Fresh Meat Issue 1

Why

Fresh

Meat?

This publication is for those who have been captured; held hostage by the discipline of architecture. It is an addiction. An attraction to the possibility of new methods and new shapes on the horizon.

Architecture is not for the faint of heart. For those who decide to pursue it: do so with vigor and relentlessness, optimism and opinion.

Do so under a mission to challenge old ways. This is for those of you who see what is and are exhilarated at the possibilities of what could be.

Fresh Meat is to be used at your leisure – at your desk, near your pillow, in your pocket. It is a summation of past events at the SoA@ UIC and a projection of what is to come. Our intent is to provide a link between faculty, students and guests. Above all it is an invitation to converse on the issues we present and to take a stance – Agree.

Disagree. Enjoy.

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SIRLOIN

SHORT LOIN FRESH MEAT [new faculty] INTERVIEWS SEAN LALLY... PAGE 27 IKER GIL... PAGE 12 ADRIAN McDERMOTT... PAGE 17 KYLE REYNOLDS... PAGE 20 DEBORAH FAUSCH... PAGE 11 TOM JACOBS... PAGE 13

FLANK

20 QUESTIONS W/ STAN ALLEN... PAGES 3-7 CONVERSATION W/ ANDREW ZAGO.... PAGES 23-24 MISREADING BURNHAM... PAGE 31

CHUCK RIB

BLOG IT: WWW.UICFRESHMEAT.BLOGSPOT.COM

BRISKET

SHANK LAI COMIC... PAGE 33

ROUND WHY FRESH MEAT? ... PAGE 1 MEET YOUR BUTCHERS... PAGE 41 CALENDARS... CENTERFOLD Wed @ 1, Lecture Series, Graham Foundation, Art Institute, Extension Gallery

CREDITS... PAGE 42

SHORT PLATE FRESH MEAT [new faculty] INTERVIEWS JIMENEZ LAI... PAGE 14 JULIE FLOHR... PAGE 25 RYAN PALIDER.... PAGE 18 ALEXANDER LEHNERER... PAGE 29 MICHELLE LITVIN... PAGE 16 ALEXANDER EISENSCHMIDT... PAGE 9 ANDREW MODDRELL... PAGE 19

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[with STAN ALLEN] Allen weighs in on ecology vs. green, vents his issues with LEED, confirms that he doesn’t subscribe to any magazines, and thinks infrastructure has untapped [green] potential.

Stan Allen was at the UIC SoA this past December to participate in the Cervantes Conference. This is the conversation that followed.

SA: Stan Allen DH: Dorit Hershtig AH: Alysen Hiller LT: Lauren Turner JS: Julia Sedlock JM: Jon Mac Gillis MF: Meghan Funk JC: Jason Colturi DH In your lecture, it was great to hear the term ‘ecology’ in substitution of ‘green’ architecture or using this term implicitly instead of green architecture.

SA When talking about ecology, I have always liked Gregory Bateson’s quip: he says that “ecological thinking must be ecological”. This sounds redundant, but I think that it is an intelligent way of thinking about the problem because whether you are dealing with natural ecologies or social ecologies, they are both dynamic systems subject to outside input. They operate according to systems of feedback and they’re not going to respect conventional boundaries. Your thinking has to be as fluid and adaptive as the ecological systems you’re studying. I don’t think that is a bad place to start when you take on the problem of green architecture.

On the one hand, you have to respect the ethical imperative to do something; in that sense the focus on sustainability and green architecture is appropriate. At the same time, whenever you’re dealing with these complex systems you’re going to find unintended consequences, so you need to be thinking about deep ecology in this broad interactive and dynamic way.

For example, the LEED program—nobody is going to say that the LEED program is a bad thing.

You could say that because you follow LEED standards, the building uses less energy than a typical building, that’s a good thing, but is anyone asking the question should that building have been built in the first place? Is anyone looking at the larger ramifications of the system—the city or the ecology?

What role is that particular building playing in the larger ecology? That is the intention of an ecological perspective rather than a strictly green perspective.

DH So do you think the term green architecture has become too broad—incorporating the technical with the symbolic?

SA I don’t think it’s too broad, I think that it’s become a bit of a marketing technique. You see advertisements for condominiums and they’re selling because the condo is “green”. You have to wonder, do these developers have a real commitment to sustainability? It has become such a buzzword in contemporary society.

AH So it’s subjective. Would you also consider the term ecology subjective?

SA Sure. But I think it is harder to co-opt. Never underestimate the powers of the marketplace—certain things become buzzwords very easily, and the term green has slipped into that.

LT You mentioned during your lecture that in one of the initial proposals for Taichung Parkway you had a road going through your site and it wasn’t approved, so you tried to sell it by stating that you could make it an ecological road. Do you see it as an actual possibility for green techniques to be more infrastructural or was it more of a marketing technique?

SA Very often, it is an underdeveloped opportunity. American cities—Chicago, Los Angeles, are spread out horizontally, and there is a relatively low density over all. I think there is a great potential to weave infrastructure, built fabric, and nature together in new ways.

JS This reminds me of a parkway in New York City. Do you find that successful?

SA There are examples from the early decades of the 20th century parkway systems, like Fairmount Parkway in Philadelphia, those that were associated with the City Beautiful Movement. They are not necessarily successful in and of themselves, but it’s not a bad jumping off point to see how can we revisit that, what can we do today that was maybe not possible 60 or 70 years ago.

JS Do you have an example of something that could be added to the equation?

SA Well, in the first version of our Taichung Parkway project, we worked to accomplish two things; one, we used transit routes, bicycle routes, separate lanes for different speeds of traffic—all heavily greened, we integrated pervious surfaces into that so the roadways wouldn’t become a big shedder of water. And two, we manipulated the section of the roadway; there are times when we brought the topography of the park up and over the road, and times when we pushed the road down. This is the thinking moving forward. If you think of infrastructure as your friend rather than your enemy, you can potentially find these new hybrids.

JMG As opposed to a marketing tool, does it have more to do with the aesthetic of the term? I see firms like SOM or KPF mentioning “green”, whereas—not to put words in his mouth—but someone like Corb who also dealt with environmental matters, I can never see him saying green, I can see him saying “ecology”.

SA I think you’re absolutely right. Another problem that I have with “green” is that it can be an apology or an alibi for design work that’s just not so interesting. To be a little bit more optimistic, there are two categories here. There are the people that want the user to know that it’s a green building because they can see the solar panels or the double façade—in other words, they’re making a kind of feature out of it.

On the other hand, if you think of the building envelope, or curtain wall, not simply as a passive barrier, but as something that needs to be an interface—whether it has to do with active shading, or double skins with ventilation—these are areas that are really specifically architectural questions—and they have an aesthetic dimension. You can develop an architectural program out of that, you can develop an aesthetic program out of that—a lot of that is happening around the question of the building façade.

JMG That San Francisco Federal Building by Morphosis falls in between the discussion of ecology/green and envelope because it failed as a LEED building, but it performed—the skin performed. Is that the problem of the definitions?

SA Exactly, yeah. I think that there are a lot of problems with LEED. The Thom Mayne San Francisco Federal building addresses the budget by being very strategic. As I understand it, he was able to convince the clients that the money they would have spent on the air conditioning system should be put into the façade and that he would create a façade that performs at a level that keeps the building cool.

And of course he had to deliver on the promise. Certainly the façade has become a major architectural feature of the building, I mean a little too much of an architectural feature in my mind, but I think it should be admired for the intelligence of the strategic thinking.

DH I think that one of the intentions of this program is to redefine green architecture, or retrace the history. Do you see that this part of the curriculum that Somol is implementing is becoming popular across many academic institutions?

SA You do. We are living in a moment where we are very conscious of this issue, and I think we should be conscious of this issue. If we don’t do something, we’re in trouble. Iñaki Abalos likes to point out that economy and ecology share a common linguistic root; one way to achieve sustainability is to simply exercise a sense of restraint and an economy of means when building or designing. He has another proposition which I’m not 100% sure whether I buy, but he was proposing a kind of alternative aesthetic of sustainability, that if you build with minimal material use, that in and of itself is green.

My feeling would be this—our job in architecture schools, is to teach design and design technique and design intelligence at the highest level possible. Then students—and later practitioners as they confront problems, including problems of climate change and global warming, will have the best set of tools available in order to come up with solutions to deal with these issues. In other words, I think it has to be taught as an extension of the design and problem solving that is part of our discipline already.

Architecture is the last generalist education around. We’re not going to teach you about economics, we’re not going to teach you about anthropology; but we will give you the skills and the tools and the way of approaching a problem that will allow you to deal with those issues intelligently in the future.

AH In terms of approaching a problem, often people basically take a term and appropriate it to define themselves and their work. Is this a reasonable way of dealing with a problem—by redefining yourself and your work in the context of a problem without actually addressing the problem? For an example, one we’ve all talked about is Emilio Ambasz—who redefines green as this poetic move, which turns into this divided discussion because he becomes relevant only by redefining the vocabulary.

SA I have to tell you guys, you are the only people on the planet that are passionately debating Emilio Ambasz. [laughter] But this is a technique I would encourage everyone to do. Architecture is in some ways a magpie profession. It’s always borrowing from adjacent or nearby fields. It’s always done this; it’s that lack of an absolute definition of what architecture is that helps keep the field vital. The ability of architecture to appropriate material from other fields and to rework it in the terms of architecture is generally a positive thing, but It can be very trivial at times too.

DH In your lecture, you mentioned that architecture is deployed as a means to further the landscape/urbanism idea and you projected that, in the intersection, the next era of what would tie in landscape and urbanism is biological mechanisms. Is that what you see, that green architecture is making a shift from the technological to the biological intersection of landscape and urbanism?

