All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture.
ISBN 979-8-89940-608-9
Restart
Throughout its sixteen-year run, issue positioned itself as a vital part of the culture at UTSOA. A publication by us and for us, ISSUE was dedicated to showcasing the extraordinary talents and innovative ideas of the architecture students and faculty within our programs. Unfortunately, after the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, issue lost its footing and as such, the students lost their voice.
Enter RE: issue, the eighteenth installment and re-branding of this beloved publication. Our mission remains the same as it has been for the last twenty years: to serve and support the students of UTSOA. RE: issue is a partial summary of the hard work and critical thought that occurred at this institution during the four years that issue was inactive.
In this edition, we proudly present a diverse array of student works that push the boundaries of design and challenge conventional thinking. These projects, ranging from conceptual explorations to practical solutions, reflect a deep understanding of the complexities of architecture and an unwavering commitment to making a positive impact on our world.
Post-Covid, certain themes have arisen within the studios of UTSOA, such as a concern for the environment, careful atten-
tion to historical and political contexts, and the introduction of new digital tools. This edition of issue seeks to highlight the innovative ways that alumni and friends of our school worldwide are engaging with these themes. This issue is a testament to the creativity, dedication, and resiliency of the next g eneration of architects who are shaping the future of our built environment.
The works featured in this issue are more than just designs; they are stories of ingenuity, perseverance, and collaboration. E ach project embodies the unique perspective and voice of its creator, offering f resh insights and innovative approaches to contemporary architectural challenges.
As you navigate through these pages, we hope you will be as inspired by these students’ works as we have been. Their ability to translate ideas into compelling designs is truly remarkable. We are excited to see how their contributions will shape the future of our built environment. R E: issue posits itself as both a memorial to the past four years at UTSOA and a bold celebration of what is to come.
Thank you for joining us in celebrating the talent and vision of these emerging designers.
Sincerely, The Editors of RE: issue
Regarding issue
A little more than a year ago, my Student Publications in Architecture seminar held a listening session. We organized cookies and oranges, and we printed surveys and flyers. We wanted to know if the students of the UTSOA were interested in reviving issue, a student publication that had lain fallow for three years, and if so, what they would envision. We hoped for maybe 10 students, tops. Instead, the large classroom filled.
Of course, the students had differing opinions about what issue should be. Some argued for a yearbook approach. Others wanted issue to be about specific issues that affect UTSOA students. A few felt that issue should be used to court future employers. A few more felt that issue should be open to all students at the University of Texas. Only one clear point of agreement emerged: the students wanted issue.
And so, a consistent student publication became our mission. The seminar finished the semester by creating a series of templates that could serve as a plug-and-play for all future issues. And then, Dean Heather Woofter supported the effort. While the role of publications is still a matter of the School of Architecture’s strategic planning at this time, the Dean’s immediate and generous support meant everything to us.
In Spring 2024, the issue team, led by Bridget Knudtson and Thanh Le, convened. What this group invented is what you see here: a “re-issue,” a relaunching of issue, a revival and a recovery of what the fallow years missed, restoring the publication, and for students between 2021 and 2024, a form of repair. From there, as academics do, the team began to use the “RE” to mean regarding or referring to; and then finally Re(d) which helped form a graphic sensibility along with the wily and slippery dot over the i. Lines and dots, and red and white, would stitch together what had been torn apart.
As the submissions came in, a fascinating sub-theme emerged, one that recalled the listening session, but also perhaps the nature of all publications, what we call here “A Voluntary Catalog.” The loss of time can only be archeological, not collected nor curated. In a world of downloads and streaming, the issue team led by Bridget, and including Colin, Jeremy, Joy, Kesari, Noah, Aarif, Rachel, Sriya, and Travis found a novel approach to understanding content – reflected in the chronological diagram by Paul Germaine McCoy. This is how we revive and repair. Bravo, students of issue, and thank you.
Many thanks also to Anya Mitchell who dotted the i.
Sincerely, Dora Epstein Jones, Ph.D.
A Map to a Voluntary Catalog
Paul Germaine McCoy
A Voluntary Catalog:
SEMESTER
Athens
Austin
The
Bats
Beez
Ag-Repurpose
Vince Allen Hernandez
Advanced Design Studio
Instructor: C. Odom
Fall 2023
Project Ag-repurpose reconditions the 314 Apartments in downtown Los Angeles into an agricultural housing complex as a solution to issues of urban densification. The flexibility of gardening spaces shared from unit to unit and floor to floor offers a new housing typology of farmer residents as a resource for the LA community.
The Arts NFT Gallery
Jeannette Massey
Design V - Interiors Studio
Instructor: R. Bravo
Fall
2022
The design of this NFT Gallery reimagines the ways in which we have historically engaged with the fine arts. The different types of fine arts included in the gallery are fashion, music, dance, photography, architecture, cinema, installation art, literature, painting, mixed media, and sculpture. A modular unit was developed that could be split, scaled, and repeated as necessary to create multiple exhibits throughout the two-story gallery space. Each exhibit is completely dedicated to the exploration of a specific type of art that has become digi-
talized in the various forms of NFTs available. For example, the architecture exhibit exists at the scale of a room with seating. Here, images and videos of architectural projects are projected onto the walls for occupants to understand what it would look like to experience these projects in real life. The furniture design throughout the gallery also utilizes this modular unit, specifically in the café. The units allow for optimal wayfinding and inform a more convenient and continuous experience for occupants moving throughout the space.
PLANS 03a
The Airbnb
An Unlikely Savior of the Polykatoikia
Rachel Berkeley, Faith Bryant
Advanced Design | Athens: Into Exarcheia
Instructor: K. Kyriakou
Fall 2023
The dominant building typology in Athens, Greece is the stepped-back polykatoikia, or apartment building. Originally conceived as a collective action model, the residents of the polykatoikia would come together to make decisions for their building since no one person or entity owned it, each resident owned their share. Today, the polykatoikia is failing due to financial depression, inflation, and the war in Ukraine which has drastically affected the energy economy in Greece. Taking action together toward the betterment of the building has fallen away
MIRROR OF OLD & NEW 02b
as each resident prioritizes their own financial situation. The polykatoikias themselves have fallen into disrepair and are in desperate need of consistent maintenance and accessibility updates. In addition, the excess of tourism has interrupted residential life with the overwhelming presence of Airbnb. In neighborhoods such as the politically active and radical Exarcheia, Airbnb symbolizes encroachment to the highest degree; residents regard them with the utmost dislike, bordering on hate. This project aspires to bring back the original collective action the polykatoikia was built on by enacting new legislation. This legislation would allow the polykatoikia residents to tax the Airbnb inside their building as a fee for occupying the space. The residents would form their own LLC and determine how to allocate the collected funds for the maintenance and improvement of the polykatoikia. Once sufficient funds are acquired, projects beyond maintenance may take shape in the form of built interventions within the building and its under-utilized roof. By being able to financially benefit from the Airbnb, the residents renew their polykatoikia and become a collective once more.
Athens 2035
Colin Cantwell
Advanced Design | Athens: Into Exarcheia
Instructor: K. Kyriakou
Fall 2023
AXONOMETRIC 04c
The Athenian neighborhood of Exarchia is well-known for its history of squat housing and vibrant grassroots activism. A contentious debate was ignited with the announcement of plans to construct a new metro station in its central square. It was widely perceived as a government-led effort to exert control and foster increased development and tourism; tensions ran high among community members. Enter the Vertical Park, born from this contentious intersection of politics and urban development. Speculating on a future where government intervention takes the form of monumental infrastructure, the project explores the hypothetical transformation of the neighborhood’s landscape. It delves into the potential responses of Exarchia’s residents, envisioning how they might interact with or reclaim this imposing development as their own.
Athens Anew
Advanced Design | Athens: Into Exarcheia
Instructor: K. Kyriakou
Fall 2023
Athens Anew is a project that re-imagines a cityscape undergoing a remarkable transformation, particularly in the way that citizens interact with public spaces. This hyperbolic city-planning initiative is projected into a distant future where citizens and organizations have made major initiatives to abandon the ground floor. A new form of public space is born through a need for a breathable existence. After heavy debris, traffic and congestion have made the ground floor largely uninhabitable, citizens resent a life full of obstacles and stagnancy. Athens Anew takes a modernist approach to moving life upwards and valuing pedestrians. Neighborhood groups and coalitions have kickstarted a demolition, remodel, and pedestrian bridge construction project to shift the public program of the ground floor to the ex-residential units of the second. The Dom-ino structural system makes this possible, allowing residents and shop-owners to recreate a neutral circulation space aiming to be free of the ownership of
Zake Bjontegard, Mayle Lester
objects. In conjunction with the interior demolition and remodel, emerges a system of bridges and paths that connect remodeled buildings together to replicate the ground plane in a modernist way. Once life is moved upward, the previous ground floor becomes a residue of a society that once centered vehicles and cars. This new system becomes a newer, larger organism within the city that is unified through a sense of collectivism. This new public space not only physically, but culturally uplifts the city, promoting a dynamic synergy between architecture, commerce, and the everyday lives of Athenians. This proposal hyperbolizes and imagines what cities can begin to look like once people reject their current conditions and move upwards.
Austin Transit Center For Music
Paulina Gallegos, Elvira Lathrop
Design VI - Interiors Studio Instructor: A. Gaskins
Spring 2021
RENDER 07a
The Austin Transit Center for Music connects the public with the local music community at a deeper level, beyond the scope of an audience member. The open layout and curved architecture promote circulation through the space. Transit waiting areas are located on each end of the building, but casual visitors are enticed to explore and discover new local independent music by sitting at intermittently placed listening-stations, witnessing live music rehearsals and recording sessions in the partially glass-enclosed studios, or enjoying a performance at one of two stages. Visitors can also purchase tickets to musical performances and connect to live music venues. The space is also a onestop shop for all things a musician needs - a music shop, a community resource center, a workshop, and an instrument setup/repair shop. There are performance spaces, indoors and out, along with a coffee shop, and a mezzanine level that holds an art gallery space with exhibits that seek to educate the public on the Austin music scene.
AXIS Theatres
Kayla Quilantang, Collen Harrod
Comprehensive Studio - Cinema
Instructor: J. Birdsong
Spring 2023
The cultural identity of Austin, Texas is known for its vibrant arts scene, thriving recreational greenspaces, and progressive ideologies. These factors combined attract a diverse mix of people from across the nation: ranging from artists and musicians to tech professionals and academics. However, behind this are historical origins of systemic discrimination that resonate still to this day, with the City Plan of 1928 displacing low-income communities of color East of the I-35 divide and splitting Austin into starkly contrasting socioeconomic regions. At the intersection of East and West Austin, Waller Creek, and the two major transportation threads of I-35 and Red Line, lies the opportunity to design a space for Austin’s diversity of people and backgrounds to share. AXIS Theaters acts as a gateway both between East and West, and for newcomers coming from throughout the nation by prioritizing public space—space accessible for all regardless of economic or cultural
backgrounds--at its forefront. Through utilizing a truss superstructure to lift the building from the ground, the site is returned to the city for use as a public park. Then, through a massive public stair stretching across the building, the park is continued throughout the project with connecting views that celebrate both downtown and the suburban East.
MODEL PHOTO 08c
Austin Center for Creative Arts
Gerardo Rios Trevino
Vertical Studio
Instructor: K. Bieg Fall
2023
This project is about elements and exploring how they come together to form a building with a variety of experiences. The project started with two elements, a stair and a room. They both existed without context and resulted from a series of abstractions using Midjourney. When the elements were combined, each had to adapt in order to become compatible with one another. The project traces those adaptations at a range of scales – from the extra-small to the extra-large. Ribbons form the wrapper of the building and inform the language of spaces within. The building isolates the circulation to the north façade. A series of ribbons, closed at first in the lower floors, gradually open the higher a person goes. The north façade adapts to share the same language, so they become compatible components. For example, when the stair lands, the wall folds in to reveal a view of the outside. The ribbons are twisted to varying degrees to increase the aperture between them and let light in. They are used at different scales: on the wall, by the stair landings, and to form the skylight. The stair tread influenc-
es the width of each individual wall panel and becomes the defining grid for plan and section. They influence the dimensions of elements such as the cabinet doors of the auditorium, columns, rooms, corridors, and walls.
06a
AXONOMETRIC
Boat House Grecia
Emilio Sanchez Perez Vertical Studio Instructor: F. Gomes Fall 2023
Boat House Grecia is in fact two boat houses. One in Lady Bird Lake, and one over the dam in Lake Austin. The boat houses are both composed of two volumes, one containing the restrooms and the other containing a storage room, a countertop—to rent kayaks and sell drinks—and a lounge area with tables and chairs. These two volumes sit on top of a floor plate and pierce through the roof plate. The floor plate and roof plate connect both boat houses by turning into a bridge. The bigger of the volumes, the one housing the storage room, countertop, and lounge area have an HVAC system, which dehumidifies and keeps the interior cool, creating a sharp contrast with the exterior hot humid air and the subsequent wet cool water onto which users will eventually jump into.
MODEL PHOTO 15a
The Bamboo Bounty
Marie Agustin, Stella Stambaugh
Design V - Carbon Hinterlands
Instructor: D. Koehler
Fall 2023
RENDER
The Bamboo Bounty is a reimagining of grocery stores and their relationship with the food supply chain and visitor experience. In response to the studio’s theme of Carbon Hinterlands, which focused on the research, application, and design of carbon sequestration methods, The Bamboo Bounty’s primary goal is to condense the food supply chain into a single location to mitigate the carbon footprint that arises due to transportation, packaging, and other energy-intensive aspects of the supply chain. The design utilizes carbon sequestration techniques that do not rely on electricity, drawing inspiration from older processes such as pickling, a food preservation technique to replace the need for refrigeration, a bamboo-pipe irrigation system as a replacement for PVC or steel pipes, among others. The primary construction material proposed is bamboo, which has better carbon
sequestration capabilities than most common construction materials while still being comparable in strength and versatile in application. As a result, The Bamboo Bounty offers communities a refreshing and sustainable grocery option where produce is grown, harvested, prepared, distributed, and composted at a single store while being flexible enough to be replicated in different locations at different scales, and is capable of housing collaborative markets for local businesses, educational spaces, or even public entertainment venues. This reimagining replaces the perception of a chore, commuting to a grocery chain where all products are packaged unsustainably, and the atmosphere resembles a warehouse. Instead, experience a nature-conscious and visitor friendly grocery and garden hybrid that encourages environmental mindfulness and connection to your community.
Barboa Street
Abel Del Pino
Urban Design Studio
Instructor: D. Almy, Gehl Studio
Spring 2022
Based on a Mobility-focused Vision Planning Framework, the streetscape design of Balboa Street is a proposal that aims to be the nexus between the east and west sides of the city of San Francisco. Through the concepts of micro-mobility, community and ecology, the project seeks to rethink the design principles of a street as a more human, sustainable, safe, multimodal, community and ecological transit-corridor. Through a series of tactical urban interventions, the new urban landscape becomes a new way of life for citizens, bringing a new cultural value.
EXTERIOR RENDER 056b
Bars & Flow
Emilio Sanchez Perez, Edward Bondoc
Integrative Studio: 1=6 San Francisco
Urban Infill Housing
Instructor: M. Haettasch
Fall 2023
The main idea of the project is composed of three simple bars that span the site and keep sacred the gaps in-between them. This preservation provides the project with natural moments to engage with the surrounding site, while also providing a rigid framework that can house a diverse and flexible amount of program and unit configurations. The basic form is the result of several chosen constraints: One, a continuous physical and visual connection from the street to inside the lot, and two, a 12’ x 12’ grid system that can house program for living and guides alignments/ changes throughout the project. The bars are made of two main components, a permanent/rigid component and a temporary/ infill component. The permanent component - the rigid concrete walls - serves to establish the “sacred” constraints for the project while acting as the main structural support.
Its permanence, in theory, implies that should the site program change, these will remain, thus providing a long-term rigid framework from which different program and functions can infill. This infill component is especially evident in how the program spaces and unit layouts begin to organize themselves. By prioritizing comfortable spaces, equal access to light, access to double height communal spaces, and access to views, every unit has a unique condition in how it inhabits the bars and begins to flow through them. Instead of being inhibited by the rigid constraints established, they can take advantage of the framework. The resulting project is a play between the rigid and the flowing components that aim to discover how a rigid framework can be an invigorating experience for housing.
TERRACE RENDER
11c
Bats & Boats
Nate Albers
Vertical Studio - Leftovers
Instructor: F. Gomes
Fall 2022
As a bat roosting site and kayak/paddleboard rental facility, this project puts non-human users first. Through flight and roosting surfaces, bats experience the world very three dimensionally. In contrast, boats only experience the planar surface of the water. These experiences lead to a form that features complex volumetric shapes for hosting bats lifted above a simple, flat deck for launching kayaks. People have space to view the dam, the surrounding landscape, and the exit of the bats on their nightly flight. The intervention also serves as a landmark that signals the end of Lady Bird Lake and connects people on both banks of the riverside walking trail.
RENDER FROM TRAIL
12b
Beez Block Where Design Meets Conservation
Andrea D. Bailey-Ortiz Vertical Studio Instructor: D. Briscoe
Fall 2023
One of the leading causes of the native bee population decrease has been habitat loss due to continued development. This project focuses on using design and materials as creative tools to address issues of native bee conservation in our urban environment. The Beez Block takes the form of a deconstructed hexagon - a shape that is inevitably associated with bees. However, the fragmentation of the shape serves as a metaphor for deconstructing the perception that there’s only one type of bee. The resulting pattern allowed certain pieces to be removed to create hollow spaces similar to a breeze block. The remaining pieces were then used to create habitat conditions for different types of native bees - carpenter bees, mason bees, leaf cutter bees, and bumble bees. Each requires a nesting tube with specific characteristics. The end
MODEL PHOTO 13a
design is a blend between a breeze block and a bee hotel that has aesthetic appeal to be used in various ways when it comes to buildings and greenspaces but also offers a much-needed habitat for native bees within the urban context. The Beez Block is designed to be made out of clay, a material that can be
locally sourced and produced, adding a layer of sustainability to the project. This material would allow the design not only to be a habitat for native bees, but also offer thermal mass, act as a noise barrier, and give the opportunity to create semi-private spaces with interesting shadows without compromising ventilation.
Beyond a Monolithic Characterization of African Architecture
Kayla Quilantang
World Architecture - Origins to 1750
Instructor: C. Davis
Spring 2023
In the ‘revered’ canon of architectural history, who determines which stories are told? Who determines those worthy of more depth and complexity, more care in exploring their cultural significance, more pages in a textbook? The story of The Great Mosque and the conflict between the community of Djenné and UNESCO demonstrates the reductive, static representations of a culture that result from a unidirectional imposition of authorship.
