Recess 2 by Boston Architectural College

RECESS The Boston Architectural College Journal

Credits FACULTY EDITOR IN CHIEF Yoonjee Koh STUDENT EDITORS Sana Aladwani Gregory Baker Giovanna Ballani Antonio Barreto Salvatore Cherone Rebecca Dejenie Rowaida Dweik Jessica Gilbert Shahin Kiyomarsi Allen Ly Parnian Mahmoudi Michael Marr Jhamela Rae Mastinggal Lorenzo Nshizirungu Jennifer Ortiz Jonathan Suhirman Akasya Surmeli Luisa Ortiz-Wren Dyuthi Prakash Malik Wocker Zhouqi Xu ALUMNI EDITORS Alexandre Costa Yiran Shu Published in 2021 ISSN 2771-0874 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed or transmitted in any form or any means of electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers. The Publisher and Editors are not held responsible for errors or any consequences arising from the use of information contained in this journal. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Publisher or Editors ONLINE www.bacjournal.org instagram.com/bac_logue 4

Hello It is with great pleasure that we present the second BAC student journal RECESS. This issue reflects back on the years of 2020-21 and highlights work throughout the BAC that focuses on topics which repeatedly emerged throughout this past year. We cover work that realize the importance of health and well-being, underscore the shift towards digital learning, bring renewed awareness on social equity, and expand our viewpoint beyond the immediate context. Please enjoy a moment of pause, take a breath, and flip through these pages to celebrate diverse conversations that surround the BAC. Yoonjee Koh Faculty Editor-in-Chief

Message from the BAC President

RECESS Those in-between spaces and times, The times of escape from the regimen of classrooms, We look forward to recess, The times of purposeless play and sheer bliss. The conjunctive moments—unprogrammed—for conversations to arise: Streaming banters in the hallways, Friendships forged on the playgrounds, Relationships kindled under banyan trees, And chance encounters sparking disruptive dreams. Recesses of the city lay bare Authentic moments of unscripted realities Inconvenient (and hidden away). Recesses of history, those silent gaps, are replete With fecund messiness between political orders, Revolutions and insurgencies, Uncertain times full of prospects.

Residual spaces and crevices are the recesses For the oppressed, the ignored, and those who are the shadows That fit not into the privileged orders of the times. The BAC has always thrived in the spaces in between: As a club founded in 1889 to fill the recesses, As a center on the outer edges of the privileged circles, As a college melding multiplicitous practices and pedagogies, A pathless land for fearless wanderers and wonderers, A movement emerging from the recesses. These are the works full of intersectional play and possibility Featuring intrepid inquiries of minor themes emerging From the recesses between grand narratives.

By Dr. Mahesh Daas BAC President and ACSA Distinguished Professor of Architecture

Contents

Social Equity Health & Wellness

38 Chicago Mobile Makers by Maya Bird-Murphy, M.Arch Thesis & Practice

44 Ethical Documentation of Difficult Pasts in Historic Preservation by Amanda Zettel, MDS Thesis

Stopping the Spread of Diseases with Architectural Technology by Saad Alqahtani, MDS Thesis

15 The Role of Landscape Design in Pandemic Mitigation by Inmaculada Gil Cerezo, MLA Thesis

50 The Colonial Period Can Be Compared to a Butterfly Fluttering Its Wings in One Region of the World and Creating Changes in Another by Thea Barton, B.Arch

24 Gateway Project School for the Arts Reopening Strategy by BAC Gateway Project

52 Colonist Landscapes by Erin Carlo, B.Arch

28 Architecture as Stress Management by Megan Gallahue, M.Arch Thesis

55 The Weight of Identity by Erin Kearny, BLA

34 Humanizing Hospital Design by Rachel DeSanto, MDS Thesis

57 Underserved Youth in Marginalized Communities by Katherine Iipinge, M.Arch Thesis 64 Design Activism Lecture by Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton, covered by student editors Jessica Gilbert and Dyuthi Prakash 71 Inhabited Borders by Dila Ece Ozyazici, M.Arch Thesis 84 Resilient Design and Planning for the Municipality of Guarnica by Ruth Super, MDS in DHH 85 Towards Just Space by Karen Nelson, Dean of Architecture

