MEMORY, BUILD!

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Keith Benes, Jessica Rote, Vaidehi Patel, Ainish Sheth (Materializing Loss); Andrew Griffin, Brianna Mancini, Michael Vigliotti (Lost Buffalo) Miguel Guitart

Spring 2022

ARC607, Material Culture Graduate Research Group

MArch

How does architecture engage the memory of places? Architecture embodies relationships between place and time, articulating the role of memory in the experience of the built environment. Students from the Material Culture research group design studio Memory, Build! explored architecture’s role in preserving the memory of places and the ways in which materials preserve, reveal, and conceal history. Organized into groups, the final proposals took the form of small-scale built works using earthen materials–brick, stone, earth–to interrogate the relationships between material, place, and memory. These constructions aimed to reinterpret how history is registered through architectural design.

The students began by working individually to explore memory through material qualities. Structure, facture, and texture were introduced as different scales of the design narrative for each group. These three scales provided an organizing system to further students’ thinking on material properties and behavior, taking care into how they would later merge these principles.

Materializing Loss

The proposal seeks to reflect on the notion of personal loss. A square enclosure memorializes those estranged from society, who lived and died at the former Erie County Poorhouse, now UB’s Hayes Hall. The design aimed to honor the individuals who died and are buried beneath some areas of UB’s South Campus. The geometry of the proposal encloses an inaccessible space that remains conceptually reserved for those who are memorialized.

The material strategy was composed of two conditions: a soft, erosive clay envelope that erodes over time, and a hard, permanent concrete core that is revealed as the outer layer degrades. As the hard core is revealed, a lasting internal structure represents the strength that comes after personal loss. The construction process started with clay blocks that worked as formworks, into which concrete was poured. Concrete filled the modular blocks' vertical and horizontal network of cells and groves. To speed up the eroding experience in the final presentation, students and faculty used mallets to physically wear away the cast blocks, exposing the lasting core. Through the earth that keeps thousands buried, the erosion of loss reveals their stronger core.

"As a construct, 'care’ was the physical creation of the bricks, their final assembly, the research, and the overall goal to bring to light what Buffalo lost was more than some 'cool' buildings."

- Brianna Mancini

Lost Buffalo

Buffalo’s rich economic and cultural history of industrialization at the beginning of the 20th century was soon followed by a period of abandonment and demolition of numerous buildings. With the demolition of these buildings, part of the city’s history was lost. One of these structures was Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Administration Building, built in 1903 and demolished in 1950.

The proposal aimed to recreate the memory of the Larkin Administration

Building by exploring its material palette. Students analyzed the material components and focused their interest on the heavy, structural and envelope elements, such as concrete and brick. A series of mix ratios were considered in the fabrication of specific brick typologies that were later integrated into the assembly of a platform that resembled the footprint of the building atrium.

The final installation was embedded into the ground outside UB’s Hayes Hall, resembling a tomb in memory of the remains of the Larkin Building that were used to fill in the Ohio Canal Basin in the Old First Ward, under what is now known as Conway Park in Buffalo’s Old First Ward. The assembly of the platform provides a space for reflection to remember the social and technical innovations of Wright’s Larkin Building.