Located in Mali, Africa, The Great Mosque of Djenné was originally designed and constructed in the 14th century as a synthesis of the city’s Islamic and ancient animistic spiritual origins. Most importantly, however, was its mud-brick construction, whose vulnerability to the elements led to a vital dependence on Djenné’s community-wide, centuries-old annual re-plastering celebration. However after being declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1988, the city of Djenné was subject to a massive conservation project by UNESCO to restore The Great Mosque’s internal structure to preserve its ‘original condition’. This led to an unprecedented interruption of
the annual re-plastering festival throughout Djenné. The dilemma lies in UNESCO’s role as a source for capital resources, at the heavy cost of imposing Eurocentric values onto a deeply meaningful cultural tradition. However, the solution may lie in reconstructing the architectural narrative to be one of co-authorship, with entities such as UNESCO widening their perspectives to protect not the stereotypical images of great buildings, but the cultural fabric that surrounds it.
“Sub-Saharan Africa possesses the most ancient traces of human existence, yet remains one of the least documented areas of the world.”
Richard
Ingersoll, World Architecture:
A Cross-Cultural History
The Great Mosque’s significance is not in its form alone, but in Djenné’s annual re-plastering festival. Each year on the Islamic holiday of Ramadan, a religious ceremony centered on community, “the men carry mud to the site, the young women fetch water, and the citizens wait for the signal from the elders to begin construction” (Masons of Djenné, 2013), bringing the entire city together in a single event. “With each application of mud, the building’s contours take on a slightly altered shape” (Ingersoll, 2018, 373), with each unique layer of the previous years embedded within. Unlike the European perception of historical monuments– preservations of a single moment, and often a single individual, through time–”Africans created a truly living architecture” (Ingersoll, 2018, 365) that grew, changed, and persevered along with the history of its people.
The intervention of UNESCO’s 2013 conservation project arose from the discovery of The Great Mosque’s deteriorating initial structure, whose rotting wooden members threatened a potential collapse in its future. In hopes of conserving Djenné’s value to the United Nations, as “the most beautiful city of Africa” and “the typical African city” (Advisory Body Evaluation, 1988), centuries of mud-layers were removed and artificially replastered to access the structure. In addition to the removal of the town’s history, the renovation prohibited the community of Djenné to re-plaster the mosque for three years, essentially pausing the present and “leaving the city in a state of great anxiety” (Masons of Djenné, 2013).
The story of Djenné and The Great Mosque represent architectural potential that goes far beyond the static perceptions of Africa painted by the European canon. However, it also represents the failures of post-colonial ‘saviorism’. There were a series of missed
“Putting that mud back on could make it beautiful, but it is no longer the African way. They did it in a European way.”
Smithsonian’s National Museum of History, “Masons of Djenné - City of Mud.”
opportunities to find a solution that could integrate with the annual tradition, be administered by the original masons of Djenné, or at the very least allow its people to decide the fate of the mosque themselves. Ultimately, UNESCO failed to follow through with their mission statement of “working to create the conditions for dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based upon respect for commonly shared values” by robbing authorship of a cultural legacy from the very people they pledged to protect. ●
Richard Ingersoll, World Architecture: A Cross-Cultural History (Oxford University Press, 2018), 365-373
UNESCO. “Old Towns of Djenné.” 2023. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/116/ documents/.
Smithsonian’s National Museum of History. “Masons of Djenné - City of Mud.” August 23, 2013. Educational video, 5:12. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=XiHOqxo5tpc.
UNESCO. “Old Towns of Djenné.” June 3, 2010. Educational video, 2:53. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na-uIQ1Fdoc.
Bridging the Divide A Diverse
Ecotone
Supporting Brain Health
Mason Brown Landscape Architecture Design II Instructor: H. Hasbrouk, C. Eddlemen-Heath Spring 2022
This project looks at the existing site of the Austin State Hospital in Austin, TX. Tasked with re-designing the 95-acre campus, the natural ridgeline of the existing site was used as a catalyst. This proposed, amplified ridgeline acts as a division between private and public sides of the new Austin State Hospital campus. The new ridge also symbolizes the border the city of Austin lies upon between the Blackland Prairie and the Texas Hill Country ecoregions. The east side of the site will feature public park space, community centered buildings, and general HHSC buildings. It also features the Blackland Prairie planting structure on the east side of the ridgeline. The west side of the site will feature private park space, the main hospital, residential buildings, and therapeutic gardens for the patients living on site. These western areas are composed of planting communities that resemble the Texas Hill Country ecoregion.
SITE SECTION 16a
Cavum Dance Center
Zake Bjontegaard, Mayle Lester
Comprehensive Studio
Instructor: K. Kyriakou Spring 2023
The Cavum Dance Center is a daring proposal connecting East Austin to the heart of downtown. The ground floor strives for
complete transparency, offering visual and physical connections to the redeveloped Waller Creek, to Metro light rail transit, and to recently capped I-35 fields, resulting in a floating box held up by a skeleton of steel trusses. The ground floor offers public functions as a landmark meeting spot with glimpses into the theater space, an educational gallery space, and outdoor performance amphitheater. This new public space will work to garner peer cohabitation and allow for schools and organizations to cross-pollinate. A cylindrical void
SECTION OBLIQUE
BAY MODEL
17a
cuts through the center of the dance center, reinforcing ideas of centrality, periphery, and visibility. The main theater is sunk below grade to become the heart of the building, allowing engagement and visibility from all levels. This overt transparency through and across levels encourages connection and opportunity for visitors, students, and instructors. The void is mediated through an 80-foot curtain and
movable ceiling which can be tailored to resident or touring programs, especially those tending to the unconventional. The building also includes three stories of private practice studios and outdoor facilities for smaller performing art classes and workshops. The building doubles as a collaborative space where other dance mediums can begin to coexist and grow alongside different techniques.
Cerro Las Navajas Geopark
Matthew Powell
Advanced Design Studio
Instructor: B. Ibarra-Sevilla
Fall 2023
The beauty of the Cerro de las Navajas Geopark lies within a deeper cultural comprehension of its surroundings, buried beneath educational barriers. The center unearths this understanding to realize and respect the site’s quiet, hidden beauty. Through embracing traditional construction methods and utilizing low energy materials, the center can feasibly be constructed using local knowledge and labor. A central, raised path establishes new visual, physical, and intangible connections to the site to generate a new appreciation of the geopark’s unique geodiversity and cultural history. To create this connection, the building is organized along a central wooden spine. The spine begins at ground level at the entrance platform and continues along this datum plane. As visitors walk along this central path, the ground slowly falls beneath them as one emerges
eye level with the tall tree canopy. Additionally, this upper path allows for a fully accessible overlook access without the need for costly specialized labor. Rest points along the spine add to its accessibility and allow visitors to pause and view the canopy. The lower path allows visitors and staff to experience the structure below the path, with lateral bracing which undulates along the slope.
18c
18b
Charles Street Deli
Madeleine Wilson
Comprehensive Studio - Interior Design
Instructor: A. Gaskins, L. Janssen, M. Smith
Spring 2023
This project revolved around the balance between aesthetics and function to develop a restaurant concept underpinned by the technical requirements of a dining experience. The site is a historic brick masonry townhouse in Beacon Hill Boston, MA, adapted to serve as a boutique hotel and restaurant. The kitchen sits on the basement level, leaving the 2,700sf ground level for dining, lounge, and bar. Daytime programming includes a walkup delicatessen, mercantile, and barista. A laptop-friendly lounge invites guests to dine and linger. At night, programming shifts to a formal experience where guests reserve seating at tables or in the lounge spaces. The deli counter remains a consistent focal point, facilitating final plating at night. Technical integration served as a key driver in the design. MEP integration, assembly detailing,
specification of equipment, fixtures, and FFE, as well as code compliance underpin the design and were the studio’s primary focus. Ultimately, this integration enabled the concept of a classic neighborhood deli encased within a fine dining experience to be realized.
Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Lockhouse Documentation
Ellie Slaton, Brooklynn Cnare, Marty Hightower, Hannah Hunt, Sravani Bhattiprolu, Thomas Goodwin, Braeden Byrd, Alexandra Carillo-Martinez, Jiaxuan Hu, Stefka Kuneva, Alyssa Randazzo, Xavier Todd, Yasmin Torres, Julia Wagner
Graphic Documentation Instructor: B. Ibarra-Sevilla
Fall 2023
In September 2023, the Graphic Documentation students embarked on a journey to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in Maryland to document structures built in the 1830s, called lockhouses. These were where canal operators lived and worked, which was essential for transportation in that era, as each lock allowed boats to move up and down the canal. The National Park Service partnered with the Historic Preservation Program at the UT School of Architecture to measure, photograph, and produce drawings of these structures for the Library of Congress archives, where these records can be used to better study and preserve the lockhouses in the future. In Maryland, our class visited five of these houses to assess their conditions, measure key elements, photograph, and laser scan the buildings in their landscape. Upon arriving at each house, our class split into groups to fo-
cus on each façade in order to create sketches with measurements (field notes), that would later allow us to produce measured drawings. During this process, we also ran a laser scanner to make a digital model of the site and the lockhouse to help verify accuracy later on. This process involved gathering as much data as possible, so when we returned, we could cross reference information to produce the most accurate drawings possible. After our visit, we returned to campus and began analyzing our field notes. We referenced these to the pictures and the laser-scanned digital model to double-check our measurements and ensure accuracy and detail. We analyzed these structures in a variety of scales, from site context to the details of brick placement and more. After cross-referencing our data, we began to produce measured drawings of each lock-
EXAMPLE DOCUMENTATION
house. We scaled photos of the houses to have true measurements, extracted, rotated, and traced parts of the laser scanned model, and even used photogrammetry. At the end of the semester, we presented our work to a jury along with a historical report for each house, outlining the current conditions and cultural importance. Without work like this, these structures could be lost to time which is why documentation research is so important.
21 Cinco Piezas
Simon Butler, Aleida Villasana
Advanced Design Studio
Instructor: B. Ibarra-Sevilla Fall 2023
Located in the foothills of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico, Cinco Piezas serves as a visitor and community center for the Cerro de las Navajas Geopark and Ejido Nopalillo. Camouflaging into the natural landscape, the courtyard building’s low profile respects the abundant surrounds of nature. The building aims to create economic opportunities for the local community while educating visitors about the ecology, history, and the cultural significance of the site, as well as the importance
of its preservation. Visitors’ experience is curated by immersion spaces inspired by natural elements: the wind, sky, obsidian, viewpoints, and cultural heritage. Additionally, an emphasis is placed on the feasibility of construction of this project due to its remote location and lack of financial resources. By means of designing a simple construction system and material palette, the purpose is for locals to use resources and techniques native to the area for this development.
Coco Loves You
Colin Cantwell
Spatial Stories
Instructor: N. Wiedemann
Fall 2023
Coconut Club, one of Austin’s most popular gay nightlife spaces, has faced consistent threat of closure due to development plans for the lot. Based on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome, the piece takes queer memories of the space and scatters them throughout an abstract hanging representation of the club complex in order to represent the power and fragility of queer space. Quotes were sourced via an anonymous form distributed over Instagram. The responses were cut into short, decontextualized fragments.
MODEL PHOTO 22a
Dayla
Jeannette Massey
Design IV - Technical Studio
Instructor: A. Gaskins, L. Janssen, M. Smith
Spring 2023
This project combines the innovative practice of hydroponic gardening with clean eating and sustainable design practices. Hydroponic gardening is a sustainable agricultural practice conducted in a fully controlled environment, offering a convenient method for restaurants to source ingredients for menu items. Additionally, hydroponic gardens em-
ploy purple LED lighting, which chlorophyll in plants can absorb more efficiently, further promoting plant growth. The aesthetics, branding, and narrative for this public house is completely centered around these hydroponic gardens integrated throughout the restaurant. Every menu item features at least one ingredient grown in the gardens, which are strategically located around the restaurant in optimal viewing spots, allowing customers to feel confident in their food choices. The light emissions from the gardens contribute to the overall ambiance of the public house, as well as determine the purple and green color palette that is used in furniture and material choices throughout the restaurant. The integration of sustainable urban farming techniques and local food sourcing sets Dayla, the Hebrew word for water, apart from other restaurants in the area while still creating the feeling of domesticity through the overall aesthetic and cuisine.
Designed to fit multiple needs, this center table is a perfect blend of utility, style, and entertainment. This low height round table is accessible from any point in the Living room and provides a perfect opportunity to socialize with friends and family over food, a deck of cards, or Chess! A square at the center is removable and designed to have a chess board on one side while the other has an African Mahagony, Maple, Walnut, and Poplar Marquetry giving the other side a timeless look.
Convertible Center & Chess Table
DETAIL 23b
DETAIL
Ashwini Munji Wood Design Instructor: M. Macek
Fall 2023
COMPLETED TABLE 23b
Densified Dwelling
Aleida Villasana
Design IV - Intermediate Studio
Instructor:
R. Navasaityte, A. Edwards
Spring 2022
As one of the most rapidly growing cities, Austin is facing a housing challenge that encompasses affordability, displacement, gentrification, and homelessness; in combination with other strategies, urban densification begins to address some of these issues. This residential project is located on two smaller lots within a programmatically diverse context in a lower-to-middle class income, East Austin neighborhood. Restaurants, food markets, gymnasiums, bars, and parks surround the site of the project, and successfully embody the essence of city life. With the intention of addressing affordability, this design explores mix-use programs at the ground level as well as modularity, with the purpose of prefabrication, within the residential spaces. Three unit types are available for residential space,
and as a result of their staggered, upward aggregation, interstitial spaces begin to provide individual “backyards.” Converting exposed roofscapes into green roofs allows all units to have unique exterior spaces and means of access are also accommodated.
RENDER
RENDER 25d
25c
The Divided Cineplex
Juliet Chui, Vaani Vedula
Comprehensive Studio - Cinema Instructor: J. Birdsong Spring 2023
The Divided Cineplex offers a new perspective on the importance of theaters as non-traditional gathering spaces. Inspired by their allure as “urban oases” that unite people, the design embraces the thriving nature of theaters in a post-pandemic world where they have emerged as hubs for social interaction. Driven by the redevelopment of Waller Creek and I-35, the Cineplex allows for an unobstructed access to the creek, seamlessly connecting East and West Austin. Embracing the site’s vibrant foot traffic, the pavilion-like structure creates outdoor pockets that invite pedestrians to escape the city noise and find tranquility. Lightly touching the site, the structure acts as a pavilion, seamlessly blending in with its surroundings. The Cineplex’s light and open structure fosters a social theater experience, uniting the community regardless of being the public or a patron of the cinema. Meanwhile, I-35, formerly a racial divide due to redlining, is becoming a sunken thoroughfare, creating a safer, more connected Austin.
Finding Solace at Sea
Ella Rolander
Vertical Studio
Instructor: F. Gomes
Fall 2023
After researching and studying the site, a 2200 TEU container ship, the problem of feeling completely exposed when on the exterior of the bridge tower and on deck was
observed. The design desired to find a way to create spaces where the crew members could be outside and walk around the deck without feeling completely overwhelmed or engulfed in the vast “sitelessness” of a giant container ship in the middle of the ocean. To achieve this, three existing languages of the container ship were identified and applied to the building programs. Those languages are the grid inspired by the stacked, regular containers, the curved metal paneled enclosure inspired by the hull of the ship, and the veil inspired by the chains of the mooring winches and anchor of the ship. These languages intersect and break away from each other to create pockets of space that begin to solve the problem of exposure without limiting the user to entirely interior, claustrophobic spaces. These languages also begin to form functionality. The grid helps organize the program in a familiar way, while the curved enclosure begins to mirror the aerodynamics of the hull shape. The veil lining the atriums and facade acts like a rain chain that waters a main garden that contributes to crew meals. It also fills water tanks below deck that filter collected water and fuel plumbing components of the building. The anchoring of the veil and grid below deck begin to create a sense of security and stability for the building as it merges the building and hull of the ship into one continuous form.
EXTERIOR PERSPECTIVE
31
Freighter
Hayley Gilette
Vertical Studio Instructor: F. Gomes Fall 2023
INTERIOR PERSPECTIVE
What occurs in the world between production and consumption? More than half of the world’s goods are carried to us and from us in shipping containers. These are vital processes that we do not see. In this project, the small world of a container ship’s bridge is expanded. The separation of space
into recreation, work, and living components generates the feeling that the vessel is larger than it really is. Movable furniture that locks into place allows residents to reconfigure the smallest of spaces into endless possibilities. The new bridge of the ship is now a place to be explored as fully as the sea of water and steel which it has extended.
For a Couple
Scott Harter
Vertical Studio
Instructor: E. Danze
Fall 2023
Building, Dwelling, Thinking. Upon entering the house, on either side of you lay two pools of water, where acid-etched glass floats above- catching reflections of the water as the day passes. As you make your way through the entrance, you are brought to a horizon of similar glass panes, separated from each other by an aperture of half a foot. Two offices for the couple face a subtle north light imprinting itself onto panes of acid-etched glass, and light from the east and west shines through thin apertures placed across from one another in the primary living space. Furthermore, shining from the coast of New Haven, southern light faces a balcony and patio, unadulterated. Three parts make up the whole of the home, and they are each separated by a bouquet of reeds. When you escalate upward or downward from one part to the other, you either descend into the earth or move farther from it toward the sky. Perpetually, movement and light reveal a space never twice the same.
MODEL PHOTO
MODEL PHOTO 28c
The Freudian Lodge
Kaely Hoskins
Design I - Foundations
Instructor: V. Snyder, S. Brits, C. Lewis
L. Rosner, M. Glassell
Fall 2023
This project serves to house a scholar studying Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, to inspire further analysis of Freud’s concept of the unconscious mind—or rather the relationship between the unconscious and conscious mind. Rather than creating a lodge dedicated to the study of dreams, this project is intended for discovering the relationship between the unconscious and conscious mind as it not only explains dreams but human behavior as well. Of course, the unconscious mind and the ways it may impact the conscious mind are vastly misunderstood and unknown, so this lodge aims to aid the study through first analyzing the unconscious and conscious separately—as we know it now— and then study the two together. Ultimately, this project inspires a deeper understanding of the unconscious and conscious relationship through emphasizing the juxtaposition between the reality and the unknown. The upper two volumes represent the unconscious and conscious mind as separate
entities. To the right of the steeper inclined staircase is the “unconscious” mind, a space solely to reflect with no outside distraction. To the left is the “conscious” mind, an office or reading room with floors flush to the outdoor platform. Back down the steep staircase, the habitant may access the elevator to travel down to the lower volume which symbolizes the culmination of the studies on the conscious and unconscious minds, representing the harmonious relationship between the two entities that researchers strive to understand.
MODEL PHOTO 32a
Fountain of Flowers
Jennifer Wang
Visual Communications III
Instructor: P. McCoy
Fall
2023
Every aspect of this ornamented hallway is formed from a few simple motifs, sourced from the small, unseen geometries of ornamental patterns and satellite imagery. These motifs, or profiles, were then inputted into Grasshopper algorithms, with new shapes arising from the geometric intersections. This is what created the three traditional-looking wallpaper patterns. The wallpaper and the basic units were integrated into a final corridor, designed sectionally rather than in plan. The Fountain of Flowers is an occupiable gallery space, with artistry in the architecture itself. It has an organic, classical feel to it. The fountain blooms from a central moment, defining the axis of symmetry throughout the length of the corridor. A domed skylight frames the water in a wash of natural light, beckoning visitors to enjoy the sights and take pictures. People are also free to take a seat on the expansive windowsill, leveled to a comfortable height and curved at the ends like an armchair. They just might need to watch for the sharp angle…Ouch!