SA Yeah, I’m not sure I want to make a prediction, but I guess my point is that this very strict separation of nature and culture that was the basis of critical work in the eighties no longer has the critical traction it did twenty years ago. And exactly what comes out of that, who knows? There are a lot of different things you can imagine. Tschumi and Koolhaas at la Villette were using architecture against landscape; they were seeing landscape through the lens of architecture. Today it is more interesting to see architecture through the lens of landscape—to see cultural production in the form of architecture through the lens of nature.

It’s really about seeing a kind of convergence between the natural and the artificial around information exchange and artificial intelligence that gives us different ways to think about architecture. So that could have implications in terms of design methodologies; the idea that instead of designing the building you sort of grow the building with the application of genetic algorithms in the design process.

JMG In terms of letting things grow out of the forces present in the environment, how do you see the position of Greg Lynn or Francois Roche, who actually design the object?

SA In nature, organisms have evolved in response to the forces present in the environment. There is an information exchange between the organism and the environment—it is the principle that all

evolution is co-evolution, evolution is always a response to an environment. That said, there are two issues in Greg’s work: the first is, I think he’s still doing a kind of simulation of those forces, and he’s dependant on the way in which those forces are translated graphically. Two, is what is sometimes referred to as the stopping problem—you’ve got to freeze the process somewhere and I think the translation has become a bit too literal.

I used to come out here to Chicago quite a bit in the early nineties when people like Greg Lynn, Bob Somol, Catherine Ingraham, and Doug Garofalo had just started teaching—and Mark Linder was out here. Greg was doing a complex curvilinear form before he ever got his hands on a computer. So Greg had an aesthetic project first, and all of the theoretical background of Deleuze and Gauttari. Greg’s project was so successful because he had an architectural proposition and an aesthetic before he had the machine.

Greg used to give his students potatoes. The studio exercise was to first draw the potato, not as an evocative picture of a potato but make precise measured drawings of the potato and then reconstruct it; make a machine to reconstruct the form of a potato. The problem was that natural forms don’t tend to be subject to geometric description according to conventional tools of architecture representation. So you had to invent new tools to deal with these new forms. It was all pre-computer.

LT In your lecture, you briefly talked about how when one is composing a presentation to be given for Bob Somol there is a rigor in the approach that one would take. We are curious if you have an opinion about his agenda for architecture and how that fits into UIC, and what that might mean for the students?

SA I don’t want to speak for Bob, but I have known him for probably close to twenty years and Bob believes very strongly that there is a specific body of knowledge that belongs to architecture and the first job of any school is to make sure that every student is aware of that body of knowledge. You can’t have an informed conversation without a common language and a common body of knowledge. I don’t think Bob is prescriptive, I think he’s interested in people making propositions that have architectural consequences, propositions that contribute to that conversation.

Bob came to architecture from another field, so I think he is very open to taking things from the discipline’s margins and making them part of the discipline. I would say there is a very blurry boundary of the discipline, but there is a boundary—a boundary that is changing over time.

DH We are seeing this publication more as a tabloid—an easier read, broken up into different pieces. In the Pidgin article that you wrote, you stated that when you write, you let the argument grow from your process instead of starting with a static argument and building it up. Do you think this is a successful way of putting together a publication?

SA I am very much a believer in the notion that you need an idea or hypothesis—a jumping off point, an articulation to get the process started. This goes for writing, this goes for designing, and structuring a journal. You need to be open to the discoveries you make along the way and you need to be willing to let those discoveries shift the directions of a project. When you are working out a certain aspect of your building, you may discover a new relationship between parts of the building which revises your original idea. A good designer will run with that idea. As good designers, you have to learn when to let go of an idea.

Design is an iterative process, it’s constantly about revision. I tell my students that they must have this paradoxical mindset; at any given moment, you have to be absolutely convinced that your solution is the best solution. At the very same time, you have to be open to revising it at any moment.

DH You also mentioned that you don’t subscribe to any magazines. Is that true?

SA One of the things about being a dean is that things arrive to your office without you subscribing.

And we get a lot of our information online, but I depend on people—I depend on students, I depend on people in the office.

There was a time when access to information gave you a competitive advantage, which meant being in a city like New York or Chicago, or a city like LA, because that’s where the centers of production were and information was transmitted slowly so you had to be close to the source of the information. Today, access to information in and of itself gives you no competitive advantage. The competitive advantage today is being able to select—among all the vast sources of information—what will become the crucial source. We have to rethink how we navigate and operate in a world where we have not a scarcity of

information but an excess of information. It’s a very different problem.

JS Is there a certain way that architecture schools can facilitate that kind of interaction for students?

SA One way is simply to pay attention to the city that you occupy. There’s a long tradition in the discipline that architects and architecture schools contribute to the city where they are. Lars Lerup made Houston a kind of laboratory for new dispersed urbanisms, so, I think you choose as your laboratory that which is most immediately part of your environment.

AH Speaking to a lack of diversity on an academic level within the discipline, do you think this is something that we’re going to shake in 15-20 years? Is this lack of diversity, this lack of original design—is this something that we’ll just get over once we get accustomed to the influx of information or is it more or less here to stay?

SA I think it’s here to stay. I think it’s your generation’s responsibility, not something you resist—you don’t shut your eyes to the global scene and go back to handcrafted and regional traditions, but you find a more interesting synthesis.

It has certainly affected schools. You can go from Tokyo, to Los Angeles, to Rotterdam, to Croatia, and you can be looking at pretty much the same projects. Everyone is working on the same software; everyone is looking at the same projects. And the converse of that, a firm from Tokyo, or Los Angeles, or Rotterdam, or Croatia, is producing equally sophisticated work. There’s no longer a center. I think it certainly has affected the practice. It’s important, in a crude way, to not totally embrace the global, and not totally embrace the local. What’s interesting is the mixing between the global and the local. Within that dispersed new environment the people who are doing interesting work are the people who are finding interesting ways to tweak that global-local relationship.

MF Okay, so we’re in this moment of abundance of information, so, what are we doing then? [laughter] I mean, great, we’re having this interesting conversation and we have the desire to share that, but is our role more as curators? How can we go about curating information for the other students; what is the role of a student tabloid as opposed to faculty?

SA Curating is a good term. Even if you look at art practices, I think more and more artists are understanding their craft as a kind of curating. You are exercising a kind of critical intelligence, and a kind of skepticism, but you’re also exercising a sensibility. I think your job is to bring a strong point of view to that diffused field.

LT Because there is such an abundance of information out there and so much coverage of certain projects, I think a lot of times in magazines and online they really focus on creating an intense graphic quality, so that you end up flipping though picture after picture and not really getting any of the meat of the project. Do you think that architecture is diluted because of this?

SA That’s completely true, but I think that’s also a fact of life today. I’m conservative enough to believe that it’s still important to see buildings first hand. I also think it would be nice if journals would publish things like plans and wall sections; that’s information that’s useful to us. I’m not sure that’s necessarily going to happen, but I think we have to recognize the degree to which buildings themselves participate in that culture of the circulation of images and information.

There are people out there who say the reality of the 21st century is the circulation of the image, and it’s dissolved the physicality of architecture, that actual buildings don’t matter anymore because it’s all just a culture of images. I don’t buy that argument. Building itself, the real experience of a real building, in real space and in real time can actually trigger virtual effects way beyond a photograph or drawings or a model. So, yes, we’re inescapably influenced by the culture of images that we swim in today, we’re never going to get out of that, but architecture can offer experiences that are richer and more complex than even the most seductive of media.

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FA L L

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NEW FACULTY

O n e on one with A l e x a n d e r E i s e n s c h m i d t Interview by Lauren Turner

.

FM What was your first job (non architectural)?

AE I never worked as a waiter or something like this which I think is pretty common for students here and in Germany but I never did this. Mine was in construction. I was helping out at a construction site because in Germany many schools have what is called “a practice semester.” When you study architecture that’s what you have to do. It was a required thing but also very helpful. So that was my first job. I suppose you were hoping for something…I don’t know … more adventurous?

FM So no McDonalds?

AE No, never! Although, that would have been fun? I guess …

FM What are you attracted to about UIC? AE Two reasons: One is Chicago and the second is Bob Somol and that’s probably not even the order I should say it in. I was teaching before in New York and Philadelphia and Syracuse, of all cities. Chicago as a city is very attractive to me. I am interested in the relationship between architecture and the city, the metropolis and how it all emerged and so Chicago is really at the forefront of this development historically and ultimately something really interesting to look at today. And then I was very interested in the project of the architecture school as it has emerged here at UIC. The question was really do I stay at a school that’s much more established and where the realms are more confined or do I go to a school that really tries to promote new ideas, with new faculty where it feels like a fresh start? That for me was very attractive. Also the students seem engaged here which I was not as aware of before. They seem interested and are not arrogant as you may sometimes find at other schools. There is a good energy and a good vibe in the school.

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FM What effect do you expect to have on your students? What would you say is your main goal in teaching here?

AE I guess there are several things in terms of architectural interests. I am interested in projective practice where new forms of practice

would emerge and I am very interested in students teaching me something. And so I structure my studio in a way such that I set the parameters or the rules but that the students ultimately spiral up and create something unexpected. I am really not interested in rehearsing past discourses. I am more interested in fresh and young ideas.

I think that if architecture is, by default, a kind of optimistic practice that the architect can seek potential even in the darkest hours. I therefore feel that schools of architecture are the right place for questioning established routines, a way of thinking that should manifest itself in the studio and that ideally has an effect on the discourse and on practice.

