ISSUE:006

VOLUME 006

VOLUME 006 \ UTSOA STUDENT WORK 2009

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1\\ FOREWORD BY FRANCISCO GOMES 2\\ SPRING 3\\ SUMMER 4\\ FALL

HOW TO DE-CODE THIS BOOK:

SPRING

PROJECT

DESIGN 5

SUMMER

PAPER

SOUND BUILDING

FALL

EXHIBIT

LANDSCAPE STUDIO

INTERVIEW

VERTICAL STUDIO

DIVIDER

ADVANCED STUDIO

ISSUE: is an annual student-run publication featuring graduate and undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Its intent is to foster interaction and the interchange of ideas among students as well as to record the intellectual activities of the SOA. Editors Edna Ledesma* Janice Nicol Joel Nolan Jesse Anderson Whitney Cooper Katia Davidson Caroline Emerson Charles Frank Stephen Harris Erica Ko Alexis Kurland Kristina Loomis Nishiel Patel Brooks Rosenberg Brad Singer Diana Su Alexer Taganas Graphic Design Joel Nolan Janice Nicol

*Edna Ledesma remained unthanked in ISSUE: 005. The staff would like to send our sincerest apology for last year’s error, and to acknowledge her tireless efforts and devotion to the success of both volumes 005 & 006.

1 University Station A6220 SOC #426 Austin, TX 78712 issue@austin.utexas.edu http://soa.utexas.edu/publications/issue/ Š2010 ISSUE: All rights reserved.

ISBN 0-9786228-5-5 Printed in Austin, Texas

A vigorous school ought not to be of a single mind in its pursuit of knowledge and meaning. Qualities we value in our broader society: components of the intellectual and social life at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and important in advancing the work of our disciplines. The Àelds of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and interior design are represented here, alloyed in varied proportion and through a broad array of activities.

Certainly design holds a central role, but writing, fabrication, lectures and exhibitions, original research, community engagement, and discussions both public and private are all acts of citizenship in the daily life of our school. ISSUE:, a publication conceived and authored by students, samples from a broad range of production at the school and strives to reÁect the richness of its activity.

The works included in ISSUE: are indexed by discipline and chronology, but are perhaps best understood individually as indicators of the particular issues and interests which surround each project or conversation. Design education beneÀts from the inductive model. Discovery and innovation are not conceptualized from a distance, but rather evolve from thoughtful response to the issues and conditions tied to speciÀc questions, sites, and programs.

The signiÀcance of the projects included in this ISSUE: lives in their speciÀcity and the particular set of values each embodies. Topics prominent in the dialogue of the school: urbanity, social justice, infrastructure, spatial experience, ecology, materiality, energy, parametric computation, or even meaning and beauty, become only hollow buzzwords when removed from the context of their particular projects and discussions. The editors of ISSUE: have expanded their coverage of individual projects and I encourage you to look directly to the work itself, along with the statements of its authors, for a more complete understanding the collective endeavors of the school.

The School of Architecture nurtures range and diversity in thinking both within and between disciplines. The highest responsibility we have as citizens of the school is to steward that freedom by exercising it with good cause.

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enthusiasm, rigor, diversity, and meaningful expression are essential

FOREWORD Cisco Gomes, AIA Assistant Professor of Architecture

YOUNG ADULT CONFERENCE CENTER Matthew Leach REPUBLIC SQUARE Yan Yau PERISCOPIC DIVERSITY Joseph Boyle ALTERNATIVE ENERGY CONSORTIUM Kim Cole MCDONALD OBSERVATORY LODGE Sam Gelfand & Alexis Kurland PHOTOVOLTAIC APPLICATION Gregory Arcangeli, Chad Gnat, Erin Holdenried & Vanessa Poe ROLL OUT SPA Alix Bulleit REIMER’S RANCH PARK Chelsea Larsson LAND WATER John Paul Rysavy KINETIC CULTIVATION Kayln Adams, Edna Ledesma, Audrey McKee, Stacy Rodriguez & Lisa Storer OBJECT ECOLOGIES Materials Lab Exhibit REPUBLIC SQUARE Don Xu ASTRONOMER’S RETREAT Jesse Anderson & Erica Ko BOATBRIDGEHOUSE Andrew Bell ALMA DE MUJER PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE Joint Student Project ARTHUR GANSON INTERVIEW FALL CREEK WINERY Joshua Bailey PECKERWOOD VISITORS CENTER Edna Ledesma MCDONALD OBSERVATORY LODGE Kevin Johnson & Jeremy Olbrys LAND ART MUSEUM Brian Rome

conditions visual passage intervention indicators flexible solid proportions excavate peripheral reconnect origami lifecycle cardboard reuse morph exoskeletal triangulate arterial tension comfort tetrahedron coalesce energize transform kinetic cultivation morphological potential variability dynamic scale parametric connecting leisure pedestrian framed perimeter aortic motherboard performance circulation planes directional static singular terminus geothermal privacy channels concrete abstracted filter form integration modular volume exploration materials rainwater privacy transparency density kit-of-parts molds undulating skin mesh experience systems ecologies natural synthetic zoning relationally conditionally tactically formations composites abstractly conceptually contemporary behavior interconnectivity reciprocity systematic planar potential patterns discrete filler research private/public region instance elite selective

EXHIBITIONS

LECTURE SERIES

SYMPOSIA

STUDIO INSTRUCTORS

Across the Map

Ignacio Bunster

Weather Patterns

Design II

student work from School of Architecture study abroad programs

Drawings & Workshops

Landscape Architect & Urban Designer

Perry Culper

Architect, Artist & Professor

works by Perry Kulper

Machines

works by Arthur Ganson

Monica Ponce DeLeon Architect & Dean University of Michigan

Juhani Pallasmaa Architect

Arthur Ganson Artist

Deborah Berke Architect

Keith Kaseman & Julie Beckman

Landscape Architects & Professors

Cristiane Muniz Architect

Marianne Burkhalter & Christian Sumi Architects

Marianne Burkhalter & Christian Sumi Architects

Kristina Hill

Director of Landscape Architecture University of Virginia

Climate, Culture & Placemaking Featuring: J.D. Connor Robert L. France Werner Krauss P.H. Liotta Steven A. Moore Allan W. Shearer

Latitudes

Architecture in the Americas Featuring: Brigitte Shim Cecilia Puga Angelo Bucci Gerardo Caballero Alberto Kalach Solano Benitez Rick Joy Edwin Chan Michael Benedikt Wilfried Wang Barbara Hoidn Kevin Alter Vincent Snyder

Elizabeth Danze Allison Gaskins Jennifer Marsh Vincent Snyder Lois Weinthal

Design IV

Judith Birdsong Kim Furlong Charlton Lewis Nik Nikolov Nichole Wiedemann

Design VI

John Blood Ernesto Cragnolino Ulrich Dangel Maija Kreishman Carl Matthews

Vertical Studio

Michael Benedikt Larry Doll Fran Gale Jane Garland Lucas Smilja Milovanovic-Bertram William O’Brien Jr. Joyce Rosner

Advanced Design Dean Almy Michael Beaman Sinclair Black Ilse Frank Fran Gale Jane Garland Lucas Michael Garrison Cisco Gomes Barbara Hoidn* Russell Krepart Juan Miro* Steven Moore Lori Ryker * travel studio

SPRING 2009

Young Adult Conference Center Matthew Leach Critic: Larry Doll

Between a ravine and a road, at the end of Johnson Greenbelt Park, lies a hill. It is neither here nor a there; it is displaced and dissatisÀed. It wants to be both the rock and the rut, and yet, is neither. Borrowing elements from the ravine transforms this location into a place; making it a there, making it a home. On this site is a proposal for the housing of young adults that have matriculated from foster care. It houses 35 individuals with two unit types, and includes counseling, education, and career services. Also featured are learning and cultural amenities, including reading rooms, gallery walls, and multi-purpose rooms.

The goal is to provide these young adults with opportunities afforded by a home life that will help each individual make the transition to being an independent person.

How does one perceive buildings; this building; one’s self in this building? Can the registration of the individual, and the expressed element of variability on the facade create a connection between groups, the neighborhood, and users? Can the desire for nature’s variety be abstracted and brought to bear on the project, informing its use and expressing something besides “building?”

Can a dynamic facade and in-situ/ad hoc construction yield

9 enough variety to bring a monumental scale down to the level of the individual?

The place for these inquiries occurred through many methods and scales, including drawing, advanced modeling, and parametric tools. By using parametric modeling, variability was simulated and evaluated against explicit randomization. The user is validated on a variety of scales by implementing this system: it allows for an individual to live, and it registers the lives of many individuals, and thus themselves against a building, community or city. This is fundamental for this particular user. Anonymity with speciÀcity

allows these young adults to recognize their individual and collective identities without feeling like they are on display, or in an ex-societal position. However, there is a need to reassess the middle ground; the place between the door and the stair; the place between the street and the building; and, ultimately, the implied and resultant program of architecture itself.

S.2 S.3*

S.0

S.1

S.3

D

Young Adult Conference Center

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Republic Square Yan Yau Critic: Jason Sowell

Republic Square is an urban open space located in central Austin.

The park hosts weekly farmers markets, yoga classes, running races, festivals and other civic events throughout the year.

Despite this activity, the park lacks distinct spacial conÀguration and organization for this diverse range of program.

Two axes are emphasized to bring the most pedestrian trafÀc into and through the park, connecting the surrounding condominium and ofÀce users in the adjacent neighborhood.

A platform surrounded by a shallow water pond is aimed to accommodate public events. A north-south path gradually widens

to accommodate the demands of a weekly farmer’s market by designating a loading zone. A raised lawn area, Àlling the park’s center, is intended to accommodate a range of bigger events and daily leisure use.

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Republic Square

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Periscopic Diversity Joseph Boyle Critic: William O’Brien Jr.

Identity to Fredericksburg is important, as is access to and from for lectures/performances, mechanical, storage and maintenance. It controls access to and from the facility. exposure to the highway and the public is controlled, buffering

Four aortic/arterial art wings branch off of the motherboard. This

sound when needed, while a land buffer at the site’s edge is a potential land art zone.

The motherboard holds all supporting functions of the museum,

frames the coinciding land art zone. This space serves as the

including: central lobby, cafĂŠ, restaurant, kitchen, museum shop,

permanent exhibition gallery space as well as circulation/egress.

North light is important and is controlled on the roof plane through

17 expanded metal sheathing over glass.

The terminus of the vein path is the land | art periscope. The form of the periscope will vary with the landscape conditions that it static views onto the coinciding land art zone.

Capillary paths branch out from the digit/periscope tower. These are made by the user after the land art is in place. Therefore, each land art zone is experienced in a singular or isolated manner and reset/repositioned at the motherboard.

Periscopic Diversity

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Alternative ative Energy Consortium Kim Cole

Critic: Carl Matthews

For this project an existing building was converted into a shared work environment for four alternative energy companies: solar energy, wind energy, geothermal systems, and rainwater collection.

The program called for separate work spaces for each company while providing shared areas such as breakrooms, conference, copy and printing space, restrooms, and a unique “educational space” for companies to display information to the public on a walk-in basis.

While the educational space offers the potential for a stimulating environment, it is problematic when there is too much noise or distraction going on in the workspace. The Áoor plan moves from

public space to semi-public work space and Ànally to private ofÀces.

The curved central form functions as the membrane between the public and the employees. Optical channels in the poured concrete form allow light to travel through to the other side in an abstracted and colorful way as people watch video clips on each of the four companies. By creating a Áoor plan and central space that Àlter out excess distraction from the public environment the design reiterates how each of these companies functions as a Àltration system for the resources of the natural environment.

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Alternative Energy Consortium

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McDonald Observatory Lodge Sam Gelfand & Alexis Kurland Critic: Russell Krepart & Cisco Gomes

McDonald Observatory, a research unit of The University of Texas at Austin, is one of the world’s leading centers for astronomical research, teaching, and public education. The observatory is located atop Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, which offer some of the darkest night skies in the United States. Astronomers from research institutions from around the world book telescope time years in advance. In many cases the opportunities to observe astronomical events occur only once in a lifetime.

The unique nighttime working schedule presents an interesting

design problem. A successful addition to the observatory campus would be facilities that provide for a sense of community and collaboration for the visiting astronomers, comfortable daytime sleeping quarters and signiÀcantly limit light pollution during the night. Additionally, these new buildings must take into consideration its presence in the immense west Texas landscape as well as with iconic telescope buildings.

To foster community, the proposed new facilities provide varied social experiences. The meeting, eating and socializing programs are consolidated in a single large building organized around a three-

25 story height great room. This three-story height space opens to the landscape via large Ă oor to ceiling windows. Large oversized shutter doors, inspired by the aperture openings of the telescopes, close the view off at night, allowing the building to be used without interfering with the telescopes. A meandering walk servicing the sleeping facilities provides smaller spaces for impromptu gatherings and opportunities for researches to share the view.

Private “dogtrot� unit entrances provide shelter and opportunities to experience the view privately. The dogtrot entrances and the decision to suppress the sleeping facilities below the main grade

serve as part of the light mitigation strategy as well. The entrances to the units open to the covered dogtrot and prevent interior light from escaping to the night sky. The suppressed pathway functions similarly. Finally, the sleeping quarters are perched off the side of the mountain supported by large pre-cast concrete stilts.

McDonald Observatory Lodge

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This proposal seeks to provide information, evidence, and basic design

usage among the top research facilities in the nation.

concepts for the attachment of photovoltaic cells to the backside of

Markets: Studies of Sustainability: As the world around us evolves into

the 7,370 square foot video screen nicknamed the “GodzillaTron” at

an eco-minded existence, the study of sustainability, from research

the Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium (DKR-TMS).

to investment, will continue to grow. It is crucial that our reputation

Creating a visible symbol for the University’s position on the

as a university with measurable dedication, research and investment

forefront of sustainable and renewable energy sources is the focus of

in sustainability grows with it. By intensifying our commitment to

this project. The DKR-TMS has an unobstructed view towards the

sustainability, we will attract the best and brightest minds in the Àeld

capital building and the commercial districts of downtown. The DKR-

to the university.

TMS also is Áanked by a major elevated US Interstate: Interstate 35 is

Photovoltaic Training: As the demand for educated engineers and

the major freeway that connects San Antonio to Dallas-Fort Worth.

trained installers increases in the realm of photovoltaics, the

Also on gameday, the solar array will be viewed around the US via

university will be able to Àll the demand by creating learning

television broadcast from ground crews as well as from helicopters

opportunities in all areas of solar energy study for our students.

and blimps. All of these vantage points mean it could be one of the most visable photovoltaic collectors in the nation.

The Solar Cascade This design seeks to serve multiple purposes for the University. In addition to making the scoreboard self sufÀcient, generating energy and piping it into the school grid, and offsetting the stadium’s carbon footprint, the project supports campus-wide sustainability and acts a visual commitment to our desires. The swooping form is highly visible from I-35 and other viewing corridors around the UT campus. The form attaches to the back of the scoreboard and then reaches out over the Moncreif-Neuhaus Athletic Center. This form adds a free Áowing form to the ridged rooÁines of the area Fig. 02 The back of the scoreboard showing its structure

and provides additional cover and protection for the practice Àeld on its roof. This structure has the potential to light up due to

Introduction The University of Texas is a leader in both academic research and athletics in the US collegiate system. One major reason for the University’s success is that UT is an institution that looks at opportunities that will help it stand out amongst other universities.

Fig. 03 Concept sketch

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Austin as a leader in energy cost mitigation and renewable resource

Photovoltaic Application for the Scoreboard at Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas Gregory Arcangeli Chad Gnat Erin Holdenried Vanessa Poe Course: Seminar in Building Integrated Photovoltaics Professor: Werner Lang

Fig. 01 Day game with views into the stadium

Executive Summary Mission: In an effort to decrease The University of Texas at Austin’s dependence on non-renewable energy, a group of Architecture graduate students are proposing an innovative, cost-effective, highproÀle initiative that centers around one of the university’s most recognized attributes—athletics.

Description: The University of Texas at Austin is continually implementing new and inventive strides towards establishing a more sustainable environment. As “green” technologies surface, efforts are made to incorporate components of sustainability into the campus culture. In this proposed undertaking, one of our athletic icons, the scoreboard at the Darrell K. Royal- Texas Memorial Stadium, is the target. The highly venerated scoreboard in the football stadium serves as a symbol of Texas pride and accomplishment. Unfortunately, the scoreboard also serves as an admonition of energy consumption.

Our proposal is to transÀgure the scoreboard into photovoltaics (solar cells), transforming it into a beacon of sustainability. Eightythousand plus attendees at every football game would be reminded not only of the university’s commitment to sustainability, but of their own personal responsibility to our planet.

Technologies: Photovoltaics are a stable source of energy that requires minimal maintenance over their lifespan. The installation of the photovoltaic system would establish The University of Texas at

proper drainage from rail and to reduce wind up-draft

Photovoltaic Application for the Scoreboard

31

creating strains on the structure.

Fig. 9 Joint for reticulation free-span roof structure

Fig. 8 Insolation received on the variety of panels

Structure: The current structure of the scoreboard has been over sized to ensure the longevity of the installation. The attachment of the vertical portion of the installation to the pre-existing scoreboard structure would not alter the existing loads, however extra reinforcement is encouraged.

The overall structure of this dynamic design takes advantage of a relatively new form of spatial structural grid called a reticulated free-span structure. As opposed to a space frame, the structure uses a single layer surface to support the geometry of the architecture.

