SAM@QASTIC.COM
32 HIGH STREET #102 NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT 06510 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Samuel Ray Jacobson is an architect and theorist. Trained at Rice University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he resides in New Haven. CONTACT: SAM@QASTIC.COM All content, graphics and publications in this book are protected by U.S. copyright and international treaties and may not be copied without the express permission of Samuel Ray Jacobson, which reserves all rights. Re-use of any of Samuel Ray Jacobson content and graphics for any purpose is strictly prohibited. The materials from this publication are available for informational and noncommercial uses only, provided the content and/or graphics are not modified in any way, all copyright and other notices on any copy are retained, and permission is granted by Samuel Ray Jacobson.
This document contains samples of work by Samuel Ray Jacobson, produced between 2008 and 2013. Every project section includes an abstract and a few demonstrative representations. Where relevant, hyperlinks have been inserted; clicking their yellow-highlighted text will open a website I have selected, in your browser.
Samuel Ray Jacobson New Haven, CT sam@qastic.com samuelrayjacobson.wordpress.com archinect.com/samuelrayjacobson linkedin.com/in/samuelrayjacobson mit.academia.edu/samueljacobson archdaily.com/author/samuel-jacobson twitter.com/samueljacobson facebook.com/samuelrayjacobson
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ARCHITECT MAGAZINE, JUNE 2013
The model home gallery is a phenomenon in South Korea where the majority of housing is developed by one of the five big corporate families. Apartment buildings are not designed as individual buildings but as multiples; thus a new housing project may be conceived as 20 or 30 towers forming an entire neighborhood. If mass housing has had pejorative connotations in the United States, in Korea the study, design, and sales of housing have developed into a discipline serving an ascendant middle class with amenities and technologies that are significantly sophisticated. For that reason, each corporation invests in what is called a “model home gallery,â€? a building that not only contains sales offices with model homes, but also a variety of public amenities that are purposed for the use of the community in which the gallery is placed. These public programs include art galleries, restaurants, cafĂŠs, auditoria, and other functions that can become part of the public realm. So numerous are these model home galleries that they have also created an iconic spectacle within the urban landscape, each attempting to occupy a status more commonly held by public institutions such as museums or libraries. For this project, I developed the innovative parametric design interface used to create the steel-louvered facade. Adaptively incorporating elements such as view corridors, envelope modifications, and manipulations of depth, height, and frequency, this modelling system rapidly instrumentalized client and architect design demands to create a beautiful, structurally robust outcome not usually possible on a project of this scale and budget. The built facade follows my schematic design, as does the arrangement of the storefront window system.
roofing membrane rigid insulation continuous steel plate @ top of curtainwall steel edge plate bolted to edge of composite roof slab steel I beam glazing
2 layers of GWB finished w/ venetian plaster ceiling, typ. aluminum reveal
bolted T-steel
T-steel column beyond stone tile curtainwall base plate flush w/ f.f. continous steel grill
base etail at base detail at horizontal mullion detaildetail at atbase
detail at horizontal mullion detail at horizontal mullion
detail at base
detail at horizontal mullion
detail reflected ceiling plan detail at detail horizontal reflected mullion ceiling plan
detail reflected ceiling plan
GRAPHICS BY JOHN HOUSER
interior wall perforated aluminum louver sloped 2% to drain rib at each side attached to vertical support vertical fins - custom lasercut steel plate conforms to overall geometry, painted dark insulation on z furring
aluminum panels or shingles painted dark
aluminum louver rib @ each side attached to vertical support w/ steel brackets
aluminum panels or shingles painted dark
vertical fins - custom lasercut steel plate conforms to overall geometry, painted dark
GRAPHICS BY JOHN HOUSER
Samsung Model Home Gallery Model home sales office and gallery, Seoul, Korea Completed October 2012 John Houser and Samuel Ray Jacobson (exterior), Kevin Lee and Ellee Lee (interiors); Richard Lee and Tom Beresford, Project Architects; Katie Faulkner and Nader Tehrani, Principals; project team, NADAAA Photography by John Horner AWARDS • 2012 Best of the Year Award, Interior Design • 2012 WAN Civic Award, Wold Architecture News • 2013 American Architecture Award, Chicago Architecture Athenaeum
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Cocktail Culture: Ritual and Invention in American Fashion, 1920-1980 was the first multi-disciplinary exhibition toIMG_0998.jpg explore the social ritual of the cocktail hour through the lens of fashion and design. Organized by the RISD Museum of Art’s Department of Costume and Textiles, Cocktail Culture featured stunning fashion apparel from Balenciaga to Schiaparelli, jewelry, textiles, decorative and fine art, film, photographs, and more. WDesigns were executed by myself under close supervision from senior staff. Display hardware was designed to maximize visual connection to artifacts while maintaining security; this was accomplished through a series of portable, low-profile plywood platforms, sized to enforce a 36� security perimeter. Affixed, raised platforms were deployed for artifacts of smaller size, displayed under Plexiglas. Walls were utilized for thematic texts, printed on color-fields corresponding to selected objects, as well as printed materials and objects of secondary importance. Object identification was located on raised placards, custom-fabricated out of powder-coated plate steel and bent pipe. The exhibit, arranged in an island configuration, could be explored chronologically by following an implied, counter-clockwise path. Mannequin groups were arranged to give a sense of dynamism, evocative of a cocktail party.
EXHIBIT PLAN
WALL SECTIONS
DETAILS
Cocktail Culture Exhibition Design RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island Exhibition open March-July 2011 Samuel Ray Jacobson, Designer; Ramon Alberts and Tom Beresford, Supervisor(s); Nader Tehrani, Project Architect: project team, NADAAA SELECTED PRESS •
“A Spirited Celebration of America’s ‘Cocktail Culture’” by Jacki Lyden, NPR Weekend Edition Sunday
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“Highballs and High Art” by Stephen Heyman, New York Times Style Magazine
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“‘Cocktail Culture’ Toasts an Era of Elegance” by Sebastian Smee, Boston Globe
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“High Society: Toasting Fashions of the Cocktail Hour” by Tina Sutton, Boston Globe Sunday Magazine
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“Fashion Intoxication” by Casey Nilsson, Blast Magazine
IMG_1012.jpg
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NADER TEHRANI
3
Alienation and Education Massive Open Online Courseware and the Future of Architectural History Instruction Samuel Ray Jacobson sah.org October 2013
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ith a team of administrators, programmers, video editors, and student interns I spent the summer developing the first ever massive open online course on the subject of architectural history. Offered on the edX platform beginning September 17, the MITx course “A Global History of Architecture: Part 1”—known to us at MIT by its course number, 4.605x—is intended to serve as a platform for thought about architecture throughout the world and the history of human society. Like most online courses entering the education marketplace today, 4.605x is constructed around a body of pre-existing material. The bulk of the course is derived from the spring 2013 offering of Dr. Mark Jarzombek’s recurring MIT architectural history survey, 4.605 “Introduction to the History and Theory of Architecture.”1 This aspect of adaptation generated some of the most compelling pedagogical challenges to our creation of the online offering. It is because of the exemplary nature of these challenges to the field of architectural history and its instruction at the college level that I would like to share some of my experiences and thoughts with you, here on the SAH blog.
4.605, the original course, was uniquely suited for an adaption of its kind because of the conceptual design of its learning objectives. The course’s overall structure is dependent upon the facilitation of a spirit of pluralism, for pedagogical effect. For example, Jarzombek’s first lecture begins with a rational and cautious conveyance of the limited theories and facts known about early civilizations. This includes a discussion of ochre, and its use in ancestral worship rituals; drawing a connection between the uses of this material in various societies, historically, without naturalizing this phenomenon within ostensibly trans-historical explanations, Jarzombek’s portrayal of the first societies imparts upon those groups a level of historical autonomy, whereby their cultural practices are represented as a cumulative instance, sitting at the end of an ongoing historical unfolding (rather than functioning as an antecedent of the present). Building upon this example, 4.605x can be rightly understood as a format for historical pluralism: it recounts the story of architecture and history in various instances as it moves through them, chronologically, in an attempt to foster a type of historical literacy. Presented in episodes, the history of architecture and society gradually accumulates, its instances receding form their particularity and towards their implication in a continuum. As a student, this revelation becomes ever-more seductive by virtue of the ignorance it produces: everything one learns reveals the possibility for learning that much more, as the unfolding of architectural history continues revealing itself as ever vaster and more complex than it seemed before. Embodying the curiosity of its self-selected student body, 4.605x creates for itself a new demographic of architectural historians: independent, global, and operating outside the normative boundaries of our field’s academe. That this should be so inherently pushes against the medium condition of MOOC development
in its present, early iteration. In general terms the repackaging prerecorded lectures as a free online course, while expanding availability to content, also highlights the elite privilege of access to today’s institutions of higher learning. In our case while 4.605x is making available, for free, to anyone with an internet connection, a simulacrum of an experience that up until this moment was only available to those with the ability to attend MIT classes, those who enroll in 4.605x will receive no official credit for the course and, since MIT retains copyright to its materials, enrolled students are not free to engage with course lectures, readings, or assessment outside the edX online environment. The experience is approximately analogous to auditing a traditional university course, with the added consideration that one cannot watch lectures live or interact personally with the professor. The necessary formatting of our recorded material heightens this potential alienation of the student from their online instructor, when compared to a traditional auditing situation: divided into segments, edited for length, and released en-masse, the lectures seen by 4.605x students will read unavoidably as a derivative product, awkwardly adapted for their online viewing and always feeling like a secondary sort of experience. Bearing these factors in mind, 4.605x is no more than the sum of what has been lost in translation; a teasing reminder of the worldclass instruction offered by MIT, to individuals who will probably never be able to experience it. Such cynicism is misplaced. To view our MOOC as mere branding exercise misses the opportunities that the online medium provides for new forms of instruction and individualized learning, which are numerous and compelling. MOOC lectures, even those adapted from residential courses, differ from traditional lectures because students are free to absorb information at their own pace: with streaming online video, a student can watch when they please, with the ability to pause, rewind, and revisit portions they may not have understood the first time around. In our course, self-
scrolling, time-stamped transcripts, displayed beside the lecture videos, enable better comprehension for the hard-of-hearing and English learners. Additionally, questions displayed beneath videos have been used to highlight salient points in our video segments; this simple gesture is of tremendous importance: by taking advantage the necessary fracturing of our video content as a pedagogical opportunity, 4.605x starts to utilize its digital nature as a value added opportunity for its global community of students. There are many other ways in which the 4.605x course team attempted to capitalize on the edX platform, building on the learning objectives implied by the material available from the original MIT course. The content of Professor Jarzombek’s course holds up the ideal of free, rational association between historical episodes. Paraphrasing his course abstract, 4.605/4.605x’s lectures give students grounding for understanding a range of buildings and contexts; analyzing particular architectural transformations, arising from various specific cultural situations, the course lectures answer questions like: •
How did the introduction of iron in the ninth century BCE impact regional politics and the development of architecture?
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How did new religious formations, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, produce new architectural understandings?
•
What were the architectural consequences of the changing political landscape in northern Italy in the 14th century?
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How did rock-cut architecture move across space and time from West Asia to India to Africa?
or •
How did the emergence of corn impact the rise of religious and temple construction in Mexico? (Jarzombek)
These questions coordinate very particular narratives about architecture and its role within the unfolding of social history. In a traditional lecture course, student concerns involving these narratives and their relationship to each other could be addressed in recitation sessions, but in the MOOC environment this is not possible. While technologies exist to facilitate personal interaction between instructors and online students, such as edX’s built in discussion form or products like Google Hangout, even with these tools it is not possible to address individualized concerns with the attention and care of graduate student teaching assistants. Building upon spring 2013 4.605 TA input, the 4.605x course team devised a moderated approach to facilitating student discussion that emphasized the course learning objectives without necessitating the input of additional resources.2
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o discuss these strategies it is necessary to understand how 4.605x configures its narratives of architectural history. As an example, let’s consider the third question above, about early modern northern Italy. In his lecture on the topic, Jarzombek argues that the example of the emergence of the town square in Siena in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and concomitant consolidation of the medieval torre typology from its proliferation in family compounds to the singularity of town hall, signals the emergence of civil society in that region. Thus, the comparison between the later and earlier townscape conditions, illustrated below, relates indexically to the creation of the concept of citizenship and the growing role of civic institutions during the Renaissance. In this and other incidents, 4.605 lectures enact an historical methodology, whereby architectural developments are seen as causally related to a wide variety of cultural
factors, across related geographical and chronological contexts. With respect to the issue of fitting incidents together, it is important to note that there are other metanarratives that one might fit this event in Italian history in to, and that in 4.605/4.605x a student is not given an opportunity to choose, or even explore, such counterpoints. It should be stated that in offering an admittedly singular and sanctioned narrative among a broad variety of twenty-four related, but autonomous incidents, students are enabled if not forced to use their own reasoning to create a comprehensive understanding of global architectural history; therefore, despite operating on an inherent notion of propriety and sanctioned knowledge, 4.605x’s epistemic values nourish and encourage an individualized engagement with architectural history, and therefore history, writ large. It is with this directed encouragement in mind that we, in developing 4.605x, tried to facilitate a conversation that could be as open as possible, and that took maximum advantage of our online course’s large and diverse community of motivated students. Like most surveys, in 4.605x the fostering of intellectual connections between related materials is foregrounded at the expense of individualized exploration. That said, the global character of our course community offers an unprecedented opportunity for students of diverse backgrounds to connect with each other, and these connections offer opportunities for personalized reflection and exchange that the original MIT course cannot match. Indeed, we see the open-posting capability written into the edX discussion forum as a wonderful tool for students to get to know each other as they get to know the material—and to experience whatever benefit this may offer. To this end, simple policies have been devised such that the discussion can remain free without impinging upon comprehension of the class’s
radically inclusive historiographical methodology. Those policies, informed by previous edX courses, include: •
Be polite. We have learners from all around the world and with different backgrounds. Something that is easy for you may be challenging for someone else. Let’s build an encouraging community.
