Objects by Architects Vol. 1 by MIT Architecture

OBJECTS BY ARCHITECTS VOL. 1

CURATED BY SARAH HIRSCHMAN September 19 - October 23, 2012

The Keller Gallery MIT Department of Architecture

Exhibition Design and Curation Sarah M. Hirschman Exhibition Team Mariel Villeré Clay Andersen David Costanza Exhibition Documentation Judith M. Daniels, SA+P Irina Chernyakova Special Thanks Nader Tehrani Sarah M. Hirschman James Harrington MIT Architecture Photographs courtesy of the designer unless otherwise noted

The Keller Gallery at MIT Architecture Room 7-408, MIT 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139-2307 Series Editor Irene Hwang Volume Editor Mariel Villeré Assistant Editors Elizabeth Yarina Nathan Friedman Publisher SA+P Press Cambridge, MA 02013 Design TwoPoints.Net Printer Agpograf Contact SA+P Press Room 7-337, MIT 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139-2307 ISBN 978-0-9836654-3-4 ©2013 SA+P Press, All Rights Reserved Front Cover Blossom by Atelier Manferdini, Photograph © Irina Chernyakova

Volume One Contents

Objects By Architects An Introduction by Sarah M. Hirschman . . . . . . 05 Actual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 07 Moorhead & Moorhead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 09 HÖweler+Yoon/MY STUDIO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Barbara Flanagan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Stanley Saitowitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 ATELIER FCJZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Work in Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 FTF Design Studio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Molo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 NADAAA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 ATELIER Manferdini. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Rael San Fratello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Model Subjects Mariel Villeré . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Objects by Architects was presented in the Keller Gallery from September 19 - October 23, 2012.

Above: Objects by Architects in the Keller Gallery; pictured: Ivy Coatrack System by MOS. Photograph Â© Irina Chernyakova

OBJECTS BY ARCHITECTS I SARAH M. HIRSCHMAN

The Objects by Architects exhibition was inspired by a mass email from Lerival, a company that produces and distributes furniture designed by architects. More pointed than the daily blanketing from design-object sites, this email was clear—they had a new stool, it was designed by a well-known architecture firm, you should buy it. Though it comes off as any old advertisement, something is different in the direct link the company draws between the object and the designer. For whatever reason, it’s here, in the world of high-end home furnishings, where architects can be unproblemmatically hailed as visionary, just for being architects. That the unique skills of architecture here are assumed to add value—it’s refreshing. Lerival sells stuff, sure, but in order to sell that stuff, they also package the idea that architects have something to offer outside of the architectural scale. Lerival’s mission statement from the homepage of their website declares that they “champion personality-driven products of versatile modularity to reflect the innovative aesthetics & techniques of emerging design today.” That disciplinary cross-over could be the engine for such innovation and that architects were doing something other than architecture both seemed worthwhile jumping off points for an exhibition within a school of architecture. Compared to a custom home, a one thousand dollar table is modest and attainable. For the architect on the other side of this equation, a table is designed once and done— multiples of objects are assumed and expected; multiples of architecture are breach of contract or copyright violation. The Objects by Architects exhibition was initially conceived of in a cynical light—it was meant to show what architects did to make ends meet, what other chains of commerce they had to engage in order to make architecture work. That was, of course, naïve—almost as soon as the objects were researched and collected it was clear that they were all conceived of in very different circumstances. Some of the works included in the show are one-off material tests meant only for internal research. Some were art pieces meant only for exhibition. And of course others are indeed commercial products—but then the quantities in which they’re manufactured, the processes used to create them, and the distribution channels used to get them into the hands of consumers vary widely too. At a time when the tools and methods of design, fabrication, publicity, and distribution 5

Above: Objects by Architects in Keller Gallery Pictured, from left: Google Map Quilt by Cheryl Baxter, Scraplight by Graypants, Branch Table by Incorporated, Umami Trays by FTF Design Studio, NUM NUM Flatware by NADAAA. Photograph © Judith M. Daniels, SA+P

are changing so rapidly, the collection of these twenty objects—unified by nothing but their size and a loose academic allegiance of their designers—within a school of architecture speaks most to experimentation with standard structures and scales. No two objects in the show share the same trajectory from design to delivery, and that is where the real story is. The histories provided in these booklets are an essential component of the exhibition because it was never just about the objects themselves.

ACTUAL/ JOSH JAKUS UM TOTE, 2005

UM Tote is a sculptural handbag that zips together into a complex form with three dimensional strength from a flat piece of felt. As a sideline to architecture, Jakus was working on several furniture and product pieces—he wanted to make a chair. Upon realizing that a soft-good would be the easiest and most viable product for retail stores, he started experimenting with felt and zippers. Starting with the concept of a bowl, the experiments led him to design a closeable container, which evolved into a handbag. Although the design arose out of material manipulation, Jakus is not involved with the fabrication process, and never has been. Chosen for its structural quality, the felt comes from Canada, zippers from Italy. Die cut at a Hayward, CA shop and sewn in Oakland, CA, Jakus shied away from the sewing after stapling the first prototypes. Evading finishing labor, the felt has added value as a non-woven material that is “basically just tangled fibers.” Jakus adds, “So the edge is cut. No finishing required. I am now working with cork for the same reason.” Simplicity is both an aesthetic and cost-effective approach. Rather than pricing his objects based on the market, Jakus assesses his production costs and profit margins. With eruptive popularity, UM Tote is now one piece of a line of five bags. Its success pulled Jakus away from practicing architecture into the direction of making objects. He eventually returned to the bowl, and additionally designs “tabletop things” and lamps. He highlights these objects on his blog and website, which he uses as his primary marketing tool. After running the “brutal and expensive” trade show circuit and finding it took him “away from a creative place for months at a time, both physically and mentally,” he is now “taking a more proactive approach and communicating with the public” at local events and through social media. Although the first chair was a failed attempt, he says he will eventually make one. MV

How does your education inform your practice?

JJ My process is very rooted in architecture. I have met a lot of industrial, fashion, and furniture designers and they think very differently. I am more analytical, more iterative, more reliant on process and less on market study. I also treat a set of materials like a site or landscape: what are the possibilities? What are the limitations? How can those limitations inform the design? 7

MV How do you test UM Tote? Were there prototypes and earlier iterations? JJ There were many, many prototypes. I showed these prototypes to lots of people, but the most important were my architecture professors and classmates from my M. Arch program at Berkeley (some of whom came from MIT). I still have a team of 5 or 6 people from school who look at all my prototypes. I find that architects give the best and most critical feedback from a design perspective. I also seek feedback from non-designers, but one has to translate because regular people react from a personal standpoint and don’t have language to describe what they like and don’t like. MV

Who are you designing and making for?

