University of Pensylvania, PennDesign
critic: Ali RAHIM

suckerPUNCH: Describe your Project.

Andreas KOSTOPOULOS & Hayley WONG: A nightclub is situated in Hong Kong, in Victoria Harbour, in order to provide a range of experiences for different audiences based on their distance and degree of enclosure. Those viewing the nightclub from the tallest skyscrapers retain a generalized perception that is also altered by the building’s reflected image in the water, which remains unseen to those within the night club.

Those located in the immediate vicinity of the building can begin to observe the construction and geometry that contribute to both the exterior and interior atmospheres of the nightclub. Lastly, those directly immersed in the building, are able to fully experience the interiorities and atmospheric effects of the nightclub as a result of precise formal techniques and composition.

Throughout this range of experiences, illegibility and bilateral symmetry are key to the study of interiorities within the design of this nightclub. The idea of illegibility is central in developing interior atmospheres and architectural techniques that are not visually linked to a specific existing creature or object. Because of this illegibility, continuously varied readings of the architecture are encouraged. Through the vagueness of illegibility, experience emerges through impulse rather than figuration. Bilateral symmetry, which this project recognizes as a universal, over-arching organizational quality, allows for a sense of attraction and order to be achieved in select precise locations, even when recognition is not achieved as a result of illegibility.

A Hong Kong nightclub program inherently allows for a break from architecture’s normal focus on efficiency and economy, both in interiorities and in circulation. In this project, night club-specific illegible circulation, as opposed to a direct procession-like circulation, is achieved by situating distinct spaces in a way that allows for non-sequential experiences according to the interpretation and self-navigation of visitors. The use of bilateral symmetry is then implemented to create, when visitors stand in select exact locations, a sudden flicker of unity and brief directionality amongst the otherwise illegible orientation of spaces.

sP: What or who influenced this project?
AK & HW: Francesco Borromini, Alexander McQueen, Edgar Allan Poe, Sanford Kwinter’s essay “Who’s Afraid of Formalism?”

sP: What are you reading / listenig / watching while developing this project?
AK & HW: Reading Jeffrey Kipnis, “Towards a New Architecure”; Sylvia Lavin, Kissing Architecture; Eric R. Kandel, The Age of Insight; Konstantinos Chatzopoulos, “Simple Manners”; The New Yorker. Listening to Maya Jane Coles; Sub Focus; Maxology; Trust; Daft Punk; Grimes. Watching Cloud Atlas (dir. Tom Tykwer) and Pina (dir. Wim Wenders).

sP: Whose work is curently on your radar?
AK & HW: Matt Johnson, Andreas Lolis, Tino Sehgal, Ryan McGinley, Sara VanDerBeek, Phoebe Philio, Olivier Rustein, Miuccia Prada, Raf Simons.

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Jennifer GEORGESCU: It seems that while that we can recognize that we are a part of nature, there is evidence of a disconnect taking place. We have no solid definition of what it is that we claim to be a part of, and rationality is privileged over wildness and chaos. We set aside small areas of land for enjoyment, we pay to see caged animals; we want to “dabble” in nature so that we can feel closer to it. Sand, Stones, Dead Leaves & Bone examines our relationship to nature and the anxiety that comes from our lack of contact with it.

Presented in this project are slightly unsettling images of humans being engulfed by nature and vice versa; attractive and repulsive in their approach. This dualism suggests that perhaps we fear nature might win if we don’t dominate it, while at the same time alluding to the acceptance of not being in control. Through the use of medium format film photography, installation, and digital technology, I explore “backyard” suburban nature and the integration of the physical and mental self into its surroundings.

sP: What or who influenced this project?
JG: N/A.

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
JG: I have been reading Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild; Henry David Thoreau, Walden; Bruce Hood, The Self Illusion; and David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous. And looking at Amy Stein’s Domesticated, Simen Johan’s Entropic Kingdom, and sculptures by Patricia Piccinini.

sP: Whose work is currently on your radar?
JG: I recently came across a study in which participants were asked if they thought humans were a part of nature. The general consensus was yes but when these participants were asked to define what nature was, they described it as something untouched by humans. Initially, I found this study shocking but I began to realize that these contradictions offered glaring insight of our skewed relationship with nature. I began noticing that most of us don’t know the types of plants, or names of birds that inhabit our immediate surroundings, or where exactly humankind fits in with any of this. With this in mind, my work began to take on a sort of ritualistic approach where I became an every-person longing to interact with nature or to belong with it.

