INPROCESS 17

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE 61 ST. JAMES PLACE BROOKLYN, NY 11238 TELEPHONE 718-399-4304 www.pratt.edu

INPROCESS 17 2010 - 2011

INPROCESS 17

PRATT INSTITUTE 200 WILLOUGHBY AVENUE BROOKLYN, NY 11205

184

Graduate Architecture and Urban Design

Graduate Architecture and Urban Design Chair’s Forward The Graduate Architecture and Urban Design (GAUD) program at Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture is a progressive design environment for advanced architectural research located in New York City. The program proposes speculative debate and experimental architectural production based on a relational construct among theoretical inquiry, computational research, digital design, and technological investigation. To this end, Pratt Institute’s GAUD seeks to formulate a contemporary approach to architecture that is “ecological” in the sense that it provides collective exchanges which are both trans-disciplinary and trans-categorical. This ecological approach encourages feedback relationships among architecture, landscape, urbanism, technology, software programming, industry, manufacturing, political agencies, theoretical studies, as well as categories and disciplines that are newly emerging in contemporary culture. This approach seeks to productively intensify heterogeneous interests and agencies.

Strengthening the GAUD’s role in advanced architectural research via its continued interest in working with ‘heterogeneous interests and agencies’, is the Network for Emerging Architectural Research (N.E.A.R.), a new research initiative in Graduate Architecture and Urban Design. Newly emergent relations between design, technology, and natural systems, allows N.E.A.R. to provide an environment which cultivates invention, innovation, and improvement in the research, development, manufacture, and fabrication of architecture and urban design. N.E.A.R.’s focus is to generate new ideas, techniques, and approaches for 21st century issues, cultural situations, and circumstance. This research environment constructs a unique platform to address the newly evolving trans-disciplinary relationships between academia, industry, and public institutions.

William J. MacDonald, Graduate Chair

GAUD

In addition, the program sees architectural innovations in both the theory and practice of architecture and the interconnected phenomena out of which it emerges. Recent courses at Pratt Institute’s GAUD have investigated such topics as iterative processes, fluid systems, emergent phenomena, logics of organization, complex urbanisms, globalization and politics, computational logics, material performance, and speculative fabrication.

Master of Architecture

CORE DESIGN STUDIOS The three year, Master of Architecture program guides students through a curriculum that employs an interdisciplinary approach to architectural education to prepare students to become professionals that can accommodate current issues of inhabitation and anticipate emergent conditions of site and program. The studio sequence is the fundamental mode of instruction in architecture. Studio is complemented by supporting coursework in the categories of history and theory, technology, and computer media as well as a broad network of electives that together give students access to the extensive array of knowledge necessary to the education of an architect. The program has placed an emphasis on the ways in which courses can interrelate to generate relationships between subject matter across these categories of instruction. Studios work in a variety of media, from physical material explorations to digital modeling, imagery, and digital fabrication.

The studios cover a range of topics, from explorations of techniques as generators of new formal and tectonic systems to investigations into issues of contemporary culture and emerging spatial, social, and political structures.

The core sequence comprises the first three semesters of the sixsemester program. The first year begins with investigations of material form and conventions of representation that use physical and digital formal manipulations to construct aggregate systems that produce tectonic conditions of structure and envelope and programmatic potentialities. These studies are parlayed into projects exploring program and context that consist of small scale interventions into New York City infrastructural networks, which this year was a movement studio proposed on one of a number of triangular sites along boundary conditions within Manhattan’s street grid.

The spring context studio highlights issues of context as a topological condition and a programmatic one of circulation and accessibility.

The studio continues to foreground techniques of representation in coordination with the computer media course sequence and to apply these techniques to more complex projects. This year the program was a Montessori school on a sectional site in Staten Island that sought to address the topological and visual conditions of the context.

In the fall of the second year, studios build in complexity, with a mixeduse housing project based in Coney Island, Brooklyn that investigated the relationship between site and the complex matrix of multiple programmatic conditions. This studio seeks to apply technical concepts introduced in the material assemblies and environmental controls seminars to the development of building envelopes and environmental systems in the projects.

Alexandra Barker, coordinator

CORE DESIGN FACULTY Alexandra Barker StĂŠphanie Bayard James Garrison Karel Klein Craig Konyk Carla Leitao

186

Peter Macapia Gregory Okshteyn Philip Parker Chris Perry Maria Sieira Richard Scherr

Matthew Buyer

Chris Perry, critic

Master of Architecture | First Semester

188

This studio introduced the students to concepts, processes, and methodologies that are fundamental to contemporary architectural design. This studio section introduced these themes through a series of material studies that investigated properties and tested the performative limits or boundaries of building matter in order to understand how form can be manipulated to create spatial configurations that have architectonic potentialities. Students used physical and digital formal manipulations to construct spatial relationships. They translated the physical models into parametric digital models produced through the use of animation techniques that allowed them to develop a range of tectonic conditions from planar to volumetric, open to closed, and structure to surface. From these studies, students developed unitized systems that were aggregated and transformed in consideration of imagined external pressures of site and internal programmatic potentialities. Students analyzed the systems they develop and generate graphic notation strategies.

In the second half of the semester, students apply these techniques to the development of an intervention into the strata of the urban street edge or boundary condition. Boundary conditions in architecture are examined as spatial zones with subdivisions that overlap and change according to daily or seasonal shifts. The tectonic units developed in the material study were aggregated and manipulated at the local and global level to be employed to generate intricate, multivalent spatial conditions that could be employed to address issues of site and program discovered through research and testing.

The program this year was a movement studio proposed on one of a number of “residual” sites along boundary conditions within Manhattan’s street grid. The sites are a number of triangular-shaped residual spaces that emerged as a result of the imposition of Manhattan’s street grid over existing streets.

Alexandra Barker, critic a

b c

a

a. Heena Patel b. Dong Gyum Park c. Kyle Dunnington

GAUD

Channel Flow Modulation: Traffic Island Movement Studio | Manhattan, NY

Master of Architecture | First Semester

190

This studio introduced fundamental concepts, processes, and skills required for first-year graduate architectural design students. Through the exploration of spatial conditions and diverse systems of aggregation, students investigated conceptual and contextual relationships.

Students researched physical and structural properties of specific tangible materials, and through a series of non-uniform manipulations and digital production processes, developed unit modules based on the conceptual relationships.

The aggregation of the developed units introduced notions of space, pattern, scale and connection. This protocol became an evolutionary process engaged simultaneously in architectural production as well as in representation. Contingencies emerged from the constant confrontation between the physical model and digital representation.

Explorations were eventually tested in two small public parks located in the Bowery and along the Hudson River where students were asked to design a public dance studio of their choice. Students researched dance and its spatial specificities, as well as the relationship between dancers and the public. The peculiar situation of intimacy in a public space, effort and excess in a leisure space, spectacular in a mundane event, allow the display of bodies and behaviors, sportive or seductive, while in an urban environment. It blurs the boundary between audience and performance. The location of sport recreation in a dense urban site seems paradoxical but offers an opportunity to study infrastructural adjacency as well as the merging of the various users inherent to a community dance studio. Previous material explorations from the first part of the studio enabled students to link conceptual ideas and form through architectural design.

StĂŠphanie Bayard, critic a

c a

b

b

a. Adam New b. Victoria Maceira c. Umberto Plaja

GAUD

Dance Studio | Manhattan, NY

Master of Architecture | First Semester

192

The Wilderness Downtown | Manhattan, NY

The studio projects developed three important insights: the use of combinatorial as a new topological form of thinking, allowing architectural categories such as structure, enclosure, circulation and so on to become modalities; second, to preemptively understand the “building� as infinitely flexible with regard to site, infrastructure, local and global community; finally, to take the current openness of the urban environment to similarly network between conventional and excessive and indeterministic programs.

Each moment of research is a scaffolding which can be kicked away as the architectural condition arrives. Nestlist algorithms turned into simple geometric artifacts and run through combinatorial aggregates which are then patiently investigated through material modules and resubmitted to architectural logics. The architectural will enters into confusing relations with diagrammatic logic of analyses typical of dynamic systems of forces and pressures. The architect is then positioned to jettison the technical/bureaucratic logic of computer master and instead thrust into the uncomfortable but necessary attitude of responsibility to achieve a determination wherein the architectural results are productive of new urban logics of form, space, movement, and visuality.

To this end, we likened the architect to a performance artist wherein the city was not an exterior but rather a shifting set of relations that are in fugitive.

Peter Macapia, critic a b b

a

a

c

a. Justin Cho b. Matthew Lightner c. Tuan Nguyen

GAUD

What is the relevance of computational architecture in this moment of bifurcation between digital and algorithmic techniques? What are the spatial and formal conflicts? And how do these outcomes potentially put the architect in a serious bind with the topological networks and geometrical conventions?

Master of Architecture | First Semester

194

In an attempt to understand and extract embedded energy, each student was asked to investigate performance and propensities of chosen materials. Rigorous and generative analysis of materials is expressed through drawings and diagrams of simple physical models called units. Units are drawn and developed to challenge or celebrate inherent properties. Based on the analysis of the developed unit, students were asked to multiply, grow, and evolve the individual units into aggregated systems in which new properties and characteristics emerge.

Aggregation and connection logic of the cumulative system is based on original performative criteria analyzed during the unit development. Awareness and confidence of all criteria is constantly challenged.

In the second half of the semester; site analysis, programmatic logic, and historical data is used to further evolve the highly charged systems. Principals of structure, circulation, and envelope are extracted from the aggregated systems and applied to an architectural proposal.

Gregory Okshteyn, critic a

a

a

b

c

b

d

c

a. b. c. d.

Michael Grieser Christina Ostermier Michael Licht Eric Wong

GAUD

Material*Matters | Manhattan, NY

Master of Architecture | First Semester

196

Formal / In-Formal: Architecture and Mobility | Manhattan, NY

One of the ways in which general issues of mobility have been explored within architecture has been through the problem of form, specifically in terms of design methodologies that explore geometric and formal complexity through the use of dynamic modeling as a generative, time-based process. This dynamic process typically results in a formalism of two predominant schools of thought, one generating forms of geometric complexity with the appearance or expression of fluidity and movement, the other generating forms which, in their use, contain within them the latent potential of stored motion, and by extension, programmatic activity.

It is this latter approach, the studio will engage a specific interest in thinking about form in terms of forming processes. An uninformed surface is inherently neutral, which is to say it lacks the capacity to structure or influence movement and use. On the contrary, an informed surface has embedded within it a specific logic of structure and organization through which it opens up varying degrees of potential in terms of movement and use.

To this extent, form and program are seen as integral to one another. On the one hand, the studio’s material experiments are obviously investigations into the nature of form and degrees of formation in terms of exploring the properties of a physical surface. On the other hand, program is also considered to be an inherently formal problem, albeit in a less literal way. More established and stationary programs (such as a cafÊ or retail store) might be considered primarily formal in nature, to the extent that their particular form of use is more fixed in nature.

Less established and thus more temporal programs (such as street vending and performance activities) might be considered fundamentally informal, to the extent that their particular form or use is less stable and more subject to change.

In this way, questions of formation relate not simply to the physical properties of a building but even more importantly the ways in which that building organizes and distributes varying degrees of use and movement over time.

Chris Perry, critic a b

b c

c

a. Sierra Sharron b. Liduam Pong c. Matthew Buyer

GAUD

This studio situates itself in an ongoing discussion of architecture and mobility, which is to say, the challenge of how a traditionally static discipline responds to a larger cultural and technological condition of increasing movement and change.

Master of Architecture | Second Semester

198

In a real sense, the architectural design studio is a Montessori model for an architectural education, and as such, the studio will exploit inherent parallels. Self-directed research and independent thinking are encouraged in each student’s process. The design of the Montessori school will begin with three preliminary creative exercises: I. BRICK First will be an investigation of enclosure: students will design a brick wall experiment; a building block for a tectonic exploration for the project, expressing ideas of aperture, porosity and portal.

II. SECTION Second, students will investigate section and the potential exploitation of sectional space, movement patterns, and flows.

III. SITE Third, students will propose “prosthetic” strategies for the site, investigating restorative strategies for the missing “wing” of Saint Peters Church and Rectory, which will become the proposed Montessori School.

Students will spatially organize their project on the site, in section, using brick as the primary material for the exterior and interior. Thus brick will drive the material/ tectonic expression and section will drive the interior spatial formation, all composed upon the sloping site within its existing ecclesiastical context.

Craig Konyk, critic a b

c

a

a. Cheyenne Lau b. Anastasia Filippeou c. Jonathan Blistan

GAUD

Parallels | Staten Island, NY

Master of Architecture | Second Semester

200

An intrinsic, virtual process of the pedagogical Montessori method, implies congregation – individuals in a working collective, subjects are shared and learning happens through interaction. Additionally, an important process, is the slow progress into the focus of the individual and its chosen individual activity. A third important piece is the inclusion of exterior space as an extension of classroom activity.

CATALYTIC EXERCISES overview – flexible/elastic membranes Students studied spatial structures that mediate relationships between activity, learning, sharing and independence: procuring structures that could create an oscillation between ordering elements of connections in the site and program and their intrinsic strategies which would allow the productive breaking of that same order.

Our studio section worked with flexible membranes and two structural and formal systems – TENSION and CRYSTALLIZATION – ways of making linkages between programmatic operators at diverse sets of scales and qualities.

TENSION structures or CANOPIES are active procurers of opportunities and strategies for continuity and linkage across the site. CANOPY studies engaged space character definition by focusing on ceiling tactics that suggest different modes of enclosure and productive ambiguity between interior and exterior spaces.

CRYSTALLIZATION processes work towards establishing cross-sectional qualities in the linkages created by dynamic relaxation processes in the CANOPY studies.

These processes will actively work towards understanding and breaking down different types of stresses into productively ambiguous contiguity and adjacency relationships: across programs, people, light.

EROSION – in the site, program, activity, of attention - is a counterpart active element the studio will take on as qualifier of site and program analysis.

The connection of these studies have the ultimate objective of creating various palettes of communication between spaces, focusing on different ways of accessing centralization, decentralization, bifurcation, and networking movements of the users.

Carla Leitao, critic a

c

b

a

a

a. Liduam Pong b. Emmy-Juliette Rodriguez c. Kyle Dunnington

GAUD

Active Tension | Staten Island, NY

Master of Architecture | Second Semester

202

FINDING A HOOK! | Staten Island, NY

All chosen hooks in this studio required a robust connection to the process of learning. The key goal was to develop a proposition for an alternative, non-standard spatial and organizational strategy for a school. All proposals aimed to provide architecture which was more conducive to learning and an architecture that supported and facilitated education, rather than simply containing it.

Notions of confidence, self-awareness, and interactive development were used with each student to assist in the maturity of a personalized design process. Strengths and weaknesses were identified based on each project’s adherence to the original hook while achieving the goal of a non-standard place for learning.

Gregory Okshteyn, critic a

a b c

b

a. Matthew Buyer b. Marcus Ziemke c. Sierra Sharron

GAUD

In an attempt to articulate a strong concept, each student was challenged to develop a HOOK for their Montessori school project. The hook in terms of hip-hop production and songwriting is the absolute essential element to the foundation of a memorable song.

Master of Architecture | Second Semester

204

Working with change as a fundamental condition of architecture the studio sought out locations and models of material change in social fields. Varied strange and everyday movements of social exchange provide a sense and ultimately graphic evidence of change in direction, momentum, rhythm, and response of the intricate behaviors. They demonstrate remarkable shifts in authority engagement, boundaries, and connections and they show subtle and volatile evolving dynamics of agents.

Critically, these events demand an agile and responsive conceptualization in media.

Our combined interests in context and adaptation recognizes that context is an evolving field adapting to material introduced into its territory just as that material adapts to the existing field. We recognize that context or site are not so much fixed and stable entities as they are adapting in a flux of varying waves of intensity across multiple territories. The principle studio contexts, a hillside in Staten Island and elementary educational institutions are reworked through coevolving, intertwined and discrete propositions.

Philip Parker, critic a

b

d

c b

b

d

a. b. c. d.

Cara Hyde-Basso Alexander Davis Umberto Plaja Aylin Cinarli

GAUD

Context Studio | Staten Island, NY

Master of Architecture | Second Semester

206

The studio visited a Montessori school and read recent research that concludes it is important to emphasize spatial thinking in pre-schools, and not just linguistic or mathematical thinking. The students took this as a starting point to program the classrooms and assembly spaces as learning environments. The formal and generative work focused around interior/exterior relationships, coexisting scales, as well as spatial exaggerations and negotiations between the steep site and the programmatic requirements.

The students were challenged with a site in the Special Hillsides Preservation District, a steep slope area of Staten Island’s Serpentine Ridge. The site was chosen in part to ask students to learn sustainable approaches, since the regulations for this area are designed to reduce hillside erosion, landslides and excessive storm water.

There are strict limits on paving and a great portion of the site must be maintained as permeable ground with trees, vegetation, or paving in order to prevent runoff.

The primary way in which development is regulated on this site, and perhaps the most challenging for first year students given the complexity of the project’s program, is the limit on lot coverage by the building.

Since the project included the programming of outdoor areas, this building footprint restriction made the building into a kind of device introduced into the hill. Early work, including the drawing and redrawing of boundaries, paths, and potential activity on the site, produced lines that later hardened into materiality or became the implied access and use of the building. Students were asked to work with the orthogonal cuts of the building and site simultaneously, and to use physical and digital models to explore the potential materiality of these foreplans and fore-sections.

Maria Sieira, critic a

c

b

b

c

d

d

a. b. c. d.

Christina Whipple Annette Miller Michael Hoak Victoria Maceira

GAUD

Surface Mount | Staten Island, NY

Master of Architecture | Third Semester

208

Our understanding of aging in society is becoming much more nuanced and individuated. The idea that one becomes elderly at a specific moment has given way to the realization that people age in dramatically different ways with different needs and abilities. The one size fits all warehousing of persons over sixty five is a convenient bureaucratic device of the modern state but is not affordable, humane, or productive. The goal of this studio is to explore the needs of people as they age in contemporary society and to develop new residential and communal models that better serve them.

Through demographic research the class found that over seventy percent of the elderly live with their children; that young adults are likely to remain part of their parents household for much longer than in the past; and that most elderly wish to remain in their homes. These trends suggest the creation of multi-generational housing that includes families, elderly, and young adults. Consequently the class has attempted to design housing and services with enough flexibility to respond to a variety of living and care requirements. The resulting schemes allow the use and configuration of housing that can change over time as families grow and shrink and to respond to individual courses of physical and mental evolution.