JJ I have found that my best work comes from designing for myself; following my creative process. When I try to design based on what I think might sell better or what is in fashion then I get stuck. Ironically, objects that are very personal to me are more successful in the marketplace. MV How do you describe your design style/philosophy? How has it evolved? JJ I started out in product as a sideline/hobby, so I was very experimental and free. I let the exploration guide everything. Then my products were successful and that led to running a business and then things got complicated. I’m now trying to simplify and position myself to do my best work for the rest of my career. But it’s like being in a 12-step program because the negative forces of business and the market are very strong. When I feel like I’m getting sucked back in I have to call on friends for support.

MOORHEAD & MOORHEAD POLYESTER FIBER CONTAINERS, 2003

Moorhead & Moorhead is an architecture and industrial design studio—Granger was trained as an architect, and his brother, Robert, is an industrial designer. Working across a range of scales, from furniture to architecture, they have designed and prototyped roughly a dozen objects, including chairs, stools, light fixtures and a modular screen system. Some objects are internally generated projects; others are specifically commissioned, or grow out of architectural projects. Their practice has always designed objects and worked on architecture projects concurrently. Coming from educational backgrounds that emphasized a hands-on approach to design, their design process carries this through, but it is especially so with the design of objects. Yale Architecture School, where Granger went to school, has its First Year Building project; and the product design program at RISD, where Robert studied, has an extremely strong shop culture. From the beginning, objects have given their practice a means to pursue ideas free of the limitations clients and larger scale projects can sometimes place on the design process. There are almost always many rounds of in-house prototyping to test and refine furniture and object designs. They typically design and prototype objects to explore ideas of function and materiality. The Polyester Fiber Container grows out of the practice’s interest in material explorations and to design projects that are straightforward and direct. The goal is to use materials in interesting ways that exploit their inherent physical properties. Sometimes an interesting material drives a project, and other times it is a matter of finding a material that is appropriate to solve design issues. In using simple materials to solve issues of function and form in simple, unexpected ways, the everyday can be transformed. MV What is the backstory for this object? Why did you make it in the first place? M&M Years ago, designers David Weeks and Lindsey Adelman were collaborating on a line of affordable lighting called Butter. In 2003 they invited us, along with a range of other designers, to design a limited edition object for the Butter Vending Machine project—an automated sandwich 9

vending machine that Lindsey and David filled with a curated selection of objects, for sale during that year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York. The only requirement for the project was that the objects needed to be small enough to fit into the sandwich vending machine. At the time, we had just gotten back from a trip to Herman Miller in Zeeland, Michigan, where they had introduced us to one of their local contractors who worked with polyester fiber (for car trunk liners and tack board surfaces). We thought it was an interesting material, and that this was the perfect opportunity to do something with it. MV How is the object fabricated? What is your involvement in that process? Did this change? M&M In its raw state, polyester fiber is a soft fibrous sheet material made by needling polyester fibers together (in the same way industrial felt is made). Historically, the fabric is molded into rigid parts, like trunk liners, using heat. We wanted to explore the idea of simultaneously incorporating both states (soft fibrous and rigid plastic) in the same object. To do this we constructed molds and a simple press, which we used to form the containers. The exterior of the mold was a heated steel element, and the center a cooled plastic core. The result was the containers in the exhibit—smooth and plastic on the outside, and soft and fibrous on the inside. Production never went beyond the in-house limited edition run for the Butter Vending Machine Project. MV How do you market your object? How do you price your object? M&M We typically do not manufacture or sell our designs—the limited edition run of Polyester Fiber Containers was an exception, given the nature of the commission. Our goal is to license designs to an outside manufacturer/distributor, who then handles production, pricing and distribution. Under this model, we receive royalty payments—a small percentage of each sale made.

HÖWELER + YOON/ MY STUDIO WINE SOCK

Meejin Yoon describes the guiding philosophy of the architecture practice she runs with partner Eric Höweler as “clear, playful, almost obvious but with a little twist.” The wine sock was developed from a need to package a wine bottle for shipping. The envelope was then absorbed as part of the holiday gift to friends and mentors. Hand cut and sewn, the wine sock, as it is endearingly referred to, is a limited edition, but clearly relates to the practice’s other objects. In fact, Yoon started making objects before making architecture—Artist Books, Concept Clothing and Furniture. She traces her iterative process to her education, testing prototypes and materiality by performance, feel and ease of making. Process seems to prevail, as her objects are never for sale.

BARBARA FLANAGAN TOWER OF CLIPS, 2007

Prior to making objects, Flanagan practiced architecture with corporate firms and did design-build work and residential “green” contracting. With an interest in making objects that promote monkeying and customization, she started designing furniture, lighting, housewares, watches, accessories and sculpture. The Tower of Clips is a desktop organizer that transforms clutter into a moveable display. Its twelve clips are made of remnant stainless steel from the cookware industry. They hold notes, cards, photos, pens, glasses, and other tools and ephemera. MoMA wholesales the product on their website, and online reviews describe the various manipulations of the Tower: “a family communications center, a vertical altar, an organizer for make-up, and a holder for art supplies.” MoMA aside, Vat19.com touts the “ultimate tribute,” says Flanagan. The website creates theatrical videos to sell “curiously awesome products” via YouTube and the like. Flanagan recounts, “in the video, a narrator invites consumers to use the Tower as a bedside holder for remotes and handcuffs, or, to ‘decorate it for the holidays and sing to it.’ Actors are shown doing just that. Thus, mission accomplished. Monkeying, awesome.” Upright is the new sedentary. With the goal of re-inventing the mundane habits of daily life, Flanagan also wants to rejuvenate old habits like growing vegetables. She has invented “an absurdly simple and cheap backyard composter” called the BioReactor, which turns kitchen scraps into garden humus. She has been testing the composter for the past five years while she looks for a manufacturer who will bring it to a mass market, as was the fate of the Tower of Clips. MV What is the backstory for the Tower of Clips? Why did you make it in the first place? BF In architecture school, we often talked about skyhooks—hardware that would magically hold up your building if your structural scheme couldn’t. In sci-fi lit, skyhooks suspend private estates in the stratosphere. In my studio, I just wanted to suspend small-but-urgent items above the gravity-bound chaos of my desk where things get lost—especially those that need to be used, cashed, or tran13