Additional credits and links:
[jengeorgescu.com]
[jennifergeorgescu.wordpress.com]
[jennifergeorgescu.tumblr.com]

University of Illinois at Chicago
critic: Paul PREISSNER

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Ryan HERNANDEZ: This project explores the idea of awkward architecture produced with a certain precision. The elements appear haphazard and ignored. The design seems to lack a certain amount of skill, though, these decisions are on purpose.

This project, an aggregation of cylinders, combines them in clumsy yet specific way; a way which causes the user to feel a certain level of discomfort. The cylinders are slightly leaned against one another in a careless fashion.

A few of the variations have a cylinder hanging overhead so the user approaches the cottage with trepidation. The interior is organized to create an open floor plan, which combines with great height. From the exterior, the square footage appears endless, however; the cottage offers only one floor, which creates an awkwardness with the height of the ceilings. The exterior paint pattern is a seemingly bad aerosol spray, which separates the cylinders in two and contrasts the singular space inside. The windows and doors are placed parallel with the ground and in a way that is not overdesigned. Each variation has its own arrangement, interior, color, and window placement; however, one is not more correct than another, all creating a colony of cottages.

sP: What or who influenced this project?
RH: The idea of this project was to have little to no outside influences other than studying processes of creating with no influence. Projects done by artists such as Anne Truit or John Chamberlain were studied for their seemingly less articulate, simple, and haphazard applications.

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
RH: Listening to Eric André; watching “On Cinema at the Cinema” with Tim Heidecker.

sP: Whose work is currently on your radar?
RH: Paul Preissner (distant buffalo), CAMES/Gibson, FAT Architecture, Chris Dent, Mast.

Tempera is an indoor temporary pavilion for exhibition “A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture from Southern California” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (June 16–September 16, 2013). The pavilion theme is a fantastic garden where visitors see their own images reflected into a three-dimensional immersive painted canvas. The subject of the graphic depictions of the pavilion reinterprets the topic of “Still Nature”; in particular, the original subject represented here is 3-D scanned acquisitions of natural elements such as flowers and insects.

Nature, first frozen by a scanner into realistic three-dimensional computer geometry, slowly melts into liquid paint on a digital color palette. The finished surface of the pavilion is a deliberate appeal to the viewer’s attraction to the playful, fictional, pop aesthetic, which represents clearly that architecture enters into the imaginary realm of our “eye-candy” culture.

///

Elena Manferdini graduated from the University of Civil Engineering (Bologna, Italy) and later received her master’s degree in architecture and urban design from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2004, she founded Atelier Manferdini, a design office in Los Angeles, California. The office is based on a multi-scale work methodology and embraces the philosophy that design can participate in a wide range of multidisciplinary developments that define our culture. Manferdini was recently awarded one of the 2011 annual grants from United States Artists (USA) in the category of architecture and design. In addition to leading her design practice, for the past nine years Manferdini has been teaching architectural design studios and technology seminars for the graduate and undergraduate programs at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Currently she is the coordinator of the Graduate Thesis Program at SCI-Arc. She has also held visiting professorships at Cornell University and Seika University.

///

Dates: May 2012–June 2013
Client: MOCA
Design: Elena Manferdini, Ronny Eckels, Laura Ferrarello, Vanessa Teng, & Luis Tornel.

POP: Protocols, Obsessions, Positions, investigates what constitutes a position in architecture today and how that might be generated through the architect’s drawing. The exhibition presents 30 original drawings of the Storefront gallery space at 97 Kenmare Street by an international group of architects asked to go “from protocols, to obsessions, to positions.”

“POP: Protocols, Obsessions, Positions” with Stan ALLEN, Alex MAYMIND, Eric MOSS, Caroline O’DONNELL, P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S, Bernard TSCHUMI, Gia WOLF, & more
opening: Tuesday 06/18, 7.00 p.m.
exhibition: 06/18–07/26
Storefront for Art and Architcture
97 Kenmare St.
New York, NY 10012

.

