Spring 2016 Portfolio by Mike Howard

M I C H A E L G

S T E P H E N S

H O W A R D 20 16

INDEX

4...................................................................................................................................Factory for Public Space 18........................................................................................................................................Mining Salt Slurries 24.......................................................................................................................................Responsive Housing 40.........................................................................................................................................Development Bank 48..............................................................................................................................................Redundant Pool 56.......................................................................................................................................Radiating Bathroom 60........................................................................................................................Media and the Refugee Crisis 72.................................................................................................................Architecture as Waste Production 78..........................................................................................................................Recursive Drawing Machine 82...............................................................................................................................Shibaura House Analysis 84............................................................................................................................................Theater Systems

Videos, animations and interactive graphics hosted at howportfolio.com

FACTORY FOR PUBLIC SPACE SPRING 2016 ADVANCED STUDIO IV CRITIC: TEI CARPENTER

REINTERPRETATION The proposed institute functions as a maker of public space and as an empathy machine – one that fundamentally alters the way the public views industrial landscapes. Too often, industrial interventions are closed, hazardous, and ugly leaches. Residents yearn for acres of “natural” transplanted trees to replace these human artifacts of our economic success and modern lives. The proposed intervention offers a realistic compromise between neighbors stated needs and the needs fueled by their consumption. It offers public, industrial, and institutional benefits - wedding student space, public space, and industrial reuse in pure, white piles of salt. The institute operates as both an artist residency and public space that feeds off of Providence’s industrial waste. The heart of the institute houses an industrial liquid crystallization-processing center to convert local and abundant waste pickling liquid (WPL) to sulfuric acid and ferrous sulfate. The institute sells excess sulfuric acid back to steel pickling plants. The less valuable excess salt forms two types of artificial public landscapes. The first is one of granular piles of salt aggregated into dunes. This landscape is contained within the interior of the building and acts as a playground for RISD students and providence residents. The second landscape is one of compacted salt that forms a network of salt caves around Providence in neglected industrial sites. Art and public space act as a mediator between industry and community. Confronting the realities of climate change and humankind’s irrevocable impact on the “natural”, the institute compels us to embrace our artificial impacts through science, art, and community.

notnotnature.com Developed with Taylor Zanke

MINING SALT SLURRIES SPRING 2016 ASSEMBLING ALL SORTS CRITIC: RYAN JOHNS FEAUTRING: UR3 ROBOTIC ARM & KINECT2

REUSE Complementing the Factory for Public Space, experiments with Salt Mining serve as a small-scale test of the implementation of a possible realization of salt caves – an artificially generated public landscape that could be exported to neglected industrial sites around Providence, RI. Here, a 6 inch salt cube was cast from table salt and water. For a few days after casting the block remained somewhat soft and slurry like; suggesting new types of material operations that could be conducted before the material fully hardened. While in this slurry like state, the salt block was operated on, mined, by a computer controlled robotic arm – the UR3. What would typically be considered waste in other forms of subtractive fabrication like CNC milling, here the subtracted salt shavings are completely reusable. The shavings removed from the larger block can be cast, without any degradation of material properties, into new salt blocks. This operation offers a less wasteful future for subtraction fabrication techniques. On a technical level, a Microsoft Kinect2 scanned the salt block and generated a detailed point cloud of the salt block. A Grasshopper script selected that largest flat surface on the salt block from which it subtracts or mines a desired shape – in this case a mound. This process was designed with the capability of being completely recursive so that the salt block could be scanned and operated on again after being mined. Such a recursive process would result in a fractal like pattern of subtractions on the salt block surface. The short 5-week course only allowed enough time for one iteration.

RESPONSIVE HOUSING FALL 2015 CORE STUDIO III CRITIC: MARIO GOODEN PARTNER: MICHAEL NICKERSON

RESPONSIVENESS With few means to benefit from the increasing value of space, established residents of rapidly gentrifying Mott Haven in the South Bronx are being priced out of their community. The proposed housing confronts the realities of change and argues for an architecture that responds at a variety of scales â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from the city to the envelope, the site to the unit. Through its responsiveness, our housing can mitigate the negative and enhance the positive aspects of change in the city. The housing finds a meaningful intersection of public programs and housing to both culturally anchor the building to the community and to give residents a means to profit from the increasing value of space. In the library, residents are free to rent out space in front of their unit for coworking. Retractable shelves outside the units encourage a building wide sharing economy and foster a stronger relationship between resident and community. In the gym, bold projections prominently display the body to the city. Tiered sectional changes establish a hierarchal relationship between resident, gym user, and city. In the art gallery, residents may work and preform in a semipublic space doubling as studio space and circulation. These long galleries surround an outdoor gallery and performance space. These programs intersect on bridges connecting the three lots. There are moments of interruption when the public space breaks into the private and vis-versa confusing the threshold between public and private. On each lot, a column grid morphs from 16ft to 32ft to 8ft to support the needs of that space. In public spaces, these columns gently bend and sway to provide shading. In the purposed housing, program, and space respond to the needs of the resident and the community.

