EDITORS
CREATIVE DIRECTOR EDITORIAL TEAM
FACULTY ADVISOR
in chief: Alanna Lauter managing: Kaitlin Faherty Matthew Addeo Kristy Lau Midori Tanabe Sai Dhasma Samantha Ong Solomon Oh Christian Camacho Marta Gutman
WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO
Gordon Gebert Camille Hall Erica Torres Michael Miller AIAS ccny
Contact Us www.informalityssa.com informalitymagazine@gmail.com The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture 141 convent ave, new york, ny 10031 / 212-650-7118 acting dean: Gordon Gebert chair: Julio Salcedo-Fernandez ssa1.ccny.cuny.edu
ISSUE 8
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
I N form al ity Magazine is a student-led, student-curated platform for discourse at the Spitzer School of Architecture (SSA) and the City College of New York. Our aim is to incite conversation, debate, and exchange across the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design, with a primary focus on expression outside of these seemingly independent realms: namely through art and writing. We believe that, as design students, it is important to celebrate and share the creative works we make outside of the classroom as well as within. We are most interested in how these disciplines intersect. In the past Informality has served as a platform for students to showcase and critique the processes of architecture in the academy. In this issue, Informality encouraged informal drawing, writing, and discussion, allowing us to operate in a ‘call and response’ fashion by engaging individual students and faculty members in one-on-one conversations, asking them to speak about a specific interest or talent which they foster in tandem with their design education or their professional work. This direct method of communication is the advantage of our academic and culturally diverse setting at City College. This is how our theme for Informality 8 developed; we sought to explore the work that inspires the creative thinkers of our student body, and to frame their actions in a provocative, bordering on rebellious, manner. There is no single belief in the “right” way of designing, nor consensus on where to pull inspiration from. Thus is born our industrious mischief maker, the individual who carries with them a unique inspiration or perspective; some look forward to the promise of complete digitization, others romanti-
cize it, still others are intent on studying the past. As a collective, they represent numerous trails of thinking through design. Each of these acts, to borrow from John Berger, are different “ways of seeing” as expressed through methodologies of recording, of thinking, and of doing. The direct engagement we enacted with our peers is the characteristic which we feel embodies the goal of Informality, where the informal conversations are the ones which bear the most fruitful narratives and ideas. We focused also on gathering event-based materials - hosting a coffee cup sketch display, collective studio drawings, and lecture sketch cards. The sketch, which was the dominating result of these events, is the impromptu, informal recording of thoughts. Amassed they become a collage of individuals. We’d like to give our thanks to all of the students and faculty members who submitted their work and encouraged our pursuit of formulating the ideas for this print publication. We’d especially like to thank our group of committee members for our discussions early in the process of developing the theme for this issue, and for their work to motivate other students to share words and work with us. AL + KF
I S S U E 8 | c o n s t a n t l y, r e g u l a r l y, o r h a b i t u a l l y a c t i v e o r o c c u p i e d .
I N FORMALITY dustrious.
FRANKFURT DAM GERMANY STUDY ABROAD SUMMER TERM ELIZA TANG B. ARCH / 2016
“If Images Had Buttons” Wallpaper of a photgraph of a fire at a construction site placed strategically on a wall in the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany.
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thoughts. SPECTACLE OF HOPE Ben Tulman
works. 4
INFORMALITY 8 COVER SERIES Matthew Noonan
PUBLIC SCHOOL 1: Kaitlin Faherty
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PLASTIC PAVILLION Digital Fabrication Studio
2
HOUSE HISTORIES Christin Hu
18
GRAFFITI Cesar Juarez (Photographs)
7
URBAN REFORESTATION David Tovar
27
NYC HAZE Christin Hu (Photographs)
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MOUNDBUILDERS Tyrell Lundman
30
CITY OF CULURE Kaitlin Faherty
THREE+TWO MUDHOUSE Matthew Addeo
45
INK SERIES Cristian Camacho
PRINTED FUTURE Jethro Rebollar
47
DOODLES Hyun Pak
craft. SITE LINES Ermira Kasapi
14
LECTURE SKETCHES Various Students + C. Volkman
25
HOMMAGE À VERSAILLES
35
KAHN-INVERTED Lester Li
37
James Geoghegan
15
24 28, 45, 56
MANHATTAN CHRONICLES Sal Cosenza
29
PLANET NYC Gabriel Florimon
44
SPYDER Chrisoula Kapelonis
53
talks. HELEN LEVIN
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With Kaitlin Faherty
HEAVEN Sainath Dhasma
48
DEFINE INDUSTRIOUS Various Students
PLACEMENT Alanna Lauter
51
ADAM HAYES With Alanna Lauter
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works. PLASTIC PAVILLION OF PLASTIC FLOWERS DIGITAL FABRICATION STUDIO PROFESSOR JONATHAN SCELSA SUMMER 2015 TEAM EMIR GJOKA DANICA VILDOSA TONY FUNG CHEUNG DANIEL ESCOBAR DESTINY CONELY BERK ERASLAN CHARLES LENT
Plastic Flowers began as a study of curved folding as a methodology of creating a volumetric structure unit from sheet material, requiring minimal fastening and maximum space. The pavilion is formed from 100 “petal” units each constructed from an individual piece of .0625” thick density polyethylene. Two petals each were cut from a 2’ x 4’ sheet and etched to .032” depth using a CNC 3 axis router. The figural arc groove contour is created with a V-Groove tool-bit that when folded forms the rigid structure of this “Petal Brick.” CL
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thoughts. SPECTACLE OF HOPE: SIGN AND SIGNIFIER OF NEW YORK SUBWAY GRAFFITI BEN TULMAN M. ARCH / ALUMNUS
It has been said that New York is the loneliest city on earth. Something about being surrounded by millions of people, rushing between skyscrapers, each with their own agenda, can provide a stark backdrop that can torment an individual with the close proximity of humans while withholding the humanity of personal connections. Relief from this cold version of the city comes in various forms, but the signage throughout the history of Times Square provides insight into a deep-seated desire for a humanizing element in the city. Communicating ideas, whether through language or images, is an act that evokes a true human connection, even if one may disagree with the message. An image of city dwellers and visitors alike on the Times Square sidewalk gazing up at the news of the D-Day invasion of Normandy demonstrates the importance of communication. The news streaming along the famous “zipper� news-reels caused everyone to stop what they were doing, pause their day, and concentrate their attention on a story that affected everyone and everything they knew. Ultimately, generations of pedestrians have been captivated as they look up at the signs and lights of Times Square, a fun, colorful escape from the regularity of the street, as well as a symbolic reminder that they are humans connected to other humans. In acknowledging that sign, the people are acknowledging their fellow men.