•
Search before asking. The forum can become hard to use if there are too many threads, and good discussions happen when people participate in the same thread. Before asking a question, use the search feature by clicking on the magnifying glass on the left-hand side.
•
Be specific. Choose a descriptive title, and provide as much information as possible: Which part of what problem or video do you want to discuss? Why do you not understand the question? What have you tried doing?
•
Write clearly. We know that English is a second language for many of you but correct grammar will help others to respond. Avoid ALL CAPS, abbrv of wrds (abbreviating words), and excessive punctuation!!!!
•
Use discussion while working through the material. On many pages in the learning sequences and homework, there is a link at the bottom that says “Show Discussion”. Clicking on this link will show all discussion on the forum associated with this particular learning material.
By foregrounding concerns of civility and legibility in our management of the discussion forum, we hope that our course community will develop itself into a vibrant forum of equal interlocutors, despite the centralizing epistemological tendencies of the survey format and sense of alienation imposed by the digital adaptation of
an existing course. To get things moving, and emphasize certain salient aspects of course lectures, a small body of conversation topics, written by Dr. Jarzombek, have been pre-seeded. Released onto the discussion forum with each lecture, these directed prompts offer opportunities for personal reflection that is based on the material discussed. Emphasizing the living nature of architectural history, it is hoped these discussion questions help students to connect material together as they form associations between what they are learning about and their own lives. For the lecture on early modern Italy, for example, the discussion prompt includes the question “Have you ever visited an Italian city and had a coffee in a piazza?” By answering this question or responding to the experiences of others, students can start to understand how they have interacted with the contemporary legacy of the urban-political shift addressed in the course, even in something as everyday as having an espresso. We hope that this intentionally limited mode of fostering student engagement catalyzes additional ancillary benefits. It is true that, by not encouraging engagement with alternative philosophies of history, 4.605x often works to reinforce its epistemological authority, to the effect of performing as a vehicle for sanctioned facts and narratives. That said, given the specifically anti-hegemonic nature of Professor Jarzombek’s architectural history— which engages the subject across traditional chronological and cultural boundaries—I am incredibly optimistic about 4.605x’s ability to enable new connections to the field of architectural history, conceived in the broadest possible form. These directed questions are one excellent example of how this could occur; there are many others. Ultimately, it is the global nature of the content developed for the course that will help an unprecedentedly diverse audience to relate to what has
traditionally been a somewhat elite and generally Eurocentric subject. In catalyzing this novel opportunity to create a new community of persons interested in architectural history, allowing for personal reflection is of immense importance. It is in this sense that the discussion component of 4.605x is helping to build on the course’s pedagogical strategy, even if the online formatting of the course ambivalent about our inability to engage with students personally.
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y measured optimism comes with a wealth of caveats, predicated on uncertainty. Like many universities, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is helping to develop curricula for an emerging university outside the United States, and it is likely that 4.605x will be adapted as an instructional tool for use at that institution in the near future; it is also likely that the course will be used as an instrument in similar “flipped instruction” utilizations elsewhere, further in the future. The details about this were still developing as 4.605x was being put together, but the continuation and adaptation of 4.605x into new and different forms seems inevitable. The inherent problem with this dynamic is one of derivation. Not only is our online course inherently derivative— based, as it is, on recorded lectures from spring 2013—but it is also going to be used to develop derivative content—such as materials to facilitate residential instruction elsewhere. Here is my fear: 4.605x is a survey course, composed of relatively autonomous episodes, portrayed in lectures; I can see its content being easily misused, formulating connections that the course itself leaves ambiguous, to the detriment of students. The motivation of my fear is an attachment to 4.605x’s present and delicate neutrality, as a format for content, from the perspective of historiography. Having watched the course lectures out of order, a few times, I can say that all of them
stand on their own easily. They are comprehensive, and entertaining. I can also say that no particular lecture is necessary to satisfy the overall pedagogical ambition of the course: the ambition of training students in an understanding of history and architecture can be achieved even without a unit on the Minoans and discussion of the impact of the collapse of the Indus River Valley civilization in 1500 BCE, for example. That said, 4.605x does not lend itself easily to historiographical agendas outside the moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason. So, while 4.605x courseware can and should be used as a resource for teaching global architectural history—few exist, more should—I would hate to see it adapted in a manner that naturalizes secondary aspects of the course as overriding concerns. It would be an abuse of the course’s content to create a derivative from it which is centered on ideological critique (cf. Tafuri) or technical determinism (cf. Semper; Banham) for example, or to make an argument that architectural history is characterized by expressions of singularity (Frampton) or signification (Jencks)—all of which are possibilities, should one cherry-pick content to adapt based on ideological interest. To provide an extended example: bearing in mind my interest in sexuality and space, it would be entirely possible to utilize 4.605x lectures to create a limited course on the history of human sexuality and the architecture of domestic environments; this course could include clips about matriarchal societies in the preclassical Mediterranean (Lecture 6), the relationship between the rise of farming and more dimorphic gender roles in the Holocene (Lecture 3), connections between the lack of public space and the culture of rape renaissance Italy (Lecture 22), among many others. While I am OK with the idea of using 4.605x videos in an external and unrelated environment, it is crucial that this adaptation not be presented as an abridgement of 4.605x. The absolute character of “A Global History of Architecture: Part 1” (covering the whole world, and the complete history of society) neutralizes its particular content such that its only agenda is that of conveying material, to foster the
intellectual growth of a student audience. It is for this reason that the course can cover 100,000 years of human history with efficacy: none of its admittedly limited dives into particular subjects are inherently necessary to the overall integrity of the course. Once that neutrality is compromised, the course becomes a political instrument, using incomplete materials to enforce a set of propositions. Rather than learn to teach themselves, students are merely indoctrinated. The question facing 4.605x now, as future adaptations remain to be considered, is: can the course’s present ethos of facilitation be expanded to include a body of teachers? Stated another way: Can 4.605x become a platform for facilitating new and novel engagement with global architectural history instruction, in both senses of the phrase (instruction on the subject of “global architectural history;” and on architectural history, generally, around the world), in the same manner as it encourages new, global connections to the subject of architectural history? I don’t know. What I would like to see is metamorphoses of 4.605x, not derivations, elicited in the same way that the course hopes to have an impact on student thinking about architecture and history, but not necessarily to shape it. I am able to present several informed judgments about the state of 4.605x with regards to the ambitions of its institutional stakeholders. Presently members of the MIT Office of Digital Learning (which also oversees MITx) are utilizing analytics to reconsider how MOOC courseware can be designed to maximize intended impact. One recent study, “Exploring the Relationship between Course Structure and etext Usage in Blended and Open Online Courses,” uses anonymous, aggregated, and chronologically analyzed student click data sets to understand when and how often students utilize certain resources. This research had a marked impact on our course, leading to the implementation of four regular exams rather than a midterm and final, since research has found that students engage much
more with eText when this format is used, and more engagement is assumed to be beneficial. The impact of this leveraging of analytics remains to be seen. In developing our course, research was used to short-circuit the traditional iterative refinements by which university courses are developed over the years. The intention was to improve 4.605x’s online learning experience based on scientific data, but it is just as possible that our creation of additional tests will work to over-emphasize an aspect of the courseware (eText), at the expense of the other possible developments obviated by the labor necessary the additional tests (for example peer reviewed essay assessments, or the beta testing live office hours analogues). The dynamic of derivation within which 4.605x presently sits involves a high degree of free play. It is my hope that future analytics data about, for example, what students click on the most, how this is reflected in assessment outcomes, and how demographic data might be implicated in such outcomes, can be leveraged to continue thinking pragmatically about improved learning outcomes. Put another way: it is my hope that those responsible for 4.605x in down the line will leverage gathered data to learn what there is for the architectural history community to learn, about learning, rather than to attempt to manipulate the structures we have created to conform to externally generated assumptions. Addressing the issue in this way might be too limited. From the perspective of architectural history as a subject and discipline, the ultimate question provoked by this course at present—and therefore by MOOCs, towards the future of architectural history instruction— is: what do we want? 4.605x proves that creating a high-quality massive open online course on the subject of architectural history is possible, and demonstrates that even following the simplest model for online courseware production (adaptation of existing materials) there is a lot to be gained pedagogically from a careful
consideration of the capabilities of the format of content distribution. I personally think that 4.605x will help to fill a gap that exists at many professional programs, who lack the resources retain a dedicated, experienced PhD-level instructor of architectural history capable and motivated to teach a broad, undergraduate-level survey course, and for this reason the course is highly noteworthy. Your views on what qualifies an individual to teach the subject of architectural history and what should be taught to whom likely differ from mine but it is likely we agree that expanding access to college-level instruction in architectural history is a service to the field. What this service will mean, as the project evolves, can start to be evaluated by looking at the landscape of online education today. Compared to disciplines such as math, biology, or electrical engineering, architectural history is relatively unique in its limited size and scope, with only a few institutions able to maintain robust programs of study; 4.605x is an interesting case study in the early history of MOOC education since its licensing and redistribution likely does not offer the threat of professional displacement that speculated about similar MOOC surveys in subjects with larger teaching communities, threatened by our current age of austerity.3 What these things mean, together, is that the relative value added by increasing access to and otherwise facilitating instruction on the subject of architectural history online is high, while the risks, at the level of administration and job security, are relatively low. Even if 4.605x fails to meet your best expectations for the first architectural survey online with regards to content I think you can concede that the precedent it sets with regards to the possibilities for architectural history instruction is a worthy one. It does not replace its traditional equivalent, but it allows greater access to its content, and this is a benefit. Given that, I ask you the members of the Society of Architectural Historians: where
do you want to take this? Certainly some serious consideration of what we want the future of architectural history to look like is warranted. The fact of 4.605x occurring, now, and the prospect of its continued adaption brings to that consideration some urgency: massive open online education in architectural history is happening, and will continue. While it is unlikely that a competing MOOC on the subject of “global architectural history” will emerge soon, it is quite likely that similarly constructed offerings on the subject of architectural history—adapted, comprehensive, and lecture-driven— will proliferate over the coming years. I am content with how this course turned out, but not satisfied; to the effect that I remain insecure about its present iteration I worry about its future adaptation, and the design of other MOOCs on the subject of architectural history. In the translated words of Roland Barthes, “whatever its sophistication, style has always something crude about it: it is a form with no clear destination, the product of a thrust, not an intention, and, as it were, a vertical and lonely dimension of thought.” Applying this maxim to 4.605x: our course is configured as it is as a result of its context and the resources available, future iterations will remain the same in that regard, and related courses will bear some resemblance in that concern. It is likely that other online courses on architectural history will resemble ours in terms of formant. Thus it bears asking: how do we want online education to benefit the field of architectural history, and how can the possibilities and capabilities of emerging online education platforms be utilized in the service of these goals?
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o begin this conversation, I would like to offer some interdisciplinary reflection. Many in the arena of Internet Studies have argued that the World Wide Web is a powerful, flattening force, capable of everything from radically decentralizing
economies and reproduction (cf. Friedman, The World is Flat), to revolutionizing technological evolution (cf. Zittrain, The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It), to transcending traditional boundaries of place and culture. In support of this last proposition, Canadian online education pioneer and activist Stephen Downes has argued that the internet is capable of functioning as a global public sphere, where people from around the world can talk to each other without regard to their social position. MOOCs are a fundamental vehicle for achieving this openness; as Downes stated in his EdgeX2012 presentation, Online, the Prime Minister of a country can have a conversation with people from all over the place; offline, that’s a lot more difficult, because the Prime Minister’s always surrounded by advisors, and then media, and then other media, and then a crowd of people, and that prevents the Prime Minister from talking to people directly. It is this directness, this immediacy of communication, that you can do online that allows a MOOC to be open, that is one of its defining features. The MOOC is structured as a network. And again, this is the sort of thing you can’t really do offline. But online - I see people laughing at the diagram, that’s a creative representation of a MOOC, by one of our students in a MOOC - and the idea here of a MOOC is that it’s not one central entity that everybody goes to, it’s not like a school or a classroom or a book where everybody would go to this one thing. It’s distributed… it’s the website of this student, this student, this student, it’s the website of a person in Spain, a person in Brazil, a person in India, a person in Canada, the United States, wherever. (Downes) Despite this flattening aspect, like all public spheres, MOOCs are characterized by barriers to access. The most important one here is that
system lacks a proactive and wellresourced agenda for enriched and interest-driven learning, young people dependent on public institutions for learning are doubly disadvantaged. (Connected Learning)
of regular sustained access to an internet connection. Downes makes a note of this in his presentation: Anybody can enter a MOOC. Well, OK, I have to be a bit careful here: anybody with a computer and an internet connection, or access to one, can enter a MOOC. These are types of online learning. I’m going to emphasize this a little bit later as well, but what we built is a type of online learning. And it requires a certain infrastructure. (Downes) Here, the non-possession of prerequisites for participation (an internet connection) preemptively disqualifies a person from participation in the public sphere of the MOOC. This problem is negated, however, when it is turned into a question of taste; in this vein Downes continues the selection above... It takes advantage of that infrastructure to do things that we could not formerly do without the infrastructure. You might say, and you’d be very reasonable in saying, well what if you don’t have that infrastructure? Well then probably you’re not going to want to do a MOOC, because it’s going to be a lot more difficult. (Downes) When one considers that this factor of preference might be motivated by other contingencies (including wealth) the narrative offered by Downes echoes those seen elsewhere. Consider Craig Watkins and Juliet Schor’s recent report on connected learning, which argues that new educational approaches risk becoming an opportunity to reinforce already existing privileges of class and status. So they write, The trend for privileged young people and parents to mine the learning opportunities of networked and digital media is one more indicator of how differential supports in out-of-school learning can broaden the gap between those who have educational advantages and those who do not. When the public educational
To summarize: the societal value of MOOCs is moderated by limitations to their access. At the same time, the medium can be considered of incredible importance because of its ingenious operation between ideas and ideology: at this precise moment the MOOC remains both a pursuit of education content and its universal access, but its utopic promise remains precisely that. To these ends, while massive open online courseware can serve institutional and egotistical functions, covering elitism with a bad-faith gloss of equanimity, it can nonetheless also be leveraged as a means for identifying social and institutional conditions that foster autonomy and personal growth. The MOOC as described by Downes is not really free and available to all but it nonetheless serves as a means of resistance to established social orders; it is building on this compromise that I feel that the MOOC can function as a means towards broadening the availability of architectural history instruction at the college level while also facilitating the creation of a new diverse generation of independent, self-motivated architectural historians. Downes believes that the MOOC can be a democratic space capable of withstanding the corrosive effects of prejudice, narrow-mindedness, and elitism, and I agree. I think that 4.605x has started to model what the space of the MOOC might be within architectural history. I invite you to improve on it.