There is a special bolted connection that allows for complex

Fig. 10 Norman Foster + Partners’ Robert & Arlene Kogod Courtyard at the Smithsonian Institute

geometric forms. Even the most irregular surfaces can use this

Figures: The Solar Cascade can accommodate 4666 of HelioVolt’s

standard beam connector without requiring secondary steelwork. A

thin Àlm panel. Although the efÀciency of their panel is about half

number of projects have been completed using this structural system,

the efÀciency of standard monocrystalline panel, the payback period

such as Foster + Partner’s Kogod Courtyard at the Smithsonian

is actually much lower. Because the PV area is a signiÀcant size and

American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. The main

the panels are orientated at a variety of angles, it is able to produce

supports would be placed upon the roof and tie into the existing

a signiÀcant amount of energy during a variety of times of the day

column grid below. Using this pre-designed structure would decrease

throughout the year with the peak producing months during the

the cost of having a custom structure fabricated and tested.

height of the football season. We estimate that the purchase and

imbedded LED lights intertwined with the photovoltaic panels in the same vain as the main tower, or in response to the stadium crowd’s enthusiasm or when a touchdown is scored; letting Austin know the progression of the game or become a light signal to the University and Austin. Potentially dense LED’s could be added to the vertical portion of the panels which will be highly visible and would create advertising logos, state the current energy generation, depict Amber Alerts to the drivers of the interstate, or congratulate new graduates.

Fig. 4 112+ decibals (touchdown) and remains illuminated after the win

Fig. 7 Night game with LED advertisement logos

Solar: The swooping structure would be clad with thin Àlm Fig. 5 105 decibals

photovoltaic panels from HelioVolt which is an up and coming Austin based PV manufacturer of a new type of thin Àlm technology, CIGS (Copper, Indium, Gallium, Selenium). Through using HelioVolt we would be investing and encouraging our local economy. The efÀciency of the panels is lower than monocrystalline or polycrystalline, but they have an innovative manufacturing process that signiÀcantly lowers the cost and amount of material and energy used to produce the cells. The panels are ridged in structure but when multiple panels are placed along the surface of the structure it gives the illusion of a free Áowing curve. The LED lights could be sandwiched around the PV cells within the glass or could be layered behind the glass panels to ensure that no shadow is created on the face of the photovoltaics.

Fig. 6 100 decibals

A slight gap between each panel would be preserved to ensure

as a leader in tackling climate crisis and create energy independence

Haskell, Burt. HelioVolt’s Director of Product Development. Lecture and PowerPoint presentation given February 5, 2009 to the University of Texas at Austin.

for the country. As students ourselves, we would love to see the

How Green is Austin? October 21, 2008. HufÀngton Post. Accessed May 6, 2009. http:// www.hufÀngtonpost.com/2008/10/21/how-green-is-austin_n_136578.html

University of Texas takes a more visible role in tackling such critical issues. “The University of Texas: What Starts Here Changes the

Kropp, Robert. Solar Expected to Maintain its Status as the World’s Fastest-Growing Energy Technology. Sustainability Investment News. March 3, 2009. Social Funds.

Accessed May 6, 2009. http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/2639.html

World!”

Novum Structures. Acessed May 10, 2008. http://www.novumstructures.com/novum/ Partner ProÀle. Green Power Partnership. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Accessed May 6, 2009. http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/partners/partners/cityofaustintx. htm

Epilogue

Texas Longhorns. OfÀcial Site of the Texas Athletics. CBS. 2009. http://www.texassports. com/

This document is an excerpt from a 58 page booklet that was

The German Energy Society. Planning and Installing Photovoltaic Systems for the reticulated structure for a free-form surface. Earthscan. 2008.

submitted to the University for consideration during the Spring 2009 semester. With the driving force of Professor Werner Lang, this project has been submitted and presented to numerous committees, boards, departments, and individuals, who have all been in great

Thin Film. U.S. Department of Energy - Energy EfÀciency and Renewable Energy. Solar Energy Technologies Program. January 5, 2006. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/ thin_Àlms.html Ut Campus Environmnetal Center. Accessed May 7, 2009. http://www.utenvironment.org/ content/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

support of seeing this thought put into action. The project went

Welcome to UTake Charge. 2007. University of Texas at Austin. http://www.utexas.edu/ utakecharge/about/

through a structural feasibility study with Datum Engineers in Austin,

Notes

who found the cost of the structure on par with student estimations

Figure 01: Arcangeli, Gregory. The University of Texas at Austin. April 2009.

using a similar structure, though the LEDs have currently been cut

Figure 03: Arcangeli, Gregory ; Gnant, Chad; Holdenried, Erin; and Vanessa Poe. The University of Texas at Austin. April 2009.

out of the project due to Ànancial concerns. The next step of the

Figure 07: Arcangeli, Gregory and Vanessa Poe. The University of Texas at Austin. April 2009.

project is to receive an estimate for the solar portion of the project before the University and Athletics fully considers building this student-designed solar installation on campus.

Figure 08: Holdenried, Erin. The University of Texas at Austin. April 2009.

Figure 09 : Novum Structures. Acessed May 10, 2008. http://www.novumstructures.com/ novum/ Figure 10 [Norman Foster Building]: Sir Norman Foster does it again, and again, and…

Museum Lab. The New York Times, November 19, 2007. http://www.museumlab. org/2008/02/07/sir-norman-foster-does-it-again-and-again/ Figure 11: Holdenried, Erin. The University of Texas at Austin. April 2009.

Figure 12: Holdenried, Erin and Chad Gnant. The University of Texas at Austin. April 2009.

Figure 13: Arcangeli, Gregory. The University of Texas at Austin. April 2009.

References Campus Sustainability Policy. The University of Texas at Austin Revised Handbook of Operating Procedures. Policy Number 1.A.3. April 22, 2008. http://www.utexas.edu/ policies/hoppm/01.A.03.html Eiffert, Patrina and Gregory Kiss. Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Desings for Commercial and Institutional Structures. A Sourcebook for Architects. 2000. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Accessed May 7, 2009. www.nrel.gov/docs/fy00osti/25272. pdf Ecostream. 2006. http://www.ecostream.us/ G, John. Global Solar Photovoltaic Market Analysis and Forecasts to 2020. March 13, 2009.

Aarkstore Enterprise. Accessed May 6, 2009. http://www.prlog.org/10198293-global-solarphotovoltaic-market-analysis-and-forecasts-to-2020.pdf Gold, Russell. Texas Moves to Foster Solar Power. April 23, 2009. The Wall Street Journal.

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Accessed May 6, 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124042738382344591.html

Photovoltaic Application for the Scoreboard

the role of sustainable values in people’s daily lives and prove itself

grants, and therefore more money and notoriety for the school.

The curve shape offers the opportunity to test the attachment and performance of the panels at different orientations and to offer research and learning opportunities for the many programs, research, and curriculums on campus. The free span over the rooftop practice Àeld preserves the use of the space along with adding extra protection from sun, wind, and water. The unique size, shape and visibility increases the opportunities for additional uses and interest in the school.

Fig. 11 Breakdown of photovolatic angles

installation of the photovoltaics will be about $4.8 million (at $15/

Call to Action

Watt). The structure itself was estimated to cost roughly 2.2 million to fabricate and construct, but the system will take roughly 15 years to payback and after 30 years the system could offset 7,150 tons of carbon. LED lights incorporated into the photovoltaic panels would add another 3-5 million dollars to the project, but the amount of revenue it would create with advertisement contracts from big name corporations would easily pay for itself in a season or two.

SOLAR CASCADE PAYBACK ESTIMATE PER ELECTRICITY COST PER KWH Electricity Cost ($/kWh) $0.08 $0.09 $0.12 $0.16 $0.20 $0.24 $0.28 $0.32 $0.36 $0.40 $0.44

Energy Generated / day $83 $95 $124 $165 $207 $248 $290 $331 $372 $414 $455

Cost Savings / Year $30,200 $34,730 $45,300 $60,400 $75,500 $90,600 $105,700 $120,800 $135,900 $151,000 $166,100

Payback Years 26 22 17 13 10 9 7 6 6 5 5

Fig. 12 Payback estimate per electricity cost

Fig. 13 Night View

As a world-class public research institution, and one of the largest in the country with a Àrst class athletics department to match, the University of Texas has the opportunity to plant the seeds to catalyze change within the local Austin community, the nationwide academic community and the nation as a whole. A photovoltaic installation of visual prominence can be tied directly to such a source of pride for the school, our football team, and prove to the nation that sustainable technology can be successfully integrated

Advantage/Disadvantage: The disadvantage to this project is the signiÀcant upfront investment from the University. However, because of the nature of the project, its large size, and the orientation of the panels it would generate energy, carbon credits, government

into the existing social and technological framework. UT can show its thought and beliefs in action through this project by showing this successful integration of clean technology, education and fun. In this way, the University can play a role in shifting negative mind-set about

Roll Out Spa Program for the George Bush Houston Intercontinental Airport Alix Bulleit Critic: Igor Siddiqui

The semester-long intensive investigation of the experience of space at all scales through the development of modular systems carried on into the design of a new prototype for a roll-out spa program. The intended site is the Geroge Bush Houston Intercontinental Airport, but the spa is designed to be easily retroÀ tted for airports nationwide.

The idea of modular architecture inspired the use of modular panels of differing materials to create an integrated system of volume, program, circulation, lighting and furnishings. After a deep exploration of the airport and its cultural context as a

site, I decided to play off of the tension between surveillance and privacy through variances in the transparency and density of materiality in my prototype.

The triangular panels vary in size and material, ranging from glass to wood, in order to clue users in as to the amount of privacy required for different programs within the spa. Using the idea of a kit-of-parts with this system of panels, the intention was to allow for easy adaptation to any airport terminal. The structure itself completely molds the space by means of its undulating skin as a mesh that encapsulates individuals and form a new environment

Section 1

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Section 2

Section 3

within the context of the airport. Spanning an airport terminal, the structure forces travelers for a few seconds to remove themselves from the sensory overload of the airport, providing a small escape from the routine travel experience.

Section 4

Reimer’s Ranch Park Chelsea Larsson

Critic: Kira Appelhans

Set in the dramatic landscape of West Texas, Reimer’s Ranch is a place rich with ecology and cultural history. After its recent purchase by the county and transformation into a state park, much debate has been raised about how to care for the site. Part of the park was fenced off to most recreators but open to Boy Scouts and mountain bikers because the Scouts had cleared away invasive Ashe Juniper and the mountain bikers built and maintained their own trails. This collaboration between the park and the user inspired me to locate other possible collaborations on site and design a landscape with those exchanges in mind.

This design organizes the diversity of natural materials and current recreators, and proposes a stewardship program that maintains the park while building spaces and inhabitable moments over time.

The design is not formally prescriptive in its resolution; rather, it is a site strategy meant to encourage ownership, both physically and visually, through communal activities and user-built places of respite.

Users are considered stewards and become a part of a community connected by a framework of ‘tool sheds,’ structures that are siteand program-speciÀc. For instance, the rock climbers’ hut is a two-

37 story structure that can be entered from the top and bottom of a cliff; the location is central to the cliff base where rock climbers recreate, and the structure contains tools particular to their sport.

Each tool shed houses supplies that are employed by the most adjacent program as well as a set of basic tools that other users might need in order to care for the park.

The areas directly surrounding the tool sheds are designed to stimulate the engagement of users in personalizing the park with localized gardens, with the intent that they will become invested in the broader landscape and become a part of its future care. These

tool sheds are connected by a series of typologically unique trails, intended to be built and possibly modiÀed by the users. By creating this network of places across the site, it is my hope that programs will overlap, form knots, and create a web of users working together, creating gardens and buildings grown out of a common, cared-for landscape.

Land Water John Paul Rysavy Critic: Joyce Rosner

The design for the Austin Rowing Club boathouse responds to the movement of rowing trafÀc on Lady Bird Lake and the current of the walking trail along the boundary of water and land. Situated on the seam between lake and city, the building conforms to the ritual and kinetic process of rowing and the progression between land and water. Situated on the edge of the urban fabric, the facility serves to further accommodate crossing the city of Austin by bike and by foot.

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Kinetic Cultivation: Morphological Potential ial Kayln Adams, Edna Ledesma, Audrey McKee, Stacy Rodriguez ez & Lisa Storer ULI Competition / Professor Simon Atkinson

The present site in Denver, Colorado holds a large collection of scattered, big box retailers, but the future carries a series of unfolding possibilities, and innovation is our tool of choice.

Throughout the course of its 10-year implementation, the Alameda redevelopment seeks to coalesce its neighboring districts though the establishment of green linkages, successful pedestrian streetscapes, and a maximized potential of the light rail system. To the citizens of the area, the established commercial base, featuring both big box and small storefront retail along Broadway, Àlls the needed role of providing a variety of consumer goods.

Adjacent to this wealth of consumerism sits the Denver Design Center, which enables the growing regional design sector to gather at a visual and tactile home-base. With a comprehensive understanding of the economic impact of the big box retailer to the local consumer, this redevelopment seeks to ignite a complete transformation of the existing program to become one that is more conscious and careful about its social and environmental impact.

While undergoing this change to emphasize density and commerce, the idea of Ă exibility emerges as a key element to energize the district. Former structures are repurposed, renovated, and built

41 once again to integrate systems and use space and resources in a more efÀcient manner. At present, the location holds a great amount of potential with respect to the current economic condition, and hosts a thriving industry of creative and intelligent minds; our goal is to reveal the potential of the mundane and allow this community in Denver to become a destination.

Phase Phase I I

Phase Phase IIIIII

Phase Phase IVIV

Kinetic Cultivation: Morphological Potential

43

Phase Phase II II

45 formations.

Throughout the studio, students considered “composites.” They considered composites abstractly, conceptually, and in the context of contemporary architectural-landscape and architecturaldiscourse. Contemplating and exploring composites – conditions of two or more interrelated systems, each of which contribute to a new behavior/performance, but which remain identiÀably discrete – provided a way into developing alternate resonances between site and building. There are many ways to conceptualize the relationship between landscape and architecture, by choosing

composites as our initial Àller, students privileged the potentials of interconnectivity and reciprocity, while acknowledging the distinction between constituent parts.

Projects highlighted here: Sky Lutz-Carrillo, Mike Stark, Natalie Ward, Alexer Taganas, Aaron Sleater, Jonathan Schwartz

Object Ecologies Materials Lab Exhibit Critic: William O’Brien Jr.

Traditionally in architecture, potential disparities between descriptions of site and conceptions of building have been reconciled through, what can be considered a descriptive and conceptual equalizer, representation. For example, Modernism was witness to “landscape as tabula rasa”, reÁecting an investment in buildings as synthetic, planar, structurally-gridded constructs.

Appliqué, appropriated patterns, signs and symbols dictated an understanding of buildings during Post-Modernism, perpetuating a similarly artiÀcial interpretation of ground. Contemporaneously, resonances between landscape and architecture are increasingly

dependent on systems of organization—natural and synthetic— and their processes of formation. Object Ecologies focused its research on the development of alternative reciprocities linking site and building. Temporarily eschewing common (albeit important), practice-oriented, site-deÀning elements—lot lines, setback requirements, zoning codes — Object Ecologies instead tested interpretations of site which highlight systemic attributes, lifecycles, time-based ecological processes, topological characteristics, etc. Likewise, Object Ecologies experimented with depictions of building as relationally-, conditionally- and tactically-conceived

Republic Square Don Xu Critic: Jason Sowell

Republic Square Park is located in downtown Austin along Guadalupe Street between 4th and 5th Street. One of the four original public squares laid down in the 1838 Waller Plan, Republic Square Park is currently underutilized and unmaintained. Despite this, the location of the park, the existence of several historical oak trees on the site, as well as future development in the area gives Republic Square Park great civic value.

Evaluating and designing the modern urban landscape is driven as much by process as it is by form. This project was approached Àrst through a series of abstract surface models which responded

to site conditions as well as contextual relationships with the new federal courthouse and the surrounding developments. These models helped to inform the physical dimensions and shape of the site as well as solutions to its construction.

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Republic Square

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Astronomer’s Retreat Jesse Anderson & Erica Ko Critic: Russell Krepart & Cisco Gomes

Located in West Texas, the McDonald Observatory has served as a place for cutting-edge scientiÀc research, drawing astronomers from around the world to use its telescopes. The observatory has also become a destination for amateur astronomers and tourists with an interest in the night sky. As new telescopes are continually being developed, the facilities at the McDonald Observatory appear to be rapidly reaching the end of their use in terms of contemporary scientiÀc research, and the future of the site appears to be moving more in the direction of tourism and away from professional research.

This shift in function is accompanied by many questions, which we sought to answer on a variety of scales: Àrst by means of a small residence designed with a weekend hobbyist in mind, and second with a fully redesigned campus for the McDonald observatory. This method of working Àrst on a small scale allowed us to fully explore and articulate certain themes that would serve as inspiration for the second part of the project.

We strove for continuity throughout the project, especially with regard to the use of the building as a means of mitigating the harsh climate of West Texas and the achievement of a clear relationship

51 of material to form and site. Similarly, we attempted to use the architecture to emphasize the natural beauty and vastness of the site, while holding in mind the central notion that these facilities will cater to a different type of clientele who visit primarily for leisure rather than work.

BoatBridgeHouse Andrew Bell Critics: Joyce Rosner

All along Austin’s Town Lake the damages of the city’s expansion are prevalent. Litter corrodes the water’s edge, turning a dip in the water into an unpleasant experience. The site for this project is no exception, and a manmade excavation of the water’s edge further mars the area. My proposal aims to repair the damaged edge and provide new linkages between rower, park participant, and water.

