Architrave 23 by Architrave

ARCHITRAVE 23

Architrave: A multi-faceted communication tool at the University of Florida College of Design, Construction, and Planning (DCP). Throughout the design studios in our program, “process” is a term constantly regarded as a means of exploration and iteration. From the previous edition of Architrave, we transitioned the idea of non-static design to reference the timeline of making here at the University of Florida.

“DESIGN IS NOT FROM A TO B” -Architrave 22

DESIGN HAS MANY OUTLETS AND JUMPS BACK AND FORTH across disciplines inside of studio outside of studio from iterations.

Z A H A H A D I D ( 1 9 50 - 2 0 1 6 )

Jaysen Good | D3 | Zajac

CONTENTS.

01.

02.

03.

URBAN CONTEXT

POSITIVE PROCESS

NATURE + BOUNDARIES

10 - 17

18 - 25

26 - 35

A DISCUSSION THAT EXAMINES THE IMPACT OF DESIGN ON THE URBAN SCALE

POSITIVE MENTALITY AND ENVIRONMENT ARE IMPORTANT TO THE DESIGN PROCESS

AN UNDERSTANDING OF EDGES AS A THRESHOLD TO NATURE

04.

05.

06.

WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE

SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT

COLLAGE + DECOLLAGE

42 - 49

50 - 65

66 - 73

ON THE CRITICALITY OF DIVERSITY IN ARCHITECTURE AND THE DISCUSSION OF ITS CURRENT IMBALANCE

THE INTUITION INVOLVED IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE ITERATIVE PROCESS

TO PIECE TOGETHER AND ERASE FOR THE CLARIFICATION OF DESIGN

07.

08.

09.

STEPS OF PROCESS

DIALOGUE OF SCALE

QUESTIONS + ANSWERS

84 - 93

94 - 105

106 - 111

DESIGN AS A SYNTHESIS OF BACKGROUND, EXPERIENCE, COMMUNICATION AND KNOWLEDGE

THE INTEGRATION OF MEASURE TO INFORM AND MEDIATE DESIGN DECISIONS

USING THE VARIOUS TOOLS OF MAKING TO EXPLORE ALL POSSIBILITIES, NOT ONE SOLUTION

creating HOW?

Materiality Light Spatial context Mind mapping Sketching

begins with

WHY?

Experimentation To Learn Explore various options To Fail

TO ACHIEVE? Understanding Expression Thoughtful, innovative design Exploration

process TO FIND?

Precise, intelligent design solutions Efficient methods Organization Consolidated ideas

ARCHITRAVE 23 Design builds upon experimentation and revisits the nature of an idea on many different levels. As a way to convey this notion of non-linear process, the structure of the book is based on the essays provided by the writing team. The writing pieces explore differing perspectives of what process means to architecture. Using the writing as sectionseparators as a means to organize the book, the student work followed to create a publication in which text furthers the image. Interviews and outside quotes enhance the meaning of what our process means on a wider scope and provides connections to bridge the gap of studio and the world outside of studio. Architrave 23 also focused on using this compilation of words and images as a placeholder in time. The book itself is an artifact that continues on and bleeds into the past and the future. Interviews depict the context of time and enhance the quality of student work in reflecting the current state of our understanding the built environment. We would like to thank all of our peers, faculty, and staff-- without whom, this publication would not be possible. We hope that Architrave 23 further inspires, motivates and questions design decisions to produce a more meaningful future of design through the facets of architecture for us all.

ILLUSTRATE. DRAFTING

SKETCHING

Maria Antonia Morales + Beatriz Santos l D7 l Cohen

01 URBAN CONTEXT POSITIVE PROCESS NATURE + BOUNDARIES WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT COLLAGE + DECOLLAGE STEPS OF PROCESS DIALOGUE OF SCALE QUESTIONS + ANSWERS

Dima Toma + Kinga Pabjan l D7 l Montoya

Maria Antonia Morales + Beatriz Santos l D7 l Cohen

PROCESS OF URBAN DESIGN EZEKIEL FAIRBANKS Urban design doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t lend itself to the same post-development criticisms as a building does. Neither would anyone systematically break down the processes in which it was developed. If a moment was taken to understand and dissect the theoretical process in which urban design undergoes, perhaps the reason for the shaping of places would be revealed. We can take a look into the phenomena of public spaces as an example of urban design due to the fact that it holds at the heart of many developments due to its socio-economic role.

URBAN DESIGN IS VIEWED BY SOME AS A MIXTURE OF DISCIPLINES....

Through an analysis of London, Matthew Carmona theorizes how places are shaped through urban design. Urban design is viewed for some as a mixture of disciplines such as spatial political economics, urban planning, sustainability and architecture rather than a single distinct field of practice. However, urban design is able to tackle and question some of the more pressing questions in the urban environment. It can therefore find an identity and home as an interstitial bridging between traditional practices of the arts, sciences, and social sciences.

Carmona studies public spaces in London as an attempt to understand the process through which urban space is developed. This process is guided by time and place, because true innovation is but a faĂ§ade, and our actions are informed from history and practices that have been passed on. The successes of a place are determined by the society, economy, and politics of each location. The four key place-shaping processes in which constitute urban design are: design, development, space or place in use, and management. Shaping places through design begins with casting a vision for the project, something that is distinctive and encourages activity within the place. Value is an integrated aspect to consider during this process because of the importance of the designâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to contribute to a workable and livable city. Space is not a commodity in urban environments therefore the vision cannot rely on an aesthetic value alone; it must deliver a useable and practical occupancy. The balance of public and private interests must be negotiated. This is where politics plays a role in the design process, in the case of traffic space versus pedestrian space, pressure can be placed on the politicians to take act on the demands of either the driver or the pedestrian. Shaping through development involves an open conversation between the stakeholders. Assigning a responsible lead to coordinate this process allows proper communication between stakeholders to insure that the vision for the project is met and wards the intention of narrow interests. Other aspects of this particular process are funding and

support. Support is a delicate balance that should be noted because underestimating small communities is simple but these individuals can be the force that thwarts the project. Through several case studies of public spaces in London, several were funded due to promising conditions in the market. As many projects are funded through the means of outside sources, being able to read market conditions is vital to the health of a development.

Adiel Benitez l D7 l Clark

Shaping through use gives the space identity. The activities that occur in the space will largely depend on the time of day and what activities are available. Spaces within the space will be defined by the groups formed by people of similar associations. An example being young teenagers gathering in a location where they can be loud and energetic together. The type of amenities available at the location will assist in attracting the profile of individuals that was envisioned for the space. Sometimes aspirations of a space don’t come to realization and the outcome becomes something entirely unexpected. Such as the case of the Royal Arsenal Gardens in London. A local community of skateboarders were able to influence and transform the space into a skate park. Regardless, with time the characteristics of a space will change. Shaping through management is a crucial post-development element in this process to keep in mind. After the project is built and completed the site must have some form of stewardship to protect the values of the development. Controlling a space through active security or signage will help ward away any SHAPING THROUGH USE undesirable activities such as skateboarding. Because large projects are an investment for corporate developers, controlling a space as such GIVES THE SPACE IDENTITY will lead to an extended lifespan of the site’s integrity and image thus making the space more desirable to be in. However in stark contrast, Gabriel’s Wharf has had very little maintenance in its lifetime which has allowed the space to grow faded and worn; this has only added to play into the place’s charm and identity. There are a multitude of conscious and unconscious decisions and actions that affect the outcomes of public space. Design alone, nor the developmental process can be responsible for the shaping of a place; it is a combination and relationship between the two. Only through understanding of the processes in which it undergoes, can we then begin to theorize and influence the space. Urban design doesn’t lend itself to the same post-development criticisms as a building does. Neither would anyone systematically break down the processes in which it was developed. If a moment was taken to understand and dissect the theoretical process in which urban design undergoes, perhaps the reason for the shaping of places would be

revealed. We can take a look into the phenomena of public spaces as an example of urban design due to the fact that it holds at the heart of many developments due to its socio-economic role. Through an analysis of London, Matthew Carmona theorizes how places are shaped through urban design. Urban design is viewed for some as a mixture of disciplines such as spatial political economics, urban planning, sustainability and architecture rather than a single distinct field of practice. However, urban design is able to tackle and question some of the more pressing questions in the urban environment. It can therefore find an identity and home as an interstitial bridging between traditional practices of the arts, sciences, and social sciences.

DESIGN ALONE, NOR THE DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS CAN BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SHAPING OF A PLACE

Nicholas Acosta l D4 l Wang

Shaping places through design begins with casting a vision for the project, something that is distinctive and encourages activity within the place. Value is an integrated aspect to consider during this process because of the importance of the design’s ability to contribute to a workable and livable city. Space is not a commodity in urban environments therefore the vision cannot rely on an aesthetic value alone; it must deliver a useable and practical occupancy. The balance of public and private interests must be negotiated. This is where politics plays a role in the design process, in the case of traffic space versus pedestrian space, pressure can be placed on the politicians to take act on the demands of either the driver or the pedestrian. Shaping through development involves an open conversation between the stakeholders. Assigning a responsible lead to coordinate this process allows proper communication between stakeholders to insure that the vision for the project is met and wards the intention of narrow interests. Other aspects of this particular process are funding and support. Support is a delicate balance that should be noted because underestimating small communities is simple but these individuals can be the force that thwarts the project. Through several case studies of public spaces in London, several were funded due to promising conditions in the market. As many projects are funded through the means of outside sources, being able to read market conditions is vital to the health of a development. Carmona, Matthew. 2014. “Journal of Urban Design.” The Place-shaping Continuum: A Theory of Urban Design Process 2-36.

Dima Toma + Kinga Pabjan l D7 l Montoya

John Paul Bernal + Derek Hill l D7 l Perez

Bruno Kukoc l D6 l Kohen

Design alone, nor the developmental process can be responsible for the shaping of a place

Amelia Linde l D6 l Lisa Huang

There are a multitude of conscious and unconscious decisions and actions that affect the outcomes of public space.

Pietro Mendonca l D2 l McGlothlin

Cami Cupples + Brandon Wong l D7 l Cohen

Maria Antonia Morales + Beatriz Santos l D7 l Cohen

Mitchell Clarke | East Asia

02 URBAN CONTEXT POSITIVE PROCESS NATURE + BOUNDARIES WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT Maxwell Hunold + Neill Shikada | D3 | Zajac

COLLAGE + DECOLLAGE STEPS OF PROCESS DIALOGUE OF SCALE QUESTIONS + ANSWERS 19

POSITIVE PROCESS GRAHAM NICHOLS

Our major is an optimistic one. We have faith that our thoughts can become things. We are compelled to share our ideas with others through what we make. It is necessary then to treat what we design as a means of communication. To approach each of our projects as a form of silent language. We speak with what we make. Our feelings color the tone our voice takes. When we are in a good humor we are pleasurable to interact with, conversations come easily and often times brighten the mood of those that we share a space with. When we “WE BECOME WHAT WE are angry then we are abhorrent, difficult, and often times make the THINK ABOUT” exchanges we engage in uncomfortable. This is just as true about how we -NAPOLEON HILL make, because what we create is interactive, though we may never meet or see the other person that comes into contact with it. Architects have the power to touch and change lives through time and space; to speak to individuals far removed by distance or generation, no different than writers, painters or musicians. This is why it is absolutely essential that when we begin the process of creation, we must treat it with delight. A drawing ARCHITECTS HAVE THE that is treated as a gift, created with happy and joyful purpose, POWER TO TOUCH AND will give much more to the creator and viewer than one that is CHANGE LIVES begrudgingly completed as a rote assignment. It will be absolute hell to complete if the work is done only to meet minimum requirements. However, when it is done with appreciation and gratitude, there is much less feeling that this drawing is work and instead it is something happy and playful. This creates a positive feeling within ourselves and will allow an individual to spend hours doing something, without feeling tired or bored because whatever we do is more like game and less like work. This approach to thinking will allow you to work an image for a long while, because you love every moment of the act of creating. All that time and effort spent in this “mode of play” will always result in the creation of a more detailed, and carefully crafted work that is more thoughtfully composed than if it were completed as mere task. In turn the work put into each piece will give the gift of experience and the gift of understanding back to the designer. This is the secret to a good project.

Idael Cardenas | D2 | Cohen

Look at all the men and women who were a success in the field of architecture (or really any field). Now ask yourself what is the one thing that they all have in common? What is thread that ties them all together? The answer will resoundingly be: â&#x20AC;&#x153;They all love what they do for a living.â&#x20AC;? These people are excited to get out of bed in the morning to get back to their work because in it they find joy and purpose. As architecture students it is necessary to create a drive that is similar to those who are successful in order to meet and surpass them as we go out into the field.

BECAUSE YOU LOVE EVERY MOMENT OF THE ACT OF CREATING.

To accomplish this level of enthusiasm and drive, experimentation is absolutely necessary. There is no single path in design. There are many ways, and that is good. This allows for each and every one of us to find out the best way we work, by testing the different means and methods of creating drawings or models: Plaster, Plan, Axonometric, Section, Hybrid, Resin, Wire, Digital, Analogue, Basswood, etc. Through investigation of the possibilities, you can find a direction that provides you with enough promise and satisfaction to proceed. Do not be afraid to ignore assignments that you know will not help advance your design, instead be self-reliant, make your own path and do what you know to be right for the project. Trust yourself. In the end that will further any project you work on far more than something that is done only because a professor asked for it. The project is yours, so make it that way and make it a good one. In the end, the things you do today will make what you do to tomorrow; there is no way around that. You can pay now or you will pay later. There are no short cuts to architecture. You can cheat the professors and toss something together that you postrationalize the morning of, but that will never help you get more than a passing grade. If you truly want to be good and original, then you can expect long hours. The time will pass anyway so it is so much better to enjoy your time working; this is why it is essential to finding your positive process. Begin today with a definite purpose of finding your own unique workflow, and set out to explore the possibilities of making. Create with joy and the results will always be undeniably better.

Nicholas DelCastillo | D3 | Zajac

Domonique Carey | D6 - Interiors l Meneely + Campbell

In the end, the things you do today will make what you do tomorrow

Elizabeth Cronin l G1 l Lisa Huang + Bradley Walters

Zach Wignall l G1 l Lisa Huang + Bradley Walters

Roberto Moreno | D2 | Hofer

Pietro Mendonca | D2 | McGlothlin

Lisa Ryzhikov | D2 | Hofer

Ana McIntosh | D2 | Hofer

Alexis Benton | D2 | Hofer

To accomplish this level of enthusiasm and drive, experimentation is absolutely necessaryâ&#x20AC;?