The Digital 87 Ames Travel Fellowship Interview with Alumnus Hamze Machmouchi covered by student editor Sana Aladwani and Jhamela Mastinggal 93 Virtual Shop Tour & Global Fractals Workshop by Peter Atwood and Takbir Fatima

104 Virtual Travel Tour by Kyle Tornow

Surrounding Fabric

98 Faculty Development Projects & NanoConference Sponsored and funded by Davis Foundation, Presidential Grant, and the Boston Architectural College

107 Recovering Urban Density by Alberto Gutierrez, M.Arch Thesis

99 Mattaport as a Tool for Understanding Existing Site Spatial Detail by Jessica Wolff & Luke Sinopoli

127 Kinetic Envelope by Nandini Jain, M.Arch Thesis

99 Innovative Digital Media Education by Wendy Wang & Grace S. Wong 100 Physical Models, Digital Feedback Bridging the Gap Between the Analog and the Digital in Remote Architectural Education by Ignacio Lopez Buson 100 Finding Common, Shared Space to Think, Work, and Play at a Distance by Samuel Maddox 101 Reimagined Forms of Architectural Drawings, Media, and Material Culture in an Online Classroom by Yoonjee Koh 101 2024 Project: Learning Events for a Virtual Design Curriculum by Rashmi Ramaswamy 103 Rethinking the Materials Library Innovations to an Interior Architecture Student Resource for Online Education by Sarah G. Redmore 103 Interactive Interface for Online Asynchronous Learning by Jason Pieper

117 Architectural Defense by Caitlin Flinn, M.Arch Thesis

134 In-Between Spaces: Sculpting Urban Void by Katarzyna Fryckowska, M.Arch Thesis 139 Terra-Scope & Spectra by BACMakers 146 North End: Storytelling Immigrant Museum on Boston Waterfront by Ekaterina Siemoneit, M.Arch Studio 4 151 Maverick Hills by Luis Ruiz, M.Arch Studio 3 157 Engawa by Hana Oji-Gutterman, M.Arch Thesis 163 Maverick Hills by Thom Boessel, M.Arch Studio 3 169 Museum of Transportation by Carolyn Judd, M.Arch Studio 4 175 To Clothe by Tianliang Wu, MLA Thesis 179 Water Ecology Museum by Qianyun Wei, BLA Degree Project

104 Asynchronous Teaching - A Beginner’s Guide by Donald Hunsicker 9

Health & Wellness The Designer will see you now

STOPPING THE SPREAD OF DISEASES WITH ARCHITECTURAL TECHNOLOGY

SAAD ALQAHTANI Design Studies Thesis BDS, Fall 2019 As cities become denser and population increases, diseases will spread faster within the spaces and the environments we design. Designers need to be more aware of how infectious diseases spread to use design to control the transmission. One way to help stop the spread is for designers and architects to learn about and practice prevention techniques by applying methods where design can reduce and limit the transmission of diseases throughout the spatial environment.

Scheme

The program indicates the current conditions, materials used, and application/outcome of three different sized rooms: small, medium, and large. The current conditions show the number of germs in each room. The amount of germs changes based on the size and mostly on the number of people inside the room. The first room shows three people using the space and the second room has five people and the last one about 30 people. The materials used are two types of materials:

(A) is material that fights germs such as an antibacterial surface material. These materials are exciting and have been used in so many projects. Some of the materials I looked at are antimicrobial copper: brass, HT coating, and keraion. (B) is surface material that shows a print of germs on it. It is similar to the heat-sensitive surfaces, but instead of showing body heat if touched by unwashed hands, it leaves a print indicating that the surface is not clean.

Interior Rendering

New Surface Material

The new surface material reduces the transmission of common cold infections inside buildings where the material is applied. It also allows and facilitates rhino and coronavirus, which cause cold infection to be visible to the users. A warning sign makes the user aware of the viruses and advices them to clean the surface and their hands. These surfaces can also be applied to almost all types of soiled furniture as shown in the above images such as tables, benches, and walls.

