PRINCETON- school of ARCHITECTURE rumor- SPRING 2012 ---------------------------------------------
Rumor 03.03 right: Ravensbourne College, London, 2010; underlay: proposal for the Spanish high-speed rail station, AVE, in Ourense, Galicia, 2011.
A Conversation between Stan Allen and Alejandro ZaERA-POLO In July of this year, Alejandro Zaera-Polo will start his term as the School of Architecture’s fifth Dean. An accomplished practicing architect and prolific writer, Zaera-Polo continues the School’s tradition of promoting ambitious design work in a challenging intellectual context. Stan Allen and Zaera-Polo conducted their interview by email in early May 2012. STAN ALLEN: I’d like to talk less about the specifics of pedagogy and more about some of the larger issues facing the discipline today. You might argue that all major innovations in education spring from the need to confront new problems with new techniques. There is no doubt that the tools of design are themselves changing; we could talk about drawing versus simulation for example, but also the importance of data, the need for collaboration and the role of research in design — what might be described as new intellectual technologies. I am interested in the way in which these changes are reflected in your own practice, and your thoughts on the future. ALEJANDRO ZAERA-POLO: I have always believed that technology is the supreme form of intelligence. I am Bergsonian in that sense, believing that intelligence is the “faculty to create artificial objects, in particular tools to make tools, and to indefinitely vary its makings”. And architecture as a discipline is very much about being able to capture the capacities of the Homo Faber throughout history. For my generation, traditional architectural tools were replaced by a new technology. The threshold of difficulty to access computer technology was reduced to the point that everybody could start using computers effectively as design tools. This opened incredible opportunities to rethink the discipline, and made new experiences and new architectural effects available. The datascapes, the parametric, the processual, the diagrammatic, etc. were all theorizations of the impact of these technologies in our practice. Technology for me has never been a production tool, but a realm for thinking and research about architecture in its own right. Technology has continued to evolve at an enormous speed. I flew for the first time at 22, started using internet when I was 33 and I had my first mobile phone at 35. My daughter was on a plane before being able to walk, used the internet at 5 and had a cell phone at 7. This will have enormous effects on the way people will live in the future, and these are the areas within which the true opportunities to advance the discipline of architecture can be found. SA: Axel Kilian makes a convincing case for carefully distinguishing between the digital (which for him implies media and communication technologies) and computation (the architecture of the computer itself and the software that drives it). Writing code is mandatory today for advanced work in computational design and we see a new generation of architects and students with access to these new technologies of design. Interest in
robotics and sensing signals new protocols for computational design. Is this a revolution or an evolution? How do these new techniques relate to the discipline’s established paradigms? AZP: I believe the difference between revolution and evolution is a matter of speed. And this is sometimes dictated by perception. The shift from traditional drawing to CAD and the introduction of the world-wide web felt much more sudden and revolutionary than the rise of social media and algorithmic design, robotics and sensing. “We have never been revolutionaries,” as Bruno Latour would say, but in this new brave world of computation there will be a progressive integration between media, communication and production. Sensing devices are providing constant and simultaneous information about remote environments; content is managed by search algorithms; relations are driven by social media; and production is handed over to robots. All of this impacts the assemblage of social, political and technical protocols that intersect in the practice of architecture. But I do not think that this will entirely terminate the arcane material substrate of architecture. It will simply expand it in new dimensions. When I started learning AutoCAD in 1989 at the GSD I was told by some important faculty that the program was for “CAD monkeys,” as if technology was devoid of any theoretical, cultural or political content. In fact, with the exponential development of the artificial, I believe this will become the stage of the most intense cultural and political battles and the most important area for speculation in architecture in the near future. Perhaps we need to develop a philosophy of new materials: a new theory of the genesis of material form may be necessary to understand how to use productively a computer-simulated evolution to breed new architectural designs. Questions such as the importance of scale in the world of simulation and modelling, or the implications of modelling the physical world through polygons, NURBS, metaballs or particles, the exploration of newer technologies related to artificial life — such as cellular automata and object-oriented programming — or the potentials for designing new materials from the bottom-up as advanced in nanotechnology are important theoretical inquiries for the discipline of architecture. I believe those will become crucial fields of speculation and theorization in architecture. Princeton has the best tradition of speculative science and I think that this is one of the most important potentials for the School of Architecture. We need to use Princeton’s scientific infrastructure in order to gain an advantage in these crucial fields. SA: As much as the techniques of design are changing, the structure of practice is also changing. The most innovative practices today are agile and more entrepreneurial, less dependent on conventional patronage structures. Architects are more mobile than ever, working all over the world. The discipline is asked to confront new issues, such as climate change (where our capacities may be limited) or global urbanism (where architecture may have more traction). This requires a new skill set and a new knowledge base. What are your views with regard to these new practice modes? Is there
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a danger of architecture’s impact being diluted as it is asked to perform in these unfamiliar territories? In the past you have talked about “the engineering of material life;” how do you see the relationship between the virtual and the real in these new territories? AZP: Yes, this is something that we need to rethink, too. We can’t keep thinking that we are a species fed by museum commissions. One of the issues that I try to teach in the studio is the necessity for students to understand for whom they work, who will be their clientele or their audience. I do not think that a contemporary school of architecture can keep educating students for these ideal commissions which are supposed to fall onto you if you are talented. This is not a matter of being pragmatic. It is actually a theoretical problem: paper architecture has irremediably lost its former capacity to transform. As a contemporary architect you need to think of — in parallel — your acquisition strategies and your fields of engagement. And the globalization of the practice means that its modalities have multiplied exponentially. Your architectural problems and opportunities become dramatically different if you decide to act for an NGO in Nigeria or to work for a condo developer in Kuala Lumpur. We are no longer in the age when the architect is the origin of everything a la The Fountainhead, but rather a surfer who joins waves and harnesses energies, to quote another well-known metaphor of the practice. In this sense I think that a practice or a school needs to be able to identify the domains where it will experiment in order to be transformative. We cannot cover all domains of practice and therefore we remain in the neutered state of pure architecture. Ecology and sustainability are an obvious wave, a low-lying fruit. If we are to advance in this field, the returns on our investment will be immediate. You can spend billions of dollars in research trying to build more efficient jets or energy plants, but that will produce a negligible effect compared with the impact that developing an architecture that will make environmental technologies aesthetically desirable and cheap to implement could have. Sometimes we underestimate our transformative powers; Post Modernism was an invention of architects — some of them Princetonians — and to this day it has a huge audience. If we could make thick PVC windows and solid facades look good we could do a great service to the planet and to the profession. A school needs to identify some interesting potential audiences and target them deliberately. SA: Can I push you on that? Only to ask if saving the planet can ever be the major part of our ambition… Our impact as architects will always be marginal; maybe it is more interesting what effect these new challenges might have on architecture? AZP: I think what truly dilutes architecture’s impact is not the operation in unfamiliar territories but the inability to engage with them by pursuing some sort of disciplinary specificity. I am obviously not in the autonomy camp, but I have to admit that my passions are schizophrenic. On one side I have been always truly excited by the challenge of venturing into these forbidden territories and the brutal editing of the disciplinary (CONT. ON P.07)
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Constructed Atmospheres Spring Lecture series organized by Philippe Rahm
We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air. —Evangelista Torricelli, 1644
Architects, Philippe Rahm has written, usually claim space as the object of their discipline. “But until recently, architects have been unable to define the void in any way other than designing the solid around it, because they had no real knowledge of space. They didn’t really know this hollow in between the walls that they could neither catch nor see.” With modern scientific technology, and more significantly, expanded conceptions of space, affect and visibility within the discipline, there is a renewed interest in working with and shaping this invisible void: “If the architects of the past were reduced to work on the solid, today we are more and more able to work directly on space itself and to design its atmosphere by shaping temperature, smell, light or vapor.”