BoatBridgeHouse begins as park path and turns into a dock as it extends out over the water. The course of the path follows the former shoreline that has been excavated, while the dock captures and retains a portion of water, protecting it from the Áoating trash.

The result is a clean shoreline to hang out at, a walkway over the water, and plenty of places to dip your feet into the river.

The facilities for the boat club are housed in structures shifted off the path. Concrete masses, which hold an ofÀce space and bathrooms, anchor the pier to land at the transitional zones of the structure. Boat storage facilities and training rooms are housed in light structures that Áoat over the pier and slip past the concrete anchors.

Sliding doors provide nighttime security for the sculling equipment and allow the structure to open up entirely during the day. The

53 proximity of water allows for sculls to be dropped into the water with ease and gives rowers a continual connection to their favorite environment: the water.

1

9

8

2

3

4

1/8” = 1’ 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Office/Workshop Boat Storage Oar Storage Dock Side Pool Entrance Gym Kitchen Lockers/Bathroom Lan Side Pool Entrance BBQ Hut

6 5

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BoatBridgeHouse

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Alma de Mujer Pedestrian Bridge Kevin Johnson, Yasmin Fazelinia, Adolfo Moreno, Lauren Richter, Meegan Beddoe, Brittany Cooper, Jonna Huneryager, David Bowers, Alex Howell, Courtney Kizer, Ryan Marcrum, Catherine Murphy & Jose Arellano Critic: Steve Ross

The mission of Alma de Mujer Center for Social Change is to offer programs for local communities and meeting space for social change organizations. The spiritual atmosphere of this secluded oasis near Lake Travis, only thirty minutes from downtown Austin, is one that encourages its visitors to Ànd their own sense of meaning in the land and community in which they live. As a member of the Indigenous Women’s Network, Alma “supports public education and advocacy, the revitalization of Indigenous languages and culture, the elimination of all forms of oppression, the attainment of self-sufÀciency and the protection of Mother Earth for future

generations.” With a focus on activism and social justice, Alma offers a meeting place for those working for change in the Austin area. While this may not be considered the ‘highest and best use’ of land by traditional valuation, the very real and far-reaching change that Alma inspires in the community is, according to AREA-ER [Alternative Real Estate Action – Experiential Research], an ideal example of ‘maximally productive’ real estate.

The major design obstacle was the sparse $400 budget to construct a bridge that spanned over a 40 foot section of the Cyprus Creek on the Alma de Mujer property near Lake Travis. In order to

57 construct the bridge within the given budget, we as a class went into the community to establish connections between other individuals and organizations whose missions harmonized with both Alma and AREA-ER. These organizations included: Guthrie Lumber, Niece Equipment, L.P., Austin Energy, Home Depot, Seth Dean, Dean Transport, Jack Sanders, Design Build Adventure, Stan Pipkin, Lighthouse Solar, UT Undergraduate Studies Signature Program, and The UT School of Architecture.

Within the period of a semester the pedestrian bridge for Alma de Mujer was designed and constructed. By salvaging old utility

poles that were too irregular to be used for their original intended purpose, the 40 foot span was made possible thanks to a simple donation from Austin Energy. These two utility poles were secured with folded steel “sleeve” brackets bolted onto an existing foundation from an old bridge that had been demolished years ago from a Áood. The poles were aligned into the sleeves and bolted using several threaded rod through bolts. This new bolted bracket connection provided a much stronger attachment to the ground than the previous bridge, ensuring the new bridge to withstand Áooding.

stabilizing––the landscape…creating a place where other things happen, not being the thing that is happening.

So the technical aspect is really in service of the intention?

I think it is really interesting that you are talking about speaking clearly with the object but not being clear about what you are saying.Then it is not necessarily about critique, but it is about this evidence of a feeling— evidence of an attention to the way things are or might be.

Absolutely. I’m not interested in the materials themselves. I’m more interested in what can be said through the movement of those materials. And with every piece there are so many ways to build and express it, the least precious aspect, really, is the actual object; they’re all gonna break.

Right.You mentioned the expression of an idea, that the object itself seems to recede behind that expression. So, you feel as though they are communicating?

My intention is to communicate! I’m not making them for a vacuum. I know that my intention is to make them communicate my experience. It’s a way of reaching out, though there’s nothing specific that’s being communicated. In some ways, the object is a record of my process. It’s so hard to talk about because it’s almost like any time anything gets defined, it’s not really true....

Yeah, deÀnitely.

So, there are no truths. And then we’re talking about ideas about the nature of mechanics, or the nature of utilitarianism.

You could probably say anything and justify the idea.

Right…as far as what’s being said with the piece, or about the piece?

—what’s being said about the piece.

That’s interesting.The Finnish architect and theorist Juhanni Palismaa was here yesterday and gave a really great talk. In it, he said something to the effect of, “I have these certain beliefs and I feel very strongly about them but once I say them, or commit to that belief, the exact opposite is also true.”

Exactly! I would totally agree with that. The pieces for me are not meant to communicate anything specific. Going back to the word you used, “ambiguous.” I try and work with ambiguity. The ambiguity is very important. The work has to be both clear and ambiguous at the same time.

You know, we occasionally have a conversation here—actually quite often—about the difference between art and architecture. One perspective is that the realm of art is of provocation and critique, while the realm of architecture has much more to do with receding into and supporting––

Yeah, I think that it’s really important to make a distinction between the thought about something and the feeling about something, because they are two very different realms. All the machines that I’m making, and all art, always has a feeling that’s associated with them. I’m very aware of that. Everybody will come to a piece of art with their own baggage, their own world view. For me the meaning of any art is never contained in the art but is brought to it.

I can see how there’s a tremendous overlap between art and architecture in the feeling realm because every building will convey a very strong feeling when you are in the space—and that can be different than how it gets used, different than its program and its intention. I guess you could have a building that works really well on an emotional level but fails on the functional level. My machines, sometimes I feel as though they work well on the emotional level and they’re not built well, so they’ll fail, and vice versa.

Another issue which appears important to you is precision and play and the value of hand work. All of these machines are clearly handmade, they’re clearly partially planned and partially improvised–– Exactly! Totally. Oh, it’s all about that because—well, no its not all about it, because nothing is all about anything [laughs]—but, for me, it’s always been integral with the process. I’m doing this also because I love to build things with my hands. That’s an underlying truth. Every one of these machines could be built remotely with a CNC machine and it would look different and it would feel different. But, there is something about the quality of the hand. That alone carries so much information to the viewer: just the fact that it’s made that way. It speaks on that level, it’s carrying information, and it’s integral with the impression that a viewer would get the experience of making it. It’s like an extension of my body.

And, you know, a CNC machine is also an extension of our bodies, it’s much more remote, but it is still an extension because something that’s made on a CNC machine, or a

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aspect of any art form. For example, in painting and dealing with the nature of color and how it works…

Arthur Ganson Interview Conducted by Pete Wenger & Dan Sylvester

Arthur Ganson has been making kinetic sculpture for 31 years, having received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of New Hampshire in 1978. His work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums in both the United States and Europe. He has held residencies at a number of institutions including the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge where he has also maintained an ongoing exhibition of his sculpture since 1995.

His sculpture has been featured in numerous magazines including Smithsonian Magazine,The New York Times Magazine and Forbes. In 2005 his work was proÀled on Nova: Science Now by WGBH television in Boston and he has even made a guest appearance as a cartoon bear on the children’s cartoon series Arthur, also produced by WGBH. He has been a guest speaker at many universities and has given presentations at both the TED Conference and the Long Now Foundation.

Besides exhibiting work, he has taught at the Haystack Mountain School on Deer Isle, Maine.With the MIT Museum, he has helped run a community chain reaction event for the past 11 years. He is the inventor of the awardwinning children’s toy Toobers and Zots.

Thanks for agreeing to talk with us.

No problem.

Your show is up now in the Mebane Gallery downstairs and tonight you are giving a talk about your work.We just wanted to sit and talk with you a little about your work and your approach.

Recently, at the school we’ve been talking a lot about the meaning of making. One thing I’ve noticed is that your machines are really evocative and sort of appear as inventions with ambiguous intentions, but at the same time I know you also invent tools with really clear and technical intentions.

Well, the tool making has to be very specific because there’s a very clear mechanical use for it. I see the mechanical engineering aspect of my work, which is problem solving with mechanics, as a very utilitarian process; but the function is, as you say, ambiguous. That’s what’s interesting to me. When I’m approaching the work as an engineer, I have all the same considerations as an engineer that makes any useful tool.

So, all of that goes in, but then the utilitarian function has to do with an attempt to illicit feelings and to express ideas. The basic impulse is to express feelings and to share the deep feelings. The engineering aspect is just what has to happen in order to get to that, and it’s very similar to any technical

Yeah.

Right, right.

Because the object itself really means nothing at all. It’s just stuff. It is just wire and a little bit of oil and maybe a found object: a piece of plastic or some bone. I mean really, it’s nothing. All of the meaning is in your own being and I’m aware of that. I think that’s the place of clarity and ambiguity.

The conditions that allow someone to make something their own is that it’s clear enough to grasp: “oh, I know that, I know this, that’s a wishbone, that’s a piece of string.” It is all very clear, but then floating above that, as you say, is the ambiguity of “what does it feel like?” We all know what movement feels like through our own bodies and that’s such a critical piece of information, right? Just like the gesture of walking or of opening… if we didn’t have that experience inside our bodies, we probably wouldn’t be creating meanings. So, there’s no meaning in the work itself, we bring it all to the piece.

Interview with Arthur Ganson

I would say so, yeah. I think because the opposites are true.

I think about the mechanism so seriously and look so closely into the details of how they get put together in order to create a gesture that hopefully can allow itself to transcend its material nature. That’s a goal. It doesn’t always happen. And, even if it does happen, it works for one person and won’t work for another person. So you can never take the observer out of it. This is like my version of quantum mechanics, right? The observer is always part of the picture, right?

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But, then again, almost going to the point of reveling in absurdity and futility.

Is that a strong part of what you’re doing?

piece of lumber that’s cut in a mill, or plywood, or all the materials that we’ve made, they’re closer to our bodies than say, trees and rocks—pure landscape—because we’ve manipulated them. In that way I feel like there’s a commonality there.

But I started making these machines because I wanted to work with my hands. I felt like it was really important because it very much defined what they are. I can see now that it was a clear bringing together of all the parts of my being and they just happened to evolve in this way—kind of like a tree will be a perfect evolution of all the forces on it and all of its internal functions. It just naturally grows to accommodate all of its processes, but then be totally unique. I could teach someone to bend wires and make gears but everything they make would be totally unique.

All your machines are made by hand and they have a certain feeling.

The process could be automated––you could make a machine to make your machines, for example––and it would have a different quality.This seems to be something that comes up throughout life. It’s not just an art thing or an architecture thing.There’s a very particular threshold where the “remoteness” has gone beyond something that carries meaning and emotion and becomes something that speaks of an intention. How would you begin to identify that?

Yeah. Right, right. I think on some level, and maybe it’s all relative, everything is going to contain some degree of meaning and emotion, especially if it’s fabricated. We have to decide upon shape and form and orientation in space— everything has an effect, right? So, this floor and the carpet, they’re both made with tools. You know, the wood boards weren’t hand hewn, but they were set by hand. Someone decided on where they ended and someone decided about the color and the weave of this fabric. It does carry, very much, a quality—a remote quality—of hand. See, it’s like a scale, I think. On one end of the scale you have an oil painting or a drawing in which you can see the muscles and how they acted. You’re not going to see someone’s muscles as clearly here on the floor.

Actually, when I’m building my machines there are many aspects of the building process that are somewhat removed from me. I go over to the band-saw and cut a piece of metal.

That cut is a mechanical thing; but then its orientation, its length, or maybe the fact that I didn’t de-burr it or I do de-burr

it—certain aspects of the machines carry more of the quality, now, than other aspects.

However, forgetting about the specific material—stepping back—the orientation and what’s being said by it and why it’s there in the first place is more important. I mean really, why is it there in the first place and what is this strange collection of materials? In order for me to really know how well they work they have to be all together in their final form because the imagination of the machine is very different than the actual object. I can see how you can do all the imagining that you can possibly do with a structure but you won’t really know how it feels until it is built. That must be really difficult in the realm of architecture.

Especially as students.We struggle with that all the time because we only deal with representations, which can be frustrating. Sometimes there are big jumps between levels of abstraction with craft, you know, talking about everything from “the hand” to generative modeling and CNC. Can you transmit the craft of pencil on trace all the way through the layers of a computer drawing to a Ànal building? Where is that craft, how deep does that craft go? For a lot of people, part of the beauty of your machines is the craft. It’s interesting that you say that the materials aren’t so important— They’re subservient.

How do you mean?

The materials—hopefully both the materials and the level of craft will be subservient to the expression or the overall idea or content of that particular piece. What’s the statement?

Where does it all come together? And when it all comes together, what does it impart? What is it trying to capture?

That has nothing to do with the actual material. And that, “what is it trying to capture?” is the synthesis of both the material aspect and the motion. It’s all together.

And it seems to sort of Áoat above the thing, in that space between.

In a way, yeah.

The day I met you, my friends were helping you set up the show and when you would turn these things on to test them the immediate reaction from me and my friends was to nervously laugh because it just gets you right away. I think we were all incredibly relieved that your response to us laughing was to laugh even harder. [all laugh] To me that reveals this attitude about “the machine” in a larger sense that is not just Rube Goldberg-esque in the sense of using mechanisms to reveal an absurdity and futility, there is the other side of really loving the mechanism and the machine––

Fall Creek Winery Joshua Bailey Critics: Ulrich Dangel

Fall Creek Vineyards has been producing wine in the Texas Hill Country for the past two decades. In this design, an amorphous skin covers both the public and process-related spaces, acting as a symbol for the winery as it hovers over the vineyard. A Glu-lam structure allows for large interior spaces to be created by the sculptural roof, and enables a connection between the tasting spaces and the spaces for wine production.

Visitors are brought through the winery in a way that engages the senses: views of the vines that produce the grapes, the smell of the must fermenting and the oak barrels holding it, and the

taste of the wine working together to create a comfortable environment for tasting wine.

Wooden Slats Wooden Slat Support

Secondary Structure

Standing Seam Aluminum s

Purlins 5 1/8” x 6”

Joists 6 3/4” x 1’

Beams 8 3/4” x 1’ 4”

Girders 10 3/4” x 2’

Primary Structure Columns + Shear Walls

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Glazing set in heavy timber frame Heavy Timber Columns

Fall Creek Winery

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Peckerwood Visitors Center Edna Ledesma Critic: Lori Ryker

In envisioning the future of Peckerwood Garden as a destination for a variety of users, I felt it was important to redeÀne that experience from entry to end through a strategy that informs a common ground for all users, from casual visitors to experienced scholars. In this design, the visitors center was envisioned as a release agent from the more natural and undisturbed landscape experience to a trajectory outward into the manicured gardens.

The reevaluation of the program began with a careful consideration of its users divided into three categories: elite or selective garden visitors, which include friends and special guests of John Fairey,

the garden’s superintendent; academics, which could, in turn, be subdivided into categories varying as to the extent of their stay; and common garden visitors in need of a guided tour experience.

I began by identifying the relationship of private vs. public and how these three user types could fall into either of those two categories. Instances of overlap were derived to form the galleries and the herbarium, which allowed for the interaction of paying visitors and extended-stay scholars.

The placement of the visitors center was dictated by the kind of experience that a stranger would want to have as a Àrst impression

67 of Peckerwood. After visiting the site, I was enamored with the grand vistas found in the core of the garden as one approaches the forested region alongside the garden’s grand oak. In order to establish that Àrst impression, public entry was redirected through the underutilized farm road at the western boundary of the site.

The transition of entering from a highly vegetated region and then following a series of water features and decked pathways allowed for the psychological preparation of having arrived at a special place.

A site near the grand oak at the core of the site became the location for bridging the existing gardens to the new visitors’ entry

procession. Having now changed the entry for the users, the existing entry could be fenced off and left only for those doing research and servicing the facilities. The southernmost tip of the site would be reprogrammed as a regional research area for farming or plant cultivation of all kinds, and the expansion of the garden’s research capabilities would allow for the upkeep of an improved herbarium.

McDonald Observatory Lodge Kevin Johnson & Jeremy Olbrys Critics: Russell Krepart & Cisco Gomes

Set atop Mount Locke in the heart of the mountains of west Texas lies McDonald Observatory. As the observatory’s telescopes are phased out with the completion of a massive new telescope in South America, the world-renowned professional and academic facility will be preserved as a historic destination for amateur astronomers to explore and use. The proposed project is a lodging facility that provides larger and more efÀcient hospitality facilities for amateur astronomers. To reÁect the lasting qualities of the site, the building is designed to withstand the location’s harsh conditions while becoming a permanent element of the mountainside.

Hospitality spaces consisting of 22 double rooms, 5 suites, a dining area, kitchen and lounges are strategically located along with administration ofÀces and maintenance facilities. Since many of the Lodge’s visitors will be amateur or professional astronomers who sleep for most of the daytime hours, lodging rooms are positioned at the lower level with small northern exposure fenestrations and operable closing devices. Public gathering space is a commodity on Mount Locke, and the building was designed to incorporate three separate outdoor gathering spaces to appreciate and observe (with amateur telescopes) the landscape and clear night sky.

69 The building utilizes two structural systems: steel framing with a vierendeel truss and load-bearing, cast-in-place concrete walls.