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While this is an extreme example, we see the communicative potency that signs can have in a dense urban setting, when the potential, or even the guarantee, of spectacle is so great. At the core of a sign is an exchange between the signifier and signified. Signs are ubiquitous in the city: they tell us where we are, how to get where we need to go, but also, more importantly, they communicate mass messages of what the culture in that city values. The content becomes less significant than the act: What do we let occupy the vision of the masses? In the traditional capitalistic sense, the general rule in signage seems to hold that the largest, brightest, most influential signs are the most valuable in advertising, and therefore are rewarded with the highest compensation and prime locations. This top-down model is safe and comfortable, but what happens when a sign of maximum spectacle can be created for free? Who creates them? Who is the audience? How does it utilize, but break away from, the accepted notions of signage, spectacle, and mass communication in the city? Graffiti becomes the subject of study, a grassroots extension, albeit a subversive one, of the culture of spectacle inherent to signage in the city. Like any other aspect of life in this postmodern world, there is multiplicity in the perspectives on graffiti, and the significance of how it has changed over the years. According to Marshall Berman,
graffiti was about instilling hope among a decaying community, in this case, the South Bronx. In the 1970s, New York City was bleeding. Facing bankruptcy, the city took cost cutting measures, reducing social services and teachers. Buildings were being foreclosed, people were losing their homes, and neighborhoods were literally burning. Therefore, the struggling working poor faced fewer options of social mobility, and needed an outlet to tell the world their story.
“The buildings are burning down on one side of the street, and kids are trying to put something together on the other.” The earliest form in which people who weren’t part of that neighborhood saw [these achievements] was the graffiti that appeared on the subways in the 70s. And this was on a very rickety decaying generation of grey trains, they painted enormously exuberant colored names and reliefs and mottos. ...This was a parable of a city that’s being ruined, being destroyed, and they’re saying “we can rise again... we come from ruins, but we are not ruined.”1 Marshall Berman It was no accident that graffiti culture in New York City began on the sides of subway carriages. The graffiti writer faces an interesting conundrum in trying to spread his or her message, while still concealing personal identity. Unlike the Times Square signs — which are a spectacle in their own right, a work of graffiti must be elusive.
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A blank wall one evening, a masterpiece the next morning. The subway was the best target for a graffitist to accomplish his goal. It could be tagged in the concealment of a rail yard, but gained maximum spectacle as it was subsequently carted throughout the city to display the tag within every neighborhood it passed. “The constant motion of subway graffiti added to its sense of excitement for writers and viewers alike. Different cars would pull into each station regularly, each carrying new tags and pieces,”2 according to one graffiti writer. “When we went into the slums in the Bronx, the train was elevated so people could see the whole train. You could see people blocks away going, “Look at that!” ... ‘People were crowded up there in front of stores, and they were looking up and going Wow!” 3 As we know from history, Berman’s romantic viewpoint of graffiti as an expressive outlet was a minority opinion.
Regardless of whether it is colorful or dull, ugly or beautiful, writing graffiti is illegal. It put the graffitist into great danger, and made some average New Yorkers feel unsafe in an already disorderly environment. According to one graffiti writer however, graffiti evoked the most fear in the political establishment over the possibility of losing control. “I think graffiti is freedom of thought and expression, and that’s what scares the city and the government the most. It’s simply done out of their control. It’s a representation of how uncontrollable youth is.”4 The youth had discovered a way to hack the system of signage, tapping into the kernel of human emotion that responds so clearly to bright, decorated signs among a grey monotonous scene. It was a voice for a disenfranchised, yet invigorated population, and an important facet of that voice was its status as illegal and deviant, because it was dynamic,
Image 1: “New York, New York. People watching the electrical news sign on the Times building at Times Square” Hollem, MacLaugharie, and Meyer, 1944.
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GRAFFITI SERIES CESAR JUAREZ / B.ARCH 2014
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unexpected, and made the viewer think. Considering this symbolic threat to their control, the socio-economic elite of City Hall and the MTA came down on graffiti with increased security and harsher punishments. This brute-force method of stopping graffiti led to a great reduction in tags across the city. “In 1984 80% of subway carriages contained graffiti; by May 1989 the MTA was celebrating the network being graffiti-free. The change was reflected in the falling number of graffiti-related arrests - 2,400 in 1984, and only 300 in 1987.” 5 The ultimate irony here, however, is that the demise of graffiti in New York as a meaningful signifier of street life came when it was painted on canvas and displayed within gallery walls. When graffiti was dangerous, transient, and subversive, it was telling a real story, larger than what can be told in the capitalist world of gallery art. As graffiti as a visual experience transitioned into a commodity, we have been witness to the repressing of a movement. “Graffiti -- that anarchic, powerful, and threatening form of expression -- was not to be tolerated by the postmodern world, not until it was tamed.” And with that, 5Pointz - the famed ‘mecca of graffiti’ in Queens - has now been tamed, as the powers of real estate development have recently demolished the building to replace it with residential high-rises. Unlike the site of our Times Square primal scene, 5Pointz was not deemed culturally significant enough to save. It is a reminder of the transience of the medium of graffiti, that perhaps
it is not quite as precious as art. “What some considered art, others considered crime. The writers themselves, however, considered it neither. It’s no coincidence that while many critics referred to them either as ‘artists’ or ‘vandals,’ they preferred the innocuous term, ‘writers.’”6 In the endless battle between people and oppressive institutions, graffiti existed on the side of the people as a colorful and communicative tool of hope and empowerment. As long as there is a message to be conveyed, urbanites will continue to strive to connect with each other in humanizing ways, to remind us that we are all here together. BT 1 Berman, Marshall. New York: A Documenta ry, Episode Seven. PBS, 1 October, 2001. 2 Berman, Marshall. On the Town: One Hun dred Years of Spectacle in Times Square. (NewYork: Random House, 2006)
3 Bunting, Amanda Marie. “A Social Study of Graffiti in Seville, Spain”. Journal of Student Research, Vol. 2 (2012). pp-51-54 4 Summers, Chris. “Great Art? The graffiti of the New York subway.” BBC News. 8 August 2014 5 Gonos, George, Virginia Mulkern and Nicho las Poushinsky, “Anonymous Expression: A Structural View of Graffiti.” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 89, No. 351 (Jan.- Mar., 1976), pp.40-48” 6 How did graffiti become respectable?” The Economist. 10 November 2013. Image 1 Library of Congress, Prints & Photo graphs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LCUSW3- 054057-C
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talks. Editor Kaitlin Faherty talks with former Informality editor Helen Levin, B.Arch / Alumna 2010
Kaitlin Faherty: Helen, thank you for joining us for our Informality Talks Series. Since you are an alum of the school, we wanted to know why you chose to attend the SSA and your feelings about City College after graduating. Helen Levin: I wanted to be in a city studying architecture, and the program really sold itself as that being a big part of it. And the diversity of City College, which is something that everyone always talks about, but you don’t realize how un-diverse places are until you visit them. So, I had done a lot of college tours, and it really appealed to me to be in that diverse unban environment.