FM Sure. What is your worst run in with the law?

AE Well I mean I’ve driven too fast many times although this is easy in Germany. But there was once that we were partying too heavily and the police came by and asked us to lower the music but it never went so far where I had to go to the police station. This just never happened although that’s not to say it never could!

FM True, plus this doesn’t come out for another month either so if you get in trouble with the law by then you can let us know.

AE Oh of course I will certainly update you.

FM Drink of choice?

AE Gin martini.

FM What or who (non-architectural) is your greatest influence?

AE If I am not allowed to mention architects or theorists, I would have to say film. I don’t think there is a filmmaker out there who does more compelling and really striking movies than Lars von Trier. It is really quite incredible to see how he can structure his films through such simple means. He’s also a filmmaker whose work is quite architectural if you consider a movie like Dogville. It’s a deeply spatial but also psychological play that he does in his movies that I’ve found to be really fascinating.

I’ve also traveled quite a bit and this is always very influential.

Making little movies and photographing places like the Australian outback or going to New Zealand or Japan or Latin America. These are all places where people can learn from and they certainly all had an impact on my outlook at things.

There were also some political events that were truly influential. I was living in East Germany when the wall came down, and witnessing these

political shifts first hand made a big impression on me.

FM Who’s your dream woman?

AE

Kate Moss

.

FM That was easy. What are your nonarchitectural interests?

AE Film, skiing, and I like the beach. I played tennis but not anymore.

FM Cooking?

AE I cannot cook. I cannot do many things but I really cannot cook. I believe I would like it because I feel like it is a little bit like making a model.

FM What do you do on a day off?

AE Read a book, watch a movie, call friends and go to a bar. Preferably one where I have not been. Since I am new to Chicago, I am trying to see different places in the city. I like the town, especially its diversity.

FM I think movies, bars and Kate Moss would be a pretty good day.

AE That sounds right.

FM Being that it is inauguration day, how will you celebrate?

AE Oh yes what a happy day! I will go out with friends, have drinks and enjoy it. It is such a good event and really is a good time to be in Chicago. I was really hoping for more kinds of these questions!

FM Ah yes but it’s not what the students are interested in! Finally, if you could send out a message to UIC what would it be?

AE The architecture school just needs to follow through with its great ideas, and to the students I would say to be persistent in following your dreams, seek opportunities and potential wherever you can, and to just

go for it.

Eisenschmidt, clinical assistant professor, currently teaches 4th year undergraduate design and 1st year graduate theory.

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S I X M I N U T E S W I T H DEBO R A H FA U S C H Interview by Jason Colturi

FM What was your first job?

DF The cashier at the steak house where

“Cheezbuger Cheezbuger Cheezbuger” originated.

SNL (http://www.hulu.com/watch/3533/ saturday-night-live-the-olympia-restaurant)

FM Drink of choice?

DF Patron on the rocks with lemon.

FM Who is your dream man?

DF The sappy answer is my husband…but I would go with the

banjo player Scruggs.

Earl

FM How do you explain being spotted three times in the building simultaneously? <Laughs> DF Relativity.

FM What was your first architectural job?

DF A place called Sewer West Housing Center that did low-income housing in Minneapolis.

FM What brought you to UIC? DF A job! I practiced for a while after school and then moved to New York for school and worked in exhibition design firms. Then, went to Princeton for a PhD in architecture, and then came back to the mid-west for a job at UIC. FM What is something you expect to accomplish with your students?

DF I love teaching students and especially studio. I get to figure out how a student’s mind works and help them evolve. In addition to teaching them the tools to become an architect

I like understanding a person’s creative process and pushing them.

FM What non architectural interests do you have?

DF Music. I play the piano, the banjo, and guitar.

I wanted to take a gospel singing course, but it didn’t run and we had a banjo in the house, so I picked it up.

FM What was your most embarrassing teenage experience?

DF Slipping and falling in my high school algebra class in front of the teacher I had a crush on.

FM What is the your worst run in with the law?

DF I’m boring about that…parking tickets.

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Fausch is an adjunct associate professor and director of undergraduate studies.

E M A I L CORRESPONDENCE W I T H IKER GIL

photography, collecting books, having dinner with friends, the ocean…

Interview by Cole Monaghan

solution. In terms of appearance, (my girlfriend would call that Spanish).

FM What was your first job?

IG My first job was framing pictures during the holidays in Bilbao (Spain). I did that for several years but I also worked as a bartender, bellhop in a hotel, a valet, and an extra for a couple of TV commercials

FM Who or what is your biggest influence?

IG Growing up in Bilbao and seeing its social and physical transformation was a big influence in my interest about understanding cities. Also, I remember being interested in the work of Arne Jacobsen after my father (who is not an architect) took me to an exhibition of his work when I was a child. If I have to choose and individual architect, that would be Rem Koolhaas.

FM What about in architecture?

IG In architecture, my first job was in Barcelona, with an architect from Chile named Rodrigo Diaz.

It was a great experience but sometimes tricky as he took most of his decisions on site rather than designing and following drawings.

FM Why this school?

IG I received my Masters Degree from UIC a few years ago and I really enjoyed the experience and the contact with the faculty in the school.

After working at the planning studio at SOM, I wanted to teach in a school that was interested in urban scale issues and not so focused on individual buildings, and I feel UIC has that kind of mind.

FM What do you expect to accomplish with your students, or, why are you interested in teaching in general?

IG I want to teach the students to be confident when they present their work, to defend their ideas, help them make decisions, and be open to what happens around the world and in other fields that are not architecture. I enjoy teaching because I can share some of my experiences and at the same time, get new points of view from each one of the students.

FM What interests lie outside school?

IG Outside school, I focus my effort in MAS studio, the practice that I started a few years ago.

I enjoy collaborating with other designers on a variety of different types of projects. Recently it has been several competitions, exhibitions, a book, and an upcoming journal. Outside architecture, I enjoy traveling, going to concerts, going to the cinema, watching bad 80s movies and series on TV, playing and watching soccer,

FM Sum up your style?

IG In regards to design, not interested in having any definitive style. Each project needs a specific

messy

FM What is your most embarrassing high school/teenage moment?

IG I didn’t have anything too embarrassing,

probably having an eye patch, contact lenses, glasses and braces all at the same time. Now that I think about it, it was pretty embarrassing.

FM What is the worst pick up line that you have used?

IG I don’t have any pick up lines, but in Spain we give two kisses and I could make that work for me as needed.

FM What is your worst run in with the law?

IG Nothing actually, I guess I have behaved pretty well or I just haven’t been caught.

FM What is your drink of choice?

IG I am a coffee drinker and I usually

double cortado at the Intelligentsia in the Monadnock building, my favorite have

a

place. I highly recommend the double cortado, two shots of espresso with just a small amount of milk. When I go out, rum and coke would be my choice.

Gil, a graduate of UIC, currently teaches 1st year undergraduate design.

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CONV E R S AT I O N w i t h TOM JACOBS

Architecture is always site specific. In terms of how you judge

FM What was the first job you ever held?

TJ I worked construction with my Dad. My Dad was originally a trained as an architect but then changed to a construction company fairly quickly.

My summer breaks were spent working on construction sites and hauling materials around Switzerland.

FM You worked for HdM for three years, what was that experience like?

TJ Spectacular. It was very challenging, but nothing short of spectacular. The work they do, the passion they have, the speed, it was fantastic.

Interview by Dorit Hershtig

DH Why teach at UIC? TJ It was a little random. It had to do with some people that I knew and that Bob knew. Probably mostly due to Joe Rosa who I was on a jury with and at some point it was through that introduction that I ended up talking to Bob. FM It is interesting, because at Krueck and Sexton, it is very IIT here and you are the only one UIC representative.

TJ That was talked about here within these walls.

I haven’t taught before. This is my first teaching experience a bit similar to my first architect job with a degree. I don’t necessarily think it’s critical what firm you end up with; you just got to get your feet wet.

FM Being your first teaching experience, what were you trying to accomplish with your students? What expectations did you have?

TJ Um, well, I mean I guess it is second year undergraduate studio, so I think I had to figure out where people were. Uncovering how much experience they had and figuring out their drawing skills. I found that students at this age have a great amount of trouble with drawing.

They hardly know what a section is. So there is a certain amount of teaching that has to do with basics. What is very important to me overall which has a lot to do with my background where I went to school in Zurich. We designed a library on a particular site and whatever we designed, the building can only be as good as the solution ends up improving the neighborhood. It has to be site specific; it has to add something to the city.

And that is the most important thing. Whatever you do might be interesting and this that and the other thing but ultimately because this project was in Chicago. The most important thing is contributing to the broader issues. That is what was beat into us in Zurich.

something, it always has to fit in that unique site.

So that the ultimate solution that is developed is quite strong.

FM If you can sum up your style in one word what would it be? <laughter> FM It can be two words

What my style is, or hope it would be is concise.…

Yeah, I’ll stay with that.

TJ

FM What are your interests outside of work or teaching? What are your hobbies?

TJ I have a family. I have two kids, ages six and eight, boy and a girl, and between work, teaching and the family, that’s about it.

FM What or who is your biggest influence right now for you work? Where do you draw inspiration from?

TJ Well, Ron Kruek, and Mark Sexton are the owners for this firm. It’s not a very big firm, about 15 people, and what we do necessarily well is collaborate. Ron Kruek is definitely the creative mind behind the whole operation but then there are all of these other people including Mark and myself and the others that can challenge him.

FM What is your drink of choice?

Co-worker: Tom, we need you in ten minutes?

TJ Yes, sure. Well, up until a week ago, it was coffee. I drank way to much and then I had issues.