In the first session, Michelle Addington , Hines Professor of Sustainable Architectural Design at the Yale School of Architecture offered an overview of some of the new analytical and design techniques now available to architects in her lecture “Contingent Phenomena,” while Sean Lally, principle of the firm WEATHERS , working under the title “The Air on Other Planets” showed projects that explored the design of the atmosphere. Architects Shelia Kennedy and Jeanne Gang showed realized projects that work with an expanded notion of performance, incorporating environment and building systems. Madrid-based architects Cristina Díaz Moreno & Efrén García Grinda (Amid/Cero 9) were paired with architectural theorist Laurent Stalder from the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich. Amid’s playful projects, from a hotel for starlings in Rome to a pavilion for the festival of cherry blossoms in Spain were juxtaposed with Staadler’s inventive historical account of “threshold” technologies in architecture. Iñaki Ábalos , architect from Madrid and visiting professor at Harvard’s GSD showed recent projects that work with constructed, performative voids in his lecture “Air in Motion,” while landscape historian Michael Jakob looked at the persistent motif of vertigo in architecture, film and painting. Finally, in her lecture “Rooms, Parks and Stages,” visual artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster showed installations and projects relating to the theme of the atmosphere, and architect and theorist Jonathan Hill presented material from his recent book Weather Architecture, which recognizes the weather as a creative architectural force alongside the designer and user.
clockwise from top: Fritz Haig; Jeanne Gang; Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster; Michelle Addington; Iñaki Ábalos, Michael Jakob, and Stan Allen; Sheila Kennedy; Sean Lally; Cristina Díaz Moreno, Efrén García Grinda, Phillipe Rahm, and Laurent Stalder; Chip Lord; Dominique GonzalezFoerster and Jonathan Hill. Photos: Stephanie Velazquez and Dan Claro.
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Luis Moreno Mansilla 1959–2012 With great sadness we received the news that Luis Mansilla had died, without warning, in Barcelona on February 22, 2012. Together with Emilio Tuñón, he formed the studio Mansilla + Tuñón, and the two partners taught at the School as Labatut Professors of Architecture from 2008–10. Mansilla + Tuñón enjoyed a growing international esteem, with significant prizes, major work under construction, and important new commissions. Prior to forming their own practice, Luis and Emilio worked together in the office of Rafael Moneo. The work of Mansilla + Tuñón shares with Moneo’s a sense of gravity, clarity of detail, and strong material presence. But their work departs from their mentor in its abstraction, its playful diagrammatic character, and in their recent fascination with serial repetition. Luis saw architecture as an unfolding conversation, at once lodged deep in the history of the discipline and at the same time always searching for new thoughts and fresh ideas. This way of thinking permeated his long and fruitful collaboration with Emilio and the work of their studio, but it was also fundamental to their teaching at the School and it extended to his wide circle of friends. He was dedicated to his work but he always made time for friends and for his family: his wife, the talented painter Carmen Pinart, and their two daughters, Luz and Maria. Luis and Emilio were in Barcelona to present a book of the last writings of Enric Miralles, another talented architect who died too young. Looking back, his words that night take on a special poignancy. Speaking of Miralles’ work, and its power over a generation of architects, he said: “I am beginning to think that in reality space is not a significant part of our preoccupations in life. Only time, that spills and slips through our fingers when we try to catch it.” And now Luis has slipped through our fingers. The field has lost a figure of great promise. We will remember him for his optimism, his generosity, his intelligence, and his gentle passion for the art of architecture.