KF: While you were here, you were an editor for Informality Magazine. We were wondering if you could tell us about the background - how did Informality get started? HL: I didn’t start it, but two of my classmates one older than me, and one younger than me had started it. They had taken a course about publications in architecture, and felt that it was really necessary that the students had their own. So, they became a club and asked other people that they knew who were interested in a more theoretical, critical writing about architecture to participate. I was one of the people that was writing in the beginning and the previous editor-in-chief was a year older, so she graduated and then I decided to take over for my 5th year. That’s the basic story, -9-
KF: We’ve done that to!
but it was just really fun, I had always liked magazines and DIY kind-of things, so that was what drove the aesthetic of the original publication: that it was kind of scrappy, that we didn’t have any money, that we were just doing it with what we could. And then when we moved into this new building and recieved the $5,000 Haskell Grant, administered by the AIANY chapter, we started to petition the Dean for money to print in color and that’s when we got really serious about graphic design and themes.
KF: Where does Informality come from, the name of themagazine? HL: I think it’s from a little of that DIY thing. I didn’t come up with it so I’m not totally sure. But, the way I understand it is that it’s kind of a vague word that can be applied to a lot of things, and that it can be broken down in a lot of ways. Architects like to pull words apart and put brackets in them and all the stuff, and I think we were interested in that aspect of language. So ‘Informality’ can be ‘In-Form’
HL: Yeah! We’ve all done that. It’s sort of a cliché, but it’s also kind of necessary because we are talking about the components of things in architecture, and so we’re trying to be that precise with our language. So, that’s were it came from, but then it definitely became a discussion about “what does that mean in architecture?” in the beginning. Then it kindof just became a name that we used.
KF: Side question, could you tell us about one of the pieces that you wrote for the magazine, or one of the first pieces that you wrote? HL: Yeah, I interviewed Fran Leadon, who was coordinating first year. Since we were trying to define what ‘informality’ meant in architecture my task was to get out of him what he felt that word meant, and he actually gave this really wonderful explanation about what it meant for him as a professor of architecture, what ‘informality’ meant. I know he told an anecdote about his father who was also a professor, inviting his students over for dinner or having more, I guess, informal social experiences with his students, and that being a big lesson that he took from his father in saying that…I don’t ever remember going out of school with him, he was never my professor, so maybe he did it with his class, but, he did mention in the interview
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that he made a point of being friendly and more informal, relationship wise, with his students in the hallways and at lectures… it struck me, because I think there is a big distinction in this school, still, of the older guard and newer guard, and that really stands out as one of the differences in peer-to-peer relationships.
KF: How has the work you’ve done with Informality translated into your career now, or what you’re doing now? HL: Well, currently I’m not really sure if it applies so much but up until a few months ago I was writing for a blog. I always try to make that a part of my work. I went to graduate school and…I don’t know I’ve always used it as something that was really important, that shows that I can really lead. So, there are two parts of what Informality was for me. It was that leadership of organizing, pulling at people to write something and contribute
and be a part of something beyond studio and showing up for class: that community aspect. And the other part was just writing and having a voice, which is something that I think people undervalue at City College, at least when I was there. So, I think just both of those two things together. It gave me confidence as a writer and a leader and an organizer… that kind of thing. I hope to do that stuff again, but I’ve focused more on trying to be a better designer…because while I excel at editing and writing I didn’t really think I excelled at design in undergraduate, which is why I kept going to graduate school, and now I’m getting my license and all that stuff…so who knows! I think it will all come back around.
KF: Well you mentioned having a voice, how important do you think it is to have these informal conversations in school, especially in architecture school as a platform for discourse?
Informality Magazine Issue 2 and Issue 6
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HL: Yeah, totally. It’s very important. I think architects actually do have political influence; I’m not quite sure about the role of the architect as the Utopian leader; that’s kind of troublesome. But, I do think that we have a prominent role in society when we want our voices to be heard. You can very easily it back and let your clients dictate what you do for the rest of your life, or you can actually try to change perhaps their preconceptions of what they think their built space, and their built environment
i do think that we have a prominent role in society when we want our voices to be heard should be. So, I think that part of having a voice is really important in design. And then I think also that if the work isn’t there, you know, if all you can get is the client that all you can do for them is what they want, you can turn to writing, to conceptual practice, that kind of thing if you have the time and the drive to do it. And if you’ve built that platform and say, well I have that project and I have things that I care about, while you are in school you will always come back around to that even in your bleakest toilet specifying moment…I think. At least that’s where I am in my career. Finding the balances in what I need to learn in order to run projects and manage projects and deal with clients and all of that. The construction, the real life kind of stuff. And how I’m going to let the ideas that I started working on while studying come back into my life, soon I hope.
KF: So there’s hope? HL: Yeah, I’m very hopeful. I think there is always work at this time…well okay there isn’t always work, but right now there is work. So, you don’t have to run away from architecture in order just to make rent. And I think even you can find jobs in really amazing conceptual offices and make a little bit less money perhaps. But, I think right now, I sense people are little bit disillusioned with political structure and that kind of thing. The whole…I hate to say it but like ‘the maker thing’ is bringing back the individual and creativity… So I think you just have to keep learning and stay positive, and I think the individual is coming back.. but in a collective way. That’s like really vague.. and not in like a socialist way, but in a supportive way.
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“STREET SMOKE” Photo by Christin Hu
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craft.
SITE LINES THESIS MAPPING ERMIRA KASAPI B.ARCH / 2015
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“ CITY OF CULTURE ” Drawings by Kaitlin Faherty
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thoughts. PUBLIC SCHOOL 1: EXPERIMENTATION IS LEARNING KAITLIN FAHERTY B. ARCH / 2017
Take seventy-eight young contemporary artists, put them in an abandoned public school, and what do you have? A collection of works that defined site-specific art installation and brought experimentation to institutionalized learning. What follows the 1976 Rooms exhibit is nearly forty years of experimentation, practice, education, and avant-garde gallery shows and classes that have accumulated in the history of one of the largest nonprofit art institutions in the world, today known as MoMA PS1. But the Romanesque Revival structure began with the name Ward School 1, quickly changed to Public School 1. It was constructed in 1892 as the first public grammar school in Queens, and remained as such until closing in 1963, when it was left to deteriorate and face demolition. 1 Public School 1 existed long before the inception of the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, and before the prospect of its affiliation with the Museum of Modern Art. Spanning these changes in use and ownership is the essence of the structure itself, which has, for over a century, existed in the service of learning.