FM What is an embarrassing highschool moment?

TJ Highschool….. I used to play the guitar and sing, I still do, but there is a piece of equipment where you transpose the strings so I performed one time in front of my friends and I forgot this piece that I crucially needed. But I decided to play anyway, and it was a huge disaster. I couldn’t reach the chords, I couldn’t sing, I was

concentrating too much.

FM You should put a show on at UIC.

Ha, it probably would be a show.

TJ:

FM Do you still play?

TJ No, well, at home a little bit.

FM And last question, have you ever been arrested?

TJ Ha, no.

R E V E A L I N G J I M E NEZ LAI Interview by Alysen Hiller

FM How do you take your meat?

JL This is actually interesting because typically I take medium rare – until I got to Chicago and realized that medium rare is rare in Chicago. So now I take it medium.

FM What was your first job?

JL Well, I was working in a restaurant, I was in the kitchen—a Japanese restaurant. I didn’t make sushi—I was washing dishes.

Wait, I had a job before that, an animation studio, although that was the co-op program through

I guess my first job was drawing cartoons. school—so,

FM So what about your first architecture related job or design related job?

JL My dad’s best friend offered me a job when I was 21, so I went to Taipei. Back then I didn’t have any experience, so I was just drafting.

FM So why this school? Why UIC? JL UIC—because of Bob [Somol].

FM Because of Bob. JL I moved here because of Bob. FM So this was a relationship that started at Ohio State?

JL I met Bob during my interview in Ohio. As soon as I got a job there, he had already left. But he wanted me to join him in Chicago a year after —and he gave me a deal I couldn’t refuse.

FM Well you got to give people you like a good deal.

JL Yeah. {laughter} FM I saw the posters of you from the Ohio lecture series that you did, the posters with the kind of ghostly image—

I was thinking more like space-rock drummer— JL

Jacobs taught 2nd year undergraduate design in Fall 08.

FM You get that—it comes across, I see it.

JL I was hoping for that, but the ghost thing—well okay.

FM Within this program, and with Somol, and everything that’s going on right now, what do you think is the potential of this program?

JL Okay, good question… but seriously, or not

serious?

FM However you want to answer it. So either your own role, or is it a higher agenda that you’re carrying out, something that you’re an integral part of…

JL I do think I’m a part of this—it goes back to your other question of why did I come here. I was debating between here and LA and I came here because I really believe—and I’ve told Bob this—I really believe that this isn’t just building a school, but building a movement.

FM An ideology.

JL Yes, an ideology. So, if I were to look back at the history of architecture through the 20th century, at the turning points, when scholars got together… I keep thinking about groups like de Stijl, Werkbund or Team X. We really have a chance to collaborate in something like that— a movement, or an ideology as you said.

FM I mean that’s the reason a lot of us are here too—to latch on to the start of that movement. When most of us got here, what Somol calls Year 0, which was last year, my first year here—we didn’t have anything to compare it to… My thinking going into this was that I wanted to be at a school that is conceptual but that has some sort of energy behind that; a school that isn’t just about making, but is about thinking… That duality is why a lot of us are here.

JL Yeah.

FM So speaking to that ideology, what do you expect to accomplish with your students?

JL It isn’t easy to answer right now because aside from the graduate studio I’m teaching an undergraduate studio as well, which is kind of a nightmare. It’s more difficult to motivate people that young. I’m teaching first year undergrad— maybe I just don’t really have the drill sergeant voice.

FM —but you shouldn’t have to.

JL Right. But Grant Gibson’s studio looks great… and Alexander Eisenschmidt—I mean his studio is probably the best in undergrad, in my opinion.

So what do I want to do with my students here— I would like to think of it as an experiment that produces something extremely difficult and intelligent, but delivering it in a stupid and easy way—in terms of representation.

FM So what are you trying to deliver? A continuance of the ideology or an individual sensibility?

JL I’m addressing a representational project, less a design agenda. In terms of representation, the image is the complexity of the project.

FM What are your interests outside of architecture and teaching?

JL General interests… I started an office this summer and it was becoming really apparent that I had to quit baseball. Both in terms of watching, following the games, and playing—in all ways. It’s something that my dad got me into; it’s a huge thing in east Asia. I realize that I had to quit in all capacities.

FM Have you successfully “quit” baseball?

JL No. I still follow it, but at least I realize that I can’t put too much time into thinking about it anymore. I also really enjoy cooking. When I was in Taliesin, [Arizona], we had to cook for about 50 people, so I really got into that. And I like music.

FM Who’s your favorite musician or band.

You can name three.

JL In high school, I was listening to Radiohead a lot.

FM I concur. <laughter> JL They’re really hard not to like.

FM I find that Radiohead is one of the few bands that you can put on anytime and it’ll fit the mood, any mood.

JL I know! You can play it at a party, but you can’t really play the complete works of Chopin.

FM Never—or it would be awkward at least. <laughter> JL Somewhere between Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Johnny Cash, the heavy, depressive but light-hearted… and recently I got into this group called Crystal Castles, it’s just some electronic music with a woman shouting in the background. <laughter> FM Briefly, sum up your style.

JL I am trying to be I hope.

dorky

enough,

FM Who or what is your biggest influence?

JL If I talk about architecture, I would have to say Michael Meredith, office MOS. FM You worked for him, right?

JL Yeah. In terms of architecture, he taught me almost everything I know. He was a really huge influence on my development. In terms of attitude towards life, well, maybe those couple years that I lived both in Taliesin, and in Atelier Van Lieshout, in the port of Rotterdam.

I was living in a desert shelter, and then sleeping in shipping containers. That’s when

M I C H ELLE

LITVIN

I realized that I actually don’t need anything… in terms of possessions.

FM Drink of choice?

JL In public, whiskey on the rocks—or with soda.

FM Have you ever been arrested?

JL Uh, no.

FM No? <laughter> FM Most embarrassing teenage moment?

JL Oh no.

FM Well, where were you as a teenager?

JL Toronto. Alright—it’s not like I don’t think there are any, it’s that there are too many. High school was really boring. It would have to involve this girl that I really liked in high school. I just kinda waited at the bus stop... thinking that she would also take the bus, I would wait for 5 or 7 busses until she would get to the bus stop. <laughter> [Lai looks down and is reminded that the conversation is being recorded.]

JL And now it’s on the record.

FM Thank you very much JL That was really embarrassing.

Lai, clinical assistant professor, currently teaches 4th year undergraduate design.

?

CONV E R S AT I O N w i t h ADRIA N M c D E R M O T T Interview by Julia Sedlock

FM What was your first job?

AM

Working in a video store.

FM And what about in the field?

AM Actually, my very first job was at Dan Wheeler’s office. I built a three foot wide one-to -one section of somebody’s kitchen, for a day.

FM Why do you teach at this school?

AM Why UIC? The opportunity presented itself to teach at UIC. As you know I just wrapped up the M. Arch program and I wanted to teach. The opportunity came up over the summer to teach a bridge program and mid-way through that Bob offered me the freshman design studio position and the first year graduate design studio with Paul Preissner. That’s not something you turn down, if you’re smart. It’s a fantastic opportunity, but it also happens to be a really cool opportunity right now at this particular point in time in UIC’s track.

FM What do you expect to accomplish with your students? Or why are you interested in teaching in general?

AM Well, I mean, so far my experience is limited to the foundation courses at either the graduate or undergraduate level. What I find particularly fascinating about the two classes that I’ve been a part of is that in every way it’s indoctrinating students, whether they’re 35 or 17, into the language and the practice and the discipline and the rigor. On a selfish level, it really forces you to galvanize and articulate your own positions.

Having come freshly out of the gauntlet of graduate school, I find that it’s easy to relate to the students and that they find me accessible because I can articulate disciplinary concepts, but then I can also understand how students need to digest it.

FM What’s the worst pick-up line you’ve ever used?

AM I’ve never used one.

FM You just use your natural charm?

Having no charm is probably my charm. Not being a AM

schmooze is what probably attracted my wife.

FM What are some interests outside of school, or outside of architecture?

AM I have a degree in photography so I have a genuine interest in that. I am currently obsessed with the fact that I am about to have a son.

I am also obsessed with cycling, bicycling.

From my days in Seattle I‘m obsessed with the outdoors, but around here there aren’t as many opportunities, or different kinds of opportunities.

FM Do you have time?

AM No, definitely not. Between my impending son, 60 hour weeks at SOM and 20-30 hour weeks at school, there’s not much time. But that’s fine; it’s the beginning of a career.

FM What’s your most embarrassing teenage moment?

AM So long ago, you’re really dating me now.

I was in a musical production of South Pacific, and just that alone is enough. But, I was

a gymnast in high school, and I got in the play because was there was a sequence in one of the dance numbers where they needed tumblers. It called for us to do back flips across the stage, crossing paths from one side of the stage to the other. When we were in the middle of the sequence we couldn’t see the guys coming from the other side, so in the middle of one of the performances we crashed straight into each other. I came out of it fine - aside from being embarrassed - but I broke my friend’s finger and kicked him square in the nose. He had a bloody nose, was carted off stage, his finger was going back in the wrong direction. I felt more for him than embarrassed for myself, but you know that got talked about for a while.

FM Would you say that you have a style, in terms of your design work?