scribed ASAP: tickets, coupons, appointment cards, checks, invitations, keys, etc. The idea was to house clutter in a highrise using the neglected air space one foot above the work surface. Instead of a skyhook, I used a simple stainless steel structure: a rod threaded into a base. The rod pierces the handles of twelve clips, holding them upright and allowing them to swivel 360 degrees. Owners can use the tower to create a changing sculptural form while keeping the miscellany in full view. The Tower of Clips started out as a gift to myself. It solved a tiny personal issue: filing non-fileable things. But it’s also a little monument to an idea I try to promote: enlivening the mundane tasks of daily life. As Italian clothespins, the clips boost laundry hanging (solar drying). As a desktop organizer, the Tower animates filing as it points out the potential of using scrap and off-the-shelf components. MV How is the object fabricated? What is your involvement in that process? Did this change? BF To make a prototype I needed stainless clips. Not galvanized steel, not plastic, not wood. For those I looked all over the world. While in Singapore, I searched through electrical supply houses and hardware stores. Online I searched Japanese distributors of restaurant supplies and stationery. Finally, on vacation in Siena, I spotted some intriguing clips at laundry vendor’s street market booth. Labeled as clothespins, the clips were quite complex, engineered with coils of spring steel controlling alligator-like jaws. (Clothespins are indispensable tools in Italy where clothes dryers are rare, and laundry is line-dried indoors and out.) Those clips were perfect. But the package included no brand name or manufacturer. I scoured Italian stores, searched the internet, and found nothing. Finally, I sent photos to the Italian Trade Commission in the U.S., and asked them to find the clip maker. “Ha!” they answered. “You’re asking us to find a needle in a haystack.” I said: Yes, and that’s why it’s going to be so rewarding when you succeed. The manufacturer turned out to be maker of stainless steel cookware. The firm’s owner had produced the clips to recycle the scraps from sheet-metal cutting.

How does your education inform your practice?

Taking big risks is a good thing, profit be damned.

STANLEY SAITOWITZ MENORAH, 1995

The Menorah is one of multiple pieces in Stanley Saitowitz’s Judaica Collection. Each of the pieces, including the Mezuza Case, the Kiddish Cup, the braided Challah Cover, the Seder Plate and the Havdalah Set, is a contemporary expression of an ancient object. As instruments, they aim to make visible the ceremonies they facilitate. Their forms emerge from the blessings they are required to fulfill.

Below: Photograph © Irina Chernyakova Page 12: Photograph © Irina Chernyakova

The Menorah acknowledges the miracle of continuous light for eight days, and encapsules the ceremony of illuminating Chanukah lights; right to left for adding candles, left to right for lighting candles. Two candles are lit by the woman of the household 18 minutes before sundown to welcome the Shabbat, and bring peace to the home.

YUNG HO CHANG/ ATELIER FCJZ HULU CHINAWARE, 2008-2010

Yung Ho Chang writes, “For architects, it is neither enough nor appropriate to directly apply the language of architectural form to industrial design. How then should an architect participate in product design?” On accepting the Chinese dinner set design project for the Taipei- and Hong Kong- based product company Jia Inc., Atelier FCJZ developed three approaches that put to use their understanding of architectural design for the design of products.

Opposite, above: Photographs © Irina Chernyakova Opposite, below: Photograph © Judith M. Daniels, SA+P

Though relatively abstract, Chang believes the foundation of architectural design to be rooted in the understanding of everyday life. Observations of common serving and eating utensils provided the starting point for Atelier FCJZ’s design of dinnerware. As a native of Beijing, Yung Ho Chang was familiar with the dishes, bowls, and pots of Northern China. Among them, the piao is especially unique. It is a ladle created by cutting a gourd in half. There is wisdom to be found in its clear expression of an idea corresponding with its function. The concept of the piao originates as natural form appropriated by man—its figure remains fundamentally not abstract. Found amongst the common objects of everyday life in Northern China, the piao perhaps is not considered a “designed” object. It therefore contains a strong sense of local character. The piao is born of an era of vernacular handicraft, and is made from the material of dried fruit shell. It cannot be directly inserted into the context of modern industrial production, contemporary design culture or dining customs. The dinnerware design imagines a gourd sliced at different angles to create utensils of various shapes and sizes. Stainless steel stands were designed to display the dinner set in a way that the dishes, bowls, and plates can be held together to form the shape of entire gourds. Thus the concept of a cut gourd is visible whether dishes are in use or displayed, “A central tenet of our design methodology—on the scale of a building or a product—is to provide a clearly expressed concept.”

Yung Ho Chang continues: In the profession of architecture, sensitivity to material is essential to the final quality of a product, even though the selection of a material may begin from a rational point of view. Our choice of fine bone china for the dinner set expresses a series of transformations from handicraft to industrial production, rural to urban, traditional to modern, from rough to delicate. A piao made of fine bone china is no longer a “piao.” Its shape is definite. Its tolerances controllable. Therefore it can be mechanically reproduced. The quality of fine bone china liberates our design from concept to a new physical reality, understood only through observation, touch and use. Like the process of architectural design only through many stages of development and refinement do these three aspects of observing life, conceptual thinking, and perceptual judgment, result in the Piao dinner set. This project started product design at Atelier FCJZ. Later, FCJZ made a stainless steel tray for Alessi, among other things. MV How is the object fabricated? What is your involvement in that process? Did this change? YHC They were made of fine bone china in the traditional way, the material was a given. FCJZ was not involved in the production although we did go to visit the factory to evaluate the tests. MV

How does your education inform your practice?

YHC design.

My education tells to stick to the basic issues of

MV How do you describe your design style/philosophy? How has it evolved? YHC I’m not sure if I have a style and philosophy is a big word. I wish my design could enrich someone’s life and that’s a big ambition.

Why not a chair?

YHC

Why not.

Above: HULU, bone china Left: HULU Oil & Vinegar Set

Above, left to right: Umami Trays by FTF Design Studio, Bevel Bowl by Rael San Fratello, NUM NUM Flatware by NADAAA, UM Tote by Actual, Polyester Fiber Containers by Moorhead & Moorhead, HULU Chinaware by FCJZ, Wine Sock by Höweler+Yoon/MY Studio, Tower of Clips by Barbara Flanagan, Blossom by Atelier Manferdini, Paper Light by Fiyel Levent, Ivy Coatrack System by MOS.