Idael Cardenas | D2 | Cohen

URBAN CONTEXT POSITIVE PROCESS NATURE + BOUNDARIES WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT COLLAGE + DECOLLAGE STEPS OF PROCESS DIALOGUE OF SCALE QUESTIONS + ANSWERS

Daniel Rodriguez | Principles | Gurucharri

ON BOUNDARIES PAOLA VAZQUEZ-GOMEZ

B0undaries are essential to life. The microscopic orchestration of cell membranes, tissues, forming billowy films and rigid chambers alike; the slight but omnipotent interfaces of matter’s phases; the thresholds that rule synaptic firings or the squirting of a squid’s ink; the semantics that sort the meanings and non-meanings of our lexicon; the unbridgeable chasm between life forms, focal points of matter organization; prevent the great spillage of all life matter and concept. Imagine a world without boundaries. Imagine the churning cosmic soup—liken to that which you might associate with the beginning of time—that is your array of atoms dispersed in the stratosphere, some floating in a cluster with another 17,459,230 human’s that have just caught a breeze containing a hint of gaseous {insert your pet’s name}. If you can begin to conceptualize the non-being of such elemental physical forces as have formed your reality since before birth, go on to break the barrier between physical phases, between and within atoms and their quarks, and subtract even the spaces and consonants from words that might enter the scene. As you let this breed of chaos unfold, break the very frame that contains it in your mind; let it wash over you, this soup of all.

NOW, TAKE A MOMENT EASE OUT OF YOUR SMALL HEADACHE AND CONSIDER THE NONCHALANT QUINTESSENCE AND BEAUTY OF BOUNDARIES.

These pieces of plastic have undergone photodegradation as a result of excessive sunlight exposure. Similarly, the part of the communicated realm that relies on underground passage withers upon being brought to the surface. A classic Mark Twain take on the matter goes: “Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.” Image courtesy of Adam Sherwin, Independent UK.

Stefan Blignaut | Urban Design | Acomb

Michael Ruggiano | D5 - Interiors | Meneely

Stefan Blignaut | Urban Design | Acomb

Nature Just like the beauty of a moment can be some function of its silence, as subsonic traffic, absolved of harsh light exposure, flows through some malnourished segueâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and by the same rules that keep a good joke modestly dressed: an understanding of boundaries is of a mystic nature. They are not something to be systematically executed by functional logic, but rather something that glints in the dim light of peripheral vision, and sets its roots in the soil of intuition.

BLOCKAGES BREED DISSONANCE AND CACOPHONY

Bryce Donner | Site Design | Holmes

AN UNDERSTANDING OF BOUNDARIES IS OF A MYSTIC NATURE.

31 A. Fulgham, A. VanDyke, P. Valentin, K. Bachelder, J. Moore | D7 - Interiors | Carmel-Gilfilen

If we were to observe a uniform beam, we would first note its extent, and gain an idea of its midpoint. The midpoint divides the one side from the other, though the two sides are arbitrary and have no inherent difference between them. What truly divides the two sides is the behavior of the beam in the presence of a perpendicular gravitational force, for the midpoint is the only single point which lends for a non-discriminatory positioning of both sides with regard to the object of gravitational attraction. A continuum might be considered a conceptual beam, with the meanings of its poles as opposite and arbitrary as ‘right’ and ‘left’, and its midpoint a threshold found at the point of equal proportioning of its conceptual extremities. With conceptual beams, we run into a series of complications, which contribute to the elusiveness of the matter. For starters, the conceptual beam tends to lack the definite extent of the physical beam, but its midpoint still dictates its nature—like zero balances the positive and negative infinities. It is also common for a focus on intervals (think of the infinities between integers) to prevail over a definite zero. Finally, though such a uniform, infinitely partitioned beam might be abstracted, it cannot be contextualized; true continuums are far from uniform and do not exist in isolation. They are inextricably entangled and dynamic both within themselves and in their interaction with each other. Though it is pure and satisfying to isolate a continuum and project it, assigning clear-cut variables that follow a definite choreography, such an approach can only give us a distanced idea, which can be counterproductive in the common case of overplay and misuse. The subjectiveness lent by perspective and circumstance is a major deterrent of direct and conclusive approaches to understanding boundaries as thresholds. Now, not all is doom and gloom in understanding and using boundaries as thresholds. The key lies in an aspect of breathability; of osmosis. Boundaries must not suffocate their interdependent content—they must recognize and adapt to the capriciousness of circumstance. Without flow, growth is suppressed and integrity distorted. Blockages (boundaries abused) breed dissonance and cacophony. It is a harmonious tension that must be achieved, through a semipermeable membrane that permits flow while upholding the structure of life in matter and concept.

Daniel Rodriguez | Design Com. 2 | Sosa

Emilie Ogburn | D6 - Interiors | Meneeley

Michael Ruggiano | ? | ?

Lienny Ruiz + Felix Bautista | D7 | Lee-Su Huang

Kelsey Riordan | Principles | Gurucharri

Art of use Boundaries in the most extensive sense emerged in nature over billions of years. They are a result of the primal dance of the elements to the music of entropy over time. They exist objectively, and their present analysis is only toward ensuring their closest approximation by us. A good building manages a balance of confinement and release—its physique satisfying metaphysical demands to a poetic perfection in flows of air, light, space, and scale. This requires an ambient assessment of factors to grasp the essence of their interaction. Once an understanding arises, like a cloud figure dissolving in the wind, it must be cultivated, cast, set, and refined until it reaches full bloom. Therein lies the art of process in architecture, as Louis Khan states: “A great building must begin with the immeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasured.” Lienny Ruiz + Felix Bautista | D7 | Lee-Su Huang

Boundaries must not suffocate their interdependent content...

Ellen Straub | D4 - Interiors | Carmel-Gilfilen

CONSTRUCT. SCALE

MODEL MAKING

Lea Kindt | Principles | Gurucharri Shannon Mallon | D5 | Walters A. Fulgham, A. Perez, N. Weinbrum l D6 - Interiors l Lorusso

Ana Arenas l D4 l Nelson

PUBLIC SPACE A: ARCHITRAVE J: JAMIE MASLYN LARSON

Monday, Oct.12, 2015 Jamie Maslyn Larson: Principal, Partner West 8 New York

A: What are some of the cross disciplinary studies between landscape architects and architects? Is there a dialogue that happens?

J: There is a huge amount. In our office we have roughly 15-18 people in our office here in NYC. Four have architecture degrees and then in Rotterdam most of the people are architects. One thing we hate is having people in camps and divisions. Saying “that’s not my scope” or “I’m a landscape architect, I don’t have an idea for that.” It’s all hands on deck. It LET’S MESS AROUND AND depends, sometimes there are relationships where it’s like, “Here is the INFLUENCE EACHOTHER building, don’t touch the building. We know not to touch the building, but don’t touch our landscape either”. Sometimes it’s more “let’s mess around and influence each other”. But every architect has a point of view. We just happen to be one of those that enjoy playing around. Some architects may be like, enough playing, but it’s generally a positive place. People have to be comfortable with each other, there is a certain amount of putting your heart on the line. It’s a sort of diplomacy to figure out how to challenge or motivate or how to present ideas as one team. And some firms put it all out there and let the client choose. And you can’t judge, THE ART OF PLAYING... some of the most accomplished people we’ve worked with who are Pritzker prize winners and who you would think would have all the confidence in the world dabbling in this playful world, but actually aren’t comfortable with it.

A: Do you find that the projects where you are engaged with multiple disciplines and there is a positive, diplomatic dialogue that the project is better? Or could you define a relationship between the quality of the project and the process of the project.

J: It is not always that the collaboration makes a better project. Sometimes those boundaries between the disciplines make a better project. I know collaboration is a big buzzword but autonomy and artistic authorship are also important. It’s knowing what is right for what project. And just to be explicit about it, my thing is to be upfront. I don’t like lack of clarity and ambiguity. I like to know what is on the table and what is at stake and work within that. One thing we have within our office is a healthy debate about ideas and it isn’t personal. At the end of the day, someone has to choose a winner and present that to the client. Being aware of the bracket between your artistic point of view and the collaborative aspects and having a healthy dialogue about it that isn’t passive aggressive. And we are constantly learning how to navigate those waters. It’s important to constantly work on that.

Samantha Kokenge | Vinceza

A: The seniors are working on collaborative projects right now. And I can tell for some people it is a struggle.

J: It’s hard to say in words that “this isn’t working for me” or “You don’t seem like you’re being collaborative” and then they say “Well you don’t seem like you’re being collaborative!” And what is collaboration? Is it about compromise, and sometimes it’s about finding boundaries. Which is okay. It’s not mushing your ideas. Like if you try to merge Faulkner and Hemingway together it would be crap. You can’t get a good sentence out of those two. They’re both great on their own. And sometimes that is the way it goes.

A: So your projects seem to be uniquely suited to the public spaces that take them on, regardless of occupancy. How do you achieve a response like the Miami Beach project in a public space with such variable occupancy?

J: Part of the responsibility for us as designers and landscape architects is understanding the full context of a design problem and finding the issues that are holding back the potential of a site. There might be other powers at play, be it stormwater, flooding, or in the case of the Miami Beach project the Lincoln Road Mall UNDERSTANDING THE was just a block away and that was the place to be. So thinking of this place FULL CONTEXT OF A in the context of all of the other pieces and parts is really important, and for every project it is very different.

DESIGN PROBLEM

We knew that in Miami Beach there was a great idea of a program, which actually came from Michael Tilson Thomas, to bring projection of concerts to the outside environment, to give it a really democratic feel. So we ask what that experience will be like, how it will feel, what will the atmosphere be. Something dreamy, very Miami with palm trees, the FINDING THE ISSUES THAT romance of that was very easy to imagine. ARE HOLDING BACK THE

POTENTIAL OF A SITE What was harder in that project was layering in the daytime demand of the city. The space is used a lot, in many different ways, and the program that they wanted would have overstressed the park and required many more hardscape areas. So we were very strong in saying that this place has to remain green, soft, and shady, in the day, every single day, or no one will want to be here. So we pushed back pretty hard on that program, demonstrating what hardscape would look like and talking more about how the space could be used if it didn’t have those programmatic demands. Our ultimate goal was to find a lot of green and a lot of shade. So in the day it’s very relaxing, it feels a bit like a retreat, and at night it has a lot of open views so that it has the flexibility to support a lot more people than we ever anticipated. For other projects, we perform heavy research into the environmental context, urban design context, cultural history, artistic history, in order to understand what the forces

THE DESIGN WILL REQUIRE MULTIPLE RESPONSES AND MULTIPLE LAYERS

are. Then through the design process we do a lot of iteration and testing of what the right thing is. So we are generating a lot of options and testing them against the client and for ourselves to find the right thing to do.

A: What is the information and research model you use, in terms of talking to locals, gathering information, etc?

J: Because we work all over the place, we always have a local team of consultants that we work with. It might be architects, landscape architects, environmental engineers, civil engineers. We ask questions, we ask for tours. In Houston, for example, we really wanted to discover the architectural fabric because it wasn’t immediately evident. So we asked for a tour, and got a five-hour tour from the local guru at Rice University, and we learned basically that there is no vernacular in Houston. This led us at least to say “Ok, the architectural style here at the Houston Botanical Garden can be new, different, contextual to the Botanical Garden.” There are obviously lots of resources online, and I’ll just use Houston again as an example because we knew that the flooding would be critical to the design of the place, our client alerted us to the website of the Flood Control District which has a ton of information on flood management and restrictions within the floodplain. So we just have to do a ton of research and we make what we call a phone book, full of everything we could possibly need to know, and then we can distill it once we find the drivers of a project. Teasing out these drivers is important too. It could be an economic situation or an environmental situation, but it’s usually a combination of everything. So the design will require multiple responses and multiple layers, and we think of projects in this way from start to finish in terms of converging these layers and deciding where to apply what we know.

Can you talk about circulation and spatial experience in the context of the Houston project? It seems both precisely articulated and yet responsive to some sort of organic instruction.

Bryce Donner l Plant Design l Acomb

SETTING UP A SORT OF FRAMEWORK THAT ALLOWS FLEXIBLE IMPLEMENTATION OF PROGRAM

J: A big part of a Botanic garden is that it’s different than a park.

It’s not just a place of leisure, the purpose of a botanic garden is research and science. How they attract audiences is through other programs that they put on. The greatest example is that a botanic garden is a sort of zoo for plants. Botanic gardens collect the DNA of all of one plant species and they hold it and become the experts of that particular plant. They are entrusted with keeping that plant in safe condition for the future. But nobody is interested in that, a few are, but most just want to see the beauty of the plant. There are some gardens that are just display gardens and they only show the most beautiful kind of the plant species. The “best in show” gets showed off. The botanic garden that we are working on is still very early, so we haven’t defined with our client what kind of research, how much research, or what kind of display they want. So we are setting up a sort of framework that allows flexible implementation of the program in the future. In our approach was that we love the site, it’s embedded in the neighborhood, it’s a weird shape, it’s surrounded by water and are able to organize the logistics on one side of the site and reach the gardens by crossing the bridge and getting to an island. Within that island there are gardens to the south but the island is a special moment, a special opportunity. It is surrounded by the bayou so we wanted to create a really cultivated, naturalistic bayou experience. Which is really what Houston’s environmental identity is, it’s the bayou city. There are also other landscapes in the Houston area that are also really important but are also not evident when I WAS INTERESTED IN you go to visit. So we have places for those natural landscapes. Then DESIGN AND I FELT THAT we created a kind of orthogonal place with the cultivated gardens THE NATURAL WORLD would be and where the display gardens would be. To organize and to orient people we created a shaped structure that becomes a way WAS CALLING TO ME. to manage the intense times of year.

Nathania Martinez | UF SCASLA Parking Day

Whether it’s intense rainfall or heat, you are always able to be under the shade and comfort of a shade structure. But always have access to the gardens in a formal way. Gardens are a place where you want to get lost. You don’t want to feel like you’re on a circuit with check boxes so there isn’t just one loop. There are a lot of loops and ways to meander and get lost. That was very important to the organization of it.

A: We talked earlier about how you were raised in Arizona. How do you think that sort of desert landscape affected you as a designer?