The inception of MoMA PS1 occurred behalf of Alanna Heiss and the Workspace movement, today referred to as the Alternative Space movement. Her mission originated in London with the SPACE program in the 1960s, when Heiss began her hunt for old dock-site warehouses to purchase and lease as studio space at a low cost to emerging artists. 2 When she came to New York City, she was hired as the program director for the Municipal Art Society (MAS), continuing with her mission to find alternative spaces to fulfill Workspace as “an idea” of “the innovative use of space.” 3 The difference was that it was now happening in New York City, where it could act as a catalyst. Her Under the Brooklyn Bridge event in the summer of 1971 was the symbolic beginning of the alternative space movement in New York City, laying a foundation for collaboration between the artists who would come to define the art scene of their generation. The carnival atmosphere and guerilla-style collaboration of artists, performers, and production teams for the four-day event were fitting for the cause; experimentation was, and still is, an integral foundation for reclaiming “neglected urban spaces” 4 as centers for artistic pursuits. Exactly a year after the Brooklyn Bridge event, Heiss co-founded the Institute for Art and Urban Resources (IAUR) in 1972, spearheading it under the authority of MAS. Over the course of the five years that followed Heiss acquired a handful of spaces in
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Manhattan and Brooklyn for The Idea Workspace. From warehouse, to lower Manhattan clock tower, to abandoned Crown Heights police station, there was no place that Heiss acquired that her contemporaries believed insufficient for their needs: so long as it was cheap and could accommodate, or better yet, spark, creativity. 5
P.S. 1 Contemporary Arts Center was established as “a place that provokes and engages artists and ultimately inspires the works made and shown there.” 5 This statement is true about MoMA PS1 still today. After undergoing renovations for a three-year period, P.S.1 reopened in 1997 with a new backyard: the street itself.
Experimentation and adaptability are the essences of the Idea Warehouse mission, which the abandoned Public School 1 would immediately embody with the opening of its first show.
KF
When Rooms opened at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Arts Center in 1976, its success came from an extension of the atmosphere created several years prior in DUMBO and in the small spaces acquired by the IAUR. The acquisition of Public School 1 itself became an end to Heiss’ search. After extensive negotiations, the abandoned school was leased to the IAUR and a grant was acquired for its extensive repair, totaling $133,000. Rooms opened a short seven weeks after the space came under the direction of Alanna Heiss, and the process of its creation was the process that defined what is commonly known as site-specific art installation. The show featured artists like James Turrell, Alan Saret, Richard Artschwager, and Lawrence Weiner,2 names hailed today for the pivotal works they had begun to create in response to the availability of P.S. 1.
1 Vogel, Carol. Tweaking a Name in Long Island City. (The New York Times, Art & Design, 29 Apr. 2010) 2 Significant Events in the History of MoMA PS 1. (NewYork: Museum of Modern Art) 3 Draft letter from Alanna Heiss to Lorna Bivins, discussing the Workspace Program (Prima ry Source Image, c. 1972 [VII.E.3], Museum of Modern Art) 4 Miller, Alana. From the Records of MoMA PS1: The 40th Anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge Event. (New York: Inside/Out, Museum of Modern Art 27 Jun. 2011) 5 The Artist In Place: The First 10 Years of MoMA PS 1. (New York: Museum of Modern Art) 6 Smith, Roberta. Art Review; More Spacious and Gracious, Yet Still Funky at Heart. (The New York Times, Arts, 31 Oct. 1997)
Images on Right Fig 1: Battery Park City Authority, Futuristic Model of Downtown, n.d., New York. Fig 2: NYC Department of Information, Technology, and Telecommunications, 200 Rector Place, 1924, New York.
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thoughts. HOUSE HISTORIES: A BREAK FROM TRADITION AND UNFOLDING LEGACY CHRISTIN HU B. ARCH / 2016
Enter Downtown Manhattan. What used to belong to the Hudson River, under countless ships and piers along the edge of downtown, is now the built up site of a burgeoning residential community: Battery Park City. This is where I live, and where I have lived for the past eighteen years of my life. The neighborhood’s conception and construction began long before I was born, in the wake of the Urban Renewal Project and its deterioration in the 1960s. No doubt influenced by Jane Jacob’s “mixed use” planning strategies outlined in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Mayor Nelson Rockefeller looked to create a new city on top of the dilapidated piers with futuristic towers, parks, subways, and scenic river promenades. Amidst financial depressions in the 1970s and debates about program and housing for the poor, several plans were proposed, but it was not until 1979 that a plausible master plan was adopted. And it was not until 1987 that my place of residence, Liberty Court, designed by Ulrich Franzen and Polshek Partners, was implanted into the barren landfill of latent prosperity.
The building on Rector Place was conceived in the post-modern era and utilized brick cavity wall construction with a steel frame to optimize the height versus foot -print conditions – a necessary step for appealing to developers and providing enough housing. Rising to forty-four floors 400 feet above the ground, Liberty Court was open for new buyers and renters, specifically the rising middle class who might work in the neighboring corporate towers. My mother was one of those buyers. With its new parks, transportation, access to stores, and riverside view, Battery Park City was instantly appealing to my parents who were at that time juggling multiple jobs in the city and living in the relatively remote area of Valley Stream, Long Island. Having grown up in China during the Cultural Revolution, my mother knew many “homes,” as her family was perse-
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
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-HOUSE HISTORIES-
-cuted and finally exiled to Inner Mongolia. The apartment itself was appealing, with its view to the World Trade Center, but its location was equally – if not more – significant. The calming esplanade with accented sculptures and introverted community gardens captured a paradise of safety, stability, and pleasure, which represented the establishment of her success far away from the then violent, red-ridden, streets of Beijing. Stepping off the elevator onto the plush ornamented carpet, I move, al-
most mechanically, through the halls until I reach a metal painted door, among twenty-five other metal doors on that level, with an engraved plate marking “V” – “V as in Victor,” as the doormen always say. The lock clicks clumsily as I enter and a soothing north light filters in from a window framed in black. The kitchen (renovated in 2008) is to my left and opens up to an elegant dining room, complete with breakfront and chandelier. The “bedroom” has since become a study with my drafting board, bookshelves, desk, and cushioned bench.
Fig 3
Fig 3: Battery Park City Authority, The Landfill Site, circa 1985, edited by Christin Hu, New York. Fig 4: Battery Park City Authority, Liberty Court Aerial, 1987+, edited by Christin Hu, New York.