Below, left to right: Google Map Quilt by Cheryl Baxter, Branch Table by Incorporated, Scraplight by Graypants Photographs: © Judith M. Daniels, SA+P

Above, left to right: Blossom by Atelier Manferdini, Tower of Clips by Barbara Flanagan, A-Frames by Chiaozza, Wine Sock by Höweler+Yoon/MY Studio, UM Tote by Actual, Bevel Bowl by Rael San Fratello, Google Map Quilt by Cheryl Baxter. Photograph: © Irina Chernyakova

This spread: Objects by Architects in Keller Gallery; Photograph Â© Judith M. Daniels, SA+P

Atelier Manferdini: Arlecchino, Texas A&M University (2011). Arlecchino is a site specific artwork commissioned by Texas A&M University in College Station. This permanent installation for the University cafeteria focuses on the relationship between scripted

drawings and coloration in architectural envelopes. The overall geometry and structure follow the general rules of planar tessellation and aggregation.

The figural quality of the circular outlines and its glossy finish brings the viewers to a super-sized world of graphic illustration that embraces them while walking on a colorful and improbable vinyl floor.

Above: The Hex Tower is fabricated from 3-D printable, maple hardwood; Rael San Fratello, Emerging Objects Below: Drum is a study in large-scale lightweight 3-D printing with our cement material. The simple connection

system holding thin cement panels in compression and its spiral form cantilever from a central fulcrum point. Each panel is held in compression using binder-clips allowing quick assembly and disassembly; Rael San Fratello, Emerging Objects. 25

Above: Nebuta House by molo is a museum and center for creative culture in the Northern Japanese city of Aomori. Over the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s course, the program evolved from housing and community facilities into a unique cultural building inspired by the craftsmanship and spirit of Aomoriâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Nebuta Festival. The building is a house for mythical creatures, functionally meant to share the tradition, archive the history and nurture the future of this unique cultural art form.

Below: Cloud Softlight Mobile creates an undulating overhead canopy of soft luminous forms. Group cloud mobiles (small, medium or large) or cloud pendants create vast cloudscapes flowing in a unique topography, tailored to the individual space they are shaping.

Opposite, above: Dress, detail by MY Studio Opposite, center: UM Tote by Actual Opposite, below: Polyester Fiber Containers by Moorhead & Moorhead

Opposite: Holocaust Memorial, Stanley Saitowitz: Boston, Massachusetts (1991-1996)

As visitors walk the path, entering the towers, they are tattooed with the shadows of numbers, and trapped momentarily in a theater of horror. At the scale of the city, the memorial has another role: path, colonnade, and frame create urban space, defining

edges and relationships with the buildings and city beyond. These six towers are emblems of faith, a covenant of trust that memorializes a collective evil. They are towers of hope and aspiration.

Above: Mezuza Case Each of the pieces in the Judaica Collection are contemporary expressions of ancient objects. As instruments, they aim to make visible the ceremonies they facilitate. Their forms emerge from the blessings they are required to fulfill. The Mezuza Case embodies the tradition of slanting towards the room implying that God and Torah are entering.

Above: NOB NOB door handles by NADAAA

Opposite: BANQ by Office dA, Boston, Massachusetts

There are a great number of typologies in door handles: the knob, the oval, the handle, and so forth, each associated with varied protocol and levels of formality. Through explorations, NADAAA developed not a hardware ‘line’ but a hardware ‘matrix’ where types respond to program, and families to interaction.

Banq (2006-2008) is a restaurant located at the base of the old banking hall in the Penny Savings Bank.

A striated wood-slatted system conceals the view of systems on the longitudinal axis, while offering a virtual canopy under which to dine. The longitudinal axis emphasizes the seamless surface and lateral views offer striated glimpses into the service space above, and demystify the illusion. To underline this strategy, certain areas of the ceiling “drip” and

“slump”, acknowledging the location to place exit signs, lighting features, and other details. Below the ceiling, the functional aspects of a dining space are fabricated with warm woods and relaminated bamboo amplifying the striping effect already at play throughout the space. Striations of the ground, the furnishings, and the ceiling all conspire to create a total effect, embedding the diners into the grain of the restaurant.

Above: A staple design of the FTF Furniture Line, by FTF Design Studio, the Jane Table has a clean-lined, simple look that appears to float. Constructed of Corian, the table is both durable and sexy.

Above: Designed and decorated by West Chin Architect, this beach house on Long Beach is a 6,000 sq. ft. modern retreat. The house features a 26 ft. wide airplane hangar door that opens the living room up to the ocean. The C-shell shaped beach house slopes to maximize views, light & air. The roof bends and cascades towards the ocean to ensure that even the deepest reaches of the house have an unobstructed view.

FTF DESIGN STUDIO (WEST CHIN ARCHITECT) UMAMI TRAY, 2011

Below: Corian Umami Tray by FTF Design Studio

A self-described foodie, West Chin was looking to make the presentation of Asian dining more pleasing. The Umami tray is one piece in a full line of furniture, trays, accessories, and a recently launched hardware line. Often using Corian for the designs for its durability and sexiness, the studio designs for families and fellow foodies. The Umami tray is a unique, sleek serving tray with a base designed to neatly hold chopsticks. FTF Design Studio is an interior design practice within West Chin Architect, designing objects and homes that are both beautiful and functional. West Chin began his career at thirteen in construction and opened his own design-build practice at the age of twenty-two.