James Garrison, critic a

c b

b

c

a. Joshua Maddox b. Andrew Sutton c. Monica Blasko

GAUD

Multi Generational Housing | Coney Island, NY

Master of Architecture | Third Semester

210

This studio focused on the development of novel organizational strategies that would simultaneously develop both consistency and individuation. Within the history of housing, three modes of organization have been dominant. First, and most common, has been the suppression of individuation in the dwelling unit for the purpose of developing a predictable overall organization. In this case, dwelling units follow a strict, gridded system in order to insure the continuity, and more importantly, the predictability of the whole. Second, are cases where modes of containment in the dwelling unit become variable but consistent relative to a typological premise. This is exemplified by our current suburban landscapes where plans, construction methodologies, even finances follow a consistent typological model while simultaneously privileging often-trivial variation of individual expressions. Third, in the brief period of experimentation in the late 60’s and early 70’s, we notice projects that attempt a development of organizational novelty for the purpose of challenging social orders. Individuation is suppressed, and the dwelling unit is theorized as a generic pixel that enables a rich, organic, alternative mode of consistency in the collective. This metabolist notion has been revisited in many contemporary experiments.

This studio examined a fourth possibility that challenges orthodoxies of architectural part to whole relationships— the simultaneous individuation of both part and whole.

In this scenario, the collective is a loose-fit aggregation where collective identity is unpredictable and emergent.

The loose-fit principle enables the individual unit to fully explore idiosyncratic possibilities and develop individual expression to a radical degree. In some ways, it is an attempt to follow what has been commented on as the democratic ideal—a disunity of individuality that is nonetheless consistent and productive as a whole. Within this organizational premise, four design topics were of specific interest to the development of tectonic expressions: 1. Building as Infrastructure 2. Frames, Shells, and Hybrids 3. Alternative Modes of Fenestration 4. Anomalous and Idiosyncratic Interiority Housing is often constrained by limited resources and complex necessities in its accommodations. Though housing’s shortcomings are often excused by these difficult constraints, there are remarkably few experiments that question the basic premises of housing’s organizational models. This studio hopes to develop new optimisms about this important building type through an open-ended speculation that challenges nominal practices.

Karel Klein, critic a

a c

b

b

c

a. Andrew Tyson b. Yasin Ozdemir c. Jay Woodworth

GAUD

Part to Part, Whole to Whole | Coney Island, NY

Master of Architecture | Third Semester

212

Extended Family Tree | Coney Island, NY

Diagrams of common family organizations and generational development are a point of departure for the studio. The increasing complexity of those interrelationships and family constitutions will be studied, analyzed and diagramed.

Immigrant groups and population shifts over time will be documented and analyzed for growth patterns and potential clustering of groupings. The Borough of Brooklyn and its various neighborhoods will be thought of as a kind of Extended Family Tree.

The matrix of contemporary issues that are impacting the nature of families and households is in and of itself a pattern of emerging constellations of societal concerns.

Finally, we will consider the design of housing in the wake of social media and its ability to collect and group individuals into constantly changing constellations of “households� and speculate on its impact on the design of a housing unit.

Craig Konyk, critic a b c

b c

b

a. Kerim Eken b. Michael Leach c. Madeline Nero

GAUD

This studio will explore multigenerational housing through the prism of new households; specifically evolving household mixes that are changing definitions of what constitutes a family, with its various extensions from biological origins to unrelated cohabitants.

Master of Architecture | Third Semester

214

The site for the housing studio, a narrow strip between elevated subway tracks and Surf Avenue in Coney Island, presented maximum constraints in plan organization, resulting in various manifestations of “wall” building. The studio emphasized the generation of “public structure,” or intermediate scales between the individual and the collective, stressing possibilities of identity, social interaction, and rich experiences of transition and arrival. Public structure is defined primarily in the formation of linear, circulatory structure, typically organized and shaped in plan. In this case, it was thought to be more interesting, and necessary, to “flip” the traditional emphasis of the plan, in which public systems and interrelationships are now resolved in the vertical dimension of the elevation.

The initial exercises of the studio explored synthesizing connective structures of lines, or linear volumes, through various manifestations of vectors, knots, intertwining, layering, clustering, and exploding, intending to maximize possibilities of connection, and potential association between lines. This was played against the formation of patterned fields of repetitive units, depicted as a pictorial surface which was transformed by formal operations based in displacement and distortion. An alternative investigation involved the generation of the vertical, “thickened surface” performing as a mediating membrane, whose role is to reconcile environmental forces, facilitate intermediate interior-exterior habitation, and demarcate possibilities of “difference” and identity. Sources for formal investigation included work by Gordon Matta-Clark, Isamu Noguchi, Hans Richter, and pattern transformation through filtering and extrusion operations.

Richard Scherr, critic a

b

b

c

a

a

a. Joy Tennenbaum b. Susan Park c. Luke Cunnington

GAUD

Thick Surfaces | Coney Island, NY

Master of Architecture | Third Semester

216

We began the studio by reading the essay “What is Architecture the Name Of Today?” (Log 19, the Spring/Summer 2010 issue), in which Petra Ceferin, an architect and scholar in Slovenia, plays on the title of the book “De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom?” (“What is the meaning of Sarkozy?”) by the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou. Ceferin argues against a stepping back of architecture in the face of a financial meltdown, and proposes that an economic crisis is an opportunity for architecture to re-establish its critical position in relation to existing economic, political, and cultural orders. With this critical project as a starting point, the studio programmed and designed housing for older adults in Staten Island.

Each student was asked to define for themselves what such housing might entail, often drawing on their own experiences. Among other programmatic issues, students researched degrees of mobility and independence, the fluctuating number of inhabitants in each unit, casual encounter spaces, access between units and between each unit and the street, and programmatic components in this mixed-use project that would represent progressive attitudes toward aging. The site, the heart of Coney Island, was researched both as a playground, both in its actual and idealized condition, and as a summer town year-round, with its occupation shifts, from its summer buzz, to its empty winter months, which could be either desolate or tranquil, depending on one’s perspective.

Local conditions at the site included a noisy elevated track, which presented challenges relative to outdoor spaces and the orientation of entrances and windows.

The site is in-between and left behind—site visits between September and December were increasingly described as eerie—but it also gave students the opportunity to define housing for older adults beyond the pretty and the pleasant.

Maria Sieira, critic a

a

b

b

c

c

b

a. Blaine Campbell b. Yoko Saigo c. Bridget Rice

GAUD

Housing on the Beach | Coney Island, NY

Master of Architecture

COMPREHENSIVE DESIGN STUDIOS In the Master of Architecture fourth semester design studio, students undertake the design of a Comprehensive Architectural Project (CAP).

Students work in groups and are assigned a program of moderate complexity on sites with varying climatic conditions. The projects are brought to a high level of completion and incorporate extensive site and climate analysis, material research, structural and mechanical system design, and the documentation of construction details. The agenda for the studio is to develop a collaborative approach across disciplines that can produce architecture that is able to integrate systems at the scale of the building and make connections to infrastructural networks at the urban scale. To accomplish this, the course is taught concurrently with the Integrated Building Systems seminar (IBS), the culminating course in the technology sequence, where instructors in the disciplines of structural, mechanical, environmental and facade engineering advise students alongside the design instructors in the studio. This year, the project was to design a visitors’ center for significant cultural and natural sites in extreme climates. Sites included the El Yunque Rainforest in Puerto Rico, Eagle Point West at the Grand Canyon, Bahia Honda Park in the Florida Keys, the Hornstrandir Nature Reserve Center in the Westfjord region of Icleand, and a visitors’ center for the Mastaba, a sculpture planned by Christo.

Alexandra Barker, coordinator

COMPREHENSIVE DESIGN FACULTY Kutan Ayata Alexandra Barker Stéphanie Bayard Frank Lupo Erich Schoenenberger

218

Hannibal Newsom, Mina Rafiee, Wei Xin Michelle Fowler, Paulina Hospod Erich Schoenenberger, critic

Master of Architecture | Fourth Semester

220

The project for this studio was a visitors’ center in the El Yunque Rain Forest in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico lies in path of moisture-laden trade winds that travel East from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean and meet the Northeastern portion of the island, producing a rain forest condition when they hit the El Yunque mountain range. The agenda for the studio was to incorporate sustainable practices such as passive solar design, passive cooling, and geothermal/hydrothermal heat sourcing into a design that was responsive to the site and programmatic conditions. The studio focused on the biomimetic potentials of plants and animal species as well as meteorological phenomena indigenous to the rain forest as conceptual generators for the projects. The students also researched speculative materialities and systems that would take advantage of the unique conditions of the humid tropical climate of the rain forest.

One project developed a massing on stilts constructed from lumber reclaimed from the clearing of the site. The structures flanked an open amphitheater suspended above a stream on the forest floor and attached to extended walkways that connected to nearby hiking trails. The second project developed a lightweight column of bundled steel members, recalled from the structure of the indigenous parrots, that were clad in ETFE to evoke the lighting effects of the cloud forest. The building was elevated to penetrate through the canopy toward views of the ocean.

Alexandra Barker, critic a b a

b

b

a. Jeffrey Autore + Madeline Nero + Christian Strom b. Michael Leach + Bridget Rice + Jay Woodworth

GAUD

Rainforest Biomimetics | El Yunque Rainforest, Puerto Rico

Master of Architecture | Fourth Semester

222

The studio explored a visitor center at the rim of the Grand Canyon’s Eagle Point, 4000 ft above Colorado River Bed. The site is the current location of the Grand Canyon Skywalk Visitor Center owned and operated by the Hualapai Indian Tribe. The proposals sought to manipulate the rather mundane typology of the visitor center as a stop before the “main attraction” as they produced new formal, material, organizational logics to enhance one’s experience of this unique geography and space of the canyon. Students engaged the site not only over the planimetric territory but at and around the rim’s edge, as well as at the vertical face of the canyon.

Specific strategies of tunneling, anchoring, rock removal and reinforcement guided projects as they engaged the geology of the canyon to initiate heightened and staged spatial experiences in relation to approach, vista, void and vertigo...

Kutan Ayata, critic

a

a b

b

c

a. Frances Fox + Joshua Maddox + Andrew Sutton b. Monica Blasko + Eric Engdahl + Luke Cunnington c. Steven Christian + Andrew Tyson + Joy Tennenbaum

GAUD

Vertigo | Eagle Point Visitor Center, Grand Canyon West

Master of Architecture | Fourth Semester

224

During the fourth and final core design studio, students are required to design a Comprehensive Architectural Project (CAP), which emphasizes the relationship between conceptual ideas taught in the design studio and technical aspects of the project in the concurrent Integrated Building Systems seminar. The tight relationship between these two classes gives students the opportunity to engage a variety of means of architectural design to produce structural, mechanical and infrastructural systems, fully developing the project to the level of architectural detailing and material finishes.

The studio proposed to design a Visitors’ Center for the Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys Island. The site, located at the southern tip of the island has a dual orientation with Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Gulf of Mexico on the west and is physically sliced in half by the remains of an old railroad bridge. The primary driver for the technical design is attributed to the tropical climate of the Keys, known for it’s hot and humid summers and routine hurricane seasons. In addition, limited local resources, such as water and building materials, provoked the development of an efficient building that decreases dependency on external energy sources, while collecting fresh water and natural energy.

The Florida Keys host the only coral reef in North America as well as many endangered plant and animal species. Each team of students studied different local species and their adaptive behavior in changing habitats, such as mangrove tree, coral or local butterfly. Studying their performative quality allowed the students to design a building that would be best respond to specific local conditions and link nature to technology in architectural creations.

StĂŠphanie Bayard, critic

a b

b a b

c

a. Roman Chikerinets + Leslie Forehand + Mitchell Streichhirsch b. Blaine Campbell + Manuel Castaneda + Chang Hee Park c. Lauren Burdelsky + Vida Chang + Kathryn Longobardi

GAUD

Visitor Center in Bahia Honda State Park | Keys Island, Florida

Master of Architecture | Fourth Semester

226

A visitor center in a remote area of Iceland, the Western Fjords, took on the dual predicament of a geographical condition that seeks not to be disturbed while the landscape begs to be discovered. A puffin haven, fjords as far as the eye can see, rough tundra-like terrain and an unfriendly climate set an interesting backdrop to a wide range of projects.

The students were asked to push the theoretical basis of their projects but also to test their designs against the criteria of sustainability, feasibility and constructability.

Design reviews were balanced with weekly critiques, pin ups and seminars given by the Integrated Building Systems instructors on structure, mechanical systems, sustainability, landscape, building envelope design,egress and accessibility, to insure that the projects design evolution was an integrated and collaborative process.

Research focused on the climatic, cultural, mythology and geographical particularities of Iceland. The project teams were encouraged to address the emerging questions they found relevant to their interests, looking at influences from allied disciplines such as art, literature, film, sculpture, and music to formulate original ideologically approaches to the problem. Applying these influences to programmatic issues, the students questioned what was meant by the definition of a visitor, and what geological and archaeological clues could influence the architectural expression of space.

Material research focused heavily on local availability as well as the overall interest in designs that would work in harmony with the climate, the vast serenity of this remote site. Having a wide geographical area to select from, each team researched the nature of the physical context. Topography, solar orientation, prevailing winds, views, native vegetation, access to road and the shore contributed to the formulation of their design approach and site development.

As a design methodology, each student was encouraged to develop and present an “esqisse�, their first distilled design ideas for solving the problem and present it to their team. This exercise was undertaken in a effort to foster collaboration within the teams and to quickly get the best ideas to meld together into one design direction that engender group ownership and a common goal.

Frank Lupo, critic

a b

c a

c

a. Michael Austin + Dan Couglin + Joselia Mendiolea b. Aditi Amalean + Zach Johnson + Shannon Reid c. Simon Chawky + Sarah Ruel-Bergeron + Adrian Von der Osten

GAUD

Hornstrandir Nature Reserve Visitor Center | Westfijord Region, Iceland

Master of Architecture | Fourth Semester

228

The studio’s premise called for the conceptual design of a set of four visiting center buildings marking the arrival point of artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Mastaba project for the United Arab Emirates. The site is located in the vast UAE desert. Christo and Jeanne-Claude‘s Mastaba project was conceived in 1977 and is planned as a work of art made of approximately 410,000 horizontally stacked oil barrels secured to an inner structure. One of the important aspects for such a massive structure in the desert is the supportive infrastructure, a point of arrival and visiting center.

The students had the challenge to develop a group of buildings with various functions to resemble an oasis-like visiting center, 1.5 kilometer away from the future Mastaba site. The harsh climatic desert condition and the vast fluid, sand landscape poses fundamental architectural and formal questions on how to plan and design for a remote desert destination point. The students researched the dynamics of the ever-changing dune landscape as well as traditional approaches to building in the desert with the aim to find a new contemporary reaction to the site conditions. A further important aspect was the atmospheric and visual value of greenery and water elements as these are luxury elements in the desert. The resulting four projects combined assembled the new visiting center, a contemporary oasis to the Mastaba.

The students had the honor to meet Christo over the course of the semester and present their concepts.

Erich Schoenenberger, critic a

b

b

a. Hannibal Newsom + Mina Rafiee + Wei Xin b. Michelle Fowler + Paulina Hospod

GAUD

Mastaba Visiting Center | UAE Desert

Master of Architecture and Master of Science in Architecture

ADVANCED OPTION DESIGN STUDIOS The Graduate Architecture and Urban Design program’s option studios create a progressive environment for (upper-level) first-professional and post-professional students to engage in advanced design research through a number of specially formulated themes in contemporary architectural design research, practice and discourse. For first-professional students, the studios act as a vehicle to push capabilities accrued throughout the core curriculum through advanced design scenarios. They bring post CAP-studio skills into more speculative venues that are further intensified in relation to advanced electives accessible at this point in the program. For post-professional students, the studios are opportunities to confront new territories and emerging questions in architecture culture in the ascent towards a thesis formulation. For both sets of students the option studios are an environment in which the important challenges of advanced studio culture may intensify both collectively and individually emerging positions on contemporary design thinking, intelligence and execution. Accomplished instructors with diverse and progressive interests are invited to lead these intense and exploratory studios that contribute deeply to the evolving identity of the program. Themes explored in the option studios this year included: parametric design and developing building technologies; responsive systems and bio-mimetic modeling; tectonic expression and ecological adaptation; techno-social change and architecturalm innovation; creative destruction and trans-disciplinary design-thinking; urban agency and self-organization; infrastructural development and global urbanization; near-future scenarios and computational design; and iterative logics of digital design.

Jason Vigneri-Beane, coordinator

ADVANCED OPTION DESIGN FACULTY Meta Bruzema James Garrison Hina Jamelle Lydia Kallipoliti Sulan Kolatan Carla Leitao Peter Macapia

230

Audrey Matlock Chris Perry David Ruy Erich Schoenenberger M. Ludovica Tramontin Nanako Umemoto

Jonathan Alexander + Nick Tran

Hina Jamelle, critic

M. Arch + M.S. Arch | Fifth + Second Semesters

232

This “Transition” studio was designed to foster architectural solutions that accelerate the transition towards a more sustainable, innovative and productive society. We were interested in systemic architectural interventions that engage people, nature, and culture. Interventions which lead to societal transitions in the workforce and economic development sectors at multiple scales.

Our project site is in Kingston, New York; an economically challenged, mid-size town in the Hudson Valley. Specifically, we wanted to catalyze the Hudson Valley’s innovation economy with new spaces for learning, exhibition, meeting, (net) working and experimentation. We were especially interested in designing architectural spaces that foster innovation and high-growth entrepreneurship as well as a culture that thrives on risk and change.

To advance these goals, we looked at Dutch Transition Theory (derived from systems theory, complexity theory and sociology) which is the study of non-linear processes of social change in which the structure of a societal system transforms. Transitions are defined as the result of technological, economic, ecological, socio-cultural and institutional developments at different scales that influence and reinforce each other. Transitions seek to organize radical changes in sectors like energy and transportation, the building industry, agriculture, health care etc…For example in the Netherlands, transition practice often involves the creation of “niches” in which iterative experiments and innovations can occur; outside of conventional rules. These and other system-based methodologies informed our architectural design process.

Each of the student projects developed a transition strategy for the sector that is closest to architecture - the construction industry. Each project tried to engage broader material, energy and water cycles, as well as fabrication techniques and labor practices. The resulting forms, material assemblages and programmatic juxtapositions were intended to shape not only the building itself, but also the larger social, cultural and economic system.