The new material is a coating material that can cover surfaces. This thesis research concludes that treatment of surface material is the best way to control the transmission of viruses. Designers and architects should be responsible for both educating clients/users and designing to reduce the spread of infectious diseases. Good personal and surface hygiene practice is the most effective way to limit the spread of cold infection.

Interior Rendering

Site Plan

THE ROLE OF LANDSCAPE DESIGN IN PANDEMIC MITIGATION

INMACULADA GIL CEREZO Landscape Masters Thesis MLA, Spring 2021 The pandemic is a global problem that is changing how people behave. One of those changes is the ways in which people use landscapes; and it is necessary to adapt those landscapes to these new interactions. This study addresses the need to adapt landscape design to the new realities resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study is to explore-through design-ways to reduce transmission of infection in open spaces.

Existing Condition

Airflow Movement Proposal

Circulation Strategy

Edification Type Strategy

Airflow Strategy in Site

Through observation and review of the existing literature, pandemic-related uses of public open space, COVID-19 transmission, and currently recom mended control measures were explored. Preliminary research has yielded the following three themes that are presented in this proposal: 1) landscape adaptation to public health conditions through history, 2) transmission and control of

COVID- 19 in indoor public spaces, and 3) adaptation of control features to outdoor spaces. In the design phase of this thesis, these themes will inform the adaptation of a public open space and creation of guidelines for landscapes to help with the mitigation of infectious diseases.

Sections of Edible Garden

Outdoor Theater Scenario Perspective

Health Emergency Scenario Perspective 20

Street Conditions

View of Memorial 21

23 Perspective of Edible Garden

GATEWAY PROJECT SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS Reopening strategy In the fall of 2019, a team of students worked on a facility utilization study to better understand how academic and artistic spaces were used, and what the impact of the current schedule had on those spaces. Recommendations were made for short, medium, and large-scale projects to modify key buildings and reconfigure the class schedule.

Walnut Hill School launched a yearlong collaboration with the BAC Gateway Initiative to evaluate and re-program the existing campus as well as conceptualize future growth and reorganization of the selected buildings.

In Spring 2020, the student team worked with the Buildings & Grounds Committee to study and develop conceptual designs for 2 out of the 4 scenarios under consideration for expansion and renovation of the facility to a place that exceeds the student’s well being, needs, and desires, and to enhance their performance and creativity.

The coronavirus has forever changed education, so as schools, colleges and universities plan on reopening their buildings to students and eductors, they must ensure the safety of students, educators, and staff. With that, everything from classrooms, cafeterias, playgrounds, to social spaces will look very different.

We along with educators must navigate and rethink how to leverage physical classroom space design in a way that elevates both platforms to create a safe learning environment that will enhance learning outcomes within the pandemic.

AYGUL ABIZGILDINA, AMANDA KHASHILO KHOSROABADI, OMAR TAWFIK, CAITLIN FLINN, REBECCA DEJENIE, MAYRA FLORES, HIND ALSHANKITI, ROSA BALDERRAMA, LARISSA DA SILVA BAC Gateway Project Spring 2020 25

We introduce some strategies for the school, so that the education at school will be safe for students and teachers. Highlighted school strategies include: limiting classroom and meeting room capacity, distance guidelines, and placing a hand sanitizer at the entrance.

This is an interior view of the painting romo at ATC. The space is designed for a small group of pupils, where all “working areas” are separated with plastic partitions. The entrance has a hand sanitizer gel station. There is a measured entrance to the class as well.

ARCHITECTURE AS STRESS MANAGEMENT Student Stress Center

Exterior Rendering

MEGAN GALLAHUE Architecture Thesis M.Arch, Spring 2020

Stress is inevitable and therefore requires management. A significant number of students suffer from daily stress and do not seek professional help. This project attempts to address this problem by provoking a psychological response using architecture as a means. This thesis explores how the choreography of changing environments using connection, disruption, and human scale can influence how an individual experiences stress. It will explore the theory of restorative environments and stress recovery, investigate why students are stressed, and create environments that provoke the desired response.