Faculty PRINCETON- school of ARCHITECTURE rumor- SPRING 2012 ---------------------------------------------
Luis AsÍn, 2011 Royal Collections Museum, Madrid Mansilla + Tuñón
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(CONT. FROM P.01) principles they enact; on the other side I know that if I do not get something that does not advance on the intimate secrets of the discipline I will be disappointed. There is also a tendency now for architects doing urbanism, sustainability, activism or fabrication to become cozy in their niche without being able to explain in what way those approaches can become architectural. SA: Finally, all of this is happening at an accelerated pace — communication today is instantaneous; capital moves fluidly throughout the world; and there is pressure to produce at a faster and faster rate. Both individual careers and building production have been speeded up. But architecture, you might argue, is a fundamentally slow discipline, involving many agents and large investments of capital. The work of architecture is weighty and durable; the building outlives its designer. There are those who believe the solution is a faster, more responsive architecture — an architecture that approaches the lightness of media, while others insist on architecture’s traditional association with stability and survival over time. Is there a way out of this double bind? Can architecture’s stubbornness be an asset? Can the slow and the fast co-exist?
TABULA SUBLIMIS: SENDAI Spring 2012 studio 506a Professor Jesse Reiser and Assistant Neil Cook
At a recent exhibition titled “Metabolism: Dreams and Visions of Reconstruction in Postwar and Present Day Japan” at the Mori Museum in Tokyo, the curators drew a parallel between the Japan’s rebuilding after the devastation of WWII and the current post-tsunami condition. In the spirit of Metabolism’s comprehensive vision, they saw the current disaster not just as an occasion for pragmatic solutions for rebuilding, but as an opportunity to fundamentally rethink future urbanism in Japan, both within and beyond the disaster areas. The sites of Greater Sendai selected for our study by Tohoku University were essentially flatlands at or close to sea level, hence their susceptibility to tsunami waves. The flat area along the coast line of the city of Sendai is predicted to have a huge flood once every 50 years. The pragmatic call by the University required development of low-density programming such as parks, memorials and low-rise housing. The studio addressed these concerns as a minimal expectation and proposition on the way to a more ambitious large-scale urban vision. Our studio work aspired to the creation of visionary and prototypical urban and infrastructural proposals: a productive new landscape. Since the nineteenth century, infrastructure has been overtly utilized as a model resulting in the amplification of systems of movement,
distribution, and control. While the proliferation of these systems has necessarily been attendant to modernization, they are rarely questioned or seen as anything other than discrete components of a hierarchy no greater than its parts, circulatory systems for nodal aggregations of culture. The great potential of taking on the design implications of new transportation technologies lies in the wider implications and effects of the system.
The Princeton students visited Sendai in March and met with students and public officials in Japan. Following the final review on May 11, a “Super Jury” with students and faculty from Japan and China took place at the School on May 15.
from top: Bamboo forest in Sendai; students visit Prada Aoyama; mid-review at Tohoku University
Research into the History of the School of architecture
AZP: I think that both speeds can coexist in architecture. Architecture will never be as pliant as capital or as fast as media. It operates as a mechanism that introduces lateness in the social processes because of its constitutive nature, which is primarily mineral. While I am in no way in favor of practicing an architecture that deliberately resists technical and economical development, I am aware of the specificity of the medium, and I believe that this is a powerful asset. There was a time when architecture needed to be typologically specific: there were residential and commercial structures. And cities had to be full of highways. Today we know that the uncertainty introduced by capital is favoring structures that have a less determined functional performance and that the cities made out of highways are clogged with traffic and have become unsustainable. Cities like London or Paris resisted the development because there was a public appreciation for the physical fabric of the city. Sometimes, some parts were dramatically demolished because of the urge to be up to date. Urban centers decayed because of lack of accessibility. Today, the most expensive offices are flocking to these centers because, for example, there is wi-fi and buildings no longer need
Book launch—27 April 2012
Book launch—14 May 2012
The Sniper’s Log
School of Architecture Studio books
On the occasion of the release of The Sniper’s Log: Architectural Chronicles of Generation X by Alejandro Zaera-Polo, the newly appointed Dean of the School of Architecture, Storefront for Art and Architecture presented “Towards a Theory of Misbehavior,” a Manifesto Series event showcasing different generational approaches towards architecture theory. The event included a series of manifestos outlining hypothesis and methodologies towards architectural acts of disobedience, followed by a discussion between the presenters moderated by Stan Allen. Presenters included: Anna Pla Català, Cynthia Davidson, Peter Eisenman, Eva Franch i Gilabert, Bjarke Ingels, Jeff Kipnis, Sanford Kwinter, Michael Meredith, and Bernard Tschumi.