These overlapping and interconnecting systems are expressed on the interior and exterior with board-formed concrete walls and corten steel, drawing from the site’s arid environment. A series of framed corten panels slide to cover the windows at night in order to prevent light pollution, a negative effect when observing stars.

Crisp detailing of common materials are employed in a fashion that alludes to cultural references of traveling through space. Where possible, this effect is enhanced by the building’s linear form along

with particular wall and ceiling treatments. Walls running parallel to the length of the building are either free-standing or have large uninterrupted sections. Finished in dark wood, these walls are typically staggered to allow views of the additional receding walls’ metal, Àn-like edges. Linear ceiling lights, vents, and colors create a unique experience that ties the length of the building together, providing a sense of familiarity for anyone who has an interest in deep space exploration.

McDonald Observatory Lodge

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Land Art Museum Brian Rome Critic: William O’Brian Jr.

The program for the studio is a Contemporary Land | Art Museum located outside of the town of Fredericksburg, Texas. The 40,000 square foot museum includes interior permanent and temporary exhibition galleries, public spaces, education amenities, and administrative spaces. The program also incorporates the design of a “framework� for future commissioned works of land art, as well as the phasing and choreographing of its implementation.

The design creates a network system in which programmatic nodes are dispersed throughout the site. Activating one node produces

a series of relationships between certain satellite nodes. These relationships are based on the programmatic needs of the museum at a particular moment in time and in-turn, activate the land art zones within the network. All other nodes and land art zones outside the network are de-activated and prepared for future commissioned land art exhibits.

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Land Art Museum

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SALK INSTITUTE COMPETITION Brian Bedrosian & William Huie LYDIA STREET ALLEY FLAT Student Design Build Summer Studio INTELLIGENT CONTROLS Lisa Storer A VISION FOR BERLIN MITTE Nick Coker, Kevin Olsen & Niko Von Schwabe WALKWAY BIRD-BLIND Molly Hubbs

sustainable design-build prototype visual presence comfort efficiency energy feedback solar wind demands urban mixed-use path spiritual sectional solar access community structure filtering biological conducive empowering consumption data strategy exploration sensor

STUDIO INSTRUCTORS Design I

Michael Benedikt

Design II

Larry Doll

Vertical Studio

David Heymann Smilja Milovanovic-Bertram

Advanced Design Simon Atkinson* Ilse Frank*

* travel studio

SUMMER 2009

Salk Institute Competition / Looking Into the Distance Brian Bedrosian & William Huie Critic: David Heymann

Louis Kahn’s original building is the spiritual center of the Salk

faculty ofÀces are close to the laboratories with which they are

Institute, but future development of the campus must incorporate

associated. Conference rooms, where the teams gather, have pride

that powerful space into a larger composition.

of place fronting the long stoa. The open plan laboratories and

The campus can be understood as a series of sectional data. The

universally accessible mechanical Áoors make the new building as

original terrace is the conceptual high point, and it organizes

versatile as the original building.

exterior spaces: a new entry grove, a plaza adjacent to the new

A closed-loop heat exchange system uses the PaciÀc Ocean as

auditorium, and the hotel terrace looking south-west towards La

a heat sink to offset the cooling requirements of both the new

Jolla Bay and the PaciÀc Ocean.

building and Kahn’s original building. A roof structure allows

Research involves constant, collaborative interaction. Generous

solar access where required (e.g., for green houses) and shades

79 the building. It also carries radiative cooling, feasible given the

First Place:

relatively consistent temperatures of both the supply water and the

ACSA’s PRESERVATION AS PROVOCATION:

conditioned interiors. A microcrystalline solar photovoltaic array

RE-THINKING KAHN’S SALK INSTITUTE

atop the roof could generate about 2.15 GWh annually.

International Student Design Competition

The preservation of Kahn’s original building demands its incorporation in a lively, thriving campus. This proposal recognizes the centrality of the original building while incrementally developing an architectural understructure that encourages the growth of this vital community.

Salk Institute Competition / Looking into the Distance

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Lydia Street Alley Flat Alley Flat Initiative Critic: Michael Gatto

During the summer of 2009, the UT Center for Sustainable Development, Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation, and Austin Community Design and Development Center collaborated to provide a non-traditional design/build course for undergraduate and graduate students as part of the Alley Flat Initiative. The Àveweek course incorporated design investigations and hands-on building within a broader neighborhood context. Students collaborated with a local builder, Saldana Homes, to complete construction on a fully accessible, one-bedroom unit for the Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation. Students were challenged to design and

build four primary exterior components, exterior cladding system, entry portico, site elements, and porch/ramp, for the second Alley Flat prototype originally designed in the Spring 2007 AFI studio. These exterior elements address the on-going dialogue over visual presence, neighborhood character, and environmental technology.

Participants: Eli Mosley, Megan McCall, Eileen Wright, Marisa Love, Chelsea Larsson, Bhujon Kang, Sasha Greif, Lee Jung Soo, Changwook Kim, JohnPaul McDaris, Justin Dowhower, Lisa Acker, Christopher Minor, Saul San Juan, Diana Su, Kristina Ibarra

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completely incomprehensible when it comes to economizing.

The United States is the largest consumer of energy in the world,

Direct feedback is an integral, yet only recently developed component

representing 21 .6 percent of the 462 quadrillion BTUs of energy

of advanced building control systems. Essentially it consists of a real-

consumed globally, although it only contains 4.5 percent of the

time display of energy use data, accessible to the users of the building.

world’s population.2 In the U.S., commercial and residential sectors

Displays typically also have the capability of showing historic data

combined consume about 39 percent of total energy, and this

for comparison, the cost equivalents of kilowatt-hours used, as well

building sector consumes most of its energy in the form of electricity.

as estimated bills. More advanced systems with individually metered

In its most recent report, The United States Energy Information

equipment can show data for each, and some systems also monitor

Administration stated, using 2001 data, that there were 107 million

water and gas consumption. These displays take a variety of forms,

households in the U.S., using a total of 111140 terawatt-hours per

from low-tech, inexpensive countertop units for homeowners to

year. That gives an average of 10.6 megawatt-hours per year per

internet-based interactive displays that can chart performance over

household. Of that, the plug load due to lighting, home electronics

time and calculate unit equivalents. Regardless of the type, studies

and appliances accounts for 26 percent of the total energy use in the

have shown that any type of real-time feedback has had signiÀcant

residential sector.3 Within the United States, Texas leads the Nation

and measurable energy use reductions.

in energy and electricity consumption, and per capita residential use is signiÀcantly higher than the national average.4

space heating

space heating

6%

6%

8% lighting and appliances 40% water heating

20%

air conditioning

Empowering the User to Reduce Energy Demands

6%

39%

water heating air conditioning

9%

refrigeration 9% ventilation

refrigeration

Most domestic and commercial energy use is generally invisible

lighting and appliances

8%

26%

23%

computers and office equipment

to the user, except when equating that energy use with currency as he or she is paying a bill. Most people only have a vague idea of how much energy they are using for different purposes and what sort of difference they could make by changing day-to-day behavior or investing in efÀciency measures. As Sarah Darby writes, “Energy supply and consumption are sociotechnical in nature: technology and behavior interact and co-evolve with each other over time.

It is well established that technical and physical improvements in housing are not enough to guarantee reduced energy consumption.”5 Consumption in identical homes, even low-energy designed buildings, can easily differ by a factor of two or more depending on the

Fig. 02 U.S. Residential Energy Use, 2005

Fig. 03 U.S. Commercial Energy Use, 2005

While the most immediate effects of direct feedback on energy use has been reduction of typical plug-load uses—computers, lighting, and appliances—interactive feedback displays have shown to have measurable impacts on HVAC loads as well. In combination with utility-provided information about peak load reduction, direct feedback has shown remarkable results in assisting consumers to reduce their energy use during peak times of the day when the energy grid is stressed.

behavior of the inhabitants.6 The current process of energy billing

This type of energy conservation, driven by feedback and consumer

has been compared to shopping at a grocery store totally without

action, directly beneÀts both consumers and utilities. Consumers

price markers and being billed via a monthly statement, making it

beneÀt from using less electricity, which directly translates into

85

Energy Consumption Statistics

Intelligent Controls + Advanced Building Systems: The Potential of Closing the Feedback Loop

Automated building systems technology and intelligent control

Lisa Storer

types where life-safety, technology and security issues demand

Course: Seminar in Sustainable Architecture Professor: Werner Lang

constant indoor climate regulation. This technology has since become

methods have made tremendous advances since their introduction in the early 1980s. Intelligent control systems were initially developed as expensive, building-speciÀc models for specialized occupancy

much more prevalent, is now used in many institutional and owneroperated structures where the reduced energy-use payback for the initial investment is achievable, and is beginning to transform not only the way that buildings regulate energy use, but also the energy networks themselves.

In general, such systems work by employing microelectronic controls to monitor and adjust indoor parameters to achieve comfort while optimizing their service systems and improving the efÀciency of their maintenance and management over time. These systems function by comparing values (temperature, humidity, lighting levels), measured with a sensor, to the expected or desired values (set-points). Then an electronic controller mediates a device to equalize the actual and desired values. There are varying algorithmic types of sensor and controller operation systems, ranging from fairly simple on/off types to adaptive controllers using artiÀcial intelligence.1 As these types of automated building systems advance, the trend in development has been one that aims to allow full systems and comfort control without the intervention of users, effectively designing the building to operate itself, and in doing so, optimizing energy efÀciency. However, some automated building control research is beginning to utilize the advanced censoring and monitoring capabilities within these systems to speciÀcally educate and interact with occupants in order to inÁuence user behavior and reduce energy demand to further improve the efÀciency achievable through controls. This user-feedback research and development has wideranging possibilities and industry implications, from altering the way consumers interact with their energy utility to vehicle, building, and infrastructure design.

day’s measurements. The average U.S. residential customer spends

produced by their PV array is charted against their real-time

$12 00 a year on electricity, so savings simply based on a real-time

electricity consumption rates, and units are appropriate for a middleschool level – electricity can be converted to dollars, compactÁuorescent light bulbs, and hairdryers as well as kilo-watt hours.9

Examples in Use + Emerging Competitors in the Interactive Energy Display Field

The Building Dashboard software is also in use at Oberlin College as a method of tracking energy use in dormitories across campus, and is set up in a competition-style layout. Each dorm is rated on a

The direct feedback display Àeld is quickly becoming crowded with

color scale, ranging from red for high-energy use to dark green for

newly developed hardware and software designed to increase public

those doing well in conservation efforts. In combination with LED

information about energy use. The biggest names in information

glowing ‘orbs’ in corresponding colors installed at the entrance to

technology have all announced such products in development, including Microsoft, IBM, and General Electric. A few smaller companies got a head start in launching their products for multi-unit institutional buildings where managers have some control over their residents’ energy billing such as schools, hotels and dormitories.

These web-based interactive display products give a taste of what is to be expected as such technology begins to shape the mainstream residential and commercial sectors.

Lucid Design Group’s Building Dashboard software allows clients to monitor and manage their resource consumption in real time on the web. A building’s energy load at any given moment is continuously measured against a two-week moving average for that time of day, and each system is customized to show pertinent information for

Fig. 06 Oberlin College’s dorm energy use challenge interactive web-based tool

the building. At Sidwell Friends Middle School, the solar electricity

Fig. 05 Lucid Design Group’s Building Dashboard software for Sidwell Friends Middle School

87

feedback monitor could amount from $60 to $180 savings per year.

Fig. 07 Dartmouth’s Bula the Bear energy use indicator

Intelligent Controls + Advanced Building Systems

5

She states, “Overall, the literature demonstrates that clear feedback is a necessary element in learning how to control fuel use more effectively over a long period of time and that instantaneous direct feedback in combination with frequent, accurate billing (a form of indirect feedback) is needed as a basis for sustained demand reduction.”5 Darby’s study uncovered that the average and expected savings from direct feedback methods ranges from 5-15%, although in combination with indirect feedback methods (usually through billing) that incorporated historic data, an additional 10% could be captured.

She states, “Any development of ‘smart metering’ needs to be guided by considerations of the quality and quantity of feedback that can be Fig. 04 Demand-side energy reductions can reduce the need to invest in additional energy grid infrastructure

supplied to customers. Direct displays in combination with improved billing show promise for early energy and carbon savings, at relatively

lower energy bills, and environmentally-conscious customers derive

low cost. They also lay the foundations for further savings through

additional value by decreasing their carbon footprint. At the system

improved energy literacy.5

level, energy savings keep the consumption growth under check,

Ahmad Faruqui’s study of twelve pilot programs throughout the

which often means avoiding incremental capacity, transmission, and

United States and Canada that implemented in-home displays of

distribution investments. With respect to demand response measures,

real-time energy usage found that consumers who use an energy

utilities Ànd that interactive consumer displays, used in conjunction

display can reduce their consumption of electricity by an average of

with time-varying rates, effectively Áatten out the peak demand

seven percent, and are much more likely to augment their timing of

7

curve.

resource use to help with peak load.7 With more advanced displays

As Edward Lu, Advanced Projects Program Manager for Google, Inc.

that show historic consumption, cost at the current rate, temperature

stated in his testimony to the Senate Committee on Energy and

data, and comparisons with other homes as well as a running meter,

Natural Resources, “If all customers nationwide engaged in reducing

these energy savings can double – a 9-month trial in Japan resulted in

peak loads, peak electricity prices would be substantially reduced

an electricity savings of 18 percent, and a gas savings of 9 percent in

and approximately $70 billion in new generation, transmission, and

comparison with controls.5

distribution systems could be avoided, with the savings passed along

One important aspect of energy displays which chart historic data is

8

to the ratepayers.”

their capability in promoting self-conducted experiments investigating what actions have the most impact on energy usage and therefore

Impact of Direct Feedback on Energy Consumption

cost. Participants of studies report that they are able to augment their behavior and observe the changes in energy based on their

Sarah Darby’s 2006 study for the Environmental Change Institute

actions. For example, a family might decide to raise their indoor

on the “Effectiveness of Feedback on Energy Consumption”

thermostat by a degree or two during a summertime day while they

reviewed over 20 years of research and literature on the subject.

are not home, and be able to chart the difference from the previous

consumers save energy and money.”8

The construction and building industry is also adapting to incorporate operational energy use as a measurement in comparison to energy

Incorporating basic information about the U.S. energy grid into

models done during the design phase of a project. The new version

communication with users would also allow the public to understand

of the US Green Building Council’s LEED building rating system

the issues involved with our over-taxed grid, and the reasons why

requires energy use data to be supplied on an annual basis after a

energy-use reduction is important. Tools such as the ones NPR and

new or renovated building is occupied, simply to assure that actual

the Rocky Mountain Institute have developed mapping the Nation’s

energy data and user practices do not undermine the estimates

energy deployment system, and breaking it down by state, are a

made with design-phase energy modeling. As Scot Horst, Senior VP

good start. If utilities developed similar data, explaining the sourcing

of LEED, US Green Building Council said, “Today there is all too often

and implications of peak demand reduction, this type of information

a disconnect, or performance gap, between the energy modeling

would be beneÀcial in an interactive display attached to one’s energy

done during the design phase and what actually happens during daily operation. We’re convinced that ongoing monitoring and reporting of data is the single best way to drive higher building performance because it will bring to light external issues such as occupant behavior or unanticipated building usage patterns, all key factors that inÁuence performance.”14

Interactive Energy Displays for Austin Austin is home to 690,000 residents, making it the 16th largest city in the United States and its population is expected to double within the next 20 years. Due to the signiÀcant forecasted increases in demand Fig. 09 NPR’s Visualizing the U.S. Electricity Grid online resource

for energy and resources, the Austin city government has made broad strides in implementing energy conservation and renewable gridintegration agendas. Because Austin Energy is a municipally owned utility, it has a distinct advantage in quick implementation of energy saving measures and was one of the Àrst in the United States to establish a demand side energy program, introducing numerous and comprehensive energy efÀciency and conservation efforts, the most recent of which is the roll-out of residential smart meters that will allow consumers to physically see their energy use as well as their contributions to the grid in the form of small-scale solar or wind power. Reducing peak demand in Austin, and thereby eliminating the

Fig. 10 RMI’s state-speciÀc electric productivity online resource

89

standards to spur the development of products and services to help

use as well.

Intelligent Controls + Advanced Building Systems

information should be made available based on open non-proprietary

each residence hall, Oberlin has seen electricity reductions in the

out before the program launched 60 percent of Dartmouth students

magnitude of 30 to 55 percent, and water use reductions of three

said they didn’t really think about the environment. After Bula the

10

percent.

bear joined the campus, a follow-up survey showed that 80 percent

At Dartmouth, students have used real-time energy displays in

of the students cared about the environment and thought about it

dormitories for over a year. An assistant-professor of computer

when they went to use electricity.12

science and a dozen or so undergraduate students designed and

Google Inc.’s PowerMeter, which is testing in beta mode with various

implemented the program, that they call Greenlight. The real-time,

utilities (Austin Energy is not currently one of them), allows users to

animated displays in the common areas of the dormitories feature

see their electricity usage information right on their iGoogle page.