MOLO FLOAT TEA LANTERN, 2001

When Todd MacAllen and Stephanie Forsythe founded molo they sought a way to work on and create projects that they could fund and direct themselves, without the need of a client. This naturally led to smaller work, and the name ‘molo’ actually comes from “middle ones little ones.” Through molo, Forsythe and MacAllen have designed and produced a range of products based on materials research and exploration of space making. Aside from float glassware, molo has, notably, created a lightweight, flexible building system of honeycombed paper and textile products; softwall + softblock modular system; softseating and energy-efficient cloud + urchin softlight. All of molo’s products come out of MacAllen and Forsythe’s personal experience—finding possibilities in daily life and turning those ideas into forms that can be more universally applied. The beginning of the soft collection started when MacAllen and Forsythe were both living and working in a loft space in Vancouver. The concept for softwall started as a response to the need for partitioning work and sleeping areas in their open space. Paper models that the two created ended up growing, integrating the expandable honeycomb form, and eventually developed into the first prototype of softwall and the beginnings of the soft collection. As both of molo’s designers are architects, there is a great spatial awareness to the designs molo produces. Products like softwall + softblock—flexible, expanding partitions made of paper and textile—very literally create and change space, while float tea lantern activates space through light, aroma, and color. Constantly in the process of experimenting with new material and finding further efficiencies for materials currently in use, materials used in molo products are chosen very methodically and carefully by the partners. Everything from Carrara marble to borosilicate glass to kraft paper is selected with great care and consideration for the material’s properties and source. The Float Tea Lantern is made with a crystal clear borosilicate glass, which allows users to see the rich or subtle colors of the tea inside. The lantern’s double wall encloses a vacuum, creating a thermally insulating space to maintain a hot or cold serving temperature. This allows the tea vessel 35

to retain the simple form of a cylinder (as it may be held and poured directly without the added appendage of a handle), highlighting the tea inside. With the tea light candle lit below the tea lantern, the ambient light, together with the color, fragrance and steam of the tea, transcends the pragmatic to create an engaging experience. The inspiration for the tea lantern came from the ritual and beauty of tea and the idea that even a small object such as this has the potency to define an intimate space of gathering or contemplation from the sensory qualities of light, warmth, fragrance, and touch. Forsythe and MacAllen designed the original tea lantern in 2001 as part of a study to create simple and beautiful objects designed of only a single material. The pair researched various technical methods of scientific glass blowing to understand how to achieve very simple detail, looking to glass labware in particular. Having learned about the cylinders of glass that are used as a starting point in the crafting process, they specified standard tube and wall thickness dimensions and put further attention into maintaining as much of the purity of this original form as possible. As they began to better understand the scientific glassblowing process and methods, MacAllen and Forsythe created drawings for float tea lantern and float tea cups, which were then entered into a design competition that same year. The designs won the competition and financed production of the first iteration of the products to be created. MacAllen and Forsythe have since then continued to test the full family of float glassware by using in their own lives and in the molo studio environment. MV How do you describe your design style/philosophy? How has it evolved? M Our philosophy stems from observation and experienceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;taking part in the space around us and then designing from these experiences. Designing from the first person perspective to find the essence of a design. By being hands on with molo products, we have potential to continue to create improvements throughout design and production phases. With serial production, we can then see the effect of all the small refinements to the productâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s form as it evolves. MV How is the object fabricated? What is your involvement in that process? Did this change? TM Each piece is handcrafted by master glassblowers in the Czech Republic from the finest German borosilicate glass. The history of bohemian glass blowing dates back to the late 15th century and the Czech Republic, at the center of this region today, continues as a great glass blowing culture. Stephanie and I traveled personally to the Czech Republic to find skilled artisans to produce the glassware line. 37

MV How do you market your object? How do you price your object? M molo’s products have gained attention from numerous international awards and their acquisition into the collections of museums and galleries worldwide including the Permanent Collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Several times a year molo also creates unique, site-specific installations which aim to expand the way in which molo products can be considered and the modular aspects of the design. These installations typically occur during design events such as Milan Design Week, ICFF, Maison et Objet, etc. molo products are available from molo’s online marketplace (molostore.com), through molo Official Dealers, and through closely working with our staff in the studio. The studio team has a great breadth of expertise with molo products and works alongside clients who are specifying for larger scale projects. molo has made particular efforts to have a direct connection with clientele. Because of this, molo pricing can be based directly upon the cost of materials and production. MV Is this object considered continuous with your practice or an anomaly? M Many of the same interests and issues arise when designing smaller objects as they do when designing buildings. In both cases, it involves thinking about the experience of life in that space. A teapot has a spatial dimension due to the quality of light, the smell, the warmth, and the way it creates a centre for gathering around it—much like a hearth. With a building you think about the building within the site and the site within the city and how they relate to each other. It’s about thinking about the object in its environment, not just about the object itself. MV Did making the object change your other creative practices? M Creating float confirmed our interest in designing products, and the strength in taking a hands on approach to working through a project all the way from concept to design and production.

NADAAA NUM NUM FLATWARE, 2007-2012

The prototype for NUM NUM was developed as a way to establish better grasp, depth and usability of flatware. If successful, each utensil would function as a natural extension of its user’s hand. Through several tests, the design of the silverware developed from a “generic triangular cross-section and evolved into various sections to conform to the hand in all scenarios of purpose and use.” The first generation of the silverware fabrication was 3-D printed on a Z Corp Z Printer 350. Although tested for fit, their structural constitution did not reflect final weight and forces, which necessitated 3-D printing stainless steel on the EOSINT M 280. An extensive study of the center of gravity led to a thick wedge at the midpoint of each utensil’s handle, where the thumb touches the index and middle fingers. NADAAA makes other objects, too. Doorknobs, handles, furniture pieces, among other things. A chair is next. Principal Nader Tehrani considers the object making continuous and influential on the firm’s other creative practices. Of experimental spirit, it was also a response to a general shift in the industry, “from the aggregation of industrially manufactured units to the possibility of 3-D-printed customized artifacts. This has turned the whole challenge of design on its head,” says Tehrani. MV What is the backstory for this object? Why did you make it in the first place? NT When I saw Greg Lynn present his silverware in a lecture at GSD some years ago, I was somehow very impressed by his mastery of a certain scale that he was not able to undertake with a similar ease when confronted with architecture. This silverware was, in part, a response to his, though not on the same terms of course. Over the years, I have been invested in design at different scales, from artifacts to buildings and landscapes. Each has its own medium, rules and parameters. In this case, I was interested in taking on something with extreme ergonomic constraints, an industrial design object that mediated between the hand and mouth. We looked at silverware from various centuries, examining and analyzing each. Two types stood out: the first, I will call the dumbbell typology, whereby the weight of the front of the utensil is balanced by the in39

troduction of a counter-weight on the back (a formal flourish akin to a pear shape). The second type is more characteristic of modern 20th century typologies, mostly minimal in form, but also imbalanced as a result of the lack of counterweight. We also researched various means of fabrication, among them casting and stamping, among other techniques. Our response emerged from the need to develop a form that was at once the result of ergonomics and the balance of weight in oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand. MV How do you describe your design style/philosophy? How has it evolved? NT I am not sure if I was after a style, though certainly a sensibility has emerged. If I were forced to synthesize an entire philosophy into a capsule, I would say that our design emerges from a dedicated commitment to creating a synthetic relationship between part and whole, something that is a litmus test for most all of our design, something that is purely conceptual, and something that bars us from the whims of composition. Having said that, for the line of silverware, we had to expand that definition altogetherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for obvious reasons.