POST-WORK IMAGINATION

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TRANSPORTATION: PRIVATE CAR

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WINDOW / APERATURE

PAUSE BEFORE THE DAY: NEWSPAPER

LIGHT: ARTIFICIAL

DISPLAYS / DESIRE BEFORE WORK

POST-WORK IMAGINATION

WORKING: ALONE

DRINKING

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MIRROR

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DEVELOPMENT BANK SPRING 2015 CORE STUDIO II CRITIC: ROBERT MARINO

VOIDS In 2011, the City of New York rezoned Long Island City allowing developers to replace manufacturing warehouses with lucrative high-rise residential towers. In an odd triangular island dwarfed by these fresh walls of glass, our critic asked us to design a bank. With the advent of digital currency and online banking, the industry has forced branch banks into an awkward period of self-examination and, arguably, a loss of relevance. Rather than focus solely on the branch bank program, I found inspiration in the siteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s context and in architectural permanence. I wanted to design a welcoming semipublic space that would last in spite of all the new construction. Rather than attempting to combat this churning development, I embraced it. Preserving space for a 30ft x 30ft steel column grid structural system, the bank allows for a tower to be constructed on top. The bank is as much negative space as it is occupied space. Hyperbolic voids paneled with transparent ETFE foil pierce the bank respecting the 30ft grid. The voids serve many purposes - natural light, vertical greenery, greywater catchment, and form a public arcade at ground level. The bank also provides public access to its top floor greenhouse. Here the voids blossom outwards, maximizing office space square footage on the middle floors and maximizing natural light in the greenhouse. The bank, as a program, is diminished. In its place, structure, public space, and light rise to prominence.

REDUNDANT POOL FALL 2014 CORE STUDIO I CRITIC: JANETTE KIM

REDUNDANCY Well-integrated support systems like flood protection, back-up generators, community-meeting spaces, etc. provide the community with undeniable utility. While these systems help mitigate the aftermath of a hundred year storm and smaller scale issues like temporary heat loss, it is arguably more important that the community use and enjoy these spaces on any given day regardless of their energy needs. NYCHA is plagued by frequent failures of basic utilities like heat and hot water. Directly opposite NYCHA is Columbiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new Manhattanville expansion with modern utilities and an onsite steam and chiller power plant. The pool, located between NYCHA and Manhattanville, bridges the energy disparity by providing redundant utilities and energy to the public. A large anaerobic digester located underneath the site converts community food waste and human waste into biogas. Thick utility walls house all of the mechanical systems. The public circulates through, walks on, feels the warmth from, and swims within these walls creating a meaningful relationship between the public and redundant systems.

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RADIATING BATHROOM FALL 2014 CORE STUDIO I CRITIC: JANETTE KIM

INCINERATION Located in Straus Park on 106th and Broadway, the public restroom uses heat from incinerated human waste to warm the interior and the facade. Rather than flush away the waste to an offsite processing plant, solid waste is incinerated onsite. Waste water, from urinals and sinks, warms as it flows through pipes wound around the hot incinerator chamber. This hot water is then pumped through a gypsum concrete facade, similar to the technology used in heated floors. Many small circular indents in the facade increase the surface area by ~60% creating a proportional increase in heat flow compared to a flat surface. The bathroom provides a warm relief for park goers and bus patrons. Heated potable water from the bathroom is also circulated to surrounding buildings, alleviating their hot water needs when demand is high. In the summer, the water is redirected to an alternate cooling system and the facade cools the space.