“Bula” the animated polar bear in various levels of comfort or

It works by collecting electricity usage information directly from

distress, depending on the amount of energy being used in the

utilities and individuals equipped with smart meters combining that

building or on each Áoor depending on the style of dormitory.

data with utility-provided information such as the pricing structure

The student designer of the bear, Sonia Lei, said, “The polar bear

and energy rates, and graphically representing real-time and historic

animations were chosen to give a simpler representation of what still

energy use data.13 Google intends to release this as freeware,

seem to be far-distant effects of humans’ energy consumption, and

allowing everyone access to this important data in a sophisticated

to visualize those effects on the bear while offering some level of

interface. The potential for Google and other companies to

interactivity.”11 Of the two dorms included in the initial pilot launch,

revolutionize energy market interactivity is tremendous, provided

over the course of a semester, total energy use was reduced by 14

that regulatory bodies and utilities do their part in upgrading the

percent in one and 22 percent in the other. The project is now in

United States energy grid.

eleven dorms on campus, and the overall average energy savings for these dorms is about 10 percent. Also signiÀcant in the Dartmouth Àndings is the dramatic change in student opinion. In a survey given

Maximizing Consumer Information as an Addition to the Smart Grid As the United States upgrades its 1950s era electricity infrastructure, a consideration needs to be made to enable direct feedback to consumers. If smart meters and other improvements are implemented solely to provide more detailed information to the utility, without advanced two-way communication, a huge opportunity would be lost to engage the public to participate in energy saving measures which would have a serious impact. As Edward Lu, Advanced Projects Program Manager for Google, Inc. stated in his testimony to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, “First, we must develop and deploy smart grid technology in a manner that empowers consumers with greater information, tools and choices about how they use electricity,

Fig. 08 One of Oberlin College’s energy orbs

including access to real-time energy information. Second, energy

Figure 05: Sidwell Friends Middle School Building Dashboard, http://buildingdashboard. com/clients/sidwell/

2. Energy Information Administration, “Energy Outlook 2009”, 27 May 2009. http://www. eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/highlights.html

Figure 06: Oberlin College Dorm Challenge Building Dashboard, http://www.oberlin.edu/ dormenergy/

3. Energy Information Administration, “U.S. Household Electricity Report”, 14 July 2005. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/reps/enduse/er01_us.html

Figure 07: Dartmouth College Energy Feedback Interface, http://greenlite.dartmouth.edu/ portal

4. Energy Information Administration, “State Energy ProÀles – Texas”, 6 August 2009. http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/state/state_energy_proÀles.cfm?sid=TX

Figure 08: Oberlin Energy Orb, http://farm3.static.Áickr.com/2572/3747667137_ c2d9b4e09c.jpg?v=0

5. Darby, Sarah, “The Effectiveness of Feedback on Energy Consumption”, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, April 2006. http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/ climatechange/uk/energy/research/pdf/energyconsump-feedback.pdf

Figure 09: NPR’s Visualizing the Electricity Grid, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story. php?storyId=110997398

6. Keesee, Mike, “Setting a New Standard – The Premier Gardens Zero Energy Home”, September 2005. http://www.californiasolarcenter.org/pdfs/forum/2005.9.13-SolarForum_ MKeesee-SMUD.pdf 7. Faruqui, Ahmad, “The Impact of Informational Feedback on Energy Consumption – A Survey of the Experimental Evidence”, 2009. http://www.smartgridcentral.com/artman/uploads/1/The_Impact_of_Informational_ Feedback__05-20-09_.pdf 8. Lu, Edward, Testimony to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, 3 March 2009. http://www.google.org/powermeter/sgtestimony.html 9. Sidwell Friends Middle School Building Dashboard, http://buildingdashboard.com/clients/ sidwell/ 10. Petersen, John, et al, “Dormitory Residents Reduce Electricity Consumption when Exposed to Real-Time Visual Feedback and Incentives” International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2007.

11. Dartmouth College OfÀce of Public Affairs Press Release, “Green Screen”, 17 April 2008. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2008/04/17.html 12. Newhouse, Ryan, “Psychology and Social Science Inform Climate Campaigns”, Campus Ecology, 1111 August 2009. http://www.nwf.org/campusEcology/climateedu/articleView. cfm?iArticleID=95 13. Google Inc’s PowerMeter http://www.google.org/powermeter 14. “Buildings Seeking LEED to Provide Performance Data”, US Green Building Council Press Release, 25 June 2009. http://www.usgbc.org/Docs/News/MPRs%200609.pdf 15. City of Austin “Resource Guide: Planning for Austin’s Future Energy Resources”, October 2008. http://www.austinsmartenergy.com/downloads/ AustinEnergyResourceGuide.pdf 16. Pecan Street Project Operations and Systems Integration Team 7 Final Report, 22 July 2009.

17. Koonin, Steven, during his talk, “Global Energy Challenges”, during the Bureau of Economic Geology Centennial Symposium, UT Austin, 7 August 2009.

Figures Figure 01: GE Ecoimagination Print ad, http://www.ge.com/company/advertising/ads_eco. html Figure 02: Pie-chart constructed from data from Energy Information Administration, “U.S. Residential Energy Consumption Survey”, 2005. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/ contents.html Figure 03: Pie-chart constructed from data from Energy Information Administration, “U.S. Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey”, 2005. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ cbecs/contents.html Figure 04: Image from http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN02-1111-00/images/grid_pix.jpg

Figure 10: Rocky Mountain Institute’s Energy & Resources Team Closing the EfÀciency Gap, http://ert.rmi.org/research/cgu.html Figure 11: GE Ecoimagination Smart Home, http://Àles.gereports.com/wp-content/ uploads/2009/07/netzero_homes_graphic.jpg References Austin Energy Resource Plan Updates, April 2009, http://www.austinsmartenergy.com/ downloads/ResourcePlanUpdates.pdf Austin Smart Energy, http://www.austinsmartenergy.com U.S. Green Building Council, http://www.usgbc.org Pecan Street Project, http://www.pecanstreetproject.org

Intelligent Controls + Advanced Building Systems

1. Medved, Saso, “5. Intelligent Controls and Advanced Building Management Systems” from Santamouris (Ed.), Environmental Design of Urban Buildings, 2006.

91

Notes

need constructing new municipal power plants is the goal of the

they will not be upgraded similarly. While some of the team’s “Day in

Austin Energy Power Saver program. Due to record temperatures in

the Life Scenarios” refer to a smart home panel, the details of such

Austin in 2008, the Austin energy grid set a new peak load record of

implementation are fuzzy throughout the rest of the report.

15

2,514 MW.

Because Google is currently in development of its PowerMeter, and

With the introduction of the Austin Climate Protection Plan, which

is pairing with utilities that have upgraded to smart metering, it is

aims to eliminate CO2 emissions from all municipal activities by

recommended that Austin Energy immediately look at combining

the year 2020 through increased energy efÀciency measures and

with Google in an effort to develop energy feedback displays that

renewable energy production, as well as the introduction of new

correspond to the needs of Austin home and business-owners. While

building codes which require the disclosure of energy efÀciency

still in its beta testing stage, perhaps Austin could utilize the Energy

audits, Austin is a prime market for real-time interactive energy

Saver volunteer program it already has in place to identify willing

displays and controls, not only on the personal consumer level,

consumers who would try out the system and give criticism to fuel

but also linking one’s impact on the grid. While in the Pecan Street

quick development and implementation of the PowerMeter for

Project’s Operations and Systems Integration Team’s recommendation

everyone.

report, the implementation of Austin Energy’s Smart Grid will be powered by Software Oriented Architecture that will deliver information to all stakeholders,16 it is unclear whether the end-user is

Conclusion

included in this group. The Team has done a fantastic job of providing

The overall energy-savings that can be expected from direct feedback

a clear overview of a complicated systems roll-out, but while much

strategies to consumers is Àve to 15 percent, and has been well

effort is going into improving the electricity production, distribution,

documented in institutional settings. As these technologies develop,

and communication methods, the demand-side management

the residential and commercial sectors will begin to implement them

strategies that Austin Energy has already implemented appear as if

in new buildings and consumers will begin to expect such information instead of simple monthly energy bills. If such direct feedback displays and meters are put into practice in tandem with the development of a U.S. smart grid, the energy savings will be considerable. As Dr. Steven Koonin, Under Secretary for Science for the U.S. Department of Energy, has said, “A little meter running in the corner of everyone’s computer or television screen would do wonders for reducing energy consumption.”17

Fig. 11 A depiction of the smart home of the future, highlighting its energy feedback display panel

A Vision for Berlin Mitte: Marx Engels Forum Nick Coker, Kevin Olsen & Niko Von Schwabe Critic: Barbara Hoidn

Our team brought a mixture of interests varying from urban design and architecture to urban studies. We began the process by investigating historical Italian squares to act as precedents, and compiled a type specimen book.

A series of public spaces began to form in reaction to the buildings. Since the project is located in a considerably active area, the realization will occur in three phases. Phase 1 will be the reconstruction of the Marx-Engels Forum. Since it is currently only an open space, there would be very little intrusion to surrounding activities. Bringing people to the site and attracting their attention

to the space is the Àrst intention. Phase 2 will see the construction of three buildings and a public space around the Marienkirche and the Rathaus. The building catty-corner to the Rathaus will provide more space for local government. The two other buildings around the Marienkirche will be predominantly residential with commercial addressing the ground level. Phase 3 brings the most visible change to the area. It includes the demolition of the base building at the bottom of the Fernsehturm and the addition of two mixed-use buildings.

93 cultural commercial residential government

Walkway Bird-Blind Molly Hubbs Critic: David Heymann

This bird blind system of adjacent cantilevers responds to both the occupants and the bird habitat. Interruptions in the path occur at the locations of large trees. Slightly before these junctures, the path begins to cantilever out at intervals dependent on the width of the 2 x 6 post, forming a continuously reclining bench. Birders can choose from a fairly upright position at the beginning of the cantilever to watch the lake, or from a fully-reclined position just before moving to the next system for observing birds in trees. The path culminates in a bird blind which fully integrates the structural system.

As the paths cantilever on either side, the supporting x-braces beneath the deck Ă atten out. By doing so, the central vertical post, which attaches to the pivot in the braces and to the groove in the roof, gradually descends toward the water, bringing the groove of the roof with it and culminating in a dramatic butterĂ y roof and scupper.

95

[RE]THINKING THE BOTANICAL GARDEN Brooks Rosenberg PATTERN ABSTRACTION Parker Thompson GATEWAY HOUSING REDEVELOPMENT Roy McGarrah CONSTRUCTIONS IN PAPER Materials Lab Exhibit HEATHER ROBERGE INTERVIEW THE MAPPING AND TRACKING OF RCOKS Kristina Loomis MALEVICH, THROUGH JUDD & SERRA Keith Ragsdale SOCOMPACT STUDIOS Phil Zimmerman [RE]THINKING THE BOTANICAL GARDEN Ryan Buckley HORIZONTAL XII Laura Grenard ACE ACADEMY SCHOOL Jake George & Marcy Shaw COMPONENT RAIL STATION Nicholas Montanino FACILITY FOR THE STUDY OF INTERTIDAL EROSION Jeremy Babel WOOD DESIGN Student Work TENSEGRITY OBSERVATION TOWER Hanying Zhang CASTIGLION FIORENTINO COMMUNITY CENTER & GALLERY Josh Jow & Daniel Selensky MANUFACTURED RIPARIAN JP McDaris CARL STEINITZ INTERVIEW WALLER CREEK DISTRICT MASTERPLAN Alfonso Calero-Lopez, Erika Huddleston & James W.T. Yan 2010 HOUSING STATION Brian Rome & Alexer Taganas PROSPECT AND REFUGE Whitney Cooper NATURE AND THE ORIGIN PRINCIPLES OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE Sara Pierce LANDFILL PLATFORM Noah Halbach LIVING MODULE 2010 Andrew Bell & Noah Marciniak ACE ACADEMY Joseph Boyle & Jonathan Schwartz ENDOTRACHEAL INTUBATION Bhujon Kang

repurpose mixed-use object mapping tracking flexibility lightness pattern organization climate hybrid mobile digital transport skeletal path schematic cyclic transit context cultural folding bending perforating ripping scoring crushing weaving assembly surface form process awe gasp murmur stimulus virtual color lighting texture surface materiality self-referential aperture reflectivity continuity analytical trajectory tracking metaphysical urbanism hybridization pneumatic rhythm dynamic undulating environment pattern waves non-map vernacular handwork materiality craft approach tensegrity tetrahedral views modules views link services storage pattern-making riparian filtering determinism mapping output expression space texture infrastructure vascular reveal functions envelope geometry plug-ins movable reorientation agenda landscape model language ecological

EXHIBITIONS

LECTURE SERIES

SYMPOSIA

STUDIO INSTRUCTORS

2 x 2: Drawings & Sketches

Dan Phillips

Zero Carbon Communities

Design I

Installation Tectonics

Larry Doll

works by Larry Doll & Sinclair Black Ronit Eisenbach

Sustainable Builder Archtiect & Professor

Sinclair Black

Architect & Professor

Niklaus Kohler Professor

Dietrich Neumann

Professor - Brown University

Heather Roberge

Architect & Professor

Ricky Burdett Professor

Chris Payne

Photographer & Architect

Carl Steinitz

Landscape Architect & Professor

Ross Wimer Architect

Ronit Eisenbach

Architect & Professor

Featuring: Wilfried Wang Elizabeth Mueller Steve Windhager Mark Simmons Emily Manderson Ming Zhang Kent Butler Michael Oden Steven Moore Karl Rรกbago Michael Gatto Jim Walker Werner Lang Sarah Dooling Patricia Wilson

Simon Atkinson Elizabeth Danze Larry Doll Joyce Rosner Nichole Wiedemann

Design III

Judith Birdsong John Blood Allison Gaskins Robert Gay Louise Harpman

Design V

Elizabeth Alford Anthony Alofsin Michael Beaman Jack Sanders Igor Siddiqui

Vertical Studio

Danelle Briscoe Ulrich Dangel Michael Garrison Cisco Gomes Camille Jobe Russell Krepart

Advanced Design

Dean Almy Kevin Alter Michael Benedikt Sinclair Black Coleman Coker* Ernesto Cragnolino Carmen Garufo* Hope Hasbrouck Werner Lang Carl Matthews Smilja Milovanovic-Bertram Vincent Snyder Wilfried Wang * visiting professor

FALL 2009

[Re]Thinking the Botanical Garden Brooks Rosenberg Critic: Hope Hasbrouck

This advanced design studio addressed the making of a botanic garden and support structures to house a new collection of plant and horticultural materials including a herbarium, conservatory, library and visitors center, and display gardens. “[Re]Thinking the Botanical Garden” challenges the role of a botanical garden in a modern urban context. It incorporates the beauty of decommissioned infrastructure with a captured piece of a larger landscape. Austin’s Botanical Garden is a spectacle, offering close examination of the exotic while addressing concerns of native biodiversity, water use, and connections between recreation

and urban infrastructure. The site interfaces with the city’s grid and Austin’s blue and green heart while setting the stage for an enchanting display.

Habit. Non-living Structure.

99

Indoors Limited sun exposure Xerophytic Tillandsias Variety of built structures

Nutrients. Myrmecophytic Habitat

Indoors Plants/Ant habitat displayed behind glass.

Tillandsia bulbosa

[Re] Thinking the Botanical Garden

101

Pattern Abstraction:

Mapping and Manipulation of Bird Schematics Parker Thompson Critic: Anthony Alofsin

Following research on the constituents of a bird’s skeletal system, I abstracted a pattern consisting of variable paths one could take schematically throughout the wing structure. Starting at the spine, the paths consisted of Àve steps (wing, feather, barb, barbule, and hook) with two choices at each step (left or right), thus 25 = 32 possible trajectories.

After mapping each trajectory, I created thirty-two variable devices able to illustrate their paths. Placing these devices at a single point, I documented their step-by-step alterations that gradually illustrated their paths. With much experimentation, I produced a machine able

to contract a single schematic device that presented four of the initial trajectories. I then documented the cyclic contraction of this device, recording the schematic’s distance from its initial position across time. This mapping illustrated a sinusoidal curve analogous to bird Áight. With this relationship established, I sought to create a kinetic mechanism that illustrated this cyclical movement.

Ultimately, I constructed a machine that contracted each of the schematics in succession. This contraction rendered on paper a sinusoidal form, emulative of a bird’s wing movement.

103

Pattern Abstraction: Mapping and Manipulation of Bird Schematics

105

Gateway Housing Redevelopment Roy McGarrah Critics: Cisco Gomes

In an effort to repurpose the Brackenridge Tract, the University of Texas is considering the densiÀcation of the Gateway Apartment Complex from 200 units to a total of 800 units. The site is surrounded on three sides by the West Lynn neighborhood and 6th Street to the south. This allows access to transit and the commercial character of West 6th, while also providing a quieter, residential neighborhood connection in the other directions.

The main strategy in the design was to relate to the context of the site, provide a means of circulation across the existing neighborhood, and open up the site to continuous activity.

Residential bridges cross the creek valley on the site’s west side, while long buildings oriented east-west across the site on raised columns allow a continuity of movement north-south rather than walling off the site. On 6th Street, a large mixed-use apartment building blends into the urban fabric of the city while lower buildings on the north end of the site weave into the neighborhood.

The result is a dense community within a traditional neighborhood that connects people across geographic and cultural barriers.

107

109

Constructions in Paper Materials Lab Exhibit Critics: Michael Beaman, Danelle Briscoe & Igor Siddiqui

Students from three University of Texas in Austin School of Architecture studios explored the material properties of paper in the Àrst assignment of the semester. Each studio assignment was different in their program and design requirements; however, collectively through analog and digital methods of manipulation – folding, bending, perforating, ripping, scoring, crushing, weaving and/or cutting – each form of representation provides a unique designed component and assembly of parts. Generative and iterative explorations are seen in three-dimensionality and in surface analysis. The student work is from Visual Communication

3 with Michael Beaman, Design 5 Interiors with Igor Siddiqui, and Vertical Studio with Danelle Briscoe.