ATELIER MANFERDINI ALESSI BLOSSOM, 2011

Elena Manferdini’s practice bridges engineering, architecture, fashion design and industrial design, and approaches projects in the aesthetic of digital scripting with the cultural relevance of traditional craft. The Blossom fruit basket designed for Alessi is part of the studio’s comprehensive research on the relationship between apertures and architectural envelopes. Blossom specifically explores the potential of lace to produce figurations and ornaments through intricate apertures and delicate connections. Refined several times over the six years between conception and production, the object is constructed from stamped stainless steel, folded and welded into place to hold fruit, bread or other table settings. Like many of the practice’s experiments, Blossom began with fabric patterning as a case study, guided by the research question of how to shape sheet material three dimensionally to create an envelope or cladding. The digital drawing itself translates a fabric sheet to a steel sheet. Very often unchanged, the motif or drawing is applied to different materials, from something soft and easy to manipulate by hand, to rigid steel. For Blossom, a pattern of clover shapes is arrayed and scaled along a simple cube, while a thin structural metal grid stitches the figures together into a surface. The overall pattern triggers a logic of possibilities and plays with the notion of flatness and graphic illustration. “Interestingly,” Manferdini says, “the use of reflective material and repeated perforations creates an optical illusion that trick the eye into seeing an object that lies outside the basket as it would be inside the container. It becomes clear that patterns are a method to find things, to interact between illusion and a picture plane, between understanding and seeing, between abstraction and figuration, mathematical proportion and physical behavior.” The patterns come into motion in projects with Nike and Valentino, fabric imagined as a “graphic intricate screen to conceal and reveal the body.” Ornament following algorithmic scripts can produce infinite variations and scale to the architectural or urban. Designed for the city center of Guiyang, Manferdini’s Fabric Tower responds to the site’s natural landscape and social history of the region. The architecture maintains the sense of lace draping and unfolding over the volume of the tower in an ornamental illusion. Working “from unit to component,” boundaries are broken by way of 42

digital technology. The small scale projects may function as case studies, but in opening up a dialogue with the architectural scale, the two inform each other.

Above: Alessi Blossom; Photograph ÂŠ Irina Chernyakova

MV Is this object considered continuous with your practice or an anomaly? EM It is considered continuous. In my practice small scale industrial design projects act as incubators for ideas, materials and techniques that are then applied to larger architectural problems and vice-versa. MV

Are you an architect?

Yes.

RAEL SAN FRATELLO BEVEL BOWL, 2011

Rather than using the proprietary materials one would normally use, Rael San Fratello developed the wood material used for this object at The University of California Berkeley where Ronald Rael is an Assistant Professor, and further in the office with Virginia San Fratello, where the research is employed in design experiments. The Bevel Bowl is 3-D printed from this developed material, composed of wood fiber and synthetic reinforcement fibers, and then reinforced with a water-based sealant. The studio has been experimenting with new materials for 3-D printing from ceramics and cements to salt and bone. Once they came across an inexpensive source for wood flour (a powder), they were attracted to the material’s texture, the economy, its translucency and its grain (defined by the additive manufacturing process). They continue to look for interesting powder-based materials to reconstitute through additive manufacturing. Rather than a test of the bowl’s design, the bowl was designed to test the detail and structural integrity of the 3-D printable pecan shell (they are now working with engineered maple and pine). Considered a work of art, its shape is inspired by the drawings of 19th century biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel. Much of the work of Rael San Fratello attempts to expose the latent potential found in some of society’s most pressing issues, particularly those not necessarily defined by geographical location. Much of their work is still in the research and development stages with plans to develop the material for client projects and to exploit the material’s strength in largescale objects for the built environment. Working through digital processes and additive manufacturing is opening new avenues for thinking about societal issues relative to design. Each partner has a degree in Environmental Design (undergraduate from the Universities of North Carolina (Virginia) and Colorado (Ronald)). This liberal arts degree, with a focus on the broad spectrum of design (from products to buildings) as well as the environmental consequences of design (or lack thereof) is enormously influential to their practice. Their time at Columbia University as graduate students coincided with the moment when digital design was being born into architectural culture and thus became formative in their processes, use of technology and thinking about contemporary design practice.

Their practice is now licensed in New York and Colorado. Co-principal Ronald Rael was on construction sites as a toddler and worked as a builder for ten years before attending architecture school and continues to have a direct hand in the making of objects in the office. MV Is this object considered continuous with your practice or an anomaly? RSF We consider the object consistent with our practice in terms of our explorations of reuse, materials and resistance (in this case, resistance to accept the closed nature of 3-D printing processes). Increasingly, our research in 3-D printing is pushing us into many avenues of object making that we are just beginning to put into practice, including chairs. Because we are a young practice, we consider many of our built projects as â&#x20AC;&#x153;full scale modelsâ&#x20AC;? and in that sense, they are objects as well, just bigger ones. Almost always we have a hand in the physical production of our work. MV Did making the object change your other creative practices? RSF Yes, because of the process, we are now experimenting with new assembly methods for the materials we are developing based on this object. We now consider object making a large arm of our creative practice, and have named that part Emerging Objects. 45

The author would like to thank Irina Chernyakova and Christianna Bonin for their insightful feedback on earlier versions of this essay. Above, Figure 1: Creative Commons Image of Frank Gehryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Walt Disney Concert Hall, 2003 courtesy of Kansas Sebastian on Flickr.