AM Not yet. I’m interested in parametric design, not so much for the perfume bottle tower aspects of it but just kind of exploring the inherent possibilities. I think for me it’s easy to get wrapped up in the aesthetic qualities of form making as opposed to justifying parametric design to some kind of efficiency or building science or logical solution. The reality to me is that all of it is an aesthetic choice, with an infinite number of possible solutions, so call it what it is. How you argue for or against it, that’s the prerogative of

the designer. And, whether or not you can argue for or against any one design solution has to do, at least within professional practice, with knowing who your client is and how you would explain the project. In other words, a lot of the work that I do here at SOM as an individual is presented to a design team. That work is part of one long choreographed set of arguments, highly focused based on who you’re speaking to.

I mean if I were being glib I would say that my style is curvy, but it’s not quite that simple.

FM Who are your biggest influences or who do you admire?

AM I don’t have any heroes. I don’t admire anybody that I don’t know, because I don’t see how you can. In that regard, I think that people like Doug Garofalo, and Paul Preissner, also Iker Gil and Juan Rois, are all interesting models for how one can develop a practice, teach and have a life. My personal goals are to get the license, to start my own practice, and to teach simultaneously, and the people that I described as admiring have done that, and all offer different models, so I think all of them are to be admired and studied.

FM What’s your drink of choice?

AM Coke.

FM No alcohol?

AM I’m not a big drinker, but I guess if I’m drinking, then Guinness.

McDermott, a graduate of UIC, currently teaches 1st year undergraduate design.

CONV E R S AT I O N w i t h Ryan Palider Interview by Dorit Hershtig

FM Let’s talk about your experience teaching third year undergraduate studio. What do you expect to accomplish with your students.

RP Well, the way I typically teach studio is to expose them to architecture as a social, political and cultural discipline and I try to teach them a way to have an open mind about the possibilities of architecture and plotting new trajectories in architecture. I try to expose them to a tool set so that they can begin to develop their own ideas about architecture. Typically, when I teach a studio it’s more process-based, by creating

a framework that needs to be solved and they bring their own ideas to certain type of issues.

FM Why teach at UIC? RP: Well, mainly because of Bob. He taught at Ohio State when I was there. He called me up and asked if I wanted to come teach at UIC and I said, “Ok, I’m there.” And I’ve wanted to move to Chicago for probably about a decade now, just waited for the right time.

FM What was your very first job?

RP For my very first job, I was a house painter.

FM Did you have your own company?

RP No, it was with a construction company that my brother worked for in Cleveland, Ohio.

FM What was your first architectural job?

RP My first architectural job was working for a faculty member. A professor of mine was designing a house so I helped out with the construction drawings. I actually worked on all phases of that project. I worked on the construction drawings. and then I did construction management and became friends with the contractor and painters so I painted the house. The joke in the office was that I was the only one that made money on that project.

FM How would you sum up your style?

RP Well I don’t know, in terms of design style,I’m not interested in any sort of particular style, but I’m interested in performance, programming, and surface and material, so basically performative.

FM Right now, who or what is your biggest influence?

RP Right now I’m really interested in UN Studio.

FM What are your interests that lie outside of school? What are your hobbies?

RP Well, I love to cook. That’s my favorite thing.

FM What’s your best dish?

RP Lots of things, I just like to make things. If someone gives me a recipe, I’ll make it.

FM favorite cuisine?

RP That’s difficult. My favorite cuisine in Chicago is Contemporary American, or French influence.

FM What is your drink of choice?

RP Well, I’ve been cutting back on drinking lately, but I’m a big fan of Maker’s Mark on the rocks.

FM What is your most embarrassing high school moment?

RP My most embarrassing high school moment..

I don’t know, all of highschool was sort of embarrassing. I would say I was sort of quiet,

under the radar. Oh, the most embarrassing moment I would have to say was when I had a zit right in the middle of my forehead.

FM That’s very common, everyone has had one.

show. And this may just be due to the fact that I’m only 29 and out of grad school four years, but that is where I am right now, and that’s okay, but it is probably what is most difficult for me right now.

RP But it was like

FM What do you expect to accomplish with your students?

AM All I really want is for my students to feel comfortable analyzing issues and thinking them through, and that in this process, the project will design itself. It’s very difficult to teach architectural design. I think it’s about learning how to think.

dead center, it wasn’t off center where you could cover it with a creative hair cut, it was dead center.

FM Have you ever been arrested?

RP No. FM How do you take your meat?

RP Medium Rare.

Palider, clinical assistant professor, currently teaches 1st and 3rd year undergraduate design.

T H E D E C I S I V E ANDR E W M O D D R E L L Interview by Alysen Hiller

FM What was your first job?

AM I was laying carpet for my entire summer of tenth grade. I was hired to carry and glue carpet in a fraternity house.

FM What about your first architecture/design related job?

AM I had my first internship during a summer at KU. The job was for Gould Evans in Kansas City where I basically built models of elementary schools and hung out in an Airstream trailer all summer.

FM Why are you interested in teaching?

AM I think that it comes specifically from great teachers that I’ve had, and probably also inspired by some not so great teachers I’ve had. I think it is to do with the awareness of what a difference a person can make. You just remember the great professors and how they helped you in the course of a semester and how much you can really learn from one person in a short period of time.

I know that there are certain aspects of teaching that have clicked for me and there are things about teaching I’m very comfortable with. But there are situations, like being on a review for example, when I don’t really feel ready to run the

FM Who or what is your greatest influence?

It’s definitely not an architectural icon or whatever.

I couldn’t even tell you who my favorite architect is. I would have to say my mom and dad. At some point in my life, that became my answer—I don’t know when. Was it three years ago? Was it last week?

FM Drink of choice?

AM Well it depends on the occasion. I don’t have one.

FM Bar context.

AM What kind of bar?

FM A comfortable bar that you’ve been to before.

AM I don’t know…

FM Okay, top three. You can attach them to a context if it makes it easier.

AM Sometimes I really wish it was simple.

Because then I wouldn’t have to think so long every time I go some place.

FM Are you just generally an indecisive person?

AM No. Definitely not. This isn’t indecisive.

I really wish there was one thing that was that good, you know? Maybe the question is “last drink that I could ever have.”

FM Okay. Last drink you could ever have?

AM If I was going to get a cocktail, a white Russian, but no one can drink that all night long, or a regular gin martini.

FM Up or on the rocks?

AM Up. FM Olives?

AM Two olives. Beefeater or Bombay Sapphire—to start the night. But a really long day after studio, a really cold beer, but not a really carbonated beer. Okay, that’s it, that’s my answer, a really good stout, or a black and tan.

You know what though, the first sip of a martini is really good.

FM How long does it take you to get ready in the morning? What takes up the most time?

AM It takes me 30 minutes—tops, with a shower.

And the shower takes up the most time because I really like to be warm. I get in the shower and I don’t like to get out. It’s awful and it’s wasteful, but I’m sorry. I just stand there and think of what I’m going to do that day, and when it’s negative 7 outside, it’s really hard to get out. But I never stay until the water gets cold.

FM Well why would you do that?!

That’s how you know it’s time to get out.

vegetarian?

AM No, not on the verge, well, sort of. I have to do something—my cholesterol is alarmingly high for someone who’s 165 lbs and in shape.

FM What if I would have asked you two weeks ago?

AM Medium.

Moddrell, adjunct assistant professor, currently teaches 2nd year graduate design.

AM What do you mean?

FM What is on your bedside table?

AM A lamp.

FM Just a lamp?

I have an issue with keeping track of the temperature at different places AM Okay this is a little silly.

in my apartment. My wife and I live in this 600 or 700 square foot place and I have these temperature gauges throughout the apartment, inside and outside. So, that’s the only thing I have on my nightstand, a temperature gauge, so I always know what the temperature is near the bed as opposed to in the bathroom or near the couch.

FM So the obsession with this is…

AM I really don’t like being cold and I’m fascinated by it I guess—the temperature and the relative humidity. I like to keep track of it

My wife thinks it’s a little obsessive. all.

FM So if you weren’t in architecture or the design field, what would you be?

I feel like I could be a decent CSI. Even though I’ve never AM

really watched all those shows… I’m less interested in the mystery than I am in the problem solving. But there’s really nothing worse on television. Outside of that, I’d probably be in education.

FM How do you take your meat?

AM Well, I just got my cholesterol checked, and I haven’t eaten meat in about 10 days.

FM So are you on the verge of becoming a

G E T T I NG TO KNOW KYLE REYNOLDS Interview by Julia Sedlock

FM What was your first job?

KR My first job ever, I think that was when I worked as a soccer referee for the local athletic department. I was twelve or thirteen. I’d referee other little kid’s soccer games, where they would swarm around the ball, which I think was actually one of the worst jobs that I’ve ever had…

FM Because they’re so out of control?

KR Not the kids, the parents…I was just telling someone about this the other day, that I had to throw an adult out of a game when I was twelve years old because whenever the kids fall down you have to blow the whistle and reset the ball, and one of the parents was screaming

“No blood, no foul! No blood, no foul!” so I had to ask him to leave.

and not at all joking,

FM What about in the field?

KR In the field? I was an environmental researcher at UWM [University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee]. We used a program called TRNSYS (pronounced “transis”) to do environmental modeling on existing and new buildings to see what energy enhancements could be made.

That was during school, and then my first real architecture job was at Valerio Dewalt Train, which is where I work now. I worked at VDT for two years after undergrad, went to grad school

and now I’m back.

FM How did you find yourself teaching here?

Why UIC? KR Well, I guess there’s kind of two paths that converged…I had Bob as a thesis advisor at Princeton. And, I was always interested in coming back to Chicago and teaching. I stayed in New Jersey for a year after I finished grad school and worked there, but I knew that I wanted to be back here in the Mid-West. I contacted Bob after I arrived back in Chicago and here I am.

FM Did you know anything about UIC before coming?