Meta Brunzema, critic a

a

b

b

a

c

c

a. Noah Modie b. Laura Carter c. Jim Fenzel

GAUD

Transition Studio | Kingston, NY

M. Arch + M.S. Arch | Fifth + Second Semesters

234

Today’s digital techniques allow us to deal with the full complexity of material systems, by offering the tools to create effects that exceed the sum of their parts. Shifting Hybrids will examine some ways in which this can contribute to the formulation of architecture, utilizing generative techniques for the evaluation of growth patterns and their variation in the development of form. The act of designing using digital techniques is reliant on a two-way exchange of information. By allowing for positive feedback, these systems become open to opportunities to incorporate responsiveness, contingency, and the accidental in their generative process. Digital techniques circumvent pre-determined analytical processes that focus on fixed formal issues such as figure/ground, ideal types, and static program. Instead, these projects give primacy to FORMations that are in variation, scale-less, accumulative and subject to changes that may shift in part to whole relationships, spatial qualities, and color.

In addition, projects using digital techniques incorporate program, space, structure, and enclosure into a singular formation that incorporates a range of experiences and formal variations of gradated intensities.

The explorations of Shifting Hybrids seek to push beyond the austerities of digital technique, encouraging concerns for refinement, precision, and to unleash a visual intelligence pertinent for architectural design. The most sophisticated of contemporary projects use this intelligence to achieve nuances within the formal, spatial, and material variation of projects.

The site is between West 17th and 18th Streets on 11th Avenue in Chelsea. Catalyzed by the Highline project, the program is of a uniquely configured mixed use building. Each student determined and refined the particular program during the course of the semester. The goal for each student was to deal with a range of familiar architectural issues- how to turn a corner, how to add to an existing building, vertical circulation and structure. The intended result is a project exhibiting innovative architectural features in variation, produced using topological surfaces and component arrangements with different spatial and material qualities contributing to the development of architecture.

Hina Jamelle, critic a b

b

a

a. Reynolds Diaz Jr. + Chris Dorsey b. Jonathan Alexander + Nick Tran

GAUD

Shifting Hybrids | West Chelsea, NY

M. Arch + M.S. Arch | Fifth + Second Semesters

236

Cloud Institution: TransverCity | Year of 2048

The CLOUD Studio engaged the future design of institutions which use ultra-locality and remote connection, emerging tectonics provided by advanced material sensitivity and/or connectivity, and distributed form or protocol. The potential future convergence of archival and educational programs was addressed. The year of 2048 located the projects in a scenario where spatial character was conferred by the design of material specifications. The studio focused on optimum and optimistic relationships between a potential materially-induced environmental/ambient/weather behavior that would self-institutionalize. The work speculated on how the future of material specifications, ultra-local sensitivity, and ubiquity might start to unfold together with that of institutions and be relevant for any future spatially built structure.

The CLOUD figure has a particular thread in architecture culture. The project of ‘’Horizontal Skyscrapers’ by El Lissitzky, Superstudio’s different projects, including the “Continuous Monument” or their “Fundamental Acts” series, as well as Archigram’s works - such as “Instant City” or “Walking City”, or Cedric Price’s investigations into distributed systems such as the Pottery Belt, were some of the studied potential CLOUD Projects.

Developments in nano-materials and meta-materials explore universal problems - how to improve a lens - and inversions of natural phenomena or hybrids: problematizing characteristic or trait. The claim is to program matter, to constitute new classes of materials, their ubiquity and integration of matter classes. These materials are not obscure, but potentially also not tamable. Actually, they might potentially be political or alive.

The archive in architecture can be a philosophical lens to understand a city or a human being, style, or structure, object or concept. Archive structures are intrinsic to their process of formation – their sensitive net of understanding, marks the space for their storage rule set and unpacking. These are, as well, the same markers by which learning institutions will preserve and deploy their subjects. Structure and space are directly bound to the understanding of the preserved object. The CLOUD studio investigated connections between new traits of matter and materials, and the desire to build environments.

Students devised institutions whose material structure integrates them in a series of other bodies and in this manner constitute its own.

Carla Leitao, critic a

d

b c

b

c

a. b. c. d.

Erik Thorson Kevin M. d’Assalenaux Sheppard Orkun Beydagi Matthew DeLuca

GAUD

N.E.A.R Confederated Studio

M. Arch + M.S. Arch | Fifth + Second Semesters

238

Public knowledge and appreciation for our buildings and our cities arguably lends support to the production of better architecture and urban design. Cities with an informed public are likely to engage in constructive dialogue regarding their city’s future development. Based upon this theory, the Santral studio explored how a particular institution might encourage public engagement with the growth of their city through exhibitions and dialogue, while providing a working environment for architects to gain positive public exposure.

The project is an Architecture and Urban Design Center for a location in Istanbul at the origin of the Golden Horn.

It incorporates the city’s oldest Ottoman power plant called Silahtaraga, and builds upon an ambitious current progressive educational and cultural development. This site is both visually prominent and historically significant.

The studio evaluated the site’s physical characteristics, its visible layers of landscape phenomena and transformations that occurred during and since the industrial period. The intention of this focus was to emphasize the pervasive and profound impact that a site has to architecture and visa versa. The studio explored how a new building transforms a site’s use as well as its topography, microclimate and circulation. It questioned how new construction defines successive sites for ensuing constructions and how it alters adjoining sites as well as its own. Specific focus was given to the transformation of the waters edge, and the economic, social, cultural and political impact of change along the Golden Horn.

The project’s experimental program introduced nontraditional facilities that providing a broader reach than an insular academy and take advantage of the larger Santral creative community context. The studio explored the relationship of architecture and program, and how the architecture of this institution might support its programmatic mission.

Audrey Matlock, critic a b

a b a

c

a. Yuliana Lazovskaya b. Sylvia Boruchowicz c. Thomas Lozada

GAUD

Santral Studio | Istanbul, Turkey

M. Arch + M.S. Arch | Fifth + Second Semesters

240

Painterly Effects: An Agricultural Villa for the 21st Century | varies

The goal of this studio was to develop new design ideas for the inter-relationship of architecture and landscape.

Though the agricultural villa was once a clear emblem of architecture’s dominant and rational position relative to a natural landscape (Paladio’s Villa Rotunda, for example), in the 21st century, architecture’s relationship to landscape has become manifold and complex. Even the notion of agriculture has become expansive and generalized to include such things as solar farms or data farms. Is this just a metaphor of agriculture? Or has the distinction between the natural and the artificial become so vague that we are literally cultivating and harvesting technology just as we would a plant? If we accept this expanded notion of agriculture, then what is an agricultural villa today?

An important subtext for the development of design proposals was the premise that nature is not an object “over there” in constant conflict with the artificiality of human interests, but that nature is itself an invented human concept that is as artificial as anything else understood by civilization. To examine this premise of nature as an artificial concept structuring projective aesthetics, students were asked to consider the magnificent history of landscape painting (particularly in the late 19th century) where nature was represented or in the best cases, reoriginated through the cleverness and magic of painterly effects. What would constitute painterly effects in architectural design? Are there alternative paths through emerging digital design technologies that avoid reductive methodological frameworks but instead discovers new open-ended proxies (like paint, for example) for the excessive creativity of the human imagination?

The results of the studio were wide-ranging. Proposals examined a variety of contexts and programs foregrounding the objectives of each individual student.

Projects ranged from notions of the grotesque applied to figure-ground manipulations of a large solar field to an examination of radicalized ecological technologies developed in the context of an interiorized urban park; from surrealist compositional strategies for remediating disused rooftops in midtown Manhattan to arborescent formal strategies used to aggressively colonize abandoned big-box retail sites.

David Ruy, critic a

a

b

c

a

a. Meredith Atkinson b. Jorge Salcedo c. Scarlett Esion

GAUD

N.E.A.R Confederated Studio

M. Arch + M.S. Arch | Fifth and Second Semesters

242

There is and has been a great deal of discourse on ecology and sustainability in recent times. How we live and how we take care of our environment is of great importance to most. This studio will focus on Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology both much debated and controversial aspects of the ecology discourse. Cultivating plants and selective breeding has been done for countless generations. There are references of selective breeding in the bible and in many other historic artifacts.

It made the domestication of humans possible. Crafting new breeds and plants traditionally takes decades and it is impossible through selective breeding to mix traits from two totally different species. That is precisely where genetic engineering comes into play.

Genetic engineering and biotechnology have a much polluted reputation. Companies like Monsanto and their pesticide+seeds “Roundup” system are widely criticized for their ruthless politics in marketing these systems, while sideling concerns about the impact of the products on the environment. Recent documentary movies like “Food Inc.” have brought awareness to the doings of these Biotech companies. There are however many creative and novel uses of biotechnology. Recently, a genetically modified salt tolerant cereal crop was created, where the researchers modified genes specifically around the plant’s water conducting pipes so that salt is removed from the transpiration stream before it gets to the shoot.

The objective of this design studio was not to take sides in this debate or to solve ecological problems but rather to explore how an architectural design would organize and formalize itself in the face of a manipulated and engineered “nature”. The program of the studio was an “Open Source Laboratory”, a new kind of institution that finds itself between a Museum of Biology and a genetic testing laboratory, between a farming university and a corporate headquarters. The students researched how such an Open Source Laboratory could operate to produce an interaction of different interest groups.

The site was Pier 40 on Manhattan’s West side. Until recently, Manhattan’s shoreline was lined with man made piers; it has defined the edge of the city. Only a few of these piers remain and have mostly adapted new programmatic uses. Pier 40 is a large 800 x 900 ft pier that is currently used as part parking garage and part soccer fields.

Erich Schoenenberger, critic a b b

c c

b

c

a. Amanda Rivera b. Nima Farzaneh c. Zachary Finstrom

GAUD

Gene Adaptation | Pier 40 Manhattan, NY

M. Arch + M.S. Arch | Fifth and Second Semesters

244

The studio will look at the tension between the natural and the technological by using computational design not as an emulation of natural forms but as an exploration of novel territories for their mutual influence. The program proposed is ‘immersed in nature’ to rethink the building as a transparent and open construct to the landscape- beyond the modernist idea- in terms of a continual relationship between the spatial formation and its environment.

Using analogue and digital techniques we will investigate the idea of transparency from looking at the fine preciosities of the garment in contemporary fashion. We will abstract this understanding of transparency as no longer being a passive element increasing the ambiguity between materials and structure, becoming a catalyst of social and spatial interaction.

We are interested in something that appears ‘pure’ though being seamless and transparent and nevertheless hosts sophisticate technical functions (energy production, acoustical performance, day lighting and airing control). This will not necessarily result into a minimalist aesthetic or into a purified system. With the aim of reflecting this feeling of complexity into diverse tectonics of relationship, we will understand the Greenhouse as a territory of ambivalence and delicate interplay between technology and nature. The site proposed for investigation is located in the Monte Urpinu Park in the city of Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy. The model will be developed parametrically in response to the complex spatial and technical requirements of the programs proposed; the Nursery for exotic and native species, the Museum and the Therapeutic Garden.

M. Ludovica Tramontin, critic a

a

b a

c

c

b

a. Marit Jensen + Eleni Vakalopoulos b. Greg Frenzel c. Natalie Graham

GAUD

Structural Transparencies | Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy

Master of Architecture | Sixth Semester

246

The waves of efficiency increases that have transformed the production and economics of nearly every manufacturing sector through the last century have had few equals in the design and construction industry. In fact, a study comparing productivity (measured in contract dollars per work hours) found that since 1964, non-farm labor productivity has more than doubled whereas the construction industry has experienced a productivity decrease of approximately 20% (US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Labor Statistics).

One essential underpinning of manufacturing productivity is the development of systems that minimize the consumption of human and material resources. As architects, we can combine such efficiencies with a complete life cycle to advance both the wealth of society and the need for dramatic increases in sustainability.

The potential for building industrialization is increasingly facilitated by computer aided design and building information management. Like the automobile, created and engineered as a virtual object before it is produced, industrialized buildings profit tremendously from integrated computerized design. The factory setting allows the optimization of this technique as fabrication and assembly are rationalized through time motion studies.

While extensive prefabrication has been successfully applied to low rise housing, it has been less applicable to tall buildings. Yet it is in tall buildings, in highly constrained urban contexts, where much of the potential for an industrialized building approach can be most beneficial. The project site is the parcel where the Barclays Center is currently under construction in the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, NY. Four residential buildings in excess of thirty stories are planned for this area.

James Garrison, critic a

b a

a

a. Sylvia Boruchowicz + Greg Frenzel b. Jonathan Barrios + Sarah Schkeeper

GAUD

Plug in City 2011 | Atlantic Yards, Brooklyn, NY

Master of Architecture | Sixth Semester

248

One of the prevailing architectural problems of our time is our relationship to history. Currently, two rather dysfunctional versions have taken hold. Urban history faces either death by destruction or death by preservation.

And yet, if history is part of our identity, new approaches are urgently needed to avoid irreversible amnesia and the permanent loss of identity.

The site and program for the studio separately and jointly represent a compelling example of the strong forces of past and future. Typically, this kind of encounter would be described as a collision, however, if new ways of thinking about history are to be pursued, it is critical not to remain within these de-fault-lines as they inevitably lead to the destruction/preservation paradigm.

In order to pursue one such non-default alternative, the studio followed an affinities-based approach. This approach does not emphasize a conceptual cut between history and present but rather continuing or re-emerging affinities between the two. We used geometry and topology to investigate and deploy these affinities throughout the project. As a society we regard architecture as a carrier of cultural and material inheritance. Is there a way of developing strategies of inheritance that fall outside the territory of typology? What role can Variable Multiples (cell variations) play in revealing and creating affinities? Can topological cells be embedded with historic DNA – as in surface-form, geometry, pattern and social protocols?

Sulan Kolatan, critic a

c a

b

d

a. b. c. d.

Sean Madigan Nick Tran Erik Thorson Jonathan Alexander

GAUD

Operatic Operations | Istanbul

Master of Architecture | Sixth Semester

250

“Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it . . . In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with regard to buildings. Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction.”

– Walter Benjamin The 19th century invention of the city as spectacle continues today, spaces of new social relations, new architectural types - the park, the bar, the arcade or mall, the museum - all enjoyed exponential growth, transformation, and reinvention. But the most conservative remains, architecturally speaking, the museum. What has become radical is primarily a sense of form rather than the logic of the Institution.

Where is the museum in the 21st century? Degas had already pointed out in the 19th century when exploring this multiplicity that the museum is tied to shopping, as shopping is certainly tied to the home, and likewise, the cultivation of the self which is then cast into the city as a flâneur and spectacle at once. Where is the museum across these contradictory interstices?

This studio, the first in a series called “The Feeling of a City”, explores the city as a series of interstitial spaces to develop a program hidden and yet present and alive, sprawling across blocks, intersecting odd and controversial programs, which disappear into the blurry thickness or barren vacancies of the urban strata. The architecture culture which is notorious for “intricacy” and “design” shifts from the tradition of obviousness. The skills of the architect are now re-consecrated as ambush. The projects enact a form of disappearance and emergence at one and the same moment, to imagine a museum that everyone knows about but no one can find.

Five considerations: 1) Art and installation have continued to transgress architecture – so why has architecture refused to transgress itself and what would it mean for architecture to transgress itself? 2) It is already a commonplace that independent alternative cultural institutions and corporate cultural institutions have joined forces in the urban spectacle. MOMA and PS1 are now two sides of the same coin. There is no outside of the institution. 3) Commercial and artistic enterprises are forever now intertwined in the gift shop – there is no outside of capital. 4) The corporate museum (to our advantage) is both desperate and curious – it is a fashion hunter and nothing is excluded. 5) Surveillance and spectacle have folded into each other.

Peter Macapia, critic a b b

c a

b

a. Amanda Rivera b. Bryan Reitter c. Yuliana Lazovskaya

GAUD

The Museum is Where... | Manhattan, NY

Master of Architecture | Sixth Semester

252

The instrumental and aesthetic implications of architecture’s engagement with science and technology has a long history, part of which includes the period following the Second World War when the rapid technological advances of the Industrial Revolution merged with a general cultural mindset characterized by themes of mobility, progress, and futurism. For postwar thinkers like Reyner Banham, this interest in a progressive architecture suggested an approach to design rooted less in architectural precedent than technological extrapolation.

Given the equally revolutionary advances in computer technology in the last twenty years, our contemporary moment can be seen as having many parallels with the postwar period, and not unlike the postwar generation of architects and thinkers, contemporary designers are inevitably faced with the challenge of engaging new technological advances and their implications for architecture.

It is within this context that our studio revisited Biosphere 2, a wildly futuristic and utopian project situated somewhere between postwar counter-culture and 21st Century climate change. The project has its origins in a northern New Mexican cult or self-titled “eco-village” called Synergia Ranch, which gained new legitimacy by enlisting the financial support of Ed Bass, son of the wealthy oil family from Texas. This new found legitimacy lasted only so long before being exposed by the media.

Turning to more ‘legit’ educational institutions in order to reclaim the initial research aspirations of the project, Bass enlisted Columbia University and later the University of Arizona. Despite their temporary involvement, however, Biosphere 2 has yet to find a purpose, and continues to linger in the wake of its misguided, albeit-it well-intended founders. It is this current and on-going predicament of Biosphere 2 as a failed utopia that provided both the site and general area of inquiry for our studio, Biosphere 2 Redux.

Chris Perry + Lydia Kallipoliti, critics a

c b

b

a

c

a. James Williams + Kevin M. d’Assalenaux Sheppard b. Thomas Holliday + Jorge Salcedo c. Matthew DeLuca + Juhee Woo

GAUD

Anticipatory Architecture | Biosphere 2 Redux

Master of Architecture | Sixth Semester

254

“The airport today has become new city…people are no longer citizens, they’re passengers in transit. They’re in circumnavigation. When we know that every day there are over one hundred thousand people in the air, we can consider it a foreshadowing of future society; no longer a society of sedentarization, but one of passage; no longer a nomad society, in the sense of great nomadic drifts, but one concentrated in the vector of transportation.”

–Paul Virilio, Airport Urbanism The studio explored the design of a micro-city, an airtropolis, appended to the new international terminal at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. The studio developed a semiautonomous urban structure which, did not merge with the existing fabric, but essentially grew from the airport infrastructure. The micro-cities presented a new territory neither fully of the airport nor of Japan and proposed a crucible for new social and cultural experiments envisioned by each member of the studio.

The dawn of mass travel by jet in the early 1960’s corresponded to the wholesale re-organization of airport infrastructure - as an extension and transfer zone from highway, the land-based modality, to airport terminals – the transfer zone to an air-based one. In the world of the terminal, the relentless and systematic exploitation of “free” or layover time between arrivals and departures has given rise to the advent of the city-like agglomerations of uses for the in-transit population - a group already pre-screened, pre-selected and predisposed to spend time and money within this circumscribed domain.