Stress can come from a variety of sources. For students, the main components are performance related: going to class, completing assignments, maintaining a schedule, as well as academic and personal responsibilities. At times, these stressors can be consuming and can create an obstacle in a student’s academic and personal evolution. If this stress is not properly managed, serious problems can arise. In order to manage stress, students need to be exposed to environments that allow for communication, fun, work, and restoration. My concept will transform the student schedule and make these four activities and environments a priority. Daily interaction will aid in creating a balanced student experience.

TRANSFORMING THE STUDENTS SCHEDULE

COMMUNICATION

FUN

WORK

RESTORE

CHOOSE YOUR OWN PATH

POST ALL NIGHTER ENTRY: PRIVATE REVIVE ENGAGE EXCITE

HANGOUT

ENTRANCE: MAIN ENGAGE 1 FOCUS REVIVE ENGAGE 2

GET WORK DONE ENTRY: PUBLIC ENGAGE EXCITE FOCUS REVIVE ENGAGE

HANGOUT

Concept Diagram

seeing friends along the way and will become ENGAGED. Th student then takes refuge in a group nook where they can F on a friendly conversation. This conversation and the group friends REVIVE the student from the stress they had been fe from the day before. After this conversation, they part ways, becoming more aware of their surroundings. The student lea ENGAGED and ready to take on their next adventure.

The Communication environment is a place for students to gather and network. This becomes a place for them to build a social and professional network. This space is meant to ENGAGE. The Fun environment is a place for students to break up the monotony of work and stress. This becomes a place to go and breathe life and energy into one’s day. This space is meant to EXCITE.

ENGAGED 30

The Work environment is a place for students to do focused work. This becomes a place for students to grow academically. This space is meant to FOCUS. The Restore environment is a place for students to take a break or meditate. This becomes a place for students to reset. This space is meant to REVIVE.

HANGOUT This student might enter through the main high entrance, seeing friends along the way, and will become ENGAGED. The student then takes refuge in a group nook where they can FOCUS on a friendly conversation. This conversation and the group of friends REVIVE the student from the stress they had been feeling from the day before. After this conversation, they part ways, becoming more aware of their surroundings. The student leaves ENGAGED and ready to take on their next adventure.

The n FOCUS up of n feeling ys, leaves

FOCUS

REVIVE

ENGAGED 31

The Student Center responds to stress with: • Overhang: Creates a human scaled refuge from the stress of the street • Band of Greenery: Acts as a visual and physical barrier for the interior and exterior • Massing: Creates an interesting shape for a visual and physical break from the site stress • Site-work: Acts as a refuge and place for students and the public to use • Node Manipulation: This pulls people from the corner through multiple alleys on the site • Building: draws people in through journey Connection is an important aspect to consider when designing for stress management. It is meant to foster community, conversation, engagement, and prevent isolation that can accompany stress. It is achieved architecturally through: • Visual • Physical • Sight lines • Focal point(s)

Human Scale an important aspect to consider when designing for stress management. It is meant to create comfort, prospect and refuge, and ownership of space. This is meant to ground the student and provide stability. It is achieved architecturally through: • Compressing spaces • Separating spaces • Variety of Spaces Disruption is an important consideration when designing for stress management. It is meant to create excitement and attempts to make students comfortable with change and breaking the norm, by creating distractions in areas encouraging students to wander. This is creates more excitement, engagement, and evolution of the student. It will influence students to become more evolved and willing to encounter new experiences.

Va r i e t y o f S p a ce & connections

Elevation Changes Views Beyond

Focal Points

Spatial Qualities

Proc

Compression & Expansion of space, sight-lines, and connection to spaces beyond.