KR I had friends who had gone here, and when I used to work at Valerio Dewalt Train I would come to lectures and events here. I also had many professors who used to teach here, that was kind of the extent of it.

FM So, what would you say you expect to accomplish with your students?

KR I think they need to be able to represent their ideas, which is one of the first things that we worked on, both in model and drawing form, but then also understand what they’re doing, understand how they’re working and what it does for them. When they make something, I want them to ask what does it do and what can it do?

FM What’s your favorite color underwear?

KR My favorite color underwear? Probably red.

FM Do you have a lot of red underwear?

KR Maybe three or four pairs.

FM Boxers or briefs?

KR The one in between, what’s that…

FM Boxer briefs?

KR Boxer briefs, that’s right…

FM And only solid red, or with pattern?

KR I would wear any, but I just kind of go with the cheap stuff, the Hanes.

FM What interests do you have outside of school or outside of architecture?

KR Outside of architecture…well, I’m from Wisconsin so I’m a big Packers fan…and they’re not doing so hot this year. So, I watch sports sometimes. I also play Guitar Hero a lot…

FM What’s you’re most embarrassing high school moment?

KR (sigh)…There’s so many. Gosh, I’ve gotta come up with a good one. Well, really anything that you do in high school is embarrassing…I have a really embarrassing grade school moment, can I share that?

FM Of course.

KR Well, I loved Mickey Mouse when I was a little kid - I was obsessed with Mickey Mouse. And I didn’t know that he wasn’t

in fifth grade you’re not supposed to like Mickey M o u s e anymore. cool, that when you’re

I loved going to Disney World and all that stuff. So, it was Halloween and we wore our costumes to school, and I went as Mickey Mouse - obviously, what else would I go as? And all of the other little kids were like Rambo and other little violent warrior things. I was made fun of for weeks after that.

And I never went as Mickey Mouse again.

FM Your innocence was shattered. Do you have any pictures of yourself as Mickey

Mouse? Maybe you could ask your mom for some and we could publish it…

KR Okay sure, I’ll try to find one.

FM That would be great. One more serious question: what’s your favorite Bob Somol outfit?

My favorite Bob Somol outfit? He has some KR

good ones. He had white shoes at Y-Arch over the summer. He had these bright white shoes, those were pretty amazing. It’s kind of weird that I remember, but I think my favorite was

the leather suit at the Stan Allen lecture. That was my favorite. Oh, but I also remember from the Princeton days, he used to have these black pants with all these zippers on them.

FM That is typically the favorite, with the zipper at the bottom, and they actually have a matching vest.

KR Oh, they do? Good, well, you know, he’s way cooler than I am.

FM He’s way cooler than most of us.

look at what I’m wearing - I’ve got my Napoleon Dynamite moon boots on, but they’re KR I mean,

over last April. That was amazing. It was good. I got mugged.

FM In Rio? KR Yeah, In Rio. FM I assume you also went to Brasilia?

KR Yeah, I went to Brasilia. You know the crazy thing about Brasilia is that it’s a modernist city, but it works. All the stuff that’s not supposed to work, actually does there. The modernist roof garden, people actually use them, they go up on the roof. Or buildings elevated on piloti that provide shade, people go underneath. All the spaces that are typically dead are really active in Brasilia. I’m convinced modernism was made for a tropical climate. And the circulation, the traffic patterns, they really work. It was pretty amazing. But my favorite moment - I’m totally off track here - my favorite moment in Brasilia, was when the President of India was there and, he shows up at the plaza of the three powers to meet the Brazilian President, and the Brazilians have an official band that plays. One would think they would play either the Indian national anthem or the Brazilian national anthem - they played “Final Countdown”. We were like, “Final Countdown”? In Brasilia? Could you imagine that at the inauguration for Obama?

FM (laughing) That would be awesome. Last but not least, what is your drink of choice?

KR Water.

FM What about alcohol?

KR Oh, alcohol. I don’t drink coffee, which everyone makes fun of me about. If I have to stay up then I’ll have a coke, and that actually works because I don’t ever drink caffeine. But, drink of choice is typically beer.

not quite as eighties.

FM Would you say that you have a style in your design work?

KR I guess, no, because I don’t think I’m old enough or experienced enough to have developed a style. I probably copy styles. I’m still a subject of what I learned recently, so I work within what I learn and try to explore ideas through that.

FM So then who would you say your influences are?

KR Neutelings Riedijk is a favorite of mine, also Sejima and Nishizawa (SANAA), and Oscar Neimeyer. I love Oscar Neimeyer. I went to Brazil

Reynolds currently undergraduate design.

teaches

1st

year 22

P O S T- R AT I O N A L I Z I N G ZAGO’S STUDIO WE ASKED A CRITIC AND A STUDENT THE TWO FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

1. If you were Andrew Zago, what would you say this studio was about?

2. Knowing that you are not Andrew Zago, what do you think this studio was about?

John McMorrough, OSU critic 1 The historically descriptive answer, and the one I would imagine would be closest to how Andy Zago would himself describe the studio, would be as an investigation of a specific relation between a continuity of exterior skin and interior subdivisions; a relationship mostly understood in section. The context of the studio is a long-standing interest of Zago’s in the articulation of free-standing interiorized volumes, most clearly manifested (and perhaps precipitated) in his reading (with sometime collaborator Jeffrey Kipnis) of the Tokyo Opera house competition entry

by Jean Nouvel and Philippe Starck from 1985. In that design the open volume of the building moves around the discretely articulated volumes of major program groupings, the effect of which was to make the space “buoyant”.

2 The situational answer as to what the studio was about, the one that describes how the formal interest of Zago plays out in this particular studio, has to do with the context of instruction that is Chicago and UIC. Within the context of Chicago, the selection of a site which is both adjacent and similar to the Monadnock building (John Wellborn Root, 1893) draws an allusion between the work of the studio and the existing building. In both cases the program is relatively generic office space with the architectural issue (or challenge) being to introduce “qualities” to such an unexceptional circumstance. Both instances highlight the deployment of poché (real in the case of the Monadnock, virtual in the case of the Zago studio) as architectural device. Within the context of UIC, this interest in the modeling

effects produced by an insertion of a virtual poché (as opposed to “real” poché) represents a broad shift within the curriculum overall from a focus on architectures made from the ubiquitous exceptionality of tectonic attentions, to those composed by the strategic deployment of performative technique.

Ryan Johnson, UIC student 1 The studio was about an intent to investigate a new form of monumentality in architecture. Precedent examples: Tokyo Opera House by Jean Novell and Philippe Starck and Signal Box by Herzog and De Meuron. This new form of monumentality and opaqueness is clearly represented throughout the Monadnock building. The intent of the studio was to produce an understanding of what it means to make a contemporary monolith within the city. Secondly, knowing that contemporary architecture cannot be an opaque mass, the studio was also interested in expressing a nature of the interior on the exterior. So the issue is topology, something that is very different from topography. It is important that we know the difference between the two. We wanted to create a topological inversion of the reading of these buildings, where the question now becomes, “is the building a ship-in-the-bottle or does the ship become the bottle”. This is something very different than the Buddha in a cave, or the Corbusian object-in-the-landscape.

What we were actually interested in was getting the topological diagram of the building correct, so we see the building as a series of inversions folding in on itself.

2 Being a participant in this studio, it is of my best interest to believe what I just wrote, as well as sparing myself to be redundant. Nonetheless, I would say this studio is simply about creating a contemporary Monadnock. This has many hidden meanings in it, but really the issue is how do we contemporize monumentality and monoliths in architecture. A great example of this is Mies’ Federal Center.

This becomes truly interesting as a contemporary phenomenon at the point where transparency can become an opaque mass. This may be a somewhat dated idea and issue, but is a good example of what the studio was responding to.

For more about this article, check out the blog at www.UICFreshmeat.blogspot.com

SPRING

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NEW FACULTY

THE NE WLY CONVERTED:

JULIE

Interview by Alysen Hiller

FLOHR

JF I’m not that funny, my sense of humor is not very good….

FM It’s okay. What was your first job?

JF My first ever paid job was serving in the Creperie des Cannettes, in Paris on the little street where I lived. I was a waitress at this pretty well known Parisian spot. Catherine Deneuve showed up, but they didn’t let me serve her. I was 18.

FM First design or architecture related job?

JF I worked for Dani Karavan, he’s a Parisian based Israeli artist. He had gone to lecture at Unesco, and he presented these monuments in the desert, which were sort of these cast concrete structure that at the time they really captivated me, and I approached him, very bluntly and said “Hey, I want to come work for you.” So, I started working for him in a little studio making these ongoing public projects—a lot of architectural work with landscape and urban types and contexts. I worked for him for two summers while at school in Versailles.

FM Why UIC? JF Why am I here now? Well, there is the life story reason why and the intellectual story why.

So, the life story reason is that I came here on exchange as a student. Versailles has an ongoing exchange program with Urbana-Champagne, and once in a while, they will allow us to come here--to Chicago instead. They said, “Well, it’s a place with no windows and it’s right next to the highway.” And I said, “Well, I don’t care, I’m not going to Champagne.” That’s when I met Doug Garofalo and Robert Somol. And on an

it’s the hottest place to be in the city right now. It’s where I want to be. intellectual level,

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FM What do you want to accomplish with your students—as a professor, as an intellect, as a designer?

JF I want to change how one might consider a practice, or a model of practice. One where technology is another design tool. Technology

has invaded all aspects of life; and technology organizes information differently than before.