Flat surface

Increased heat flow

MEDIA AND THE REFUGEE CRISIS FALL 2015 HISTORY ELECTIVE: ECHOING BORDERS CRITICS: NORA AKAWI & NINA KOLOWRATNIK

TO WHERE WE LOOK As of November, more than 660,000 refugees entered Europe through Greece in 2015. Over half of them traveled through the small Greek island of Lesvos just off the Turkish coast. Once a quaint Mediterranean tourist attraction, the island begrudgingly rocketed into the international spotlight on the waves of the refugee crisis. With over 3,000 refugees arriving on the island everyday on unsafe and makeshift boats, it is impossible to ignore the ceaseless flow and painful journey of refugees. Various media outlets, European agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and individuals flooded the island in recent months to be on hand for a dramatic portion of the refugeeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s longer journey; that of the boat landing on European shores. Each actor portrays the same few miles of coasts through slightly different lenses in what has become an international blitz of nearly identical imagery. When placed in the context of the crisis, this coverage is justified. The refugee crisis demands a coordinated international effort in order to put an end to countless human rights violations. If the imagery of the beach landing is the most effective fulcrum against which to position the conversation, actors on Lesvos are right to use their most potent imagery to compel the world to act, to mobilize through shame. But, as Tom Keenan warns, one must be aware of the threat of saturation. With such a barrage of beach landing imagery, the public becomes increasingly desensitized. One wonders how NGOs will compel the international community to act as the atrocities of the refugee crisis become increasingly mundane as an ironic and indirect consequence of the saturation of media coverage of the issue.

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Michael Howard Echoing Borders Fall 2015

Where We Look: Media as a Means to an End

As of November 2015, more than 660,000 refugees entered Europe through Greece.1 Over half of them traveled through the small Greek island of Lesvos just off the Turkish coast. Once a quaint Mediterranean tourist attraction, the island begrudgingly rocketed into the international spotlight on the waves of the refugee crisis. With over 3,000 refugees arriving on the island everyday on unsafe and makeshift boats, it is impossible to ignore the ceaseless flow of refugees.2 Various media outlets, European agencies, NGOs and individuals have swarmed the island in recent months to be on hand for a dramatic portion of the refugee’s longer journey; that of the boat landing on European shores. Each actor portrays the same few miles of coasts through slightly different lenses in what has become an international blitz of nearly identical imagery. While most operate on the island for primarily altruistic goals, their projection of events through traditional and social media channels furthers each actor’s self interest. Two Months Distilled into Three Hours Before examining the refugees’ arrival in Lesvos in detail, it is important to place that segment of the trip in its larger context. The majority of refugees traveling through Lesvos are Syrian but many others come from Iraq or Afghanistan among tens of other countries. In 2015, Syrians, the majority, composed 34% of all refugees traveling by sea into Europe. Afghani refugees composed the next largest share, 12%, of arrivals by sea.3 When asked about their final destinations, refugees typically state a northern European country,

UNHCR News Story, “Some 3,300 people a day still arriving on Lesvos,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://www.unhcr.org/5645eb7f9.html. 2 UNHCR News Story, “Some 3,300 people a day still arriving on Lesvos,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://www.unhcr.org/5645eb7f9.html. 3 Zizi Agabani, “Record 137,000 Crossed Mediterranean in 2015 – UNHCR,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://migrantreport.org/unnew-highest-record-137000-refugees-crossed-mediterranean-this-year/ 1

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specifically Germany or Sweden.4 The grueling trip may take months. One 34 year-old Syrian refugee who traveled from Aleppo to Hamburg published a summary of his trip online. It took him 2 months to complete the journey.5 Other refugees may not be so lucky. The trip could easily run longer if a refugee ran out of money or if he or she was detained for any number of reasons by European security agency, Frontex. From Syria to Germany, the refugee’s journey is exhausting as they find themselves caught with a complex cloud of geographic landscapes, local and international political climates, prejudice, and religious tensions among many other risks. And yet, throughout this weeks long journey, the international community pays a disproportionately large amount of attention to one sliver of the trip - the beach landing at Lesvos marking the refugee’s arrival in the European Union. While documenting the refugee’s journey, editors appear to have a few favorite categories of photographs to which they return repeatedly. They publish photographs of many refugees cueing in endlessly long lines, photos of refugees walking solemnly through barren fields, and photos of the boat landing.6 Of the three, the boat landing is the most dramatic photograph and an apparent favorite of the editor. An understandably tense moment of first putting foot on EU soil, photographs of boat landings seem to wrap the refugee’s story in countless dramatic layers. Refugees attempt to rush of the makeshift boats with damp sacks of personal belongings as cold, wet children and elderly people struggle to make it over the boats unwieldy threshold. Volunteers, wearing bright yellow vests plastered with huge logos akin to the branding on NASCAR cars, rush to lend a hand to refugees disembarking.7 Although they mean well, darting volunteers shouting directions in foreign languages often add to the panic and emotionally escalate a situation that may have otherwise been a fairly calm jostle once the boat came ashore. In a historical context, from the ancient Greeks to D-Day to Somalia in 1993, boat landings signal the ultimate manifestation of invasion. Conservative anti-immigration groups easily distort this imagery of the refugee’s landing, framing it as a foreign invasion and an affront to every local tradition their communities hold dear. One easily imagines how effortlessly an audience projects their own emotions and beliefs onto the beach landing imagery. This dramatic border crossing serves as the focal point of the refugees’ journey precisely because people can so easily project their own understanding onto the situation.