Fragrance Atelier
Madeleine Wilson Advanced Design Studio - Scentability Instructor: L. Janssen
Fall 2023
This studio aimed to spatialize ephemeral qualities of space, movement, and sensory perception. Programming includes a laboratory for distilling and bottling fine fragrance, retail space, private atelier, and dedicated area for sensory deprivation. The design of the interior was revealed through physical making by experimenting and establishing a process to generate physical forms. In this way, the design mirrors the empirical process of for-
mulating fine fragrances. Physical elements manifest as cave-like rock formations that anchor to the site by appearing to be made from solid limestone. Highly refined detailing serves as a counter and represents the scientific lens required in fragrance formulation. The resulting design is stimulating, participatory, inclusive, sensorial, immersive, intangible, and shifting based on its inhabitation.
RENDER
Galapagos Reforestation
Charlie/Chon Fai Kuok, James Mustillo
Advanced Design Studio - Galapagos
Instructor: D. Heymann, A. Jaeschke
Summer 2023
The project concept revolves around the interplay between the landscape and architecture. It emphasizes the relationship between the forest and the research center. The project’s massing aligns with the western view axis, establishing visual connections from the research center to the valley, city, and ocean beyond. It creates both a viewpoint and a navigational beacon. The building’s orientation along the East-West axis mitigates
the challenges posed by strong evening sun exposure. To celebrate the connection with the landscape, the building transforms into an observation deck at its ends. Visitors can stroll beneath the building on an elevated garden pathway. After meandering through the building’s structure and diverse plant species on-site, the path opens to a panoramic view of the forested valley with the oceanic town in the background.
MODEL PHOTO 33a
MODEL PHOTO
SECTION THROUGH OUTDOOR SPACES
RENDER
33d
33c
33b
Gardens of Dance
Ashwini Munji
Landscape Architecture Design Studio IV
Instructor: A. Barbe
Spring 2022
The City of EL Paso along with TxDOT wishes to build a Deck Plaza over I-10. This proposal acknowledges the rich cultural history of El Paso and hopes to provide a space that would not only embrace the different ethnic groups/cultures, but be a marker in the city, narrating the stories of the past and passing the knowledge to the future generations. Using Dance as a metaphor and symbology, this Deck Plaza is a place for people to come together, receive a sense of community and have cultural exchange.
SITE ZONES
34c
Geary Boulevard
Aubry Klinger
Urban Design Studio
Instructor: D. Almy, G. DiTommasso, L. Johnson
Spring 2022
Geary Boulevard, the main east-west thoroughfare through the Richmond district of San Francisco, is today a monotonous and traffic-filled road. The street was intended to act as a link between the city’s downtown and its Pacific coast, but currently, this trip can only comfortably be made by car. This project reimagines Geary both as the social heart of several sub-neighborhoods within the Richmond, and as a people-focused link between the city and the Ocean. A new light rail system, bike lanes, and a series of green spaces, weave together along the length of the boulevard, responding to the existing character of the neighborhood and to the new density proposed along Geary by the studio’s masterplan. The Geary of tomorrow is a new kind of street which anchors and connects the people of San Francisco to nature and to one another.
AERIAL RENDER
35a
RENDER
Go Visitor Center
Design II - Foundation Studio
Instructor: U. Dangel, E. Danze, J. Rosner
Spring 2021
Thanh Le
The visitor center was designed with three principles in mind. The building must have little physical affect on the site, focus on the visual and spatial experience of the visitors, and facilitate social activities within the building and its surroundings. Inside, the project concentrates blending the borders between indoor and outdoor space. It embraces and explores the flexibility of that space in hosting various activities such as a café, a gallery and a viewing room. This main uninterrupted corridor within the horizontal tube of the building not only visually connects the occupant to the outside, but also enables physical access to the site, the roof, the bathroom and the office. Visitors are meant to enter, experience the space and their coffee briefly before making their way down to the main attraction, the sculpture garden.
MASSING MODEL
Green Core
Charlie/Chon Fai Kuok, Amelia R. Webb
Campbell Kraemer, Katherine A. Kelley
Ania J Yee-Boguinskaia
Claire T Greene, Varsha S Iyer
Christine Annabel Lee, Nolan J Summerhill
Brinton Lee Freeze. Nikki Gendelman
Osvaldo Herrera Garcia, Chi-Shen Ni
Advanced Design: GreenCore
Instructor: J. Liu, C. Townley Spring 2022
This project explores the role of an accessible dwelling unit (ADU) in a suburban context to mediate the tension in gentrification and climate change. The project utilizes CNC routing and plywood bending to create a kitof-parts which can be implemented in different sizes and locations. The module is based on an 8’ equilateral triangular grid as a means to incorporate the idea of tree canopy as part of the architecture. The ADU system can be constructed by civilians without the help of an outside contractor. This minimizes the cost to build an ADU in an existing backyard, therefore empowering residents financially as well as mitigating the growing housing demand.
Guiding Lines
An Adaptive Template for the Northwest Industrial Neighborhood
Erin Kim, Hayley Brant, Alejandra Quintana, Vastal Shah
Advanced Design - Cascadia Chronicles IV
Instructor: M. Hansen, D. Almy
Spring 2022
Portland, Oregon’s northwest industrial district is a large, urban neighborhood situated along the northwest section of the Willamette River. However, the once entirely riparian wetland is now a part of the Portland harbor superfund site. Sixty-four total chemicals of concern are discharged from many of the industrial facilities found on the site. This hazardous waste spreads into the storm and wastewater outfalls on site and eventually ends up in the Willamette River. Simultaneously, Portland’s population is projected to increase by 300,000 in the next decade. This area is experiencing this pressure along its forest park edge where housing development is expanding. To accommodate this expansion, more people are utilizing the site beyond its industrial use. New industries like breweries, wineries, and art studios are emerging, bringing a new cultural character to the site. While it is an economically significant industrial area, there is a need for intervention to
remediate the site’s pollution to provide a healthier environment for workers, a new population of residents, and the area’s ecology. Guiding Lines provides a design strategy that preserves the industrial economy, remediates pollution, integrates housing, and embraces a cultural shift so that the Portland community can thrive. This design approach utilizes editing through subtraction and a syntactic approach to develop a language for users to understand the network of public, semi-public and restricted areas found in the site. With an understanding that the site will change over time, this approach serves as an adaptive template for current and future use of the northwest industrial neighborhood. .
Hal Box & South Lobby
Jeannette Massey Design IV - Technical Instructor: C. Odom Spring 2022
This design challenges the way occupants move throughout and between the South Lobby, located on the first floor of Goldsmith, and the Hal Box Athenaeum, located on the fifth floor, by utilizing color, wall orientation, and lighting to make wayfinding an intentional activity. Emphasis was placed on reimagining how the Hal Box and South Lobby could be used in order promote studio culture and strengthen internal and local community by creating multi-use spaces with public and
private areas. Within the Hal Box Athenaeum is the historic Charles Moore mural that celebrates his post-modern design ideals. To acknowledge and appreciate this piece, each section within the Hal Box was designed with a visual connection back to the mural. These sections are configured for various activities and are demarcated by wall partitions that guide movement within the room, each complemented by colors extracted from the mural. The pink semi-enclosed area accommodates small group pin-ups, the yellow bench serves as a designated social hub, and the blue enclosed room provides an environment for individual study. In essence, the space fosters studio culture by serving as a nexus between students’ academic pursuits and social interactions. With the South Lobby being the entrance into Goldsmith, it becomes essential to the culture of UTSOA. Catering to both regular users and occasional visitors, the lobby was designed as a place for students to display and discuss work, a designated waiting area for those visiting the office, and additional seating options. Each of these sections are oriented to create meaningful movement that encourages occupants to travel intentionally through the space.
RENDER
40b
RENDER
40c
Holding Court
Mason Brown Planning and Design of Landscape I
Instructor: H. Hasbrouck, C. Eddleman-Heath Fall 2021
This design employed the use of lines of extension between entry & exit points from the four dorms that encapsulate the courtyard. These lines of extension and subdivisions within were used to influence each space. This new courtyard holds a large gathering terrace at its center where students can hold meetings, club fairs, graduation celebrations, or during the semester act as a study area. Within the spaces, the trees, and the foliage, I aimed to frame the ground, the sky, and various points of interest. The courtyard sparks curiosity, encourages relaxation, and breathes new life into an underutilized part of campus.
RENDER
41b
Honors Courtyard
Kristen Juen
Panning and Design of Landscape I
Instructor: M. Averitt
Fall 2023
Framed by residence halls, the Honors Courtyard at the University of Texas is home to students, many who are living away from home for the first time. The existing site has unrealized potential to provide gathering spaces for building community, while also maintaining privacy for individuals living on a public campus. The proposed design creates opportunities for residents to connect to the landscape on three levels: first, the UT identity by reflecting the campus aesthetic and providing event space, second, the honors community through site-specific art and group spaces, and third, the individual experience
through individual spaces and discoveries. An oval mall reflects the campus aesthetic and provides gathering space for the UT community. Planting areas serve as privacy buffers for resident rooms. A sloped terrace design articulates spaces sized for public, social, intimate, and individual interpersonal interactions. Finally, the loop sculpture enhances an individual’s experience of walking to and from class, conveys an honors courtyard identity, and connects to the UT community identity as a part of the UT Landmarks public art program.
Housing the Unhoused
Paulina Gallegos, Abigail Winfield, Elena Paige Frost
Advanced Design Studio
Instructors: M. Spin, J. Gu
Spring 2022
This project responds to the housing crisis in Chinatown, Los Angeles, by providing density and multifamily living for low-income and the homeless. In addition to studying financial models and financing, the project focuses on a new proposal for housing development. Sited on a vacant lot in Chinatown, the surrounding context includes a park, a transit line, and housing developments. While connecting to the surrounding context, this proposal contains critical elements that make up the overall form, such as the plinth with parking underneath and courtyards above, mixed-use space on the two lower levels, and units on the upper levels. The building is wrapped with a metal mesh to provide solar shading and unify all the different components. This project balances the formal aggregation of units, financial research, graphic and performative building envelopes, courtyards, and civic infrastructure to address the housing crisis and the urban fabric.
AERIAL RENDERING
43b
Index/Code
Notes on Krauss
Colin Cantwell
Spacial Stories
Instructor: N. Weidemann Fall 2023
It is the aim of traditional architectural conventions to represent a building through code; the physical space of the building flattens as it is translated into line, poché, and hatch. The works at MoMA PS.1 by Lucio Pozzi (1976), Michelle Stuart, (1979) and Gordon Matta-Clark (1976) present the opposite—a building indexed but not coded, a trace of the object that is tautological to the object itself. This form of representation is impossible to be understood outside of the context of the building; Matta-Clark’s work, for example, could not be transported to a museum as it merely consisted of a void within the object of the building. Pozzi’s work, similarly, would become meaningless when taken off the wall. This indexing ultimately presents a much truer image of the building-object than any coded version—the plan, the section, the model. Here, the truth of the building is exposed without trans -
lation. As Deborah Hay expressed in her 2018 lecture At MoMA, the PS.1 exhibitions speak simply for the building: “I am here.” The dichotomy of the symbol and the index can be easily mapped onto Michel de Certeau’s description of the map and the tour in The Practice of Everyday Life (1980). The
map is a symbol, an interpretation of a space through a code. It presents the place through a graphic language; however, it often fails to capture its temporal, emotional, or narrative properties. The index, on the other hand, is more like deCerteau’s “tour” in that it sets aside the broad understanding in favor of a specific sensory description. The photograph does not attempt to express the whole truth of an object; rather, it expresses one view of the object in one condition at one point in time. The tour may not include every detail of a space, but it expresses one user’s experience of the space at a given point in time. It would be interesting to see how the indexical approach of the postmodernists could find
itself expressed in the context of architectural education, where symbolism dominates. The challenge is that, in a studio environment, a theoretical project cannot be indexed in the way of P.S. 1 as there is no physical building to reference. Therefore, the building object can be only understood and presented through symbolic representations. These drawings become signifiers, speaking on behalf of the unbuilt building which does not yet have a voice of its own. The representations fail to accurately convey the presence of the building object, which can only be truly expressed through the index—the photograph,
the tracing, the void. Much like how the map reduces its subject to a set of systems, the plan and section reduce the building to a set of graphic conventions. One could argue that much “bad” architecture is the result of this flattening, this failure to take into account the physical and sensory weight of the planned building. Much like how the tour liberates a space through its expression of lived experience and desire, the index has the power to liberate the building by speaking to its sensory presence and feeling. Perhaps by allowing this abstraction into our understanding of the design process, we can give voice to the elements of buildings which so often go unspoken. ●
Intersection
Joseph Doyague
Vertical Studio: Convergence
Instructor: N. Wiedemann
Fall 2023
Red Mountain (Sugarloaf Mountain and/or Turtle Mountain) is the place of origin for the Tonkawa tribe. Working on such an important site, our studio designed a program to restore the ecology that was present when the Tonkawa people still inhabited the land: the Blackland Prairie. Blackland Prairie ecology is a cultivated landscape, perpetuated by grazing animals and disturbance fires. Landscape restoration thereby directly prescribed the cultural practices of the Tonkawa people to the site. Following these gestures, I worked to describe the moment of intersection between building and landscape, one of reciprocal ten-
sion and harmony; expansion and contraction; incursion and retreat. My building aspired to interweave culture and place, landscape and structure. Designing a welcome center for the Tonkawa tribe on their sacred land, I worked to contextually integrate links between indigenous culture and landscape into my design.
PLAN 45a
Lamar Transit Hub
Sarah Lemp
Design III - Interiors Studio Instructor: A. Gaskins Fall 2023
The project addresses the issues of adjacencies and boundaries, simultaneous inhabitation, and modulation of light through the use of depth and layering. The wall partition and guardrail design were crucial in addressing these issues in addition to how those affect natural light within the space. The layered walls give depth and shadow to the spaces they create while enrobing the inhabitants in a pattern of light. The expanded wall partitions and integrated lighting between the layers create hanging lights at differing heights to bring depth to the main space. The guardrail design, positioned horizontally in private spaces to line up with skylights, further enrobes the inhabitants in order to interact with sunlight in an intimate environment. This is also prevalent at the entrance of the transit hub as well as the outside and live music area. This integration of the elements on the outside and inside helps to have a sense of continuity throughout the project. Incorporating the wall partition design as a tile inlay further helps to distinguish spaces from public and private and the orientation of furniture.
COMPLETED PANELS
Lightscapes
Pranav Subramanian, Maya Hazarika Independent Work Summer 2023
Drawing from the shared experience and nostalgia of Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli films, the Asian Memory Project seeks to create community in Austin’s rapidly growing yet still underrepresented Asian American population. We worked with AMP to design the staging for their debut concert events, using a budget of $2,500 to produce an engaging experience
that modernizes the traditional classical concert and caters it towards building community in Austin’s Asian American population. and digital fabrication techniques, we constructed set pieces that complemented the musical aspect of the performances while providing the necessary visual stimulus to engage a variety of audiences. The resulting design featured in a series of unique concerts lasting all throughout the summer of 2022.
Manor Blackland Junction
Ashlynn Althaus,
Gabriela Ocampos Velazquez
Advanced Design Instructor: M. Garrison
Fall 2023
This project supports the shifting uses in Austin’s evolving Blackland neighborhood. Replacing a current parking lot, it aims to balance economic growth with community integration through its programming and design while engaging in dialogue with the genius loci. The proposed mixed-use building on Manor Road will provide new commercial space: a ground-floor restaurant and a firstfloor hotel. As the “American Dream” shifts from a large house in the suburbs to some -
thing more achievable and urban, there is a greater demand for diverse housing options. The project addresses this by providing four levels of apartments with flexible one or two-bedroom unit configurations to serve students, couples, and small families, and an adjoining row of three-level, three-bedroom townhomes that cater to larger households seeking urban amenities. The townhouses face the existing homes on the alley behind the site to allow the project to fit both the scale of the growing commercial district on Manor Road and the scale of the Blackland neighborhood. Drawing further from its context, each private apartment and townhouse front has a private porch echoing Blackland’s residential roots. As part of a comprehensive sustainability program, the building optimizes passive and active design strategies for Austin’s climate through cross breezes, photovoltaic panels, and a rainwater collection system. The central circulation spine allows daylight penetration through light wells and airflow through the corridor via apertures on the East and West facades. With its diverse housing types and adaptable commercial offerings, the development promotes an inclusive vision of Austin’s future while respecting its history and current residents.
LIVE+WORK+PLAY
Chon Fai Kuok
Vertical Studio
Danelle Briscoe Fall 2021
Live + Work + Play is a new type of infrastructure proposed to address the paradigm shift in work culture. The preconception of work is evolving and the needs of workspace become ambiguous. The proposal creates a 3-dimensional field condition by pulling units apart and the spaces in between units become flexible spaces with different spatial conditions, which can be utilized for any kind of works.The neutrality of the flexible spaces allows a variety of programs to happen inside, such as a park, playground, urban farm, transportation hub. It is a fluid system that supports the evolving work culture.
MODEL PHOTO 48a
LLM Material Hybrids
A Sustainable Paradigm Shift in Building
Construction through LLM-Driven Synthetic
Materials
Catherine Graubard
Computational Architecture
Instructor: D. Koehler
Fall 2023
RESEARCH WORKFLOW
This research delves into leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) for the discovery and synthesis of sustainable materials in architectural applications, with the objective of replacing traditional, carbon-intensive construction materials. The project outlines a systematic workflow that integrates LLMs, AI-driven methodologies, and data from renowned databases such as Berkeley’s Materials Project and Google’s GNoME. This workflow enables the identification and fabrication of innovative materials that meet key criteria such as low carbon emissions, cost-effectiveness, and scalability, tailored to local resources. A significant aspect of the research is the use of the Stable Diffusion model to visualize material applications at different architectural scales, providing architects and designers with realistic images that support informed design decisions. The project emphasizes practicality and accessibility, enabling even resource-limited small-scale labs to engage in advanced material synthe-
sis. This approach contributes to reducing the environmental impact of construction by fostering the development of low-carbon materials and promoting local resource use. The study bridges the fields of architecture, material science, and AI, showcasing the potential of interdisciplinary research to address pressing environmental challenges in the construction industry. By offering a replicable, scalable workflow, the research sets the stage for future advancements in sustainable construction practices. This work, presented at the 2024 ACSA International Conference, underscores the importance of AI-driven innovation in achieving sustainability goals within the built environment.