Technology is just another design tool—it allows architects to design custom tools to solve invented or speculated needs for design intervention. We’re producing projects

differently because these tools are here. I’m not personally an expert on how technology is changing our social interaction, but I recognize that too is needed. I’m not claiming much interest in that social moment, but I’m fascinated with the potential for new linkages to be made with technology in terms of production systems and performance of these networks—and the social question is critical, otherwise the things we produce aren’t for anyone and they’re not wanted. So, for me, design and technology is more of an attitude. Being really informed in precedents allows you to tweak or modify the function of these designs. That is what invention is—very little change to a contribution that is already established. It’s a design strategy for many things.

FM So, does this involve your interest in pattern?

JF Yes, pattern is very predictable, but then the moment you start to tweak that pattern, you enter into something much richer, and it changes exponentially. It’s not that it becomes more complex, but it becomes more interesting. For me, pattern is a substrate with potential. I’m interested in the implications of cutting edge manufacturing and modeling strategies for material organization, and for the understanding of the role that “performance”, like structural performance, might also play in the design process. If you look at someone like Cecil Balmond—I’m fascinated with that type of work.

of things that are different than what we do or live in every day, which can be confining. Then there are the simple things, like walking, being at the beach, etc.

FM Do you have a moment, or a project of great influence or inspiration?

JF I think it would be people of great influence.

The way those people approached things, or looked at things; one of those people taught French Lit. So, not even architects. It’s moments where my thinking was really challenged, and what challenged that probably isn’t architecture.

FM So, to diverge… most embarrassing high school moment?

JF Oh, we don’t have that in France.

FM What? You have high school!

JF We don’t have embarrassment. When you watch TV in France as a teenager and it’s all these cheesy American things, and you go, “huh? What are those people doing?” I was really never embarrassed in high school. You could start drinking at 16, you’re adults. I mean, here, it’s like you’re kept in this confinement— there wasn’t that pressure. I’m not saying I was always happy, but I wasn’t embarrassed.

FM Drink of choice?

JF Red wine. A good Bordeaux from at least 10 years ago, which I can’t afford here—so, my parents’ cellar’s red wine.

FM Any run-ins with the law?

JF No. I’m an immigrant here, so I can’t really run-in with the law. It’s not an option.

FM How long does it take you to get ready in the morning, and what is the most time consuming part?

JF Getting my child ready. I have a son who is 3 and a half.

FM Favorite musician?

JF Not composer?

FM Sure. Either one.

JF Eric Satie. He’s a pianist.

FM Interests outside of architecture?

JF I have a lot of interests that revolve around cultural things—experiences, traveling, reading—

FM How do you take your meat?

JF Medium rare.

doing on the intellectual side of things. Being an architect has to do with having these experiences

Flohr, clinical assistant professor, currently teaches 4th year undergraduate design and 2nd year graduate tech.

being transported into somebody else’s experience through their own medium is something I really enjoy

CONV E R S AT I O N w i t h SEAN L A L LY Interview by Jon Mac Gillis

FM How do you like your meat cooked?

SL Rare to medium rare FM What was your first job?

SL I was a paperboy at age 13 or 14.

FM What was your first architecture related job?

SL My first related architecture job was actually in landscape architecture. Literally doing residential landscaping for a lady

she was a landscape architect, but looking back she was probably just a gardener. who said that

FM Why this school?

SL I came clearly because of what Bob is putting together here. It’s kind of clear that there is a center of gravity that is starting to converge, and that he is trying to put together. I think at some point you have to make a judgment call when you are a young architect to find out what

One thing about being a young architect is to be willing to move, and to realize the opportunities don’t come around too often, and when they do you have to take you want to do.

them. Generally momentums in schools usually don’t last that long, so you want to hit them at the beginning point. I also think there’s a good mix of people that Bob has brought here and people that were here before. I have had more conversations with people here than I have had in a long time.

FM What do you expect to accomplish with your students, whether it’s in studio or tech

or a theory seminar?

SL My biggest thing is that I don’t really have a formal agenda. I really like to look at past studios and see a physicality that ties them together. I like to see more of a spatial organizational implications within them. In terms of what the students get out of it is being able to have a hypothesis of what is possible, and then testing it to see if it is possible. Being able to go to that little dark space where you don’t know what is going to happen. To find out what you do want and what you don’t, and then executing it. I think when the student knows before hand what they want out of the studio is when I get scared.

FM No preconceptions then?

SL Well the studios and seminars have a clear method or direction of where they are going. So this seminar is on immaterialities and energies, I think that is clear from the beginning, but seminars are always one-to-one models, and when I say models I mean both physical and ones that have to do with energy systems. So there is always a clear objective at the end. I try to always be as honest as possible on what the objective is, but the objective is not always the same for each student. Those deliverables aren’t always explicit but the kind of end game.

I think the more successful studios are where the deliverables are all different from student to student because the projects generally involve different parts, and those different parts require different ways of articulation.

FM What are your interests outside of teaching and the school?

SL I love music.

FM Who’s your favorite band?

SL I couldn’t tell you.

It varies from Deftones to Houston hip-hop,

cash millionaire reggaeton.

to

FM Do you dance?

I do not dance.

SL FM Do you play an instrument?

SL I used to long ago. I can definetly tell you that the day of trying to record music ended when I started grad school. I find music sacred.

I don’t like to discuss music in studio because I don’t want to draw correlations to it. I listen to it because its enjoyable and inspirational, and I don’t find the need to make analogies to design.

It will just dirty it up. I think architecture is so much about making arguments of why its good and I don’t need to make an argument for why I like music.

FM What is your style?

SL Like walks in the park? <laughter, pausing> I don’t know if I could sum it up.

FM Where would energy systems fit in?

SL Energy systems are a means to an end, but I see opportunites there.

FM Who is your biggest influence?

SL I think it is pretty eclectic. I went to undergrad for landscape architecture at a state school, which was more nuts and bolts. Going to graduate school at UCLA, exposed me to people like Thom Mayne, Greg Lynn, Bob, and Sylvia Lavin. So, I just try and keep my ears open. I try to take in what I can and hybridize it.

would lose my job.

FM What kind of posse did you role with in high school?

SL Not a very tough one. I went to an all boys catholic school so the

toughest posse was probably the priests.

FM What’s your worst pick up line you have used?

How you doin’?

SL <Joey Tribiani from Friends voice>

I have never worked for a big architect or a star-architect.

So I was never in an office that when I moved on I felt like I needed to take something with me. I try to look at everything and just enjoy as much as I can. I don’t feel a responsibility to anybody. Bob and Greg were really interesting characters at UCLA for me because they were polar opposites. I have heard some of the best discussions between those two.

FM What is your most embarrassing teenage moment?

SL So many to choose from. I have probably blocked most of them out. I don’t want to condone drinking so I wont go there. One of my

going to a bar and just sitting there and staring at the bar and waiting for someone to bump into me to talk, and it never even worked. most embarrassing moments is

FM What is your drink of choice?

SL I generally drink beer, but when I am going to do sustained drinking it would be vodka tonic.

For some reason I seem to have a relative immunity to vodka tonic.

FM What is your worst run in with the law?

SL I have never been arrested. Otherwise I

Lally, assistant professor, is teaching 2nd year graduate design and 1st year tech.

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A L E X A N D E R L E H N E R E R ON THE RECORD Interview by Jon Mac Gillis FM How c o oked?

A L Rare!

do

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meat

F M What was your first j o b ?

A L I delivered newspap e r s . A t o n e p o i nt it was just an a d v e r t i s e m e n t p a per. I lived in a small v i l l a g e a n d I h a d to deli ver this ad to e v e r y m a i l b o x , a n d I didn’t like the job s o I j u s t t h r e w h a l f of them away into the g a r b a g e . S o n e edless to say I lost this j o b v e r y e a s i l y a n d quickly.

F M What was your first a r c h i t e c t u r a l r e l ated job?

A L Actually I was not plan n i n g o n d o i n g a r c hitectur e. I was enrolle d i n l a w. T h e n t h e re was a strange incid e n t w h e r e w e h a d a two or three hour lo n g d i s c u s s i o n o n when is it legally rainin g . I s i t w h e n t h e street is wet? Or is i t w h e n y o u h a ve to turn on your wipe r s ? A f t e r t h i s d i s cussion I said no, I ca n ’ t s t u d y l a w a n ymore.

It’s strange b e c a u s e t h i s a m biguity that I found in l a w i s w h a t I f i n d interesting in architec t u r e .

F o r my fir st architectura l j o b , I m a d e m o dels for an office in B e r l i n . I w a s r e a lly into the foam cutte r a n d b e c a m e s k i l led with it as well. Usu a l l y y o u h a v e t o use guides to cut straig h t , b u t I c o u l d d o it all freehand. I had a p r e t t y c a l m h a nd, and I knew how to u s e t h e f o a m t o cut a straight line. I a l s o t h i n k t h a t a s traight line is harder to a c h i e v e t h a n a c urved one. But the pro b l e m w i t h t h e f o a m cutter is that it only al l o w s y o u t o c u t c o mpletely through the pie c e . O n c e y o u b e come accustomed to t h a t t e c h n i q u e y o u becom e restricted in y o u r h e a d , y o u a l ways think of the cuttin g l i n e s o f t h e f o a m cutter in your head. T h i s g o e s f o r a l ot of technologies as w e l l . We s t a r t t o t hink through the techno l o g y, a n d t h a t l i m its our thoughts.

F M Would you say that i t ’s t h e s a m e c a se with the laser cu t t e r o r C N C

mill?

A L E x a c t l y. T h e m i l l i s a l s o c o m p l e t e l y restrictive.

I would strongly oppose the school buying a mill. To d a y a n d strangely enough, it seems almost n e c e s s a r y t o h a v e o n e f o r a s c h o o l ’s reputation.

