11
GRADUATE THESIS 2012: A VISION OF HOW THINGS WILL BE Elena Manferdini
Elena Manferdini is the Graduate Thesis Coordinator at SCI-Arc, and for the past 8 years has been teaching architectural design studios and visual studies seminars. She is the principal of Atelier Manferdini, founded in 2004, a design office located in Los Angeles, California. Her practice is based on a multi-scale work methodology and embraces the philosophy that design can participate in a wide range of multidisciplinary developments that define our culture. Her architectural projects have been exhibited in both architecture and art museums internationally. Manferdini graduated from the University of Civil Engineering (Bologna, Italy) and later from University of California, Los Angeles (Master of Architecture and Urban Design). She has lectured widely, including at MIT, Princeton, and Bauhaus. Atelier Manferdini has been feature extensively in national and international media including A+U, Domus, The New York Times, Icon and Form. 1. Kyle von Hasseln + Elizabeth von Hasseln Phantom Geometry 2. Chloe Brunner Dweller on the Threshold 3. Daniel Berlin Rendezvous: Subverting the latent relationship between a stack and a pile 4. Gonzalo Padilla Villamizar Seamless Incongruence 5. Erin Besler Low Fidelity 6. Michael Nesbit Towards (Ph2)Latness 7. Fernando Herrera Unravelled
The Graduate Thesis Program at SCI-Arc represents the culmination of the master curriculum and is therefore the most significant test of the students’ and school’s ability to synthesize and produce critical and rigorous architecture. Looking at the work produced by our students in the past two years, it is clear that SCI-Arc as an institution has unquestionably reached a mature stage, and that our thesis program has been able to demonstrate its ability to own the choice of what designers need to know and think about today, fostering a broad culture of ideas, inquiry and position-taking. At the crossroads of independent researches and collective allegiances, SCI-Arc’s thesis is structured to foster an open-ended spirit of inquiry, responding to shifts in society, technology and culture that define our contemporary architectural field. This year’s group of award winning projects is an example of the various architectural trajectories and research agendas present in the school. For example Erin Besler’s and Kyle and Elizabeth von Hasseln’s theses explore various modes of representation developed with the use of the SCI-Arc robotic laboratory. Maya Alam’s interest revolves around issues of politics and gestalt in our discipline. Ben Warwas’ and Dale Strong’s projects are an example of familiar architectural language that engages with collective 2
narratives. Daniel Berlin tackles classical notions of architectural
compositions, while Fernando Herrera’s project is an example of mastery in digital formalism that the school has been invested in for several years. The year-long thesis program, divided into Thesis Research during spring and a Design Thesis Studio during summer, is precisely the place in the curriculum where students are asked to produce significance and originality, advancing the state of the art rather than simply compiling what already exists. A set of choreographed lecture series, weekly group meetings, public round tables, symposia and critical debates has been held in order to promote the creation of their arguments. At the beginning of spring 2012, GEHRY PRIZE
MERIT GRADUATE THESIS Kyle von Hasseln + Elizabeth von Hasseln Phantom Geometry Advisors: Devyn Weiser & Peter Testa This thesis is about a way of making, a way of using information by developing a system for moving streaming information through physical space—in the form of light—to generate material form. This system is a full-scale, generative fabrication process that is innately non-linear, is interruptible and corruptible at any time, and does not rely on periodic flattening to 2D. The project builds upon the unique design platform of the SCI-Arc Robot House.
Maya Alam The Bastardized Gestalt: Lobotomy of the Familiar Advisor: Elena Manferdini The Bastardized Gestalt explores the defamiliarization of two specific architectural styles—baroque and brutalism—through matters of a fragmented whole. It exploits the irreconcilable by overlaying the pictorial and the geometrical deformation, the 2D and 3D, tied together by means of the subconscious idea of the unified whole. Daniel Berlin