ENDNOTES 1.
In producing the online course, lectures, recorded during the run of the class, were divided into eight to seventeen minute segments. Images and videos from lecturer PowerPoint presentations were spliced over the video feed where
appropriate. In addition, four customcoded, comprehensive exams were developed from the spring mid-term and final exams. As is typical for the massive open online course a.k.a. “MOOC” medium, videos are each accompanied by short multiple-choice exercises, and each lecture includes an opportunity for guided discussion. Some supplemental resources, such as a map of sites mentioned in the course, were also created, based on existing resources. Twenty-three of the twenty-four lectures are presented MIT Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture Mark Jarzombek, and one by Ana Maria Leon, PhD Candidate in the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art at MIT. Six supplemental lectures are also offered with the course package, two by Jarzombek, two by Leon, and two by University of Washington Professor of Architecture Vikramaditya Prakash. These were recorded over the summer. 2.
Currently MITx estimates that managing their discussion forums requires approximately one hour per thousand students, per week, at a minimum; given limited resources it was necessary to devise strategies for discussion forum management that were as efficient as possible.
3.
See recent controversies involving JusticeX, a Harvard course offered to San Jose State University students, as well as Princeton sociology professor Mitchell Duneier’s decision to withdraw from his partnership with MOOC distributor Coursera, citing uneasiness over licensing his course to the University of Maryland and the University of Akron.
WORKS CITED Downes, Stephen. “Education as Platform: The MOOC Experience and what we can do to make it better.” EdgeX. Delhi, 2012. Keynote address. Ito, Mizuko, et al. Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Irvine, CA: The Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, 2013. Report. Jarzombek, Mark. https://www.edx.org/course/ mit/4-605x/global-history-architecturepart/884. Ed. Samuel Ray Jacobson. 6 June 2013. Online course description. 10 July 2013. Seaton, Daniel, Yoav Bergner and David Pritchard. “Exploring the Relationship Between Course Structure and etext Usage in Blended and Open Online Courses.” 6th International Conference on Educational Data Mining. 2013. Conference Proceeding.
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PLAT was exhibited in London, Milan, Bacelona, New York, Berlin, Montreal, Paris, and Bratislava as part of the exhibition “Archizines,” from November 2011 to November 2012. (Click to learn more)
PLAT 0.5 PHOTOGRAHPY COURTESY ARCHIZINES
January through May 2010 with Seanna Walsh, Marti Gottsch, E. Baer, Matthew Austin, Rice School of Architecture Student journal of architectural scholarship based at the Rice School of Architecture. PLAT’s purpose is to shift architectural discourse by stimulating new relationships between design, production, and theory by weaving student, faculty, and professional work into an open and evolving dialogue which progresses from issue to issue. Curating worldwide submissions in two annual issues, PLAT serves as a projective catalyst for architectural discourse. As part of the Exploratory Editorial Committee, I determined the project’s mission, content, format, and name.
> Learn more on the PLAT website.
5 TERMINAL in development with Irina Chernyakova, Mariel Villere; Mark Goulthorpe (MIT) MIT-based online journal of architectural research TERMINAL, a speculative publication based in the Master of Science in Architectural Studies (SMArchS) degree program at the MIT SA+P, is the culmination of student work for the program colloquium, a course facilitated by Mark Goulthorpe. Based on the contributions of visiting scholars, TERMINAL aims to develop a sustained, open, multi-disciplinary dialogue on architectural themes through an innovative, independent, student-oriented online platform. Scholarly and entertaining; innovative and interactive; straightforward, but with depth–Terminal will be a unique contribution to the MIT mediascape, serving as a much-needed instrument in the continuing development and expansion of the SMArchS program. TERMINAL publication will be issued yearly, with each year’s colloquium theme serving as the theme of the issue. This projective archive of critical writing and supplementary content allows a level of historicity and self-reflexivity not available in other student architectural publications.
DEMO VIDEO IRINA CHERNYAKOVA AND MARIEL VILLERE
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POLICY May 2010 for Mary Ellen Carroll with Daniel Anguilu, Alberto Govela, Matt Stilt, Kevin Topek, and Seanna Walsh. Exhibition at Architecture Center Houston
Focusing on Mary Ellen Carroll’s ongoing project, prototype180, POLICY negotiated the unseen interaction between land use policy, the petroleum industry, land art, and public art. With colleagues, I collaborated in producing a series of artifacts, video, and 150-foot-long graphic timeline. Inviting an exterior practice onto the interior of the Architecture Center’s walls (policy), the timeline showed pivotal moments contributing to the realization of Carroll’s ongoing local urban alteration. Timeline information was executed in the street style known as e2e (end to end) by Matt Stilt following my design, with assistance from myself and Seanna Walsh. A video, comprised of interviews with Southwest Houston residents and business owners, offered their perspective on what they see for the future of the area, and what it is like to live in a first ring suburb that has the external perception of as a “blighted” neighborhood (Sharpstown). The footage was captured by Alberto Govela and myself, and edited by Govela. A model of prototype 180 was on display that showed the “before and after” of the 180 degree rotation for the single family home and its surrounding property. Other elements of the project that have been designed and patented were also on display. This exhibition was restaged in the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia University between February 17 and March 25, 2011, and at the Generali Foundation (Vienna) between September 7 and December 16, 2012.
In terms of content, Houston and Sharpstown serve as the starting points, such as the Houston Chamber of Commerce’s 1953 declaration of Houston as the nation’s most air-conditioned city, and the imposing of Sharpstown’s deed restrictions two years later. The timeline eschews hierarchy, juxtaposing the formation of a local neighborhood with the 1951 declaration by the American Committee for Cultural Freedom that “democracy, not communism creates societies where art thrives.” The text highlights that stalwarts of post-WWII art and theory like Clement Greenberg, Jackson Pollock, and Alexander Calder collaborated with the Committee in opposition to fascism. The inextricable links between business and culture are posted on the wall, beside the global forces that leveraged and tainted them:
1969 John and Dominique (nee Schlumberger) de Menil acquire the following works by Tony Smith: ‘The Elevens are Up’ (1963) and ‘New Piece’ (1966)
1973 OPEC oil ministers agree to use oil as a weapon to influence the West’s support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. An embargo is extended against states including the U.S.A.
> Read the rest of this review on offcite.org
As Policy so plainly delineates, corporate corruption and cultural patronage are never far apart. One of the most timely entries concludes with a quotation from Los Angeles County Museum of Art executive director, Michael Gowan:
2007 LACMA accepts a $25 million donation from BP that shall aid in the renovation of the museum. The entryway on LACMA’s newly expanded campus is hereby renamed ‘The BP Grand Entrance.’ ‘LACMA is proud to partner with BP. What is convincing to LACMA is their commitment to sustainable energy.’ ...the exhibition stands as an exhaustive look at the autonomous instances of policy that have shaped the city. The bits of text, which draw connections that are at once affirming and ominous, speak for themselves. Even a video installation, which features interviews of Sharpstown’s denizens, from community leaders to original residents, grants a full-spectrum viewpoint. - CITE MAGZINE
ARTHUR ROSS ARCHITECTURE GALLERY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, NEW YORK FEBRUARY-MARCH 2011
GENERALI FOUNDATION VIENNA, AUSTRIA SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER 2012
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BAYOUSPACE Spring 2010 Critic: Spencer Parsons Studio design project, Rice School of Architecture.
This university design studio’s assignment was to create an environmental education center on a 12-acre site owned located in a post-industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of Houston’s central businss district. Rather than construct a new facility I proposed (defiantly!) to use the environment itself as the medium for environmental education.To that end, BAYOUSPACE is an act of landscape architecture, and an environmental education center, in the strictest possible sense of both terms: it employs that which already exists within the assigned site to educate the public about the environment. Satisfying the ultimate challenge in architectural representation, BAYOUSPACE visualizes a disciplinary position based on its own negation, an architectural practice of polite and performative refusal. Representing the futility of architecture as an act of civic engagement, BAYOUSPACE lovingly embraces the possibility that sometimes the best thing to do is nothing all.
To work with landscape, we must first realize that it is already a thing of design. The environment is a peculiar thing, for it is both created by man and shaped by forces beyond human comprehension. Monumental forces are at work. How does one make those forces visible?
What you see in the column just to the right is a program analysis. The program (see below) has been broken into three categories: a series of desired events, existing characterizations of Buffalo Bayou, and desired characterizations of Buffalo Bayou.
This semester’s assignment was to create an environmental education center on a 12-acre site in Houston’s Second Ward owned by the Buffalo Bayou Partnership. Rather than construct a new facility I say use what’s already there:
BAYOUSPACE is an environmental education center in the strictest possible sense of the term: it employs that which already exists within the designated site to educate the public about the environment. The task of the designer is to make that possibility legible.
Use the environment itself as the medium for environmental education!
The easiest way of accomplishing this task, to my mind, is to treat the program and the site as pre-existing conditions, break those conditions into qualities, and to see how those qualities can be combined to form a new, symbiotic whole.
What you see in the next two columns is site analysis; it shows the site broken down into its constituent elements, an analysis of the qualities of those elements that correspond to the requirements of the program (as outlined in the table below), a synthetic site plan, and video of the site taken at four different locations.
The set of images and diagrams below illustrate how the desired events can be achieved over time. Each narrative corresponds to one desired events. All of the named people and programs correspond to people and programs in current working relationships with the Buffalo Bayou Partnership. Beneath each narrative is a fragment site plan, and beneath that, the picture that forms the basis for the large image beside it. Together, the narratives form a larger historical metanarrative that speculates as to how the site would change over time, and how the desired events can be used to accomplish the desired characterizations.
In our pursuit to design a better future, we oftentimes forget to celebrate the value in what we’re already doing. If you accept the structuralist proposition that meaning is based in difference, then there is no better way of giving meaning to what is already there than to create a neutral stage for that which already exists to be registered against. In our contemporary culture of real-estate speculation and information overload, there can be no better role for public space than that of meaningful relief—a space not for escape, but to realize the worth of the people and the place that the we call home; a spot of constancy which reveals the virtues of a city and makes apparent its change over time.
It’s pragmatic. It’s practical. It’s sustainable.
Interestingly, the desired events are a means of transforming the existing characterizations into the desired characterizations. Even more interestingly, this process corresponds to the current goals and programs of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership—which means that this process can be accomplished without the institution of a new facility.
Over the fifty-year span of the project, BAYOUSPACE remains as a neutral stage upon which the city, the Bayou, and the public can perform and upon which changes in that performance can be registered over time. This automatic public space—both in the sense of being instantly attainable and in the sense that it was designed through the self-equalization of the program and the site— is an interesting case-study in giving meaning to everyday life.
The project is, I admit, an act of civic narcissism—but aren’t all good public spaces?
It’s easy. It’s cheap. It gets the job done. It’s BAYOUSPACE. Welcome!
Desired Event: The consolidation of “local and national agencies [studying] Houston’s bayous” in a “new facility”
Desired Event: “To enlarge public awareness of ecology by offering lectures and hands-on programs
Desired Event: “Periodic measurements of the bayou’s water quality” and “studies of erosion patterns”
Site Condition: Land owned by Buffalo Bayou Parnership
Site Condition: Parcels
Desired Event: The systematized removal of refuse from the bayou’s banks
Desired Event: After-school and summer youth programs
Desired Event: The creation of and continual addition to an archive of Desired Events
Site Condition: Structures
Site Condition: Trees
Existing Characterization: Buffalo Bayou as a “drainage ditch”
Exiting Characterization: Buffalo Bayou as a “dumping ground”
Existing Characterization: Buffalo Bayou as “polluted”
Stie Condition: Hard Surfaces
Site Condition: Unkept Area
Existing Characterization: Buffalo Bayou as a “historical source of drinking water”
Existing Characterization: Buffalo Bayou as a “piece of urban infrastructure”
Existing Characterization: Buffalo Bayou as “bacteria-laden” and “not safe for swimming”
Site Quality: Automobile Access (Large Trucks, Passenger Cars, Off-Road Vehicles)
Site Qualitiy: Dryness (Well-Drained, Adequitely-D
Existing Characterization: Buffalo Bayou as an “urban stream”
Existing Characterization: Buffalo Bayou as a thing with “tree-lined shores [that] provide habitat for an abundance of wildlife”
Existing Characterization: Buffalo Bayou as prone to flooding
Site Quality: Access (Universal, By Foot)
Site Quality: Objects of Histo
Desired Characterization: Buffalo Bayou as an “attractive recreational amenity”
Desired Characterization: The design project itself as that which “promote[s] a discussion about architecture including its past, allowing interpretation”
Desired Characterization: The design project itself as a that which has “achieve[d] a level of architectural detail”
Site Quality: Rock-Free Turf
Site Quality: Public Access (Public Rights of Way)
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Site Condition: Topography
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Site Condition: Fences, Embankments, and Rail
Site Condition: Mowed Areas
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10:17 AM, February 17, 2011 Dr. Brad Hodge, director of HUNSTEM, the Houston Urban Network for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, wades out in the water to collect samples of soil at different depths along the bank of the bayou. “Diatom and acelleacean communities are good indicators of success in wetland soils,” he says to the audience of eleventh graders from YES College Preparatory Southwest, watching him from the shore. “Determining community structure at the surface and at various depths of wetland soils can provide models of soil function, wetland succession, and the success of mitigation efforts.” “So what are we doing with these?” shouts one of the students. “You’re going to take these little tubes I’m filling back to your school, look at them with microscopes, and take down some observations to compare with data from other places. And then the data that you collect is going to be compared with data from this site next year, and the year after to see how the water clean-up is going.” “Oh,” says the student. “This is actually really important work that you’re doing. Doesn’t that sound cool?” She shrugs. “We’re all very excited to be a part of this, Dr. Hodge,” says her teacher. Dr. Hodge mutters something, shakes his head, and returns to his samples.
