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

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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.

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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.

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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

Commonly understood today as a set of beliefs or practices in conflict with prevailing dogma, the word “heresy” derives from the Greek “heiresis,” meaning “choice.” In classical antiquity, the term also signified a period during which a young philosopher would examine various schools of thought in order to determine his future way of life.

symposium: “Modern Architecture in L.A.: A Confederacy of Heretics” with Ewan BRANDA, Hernan DIAZ ALONSO, Todd GANNON, Wes JONES, Jeffrey KIPNIS, Thom MAYNE, Eric MOSS, Andrew ZAGO, & more.
Friday, 06/14, 3.00-9.00 p.m,
Saturday, 06/15, 10.00 a.m.-4.00 p.m.
SCI-Arc Campus
960 East 3rd Street
Los Angeles, California 90013

[LIVE STREAM]

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These inflections neatly capture the ambitions and attitudes held by the architects at the center of this presentation. Some had grown weary with what they viewed as the stale orthodoxies of the establishment, and saw their work as a distinct challenge to the status quo. Others were less strident, and experimented with a diverse range of historical sources as potential platforms from which to develop their individual idioms. Others still struck out in bold new directions, drawing inspiration and techniques from the art world, literature, and other sources.

Such wide-ranging activities defy any attempt to portray these architects as members of a coherent group or “L.A. School.” More correctly, the Architecture Gallery constitutes one of many loose, temporary confederacies into which these architects entered during their formative years. Here, the heretics found strength in numbers, and the impact of their efforts was felt across Los Angeles and around the world.

Gathering an array of original drawings, models, photographic documentation, video recordings, and commentary alongside new assessment by current scholars, A Confederacy of Heretics aims neither to canonize the participating architects nor to consecrate their unorthodox activities. Rather, the exhibition re-examines the early work of some of Los Angeles’ most well-known architects in a contemporary context, charts the development of their most potent design techniques, and documents a crucial turning point in Los Angeles architecture, a time when Angeleno architecture culture shifted from producing local variations on imported themes to exporting highly original disciplinatory innovations to a global audience.

Taken together, the exhibition, symposium, and catalog that comprise A Confederacy of Heretics offer a unique lens through which to analyze a pivotal moment in the development of late 20th century architecture.

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FRIDAY, JUNE 14, 2013

3:00-5:00pm
Roundtable Discussion
Introduction by Todd Gannon & Ewan Branda
Moderated by Jeff Kipnis

Participants: Eugene Kupper, Roland Coate, Fred Fisher, Frank Dimster, Peter de Bretteville, Thom Mayne, Craig Hodgetts, Eric Moss, Coy Howard

5:00-5:30pm
Break

6:00-7:30pm
Keynote Lecture
Introduction: Eric Moss
Keynote speaker: Thom Mayne & Coy Howard

7:30-9:00pm
Reception

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SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 2013

9:30-10:00
Coffee
10:00-12:00
Session 1: Media and the Globalization of Los Angeles Architecture
Moderator: Ewan Branda
Panelists: Barbara Bestor, Hsinming Fung, Paul Goldberger, Mark Mack and Nick Seierup
12:00-1:30
Lunch

1:30-3:30
Session 2: Eccentric Projections
Moderator: Todd Gannon
Panelists: Annie Chu, John Enright, Wes Jones and Andrew Zago
3:45-4:00
Closing remarks: Hernan Diaz Alonso

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A Confederacy of Heretics: The Architecture Gallery, Venice, 1979 is part of Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A., an initiative celebrating Southern California’s lasting impact on modern architecture through exhibitions and programs organized by seventeen area cultural institutions from April through July 2013.

Major support for A Confederacy of Heretics: The Architecture Gallery, Venice, 1979 is provided by the Getty Foundation.

Additional support is provided by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, The Vinyl Institute and the Pasadena Art Alliance. The publication is underwritten in part by Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund. Archival images provided by the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

SCI-Arc exhibitions and public programs are made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs

SCI-Arc
critic: Marcelyn GOW

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Nicholas BARGER & Brian HARMS: Buoyant Depositions focuses on the implications of technology in the design process by exploring questions of reproducibility, fluctuation and variability, as well as an aesthetic of the undesigned, or perhaps, the undesignable. The project specifically explores how robotic motion control may allow designers to generate and analyze inexact forms through unpredictable material interactions.

The ability to administer these inexact processes in an exact, repeatable fashion allows the designer to measure and index variability in order to understand the parameters of these otherwise incalculable operations.

At its core, the project utilizes articulated deposition of liquid wax into water, taking advantage of buoyancy, the rapid phase change of wax from liquid to solid, and the ability of wax to bond to itself and other materials. Buoyancy is a key factor in the generation of new form; columns are built with directionality but simultaneously expand from their interiors, occasionally contracting when the liquid interior rises to the surface. Datums, or floor plates, are produced when excessive amounts of wax are allowed to cool before the water level is adjusted. Alternatively, by changing water levels while these pools of hot wax float on the water’s surface, organic caves and coves rise and solidify within the structural network.