The flattening or placelessness of the airport space, the interchangeability of its stores, hotels and its waiting rooms worldwide, is simply in advance of the same ineluctable processes everywhere else. The utopian or dystopian effects are simply more pure because unlike in traditional places there is no history, no resistance, material, cultural or otherwise to resist it.

The studio focused on the molecular, because it is artificial, experimental and unburdened from traditional methods, in order to seek new effects through a rigorous orchestration of sensory experience. By pushing the envelope of material affects the studio thus wagered that new public(s) might coalesce around new sensibilities in new metropolitan paradigms – in other words – new ways of life.

Nanako Umemoto, critic a

a

b

c

c

b

a. Philip Jenkin b. Cynthia Fels c. Charles Thomas

GAUD

Microcity | Tokyo Bay

Master of Science in Architecture

DESIGN STUDIOS The three-semester Master of Science, Architecture Program is an investigative, rigorous, and progressive environment for experimentation and research into advanced architectural design-research and discourse. Option studios, seminars, a range of electives and a thesis are opportunities for both individual and collective work on themes/ practices that examine existing assumptions and potential futures in architecture. Some of these studios and courses have looked closely at emergent forms of organization, computational techniques, and parametric design; networks, flows, and collective intelligence; complexity in urban, architectural, and institutional systems; innovative building systems, advanced materials, and digital fabrication techniques; trans-disciplinary thinking from scientific models to film theory; scenario-planning and near-future thinking; multi-dimensional agency in architecture and urbanism; globalization, ecology and far-from equilibrium thinking.

The program questions the multitude of assumptions that lie behind the architectural conventions of program, site, and design methodology in order to create new design processes, strategies, technologies, and conceptions of architecture in a period of rapid change. What is more, the M.S. Arch program believes in a strong methodological component to architectural innovation and seeks to provide such a component to students in a variety of ways. The program brings a diverse and international group of students into many provocative discussions and operations currently underway in the discipline and practice of architecture.

This year’s thesis sequence developed projects around architectural innovations that might emerge out of speculations on near-future scenarios. This sense of speculation provided a framework for collective research to be mined and expanded in the formulation of thesis projects that might ultimately propose a kind of creative destruction of architectural conventions. In thesis research, students were asked to formulate relational constructs among design methodologies, trends in such arenas as techno-social change, radical ecology and global urbanization as well as speculations on architectural production, materials and fabrication. In addition, the international make-up of the student body was cultivated to encourage global-local thinking and diversity in sites of operation. Within this framework, students constructed scenario-based approaches to project formulation that targeted identifiably emergent socio-cultural phenomena, giving rise to potentially innovative architectural proposals and explorations of evolving design methodology.

Jason Vigneri-Beane, coordinator

DESIGN STUDIO FACULTY William MacDonald Elliott Maltby Philip Parker Jason Vigneri-Beane

256

Chung-Kuang Chao Philip Parker, critic

Master of Science in Architecture | First Semester

258

Air Space | Chase Manhattan Plaza, NY

This project is a further research into the potential for the sectional development of gradated notions public/ private space in downtown Manhattan. The studio intends to re-invent the idea of ‘Privately Owned Public Spaces’, known, in Manhattan, by the acronym ‘P.O.P.S’. or, alternatively, ‘Pr.O.P.S’. The studio will use a site which is elevated far above the ground plane and has no foot print at street level. The project provides an opportunity to re-qualify public and private spaces now in terms of volumed space, a three dimensional occupation of the sky plane. The intention of the studio is to more fully exploit the relationship of legislated public occupation of only the ground plane into three dimensional space while expanding the requirements of this area and its’ limited, indeed anachronistic, notions of public space; by asking ‘What would constitute new notions of public space in this metropolis in the 21st century?’

This project is an opportunity to extend the notion of art exhibition and address the need for institutional demand in this area and develop new ways in which gradated public/private spaces and private/public museum space could be conceived.

William MacDonald, critic a

b

b

c

a

b

a. Ryan Griffin b. Antonis Charalambous c. Jeremiah Lo

GAUD

How does one conceive of a privately owned public space with a vast art collection as a ‘new constellation of museum and new construct public/private space,’ while, allowing for the simultaneous and concomitant operation of work and leisure to create a ‘mutual-istic environment’ for the 21st century?

Master of Science in Architecture | First Semester

260

Architecture and fabric, architecture and textiles, architecture and the lines of distinction between one side and another are played out in the studio addressing variation in linear intensities. Boundary lines and vectoral lines of flow once the stable production of architecture are recalibrated in contemporary surfaces and architecture producing often strange and estranging affects in an ongoing and evolving play of imagined individual and collective bodies.

To mention contemporary fashion - a vast expanding region – may provoke a sense of material experimentation and production, commerce, shopping, window shopping, modeling, individual and collective action, weaving, textiles, skins, veils, appearing and disappearing. New, novel, cyclical, revolutionary, the times of fashion are in various states of remaking membranes, wrappers, covers as reconstitution out of the woven, knitted, stitched, seamed, lines, mostly lines of thread. How does a garment go from the flattened membrane of cloth to clothing? How do architecture’s built and drawn surfaces play back and forth on one another in an active public field?

The studio developed proposals for a fashion collective, spaces for for sites between the western edge of Manhattan and the Highline.

Philip Parker, critic a b a

b c

b

a. Aarthi Janakiraman b. Chung-Kuang Chao c. Andreas Delgadillo-Lopes

GAUD

Fashioning Lines | The Highline, Manhattan, NY

Master of Science in Architecture | Third Semester Thesis

262

The design project is an attempt to achieve a level of design methodology for the urban poor, using the technical knowledge and creative capacities of being an architect. It is an exploration of industrial and architectural design to provide housing to the homeless rickshaw drivers in urban India. With this multidisciplinary approach for a social intent, the homeless can have a home and a substantial place in society.

The issue of providing house for the homeless is relooked at by pushing the conventional design boundaries of offering tensile structures, which resulted in formation of an identifiable social scenario. R-(e)-designing the vehicle to morph into a deployable pod and the subsequent “parking” of such units can result in communal living, the birth of ‘new urbanism’ from what was seen as a refuse in the urban fabric.

The essential concepts of multi-functionality of space, rights of labor class of the city, public-private are implemented in the grey areas of the city. Eight percent of the land in every bus terminal of the city is marked as “public green”, an ‘aesthetic’ imposition, which is chosen as the potential site for docking stations of the transformable rickshaws.

“The secret ambition of design is to become invisible, to be taken up into the culture, absorbed into the background. The highest order of success in design is to achieve ubiquity, to become banal.”

– Bruce Mau The singular idea of integrating the currently existing, sporadic, ‘refused’ and homeless labor class into the city derived the futuristic proposal. It transformed this community into an identifiable and co-existing part of the urban fabric by providing housing in their own morphed vehicles.

Deepti Bansal with Jason Vigneri-Beane + Elliott Maltby, critics

GAUD

r(e)ickshaw | Delhi, India

Master of Science in Architecture | Third Semester Thesis

264

Feral Garage: A Wilderness of Deviant Technologies | 59th Street and 5th Avenue, Manhattan, NY

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock.)

The edifice consisted of forty stories of intelligent opaque glass – a crystalline research and development facility so advanced that the entirety of its interior was held to unprecedented clean-room laboratory standards.

In order to achieve this ideal interior lab environment, each floor had been outfitted with entry decontamination chambers that served as the transition between the building’s immense mechanical service core, wrapped in a parking deck, and the individuated lab spaces themselves; this division was vital in maintaining a wholly unadulterated operations facility. The heart serving – but not influencing – the brain. But the true mastery of the building came from its instrumentation – the devices that would count the sheep of the dormant machine. A faint blue wave swept over instruments, faucets, tensed shoulder blades, and nimble fingers - reading and calculating radiated heat, wasted chemicals, and completed tasks. The Corporation had intended this facility to be the symbolic head in the quest for total knowledge, complete intelligence, and the digestion of the world into mere data was the lynchpin. No stone left unturned. No shadow left unlit.

Looking into the heart of light, the silence, And yet, the utter desolation it had wrought upon itself had been so complete and complex, the EPA had no choice but to immediately render the entire block a Superfund site and delay its demolition until the responsible party had undertaken a full retrospective evaluation.

Using their advanced analytics, they determined that when the building was functioning at its highest possible capacity, it was also unwittingly creating its most perfect disaster, rendered in what is now manifestly glorious ruin.

Breeding lilacs out of dead land.

Martin Byrne with Jason Vigneri-Beane + Elliott Maltby, critics

GAUD

Humankind was on the verge of witnessing the bright and glittering daybreak of a terrifyingly intelligent planet.

Little did The Corporation know, its masterpiece was about to fall headlong into the shadow that daybreak inevitably brings.

Master of Science in Architecture | Third Semester Thesis

266

Bazaars in Istanbul have been an important part of the inhabitants’ daily life, even before the city was named the new capital of the Roman Empire in 4th century. Nevertheless, today, they tend to lose their potential as “social activators” distributed within the city fabric, due to the recently adopted strategies by the municipal administration. Under the pretext of being “modernized”, current bazaars are either being relocated to the periphery, regularized within their existing sites or shut down.

Even if they can be criticized due to their infrastructural problems (lack of water, electricity, toilets, parking, etc.), the noise they create or their tendency to be left-over except the market days, these temporary open-air markets deserve to be thoroughly analyzed in such a way to develop an alternative approach which will not only deal with their current problems (caused by external and/ or internal factors) but also define and maintain certain existing characteristics which increase their potential as social activators. In order to develop such an alternative, the thesis project takes one of the current bazaar areas spread along the Golden Horn (where the city’s market district developed throughout the centuries because of the region’s potential to work as a natural port) and develops a rule-based design solution which can be adapted to a variety of contexts.

As a matter of fact, this solution appears to be a “balance”, a “dichotomy”, a “negotiation” between the top-down and the bottom-up, the realistic and the utopian, the municipal administration’s will and the bazaar’s autonomy, the existing and the future-proof. What is proposed at the end is therefore an “alternative” and not a “re-invented” bazaar, since the existing bazaars have a lot to be learned from, even if their future is full of expectations.

Ali Derya Dostoglu with Vito Acconci + Jason Vigneri-Beane, critics

GAUD

Bazaars as Social Activators | Istanbul

Master of Science in Architecture | Third Semester Thesis

268

Evolutionary processes in different aspects of life are forever affecting the definition of the city and changing the role of architecture. In the near future cities, we confront with a more ambiguous condition of built environment, where discernibility between their component parts and programs are blurred. We may see cities which shape one entity with different meanings and functions embedded in superimposed “STRATA”. This hypothesis would result in a kind of randomness in spite of the internal order of each layer.

The Manhattan grid provides a platform to inhabit threedimensional space within itself; but in fact, it has a twodimensional nature. The main challenge in this proposal is to convert the role of the two-dimensional grid as a form of division and organization, to a three-dimensional spatial grid, emphasizing on amalgamation and connection: “THE MORPH”. The existing grid is also the main factor which defines the movement and organizes the flow of the people within itself. This idea has also been developed to create a new network of movement and interactions. The three-dimensional “MORPH” provides a potential spatial condition, capable of constructing “SITUATIONS” in addition to pixelation of space into inhabitable segments.

This multi-layered condition will result in a kind of porosity and openness which constitutes the space of the intermediate. The in-between space is a potential nothingness which is transformable and flexible enough to be inhabited and programmed in multiple ways. The unstable nature of the urban context and the new relationship between people and their environment requires this type of flexibility and adaptability. In this case, the users choose their own way to interact with the space and the final organization is made out of every individuals way of reading the space.

In this project, the aim is the materialization of the concept of movement through an architectural language; by creating an urban framework, which has the capability of forming a container to insert flexible programmatic applications. The intent is to enter a zone in which peripheries between architecture and the urban space (inside/outside) cannot be distinguished and will ultimately acquire the same quality and essence.

Nima Farzaneh with Vito Acconci + Jason Vigneri-Beane, critics

GAUD

Inhabitable Strata | Foley Square, Manhattan, NY

Master of Science in Architecture | Third Semester Thesis

270

In Manhattan, on one hand- an amalgamation of tall structures, comparatively smaller streets, and lack of large green public spaces is seen. While on the other hand, under utilized waterways and the unexplored water world can be observed. The Water, which surrounds this city and eventually extends into the Atlantic Ocean, has great potential to ease the city’s existing state of congestion.

Hence, a new vision for Manhattan is discussed in this ‘near future’ thesis proposal- a city that is completely rebuilt to help it function as a better urban center. The existence of a dynamic urban fabric is essential in this context, which would have the potential to change its density, appearance, utility and character constantly.

Addressing the issues of URBAN OUTBURST & the NEW NOMADISM, this project aims at providing a solution through MOBILE & PLUG-IN architecture.

The 6th Borough is proposed to be on the water at the south of Manhattan. It is made up of ‘amphibious pods’, which are modules that would aggregate to create different spatial scales –and could subsequently serve either as a living unit, a living+work unit, a recreational unit, or even a mass transportation unit. They could also serve as multi-functional units that cater to specific programmatic requirements at specific times. For example, a pod could be used as a conference room or a hotel room as and when required. This project assumes a scenario where Manhattan is rebuilt with fixed core structures & mobile units that plug into these cores, making them flexible enough to accommodate various functions.

Shwetha Venkatesh Gururao with Vito Acconci + Jason Vigneri-Beane, critics

GAUD

Amphibious Architecture | Sixth Borough, NY

Master of Science in Architecture | Third Semester Thesis

272

Retrofit Revival | Mumbai, India

Rapid urbanization leads to suburban expansion. Cities are no more contained to a few million people and are in a constant state of expansion. However, a lack of maintenance in infrastructure leads to the formation of urban holes in a state of decay within city limits. Demolition and building again from scratch is not seen as logical due to monetary factors. Can these abandoned structures be explored to support the creation of new retro-fit micro environments? Our way of living is fragmenting at a rapid rate due to the increasing dependence on technology. In a scenario four decades into the future, this situation will only aggravate forcing us to rethink the way we inhabit structures. Large buildings will gradually give way to smaller, mobile architecture which is governed by a need for individual customization.

Retrofit Revival imagines a scenario in which these abandoned structures give a new lease of life by the insertion of smaller live-work modules, thereby reducing pressure from already congested areas. These modules would be characterized by a highly customizable interface, and would open and interact with other such modules to create conditions of dynamic interchange. The modules are conceived as a Kit-of Parts which can be assembled to fit a host of urban conditions. Gradually a new system of living will emerge from this which will feed off and eventually completely replace the large-scale built environment.

Aalhad Pande with Vito Acconci + Jason Vigneri-Beane, critics

GAUD

200,000 people migrate from rural to urban areas daily.

This translates to 1.4 million people a week, 70 million people a year. It is estimated that by the year 2050, there will be 3 billion squatters- one in 3 people. (SourceSquatter Cities, Robert Neuwirth, 2005.)

Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design

DESIGN STUDIOS The Graduate Architecture and Urban Design program is a unique, three semester post-professional program for students holding a fiveyear, or equivalent professional degree in architecture. Its mission is to develop and expand the students’ understanding of contemporary urbanism in an intensive, one-year program that includes courses in the summer, fall, and spring semesters. It prepares students for a career of design-based research and collaborative professional practice that operates at the urban, regional, and global scales. In addition, the program prepares students for high-level roles in public and private sector urban design and development projects.

Students are exposed to relevant contemporary urban issues through a trans-disciplinary curriculum that is guided by leading scholars and design professionals in the architecture and urban design fields. The program coursework consists of a series of advanced digital design/ research studios and seminars that attempt to contend, in new ways, with the complex issues of contemporary urban environments – including climate change and urban ecology, dynamic patterns of urbanization, global social and economic forces, and emerging information and communication networks.

Specifically, the program focuses on architectural and infrastructural issues associated with urban scale development where “form” is understood as a dynamic, rather than a static, principle; problems of sustainability and the potential for non-linear and highly sensitive systems of feedback; the need to address a multiplicity of scales and a diversity of populations; the formulation of connections between diverse institutions and agencies; the analysis of informal systems of urban development and global/local economies and finance; the need for forms of representation and repositories of information (mapping, databases) that can provide genuine resources for decision-making.

The Graduate Architecture and Urban Design program also draws on the strengths of existing graduate programs in Architecture, Urban and Regional Planning, Historic Preservation as well as the extensive resources of New York City.

Meta Brunzema, coordinator

DESIGN STUDIO FACULTY Vito Acconci Maria Aiolova Mitchell Joachim Ferda Kolatan David Ruy Erich Schoenenberger

274

Bich Ngoc Le

David Ruy, critic

Master of Science in Architecture + Urban Design | First Semester Studio

276

Indeterminate Constellations | East River, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY

“Ecology is the comprehensive science of the relationship of the organism to the environment.”

- Haeckel, Ernst In his seminal paper on abstract art, The Open Work, Umberto Eco coins the notion of “substantial indeterminacy” as the potent prerequisite for manifold expressions.

Indeterminacy here is far from vague. Rather it refers to an inherent ability to alter position and re-constitute new relationships without having to change ones core properties. A constellation thus is a fleeting quality, one that is based on a subset of interdependent coordinates, which can and will change as time passes. Urban planning and design is usually concerned with the opposite phenomenon. It seeks to define, manifest, and control singular visions of city, which are usually driven by respective (and often interchangeable) ethics of power, politics, optimization, connectivity, etc. with the latest being ecology and sustainability.

Ecology however, as originally defined by Ernst Haeckel, must be an “indeterminate” condition. Naturally, any balance based on dynamic constituents has to be in constant flux and thus characterized by adjustments, adaptation, and reconfigurations. True ecology is an expression of symbiotic as well asm obstructive relationships and cannot be reduced to a simple model of a “better performing” world or into an equally naïve “architecture as nature” ideology.

This studio investigated novel urban design strategies that seek to engage notions of ecology based on Eco’s definition of fields and indeterminacy. This concept is by no means a push towards an immaterial approach or a purely programmatic planning strategy. To the contrary, it requires a highly sophisticated design logic, which can begin to formulate ideas of reciprocity, growth, and adaptation in a strictly material fashion.

Ferda Kolatan + Erich Schoenenberger, critics a b a

c c

b

a. Aayushya Patel b. Ana Perez Dobarro c. Dhara Patel

GAUD

“A field offers a wider range of possibilities, a configuration of stimuli whose substantial indeterminacy allows for a number of possible readings, a ‘constellation’ of elements that lend themselves to all sorts of reciprocal relationships.”