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Dr. Brad Hodge, director of HUNSTEM, the Houston Urban Network for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, wades out in the water to collect samples of soil at different depths along the bank of the bayou. “Diatom and acelleacean communities are good indicators of success in wetland soils,” he says to the audience of eleventh graders from YES College Preparatory Southwest, watching him from the shore. “Determining community structure at the surface and at various depths of wetland soils can provide models of soil function, wetland succession, and the success of mitigation efforts.” “So what are we doing with these?” shouts one of the students. “You’re going to take these little tubes I’m filling back to your school, look at them with microscopes, and take down some observations to compare with data from other places. And then the data that you collect is going to be compared with data from this site next year, and the year after to see how the water clean-up is going.” “Oh,” says the student. “This is actually really important work that you’re doing. Doesn’t that sound cool?” She shrugs. “We’re all very excited to be a part of this, Dr. Hodge,” says her teacher. Dr. Hodge mutters something, shakes his head, and returns to his samples.
Youth Programs
4:30 PM, August 21, 2060
The boy looked over the
The boy looked over the dilettantish crowd to see that the high school’s totally inaccurate re-enactment of Allen’s Landing was just about over. He would be content to keep standing here in the sun, mostly naked, for a little bit longer…. although the combination of heat and the churro that he had eaten earlier was beginning to make him a little bit queasy. Yes, he knew that the Rusk/Burnett Elementary swim meet was going to be starting in a few minutes, but he would feel better by then. He wasn’t that good at swimming anyway. His sister would want to take the light rail home—it was too hot to walk. Even if their apartment was just on the other side of the bridge.
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Julie Carlberg pressed the “next” button on her remote again, and the snapshot of her father holding a giant pair of scissors from fifty years before was replaced by the words “Thanks, Houston” in large white letters. The audience waited politely for her to continue.
She cleared her throat and then nodded to her brother, who walked up next to her and handed her a glass of brownish water.
endeavor. BayouSpace, like everything else, was only meant to have a certain life. Now, with its original goals accomplished, that life has come to an end.” Whispers erupted. What does she mean? We don’t remember anything about it coming to an end. BayouSpace is a part of our history, a part of our heritage. How could she let it die?
4:30 PM, August 21, 2060 She continued:
“You sure you want to drink this?” he asked. “Yes, yes. It’s good. It’s good.”
She turned her attention back to the expectant crowd. “Fifty years ago, my father launched on a strange and ambitious endeavor: to make this place the locus of a series of activities aimed at improving the watershed and the neighborhood while, at the same time, not doing anything at all. Now, fifty years later, BayouSpace is much like it did when Mayor Parker cut that ribbon: grassy, quiet, and full of potential.
“I know. I know. I’m sad too. But the time for acknowledgement and selfcongratulation is over. Now, it is time to return this land to the city, and to give it the life of its own that it so rightfully deserves. It is now time to see what we might do, what this city can become. If BayouSpace were to simply to remain, it would not be doing anything.
The boy looked over the dilettantish crowd to see that the high school’s totally inaccurate re-enactment of Allen’s Landing was just about over. He would be content to keep standing here in the sun, mostly naked, for a little bit longer…. although the combination of heat and the churro that he had eaten earlier was beginning to make him a little bit queasy. Yes, he knew that the Rusk/Burnett Elementary swim meet was going to be starting in a few minutes, but he would feel better by then. He wasn’t that good at swimming anyway. His sister would want to take the light rail home—it was too hot to walk, even if their apartment was just on the other side of the bridge.
The city around us has changed remarkably, thanks in part to the efforts of the eighteen organizations in the BayouSpace project. Because of those efforts, the public is better informed about the watershed, and its importance in our lives. Schoolchildren now have a place for plays and other events events. And, for the first time in over a century, the Bayou has become clean enough for swimming, fishing and, yes, even drinking.”
Thanks to BayouSpace, we know what we can do. We did it.
It is now time to endeavor upon what we could do. What we might do. What we will do. With that, I would like to announce the beginning of a new era. A competition is now being held to determine the future of this site, and this city. Fourteen groups from across the city, country, and world, are now working to come up with what might be made of this site—an effort to craft for this site, and for this city, an even better tomorrow.” Julie wiped a tear from her eye, and hit the “next” button one last time. “Welcome to BayouPlace!” she said.
She paused, and took a sip from the glass her brother handed her. She grimaced. “….technically.”
The screen went dark. People clapped. It was over.
The audience recoiled, then laughed.
“In its fifty year life, the activities of BayouSpace have been well documented— as I showed you tonight. It was perhaps the constancy of the site that allowed us, now, to register the changes that it made possible. Without that constancy, it would be impossible for us to understand just how tremendous those changes have been. Or even to see them. Which brings me to my next, and final point:
This project was intended to show us what this city already was, and what we could do. You will certainly agree with me that it has been successful in that
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Ongoing from May 2010 with Robert Hadley, Co-Founder Non-profit public art initiative “Underfun!” is a collaborative research experiment employing color to monumentalize liminal spaces, in order to transform transportation infrastructure into instruments for the production of local identity. “Underfun!” is now finalizing plans for its first project, located in central Houston. Using color as a material instrument of effects, we are transforming an ignominious yet ubiquitous element of Houston’s cityscape into a phenomenologically engaging landmark. While other public art projects propose new programs or devise design solutions, “Underfun!” alternatively renegotiates a relationship between infrastructure and the community through the collaborative recreation of a forgotten urban space. Community members from both sides of the freeway will come together to paint the underpass over a series of weekends; by convening at the locus of their division, individuals from each side of the freeway will both negate and affirm their infrastructural separation, creating a wholly new constituency. Underfun Inc. is a Texas non-profit corporation, currently seeking 501(c)3 status.
PROMOTIONAL IMAGE GRAPHICS BY SAMUEL RAY JACOBSON
underfun
underfun Underfun! Local. Color.
Underfun!, a new community initiative using color to bring people and places together, is finalizing plans for its first project, located in central Houston where Greenbriar Drive passes under US Highway 59. Underfun! is a collaborative research experiment. The project employs color to monumentalize what is otherwise considered “garbage space”, translating an existing structure of means and materials into a new, projective architecture. By painting the underpass at US Highway 59 and Greenbriar Drive, Underfun! uses color as a “material instrument of effects,” transforming an ignominious yet ubiquitous element of our cityscape into a phenomenologically engaging landmark and bringing people together in the process. Underfun! is different from other public art projects. We not only propose a solution, we deliver one that actively engages the community as it seeks to refine the fabric of the city we all know and love.
A dirty space in a dirty city deserves an equally “quick and dirty” solution.
While other public art projects concerning Houston’s freeways propose new programs or devise entirely new design solutions, we alternatively renegotiate the relationship between the freeway and the community by creating an event centered around the re-creation of an otherwise forgotten urban space. Community members from both sides of the freeway will come together to paint the underpass over a series of weekends. By convening at the locus of their division, individuals from each side of the freeway will both negate and affirm their infrastructural separation, creating a wholly new constituency; one defined by the fact that it consists of members of two groups that should not be divided. With the help of a generous grant from the Rice Design Alliance “Initiatives for Houston” program, planning has already begun to bring more local color to our city and, if successful, this model of local collaboration and simple, effective spatial modification can be replicated throughout the city.
Underfun! is led by a group of energetic directors who share a passion for local color. Under the direction of Houston-based artist and designer Samuel Ray Jacobson, the board is led by Robert J. Hadley with assistance from Rice University School of Architecture Dean Sarah Whiting.
Contact:
Samuel Ray Jacobson, Project Director srjacobson@underfunhouston.org
Underfun! | Rice University MS-50 | PO Box 1892 | Houston, TX 77251
OFFICIAL PROJECT INFORMATION SHEET TEXT BY SAMUEL RAY JACOBSON, SEAN COWAN, AND ROBERT HADLEY
www.underfunhouston.org
UNDERFUN IS A NEW COMMUNITY INITIATIVE USING COLOR TO BRING PEOPLE AND PLACES TOGETHER. WITH THE HELP OF A GENEROUS GRANT FROM THE RICE DESIGN ALLIANCE “INITIATIVES FOR HOUSTON PROGRAM”, PLANNING HAS ALREADY BEGUN TO BRING MORE LOCAL COLOR TO OUR CITY. SLATED FOR COMPLETION THIS SPRING, UNDERFUN’S FIRST PROJECT IS LOCATED BETWEEN THE UPPER KIRBY DISTRICT AND BOULEVARD OAKS, WHERE GREENRBIAR DRIVE INTERSECTS US HIGHWAY 59. CONTACT US
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GENERAL INQUIRIES SHOULD BE SENT TO INFO@UNDERFUN.ORG OUR STAFF INCLUDES: Robert Joseph Hadley (B. A., University of Washington, 2009) is a Houston native currently pursing an advanced degree in architecture. He recently completed an internship with Streets for All Seattle, focusing on improving pedestrian life within the city. Mr. Hadley is serving as Director of Underfun!, Inc. RJHADLEY@UNDERFUNHOUSTON.ORG Samuel Ray Jacobson (B. A., Rice University, 2010; B. Arch., Rice University, 2012) is a student at the Rice School of Architecture. In April 2010, he completed “ColorCycle!”, a large-scale, student-initiated public art installation at Rice University funded by an Envision Grant from Leadership Rice, part of the Rice University Center for Civic Engagement. He is currently working for Office dA in Boston, Massachusetts. Mr. Jacobson is serving as Director of Underfun!, Inc. SRJACOBSON@UNDERFUNHOUSTON.ORG Sean Christopher Cowan (B. A., Rice University, 2008; B. Arch., Rice University, 2010) studied both visual arts and architecture. He has worked for three architecture firms over the past five years, including the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Genoa, Italy. Mr. Cowan is serving as the Project Manager of Underfun!, Inc. SCCOWAN@UNDERFUNHOUSTON.ORG
PROJECT WEBSITE DESIGN BY SAMUEL RAY JACOBSON
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Cycle! Organizational Matters Group (CC!OMG), Leadership e Department, Rice University Department of Public Affairs, re, Rice Student Volunteer Program, Rice Thresher, Rice iety at Rice, and the GIS Data Center at Fondren Library.
lic art installation on the campus of Rice University.
art project about the relationship between spatial practices nd everyday experience. A commentary on Rice University’s spaces and facilities that will cultivate greater dynamism s and foster our sense of community,”1 “ColorCycle!” sought or for diversity that, while iconic, was only apparent through > Read more about ColorCycle! in the Rice Thresher
April 2009 through April 2010
rsity together in one abstract gesture both in action as an as with ColorCycle! Organizational Matters Group (CC!OMG), Leadership Rice, Rice University cycles reclaimed from the of local universities were Police Department, Ricecampuses University Department of Public Affairs, Rice School of Architecture, Rice Student Volunteer Program, Rice Thresher, Rice Magazine, Architecture Society at Rice, by individuals from across the Rice University community— and undergraduates the GIS Data Center from at Fondren Library. ents, and every residential college and were distributed the campus to create continuous Volunteeringacross event and public art installation on theacampus of Rice University tched from east to west. Rice prides itself on the social, ColorCycle! was a public art project about the relationship between spatial practices of institutional regulation and intellectual diversity its students, faculty, and staff. Despite everyday experience. Aof commentary on Rice University’s commitment to “create the spaces and facilities that will cultivate dynamism and vibrancy the campus and foster sense of community,” ColorCycle! sought to create a spatial -to-daygreater interactions at theon university are our limited to a small metaphor for diversity that, while iconic, was only apparent through intentional exploration. As Project Director, I initiated rom ourthecollege or funding, major, people of and similar socioeconomic project, secured coordinated vendors volunteers, and served as lead designer. other staff or faculty in our department. Such experiential ColorCycle! tied the university together in one abstract gesture both in action as an as artifact. On April 3, 2010, bicycles overcome, often isn’t because of laziness, fear others, reclaimed from the campuses of local universities were painted one of of seven colors byor individuals from across the Rice University community—faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduates from every residential college and r installation, should one have observed the project from any department. These bikes were distributed across the campus to create a continuous gradient of color that stretched from east to west.that Rice prides itself on the social,the economic, geographic, andItintellectual diversity of its students, faculty, and s, it appeared all bikes were same color. was only staff. Despite this seeming diversity, day-to-day interactions at the university are limited to a small group of people— e of thefriends project could realized. bikes were orappropriated from our collegebe or major, people of As similar socioeconomic ethnic background, or other staff or faculty in our experiential self-similarity, easily overcome, often isn’t because nity, thedepartment. act ofSuch integration realized while during the painting eventof laziness, fear of others, or ignorance. Immediately after installation, should one have observed the project from any one point on Rice’s campus, it appeared that all bikes were the same color. It was only with effort that the full scope of the project could be realized. As bikes were appropriated by members of the community, the act of integration realized during the painting event was recreated in space.
with an Envision Grant from Leadership Rice.