MODEL SUBJECTS MARIEL VILLERÉ

Frank Gehry, an architectural figure whose early career is marked by classic experiments in form and space, is more commonly known for his mature deconstructivist work, leading technology research to produce sculptural and impossibly fragmented forms. Inspired by more than computational geometry for his 2003 Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Gehry used a familiar object as a metaphor for the performance of the planned building. He modeled his signature back-bending silver curves from the contours of a baseball mitt, an architecture that would allow him to “hold music in his hands.” (Fig. 1) I would like to draw out from this example the importance of a personal object in understanding architectural form and scale. Similar to the traditional architectural model, the object prioritizes touch as an approach to an abstract concept in order to understand it. Although students and architects increasingly design in the virtual, a tangible and commonly understood object remains crucial to the design process and to communication. Digital prototyping has positioned architects to question and even replace the traditional model for the sake of flexibility and expediency. As digital tooling has been incorporated into practice, products have seen refined craft, thereby gaining value. Once a form of representational excess, the prototype has become an artful object. Furthermore, the transition in experimentation and representation from model to object can be read as a wind sleeve for the practice of architecture.

Mariel Villeré earned her SMArchS degree in History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art from MIT in 2013. She wrote her prize-winning Masters thesis on the first documenta exhibition-event in 1955 and its positioning alongside the traveling German Federal Garden Show as an effort to support postwar reconstruction. She holds a BA cum laude in Architecture from Barnard College (2008).

Models of any kind—planes, trains and automobiles, but particularly architectural models— give the beholder the capability to imagine an “other” space, reproduced in a different place and time. Most commonly, architects use the model to plan a design and to resolve conceptual and structural flaws in advance of the fullscale building. Although models have been a primary tool in the design and building industry since before the Renaissance—we can identify 47

them in medieval paintings as ritual objects—one particular eighteenth-century model collection provides a fascinating range of the model’s meaning and importance as a tool for both design and teaching. With a civic mission to elevate the status of architecture, architect Sir John Soane collected models as he developed his eccentric house museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. The collection was meant to articulate his lectures at the Royal Academy in three dimensions and to give students an opportunity to spatially understand historic architecture, built work that was otherwise inaccessible. Soane would cordon off sections of his multi-story house museum to correspond with each lecture and students could examine the models, holding the space with their eyes if not with their hands. While each model represented a specific project in place and time, the collection as a whole was meant to represent “architecture” in general and along a Hegelian path of history. Simultaneously exposing young students to works of architecture seen on the Grand Tour and opportunistically elevating his own designs to match those of the classical world, Soane combined and recombined the models in his collection to get at the bigger question of what constitutes architecture and the making of space? Thought to have designed through

1. The model room remains a centerpiece of the Sir John Soane House Museum, which was bequeathed to the British nation in 1837 upon Soane’s death. The collection now holds items including early 19th century nails, screws and bolts preserved in the structure of the Museum and as fixings for objects. Window frames and glazing bars, window latches and sash lift are displayed with the other models, therefore further expanding the definition of “architectural model.” Left; Figure 2: Design model in Sir John Soane’s collection. Image courtesy of Sir John Soane’s Museum. Left, below; Figure 3: Cork model of The Temple of Vesta, Tivoli in ruins in Sir John Soane’s collection. Image courtesy of Sir John Soane’s Museum. 48

modeling to imagine architectural interiors, Soane commissioned craftsmen to make intricate models that would stack, unfold and reveal multiple spaces. His own designs were placed adjacent to fragments from London buildings as full-sized models of themselves and collected miniature cork models of Greek temples and Etruscan tombs.1 (Fig. 2 and Fig. 3) Each typology had a singular and distinct material expression, from wood, to plaster casts, to the deteriorating cork as a scaled stand-in for stone in ruination. An artifact and double of the original architectural space sited in Italy, the souvenir model was reality, and Soane became obsessed with this phenomenon. Actively prioritizing his collection over his architecture practice in his later years, these models and their placement in the house were a source of sustainment. To reference Elizabeth Grosz’s definition of the “thing,” the architectural model was no longer a double, but the resource of the subject’s being or enduring. Sir John Soane was so absorbed by these models that they begin to represent and substitute him, rather than simply precedents for his design work or their provenance in the classical world. He went so far as to write a hypothetical archaeological report about his own house museum as a site unraveled by future antiquarians titled, “Crude Hints Toward the History of My House.” In an effort to write his name into architectural history, he collapsed typologies of design model, souvenir and architectural fragment in the model room and in his design work, ultimately defining “architecture” without consideration for time or place. That is, the model lost its full-scale “other” and instead replaced architecture as a hand-held object. As Soane continued to collect these various model objects, and even multiples of the same models, he filled a multitiered tableau (and every other available surface) within the model room. Without any apparent organizing principle, visitors encountered this room with a site model of Pompeii in cork, 14 cork models of ruins, 20 plaster models of those same buildings in imagined reconstruction, over 100 models of his own architecture, and found architectural fragments and details. By nature of their display, each model lost its integrity and identity in proliferation—no longer offering unique spatial experience and interior journey, but rather seen as parts of a set, the model room. The model continually approaches object status as architects turn toward new technologies and methodologies of production, often away from the handcraft that Soane commissioned. Technology has made the act of reproducing faster and easier, creating a new image of the entire project after each detailed change. At the same time, advanced geometries call for advanced joinery systems, and the modeling process may focus on resolving a singular joint to reproduce across a façade, for example. Rather than representing the full project in miniature, the recursive prototype

is absorbed into the final object at full scale; it shifts away from the model as a representation of the complete project in architecture towards a mimetic set of grammatical rules. Although design edits may be legible among a set of prototypes, the disjunction between model and final project is increasingly opaque as the “final object” shrinks in scale, to a modular joint, per the earlier example. Translation from model to reality is thus eliminated from the process. I’m considering MOS’s modular Ivy Coatrack here, made up of several units of injection molded plastic. (Fig. 4) If we consider each of these units a model, is it a copy, remake or even surrogate once made in multiple? Once the proto-type (before- or primary- type) passes the designer’s test, it could become the final product or later substitute the final design itself as a double, “limited edition,” “one off” or “as is.” As a resolved design, the mind can imagine it in multiple, constructing the whole using the representation of just one part. Collected, conglomerated and tiled, the full composition is customizable as a set of parts, permuted for the user’s needs and desires, even on a whim. Each part, in fact, becomes an object in itself, a vibrantly colored “Y,” a “branch,” and not just an artifact of the “ivy.” On the other hand, the model is merely a representation of the distinct thing, without much use value after the architecture has been built, other than the occasional exhibition display. No longer a representation of space, a model for what will be or what was built in full, the prototype is considered a design object, a thing. Greg Lynn, another champion of the forms

made possible by digital fabrication, has worked across scales, down to a set of silverware. His “one-of-a-kind metal sintered and silver plated prototypes” sit in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, a record of the experimental form, a prototype as a design object to display process in a museum setting.2 In researching and developing the forms for NADAAA’s NUM NUM Flatware—the full set of which had not been produced before the request to be in-

cluded in the Keller exhibition—each fork, knife and spoon was digitally modeled, 3-D printed on a Z Corp Z printer 350 for early mock-ups, and ultimately in stainless steel on a EOSINT M 280 printer. (Fig. 5) Known to designers and keen consumers alike, the crucial aspect of cutlery is its weight distribution once in hand. This necessitates the fluid prototype in the final material selection to empirically test for weight and forces. While the geometry can be resolved virtually and in mock-up, discovering the relationship to the body is only through mimicked use in true form: shape, size and material. The modeled fork becomes a personal object, if only temporarily.