by Joseph Bedford
top: Frederick D. Moyer, Riparian Architecture: A New Waterfront at Fort Pierce, Florida (MFA, 1962); above left: Edmund Caddy, Controlled Visible Radiant Energy as Means
of Architectural Expression: A Religious Complex for a Small Community (MFA, 1955); above right: Hugh Hardy, The Stage: A Designed Focus Through Selection (MFA, 1956)
As part of a larger exploration of the history of architectural pedagogy, a group of Princeton PhD students — Joseph Bedford, Esther Choi, Britt Eversole, Ignacio González Galán, Anna-Maria Meister and Federica Vannucchi — have been turning their lens closer to home and exploring the newly available archive of the Princeton School of Architecture. The group’s initial approach to the archive took the form of “THESIS MATTER[S]”, an exhibition that presented thirty thesis projects as a lens through which to consider the history of the School. It emphasized the way in which thesis students critically consider architecture’s mediation in processes at different scales, from subjective perception to historical transformation. This cross section of projects from the 1940s to the 1960s surveyed topics proposed by students when compelled to make a statement about architecture freed from the compromises of professional practice. The exhibition aimed to demonstrate how thesis at Princeton challenges architectural knowledge cultivated within the school testing it against the reality of outside conditions, as it simultaneously
creates new forms of agency for the transformation of reality. From these initial efforts research is now underway to explore the broader history of Princeton’s School of Architecture. During a time of change within the school, it is perhaps timely to locate some of the more significant moments of the School’s impact on architectural discourse, and to uncover some of the institutional and curricular conditions for these transformations. This research has been made possible by the efforts of Daniel Claro, Curator of the Visual Resources Collection, with the help of Professor Spyros Papapetros; Professor Axel Kilian; Hannah Bennett, librarian; and Leslie Geddes. Thanks to the support of Stan Allen and a generous grant from the David A. Gardner ’69 Fund in the Humanities Council, the School’s unique archive of some 3,000 boards and 13,000 slides of student work, 900 video and 650 audio recordings, spanning over three-quarters of a century — and complimented by comprehensive textual sources ranging from studio briefs, syllabi, course notes and written theses — is increasingly available for sustained historical research.
cabling. Public transport has developed, making accessible urban centers which were not so readily accessible for residential and employment uses. The lateness introduced by architecture’s resilience is a critical factor — a tool for resistance to the whimsical changes of societies — which retains some of the qualities of previous cultures. It is a magical assemblage of layers operating at different speeds. In A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History, Manuel DeLanda describes reality as an assemblage of three strata (the geological, the biological and the linguistic) operating on different speeds. I do not believe in all-encompassing revolutions and I do not think that we need to choose only one strata. Sometimes we need to be more geological, sometimes more biological and sometimes more linguistic, depending on our remit and our audience. I prefer the city of co-existing strata, such as Blade Runner, where the strata coexist, to the city of Metropolis. And as an architect I have the same respect for people using the city as a carcass to locate pop-up events that follow instantaneous trends as for those building entire new towns to last 200 years. We need to identify our constituencies and practice at the right speed. The lateness of architecture can also be an asset.
from top: Alejandro Zaera-Polo; the audience; Jeff Kipnis, Sanford Kwinter, and Bernard Tschumi. Courtesy of Storefront for Art and Architecture, photos by Tomaz Cappobianco.