Fig 4
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Walk out the door and turn left down the hallway to the fire stairs and you’ll find the next apartment, C, which was purchased after my parents’ divorce to support my brother, mother, and me. Each day, we traverse these hotel-like corridors and drab concrete stairs, naturally segregating our tasks and room functions. Once, a foreign labyrinth to my four-year-old self into my memory, the two apartments have become, somewhat paradoxically, both stable and dynamic “nests” molded to my family’s evolving needs and whims. My mother is fond of moving furnishings, so we often changed the bedroom and living room arrangements, but never have we switched the upper floor kitchen and dining room. Those two spaces were constant. Eating together was a big part of our family life and was integral to keeping us both physically and mentally connected. As if to emphasize this, my mother has garnered countless plates, kitchen appliances, and dining room furnishings. She chose to renovate the kitchen and dining rooms first, spending large sums of money to integrate and activate the two for more enjoyable cooking and eating experiences, as well as to encourage my brother and I to accompany her while she cooks. While the upper floor served as our dining and living room, the lower floor apartment acted as mix of living and bedroom spaces. There have been too many
furniture arrangements to count, but it has always generally served as sleeping quarters since we moved in. From the very first move in day, my brother and I slept on an uncovered king-size mattress in the clutter of unfinished process. Now, it is a guest room and shared bedroom, where my mom and I sleep. The kitchen program has changed from cooking to storage and is currently undergoing renovations. Although the plan layout is nearly identical to V, C has adopted a completely different function for my family because of our collective needs and the nature of our owning two apartments, albeit on separate floors. Although these spaces are ever evolving, there remains a balance of eating and working (V) to sleeping and play (C), which occasionally gives way under extreme circumstances (e.g. all-nighters). This dynamic relationship cultivated by my mother has always been a source of joy and excitement for her. My brother and I often joke about her seemingly sudden changes in room arrangements or acquisition of new furniture, which in reality have been carefully and silently considered for months or even years. Our home is truly the establishment of my mother’s independence and modern family – it is her conquest over past hardships and divorce – her castle of confidence and individuality.
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As a dual-apartment owner, my mother rarely considered the exterior conditions of the architecture. Rather she frequently revisited the unique relationship between the two apartments. We have often considered acquiring an adjacent apartment or an apartment below to somehow connect the two – I say we, because by then, my brother and I were old enough to seriously discuss these issues with my mother. At one point in time, we had rented out C and moved to the thirtieth floor, but those couple of years were just an awkward phase: my father had tried (and failed) to reconcile with us and my borther was all about “teenage angst.” I hardly remember those years except for my parents’ yelling and my brother’s “research” of a particular green plant. In any case, our two original apartments were already physically connected. True, the hallways and stairs separated certain functions, but the four metal doors did nothing to divert us, whether we were half naked, moving furniture, formally garbed, or running barefoot. The halls, rarely populated with neighbors, served as our private, extended doorway to our rooms.
Housing units lived in by the Hu Family
Just recently, during dinner, my mother told me snippets of her past, a past played by a cast of dynamic characters, - 21 -
-HOUSE HISTORIES-
namely, my grandmother, great granfather, and great-great-grandfather. My grandmother is an extraordinary human being – a survivor of breast cancer in her nineties, she has experienced everything from near starvation in exile to luxury train-travel. She has raised seven children with the help of a hot-tempered husband, always keeping her calm and maintaining her integrity in the face of opposition. This kindly and very stubborn lady is one who has broken from the traditions of patriarchal Chinese society, just as her father had before her. Her father, my great grandfather, had risen from the lowly position of a janitor in a medical school to one of the most successful doctors and businessmen in Chángshā, the capital city of the Hunan Province of China. He had married of his own accord and was thus denounced by his family (one of the most influential clans in the city), permanently leaving behind the conventions of the past. Meanwhile, on my great grandmother’s side was a merchant of Mobile Oil, a lit-
erally and figuratively groundbreaking profession in China at that time; and the story continues. My home is a dwelling that lives and breathes, and contains a spirit which has permeated throughout my mother’s family history. Her mother’s unwavering confidence, grandfather’s creative intellect, and great grandfather’s innovative ability, live through her daily activities and instinct for furnishing these two seemingly ordinary one-bedroom apartments we call home. Now, as I contemplate my future career, I struggle with the part of me that wants remain at home and the other, that nudges me toward another direction – to move away and start new. It is the “tradition” of breaking tradition my mother has materialized at Battery Park City that both repels and attracts me – a living legacy which I have yet to unfold. CH
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DEFINEINDUSTRIOUS “Findi ng a cting
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an d
cre ati n g
INK SERIES CHRISTIAN CAMACHO / B.ARCH 2015
INFORMALITY 8 COVER SERIES MATTHEW NOONAN M.ARCH/ 2017
LECTURE SKETCH SERIES All lectures are free, and open to the public Thursdays | 6:30 pm Sciame Auditorium The Bernand and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture
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URBAN REFORESTATION: INTERVENTIONS AT THE SCALE OF THE EVERY DAY
thoughts.
DAVID TOVAR B.ARCH / 2017
CHANGES AT THE EVERYDAY LEVEL IGNITE A CHAIN REACTION
In our everyday, overexposure to mundane topics overshadows the topics that are critically important to our collective living and we, as a whole, have embraced this as a fact of life. The lack of relatability to the occurrences beyond our perceived realities has desensitized us to our role within Spaceship Earth. So long as this culture remains unchanged, the risk of ignorance remains.
Within this ignorance lies our greatest risk. While this piece is meant to be relatable to all, designers in particular must take a moral stance and, through design, advocate for positive change. Through our professions, we have the unparalleled ability to help shape the world around us and with this responsibility must also come a moral stance on the topics here discussed. Advocacy for reforestation extends beyond the embrace of trees and biodiversity which as undoubtedly important. Instead, let us view reforestation as an opportunity for sustainable living at the level of the everyday. In this strive for sustainability, let us also strive for resiliency and cooperation -so that we may alter the everyday life in our communities for the better. Remembering the interrelatedness of the different scales in the scalar view of life, changes at the everyday level ignite a chain reaction of positive change in our personal culture, our community culture, our societal culture, and our collective culture. Let us strive for a mutually symbiotic relationship with nature not only because we must but because we can. Let us remember then that by investing in the present, we are consequently led to invest in the future. In reimagining our urban future, creativity calls and as designers we must answer. On this note, let us design for an everyday that is sensible, moral, more equitable, and nurturing; for life, as we know, takes place in the everyday. DT
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Doodle by Hyun Pak
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works. MANHATTAN CHRONICLES SERIES, Each piece measures 30 x 40 x 1.5, Acrylic on canvas SAL COSENZA M. ARCH / 2015
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Manhattan (left) Completed in 2002, the first installment in the series depicts the city's surviving buildings witnessing their friends, the Twin Towers, ascending off into the heavens. The surviving buildings, which include Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and Lady Liberty, are shown in a state of mourning and unspeakable loss at the sight of their murdered friends' departing spirits. Using the horrific events of September 11th as a catalyst, the anthropomorphic painting won several awards upon completion, and set into motion a story that drove the remainder of the series. Manhattan : The Rising War (below) Completed in 2005, the second installment in the series is darker and more brooding than the original, as the buildings are witnessing an impending war between their own Manhattan Military, and the elite T.E.R.R.O.R Group, the culprits behind the death of the Twin Towers. As they witness an air battle erupting over the remains of Ground Zero towards the center, many questions about the future of the city loom for the buildings still standing. Like its predecessor, Manhattan: The Rising War also won several awards, and its story was based on global events pertaining to war oversees.
