SCAFFOLDED

Students:

Deron Charlery, Arthur Clay, James Herlihy, Leo McDowell, Matt McLean, Mumushka Patel, Sean O’Keefe, Kaylen Rasua, Ray Vergese, Cameron Ziegler

Faculty:

Term:

Course:

Program:

Stephanie Cramer

Fall 2022

ARC606, Option Studio

MArch

What would happen if scaffolding was left in place after a building’s construction? How can we think of scaffolding as an organizational and aesthetic proposition? This studio began by acknowledging that architects typically do not make buildings, we draw buildings for other people to make.

“Scaffolded” highlights this fact by designing directly for the people who make and/or maintain buildings. Students were tasked with absorbing access as an architectural responsibility and explored the spatial, material, and programmatic repercussions. The one requirement – all design projects must be constructed by people without the use of secondary infrastructure; no ladders, lifts, cranes, and of course, no secondary scaffold.

Scaffolding as a construction method and temporary means of support is ubiquitous across the globe. In many cities, however, it has become a regular underpass during commutes or, to others, a constant eyesore. The Fall

2022 Option Studio, "Scaffolded," addressed these secondary skins as systems that can either enable or hinder the design process.

A history of scaffolding details the transition laborers have gone through to make building a building as streamlined as possible. As history moves through the timeline of temporary platforms, minimal wooden bracing is phased out to accommodate modern techniques utilizing steel and modular systems. Both kinds achieve the temporal quality we know scaffolding as, yet they fail to integrate the scaffold into the architecture. This idea of designing around and for the build or maintenance process was baked into the student proposals from this course.

Using a mixture of large-scale physical model-making and technical drawings, the work produced by this studio yielded a set of carefully articulated building systems. All projects understand the scaffold as a means to provide access, create space, and introduce a finer grain to the resulting architecture rooted in the scale of a person. Physical fabrication took hold as the primary means of creative expression, as each student built several large-scale mockups exploring construction systems.

The first task required students to look at existing scaffolding systems from any historical era and forms of construction, such as corbeling or tiltup construction, which do not utilize scaffolding. Using their established construction technologies, task two had students use existing scaffolding systems to create occupiable spaces for community use. As temporary installations, an element of (dis) assembly was required, allowing communities to deploy these pieces of social infrastructure as needed. The semester culminated in task three, where students took a stance to either embrace, absorb, or reject the role scaffolding plays in building systems. It was through this phase in the semester that interpreting scaffolding as a building material, as a system, and as a way to make enclosure when the large-scale prototypes took form. Each prototype was part of a design proposal, programmatically defined as a community center or gathering space. Each student’s scheme was primarily developed from sketching, diagramming, and a substantial portion of time spent in the Fabrication Workshop. Using wood as a primary structural material set the baseline for the individual projects to explore other secondary materials.

Community Movie Theater

MArch student Arthur Clay chose to design to create aestheticdriven public architecture while also demonstrating the limitless possibilities of scaffold elements. His community movie theater implemented a serviceable and easy-to-assemble structure that rejects the need for a secondary infrastructure. The dense timber forms a grid allowing for access during construction and a unique resulting aesthetic.

“I designed with the intention of creating aesthetic-driven public architecture, having the ability to demonstrate the limitless possibilities of infrastructure.”

- Arthur Clay

The studio, as a collective, challenged the premise of the architect’s motive behind design, prioritizing the act of making rather than the finished product. Ripping away the scaffold, in the end, will always reveal a complete product. A building's life cycle, however, could require the reintroduction of scaffolding for repairs or routine maintenance. Integrating these access requirements into a complete-looking building assembly changed the way this group of students thought about constructability and the care we have for the built environment.