Alberto Nardelli reporting for The Guardian, “Germany receives nearly half of all Syrian asylum applicants,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/05/asylum-applications-to-germany-see-160-rise. 5 International Rescue Committee, “Mapping a Syrian refugee’s danger filled journey to Europe,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://www.rescue.org/blog/mapping-syrian-refugees-danger-filled-journey-europe. 6 Julian Borger and various authors reporting for The Guardian, “Winter is coming: the new crisis for refugees in Europe,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/02/winter-is-coming-the-new-crisis-for-refugees-in-europe 7 Youtube User: Channel 4 News, “Lesbos refugee crisis continues,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwXUEJXlFBI. 4

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Landing on Lesvos Lesvos, a small Greek island roughly ten miles off of the Turkish coast serves as a major hub for refugees entering Europe via the Western Balkan route.8 As of November, more than half of the refugees that traveled to Europe in 2015 passed through Lesvos.9 To gain access to Europe, many refugees travel from their of origin to Turkey. In Turkey, refugees are forced to move towards the coast to gain access to Greece since the land border is closed. Near the coast, refugees make contact with a smuggler to arrange passage across the Aegean Sea to Greek shores on a small boat or raft.10 Smugglers provide boats that are ill equipped to cross the sea with so many passangers on board. Rubber boats are battered by waves that can wash passengers overboard. The coast guard views wooden boats as more of a threat as they fail catastrophically, disintegrating under the weight of their massive passenger loads.11 As a result of these conditions, many refugees lose their lives in this relatively short sea crossing. As of September 2015, an estimated 627 refugees died attempting to enter Greece.12 Local fishermen or coast guards intercept the boats partway across the channel to either rescue refugees or to help guide them to shore.13 Should a boat make it across the water, it likely lands in one of two locations; along the north of the island and to the south east of the island not far from the island’s capital and close to the airport. The north of the island became a popular landing zone due to its proximity to the Turkish coast, six miles at its closest point. Other boats landed near the airport because they used the lights from the airport to help navigate the sea at night.14 Now comes the most closely watched portion of a refugee’s trip, the beach landing. Depending on the time of day and the exact landing location, a refugee boat landing can range from overcrowded to desolate. If a refugee boat manages to land on sandy beaches along the well-established landing zones on the North coast, they are likely to be greeted by a gaggle of volunteers operating with varying levels of coordination and experience level. Less fortunate boats may miss the sandy beaches and come to shore along rocks and small cliffs. NGOs relocated to where refugee landings were and refugees continued to aim their landings for where they would receive the most support. This positive feedback loop links the NGOs early reception points to refugee landing spots. Interestingly, an inadvertent effect of NGOs use of social media is in advertising their positions to refugees planning to make the crossing.

Frontex, “Western Balkan Route,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://frontex.europa.eu/trends-and-routes/western-balkan-route/. UNHCR News Story, “Some 3,300 people a day still arriving on Lesvos,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://www.unhcr.org/5645eb7f9.html. 10 Patrick Kingsley reporting for The Guardian, “Lifejackets going cheap: people smugglers of Izmir, Turkey, predict drop in business,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/24/refugee-crisis-people-smugglers-izmir-turkey-predict-dropbusiness. 11 Patrick Kingsley reporting for The Guardian, “Lifejackets going cheap: people smugglers of Izmir, Turkey, predict drop in business,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/24/refugee-crisis-people-smugglers-izmir-turkey-predict-dropbusiness. 12 Missing Migrants Project, “Mediterranean Update,” last accessed on Dec 16. 2015. http://missingmigrants.iom.int/en/mediterraneanupdate-11-december-2015. 13 Simon Shuster reporting for Time, “Welcome to Europe” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://time.com/refugees/. 14 Mercy Corps “Lesvos, Greece, Molyvos: Vital Arrival Info,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. https://refugeeinfo.eu/lesvos/en/#Anchor_30049. 8 9