2. Lynn, Greg. “Form.” http:// glform.com/living/flatware. Web.

This is the distinct difference between the prototypical object and the model. The prototype itself must be used, handled, performed upon, moved through daily life with the body. Grosz writes, “The object is that cutting of the world that enables me to see how it meets my needs and interests,”3 she continues, quoting Henri Bergson, “‘The objects which surround my body reflect its possible action upon them.’”4 As an interface with the body, the designed object more directly begins to represent its designer

Opposite page, right; Figure 4b: Ivy coatrack system, MOS in packaging designed by Linked by Air. Image courtesy of MOS.

3. Grosz, Elizabeth. “The Thing.” Architecture from the Outside. The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2002 (2001): 167-184. 4. Bergson, Henri, Nancy Margaret. Paul, and William Scott Palmer. Matter and Memory. New York: Zone (1988): 21. Opposite page, left; Figure 4a: Ivy coatrack system, MOS. Image courtesy of MOS.

Above, this page; Figure 4c: Ivy coatrack system, MOS. Image courtesy of MOS/ Lerival.

5. Boulay, Mickael. “Transitions.” http://mickaelboulay.fr/ index.php?/menu/transitions/. Web video. Above; Figure 5: NUM NUM Flatware set, NADAAA. Image courtesy of NADAAA. Opposite, above; Figure 6: Transitions research models, Mickael Boulay. Image courtesy of Mickael Boulay. Opposite, below; Figure 7: Transitions Fork, Mickael Boulay. Image courtesy of Mickael Boulay.

and its consumer rather than representing an abstracted concept of architectural space. As far as empirical trials, not much more is demanded of the architectural model than a visual explanation. Its craft, though most often thorough and intricate, is rarely put through the same tests as the prototype. Eindhoven (NL)-based designer Mickael Boulay developed a set of transition cutlery with occupational therapist Yvonne van Woerkum and one of her young motor-impaired patients. Boulay began by modeling indiscernible globular shapes in clay, then casting those shapes for performance tests with the patient. After several trials, the design adapted based on how the patient put these foreign, yet intuitive objects to use. (Fig. 6) “Through steps,” Boulay writes, “the function of the cutlery and the way of holding” inform each other “in parallel, and a step-by-step progress is generated from the main muscles of the hand to the tips of the fingers,” to develop a finer grip on the object and “un-handicap” the user.5 While the designer changes the object, the object can change us depending on our relationship with it. (Fig. 7) Rather than an evolution of the fork through the meal (that is, a salad fork, dinner fork, dessert fork and escargot fork), Boulay’s cutlery series reflects an evolutionary model of its user. Perhaps like Sir John Soane, we can evaluate the place of architecture only by including full-scale fragments of the above series, a fork

or an ivy attachment, alongside surrogates for the “real thing,” the same author’s building in miniature. However, with the observed shifts in the culture of making, the prototype is a “real thing,” with a one-to-one relationship to the body. In each iterative prototype, the “object” displays something about the process of design and of architecture, never clearly finished nor clearly failed. It is evaluated instead on its relationship with the user—how well it folds into our lives, our needs and interests. Augmenting the body and its movements, the thing assists our being and enduring; its value derives from that utilitarian purpose and influence on the user’s self-understanding. Having been productively informed by design across scales, the object serves as a new model, bringing the architect closer to an understanding of making, the relationship between the body and design, and the social dimensions of architecture and consumption. Rather than representing something “other,” the model starts to reflect our own being-ness, tracing us in form and allowing us to imagine ourselves differently.

This spread: Images from Opening of Objects by Architects, installed at the Keller Gallery; Photographs ÂŠ Irina Chernyakova

Above: Opening of Objects by Architects, installed at the Keller Gallery; Photographs ÂŠ Irina Chernyakova

In a little over two years, room 7-408 has transformed from what was once a plotter room into the Keller gallery at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s school of architecture & planning. Through a generous gift by Shawn Keller, principal of C.W. Keller & Associates, the Keller Gallery opened with its first exhibition in the fall of 2011. With nineteen exhibitions and counting, the Keller has already accomplished much in the way of creating a shared space for the several different communities that pass by and through its door. Part of a larger series of initiatives set forward by Nader Tehrani, who is the current head of the department of architecture, the gallery brings the spirit of debate, ambition, and design into the heart of the school—through and for the faculty and student community. Sarah Hirschman, who helped to launch the curatorial direction of the gallery as its first director, puts it best when she writes that the Keller “uses physicality to get everyone in the room.” As her successor, I cannot think of a better way to sum things up. The central motivation for such a small gallery—and one less plotting room—is the regenerative challenge to put forth an answer to the question: How to display architecture? Seemingly simple, this act—one that shifts scales, translates intentions, and relocates our gaze—grows increasingly less straightforward. The simplicity of this question is further amplified by the diminutive dimensions of the gallery. Its size affords only so much and thus forces our exhibitors to be focused, edited, and abbreviated, using limited means to make the strongest conceptual statement. An exhibition at the Keller is conceived as a One-Idea space, a One-Building space, or a miniature exhibit, among a range of other tropes. As the discipline itself takes on greater, less or simply different responsibilities, the Keller attempts to both reason and argue with the assumptions that have taken hold while we went about our business. A combination of project images, opening photos, and texts, Objects By Architects Vol. 1 is one of six compact publications that touch upon the immediacy of the exhibition itself, as well as a consideration of the context and conversations that surround it. These collected books do not pretend to recreate the exhibition experience, but rather aspire to expand what we see and what we discuss, as we continue to make architecture in varying formats, and across academic and professional work.