Projects highlighted here by: Christopher Bennett, Carolina Bobadilla, Alix Bulleit, Carolyn Gawlik, Laura Grenard, Walter Medrano, Sarah Miracle, Nicholas Montanino, Justin Oscilowski, Christopher Sharkey, Enoch Shih, Nicole Walter & Heather Wright

The piece that you showed in your lecture – with the facial expression -what was the progression? Was it creating awe through seeing a face that made an expression that wasn’t normally perceived?

Yeah, so this is Tim Hawkinson’s piece and it’s called ‘Emoter.’

I first saw it on PBS -- PBS does this incredible series called ‘Art 21’ which chronicles contemporary art practices in the 21st century. They had a long segment on Tim Hawkinson, and I saw it there before I saw it in the museum space. What it does is, all of our networked muscle structures and the relationship of those structures to the brain constructs facial expressions as a response to an emotion, and in his piece each of the elements that generate facial expression were receiving digital input and they weren’t tethered together in the way that our organic structures are tethered together, which means that the eyes could move distinctly from each other, the same with the cheeks, the lips, the chin, everything was moving, so you would get these sort of monstrous facial expressions that you couldn’t get, or really funny ones, but they were constantly moving and sometimes recognizable and sometimes absolutely indefinable. So, as a result the crowds would respond to them in the gallery and typically a museum space is just quiet and people contemplate things; its not expected to hear people shout or make exclamationsthat piece is kind of interesting that way.

So do you relate to that piece in a sense, in your built forms? Meaning, do you Ànd that you are searching for those same unexpected reactions from someone?

I don’t think that I’m necessarily looking for unexpected reactions, I would rather become more expert at anticipating the reactions because I understand fully the kind of atmosphere I’m producing so I’ll understand the way the space will feel as I’m drawing it rather than being surprised by its ability to move an audience after the fact. And so I don’t think that we have a very developed vocabulary for discussing that - or maybe not a comprehensive vocabulary, or in my experience there are people who are expert at understanding lighting effects, there are people who are expert at understanding form making or space making, but there isn’t a developed vocabulary for integrating systems like color, lighting, texture, surface, space. A lot of the research that I’ve been doing - what I look at and study is trying to understand what the kind of side effect, the fall out of all of those simultaneous decisions are, and I think we should be able to predict and discuss that because it is a primary part of what we produce and yet we talk about it in very abstract terms. Although over the last 10 or 15 years the terms have become increasingly material and that to me is very interesting. I think there was a kind of collective interest or a turn toward wanting to understand how what we make impacts our audiences. In the late eighties, early nineties, it was about the construction of ideas and abstract processes and now things are becoming much more material and much more constructed realities that are full of materiality and not just form. So even though digital practices and digital fabrication is interested in form making, I think that because its being tested at one to one scale it’s impossible not to role in the materiality to that making.

After your talk last night I was looking at the Vortex House and the Malibu House, and the Vortex House seems to be directly related to the environment in which it’s situated. You have the roof plane that mimics the undulations of the hills that are adjacent, and the apertures that are situated according to the views of the landscape around it. Then the Malibu House seems to be a little bit self-referential in which the small circular apertures are a bi-product of the structural capability where the aperture only exists when it is able to exist. In my opinion it seems like these are two divergent ideas that you are searching through with these two houses.

In your mind how do you decide in the beginning of a project which design conjecture is most important?

I think they’re both interested in the relationship of the organic to the artificial. They approach that problem from different tacts. But the first house was a New Form project and we were really pushed by the client to produce an

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singularly so it’s responsiveness that’s taking shape instead of one type of responsiveness to stimuli. So in earlier work, probably the interest in atmosphere and in provoking or stimulating multiple senses simultaneously was really a reaction against earlier virtual work where images made digitally were very abstract and immaterial and very thin and so the early work that Jason and I did in New Form was in having thick, more substantial assemblies of things and I think that was both a reaction to what we saw happening in digital environments, but also an interest in some of the representational bi-products of digital tools; so wire frames, and multiple profiles, and the ability to control section at a really fine interval so all of those things were sort of, optically stimulating, but also able to be translated into more tactfully and environmentally stimulating constructions. So those are some of the reasons…

Heather Roberge Interview Conducted by Joel Nolan

Heather Roberge is a practicing architect and educator in Los Angeles.

She is the founder and principal of murmur, a practice that studies the spatial, structural and atmospheric potential of emerging digital design and manufacturing techniques. She is Associate Vice Chair of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA, where she teaches graduate courses in design and digital fabrication and is Director of the undergraduate program in Architectural Studies. Ms. Roberge’s research focuses on the effective implications of contemporary surfaces with particular interest in formal and material experimentation that engages the senses. Her work has received numerous design awards and has been included in A+U, Praxis, Metropolis, I.D., Japan Esquire, Architectural Record 2, Form Magazine,The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, Softspace, Crib Sheets and Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques among others. In 2006, as co-founder of Gnuform, she participated in MOMA’s Young Architects Program with the submission of a project titled “Purple Haze” and was included in the Bejing Biennial, “Emerging Talents: Emerging Technologies.” Her work has been displayed in exhibitions including “Gnuform: Hairstyle”, “Patterns: Cases in Synthetic Intelligence”, “Temporalism” and “Matters of Sensation.”

You mention the word atmosphere and your interest in the conversions of the senses as a way to give meaning to form. Can you speak more about the way in which these two values directly inÁuence the direction of your design process?

Sure. There was once a quote from someone who was a teacher of mine in the early nineties who said that Architects are incredibly good at silencing their audiences so one of the responses that architecture has always been capable of achieving is to put people in kind of a state of awe where they become quiet. So, at any time, church architecture accomplishes that, Museums, kind of public spaces, Courthouses - all of these places that kind of quiet the audience. And I’m kind of interested in other responses, like the Tim Hawkinson emoter piece I showed where people laughed or grimaced or gasped, that were a kind of audience feed back in the response to this kind of dynamic illustration of facial features. So I’m interested in that in the work. I think that we should be more expert in achieving other kinds of responses besides just awe and silencing audiences. Jeff Kipnis said that one thing we are incredible at doing is silencing our audience and I thought that was incredibly true. One of the reason the practice is called ‘Murmur’ is because a murmur is a response to stimulus, that doesn’t yet have the ability to be articulated

113 Interview with Heather Roberge

that interested in trying to put a box around what I know and asking students to mimic my approach to design. I would rather train them to evaluate and conceptualize what they see and then work on the problems that they can formulate.

So unlike some practices, all of the work that my students produce doesn’t look exactly like my work, and all the work I produce doesn’t look exactly the same, and I’m comfortable with that because I don’t think that there’s a finite set of forms that’s stable enough and interesting enough to sustain my entire career as a practicing architect.

organic form. They insisted on double curvature, they insisted on treating the house kind of like an organism, like a body that was inhabiting the site. And so I think a lot of it was really driven by the kind of programmatic demands, program in the more general way, that the client insisted on. Then in addition, because that is then made through man made synthetic ways, the other decisions like aperture just came out of necessity in translating that design into construction systems that were plausible. And I think that the apertures in many ways, they regulate vision in an opposite way so it is in many ways a sort of self referential set of processes but you’re in the house and the house exists sort of in the round in a landscape that is enveloping the house, and there perforations and the cascades of apertures survey from the interior toward the exterior that landscape condition.

The other house, the Vortex house, which is a project I did afterwards, is still really intimately related to its landscape, but instead of the openings being about presenting the landscape, my hope was that the openings because of their profile and configurations, and the profile and configuration of the massing and ceiling line, they start to coalesce where rather than the house being something that’s just a kind of framing device for the landscape, it’s really trying to bring the landscape into the interior environment, and condition the interior environment with the natural geometry sort of mixing with artificial ones. So it’s still interested in the relationship between the natural and the artificial and the productive mixing of those things, but the formal language is really different.

On the Vortex House, when you are talking about bringing the outside in, is one of the ways you handle the materiality of the exterior just by wrapping it into, so that interior wall becomes exterior wall, do you think that helps?

By wrapping it in, there are some pragmatic concerns like how do you, in a prismatic form like that, deal with entry?

How do you define an entry without relating to signs of entry?

Some of the involutes spaces are just dealing with tropes of architecture, like how do you signal entry? Also, they have to do with environmental issues like a massive southern exposure right where you have an incredible view of the ocean, and so the involution of the envelope puts patios where they’re helpful, but in addition every room instead of having just a single window to the landscape, has at least two if not three surfaces that is cut to reveal what the landscape

is doing around the house. So that makes every space more artificially enveloped by the landscape than a traditional house that’s efficiently packed into a four-sided box.

It seems apparent in your design that there is a strong desire to have a perceived continuation of surface across multiple spaces; so whatever is wall may also becomes ceiling. In your opinion, where do you mediate the difference between material and materiality? This is getting at your perception of the synthetic real, citing the example you brought up during your lecture in which you describe one of Herzog & DeMeuron’s glass buildings as having the capacity to reÁect the social structure of the town.

I guess that was meant to be an example of the kind of constructed effects of the use of material that is not solely interested in the intrinsic qualities that come with the material. And that one I thought was interesting as a kind of contribution to the fabric of Basel because while its massing is consistent with the urban fabric of Basal, by using large reflective glass surface that are tinted, so they’re more opaque than glass would typically be, and they use all sorts of mediums interacting with glass, but lets just talk about tint and reflectivity. By fastening it on to the façade in six different orientations, the glass becomes fractured and makes discontinuous that uniform fabric of Basal. It is literally quite consistent with Basal, but the image that it presents in its surfaces is a radical departure from Basal. And for me that was trying to illustrate the idea that it’s possible to construct a new reality by co-opting some intrinsic materials properties but doing it in a way that gives you other side effects, and in that case it was radically transforming the visual continuity of Basal’s urban fabric.

You are both an educator and a principal in a Àrm – in your link between practice and academia which one comes Àrst? Do you have ideas about architecture, and then you use your classroom as a testing ground? Or is it that the work the students are producing that begins to shape your ideas and your theories about architecture and the direction it’s going?

I don’t’ think the trajectory is one way or the other, I think it’s a set of loops. So I can’t get students to do coherent research without having a point of view and an analytical position about what I see happening in contemporary architectural culture. But at the same time that isn’t a fixed thing; I’m always analyzing and imagining the importance of what I see happening, and I do that in the work of my students and I do that in other practitioners in the field. And so I’m not

The Mapping and Tracking of Rocks Kristina Loomis Critic: Russell Krepart

This project allowed each student the freedom to choose his or her own program and site. The only requirement was that we design a structure for ‘the mapping and tracking of objects.’ The interpretation of this statement was left to each individual.

For this project, the choice was made to track and map the mysterious moving rocks of Death Valley, California. For years, observers have noted long grooves behind the rocks on a dry lake bed, seeming to indicate that the rocks moved themselves across the surface. This project was to provide a remote residence and work station for a scientist who would solve the mystery through

mapping and tracking. The structure’s ultra-thick walls were designed to mitigate the harsh climate by providing the thermal mass needed to take advantage of the desert’s large diurnal swing.

The thick walls then provided a design opportunity to shape and sculpt the outer object. The structure was also designed to respect its surroundings and maintain the vast and empty appearance of Death Valley’s pristine National Park for visitors. A goal was that, from afar, the structure might not be noticeable, but upon moving closer a unique object would emerge from its rocky surroundings.

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thereby promoting surface beyond color and form. Richard Serra’s

proclaims Malevich as an originator of painting as an independent

pronouncements are more fervent with regard to making marks.

material condition. Although Malevich’s paintings have also been

From “Notes on Drawing,” Serra writes:

interpreted as having spatial characteristics (with metaphysical

To use black is the clearest way of marking against a white Àeld, no matter

implications), Judd looks more closely at how the work is produced.

whether you use lead or charcoal or paintstick. It is also the clearest

Having little interest for representational aspects, Judd’s concern is

way of marking without creating associative meanings.You can cover a

the painting’s medium and method. “Malevich paints in a freewheeling,

surface with black without risking metaphorical and other misreadings. A

practical way,” as Judd explains: In the Suprematist paintings there

canvas covered with black remains an extension of drawing in that it is an

are no carefully painted areas or precise edges; there is not much

extension of marking.6

sense and not much more evidence of adjustment. The priority of thought and the matter-of-fact execution are part of the nature of these paintings. Malevich paints as if he’s busy, with a lot of ideas to be gotten down, and with the knowledge that color, form and surface are what matter, and that care doesn’t have much to do with these.3 Within Judd’s purview, Malevich “has no doctrine about geometry itself.”4 Judd restricts Malevich’s doctrine to the independence

And later, Serra offers this distinction: “Black is a property, not a quality. In terms of weight, black is heavier, creates a larger volume, holds itself in a more compressed Àeld.”7 Even if Serra would entertain “the paint-allusion gesture,” though he says he would not, black would represent a presence – not an inÀnite, vacuous space, but rather a thick density.8

of color, form and surface, and further illustrates Malevich’s

As a Ànal consideration, one may observe that, of the several

emancipation from representational painting, stating:

versions of Malevich’s Black Square painting, there is one work that

The common requirement of independent surface, color and form is that they occur upright and Áat.The three aspects generally develop together, though irregularly, one forcing another further. The depiction of perspective and volume makes its impossible to have an independent surface, since surface must follow the tilt of the perspective toward the top of the picture and the curves of the volumes everywhere. Color must be diluted to agree

has particularly aged. There are gaping cracks in the “black” paint, its pigments fading in splotches, which overall might begin to reveal a hint of the artist’s brush strokes. These properties eventuated by the painting’s patina may further demonstrate the Black Square as a Àrst site of the material condition and therefore be revived in this (quasi-) contemporary reception of the work.

with perspective and must be shaded to show volume, occurring full strength only in a narrow strip. Form has nothing to do with the depiction of objects, so when it is used to depict objects it must be crumpled to Àt and forced away from the plane of the painting.The free rectangles in Woman at Poster Column are already vertical, Áat, aligned with the rectangle of the painting itself and positioned in relation to it.The Black Square then probably came from thinking about the white upright square of canvas and so is a second plane within the Àrst.The unchanged white, either canvas or painted, might have suggested black, making the Àrst Suprematist colors.5 Judd’s remarks begin to suggest black as the signiÀcant Àrst marking

Notes 1 Danilo Udovicki-Selb, “Between Formalism and Deconstruction: Hans Georg Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and the Aesthetics of Reception” in The Education of the Architect (1997): 254.

2, 3, 4. Donald Judd, “Malevich: Independent Form, Color, Surface,” from Art in America, March/April 1974, as compiled in Donald Judd: Complete Writings 1959-1975 (1975): 211-12.

5. Ibid., 215.

6, 7,8. Richard Serra, Writings/Interviews. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press (1994): 179.

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1915 no form, color, surface, anything, existed as itself.”2 Here, Judd

Malevich, through Judd and Serra: A meditation on the making of marks

The 1915 painting by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, the Black Square, may be understood as a historic site of manifold trajectories for artistic and architectural practices. Its signiÀcance pervades the frameworks of architectural tectonics, socio-political propaganda, metaphysical

Keith Ragsdale

philosophy, and art criticism, if not others still. This multiplicity

Course: Modernism and Revolution: Soviet Avant-Garde Architecture/ Art/ Film (1917-1937)

of reception Ànds its reconciliation in Hans Georg Gadamer’s

Professor: Dr. Danilo Udovicki-Selb

hermeneutics, as described by historian Danilo Udovicki-Selb: According to Gadamer, The artist’s own comments about what is said in one or another of his works may certainly be of possible interests…. But the language of art means the excess of meaning that is present in the work itself.This inexhaustibility that distinguishes the language of art from all translation into concepts rests in this excess of meaning. It is the excess of meaning that makes possible the work’s life in time.The interpreter extracts from the work the answers corresponding to ones own motivations, aspirations, interests, and criteria, all conditioned by a historically determined “horizon of expectations.”1 Indeed, much scholarship to date articulates the signiÀcance of Malevich’s contributions to the Russian avant-garde, and many purport the deÀnitive meaning of the Black Square. But invoking Gadamer’s hermeneutics, this paper considers Malevich’s Black Square through the interpretative lenses of Donald Judd and Richard Serra in order to propose an alternative understanding of the work – one not dependent upon an impetus of iconographic metaphysics or socio-political propaganda. With no aspiration to discredit those insightful studies, this paper simply focuses on the painting of the Black Square (the act) as a demonstration of its materiality – a notion keen to many in architectural practice today.

Inspired by a critical review of Malevich’s written efforts, Donald Judd posits, “In From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism. The New Realism in Painting, Àrst published in December 1915, [Malevich] wrote: ‘Forms must be given life and the right to individual existence’ and ‘Color and texture in painting are ends in themselves.’ Before

SOCOmpact Studios Phil Zimmerman Critic: Danelle Briscoe

The objective of the project is to confront under-utilized urban remnant space through a minimal architectural intervention, while simultaneously exploring the parametric ability of building systems and form through Building Information Modeling (BIM) software.

The site is located in South Austin along South Congress Avenue in a small lot used predominantly for parking and from time to time transformed due to the presence of arts vendors and street performers. In an attempt to increase the site’s occasional pedestrian density, the insertion of a small building containing artists’ studios serves to enrich and make permanent this existing

creative community.