As an image based on codes and systems of representation that establish a space of legibility between inherited and new forms, the architectural drawing tends to operate either as a technical tool of communication based on protocols and codes or in a diametrically opposed spectrum as an artistic device completely detached from the constraints of architectural practice. While one end of the spectrum is overcharged by the need to communicate, the complex or mysterious beauty of illegibility haunts the other. While protocols engage with a disciplinary temporality and obsessions are usually atemporal, positions address timely, current issues beyond those typically addressed in the discipline of architecture or an architect’s body of work.

POP presents thirty drawings by thirty architects that address both ends of the architectural drawing spectrum, understanding its codes and protocols and deploying the personal obsession of each architect in the articulation of a position now. Architects include: Ada Tolla & Giuseppe Lignano | LOT-EK [New York]; Adam Frampton [Hong Kong-New York]; Alex Maymind [Ann Arbor/Los Angeles]; Amale Andraos | Work AC [New York]; Ania Jaworska [Chicago]; Arturo Scheidegger & Ignacio García Partarrieu | UMWELT [Santiago]; Bernard Tschumi [New York]; Caroline O’Donnell | CODA [Ithaca]; Eric Owen Moss [Los Angeles]; Fernando Romero | FREE [Mexico-New York]; Filipe Magalhaes & Ana Luisa Soares | Fala Atelier [Oporto]; Form_ula [New York]; Gia Wolf [New York]; Hayley Eber | EFGH [New York]; Hedwig Heinsman | DUS [Rotterdam]; James Wines [New York]; Juan Herreros [Madrid]; Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates [New York]; Lola Sheppard | Lateral Office [Toronto]; Luis Callejas & Melissa Naranjo | LCLA Office [Medellin-Cambridge]; Marcelo Spina & Georgina Huljich | P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S- [Los Angeles]; Mark Shepard [Buffalo]; Michel Rojkind [Mexico DF]; Michele Marchetti | Sanrocco [Milan]; Neil Spiller [London]; Norman Kelley [Chicago-New York]; Odile Decq [Paris]; Rafi Segal [New York]; Ryan Neiheiser, Giancarlo Valle & Isaiah King | another pamphlet [New York]; Stan Allen [New York]; Veronika Valk [Tallinn]; Viviana Peña | Ctrl G [Medellin]; Yansong Ma | MAD [Beijing]; among others.

Exhibition Opening Afterparty
Lucky Jacks
129 Orchard Street
$5 Grolsch Swingtop feature
All are invited.

On the Facade
David Molander, a Stockholm based artist, has been invited by Storefront for Art and Architecture to design a site-specific photographic work titled “New York Positions”, specially designed for the exhibition POP [Protocols, Obsessions, Positions]. Mixed and intertwined with other urban portraits, this installation presents a large-scale image of the events related to the Occupy Wall Street Movement in September 2011 covering the interior facade of the gallery in its entirety. Through special configurations of the facade panels, the piece will create a dialogue with the same New York that witnessed the events, as well as with the 30 representations of Storefront’s gallery included in the POP exhibition. While POP investigates what constitutes a position in architecture today and how that might be generated through the architect’s drawing, “New York Positions” reflects on the configurations of sociopolitical positions of the contemporary urban space.

POP is Storefront’s second annual architectural drawing show that aims to contribute and transform our understanding of architectural drawings in the 21st century. The drawings on display at the exhibition will be auctioned at the close of the exhibition and proceeds will support Storefront’s exhibitions and programs.

The opening reception of POP is supported by Grolsch.

University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning
Raoul Wallenberg Studio, Winter 2013
critic: Alex MAYMIND (2012-13 Walter B. Sanders Fellow)

students: Ciera CLAYBORNE & Alexis STEWART; Phil LOCKWOOD & Ross KUCHIN; Stella DWIFARADEWI & Christopher BAIR; Jake HOLBROOK & Matt JONIEC.

Today mats are appearing everywhere. Whether seen as a counterpoint to the preoccupation with sculptural form or as what happens to architecture when it has to cover really large areas, no building type captures the predicaments of contemporary architecture more fully. The mat answers to the recurring calls for efficiency in land use, indeterminacy in size and shape, flexibility in building use and mixture in program.

