sumanasinghe (B.Arch ’14) | Hernan Diaz Alonso, SCI-Arc Trustee Tom Gilmore, Coco Kristal, Hsinming Fung

Nerin Kadribegovic (M.Arch ’03), Coomy Kadribegovic (MRD ’01), Ernest Convento (M.Arch ’05), Paras Nanavati (B.Arch ’04) | SCI-Arc Trustee Thom Mayne, John Enright

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Kainoa Westemark (M.Arch ’11), Joe Tarr (M. Arch ’08) | Monique Birault (M.Arch ’92), Margaret Griffin, John Enright, Yvonne E. White, Florencia Pita

Hernan Diaz Alonso, Tim Morton, Todd Gannon, Dora Epstein – Jones, Tom Wiscombe, Lisa Wiscombe, SCI-Arc Trustee Tom Gilmore | Popcorn by Hernan Diaz Alonso

Kelcey Newman, President of STUN Kevin Sherrod | Student Representative to the Board Debbie Garcia, Michelle Lozano (B.Arch ’14), Helena Yun | Dana Swinsky (M.Arch ‘89), Mehrdad Dabbagn (M.Arch, ’91)

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46

1970 s Steven Lombardi’s (B.Arch ’79) El Do and Del

Monte homes are featured in San Diego’s Dwell Home Tour 2016. Handmade, an exhibit of Lombardi’s design process from the earlier 1980’s to today, was recently on exhibit at Modmatter in Little Italy, San Diego. It featured projects in Hawaii, San Diego and Costa Rica, with both models and drawings from handcrafted concepts to scaled working constructions.

Nick Seierup, FAIA (B.Arch ’79) of Perkins

+ Will has won the commission for the prestigious Kings College Hospital in Dubai. Seierup, Design Director and Principal of the Los Angeles office, will lead the design of the new $200,000,000 facility. Headquartered in London, Kings College is one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher learning in Europe.

1980 s David Hertz, FAIA (B.Arch ’83) designed the

recently unveiled 40th Anniversary Perpetual Trophies for the World Surf League. He is also at work designing a rocket launch control center and observation tower for Space X and building a new mixed-use boutique hotel in the popular Abbot Kinney neighborhood of Venice, CA. Hertz’s project the 747 Wing House is a finalist in the international Architizer A+ Awards.

Robin Donaldson, AIA (M.Arch ’86) founded

Shubin + Donaldson Architects with Russell Shubin, AIA. This year the firm celebrates twenty-five years with over 50 employees at offices in Culver City, Santa Barbara, and Orange County. The firm just broke ground on a creative office campus to house their Santa Barbara offices.

Will Sharp (M. Arch ’86), principal of New

York based Will Sharp Architects, recently received an award by the Peconic AIA for his rattlesnake creek house in Sag Harbor, NY. The house abuts a large wetlands preserve and will be the future residence of Will and his wife and children.

Rea Jackson (M.Arch ’87) has been working in

Program Management/Finance and Project Management in the Chicago area. Rea is more involved in consultancy work with very little design work.

Gary Hulton (M.Arch ’89) was awarded the

Sommelier Certification, with distinction, from the Sommelier Society of America, New York, in January 2016.

1990 s Michael Poris, AIA (M.Arch ’90) began con-

struction on two new projects in Detroit, MI: DuCharme Place, a 185-unit apartment community; and The Foundation Hotel, a 100-room independent hotel. He received the 2015 AIA Detroit Building Honor Award in the Small Project category for the Michigan Research Studio that hosts college-prep architecture courses for urban youth. He will speak

at Docomomo US/Michigan 2016 National Symposium in Detroit, MI.

Elissa Scrafano (M.Arch ’90) recently executed

Bridge, a foundation in Harlem dedicated to the tutoring and mentoring of young boys, opened in March.

a project in Chicago with Linc Thelen Design that renovated an historic church into a comfortable modern home. This project was recently awarded an AIA Chicago Chapter Small Project Award. The Los Angeles Times selected one of Scrafano’s renovation projects in Santa Monica as the Los Angeles Times Home of the Week.