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Manhattan : The Wrath of Terror Completed in 2008, the third installment in the series depicts the violent capture of Manhattan Island from the deadly T.E.R.R.O.R Group, while a handful of the city’s surviving buildings are shown fleeing from their island and into the mysterious sand dunes ahead. Chrysler and Empire State Buildings are shown being captured in the bottom left of the piece, and towards the bottom right, the fleeing buildings are shown discovering the presence of Freedom Tower, who makes a dramatic debut by rising out of the sand like a phoenix. Postapocalyptic in tone, the award winning piece took the series into strictly fictional territory, as the buildings are shown being forced to flee their home and rely on a gleaming new tower to help them going forward. Manhattan : Part V working title (right) Set for completion in 2016, the fifth and final piece in the Manhattan Chronicles will depict the events following the reclamation of the island by the buildings. This sneakpeak image alludes to a city under immense reconstruction, with new towers covered in scaffolding, new streets paved, and so forth, while Freedom Tower, Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and UN Building, among others, look on. The finale is meant to bookend the series in a variety of ways, and tie back to the original Manhattan through both its color palette and the positioning of certain buildings. As the series concludes, a novelization of the entire story is also in the works, which promises to explore the world of Manhattan Chronicles much further.
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-MANHATTAN CHRONICLES-
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thoughts. THE MOUNDBUILDERS ESSAY TYLELL LUNDMAN M.ARCH / 2016
Ohio is quiet. The “great muddy flow” provides an eerie beauty to those who look up from the road. The plow became at home here, once the trees were cleared. It was a forest. The air is heavy, with a dramatic sky, though not yet like the West. It is a practical place, for practical people. Urban play is bleak here. It fouls the open line of the plain and offers nothing in return but detritus, cheap buildings wired together with real wire and an ether of exhaust on dusty streets – but they are big. A parking lot. They are obsessed with traffic lights. The familiar sign of the Park Service says “Earthworks” with a 2 o’clock arrow pointing off the highway. Modest. I think of first-year Room 107, 9am. We are in southern Ohio. These must be them. What were they called? Prehistoric American. Not a great civilization from the South, worthy of Spanish conquest. There is no gold here, just the land. At a T-intersection a mile later there is no indication which way to turn. Monument is quickly forgotten. The Great Circle is located just off Route 16, twenty miles east of the Columbus. Ironically perhaps, the circle is cut by the town line of Newark, Ohio, which runs through its northern edge. It was part of a much larger complex of circles, octagons, and allées that covered some three-thousand acres. The Great Circle is a thousand feet wide. - 33 -
There is a man playing with his dog, and someone else about to set up a picnic, but everyone seems so far away, di-
I am driving ten minutes to another part, not the other end, just halfway. It is a private country club, “The Moundbuilders.” Cheeky. I wonder if there will be any trace left of the ancient forms.
Situated along County Road 79, connecting to the Interstate fifteen miles away, the Great Circle links a mid-century residential part of the city with a modern commercial strip. Lots of people drive by, and a few park in the cluster of spaces provided unguarded in front. There is a closed museum, a miniature copy of Kahn. From the street-side, the complex looks like an earthen noise barrier as one might find in any suburban office park. From the inside it seems to undulate with subtle variations in height. Eight feet is made to seem like much more behind a five foottrench. People are small now and they were much smaller then. This rise is 1,750 years old. That it should be taller.
I park on the east side in front of a severed artery. Two of the boulevards were here, a clear intersection with both projections truncated on the bias that leftthe node intact. It is a vector, or an editor’s carrot, or an arrow in negative space pointing back to the beginning. It is a body with legs cut off by a rustic wooden fence. I am in front of someone’s house, a clapboard colonial, crossing the graveled asphalt and walking along the edge of the golf course. There is a lot of traffic for a quiet neighborhood.
minished by the force of perspective, and the unrelenting trees.
The Earth itself is soft here. It turns under shoes like sand hung in a net of peat grass. Trees uproot themselves easily. They overturn the land. Tornados are frequent. Moles are easily tracked. On land like this, each step is labored. Every movement is a negotiation. Person applies a little pressure, the land yields some. It stops. A successful pivot and the process is repeated. These people were industrious! The Great Circle is not all there is. Maybe it’s only ten percent - even more destroyed now to build schools and roads. There were grand boulevards stretching miles. They forked into various directions, a hundred feet wide. There were processions, nodes, and squares. It is a Baroque city plan.
They didn’t destroy anything inside. Dating from the mid 1930s, the golf course uses the existing form to add visual interest and a certain degree of challenge. One island green is set inside a smaller circle, only sixty feet across. There is a target mounted on a pole to help a person find it from the other side. The white flag for the hole would be too small to see. What we do with what we have. It is moved from place to place. Lower to higher, nothing lost and nothing gained but height and monument: a declaration of place. They built a golf course here. A sign of diversion, or respect for something unique and unguarded? It is kitsch, of course, “The Moundbuilders,” but it is better than being leveled and subdivided on the square. There are still lunar pageants here.
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TL
craft.
HOMMAGE À VERSAILLES HISTORIC ELEVATIONS REDRAWN IN MODERN SOFTWARE JAMES GEOGHEGAN B.ARCH / 2016
The Palace of Versailles, Versailles France, 1682, Lead Architect: Louis Le Vau
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Top: Elevation from the Resevoir, Versailles France, 1682 Bottom: Cour de Mabre, Versailles France
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craft. [KAHN]VERT A SEMINAR ON LOUIS KAHN LESTER LI, SARA VEZELAJ, ANNA KWIATKOWSKA B.ARCH / 2016
Lester Li, Sara Vezelaj, Anna Kwiatkowska
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[KAHN]vert It’s a little over halfway through the semester. The leaves on the trees have all gently settled as piles on lawns. Squirrels are frantically stomp around in the crisped leaves, preparing for the end of fall. The end of fall is approaching. Its 7 minutes past 7 in the morning. Sara, a close friend and colleague of mine, says, “Lester, let’s take a break.” It was our seventh break of the night. We make our way
down to the school loading docks. After a moment Sara asks, “Have you ever wondered what we would be doing if we never applied to architecture school?” “… yeah, sleeping!” As our delirious laugher subsides, I turn my attention to a cardboard box by a pile of garbage bags. I look inside and found black ink cartridge parts. “This looks like half of Erdman Hall’s dormitory.” We mutually understood my statement was because we had
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analyzed that building in our studio classes, only weeks before today. We laughed as if this was the funniest joke we had heard on our lives. As I dug through the box to find more material for my popup standup comedy skit, I found a hundred more of these ink cartridge parts. It was a goldmine. “Woah… wouldn’t it be cool if they let us just explore this. We can cast them in plaster and cut them up to make parti models.” LL
-[KHAN]VERT-
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Study Models Scale: 1/32”=1’-0” Plaster, joint compound, found objects
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talks. Informality’s editor Alanna Lauter talks with Adam Hayes.