PEOPLE DESERVE BEAUTY AND QUALITY ALL OVER THE WORLD

J: My father always took me hiking and at the time I didn’t realize how

that was impressing upon me. I didn’t realise what I wanted until I was in college getting a degree in something else and I had one of those moments. I happened to be on a hike and I saw it wasn’t in the desert and I saw ferns and thought, this is incredible, this is art right in front of me. The beauty of the plants and how they were composed together. I didn’t know about landscape architecture, which probably a common narrative among a lot of landscape architects. You don’t know that you can do this stuff for a living. But I knew in my heart that there was something more meaningful that I could do to contribute to making the world a better place. I was interested in design and I felt that the natural world was calling to me. It was one of those moments in your life where it’s all clear. Then I had the luck in my career to be able to go to a lot of different landscape types and be able to travel the world. It’s always been a fascination of mine that people always think the desert is so tough, but it’s actually delicate. There is always a story behind every landscape and every ecology and I’m always interested in that when I go to a new place to work. The combination of soils, climate, temperature, rainfall, everything that creates a landscape and makes it potent in some conditions is what makes it tick for me.

A: Are there any domains in which you bring your background in fine arts to bear on a project?

J: My background is in art, and because I believe that good design matters to everybody and people deserve beauty and quality all over the world, it should be that good design is everywhere. On a meta-level, when I was deciding what I wanted to do with my career I found that I had a very strong social mission as well. I was engaged with nature and design, but I felt that in making things the way I was making them I wouldn’t contribute to what mattered. I really wanted an THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE opportunity to bring the beauty of nature to many people, I wanted IS TO ENGAGE WITH to give people a chance to get out of the house and relax and sit. This is really why I became and landscape architect, and that’s why I AND BENEFIT THE MOST really focus on public space in cities. I think the biggest challenge is NUMBER OF PEOPLE to engage with and benefit the most number of people, so I focused

I WAS IN A BIT OF A CONUNDRUM SO I FIGURED I WOULD DO THE INVERSE

on public work in cities. When I got out of college, the principal at the first firm I worked with asked me to work on a college campus project, and I said no. I didn’t want to work on a campus because that was really a project for a privileged group of people. A: Where did you go to school?

J: I received my Bachelors from Northern Arizona University in Fine Arts and then I took some time off. I knew I wanted to be a landscape architect but I didn’t want to go right into school. So I spent some time in Montana, skiing, hiking, and serving coffee. Enjoying time off. Then I went back to grad school at Utah State University, which is in Northern Utah in the middle of nowhere, completely isolated. That was interesting because when I was thinking about school and working and living in these small western towns and how I just loved that life. I love places like Jackson, Derango, Bozeman Montana. And I thought I’ll be a landscape architect and I’ll work on large scale landscape preservation projects or restoration of mines and other over exploited landscapes. I’m just going to work on making the west more beautiful. Small town planning. So I went to school and Utah has a very strong connection to the natural resources department and they also have a good regional planning “arm”. So I went there and all of the sudden realized that I don’t want to do this, I’m not interested in policy, I’m not interested in GIS. I don’t want to work for the forest service, park service, the government, or the bureau of land management. Because also I WAS 34 YEARS OLD AND at the same time I was hearing a lot about entitlement issues. I KNEW IF I DIDN’T GET For example, Californians were upset because all these new people were coming in and the Californians were already new to OUT OF DENVER NOW, I’M these cities. There were these trust fund kids that were building NEVER GOING TO LEAVE McMansions and they were getting grumpy. I realized I didn’t want to deal with them because they have such a great life and all they were doing was complaining about these luxurious things. I was in a bit of a conundrum so I figured I would do the inverse which would be instead of making these beautiful areas out west and preserving the land I would work in cities and make cities better places to live so they would never leave these cities to go to their small towns. Once I decided to work in cities, at that time, there was no way I could imagine working in NYC. It was scary. But I kind of built my way up. So I was in this school that was absolutely not an urban design school and certainly not a school that dealt with urban context. So I had to ask my professors if my plans were going to work out and if they would help me. Since I would have to craft my own curriculum and study. They were super supportive and helped me get an internship in Denver which was the biggest city around. And that led to me getting a job at that firm. And I tried to focus on public space projects in cities. I was at that firm for 7 years or so. I had the possibility of staying there and building my career. But I figured I was 34 years old and I knew if I didn’t get out of Denver now, I’m

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never going to leave. I really wanted that chance. At that time people were starting to make recruiting calls and I was invited to talk to a firm in Boston. And I thought to myself, why would I move to Boston? It’s a great city but it’s not THE city. By that time I had been traveling a lot to New York and I had a trip planned. So I decided to set up some informational interviews and just see who is out there and what they are doing. I had an informational interview and was handed a job offer the next day and that was something I couldn’t turn away from. 3 weeks later I was living in New York and I was sort of shocked and stunned that I was living there! What am I doing? I didn’t know anybody. I left everything behind. But there was an opportunity and I went for it. It was hard couple of years since it’s a big city and making friends is hard, building your network is hard. Everyone I knew was two time zones away and I was constantly subtracting 2 hours from my life. And the firm I worked for was fantastic but then I got an opportunity to shift over to West 8. Actually, I made IT’S A VERY EGALITARIAN the opportunity to work there. I called them after they won a competition and asked if they needed someone to work for them FIRM, WE DON’T WANT TO and that I wanted to work for them, and I got hired. PUT PEOPLE INTO BOXES

A: How did you find West 8? How did you know you wanted to work for them? What was that process like?

J: American landscape architecture has many great architects. But there is a different point of view on landscape from West 8. You can read about it and see that and that’s what I did. Their founder Adriaan Geuze has slightly unusual writings since they’re European and have a different culture. One of the first things he said to me was “I need help understanding you Anglo Saxons. For him it is a big cultural leap to work in America. America is very different. I was hired without really having an idea of what I would be doing. It’s a very egalitarian firm, we don’t want to put people into boxes, we want to allow people to find their strengths and grow into them. I started by working on

Governors Island and I saw an opportunity to work on projects that were complex and provide advice on interacting with the client. I was able to provide for these other layers of the design process that were important. Such as public input process, which is a unique American thing. I was demonstrating leadership and commitment. We started with the focus of our company would be delivering Governors Island. And not to be naive that it was a small task. We had to build American specifications and work with their codes and laws. We had to build up everything from scratch, such as our letterhead! It had to be an 8.5 by 11 letterhead! All of our systems had to be built for America. We had to build a firm at the same time as a project. Once we got Governors Island and our comfort zone we were able to say, what else can we do? Let’s try PROJECTS THAT WILL BE to find clients that understand us and we can build relationships with. BUILT AND RELATIONSHIPS Our marketing development wasn’t to just email a list of architects and have meet and greets, it was more like filtering the phone calls THAT WILL BE MUTUALLY that we were getting. Asking if we wanted to work with them and SUCCESSFUL if they understood us. Because everything is a relationship and you only have some much time to invest into a relationship so you want to make them worthwhile. So, unless you’re here to take over the world in which case you take on all the projects. But we want to stay small and take on the best projects, and be selective. Which is a luxurious situation. So we are really focused on projects that will be built and relationships that will be mutually successful. Part of the reality from the business side was that we had to expand our portfolio from just massive, multi-faceted projects to projects that were more developers or smaller scales. So there were a lot of dynamics and it was a lot of fun. So now we are looking at what the next five years will bring and what those successes will be. A: It seems to me that the office answers questions of finding human scale in these super structure scale projects very effectively does that come from your living in NYC or how Europeans treat public spaces? J: Sometimes the contrast is really good. It’s the contrast of the intimacy and vulnerability that makes places potent. So there isn’t a rule of thumb. But we work in 3D, we immediately build a 3D model and get down to IT’S THE CONTRAST OF the eye level. We throw like a hundred people into this model and THE INTIMACY AND try to understand that scale. It’s very hard to replicate that and VULNERABILITY THAT even as many years as we have worked in it, it’s hard to look at something in plan view and say “I understand scale”. Maybe the MAKES A PLACE POTENT masters can. To understand scale you need to build a model and get at eye level. Which we do straight away. And then I think the art of playing up that method is a really fun idea. How you play that up is the fun part.

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Shannon Mallon | East Asia

PSYCHOPATHOLOGIES OF SPACE A: ARCHITRAVE D.T.: DYLAN TRIGG

Thursday, Nov.5, 2015 Dylan Trigg: Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellow at the University of Memphis, Department of Philosophy and at University College Dublin, School of Philosophy.

A: What is your interpretation of process, and what does “the process” mean to you? D.T.: One of the big questions in contemporary philosophy is “What is the self?” - “What is ‘I’” - “What is the source of identity,” etc. There are various ways that one can respond to this question, and one traditional response is that what constitutes my sense of self is something like continuity - the fact that I have memory, the fact that I live in time, the fact that I have a past, the sort of arc of becoming a self from childhood, with memory. The ability to render this coherent narrative. Other people believe that what constitutes the self is something more static, i.e. the ability to reason, something WHAT IS SELF? essential like that. I tend to think that there are different dimensions: you have different levels of selfhood, and these unfold in time in a dynamic way such that one can go through life feeling as though your sense of self is at times empowered and reinforced or undermined and destroyed to some extent. So what this has to do with process is that the way in which we form a sense of self is static. There isn’t some “sense of self” that we return to time and time again. There is a constant modulation, a reshaping of self. You may be involved in other situations, in challenges, jobs, relationships, etc. and these of course all play their part in shaping a sense of self, and yet nevertheless throughout that there is some underlying level that enables me, or another human being to say that “Well, this is my sense of self that is either reinforced or diminished.” Although you have this process, this sense that the self is unfolding in time and is rather erratic. It is always my sense of self that is in process. So there’s never a point at which the process becomes so precarious that it thins out and you lose that sense. Of course there are situations such as Alzheimer’s when not only does this narrative sense of self become extremely fragmented, but also this low-level function of narrative and process become diminished. These kinds of processes seem to unfold on different levels, and I guess at some times they can coalesce and at other times they can disperse and diverge in different directions. 41

A: So just to clarify, your interpretation of process is related to a sense of being. D.T.: Yeah, there is a freedom and an openness, but of course the process itself is shaped by other factors. Just to go back to Merleau-Ponty, he writes a lot on Cezanne and finds that the creation of Cezanne’s work is shaped by a certain biography, a certain way of being which is very tense, very anxious, very nervous. But the work of art is not reducible in this way; it’s not just a symptomatic manifestation of his neurosis, the work of art is motivated and emerges from this context but it’s not caused by it. There’s a nice distinction there between a process that comes about through an atmosphere of freedom, one that is open to the world, and one THE WORK OF ART IS that is caused in a linear way by his conditions. It’s not that you can MOTIVATED AND EMERGES say “Here’s one of his landscapes and that was tied up with x, y, z event and that’s the heart of it.” It’s something far more reflexive FROM THIS CONTEXT, BUT and organic. So we can talk about the way this atmosphere gives IT’S NOT CAUSED BY IT. rise to a certain process.

A: On the topic of the self and in the context of your work on phenomenology, can you address the relationship between consciousness and the contents of consciousness? And by this I mean to draw the distinction between the facts of reality and the perception of personal, libertarian self.

D.T.: Well I would definitely make a distinction between consciousness and self. So again, the self is something far more precarious: an image, if you like, that is formed in order to exist in the world in a coherent and unified fashion. Consciousness can exist without that sense of self. For example, one of the things I’m interested in is this state in between wakefulness and sleep called hypnagogia, which is a very distinct kind of consciousness. In ordinary waking life we are at the center of things, and the world presents itself as something that kind of revolves around us even though in objective terms that is just not true. We are one of many, but we have this frame of reference, this horizon, that seems to span out in this centrifugal, absolute here. That of course is reinforced by the narrative, the image, the story that we tell ourselves about a certain person that we are and a certain world that we live in. There are various kinds of clarifications that are made in order for us to function as a particular kind of self.

THE SELF IS SOMETHING FAR MORE PRECARIOUS: AN IMAGE... CONSCIOUSNESS CAN EXIST WITHOUT THAT SENSE OF SELF

Of course this is often challenged by certain situations in life, and by our subjective interpersonal encounters. Other people can contradict the story we tell ourselves of who we are. So as this sense of possession or mastery over one’s self is challenged, the consciousness that underlies that sense of self becomes visible.

In this hypnagogic state, the idea is that the boundaries that seal off oneself from the surrounding world, and draw the distinctions between reality-artifice and memoryimagination tend to loosen. There are often reports of people entering this state for some ten seconds and feeling as though an hour has passed. Images that reportedly have no referential meaning in a person’s life can appear from out of nowhere; one can feel one’s body in a completely different kind of way. Perhaps you have had this experience on the brink of sleep where your body might jerk and enter spasm state, or you can feel yourself falling even though of course you are barely moving.

IN THIS HYPNAGOGIC STATE, THE SELF BECOMES MINIMIZED AND CONSCIOUSNESS IS ABLE TO ROAM MORE FREELY

So there is something there and yet at the same time you are not non-conscious, as it were. There is still this minimal awareness of these images presenting themselves to you or to some variant of you. This is kind of situation in which the image one has of oneself is momentarily suspended, and it seems to be a very privileged state in which the pre-ordained, daily presentation of the world, and of us, is suspended and these distinctions that we make in life (principally between dreaming and wakefulness, and reality and artifice) are dissolved. We seem to be confronted with a sort of pre-conceptual world that is more ambiguous and holds none of those predetermined attributes. From recent research we find that this state seems to be productive because it can reveal attributes and reveal to us a way of being and a way of attending to the world that is ordinarily concealed in what is otherwise a very rigid and narrowly construed perception. So in this hypnagogic state, the self becomes minimized and consciousness is able to roam more freely, and although there is still this minimal self that identifies my consciousness, this state can be suspended until we fall into dreaming where then the self returns. Of course dreaming is a strange world, but it is nevertheless more consistent with wakefulness than hypnagogia. It’s something like a parallel, where the image is reintegrated and returned.

A: A particularly useful feature of consistently achieving meditative states is that the conventional idea of “self” dissolves, and is shown to be at best illusory. Is there a discreet relationship between processes like deep-cycle meditation and hypnagogia?