- Eco, Umberto. The Open Work

Master of Science in Architecture + Urban Design | Second Semester Studio

278

Googleplex NYC | Ninth Avenue, NY

The current design practice of computation is split into two distinct models. The first one, the programming language or program based computation, focused on pragmatic statistics and quantifiable cultural research.

The second one, the omnipresent, digital design, focuses on parametric computation of infinite, non-critical, formal variability. In designing an urban complex for Google Inc., the company that epitomizes computation, we will reexamine its role and demand judgment rather than rely purely on calculus.

While Google places a premium on success, it appears to shrug off failure. The resulting culture of fearlessness needs to permeate the new 24-hour Googleplex NYC. Moving away from the collection of low-rise buildings in Mountain View, CA, the dense urban complex on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan will vertically integrate the two existing offices and bridge over the adjacent buildings and lots. We will utilize the program based computation to map the flow and crossings of programmatic zones.

Our use of parametric computation will be less interested in aesthetics than in solutions—a series of fixes that happen fast and smart.

Google’s frugal approach to its offices was a point of pride; the fast-growing company would expand into the abandoned offices of another obsolete company, reusing furniture and floor plans. However, they usually feature upscale accessories -- free meals three times a day; free use of a swimming pool, indoor gym, child-care facility, game rooms and so forth.

Our proposal will endeavor to convince Google that they have graduated from this stage. Just as their search engine needs to stay fast and relevant, Googleplex NYC has to do the same. Moving away from the new–age college campus mentality, we will propose a program that takes a cross section of the city and vertically integrates it into a cohesive whole, where invention and necessity coexist.

Mitchell Joachim + Maria Aiolova, critics a b

c

c

a. Matthew Hamilton + Aliz Mena b. Be-Jen Chan + Shreyas Madhuranath c. Marko Icev + Matthew Lynch

GAUD

N.E.A.R Confederated Studio

Master of Science in Architecture + Urban Design | Third Semester Culmination Project

280

Vito Acconci called it his water studio - a hypothetical scenario to test possibilities of livable environments being built around water, inside water, or underwater.

The studio re-visited architectural interaction with water, but at a much more intimate level and scale than earlier imagined to be. The individual was to be not the centre of the system that develops because of water, but a smaller part of it.

The site for this experiment developed out of the idea of constructing a working system of human networks and connections, in the conventional definition of a city, but building it in an environment that inverts relationship of the outside and the inside. The Dead Sea, with its high concentration of salt, proved to be a potent laboratory for such an experiment. Given that a third of the Sea is just salt, this project explores the use of the natural material as a basis to create livable environments.

The Salt Loop City consists of self-sustaining islands that are powered by the sun and salt. Solar towers melt salt from the sea and send it through underwater loops. Processes dependant on the sun are located on the top of these islands - food is primarily harvested here and then passed down, along the loops, with molten salt. Within these loops, or tentacles, are nodes of creation - creation of power, food and electricity - all using the heat within the salt as a source of energy. These nodes, thus become points of interest within the system - public zones - mostly temporary in nature - allowing users to connect and disconnect based upon their needs. Individuals are free to move around in their own private underwater units, breaking away from the solid tentacles of the islands at will and are thus allowed to explore the underwater habitat.

The project attempts to develop a short understanding of how an underwater human collective would work - it attempts to redefine ways in which a system and its users create, deliver and use resources compared to an on-land scenario.

Ninad Garware, with Vito Acconci, critic

GAUD

Underwater Urbanism: The Salt Loop City | The Dead Sea

Master of Science in Architecture + Urban Design | Third Semester Culmination Project

282

Lohachara Island, once inhabited by more than 15,000 people, is today completely submerged as a result of rising water levels and soil erosion. The site is located in the Ganges delta, where the three big rivers of India pour into the Bay of Bengal. During the 4-5 month-long monsoon, it swells with water, eroding the islands and facing extreme low and high tide issues.

The design intervention is based on the usage of the existing infrastructure of the submerged island and turning this extreme condition into an advantage, creating living conditions for people both under and above water.

Given the centrality of agriculture and fishing as the key source of income, a major objective of the project is to revive agriculture and aquaculture, which were affected by the increased level of saline in the soil.

Sedimentation is another important element of intervention. Planting shafts on the river bed will allow sedimentation over time, and due to the intrinsic arrangements of the shafts, voids will be created. The bacteria Bacillus Pasteurii, which chemically produces calcite – natural cement which binds the soil – will be injected in the sedimented soil, after which habitable units would be carved out of the solidified sand. The habitable units can be used as residences, or for other purposes like agriculture, aqua culture, or mud therapy.

A fluid design approach is adopted to address the tide levels that are affected by changing weather patterns.

For instance, during the monsoons and high water current, the loose soil will erode, leaving behind the units that have been solidified by the bacteria and infrastructure. When conditions are calmer, sedimentation would occur again, forming new islands, depending on the direction of the water current. Depending on external conditions, activities and programs could cater to trade, commerce, mud therapy, or religious activities.

Devashish Pradhan, with Vito Acconci, critic

GAUD

Reviving the Lost Island | Lohachara, West Bengal, India

Master of Science in Architecture + Urban Design | Third Semester Culmination Project

284

Mangrove City | Can Gio, Vietnam

Heading toward the Pacific ocean has long been a main inspiration for many strategic development projects in the South of Vietnam. Heading toward the sea is a long coasting mangrove forest that holds a variety of birds and marine organisms. This is the home for many species which are strictly protected but not so far that it could be home for us.

Inspired by many ideologically futuristic projects, this study looked at the city as a complex structure where building a city is building its infrastructure. It is simply about a giant mangrove root - like structure colonizing above a mangrove swamp. The whole structure lightly touches the ground and maintains its balance by leaning, weaving and bundling its shape as a decentralized city.

As the structure grows, it forms multiple spatial levels between its weaving branches. The city’s population is changing, people are moving and small deflatable pods are created along the move of its citizens, houses are expandable as needed, the structure can go up high and also destruct itself.

The system is likely a moving city that satisfies human settlement needs and ensures the lives beneath it. There is always a question; what is the architecture of the continuity of human inhabitation, the continuity of nature and the continuity of the landscape.

Bich Ngoc Le, with David Ruy, critic

GAUD

The city never looks the same and never stays still.

Master of Science in Architecture + Urban Design | Third Semester Culmination Project

286

Arborescence | Anthropocene Era

Post-Romantic Urbanism for the Anthropocene Era

With the design of each element of the system, architecture becomes unique. In the large scale, the uniqueness becomes anonymous.

This architecture is a large-scale guidance of design with anonymous materials for the Anthropocene Era.

Carlos Gonzalez Uribe, with David Ruy, critic

GAUD

Arborescence is looking for a signifier with the understanding of the in-existence of nature and cities; there is only one system that needs to coexist.

M. Arch, M.S. Arch, M.S. Arch + U.D.

ELECTIVE SEMINARS The GAUD program offers a range of elective courses concentrating on contemporary approaches to technique and trajectories in history and theory. Courses include content from digital media (scripting, dynamic models, interactive systems) to digitally-driven fabrication technology; representational techniques (film, new media) to innovative structural logics; cross disciplinary models (biology, landscape, emergent systems, legislative constraints) to sociopolitical constructions. This collection of electives provides an environment that both fosters innovation and deepens knowledge in particular areas of architectural and urban discourse and production.

SEMINAR FACULTY Theo Calvin Ferda Kolatan Maria Sieira Michael Szivos Jeffrey Taras Christopher Whitelaw

288

Keunhyung Yook Michael Szivos, critics

M. Arch, M.S. Arch, M.S. Arch + U.D. | Core Elective

290

With a rules based design process we explore methods of drawing dynamic, self-organizing, agent-based systems. The goal is not to directly draft the artifact, but instead capture the logic that drives the design. These systems represent formal ordering methods obtainable only through the effective use of computational models.

Computational models don’t describe form as a static entity. Rather, these models use rules as a design medium to capture underlying structures, relationships and hidden organizations. The forces driving these systems can often be fleeting or soft or emergent or locally weak, but ultimately very powerful in the creation of form.

It is possible to learn about order from systems that create order. Models of order are portable. We can look to algorithms from biology, meteorology, physics, and finance to see how order is created under different conditions and bring those findings to use in architecture.

Learning how to code gives us access to types of order otherwise inaccessible to architecture.

No site is neutral. The tabula rasa is a myth. Computation gives us the tools to create designs that feed off the energies present in a site; to create formal order contingent on a relationship between the found condition and the introduced. It’s possible to work with input from a context in more sensitive and productive ways using computational strategies. We seek to create systems that balance conflicting tendencies and exhibit unforeseen orders.

This approach expands the design process. Rather than direct manipulation of the design object, we evaluate the effectiveness of the outcome and modify the logic and relationships that lead to a physical manifestation. The presence of an internal logic is perceivable in the harmony of the final product even when it is surprising or novel in appearance.

Theo Calvin, critic a b c

d

e

a. b. c. d. e.

Sean Madigan Jonathan Alexander Cynthia Fels Daniel Vianna Shwetha Venkatesh Gururau

GAUD

Procedural Morphology

M. Arch, M.S. Arch, M.S. Arch + U.D. | Core Elective

292

UA

CODIFYing + GAUD++

This course also has a secondary agenda, demystifying the tools of design provided by particular software packages and consequently empowering the designer to invent their own software tools and practices. The majority of 3d software packages, Maya, Softimage and 3dStudio Max, are designed for use in the filmmaking industry and have been appropriated by the architectural design profession. These tools have inherent formal biases based on their heritage, and limit the capacity of the designer. The course will explore methods through which the designer can shape a custom set of software design tools to correspond with specific design agenda or formal language.

Michael Szivos, critic a

b c d

a

a. b. c. d.

GAUD++ Exhibition Adam Fisher Bich Ngoc Le KeunHyung Yook

PSPD

This course pursued various methods through which the role of the designer can shift from “space programming” to “programming space”; the designation of software programs to generate space and form from the rule-based logic inherent in architectural programs, typologies and building code. Through the use of a native scripting language, students were able to effect the software and their workflow in a more natural way.

Through a way that becomes more responsive to outside conditions. Students were no longer designing solutions, but systems to produce a variety of solutions. Students approached the objectives from two ends. 1. The use of rule-based algorithms to produce a range of formal strategies and 2. The use of the software’s native scripting language to generate custom tools to adjust those formal strategies.

PCCD/ SWP

CODIFYing (right)

SOA

This course is not only a design build project, but also an exercise in curation and organizational strategies. The brief of the course is to design, fabricate, and curate the Graduate Architecture and Urban Design student exhibition.

GAUD

GAUD++ (left)

M. Arch, M.S. Arch, M.S. Arch + U.D. | Core Elective

294

Architects are constantly employing and deploying materials to achieve a desired structural or aesthetic effect, such as lightness, mass, transparency and reflectivity. Schools, offices and for-profit firms maintain material libraries to meet the demands of architects for better, more functional and, especially now, cheaper materials.

This class takes off-the-shelf materials as a point of departure and investigates how architects can manipulate, extend, and modify existing materials through design and experimentation with digital fabrication tools, such as laser cutting and CNC routing.

We began the semester with an introduction to digital fabrication, and specifically the use and safe operation of a 3-axis CNC router. Students learned the standard milling tactics offered by contemporary CAM software, such as curve machining and parallel finishing. The students then sought to subvert these canned operations through a productive patterning exercise, in which they explored the interactions between bit geometry, cut path and surface geometry to create an emergent 3D patterning.

With a working knowledge of the possibilities and limitations of CNC routing, students spent the balance of the semester working in groups to research and develop ways to physically alter a material - in many cases Dupont Corian - in order to alter or enhance its capabilities. These explorations largely began with learnings from the earlier patterning exercise, and quickly moved on as students experimented with the material, and its abilities and limits. Through a process of rapid iteration and testing, the student groups developed both strategies and methods for altering the material, as well as proposals for use of their “new� materials.

Jeffrey Taras, critic a b

a c

c

a. Cara Hyde-Basso + Liduam Pong b. Hannibal Newsom c. Michael Hoak + Maurizio Huaylla + Marcus Ziemke

GAUD

Digital Fabrication

M. Arch, M.S. Arch, M.S. Arch + U.D. | Core Elective

296

Computer Aided Construction + Animation and Computation

Architects actively engage “computation” in our design strategies. It allows us to explore an increasingly complex set of questions. The implementation of computation in architecture is traditionally through scripting (i.e. programming).

Historically, there are examples of computation in design that did not rely on digital computers including Antoni Gaudi’s catenary string structures and Frei Otto’s thin film soap bubble models. These models were developed as analog computers and were more interactive, visually responsive and intuitive than the more commonly scripted algorithms employed today. By employing advanced physics based 3D computer software, Animation & Computation seeks to reestablish the interactive and visually responsive characteristics in these found in these early analog models.

For the first half of the course, lectures focused on introducing students to a range of animation tools through the development of a set of sample analog models based on historical examples. During the second half of the course, students developed their own analog models, designed to respond to predefined performance criteria; the final result of which is a set of iterative geometric solutions.

Computer Aided Construction (right) Parametric Manufacturing explores the potential of computation to deliver a new class of parametrically driven manufacturing workflows designed for production using CNC machines. This seminar emphasizes the architect’s role as active agents of the process of digital fabrication that is enabled and demanded by what has become the ubiquitous presence of computer aided manufacturing systems. Students are challenged to rethink the relationship between design and construction, by learning how to design and implement their own manufacturing workflows, including 3-dimension parametric assemblies, associated logic, and associated fabrication strategies.

Students are introduced to existing parametric manufacturing workflows. These workflows include specific parametric techniques and logic capable of generating and sorting the CAD data required to manufacture component based assemblies. Students explore each of these techniques utilizing them to fabricate their own unique assemblies.

Students designed new parametrically adaptable assembly methods, optimized for CNC fabrication. Working in small teams, students design and implement a parametrically controlled fabrication workflow for the manufacture of component based furniture scale assemblies.

Christopher Whitelaw, critic a

c d

b

e

e

a. b. c. d. e.

Nisha Bhat Sidika Merchant Leslie Forehand Jackie Hsiao + Yu-Cheng Lin Jeffrey Autore + Bridget Rice

GAUD

Animation and Computation (left)

M. Arch, M.S. Arch, M.S. Arch + U.D. | History and Theory Seminar

298

Throughout history man has used technology not only to enhance his practical abilities but also to express his deeply rooted ideas, both material and immaterial, of the world he inhabits. In observing contemporary design one notices a renewed interest in the ‘extra-ordinary’.

The emerging ecology of computation, fabrication, and material intelligence has begun to produce work of great delicacy and cleverness marked by a highly sophisticated coalescing between material, technique (craft/skill), and performance. As our current technologies develop we see a shift away from linear form-finding processes towards a deliberate attitude of form-making, enhanced by means of refinement. It is here that we need to establish a new set of criteria to term and evaluate this work and to distinguish the gestural from the profound.

Design Finesse is used as both an investigative as well as an operative term. Following an investigation of historic precedents, the students identified specific features and characteristics of finesse. The students then fabricated a series of physical prototypes based on contemporary computational design techniques testing these features through materiality and demonstrating an emergent sensibility, novel, and inherently linked to the applied methodology of production.

Ferda Kolatan, critic a b

c

b

a. Sean Madigan b. Carlos Gonzalez Uribe c. Reynolds Diaz Jr.

GAUD

Design Finesse

M. Arch, M.S. Arch, M.S. Arch + U.D. | History and Theory Seminar

300

This film and architecture seminar asks students to critically examine film as if they were architecture and architecture as if it were film. This is more than a play on words: we don’t consider the “architecture” of the film to be the buildings and sets shot, but rather the space made with the moving images on the screen; not the architecture in film, but of film. And, just as in buildings a sequence of spaces is just the beginning of one’s understanding of architecture, here too the “structure” and “program” of these films is considered within the context of architecture readings. Architecture theory at its best enables, not just the entry of other fields into its own discourse, but the possibility of architectural readings that augment or even resist critical and operational modes in those other disciplines.

Students examine both the optical and analytical devices of contemporary narrative film. They do this in preparation for the study of cinematic strategies that reflect contemporary cultural space, the very space on which architects are called upon to act. Not buildings and sets, but the structure, contingencies, and configuration of the medium of film itself. One or two formally complex films are discussed each week, and studying the cinematic strategies they employ helps the architecture student develop the intellectual agility necessary for the critical production of architecture. Furthermore, the multifariousness of film makes it an ideal conduit for the architecture student’s engagement in cultural discourse.

Maria Sieira, critic a

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a. Amanda Sengstacken b. Yoko Saigo c. Aliz Mena

GAUD

Architecture of Film

Graduate Architecture and Urban Design

INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS Rome + Istanbul While the Graduate Architecture and Urban Design program benefits enormously from its New York location as a hub for both local and imported resources, it recognizes the importance of operating at sites across the world at the levels of both architectural/urban and global experience. Graduate architecture and urban design students have a range of exposure to explicitly international content and faculty in courses that make excursions to Europe, Asia, and South America as short-run features of the coursework. However, in order to give more robust architectural, urban and cultural experiences to students in this period of globalization, the GAUD program offers full-immersion study abroad opportunities in Rome and Istanbul. Each program engages a complex of issues that are shaping architectural and urban discourse and practice. At the same time, these issues are understood as part of a trajectory that includes the historical material that is an inextricable presence in these locations. The Rome program includes trips to Florence, Siena and Venice while the Istanbul program also travels to Ephesus and Aphrodisias. In combination the programs provide a powerful framework for graduate students to deeply engage the materials, practices, events and influences that have catalyzed the development of our discipline.

Jason Vigneri-Beane + Sulan Kolatan, coordinators

PROGRAM COORDINATORS + FACULTY Sulan Kolatan Jason Vigneri-Beane

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Joshua Maddox

Sulan Kolatan, critic

M. Arch, M.S. Arch, M.S. Arch + U.D. | International Program

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Rome is as much a contemporary city as it is a historical one. It is in the midst of a whole range of challenges that the process of globalization brings to such an urban environment that is both dense with historical material and burdened with its status as the one of the most romanticized of western cities. Perhaps the constraints through which Rome operates due to the historical material that suffuses it will ultimately provide pressures for urban innovations and, if not creative destruction, creative bypasses toward future vitalities of contemporary urbanism. At the same time, contemporary lessons can also be drawn from Rome’s historically evolved complexity. Across the city and at various scales one can mine the city for lessons on emergence, evolutionary design, collective intelligence, complexity, systemic change, distributed behaviors, networked zonalism, accretive negotiation, partial infrastructural adaptation, non-linear growth, linguistic drift, material development and so on.