49b
MOCK-UP
49c
Manchaca Viticulture & Learning Center
Rohaan Saripella, Austin Li
Comprehensive
Studio Instructor: M. McCall
Fall 2022
The Texas Hill-Country is one of the premier locations for viticulture in the American South. However, due to rapid development in cities like Austin, the integrity of the land and subsequent waterways is under threat. The Manchaca Viticulture and Learning Center serves as a winery and learning facility that educates visitors on land stewardship through the processes of viticulture. The viticulture center serves as a microcosm of a large-scale farming practice in hopes of encouraging visitors to take action in their own community through the methods and practices learned on site. The functions of the center are split between the two floors. The first floor is where wine is produced and bottled, while the second floor contains educational facilities. The learning center partners with local elementary schools giving field trips to students and teaching them about land stewardship. Night classes are also available to adults who want to learn more about how they can engage in land stewardship in their backyards. In addition to classes, community gardens are also available to provide a more hands-on approach to land stewardship.
The center also implements sustainable systems such as a mass timber structure, rainwater harvesting, aquaponics, and localized wastewater filtration to limit its embodied energy and maintenance. Furthermore, the undulating spaceframe roof structure is constructed of peeler cores which are leftover wood cores that are a by-product of plywood manufacturing. The Manchaca Viticulture and Learning Center not only teaches about sustainable processes, but also embodies sustainability in its construction and function.
Masonry DesignBuild
The Luis
Jake Pescatore,
Angelina Mayers, Ben Wierschem, Emma Martin, Lilly Gilford, Sravanti Bhattiprolu
Construction
Instructor: C. Gomes
Fall 2023
In the graduate Construction course, we were tasked to model and build a masonry design that was structurally sound and aesthetically pleasing. We were allowed a set amount of bricks, CMU blocks, and one custom quarry stone. The design was then built with real materials provided by the Texas Mason’s Guild. The basis of our structure was a wall with a part of the design jutting outward to give it a multi-dimensional feel. We settled upon an alternating brick pattern with 90-degree shifts in orientation and staggered each wythe placed upon the next to create both diagonal and vertical patterns. The three masonry blocks were staggered at either side as the wall climbed upward. By inserting one wythe of bricks between each CMU on the vertical axis, two void spaces were created where each block met the brick, allowing passersby to see through the wall in a unique
SCALE MODEL 52a
way. The quarry stone was placed on top to complete the masonry block pattern. Using each of the 120 bricks in a mathematical sequence, we were able to complete a triangular peak. Build day was a challenge in terms of laying a straight and uniformly jointed wall. Being only one wythe thick, we triple checked our alignment while building so that there were no curves or bulges in the structure. The extreme precision required to adjust the orientation of half the bricks to the 90-degree angle was worth the work when we saw the distinctive shadows cast off the completed wall. Thanks to the help of professional mason Luis, we named the design after him.
Memory Palace
Eamanne Moharram
Design III - Interiors Studio
Instructor: A. Gaskins
Fall 2021
The concept of the Memory Palace is a space to preserve, share, and create our stories and everyday rituals. Through a study of South West Asian and North African (SWANA) cultures and traditions, this space invites people to partake in conversations with strangers across generations and to leave traces behind for future guests. A crucial aspect of culture is community – what exists of culture when community dies? Upon entry, guests are invited into a conversation pit to freely exchange stories, questions, and conversation under the open sky. One’s experience funnels into a reflective art space where guests can appreciate works of sculpture and visual art. In the film space, guests meander through a path of projections, music, and film. Near the end sequence, people are invited to read, for the
written word is how we remember the past, preserve the present, and imagine the future. Under dappled light, people will gather for public readings, book clubs, and writers’ circles; in the same space they can leave behind their works in the ever growing library. And finally, the meditation space allows guests to pause and reflect upon all they have seen, heard, shared, and left behind in the Memory Palace as they gaze out at the landscape. Overall, the Memory Palace aims to interpret how our stories and traditions can ground us in shared experience, how they can challenge the notion that our differences in belief, age, and background are enough to keep us apart, and how they can facilitate building a future aided by the past and rooted in community.
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EXPLODED AXONOMETRIC
MultiSpecies Kinship
Advanced Design Studio
Instructor: C. Odom
Fall 2023
In a city grappling with the challenges of urban sprawl and diminishing sense of community, such as Los Angeles, this project creates a symbiotic living system that integrates diverse forms of life—microorganisms, plantae/ fungi, and animals (including humans)—within a vertical framework, departing from the conventional horizontal urban sprawl. The other challenge is to establish moments of mutually beneficial interaction across three distinct scales—unit, neighborhood, and the broader building/urban scale between all life forms through a series of architectural and interior design moves.
SCALE MODEL
Juliet Chui
The New Ney
Matthew Powell
Advanced Design Studio
Instructor: M. Benedikt
Fall 2021
The New Ney Museum is a two-story extension to the Elisabet Ney Museum in Austin’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Sculpture, specifically stone and metal, is a unique medium which exhibits considerable resistance to environmental factors. While unspecialized art museums require a tightly sealed building envelope, sculptures are often displayed within exterior, unconditioned courtyards. In quite a radical gesture, the entire ground floor gallery space of the proposed museum is unconditioned, draped with thin, reflective curtains. This action both utilizes Austin’s favorable climate and, as the curtains below in the wind, hides and reveals the museum’s collection to passersby. The proposed museum is arranged as a series of semi-open and
semi-enclosed spaces, creating a continuous gradient of opacity and permeability. Travertine walls receive extended curtain rods and rest gently on stone benches, pulling
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in the surrounding site and forming exterior courtyards. An exception to the open interior, two dark monolithic walls provide structure for the staircases; guide HVAC, electricity, and plumbing to the second floor; and create a backdrop for sculpture behind. Without a defined entrance, stone steps along the building’s outer walkway allow museumgoers to step onto the ground floor platform. Combined with the permeable nature of flowing fabric, the lack of an entrance further emphasizes the open border among the museum, the adjacent creek and greenery, and the Hyde Park neighborhood—encouraging casual pedestrians to detour through the museum.
Nostro Giardino
Anthony Watley
Advanced
Design Studio Instructor: P. Lickwar
Nostro Giardino is a proposal that attempts to reimagine the Italian Renaissance Garden as a public garden for the people. The primary aim is to take the traditional symbols of wealth and opulence, i.e. food production and grand garden rooms, and subvert them by making the public the primary consideration for their use and enjoyment. The space is meant to be experienced through a series of spaces that have no hierarchy through pathways in which the public can move freely, creating their own pathways. What has been created is a synthesis of the public park and the Italian Renaissance Garden that retains the strong space-making and
The Orchard
Mayle Lester
Design IV - Intermediate Studio
Instructor: M. Glassell
Spring 2022
The Orchard multifamily housing complex aims to mediate exchange between strangers, friends, and neighbors through bridging a focused interior with a lively exterior. The vertical garden and the sheltered exterior balconies perform as semi-public buffer zones between communal interior space and absolute exterior. Tectonic members support the partial green facade and extend at larger balcony locations to create an unsheltered threshold between semi-exterior and total exterior. The voids and communal kitchen on the ground floor of the site operate to connect and attract commercial and residential circulation networks along E. Cesar Chavez Street and Pedernales Street, locations of major exchange hubs in this area. A more open frame network and greater concentration of vegetation facing Pedernales Street allows the building to be receptive to the public, whereas the amenity spaces like the communal kitchen and vegetable garden are resident-centered. To enter all units, a resident must encounter these communal areas, encouraging social interaction on the ground floor.
The Organ-ism
Michelle Alane Franks
Advanced Design Studio - Engorged Interiors
Instructor: A. Schweder, A. McDonnold
Spring 2023
This project explores methods of creative self-expression and psychoanalysis to create a physical manifestation of a self-reflective environment. Creative self-expression is like a life raft in tumultuous waters - insti -
gating a deep connection with and purging of emotions and experiences. This vulnerability coincides with empathy, connection, and community when shared with others. The very human urge to communicate personal experience is the need to be heard and understood. Storytelling and emotional processing are one and the same. At its inception, the cube represents the processing of initial creative inspiration into more concrete manifestations. It is self-expression and reflection in one moment. Like a cube, not all parts of the self are accessible from any single perspective. The cube’s exterior fragmentation draws from the multiplicity of the Self. All of us have many parts to our Selves - some parts we like and choose to express outwardly, and others we keep deeper, only exposing to those who desire the knowl-
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edge of what is hidden beneath the surface. Within psychotherapy there are five pillars to forming a healthy sense of identity and self: to be safe, seen, soothed, heard, and to matter. The five rings of the cube are based on these five pillars. These two-dimensional concepts were extruded into three-dimensional space, employing inflatables to create a dynamic environment for spiritual experiences absent of potentially divisive religious contexts. A common theme among all spiritual ceremonies is music that creates an emotional environment, fostering spiritual experiences. Organs, commonly used in spiritual practice, utilize pressurized wind to create sound. By combining fabric structures with the wind exhaust from an organ, we can create a dynamic three-dimensional space reflective of and dependent on the sounds of the environment.
DIAGRAM
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Path of the Bison
Noah Guth
Vertical Studio - Convergence
Instructor: N. Wiedemann Fall 2023
Northwest of Rockdale, Texas, the land is streaked with swale-like landforms. Likely remnants of the San Gabriel River’s footprint, these shapes and their direction remind us of human footpaths. In this clearing along the historic El Camino Real, one is engulfed by the prevailing southeastern winds. Bison, once abounding, would lean into these strong gusts– their grazing directed by an ephemeral force. A nearby trail stop reads as a recessed streak within the landscape; its free-flowing curtain modulates the now eye-level horizon with respect to the wind. A wood frame under tension is anchored into the earth, creaking and bending as it is shaped by its environment. It is a place to rest within the earth and contemplate the intuitive forces which guide our movement. All things lean into the steady pressure.
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MODEL PHOTO
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Pavilion on the Prairie
Travis Gerhardt
Vertical Studio - Convergence
Instructor:
N. Wiedemann
Fall 2023
Located outside of Cameron, TX, this project focuses on the Blackland Prairie, a vast eco-region that spans much of the southeast United States. To be sustained, the Prairie requires natural disturbances such as fires and grazing to prevent it from becoming destroyed. Additionally, historic narratives recount individuals ‘wading through oceans of grass’ while traversing
the prairie, with native grass species such as switch-grass ranging up to 8 feet in height. Unfortunately, much of America’s grassland prairies have been killed off and the remaining is constantly under destruction due to the consistent expansion of development and agriculture. The historic eradication of wild Bison and prairie dogs have also played a huge part in the thicketization of the prairie.
MAP STUDY
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PLAN 60d
This project responds to this issue with the intention of restoring a section of the prairie to it’s native condition, as well as providing a viewing platform to immerse one’s self in an ocean of grasslands. The pavilion itself is designed
to burn with the Prairie, over time taking on a burnt-wood finish. The pavilion also acts as a viewing platform for Red Mountain, the cultural and spiritual origin point for the Tonkawa people, who originally inhabited the prairie.
Public Pool Priority
Aledia Villasana
Design V - Intermediate Studio
Instructor: T. Swingle
Fall 2022
Historically, public pools have served as social hubs offering opportunities for relaxation and interaction. However, discrimination and exclusivity of the African American population are a prominent part of this history. At the scale of a lower-income Austin community park and neighborhood, this project proposes a unifying central axis meant to facilitate access to public pool amenities and the varying bodies of water. The design aims to welcome a diverse audience by accommodating various levels of comfortability in water by offering different depths and a range of hot and cold temperatures. While redesigning a public pool within a community park, an investigation of water integration and the placement of public restrooms and showers that maintain the boundary of privacy at different levels became a prioritized task. At the core of inclusion, a series of gender-neutral spaces were created for all to use. Additionally, accessibility is addressed with gentle slopes that all lead to a common ground floor and provide access to all pool types.
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STRUCTURE RENDER
Puzzle Table
Taryn Sarah Tsujimoto
Design Instructor: M. Macek
This furniture piece is a minimal design which creatively expresses the properties of wood. This coffee table doubles as a working puzzle table consisting of two components: the coffee table surface and the puzzle working surface. These two components nest into each other where the coffee table protects the puzzle surface in its primary position which can then pivot to reveal the puzzle surface. The coffee table component has an upper surface and a lower surface which serves the purpose for storage and puzzle box display. Some considerations for this design consisted of common puzzle sizes, the point of pivot and rotation radius, the space between puzzle and top surface, and the size constraints of available materials.
Render 3: Central Courtyard
ReGen Hall
Michael Alada, Catherine Graubard, Dariya Fallon, Lexi Hudson, Sarah Rosseau, Zane Johnson, Ruiqi Huang, Saba Abdolshahi, Qin He, Marcel Muhammad
Solar Decathlon Design Challenge
Instructor: M. Garrison
Fall 2023
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon challenges teams of interdisciplinary university students to envision high performance, low-carbon buildings powered by renewable resources. The student team from the University of Texas at Austin was named one of the ten finalists in their division at the 2024 Solar Decathlon Design competition. The team traveled to Colorado to present their
Austin Final Design Narrative
Massing Diagram
Shading System Diagram
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MASSING DIAGRAM
project, ReGen Hall, and tour the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, a leading center for research in renewable energy technologies. ReGen Hall, aimed at addressing the housing needs of Dell Medical students, focuses on ecological sustainability and affordability to create a community environment that caters to the unique housing requirements of medical students and their families. The 72,000-square-foot mixed-use educational building incorporates innovative features such as affordable prefab modular construction, Passive House building envelope systems, Zero Net Energy BIPV power systems, and low-embodied-use building materials to achieve resource efficiency and community compatibility. Drawing on extensive experience in both the Solar Decathlon-Build and Solar Decathlon-Design Challenge, ReGen Hall aspires to set a new benchmark for sustainable university and community spaces in Austin.
ReRooting Camden
Aishwarya Arjun Parab, Maria Rubio, Laura Shaffer
Advanced Design Studio
Instructor: S. Atkinson Fall 2023
ReRooting Camden utilizes a set of design strategies that leverage paths and places to transform Camden’s community, ecology, and identity. The project aims at creating a thriving city which supports the well-being of all its human, plant, and animal residents. This vision can be broken down into four objectives: to sustain tomorrow’s city, to create an affordable, inclusive community, to cultivate thriving human health and well-being, and to treat water as a source of life. We believe that human health, well-being, vibrancy, and success of Camden rely heavily on its ecological and environmental health. This is especially
important in the changing climate context. These strategies are interconnected and contribute to our vision by supporting multiple objectives at once. For example, the strategy of a Green Loop which connects the study area to Regents Park, existing smallscale parks, and proposed parks is a design strategy whose success can be measured in increased biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and size and usage of parks. This strategy furthers the “sustaining tomorrow’s city” objective but also has interconnections with other objectives and can contribute to a sense of identity for Camden that is ecologically sustainable. Another design strategy with links to several objectives is the “local traffic only” zone. This strategy furthers both the affordable and inclusive community goals (measured by metrics such as local business survival rates), reduces fossil-fuel emissions, and improves health and well-being scores.
The Interbay neighborhood of Seattle has historically been a site of high productivity. Before white settlers developed the region, the native Salish tribes used the area to hunt, fish, and gather food. Today, the area is a hub for the Pacific Northwest fishing industry as well as small-scale manufacturing. However, the infrastructure which supports these industries has not only created an enormous barrier within the city, but it has also wreaked havoc on the ecology of the site. This project proposes to reverse this reality by reinventing an infrastructure of connection and employing strategies of ecological protection, all while retaining the productive identity of the neighborhood. The reinterpretation of the unbuilt Olmsted greenway plan, and the addition of a light rail route emphasizes the link between Ballard and Downtown. This north-south greenway spine is at the heart of the proposal and establishes Interbay as a secondary city center. Despite its centrality within the city, Interbay is very vulnerable due to the threat of sea level rise, heavily polluted soils, and a historic landfill. Instead of fighting the rising waters, the proposal aims to protect developed land by slowly
accepting water into a dedicated wetland park bordering Smith Cove. New productive landscapes have also been introduced at the site of the old Seattle Armory which has been transformed into a sea of greenhouses. This intensive food production both feeds the neighborhood and creates exports which can be shipped out by boat or train directly from the site. These essential acts of connection and protection give Interbay a bright future and help preserve the vital productive economies which have existed here for centuries.
Rethinking Assessment of 20th Century Built Heritage
A Curatorial Shift Toward Design Intent & Process
Susan Singh
Instructor: M. Holleran
Historic Preservation History & Theory
Fall 2023
Traditionally, historic preservation guidelines have acted to both venerate and protect structures constructed using traditional materials and craftsmanship. In these cases, verifying a structure’s significance by evaluating its physical materiality as proof of authenticity makes sense. However, in recent decades, an increasing number of preservation professionals have been challenged to tackle ever larger numbers of younger historic structures from the twentieth-century, where it remains unclear whether a different philosophical approach to restoration may be necessary. Some preservatiin practitioners believe applying a unique
set of standards for principles and practice is warranted due to the very different set of circumstances from which twentieth century architecture emerged. They argue that, with the start of the Modern Movement, a philosophical value shift occurred within the design process that should be reflective in preservation practice: one that prioritized utility over aesthetics, one that capitalized on economic benefits from modern industrialized materials and processes. Therefore, the focus should move away from placing importance on materiality, toward a framework of judging significance expressed through the intangible process of original design intent and the process of experimental ingenuity.
2
For the purposes of this article, the term “twentieth-century built heritage” will be used to denote the building stock in question. During the interwar period, and especially continuing through the postwar building boom, new materials and construction practices were being embraced, experimented with, and finally employed throughout this heritage. However, this did not necessarily constitute a clear departure and a complete break from traditional practices.
This evolution unfolded along a continuum of technological progress, where s ome building practices may have been hybrid in nature. Other constructions exhibited more of a surface-level adoption and application of modernist theory, with underlying traditional material and labor underpinnings apparent only upon closer examination. The question then becomes “How can the current preservation guidelines accommodate this ubiquitous building stock within its historical context, some of which may demand a unique treatment to assess significance and integrity, while still considering traditional preservation methodologies?” The answer may lie not in a completely separate set of standards, but rather through a more flexible and reasonable weighing of the criteria with structured, albeit still subjective, considerations of intangible design intent on a case-by-case basis.
Social Aims of the Design Process
The initial design shift towards Functionalism that began with the Modern Movement in the early twentieth-century plays a critical role in evaluation by providing the necessary historical context. Understanding those overarching goals is essential to grasp the implicit meaning and inherent significance of architectural design from this era. Utilizing advancements in technology was not for its own sake. Rather, the stated aim was typically to create not only a more comfortable and healthier environment, but one with larger social aims that could be within reach and affordable to a much larger population. After the conclusion of the Second World War in particular, the extreme housing demand spurred architects to find solutions that could satisfy the most people, and moreover, economically. To mirror that prioritization of social utility, present day preservation efforts to determine significance may need to shift by judging constructions on how effectively the origi -
nal design fulfilled broader social objectives.