ALTHOUGH YOU CAN’T WILL IT THERE IS A WAY ONE READIES ONESELF FOR IT

D.T.: Yeah I think there is. I don’t practice meditation, but I think the research indicates that there is. A lot of the literature on hypnagogia suggests that deep relaxation is a prerequisite, and although you can’t will it there is a way one readies oneself for it. So one of the things I have done with [hypnagogia] is to look at it from the perspective of anxiety. It’s typically presented as this kind of welcome state in which productivity and creative thought can open up, and you kind of take leave of yourself and a new horizon opens up. This does presuppose a certain willingness and tolerance to

loosen those boundaries that ordinarily keep us in place. What I have been working on recently is the proposal that in cases of anxiety this hypnagogic state, far from a state to be welcomed, is in fact a state to be dreaded. This is because it presupposes the felt destruction of oneself as being a very definite thing, so in some case studies anxious people have found this hypnagogic state to be a threat to the stability of the self. The images that appear and the experience of the body is incompatible with what is otherwise a very richly constructed sense of self. There can be an ambiguity depending on the mood of the body and the approach. A. Could you actually go ahead and flesh out the arguments that you’re making in Phenomenology of the Anxious Body?

D.T.: I’d need to clarify that we are talking about people with phobic anxiety, and spatial phobias in particular. I am not claiming to speak for people with generalized anxieties, social anxiety, etc. Those are parts of it, but this is anxiety before an object or space. So the basic claim is that phobically anxious people have an intolerance for ambiguity. Most of us are able to get around in the world without relying on a fixed sense of home or a fixed sense of selfhood in order to get around and survive. Agoraphobic people, for example, have to delineate the world into clear clusters in order to navigate, so they segment the urban space or the world into safe-dangerous and homely-unhomely distinctions. Once that kind of construction is in place, they are then able to get around the world without encountering this sort of anxious periphery, this borderland between the homely and the unhomely. This kind of claim as to anxiety in what I am calling the “anxious body” begins with the claim that people who are prone to phobic anxiety have to rely on a very rigid sense of self, such that there is a complete rejection of anything that encroaches upon or infringes that sense. Here’s another illustration: a lot of the time we go through the world and our day experiencing various bodily sensations that appear from nowhere, maybe a headache or something like this, that don’t necessarily have clear causal relationships. For anxious people in a phobic capacity, anything that challenges this normative, stable sense of selfhood lends itself to the feeling that collapse is imminent. So you often have these descriptions of people who enter places that are liable to provoke anxiety who report that they feel as though they literally are going to die. It’s very dramatic, not simply a feeling of discomfort but a real sense that my selfhood as I know it will expire. These people don’t know what to do with discomfort, they don’t know how to deal with an unfamiliarity in their sense of self. Therefore once that sense of discomfort escalates and amplifies, they seal off the world and forge their own world. They insulate themselves so that they can preserve what remains of the stable self.

The freedom that emerges is this kind of scenario is very circumspect and very limited. Ultimately their ability to get around is only possible because of a very strict way of being; they go from A to B without any deviation, they know the limits, they know what to expect under certain circumstances. They know what to expect from spatiality, of intersubjectivity and so forth. So it’s really this mode of trying to preserve boundaries that define a sense of self in and through time, that is ultimately grounded by a very deep instability and insecurity. It’s very complex and it manifests itself in different ways and has different sorts of modes to it, but the basic sense is that there is an intolerance of experiencing oneself as “other;” in one’s own foreignness, in one’s own strangeness. Personal anonymity is intolerable. When you get a wound on your arm, the wound heals, a scar forms, and the arm is restored. You are not involved in that scenario, the body does it. The body has its own life. There are a lot of things that the body takes care of that you aren’t really privy to and can’t control, all of the physiological stuff. Not only that, it’s your capacity to walk around. Your ability to get around is in some way predicated on the idea of the body being able to map out the arc of spatiality without you calculating in advance how many steps it takes to get from A to B.When you get around in life, you are not really thinking about what the body is doing in order for it to function in this way. One of the other things for phobically anxious people is that there is a divisive relationship with the body; there is a lack of trust in the body. So when one is in the airport, the supermarket, in these kinds of situations that are prone to elicit anxiety, it’s a radically different kind of body than one that is at home. This radical kind of unpredictability, this uneven quality, leads to the sense that the body can only be trusted in very specific circumstances. There isn’t this reliability, this foundation that most of us have. We don’t go through our day expecting our body to collapse. So that’s a kind of expression where the disordered relationship with the body is also a disordered relationship to spatiality. It’s a disordered relationship in subjectivity to social existence and so forth, but all of them involve this inability to handle “other.”

A: So that we can all be on the same page, as a philosopher what is your working definition of phenomenology?

D.T.:

There are many avenues to that, I suppose one thing would be that a phenomenologist is concerned with everyday experience and what is often overlooked in experience. So I guess one of the points of departure for phenomenology is that we have an experience of the world as it is taken for granted, as it is habitually presented to us, and that can often mean we have a sedimented experience of the world such that things can become tacit or implicit. Not seen perhaps in their depth or in their richness. So phenomenology urges us to take a step back, not to deny the existence of the world as it is presented to us but to suspend our judgements as to what we do or do not know

about it, to suspend our judgements as to how it presents itself to us. The power of phenomenology is that it ultimately seeks to renew our relationship with the everyday world in all its complexity and richness rather than denying it as if somehow deficient. Through this process we almost become defamiliarized from it. One of the main tenets of phenomenology is this idea of the reduction, or the sort of bracketing of presuppositions about how the world operates. And it’s not just world in a global sense, you can take it in a very specific frame of reference. So there are questions like “What is it to experience myself getting on a bus and going to school,” “What is it for me to experience a shopping mall or a supermarket.” Anything ranging from these kinds of questions to “What is it for a person to feel persecuted or singled out.” So the range of topics is very broad, indeed it’s completely open. One of the great strengths of phenomenology is that it doesn’t ascribe content, rather it’s a framework and a style of doing philosophy and it’s a way in which we approach the world. But ultimately yeah, this defamiliarization is the mark of things becoming renewed in their original capacity, their original facticity. So this includes a range of very complex factors; it’s not only that to think about what it is to get on a bus involves attending to the bodily experience in the subjective dimension, the social dimension, and the temporal dimension. Then one would have to think about the way in which this kind of experience is interpreted in a pre-reflective way. So everyone’s experience of public transport is of course very different; for some people it’s a problematic relationship, for other people it’s a rather cohesive and unified experience. There are always these different levels of how things are given to us, and phenomenology is very good at negotiating that.

A: How do you begin to refamiliarize yourself with things that you have personally dissociated from?

D.T.: The idea is that there is this process of defamiliarization such that things obtrude and protrude into our world in a kind of strangeness, but of course they are not suspended in that strangeness. They are ultimately reintegrated into our experience, and of course in order to function in the world we need a certain sense in which things can be integrated and taken for granted. Things can’t stand out in some sort of uncanniness, so ultimately there’s a kind of dynamic move between hyper-attention to the way in which things present themselves and the fall back into our pre-theoretical experience. A phenomenologist named [Maurice] Merleau-Ponty is particularly interested in art, and he especially privileges art as a way to study how things are organized and then how things become strange. So how art, through its own kind of logos and reasoning,

can assemble itself into a coherent whole. It’s not as though when things become defamiliarized they lose referential meaning; it’s a process by which their relationship to the surrounding world is crystallized and reinforced.

In the Disinterested Space essay you say that “Establishing a disinterested judgement, devoid of desire, is necessary to the free delight and the beautiful.” I think this is in response to some Kantian deontological concepts, but I’d like you to talk about that and then touch on the role of disinterested judgement in assessing ethics and space.

D.T.: Yeah so that line you mention is Kant’s idea, that’s the kernel of his Aesthetics. It involves something loosely parallel to the phenomenological suspension, i.e. that you take a step back and try to put aside your presuppositions, and then you just sort of lose yourself in the play of form and content without trying to evaluate it in instrumental terms. One of the things I’m quite interested in is the idea of non-place or homogenous place, so in that essay I’m exploring the extent to which certain places lend themselves to this thing that is not exactly voyeurism, but certainly is this gaze which doesn’t single out things with the intent of employing them to be used. It’s a sort of disinterested observation of the unfolding of things. Hotel lobbies, for example, are often seen as these ephemeral, transitory places that you simply go through in order to get from A to B. If you linger, it’s kind of seen as a waiting; waiting for someone to appear or waiting for transport to arrive, something like this. So it’s not a place in which dwelling or staying with a place tends to happen, and in that way it presents itself as an advantageous place to see to what extent a place can elicit some of these Kantian ideas. I believe Erik Satie was the first to conceive of music that would play the same role. It would be music played in the back of an art gallery such that the spectator isn’t immediately drawn to it as an object of attention, but it just sort of enhances or provides tacit context against which the engagement with the art can take place. Then of course people like Brian Eno have composed music specifically for airports. It’s not music meant to be an object of one’s overwhelming attention, but it’s music that provides a background context to shape and give what is otherwise a homogenous place texture and a felt quality.

A: Do you think there is a way to deal with those ideas in the context of pure space? Like something unprogrammed, something with no itinerary that might characterize a space

in that particular set of ways.

D.T.: I mean my only reservation would be that in any space we carry our bodies with us, and our bodies are laden with cultural value, personal value, affective value. So I’m not necessarily convinced by the idea that we could have a space of this sort of pure neutrality. Like indifferent space, as a sort of blank canvas upon which other things can be written on and inscribed. Already within this kind of homogenous canvas-like space there would be specific kinds of relationships with that space that would preclude an idea of purity in that sense. You know, if you think about your experience of a white cube in these kind of prosaic terms, of course one comes to that kind of space in different states of being. Your experience of that kind of space when you are fatigued or drunk is different than how you experience it when you are alert and sober. Your experience of that space is going to be different when you are depressed, melancholic, or joyous, so even within this space that is apparently devoid of specific attributes there will always be something there upon which one’s experience and bodily existence will be played out. That’s not to say that we can’t get near to something like an idea of pure space, I think we can. When we walk into a room like this [Prof. Hailey’s office], it is not only filled with content but with the presence of people and a kind of history. Now I’m not privy to that history but I am here, and I can testify to the fact that life takes place here, and my dialogue with this room is going to be shaped very much by the specific things within this room. So there is a determinism and a greater emphasis in terms of how the room acts upon me then there would be in a white cube. There will be a different kind of dialogue that I have with a blank space; maybe more minimal, maybe more ambiguous, but there is some sort of relationship that I would have with this space different than the one you would have with the space. So yeah, I think we can get close but there will always be some relational component.

A: So your lecture is entitled Pathologies of Space and Time in the Florida Landscape. Could you unpack how time is different in Florida, or how perception of time is shaped by the Florida Landscape?

D.T.: So the way I develop this in the talk is through the effect that Cape Canaveral and NASA have had, and the way that the astronaut’s experience has evolved. Their concept of time is somewhat warped, although this I guess is exclusive to people who have seen the earth from afar. So if you mean Florida more broadly, for you, me, everyone else, then yeah there is a

sort of peculiar rhythm to Florida in terms of the distinctions between seasons. It’s very ambiguous, I mean there isn’t really a distinction. I used to come here a lot as a kid from winter in the UK, and I began to understand the unending sunlight and the unending heat that pierces through the idea that winter should be a time of snow, cold, and so forth. Nevertheless I would come and see Santa Claus in the sun, and that’s very unusual. It’s atypically, but I liked it, I became attached to it. I was here a couple years ago and one morning, as I was drinking my orange juice, enjoying the view and the heat, then I flew to Chicago six hours later where it’s very cold. It was hard for me to synthesize how in such a short amount of time I could go from one climate and one way of being in the world, i.e. this very relaxed, loose way of being, to literally shivering in the freezing Chicago streets. It was a brittle, brutal contrast. I suppose Florida has a sense of being stuck in time, stuck in this heat. I live in Memphis now, which is not quite as consistent, but it does have that quality in the summer of static heat. It’s oppressive, motionless, you can’t escape it. So I don’t know, maybe after you spend a long time here you would have a similar sense of time coming to a standstill. Maybe you would yearn for that rhythm, for those seasonal changes.

A: On the topic of Tennessee and the UK, how do you think that living in various places over the course of your life has affected your perception?

D.T.: When I lived in the UK I was moving around a lot, and somewhere along the way I became fixated and sometimes haunted by the transitory quality not only of my own moving around, but also of the fact that people had been there before me, and other people will be there after me. I had one situation in a studio apartment that never really functioned as a home, more of a geometrical box that I sort of installed things into. It never achieved a sense of home, it never achieved permanence in a way that I could relate to other than in this sense of a unit of space that I was visiting, a unit of space that was literally putting a roof above my head. But was a kind of oppressive backdrop rather than something that I absorbed or developed some report with. In another situation my house was broken into. Many people have this experience, but it’s a kind of violation and you have this understanding of the radical contingency of “home,” as lacking permanence; it’s not the ultimate sanctuary that one can return to and be concealed, protected, insulated from the contingency of the outside world. Rather than all of those dimensions, contingency is contained within the home, albeit at a lesser scale and concealed in more sophisticated ways. Then I moved to Paris [redacted] and I was suffering from agoraphobia at the time, which defined my relationship to this place in a very specific way. I had sort of forged

my home within my Parisian apartment, and mind you there are worse things to do, but nevertheless the rest of the city was a mystery to me because I could only inhabit my neighborhood. I’m not sure if you know Paris but the bridges there are very small, pedestrian bridges really. I couldn’t cross these bridges, basically, because they marked the point at which this familiar area ceased to be familiar and became this unpredictable world. Anyway, that passed and Paris opened up, then I moved to Dublin and back to Paris, and then to Memphis. I was spending time back and forth in Memphis and Tokyo, but Memphis is it’s own kind of place in a very peculiar way. There is a certain atmosphere in Florida, an atmosphere in east coast cities, west coast, midwest, but I had been unable to plot or to conceive of Memphis, and everything that I did to anticipate it didn’t amount to much. It is very insulated, not only from the world but also from America in a way. It feels disconnected, but that has the effect of giving it a very strong sense of place on its own terms.

Do you want to talk about how you treated your agoraphobia or just leave that on the table?

D.T.: No no, we can talk about it. I had tried various things, but when you say “treated” you have to understand a couple of things. So in some capacity it’s not a problem for me any more, I can roam freely, but I think about agoraphobia as a way of managing and localizing anxiety. Ultimately anxiety always finds a way to reappear. I wouldn’t say I’m agoraphobic now, but I do now have this issue with flying which for me is the manifestation of the energy that formed that agoraphobic impulse displaced into something new. It’s an experience where the boundaries and the defenses are put into question. So back to your question, it was really trial and error. There were literally situations in which I was trying to cross a particular bridge, and was just stuck at the beginning or the middle. That pattern continued for quite a while, and there were other situations in which I would venture out into public squares, supermarkets, exposed spaces, but would only be able to do it in a very controlled way, like if the supermarket was on the verge of closing. Then one day in Paris, I made it from the Right Bank to Ile Saint-Louie, and that had a ripple effect such that all of the other zones that I had cordoned off became de-mystified, and the process began. There’s a kind of empirical recognition and sensation that this anxiety is to some extent and illusion.