Procession

HUMANIZING HOSPITAL DESIGN Empowering Patient With A Focused Approach On Innate Needs RACHEL DESANTO Design Studies Thesis MDS, Spring 2020 Neuroscience is discussed as a large part of the Design for Innate Needs solution. Neuroscience architecture considers the preferences humans have within the built environment. These preferences are innate needs that live deep within the brain. Human responses are unique, but the innate needs are a shared, biological commonality. The Design for Innate Needs hypothesis examines what constitutes essential human needs and how those needs are met within the built environment, particularly the healthcare environment. This thesis argues that a sense of autonomy and control and a connection to the natural environment is just as important as other basic needs for shelter, warmth, food, and sex. The Psychologist Abraham Maslow argued that certain basic needs must be satisfied for humans to thrive. After careful review, it appears that an entire piece missing from his structure. A new, proposed row has been inserted that is missing from the pyramid (see image on third page). This new row intersects the basic needs and psychological needs, and refers to the innate neurological needs deep within the human brain to be in control of oneself and the surrounding environment, while supporting the human need to be connected to the natural environment.

WHY NATURE? Humans have an innate need to be surrounded by nature and the natural environment. Nature not only makes us feel good (sensory stimulation), but it provides countless physical and mental benefits. Nature and biophilic design are the built environment’s superpower to making the hospital hospitable. Control and autonomy without nature will be unsuccessful. Control is supported in healthcare spaces when designs provide opportunities for choice and autonomy, that utilize nature, natural patterns, shapes, sounds, smells, tastes, and materials.

WHY CONTROL? Control is vital to human survival, and the need to control is rooted deep in our brains. When our brains feel they are in danger or out of control, they cope in various ways, many of which involve control. Humans are constantly searching for opportunities to exert control over the built environment and themselves; people feel better and tend to have better mental health outcomes when they are in control. There are four criteria of control (i.e., privacy, territoriality, personal space, and crowding), and each may be threatened or fortified within the healthcare environment. When patients feel a sense of privacy, they have control over who has access to them; privacy allows patients the solitude they may require when managing the stress of an illness and control over their surroundings. Similarly, personal space and crowding are both influenced by the built environment, and when either is threatened, patients feel out of control. With territoriality, spaces are claimed on a short-term basis, and allow personalization that supports comfort and control. WHY HOSPITAL? Hospitals overstimulate patients and cause them to feel out of control, increasing their stress levels. Inpatient hospital rooms are a point of stress for patients who are confined to these rooms for extended time periods. These spaces are visually overwhelming and busy with medical devices, inadequate lighting, uncomfortable sounds, smells, sights, and tactile sensations, which leave patients feeling exposed, scared, and out of control. Research finds that this psychological stress and emotional trauma negatively impacts the healing process.This stress is a contributing factor to longer hospital stays, increasing the patients’ healthcare costs and risk of hospital acquired infections. By focusing on both physical and sensory design (olfaction, vision, audition, somatosensory design), inpatient rooms can be designed to empower the patient.

Patients who are ill are already in a fear-based mindset. Entering an unwelcoming space that then removes autonomy contributes to stress, which is harmful to human health, as it slows healing, exacerbates the effects of an existing illness, and allows the body to become susceptible to subsequent infections. In order to thrive and heal, patients require the autonomy to control where they look, what they hear, smell, feel, and taste, and how they interact with the space around them and other people within that space. LITERATURE REVIEW Light health, sensory design, biophilia, salutogenesis, and humanized design are intimately connected and share a synergy: that synergy is Design for Innate Needs. The necessary lens to understand what encompasses an innate need is neuroscience. This intersection is where hospitals become part of the medicine and part of the healing process. Using data and research from neuroscience, designers can successfully design for innate needs, which ultimately solves for six characteristics (see yellow boxes in the diagram below). When evidence from neuroscience is used to bring these methods together, these six categories provide the keys to Design for Innate Needs within healthcare spaces.