The value lying in a design’s ingenuity may not be at first apparent in tangible form, especially not through conventionally judged measures based on aesthetic presentation. Rather, a structure’s value could be rooted in how the architect found a creative solution to derive economic efficiency. This may necessitate a comprehensive understanding of the economic situation, material and manufacturing capabilities, and the larger production context at play. Architect Mies van der Rohe, for example, flaunted that the design for his concrete framed high-rise Promontory Apartments in Chicago was constructed so economically that the price per square foot was less than comparable public housing —but of course, with professionally designed middle class comfort. In the case of twentieth-century built heritage, these factors assume greater importance. However, they are likely to compliment, rather than replace, the traditional criteria used to judge historic significance. In the case of Promontory Apartments, for example, Mies’s superb technical achievements also embody significance. Not only was the Promontory Apartments Mies’s first high rise building, but it was also the first expression of an entirely exposed concrete frame. The stepped, projecting columns were especially noted for their elegant tectonic expression, bearing further aesthetic merit.
When examining social objectives of twentieth-century design, it is crucial to tread cautiously. Despite their lofty, utopian aspirations, many designers ultimately fell short in achieving their stated anticipated social cohesion. In the worst cases, the experiments simply did not function. Experimental high-density public housing towers such as architect Minoru Yamasaki’s enormous Pruitt Igoe complex in St. Louis, for instance, completely backfired. Constructed in the mid-1950s, failure due to poor maintenance, crime, and vandalism de3 4 5
manded the demolition of the towers by 1976. In some instances, buildings may exhibit architectural excellence, but can be overshadowed by inherent flaws in social functioning. In assessing and evaluating buildings holistically for social value, preservationists must adopt a critical and skeptical approach. This will inherently involve a sensitive empathy—actively engaging with the constituents’ expressed values, which might even diverge from the original designer’s intended contributions.
Technological Aims of the Design Process
The stated Modernist aesthetic aim was to embrace the value of technology that arose from the industrialized process: designing the house as one would a machine. Architects such as Le Corbusier began to look to manufacturing, such as the automobile industry, and saw how the built environment could also showcase the largest benefits of the factory, where material production could be delivered with precision and economy, as well as being mass produced at a vast scale. With more efficient building forms underscored, standardization of specific components became a model of production with universal availability. Further, years of war defense had grown a knowledge base for materials and production methods that were transferred to welcoming designers and quickly adapted to construction. Architect Louis Kahn possibly captured the zeitgeist best nearing the end of the war in his 1944 lecture “Monumentality”:
“Standardization, prefabrication, controlled experiments and tests, and s pecialization are not monsters to be avoided by the delicate sensitiveness of the artist. They are merely the modern means of controlling vast potentialities of materials for living, by chemistry, physics, engineering,
production and assembly, which lead to the necessary knowledge the artist must have to expel fear in their use, broaden his creative instinct, give him new courage and thereby lead him to the adventures of unexplored places. His work will then be part of his age and will afford delight and service for his contemporaries.”13
Despite this sentiment likely resonating with many designers, it is nonetheless important to recognize that shifts in technological advancements were neither instantaneous nor ubiquitous. Rather, they evolved from experience and continuously improved over time. Le Corbusier’s design for his Villa Savoye, for example, was celebrated as an outstanding piece of modern architecture, in part due to the roof garden as a defining feature.14 Yet, the same early, flat concrete roof elements that were praised for their aesthetics failed miserably to prevent water infiltration with improperly designed waterproofing.15 Conversely, certain modern architects deliberately incorporated design elements that appeared to express a machined or architectonic structure, although in reality these elements primarily served only to elevate the building aesthetically. This is evident at Mies van der Rohe’s Alumni Memorial Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), where he concealed the underlying concrete structure, simply applying steel mullions to the outside of the column with glazing between for visual effect.16
Further evolving this approach, for the 860880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Mies innovated the exterior by stepping back the glass facade to the column surface line as a screen wall, adding exposed steel mullions out of plane as a solid visual component, independent from any functional role.17 In both cases, assessing technological significance de-
mands both a background understanding of what constitutes genuine technical success in architectural or engineering design, alongside the ability to discern what technological elements may in fact be only superficial.
“Throw Away” Architecture of the Twentieth Century
Looking beyond aesthetics, it is important to highlight that the approach to postwar design and construction did not necessarily prioritize long-term sustainability aims. With the optimism of creative problem solving and the possibilities that arose from new technologies came a certain wasteful attitude toward resources. Many structures of the era were designed assuming a certain functionalism, that is to say, an overall form that closely followed a building’s function. 18 As many were seen to be built for a specific purpose, the original builders often simply assumed after its use was exhausted that demolition would be a likely outcome.19 James Marston Fitch, founder of the nation’s first preservation program at Columbia University, was one of the early spokespersons for deliberate adaptive re-use to recycle buildings, recognizing that bias from technological obsolescence had become institutionalized as technological evolution became synonymous with progress. 20 This collective social attitude produced deliberately ephemeral constructions, often utilizing cheaper materials. Viewed “within its historical context”21 for the twentieth century, such built works may be authentic representatives of the era, albeit ironically. In light of the preservation field’s scrutiny of original material authenticity, wholesale material replacement in such cases may need to be regarded as a legitimate approach, especially in balancing acts where ensuring the longevity and utility of an ephemeral building artificially has been prioritized. The Palace of Fine Arts from the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco provides an interesting
example, which, despite ephemeral materiality, had become an icon in the city over time. By 1969, the structure was completely reconstructed to ensure longevity and now remains a beloved feature of the urban park. 22
Experimental Materials and Their Replacement
For typical issues of material conservation, a traditional approach includes preserving or consolidating as much of the original material as possible for the most authentic intervention of historic building fabric. 23 However, for modern building materials and assemblies, many were specified experimentally with neither a sufficient understanding of their future performance issues nor expected lifespan. 24 The buildings themselves within the external environment often essentially became the subjects of a living materials testing laboratory. In many instances, some prototypical materials that have completely failed may no longer be manufactured and cannot simply be replaced in kind. 25 Current practitioners have the advantage of hindsight to understand the cause of failure. They can recommend a replacement system with improved technology or may know a more durable or efficient material alternative. Instead of relying on the intent of a singular original architect and the technology of the original time, a continuum of collective authorship including contemporary preservation architects capturing technological progress could be legitimized. Where the material or system can be replaced in-kind, but at a huge expense, a better argument may be economically based, and a tricky, subjective one to answer at that: “How much burden should an owner reasonably be expected to pay to maintain authenticity of material?”
The cultural basis for material-based preservation decision making could likewise be scrutinized. Architect Tom Jester notes that the idea
of replacing original, authentic material for any reason goes against the core philosophy of material conservation specifically in Western culture. Jester supports his claim with contrary examples in Eastern cultures: in Japan (wood temples) or in India (sandstone structures) part or all of the material fabric is replaced every generation. 26 Curiously, here the concept of physical integrity as a greater value than the intangible design and construction process could be considered a Western cultural construct itself, one that could be dependent simply on societal consensus, and equally malleable under a differently evolved context.
Lifecycle of Buildings
Today, we typically frown upon “restoration” as it has been defined by the Secretary of the Interior: the stripping of a building of accretions back to a certain period of history. 27 Rather, preservationists are encouraged to evaluate all of the different building layers as authentic for their particular time and context. If conducting material intervention is viewed as a part of the building’s legitimate history over the course of the building’s entire life cycle, then telling that story of experimental fabric is validated. The very action of material removal properly interprets the underlying reason for that material’s replacement.
Practitioners have noted the issues that surround bringing outdated systems up to contemporary code, often disrupting authentic fabric. 28 Restoration work may necessitate working within the limitations of contemporary building codes for access and life safety standards, many of which were not applicable at the time of original construction. 29 One could view these regulations and changed standards as intangible “design lacunae,” where authentic fabric is forced to be removed or modified once any work commences. “Contrary to gener-
al belief,” art historian and restoration philosopher Cesare Brandi explains, “the most serious aspect in regard to a work of art is not what is missing but what is inserted inappropriately.”30 Understood in these terms, any non-compliant life safety code element could be considered a removable intangible design element. As our modern society prioritizes life safety values for any occupied structure, then modifying, including removing, authentic original material may be seen as both necessary and appropriate, a sensible
Industrial Newness Aesthetics Aim
Value of twentieth-century built heritage, as judged by visual appearance, is often a thornier issue when it comes to the use of typical, modern industrial materials: concrete, steel, and even plastics. The perceived functional or material obsolescence of stained concrete, rusted steel, or faded plastic often presents a big challenge and may or may not be in line with the material’s true level of outdatedness or failure.31 With the modern movement’s desire to embrace a machined aesthetic came an unintended rejection of age value: a standard to maintain a perpetual “brand new” look. 32
In the case of material replacement, some argue the legitimacy of honoring the original design intent. In other words, wholesale replacement of original material with an economic, long lasting alternative material, would both maintain the uniformity of original design and respect the intended newness value. 33 The metal and glass curtain wall at Skidmore Owings and Merrill’s Lever House in New York City, provides a wonderful example of this conundrum, where the original state-of-the-art impact value dictated the material replacement outcome. After concluding that ongoing repairs to the glass facade had resulted in a patchwork appearance inconsistent with the original sleek design intent, the entire curtain wall system, including subframe and mullion
caps, was dismantled. The overall assembly was replaced by a technologically superior one, but one that was constructed to mimic the original single glazing profile in dimension and reflective appearance as closely as possible. 34 Replacing components which were not completely deteriorated, was argued to be necessary, as the aesthetic of partially warped material would presumably not have been acceptable to the original architect.35 Hypothesizing what a building’s original architect might have or have not endorsed may not accurately reflect any design intent. Instead, it may even create a fictional stakeholder role, especially so if they are no longer living. This deflects attention away from the stewardship responsibilities of contemporary preservation practitioners as well as the economic implications of those decisions for the building owner.
Art historian Alois Riegl’s theoretical underpinning on age versus newness value is particularly relevant to evaluating buildings of industrial materials. Riegl claims that age value “springs from our appreciation of the time which has elapsed since it was made and which has burdened with the traces of age.”36 Riegl also questions whether we can evaluate an inherent value that is not dependent on the viewer. 37 In the case of the compressed timeframe for evaluating twentieth-century architecture, historical value based on a chain of development of human activity38 may be difficult to judge without proper temporal distance and may be left to contemporary taste or fashion. Similarly, in 1937 author and architectural critic Lewis Mumford highlighted a further dilemma and called it “...a foolish waste to design buildings…so they could be renewed: a perversion just as the modern one of fashioning a motor car to go out of style in five years in order merely to increase the demand for production and profit.”39
But does contemporary society necessarily
have to accept this standard for “newness value”? Can we challenge the source of the sentiment, which may be ultimately a financial issue? If a culture possesses the economic means to maintain a newly machined appearance for any manufactured good, a trait typically observed in wealthier, developed nations, then this financial capacity will dictate the prevailing standard. Conversely, if the economic considerations prioritize a building’s utility value over any aesthetic shortcomings, then the argument for “newness value” may become invalid. Comparing modern buildings to similarly industrially produced goods, architect David Fixler argues that financial value is held only when a “new look” is maintained, providing refurbished vintage automobiles as an example.40 However, in an undeveloped country with limited transportation resources, a driver’s utility value for a worn, yet functional vehicle may far outweigh any aesthetically-based diminished value in comparison. Are we as a society foregoing an acclimatization to natural industrial aging symptoms simply because we can afford to? It may be necessary to reconsider newness values within a larger global context, or certainly a historical one where a more expanded scope of time was provided before making permanently
Valuation of Traditional Craftsmanship vs Design Intent
One of the key transformations in building construction over the twentieth century was a shift from one based on traditional labor and craftsmanship toward mechanized industrial production of materials and construction process. To evaluate this building stock fairly, and in particular the ubiquitous postwar constructions, we may be asked to honor not only the materiality of the artifact, but rather, as Howard Davis notes in The Culture of Building, the “intimate relationship to the object being made.”41 Whereas traditionally, the craftsman may have had
a hand in physical traces of workmanship, for manufactured building materials such as precast concrete, the last human touch is further removed and displaced to the intangible intellectual level of the designer’s mind within the design process.42 To add to the complexity of the modern manufacturing process, increased prefabrication may mean literal replicas of design components in multiple locations, which, even with valid integrity, may create a unique “authenticity” paradox.
Although the twentieth-century design process increasingly shifted away from traditional craftsmanship, it is important to note machine-manufactured building components and mechanized construction were certainly not omnipresent in the modernist landscape. The innovative exploitation of brick masonry in modern ways by structural engineer Eladio Dieste provides a great example. The significance of his designs arose from his brilliant practice from first principles in engineering, transforming traditional material into thin shells of “structural art”.43 More importantly, his vaulted constructions were reliant on a consistent crew of local labor,44 not only a team skilled in specialized formwork construction, but one with a refined expertise of thin concrete application. Here it is hard to deny the significance of “human touch” craftsmanship within the construction process it self, despite the modernity of design.
Reviewing The National Register
As a next step, this investigation will assess the current process in the United States for being listed on the National Register to reveal sources of conflicting or ambiguous language as it may relate to applications for domestic twentieth-century built heritage. According to the nomination instructions, to be considered for listing, a property needs to demonstrate two
key factors: significance under National Register criteria, as well as integrity, or the ability to convey that significance. While the US Department of the Interior recognizes this evaluation involves some degree of subjective judgment, the focus remains on assessing physical features, or tangible materiality, to prove integrity.45
For this case we will only be concerned with buildings and structures that fall under Criterion C for Design/Construction, defined as “Properties significant as representatives of the manmade expression of culture or technology”, whose “architectural form or style reflect important design qualities integral to the industry.” 46 Interestingly, to qualify for significance eligibility, the property needs to illustrate “distinctive characteristics,” whose definition is vague and does not necessitate particular materiality, but rather appears open to intangible traits as well as expression through form, structure and plan. 47
In the evaluation of integrity in general, seven aspects are listed: Location, Design, Setting, Materials, Workmanship, Feeling, and Association. While these criteria may align well with older, traditional constructions, they often present philosophical and practical challenges for modern heritage. Material Integrity and Workmanship, in particular, can be much less applicable to newer structures.48
For properties under Criterion C significance specifically, a strong emphasis on proof through material evidence is noted. Retaining “workmanship” and “materials” will usually take precedence over “location, setting, feeling, and association.”49 However, the specific percentage of authentic, original material needed remains ambiguous, broadly defined as “...most of the physical features…”50 For cases where the original material has been removed and replaced, an applicant must demonstrate that the property still retains
most of the illustrative features through “massing, spatial relationships, proportion, pattern of windows and doors, texture of materials, and ornamentation.”51 This latter verbage does appear flexible enough to accommodate issues that may plague structures with failed, experimental materiality.
Conclusions
The National Register application process faces a significant challenge due to the need for a single instructional document to accommodate an array of cultural resource types spanning vastly different eras of historical production. In particular, materials and construction methods used in the twentieth century, and specifically those after the Second World War, differed significantly from those of the nineteenth century and earlier. 52 Many preservation architects, such as Tom Jester, note this tension, arguing that the principles and professional practice for preservation of modern heritage should be fundamentally different from those that apply to traditional buildings. 53 However, given the complexity, ubiquity and specificity of use for this building stock such a strong approach may not be feasible.
An alternative approach to creating separate criteria could involve retaining the existing framework, while introducing conditional language, such as broader wording or simply an asterisk to indicate the wider investigation needed for younger constructions. This could include reducing emphasis on materiality and workmanship in newer buildings where these may be less relevant than other more significant intangible traits. Evaluating the integrity of twentieth-century heritage will necessarily be both more subjective and require a greater understanding of the original design intent and methods and modern materials.
By nature, this depends on outside expertise, necessitating a greater understanding of technical merit and broad familiarity with the social and historical context of construction. For material replacement, specific guidelines could be outlined. For example, recommendations to repair, unless the cost to repair will create a financial burden above a predetermined percentage of overall costs. Rather than strictly basing design decisions on “What would the original architect do?” relying on the judgment of qualified professions to make sound judgements may be required. As long term sustainability of the ubiquitous twentieth-century building stock has become prioritized for environmental sustainability reasons, continuing to find creative solutions for feasible adaptive reuse will also necessitate a subjective loosening of traditional preservation standards. Given the increased number of repair and invention projects, preservation standards may need to show flexibility in standards, accommodating very specific building typologies, and ones that face unique constraints, especially as we aim to maintain their lives through feasible adaptive reuse. ●
1. Thomas C. Jester and David N. Fixler, “Modern Heritage: Progress, Priorities, and Prognosis,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 42, No. 2/3, Special Issue On Modern Heritage (2011): 4.
2. David G. Woodcock, “Preservation Philosophy and Approaches,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 51, No. 1, “Special Issue: The Next Fifty Symposium” (2020):15.
3. Theodore Prudon, Preservation of Modern Architecture (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2008), 2.
4. Ibid, 4.
5. Miles L Berger, They Built Chicago: Entrepreneurs Who Shaped A Great City’s Architecturen (Chicago: Bonus Books, Inc, 1992), 236.
6. Ibid.
7. Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 606.
8. Devereux Bowly Jr. The Poorhouse: Subsidized Housing In Chicago (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), 179-180.
9. Le Corbusier, Toward A New Architecture (Garden City, NY: Dover Publications, 1986), 6-7.
10. David N. Fixler, “Appropriate Means to an Appropriate End: Industry, Modernism, and Preservation,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2008): 31-36.
11. Kyle Normandin, “The Stewardship of Modern Heritage,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 49, No. 2-3, Special Issue APT’S 50th Anniversary (2018): 47.
12. Theodore Prudon, Preservation of Modern Architecture. (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2008), 15.
13. Louis I Kahn, “Monumentality” in Louis Kahn: Essential Texts, ed. Robert Twombly, (New York: W W Norton and Co. 2003), 30.
14. Rumiko Handa, Allure of the Incomplete, Imperfect, and Impermanent Designing and Appreciating Architecture as Nature (London: Routledge, 2015): 80.
15. Ibid
16. Steven Kent Peterson, “The Dematerial of Architecture: A Mies Conception of Idealized Space, ” accessed 6 November 2023, https:// petersonlittenberg.com/Architecture-UrbanDesign/Mies_part_1_files/ Mies-conceptio n.pdf.
17. Ibid
18. Kyle Normandin, “The Stewardship of Modern Heritage,” 47.
19. David N. Fixler, “Appropriate Means to an Appropriate End: Industry, Modernism, and Preservation,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2008): 31.
20. Kyle Normandin, “The Stewardship of Modern Heritage,” 45.
21. “National Register Bulletin: How To Apply The Criterion for Evaluation” US Department of The Interior, National Park Service, 1995, 11.
22. Leland M. Roth, American Architecture (Bolder: Westview Press, 2001): 321.
23. David N. Fixler, “Appropriate Means to an Appropriate End: Industry, Modernism, and Preservation,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2008): 33.
24. Theodore Prudon. Preservation of Modern Architecture. (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2008), 45.
25. Ibid., 46.
26. Thomas C. Jester and David N. Fixler, “Modern Heritage: Progress, Priorities, and Prognosis,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 42, No. 2/3, Special Issue On Modern Heritage (2011): 4.
27. Definition of “restoration” paraphrased from The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties - Technical Preservation Services (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov).