The structural organization of the building emanates from a twostory circulatory core running east to west in its long dimension.

Studio spaces with generous apertures protrude to the north, peeking over adjacent buildings and framing views of the city. A lounge and restroom jut out to the south. A unifying element of the building, the facade employs a varying polygal and opaque rigid panel curtain wall system, allowing access to both natural light and areas of solid wall for interior placement of artwork. Multiple iterations were derived from a BIM exploration that tested formal decisions

119 against several site parameters. Ultimately the building responds to its surroundings through a minimal footprint and acknowledgement of both the pedestrian and views toward downtown Austin.

A conclusion of the project is that formal variations of SOCOmpact with multiple programmatic assignments could be employed in numerous by-product spaces of the South Austin urban fabric, enriching its community and enlivening its inhabitation.

SOCOmpact Studios

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[Re]Thinking the Botanical Garden Ryan Buckley Critic: Hope Hasbrouck

The 21st century Botanical Garden is perceived as a hybrid; it does not rely solely on botanics to draw audiences. In this proposal, layers of botanical garden and recreational program are laid over an existing retail program (the dying Highland Mall). This programmatic hybridization results in unfamiliar adjacencies between culture, sport, and shopping that set up a symbiotic relationship between the botanical pavilion and the nearby recreation program, encouraging interaction between user groups and resulting in a spontaneous urbanism. The proposal seeks to both challenge the big box retail typology and add to the growing Àeld of big box reuse.

In an effort to expose the layer of international inÁuence on the mall grounds, a dispersed, decentralized botanical garden is housed in greenhouse pavilions throughout the site, each one representing the country of one of Austin’s established Sister Cities.

The standard cruciform pattern of mall interior circulation is challenged by a ring of exterior circulation that creates a “string of pearls” whereby the visitor may follow the path through zones of recreational program and botanical pavilions. The path is divided into lanes for walkers, joggers, bicyclists, and emergency vehicles.

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[Re] Thinking the Botanical Garden

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Horizontal XII Laura Grenard Critic: Danelle Briscoe

This project was the culmination of a semester-long exploration of a single component that ended with the assembly of multiple components to form a structural unit used in construction within an urban context. Under 1000 square feet, the intervention aims to increase urban density while combining multiple programmatic elements: eat, sleep, play, think, and listen.

In this project, the component takes the form of a pneumatic canopy covering a laundromat and urban park on South Congress next to Home Slice Pizza. Use of the laundromat entails large period of idle time for patrons, during which they can use the

adjacent park. The entire site is covered by a pneumatic canopy that allows the iconic grafÀti of Home Slice to remain exposed.

Stretched in between a series of circular structural frames, the canopy Àlls with air from the venting dryers delivered by the circular frame. The transparent “bubbles” rise as laundromat patrons dry their clothes and fall when not in use, creating a rhythm of colorful and dynamic shadow patterns within the park and inside the Laundromat.

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Ace Academy School Jake George & Marcy Shaw Critics: Kevin Alter & Ernesto Cragnolino

What is the role of a private educational institution in the modern city? How can a learning environment help cultivate the abilities of gifted children?

In designing a school we sought to create a place that would engage creative minds at a level commensurate with their imagination. On the busy 15th street, a large public theater anchors the school in the cityscape, providing a public face to the institution and arresting the attention of commuter trafÀc. The large bulbous theater provides the city’s inhabitants with a hint of the school’s mission: to promote big ideas, to achieve the unlikely, to spend more time

wondering and less time doubting. On the northern end of the site, classrooms and ofÀces are housed inside a large cruciform volume.

The double-loaded corridor is replaced with the undulating walls of giant monolithic classroom pods. Inside the pods, individual learning occurs in a dynamic environment, where students are encouraged to wander from one subject area to another while inside a protective shell. Outside, light and shadows dance along the skin of the canyons between the pods. The interaction between the glazed curtain walls and the classroom creates small spaces for individual students to Ànd refuge.

129 A16.7

A16.6

Component Rail Station Nicholas Montanino Critic: Michael Beaman

3-D Pattern: The paper models built for this project explored a three dimensional extrapolation of the Penrose pattern. The models were intended to create enough air resistance when dropped from a building that they could safely land without damage.

Component Design: A helix component was designed using Grasshopper, a plug-in for Rhinoceros that allows you to create and program objects using a graphic interface. This component can be manipulated with a variety of sliders that control the angle, width, and depth of the helix. It was then programmed to apply itself to any type of given surface. This component is intended to contain

and diffuse sound waves.

Elevated Rail Station - Component Application: This project is an application of the previously created component to an elevated rail station in downtown Chicago. The components were applied to an enclosure around the station that would contain the noise created by the trains passing through the station. A glass shell encloses the component membrane above the rail station, protecting the inhabitants from the weather.

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Component Rail Station

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Facility for the Study of Intertidal Erosion Jeremy Babel Critics: Russell Krepart

Beginning with a study of NASA maps of lunar surfaces, a series of vectorized interpretations were made that explored qualities of landscape, surface manipulation, object densities and movement patterns. These interpretive maps inspired the production of a series of “non-map maps” that investigated layers of signiÀcance and envisioned habitation of the site, culminating in development of a facility for the tracking of objects. Once the home of vernacular structures of the Miwok Tribe, the site is now dotted with defunct WWII artillery batteries. The design takes cues from such historical precedents in the surrounding landscape.

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137 right work by: Andrew Danzinger below work by: Maggie McIntosh

be taken up by the fabrication of Ànal projects, with each student focusing on a single piece of furniture to be completed by the end of the semester. Students will look very closely at the medium of wood and will provide reasoning for design decisions and for choices of material and technique.

work by: Alexis Kurland

Student Work Wood Design Critics: Mark Macek

The class approaches woodworking as a set of skills, strategies, and technical limits that promote design decision-making and furniture design as an expression of intention, materiality, and craft. The expression of materials suffers if the designer does not understand the actual methods of construction. In other words, we are better designers when we know how to build. The class emphasizes joinery techniques using solid lumber. Students learn traditional joinery with the option to pursue contemporary techniques such as bent lamination and CNC routing. In all operations, the role of handwork is indispensable. The maker’s hands connect design

intentions to the Ànished product and leave a detailed imprint on the completed design. As the design progresses from the schematic phase, through development to Ànal construction, our methods of building will inform our design intentions. This feedback between intention and construction demands us to revise and to adapt while we build.

In the beginning students perform hands-on exercises with a variety of power tools and hand tools. For one week, we will experiment with the engineering properties of several wood species and compare their characteristics. The remainder of the course will

top work by: Chris Minor left work by: Wade Miller

139 Wood Design

work by: Sky-Lutz Carillo

Tensegrity Observation Tower Hanying Zhang Critic: Ulrich Dangel

Tensegrity is deÀned as a structural system in which tension components are continuous with segregated compression components. Using basic tensegrity tetrahedral modules, this studio project asked students to design an observation tower at Mount Bonnell, Austin, overlooking the Colorado River.

The tower consists of three twisted tensegrity columns, connected by viewing platforms and skywalks to provide users with views of the city and the riverscape. The triptych columns structurally converse with one another and extend to below-grade for structural support. The vertical circulation is located in the center

of the tower to minimize view obstruction.

As visitors ascend the tower, the spatial experience changes according to elevation. Upon reaching the top, visitors can gather to enjoy unobstructed views of their surroundings. Regarding ADA accessibility, a gently sloped switchback ramp descends into the underground level to arrive at a viewing platform that is carved into the mountain cliff. This underground level can be used to display different exhibitions and provide space for social gatherings.

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Tensegrity Observation Tower

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Castiglion Fiorentino Community Center & Gallery Josh Jow & Daniel Selensky Critic: Smilja Milovanovic-Bertram *Study in Italy Travel Studio

The small Etruscan town of Castiglion Fiorentino was searching for a way to compete with the neighboring towns of Arezzo and Cortona for tourist dollars. This design looks at the various ways a “building� could link and merge various parts of the city into a cohesive whole. The goal was to inject commercial and municipal services into a previously underutilized area, thereby giving Castiglion Fiorentino a cultural center and meeting place for tourists and residents alike.

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Castiglion Fiorentino Community Center & Gallery

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Manufactured Riparian JP McDaris Critic: Coleman Coker

Land-Water responds to the challenge to develop one building type for two separate river sites; the Àrst in downtown Austin along Town Lake, and the second adjacent to the Yellowstone River near Emigrant, Montana. Each student was given the freedom to choose a program and site directly adjacent to each river.

During the Àrst month, students traveled to Livingston, Montana to observe the longest undammed river in the United States, traveling through Yellowstone National Park to witness the source of the river and the Beartooth Mountain Range’s barren landscape.

The work displayed here is the Montana site design. The

Yellowstone River touches a diverse landscape ranging from nationally-protected wilderness to destructive cattle-grazing ranches. Through site observation and agricultural research, I determined the need to develop new methods for collecting and storing Áoodwater and contaminated run-off for agricultural use.

The development process explored the potential for patternmaking to reorganize form using existing conditions of the site.

The Ànal form reÁects the transitional ideas of a riparian zone that allow wildlife to access the river’s edges, while providing shelter for livestock and services for ranchers. The majority of riparian

149 zones have become devastated by the cattle industry and this reorganization will allow emergent conditions to exist.

The construction enables seasonal weathering and vegetation to be recorded on the surface, which consists of a structural pattern of steel plates that form separate volumes for water containment and Àltration. As seasons change, the à exibility of the system will evolve into a design that meets the diverse needs of its many users.

Technology, aesthetics, and design process has really permeated our Àeld.

With these new innovations, how does new technology affect the design process?

That is actually a question that the GIS community is asking itself at this point. The issue of when and how you use GIS depends on whether you believe it will help you. There is a lot you can do if you ignore it all together and there are circumstances where you are foolish if you do not engage with technologies that handle information. GIS is a bad rubric.

At what point do you need to make abstractions, and at what point do you have to match the technologies of design with your sense of size and complexity? If you think a problem is small and easy and simple, there’s no reason to do this. If you think it’s big and complicated, then there is a reason to do it.

So as a general principle—general principal, this is not always true—the bigger the project, the more it’s useful, the more complicated the project, the more it’s useful; The more you have to look at and compare alternatives, the more it’s useful. And the more it’s useful, the more it is useful in the beginning. It’s more useful in the beginning if you believe that you study the big before you study the little. Some people

believe you should study the little before you study the big.

If you believe you study the big before the little, it goes at the beginning because it’s more useful at the big.

If you can go to a site, visit it a couple of times—believe that you understand it—there’s no reason to make a map, not at all. I read the site.

I can see the trees. I can know what the soil is. I can see where the wind is blowing. I can see the sun comes from up there. I know who the neighbors are. What do you need a map for?

However, if you can’t visit the site and understand it in an efficient manner, you need maps. And once you need maps, you’re in the world of GIS in one form or another, whether it’s a picture from Google or a geology map, which isn’t expressed in Google Earth. So you need a map, then you need others, and you need to find ways to combine them.

There are many ways to combine them. The simplest is to just look at a map. The most complicated is to model the processes of what would happen if your design was built.

And there is a gradation of complexity of at least eight levels in between. That’s a paper that exists somewhere in my bibliography.

So the answer is complicated. There is no simple answer, but in general, I’ve told you the rules: The bigger, the more complicated, the earlier.

How do you bridge the gap between analysis and design so that it’s not deterministic? You mentioned [determinism] last night in the context of the differences between yourself and Ian McHarg, and I wondered if this was really just a matter of the design process itself being different in the way you use maps.

Well, the design process is different. And the way you use maps… let me make a distinction. The problem is that I don’t know how you’re taught or exposed to or use GIS. I don’t know that. But there is a distinction between analytic logic, software, and products. And when you say map, I use that as synonymous with the product of the thing. How do you use a map? You read a map and interpret a map. The software might be ArcGIS. It might be any of fifteen competing programs. And I don’t know what you’re taught, but I can tell you that I’ve thrown away eight complete systems in my life, so if you become a master of a program, you’re making a huge mistake because the half-life of any particular program is about five years.

The more important question is, what do you know that allows you to program the program in the first place? And if

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or two is absolutely impossible to know. As opposed to Sylvia Crowe. I can trace her work into the United States Forest Service and the United States Forest Service into other places, so she stands up in that respect. But if you take person X or person Y today and say “do they…“, well, who the hell knows. Now, the odds are that what I said in my lecture—that in 50 years the ratio of women will be higher, and not necessarily higher than the ratio of men, by the way, but higher than what it is now, in my opinion—is simply because of a couple of things. The first women were about 30 years ago—Cheryl Barton, who was eventually the president of ASLA, and over the past 30 years I would say, it is increasingly women. So, I am quite confident that that ratio of idea generation and professional activity and professional practice will switch in favor of women, slowly, and it might take another generation. There are very few women-run practices or women dominated practices. There are some— Martha Schwartz is one. There are others. There are people working in public landscape, Kristina Hill is one. There are a whole bunch of them. But whether their ideas are sufficiently new and then sufficiently important and influential—they could be new and bad by the way… that I can’t answer. But I think the trend is very clear.

Carl Steinitz Interview Conducted by Erika Huddleston, Keeshi Ingram & Janice Nicol

Carl Steinitz has held the position of professor of landscape architecture and planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design since 1973. He began his afÀliation with the Graduate School of Design as a research associate in the Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis in 1966 and was named the Àrst Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning in 1986. He became Research Professor in 2008.

Professor Steinitz has devoted much of his academic and professional career to improving methods to analyze large land areas and make decisions about conservation and development. His teaching encompasses such courses as Theories and Methods of Landscape Planning and Visual Landscape Analysis and Management. His applied research focuses on highly valued landscapes that are undergoing substantial pressures for change.

In 1984, the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) presented Professor Steinitz with the Outstanding Educator Award for his “extraordinary contribution to environmental design education” and for his “pioneering exploration in the use of computer technology in landscape planning, especially in the areas of resource management and visual impact assessment.” In 1996 he received the annual “Outstanding Practitioner Award” from the International Society of Landscape Ecology (USA). In 2002, he was honored as one of Harvard University’s outstanding teachers.

Professor Steinitz is principal author of Alternative Futures for Changing Landscapes, Island Press, 2003. He is an Honorary Member of ASLA.

I was really interested in the way you started your lecture… bringing attention to women in landscape architecture. But I also thought it was interesting that you said in 50 years it will be different with women doing much of the important work.Which women should we be watching for?

Well, you’re asking an interesting question. It is very hard to make that judgment. I am going to answer your question but I want to put it into context. What I tried to do in that lecture is make my judgment in part influenced by other people’s judgments and you don’t do that during the active career of somebody. It is done by others, afterwards. And, the reason I made that comment is not that I think there are half a dozen women doing interesting work, because there certainly are. But the real question is, do they have an idea that will be sustainable and that will influence others? And that we don’t know. You don’t know that. Because it’s not the time yet to make that judgment. It’s the question that who in their second- and third-generation has been influenced so powerfully by them that that idea is likely to be sustainable.

I can name women who are doing interesting work, but whether their ideas are going to live through a generation

When you begin to design the three dimensional aspect of it, how do you begin to move beyond the shapes that are in the map?

Well, that’s a very good question, but I want to answer it indirectly, as is typical. When you’re working on a large project, the third dimension is not height. It’s time. You’re more likely to deal with height as a fourth dimension, whereas when you’re working on a small project, your third dimension is height, typically, and time is your fourth dimension. You’re making much more generalized statements. You’re making a map called Three-Floor Buildings and Eight-Floor Buildings. You don’t need to see them, but you know that the map, which is a 2-D representation, has a built in third dimension. But you don’t see it. It’s not a physical model. And your second map is likely to be a time series. What was this 20 years ago and what is it likely to be 20 years from now? But you’re still making a map of where three- and eight-story buildings are. It is when you get to the middle scale, the urban design project scale, that you say OK, let’s try to extrude a three dimensional model. But the three-dimensional model adds very little information. And then you want to go to the small scale in a project where you can say this person is walking down that street, and that point that the three-dimensional becomes much more important, the three dimensional with height and space and texture and color and signs, and whatever. That’s when it becomes important.

Typically it comes late, but there are lots of circumstances where it comes very, very early, and those are typically conservation-oriented.

Well, I can tell you what the people who are developing GIS are doing. First of all, there are enormous relationships between technology and GIS. There is already GIS for phones. It already is mobile. So, for example, there are all kinds of mobile techniques, military uses and lots where you’re in the field and you have a telephone and you punch in something and you take a picture and it’s already registered in the GIS.

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beautiful parts are, and that’s a GIS problem. It’s not you coming with me into my little room.

Interview with Carl Steinitz

desire for this little space? Probably not. I might want 100 designs. Or I might want to know what the 20,000 people in my town think. There’s a shift by size that makes you position less and less believable. And one of the consequences of that is that there are lots of people who lead a very happy life designing small, whimsical gardens according to their temporary predilections.

Your position is absolutely commonplace, absolutely feasible, but limited. And what I’m interested in is the aesthetic of large areas, and I do it in a very, very different way. And I do it… I give a seminar on the visual landscape.

That’s one of my famous courses at Harvard. And we talk about small projects, but we also talk about how we implement the European landscape convention when the landscape is given status by law and the public has a right to participate in the process—which you have pushed off to the side in your position. That’s to caricature it. I don’t want to make it personal—but the position of ‘I give the form’ is not the same as the European landscape convention, which says ‘we give the form.’ Furthermore, there’s another big difference. The position is typically a search for being different. It’s the artistic expression mode of operation, where as the public landscape mode of expression is more often than not, conservative. It’s more often—we have it, we love it, we want to keep it. We don’t want you to come and make a purple landscape. But here we can paint it all purple and everybody will be happy.