Students in the Rome program are asked to search for these kinds of phenomena in both historical formations and contemporary activities. Once identified, these phenomena become the basis for a speculative graphic exercise that attempts to put contemporary approaches to Rome in play via contemporary forms of representation such as diagramming, mapping, information visualization, time-based graphics and modeling.

Jason Vigneri-Beane, critic a

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a. Courtney Jones b. Lauren Burdelsky c. Mitchell Streichhirsch

GAUD

Rome Program

M. Arch, M.S. Arch, M.S. Arch + U.D. | International Program

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A recent European article on Istanbul was headlined “Istancool” – a title cleverly encapsulating the city’s current vibe as the next big city. While the focus on its emergence, as a serious metropolitan player at the start of the 21st century, replete with a booming economy, a youthful demographic, as well as vibrant art and music scenes, registers as a new phenomenon, this ancient city has witnessed an illustrious and cosmopolitan history. Its occupation of a unique piece of global real estate that straddles two continents, and thus its hybrid identity as both eastern and western is the source of both its present-day complexity and its past significance as the successive seats of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) and the Ottoman Empires.

Istanbul is a city in which east/west, old/new oppositions coincide and form a myriad of new cultural patterns and urban systems leading to a sense that this is one of the laboratories of future urbanization.

The two seminars look at these issues from different perspectives. One examines these evolving conditions as an urban ecology –operating laterally. The other operates vertically by examining how changes in the “tools of the trade” –old maps and plans, new remote-sensing imagery and simulation technologies—influence the way we conceive cities. Both seminars culminate in speculative proposals for new urban design techniques.

Sulan Kolatan, critic a b c

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Aatish Moon Lauren Burdelsky Joshua Maddox Mitchell Streichhirsch Group Site Plan Mark Richards

GAUD

Istanbul Program

Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development

PSPD is an alliance of four programs with a shared value placed on urban sustainability -- defined by the “triple bottom line” of environment, equity and economy.

The four graduate Master of Science programs are: City and Regional Planning Curriculum, Urban Environmental Systems Management Curriculum, Facilities Management Curriculum, and Historic Preservation Curriculum. Each of the four graduate programs maintains its independence, degree, and depth of study. Yet with the advice of Coordinators and Chairs, students can move between the four programs, with the further option to follow set tracks for specialized or multifaceted studies. Studios bring together students from all four graduate programs for interdisciplinary teamwork. Additionally, PSPD offers linkages to: the undergraduate Construction Management Program, with the opportunity to focus on real estate development; Brooklyn Law School, with opportunity for a joint Masters / Juris Doctor; and to the Pratt Center for Community Development, with opportunity to combine study and advocacy.

The primary mission of the PSPD is to provide a professionally oriented education to a student body with diverse cultural, educational and professional backgrounds. The PSPD welcomes applicants with undergraduate degrees in a wide range of academic disciplines. In the application process, the PSPD values creativity, civic engagement and depth of experience, as well as intellectual capacity. environmental sustainability The Environmental Systems Management Program is entirely devoted to urban environmental policy and systems. “Green development” and LEED courses augment the Facilities Management Program curriculum. The Historic Preservation Program is already “greened,” as the most sustainable action is to preserve and reuse. urbanism In this century as in the last, the major human force on our planet is migration to metropolitan areas; while the major challenge of the present and future is addressing global warming. Prior city planning values of aesthetics (as per the City Beautiful movement of the late 19th century) and new technology (as per the City Efficient movement of the mid 20th century) must now be augmented with a new city sustainable movement.

The PSPD is especially committed to realizing this paradigm on the community as well as the citywide basis. social equity and economic viability True sustainability considers factors such as social justice and financial realities. Advocacy and participatory planning are core principles, further propelled by the Livable Cities and the Environmental Justice movements. Sustainability is not just a new set of technologies and standards; it is also a value system. professionalism and internships Relevant employment and internships are an important component of the PSPD’s educational approach.

Students entering with work in a relevant field may earn up to 25 percent of their credits through advanced standing. Paid internships are available; and students with unpaid internships may waive credits. The resulting variety of professional experiences enriches seminar discussions and studio teamwork, provides students with a wealth of contacts in the field, and strengthens their job qualifications. impact Through internships, partnerships, studios, demonstrations of professional competence, and directed research, students have ample opportunity to work on real-world and real-time issues. Successes are illustrated in this catalogue, and in the PSPD newsletter. New York’s history, diversity, and international character offer a rich training ground for planners, preservationists, developers, and sustainability practitioners.

Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING The 60-credit City and Regional Planning (CRP) Program trains students as practicing urban planners whose knowledge encompasses communities, cities and regions. The curriculum aligns with the designcentered programs in the School of Architecture, with a further focus on sustainable development, participatory planning and social change.

This past year, the CRP Program celebrated its 50th anniversary; and this year the program won an award from the MetroChapter of the American Planning Association. Over time, the CRP has remained true to its emphasis on practice over theory, participatory planning over top-down policy making, and advocacy over technocracy.

Studio courses generally combine two or more of the four concentrations of the Program: community development, environmental planning and policy, preservation planning and physical planning. Often, studios relate to the ongoing work of the Pratt Center for Community Development, one of the nation’s first and foremost university-based research and technical assistance organizations in the service of disadvantaged communities.

Studios involve real clients facing significant planning challenges, consistent with the CRP Program’s emphasis on participatory planning and equity issues. Past and current studios have taken students to work on plans for Ward 9 in New Orleans; collaborate on a regional planning framework for a town in Goa, India; and work to preserve locally-owned businesses as well as the unique neighborhood character in New York’s East Village. The CRP Program offers a unique chance for students to make a difference as they complete a first-rate education.

John Shapiro, Chair of City and Regional Planning

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Large Scale Site Planning Studio: Columbus Park rendering

David Burney + Daniel Hernandez + Matthew Lister, faculty

Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development | City and Regional Planning

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new street opportunity

existing parks

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greenway opportunity

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Land Use Studio | East Harlem, NY

Students focused their efforts around several goals— preserving on-site, affordable units for existing NYCHA residents; increasing affordable housing units in East Harlem; creating economic opportunities for residents and businesses; and promoting meaningful participation of NYCHA residents and the broader community in the planning process. These goals were intrinsic to the premise of the studio and supported by CIVITAS’ community advisory committee, including representatives from nonprofit housing organizations and the local community board. In addition to engaging this committee, students and instructors conducted a land use survey, collected observations within the study area, and engaged the local business community.

The students addressed the project goals using the parameters of a single, towers-in-the-park NYCHA development as a model. They developed a series of ‘scenarios’ to communicate the tradeoffs of each concept presented. For example, while construction of new residential buildings on small parcels of land between existing towers prevents displacement of current residents and adds some affordable units, minor modifications to existing buildings combined with new construction would allow for even more affordable housing, taking full advantage of the development rights available. The three scenarios (pictured left) provided renderings of additional affordable housing construction, along with ideas for re-zoning, urban design, open space redesign, and economic and community development of NYCHA parcels. Students shaped the redevelopment concepts with the guidance of several guest faculty practitioners including landscape designers, architects and developers of affordable housing, and urban planners. In addition students prepared a white paper on strategies for community engagement and empowerment of NYCHA residents in East Harlem. This paper, informed by interviews with local elected officials, city agencies, housing advocacy groups, offered insights on the current process for NYCHA resident participation and recommendations for more meaningful participation by NYCHA residents.

Jonathan Martin + Toby Snyder, faculty

PSPD

Led by PSPD professors Jonathan Martin and Toby Snyder, students of the Fall 2011 Land Use studio took on the request of CIVITAS, “a union of citizens dedicated to improving neighborhood quality of life in the Upper East Side and East Harlem,” for assistance in exploring a hypothetical scenario in which the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) redevelops or disposes of parcels in East Harlem. CIVITAS’ Executive Director expressed the need for “a plan to plan”, in anticipation that NYCHA’s recent redevelopment and/or disposal of select holdings might come to impact East Harlem in particular, with its large concentration of NYCHA developments, retaining 9.7 million square feet of unused development rights.

Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development | City and Regional Planning

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Large Scale Site Planning Studio | Downtown Brooklyn, NY

The studio had two segments: a broad exploration of the data points, issues, and urban design elements that make up the region, including photographic tours and documentation of the neighborhood on foot or in vehicles. Within the classroom, the spirit of collaboration and guest lectures added to an already versatile team of instructors that was led by David Burney, Commissioner of NYC’s Department of Design and Construction; Daniel Hernandez, Director of Urban Solutions at Jonathan Rose Companies; and Matthew Lister, a Project Manager at Jonathan Rose with a background in urban design. Guest lecturers included: Even Rose of Urban Design+, who discusses his experience in helping to figure out the design logistics of the largest public infrastructure project in U.S. history – Boston’s Big Dig – and Alexandria Sica, Executive Director of the DUMBO Bid. The second segment was the breaking down of this very large site into specific projects, which were formed following a mid-term brainstorming session by the class.

The types of projected and the scopes of each varied dramatically. These included: radical barrier removal, wayfinding, and transit oriented development.

David Burney + Daniel Hernandez + Matthew Lister, faculty

PSPD

Downtown Brooklyn is an area overrun with barriers, many of them transit-related and created by the confluence of networks that come together in the area. Downtown Brooklyn is a place made to leave, a transit hub that can get you out of there via boat, bridge, commuter rail, or subway. This was the initial problem uncovered by students in the Large Site Planning Studio in Spring 2011. The boundaries of New York’s neighborhoods are purposefully flexible – within the mapping files of the City’s neighborhoods one finds no boundaries, only midpoints - and change in time. In keeping with this spirit no boundary was defined, only a rough center point somewhere around Tillary Street and Flatbush Ave. Early in the studio, students were invited to walk around and explore the neighborhoods using the framework of Kevin Lynch, creating a high resolution understanding of the texture of Downtown, as expressed through multiple media.

Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT The 40-credit Urban Environmental Systems Management Program studies the nexus of environmental science, policy and design. The curriculum is steeped in Pratt’s community based ethos and examination, through the lens of social justice, of the systems our urban environments construct to manage water quality, solid waste and energy. Graduates are prepared to take on a range of roles as policy analysts, sustainability consultants, low impact developers, researchers and advocates, collaborating with environmental scientists, designers, policy makers and communities.

The UESM Program combines a foundation of theoretical and technical core courses with innovative mini-courses taught by cuttingedge practicing professionals. Students learn the interdisciplinary skills needed to: assess contemporary environmental issues; catalyze innovative environmental problem solving; uphold environmental and social justice; and engage diverse stakeholders in designing and developing sustainable plans and policies.

UESM studio courses are either place-based, as in a zero-carbon studio for a neighborhood, or sector-based, as in a sustainable economic development studio. Every UESM student is assured an internship with organizations, agencies and professional practices. In the past, interns have been placed with Living City Block, the New York Industrial Retention Network, New York City Council, Department of City Planning and most recently the program has awarded 5 fellowships to work with the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. In addition, the Pratt Center provides the opportunity for students to participate in their projects, such as an initiative to make buildings in Bedford Stuyvesant more energy efficient. This professional experience enriches seminar discussions and studio courses, provides students with a wealth of contacts in the field and strengthens their job qualifications.

Jaime Stein, Coordinator of Urban Environmental Systems Management

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Urban Agriculture Design Build Course, roof farm rendering Elliott Maltby + Gita Nandan + Tyler Caruso, faculty

Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development | UESM

Sunset Park Studio | Sunset Park, NY

In the Sunset Park studio led by Ron Shiffman, Mercedes Narciso, Ellen Neises, Eddie Bautista, and Stuart Pertz, the client, the environmental justice community organization UPROSE, posed the mandate to create a holistic plan to create community resilience in the face of climate change. The team approached resilience through a broad scope, and necessarily so, encompassing urban design, community capacity building, landscape design, economic development, affordable housing, disaster planning, and city and regional policy. A holistic process emphasized fostering economic resilience, resilience of the built form, tenure and security for long term residents, a resilient culture, and a diverse and healthy waterfront and open space network that could not only weather the effects of climate change but slow them and help protect the community from them.

The studio’s plan for resilience in Sunset Park faced several challenges, not only in climate change and storm surge, but also displacement, lack of food security, unfair environmental burdens, and lack of open space. Students built on existing networks and processes, such as: vibrant street life, including entrepreneurial vendors along fifth avenue; the fishing community on Pier Four; the youthled environmental justice movement; the walk-to-work population; the plethora of effective community organization; and vast manufacturing space. From these assets, a comprehensive community vision could more readily be implemented.

Similarly, the team expanded proposals in pre-existing plans to more accurately reflect expected effects of climate change and community needs. Resulting recommendations laid out a greener and stronger Sunset Park and included: 1. Innovative ways to create more open space and manage storm water.

2. Innovative ways to build capacity and social capacity.

3. Innovative economic development.

4. Support for continuing environmental health and justice.

5. Affordable housing and rights of tenure.

Each recommendation utilizes current community assets in Sunset Park, under the guidance of its residents and UPROSE, to create a holistic, equitable, sustainable vision for the neighborhood.

Eddie Bautista + Mercedes Narciso + Ellen Neises + Stuart Pertz + Ron Shiffman, faculty

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Urban Agriculture Studio | New York, NY

The Summer 2011 Design Build Studio, led by Elliott Maltby, Gitan Nandan, and Tyler Caruso, tackled rooftop urban agriculture, looking at the elevated farm as an urban ecology exemplary of the intersection of ecological, cultural, economic and design issues. The course sought to unpack those complexities within the setting of New York City and current urban agriculture discourse, exploring its benefits through design and implementation.

The studio worked closely with Matt Krivich of the Bowery Mission, envisioning the Mission’s roof as a place of reflection and food production. The Mission has served those in need for over 130 years, including serving meals to the hungry. In addition to addressing food insecurity, Matt suggested a commercial venture, a ‘Bowery Mission Salsa’. Raising fresh food on site was a natural extension of the Mission’s work, and provided a strong social framework. However, with various levels and a tall building on its southern side, the site had many challenges faced by farming in a dense urban fabric.

To explore urban agriculture in a context with more conducive growing conditions, teams chose one of two companion farm sites to the Mission, each with distinct advantages. Teams addressed client needs and proposed other elements for each site; innovative rainwater systems, training programs, seed collection strategies, and community collaboration were developed. In addition to the physical design, a phasing strategy and social framework were explored, with teams precisely defining economic, management, maintenance, monitoring, building ecology, and stewardship associated with their designs.

Divided in two 5-week modules, the course first focused on design, introducing construction and implementation techniques, and exploring the practicalities of urban agriculture through the Mission project. With logistics thwarting actual construction on a roof, the second session was not a direct build out of teams’ designs.

Students worked with prominent NYC practitioners in a series of hands on projects at farms throughout the city, including a rainwater harvesting system installation in a community garden, weeding at the Brooklyn Grange farm, and construction of sub-irrigated planters. Finally, teams were asked to reconsider their designs given their on site handiwork. The studio culminated in a festive final presentation with a enthusiastic, engaged, and insightful group of practioners in a ‘speed dating meets science fair meets celebration’ format.

Tyler Caruso + Elliott Maltby + Gita Nandan, faculty

PSPD

Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development | UESM

Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN HISTORIC PRESERVATION The 44-credit Historic Preservation graduate program was created to go beyond the traditional concept of historic preservation education. Rather than focus mainly on the conservation and restoration of important structures, Pratt’s program embraces a broad spectrum of preservation issues, including heritage, public policy, community planning, sustainability, and advocacy. The program encourages students to understand preservation policies and methods as part of a broader historical and social context, while providing the range of skills that practitioners need in today’s professional environment.

Residing within the Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development in the School of Architecture, the historic preservation program is wide-ranging rather than narrowly defined. It draws on Pratt’s interdisciplinary resources in graduate architecture, urban design, city planning, environmental management and real estate. Students become familiar with broad concepts of building consensus and affecting public policy, as well as building, district and cultural preservation.

A range of professional opportunities are available to preservation graduates today. Preservationists find employment in government agencies, community and advocacy organizations, historical societies, museums, architectural offices, and as consultants to architects, developers, and planners. Preservationists participate in the design of buildings; frame government policy; assess the importance of sites and structures; carry out historical research; evaluate and rule on proposed alterations to historic buildings; design interpretive exhibits, plaque programs and publications; award grants and government funds for preservation; evaluate the impact of proposed new developments; and organize civic campaigns for preservation.

Studio coursework in the HP Program emphasizes teamwork and interdisciplinary, integrative thinking as an effective method of acquiring professional skills. The studio typically involves a real client and culminates in a multidisciplinary proposal that is evaluated by an array of distinguished preservation professionals and community leaders. HP students are also required to complete at least one internship, where they gain hands-on experience in the field. In the past, students have interned at the NYC Department of City Planning, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Long Island Traditions, the Municipal Art Society and the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

Eric Allison, Coordinator of Historic Preservation

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Preservation Studio, Lower Broadway district improvements John Shapiro + Vickiy Weiner, faculty

Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development | Historic Preservation

Preservation Studio | Bushwick, NY

Eve Baron and Keenan Hughes led this collective preservation and planning studio, and we had the opportunity to work with FSNNY to create recommendations that would assist them in their BOA work. Focused on a portion of the Bushwick BOA on Broadway between Myrtle and Chauncey and Bushwick Avenue between Myrtle and Aberdeen, the class looked into commercial corridor revitalization, brownfield redevelopment, and historic preservation as a means of reinvigorating the neighborhood and celebrating its significant history.

This section of Bushwick is home to numerous historic churches and community facilities on Bushwick Avenue, lengths of thriving and struggling blocks on the Broadway retail corridor, the elevated subway tracks of the JMZ trains above Broadway, and nine brownfield sites, eight of which were identified in the BOA and one of which we identified through our research.

Although home to Italian and German immigrants in the mid 20th century, current neighborhood demographics show a large population of Hispanic or Latino (about 67%) resident, a significant number of families with single female heads of households, and according to justiceatlas.org, a large number of formerly incarcerated individuals. The recommendations emerging from this studio were meant to address the needs of these populations, in addition to community needs referenced in the Community District Needs Statement and Phase 1 BOA report.

Natasha Dwyer remembered, “In our first meeting with Family Services Network, Dr. Igwe [President/CEO] told us that our motto should be ‘Only the best for Bushwick’.”

We sought to generate recommendations that would assist FSNNY in their Phase 2 report, but that would also be visionary for the community and help increase the quality of life for Bushwick residents – to ensure “Only the best for Bushwick”.