28. Kyle Normandin, “The Stewardship of Modern Heritage,” 48.
29. Thomas C. Jester and David N. Fixler, “Modern Heritage: Progress, Priorities, and Prognosis,” 4.
30. Cesare Brandi, “Theory of Restoration II,” in Nicholas Price, et. al., Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 1995), 341.
31. Theodore Prudon, Preservation of Modern Architecture, 20.
32. Ibid., 42.
33. David N. Fixler, “Appropriate Means to an Appropriate End: Industry, Modernism, and Preservation,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2008): 35.
34. Theodore Prudon. Preservation of Modern Architecture. (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2008), 487-489.
35. Ibid, 489.
36. Alois Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin,” in Historic Preservation Theory: An Anthology, Jorge Otero-Pailos, (Sharon, CT: Design Books, 2023), 122.
37. Ibid., 120.
38. Ibid., 119.
39. Lewis Mumford, “The Death of The Monument,” in Circle: International Survey of Construction Art (London: Faber and Faber, 1937), in ed. Otero-Pailos, Historic Preservation Theory, (Sharon, CT: Design Books, 2023), 198.
40. David N. Fixler, “Appropriate Means to an Appropriate End: Industry, Modernism, and Preservation,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2008): 32.
41. Howard Davis, The Culture of Building (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 111.
42. David N. Fixler, “Appropriate Means to an Appropriate End: Industry, Modernism, and Preservation,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2008): 33.
43. Stanford Anderson, ed. Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004), 13, 16.
44. Ibid., 15.
45. “National Register Bulletin: How To Apply The Criterion for Evaluation” US Department of The Interior, National Park Service, 1995, 44.
46. Ibid, 11.
47. Ibid, 18. “ “Distinctive characteristics” are the physical features or traits that commonly recur in individual types, periods, or methods of construction. To be eligible, a property must clearly contain enough of those characteristics to be considered a true representative of a particular type, period, or method of construction. Characteristics can be expressed in terms such as form, proportion, structure, plan, style, or materials. They can be general, referring to ideas of design and construction such as basic plan or form, or they can be specific, referring to precise ways of combining particular kinds of materials.”
48. Ibid, 45. For integrity of Materiality, “a property must retain the key exterior materials dating from the period of its historic significance. If the property has been rehabilitated, the historic materials and significant features must have been preserved.” Regarding the importance of workmanship, it can “furnish evidence of the technology of a craft, illustrate the aesthetic principles of a historic or prehistoric period, and reveal individual, local, regional, or national applications of both technological practices and aesthetic principles.”
49. Ibid, 48.
50. Ibid, 46. “A property important for illustrating a particular architectural style or construction technique must retain most of the physical features that constitute that style or technique. A property that has lost some historic materials or details can be eligible if it retains the majority of the features that illustrate its style in terms of the massing, spatial relationships, proportion, pattern of windows and doors, texture of materials, and ornamentation. The property is not eligible, however, if it retains some basic features conveying massing but has lost the majority of the features that once characterized its style.”
51. Ibid, 46.
52. Thomas C. Jester and David N. Fixler, “Modern Heritage: Progress, Priorities, and Prognosis,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 42, No. 2/3, Special Issue On Modern Heritage (2011): 4. 53. Ibid
Bibliography
Stanford Anderson, ed. Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art . New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004.
Miles L Berger. They Built Chicago: Entrepreneurs Who Shaped A Great City’s Architecture . Chicago: Bonus Books, Inc, 1992, 236.
Cesare Brandi, “Theory of Restoration II,” in Nicholas Price, et. al., Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 1995), 339-342.
Le Corbusier. Toward A New Architecture. Garden City, NY: Dover Publications, 1986. Howard Davis. The Culture of Building . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Devereux Bowly Jr. The Poorhouse: Subsidized Housing In Chicago Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012.
David N. Fixler, “Appropriate Means to an Appropriate End: Industry, Modernism, and Preservation,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, 2008, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2008), pp. 31-36.
David N. Fixler, “The Renovation of Baker House at MIT: Modernism, Materiality, and the Factor of Intent in Preservation,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, 2001, Vol. 32, No. 2/3 (2001), pp. 3-11.
Sigfried Giedion. Space, Time and Architecture . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982, pp. 603-606.
Rumiko Handa. Allure of the Incomplete, Imperfect, and Impermanent Designing and Appreciating Architecture as Nature London: Routledge, 2015.
Thomas C. Jester and David N. Fixler, “Modern Heritage: Progress, Priorities, and Prognosis,” APTBulletin:TheJournalofPreservationTechnology, 2011, Vol. 42, No. 2/3, Special Issue On Modern Heritage (2011), pp. 3-8.
Kyle Normandin, “The Stewardship of Modern Heritage,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 49, No. 2-3, Special Issue APT’S 50th Anniversary (2018), pp. 45-54.
Lewis Mumford, “The Death of The Monument,” in Circle: International Survey of Construction Art (London: Faber and Faber, 1937), in Otero-Pailos, Historic Preservation Theory, (Sharon, CT: Design Books, 2023), pp. 195200.
Steven Kent Peterson. “The Dematerial of Architecture: A Mies Conception of Idealized Space,” accessed 6 November 2023, https://petersonlittenberg.com/Architecture-UrbanDesign/Mies_part_1_ files/Mies-conception.pdf
Theodore Prudon. Preservation of Modern Architecture Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2008.
Leland M. Roth. American Architecture Bolder: Westview Press, 2001.
Robert Twombly, ed., “Monumentality” in Louis Kahn: Essential Texts (New York: W W Norton and Co. 2003).
David G. Woodcock, “Preservation Philosophy and Approaches,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology , Vol. 51, No. 1, “Special Issue: The Next Fifty Symposium” (2020), pp. 13-24
Approaches for the Conservation of Twentieth-Century Architectural Heritage, Madrid Document 2011.
Dirk van den Heuvel ed. The Challenge of Change: Dealing with the Legacy of the Modern Movement. Proceedings of the 10th International DOCOMOMO Conference (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2008)
River of Green
Austin Li
Design IV - Intermediate
Instructor: R. Navasaitye
Spring 2021
Located on the corner of 22nd and Pearl, “River of Green” explores the intersection between mass student-housing and green space. In a world where interaction with nature has become increasingly uncommon, “River of Green” seeks to bring trees into daily life. Each unit has access to a shared or private green space that residents must navigate through to access their apartments. The curvilinear form of the units and ground condition encourage movement through the courtyards framed by the surrounding vegetation and structure. Instead of circulating around, users are invited to walk through the complex and interact with the various shops and communal spaces on the ground floor. In the hot summers, these gathering spaces are shielded from the heat of the sun through the shading created by the trees and units above. The two ground-level courtyards create spaces for students to gather while also providing shaded transition spaces for others who are simply walking to a destination. The open courtyards invite students to walk through the River of Green rather than around it.
PLAN 67b
Robotic Sculpting
Chon Fai Kuok, Marco Peirce, Nilen
Varade, Riley Chandler
Composition Architecture
Instructor: R. Navasaityte
Spring 2022
As robotic technology becomes accessible to architectural design and fabrication, how can prescriptive tools be integrated into a creative process that demands serendipity and experiment? The project is an experiment that uses a Kuka robot as part of the fabrication process to produce interlocking wood modules, which are otherwise difficult to make by hand. The modules are then assembled freely only on intuition and the physical constraints on the modules. The end result is an architectural sculpture with complex geometry and imaginative spaces.
MODEL PHOTOS
68b
Saint Vincent Quarters
Elisabeth Allbritton
Advanced Design Studio
Instructor: C. Odom
Fall 2023
This project explores the conversion of underutilized office/commercial buildings in historic Downtown Los Angeles into residential spaces, highlighting the exposure of pre-existing building systems like HVAC and plumbing. This transformation merges domestic living with infrastructure. By inte -
grating architectural and interior design elements, the project examines the symbiotic relationship between these domains, aiming to create cohesive living environments. The project seeks to revitalize urban landscapes while embracing the challenges of repurposing existing structures. It serves as a testament to the innovative spirit within the field of architecture and interior design, showcasing the potential for adaptive reuse to breathe new life into neglected urban spaces.
INTERIOR RENDER
69a
San Cristobal Center
Aleida Villasana, Jamie Jones
Advanced Design Studio - Galapagos
Instructors: D. Heymann, A. Jaeschke
Summer 2023
The Galapagos Islands have a rich ecological history, with native plant and animal species evolving free of human habitation until the mid-19th century. However, the gradual introduction of invasive species, a rapidly growing population, and the lack of vernacular architecture threaten the islands’ fragile ecosystem. Therefore, this project, in partnership with Universidad San Francisco de Quito, aims to provide a more sustainable architecture to the islands through the creation of an agricultural research station focused on the reforestation of endemic Scalesia
MODEL PHOTO 70a
trees in the highlands of San Cristobal. Utilizing invasive Cedrela trees harvested from the site, repetitive wood frames respond to site conditions and form a long bar which allows future expansion and flexibility. Furthermore, this construction minimizes the import of heavy materials while also using
locally available labor and techniques in order to lower carbon emissions and boost the island’s economy. Within the building, the alternation of tall, naturally ventilated spaces with shorter, air-conditioned spaces creates thermal variation while allowing division of programs based on environmental needs.
Section Exploration
Barmey Chum
Design
V - Intermediate Studio
Instructor: J. Blood Fall 2023
This assignment’s challenge was to create spaces that relate to three prompts: Perch, a spatial experience that conveys a sense of peering from an elevated position. Spectacle, a space that has an experientially striking element that can be shared with multiple people. And lastly, Asylum, a safe and calm space that can be used for rest and escape. There were two end products of this assignment: A visually appealing section drawing that combines all three prompts to tell a unique story, and a physical model that transcends these ideas into a more sculptural experience.
Designed to meet the needs of an artistic couple, the Smiths, working from home, this collection of luminaires brings nature into the interior. The central idea of this collection is to bring the calming inspiration of nature into the everyday by emulating the sweeping curves of canyon walls and the layering of shadows through the trees. These luminary pieces came about through collaboration, explorations in novel forms of fabrication, and careful craft. To emulate the smooth curve of the canyon walls, one hundred layers of Bristol board were used as vertical fins that layer together to create organic contours. So that Mr. Smith could have ample task lighting for his painting, the design of the focal light brings the light directly down onto his work area with the intense layering of the vertical fins to block side lighting. In contrast, Mrs. Smith required ambient light for a cozy reading environment, so the sides of the second luminaire open up to provide more diffuse lighting. In these openings, a cut pattern layered over tracing paper provides a dappled shadow effect that mimics how light comes through a tree canopy.
Environmental Controls I Instructor: B. Marshall
Eamanne Moharram, Serena (Yu-Hsuan) Hsieh
The Shop
Jamie Jones
Advanced
Design Studio
Instructor:
D. Heymann
Fall 2023
“THE SHOP” was synthesized as an addition to the existing School of Architecture as a response to a growing culture of self-reliance and hyper-independence in education. The
building serves to prioritize the effort of the collective, encouraging cohorts to engage with their peers’ distinct ideas and facilitate a more cohesive product. By utilizing a repetitive overarching glulam and CLT structure, the building invokes an imposed monumentality which celebrates collaborative effort
RENDER
73b
and demonstrates the lasting influence of the school. The space functions as a new build lab in which model making is promoted to be highly visible along a major public thoroughfare. While the entrance to the building is at grade, the primary makerspace is excavated to offer a double height interior as well as a
shaded exterior yard, allowing for a continuation of the build lab to the outdoors. While the space is intended for use by the School of Architecture, its environmentally conscious structure and flexibility of spatial arrangement ensures that as it ages, the building continues to be valuable to the larger university campus.
Sieve Recreation
Vince Allen Hernandez, Ian Johnson
Comprehensive Studio Instructors: J. Leger, J. Sheets Spring 2023
Situated in between East 4th and 5th Street, Sieve Recreation exercises health and fitness as a major contribution to the revival of Waller Creek and its connection to the city of Austin. The complex is divided into two wings with a large outdoor precession into Waller Creek, unified with a singular steel screen that undulates and perforates at different scales to account for ventilation, daylighting, and various fitness programs.
PERSPECTIVE
The Spot Public House
Eamanne Moharram
Design
IV - Technical Studio
Instructor: A. Gaskins, L. Janssen, M. Smith
Spring 2023
The Spot Public House expands on the notion of the third space as a needed provision for social interaction and community building. This public house located in Beacon Hill is designed to act as an extension of the home living room, a third place beyond home and school/work that brings together academia,
music, and entertainment for young people at the heart of the city. Touting a unique day to night concept, this space is a cafe, hangout, and study lounge by day, and a music venue and dry-bar by night. The design draws upon the visible clash between old and new in Boston, one of America’s oldest cities that is also
host to a burgeoning youth culture fostered in the 35 + colleges and universities within the city. As such, the adaptive reuse of the original building aims to provide contrast by maintaining the traditional exposed brick set against bright colors and textured finishes, and by highlighting traditional architectural features, like the windows seen in Boston’s Federal and Palladian framed doors, set against mod light
art installations. Designed to foster a vibrant community culture, patrons of the café are invited to linger with an appetizing literature and music inspired menu, board games, and a lending library, but they’re also given the platform to promote their talents on. The Spot is the place for visitors and residents of the city alike to be at any time of day, a third space to dine, play, work, organize, and gather.
Stitching Logs
Ji Yoon Ahn
Design Through Fabrication
Instructor: D. Briscoe
Spring 2023
The Stitching Logs project aims to create a sustainable future by transforming discarded logs into valuable building materials. The project proposes a unique solution where the traditional dovetail joint is applied to structurally connect the two short logs. This results in a modular expandable wall unit that can be easily assembled by hand, without the need for intricate tools or specialized knowledge. By utilizing the discarded logs in Austin, this project seeks to reduce waste created by the commercial standardization of lumber.
C-1.
C-2.
C-3. C-4.
C-5.
PROTOTYPE
RENDER
Symbiosis
Kayla Quilantang
Advanced Design Studio - Living Systems
Instructor: C. Odom Fall 2023
In our present era of rapid urbanization, overconsumption, equity imbalances, and the resulting global climate crisis, what if we completely challenged the concept of “waste” as instead a world of self-sustaining, untapped resources? Inspired by the Living Building Challenge and the Walkable City, SYMBIOSIS answers this question by
proposing a new adaptive reuse strategy for mixed-use, communal, and sustainable living. Serving as a prototype for a new way of thinking about existing buildings, this strategy utilizes geological carving, computational unit voxelization, and engineered system interventions as parameters that are adaptable to different site contexts.
AXONOMETRIC RENDER
There’s Something in the (Rain)Water
Jonathan Shuster
Water in Cities
Instructor: M. Holleran
Fall
2022
Seattle is known for many things: beautiful mountains, delicious coffee, and, most famously, rain. Humans in the Pacific Northwest have always been affected by, and had to adapt to, the weather of the region. This essay will explore how the climate has influenced and continues to influence language, fashion, and social relations of people living in the Seattle area. One Seattle news columnist said “we tend to think that we [Seattleites] have some proprietary claim to the rain. It’s our defining characteristic, responsible for everything from our clothing… to our temperament…” (Laskin, 1997, p. 2). Seattle only receives about 38 inches of rain per year, less than places such as Miami, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Providence (Lacitis, 2017). However, Seattle ranks fifth in the number of rainy days: days with 0.01 inches or more of rain or snow (Osborn, 2022a). Rain does not tell the only story of atmospheric water in Seattle; clouds tell another. Seattle ranks among the cloudiest major cities in the U.S.: first in days with heavy cloud cover (more than 3/4 of the sky is cloudy) and second in cloudy days (clouds covering at least 1/4 of the sky) (Osborn, 2022b).
As with anywhere on the globe, Seattle’s weather patterns are tied inextricably with its geography. Semi-warm, moisture-laden air sweeps off the Pacific Ocean and rams into the Olympic Mountains, circles around them, and continues to strike east. Air from both sides of the Olympics curls
PUGET SOUND CONVERGENCE ZONE (CLARIDGE, 2019b)
78a
towards Seattle, pushing against each other and rising higher into the sky. The collision of moist air flows, cold air pushing south from British Columbia, and the bounding height of the Cascade Range force the clouds to dump their moisture on the Seattle metro area. Dictated by the region’s geography, native people of the Pacific Northwest have been adapting to the climate since humans inhabited the area. The indigenous tribes inhabiting western Washington and southwestern British Columbia are generally known as Coast Salish peoples and share a similar language and culture. The people in the immediate area around Seattle are the Suquamish, Duwamish, Nisqually, Snoqualmie, Tulalip and Muckleshoot tribes, who were bonded by a common language, Lushootseed (Watson, 1999). The Lushootseed language has words for rain, heavy rain rain showers and rain developing, along with varying types of cloudiness and various sun to cloud ratios (Tulalip Tribes of Washington, 2015). Native Americans’ cedar bark hats were so effective at shedding rain that Lewis and Clark had themselves fitted for
the head coverings (Malloy, 2021). Although well adapted to the climate, like Seattleites today, the rain still occasionally got the Coast Salish peoples down. As happens now, the dismal winter weather forced native people to stay indoors, and families cooped up in the longhouses sometimes felt as though they were being “devoured by the house” (Buerge, 2020).
Like the Coast Salish peoples, modern Seattleites have a plethora of words for rain. In the spirit of a character from A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who has a notebook with 232 types of rain in it, reddit users compiled their own list, shown in Figure 3. Other common local jargon to describe the weather include sunbreak (a small window of sunshine on an otherwise fully clouded day) and liquid sunshine (when it’s sunny but also raining). A lot of times it rains, but “it’s not really a wet rain” (Laskin, 1997, p. 88). It is a pervasive, soggy, green, rain. The perpetual clouds and dampness have led to Seattleites being referred to as ‘mossbacks,’ and ‘webfoot’ and are said to rust, not tan (Laskin, 1997).
The constant drizzle, along with the winter darkness and grey, lead to an outsized number of Seattleite’s being affected by seasonal affective disorder (aptly named SAD), a chemical imbalance caused by a disruption
NOOTKA CEDAR HATS (MALLOY, 2021)
REDDIT USERS’ NAMES FOR RAIN IN SEATTLE (T-TOWNDARIN, 2020)
78b
78c
in serotonin and melatonin (Dennett, 2021). Approximately 5% of the general population experiences SAD, while the proportion can be up to 10% in Seattle, and 30% if one includes ‘mild winter blues’ (Cotterell, 2010; Hansen, 2019; University of Washington Counseling Center, 2022). Yet, there appears to be a cognitive dissonance between how the rain affects people in Seattle and their preferred climate. According to a February 2022 poll, 61% of Seattle residents report that the yearround weather mostly or exactly matches their desired weather (PEMCO Insurance, 2022). One Seattle writer said he likes the rain because “…It allows for prolonged periods of intimacy. It’s cozy… it keeps you inside where you can turn inward.” (Laskin, 1997, p. 17). Another said “… when I’m lowered at last into a pit of marvelous mud … I want my epitaph to read, IT RAINED ON HIS PARADE. AND HE WAS GLAD!” (Laskin, 1997, p. 183). PEMCO spokesperson Derek Wing said, “You know you’re a true Northwesterner when you complain about the rain, but secretly love it.” (Claridge, 2022a). Call it optimism, ignorance, naivety, turning the other cheek, or acceptance, but Seattleites tend to like the climate where they live.