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From the landing site, refugees are quickly ushered to NGO operational bases where they enter the NGO and municipality’s infrastructure for processing refugees. Often just a few hundred feet away from the landing site, NGO’s set up ‘Stage 1’ reception sites. Here, volunteers provide refugees dry clothes, space blankets, warm tea, some first aid and other basic necessities. Smaller NGOs operating within the infrastructural and coordination umbrella of the UNHCR run these Stage 1 reception sites.15 Volunteers on the island typically stay for a week or two. Refugees travel from ‘Stage 1’ reception sites to intermediary ‘Stage 2’ reception sites, nicknamed bus stops. These stations are also run by smaller NGOs with the help of larger NGOs’ infrastructure. Larger NGOs like the UNHCR provide services like the buses and goods like blankets and tents.16 Refugees should only spend a few hours at these stations before being sent to ‘Stage 3’ camps for processing. Meaning, potential refugees are divided up, sent to different camps, interviewed, and given papers to temporarily travel in the EU so that they can arrive at whatever country is willing to accept their declaration of asylum. The refugee’s journey on Lesvos ends in Mytilene, the island’s capital and port city, where they pay for a government run ferry to take them to Athens to continue their trip. All in all, each refugee typically spends only a few, 2 or 3, days on the island.17 It is remarkable how much international attention and intrapersonal drama occurs over a portion of the trip that should be completely unremarkable. Refugees already escaped from warring factions, barren landscapes, and militarized borders. The Turkish and Greece border should be a nonissue after facing such threats as ISIS in Syria or Iraq. Additionally, from a geographic perspective, the region is similar to those that the refugee has already encountered on their trip. This is their first time crossing a large body of water but refugees make a much longer sea crossing from Lesvos to Athens that is calm and operates on government run ferries. A professional ferry service shuttling refugees from Turkey to Lesvos would save lives and undermine government-despised smuggling operations. Thousands of refugees are crossing the border illegally every day anyways. If lawmakers reached an agreement, local municipalities could use a ferry to generate revenue. Instead of spending money on search and rescue operations, local municipalities could generate revenue and save lives. Unfortunately, opaque international politics fabricate an artificially treacherous landscape. This arbitrarily dramatic border serves as foci of international attention and coverage of the refugee crisis. Three hours encapsulates two months of travel and the refugee crisis is summarized in a photo of volunteers dragging sopping wet wailing child from marooned boats. A variety of actors project nearly identical imagery to international audiences for their own self-interest. Traditional media outlets, large NGOs, burgeoning NGOs,

Lighthouse Facebook Group Page, “Lighthouse – Refugee Relief on Lesvos,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. https://www.facebook.com/lighthouserelief/?fref=ts. 16 Gabriel, Greek Coast Guard. Interviewed by Michael Howard and entire Echoing Borders seminar. Personal Interview. Lesvos, Greece. November 8, 2015. 17 Gabriel, Greek Coast Guard. Interviewed by Michael Howard and entire Echoing Borders seminar. Personal Interview. Lesvos, Greece. November 8, 2015. 15

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and part time volunteers are four actors of particular interest. An analysis of what each actor projects from the island reveals their strategy, their goals, and their desires. Coverage of Lesvos Of all of the actors present on Lesvos, traditional media outlets like the Associated Press, The Guardian, and The New York Times have the most experience covering such events and should provide the least biased base against which to compare all the other actors. Compared to all other actors, traditional media have the most breadth in coverage across the refugee’s entire journey from their country of origin to their destination. The New York Times, for example, followed one family throughout the duration of their journey from Syria to Sweden.18 However, the sheer volume of coverage surrounding the landing at Lesvos and similar Greek islands drowns out the rare pieces with such breadth of scope. An extremely popular topic among media outlets, they intensely cover any deaths at sea. In late October 2015, a large wooden boat capsized stranding 300. Nearly 30 people drowned in the incident that reverberated across media outlets around the globe.19 If the audience believes that the media is operating objectively, then their main objective is to draw direct public attention to topics worthy of interest, debate, and review. We note, however cynically, that most media outlets simultaneously need to attract readers to remain in business. The dramatic boat landing and heart wrenching deaths at sea serve as a convenient fulcrum around which media outlets can draw public attention to the refugee crisis. Locating the Associated Press’ coverage on a map of Lesvos we note how focused they are on the shores with few stories straying inland.20 Transitioning to an undoubtedly less biased actor, the large NGO actors on the island like the UNHCR and the ICRC also focus most of their media coverage on the dramatic portions of the refugee trip. Like the traditional media outlets, they interact with refugees multiple times over the course of their many week journeys, and yet they return to Lesvos to attract attention to the crisis. It is important to understand NGO’s media tactics before looking at the specific imagery they present to the world. NGOs mobilize shame; that is to say, they are organizations that bring light to some of the darker corners of the world where human rights violations occur. By raising these events and outrages to scrutiny by the international community, NGOs hope to shame their audience into action - shame mobilization.21 It comes as no surprise that large NGOs operate under these tactics on Lesvos. Over the past ten years, NGOs gained a new direct channel to their audiences, large bodies of people and individual potential donors, in the form of social media. An analysis of the UNHCR’s twitter page reveals a general trend in their tactics. Large NGOs focus a great deal of their attention on dramatic photos of the beach landings, a place where they do not operate on the island of Lesvos. On Lesvos,

