3-10 / 6 pm
marcelo SPINA
sutherland visiting professor of landscape design
senior architect founder and co-principal of
p-a-t-t-e-r-n-s, los angeles
pence 209 university of kentucky college of design

evolo magazine is pleased to announce the winners of the 2010 skyscraper competition. established in 2006, the annual skyscraper competition recognizes outstanding ideas that redefine skyscraper design through the use of new technologies, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organization. the award seeks to discover young talents whose ideas will change the way we understand architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.

john URBANEK: this is my most recent photo series, shot with a macro lens. i was inspired by the challenge of taking a free flowing form and capturing its organic transformations underwater. While the subject matter was only 4 inches tall, the substances take on shapes and life of their own. every person finds their own object in these peculiar formations.

landscapes of quarantine
mar 10 2010 – apr 17 2010
opening reception: tuesday, march 9, 7pm

group exhibition exploring the spaces of quarantine, from level 4 biocontainment labs to underground nuclear waste repositories.

curated by: future plural
geoff MANAUGH, bldgblog
nicola TWILLEY, edible geography

designed by:
glen CUMMINGS, mtwtf

landscapes of quarantine features new works by a multi-disciplinary group of eighteen artists, designers, and architects, each of whom was inspired by one or more of the physical, biological, ethical, architectural, social, political, temporal, and even astronomical dimensions of quarantine.

at its most basic, quarantine is a strategy of separation and containment—the creation of a hygienic boundary between two or more things, for the purpose of protecting one from exposure to the other. it is a spatial response to suspicion, threat, and uncertainty. from chernobyl’s zone of exclusion and the artificial quarantine islands of the new york archipelago to camp beds set up to house hiv-positive haitian refugees detained at guantánamo and the modified airstream trailer from within which buzz aldrin, neil armstrong, and michael collins once waved at president nixon, the landscapes of quarantine are various, mutable, and often unexpected.

typically, quarantine is thought of in the context of disease control. it is used to isolate people who have been exposed to a contagious virus or bacteria and, as a result, may (or may not) be carrying the infection themselves. but quarantine does not apply only to people and animals. its boundaries can be set up for as long as needed, creating spatial separation between clean and dirty, safe and dangerous, healthy and sick, foreign and native—however those labels are defined.

as a result, the practice of quarantine extends far beyond questions of epidemic control and pest-containment strategies to touch on issues of urban planning, geopolitics, international trade, ethics, immigration, and more. and although the practice dates back at least to the arrival of the black death in medieval venice, if not to christ’s 40 days in the desert, quarantine has re-emerged as an issue of urgency and importance in today’s era of globalization, antibiotic resistance, emerging diseases, pandemic flu, and bio-terrorism.

landscapes of quarantine began with an eight-week independent design studio directed by geoff manaugh and nicola twilley of future plural. each tuesday evening, from october to december 2009, a multi-disciplinary group of studio participants met to discuss the spatial implications of quarantine and develop their own creative response: the resulting work forms the core of the landscapes of quarantine exhibition.

works on display:

pages 179 – 187, joe alterio

q-city: an investigation, front studio | yen ha & michi yanagishita

map 002 quarantine, david garcia studio

did we build the frontier to keep it closed?, scott geiger

field notes from quarantine, katie holten

hotel iii, camp ii, lab iv, cell v, mimi lien

cordon sanitaire, kevin slavin

context/shift, brian slocum

containing uncertainty, smudge studio | jamie kruse & elizabeth ellsworth

nycq, amanda spielman & jordan spielman

quick, richard mosse

thermal scanner and body temperature alert system, daniel perlin

precious isolation: a pair of invasive species, thomas pollman

ENVELOPES
march 5 – may 5, 2010

“envelopes,” will explore new and sustainable potentials of the architectural surface in terms of the skin of a building and also as a sensorial space that envelops the body. “envelopes” will feature full-scale, interactive models accompanied by architectural renderings in the form of drawings and computer animations, and documentation of the process of investigation into these models from eight international firms and designers.