ColorCycle! was generously supported with an Envision Grant from Leadership Rice.
Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Permit #7549 Houston, Texas
Rice University Creative Services–MS 95 P.O. Box 1892 Houston, TX 77251-1892
ColorCycle! Colorful flowers are an expected element of spring, but this year, Rice’s blossoms had some competition when a fleet of brightly painted bicycles spread like a rainbow across campus. The project was conceived by graduate student Scott Chamberlain, who wanted to highlight the university’s diversity, and was directed by architecture major Sam Jacobson ’10. Jacobson secured an Envision Grant from Leadership Rice, collected unclaimed bikes from the Rice University Police Department and the surrounding communities, and organized the painting and distribution of the bikes, which can be used for free by members of the Rice community. › › › ricemagazine.info/colorcycle
DEPLOYMENT MAP / RICE UNIVERSITY, HOUSTON TX / ONE DOT=ONE RACK
Color Cycle! Rice needs more color! Everyone can agree that a little extra color would be nice in these uncertain times. Our proposed project, “Color Cycle!”, uses the 236 bike racks on the Rice campus to create a continuous gradient of color that stretches from the westernmost part of the university to the easternmost part. In so doing, “Color Cycle!” celebrates our school’s continuing commitment to diversity and innovation, affirming Rice University President Leebron’s Vision for a Second Century goal of fostering a sense of community and making our campus a more vibrant, dynamic place. There is a wealth of meaning behind this simple gesture. At its most basic level, “Color Cycle!” is a fun and exciting way of temporarily livening up our stately but staid campus. By bringing together many different elements into a single unified whole, we affirm the importance of unity within our diverse campus community. Even though “Color Cycle!” uses many colors, it is green at heart. While the decision to walk instead of drive or to recycle waste paper instead of throw it away may seem small, its impact is large when multiplied to the scale of an entire society. This, however, is easy to forget. Just as “Color Cycle!” focuses one’s attention on something that unusually goes unnoticed, we hope that our project will similarly focus our community on the environmental impact of the environmental impact of their daily routine.
With your help, a more vibrant campus is just around the corner. Planning and development for “Color Cycle!” has been underway since May 2009. To date, the ‘Color Cycle!” team has mapped and photographed Rice’s bike racks, determined a color scheme, and has begun working with Rice University Facilities, Engineering and Planning to develop a concrete scheme for Spring 2009 project implementation and ongoing maintenance. If you are interested in participating in “Color Cycle!”, or are interested in finding our more, send us an email. Samuel Jacobson, Baker College ‘10 srj1@rice.edu Scott Chamberlain, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Department ‘12 schamber@rice.edu
OFFICIAL PROJECT INFORMATION SHEET JACOBSON, DESIGN BY MYRA LARA
OFFICIAL PROJECT INVITATION TEXT BY SAMUEL RAY TEXT BY SAMUEL RAY JACOBSON
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I’m an architecture major from California at Baker College. I’m Sam. I’m orange. “Let’s be honest here, Rice could use more color.” What’s your color? www.ricewhatstourcolor.com
I’m an art history major from New Jersey at Hanszen College I’m Claire. I’m yellow. “I like how this project ties the whole campus together in a subtle way, but also calls attention to these things that are everywhere that we never notice.” What’s your color? www.ricewhatstourcolor.com
I’m an antrhoplogy major from New Hampshire at Martel College I’m Johanna. I’m chartruse. “In spite of the differences in hometown, major, college, age, race, or affiliation with Rice, we can all connect on a simple level--our favorite color”. What’s your color? www.ricewhatstourcolor.com
I’m a grad student from California in the ecology department. I’m Scott. I’m blue. “Bicycles represent the color of change.” What’s your color? www.ricewhatstourcolor.com
ADVERTISMENTS DESIGN BY SAMUEL RAY JACOBSON PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL PHOTOS PROVIDED, GRAPHICS AND COPY BY SAMUEL RAY JACOBSON
2
Hurricane Alicia
August 1983. Category 3 Texas $3.0 (6.8) billion damage/costs 21 Deaths.
1985.1
January Central/northern he Florida aabout $1.2 bi b billion damage to citrus industry d No deaths. s.
So he Southeast Drought/Heat roug Wave av ve Summer 1986.
Severe summer drought in 5 parts of the southeastern U.S. with severe losses to agriculture; $1.0-$1.5 (2.1-3.1) billion in damage/costs; estimated 100 deaths.
IPCC Formed in 1988
by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) as an effort by the United Nations to provide the governments view of changes to the world's climate. The initial task for the IPCC as outlined in the UN General Assembly Resolution 43/53 of 6 December 1988 was to prepare a comprehensive review and recommendations with respect to the state of knowledge of the science of climate change; social and economic impact of climate change, possible response strategies, and elements for inclusion for a possible future international convention on climate.
FIGURE 1, INTERPRETIVE TIMELINE OF WORSTENING EXTREME EVENTS GRAPHICS BY SAMUEL RAY JACOBSON
1
FIRST REPORT ON CLIMATE
1992
1980. Central ntr and d eeastern a U.S.; estimated $20.0 es 0.0 (54.8) billion damage/costs /cc to agriculture and re related industries; estimated att e 10,000 deaths (includes ud de heat stress-related).4
Florida Freeze z ze
1
1988 1 19
1 1 June-September
1984 1
Drought/Heat Wave
1980
10
0
Drought/Heat Wave D
Hurricane Andrew August 1
Su Summer 1988. Drought in central en and eastern U.S; 3 3 severe vee losses ess to agric agriculture; cu u estimated m d$ $40.0 (76.4) b billion i damage/costs; ag ge/ estimated ed 4 5,000 to 10,000 deaths.
Category 5 hurricane Florida and Louisiana winds4 damage or dest over 125,000 12 12 homes; approximately p im pr m $27.00 ((4 billion il damage/costs; am o os deaths. d
Hurricane Hugo
September 1989. Category 4 hurricane devastates South and North Carolina with ~ 20-foot storm surge and severe wind damage after hitting Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands; over $9.0 (16.4) billion damage/costs (about $7.1 (12.9) billion in Carolinas); 86 deaths (57--U.S. mainland, 29--U.S. Islands).
California Freeze
December 1990. Severe freeze in the Central and Southern San Joaquin Valley caused the loss of citrus, avocado trees, and other crops in many areas. Several days of subfreezing temperatures occurred, with some valley locations in the teens.
Oakland Firestorm October 1991. Oakland,
low humidities and high winds; approximately $2.5 (4.2) billion damage/costs; 25 deaths.
SECOND RE ON CLIM
6
Midwestt 6F Flood
Summer 1993. Severe
central U.S. due to persistent heavy rains thunderstorm.$21.0 (3 billion damage/costs; deaths.
Southeast Ice Storm February 19
Intense ice storm with extensive damage in portions of TX, OK, A LA, MS, AL, TN, GA, NC, and VA; approxim $3.0 (4.6) billion damage/costs; 9 deat
Severe Weath and Flooding M
1995. Torrential rains, and tornadoes across Texas - Oklahoma and southeast Louisiana southern Mississippi, Dallas and New Orlea areas (10-25 inches in days) hardest hit; $5.0 (7.4-8.9) billion damage/costs; 32 dea
1992. hits a, high troy 4
43.5) ; 61
ding
e,
s and 32.8) ; 48
e
994. h
AR, SC, mately
ths.
her
May hail, s d , with ans n5 0-$6.0
aths.
4
Dakotas and Minnesota due to heavy spring 3 snowmelt; approximately $3.77 (5 ((5.2) 5 billion damage/costs; d da g 11 deaths. 31
Southern th 5 Drought/Heat g Wave SSummer 1998. 9 98
Severe drought ro and d heat wave from m Texas/Oklahoma a eeastward to the Carolinas; ol $ $6.0-$9.0 billion (8.3-12.4) 1 damage/costs st to agriculture and and ranching; at least 200 deaths. e
Eastern 9 Drought/Heat Wave Summer 1999. Very
dry summer and high temperatures, mainly in eastern U.S., with agricultural losses over $1.0 billion damage/costs; 502 deaths.
Hurricane Floyd September 1999.
Large category 2 hurricane makes landfall in eastern NC, causing 10-20 inch rains in 2 days, with severe PA, NY, NJ, DE, RI, CT, MA, NH, and VT; estimate of at least $6.0 (8.1) billion damage/costs; 77 deaths.
Southern Plains Severe Drought
Fall 1995 through Summer 1996. Severe drought in agricultural regions of southern plains--Texas and Oklahoma most severely affected; approximately $5.0 (7.2) billion damage/costs; no deaths.
2
to agriculture and nd related 31 industries; estimate at of over $4.0 (5.2) billion in 5 damage/costs; estimated at ed 140 deaths nationwide. 33
Hurricane Ivan,
Alabama, 09/2004
Hurricane Frances,30
persistent remnants of Tropical Storm Allison produces rainfall amounts of 30-40 inches in portions of coastal Texas and Louisiana, causing severe Houston area, then moves slowly northeastward; damage reported in TX, LA, MS, FL, VA, and PA; estimate of approximately $5.0 (6.4) billion in damage/costs; at least 43 deaths.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC), an international organization established by treaty in 1992, adopts a formal Framework Convention policy.
Widespread Drought Spring through
early Fall 2002. Moderate to Extreme drought over large portions of 30 states, including the western states, the Great Plains, and much of the eastern U.S.; estimate of over $10.0 (12.5) billion in damages/costs; no deaths.
Texas, 09/2008 4
Hurricane Katrina,
Tropical Storm Allison June 2001. The
38
US Gulf Coast, 08/2005 5 5
a few days later it was announced that Cooney would take up a position with ExxonMobil.
“The Truth About Denial,” an August 2007
cover story by Newsweek reported that "this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks, and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.”
Nobel Peace Prize,
2007, awarded to Al Gore and the Panel on Climate Change, 10 December 2007
toEXTREMES
Climategate g , 2009 ga
31
Philip Ph ilip Cooney ey, former lobbyist obbyy 6 and “climate team m leader,” 33 at the American Petroleum m Institute and President George W. Bush’s chief of staff of the Council of Environmental Quality, was convicted of having “repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents” by the New York Times. Cooney announced his resignation two days after the story of his tampering with
8 and burn over one million acres over a three-month span.
IPCC SREX
Hurricane Ike,
Florida, 09/2004 5
Wildfires, 2008
2012
2000. Severe drought and 2 persistent p heat over south-central cee and 3states southeastern ern 30
Hurricane Charley,
Florida, 08/2004
2008
Drought/Heat Wave Spring-Summer
2004
Northern Plains Flooding April-May
2000
1996
EPORT IMATE
35
9
A server at th the h Climatic Research hU Unit it (CRU) at the University ve y of East Anglia i hacked 6a ((UEA) is several r weeks before ra b the Copenhagen p pe Su Summit on climate m change, e, initiating a ccontroversy on n the legitimacy and p le purity of
inaugurates CLIMATE CONFESSIONAL: tours country, saves world.
Sceptics alleged d that the emails revealed that th researchers manipulating ip data in favor of climate i change, and suppressing r their critics. They believed b that this data was p proof of climate change fallacy la and 41 The accusations were e denied by CRU, stating t that the emails weree taken out of context and were 14
exchanges and questions between researchers. The situation was exacerbated by mainstream media by increased coverage. Because of the timing, scientists and policy makers said that the release of emails was a smear campaign intended to undermine48the climate conference.
Florida Freeze,
01/2010; resulting in severe crop and citrus losses.
Number of extreme events causing over $1 bn in damages Source: NCDC
Percentage of American adults who believe the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated Source: Gallup
FIGURE 2, NETOWRK OF EXPERTS GRAPHICS BY IRINA CHERNYAKOVA, RESEARCH BY NICOLE GOEHRING
FIGURE 3, EXPLANATORY INFOGRAPHIC GRAPHICS BY SAMUEL RAY JACOBSON
Climate Confessional January 2012; roll-out mid 2014. with Irina Chernyakova (MIT), Nicole Goehring (Nevada Public Works) Public art proposal Focusing on targeted, one-on-one interactions between experts and the general public, Climate Confessional is a national catalyst towards long term action, focused on local and regional circumstances. IPCC recommendations for the mitigation of risks posted by extreme weather events and climate change require unprecedented public and private initiatives, dependent on massive new investments of time, money, and material, and expert opinion is not enough to secure such cooperation. Even as extreme events in the United States continue to worsen (fig. 1), Gallup’s March 2011 update on Americans’ attitudes toward the environment shows a public that has become less worried about the threat of global warming, less convinced that its effects are already happening, and more likely to believe that scientists are uncertain about its occurrence. Direct communication will be key to winning back the trust and support of the American public. Credible, accessible information about vulnerability, exposure, and changing climate extremes can together inform adaptation and risk management through the transformation of public consciousness on such issues. Climate Confessional utilizes a nation-wide portfolio of experts on climate science, climate impacts, adaptation to climate change, and disaster risk management (fig. 2), that will interface with the public by means of a retrofitted confessional booth, moved across the country using responsible transportation options and re-usable, museum-quality casework, manufactured with sustainable materials. Emphasizing the spatial, temporal, economic, cultural, and environmental variables to the development practices, policies, and outcomes shaping disaster risk, experts will build public support for climate science at the retail level while learning how to adapt their communication of the important role that non-climatic factors play in determining the impacts of extreme events for future public initiatives (fig. 3). Programming at individual sites will be developed on an ad hoc basis to best advance local opportunities for effective advocacy. Additional information on topics discussed, and the project generally, will be available on a website. Select expert/public meetings and reactions will be recorded for inclusion in a radio documentary, to be executed at a later date. Climate Confessional was exhibited at MIT from April 20-29, 2012, as part of “To Extremes,” curated by Eli Kintisch. A trial run for the project is now in the planning stages.