Rick Miller (M.Arch ’97) has been teaching

Angie Brooks (M.Arch ’91) firm Brooks +

Peter Wowkowych (M.Arch ’97) is a Studio

Scarpa has been shortlisted by the City of LA, Bureau of Engineering, for the First and Broadway Park. Called the ‘Fifth Ecology,’ the park straddles the built and natural worlds, and is a Visitor Center for the rebirth of Broadway (Los Angeles’ theatre district). Her firm has also been selected to redevelop the Southern California Flower Market.

Jeremy Levine (M.Arch ’93) is currently building

urban studies to undergraduate students across the global through the School for International Training program Cities in the 21st Century.

Rick leads student researchers to understand the intangible forces at work in manifesting the built environments we have today, with an aim toward influencing the future of cities.

Architect for Sony Pictures Entertainment.

His first one man show Slouching Toward Los Angeles opened at the AIA’s offices on April 14. The exhibit features 11 new paintings and encaustics works and will be on display until May 28, 2016.

2000 s

a fleet of mobile wood shops out of converted shipping containers for Side Street Projects, a non-profit arts foundation in Pasadena, California. The shipping containers will take up temporary residence at schools where teaching artists from Side Street will teach woodworking classes.

Alan Loomis (M.Arch ’00) was recently inter-

In Memoriam: Ulises de Jesus Diaz (B.Arch ’93)

of Nico Marques Architectural Photography, recently shot two projects for AIA Firm of the Year 2015 Ehrlich Architects, and has had his work featured on the cover of California Homes, as well as in Architectural Review, Dwell, DETAIL (Germany), AdWeek, VULKAN and West Hollywood Magazine, among others.

passed in his sleep of heart failure on Tuesday, March 29, 2016. He was 53. Ulises was a community and urban activist, artist and architect who worked to strengthen the voice of an expanding and diverse community in Los Angeles. His projects included urban design, architecture, graphic design, publications and artworks where he addressed how diverse cultures influence public open space, art and the urban fabric. At the Japanese American National Museum, he designed Common Ground: The Heart of Community, an exhibition that surveyed over 150 years of Japanese American history in the United States. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, the Gamel Dok Architecture Museum in Copenhagen and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2007, Diaz was a Harvard Loeb fellow. He was on the board of directors of Avenue 50 Gallery, founder and design principal at ADOBE LA and ownerdesigner at Studio Dos ó Tres.

Eduardo Perez (M.Arch ’94) is a tenured Asso-

ciate Professor and Program Coordinator for the BFA Interior Design Program at California State University Long Beach. He has taken students to Prague, Berlin and Barcelona and will be taking a small group back to Barcelona this June 2016. He recently invited Elena Manferdini to lecture and works to promote SCI-Arc’s graduate programs.

Gordon Kipping, AIA, P.Eng.(ON) (M.Arch

’95) just finished teaching an advanced design studio at GSAPP at Columbia University last fall. His firm was just selected by the New York City Department of Design and Construction for a three-year contract as part of their Design Excellence program. His project for The

viewed on Archinect’s 1-to-1 podcast series.

He was also a guest on KPCC 89.3fm’s “Take Two” where he spoke about Space 134, Glendale’s plan for a freeway cap park he is spearheading as the City’s chief urban designer.

Nico Marques (M.Arch ’00), founding principal

Sonal Sancheti (M. Arch ’00) won the Inter-

national competition for The Bihar Museum Project in Patna, India. Her firm _Opolis collaborated with Steven Holl Architects and won the Mumbai City Museum North Wing Design Competition. _Opolis was recently awarded the AD50 award by Architectural Digest Magazine, where they recognize the 50 most influential names in Architecture and Design in India and Sri Lanka.

Robb Walker (M.Arch ’02) was recently named

President of Ryan Associates in San Francisco.