“envelopes” is guest curated by christopher HIGHT, an associate professor at rice university’s school of architecture. HIGHT’s inspiration for the exhibition title and concept originated from parallels between the envelope of a building and the envelope of human skin; the building envelope repeats the metaphor of the building as a body and as a prosthetic second skin that allows human beings to exist within a hostile environment. inspired by early 20th century biologist jacob von uexküll and his interest in how living beings relate to and perceive their environment, the title of the show refers to the role of the building envelope and the idea of envelopment of one’s body and senses within a larger environment.  

participating architects and architecture firms: !ndie architecture; houminn practice; mary ellen carroll—mec design studios with kevin topek of permaculture design, llc and carlise vandervoort; michael u. hensel and defne sunguroğlu hensel of ocean design research; nataly gattegno and jason kelly johnson of future cities lab; philippe rahm; tobias emilsson, jonah fritzell, marcelyn gow, ulrika karlsson, and chris perry of servo; weathers.

laird BORRELLI-PERSSON: “it’s like they’re on psychedelics, the way they describe things.” that was sonic youth frontwoman and rodarte fan kim gordon speaking about kate and laura mulleavy before their show today. the seemingly demure sisters from pasadena, california—who studied art history with the eminent scholar t.j. clark, the well-informed gordon noted—have indeed crafted their own baroque dream world (cue the dry ice that created a poison mist over a runway strewn with black grit). it’s an imaginary world that’s ferocious rather than precious, not to mention ferociously influential. and with its relentless gothic overtones, it’s particularly in tune with the moment.

this collection, which married primitivism to the sisters’ ongoing interest in futurism, was one of rodarte’s most fully realized. if the silhouettes were familiar, the awe-inspiring construction of the garments represented the apotheosis of the techniques—in knitwear, printing, draping, and pastiche—that the mulleavys have been refining season after season. or, as laura put it: “we ruined everything.” in other words, they aged, painted, burned, shredded, sandpapered, and otherwise destroyed all of the materials—including grungy scraps of plaid, plastic, cheesecloth, wool cobweb, crystals, macramé, leather, and more—until they bore only traces of what they had been originally. (even their footwear collaborator nicholas kirkwood’s vertiginous heels are now so extravagantly studded that they barely resemble shoes—as a couple of teetering models discovered to their peril.)

the idea that someone could “be scarred and still beautiful” was the collection’s leitmotif, and it was about as far from some banal notion of “tribal fashion” as you could get. so where did this hallucination originate? a trip to death valley, and a corresponding obsession with singed land (which there is sadly too much of in california lately), sparked the sisters’ imagination. that somehow evolved into a tale, part mad max, part tim burton, of a woman burned alive who is transformed into a california condor (you begin to appreciate gordon’s point). forced to scavenge for existence in a barren, war-torn landscape, she pieces together her attire from rags that, as laura mulleavy pointed out, only serve to expose her wounds. it’s not exactly a good-night story—but it’s a powerful one, and it was expertly told to a rapt and ever more adoring audience.

via style.com

leipzig GERMANY
suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

patrick BEDARF : the starting point of this project evolved during researching the ongoing conflict between differing social groups regarding their interests in the one of the most attractive pieces of fallow land in the heart of berlin: the spree riversides located between friedrichshain and kreuzberg.

through iteratively distributing programmatic layers resulting from the surrounding city fabric onto the site and systematically mixing volumes of different social characteristics the motive of a foam structure appears. the quality of formal variety as a consequence within the heterogeneity of the overall system is implied into the arbitrative design methodology called function aesthetics. focusing onto the space partitioning strategy of voronoi regions features gradient-driven diversity in creating highly functional orthogonal structures as well as distorted and geometrically complex volumes. pointclouds generated from early studies of programmatic foam structures are therefore manipulated locally depending on functional-programmatic attributes. consequently, the result articulates the geometric variety as a foundation for partitioning into voronoi cells.

the emerging spatial strategy offers interesting interactions within social-territorial typologies which are scenically described and particularly illustrated around the area of the created hybrid-cluster intersecting the existing “viktoria” storehouse building. moreover, possibly scenarios regarding the social-territorial distribution are demonstrated within milieu maps carrying information about physical and theoretical adoption of space units. additionally, different concepts are defined for regulating and ensuring social-characteristic diversity within the subsystem of the study area.

sP: what or who influenced this project?

pB: the drive of berlin and the power of social networks

sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?

pB: eyes: richard senett/saskia sassen/peter sloterdijk/steven johnson/d’arcy thompson/patrik schumacher
ears: a lot of damn good fact mixes, subtrkt, extrawelt, apparat, flying lotus, santogold

sP: whose work is currently on your radar?