2
Hurricane Alicia
August 1983. Category 3 Texas $3.0 (6.8) billion damage/costs 21 Deaths.
So he Southeast Drought/Heat roug Wave av ve Summer 1986.
Severe summer drought in 5 parts of the southeastern U.S. with severe losses to agriculture; $1.0-$1.5 (2.1-3.1) billion in damage/costs; estimated 100 deaths.
IPCC Formed in 1988
by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) as an effort by the United Nations to provide the governments view of changes to the world's climate. The initial task for the IPCC as outlined in the UN General Assembly Resolution 43/53 of 6 December 1988 was to prepare a comprehensive review and recommendations with respect to the state of knowledge of the science of climate change; social and economic impact of climate change, possible response strategies, and elements for inclusion for a possible future international convention on climate.
Drought/Heat Wave D
Hurricane Andrew August 1992.
Su Summer 1988. Drought in central en and eastern U.S; 3 3 severe ve e losses es s to agric agriculture; cu u estimated m d$ $40.0 (76.4) b billion i damage/costs; ag ge/ estimated ed 4 5,000 to 10,000 deaths.
Category 5 hurricane hits Florida and Louisiana, high winds4 damage or destroy 4 over 125,000 12 12 homes; approximately p im pr m $27.00 ((43.5) billion il damage/costs; am o os 61 deaths. d
Hurricane Hugo
September 1989. Category 4 hurricane devastates South and North Carolina with ~ 20-foot storm surge and severe wind damage after hitting Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands; over $9.0 (16.4) billion damage/costs (about $7.1 (12.9) billion in Carolinas); 86 deaths (57--U.S. mainland, 29--U.S. Islands).
California Freeze
December 1990. Severe freeze in the Central and Southern San Joaquin Valley caused the loss of citrus, avocado trees, and other crops in many areas. Several days of subfreezing temperatures occurred, with some valley locations in the teens.
Oakland Firestorm October 1991. Oakland,
low humidities and high winds; approximately $2.5 (4.2) billion damage/costs; 25 deaths.
6
Midwestt 6F Flooding Summer 1993. Severe,
central U.S. due to persistent heavy rains and thunderstorm.$21.0 (32.8) billion damage/costs; 48 deaths.
Southeast Ice Storm February 1994.
Intense ice storm with extensive damage in portions of TX, OK, AR, LA, MS, AL, TN, GA, SC, NC, and VA; approximately $3.0 (4.6) billion damage/costs; 9 deaths.
Severe Weather and Flooding May
1995. Torrential rains, hail, and tornadoes across Texas - Oklahoma and southeast Louisiana southern Mississippi, with Dallas and New Orleans areas (10-25 inches in 5 days) hardest hit; $5.0-$6.0 (7.4-8.9) billion damage/costs; 32 deaths.
4
Dakotas and Minnesota due to heavy spring 3 approximately snowmelt; $3.77 (5 ((5.2) 5 billion damage/costs; d da g 11 deaths. 31
Southern th 5 Drought/Heat g Wave SSummer 1998. 9 98
Severe drought ro and d heat wave from m Texas/Oklahoma a e eastward to the Carolinas; ol $ $6.0-$9.0 billion (8.3-12.4) 1 damage/costs st to agriculture and and ranching; at least 200 deaths. e
Eastern 9 Drought/Heat Wave Summer 1999. Very dry summer and high temperatures, mainly in eastern U.S., with agricultural losses over $1.0 billion damage/costs; 502 deaths.
Hurricane Floyd September 1999.
Large category 2 hurricane makes landfall in eastern NC, causing 10-20 inch rains in 2 days, with severe PA, NY, NJ, DE, RI, CT, MA, NH, and VT; estimate of at least $6.0 (8.1) billion damage/costs; 77 deaths.
Southern Plains Severe Drought
Fall 1995 through Summer 1996. Severe drought in agricultural regions of southern plains--Texas and Oklahoma most severely affected; approximately $5.0 (7.2) billion damage/costs; no deaths.
Drought/Heat Wave Spring-Summer
2
2000. Severe drought and 2 persistent p heat over south-central ce e and southeastern ern 3states 30
Hurricane Charley,
to agriculture and nd related 31 industries; estimate at of over $4.0 (5.2) billion in 5 damage/costs; estimated at ed 140 deaths nationwide. 33
Florida, 08/2004
Hurricane Ivan, Alabama, 09/2004
Hurricane Frances,30
Houston area, then moves slowly northeastward; damage reported in TX, LA, MS, FL, VA, and PA; estimate of approximately $5.0 (6.4) billion in damage/costs; at least 43 deaths.
38
Philip Ph ilip Cooney ey,
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
a few days later it was announced that Cooney would take up a position with ExxonMobil.
Widespread
cover story by Newsweek reported that "this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks, and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.”
(UNFCCC), an international organization established by treaty in 1992, adopts a formal Framework Convention policy.
Drought Spring through early Fall 2002. Moderate to Extreme drought over large portions of 30 states, including the western states, the Great Plains, and much of the eastern U.S.; estimate of over $10.0 (12.5) billion in damages/costs; no deaths.
Climategate g , 2009 ga
US Gulf Coast, 08/2005 5 5
former lobbyist obbyy 6 and “climate team m leader,” 33 at the American Petroleum m Institute and President George W. Bush’s chief of staff of the Council of Environmental Quality, was convicted of having “repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents” by the New York Times. Cooney announced his resignation two days after the story of his tampering with
“The Truth About Denial,” an August 2007
Nobel Peace Prize,
toEXTREMES
4
31
persistent remnants of Tropical Storm Allison produces rainfall amounts of 30-40 inches in portions of coastal Texas and Louisiana, causing severe
IPCC SREX
Texas, 09/2008
Hurricane Katrina,
Tropical Storm Allison June 2001. The
8 and burn over one million acres over a three-month span.
Hurricane Ike,
Florida, 09/2004 5
Wildfires, 2008
2012
Northern Plains Flooding April-May
2008
SECOND REPORT ON CLIMATE
2004
FIRST REPORT ON CLIMATE
2000
1
1996
January 1985.1 Central/northern he Florida aabout $1.2 bi b billion damage to citrus industry d No deaths. s.
1992
0
Florida Freeze z ze
1
1988 1 19
1 1 June-September 1980. Central ntr and de eastern a U.S.; estimated $20.0 es 0.0 (54.8) billion damage/costs /c c to agriculture and re related industries; estimated att e 10,000 deaths (includes ud de heat stress-related).4
1984 1
1980
Drought/Heat Wave
35
9
A server at th the h Climatic Research hU Unit it (CRU) at the University ve y of East Anglia a ( (UEA) is i hacked 6 several r weeks before ra b the Copenhagen p pe Su Summit on climate m change, e, initiating ac controversy on n the legitimacy and p le purity of
inaugurates CLIMATE CONFESSIONAL: tours country, saves world.
Sceptics alleged d that the emails revealed that th researchers manipulating ip data in favor of climate i change, and suppressing r their critics. They believed b that this data was p proof of climate change fallacy la and 41 The accusations were e denied by CRU, stating t that the emails were e taken out of context and were 14
exchanges and questions between researchers. The situation was exacerbated by mainstream media by increased coverage. Because of the timing, scientists and policy makers said that the release of emails was a smear campaign intended to undermine48the climate conference.
Number of extreme events causing over $1 bn in damages Source: NCDC
Percentage of American adults who believe the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated Source: Gallup
Florida Freeze,
01/2010; resulting in severe crop and citrus losses.
2007, awarded to Al Gore and the Panel on Climate Change, 10 December 2007
FIGURE 1, INTERPRETIVE TIMELINE OF WORSTENING EXTREME EVENTS GRAPHICS BY SAMUEL RAY JACOBSON AND IRINA CHERNYAKOVA
FIGURE 2, NETOWRK OF EXPERTS GRAPHICS BY IRINA CHERNYAKOVA, RESEARCH BY NICOLE GOEHRING
11
September 5, 2012; November 2, 2012; November 22, 2012 with Irina Chernyakova, Mariel Villere (MIT) Collaborative event series As co-founders of the SMArchS event series, two peers and I coordinated a volunteerexecuted multi-part food art event series. The Masters of Science in Architecture Studies degree program in MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning consists of six discipline groups; this multidisciplinary degree program intends to be interdisciplinary, but provides very few opportunities for exchange between discipline groups. Current SMArchS students voiced concerns for the future of the program, especially considering the impending change with a sixth group. Along with peers, we sought commonality and camaraderie, and are proposed several structured initiatives toward that end. The 2012 SMArchS Cultural Events Series fostered a greater sense of shared identity within the SMArchS program, and encouraged the engagement of the members of that program with the broader MIT community. With a series of volunteer-executed, evening-time, food-related events, Ingestatecture provided a much needed public presence for our small program, while also serving as a structure and platform for social programs, intellectual discussions, and collaborative design projects for the SMArchS group, contributing towards the overall disposition and well-being of the program. Event Descriptions: 1 -
“Ingestatecture 1,” 9/5/2012. An introductory event, including a presentation of food art precedents in both photographic and edible form. A twenty-four course dinner, one course for each precedents , included the curry from Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “Untitled (Free)” (1992/2007) as well as a roasted turkey in honor of Lady Gaga’s collaboration with Art Smith. Held at 92 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA
2 - “Exquisite Feast,” 11/2/2012. Throughout the evening, individuals from local design community presented proposals for film, performance and architecture events to take place in Cambridge. Building on the theme “Have it Your Way,” and the precedent “Andy Warhol Eats a Hamburger” (1981), 64 configurations of Whopper were served. Coordinated by Antonio Furgiuele, held at 92 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA 3 - “Strivers and Strugglers,” 11/22/2012. An evening of heavy eating and drinking coordinated by Albert Lopez, held at 92 Oxford Street, Thanksgiving night, for MIT students unable to travel home for the holiday.
INGESTATECTURE 2012
Deleted: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Deleted: DESIGN A FOOD-ART DINNER FOR SMARCHS @ MIT¶ Deleted: BE A PART OF IT.¶ Deleted: MIT Deleted: statement of no more than 500 words in length Deleted: -time Deleted: total Deleted: Spring Deleted: Anonymous Deleted: are due
Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger, 1981 GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS INGESTATECTURE, the MIT-based collaborative, competitive food-art event series, kicks off in Fall 2012 Entrants from across the SMArchS community are invited to submit design proposals for an evening food-related event that creates space for collaboration, experimentation, intellectual discussion, consumption, and performance related to the theme of this year’s SMArchS Colloquium, Design + Technology, to be held in a storefront gallery in Cambridge, MA in Winter 2013. GUIDELINES FOR TEAMS -Teams should represent at least 2 discipline groups -There is no limit to team size DESIGN GUIDELINES -Teams must work within the provided space -Teams must allow for approximately 40 attendees (seating, performing, eating, etc.) -Designs must involve food and adhere to a budget of $1500, to be provided by the organizers -Selected participants will be responsible for the preparation, construction, installation, and removal of their design and food -Stipends of $20 (in addition to the $1500) will be made available for competition design models
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION Entrants must submit a single PDF including
-A conceptual statement, maximum 500 words -Drawings that describe the design -Proposed menu with detailed execution plan -Production/installation plan and materials -Itemized budget A statement of intent to apply is due August 15, 2012. Each applicant will be assigned a project number that should be written on all materials. Final submissions should be submitted to ingestatecture@gmail.com by September 15, 2012 Review panel will include local architects/ designers, as well as members of the SMArchS program. Selections will be announced at a banquet in October. MORE INFORMATION: ingestatecture@gmail.com
Deleted: The SMArchS Food-Art Competition will launch in Fall 2012. Dinners will elaborate on the themes addressed in the 2012 and 2013 colloquiums (Design+Technology and Waste+Failure, respectively), while creating space for students to collaborate, discuss, eat, and perform. The dinner will be held at a storefront space, off-campus in Cambridge.¶ G Deleted: UIDELINES FOR DESIGN Deleted: members Deleted: -Teams made up of members representing 2+ discipline groups will submit project ideas that engage eating as a performance and the colloquium themes as an intellectual grounding. There is no limit to the team size.¶ Deleted: X sq-ft boundaries of the storefront Deleted: students Deleted: al Deleted: of the SMArchS community and the architecture/design field at large, and will be an event in and of itself. ¶ Deleted: Submissions can be emailed to food-art-smarchs Deleted: Stipends of $20 will be made available for design models.¶ -Projects will be funded by a Graduate Student Life Grant and have a budget of $1500 excluding the $20 model. Deleted: Participants will construct and install their own design, make or arrange for their own food, seating, etc. Some coordination assistance will be available in regards to the space. Deleted: Section Break (Continuous) SPONSORED BY A GRADUATE STUDENT LIFE GRAN
COLLABORATIVE REVISIONS, INGESTATECTURE CFP, APRIL 2012 SAMUEL JACOBSON AND MARIEL VILLERE
INGESTATECTURE 1, 9/5/2012 PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY 92 OXFORD STREET
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2/24
3/24
4/24
The Last Supper Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli after Leonardo da Vinci, 1520
Food Gordon Matta-Clark, 1971
IAUS fellows at dinner Suzanne Frank, 1974
In and Out Kevin Lasko and Janine Antoni, 2012
CLOCKWISE FROM LOWER LEFT: BILL ELLIS, RICK WOLKOWITZ, PETER EISENMAN, LIZ EISENMAN, MARIO GANDELSONAS, MADELON VRIESENDORP, REM KOOLHAAS, JULIA BLOOMFIELD, RANDALL KORMAN, STUART WREDE, ANDREW MACNAIR, ANTHONY VIDLER, RICHARD MEIER, UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN, KENNETH FRAMPTON, DIANA AGREST, CAROLINE ‘COTY’ SIDNAM, JANE ELLIS, SUZANNE FRANK, AND ALEXANDER GORLIN.