So it purely is just an issue of not knowing what your experience will be in these particular kinds of spaces?

D.T.: Yeah it’s really a complete uncertainty as to how one is going to respond; whether or not one is going to collapse, going to do something irrational, be driven mad by something. One of the anxieties that comes up in situations like this is not only “What lies on the other side?” but “How am I going to get back?” Will I have the capacity to return to the place that I’ve come from, and not only return in a spatial sense but also return as the same person. Additionally, this agoraphobic tendency is not entirely undesired; there’s a sort of will in it, there’s an element of keeping things in place. Those are the terms of it, and there’s an elegance. Some people take up OCD, others withdraw from the world. Everyone finds their own way, but there are ways. One can lead a life, but it’s a restricted life, and even then there’s a sort of greater anxiety about whether this demystification process is going to undermine that infrastructure, undermine the function agoraphobia has in keeping things in place.

Marisa Waddle | D5 | Hofer

04 URBAN CONTEXT

POSITIVE PROCESS NATURE + BOUNDARIES WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT COLLAGE/DECOLLAGE STEPS OF PROCESS DIALOGUE OF SCALE QUESTIONS + ANSWER

Adriana Contarino | Light Study

WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE SARAH RUTLAND Over several decades, many attempts have been made to finally reel in the answer to the slippery question of why women leave architecture. Women make up nearly fifty percent of architecture students in the United States today but only eighteen percent of the profession, and there is an exponentially declining pattern of working women in design as the position of power increases. Historically, architecture has been a male-dominant field, and women have been discouraged, if not banned, from participating. However, now that the gates to the architectural “Promised Land” have been opened, why is it that after graduation the female presence in practice dwindles until there are only a handful of exceptions at the top? Feminism can be a scary word. It comes with a lot of weight, opinions,and cultural implications. Like architecture, feminism and feminist ideology is continuously evolving—growing into different styles and forms holding different identities and sets of values. But what unites feminist thought, through time, context, and political framework, is its strive for equality and equal opportunity. Feminism in architecture asks us to shine a light on the ignored (no matter how uncomfortable) and start making changes. It makes us ask:

WHY ARE WOMEN LEAVING ARCHITECTURE? WHAT DOES LEADERSHIP LOOK LIKE? WHAT MAKES A GOOD DESIGNER? WHO ARE WE DESIGNING FOR? HOW CAN I MAKE SOMETHING MEANINGFUL?

Ana McIntosh | D2 | Hofer

The original, all-boys-club of architecture was not designed for women (and especially not for mothers). So why not redesign? In order to create innovation that will sustain the health of the architectural practice, we must start by reshaping the rules by which it is governed. One of largest obstacles women face today while climbing the proverbial “ladder” towards success are the institutional policies (or lack thereof) that reinforce cultural biases and prevent advancement in the workplace. The contexts that we create for ourselves inevitably affect our future; consequentially, we have the responsibility to design our environments (academic, professional, personal) in order to positively shape resulting cultures. In order to retain women in the field and promote equality in practice, issues of unconscious discrimination and everyday genderbias must be acknowledged and addressed not only in practice, but sooner—in the classroom.

Carol-Anne Rodrigues | D3 | Zajac

Gender and diversity are not solely concerns for women. Rather, they are issues for the profession as a whole and for the global community. By excluding women and minorities from the field, valuable perspectives are lost in the discussion on how to use and organize space—how to design for those who are often overlooked and underserved. Such persistent lack of diversity in the field inherently affects the spaces and communities produced, exemplifying the need to create social and political structures in order to maintain diversity in designers and resulting community identity. In her book, Designing for Diversity, Kathryn H. Anthony writes:

“THE LACK OF DIVERSITY IN THE ARCHITECTURAL PROFESSION IMPEDES PROGRESS NOT ONLY IN THE FIELD, BUT ALSO IN THE AMERICAN SOCIETY AT LARGE. THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, ARCHITECTS CREATE PLACES IN WHICH WE LIVE AND WORK FROM. DESCRIMINATION IN THE ARCHITECTURAL PROFESSION CAN LEAD TO DISCRIMINATION IN HOW WE USE THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT.” 45

Architecture is a complex, multifaceted field that requires the contribution of many different types of people in order to create meaningful, innovative contributions to a community. There is no conclusion to the discussion of feminism in architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; there never is. The discourse on feminism in architecture is still growing and will continue to evolve; consequentially, we must evolve with it. Architecture, feminism, and leadership must continuously be investigated though a variety of changing lenses in order to continue creating thoughtful built environments. Celebrating equality in architecture and opening the discussion on gender, diversity, and practice is critical in creating the next generation of responsible architectural leaders, working towards an improved system of power for the future.

Melika Konjicanin | D5 | Hailey

Sara Culpepper | D3 | Blythe

Barrett Weaver | D3 | Zajac

Jaysen Good | D3 | Zajac

“I don’t think that architecture is only about shelter, is only about a very simple enclosure. It should be able to excite you, to calm you, to make you think.” - Zaha Hadid

Tracie Battle | D5 | Nelson

URBAN CONTEXT

POSITIVE PROCESS NATURE + BOUNDARIES WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT COLLAGE + DECOLLAGE STEPS OF PROCESS DIALOGUE OF SCALE QUESTIONS + ANSWERS

Alexis Benton l D2 l Cohen

Idael Cardenas | D2 | Cohen

SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT JONAH GOLDSTEIN-GREENWOOD I think we can all agree that the study of procedural thinking, or metacognition, is a difficult subject to approach in a clean and precise way. We often feel uncomfortable analyzing our own thoughts, let alone laying them on the table for the world to evaluate, so it makes sense that questioning the Ana McIntosh appropriateness of those thoughts as part of a problem-solving method might be even more difficult. Conversation on the subject can be stiff and prying, and even agreeing to talk frankly on the topic opens all parties of the discussion up to a distressing confession: that we may have, for quite some time, been doing a fundamental human function at less than ideal performance. None of us like being wrong, but being wrong about thinking? It is hard to imagine something more unsettling.

l D2 l Hofer

This puts us in an awkward spot. Consider the substitution of the word making for the word thinking in its every appearance in the preceding paragraph. I would argue that this is a reasonable experiment to undertake, insofar as it introduces the basic and extant link between systems of thinking and systems of making. We all understand that they are connected at the hip, but the written product of this experiment seems incongruent at best and offensive at worst. “...the study of procedural making…is a difficult subject to approach…” “...being wrong about making? It is hard to imagine something more unsettling.”

THINKING PROCEDURALLY IS A FUNDAMENTAL PART OF MAKING

Is this true? Well...no, not for most of us. When put in these terms, it becomes clear that being wrong about making comes with the territory. In fact, I pay tuition to be told that I am wrong about making. We all want to be told the exact ways in and degrees by which we are wrong about making, because we want to be better designers. That’s the deal.

It seems logically asymmetric that we take such issue with the claim that the way we think about problems needs improvement, yet we as designers are so receptive to improving our making process. We should be equally open to both ideas because thinking procedurally is a fundamental part of making, if not its entire constituency. Of course we try to better makers, but we often ignore improving the the process (the thinking) in favor of improving the result; that is, we rarely question

the way we structure a process, or why we make the moves we make, or if our process is as efficient as it could be. As such, we can treat “the process” as a study of WE RARELY QUESTION thinking and improve it in the same way we improve THE WAY WAY WE our thinking. If we admit STRUCTURE A PROCESS that it is important to metacogitate, there are two necessarily consequent questions. This short piece is really an attempt to introduce and describe these two issues which I see as central to the architectural process. Isn’t my intuition good enough on the subject of making? Must I really reconsider how I think about solving problems? How do I make my process better? On the first question, I believe it is fair to say that the idea of studying how we think is at least worth consideration. As we can exercise the body, we can exercise the mind, and we accept with at least general ubiquity the value of things like pull-ups because we recognize that the performance of the body can be improved (again, it is really only worth reading further if you accept that mental performance might be likewise improved). The basic distinction here is that in the case of the body, ours are not actively trying to incite us to antiproductive or antisocial behavior. Decades of socio-psychological research demonstrate that we are perniciously poor regulators of desires and urges.

Nicolas DelCastillo l D3 l Zajac

At the risk of hedonism, the natural human ethical and social cocktail seems to involve some combination of unfettered desirefulfillment and free riding. We see evidence of this in pre-agrarian pseudo-civilizations lorded over by the fat, the pugnacious, and the most prolific reproducers. When we likewise fail to manage our intuitions at scale in our modern societies, we become wards of the state or prisoners of the justice system. Career criminals and overeaters little more than serial victims of intuition.

Ana McIntosh l D1 l Cohen

Now clearly we are not all criminals; yours and my failure to regulate our intuitions tends to have much less severe consequences. We can, however, understand making in the context of response and regulation. Unfortunately, even the most studious among us are likewise daily victims of urges and desires, and it clearly inhibits our making. When we critically question the contents of IS IT NECESSARY TO our minds, it became clear that we are periodically distracted, and we are CODIFY THE PROCESS rarely able to string together the 4 or 5 focused hours required for quality creative output. We check our phones, watch movies, get coffee. Valuable OF MAKING? as we may perceive these “breaks,” they do interrupt the creative process in a meaningful way. This analogy between patrilineal pre-social agrarian humans and the semi-social studio humans might seem loose, but it is useful. When we question the devices by which we manage intuitive responses in our daily lives, it becomes clear that we regulate our thinking and deny our intuition frequently. This is in fact the entire purpose of our modern system of law. Codes of behavior regulation in service of a more peaceful and productive society are what systematized our growth as a species into modern humanity. In the words of the writer and neuroscientist Sam Harris, “Our policy need be better than our intuition.” Here is where the comparison becomes quite straightforward. In the studio, our personal policy can help us fine-tune our process, and move away from intuition. Katie Fisher l D8 l Perez

What I detailed above is the value of a system of codification - the justice system, our moral codes, even setting our alarms in the morning are efforts to use policy to better ends than our intuition would take us. We can return to the first question, which now reads as “Is it necessary to codify the process of making?”

RECORDING AND ORGANIZING HOW WE WORK CAN HELP US CENTER

Recording and organizing how we work can help us center. Codification might be valuable as a reference tool for young designers, a meditation and reflection for older designers, and a procedural/quasi-historical record by which to better understand pedagogy for theorists. If thinking is analogous to making, and we can improve our systems of thought by correcting intuition, then using that same correction (or codification) can help us improve our making and prevent us from relying on our intuitions as part of our processes. Thus the second of the two

questions I detailed might read as such: “How do I codify my process, or find one that works for me?”

Hannah Ulloa + Rob Karcher l

On this question, I will concede defeat. There is no procedural methodology that I can prescribe that perfectly outlines a reliable, foolproof method by which to improve a process. However, through study of my and other’s recorded process D7 l Cohen work, it seems that we are asking some questions on the same general topics. These “idea checkpoints” might manifest in a variety of media, but they all do some work in terms of helping the designer turn a conceptual corner. We can understand codification as it pertains to architecture as the deeper or more complete understanding of what it means to be an idea. These might be the solutions to problems of idea, or the position of new questions that help us move in a WE SHOULD NOT productive direction. In other circumstances we might well be accustomed BE WILLING TO LET to leaning on our intuition to answer some of these questions, and this works well for some of us, but I have argued that thinking more about how we INSPIRATION...TAKE ON approach answering these questions can help us present more genuine and THIS UNIQUELY POWERFUL more logically sound solutions. Again, the following studies will not prescribe any codified method, they will only defend the value of us each personally POSITION AS ARBITER finding a reliable and consistent approach to the issues. OF OUR SUCCESS

2 Examples of Codification

Starting Starting is hard. I’m not breaking new ground here. Many of us have trouble starting personal and professional projects, and this is primarily a symptom of the inflated role of inspiration. American creative culture worships inspiration in its commercials and its studios, and this has the same deleterious effect as dependency on any other fleeting and vaporous experience. We should not be willing to let inspiration, as it is currently perceived, take on this uniquely powerful position as arbiter of our success without at least questioning its value. The first and most obvious query is whether we even need inspiration at all. One of the great myths perpetrated by under-informed students and professors is that the work of cardinal artists and creative minds is incepted by some kind of inspirational intervention. Ten minutes on google cuts through this patent falsehood like butter. Ana McIntosh l D1 l Cohen

To quickly clarify, “inspiration” in this context is the outside idea or image that seems to do exclusive work in helping a project find a direction, and this object of reflection is not the result of study or analysis. Are inspiration and creation mutually exclusive? Of course not. Some very productive people have claimed to rely on “inspiration” in one or another of its vaporous manifestations. These people are few and far between, however, and the vast majority of us need something structured and reliably productive.

Pietro Mendonca l D3 l Belton

Tim Ferriss, in an article on the topic, finds the role of “inspiration” as we typically conceive of it to be a non-factor in the work of classically great writers. This makes perfect sense. If Dvorak or Ticheli sat at the piano waiting for angels to anoint them with piano concertos, modern music would be retarded by decades. It seems obvious with some pointed conceptual analysis, but what seems to be most effective at teasing out creativity is routine and structure. James Clear claims that Franz Kafka, Maya Angelou, and Haruki Murakami stuck to strict schedules and depended on the ARE INSPIRATION AND benefits, both psychological and physiological, afforded by routine.

CREATION MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE?

Structuring the creative process in such a way is essentially a strategy of developing a codified schedule for thinking, and it has a number of benefits. Not only is it easier to work for the longer, uninterrupted blocks of time that I mentioned earlier, but the work tends to be more fruitful as a result of both fundamental changes in brain chemistry and the ease of settling into a routine each day. As a corollary, productivity experts have found that the most disruptive part of the day in most large offices is the meeting, which for every ten minutes it commands can delay productivity of a single worker by close to an hour. Here we see interruptions in their natural environment: veiling distraction in the shroud of productivity.

But does any of this mean that inspiration is bad per se? It actually does not, but the evident value of routine and structure, compared to the diaphanous nature of inspiration, should demonstrate that depending on inspiration to help us begin our projects, instead of sitting down to the table every day, is a way of ignoring the routine in favor of the light bulb.