In line with northwest indigenous peoples, the rain in Seattle forces people to dress and accessorize with the weather in mind. According to a PEMCO poll, 78% of Seattleites said that ‘dress[ing] casually with a preference toward outdoor apparel’ mostly matches or matches exactly with characteristics of being a true Pacific Northwesterner (PEMCO Insurance, 2022). Dressing not to impress remains universal in Seattle, despite the influx of transplants from around the country. There is also the umbrella. A true Seattleite would only be caught with one in the direst weather circumstance. 62% of residents say they rarely or never use an umbrella when it rains . But why? Seattleites claim a number of reasons. First off, it doesn’t usually rain that hard; typically a semi-functional outfit will be enough to protect one from the elements. Some say they are just used to it. Other Seattleites are just grown-up kids, who like playing in the rain and don’t mind getting wet. Some residents simply accept the rain and wetness, declining
MODERN SEATTLE FASHION AT ITS FINEST (JANEA, 2015)
DRESSING NOT TO IMPRESS (HORSEY, 2022)
to attempt to fight it off using anything more than a rain jacket (Claridge, 2022b). But ultimately, the anti-umbrella sentiment common among Seattle locals mostly is about pride. Like native peoples of the region, we simply don our waterproof hats and jackets, grit our teeth, and take it
. And then there is the Seattle freeze. The freeze is the mind-your-own-business, no-new-friends vibe that can permeate the Seattle social scene. The origin of the freeze likely comes out of the context which Seattle grew up in and its early residents. From 1910 to 1920 the Seattle population grew about a third, including a large number of Nordic and Japanese residents. While it is polite to make small talk in American culture, in Nordic countries the nice thing is “not to talk to people” (Claridge, 2019a). The freeze is somewhere between “…demographic, cultural, [and] historical…” and “the weather might have something to do with it…” (Moorer, 2019). Regardless, the Seattle Freeze dovetails nicely with the rainy, grey weather of the area.
On the opposite end of winter’s gloomy vibes is the beauty and the glory of a Seattle summer, which can only be understood in the context of the city’s winters. Armed with bushels of apples, cherries, and berries of all kinds, Pacific Northwesterners flock to the nearby mountains and lakes to take advantage of the beautiful weather while it lasts. Summer months are typically dry (only around inch of rain per month), warm (aver-
age temperature around 75 degrees), and not humid (Mass, 2013). Hot days, cool evenings, few thunderstorms, and few mosquitos make Seattle the perfect summer destination. The plethora of waterbodies support a variety of recreational activities including swimming, boating, paddleboarding, kayaking, and wind
surfing. The summer is also Seattle’s festival and event season, and fresh local produce fills grocery stores and farmers’ markets. Mt. Rainier (Tahoma or Tacoma in Lushootseed) dominates the sky to the southeast of Seattle during most of the summer months. When Seattleites say ‘the mountain is out’
SUMMERS (KIM ET AL., 2022)
they are talking about more than just the visibility of Mt. Rainier; ‘the mountain is out’ is its own vibe. The phrase first appeared in a newspaper column in 1951 and has garnered a cult following since (Cerf, 1951). Paralleling ‘the sun is out’ the phrase brings with it the carefree feeling of a warm summer day, with time and energy for one to enjoy the day as they please. Explorer Theodore Winthrop wrote a beautiful passage upon coming to the region in 1883:
“…the cascades put their shoulders to the clouds, lifted them and cut them to pieces with their peaks, so that the wind could come in like a charge of cavalry and annihilate the broken phalanxes. Tacoma … was the first object to cleave the darkness... the mountain and the sun became evident victors; the glooms fell away, were scattered and scourged into nothingness, and the snow peak stood forth majestic, sole arbiter of this realm.” (Laskin, 1997, p. 69-70). ●
SEATTLE
“Tacoma … was the first object to cleave the darkness... the mountain and the sun became evident victors; the glooms fell away, were scattered and scourged into nothingness, and the snow peak stood forth majestic, sole arbiter of this realm.
David
Laskin,
Rains All the Time: A Connoisseur’s History of Weather in the Pacific Northwest
Bibliography
Berger, Knute. “The First Known Evidence of the Seattle Freeze,” April 23, 2020. https://crosscut.com/2020/04/first-known-evidence-seattle-freeze.
Buerge, David. “Unrelenting Grays: Native Myths About Endless Rain.” Post Alley (blog), February 23, 2020. https://www.postalley.org/2020/02/23/ unrelenting-grays-native-myths-about-endless-rain/.
Cerf, Bennett. “Try and Stop Me.” Register-Republic. August 15, 1951.
Clarridge, Christine. “‘Seattle Freeze’: Forget Making Friends — Half of Washington Residents Don’t Even Want to Talk to You.” The Seattle Times, May 28, 2019. https://www.seattletimes.com/life/lifestyle/seattlefreeze-forget-making-friends-half-of-washington-residents-dont-evenwant-to-talk-to-you/.
———. “Seattleites Love Signature Northwest Weather, Even If We Do like to Complain about It.” The Seattle Times, March 4, 2022. https://www. seattletimes.com/seattle-news/weather/seattleites-love-our-signaturenorthwest-weather-even-if-we-do-like-to-complain-about-it/. ———. “What It Takes to Be Considered a True Seattleite and PNW Local.” The Seattle Times, April 12, 2022. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/northwest/what-it-takes-to-be-considered-a-true-seattleiteand-pnw-local/.
———. “Why Are Raindrops Smaller in Seattle? How Do the Mountains Affect Puget Sound Weather? Your Rain Questions, Answered.” The Seattle Times, December 20, 2019. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/ weather/why-are-raindrops-smaller-in-seattle-how-do-the-mountainsaffect-puget-sound-weather-your-rain-questions-answered/.
Cotterell, Darren. “Pathogenesis and Management of Seasonal Affective Disorder.” Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry 14, no. 5 (2010): 18–25. https://doi.org/10.1002/pnp.173.
Dennett, Carrie. “Seattle Rainy Season Brings on Seasonal Affective Disorder. Here’s the Deal with SAD.” The Seattle Times, November 8, 2021. https://www.seattletimes.com/life/wellness/seattle-rainy-seasonbrings-on-seasonal-affective-disorder-heres-the-deal-with-sad/.
Hansen, Lily. “Washington May Adopt Daylight Saving Time Permanently. Will It Make Us Sadder?” Seattle Met, October 22, 2019. https://www. seattlemet.com/health-and-wellness/2019/10/washington-may-adoptdaylight-saving-time-permanently-will-it-make-us-sadder.
Horsey, David. “Looking Good in Our Gore-Tex Gear.” The Seattle Times, April 15, 2022. https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/looking-good-inour-gore-tex-gear/.
Janea, “Seattle Street Style Through the Eyes of a Visitor,” TheSTYLEtti. Com (blog), February 20, 2015, https://thestyletti.com/seattle-street-style/.
Kim, Daniel, Greg Gilbert, Ken Lambert, and Ellen M. Banner. “Summer in
All Its Glory around Seattle Area,” July 20, 2022. https://www.seattletimes. com/seattle-news/summer-in-all-its-glory-around-seattle-area/.
Lacitis, Erik. “The 5 Most Common Questions about Seattle Weather, Answered.” The Seattle Times, February 4, 2017. https://www.seattletimes. com/seattle-news/weather/partly-sunny-or-partly-cloudy-the-5-questions-the-weather-service-hears-most/.
Laskin, David. Rains All the Time: A Connoisseur’s History of Weather in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1997.
Malloy, Mary. “Chinookan Woven Hats.” Discover Lewis & Clark (blog), June 5, 2021. https://lewis-clark.org/native-nations/chinookan-peoples/ chinookan-woven-hats/.
Mass, Cliff. “Cliff Mass Weather Blog: Secret Revealed: The Northwest Has the Best Summer in the Nation. But Why?” Cliff Mass Weather Blog (blog), July 24, 2013. https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2013/07/secret-revealed-northwest-has-best.html.
Moorer, Brit. “Why the Seattle Freeze Is Real and How to Thaw It Out.” king5.com, November 11, 2019. https://www.king5.com/article/news/ local/seattle-freeze-pepper-schwartz/281-c089e83a-3ab6-4161-b2a0db7ff60f5d10.
Osborn, Liz. “Cloudiest Cities in US - Current Results.” Current Results. Accessed October 9, 2022. https://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Extremes/US/cloudiest-cities.php.
———. “United States’ Rainiest Cities.” Current Results. Accessed October 18, 2022. https://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Extremes/US/wettest-cities.php.
PEMCO Insurance. “How NW Are You?” PEMCO Insurance, March 28, 2022. https://pemco.com/blog/how-nw-are-you-poll.
T-TownDarin. “We Have over 100 Words for Rain.” Reddit Post. R/Seattle, January 28, 2020. www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/euxutj/we_have_ over_100_words_for_rain/.
Tulalip Tribes of Washington. “Skwedad – Weather.” Lushootseed: The Language of Puget Sound (blog), April 21, 2015. https://tulaliplushootseed. com/weather/.
University of Washington Counseling Center. “The Winter Blues.” Counseling Center (blog). Accessed October 23, 2022. https://www.washington. edu/counseling/the-winter-blues/.
Watson, Kenneth Greg. “Native Americans of Puget Sound -- A Brief History of the First People and Their Cultures.” Historylink.org, June 29, 1999. https://www.historylink.org/File/1506.
TSBVI Community Center
Anisha Kamat, Lilian Giraud
Comprehensive Studio Instructor: C. Townley, A. Stone Spring 2023
Located in northwest Austin between Lamar Boulevard and Burnet Road, the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (TSBVI) is a statewide resource for students (6- 22) who are blind, visually impaired, or deafblind, along with their parents and professionals who serve them. Despite the school’s mission of community integration as students transition into independent lives upon graduation, TSBVI remains relatively isolated from the surrounding neighborhood. This studio proposes the addition of a community center, residential complex, and educational makerspace to improve public engagement and provide a safe livelearn community for graduating TSBVI students, young faculty, and other residents. Our proposal aims to create inclusive educational and living environments that provide enriching visual and tactile experiences. To achieve this, our proposal employs the separation of the 3 main programs into an arrangement of buildings that establishes hierarchy between spaces to signal public and private zones. A canopy serves to knit together the buildings, creating comfortable pedestrian spaces for interaction,
leisure, and outdoor learning. Additionally, the orthogonal forms of the interior and exterior spaces encourage easy wayfinding and placemaking. Each building uses skylights to allow for expressive forms while preserving the easily navigable floor plan. On the exterior, they create a playful aesthetic language by shaping the elevation of the roof. On the interior, the skylights introduce natural light and warmth into the social interaction spaces, highlighting distinct public programs.
ELEVATION
AXON
79c
79d
RENDER
79b
UTSoA Addition
Catherine McCoy
Advanced Design Studio Instructor: D. Heymann Fall 2023
The focus of this project is to speculate on an addition to the University of Texas School of Architecture campus which addresses issues of sustainability, user experience, and monumentality. The building program consists of a “pantry” of spaces of different sizes and heights stacked on top of each other based on contrasting and overlapping anticipated cycles of use. Outside of each space, a series of outdoor circulation stairs wraps the outside of the building while housing additional outdoor gathering space. In its final layer, a series of fabric-clad awnings shields the project’s classroom and circulation spaces from harsh sunlight and creates comfortable outdoor and indoor climates within its enclosure. The operable panels serve to enable user agency within the classrooms while choreographing views across the UT campus. The interior classroom spaces are mass timber framed, with 6” square glulam columns and 7-ply CLT floor slabs. The outside walkways and paneling of the building are supported by a series of welded steel framed members and a web of steel plates with arched silhouettes cut out of them, which tie back to the interior wooden structure through the mullions of the curtain wall.
Waller Dance Center
Jamie Jones, Aleida Villasana
Comprehensive Studio - Dance Center
Instructor: K. Kyriakou
Spring 2022
Existing at the intersection of 4th Street and I-35 Frontage Road, the given site is central to several ongoing expansion and renewal projects in Austin, Texas. These include the Waller Creek Master Plan, which will create access to the site at the west border, the Project Connect MetroRail expansion at the south, and the plan to sink and cover I-35 with park land to the east. The newly designed Waller Dance Center is therefore intended to act as an additional avenue through which to embrace visitors and dancers at the Performance Hall and Dance School. Two nearly identical masses are divided by a twenty-foot wide public thoroughfare at the ground level, yet interconnected by winding staircases which thread the buildings together at the second and third levels. In doing so, the project beckons the public towards the improved Waller Creek and ample outdoor amenities, while concurrently providing space for self-expression and artistic endeavor. Additional elements such as an expanded metal mesh facade and photovoltaic rooftop shading further act to offer environmental control while providing more access to interstitial spaces.
SECTION PERSPECTIVE
WE Dance
Thanh Le, Aarif Ahmad
Comprehensive Studio - Dance Center Instructor: K. Kyriakou
Spring 2022
The WE Dance Perfomance Center occupies a unique site; with I-35 to its East and Waller Creek to the West, the project responses by spliting itself into two parts. T he East side is opaque, controlled, and enclosed, and the West side is transparent, open, and free-flowing. The West side houses the dance studio, offices, foyer, and reception area and has a glass facade that allows for natural light to flood into the space. The East side houses the performance theater and all the back-of-house programming. A
public stair “sews” the two sides together, creating harmony between the respective qualities of East and West. Spaces desiring natural light open up to Waller creek on the West side, whilst the spaces facing I-35 are closed off to traffic and sound. One of the standout features of the WE Dance project is the public rooftop. This rooftop includes an outdoor performance space and a coffee shop, and is accessible via a public stair that connects all the programs and encourages visitors to circulate throughout the building.
EXTERIOR RENDER
82a
AXON 82b
Weaving Community
Sarah Oancia Planning and Design of Landscape I
Instructor: M. Averitt Fall 2023
There is a spatial need on the UT campus for the Honors Quadrangle courtyard redesign, as similar outdoor spaces are concentrated by the southeast dormitories, leaving students living in the northwest disconnected. Several large live oaks define the site’s character. Pedestrian movement was reimagined through a live oak branching structure, aligned with points of formal significance to complement the surrounding architecture. The flow of the re-graded landscape is a weaving of both program and movement.
The retaining walls inscribe the branching abstraction into the topography and entice students to enter the courtyard and move through the various rooms. The central lawn doubles as a large celebration space, seating 750 individuals, directed toward a multi-use stage framed by the historic UT Tower. The motion of the weave draws the student body into and throughout the different spaces and is further emphasized through the planting selection and inversions on the plan. The main visual axis of the surround -
SEATING RENDER
ing dormitories is maintained by ornamental plantings through the central lawn, which are inverted to border the accessible sections. A bioswale on the east side of the courtyard collects site runoff and carries it under a raised ‘secret garden’ into a detention area by the main entrance for large rainfall events. While expected to evolve, suggested programming includes: a sensory garden, vari-
able study spaces, debate areas, multi-height game tables, art installations, intimate concerts on the stage, or club meetings. This design provides accessible entry to dormitories that were previously inaccessible, highlights the beauty of the live oaks and creates a unified place for UT students to feel empowered to engage in community and create a courtyard of their own.
LAWN RENDER
Who is ‘American’ in Settler Colonial Histories of American Architecture?
Kayla Quilantang
World Architecture - Origins to 1750
Instructor: C. Davis
Spring 2023
For decades, the timeline of American architectural history has been narrowly written and skewed through the lens of settler colonial bias. The majority of architectural historians dictating this canon shared a common ideal for the American essence: power. This was power specifically in the form of ethnocentric dominance and a refusal to learn from other cultures seen as lower on their manufactured hierarchy. This paper will reveal how this character manifests itself in varying degrees within the writings of twentieth-century architectural historians Kimball, Roth, Burchard and Bush-Brown.
The driving force for this false narrative is America’s origins as a settler colonial society. Settler colonialism is unique to other modes of imperial conquest as it seeks permanent residence on already occupied land, with
“elimination [as its] organizing principle.” (Wolfe 388) This long-term, complex structure of invasion utilizes race as a tool to benefit their narrative, as seen in the contrast between the blanket categorization of African Americans–a commodity for wealth–and the restricting definitions of Native Americans–an obstacle for wealth. This assumed eminent domain over both land and culture carries its themes in the development of Eurocentric, narrow, and hierarchical impositions on the architectural canon.
The settler colonial core of dominance and power is reflected in slightly different ways between Kimball, Burchard and Bush-Brown. Kimball privileges the traditions of America’s settler colonial ancestors, interpreting America as a continuation of a romanticized history of imperialism. As a result, just like “the Greeks at the Pillars of Hercules, Romans in the forest of Rhine, or Europeans on the opposite fringe of the Atlantic, [colonists] strove first to make their new home like the old.” (18) American architecture is analyzed solely as an evolution from this progression, such as
in the rationalization of timber construction for climate but also in comparison to “brick and stone [being used] by the common man” (22). Both Kimball, Burchard and Bush-Brown ignore with condescension any influence of Native American and African American cultures, though Burchard and Brown differ by also holding Americans above their European roots. They state, “the many architects who sought to bring European culture to America, explicitly denied a new architecture and thus explicitly denied the [American] dream” (56). Burchard and Brown privilege power in the form of stubborn innovation, that is, in isolation of all other cultures as well as land, as “they would affect the land and climate by their power” (50), rather than the reverse.
refer to the European settler colonists as “the immigrants”, acknowledging the Native Americans as the true original owners of the land. This is in contrast to Kimball, Burchard and Bush-Brown who refer to the natives as “primitive and naive” communities irrelevant in the world of the colonists. As mentioned in Wolfe’s essay, the categories of race “cannot be taken as a given. It is made in the targeting.” (388)
“the many architects who sought to bring European culture to America, explicitly denied a new architecture and thus explicitly
denied the
[American] dream”
John Burchard and Albert Bush-Brown, The Architecture of America: A Social and Cultural History
However, Roth’s narrative, although written in the same era as Burchard and Brown’s, takes a much more reflective and holistic approach in analyzing American architecture’s evolution. Likely as a result of their understanding of “natural forces having the most insistent demands on a building” (11), Roth has a deep respect towards Native Americans as the original architects of America. Roth reflects on “the benefits of aboriginal social practices” (13), from multifamily housing and its resulting energy savings to the wisdom of building typology for its specific regional climate. Not only does he point out the “irony of how most of this would have to be painfully rediscovered over the next five centuries” (13), but he is the only author of the three to accurately
These comparisons between ignorant and empathetic reflections of history demonstrate just how non-linear the architectural canon truly is. As American architecture recovers from its history of settler colonial biases, architects and historians must learn to try and understand its evolution from a complex network of diverse perspectives, abandoning narrow nationalism for an era of interconnected globalization. ●
Burchard, John and Albert Bush-Brown. “The Architecture of America: A Social and Cultural History”, 50-62. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1979.