. . . by mat building, as defined by Alison Smithson’s 1974 article, architects usually mean a building type that is low-rise and high-density, that is homogeneous in its layout, and that consists of a systematic repetition of a simple element such as a column, skylight, or modular room. The repetition provides the framework, both conceptual and spatial, for different possibilities of inhabitation. By virtue of its seemingly endless repetition, the building becomes an environment unto itself.
— Hashim Sarkis

The studio examined a genealogy of mat-buildings as a form of low-rise, high-density, multi-family housing. The project of mat-housing was considered as an alternative to the ubiquity of single- family homes that makes up much of contemporary suburban sprawl. Unlike more traditional row houses or the perimeter block, mat-housing typically does not conforms to the boundaries demarcated by an existing urban block but rather attempts to create a distinct urban environment with less clear edges. In contrast to the “American Dream” of home ownership (which is by now a cliché and near bygone of another era) we focused our efforts on the design of the contemporary domestic and collective sphere on a site in Brooklyn, NY.

Rather than understand mat- buildings and their related variations—fields, matrices, grounds, carpets, mounds, grids, and so on—as a particular building type, the studio work was based on an examination of canonical precedents as part of an architectural genealogy with specific characteristics and a common set of ambitions. This confrontation with existing ideas in architecture’s discourse framed the work of the studio, both literally and conceptually. The dominant technique for producing mats is based on systematic repetition of simple elements which create an environment onto itself. Therefore mat- buildings are less concerned with overall figure and form, but rather are governed by part-to-part, non-totalizing, semi-formless relationships which simultaneously engage issues of infrastructure, landscape, and context in addition to architectural and urban concerns. Other key qualities of mat-buildings to consider are the following: the ambiguous definition of the mat-building relative to the urban context, degree of internal variation and repetition based on the systematic organization of the parts, the exchange between voids and their boundaries, the relationship between the larger urban grid and its effect on the conceptual framework of the mat, and the tension between horizontal expansiveness and vertical compression.

This long overdue retrospective, the first major museum exhibition of Ken Price’s work in New York, will trace the development of his ceramic sculptures with approximately sixty-five examples from 1959 to 2012. The selection will range from the luminously glazed ovoid forms of Price’s early work to the suggestive, molten-like slumps he has made since the 1990s. In addition to the sculpture, the exhibition will feature eleven late works on paper by the artist. Price’s close friend, the architect Frank O. Gehry, designed the exhibition.

“Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective”
06/18–09/22
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue (at 82nd Street)
New York, NY 10028

.
.
.
.

The exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was made possible through major grants from the LLWW Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Photo: Ken Price, Pastel, 1995. Fired and painted clays, 14 1/2 x 15 x 14 in. James Corcoran Gallery, © Ken Price, photo © Fredrik Nilsen

“Cultural Ascent” is a design proposal for the Taichung City Cultural Center that merges the programs of a public library, fine arts museum, and city park into an iconic contemporary architectural landmark. The architectural intent of the building is to augment its programmatic contents by creating gradient spatial conditions through sectional movement, while utilizing variable façade patterning and articulation to register varying programmatic conditions.

The building organization is driven by two ramping and interlocking masses of gradient program (library and museum) that peel up from the landscape (park) in opposing clock-wise moves each hinging on a structural core. This move simultaneously. Below grade the two programs are unified through shared parking and administration spaces, while above grade each program operates independently, yet intersects at key moments where exchange is facilitated through shared circulation, vertical cores and a sculptural roof terrace, ultimately merging into a single articulated mass. In section the two opposing ground moves work collectively to frame a connective portal between the urban condition and the park to the south with the mass of the building floating above, while in plan those moves create a multi-story atrium condition.

Given it’s key location at the head of the Taichung Cultural Park, our proposal seeks to present an urban gateway to the park while simultaneously extending the landscaping of the park through the building and providing a legible edge to the park. The sculptural base of the building peels away from the landscape in two distinct landforms (library and museum) to sculpt a framed portal connecting the city and the park. As they ascend, the two masses fuse into a sculpted mass of interlocking volumes and cantilevering floor slabs that hover over the park to shield the sculpted ground condition from the harsh Taiwanese sun. The green landscape of the park appears to pull through the building and re-emerge as an intensive green roof and sculpted roof terrace overlooking the park and the pending Taiwan Tower.