Anemona Hartocollis reporting for the New York Times, “A Family Swept Up in the Migrant Tide,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/22/world/europe/syrian-refugees.html. 19 Aljazeera reporting, “At least 26 refugees, including 17 children, drown off Greece,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/10/30/refugees-drown-off-greece.html. 20 New York Times / Associated Press Database, “Search,” used to locate refugee stories from Nov 7, 2015 to Nov 11, 2015 around the island of Lesvos, last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/. 21 Thomas Keenan, “Mobilizing Shame,” in The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol 103, Number 2/3 (Spring/Summer 2004): 435-449. 18

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volunteers helping the refugees off the boat are associated with the smaller NGOs on the island. Larger NGOs are in charge of far more mundane but equally important logistical operations, like providing adequate blankets, shelter, buses, food, and coordination between other NGOs. And yet, in order to drive funding and attract the international communities interest in an age of increasing media saturation, the UNHCR uses the beach landings to encapsulate the refugees’ journey. They sometimes post cheery photos from UNHCR run campus not far from Mytilene where every surface swarms with UNHCR logos but there clearly remains a focus on the moment of beach landing – where they do no operate as directly.22 Unlike the international media organizations, the UNHCR does not focus on deaths at sea. This may seem odd at first considering such traumatic accounts, like the photograph of Alan Kurdi washed up on the shore, are sure to stir up international outrage.23 Deaths at sea though reflect poorly on some of the Greek run efforts off the coast of the island, namely the coast guard. Although there does not exist concrete proof, one wonders if larger NGOs like the UNHCR that cooperates so closely with local municipality might be careful to not damage their organizational connections. Whatever their standing with local municipalities, the UNHCR displays a constant desire for more funding to help those in need through their presence on social media. Compared to larger NGOs like the UNHCR and ICRC, the smaller burgeoning NGOs operating on Lesvos appear, by in large, far more interested in visceral imagery depicting their volunteers’ direct involvement. As of early November 2015, more than 50 NGOs were operating on Lesvos.24 These NGOs operate on a much smaller scale than the UNHCR, each typically operating with a specific focus on the island. Starfish, for example is a small NGO that focuses on handing out food and clothing along the north shore right to refugees right after they arrive. They operate some of the Stage 2 bus stops.25 Lighthouse is another such organization that a couple of volunteers founded recently on Lesvos that operates a Stage 1 reception center and helps refugees off the boat.26 The Boat Refugee Foundation focuses specifically on aiding refugees a they cross the water and their boats land onshore.27 On the island, one is struck by the apparent lack of coordination between these small players. Weekly meetings between NGO representatives attempt to iron out cooperation between groups but on the island these talks often dissolve in the face of the constant flow of refugees. One can almost sense a tinge of competition among the smaller organizations. To differentiate themselves and drive donations, burgeoning NGOs rely heavily on social media to reach donors. An extremely dramatic video from Samaritan’s Purse glorifies a volunteer over excitedly swimming out to meet a completely intact refugee boat a few hundred feet from shore for seemingly no reason.28 Again, we note a focus on the boat landing,

UNHCR Verified Twitter Account, “UN Refugee Agency,” last accessed on Dec 16. 2015. https://twitter.com/Refugees. The Guardian reporting, “Alan Kurdi image appeared on 20m screens in just 12 hours,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/15/alan-kurdi-image-appeared-on-20m-screens-in-just-12-hours. 24 Gabriel, Greek Coast Guard. Interviewed by Michael Howard and entire Echoing Borders seminar. Personal Interview. Lesvos, Greece. November 8, 2015. 25 Starfish Group Facebook Page, “Starfish Foundation – Help for refugees in Molyvos,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. https://www.facebook.com/HelpForRefugeesInMolyvos/?fref=ts. 26 Lighthouse Facebook Group Page, “Lighthouse – Refugee Relief on Lesvos,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. https://www.facebook.com/lighthouserelief/?fref=ts. 27 Boat Refugee Foundation website, “They need us: Boat Refugee Foundation,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://bootvluchteling.nl/en/. 28 Samaritan’s Purse, “Voyage to a Second Life,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://www.samaritanspurse.org/article/voyage-to-asecond-life/. 22 23