Alanna Lauter: What or who is the inspiration for your personal style? Adam Hayes: For me I think it’s a combination. One is its kind of a functional aspect that I like for certain stuff, so for me it’s not about… well I don’t really like style. I don’t like the idea of style or trend, or fashion. I like things to have a purpose. I think there are two things. It’s partly functionality, something I’m doing. There’s certainly a symbolic aspect to things, like if you wear a suit to an interview, not necessarily to a rave. But, I think the other part of it is heritage. You know, I grew up down south in Texas and there’s an aspect of that which I carry with me. So it’s the imprint of all the different experiences that I’ve had. Going to school I had to wear a suit and tie, so there’s an aspect of that, to growing up and wearing boots. So it’s kind of a sum of all the things that I’ve done.
AL: Do you ever mix your suit and tie functions with your cowboy functions? AH: Well yeah. I went out last night to an event and I wore a suit that’s got a vest, and I wore my suit and a tie and beat up cowboy boots. I pretty much always do that. You know that’s my thing.
AL: Has a particular article of clothing, pattern or fabric inspired anything that you have done in design work? AH: I wouldn’t say specifically, as in like - 41 -
event. I’ve got my dress cowboy hat too, when that’s called for.
AL: So has being able to express yourself been important? Because the stereotypical type for architects is black and white? AH: Oh, I go out of my way…I suppose that’s a sort of negative version of style. I overtly avoid this sort of name-casting architectural black on black on black with one highlight, and my funky glasses. I think that’s terrible.
AL: So what do you do instead? “I’VE GOT MY DRESSIEST SUIT, MY TUXEDO FOR A FORMAL EVENT. I’VE GOT MY DRESS COWBOY HAT, WHEN THAT’S CALLED FOR.” here’s my plaid building. I think it more of the construction that’s more of the inspiration. In a sense that how something is made, how something is crafted or like how things are rugged, but also beautifully done. Or you can wear it a certain way. So it more has to do with that. It’s not so much inspired, but to me it’s all a big ball of wax. How I dress. How I design. How I live. What I do. It’s all part of the same thing. The consideration of it is from the same place.
AL: So do you have specific articles of clothing where you say, “Okay, this is my interview…” AH: Well I mean, within reason. Not necessarily specifically. But yeah, I’ve got my dressiest suit, my tuxedo for a formal
AH: Well, I try to do what I want. Like I said, it comes from a heritage thing. I wouldn’t put my style out there as “oh this something you should wear,” because it’s not your thing. But I think if you’re wearing style as a trope to tell other people what you are, I don’t care whether you’re an architect or a hipster or whatever, to me that doesn’t make sense. There’s a mix between functionality, there’s also a mix between tailoring. I can wear certain clothes that others can’t. If I dressed up in hip-hop clothes… I like some of it, I think it’s actually kind of cool, but I would look like a total dumbass. I just can’t pull that off. It wouldn’t look like me. So there’s that. Something you look good in.
AL: Was there ever a time when you wore something and thought, “Eh, maybe that wasn’t the best idea?” AH: Like a time? Or a period of time in my life?
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AL: A period of time in your life. AH: No. AL: No? AH: I mean, I’ve bought things that I thought were going to.. but in retrospect said “No I shouldn’t have done that” because they were for an extreme sport and I wore them once in my life. I’m pretty considerate about stuff like that, I don’t tend to… you know, okay I look back at what I wore in the 90s, and, the idea of wearing it now would be laughable, but at the time, when it was contextual, it was cool, it was fine. Probably the most ridiculous outfit for me was after working for [Renzo] Piano’s office, because I came back to the states and I was very “European-architected-out.” It was all black baggy Armani suits and shoulder length hair, and that was.. pretty cool back then. But I love the idea of custom made stuff too, not just to do it, but to actually get what you really want. Because, if you’re buying something and you really know what you want, and you’re not buying it to say, “This is Prada, see the real tag?” then you actually get to determine what you want, what kind of pockets, what kind of buttons and so on. That part I definitely enjoy. For full interview visit: www.informalityssa.
Doodle by Hyun Pak
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PLANET NYC GABRIEL FLORIMON B.ARCH / 2017
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thoughts. THREE + TWO COLLECTIVE AN ARCHITECTURAL WORKSHOP IN GHANA, AFRICA MATTHEW ADDEO B. ARCH / 2016
This past summer I participated in an Earth-Building workshop in Ghana to further explore my interest in humanitarian architecture for social change. I hoped to interact with habitat and design in a more primitive form. To renew perspective outside the built environment of New York City. The objective of the workshop was the realization of a modern single family home, using both traditional and contemporary building techniques and local methods of construction in Abetenim Village. The site is approximately 50 km east of Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti Region in Ghana. According to Three + Two founders, there was a balancing act between a contemporary earth architecture that is sensitive to surroundings – culturally and environmentally – that also invites change. The design inspiration originated from traditional courtyard houses in the Ashanti Region: Conceptually voids within a mass – rather than the multi-story modern villas, which are essentially one mass within a void.
Naturally on site the drawings and design altered to meet immediate needs and challenges. For example, casting the pillars in bamboo formwork was a solution to a problem. The metal sheets originally planned for formwork were found to be too weak in Ghana. Though exhausting to construct, the finished pillars seemed to become the symbol for our project, separating it from the other competitors’ designs. Due to power scarcity we used zero power tools and focused on hand-drawn construction documents. Our workforce came from the village, we became friends, and ate together. From the production of mud tiles, to discovering the cooking process of “FuFu”, a national favorite dish, there was a full immersion in the design-build and cultural experience. If the academy exists to aid students towards realizing their own architectural position– so upon graduation we may not only contribute to the practice, but also to the discussion of architecture – trips ands workshops add to the discussion all the more. From this workshop I can relay images, words, and first-hand experience to the ideas I was beginning to process here in New York. I can add more to the discussion of architecture. It was never about a one-time experience, but another step in discovering my architectural identity.