pB: dimitrie stefanescu, luis fraguada, kokkugia, emergent architecture, big, jds

michael HANSMEYER: architecture has traditionally been an additive process. idealized components are combined, arranged, and re-configured to generate a building. the components that constitute the building are mostly conceived a priori. as a result, buildings can be described by breaking them down into smaller and smaller modules, until one arrives at geometric primitives – volumes such as cylinders, cubes, prisms, and platonic solids. not only can buildings be described in this reductionist manner, but large parts of the generative processes involved in their production can be understood.

these processes are linear and have traditionally involved operations such as translating, rotating, and scaling of components. in the past decades they have been expanded to incorporate various types of deformation. yet the combinatorial logic has remained largely on the level of the geometric components themselves, and not on the level of operations.

given the computational power at our disposal today, the question arises as to what extent a purely operations-based geometric process can generate form. rather than studying the possibilities in combining numerous primitives, the question is what potential is inherent in a single primitive given an appropriate process.

the platonic solids project aims to explore this approach. it takes the most primitive forms, the platonic solids, and repeatedly employs one single operation – the division of a form’s face into smaller faces – until a new form is produced. the recursively applied process remains entirely constant, only the variables that control its division operation are permitted to change. this single process affects the form’s topography and topology, and influences attributes such as the degree of branching, porosity, and fractalization – just to name a few. the resulting forms display a novel aesthetic and an astounding complexity that largely defies attempts at reductionism.

subdivision algorithms in this project are based on the work of daniel doo & malcolm sabin, edwin catmull & jim clark, jörg peters & ulrich reif, and charles loop. forms are generated in processing and exported as dxf files. each form consists of 200,000 to 16 million faces. images shown have an original resolution of 8000 x 8000 pixels

meenal mistry: there will be lace. and sculpted organza, floaty feathers, beading, and draped tulle. for a few seasons now, queen of the red carpet georgina chapman has refined marchesa’s signatures to a flawlessly executed fine point. that’s not to say that the label remains at a standstill, however. fall was inspired by the performer and courtesan lola montez and her travels and quest for love, chapman said. compared with last season’s occasionally stiff references to madame butterfly, there was a welcome sense of whimsy, with a feeling of girlish romance in shooting-star embroideries as well as in a dress in cotton-candy tulle, its puff shaped only by a length of black grosgrain ribbon.

there were snaking ruffles that appeared to be crafted from very expensive rickrack, and a sleek tuxedo coat that had a circus ringleader’s swagger. (though the real montez never joined the circus; that was only her celluloid counterpart.)

there are always moments at this presentation that induce a sharp intake of breath. today it was the appearance of a silver siren gown. the lace-patterned beading on the bodice turned into allover beading and looked like liquid metal. a fall collection for any creator of eveningwear is inevitably higher-stakes than spring, coinciding as it does with awards season—all those stars, or their stylists, looking to snag something directly from the runway. does chapman keep that in mind when designing? “yes, yes,” she said. “it would be silly not to.” it would be sillier still if we don’t see at least a couple of these pieces—perhaps a gorgeous paisley beaded fuchsia suede dress or a white feathered empire gown—on a talented ingenue in the near future.

experimental trickster, weaving a web of satirical relationships around the world of contemporary architecture, jimenez LAI states the following about his work.

fiction is the impetus of architecture, and architecture is one of the most powerful representations of culture. more specifically, the source of my work comes from interpreting taste, look, and trends. through acts of re-imagining fictional scenarios based on exaggerations of current practical and academic patterns, we can studiously investigate the alternate worlds and unexpected implications about architecture and urbanism.

in my work, i explore hypothetical scenarios of experimental architecture. by pressing alternate conditions against our context, the projects aim at interrogating different points of views and broaden the ways we engage conventions. graphic novels and physical installations are my two primary weapons of choice, and i believe representation is more than half the battle. the drawings often explore storylines of architecture and urbanism that dramatize exaggerated realities. the projects swerve back into the physical world via the interactive installations derived from the stories. these installations are attempts to better understand the spatial implications of the two-dimensional fiction. it is noteworthy to emphasize the role of installations in this pursuit of experimental architecture. my drawings about the fictional worlds are often physically translated into a kind of reality, and desire to provoke spatial possibilities.

as a projective practice, some of my predecessors include bob somol’s legible avant-garde, venturi’s reading of pop-culture, tschumi’s stories about events and program as well as hejduk’s hand-sketches that evoked senses of melancholic resonance that is without objectivity. in other words, the genealogy of future is encouraging me to curate my sources through hypothesizing the various tomorrows, and play on with more fictions and physical experiments.