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logistically speaking a relatively inexpensive position on the island, to drive funding for more expensive operations inland and abroad. Smaller organizations’ social media profiles heavily feature the landing sites with an occasional post about the relatively mundane but equally important intermediary bus stops. Unlike the UNHCR, smaller NGOs do not seem as fearful to heavily publish refugee deaths. Lighthouse’s Facebook page prominently features photos of the drowned boy Alan Krudi.29 Smaller NGOs rely more heavily on gut wrenching imagery, sometimes beyond the scope of the operation, showing their volunteers in the front lines of the action in an attempt to drive donations to their specific cause. In addition to donations, all manner of NGO rely heavily on the volunteer. Many volunteers on Lesvos are there for only a week or two – using vacation time from their work to lend a helping hand to those in need worlds away.30 While it is difficult to distill one coherent narrative from the social media accounts of thousands of volunteers, the location from which the volunteers chose to tweet and post to Instagram along with some anecdotes help create coherent picture of the volunteer in this media context. These volunteers have interests and lives beyond Lesvos, a juxtaposition that can make their social media account seem insensitive and the person shallow when a mirror selfie follows a picture of a refugee boat landing.31 But we must be careful not to chastise the volunteer too much. Social media accounts simply reveal the multifaceted nature of any person’s life. Of the posts that do relate to refugee crisis, an analysis of geo-located tweets and Flickr photos relating to the refugee crisis reveals that, like the three other aforementioned actors, volunteers focuses primarily on the beach landing.32 Intuitively, this makes sense. While volunteers do not necessarily use their platforms to ask for donations like an NGO, they are likely interested in showing compelling content to their followers and increasing their following and social capital, similar to the desires of a news organization albeit with less of a focus on journalistic integrity. Interested in sharing the most emotional part of their volunteer work with friends back home, volunteers choose the beach landing as an opportunistic moment. Regardless of whether they were volunteering at a bus station handing out blankets or passing out out tickets for a bus, the beach landing serves as an exciting image summarizing the importance of their work.

The Threat of Saturation With all of the media attention surrounding the beach landing, it is easy to view Lesvos through a cynical lens. One might question why organizations spend so much time on such a brief moment of the trip that they are often not even directly involved in. But, when placed in the context of the crisis, this coverage is justified. The refugee crisis demands a coordinated international effort in order to put an end to countless human rights

Lighthouse Facebook Group Page, “Lighthouse – Refugee Relief on Lesvos,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. https://www.facebook.com/lighthouserelief/?fref=ts. 30 Nicolas Niarchos for The New Yorker, “An Island of Refugees,” last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. http://www.newyorker.com/news/newsdesk/an-island-of-refugees. 31 Gabriel Piperas’ Instagram account, @gabriel_piperas, last accessed on Dec 16, 2015. https://www.instagram.com/gabriel_piperas/. 32 Twitter and Flickr API calls via Carson Smutt’s Grasshopper Plugin, “Mosquito,” last accessed Dec 16, 2015. http://www.studiosmuts.com/ceed3/mosquito/. 29

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violations along the way. If the imagery of the beach landing is the most effective fulcrum against which to position the conversation, actors on Lesvos are right in using their most potent imagery to compel the world to act, to mobilize through shame. But, as Tom Keenan warns, one must be aware of the threat of saturation.33 With such a barrage of imagery of the beach landing, the public becomes increasingly desensitized to such imagery. One wonders how NGOs will compel the international community to take action as the atrocities of the refugee crisis become increasingly mundane as an ironic and indirect consequence of the saturation of media coverage of the issue.

Thomas Keenan, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Mobilizing Shame,â&#x20AC;? in The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol 103, Number 2/3 (Spring/Summer 2004): 435-449.

ARCHITECTURE AS WASTE PRODUCTION SPRING 2016 MEASURE CRITICS: LORENZO VILLAGGI & CARLO BAILEY PARTNERS: VIOLET WHITNEY, NISHANT JACOB, & ALEX LOH

QUANTIFICATION So much of what goes into an architecture project is discarded. Laser cuts, coffee cups, crumpled trace, 300 MB PSD files – the design process that is typically considered constructive is equally wasteful. My team and I were interested in quantifying the waste generated in Avery Hall over the course of the week. Employing an array of physical computing sensors, cameras, computer software, and scales we measured Avery over one week to observe the typical cycle of a GSAPP student. We defined waste as the unnecessary byproducts of the production cycle – both physical and digital. For data: an Arduino monitored air quality, OpenCV running on a Raspberry Pi recorded occupancy and movement in the studio, a scale weighed trash discarded outside of studio, a grasshopper script recorded the amount of laser cut-able material discarded after a cut job, and RescueTime software monitored how often and what types of software students used. Combined, the datasets offered a wellrounded view of both the physical and digital waste associated with a GSAPP student’s production. The course pushed us to experiment with new forms of data representation with an N-Dimensional drawing. To convey the breadth of information we collected in static images, we employed the classically architectural techniques of section and perspective to place the viewer in a hallway of time where one experiences collected data in a more physical way – calling upon an intuitive sense of scale to understand a complex layering of data.