for more information www.threetwoworkshop.com
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thoughts. PRINTED FUTURE FABRICATED DREAMS AT THE 3D PRINT SHOW JETHRO REBOLLAR M.ARCH / 2017
I brought my dog, Shiloh, to the 3DPrintShow at the Javitz Center’s 548 Gallery in Chelsea. Spring had finally sprung and both of us were getting cabin fever from a winter spent indoors. Upon arriving at the show, I saw all the major players of the 3D-print community that make their annual appearance at MakerFaire. Somewhat surprisingly, the darling of the 3D-printer market, MakerBot, seemed to have sat this one out completely, with not even a flyer-distributor onsite. One could only suspect that this year’s company-wide layoff of twenty percent of its staff may have had something to do with the absence. Human-resources issues notwithstanding, the heavy commercial 3D-printers like MakerBot might no longer need to fight for floor space with relatively bush-league, garage-band outfits like Z-morph and Ultimaker, who are holding their own but cannot afford the outreach MakerBot has to put models into classrooms, universities and fabrication labs across the country. Some background: MakerBot hit the scene in 2009, capitalizing on the Fused-Deposition Modeling (FDM) process after the patent had expired in 2004. FDM is one of the few processes that have brought 3D-printing and rapid prototyping closer to consumers’ reach. FDM is the process of heating up a substance, typically coiled plastic filament, and laying it down in thin strands to additively “print - 47 -
0ut” a physical 3D-model from its digital 3D counterpart. In addition to MakerBot, other companies such as ZeePro, PrintRBot, BigRep, Dynamo3D and Digital WaBot, BigRep, Dynamo3D and Digital Wax Systems, to name a few, all use this process. Alternative processes like Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) apply a laser to a bed of polymer-adhesive-blends, effectively curing the mixture from the bottom up to produce the shape seen in the model. SLS has always been of personal interest to me since it doesn’t seem to be either an additive or subtractive form of manufacturing. I’ve always imagined a metaphysical phase-change happening through the relationship of the laser’s trajectory and the material bed. More
capable minds would certainly disagree with this flourish, but what good, after all, is the promise of technology without amazement? Wonderful products and ideas continue to spark intrigue at these types of events: Open-source frameworks, peer-reviewed online product libraries, improved materials and the continued promise of Moore’s Law, the expectation of more information on smaller technology, exponentially. This 3D-print show, however, started to seem like themes and competencies were becoming, for want of a better word, echoey. The 3D-printer salespeople who hope to squeeze into the MakerBot market share have developed a chilled desperation in their tone of voice, verging on desperation. I left the show thinking, if only the demand for this technology could be as
HEAVEN CONCEPT RENDER SAINTAH DHASMA / B.ARCH 2016
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-PRINTED FUTURE-
easily produced as the trinkets they use to prove their own worth. On a recent trip to Boulder, Colorado, I spoke with Sam Sussman of 8 Boulder’s Pearl district, where he is the resident 3D-printmaster. He shared the neophyte dream of a printable future along with his contemporaries as well as the shared, imagined framework for delivery of this service—localized providers, or shops, instead of the machine-on-every-desk model championed by the personal computer over the last three decades. Undoubtedly, one of the principal reasons that 3D-printing succeeded as an idea was this fantasy of one day being able to simply push a button in your own home and conjure your desired item. It sent minds soaring. Entrepreneurs like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos started to wonder: What
if you could simply buy a particular item online and pick it up in your garage’s 3D printer in a matter of minutes? This kind of positive, disruptive, and wideeyed dream was intoxicating, but was no match for a recession that crippled even the most heroic organizations of our technocracy, like NASA. The universe imagined in The Jetsons might be more distant than hoped, or it might be altogether parallel. Sam’s 3D-printmaster post at the copy center in Boulder doesn’t make him a captain of industry, but it does allow Sam to provide 3D-print services to clients who might be coming in to print a few hundred color catalogs for a trade show. The store might also allow for Sam’s expanded electrical and storage needs, should demand for his service grow. The contingency plan for
3D Print Study Dmitriy Polyakov B.Arch 2017
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the 3D-printable-future could alternately be one where consumers visit local providers at their brick-and-mortar locations, if the 3D-printer has rights contracts with participating corporations such as Etsy, SONY, and Rubbermade to manufacture and sell their items. What this allows is for companies to reach a broader audience of early adopters and ensure quality-control of their trademarks.
sumer or designer side, but also on the business end. As designers, we need to start asking ourselves tough questions, such as: “Does the industry even need a 3D printer the size of a house?” It can be a perilous path when form doesn’t follow function, but even a dreamer like me can’t help but be excited by the possibility of going to my local bodega to pick up Shiloh’s freshly fabricated, monogramed chew toy.
Nicholas Friedman is a Spitzer alumnus (class of 2015) who was a steward of some of the school’s fabrication facilities (including a Sratasys 3D-printer and a Roland CNC router). We discussed our school’s 3D-printing capabilities, and we realized that even within our own programs, we lack masterful control of the machines, thus driving us and other students away from the medium. Recent pyrotechnics notwithstanding, our model shop’s CNC router is on the mend (thanks in no small part to Alvaro Almada and instructors like Jonathan Scelsa, who have been instrumental in breathing life back into our fabrication capabilities). As young designers and architects, we are the ones who should be spearheading the utilization of today’s most advanced processes.
JR
We have returned from the honeymoon of consumer-market 3D-printing and we need to learn how to make the marriage work between new design and new manufacturing. Heavy strides need to be taken in democratizing not just the information infrastructure for the con-50-
“BATLLO” Barcelona, Spain
“CARTOUCHE” Catskills, NY
“MOSQUE” Cordoba, Spain
PLACEMENT STEADILY AND PERSERVERINGLY ACTIVE ALANNA LAUTER B.ARCH / 2016
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“INDUSTRIOUS” Hamburg, Germany
“DE YOUNG”
“CRITICA” Santiago de Compostela, Spain “EDGELESS” Rock of Gibraltar
“OMA” Oporto, Portugal “COMPANION” San Francisco, CA
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“MUSHROOM” Sevilla, Spain
works. [SPY]der HARVARD GSD CHRISOULA KAPELOIS B.ARCH / ALUMNA 2014
Today we are living in a digital symphony. A world comprised of a convoluted soliloquy of data transfer. A world where bytes are our currency, and information is our crack. We are living in hyperpixelated massiveness. They are watching us. Our every move is being tracked, archived, processed, and analyzed. Our walls have ears, our windows eyes, our spaces brains. The world is watching. How can we defend ourselves against a world so untrustworthy, and discreet? Simple. We track it back. The [SPY]der dress reverses the role of surveillance, to make the user and the surrounding population aware of the presence of security cameras. When the dress senses the presence of security cameras, it engages by lifting its arms. The closer the wearer gets to the gaze of the camera, the higher the arms raise. Once they are within the cone of vision, the arms point in the direction of the camera, both seducing and fighting with its gaze.
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-[SPY]der-
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“BREATH & READ” Photo by Christin Hu
Doodle by Hyun Pak
The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture 141 convent ave, new york, ny 10031 / 212-650-7118 acting dean: Gordon Gebert chair: Julio Salcedo-Fernandez ssa1.ccny.cuny.edu