Ryan Associates is a San Francisco based General Contractor specializing in ultra-high end residential projects. Ryan Associates has teamed with internationally recognized architects including, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Robert AM Stern Architects, among many others.

Kevin Wronske’s (B’Arch ’02) firm Heyday

Partnership was featured in the April issue of Monocle Magazine as a top developer for “building the good stuff by blending entrepreneurial flair with bold new architecture”.

Heyday has been chosen as one of nine participants in this summer’s TURF mini golf exhibition by the M&A Gallery.

Benjamin Ball (B.Arch ’03) and Gaston Nogues

(B. Arch ’93) of Ball-Nogues Studio won the Architect Magazine R&D First Award with their piece Pulp Pavilion. The paper composite

47

CLASS NOTES

structure was also featured on the July 2015 cover. The studio just completed an installation at CSU Pueblo and will complete a custom pavilion for Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

Jordan was the lead designer for the Harbin Opera House, which has finished construction, and now is working on projects in Chicago, New York, and Izmir, Turkey.

SCI-Arc Magazine Issue 012

Kara Block (M.Arch ’03) recently became a

Jeff Morrical (M.Arch ’08), Carmelia Chiang

Contributing Writers Stephanie Atlan, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Todd Gannon, Marcelyn Gow, Justine Smith

partner at DFH Architects, Inc. The award winning architectural office is best known for their effectiveness in successfully dealing with difficult entitlement processing and the ability to realistically evaluate planning, zoning and building code opportunities and transform them into exciting design.

Ron Culver, AIA (B.Arch ’04), just returned

from Sydney, Australia where he presented “Fabric Forms, the Robotic Positioning of Flexible Fabric Formwork” at Rob|Arch 2016 with his partner Joseph Sarafian, Assoc. AIA. Their paper was published in “Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2016.”

They will continue their research using borrowed robots from Autodesk’s Pier 9 and Orange Coast College where Steve Fuchs (M.Arch ’06) is the Design Professor of Architecture & Digital Fabrication.

Elizabeth M. Keslacy (M.Arch ’04) recently pub-

lished an essay in Footprint 17, an architectural theory journal published by TU-Delft. “Fun and Games: The Suppression of Architectural Authoriality and the Rise of the Reader” examines the rise of gaming and simulation in architectural pedagogy in the 1970s.

Jody Beck (M.Arch ’06) & Ross-Alan Tisdale

(M.Arch ’06) of Traction Architecture are happy to report that their firm was awarded an AIA Tampa Bay Merit Award for Architecture in Urban Design for their public art project Sky Striker. Sky Striker was an interactive light installation where a carnival high-striker machine was rigged to an iconic cylindrical skyscraper in Tampa.

Jong Hwa (Duly) Lee (M.Arch ’07) co-founded

“Estudio Remoto” in Panama. In collaboration with the University of Panama, the project’s goal is to bring architecture to remote communities and empower the indigenous population with technical tools to be resilient.

Duly will begin teaching this upcoming fall at Harvard GSD, MDes in Real Estate and the Built Environment program.

Benjamin Lepley (B.Arch ’07) teaches architecture studio at the University of Arizona.

He recently finished the Holocaust History Center exhibition in Tucson, Arizona. The project was built using materials salvaged from a 1880s house. The Center is a visceral and highly curated environment for viewing Holocaust history, survivor testimony, and conceptual frameworks.

Michael Arellanes II (B.Arch ’08) is submitting

his most current work from his design practice; a concept proposal for Houston, TX sent to the city councils department for Houston First. They collect ideas for the city expansion and development.

Jordan Kanter (M.Arch ’08) has returned to

Beijing and MAD after spending a year and a half teaching at IIT in Chicago. At MAD,

(B.Arch ’12) and Jeff Guiducci had a joint show called Finding Form at Design Matters Gallery in West Los Angeles Jan 23–Feb 13. Morrical’s work, The Folded Ocean, incorporates single sheet sculptures shaped by folds and gravity. Carmelia’s and Guiducci’s work, Tangential Mode, demonstrates the many possibilities of extraordinary form by using PVC piping.