Eve Baron + Keenan Hughes, faculty

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Preservation Studio | Lower Broadway, Newark, NJ

The focus of this one-semester studio is Newark’s Lower Broadway Neighborhood. The mission to produce a sustainable quality of life plan that targets a series of issues identified by the community, with a particular focus on culture, preservation, sustainability and economic development – factors that have yet to register in any significant way in a multitude of prior neighborhood, corridor and even city-sponsored plans for the neighborhood.

The Lower Broadway neighborhood was identified as a study area because it is one of seventeen “Building Sustainable Communities” identified by the Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC). The Pratt Center for Community Development has been brought in by LISC to prepare the plan (The Pratt Center team is headed

by Eve Baron, former Director of the Municipal Art Society’s Planning Center.) The client is La Casa Don Pedro, a community development corporation that leads affordable housing programs and social services in the neighborhood, and is generally recognized as the most successful community development corporation in the City of Newark. Throughout the semester, students are charged with the task to conduct context research and stakeholder outreach, prepare an analysis of strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats in the community, develop a plan that addresses these elements, and produce a professional plan for future development of the area. As of this writing, the studio’s recommendations are grouped as follows: Block by Block; Pride and Schools; Jobs and Commerce.

John Shapiro + Vicky Weiner, faculty

PSPD

Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development | Historic Preservation

Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development

CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT Students from Pratt Institute’s Construction Management Program will participate in the 22nd Annual Associated Schools of Construction (ASC Region 1) Competition from Thursday, November 17 to Saturday, November 19, 2011 at the Westin Governor Morris in Morristown, New Jersey.

The ASC is the professional association for the development and advancement of construction education, where sharing of ideas and knowledge inspires, guides and promotes excellence in curricula, teaching, research and service. The ASC Region 1 (Northeast Region) is comprised of colleges and universities offering four-year engineering and construction management degrees from Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Pratt’s Institute’s team of six students will compete in the Commercial Construction Division. Each team receives construction documents at 8:00 AM on Friday morning. Teams are required to prepare complete construction management proposal including: estimate, schedule, value-engineering recommendations, safety plan, quality assurance and quality control process, respond to addenda and react to telephone quotes from fictional subcontractors and vendors. The overall goal is to simulate development of a real-world bid and construction management proposal. Written proposals are due by midnight on Friday, November 18, 2011. On Saturday, November 19, 2011 the team is required to make an oral presentation with slide show to a panel of judges from the sponsoring company. Teams defend their bids, schedules, the means and methods they propose to use on the project, and their site-specific safety plans. Winners are determined at the conclusion of the oral presentations, and an awards ceremony is held on Saturday evening. In addition to the competition students are encouraged to attend the ASC Region 1 Job Fair held concurrently on Saturday, November 18, 2011.

This is the fourth consecutive year that Pratt Institute’s Construction Management program has participated in this competition. Following the competition, the team will share its experiences with classmates and faculty at Pratt Manhattan on Wednesday, November 30, 2011.

Financial support for the team has been generously provided by the New York Building Foundation.

Kent Hikida, team leader, faculty Harriet Markis, Chair of Construction Management

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Programs for Sustainable Planning and Development

FACILITIES MANAGEMENT Students from Pratt’s PSPD programs teamed up in May 2011 with students from Austria, Germany and Italy for the first “International Facilities Management and Real Estate Summer Intensive”. The summer intensive focused on “Sustainable Built Environments”: it combined lecturers from local and international industry professionals (including two former heads of the European and American Facilities Management networks) with tours to iconic locations in New York City and Washington D.C. The group visited the Empire State Building (“how does a modernized, energy-efficient infrastructure impact lease rates …”), the New York Time Building (“why is Renzo Piano’s masterpiece not LEED certified?”), the Bloomberg Headquarter (“sustainability and the flat organization”), the National Gallery of Art (“zero-capital green building initiatives with immediate payback - amazing!”), the Library of Congress (“how do you keep the rare book collection safe?”) and several others.

In 2012, the Summer Program will focus on the concept of the “Value Add of Facilities and Real Estate” and will explore how organizations are using buildings to maximize the goals of their organization. The 2012 program highlights the interests that drive the development and use of corporate buildings (NY Stock Exchange, World Trade Center, Empire State, BlackRock Real Estate Investment Trusts), and will contrast it with visits to organizations that use their facilities to pursue very different goals (Social Housing, United Nations Headquarters, MTA Fulton Station Project Site). The lecturers are again industry experts from Europe, China and the US. The 2012 program will also include a second optional week with visits to Arizona and Nevada, studying major infrastructure and facilities projects.

The program will take place during the weeks of May 14 (New York) and May 21 (US Southwest). The program is modular, so students can earn 2-4 credits based on the selected modules.

Matthias Ebinger, faculty

PSPD

The International FM/RE Summer program is centered on the concept of the “Built Environment” and recognizes that numerous disciplines are contributing to the conception, planning, design, construction and maintenance of buildings. While each discipline has a different interest with their contribution towards a building, the organization owning and using it is interested in deriving maximum value to further its objectives.

Pratt School of Architecture

RESEARCH The following pages represent a new section of InProcess and document the work and activities of our primary research centers and laboratories in the School of Architecture. Some of these centers have been in existence for many years while others are a relatively recent phenomenon. Nevertheless, the idea of research as a pursuit in the school has been growing exponentially in recent years, and the energy and production of these centers has been growing in importance as well.

Broadly, the areas of research in the School of Architecture fall under the headings of urbanism, sustainability, computation and structural / material studies. The Center for Experimental Structures - together with new material and structural investigations by other undergraduate architecture professors - falls under the latter category, while the Lighting Lab is closely identified with sustainable design. The Pratt Center has overlapping interests in urbanism and sustainable planning, and it is allied with our graduate planning, environmental and preservation programs. The Network for Emergent Architectural Research (NEAR) is an affiliation of graduate architecture faculty broadly investigating all of the above topics at conferences and research events.

Research is not only confined to these centers, but can be found throughout the studios in all of the programs within the school. The research culture in these pages defines the center of our research activities here at Pratt, but this culture is also a catalyst for a broad range of research activities across the entire school that will only continue to grow in the coming years.

Thomas Hanrahan, Dean

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Mark Parsons C.A.R.M.A.

Center for Experimental Structures | Morphology

THE CENTER FOR EXPERIMENTAL STRUCTURES Professor William Katavolos (Co-director) Professor Haresh Lalvani, Ph.D. (Co-director) The Center for Experimental Structures was founded to bridge the gap between advanced and emerging technologies of building with the making and shaping of architectural structures based on the fundamental principles of design in nature and beyond. The Center focuses on original and pioneering research by faculty in this area and students can participate in these researches through various routes.

Ongoing projects by the principal faculty include visual mathematics, origins of order, hydronics, architectural morpho-genomics, hyperspace architecture, topological structures/surfaces, and transformational morphologies for adaptive architecture.

Over the years, the researches of the principals have been supported by NASA, NEA, NIAE, Graham Foundation, Innovative Design Fund at Community Funds, Inc., NYSCA and NYSTAR. The Center was established with generous support from Booth Ferris Foundation. MilgoBufkin is an ongoing industry partner of the Center.

Constructive Minimal Surfaces Our long-term interest in alternative geometries of space combined with constructive and performative morphologies lead us to explore minimal surfaces which, theoretically, use the least surface (hence, least material) to cover space. Conservation of material, a basic sustainability argument, is tied in by definition. Here, we present architectonic studies of two different types of minimal surfaces, both completely different, yet constructed from the same unit element - a hexagon, in this instance. This is a surprise. The first one is based on the known ChenGackstatter (CG) surface (top images, Fall 2010*), and the second is a new one based on Apollonius circles (bottom images, Spring 2011**). The former derives a toroidal loop composed of CG elements within an exoskeletal frame as an example of a CG elements stacked along an axis, a line, that the latter is a more classic continuous surface that divides space into two parts. * Students:Nathan Abbe, Bridgett Cruz, Kyle Day, David Kim, Brian Chu, Adrian Von der Osten, James O’reilly **Brian Chu, David Kim, Jing Liu, Thomas Stroman, Kyle Day, Kerim Eken, Adrian Von Der Osten

Haresh Lalvani, Ajmal Aqtash, faculty

RESEARCH

Pratt School of Architecture | Research

Pratt School of Architecture | Research

Center for Experimental Structures | Continuing Research

Large Minimal Surface Structures We continue our explorations, begun in early 70’s, of minimal surface morphologies pertinent to large scale structures. Our interest in the generation of smooth surfaces from a kit of parts aims to bridge the schism between “continuous” and “discrete”, supporting our thesis that continuity, at its “atomic” level, is discrete and constructed from building blocks. At architectural scales, the “atoms” are large, but permit smoothness from parts at the “molecular” level..

We continue to build minimal surfaces from closed and open rings as boundaries for discrete modules as a general way to construct (and represent) all minimal surfaces that divide space into “interior” and “exterior”, and also those that don’t. The stretched membranes in our physical models form saddle surfaces of their own, a fallout of the expediency of using stretched fabrics. Here we show one linear structure, suggestive of tall vertical structures or long horizontal ones, as interesting morphologies that are part of space-filling systems - the “outside” region of the structure is itself constructable in a similar way to fit continuously with this one, but it has a different topology.

Haresh Lalvani, Ph.D. co-director C.E.S. Computer/Physical Models: Joel Stewart, Zach Chapman

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Biofactory | Continuing Research

The Biofactory provides an unique environment and structural conditions for the cultivation of algae as a biomass. The purpose of the biological and systems engineering testing will be to address the combined biological and engineering issues and document the feasibility for continuous flow cultivation within the structure of the Biofactory. Unique issues associated with the bioengineering of scaling up algae growth while maintaining strain health will be addressed through iterative development where systems engineering leads to biological optimization.

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Pratt School of Architecture | Research

William Katavalos, co-director C.E.S.

Pratt School of Architecture | Research

Lighting Lab | Continuing Research

The Christina Porter Lighting Lab serves not only the lighting lab course, ARCH 515, but also all five years of design studio exploration and simulation. Notably the Velux research design studio under Prof. Richard Sarrach worked with the lighting lab to simulate daylighting and electric lighting brought together in the example shown here as a reflecting, quadripartite beveled interior skylight system. Spring term freshmen design studios use the lighting lab equipment to simulate sunlight and shadow. Modeling of sunlight for passive solar designs and more recently integration of photovoltaic in window and roof glazing is in its seventh year, facilitated year round by the lighting lab, following thirty years of similar work by Prof. Porter and his students.

Brent Porter, coordinator

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Le Corbusier - Miracle Boxes | Pratt Institute

“Le Corbusier – Miracle Boxes” is a three-part exhibition on the work of the renowned architect Le Corbusier, who is considered by many to be the most important architect of the 20th century. It was the first New York City exhibition dedicated entirely to Le Corbusier and was curated

by Dr. Ivan R. Shumkov, adjunct associate professor of architecture at Pratt Institute. The exhibition focused on Le Corbusier’s unique multi-disciplinary approach as demonstrated in his architecture, city planning, books, paintings, architecture, and sculpture. The architectural portion of the exhibition in Higgins Hall featured an indepth look at more than fifty of Le Corbusier’s public buildings, including all his exhibition pavilions, museums, theaters, cultural centers, monuments, and temples. They were presented by a wealth of his architectural plans, models, analytical diagrams, as well as images, videos, and books. The exhibit provided a comprehensive analysis of the work of Le Corbusier and showed how his ideas for reinventing modern living are echoed in contemporary architecture and design.

In relation to the exhibit, Pratt Institute School of Architecture hosted the symposium “Voyage through Le Corbusier” on October 11, 2010. The participants in the symposium included the British architect, critic, and historian Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia University GSAPP; Mary McLeod, Professor of Architecture at GSAPP; Jose Oubrerie, Professor of Architecture at Ohio State University and former collaborator of Le Corbusier; Stanislaus von Moos, Professor of Art History at the University of Zurich; Deborah Gans, founder of Gans Studio in New York and Professor of Architecture at Pratt Institute. The symposium was organized and moderated by the exhibition curator Ivan Shumkov. They spoke about the work of Le Corbusier and his legacy, which goes far beyond the fields of architecture and art in suggesting a plan for radical social change. After the individual presentations, the symposium participants gathered for a round table discussion and conversation with the public.

The curator, Ivan Shumkov, will publish the exhibition and symposium in the forthcoming catalogue “Le CorbusierMiracle Boxes”.

The exhibition and symposium were made possible in part with generous support from Elise Jaffe and Jeffrey Brown.

Dr. Ivan R. Shumkov, curator

RESEARCH

Pratt School of Architecture | Research

Pratt School of Architecture | Research

C.A.R.M.A. | Continuing Research

Keeping displaced families together, the HaitiSOFTHOUSE is a flexible & sustainable approach to shelter that provides immediate transitional housing, community development & reconstruction solutions - to the current demands of the recovery and rebuilding efforts of Haiti.

The shelter is engineered to resist category 3 hurricane conditions, is impervious to earthquakes, and provides a healthy, well ventilated, and dignified environment.

The flexibility of the hex structure allows for conjoining of units into multiple unit combinations, addressing domestic space needs, institutional needs and community needs.

The design features a lightweight and easy-to-assemble structural steel frame that receives high performance fabric with excellent weather capabilities. The structure can be anchored directly into the ground using highstrength earth anchors in a variety of soil conditions.

Additionally, the structure can be mounted on a prefab concrete foundation tile system that is manufactured locally from recycled concrete rubble. The structure is designed to be assembled with simple tools, by few people in one day or less.

After the initial case study installations of two SOFTHOUSESs in Sibert, the SOFTHOUSE Group, in partnership with YĂŠle Haiti, Merlin Medical, and Community 2 Community, is in the process of installing several additional HaitiSOFTHOUSEs - the SOFTVILLAGE in Port au Prince.

The HaitiSOFTHOUSE shall serve as an active case study for implementation of transitional communities and allow time for more comprehensive long term sustainable strategies for permanent reconstruction and development in Haiti.

The HaitiSOFTHOUSE initiative goes beyond providing a unique and effective design solution by identifying strategies for local manufacture. In this sense, through implementation The HaitiSOFTHOUSE has the capacity to stimulate the local economy and transfer design and fabrication expertise in a manner that promotes sustainable solutions, helping to transform local communities both environmentally and economically.

Mark Parsons, coodinator

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AAC Textile Block System | Continuing Research

Developed as research funded by a 2010-11 New York State Council on the Arts Independent Projects Award, this project investigates the form finding potentials of Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) and the structural and technical possibilities of the material as an integrated wall and vault assembly system. The work began with the idea to develop an enclosure with a limited set of jointed precast components that is self-supporting yet easy to build without the use of highly skilled labor.

Combining off-the-shelf AAC products and customized components, geometrically complex forms and surfaces can be developed through corbelling techniques married with CNC 3-axis milling technology. The research consists of technical drawings, renderings, diagrams and scale models including a half full scale AAC prototype.

Structural variations, assembly logics, ornamental strategies and organizational scenarios of the system are investigated as part of the proposal. Aercon, a major producer of AAC in the US, donated several pallets of the material for the research and prototypes. One application for this research would be for new settlement construction following disaster relief including affordable housing and other required building infrastructure. Because the system is non-combustible, simple to assemble, customizable, insulating, and requires few additional finishes to produce an efficient envelope, it is well suited for hurricane or earthquake prone regions.

RESEARCH

Pratt School of Architecture | Research

Lawrence Blough, coordinator

Pratt School of Architecture | Research

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NEAR Conference | Pratt Institute

At the Intersection of Architecture, Nature, Technology March 24-25, 2011 A decade into the new century, technological shifts continue to destabilize our material practices; dangers and opportunities bloom with every innovation. On other fronts, we are waging battles to forestall the collapse of large-scale natural systems. Architecture—which aspires to the difficult convergence of cultural value and built form—seems caught between ecology (nature’s systems) and technology. But there is also an optimism and energy that has arisen precisely at this Intersection of Architecture, Nature, Technology. What have been seen as conflicting forces are, in fact, mutually imbricated systems that are moving us toward new freedoms in synthetic regimes. This inaugural NEAR conference focuses attention on seizing opportunities—both theoretical and practical, and some already close at hand—for astonishing collaborations and exchanges between architecture, ecology and technology.

Day 1 Opening Discussion, “Are the ecological and the computational movements interconnected?”

Introduction and Moderation: David Ruy Speakers: Karl Chu, Catherine Ingraham, Sanford Kwinter, Edward Eigen Day 2

Introduction: David Ruy Presentations: NEAR Confederated Studios Fall ‘10 (Mitchell Joachim / Maria Aiolova, Carla Leitao, David Ruy), Rhett Russo, Future Cities Lab (Jason Kelly Johnson), CASE RPI / SOM (Ted Ngai), Cmmnwlth (Zoe Coombes), Verge Labs (Ginger Krieg Dosier) Round Table 2, Biomatter Moderated by Philip Parker Presentations: Genspace (Dr. Ellen Jorgensen, Nurit BarShai, Dr. Oliver Medvedik), Bioworks Institute (Dr. Oliver Medvedik) & Terreform One (Mitchell Joachim, Maria Aiolova), The Living (David Benjamin) Closing Discussion, “What is organicism today?”

Moderation: David Ruy Presentations: William Mac Donald, Jesse Reiser Respondents: Lydia Kallipolliti, William Myers, Philip Parker

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Future Cities Lab Conference Poster Day 2 Presentations Day 1 Panel Genspace Closing Discussion Cmmnwlth David Ruy

RESEARCH

Round Table 1, Experiments at the Intersection

Pratt School of Architecture | Research

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Pratt Center | Brooklyn Greens

For more than 45 years, Pratt Center for Community Development has worked closely with the Pratt planning and Architecture programs to further its mission to create a more just, equitable and sustainable city for all New Yorkers. The Center occupies a unique niche at Pratt Institute, operating both outside and firmly within the School of Architecture. It is in some ways an independent non-profit – a sort of “think and do” tank – and simultaneously an academic department enriched and supported by the Institute’s resources, ideas and energy.

El Puente celebrated the official launch of the Green Light District with music, dance, food, public art, and a community declaration outlining a safe, healthy, affordable, just and sustainable neighborhood. The launch, held in the Espiritu Tierra Community Garden, was the culmination of a year of community empowerment, building a base of supporters and volunteers to carry out the work over the next ten years. About 300 community members attended, including students from the El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice; representatives from local partner organizations the offices of City Councilwoman Diana Reyna and U.S. Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez.

Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation brought over 200 community members together to re-envision the way their neighborhoods look, feel and work at the Verde Summit, an inclusive, bi-lingual community planning event. The summit was kicked off by Amanda Burden, the NYC Planning Commissioner, David Bragdon, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and Toya Williford from the Brooklyn Community Foundation. The information gathered at the summit will be used to develop implementation plans to make improvements in the neighborhood.

Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation is the leader of “Retrofit Bed Stuy Block by Block”, an initiative in partnership with Pratt Center that connects homeowners and tenants with free or low-cost energy assessments and upgrades to reduce energy use, utility bills, and carbon emissions. Richelle Burnette, a Block Association President, said the “This Program is bigger than the energy assessment; it is about gaining a sense of what is going on in your own home, knowing what needs to be done, and having an awareness that is priceless.” According to Rachael Dubin, Restoration’s Manager of Environmental & Sustainability Initiatives, “our sustainability efforts aim to make Bedford Stuyvesant a cleaner and greener community, while in the process, creating jobs for local residents.”

Adam Friedman, Director of Pratt Center

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RESEARCH

Pratt Center recently joined forces with three Brooklyn community development groups in the Brooklyn Community Foundation’s initiative called Brooklyn Greens.

The organizations are working together to improve neighborhood environments through a powerful combination of education, participatory planning, community organizing, and weatherization to advance energy efficiency

Pratt School of Architecture | Lecture Series

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Program of Study | Semester

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Evolutive Means Symposium CAP Review with Christo Degree Project Review Timber for 6 Percussionists Higgins Hall

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Studio Program | Location

Undergraduate Architecture Erika Hinrichs Acting Chair Jason Lee Acting Assistant Chair Nicholas Agneta Visiting Assistant Professor Gilland Akos Visiting Instructor Evan Akselrad Visiting Assistant Professor Ezra Ardolino Adjunct Assistant Professor Borja Ferrater Arquer Visiting Assistant Professor Ajmal Latif Aqtash Adjunct Assistant Professor Guillermo Banchini Adjunct Assistant Professor Eve Baron Visiting Assistant Professor Phillippe Baumann Visiting Assistant Professor William Bedford Visiting Associate Professor Christine Benedict Visiting Instructor Andre Bideau Visiting Assistant Proferssor Frederick Biehle Adjunct Associate Professor Francis Bitonti Visiting Instructor Ezio Blasetti Visiting Assistant Professor Lawrence Blough Associate Professor Robert Brackett III Visiting Assistant Professor Lex Braes Visiting Associate Professor James Brucz Visiting Instructor Dan Bucsescu Adjunct Professor, CCE Gabriel Calatrava Visiting Assistant Professor George Cambourakis Visiting Assistant Professor Anthony Caradonna Associate Professor Jeremy Carvalho Adjunct Assistant Professor Bianca Celestin Visiting Assistant Professor Roger Chang Visiting Instructor Michael Chen Visiting Assistant Professor Karl Chu Professor Jonas Coersmeier Adjunct Associate Professor Michael Cranfill Adjunct Assistant Professor

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Donald Cromley Adjunct Professor, CCE

Sofia Krimizi Visiting Assistant Professor

Bryon T. Russell Visiting Assistant Professor

Dragana Zoric Visiting Assistant Professor

Patrick Curry Visiting Instructor

Christoph a. Kumpusch Adjunct Assistant Professor

Yehuda Safran Visiting Associate Professor

George Douglas Cutsogeorge Adjunct Associate Professor

Zehra Kuz Adjunct Associate Professor

Richard Sarrach Adjunct Assistant Professor

Graduate Architecture and Urban Design

Theoharis L. David Professor

Haresh Lalvani Professor

Marc Schaut Adjunct Associate Professor

William MacDonald Chair

Adam Dayem Visiting Assistant Professor

Rodney Leon Adjunct Assistant Professor

Richard Scherr Adjunct Professor

Philip Parker Assistant Chair

Ronald DiDonno Sam Leung Adjunct Associate Professor, CCE Visiting Assistant Professor

Eunjeong Seong Visiting Instructor

Vito Acconci Adjunct Associate Professor

Livio G. Dimitriu Adjunct Professor, CCE

Fred Levrat Visiting Associate Professor

Daniel Sherer Adjunct Assistant Professor

Nicholas Agneta Adjunct Associate Professor

Kathleen Dunne Professor

Diane Lewis Visiting Professor

Ronald Shiffman Professor

Gilland Akos Visiting Assistant Professor

Adam Elstein Visiting Assistant Professor

Enrique Limon Visiting Assistant Professor

George Showman Visiting Instructor

Maria Aiolova Adjunct Assistant Professor

Gamal El-Zoghby Professor

John Lobell Professor

Ivan Shumkov Adjunct Associate Professor

Ezra R. Ardolino Adjunct Assistant Professor

Yael Erel Adjunct Assistant Professor

Christian Lynch Adjunct Assistant Professor

Robert Siegel Visiting Professor

Alisa Andrasek Visiting Assistant Professor

Dieter Feurich Visiting Instructor

Erik Madsen Visiting Instructor

Dan Silver Visiting Assistant Professor

Ramon Carlos Arnaiz Adjunct Assistant Professor

Giuliano Fiorenzoli Professor

David Maestres Visiting Instructor

Michael Su Visiting Assistant Professor

Kutan Ayata Adjunct Assistant Professor

Carlyle Fraser Visiting Assistant Professor

Harriet Markis Adjunct Associate Professor

Stephen Szycher Visiting Instructor

Alexandra Barker Adjunct Associate Professor

Antonio Furgiuele Adjunct Assistant Professor

Monique Marian Visiting Assistant Professor

Jason Tax Visiting Assistant Professor

StĂŠphanie Bayard Adjunct Assistant Professor

Deborah Gans Professor

Margaret Matz Visiting Assistant Professor

Filip Tejchman Visiting Assistant Professor

Ezio Blasetti Visiting Instructor

Frank Gesualdi Visiting Instructor

Jack McNanie Visiting Assistant Professor

Anthony Titus Visiting Assistant Professor

Karen Brandt Visiting Professor

Ralph Ghoche Visiting Assistant Professor

William F. Menking Professor

Sal Tranchina Visiting Assistant Professor

Meta Brunzema Adjunct Associate Professor

Simone Giostra Adjunct Associate Professor

Greg Merryweather Adjunct Assistant Professor

Michael Trencher Professor

Theodore Calvin Visiting Instructor

Basar Girit Visiting Instructor

Ashley Murphy Visiting Instructor

Evan Tribus Visiting Assistant Professor

Erick Carcamo Adjunct Assistant Professor

M. Louis Goodman Adjunct Professor, CCE

Signe Nielsen Adjunct Professor

Peter VanHage Visiting Instructor

Robert Cervellione Visiting Instructor

Michele T. Gorman Visiting Instructor

Anne Nixon Visiting Assistant Professor

Erik Verboon Visiting Assistant Professor

Steven Chang Adjunct Assistant Professor

Michael Hollander Visiting Associate Professor

Ran Oron Visiting Instructor

Winston Von Engel Visiting Assistant Professor

Theoharis L. David Professor

Nathan Hume Visiting Assistant Professor

Robert Otani Visiting Assistant Professor

Che-Wei Wang Visiting Instructor

Manuel De Landa Adjunct Professor

Agnes Im Visiting Instructor

Munsun Park Visiting Assistant Professor

Joel S. Weinstein Visiting Associate Professor

Hernan Diaz Alonso Adjunct Associate Professor

Catherine Ingraham Professor

Mark Parsons Adjunct Assistant Professor

Aaron White Adjunct Instructor

Deborah Gans Professor

Christopher Janney Adjunct Assistant Professor

Ronnie Parsons Visiting Instructor

Danielle Willems Visiting Instructor

James Garrison Adjunct Associate Professor

Jason Jia Visiting Assistant Professor

Robert T. Pelosi Adjunct Assistant Professor

Suzan Wines Visiting Assistant Professor

Erik Ghenoiu Adjunct Associate Professor

David Jones Visiting Instructor

Dave Pigram Visiting Assistant Professor

Gia Wolff Visiting Assistant Professor

Jose L. Gonzalez Visiting Assistant Professor

Zachary Joslow Visiting Instructor

Brent Porter Professor, CCE

Eric Chi-Fan Wong Visiting Assistant Professor

Matthew Herman Visiting Assistant Professor

Emset M. Kamil Professor

Mark Rakatansky Visiting Associate Professor

Arta Yazdanseta Visiting Instructor

Catherine Ingraham Professor

William Kartavolos Adjunct Professor

Tom Rice Visiting Assistant Professor

Shundana Yusuf Visiting Instructor

Hina Jamelle Visiting Assistant Professor

Sulan Kolatan Adjunct Professor

Brian Ripel Visiting Assistant Instructor

Robert Zaccone Ajunct Professor, CCE

Mitchell Joachim Adjunct Associate Professor

Nicholas P. Koutsomitis Adjunct Associate Professor

Otto Ruano Visiting Assistant Professor

Larry Zeroth Visiting Assistant Professor

Lydia Kallopoliti Adjunct Associate Professor

Pratt School of Architecture Faculty Robert Kearns Visiting Assistant Professor

Roland Snooks Adjunct Assistant Professor

Patricia Fisher-Olsen Visiting Assistant Professor

Theo Prudon, PhD Visiting Assistant Professor

James G. Howie Adjunct Professor

Edward Keller Adjunct Associate Professor

Jeremy Snyder Visiting Assistant Professor

Mike Flynn Visiting Assistant Professor

David Reiss Visiting Assistant Professor

William P. Hudson Visiting Assistant Professor

Nico H. Kienzl Visiting Instructor

Sarch Socks Visiting Assistant Professor

Adam Freed Visiting Assistant Professor

Steven Romalewski Visiting Assistant Professor

Hillary Lobo Visiting Assistant Professor

Karel Klein Adjunct Associate Professor

Nathaniel Stanton Adjunct Associate Professor

Adam Friedman Visiting Assistant Professor

Alison Schneider Visiting Assistant Professor

Stephen LoGrasso Visiting Assistant Professor

Carisima Koenig Visiting Instructor

Michael Szivos Visiting Assistant Professor

Ben Gibberd Visiting Assistant Professor

Ronald Shiffman FAICP FAIA Professor

Mary Mathews Professor

M. Ferda Kolatan Visiting Assistant Professor

Jeffrey Taras Visiting Instructor

Henry Gifford Visiting Instructor

Toby Snyder Visiting Assistant Professor

Martin J. McManus Visiting Assistant Professor

A. Sulan Kolatan Adjunct Professor

Meredith Tenhoor Adjunct Assistant Professor

Eva Hanhardt Adjunct Associate Professor

Russell Olson Visiting Assistant Professor

Craig Konyk Adjunct Associate Professor

Kenneth Tracy Visiting Assistant Professor

Justine Heilner Visiting Assistant Professor

Jaime Stein Coordinator, Environmental Systems Management Program

David Christopher Kroner Visiting Assistant Professor

Maria Ludovica Tramontin Adjunct Assistant Professor

Daniel Hernandez Visiting Assistant Professor

Sameer Kumar Adjunct Assistant Professor

Nanako Umemoto Adjunct Professor

William Higgins Visiting Assistant Professor

Franklin Lee Visiting Instructor

Jason Vigneri-Beane Adjunct Associate Professor

Jeanne Houck, PhD Visiting Assistant Professor

Thomas Leeser Adjunct Professor

Enrique Walker Adjunct Assistant Professor

Anne Hrychuk Visiting Assistant Professor

Carla Leitao Adjunct Assistant Professor

Aaron White Adjunct Assistant Professor

Keenan Hughes Visiting Assistant Professor

Teresa Llorente Adjunct Assistant Professor

John Christopher Whitelaw Visiting Instructor

Georges Jacquemart Visiting Associate Professor

John Lobell Professor

Lebbeus Woods Adjunct Professor

Ned Kaufman Adjunct Associate Professor

Frank Lupo Adjunct Associate Professor

Shundana Yusaf Banuri Visiting Instructor

Urvashi Kaul Visiting Assistant Professor

Peter Macapia Adjunct Assistant Professor

PSPD

Gavin Kearney Visiting Assistant Professor

Radhi Majmuder Adjunct Assistant Professor

Katie Kendall John Shapiro PSPD Chair, Associate Professor Visiting Assistant Professor

Elliott Maltby Adjunct Associate Professor

Lisa Ackerman Visiting Assistant Professor

Brad Lander Visiting Associate Professor

Benjamin Martinson Visiting Instructor

Moshe Adler Ph.D Visiting Associate Professor

Frank Lang Visiting Assistant Professor

Audrey Matlock Adjunct Associate Professor

Chelsea Albucher Visiting Assistant Professor

Matthew Lister Visiting Assistant Professor

Signe Nielsen Adjunct Professor

Eric Allison Ph.D Adjunct Associate Professor

Tina Lund Visiting Assistant Professor

Gregory Okshteyn Adjunct Assistant Professor

Eve Baron, PhD Visiting Associate Professor

Elliot Maltby Adjunct Associate Professor

Christopher Perry Adjunct Assistant Professor

Eddie Bautista Visiting Assistant Professor

Paul Mankiewicz PhD Visiting Associate Professor

Florencia Pita Visiting Professor

Christine Benedict Visiting Assistant Professor

Jonathan Martin PhD Adjunct Assistant Professor

Ali Rahim Visiting Professor

Michael Bobker Visiting Assistant Professor

William Menking Professor

David Ruy Associate Professor

Carlton Brown Visiting Assistant Professor

Jonathan Meyers Visiting Assistant Professor

Anne Save de Beaurecueil Adjunct Assistant Professor

David Burney Visiting Assistant Professor

Norman Mintz Visiting Associate Professor

Richard Scherr Adjunct Professor

Joan Byron Visiting Assistant Professor

Amy Anderson Nagy Visiting Assistant Professor

Erich Schoenenberger Adjunct Assistant Professor

Damon Chaky PhD Assistant Professor

Gita Nandan Visiting Assistant Professor

Paul Segal Adjunct Professor

Carol Clark Visiting Associate Professor

Christopher Neville Visiting Assistant Professor

Benjamin Shepherd Adjunct Associate Professor

Carter Craft Visiting Assistant Professor

Signe Nielsen Adjunct Professor

Daniel Sherer Adjunct Assistant Instructor

Ramon Cruz Visiting Assistant Professor

Juan Camilo Osorio Visiting Assistant Professor

Maria Sieira Adjunct Assistant Instructor

Stefanie Feldman Visiting Assistant Professor

Stuart Pertz Visiting Assistant Professor

Ira Stern Visiting Assistant Professor Gelvin Stevenson, PhD Visiting Associate Professor Samara F. Swanston JD Visiting Assistant Professor Lacey Tauber Visiting Assistant Professor Petra Todorovitch Visiting Assistant Professor Meenakshi Varandani Visiting Assistant Professor Meg Walker Visiting Assistant Professor

Clifford Opurum Visiting Assistant Professor Jack Osborn Visiting Associate Professor Sharvil Patel Visiting Assistant Professor Edward D. Re Adjunct Associate Professor Carol R. Reznikoff Visiting Assistant Professor Joseph Tagliaferro Visiting Assistant Professor Simon Taylor Visiting Assistant Professor

Edward Perry Winston RA Visiting Assistant Professor Kevin Wolfe RA Visiting Assistant Professor Vicki Weiner Visiting Associate Professor Joseph Weisbord Visiting Assistant Professor Sarah Wick Visiting Assistant Professor Andrew Wiley-Schwartz Visiting Assistant Professor Kevin Wolfe Visiting Assistant Professor Ayse Yonder PhD Professor Arthur Zabarkes Visiting Assistant Professor Catherine Zidar Visiting Assistant Professor

Construction & Facilities Management Harriet Markis CMFM Chair Howard Albert Visiting Assistant Professor Gail Bressler Visiting Assistant Professor Kathleen Dunne Professor Matthias Ebinger Visiting Assistant Professor William E. Henry Visiting Assistant Professor Kent Hikida Associate Professor Thomas Hanrahan Dean, Pratt School of Architecture

InProcess 17 Publication Staff:

Shannon Hayes: Master Design, Production, Coordination Nicholas R. Meier: Master Photography, Supplemental Design Erin McLaughlin: Supplemental Design, Archival Coordination Taylor Sams: Supplemental Design, Text and Archival Coordination Intiporn Rojanasopondist: Photography, Supplemental Design Kevin Chang: Archival Coordination

Pratt Institute School of Architecture Administration: Thomas Hanrahan, Dean Kurt Everhart, Assistant to the Dean Pamela Gill, Assistant to the Dean

Pratt Institute Administration: Thomas F. Schutte, President, Pratt Institute Mike Pratt, Chair to the Board of Trustees Peter Barna, Provost

Undergraduate Administration: Erika Hinrichs, Acting UA Chair Jason Lee, Acting Assistant UA Chair Barbara Harris, Administrative Assistant Harriet Markis, Construction Management Chair

Frances Fox: Graduate Design, Production, Coordination Megan Hurford: Graduate Design, Production, Coordination

Graduate Administration:

The student staff of InProcess 17 would like to extend a thank you to the Fall 2010-Spring 2011 student body for their astounding contribution of over 232 gigabytes of work as well as many outstanding models and drawings.

PSPD Administration:

Thank you to all the students, professors, and administration who helped make InProcess 17 the largest INP publication to date.

And finally, we would like to say farewell to Shannon Hayes who after four years of exceptional dedication to archives is graduating. We would also like to say farewell to Frances Fox who after two years of exceptional dedication to archives will be graduating. The torch has been passed on once again....

William Mac Donald, GAUD Chair Philip Parker, Assistant GAUD Chair Erin Murphy+Erika Schroeder, Assistants to GAUD Chairs

John Shapiro, Chair of City and Regional Planning Eric Allison, Coordinator of Historic Preservation Jaime Stein, Coordinator of Environmental Systems Management Harriet Markis, Chair of Construction Management

PCCD Administration: Adam Friedman, Director of Pratt Center for Community Development

Corrections to InProcess 15 with our apologies: pg 165 - Monique Marion’s image was improperly credited to Jung Jin + Naciem Nowrouzi + Wilmer Zamora.

Corrections to InProcess 16 with our apologies: pg 119 - Jason Golob’s name was misspelled. pg 119 - Irina Vinnitskaya name was misspelled. pg 85 - Two of SulGee Kim and Jane Jonghyun Yi’s images were improperly credited to Jae Kim and Jooyup Pyo. pg 210 + 211 - Image credits were reversed between groups A and C

The following hardware and software was used for this publication:

Additional Image Credits: Cover Image: Victoria Maceira Maria Sieira, critic

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