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Eat Art Daniel Spoerri, 1967
Bone Dinner Companis, 2011
Three States of Hors d’ Ourvres Project on Spatial Sciences, 2010
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Three States of Hors d’ Ourvres Project on Spatial Sciences, 2010
Three States of Hors d’ Ourvres Project on Spatial Sciences, 2010
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3D Food Printing Cornell University, 2011 The Dinner Party Judy Chicago et al., 1974-1979 Fear Eats the Soul Rirkrit Tiravanija, 2011
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Itinerant Gastronomy, Chicago Mercantile Exchange Mary Ellen Carroll, 2012 My Dinner with Andre Dir. Louis Malle, 1981
Itinerant Gastronomy, Goethals Bridge Mary Ellen Carroll, 2004
Itinerant Gastronomy, High Line Mary Ellen Carroll, 2006
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Beer Summit 2009 A Very Gaga Thanksgiving Special 2011
Community Episode 219, “Critical Film Studies” Dir. Richard Aoyade, 2011
“Tableau Vivant,” Modern Family 2012
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PARAMETERS:
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accommodate 51 smarchs students, potentially social activity + food + creative approach free to work in teams monthly/bi-monthly send us a proposal you design, you arrange, you save your receipts
Floor Cake Claes Oldenberg, 1962
Surrealist Forest Ball Salvador Dali, 1941
Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger Andy Warhol, 1981
PRECIDENT PRESENTATION, INGESTATECTURE 1, 9/5/2012 GRAPHICS BY SAMUEL RAY JACOBSON
INGESTATECTURE 2, 11/2/2012 PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY 92 OXFORD STREET
INGESTATECTURE 3, 11/22/2012 PHOTOGRAPH BY SAMUEL RAY JACOBSON
12
BOOKISH April 20-June 1, 2012 Exhibit at the Rotch Library of Architecture and Planning, MIT Executed in conjunction with the symposium “Unbound: Speculations on the Future of the Book,” BOOKISH explores the means and methods through which artist books challenge the book as traditionally conceived. By their selective, intentional performance and denial of normative aspects of book design— durability, flatness, narrative structure, boundedness, order, and pagination—these limited-edition, artist-conceived objects negate such norms while sustaining their worth and continuing relevance. At once a study in objectified interpolation and post-structural anti-essentialism, these 20 items selected from the Rotch Library Limited Access Collection push the limits of book form during a time when the viability of the book has come to seem increasingly untenable. On “Unbound: Speculations on the Future of the Book:” This symposium explored the future potential of the book by engaging practitioners and performers of this versatile technology to ask some key questions: is the book an artifact on its deathbed or a mutable medium transitioning into future forms? What shape will books of the future take? Grounded in this technology’s history, “Unbound” reflected critically on possible futures, promises, and challenges of the book, showcasing practices by writers and artists, putting them in conversation with scholars and thinkers from across the disciplines who are framing discourse and questions about book-related technotexts.
> Learn more about “Unbound” here
EXHIBIT OVERVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIT DEANS OFFICE
EXHIBIT OVERVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIT DEANS OFFICE
case 4/4 (fragmentation) Books are typically a singular and bounded objects, a fact crucial to their identity, circulation, and storage. Each of the books in this case subvert that paradigm: through unbounded presentation (Postcards from America), mise en abyme (Visionaire 39), the mimetic reproduction of another book work (Red books), the presentation of multiple objects as a single piece (Günther Uecker: 10 years of a kineticist’s work), or the presentation of the artist book as infinite recursion (World libraries of artist books).
1
Jim Goldberg et al, Postcards from America. New York: Magnum Photos, 2012.
2
Visionaire 39: “PLAY.” New York: Visionaire: c. 2002.
3
Andy Warhol. Red books. Göttingen: Steidl , 2004.
4
Willoughby Sharp. Günther Uecker: 10 years of a kineticist’s work. New York: Kineticism Press, 1966.
5
Kermaire, Christine. World libraries of artist books. Charleroi, 2007.
Rotch Library Limited Access Collection In May 2011, five photographers and a writer set out from Austin in an RV, arriving in Oakland two weeks later. The resulting limited edition book is a collection of objects—a book, five bumper stickers, a newspaper, two fold-outs, three cards, a poster and five zines, in a signed and numbered box—that collectively document the experience of the trip. Fragmentary and fragile, Postcards from America nonetheless maintains many of the diagrammatic traditions of book publishing: media printed on paper, bounded and singular presentation, and a strong guiding narrative. Includes photographic works by Jim Goldberg, Susan Meiselas, Paolo Pellegrin, Alec Soth, and Mikhael Subotzky; essays by Ginger Strand. This is copy 88 of 500.
Rotch Library Limited Access Collection Issued in a black wooden box (designed to mimic a gaming console sold by the project’s sponsor, Sony) this issue of the Visionaire series consists of 16 artists’ flip books. Contributors include Mario Testino, Baz Luhrmann, Steven Meisel, Pedro Almadóvar, Karl Lagerfeld, Wong Kar Wai, Nick Knight, Spike Jonze, Craig McDean, Peter Lindbergh, Steven Klein, Tony Oursler, Darren Aronofsky, Roman Signer, and Imaginary Forces and Greg Lynn. While composed of many parts, the books-within-a-book are formally and commercially rendered as one by their packaging. Visionaire is a multi-format album of fashion and art, published three times a year, in exclusive numbered limited editions, since spring 1991.
Rotch Library Limited Access Collection Reproductions of Polaroids taken by Warhol between 1969 and 1975, inside reproductions of the booklets in which Warhol collected them. Multiple in its parts and its authorship the Red Books offer a subtle but perplexing challenge the normative diagram of book form while exploiting it for the purposes of marketing. Produced in conjunction with an exhibition at Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, May 13-June 19, 2004.
Rotch Library Limited Access Collection What would be an ordinary limited-edition retrospective monograph is transformed into an artist book with the inclusion of an original, signed, numbered work by the artist. When viewed together, the two create an opaque symbiotic symmetry—the book rendered impregnable by the artwork, but also more evocative; and the art rendered unusually meaningful when inextricably tied to a decade of artistic context.
Rotch Library Limited Access Collection Stiff black bifold paper; card with title and contents mounted to inner left side with clear plastic and grommets; plastic case of breath-freshening strips mounted to inner right side with clear plastic and grommets.
13
After Sexuality & Space Conclusion to Sexuality & the Ethos of Architectural Critique Samuel Ray Jacobson Forthcoming, 2014
M
ark Wigley concludes “Untitled: The Housing of Gender” with a dismissal of identity politics, tautologically positing architecture as the metanarrative to a praxis (identity politics) for which it had been proven as inherently opposed, by his own reasoning. For this, Wigley returns to issue of “house” versus “home,” referred to in an earlier footnote: But no matter how improper, the image of the occupation of this supplementary “house,” like the political arguments “behind” most theories of masquerade, inasmuch as they presuppose, even if only “strategically,” the agency of a subject behind the mask who can manipulate its surface, raises the dilemma of essentialism whose complexity cannot be respected here other than to note that the question of essentialism is no more than the question of interiority. Which is to say that identity theory is necessarily spatial theory. (Wigley 388) Pushing further, Wigley folds Beatriz Colomina’s engagement of architecture and representation in “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism” into his description of a future project of sexuality and space, as initiated by the event of “Sexuality and Space” and the publication of its proceedings:
The question of sexuality and space becomes that of the multiplicity of mechanisms of representation that establish the subtle architecture of these key psychospatial closets and whose contemporary displacement by new mechanisms in the age of electronic representation marks the space of new sexualities. An interrogation of these mechanisms is required in order to reread the spatial arguments inscribed within psychoanalytic theory before that theory can be applied to architecture in a way that does not simply reproduce the abrupt separation of space and sexuality on which both institutional discourses currently appear to depend. But this involves more than simply making space the proper object of discourse by addressing its strategic role “in” theories of sexuality. As Irigaray points out, “the fact that Freud took sexuality as the object of his discourse does not necessarily imply that he interpreted the role of sexualization in discourse itself, his own in particular.” Likewise, discourses are spatial mechanisms that construct sexuality before giving either sexuality or space a title. Space is itself closeted. The question must shift to the elusive architecture of the particular closets that are built into each discipline, but can only be addressed with the most oblique gestures. (389) It is not surprising that as he concludes his essay, Wigley is positing Mulvey’s flawed psychoanalytic engagement of space as the thesis of an ostensibly more rigorous counter-engagement. It is furthermore appropriate that the change Wigley implies travels through that covered in “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism:” an address of “the question of sexuality and space” by means of architecture and its trajective representations. These things are expected because, together, “The Split Wall: Domestic
Voyeurism” and “Untitled: The Housing of Gender” configure a particular place for sexuality within architectural scholarship. I’d like to dwell on this minor fact before moving to consider what little came after Sexuality & Space, as a means of closing out this volume. I need to say, first, that in Sexuality & Space, psychoanalysis is used to produce a theory for the implication of space in sexuality, and vice versa. In “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism” and “Untitled: The Housing of Gender,” fashion is explored as a node between the gendered individual and society, played out in the membrane between public and private spheres. Thus style, as a formal expression of biographical detail and individual eccentricity, is interrogated as the fundamental element of the gendering of spaces and therefore of sexuality and space. As Roland Barthes argues, in Writing Degree Zero, “the allusive virtue of style is… a matter of density, for what stands firmly and deeply beneath style, brought together harshly in its figures of speech, are fragments of a reality entirely alien to language.” What I have done, in this study, primarily, is investigate Colomina’s figures of speech as they configure her adaptation of Mulvey’s theory of the gaze, which is itself generative of Wigley’s supporting historiography; as I have done so, I have constructed a counter-narrative that explains the mechanics of Colomina’s particular and unforgiving blend of feminist film theory and phallocentrism, which, as I demonstrated, engenders an inherently self-defeating project. Bearing in mind the centrality of the second chapter of this study, its composite narrative can be summarized as follows: in “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism,” Colomina applies Laura Mulvey’s famous theorization of the male gaze, as that which objectifies the female body, in cinema, to analogous architectural examples. Because of contradictions between her subject matter
and method, Beatriz Colomina’s literalization of applied theory elicits a pedagogical construct whose ultimate consequence is its own negation. Psychoanalysis is a synchronic hermeneutic methodology; it reads human thought as if its signification, while subject to dialectical sublimation, does not decay. Similarly, in “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism,” the psychoanalytic reading of architecture’s sexuality and sexuality’s architectures operate on the assumption that architectural disciplinarity is subject to synchronically legible epistemological structures, i.e. the discipline is, itself, a symbolic system which whose signification operates independent of historical progress. In the process, Beatriz Colomina inscribes within her narrative a predetermined abjection of feminist theory within architectural discourse. This is because Colomina’s assertion of a psychoanalytic metanarrative amplifies her inherent positivism, such that her essay’s description of Loos and Corbusier constructs itself as an instance in a larger, but still bounded, solution to “the problem of ‘Sexuality and Space;’” which is to say that, in “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism,” the intersection of architecture and sexuality is defined as the shared disposition of a class of (male) architects in the first half of the twentieth century. It is with this in mind that Mulvey’s feminist film theory takes on the supplemental nature ascribed to it. It is no coincidence that Wigley follows Colomina in the volume Sexuality & Space, as he takes her investigation of the gaze as the foundation for his historiography of architectural discourse as “organized by man for man.” It is furthermore no coincidence that, as that volume concludes with Wigley’s essay, historiography is used as the foundation for further inquiry, which leaves sexuality aside in the interest of revising the history of the architectural avant-garde. Although
this is by no means my conclusion, from this last statement it can be argued that, intertextually, “Untitled: The Housing of Gender” and “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism” render sexuality as a concept whose representation by architecture is inherently symptomatic of its historical context. This is to say that in “Untitled: The Housing of Gender” and “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism” the problem of sexuality can be understood as a condition of related historical concepts (of Adolf Loos and the “metropolitan individual,” of Le Corbusier and the camera; of Alberti and “the closet,” or of Semper and 19th century art history), and therefore sublimated into other scholastic inquiries (namely: critical theory and historiography). That this should be so is itself symptomatic of Colomina and Wigley’s narratives of the architectural history of early Modernism—when masculine subjectivity is taken to represent subjectivity as such (as it is in their essays) it is not worth discussing. In such a situation the consideration of masculine subjectivity as subjectivity is inherently the consideration of any other problem of ontology, since its gendered status is considered transparent and, therefore, inherently inconsequential. To this end, the void between feminist studies and architectural theory identified as the subject and ostensibly alleviated antecedent to Sexuality & Space, by Beatriz Colomina, in the proceedings’ introduction, is precisely that which is asserted by her and Mark Wigley’s related essays. Taking some liberties with Colomina’s introduction: to the extent that “feminist theorists… conspicuously ignored in architectural discourse and practice” are addressed by Sexuality & Space, the “interdisciplinary exchange in which theories of sexuality are reread in architectural terms and architecture is reread in sexual terms” by its essays does little more than to reassert the very silence that its inquiry ostensibly alleviated.