So there is a slippery slope dimension there as well. It’s not just who gives the design, but, is it intended to be new or intended to be old. They’re different, and nobody knows where the division between those is. But they are, at the extreme, very different. You sort of have to figure out where you stand on that, and maybe you stand in both parts.

I’ve designed small gardens. I really have, but I don’t find it interesting. I’m much more interested in the large ones, whereas Martha [Schwartz], who is my colleague and friend, she’s designed lots of small ones, every one different from the other. And now she’s interested in the big ones. You better have a flexible position because it varies.

Now GIS would be useless in deciding whether this should be purple, but it’s absolutely essential in deciding what people like as a society. The project I’m going to talk about is 25,000 square kilometers, 200 miles by 80 miles. And nobody has been there – but we have good GIS data. We’ve got Google Earth. We still need to figure out where the

you don’t know what you’re talking about then you could be dangerous. You may be saying nonsense into a computer program that’s making a map and you believe the map. So the real issues are: What are you trying to do and what do you know about what you’re trying to do? And how do you translate what you are trying to do into a piece of software.

The piece of software will change, but that first knowledge… might, but it probably won’t. And then the output is likely to be a map, whether it is in three dimensions or four dimensions.

It could be an animation. It could be—God knows what it is—there are all kinds of products that could come out of a GIS program. But it is typically a map. The next question is, what inferences do you draw? Do you believe it, first of all?

Second, does it give you too much choice or too little choice?

Have you calibrated it correctly? Does it answer the question you want answered? And then the issue superseding all of that is: What’s the question?

There’s a framework paper that you should read. There are six questions: How should you represent the landscape?

How does it work?

Is it working well? (Those are very different.)

How might it change?

What differences do the changes make?

What should be done? (Those are all very different questions.)

GIS, in its most primitive, is used to answer the first question.

How do I represent the landscape? So you go to a program or write a program, and you make a map. And you basically put maps on the wall. That’s the biggest waste of time of all.

Because what you don’t know is how one map hits another map, and you don’t know what the map means, anyway. But it’s representational. The second question is, how does the process work? Which process are we trying to represent and how do they work? And you can use GIS to study that. But you’re basically talking about a process for a purpose. For example, the first question might be answered by a slope map, represented. But which slope gets what color? It all depends. If you’re looking for elk habitat, you want the steep slopes. If you’re looking for a shopping center, you want the flat slopes. So there are lots of different kinds of slope maps, and you can’t make a slope map without knowing what it’s for. So for the second question: How does it work? Well, if it’s an elk habitat model, you want one kind of slope map and if you want a shopping center attractiveness model,

you want a different kind of slope map. The third question is, is the landscape working well? Well, how steep is a good elk habitat, and if I have to make a map called “Good Elk Habitat,” based on slope—how steep? And what do you know about that? Or a shopping center—how steep can it be and still be a good shopping center? And the fourth question is, how might it change? Well, I could put my shopping center here, or here, or here. And if I put my shopping center here, a GIS can be programmed to re-grade the damned thing. But it depends on where you put your shopping center.

But there are alternatives, alright. And the output of the GIS might be cubic meters of earth movement or cost of blasting rock or God knows what. There are all kinds of things. And the fifth question is, what difference does it make? Well that might be, this one is too expensive or, this one is too steep or this elk habitat is too small. That’s a different kind of program.

And the final question is, what should we do? Which of these should we do? And that’s not typically done on one map. It’s done on many maps. But they’re all different uses that could permeate through the entire design process.

There is a conference in January. Fritz is involved in it, and I’m involved in it, where we talk about the multiple roles of GIS in design processes. We’ve done this for many, many years and written about it. So the answer to your question is that it depends.

What I hear you saying, is that the analysis—or looking at maps or whatever you do with it—doesn’t really matter unless you already have a pretty clear idea where you’re going to begin with and have the right questions to ask.

That’s exactly right. I think the questions are the key, and I’ve written papers about the importance of asking the right questions. That’s exactly true. Because if you ask the right questions, you have the ability at least to get help on what the answers should be.

Does that answer the aesthetic question or is that more about the fact that you can only design what you see and that if you can’t see it you…?

No. I’m probing the relationship between the attitude of the designer as giver of form—and size. So I’m quite prepared, because she’s famous and I love her, or she’s my cousin, to say come design my square. This little square. But what about 100 square miles. I own 100 square miles. I’m George Washington Vanderbilt. Do I want her whim? Do I want 100 square miles of boxes with chairs on them, diagonal, her

Waller Creek District Masterplan Alfonso Calero-Lopez, Erika Huddleston & James W.T. Yan Critic: Allan Shearer

The Waller Creek District Masterplan proposes an innovative urban vascular infrastructure system that connects discrete urban cells to form a cohesive new district. In the same way that a vascular system within an organism functions by connecting discreet parts and cells, widening and narrowing as it branches outward to circulate crucial nutrients for development, our urban vascular infrastructure also ensures the Áow and circulation of the site’s critical nutrients—people, economics, and water.

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Waller Creek District Master Plan

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2010 Housing Station Brian Rome & Alexer Taganas Critic: Vincent Snyder

Where no speciÀc site was to be considered, all sites, therefore, had to be considered. This scheme realizes the possibility of a building that responds to a range of sites and situations.

The design can “sit” on a range of slopes while minimizing the weight of the structure’s footprint on the site. Its form, while initially driven by slope accommodations, also serves to allow better views, reveal new access, maximize solar gain and provide shade. The exterior frame functions as envelope and primary structure. The faceted form accounts for a range of slopes that the building may be placed on. It is therefore possible that each facet of the envelope can act

as roof, exterior wall, or interface with the foundation. A dia-grid geometry allows for the most efÀcient resolution of dynamic loading conditions that will be placed on the frame.

The interior spaces are demarcated by means of a series of panels that are connected to the exterior structure. The panels are strategically located so that they will always be oriented either perpendicular or parallel to the horizon, maximizing the usable space within the frame. What is wall in one instance is ceiling or Áoor in another.

The panels contain the required ductwork for air circulation and plumbing. Fixtures such as bathrooms and kitchens are conceived as

159 removable “plug-ins” that can be arranged according to functional requirements. Likewise, the interior side of the envelope can be manipulated with opaque, translucent, transparent or operable panels.

Variation arises in this “movable” structure not through whirring gears or hydraulics, but through reorientation.

2010 Housing Station

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Prospect and Refuge Whitney Cooper Critics: Coleman Coker

This studio was based on two sites: one in Livingston, Montana and the other in Austin, Texas. In dealing with both sites, the development of a set of ‘twins’ was used to achieve a complex adaptive system that would respond to each site. The Austin site presented a contained and controlled system, while the Montana The element of the tree and all of its scalar parts became the starting point from which the project was derived. In identifying the

The resulting proposal was a gathering space that engaged the interval between the open ends of land and water; the open ends The spaces themselves became emergent, connecting land and water. Prospect and refuge materialized informally in the spaces of the building, connecting land and sky in a similar way that trees do.

The skin becomes dematerialized through degradation as a sort of weathering of the built form, in turn becoming a marker of time.

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the ways designers organize and use materials. If Hawkins is correct

the designer’s materials palette and theoretical doctrines, lies future

that the world’s largest organized social movement in scale and

possibility. As Philip Ball articulates, the materials are in fact the

scope is evading the radar of politicians and mainstream media, this

mechanism (Mau, 155).

has immediate implications for the impact of local actions and the

Today we look towards nature as inspiration for improving everything

agency of designers. Is the elastic nature of these organizations, as

from economic theory to nanotechnology. Biomimicry has become

seen in their multiplicity and diversity, what allows for their continual

paramount in design as an impulse to build from the bottom-up

expansion across the globe? The backbone of ideology and leadership

manifests itself at the smallest atomic level and at the largest social

that structures standard deÀnitions of social movements is replaced

scale. In his book Natural Capital, Paul Hawkins equates an economic

in this circumstance by individual commitments to change. The youth

system that fails to account for the value of raw resources or

and breath of landscape architecture as a discipline provide a unique

waste products, to the study of an organism that focuses only on its

capacity to move beyond the hesitant merging of architecture and

circulatory system. In his anatomical metaphors, the digestive tract

ecological theory, to build a more integrative theoretical base that

ties the body inextricably to place and the immune system becomes

directly positions the designer and materials as mechanisms for

a model to describe the collective activity that is arising from the

change.

bottom up to comprise a humanitarian and environmental movement unprecedented in scale and scope (Hawkin 2007, 3-8). His recent book Blessed Unrest leads the reader to consider that perhaps we’re no longer mimicking nature but are rather just acting as a selfassembling biologic manifestation of it. The large-scale ecological

References Antonelli, Paola. The Elastic Mind. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008.

degradation and climate change that is taking place is likened to a

Hawkins, Paul. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming. New York: Penguin Books, 2007.

life-threatening disease afÁicting the planet, while the one to two

Hawkins, Paul with Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1999.

million estimated organizations Àghting against it are comparable

Nesbitt, Kate. Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.

to an immune response. The division of ecology and human rights becomes nonexistent for Hawkins as he comes to the realization that the environment and social justice are simply two sides of a singular issue that is fundamentally about how we treat the earth and one another. While recognizing that life science language is inadequate for the description of social phenomena, he sites a biological rational for all organizing principles of human activity, “life creates the conditions that are conducive to life” (Hawkins 2007, 8).

Landscape architects have to question what their contribution is, not only to ecological health, but also to the overall possibility for change as it is manifested through their own aspirations. A return to the human dimension brings with it a level of accountability for

Mau, Bruce with Jennifer Leonard. Massive Change. New York: Phaidon, 2004.

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positions them at the forefront of movements for change. Within

Nature and the Origin Principles of Landscape Architecture

It has been suggested that theoretical treatises are fundamentally concerned with the origin of a practice and that the origin of architecture traces back to the imitation of nature and human’s desire to improve it (Nesbitt, 16). Today, as technology turns its

Sara Pierce

gaze back on nature in hopes of improving science to a degree

Course: Transfer Technologies, Landscape Applications Professor: Jason Sowell

already realized in the natural world, landscape architecture needs to reexamine its fundamental origin principles. If there is truly a desire in contemporary design to return to the human dimension, then it seems highly probable that issues of global proportion can be tackled on a local scale (Antonelli, 42). To embrace this idea gives considerable agency to the role of the designer and their capacity to help people deal with change.

The postmodern critique of the programmatic social agenda associated with the Modern Movement in architecture has polarized views towards the integration of social agendas in design. While the formal structuring of a one-size-Ă€ts-all utopian vision is no longer relevant, the requisition of social principles in design is. Individualism and an intention to foster social and environmental justice are not at odds with one another. It has become necessary to reevaluate the role of social systems in models of sustainability. Paola Antonelli argues that without designers the web and appliances would be striped to their skeletal function. The same is true for ecological discussions of structure and function that paint a picture of ecology void of the role of people and cultures in the interplay of energy exchange.

Unexamined neutrality, characteristic of the objective observer thought to exist in the social theory of previous decades, still haunts the design disciplines. While extraordinary problem solving can undeniably be accomplished with technological advances, the sustainability topics prevalent in today’s landscape discourse tread lightly over more problematic ethical and social issues. If Antonelli was correct in asserting that designers truly do affect visions and aspirations of the future by giving life and voice to objects, then their relationship as the interpreter between science and production

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LANDfill, platFORM Noah Halbach Critic: Jason Sowell

The landÀll expansion of the Milam Recycling and Disposal Facility provides an opportunity to engage trash not as discarded refuse, but as material to construct culturally relevant landscapes of civic space and ecological habitats.

LANDÀll, platFORM uniÀes the open area between Granite City and East St. Louis by linking the old landÀll with Horseshoe Lake through the shifting orientation and gradation of new trash mounds.

During operation, a mosaic of preferred habitats for birds of the Mississippi Flyway will be planted on capped mounds in order that the plant communities have time to establish themselves before

the site transitions from landÀll to public park. After planting, the habitats will spread seeds naturally by wind and bird distribution, creating a patchwork of habitats that juxtapose experientially across the hillside to the lake’s edge. The site will function as critical habitat for a wide variety of birds and provide a unique recreation experience for residents and visitors of the area.

Living Module 2010 Andrew Bell & Noah Marciniak Critic: Vincent Snyder

Can a single structure adapt to any environment and user? To answer this question we researched products outside the scope of architecture, leading us to online Flash-based music sequencers that allow people to compose short songs within a simply constructed framework. We sought to invent a similar system of housing that would allow for broad adaptability within a simple system.

We chose two opposite sites for the building: a steep sloped site in the remote mountains of Arizona and a Ă at site in an urban area of Chicago. Although the environments could not be more different, we recognized that the greatest differences were in the sociability

of the inhabitant. As a result, it was crucial to create a system that allowed for adaptation to either isolation or social inundation.

In Living Module 2010, adaptation is accomplished through two facilities: hinging and arranging. The hinging allows for an array of site-speciÀc possibilities and amalgamated communities of high variability despite being comprised of the same module. A family of joiners and dividers, which interrupt the box forms, facilitate adaptation of the interior. Joiners such as stairs, lofts and window boxes act as bridges between spaces. The stairs connect the two volumes at the hinge point and are designed to rotate to any

169 position. Bathrooms, closets and kitchens act as dividers of space, articulating primary spaces by dividing up interiors. Through the placement of the bathroom, a single-bedroom dwelling can grow to a two-bedroom dwelling, while the placement of the kitchen allows the living room to gravitate towards the primary view.

The rotational capabilities of the module create a radial pattern centered at the point of rotation. We used this geometry to deÀne our structural system: a column occurs where the inferred rotation intersects the volumes, creating a triangular structure. This pattern allows for the amalgamation of units into tight communities, while

preserving rotational variability. The exterior structure is echoed on the interior by replicating this triangular geometry in the joiners and dividers. As a result, the adaptability of the structure to user and environment through hinging, joining and dividing deÀnes the aesthetic of the Living Module 2010.

Living Module 2010

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Ace Academy Joseph Boyle & Jonathan Schwartz Critics: Kevin Alter & Ernesto Cragnolino

Ace Academy is a private institution offering a unique learning environment for a select group of students seeking an education tailored to each individual’s speed and strength of development.

Students are not grouped merely by age, and are encouraged to advance through their primary and high school curriculum at whatever speed necessary to ensure individual success.

Taking advantage of this education model, the proposed design for a new Ace Academy creates spaces that allow students to Ànd their own place within the school, while at the same time promoting group activity and learning in order to maximize healthy social and

academic interaction. Straddling the historic Austin neighborhood of Judge’s Hill and the rapidly urbanizing downtown, the school maintains an urban edge along the 15th street corridor, while allowing a private and safe entrance for students through an oakshaded park to the north. As the limestone-clad base of the school embeds itself into the hillside, the school transforms from a heavy Àve-story building facing downtown into a light three-story building of wood, steel, and glass that barely reveals itself to the historic neighborhood over the tree line.

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Ace Academy

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Endotracheal Intubation: Austin Central Station Bhujon Kang Critics: Werner Lang & Wilfried Wang

The Texan culture and lifestyle created by abundant resources and wide territory has now become a contributor to pollution and the economic crisis. SpeciÀcally, expansion in Austin has created a pattern of inefÀcient energy use. With a dormant public transportation system and just two highways penetrating the city, Austin’s saturated transportation system prevents easy access to downtown. Citizens require a stronger public transportation system. This can only be realized with a major expansion of the train system that will result in a denser urban center.

From the very inception of IH-35, the highway has been a class and racial segregator between East and West Austin. This practical and political urban wall has created different states of lifestyle and density development. Located in East Austin, one of the shortterm objectives of this station is to make a successful connection between downtown and East Austin. The potential of this area will be realized as it becomes denser. ‘Endotracheal Intubation’ will serve as a gateway which connects not just the city but the Texas mega-region as a whole, including the Dallas and Houston areas.

177 The goal of this project is to create a train station which becomes the starting point of development in East Austin. It is expected that, through the construction of this complex, central Austin (Downtown + East Austin) will become denser. Moreover, the train station acts as a connector within the urban landscape. Bringing IH-35 underground and actively overlapping train station activities, pedestrian passages, ofÀces, and retail spaces, it is expected that the train station itself will become a vital part of the city. Each path is intersected and indicates the connections which are programmed and controlled in relation to the various functions of the station.

Geometrical manipulation on the 2nd Áoor helps to control the pedestrian Áow by creating an artiÀcial valley. The building requires minimal climate-control with the use of a cross ventilation system on the platform level. The geothermal exchange system penetrates the steel structure, and the merged system guarantees functional compatibility and systemic simplicity.

This new TOD development will bring a great physical and psychological transition to the East Austin area, creating a sure foundation which will allow the city to develop in new ways.

Endotracheal Intubation: Austin Central Station

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006 MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH THE GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM

Frederick Steiner, UTSOA Advisory Council and UT Friends of Architecture Kevin Alter, Summer Academy in Architecture / Sid Richardson Centennial Professorship Terry Kahn, Bruton Professorship Larry Speck, Lawrence W. Speck Excellence Fund Louise Harpman, Professional Residency Program Michael Benedikt, Hal Box Chair in Urbanism Nichole Wiedemann, Meadows Foundation Centennial Fellowship Barbara Hoidn & Wilfried Wang, O’Neil Ford Chair Richard Cleary, Page Southerland Page Fellow Senate of College Councils