Somehow every school of architecture needs a mill also for promotional/recruiting purposes.

But this technology is so generic that no matter which school you visit right now (whether in Europe or in the US) all of the products somehow look the same.

There has to be something that frees us again from where generic technology deems us to go.

FM Why UIC? AL UIC has the great advantage of being situated in the middle of Chicago.

That is very inspiring for me.

I have a very naive romanticism with the US. I a m a great fan in general and particularily o f t h e A m e r i c a n c i t y. A f t e r h a v i n g l i v e d in Los Angeles a few years ago I am now curious about Chicago and look forward to engage the city with my work and vice versa.

FM What do you expect to accomplish with your students?

AL One issue is following my own work, and that has to deal with control and how you’re able to participate in f o r m i n g a c i t y ’s f u t u r e a s a d e s i g n e r not in an autocratic sense but in a c o l l e c t i v e w a y.

So we actually have the power to do something in relation to the city! But the question is: How can we turn something so fuzzy like the big collective intelligence of the city and connect it to our own individual agenda and goals? That touches a lot of d i ff e r e n t t o p i c s . I t i s c l e a r t h a t e v e r y o n e has to have a vision if they want to a c h i e v e o r d e s i g n s o m e t h i n g . T h a t ’s a p r e r e q u i s i t e . H o w e v e r, h o w d o w e t u r n i t into instruments or strategies of taking a

v i s i on to our built environ m e n t ? H o w t o g e t into negotiations, not g e t t i n g c a u g h t u p in beauracracy and fina l l y h o w t o f i n d b e auty and productive po t e n t i a l i n t h i s w h eeling a nd dealing?

F M How to make the “s y s t e m ” w o r k f o r you?

AL Yes. There is a w h o l e a r e a o f r e s earch o f how to define a p r o j e c t a n d a better world for us – w h e t h e r i t i s a b u i lding design or a city d e s i g n . W h i l e d o i ng so, we have to com b i n e a t a c t i c a l a p proach to design – not tr y i n g t o c o n t r o l e v erything but how to m a k e f r e e d o m s o p erational and adjust con t r o l .

F M What are your interes t s o u t s i d e o f s c hool and teaching?

AL It’s not teaching wh i c h i n t r u i g e s m e . Teaching allows me t o w o r k w i t h a group of people withou t e c o n o m i c a l p r e ssure.

You can actually do i n d ependent research. I w o u l d n e v e r c a l l it teaching. I am n o t a t e a c h e r.

I f I wanted to be a tea c h e r, I w o u l d p r o bably teach somethin g e l s e .

We d o a project together, an d a t a c e r t a i n m o ment it doesn’t matte r w h e t h e r i t ’s d o ne at the school or in a p r i v a t e o ff i c e .

T h e content of the work i s m u c h m o r e i m portant than where you a r e a c t u a l l y d o i ng it. There isn’t mu c h d i ff e r e n c e b e t ween the work I am d o i n g h e r e a t s c hool and professionally.

most influential for me.

FM What is your drink of choice?

A L I g o f o r b e e r.

FM A particular brand?

Just a good (German) beer. Without any additional flavors.

AL

FM Have you ever had a run in with the law?

A L Ye s . W h e n I w a n t e d t o b e c o m e a lawyer I was scared because I thought I would not be allowed to after one s p e c i f i c i n ci d e n t . M y f r i e n d s a n d I h a d s c o o t e r s t h a t w e s o u p e d u p . We w a n t e d to go to Italy with them. So we spent the whole spring working on them, and then w e d e p a r t e d i n t h e s u m m e r f o r I t a l y.

I was sixteen and it was my first feeling of total freedom. W h e n

F M What do you like t o d o i n y o u r f r e e time?

A L I have a little boy no w. H e i s s i x m o nths old and that is fillin g u p a l l o f m y f r e e time at the moment, a n d I a m v e r y h a ppy about that.

we crossed the border we immediately t o o k o ff o u r h e l m e t s . We t h o u g h t i n I t a l y e v e r y th i n g w a s a l l o w e d ; H o w e v e r, we were caught by the police and had to pay a big fine. Then on the way back we did it again and got caught. The police made us dismantle the scooters so that we were no longer able to drive them.

We h a d t o c a l l o u r p a r e n t s t o c o m e p i c k us up.

After serving my community service time by mowing lawns, I put the scooter back together and spent the rest of the summer dodging the police.

F M What is your bigges t i n f l u e n c e ?

A L Biggest, I don’t kno w. T h e r e a r e d e f initely some, and most o f t h e m h a v e t o do with working togeth e r w i t h o t h e r p e ople. When it comes t o m y c u r r e n t w o rk, of course there is e. g . m y d o c t o r a l f a t her at the ETH. I used t o h a v e a b i g p r o blem with urban desig n . I h a d n o i d e a what this discipline w a s a b o u t . Yo u c a nnot treat urban design i n t h e s a m e w a y you treat architecture . I f o u n d t h a t I c ould be in control of a b u i l d i n g , b u t h o w can I be in control of t h e c i t y ? T h e d i s cussions on this issue a r e w h a t i s

Lehnerer, assistant professor, currently teaches 3rd year graduate design and 2nd year graduate theory.

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M I S R E A D I N G B U R N H A M UNStudio is based in Amsterdam.

Headed by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos Zaha Hadid architects is based in London.

Headed by Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher.

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Winter 2009 marks the beginning of the Burnham Plan Centennial Celebration, with events scheduled at various cultural institutions around the city. In June, the hundredth year anniversary of Burnham’s grid will be commemorated by a bold break from tradition - the opening of two pavilions in Millennium Park designed

by UNStudio and Zaha Hadid, respectively. Both international superstars have designed pavilions that deliberately misread and distort Burnham’s grid. This inyour-face irreverence towards Chicago’s architectural past is a unique event in a city that typically eschews opening its doors to outsiders. However, times are changing and in 21st Century Chicago, and legacy carries less weight. As we all know, money talks, and according to the $500,000 in contributions that will fund the design and construction of each pavilion, the Burnham Centennial Board has some friends in Chicago who appreciate cutting-edge contemporary design (or maybe Governor Blagojevich has a taste for the avant-garde?). Fortunately for us, the celebrity architects’ involvement in this celebration does not end with the design of the pavilions. Both studios have been paired up with architectural programs of academic institutions within the city – UNStudio with UIC and Hadid with IIT – and will participate in a collaboration with two local firms. Here at UIC we could possibly enjoy up to a five day workshop, seminars or a series of lectures.

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The selection process for this ground breaking design event was by invitation only. No applications, no competition: only an A and B list compiled by Ed Uhlir (Millennium Park’s Director of Design) and Joe Rosa (the John H. Bryan Curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute and adjunct professor at UIC), with help only from their blackberries’ memory banks. The “A List” included high-profile architecture firms with both avant-garde sensibility and an established track record for realizing innovative design in built form. The “B list” held the names of younger firms known for equally innovative design, but with less built work under their belts.

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Though the designs of both pavilions are derived from their respective reinterpretation of the Burnham grid, the similarities end there. Hadid’s design manipulates one of several diagonals running through the plan and into Millennium Park to create a formal shift that locates the “auditorium” program of her pavilion.

Seating at the center of her plan enables viewing of a projection screen, but also requires a queue to control entrance into and out of the space. On the other hand, UNStudio’s design incorporates a series of individual video screens to provide information about Chicago and Burnham while facilitating continuous movement through the pavilion. In this instance the architects have developed a threedimensional manifestation of the grid through a twisting and warping of the ceiling to meet the floor. Both projects are simultaneously challenging and accessible. They are intended to expose Chicagoans to the trajectory of contemporary architecture and its future potential, with hope that it will encourage a new era of Chicago architecture, one of international scope and vision.

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We predict that the presence of these pavilions at the Centennial celebration will be a milestone in Chicago architecture. Of course, all milestones arrive with their share of bumps and glitches. In this case the studios had to overcome some misunderstandings (both teams initially designed for the whole site, instead of their individual portions, and came in way over budget) and disappointments (the structural engineers required columns). Not to mention that it was deemed financially unfeasible to construct the pavilions with the intent of recycling them.

Once these pavilions come to the end of their three month- long life span, their fate is at the mercy of sledge hammer and wrecking ball. Though wasteful, we also suspect that their demise will only heighten their potency in Chicago’s architectural lore. The pavilions are a sign of hope that Chicago architecture has freed itself from self-referential complacency, and is reawakening the progressive legacy of Adler and Sullivan. This is a great moment to be in Chicago. The world is watching, with anticipation.

CONVERSATIONS WITH A DEVELOPER

JIMENEZ LAI

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Fresh Meat Issue 1 Spring semester 2009 Šcopyright 2009 Fresh Meat all rights reserved Contact freshmeatuic@gmail.com www.uicfreshmeat.blogspot.com School of Architecture (M/C 030) Room 3100 Art+Architecture Building 845 West Harrison Street Chicago, IL 60607 United States Founding Editors

Thanks We would like to thank Bob Somol, and David Brown for keeping an open mind and allowing us to produce this idea.

Thank you to the faculty who allowed us to record them as well as: Stan Allen John McMorrough Joe Rosa

Dorit Hershtig- misreading burnham Jon Mac Gillis- misreading burnham Issue 1 Team Alysen Hiller- cover design, table of contents,

20ish questions with stan allen Julia Sedlock- misreading burnham Lauren Turner- introduction, meet your butchers Jason Colturi Cole Monoghan Contributors Ryan Johnson Jayne Kelley Printer

Fresh Meat is a publication of the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture, and is published at the beginning of each semester.

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