S
uch is my thesis. Returning to the introduction, and my motivations for performing this close reading, I’d like to take some time to consider the few projects which came out of Sexuality & Space in order to spell out, as directly as close reading allows, my critique of that original publication. The conclusion of Mark Wigley’s “Untitled: The Housing of Gender” is written to leave one wondering, “now what?” In its own, complicated, way, historiography answers this question with: nothing much; which is to say: more of the same. The abstract included with this document might be somewhat misleading in implying that there are no architectural publications related to the subjects addressed in Sexuality & Space. There are about a dozen readers on issues of sexuality, gender identity, architecture, urban design, and planning that have been published since 1990; it should be pointed out however that these works are both largely unassociated with each other and are disconnected from that which was published in Sexuality & Space. More importantly, I argue that such publications fail to address the need for a comprehensive, architecturallyspecific discourse on the subjects of gender and sexuality, as is outlined in the introduction to Sexuality & Space. Therefore, based on the singularité of “sexuality” that might be gleaned from that volume, I am confident in saying that very little has been written on the subject of sexuality in architectural scholarship. There is no discourse. Here is an example of a book published after Sexuality & Space that proves my point. In 1999 Routledge published the reader Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. Edited by Iain Borden, Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, the volume brings together “the most important essays concerning subjects of gender, space, and
architecture.” The book is divided into 3 parts, each of which includes an introduction by Jane Rendell, Director of Architectural Research at the Bartlett. The publication is remarkable in its scope, incorporating fundamental texts by feminists like Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, and Audre Lorde alongside the critiques of Doreen Masse, bell hooks, and Rosalyn Deutsche. It also includes texts by Diana Agrest, Alice T. Friedman, and Beatriz Colomina (specifically, excerpts from “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism”). With its many inclusions, the publication intends to complement the understanding of architecture “within the context of its production” as a means of “providing an opening of [that] territory to future new ideas and practices.” As an introductory text, the volume instantiates a discourse to succeed it; inasmuch as this forthcoming inquiry is forthcoming, it is not given any reality in the immediate present. To complicate this, the rigorously interdisciplinary mode with which this volume presents its content implies a categorical division between its explicitly philosophical content and that which refers more directly to architecture. The conceptual progression between its three parts—“GENDER;” “GENDER, SPACE;” and “GENDER, SPACE, ARCHITECTURE”—implies the existence of a spectrum of related inquiries on gender and architecture, it is true, but this spectrum nonetheless spans an interval between poles of the explicitly philosophical and the explicitly architectural. As the volume traverses this interval, it also moves forward in historical time, starting Part 1 with A Room of One’s Own (Virginia Woolf, published 1928) to and concluding Part 3 with “Bad Press” (Elizabeth Diller, completed 1998). Although each subsequent section of the volume is labeled with an additional word, as its text progresses the intellectual purview of Gender Space Architecture actually narrows—from the literal and figural space of women in a
tradition dominated by patriarchy to the limited description of specific, post-feminist design practices. As a whole its narrative would be beautifully poetic if it weren’t so banal in its implications: namely that, as time goes on, philosophy collapses into particular architectural sites, projects, and ideas. History dictates silence. The negative consequences of Sexuality & Space, as I have read it, are not related to the banality of Gender Space Architecture, or its contemporaries. No, what Sexuality & Space suffers from—and what has been my interest here--is that volume’s specific production of silence. While it effectively instantiated a new, interdisciplinary exchange, Sexuality & Space facilitates no possibility for further inquiry besides what it, itself, has addressed. It is for this reason that the volume is both the first and last book-length publication dedicated to a comprehensive discourse on sexual identity and the discipline of architecture. I can prove this by pointing to its two stillborn offspring. Two works can be said to have succeeded Sexuality & Space— while both are successful in their continuation of discourses initiated by the 1990 symposium, they do little to advance that discourse beyond its transformation of architecture into a phallocentric exercise of sexual identity and desire. Better known of the two is Mark Wigley’s 1995 book, White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (MIT Press). In this revisionist history of architectural modernism Wigley shows how the image of modern architecture as white is the effect of a historiographical tradition that suppressed the color of the surfaces of its buildings; recalling “Untitled: The Housing of Gender,” Wigley argues that this suppression results from a sexual logic that marginalized the “masquerade” of the nineteenth century’s florid tendencies towards polychrome and ornament. Less well-known is the
1995 volume Stud: Architectures of Masculinity; employing a blend of feminist and psychoanalytic theory similar to Sexuality & Space, Stud illustrates the coding of masculinity and homosexual desire in the design and adaptation of twentieth century architectural environments. While each is compelling in its own right, neither project furthers the “displacement of Architecture” Sexuality & Space had intended to initiate; on the contrary… Something, something, something. I don’t really know what to say here. I haven’t read either all that closely. I find them boring. I don’t think there’s much point in saying that modernism is an exercise of male, architectural identity. Anyone who’s been through architecture school, lately, and doesn’t have their head totally up their ass, could tell you the same thing; to put it in a book (or two) just seems, to me, like chauvinism. Monumentalizing the unspoken sexism of twentieth century architecture though revisionist historiography does nothing but substantiate our field’s many unspoken sexisms; written more cynically, I think that both Wigley and Saunders play to a certain illiterate naïveté that plagues the field of architectural studies, because nobody reads, really, and everybody likes being told what they already know, by smart people, in language they can barely understand. Nothing is gained, and the possibility of related counternarratives is deferred by one more instance of more of the same. As the status quo re-instantiates itself, its myth becomes that much harder to demystify. From a feminist perspective, this is incredibly unproductive—not because it is oppressive (who cares about what Mark Wigley has to say, really?), but because it makes properly dialectical engagement more difficult.
T
here is one more thing to say. The fifth Google Image Search result
for “Beatriz Colomina Mark Wigley” as of April 7, 2013 is the poster for a 1994 exhibition/event series “Queer Space,” hosted by the Lower Manhattan design gallery Storefront for Art and Architecture. Organized by Beatriz Colomina, Hans Urbach, Cindy Patton, and Mark Wigley, the exhibition assembled architectural mediations of questions like How can minorities define their rights to occupy spaces within the city? How can such space be legitimized, given a history and a future? Is it even physical space that is in question, or is it the space of discursive practices, texts, codes of behavior and the regulatory norms that organize social life? When I found out about “Queer Space” the first time, performing a Google Image Search while doing research for this book, I thought maybe by looking into it I could flesh out the more incidental and secondary considerations I had had while I was writing. Just from the title and timing, “Queer Space” seems like it could have been a post-script to Sexuality & Space; even though this study is a close reading, it might have involved something interesting that, maybe, I could use in the conclusion. Also, maybe, somewhere in the archive, I might discover some details about the working relationship between Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley—since neither talked to me in conjunction with this project, and Princeton’s archivist was entirely unhelpful. In early April 2013 I went to New York, and I went through the Storefront’s archive, and I didn’t really find what I was looking for—which is also to say that I did. In the two binders of material saved from the talks and inhouse installations associated with “Queer Space,” there is only one item authored by either Beatriz Colomina or Mark Wigley. In the corner of a
poster-sized, folded pamphlet there is a two-paragraph introduction signed “Beatriz Colomina, June 9, 1994.” I am a little suspicious but also unsurprised that this is all that remains from “Queer Space” with either her name or Wigley’s attached to it. As far as I can tell, “Queer Space” started as a follow-up to Sexuality & Space, and may have initially been related to the release of the proceedings. According to Colomina’s introduction, The Queer Space project started as a discussion group formed in the Fall of 1992 [sic] between Dennis Dollens, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Elizabeth Diller, and myself. The initial impulse came from StoreFront’s invitation to organize an exhibition that would articulate the role of space in questions of sexuality. The timing of the project’s inception—late 1992—corresponds with the publication date of Sexuality & Space; moreover, the language of the selection above, in particular the phrase “the role of space in questions of sexuality” resonates with Colomina’s phrase, in the introduction to Sexuality & Space, “the question of ‘Sexuality and Space’.” For reasons that remain unexplained, the “Queer Space project” rapidly became something different from what Colomina expected, and I don’t think that she was all that happy about this. As Colomina writes, “Even before the first meeting, the focus became queer space. I don’t think that any of us quite realized what we were getting in to [sic].” Considered with the reference to the event as “The Queer Space project” rather than with the title, “Queer Space,” this comment implies a level of derision, if not frustration, hidden behind a scrim of professional courtesy. That this should be so is accentuated by the exasperation implied by Colomina’s ambiguous and ambivalent concluding description of the exhibit/event: The project did not initially have
one single program but was always multifaceted and ambiguous. The very idea of an exhibition was repeatedly contested. Many possibilities were discussed involving the space of shop windows, billboards, video games, e-mail, symposium, fashion shows, the Circle line, walking tours, bus tours, queer kinesthetic, posters, personal ads, performances, actions around the proposed AIDS drop in center in Soho, mapping homophobic geographies, analysis of queer migrations, and so on. At a certain point we decided to begin a long series of such events by registering the diverse responses to an open call to proposals and manifestos. The resulting installation is not so much an exhibition but a forum for debate. Similarly, collective endeavors associated with “Queer Space” are only referenced in relation to their failure to gain comprehension and validation: What we had anticipated as a series of organization meetings to get the project started turned into a long series of discussions over Chinese rolls at a local joint across the street from Store Front. Over time, other people joined some of our discussions, including Rosalyn Deutsche, Douglas Crimp, Robert Reid-Pharr, John Ricco, Robin Lewis, Jackie Goldsby, Jeff Nunokawa, Mark Wigley, Henry Urbach, and Cindy Patton—the last three quickly becoming part of the organizing group. Traces of this organizing dialogue can be found in a series of manifestos that were produced over these months and across many fax machines as we struggled to clarify the project for ourselves and for the myriad of institutions to which we applied for funds […] We are proud to announce that we were rejected by every institution that we applied to for financial support. I am not surprised that, here, Colomina really isn’t saying much aside from explaining what happened, while at the same time
writing in a manner which implies the judgment of failure, impotence, and obscurity often projected onto both homosexuals and to queer theory.
H
ow does this follow-up on Sexuality & Space? It doesn’t. And that’s how it helps to conclude this book. They said a lot of things, and I don’t really disagree; I’m just frustrated by a lot of it. I think it was kind of short-sighted. This is how I feel about Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley’s contributions to Sexuality & Space, and I envision that this is how Beatriz Colomina felt while organizing “Queer Space.” I like to imagine that, as she was eating her “Chinese rolls,” Colomina recognized her frustration as at least in part the result of her scholastic method, as an organizer, editor, and participant in Sexuality & Space; because the sort of dilated confusion, apprehension, and false starts she encountered while putting together “Queer Space” bear an uncanny resemblance to that which, I think, is encountered when one tries to continue upon that started in Sexuality & Space from a framework unrelated to that which is explicitly addressed in the proceedings—like, from Eve Sedgwick’s perspective (or, my own, as informed by her work). Thinking about it now, I have to laugh. Thinking again, I recognize that Colomina’s response to all that is additionally uncanny in the form it took. In the last block quote, I noticed the following sentence: Here we have reproduced one of those circulating faxes as an instances [sic] of the kind of exchanges that occurred (and may be [sic] too, of the pleasures and difficulties of collaborative writing). To the left of the introduction, there is a reproduction of a fax from Eve Sedgwick. Is this gesture not, in its own way, analogous my response to Sexuality & Space? In the absence of having anything to say, we
reproduce the original text and add some notes… hoping that, now, we have somehow been able to add something. Or, maybe we’re just mad that things didn’t turn out how we hoped they would, and hope that just by representing the situation others will agree about the indignity. In the fax, Eve Sedgwick misspelled Colomina’s first name. In the archive, I noticed this, and I snickered. What an idiot, I found myself thinking.
there is an equivalency between the conversation that I had and the subject matter of the essays I address. Rather, what I am saying is that the frustration of inventing a discourse to create conversation is that which is signified by the void Sexuality & Space has left us with. Sometimes there is nothing to say.
ENDNOTES 1.
H
aving written all this I am brought to wonder how much, really, needs to be said. When I was in New York in early April I also met up with one of the partners of the architecture firm I once worked for; we spent most of our time talking about what it meant to be a gay architect: about the office on Canal Street he once shared with Joel Saunders and Matthias Hollwich, years ago; about his voyeuristic design sensibility; about flirtation, desire, and professionalism; bickering about Charles Renfro’s media presence. It was the second item in that list which interested us the most, and it was that which we discussed for about forty-five minutes of the hour and a half we were together: what it meant to him; how others capitalize on their gay sensibility, as a practice; how that might differ, generationally. As we realized, together, the subject is not personal, but it is atomistic: voyeurism, and a related design practice based on queer marginality, is inherently based on an individual rather than communal identity; furthermore our conversation emerged from and remains defined by the circumstances of our relationship to each other, informally. Our discussion would have been changed radically by moving that it to a more formal, academic setting. My intention in writing this is not to say that gay architectural practice, or whatever, has no discourse beyond gossip, or that
Barthes, Roland. “What is Writing?” Writing Degree Zero. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2012 [1953, tr. 1967]. Print. 11.
2. Written such that an historian can read what was represented then, and always will be able to, regardless of any historical duration between the enacting of that representation, originally, and the situation in which it is being analyzed 3. Because of homophobic institutional disavowal, according an interesting conversation I had with its editor over drinks at the Cambridge bar “Paradise,” not long ago; in support of Mr. Saunders’ claim I will note that the publication is not included among the Princeton Papers on Architecture described on the Princeton School of Architecture website, as of April 7, 2013, and that this seems to me to be an intentional oversight.