Design for Innate Needs will encourage healing, increase patient safety, reduce patient stress, improve patient and family satisfaction, and ultimately benefit the healthcare facility. These six characteristics are this project’s terms of criticism and were used to create design guidelines. The evidence-based guidelines and recommendations presented in this thesis address innate patients needs have that live deep in the neural connections of their brains. These needs must be met to facilitate health, well-being, and healing. We have the power to design for mood, behavior change, and even healing. This lens of neuroscience is what brings the existing design methods together; and when they come together, when the hospital building is no longer just a building where healing and medicine happens inside – it becomes a building that itself is doing the healing. NEUROSCIENCE Humanized design, biophilic design, salutogenic design, light health design, and sensory design are critical pillars to establishing the foundation to solve for Design for Innate Needs. The next step was to integrate these categories to solve for Design for Innate Needs, and the critical lens to successfully integrating these methods is neuroscience. The research from neuroscience recognizes fundamental, innate (subconscious) needs that patients require in a healthcare setting. This is crucial to successful design, because designs that meet only physical needs will eventually fail.

Physical wellness is essential to surviving; but surviving and thriving are not synonymous. The human mind is so powerful that for the body to truly be well and heal, it also needs intense care and attention. Neuroscientists know that human brains sculpt, mold, connect, build, and break neurological connections. Neuroscientists have also discovered many behaviors that have strong connections to basic, primal needs such as thigmotaxis, which is the phenomena of hugging the walls or sides of spaces. By defining the borders of a space, humans use visual scanning to mentally reframe the space in a way that they personally understand. Humans share this practice with other species (even bacteria), and it appears to be the most basic form of controlling the interaction with a space and demonstrating autonomy over experience with space and place. This is just one of many examples that demonstrates how humans have subconscious, intuitive tendencies towards their environment, and how various aspects of the environment can unknowingly cause negative, supportive, or stressful effects through designs that speak to the sympathetic (stimulation) and parasympathetic (calming) systems within the human brain.

Instead of focusing on only aesthetics, designers need to carefully consider and dedicate a focused attention to the way designs intersect with the neurological chemicals and reactions within the brain. These reactions are connected to the innate needs that humans must have met to heal properly. There is a symphony of hormones and neurotransmitters that are released in the brain depending on exposure to stress, loss of control (helplessness), and over/under-stimulating environments. This shift in brain chemicals can cause behavior changes, varying mood, and high levels of elevated stress that negatively impact the physical body. Spaces must be carefully designed based on evidence from neuroscience, and ultimately: Design for Innate Needs. CONCLUSION The Design for Innate Needs hypothesis aims to satisfy fundamental, neurological needs. It can be applied to more than just healthcare spaces. Design for Innate Needs must be further developed and examined in relationship to the hospital and other spaces of the built environment, because innate needs are not being met in schools, offices, and other public spaces (arenas/stadiums, libraries, restaurants, etc). This thesis only scratches the surface, and the opportunity for continued research and growth is exciting and promising.

Social Equity Beyond Colonies and Boundaries

FROM THESIS TO PRACTICE Chicago Mobile Makers

Chicago Mobile Makers Onsite

MAYA BIRD-MURPHY Architecture Masters Thesis M. Arch, FALL 2017 Chicago Mobile Makers is a nonprofit organization that offers free and low-cost youth workshops encompassing design, architecture, digital fabrication, basic construction and place-making in Chicago communities. It is a safe and supportive space where brown and black youth, low income youth, LGBTQIA+ youth, girls etc. can begin their journey through the white, male-dominated design field. Maya Bird-Murphy tested this idea as part of her BAC Masters Thesis. Soon after graduation, she has realized her thesis project and has received wide success.

Chicago Mobile Maker’s Mission Chicago Mobile Makers Creates programming that encourages Chicago Youth to become advocates and change-makers in their own communities through design focused skill-building workshops. Their objectives are threefold: 1. Engage and empower youth through making and skill-building. 2. Train and support future public interest architects, designers, and makers. Maya Bird-Murphy

3. Advocate for social, economic, gender, and racial diviersity in the architecture and broaders design fields.

Founder, Architectural Designer, Educator

The makerspace is mobile architecture - a fully designed space that allows five people to comfortably work inside or spill outside to activate unused space - and is equipped with power tools, hand tools, a laser cutter, a 3D printer, laptops, and anything else needed to draw by hand, 3d model, fabricate, and build designed objects. Students are exposed to architecture and design early through designbuild workshops that empower students by allowing them to look closely at their own neighborhoods, identify opportunities and threats, and see their work realized in their own communities.