Sierra Eades + Andrew Bawtinhimer l D7 l Wang

Ideas There is a lot to unpack here, so we should first ground the term “idea” linguistically. Calling something an “idea” can be eminently useful for discourse. This basic dialectical tool plucks an abstraction out of the ether, and expresses it as a grounded concept. Ideas are propositional to one degree or another,i.e. that they propose a positive or negative to an abstraction. They claim it to be either something or not something. Philosophically an idea can be understood to be more than a spike in brain activity and still more than a dialectic resource, which is of course useful but does no more to architecturally describe the concept than neuroscience. Metaphysically, the scientific community is at least reasonably certain that ideas do, in fact, exist. Architecturally, however, none of this is remotely useful. So let’s move on to drivers, and then perhaps return to existential questions later. On examination of the temporality of ideas, it is clear that the UF curriculum biases ideas formulated earlier in a design process. This is by no fault of architectural education, naturally in a design field we need to develop drivers quickly and stick to them. Many of us, myself included, could not operate without a clear and structured set of muscular ideas. If we acknowledge the tantamount importance of operating alongside sound ideas that address a true need questioning the boundaries of typology, it seems a tall task to

Ellen Wood l D5 l Zajac

make such a meaningful commitment in such a short time period. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t our central ideas deserve a little more thought?

Jaysen Good l D3 l Zajac

They do deserve more thought, but they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessarily deserve more time. In order to dedicate more due diligence to ideas, we need not prolong the analysis but make it more efficient. This is actually a dialectic exercise. Although thinking for a period of time about the nature of our drivers is useful, understanding how to talk and write about ideas can yield valuable results. Why is this? Probing the structure of the well-written and well-spoken word genuinely can help us establish hierarchy, a tool from middle school english class, in our set of ideas. On its face this hierarchical view of ideas seems to deny ...WE NEED NOT PROLONG some epistemological conditions of conceptual equity; that is, alongside a THE ANALYSIS BUT MAKE conventional understanding of the brain, all ideas would be equal and equally valuable. In application, however, proceeding with this equity in mind would IT MORE EFFICIENT be clearly counterproductive. We have to favor some ideas over others, for the sake of time and clarity. If our process is not only a study of making but a study of talking and writing about the made, some of our ideas will take on primacy and other will fade slightly. In this way, we can find drivers.

Ana Arenas | D3 | Zajac

A “driver,” essentially, is simply that claim we make about the nature of architecture that we opt to orient cosmetic and thematic aspects of the project around. If the driver is clear and directs the project, it will touch every decision we make as to the construction, the detailing, and the phenomenology of the project. A driver functions like a thesis in that all moves from that point forward should do some WE HAVE TO FAVOR SOME work towards proving the thesis, and it also takes on the same organizing IDEAS OVER OTHERS characteristic; if we write the process our ideas will develop hierarchy and will clarify. At this point we may be able to answer some questions about the nature of ideas and their place in the process. If the link between writing or speaking, and evaluating ideas stands, which I believe that it does, then it seems that on a basic level ideas are things to be codified. They are to be understood according to a strategy that can describe them in terms of their relationship with each other, and they seem to develop fruitfully in this system which can not only organize and relate concepts in terms of their support of one driver, but save valuable time and resources.

Systems We suffer in the creative disciplines from what seems to be an aversion to any concrete claims about both the way we think and the ways in which we can improve thinking, and I elect to characterize us as “suffering” because I think that we are. The two examples detailed above, concerning the application of codification in the realms of inspiration and in the understanding of ideas as dialectic constructions

Panquat Kyesmu l D7 l Perez

demonstrate the clear value in concrete realms of intellectual honesty and time efficiency. Operating under certain parameters, or codes, can make us better designers. A recent trend of empiricism in productivity research promises to finally debunk the fallacy that there are no systems by which we can manipulate the output of a creative process, and we are primed, as a global design culture, to become more productive on a scale of what may very well be orders of magnitude. But again, there is no perfect playlist and not nearly enough Adderall in the world. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s look inward, and critically analyze our processes.

Panquat Kyesmu l D6 l Montoya

61 Alexis Benton l D2 l Hofer

Ana Arenas | D3 | Zajac

The deeper or more complete understanding of what it means to be an idea

Mitchell Clarke + Jessica Philips l G3 l Wang + Gold

Rachel Chon | D2 | Hofer

Idael Cardenas | D1 | Alread

Jamie Marchini | D4 | Wang

What seems to be most effective at teasing out creativity is routine and structure.

Jamie Marchini | D4 | Wang

Ana McIntosh | D3 | Zajac

06 URBAN CONTEXT POSITIVE PROCESS NATURE + BOUNDARIES WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT COLLAGE + DECOLLAGE STEPS OF PROCESS DIALOGUE OF SCALE QUESTIONS + ANSWERS

67 Marisa Waddle | D4 | Jayaswal

THE PROCESS OF EDITING Amelia Linde In the first stages of our academic design careers, we push to produce large quantities of work, including sketches, diagrams, drawings and models. At first it may seem that ‘more’ is better: more complex, more dynamic, more to look at. However, there comes a time when we understand that “absence is as powerful as presence,” bringing the process of editing to attention. Artists Mark Bradford and William Kentridge utilize this technique to think constructively and systematically. These same strategies of a quodlibet can be applied to every facet of architecture including process, presentation, and time. Mark Bradford identifies his process as “Collaging and Décollaging”. He is known for collecting posters, advertisements, and newspapers and collaging them together on a large surface. Bradford takes an electric sander and bravely rubs, scrapes, and grates away the layers he has built up to ultimately create a composed sculptural collage. Beautiful forms, compositions, and systems emerge and the concept is revealed. ‘Collaging and Décollaging’, he describes, is reflective of maps, their abstract grid, their social depth, and their contemporary narrative. Through editing, he forms his pieces and in them, he introduces new systems and interesting anomalies which expose both his ideas and complex process. William Kentridge believes in the use of the pencil and the eraser. Kentridge creates illustrations and composite animations that utilize the power of palimpsest. He draws, erases, and draws again on top of his erasure marks. His process develops narratively and spatially, a skill that architects establish in a similar way. These two artists have developed their systems of creating that involves

Nicholas Acosta | D5 | Nelson

heavy editing; in that process of editing, they make a quodlibet, a mass of systems, a developed and considered project, revealed through the conceptual and physical layers. Their methods of “Collaging and Décollaging” and the use of palimpsest cannot always be directly applied to our architectural projects but both techniques introduce different ways of thinking, and suggest the possibility of an architectural quodlibet. We tend to edit with an aesthetic motive during our design process. We edit and adjust spaces to appeal and function for the human body. We edit for the context and restrictions that are presented, recognizing the project’s individual role. Our considerations in our designs are present in both our conscious and unconscious, reemphasizing the fact that we are constantly censoring ourselves, our thought processes, and ultimately our work.

Lucas Igarzabal | D5 | Hailey

Audrey Reinisch | D5 | Hofer

A quodlibet, when two or more systems work and respond to each other, while still maintaining distinguishable qualities. Typically defined in musical terminology to describe several different melodies combining to create one piece.

Amelia Linde | Curry

D1 | Charlie Hailey

“The Hand has drawn something like a flower and then has began ‘Dawdling’ over this line; The flower has been written, then unwritten; But the two movements remain vaguely superimposed; It is a perverse palimsest” -Roland Barthes

Alex Velasquez | D4 | Wang

A large part of architecture is presentation, a way to sell and explain your thought process. It is imperative to be clear when expressing an informative and logical progression of the thought process and development of a project. Our narratives can be framed in photography, sections, plans and perspectives. In each of these deliverables there is the presence of removed editing. As designers, we have the ability to communicate through exclusions. We decide to remove something or subtract away for clarity, so that our dominant ideas are manifested. The decision to highlight a particular space and to eliminate others is an censoring technique necessary to emphasize the essence of a concept. As humans, we are bound to change our minds. In architecture, styles and movements quickly come and go as times, culture and society change. The original purpose of a building can be irrelevant once another occupant invades and reinterprets the structure for their own purposes. Our interpretation and opinion of a building may change over time and the impact of architecture may cause the way a community edits itself. When a building is built and sustains itself physically, culturally and socially, it is inevitable that it will change its surroundings. The way the building should be informed by context will become the process for when the context needs to respond later on.

Armando Urenda | D4 | McGlothlin

Amelia Linde | Curry

“The drawings don’t start with ‘a beautiful mark’. It has to be a mark of something out there in the world. It doesn’t have to be an accurate drawing, but it has to stand for an observation, not something that is abstract, like an emotion.” -William Kentridge Barret Weaver | D4 | McGlothlin

Amelia Linde | D5 | Hofer

The things we make are not always going to be beautiful or feasible. By learning to edit, we are able to make a multi-faceted architectural quodlibet, complex is its simplicity and simple in its complexities. Because we all have differing experiences and design backgrounds, we will not all agree on a certain programmatic elements, the way a project is presented, or what the next life of a particular project could be; however, it is still imperative to develop and attempt an understanding of intuition and merit. The power to take a step back and the will to remove the excess in order to produce something more is essential the process of editing and crucial for development of a strong ideas.

Paulina Hurtado | D5 | Kohen

Pietro Mendonรงa | D4 | McGlothlin

Anastasia Van Dyke l D8 l Interiors l McGee + Lee Paola Valentin l D8 l Interiors l McGee + Lee

visualize. DIGITAL

RENDERING

THE ARCHITECTURE OF CARLO SCARPA A: ARCHITRAVE R: ROBERT MCCARTER

Monday, Nov.12, 2015 Robert McCarter: Practicing architect, professor of architecture, and author. He is the Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis. From 1991-2007, he was professor of architecture, and for ten years he was director of the School of Architecture, both at the University of Florida.

A: It seems to me that the office answers questions of finding human scale in these super structure scale projects very effectively does that come from your living in NYC or how Europeans treat public spaces?

Sometimes the contrast is really good. It’s the contrast of the intimacy and vulnerability that makes places potent. So there isn’t a rule of thumb. But we work in 3D, we immediately build a 3D model and get down to the eye level. We throw like a hundred people into this model and try to understand that scale. It’s very hard to replicate that and even as many years IT’S THE CONTRAST OF as we have worked in it, it’s hard to look at something in plan THE INTIMACY AND view and say “I understand scale”. Maybe the masters can. To understand scale you need to build a model and get at eye VULNERABILITY THAT level. Which we do straight away. And then I think the art of MAKES PLACES POTENT playing up that method is a really fun idea. How you play that up is the fun part. If we hope to make any kind of culturally resonant buildings, the problem we have today is that not only the general public, but also architects, and too many critics and historians, just consume images of architecture without ever experiencing spaces and places. We think we “understand” the architecture of Carlo Scarpa or Frank Lloyd Wright because we have seen photographs of the exterior of their works. The photographs published in magazines and on-line today are always visually stunning compositions, the weather is always perfect, and people are usually nowhere to be seen. If there are people, they look like they have been photo-shopped in, dressed all in black and in the right exact location at the top of the stairs. Or else the people are blurry, because everyone is moving. But what is this space like to be in, to meet someone, to have an experience, to live in? These buildings are like film stills, staged and scenographic—and the photographs made after they are built are identical to the digital representations that were made during design. Scarpa’s work has provided lessons to many architects, which have nothing to do with their form. Steven Holl’s early work was strongly influenced by the way Scarpa handled

material and placed buildings in context. More recently, Holl’s work suggests his sensitivity to Scarpa’s materials, Corbusier’s handling of forms, and Aalto’s handling of light. Holl’s work is becoming more mature, because you can no longer unravel these strands coming from the works of others—he has made a true synthesis of his own. Holl’s work has staying power because it’s built on the foundation that Reynolds is talking about: the memories of the works of others, the memories of spaces he has visited. Good architects are deeply affected by the places they visit. When they were in Finland teaching, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s work was changed by what they experienced. There’s a clear connection between the 1950s swimming pool at Tapiola WE HAVE TO FIND THE by Aarne Ervi, which they visited, and the 1990s Cranbrook Natatorium of TWBT. Both buildings have the swimming pool set beneath a dark NATURE OF OUR PLACE... ceiling opened by moon and star-like apertures, with tiers of wooden seats along one side, and opening to the landscape on the other side. Yet few architects visit Ervi’s buildings because he is almost unknown outside Finland. We focus on the few over-exposed superstars Scarpa’s work teaches us that place matters, and as a result Scarpa’s work doesn’t make any sense outside of its particular location, much less outside the Veneto region. In a similar way, Wright’s work doesn’t make sense outside of the place where he built it. Yet there are a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright knockoffs all over America. When I first got to St. Louis, I got a call from someone who said, “I need you to come out and look at my house because it’s a Frank Lloyd Wright house.” He gave me the name and address, and I said, “Well it may look like Wright house but it’s not a Wright house.” He insisted it was, and when I asked if he had verified this with the Wright Archives, who have all of Wright’s original drawings, he responded, “Yeah, but they don’t think it’s a Wright house.” He just wants to sell his house for the price a Wright original would bring, and his interest has nothing to do with respect for Wright or knowing what it is like to experience a Wright house. It’s just a brand name. I think we have lost touch with what Wright and Scarpa are all about, which is the uniqueness of each place. Every place in which you build has its own character, and every good building constitutes its own unique qualities of place. We have to find the nature of our place which means looking past all the layers of nonplace thinking like real estate logic and curb appeal. “Curb appeal” means what it looks like when you are standing on the curb. Given that people don’t spend any time on the curb in front of their house, we should only about care what it’s like to be inside the house, and what it’s like to wake up in the morning in it. I live in a 110 year old house built by an architect for his family, made out of solid brick with many glass openings, and it’s a beautiful house to live in because it’s in a neighborhood where you can hardly drive down the street because there are so many people walking, biking, strolling. The neighborhood was founded in 1905, before cars began dominating the logic of how neighborhoods were laid out.

Shannon Mallon | Vicenza

Bryce Donner l UF SCASLA

FLORIDA MODERNS 1950-1970 A: ARCHITRAVE G: MARTIN GUNDERSEN

Friday, September 11, 2015 Florida Moderns - 1950–1970” is assembled and curated by Emeritus Professor Martin Gundersen based on research into the unique and innovative qualities of houses in Florida during this period of time. “In architecture, the period following WWII was remarkable as much for its rich cross-pollination of ideas as it was for its positivistic faith in the future ahead. Innovative ideas and material advances bounced from coast to coast (and between) in a spirit of collaborative optimism. Pierre Koenig, architect of the iconic Case Study House #22 in LA, for example, credits the design of a Florida residence by Paul Rudolph as the inspiration for his first (and personally most pivotal) project. Many of the architects represented here taught simultaneously at the University of Florida, shared common mentors, and crossed paths in practice. They begin to muster a family tree of provocative and cooperative relationships. The result is a body of work whose contribution to the catalog of American Modernist architecture is only beginning to be recognized.” - Excerpt from the curatorial statement by Judith Birdsong

A: We wanted you to expand on from your lecture the concept of: Architecture as gift giving. The gifts received and given when dwelling in a Florida modern house.