Jonathan Odom (B.Arch ’09) is currently a de-

signer at Instructables Design Studio at the Autodesk Pier 9 Workshop in San Francisco and is an adjunct professor at Academy of Art University in the School of Architecture. His current work focuses on celebrating the inner workings of machines, and seeks to create an intimate connection between human beings and technology.

2010 s Sam Keville (B.Arch ’10) has been working on

a new concept for a website of professional criticism. Architectural Reviewer is the first website dedicated to giving high-level feedback for working Designers and Architects. The goal is to improve the built environment by bringing the same quality of reviews from the school environment into offices. The beta is live and looking for new projects and reviewers to share their ideas.

Karim Attoui (B.Arch ’13) co-founded Public

Interest Design - Levant (PID) in 2013 and is currently its Operations Director. PID is a non-profit organization that facilitates community development. He co-founded IZEM in 2015 and is acting as Head of Design & Technology. IZEM is an industrial design agency that specializes in Design and Strategy. He is also the managing partner at Modular State; a holding company that creates and manages startups with an emphasis on innovation and technology.

Lord Evan Ceniza (M.Arch ’14) transitioned

from working at Michael Maltzan Architecture to founding the multi-disciplinary firm, 11 Parallel Studio, based in Beverly Hills. The studio is focused on manipulating and integrating concepts from various disciplines in order to find parallels to create new ideas for architecture, film, art, and fashion.

Ryan Vincent Manning (M.Arch ’14) has been

teaching at the Institute of Urban Design in Innsbruck with Peter Trummer for the past year. His firm Heron-Mazy has been commissioned to do a large exhibition in Texas in September 2016 to commemorate the firm’s 8 year anniversary. In Hong Kong, Ryan collaborated on the exhibition “urban sense” which includes image scanned 3D models projected with the local urban environment on display until April 10.

Editor-in-Chief Hernan Diaz Alonso

Photography PoYao Shih, Joshua White, Adrian Wong Communications Project Manager Justine Smith Art Director Kate Merritt Graphic Designer Marija Radisavljevic PR & Public Programs Manager Stephanie Atlan © 2016 SCI-Arc Publications

60 48

In Memoriam Zaha Hadid (1950 – 2016) The day Zaha died was difficult for me personally. She was a good friend, and in the wake of her passing I experienced that familiar cascade of emotions—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance— described by Elisabeth KüblerRoss in her famous book, On Death and Dying.

The day Zaha died was also difficult for me as an architect, as it was for architecture as both a profession and a discipline.

On an architectural level, I went through a mutant variation of Kübler-Ross’s model: Denial: I could not believe she could die, leaving behind so much work to challenge, to inspire, and simply to amaze us.

I could not accept the hard truth that with her gone, the world would be a little less interesting.

Anger: My denials were quickly overtaken by anger at so many of the tributes and memorial articles that began to appear. I couldn’t bear the chorus of insipid hacks, those guardians of mediocrity who had spent so much energy attacking her, braying hollow accolades about a life and a body of work that, by choice or lack of imagination, they had never managed to understand.

Bargaining: There will be no bargaining. The ambitions and desires that Zaha’s work engendered cannot be abandoned, cannot be compromised, and will not die.

Depression: Screw that. Architecture as a cultural activity and humanist aspiration lost one of its fiercest and unapologetic figures. Our response will not be to lament, but to rise up and fight on.

Acceptance: We must accept that Zaha is gone, but must never accept compromise, mediocrity, and simplicity. We must never give in to those mediocre calls to surrender the power that springs from architecture that does not merely serve to the body, but also stimulates the mind.

Very few architects claim that there is a “before and after,” but anybody who can remember the first time they saw one of her paintings in the ’80s will tell you without hesitation that Zaha is one of them. We must view her life not as a triumph now completed in death, but rather as a prescription for how to keep going.

H.D.A.

Charo and Zaha in Vienna

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