The form and long spans of the interweaving ramps are supported by a structure of built-up box girders. Constructed of either steel or concrete and erected in segmental stages similar to infrastructure construction processes, the box girders transfer gravity loads to vertical structural elements at either end of the longitudinal axis of the building. The vertical structural elements are concrete cores originating at the foundation level and carrying up to the roof level. Additional vertical structural elements including bearing walls and columns are integrated within the architectural form. These elements reduce the gravity load demand on the cores and shorten the spans of the ramps and floor plates to limit the required depth of the box girders.

///

Location: Taichung, TAIWAN
Client: Taichung City
Program: Public Library and Fine Arts Museum
Year: 2013
Status: Competition entry
Credits: Alvin Huang (Principal), Filipa Valente (Project Architect), Behnaz Farahi, Kevin Chen, Yueming Zhou, and Joseph Sarafian.

University of Pennsylvania, PennDesign
critics: Tom WISCOMBE & Nate HUME

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Cedric AL KAZZI & JiaRui SU: Following the idea of “Figures in a sack,” Architecture as a model highlights the importance of the component as an object. It shifts from the discourse of fields and surfaces to the notion of objects assembled. The super-component model as part to whole, reacts based on the shape, composition, and scale of the objects.

The absence of the figure does not mean the absence of the object. It still traces its impact on the surrounding figures, and becomes its negative virtual self within the original outline.

The super-component itself is based on independant and yet related objects; nested and yet not connected. Thus the removal of the figures creates these massive voids that dissipates into the mega seams in between the figures. These seams allow for the vis-a-vis and opportunities to fit the services that feed these figures as well as connect them.

As for the ground, it acts as a pedestal, where it receives the building’s shape, formally mimics some of its moves, but differentiates itself from the figure-based shapes.

The ground object is nested within the landscape that wraps around it and lays itself on it to uncover it as if its an excavated independent object.

The tattoo is resulting on tracing the impact of the missing figure and imprint its position. It stretches as a scarification along the surface with the black stripes , then is tainted yellow by the inner liner pushing outward and piercing the skin to form the openings.

The tattooed openings allow for the light to infiltrate through the main lobby casting an ephemeral shadow moving around the main stairs structure.

The micro-scale figures brings a new variation for the original composition, by it differentiation in scale that allow for a different program and affect. In our case it creates the grand staircase chandelier in the main lobby.

sP: What or who influenced this project?
CAK & JS: Bart Hess, Constantin Brancusi, Feric Feng, the Tokyo Opera House proposal by Jean Nouvel and Philippe Starck, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library by Gordon Bunshaft/SOM.

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
CAK & JS: Reading Graham Harman’s “The Road to Objects” and Jeffrey Kipnis’s “Towards a New Architecure.”

MoMA presents its first major exhibition on the work of Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, 1887–1965), encompassing his work as an architect, interior designer, artist, city planner, writer, and photographer. Conceived by guest curator Jean-Louis Cohen, the exhibition reveals the ways in which Le Corbusier observed and imagined landscapes throughout his career, using all the artistic techniques at his disposal, from his early watercolors of Italy, Greece, and Turkey, to his sketches of India, and from the photographs of his formative journeys to the models of his large-scale projects. . . .

exhibition: “Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes,” curated by Jean-Louis COHEN with Barry BERGDOLL
06/15–09/23
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
11 W 53rd St.
New York, NY 10019

His paintings and drawings also incorporate many views of sites and cities. All of these dimensions are present in the largest exhibition ever produced in New York of his prodigious oeuvre.

///

Organized by guest curator Jean-Louis Cohen, Sheldon H. Solow Professor in the History of Architecture, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, with Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA.

Photo: Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret) with Pierre Jeanneret. Villa Savoye Poissy-sur-Seine, France. 1929–31. Wood, aluminum, and plastic, 16 x 34 x 32″ (40.6 x 86.4 x 81.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/FLC