G: Tricky, tricky question. The gift giving part is sort of easy, it has to do with your attitude as a designer toward the thing you’re making. Gift Giving is especially crucial when you’re doing a project in architecture. When your making this thing you have put everything into it, so that not only for you but for whoever occupies it will receive gifts that come from committing to the best work you can do. In terms of the Florida house project, the gifts are the linkages to environment and near landscape. I showed a project where a house engages a big oak tree, the architect had to know the scale of the tree, the size of the tree; the orientation and he had to scale the space to the tree. He couldn’t do what he wanted to do; he had to give the gift of space to the tree so that people could receive the gift of the relationship to the tree. I think I call it gift giving, because when you give a gift it has to do with not expecting anything back. As an architect if you expect too much in return then what you’ve made is not done freely. If I wanted to expand on this, it goes beyond just houses and touches upon civic buildings; I could probably talk about it more emphatically using Vicenza. Palladio knew it was so important for cities to

have beautiful public spaces, and so his architecture’s purpose was to create a beautiful place, and it accomplished its purpose. If he had worked cynically or selfishly, then it would not have achieved its purpose. He did it for the right reasons.

A: That makes sense. You also talked about the near landscape and far landscape of Florida. In your lecture you said that in Florida there is only near and far, there is no in between in Florida. Could you expand on what you mean by that.

G: That is something I personally feel. Many years ago there was a book called Genius Loci by Christian Norberg-Schulz. In the book he describes different landscapes around the world. He came up with three, the romantic, the classical and the cosmic landscape. Each one he gave characteristics to. The cosmic landscape was the landscape of extreme darkness, extreme sun. It was the landscape of extremes, in terms of temperature and the relentless cyclical nature of day and night. They exist in the middle latitude, therefore there are neither summers nor winters, and it is metronomic in the way it works. He also suggests because of its extremes, it is the landscape of prophets, all the great prophets come from this landscape because it forces meditation and extreme isolation. The romantic were the landscapes of the northern latitudes, which is the landscape of the small scale. He said all the Nordic myths and literature came from the dark woods, under trees, trolls under the bridges, and gnarled roots. It’s the landscape of the near, there weren’t vistas. They have extreme dark winters, and weird twilight summers. So it was a landscape of smaller scale.

ARCHITECTRURE + GIFT GIVING

The classic landscape is found in the Mediterranean like Greece, Italy, Southern France and Spain. It doesn’t have large forests, or extreme climates. It has a benign climate that you can live outside in. A lot of it is geographically shaped in a way that allows humans to understand their scale, thus the creation of the classical Greek sculpture. He claims that the renaissance had to have emerged from there, because it encourages an understanding of human scale. I sort of mixed those up a little, and used the fact that Florida lies on the latitudes of the desert. It would’ve been a desert if it hadn’t been a peninsula. And it’s extremely flat so it has that cyclical day and night to it. Because it is tropical, it has this dense vegetation, but there is no middle landscape rolling hills or mountains. So at the edges of Florida you get the far views and on the interior you get the near views, of swamps and forests. The middle scale is vague geographically in Florida. That’s why Design 5 is so difficult because when you go out into the landscape you look for geography to engage with and its not there. You have to really focus in to assess and analyze the immediate site. A: What are the implications of the lack of middle scale geographically in Florida? How do you mediate that middle scale when you design for Florida? 81

G: I think that what the construction in the Florida landscape does is that it constructs this other scale. It also constructs the vessel that has that scale and also invites those other things I talked about into it. So you are at home in this thing, and it serves to allow you better understand your relationship to the landscape better than if you had just been standing in it. If you just go out to my house and stand and look at the forest near the creek I think that you can get a kind of assessment of it that is not dissimilar to a scientists understanding. But knowing yourself in the landscape is lacking. The architect’s job is to assess and capture those things you want to capture and give a middle scale. What I am saying is that site is better for the house being there.

A: That scale is critical to the occupants understanding of the landscape? LANDSCAPE LIGHT ORIENTATION

G: Themselves and the landscape, both and. If it’s a proper house, there are a lot that deny the landscape and create this hermetic and internalized environment, which ultimately has nothing to do with the landscape, light, or orientation. That then gets into the extreme transparency of these houses compared to normal traditional houses.

A: In the lecture, you discussed how this sort of layering of space leads to a quality of superimposition, could you expand on this notion of superimposition?

G: Okay, that component of it, starts with what I just talked about and then add in huge sheets of glass. And I mean huge sheets, because Paul Rudolph used massive sheets of glass. If you have lots of transparency, and then combine it with these other layers, then it sets up these cycles that take place within the house. The day and night reflections. Even the seasonal reflection of how the light in one part of the year is a different light than the other part of the year. If you add these cycles to something reflective, then it creates a doubling and layering which just occurs because of the materials. Glass is one of those things that are magical in that. Sometimes its serendipitous of what glass will do for you because you can’t anticipate it. It’s this unexpected that comes with the layers combined with glass that is the most interesting. My contention is with the houses with lots of glass, you’re sitting there and for example as twilight approaches and it gets darker out there, suddenly the whole room your in slides outside. If I have a piano, it is no longer in front of me; it will be floating in space outside. I think it’s a cool thing to happen, and it all goes back to the transitional and transformative quality of huge sheets of glass.

A: How do you think we could remedy this lack of appetite for risk taking architecture? G: That’s a big question and I don’t really have an idea. Remedied? Changed maybe but I don’t think it’ll ever be remedied.

How do you think this special time in architecture has either consciously or subconsciously influenced students here at UF or if they haven’t at all, what they could learn from that time and apply it to our work today?

G: I’ve actually just begun to experiment with this in the seminars I’ve been putting on. I’ve done it twice so far. The last one being the more successful of the two. It involved us looking at the work at that time and thinking of how we could make it now. Let me talk about the special time for a minute. It’s a little bit hard to talk about Florida architecture because Florida has often been viewed as the place where you don’t want to emulate its architecture. It was a special time because the two coasts seemed to capture the imagination of the country, because the after WWII everyone was fascinated with what the new American lifestyle could be. Everyone was asking what is the new American future? What is the new American family? What is the new American Trajectory? We tended to at that time believe it was suburbia. The single-family house. Luckily at the time it the people who were looking at that the most, were the same people appropriating modern architectural philosophy to experiment with it. The California Case Study House Program for example, which was published extensively, and clearly the architects of Florida were swept away with all these ideas. We’d be foolish to not believe that architects of Florida were looking at California as well as themselves. What changed everything was postmodernism of the late 60’s. All Architecture just shifted. The 70’s and 80’s were dark times. The time before then was special because everyone was working together in this same kind of mode and everything was totally experimental. That’s what students should learn from this time in history, working in that mode of thinking and being experimental. Not afraid to try things, and not getting trapped.

A: The future of this design process holds a lot of influence, and begs the question of whether the current time we are in will looked upon favorably like the special time that was Florida modern, or will it be looked down upon like the post-modern?

G: That’s a good question and I don’t know. I have been feeling that there have been some places along the way that have clearly become stylized and we look back and we go “really?” There was the blob architecture of 10 years ago for example. So I think even in this time because of the acceleration of things, there are these mini moments where there is this explosion of enthusiasm for something that is then discarded fairly quickly. To go back to the Florida modern one the things that I get excited about is that when you enter one of these houses you feel like it’s so modern and contemporary, but they have a quality of timelessness to them. There is a big enthusiasm for mid-century modern now. If you look at magazines like Dwell, or even magazines for the general public, you can see it. We are in a time of beginning to revisit the mid-century modern in our contemporary culture and I think that is a positive thing. 83

07 URBAN CONTEXT POSITIVE PROCESS NATURE + BOUNDARIES WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT COLLAGE + DECOLLAGE STEPS OF PROCESS DIALOGUE OF SCALE QUESTIONS + ANSWER

Mariana Araujo l D5 l Zajac

SEQUENCES OF MUSICAL COMPOSITION + ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN ANA MCINTOSH + GABRIELLE HEFFERNAN

Ryan Restieri l D1 l McGlothlin

In order to understand the design process there needs to be a questioning of the why and how of creating and making. All forms of art and designâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;music, poetry, prose, architecture-are made through personal processes of creation adopted by the individual maker. Through the exploration of making music versus making architecture and through our conversation with musician, Kody Glazer, we started to investigate the design process across disciplines. Having recently graduated from New England Conservatory of Music, Glazer currently lives in Boston where he composed with alternative folk bands that have strong classical and jazz backgrounds. All design originates from an original set of inspirations that guide the direction of the project. At the start of a project Glazer begins by engaging with his surroundings to find melodies and motifs with potential for his new compositions. He looks to music he has heard in the past that address and inform his new motifs. Glazer analyses these works for basic structures and allows them to morph into the beginning of a new composition. In architecture, we often have

a similar process. Many times we stumble upon an idea that becomes the driving force for our project. We may also look to architectural precedents and analyze their work in order to inform the development of our process. Our initial idea, like Glazer’s motif, becomes a claim HOW DO WE SYNTHESIZE that develops into the integral fabric of our design intentions. The sources that designers and artists accumulate for the support of their creative claims is derived from their collections of past encounters with previous works and ideas. Glazer describes this experiential database as his “historical lineage,” establishing the perspectives through which he views music. He associates different

OUR MEMORIES, EXPERIENCES, INSTINCTS, PRECEDENTS, ETC.

Bryce Donner l Plant Design l Acomb

periods of his musical background with interests in certain genres, musicians and styles, which collectively form the context from which he composes music today. Glazer explains, “Each of us comes at art through our individual experiences and lenses and I believe our first loves set stage for our values.” Our first loves in architecture include our spatial memories, educational experiences, and independent discoveries. Memories create layered perceptions that establish our design instincts.

Paul Gruber l D1 l Alread

Lyanet Moran l D5 l Meneely + Campbell

Process is about working through one’s instincts and balancing these with our conscious design decisions. Glazer says that as people who create we need to “trust [our] instincts that have been developed through past experience with the arts and the world.” In design studios, instinctual design isn’t always addressed. Often times, we strive to rationalize all our design decisions. What would happen if we occasionally trusted our instincts and let them guide us? Our experiences have taught us, inadvertently, about what it feels like to be invited, to be comfortable, to be at home, or to be overwhelmed. They are the intuition we have as we design. Acknowledging these intuitions, and even questioning them throughout the creative process can potentially guide and

water cups to measure the tide Nathania Martinez l Site Design l Holmes

Shannon Mallon l D6 l Montoya

north-south walk along city edge

Nathania Martinez l Site Design l Holmes

Although we as designers may produce very different things, the design processes are unified by a balance between conscious and subconscious making. Conversing with Kody Glazer about his specific process revealed the essential elements within the making of each composition. He, along with many other makers, incessantly question the approach and attitude toward the essential elements in his design process. How do we synthesize our memories, experiences, instincts, precedents, etc. to create something that communicates meaning or improves someone elseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quality of life? There is a responsibility to self and to others since most design is made for clients. Our work will influence people in some way. This responsibility manifests differently in client-related design versus individual design.

Whatever the case, indicators of process are not necessarily focused on sequential steps. Process centers on balancing the relationships between subconscious and conscious, rational and instinctual, individual and client. As we continue producing work, self-awareness throughout our process enables us to question and explore these relationships. This investigation ultimately leads to a more enriching and meaningful design. This way this approach is utilized across disciplines is part the essential beauty of process.

In order to understand the design process there needs to be a questioning of the why and how of creating and making.

Nicholas Acosta l D5 l Nelson

Hannah Ulloa East Asia 2015

Shannon Mallon VIA Fall 2015

E C A L P G N I C N E I R EXPE Our experiences have taught us, inadvertently, about what it feels like to be invited, to be comfortable, to be at home, to be overwhelmed

Carlos Perez South Florida Trip

Paulina Hurtado + Jairo Laverde l D7 l Cohen

G N I K A M Y B N G DESI

Amber Fulgham l D7 - Interiors Meneely

Process centers on balancing the relationships between:

subconscious l conscious instinctual l rational individual l client

Kinga Pabjan + Dima Toma l D7 l Montoya

Adiel Benitez + Patrick Weber l D7 l Clark

Maxwell Hunold | D3 | Zajac

08 URBAN CONTEXT POSITIVE PROCESS NATURE + BOUNDARIES WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT COLLAGE + DECOLLAGE STEPS OF PROCESS DIALOGUE OF SCALE QUESTIONS + ANSWERS

Nicholas Acosta | D4 | Wang

Christina Graydon | D4 | Gundersen

THE DIALOGUE OF SCALE MARC ALEX MORRISON + HANNAH ULLOA It is clear in the D7 projects for New York City that connections to the city were to become driving forces in the design. Urban planning and architecture deal with different scales but in a large urban project, like the NYC project, the scales they work with overlap. In looking at how this impacts the design process, it is possible to reflect on the methods of each field. When cities began growing at an unprecedented rate, it was clear that the methods of architecture were not prepared to deal with the social and ethical issues of urbanization. Leaders of various design fields came together in New York in 1923, where the desire to apply problemHOW DO URBAN PLANNERS solving methods of design to the scale of the city initiated the + ARCHITECTS APPROACH A field of urban planning. They recognized that individual projects have the potential to address the socioeconomic issues of the city PROJECT DIFFERENTLY? through conscious connections to the physical and social context. Urban planning was a new method of working that expanded the scope of design to a city scale. The shift in scale between architecture and urban planning has evolved into more of a dialogue, where urban planning and architecture can respond to each other. This dialogue manifests itself in the design of a large-scale urban project like the redevelopment of the NYC super-blocks in Greenwich village. The super-block tends to break down the city fabric to a detrimental level, negating multiple levels of activity and accessibility. It encourages the detachment from the public domain and privatizes access on the street. The rich grain that exists in the context is lost in the loose edges of the super-block. To solve issues the super-blocks create, any architectural design inherently needs to consider urban theories addressing the effect of the street experience upon a larger area. In such a project, this is how the architect should work. At a larger scale, the urban planner identifies problems and develops the structure from which solutions can grow. The architect then needs to exploit this viewpoint to understand how the project can serve the city context. Urban planners can use architectural thinking to achieve a similar goal. Not so much in overarching city plans but the codes that urban planners have developed in a doctrine for city design. Form-based codes direct planning away from the consideration of use (Euclidean zoning) and refocus on the form, shape, and experience of urban systems. The elements of massing, facade composition, and

Christina Graydon | D4 | Gundersen

materiality are codified in order to preserve and accentuate the street character of an individual neighborhood.