Following the publication of The SANAA Studios Learning from Japan: Single Story Urbanism (ed. Florian Idenburg), the School of Architecture has published two new installments in the Studio Series of books documenting the work and thinking developed in Princeton School of Architecture studios: Luis M. Mansilla + Emilio Tuñón From Rules to Constraints Edited by Giancarlo Valle With contributions by Stan Allen, Enrique Walker, Sarah Whiting, and Augustin Perez Rubio, photographs by Dean Kaufmann, Luis Asín, and Luis Baylón From 2008 to 2010, Madrid based architects Luis M. Mansilla and Emilio Tuñón held the Labatut Professorship at the Princeton School of Architecture. From Rules to Constraints is a wide-ranging reflection on teaching, design practice, history, and the city. Examining both their teaching methods and Mansilla + Tuñón’s own design work, the book presents the design process as an ongoing conversation between freedom and limits, and between the decided and undecided. David Adjaye Authoring: Re-placing Art and Architecture Edited by Marc McQuade With contributions by David Adjaye, Stan Allen, Alex Coles, Teresita Fernández, Dave Hickey, Sanford Kwinter, Jorge Pardo, and Matthew Ritchie Authoring: Re-placing Art and Architecture challenges traditional assumptions about the relationship between art and architecture. From 2008 through 2010, David Adjaye and Marc McQuade taught studios at the Princeton School of Architecture. Each studio focused on a collaboration with a visual artist: Matthew Ritchie, Teresita Fernández, and Jorge Pardo. The book presents recent projects by David Adjaye, Matthew Ritchie, Teresita Fernández, and Jorge Pardo, along with interviews, essays, and archival material that explores the shared space of art and architecture.
On Monday, May 14, 2012, the Storefront for Art and Architecture hosted “Toward a New Cosmopolitanism,” a discussion with David Adjaye, Stan Allen, Anthony Appiah, Teresita Fernández, Enrique Walker, and Sarah Whiting to celebrate the release of the latest books in Princeton’s Studio Series.
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Paul lewis and Spyros Papapetros receive tenure
The School of Architecture is very happy to announce the promotion to Associate Professor with tenure of two faculty members. Spyros Papapetros is an architectural historian; a highly original scholar with a unique interdisciplinary background that includes intellectual history, critical theory, psychoanalysis, aesthetics, and film studies. He received a professional degree in architecture from the National Technical University of Athens and a graduate degree in the history and theory of architecture from the Architectural Association in London. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001, and joined the School of Architecture faculty in 2003. Papapetros effectively engages both historiography and detailed formal analysis of specific artifacts, which gives his work a double force: in the field. This is historical scholarship that strongly resonates with contemporary issues. His most recent book, On the Animation of the Inorganic: Art Architecture, and the Extension of Life will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2012. Paul Lewis is an architect and educator who has taught at the School since 2001. During this time Paul has established himself as one of the mainstays of our design faculty, distinguished by the way in which his work in practice productively informs his teaching. He holds an undergraduate degree from Wesleyan and a Master of Architecture degree from Princeton. He started his independent architectural practice in 1997, and in 1999 received a Rome Prize in architecture. His firm, LTL Architects, is consistently identified as one of the most promising practices of their generation. Among their recently completed and extensively published buildings are Arthouse, a contemporary art museum in Austin Texas, and the Administrative Campus for Claremont University. A monograph on the work of LTL will be published by Princeton Architectural Press later this year.
Princeton University School of Architecture Princeton, NJ 08544 ---------------------------------------------
ISSUE 03.03 spring 2012 ---------------------------------------------
RUMOR is the Princeton School of Architecture newsletter. RUMOR appears three times a year with news and reviews of the many activities at the School of Architecture: studios, classes and reviews; lectures events, conferences and faculty updates. RUMOR is by definition fragmentary and incomplete: a quick snapshot of the life of the School, telegraphic and immediate.
03.02 p.08 Rumor 03.03 More to follow‌