RECURSIVE DRAWING MACHINE SPRING 2015 ARCHITECTURE DRAWING & REPRESENTATION II CRITIC: DANIL NAGY

RECURSIVE In our second representation course, we were asked to explore methods of design and representation as systems with inputs, processes/rules, and outputs. Our critic asked us to create a machine that, given certain inputs, would explore some architectural qualities - in my case density, scale, and pattern - through some set of rules to create an output, some type of drawing or marks. We explored these machines over three different assignments: analog, digital, and architectural. I was interested in exploring the recursive relationship between user and machine - taking some initial command or dialogue, applying a set of rules, and then using this output as a new input for the same set of rules. I repeated this rule, this recursive relationship, until the dialogue broke down. I hoped to expose the chaotic relationship between a user and a machine when the conversation echoed indefinitely. Due to slight changes in the inputs, sometimes the output would reveal fixed points where the machine would settle on a preferred outcome and other times the results would be chaotic and appear almost random.

SHIBAURA HOUSE ANALYSIS FALL 2014 ARCHITECTURE DRAWING & REPRESENTATION I CRITIC: DANIL NAGY

REJECTION Located in downtown Tokyo, Shibaura House by SANAA stands in stark contrast to its surroundings. I interpreted Shibaura House as a rejection of traditional Tokyo corporate culture. Historically, Japan has been characterized as a culture of relentless work. Shibaura House rejects this rigid structure with an openness and flexibility that encourages collaboration and movement. I juxtaposed Shibaura House with its environment, an abstraction of a standard office building in Tokyo. In the physical model and first drawing, I used furniture as a language to describe working environments. No strict borders exist between in and out as a chaotic mix of furniture more naturally reflects how we work and move. In the final drawing, I adopted the language of General Relativity to depict the different ways in which people occupy Shibaura House versus another office building. In General Relativity, massive bodies warp space-time around them. In the drawing, I projected a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s position in space to the walls of each structure over the course of a day. The more warped the walls are, the longer a person spent in that position. The office building illustrates fixed positions in space as workers remain in a grid of cubicles for hours. Shibaura House, on the other hand, reflects the dynamic movement of occupants.

THEATER SYSTEMS FALL 2015 TECHNOLOGY SEQUENCE CRITICS: CRAIG SCHWITTER, JUNKO NAKAGAWA & KRISTA NINNAVINGI PARTNERS: NICK KAZMIERSKI, KIMEE BOONBANJERDSI & KATHY XIAO (KBHX)

HULL THEATER Tasked with designing a theater in Red Hook, Brooklyn, our team drew inspiration from Red Hook’s vibrant shipping history. A box within a box within a box - the theater projects out from the ground over the lobby, resembling the hull of a ship, and penetrates the surrounding glass volume. Reception spaces on the upper floors of the theater volume provide views to the surrounding neighborhood and ports. A service and circulation wall adjacent to the theater houses the fire stairs, elevators, ductwork, and all other services. The theater volume is slightly rotated within a larger glass volume that acts as reception and cafe. Structurally, the theater is surrounded by thick concrete walls to acoustically isolate the performance space. This concrete volume is supported by steel columns and beams. The mechanical strategy focuses on minimizing obtrusive ductwork and maximizing sustainable practices. An earth duct pre-conditions air on its way to the mechanical room. Utilizing a displaced underfloor variable air volume system, conditioned air is supplied to both tiers of seating via plenums underneath the seats. Air emerges quietly through stair risers and is ultimately returned at the ceiling where it is quickly ducted out of the exhaust on the roof. In addition to the ducts supplying conditioned through in the lobby floor, a gypcrete radiant floor supplies additional heat in the winter. A variety of other sustainable systems like adjustable louvers and rain water collection support the theater and help to foster a vibrant public space on the leg of the “L” shaped portion of the lot adjacent to the theater’s main entrance.

Theater

Service & Circulation Wall

Reception & Cafe Space

Building Massing