Jaysen Good | D3 | Zajac

The goal is to create a street experience that feels right at the human scale. Form-based code runs on the belief that the humanized street is characterized by variety of form and detail, where tension in relationships actually unifies the street experience. By tapping into the vision and attention to spatial experience in the architectural process, planners can code spaces that promote engagement in city occupants while also meeting their needs. Here urban planners are using a conceptual idea, a vision, to design the structure of smaller areas that stitch together to form a diverse high-functioning city. Drawing from this type of thinking allows urban planners to improve the rules that govern design. Architects can strengthen the design of individual projects by pulling from the urban planning perspective. The potential for stimulating this type of dialogue is in the systematization of a design process incorporating both small and large scale perspective. Cultivating this process might be fundamental to the future of both urban planning and architecture, where urbanization is an ever-pressing challenge.

Nicholas Acosta | D4 | Wang

Alexis Raiford | D3 | Zajac

Jaysen Good | D3 | Zajac

Christopher Berry | D3 | Clark

Marisa Waddle | D4 | Jayaswal

Alexis Raiford | D3 | Zajac

Lisa Ryzhikov | D3 | Belton

THE SUM OF THE PARTS

Maxwell Hunold | D3 | Zajac

Alexis Raiford | D3 | Zajac

Kaila Casasus | D3 | Blythe

Maxwell Hunold | D3 | Zajac

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Gabrielle Heffernan + Katie Fisher | D7 | Clark

Lea Kindt | Principles | Gurucharri

Par ti Par ty “ I don’t think there’s anything about buildings that a typical person can’t understand. It might be a challenge for people who aren’t interested in the process of architecture to go through the text that talk about the different schemes with accompanying sketches. That takes a little patience. “ - Robert McCarter Interview

Gabrielle Heffernan + Katie Fisher | D7 | Clark

Lea Kindt | Principles | Gurucharri

Lea Kindt | Site Design | Gurucharri

Daniela Cano | Interiors | Meneely

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LANDSCAPE + SCALE:

John Paul Bernarl + Derek Hill | D7 | Perez

“ I think that what the construction in the Florida landscape does is that it constructs this other scale. It also constructs the vessel that has that scale and also invites.. So you are at home in this thing, and it serves to allow you to understand your relationship to the landscape better than if you had just been standing in it. If you just go out to my house and stand and look at the forest near the creek I think that you can get a kind of assessment of it that is not dissimilar to a scientist’s understanding. But knowing yourself in the landscape is lacking. The architect’s job is to assess and capture those things you want to capture and give a middle scale. What I am saying is that site is better for the house being there. “ -Martin Gundersen Interview

TRAVEL SKETCHES: RECORDING MEASURE + EXPERIENCE

Lea Kindt | New York Trip | Gurucharri

Adiel Benitez | D6 | Lisa Huang

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Dima Toma | East Asia Trip | Wang + Gold

ATLAS SITUATION SITE READINGS RESPONSES

Bryana Boileau l Site Design l Holmes

URBAN CONTEXT POSITIVE PROCESS NATURE + BOUNDARIES WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT COLLAGE + DECOLLAGE STEPS OF PROCESS DIALOGUE OF SCALE QUESTIONS + ANSWERS

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Shannon Mallon l D7 l Wang

Katie Fisher l Mexico l Perez

PROCESS : WHERE QUESTIONS BECOME ANSWERS EDUARDO MENESES How do we make/create process work? “More than one way to skin a cat” Creating process takes no single form. The medium varies, but what remains constant is the rigor with which the problem at hand is thought through. Making process work is about getting out a thought about the problem at hand. As architects, what role does process play as we design constructs? Is the process simply looking for an answer, or is the process a means of asking questions and exploring numerous possibilities? When it comes to problem solving, the latter provides a deeper understanding of the problem as well as the possible solutions that can arise.

THE MEDIUM VARIES, BUT WHAT REMAINS CONSTANT IS THE RIGOR WITH WHICH THE PROBLEM AT HAND IS THOUGHT THROUGH.

At the simplest and earliest of phases, the process work is a physical manifestation of a thought about a problem at hand. A common starting point for many and one of the most recognized is the sketch. Now even with the sketch, it isn’t just simply a doodle or a scribble. The sketch begins to answer real architectural questions: scale, joints, site, materiality. The sketch is also not only to be understood in the traditional sense, merely a drawing. In the world of architecture, the sketch reaches a level of diversity that is very useful in the face of conventional representation of architecture. With the consideration that the sketch is not simply one thing or one medium, the idea of several iterations becomes relevant.

Adriana Contarino l D5 l Hailey

Putting the pencil to the paper is often the genesis of many projects and the most conventional medium when it comes to the idea of producing process. It can be argued that the drawing is the earliest form of generating the process work. The early sketches and drawings are meant to rough out the parameters of a project. They are used as a tool to record any preliminary ideas that could be further developed along the course of a project. The beauty of the sketch drawing lies in the fact that it is a medium where ideas are yet to be judged. They can exist and live in their truest sense. Any and all ideas get to be joined together and they tend to mean everything about a project and nothing at all at the same time. This is because they are still open to interpretation and can still be matured from the point they are birthed onto the paper. The field of architecture concentrates on creating physical constructions and the sketch holds much weight in that because it still lives in a world that is plastic.

109

The drawing isn’t the only form of process. There still lies much power in that of the mappings, diagrams, and physical modeling of ideas. In essence, the medium is almost infinite in the way of making process. To make process is to document ideas, record information, dissect existing actualities, analyze the culmination of those things with the end goal of answering a design question. Possibilities, paths the design can take, thus the importance of producing several iterations. It can be said that much of the constructs architects create have lives of their own. As designers, we are doomed when we believe we know exactly what something is, will, or wants to be. The ideas themselves most times don’t know what they wish to be. The possibility, the plasticity, the unknown are the questions being asked as you create process work seeking to answer an architectural dilemma. Nathania Martinez l Site Design l Holmes

An architect most notorious for his process and almost obsessive love for possibility, Peter Eisenman, see’s process as a way of thinking. His projects on the idea of a house are the ultimate example of this. Each house, I to X have been thought through several times. Each iteration explores a different aspect and composition of a cube and how it can be manipulated to the ultimate extent. This work by Peter Eisenman has provided the most influence and guide as to how process is done. It is a medium for total exploration. Because real architectural questions are being answered, there is no way to know the first attempt is even close to the most suitable. The same rigor can be applied to design work when answering different questions of configuration, program, site, etc. The rigor is the level of analysis of the process work. To analyze something in the world is the first step. The next important step is to take a look at the work you’ve done, take a step back, and begin to see what it means, what it is saying, what it isn’t saying, and where it can go from there. Understand how it works at one stage, and then begin to ask a series of “what if’s” to understand that point in the process and how it could refer to other configurations. It can be said, that as architects, we create physical beings and we can attempt to impart a meaning or substance onto the architecture, but the ultimate judge in what the construct means is completely up to the inhabitant.

Cole Alter l D2 l Cohen

Adriana Contarino l D5 l Hailey

Nathania Martinez l NYC Trip l Holmes

Andrew Bawtinhimer + Sierra Eades l D7 l Wang

Nathania Martinez l Site Design l Holmes

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Hannah Ulloa l D7 l Cohen

materialize. FABRICATION

SPATIAL QUALITY

ETHICS, AESTHETICS AND PUBLIC ART A: ARCHITRAVE S.I: SANDA ILIESCU

Monday, Oct.19, 2015 Sanda Iliescu is a visual artist, designer, and associate professor of architecture and art at the University of Virginia. Her artwork, which spans the media of painting, drawing, collage, and public art, is represented by Molly Krom Gallery (New York and Berlin), and Les Yeux du Monde Gallery (Charlottesville). She is a recipient of The Rome Prize, a McDowell fellowship in painting, and The Distinguished Artist Award of the New Jersey State Council of the Arts.

A. Many of your works are abstracted. How do you begin the process of abstraction? S.I. That’s a really good question and it’s a difficult question because I think every artist finds their own way into abstraction. I started as a representational artist. I’m very interested in real things. And I was really interested in depicting that detailed, almost photographic, reality. About 5 yrs ago I had a period of 3 years where I did a self-portrait every day. They started out by being quite literal and representative and then gradually the face became more and more abstracted in the second year and third year. Gradually, the face started to look like a landscape as I got closer and closer into the topography of the cheekbones, I HAD A PERIOD OF 3 the nose, the nostrils and the mouth. It seemed to me that it YEARS WHERE I DID A was not just the visage but it was also a landscape, a kind of SELF-PORTRAIT EVERY DAY topography of the landscape. So I would say that was the moment when I became seriously interested in abstraction is with the series of self-portraits. It is like looking inwards but also looking outwards at the reflection in the mirror, the computer screen, and other various reflective surfaces. For example, sometimes late at night when you turn on the light inside a piece of darkened glass it becomes a mirror. It is a simplified mirror, kind of silhouetted and abstracted. So the faces became more and more abstract as I drew them. I also became interested in movement. There were a series of collages I did when I was a fellow at the American Academy. I loved to watch, for example, Roman swallows move through the sky. Again, at first I started by drawing the birds and seeing how people had drawn them in the past. One day I unfortunately found a dead swallow and I copied the arc of the curve of her wings. I realized the arc was almost like a flight path so I started, very rigorously, going through with my sketchbook and noticing how a particular swallow would trace an arc through the sky. I then noticed that they had these dances that reminded me of mating dances, where they would swirl around each other. So I would document that, make these sketches, and then go back to my studio and based on the drawings in the sketchbook

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that were done quickly I would make a collage that was very abstract that was titled “Swallows.” I did a whole series of these collages and so it’s based very much in reality. I would say my abstraction is about observing something in the real world and then finding a way to simplify it and distill it to an essence. For example, you see a swallow fly and it’s almost like a point slicing the air. There is a kind of sharpness and velocity to it. So I asked how one can take a still image like a collage, that doesn’t really move, and convey the crispness and sharpness of the movement. I found that by cutting sharp and pointed shapes I could evoke the velocity of the flight path. So I create these abstract collages but the reference always remains reality. These two examples explain that for me abstraction is not a departure from the real world, a shutting off EVERY ABSTRACT WORK of reality, but it’s more a distilling of it. Every abstract work I have done beings with something real. I HAVE DONE BEGINS

WITH SOMETHING REAL

A. How do you decide on what materials to use for your collage? I’ve seen that in addition to paper you’ve also used things like staples, plastics, trash, and nature.

S.I. I think that a lot of times when it comes to materials I introduce a little bit of an ethical consideration into the process. In the profession of architecture and in practical life we divide materials into different categories. There are expensive materials, precious materials and artistic materials, like oil paint on linen. Then there are materials that are “ugly” that nobody uses. These often times cannot even be recycled. They are real trash, just junk. I was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome and was surrounded by all these marbles and oil paintings. Everybody was talking about wonderful works of art, things made out of beautiful marble and granite. And then I would go to these archeological sites where there would be the fence in bright orange plastic that the archeologists put up. It had a beauty. It had a purpose. It filtered light in a really beautiful way. They would just very quickly surround an area with these bright trash bags. I thought, This is gorgeous. This is like a tropical plant. Why do you call it “ugly”? Why doesn’t anybody want to look at it? And then I realized that in making a choice to work with office staples, leaves of grass, trash bags, or discarded paper that’s been thrown away, I was resurrecting these materials. I was introducing in the work the idea that we really should pay attention to the forgotten things in our society. We really should pay attention to cheap, tawdry, ugly things. Not just materials, but people too. How about homeless people? lonely people? people who have medical problems? people who have disabilities? people who are not smart and bright in college? people who are the down and out individuals?

So I try to create works of art that introduce that raw outsider to an ethical meaning. Hopefully this dovetails with the aesthetics and hopefully it’s not preachy or moralizing, but it does show people that things that you might at first not consider beautiful have their own beauty. WA. What interests you about public art pieces and what effects do they have?

S.I. It’s a hard question. I think it’s because I’m interested in the relationship between beauty and the common good. I’m a bit of a brainy and intellectual artist. I do a lot of reading. I’m interested in the relationships between ideas of good form, aesthetics, something that looks beautiful, and the ethical realm, the social realm, and the political realm. I think architecture has to bring both these things together. How do you relate ethical ideas to aesthetic ideas? I didn’t set out to become a public artist. I was always much more comfortable working alone in my studio making paintings and drawings and having a relationship with my gallery in New York and my gallery in Charlottesville. It’s not a rejection of that. In other words making public art for me is not a rejection of much more personal individual art that’s just exhibited in a gallery or a museum. It is a way of testing I HAD A PERIOD OF 3 relationships between aesthetics and ethics, asking how they YEARS WHERE I DID A and reinforce each other and how they can come together. I think SELF-PORTRAIT EVRY DAY the most direct way these can come together is in public art. And interestingly, in architecture. I don’t practice architecture anymore. I teach fundamentals of design, art, painting, and drawing. I’m a practicing artist but I love architecture. I think that the closest kind of art to architecture is public art. The kind of public art that’s been difficult for me has been when somebody from the outside comes to me and says “I would like you to do a piece of public art with this message on this site.” I’m not very good at that. I freeze up. I think, O boy, what could I possibly do to correspond to this high ideal message, aesthetically and ethically? So what I usually do as a public artist is I become an advocate. I see a situation where a certain kind of art is needed and I get an idea for the kind of art that could happen there. Then I go to the people that own the property, I go fundraise, and I go to students and ask them to be volunteers. I say “You know, let’s do this. It really deserves it.” And because I’ve done a couple of these works that were of my own initiative that somehow managed to get done, I have developed a relationship with people. For example, the president of UVA and the board of visitors at UVA kind of know me and so other kind of artwork started to happen too. They actually come to me and say, “You know what? I think you might be the right kind of person for this project. Because they know me it works. It’s always relationship based with people. If somebody out of the blue came to me and said, “Do a building in Hong Kong” about an issue I don’t know about and I had never been to Hong Kong, I would say I can’t. But I can do things I know about so I’ve worked a lot with UVA and with the parks and recreation department in Charolettesville, Virginia. I feel like I know that place.

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