Kimball, Fiske. 1928. American Architecture, 13-24. Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1928.
Roth, Leland M. “The Land and First Homes,” A Concise History of American Architecture, 1-27. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1979.
Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native,” Journal of Genocide Research, vol.8, no.4, 387-409. 2006.
Wolf Dance
Noah Guth
Vertical Studio - Convergence Instructor: N. Wiedemann Fall 2023
Dug from the earth by wolves, and the origin point for all of humanity, Red Mountain is a sacred place to the Tonkawa people. Their creation story is ritualized in the Wolf Dance, during which wolf pelts are worn by tribe members as they reenact the story of man’s birth. Having recently reacquired the site of their sacred mountain, the Tonkawa are planning to develop a center for tribe members and locals to connect with the land. The center will include a library for cul-
85a
turally significant artifacts and texts, classrooms for youth and community education, and a presentation hall for large gatherings. This proposed design seeks to recre -
AXONOMETRIC
ate the ceremonial experience of the Wolf Dance and the creation story. Visitors first descend blindly into the complex where they become cut off from
their surroundings, reconnecting with the earth, only to reemerge and climb the observation tower to the east, which offers a striking view of the poignant mountain.
Woodie Flowers Center
Austin Li
Speculative Studio - Adaptive Reuse
Instructor: J. Wong, A. Fulcher
Fall 2021
Named after one of the co-founders of FIRST, a youth robotics program, the Woodie Flowers Center seeks to create exhibition, education, and working spaces for robotics. The center reuses an old power plant, transforming the
plant’s open interior into a series of visual and hands-on classrooms. Leaving the iconic smokestack and red brick facade, the louver system that surrounds the center highlights its robotic nature, adapting to the weather and solar patterns. The existing boiler frame was converted into an exhibition space equipped with robotics testing platforms located above and a large stadium on the ground floor. The test platforms of the exhibition space can move independently, allowing for the creation of variable robotic testing spaces. The Woodie Flowers Center works in conjunction with programs such as FIRST to bring robotics to lower-income communities. The working spaces on the basement level of the building are built for the FIRST TECH Challenge fields and FIRST Robotics Challenge fields to encourage students to experience and learn about engineering.
Recollections
UTSOA Faculty look back on the past three years
The special working relationships between students and their professors are not unilateral. In fact, in the best cases, students teach their teachers. Students bring us insights. Students make work that surprises us, and sometimes, can stick with us for many years. Here are a few nuggets from our faculty.
Let It Flow
Paula Cano
Spacial Adaptative Design
Spring 2023
Paula Cano (M.Arch 2023) was in my Material Information seminar. Paula’s project i nvestigated the granularity of the disregarded wood to the highest level. She also brought a poetic side to her robotic drawing, as well as the wood building “chunks.”
Hackberry | Celtis laevigata
David Heymann
SOA Maker Space
Jamie Jones Advanced Study Fall 2023
For Advanced Study in Fall 2023 I wrote a brief for a new SOA maker space that would maximize square footage on a site – the West Mall/ Battle Hall loading dock – that intentionally forced students to make a big box. The idea was we would spend the semester dealing with the consequences to the building’s presence, in terms of proportion, geometry, layering, etc. – of structure, enclosure, materials, systems, and so forth. Many of the students, desperate for formal exuberance, resisted feverishly. Jamie resisted most successfully. In following the rationale for a CLT frame, she defaulted into the essentially pre-Modern spirit of the assignment. Her proposal, which sinks a two-story workshop and work yard behind a Neo-classical colonnade, imagined a far better building than the brief called for.
Kyriakos Kyriakou
Carthage Wells
Maya Shamir & Julia Szeto
Micropolitan American Studio Fall 2022
An undergraduate architecture student and a Master’s student in landscape architecture collaborated for a full semester to study the political geology of Carthage, a small town in East Texas. Beneath the thick pine forests lies a network of organized operations for disposing of toxic fluids—byproducts of extraction from the Permian Basin and other locations. Ironically, this disposal involves injecting the unwanted fluids back into the earth, a practice that risks contaminating aquifers and has recently been linked to earthquakes.
Julia and Maya’s findings led to a shocking dual realization: on one hand, admiration for the technological brilliance of humankind; on the other, terror at the destructive ways this brilliance is often applied.
109 W 57th St
Alexis Careon & Stephen McCann American Condominium Metabolism Studio Spring 2022
A product of New York City’s 2010s residential development boom, Manhattan’s skinny supertalls pushed the residential tower typology to unprecedented proportions, unlocking impressive engineering sophistication alongside nonsensical architectural creativity. Driven solely by the logic of capital, these towers became physical manifestations of speculative assets, radically transforming the city’s skyline.
This sectional oblique of an fictional residential tower in Manhattan imagines, in Koolhaas’ words “the skyscraper as a utopian device for the production of unlimited numbers of virgin sites on a single metropolitan location.” In this alternative reality, architecture knows no limits—it extends infinitely into the sky and deep into the earth, like a measure of relentless capitalist accumulation.
Larry Speck
Ford Campus
Oliva Bowness
Architectural Theory: Contemporary Issues
Fall
2023
I got a particularly memorable final paper from Olivia Bowness in my class, ARC 386 Architectural Theory: Contemporary Issues, fall 2023. What made it remarkable was that Olivia was writing the paper at least as much from lived experience as from academic research. Maybe architectural writing is the very most potent when it draws from that perspective.
Olivia’s paper was on O’Neil Ford, and her lived experience came from spending four years of undergraduate life at Ford’s campus at Trinity University. Olivia has been shaped by that experience, and she is increasingly aware of how much it has contributed to her own values regarding architecture and the trajectory of her career aspirations.
Nichole Wiedemann
109 W 57th St
Alexis Careon & Stephen McCann American Condominium Metabolism Studio Spring 2022
As spaces are made with the hands, considered with the eyes, and critiqued with the mind; the student begins a journey. My role is that of a guide; carefully opening doors to places students, or I, may not have considered before and following them as they find their path, nudging them in productive directions. Many instructors talk about teaching the student to “see,” but I prefer to think that I encourage students to “listen” and embrace the potential of the unknown. I have always believed that the most significant designers live their entire lives (comfortably) not knowing the answer but continuing the search each time a line is drawn, models are made, or a stone is set.
Retrospective
Joy
Delight Presebre and Jeremy A. Smith sit down with a founding editor of Issue
In 2004 the first edition of Issue was published by a handful of students. This is the 18th edition of issue, and marks the 20 year anniversary since the founding editor, Elpitha Tsoutsounaki, put up fliers all around Sutton, Goldsmith, West Mall, and the library to gather a handful of students to work together and give us the first printed edition. A lot has changed in our culture since, but a few things remain the same: late nights in studios, fitting in fun when we can, and the entrepreneurial spirit of UTSOA students.
Elpitha Tsoutsounakis (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Multi-disciplinary Design (MDD) program at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. She served as Associate Director of the Design program from 2017-2020 and is a founding member of the faculty. Elpitha completed a Bachelor of Science in Architecture at the University of Utah and a Master of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.
She teaches design studios, research methods, and visual strategy with an emphasis in community engaged scholarship. Her design research practice with Ochre engages issues of design ethics, materiality, ecofeminism, and human/nonhuman entanglement.
We sat down with the founding editor to discuss the story behind the origin of Issue, get a sense of what life was like on campus in the early aughts, and ask for their advice as we RE: issue in 2024.
I: So how did issue get started? What motivated y’all to start the first UTSOA student-run publication?
ET: We started it because we were excited, we wanted to do something fun, and we were proud of the work that was happening in the school. It was a way of spending time together and of having conversations about our work. We saw that there were publications happening at other schools and we wanted to be a part of that and to disseminate the work that we were doing. Because if you're doing good work, but you're the only one that ever sees it, it's kind of like, alright….cool.
So we started off by just having these conversations in the North studio on the third floor of Goldsmith, and it was just a couple of us who were talking about it late at night. We'd just be in the studio and taking breaks and just chatting about things or looking at
publications that somebody had brought and saying, “oh, this is cool, we should do this.”
And so, we decided to just make a flyer and hang it up and see who was interested. I made a flyer that said, “We're starting a student publication. If you want to be a part of it, meet us in the courtyard on this day and time.” Quite a few people showed up, and we got it kicked off.
We were influenced by whatever theory we were reading at the time and we decided to flatten that hierarchy by just listing everybody as an editor. That was a really specific choice because we wanted to realize other forms of collective practice. And so maybe we could have done it differently, but that was definitely why we listed everybody as an editor. And so we just got out and got started from there. We met again and again and again. Eventually, we talked to the school and the school said, “oh, okay, yeah, sure, whatever.” I don't think they
took it too seriously, but they also didn't discourage us and they supported us. They gave us a little bit of money and for a while, they gave us an office, and that was really amazing. We had an office over by the materials library somewhere. I forget exactly where it was. And so that was kind of fun. We didn't really make good use of it, I don't think. But I mean, they supported us in the ways that they could.
A lot of the money that we raised, we fundraised ourselves in order to be able to print that first issue. We threw keg parties with bands and sold cups and merchandise and things. We also didn't take ourselves very seriously. We depended a lot on flyers and posters and communicating with people. This is pre-social media and social channels. When we printed the first issue, we had a lot of fun launching it. We stamped them all out. We laid them all face down because, at first, we had to lay them out so they would dry and
then we decided it was fun. So we filled the whole Mebane Gallery with the issues face down on the ground in one big thing, like a big massive area rug. I think we printed a thousand copies. I guess, a hundred by a hundred. And then when we opened and had the launch party, we let everybody come into the exhibit and pick one and they got to take their issue.
Each student got one free or students had to pay five or ten dollars or something silly. And then we continued to raise money. I remember
ET: The second issue was a lot of fun because we took over Mebane Gallery for about a week and we set up an office and we held office hours for the whole week. And so we’d just go in at 9 a.m. and sit at the desk and take applications for the Issue staff. And we had an application that everybody had to fill out and we set up a desk and a whole office set up with a typewriter and a plant and a phone, the whole office set up just right in the middle of Mebane Gallery. People would come in and talk to us and we’d interview people
one time we had a mojito stand and we sold mojitos to the school's board of directors for their annual meeting. And if they bought a mojito, they got a free issue of issue. So we did a lot of those types of things that were a lot of fun. In the end, it was really just an excuse to get together with your friends and peers, have fun, throw parties, and do projects.
I: What about the second edition? How did it grow from there?
and take applications and we occupied the gallery for a week. It was a lot of fun. It was another kind of fun little thing that we did.
I: To go back a little bit, you were talking about the decision to take away any sort of hierarchy in terms of what the positions were. Could you explain a little bit more about what went into that decision?
ET: Yeah, well, I think we didn’t really know what we were doing. We had no experience with publications. And so we just tried to
ISSUE I DISTRIBUTION IN MEBANE GALLERY, COURTESY OF JESSE HAGER, AIA
058b
create a structure. And we voted because we were really into doing things democratically. So we voted on who would be editors in chief and we thought, oh, we should have two. We created these positions, but then in practice, we were all so busy that that always didn’t work out. And so it was much easier to kind of just pick up where somebody left off and cover things, whoever was available would do it and whoever was capable of doing something, would do something. There were definitely people, you know, myself included, who had to really stay on top of things. And if we weren’t paying attention and taking responsibility, it wouldn’t have happened. So you need somebody who’s gonna at the end of the day, be responsible for keeping the timeline and the project on track. But otherwise, we just were really excited about working together and not worrying who was in charge and always making decisions together.
I look at a lot of commons theory or theory of the commons. There’s this new book out actually by a friend that’s at Texas A&M called Architecture in the Commons. It looks at architectural structures of commons. It talks about the methods in which people work in a variety of different ways. There are different forms of practice that are based on collectives and collective work and collective practice and different feminist practices of care. There are all these other ways of working together that are not the traditional hierarchical top-down forms of pow-
er or organizations of power. And so I think at the time we just had no idea about that.
So now thinking back from what I’m working on today, I would have maybe said, oh, yeah, we had this idea or this urge to make things democratic, but we just wanted it to work collectively. We weren’t interested in who was doing what or who g ot credit for something or who was in charge. We were just interested in getting together and producing some good work. Instead of focusing on an individual effort, we focused on whatever it takes to get the final product to be the best thing that it can be. I think at the end of the day, you do have to have a core group of people who are committed to actually doing the work and getting it done. We had a lot of people who said, “Yeah, I want to hang out and I want to do it.” Then some people didn’t have time. It’s always interesting when you’re trying to do these things for yourselves and organizing yourselves. When the incentive is that you just want to do it, you very quickly see who will drop off and who will commit to getting the job done.
I: What role do you think a student-led publication like Issue plays in an academic setting other than sharing student work? Were you motivated by other things? We saw on your website that you’re very much about community engaged scholarship and wondered if Issue played into that for you?
ET: I practiced architecture for only a couple of years and then went into academia and I taught in architecture for about 10 or 11 years. Then I founded and built up the division of multidisciplinary design which I teach in now. I also worked for an artist here in town
Since school, I’ve always really been interested in publication and the codex and books and forms of publishing and printing. And for me, architecture and architectural training is about a way of doing design research and it’s about a way of drawing and thinking and organizing process, but not for the sake of buildings or for the sake of architecture. I think that the seeds of that started in grad uate school. And when we did Issue, I was just personally really interested in publication.
for about a year as an artist assistant. Her name was Ada Campbell Bliss. She studied with Albers and her husband was at Black Mountain College. So I did this whole art thing for a year and I practiced only for a couple of years before teaching and then got involved in printmaking and doing letterpress.
Looking back, I’ve gone on to do a lot of different types of publication work. And I was always interested in that, and now I do publication as a part of my practice. Publication as a form of dissemination and publication as a product is compelling and interesting to me. I do a lot of work with archives. I just think as a product, it’s a really interesting thing to put a publication together. Books and publications are a physical object, right? They are very architectural forms of space. It has an entry and a transition and a choreography and programming. And so you can tie all these parallels between publication, bookmaking, and architecture. And I’ve actually taught typography and taught bookmaking and taught these kinds of book layout classes.
It’s another interesting way to be able to share ideas. And I think you’re seeing that have a real resurgence. I don’t know if it’s just my interest, but you know, I’m looking at all of these publishers like Valiz, Onomatopee, or Bruno
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Books in Venice. There are all these independent sort of art and design book publishers, many of them coming out of the Netherlands. There’s one in Germany that just produced the forensic architecture program at The Center for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths. They just released their second book.
These are really interesting forms of creating ideas and using the books beyond academic publications like ACTAR. All of the architecture faculty now are publishing with ACTAR. That’s the hot one. MIT Press, Princeton Architectural Press, all these places. They produce a book and it’s mostly about the words and the writing and the book is just a standard thing that they produce. These other ones, they’re really interested in the format. So they’re always hiring different artists to design the books and really pushing the format of the book and the design of the book as a way of integrating ideas. And so I think this is really one of the things that was interesting for us at issue.
I: How would you sum that up the initial brand and identity of the first Issue?
ET: Mark Lavino is the actual person that came up with the initial brand and identity for the first issue: the italics. We were just doing what was trendy. It was the trend in school and in projects. It was the graphic trend of the time and we did something that was cool and trendy. I don’t even know how we picked that photo for the cover. Whatever people were interested in beyond architecture or the studio, Issue was an opportunity for us to do that together and collectively and to be totally in control and do whatever we wanted to do. We weren’t doing
it for a grade or we weren’t doing it under the faculty. I mean, the faculty were paying attention. I think in the beginning, we even had a faculty advisor, maybe that was listed in that publication, but we could just try things and do things that we were interested in. So it became another platform for flexing muscles that maybe there wasn’t room for in studio.
It also reflects what was happening at the time. But I would think now with my experience and my perspective, I would imagine you could take it further. I think our approach was really collecting all of the work. This is what it was this year, and then we had fun putting it together. And it kind of became a platform. The issue itself or the publication itself became an excuse for us to get together and have parties and talk to people about their work and design things and do fun things, right? So it was like all of the activities, I think, were really the incentive.
The publication itself, I would say, if I am critiquing it honestly, is you have to start somewhere. I think now it would be compelling to think about capturing issues that are important to students or to the profession. Could you figure out a way of having students publish on issues? We did not have a lot of supervision. So if you were able to get faculty supervisors and to get people like doing a peer review process, people who are interested in going on to have a writing career or an academic career or a publishing career could use Issue as a platform for getting those people involved and getting them their first publication and getting their foot in the door. You could have the advisors and the structure to help you formalize or professionalize Issue a little bit more in that direction.
type and everything can be redesigned. That was a real intent of ours from the beginning. We wanted every year to have the freedom to do what they wanted to do. But I think that you could also then take it further in terms of editorial content or the overall themes or discourse or ideas that the issues are pushing beyond just, this is what we did this year.
I: Can you speak to any stark differences between the way you guys were curating and thinking about a publication then versus now? Or any general sort of change in the architectural environment or the environment on campus then versus now?
“I think that you could also then take it further in terms of editorial content or the overall themes or discourse or ideas that the issues are pushing beyond just, this is what we did this year.”
We were a bunch of kids, you know, having fun and putting up flyers. So I think those first couple issues are very unprofessional, and we were totally fine with that. We thought let’s design something with just the word name and the logo. The word mark can be recognizable, but it can be simple enough that every year, the format and the book and the
ET: You know, I saw that question on your list and I thought like, this is such a hard question to ask because it’s kind of a whole other thing. I just remember when I came from the University of Texas to Utah, it was just a dramatically different place.
I’ve been teaching in multidisciplinary design now for 10 years. My students are in the same studio and I have no idea what they’re doing sometimes. It’s really great because there’s a lot more room and it’s a lot more inclusive and a lot of different forms of practice and different things are included and validated and welcome. On the other hand, I feel like people don’t want to have
real conversations anymore. Issue can be a serious conversation too, maybe about all of the converging factors that impace architecture and beyond. That’s one sense that I have.
I would be really curious to come to UT and see what’s happening there. I haven’t been back for years. I do think that, in general, we had a lot of enthusiasm for doing things. We want this, so we’re gonna do it. We want a publication, so we’re gonna start it. We want to have a party, so we’re gonna have it. We wanna do a little art show and so we’re gonna do it. I think it would be great if architecture students, design students in general, were more active in things outside of the classroom, in extracurricular type of initiatives and just doing and making stuff, and putting it out there in the world.●
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Acknowledgements
RE: issue would not have been possible without the contributions of the faculty, staff, and students of UTSOA.
First and foremost, we want to thank the students and alumni for submitting their work to this publication. Their dedication to excellence, both in the studio setting and out, is apparent within the pages of this book. Secondly, we would like to thank Dean Heather Woofter and her administration for their generous finanacial suport of RE: issue. Their faith in us and encouragement has not gone unnoticed. Lastly, we would like to thank our advisor, Dora Epstein-Jones, for championing student voices in print media and for helping us to find our footing again.