This process operates at the representational scale of architectural models, but it could someday be translated to a one-to-one architectural scale through the deployment of autonomous machines on site. Floating on water, these machines could organically shape buoyant, curable liquids via encoded instructions and collaborative real time adjustments. But what happens when architects, who rely heavily on their ability to reify an anticipated form, embrace inherently inexact processes of construction?

These advancing robotic and managerial technologies may afford us the ability to explore building scale quasi-indeterminate fabrication techniques. This of course places the architect in a potentially uncomfortable position; what is the role of drawing and representation when the form cannot be fully anticipated, and when in part, the process of fabrication is intertwined with that of the design itself? What new form would construction documents take? Or would they become antiquated drawings that cannot account for the kinds of variables that must be planned for in such a system?

sP: What or who influenced this project?
NB & BH: The project’s major driving force was the studio’s brief, which was concerned with the capturing of qualities that would appear to be incongruous to the processes and tools used to generate them. We were driven by investigations of the interactions between various materials including resins, silicones, dyes, water, wax, plaster, and so on.

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
NB & BH: Reading: Todd Gannon, “Of Raspberries, Rawhide, and Rhetoric”; Barry Lehrman, “Reconstructing the Void: Owens Lake”; and Greg Lynn, “Chemical Architecture.”

sP: Whose work is currently on your radar?
NB & BH: Robots in Architecture, Work at the AADRL, Future Cities Lab, Chris Bangle Associates, and Kruysman-Proto.

Additional credits and links:
[Video 01]
[Video 02]
[Video 03]

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
critic: Casey REHM

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Will PYATT: The project explores a repeated geometries ability to express gradient in texture between a fluid soft-surface, and a polygonized hard-surface; wherein recognizable figural forms exist in contrast with a fluid and continuous surface. Simultaneously a secondary system operates according to the same logic; however rather than forming geometry, volume, & space these components seek to veil the existing geometries in a permeable sharp-screen that seeks to mask the nature of the interior spaces.

sP: What or who influenced this project?
WP: Machined components, engine sections, and other fast things.

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
WP: Listening to sci-fi soundtracks, Rick Ross, and Frank Sinatra.

sP: Whose work is currently on your radar?
WP: N/A.

Additional credits and links:
[willpyatt.com]

The Crisis as Calling Talk Series, in connection with the Crisis as Calling Design Competition, welcomes Michael Chen. Michael will present his student’s work from the Crisis Fronts Thesis Studio at Pratt School of Architecture and discuss how the design community can react to crisis.

Michael CHEN, “Seven Crisis Fables.”
Design Circuit/Crisis as Calling Discussion Series
Thursday, 06/13
7.00 p.m. / Van Alen Books
30 W 22nd St.
New York, NY 10010

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Michael Chen is principal of Normal Projects, an architecture and design firm based in New York City, and also teaches design studios and seminars at Pratt Institute School of Architecture. Current projects include furniture and product design, a 9,000 sq ft house in Manhattan, and the ongoing Signal Space project, featured in the United States Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale of Architecture.

Michael Chen and Jason Lee co-direct Crisis Fronts, a research seminar and design studio that explores the intersection of public policy and speculative design strategies and methods.

“Stolarnia” is the sixth design in the collection called “XII”, entirely designed by Karina Wiciak (designer in Wamhouse). “Stolarnia” (in Polish – Carpenter’s Shop) was inspired by the landscapes of the Bory Tucholskie National Park, near which the author lives and works. According to the author, a forest is a unique carpenter’s shop, where the nature uses wood and plants to create the most beautiful forms. Thus, the forest in itself is a perfect, designer work and no man can invent anything more perfect than the nature itself. So why not transfer that which is perfect and which has already been invented by nature into an interior? Pine trees, the most typical of the Tuchola forests, were used in the restaurant as a modern decoration, yet in a metal form. This is also a way of, and a pretext for, emphasizing the structural elements and fittings.

Hills, which are also typical of the Tuchola forests, inspired creation of an undulating, wooden floor. Some plants (intentionally) cannot bear pressure and bend, giving life to the floor. As everybody knows, not everything in a forest is arranged perfectly, thus this symbolic disorder, which conforms to the natural trends in nature. One could say that pylons do not occur in forests, to say nothing of national parks. Yet, for many years they have been an inherent element of rural landscapes, and thus have integrated and almost blurred with the surrounding nature. And since the pylons are situated near forests, they can also function (as decoration) in a less natural space, which a restaurant is. The “Stolarnia” design includes also a design of chair and table impaled on nails, entitled “Szpilka” (Polish for pin), as well as a chair and a hocker “Ambona” (which means raised hide), inspired by the shape of a popular forest raised hide.

About the collection “XII”///

The collection “XII” will consist of 12 thematic interior designs, together with furniture and fittings, which in each part will be interconnected, not only in terms of style, but also by name. Each subsequent design will be created within one month, and the entire collection will take one year to create.

Here, visualization is to constitute more than a design, which is thrown away after implementation of the interior design, but mainly an image, which has a deeper meaning and can function individually.

These will not be interiors made to a specific order, but designs based on the author’s fantasy and his fascinations of various sorts.
It will be possible to order a specific interior design in the form of adaptation of the selected part of the collection, on the basis of exclusivity.