1. Projection screen 2. Hand tool & paper storage 3. Outdoor folding table 4. Book and magazine storage 5. Indoor folding table 6. Peg board for hanging tools / removeable storage 7. Power tool storage 8. Pin-up space 9. Outdoor folding table 10. Laser cutter and 3D printer storage 11. Indoor folding table

“This world will not be equal until it is built by, and for, all.”

Ethical Documentation of Difficult Pasts in Historic Preservation

Figure 1: Monument Avenue, Charlestown and the Bunker Hill Monument. Taken from www.pixels.com

AMANDA ZETTEL Historic Preservation Thesis MDS, Spring 2021 The Charlestown neighborhood of Boston that residents know and love today has a difficult past. Like many cities in twentieth century United States, Charlestown went from healthy and vibrant - to what many could describe as a “slum” - and back again. At its low point, the neighborhood suffered from unemployment, foreclosures, and disinvestment that resulted in the crime and abandonment typical to this slide. To the residents born and raised in Charlestown - or “Townies” - it was home… family, community and tradition above all. A series of government programs and policies directly and indirectly caused the loss of their homes and community. The residents who stayed 44

in Charlestown and remain today are bonded by these shared experiences, a distrust of government and nostalgia around the “old neighborhood,” as bad as it may have appeared on paper. They are wary and distrustful of the people and groups that came into the neighborhood to change it, and they have lost connections to the built environment that exists today – it has changed so much from the environment and culture they remember and associate with home. A neighborhood that is unrecognizable to its long-time residents, combined with an innate human need to turn the page and move forward, leads to many barriers to the historic

Figure 2: A child plays in a littered and crumbling Charlestown Alley in 1959 among boarded up houses. Taken from digitalcommonwealth.com

preservation of a neighborhood.

reinvestment of government policy and programs, such as redlining, Urban Renewal, busing, and I made my home in Charlestown about eleven years homesteading programs. ago. When I began telling my local friends that I had bought a house in Charlestown and would be These issues are not unique to Charlestown. Federal moving, I was met with looks of fear and questions level policy and programs led to the widespread as to whether I had lost my mind. Charlestown disinvestment in cities and resulted in economic has a negative reputation that persists, and the and social decline. 1 This decline required a period neighborhood is often reminded of their difficult of reinvestment that brought outsiders in to clear past in media and popular culture such as the the “slums” and designate the services needed for Pulitzer prize-winning book A Common Ground by neighborhoods to return to economically healthy J. Anthony Lukas, the movie The Town starring Ben environments. However, these programs ultimately Affleck, and the television show City on a Hill starring brought dramatic change through widespread Kevin Bacon. It was a full year before I met any of demolition and displacement and encouraged my new neighbors, and I struggled to fit in. I joined gentrification. 2 Very quickly residents realized that the Charlestown Preservation Society a few years their neighborhood had changed, and they lost a lot after that and began volunteering in the community of what they fiercely loved. and attending public meetings related to real estate development and urban planning. I quickly became In response to the widespread demolition of aware that there are two Charlestowns. Either you historic neighborhoods and buildings, the historic were born and raised here – or you were not. I quickly preservation field made advances with their own made friends with the “yuppies,” but never got past a legislation; over time, historic preservation was friendly hello on the street with the Townies. incorporated into Urban Renewal programs. Although this was a win for preservation, the shift In addition to social barriers, I noticed that many in values ultimately linked historic preservation with community meetings quickly devolved into local governments and their Urban Renewal plans unproductive chaos. Themes of us versus them, that broke up beloved neighborhoods. To make resistance to development, resistance to infrastructure matters worse, the many early gentrifiers who plans, and most troubling to me, opposition to displaced long-time neighborhood residents were positions that the Charlestown Preservation Society also preservationists, and preservation hobbyists. and its members took. As a historic preservationist, I Residents of neighborhoods associated both Urban was driven to understand why this was. Research into Renewal and historic preservation with the loss of the neighborhood’s difficult history revealed deep- the old neighborhood and a derogatory judgement rooted trauma induced by the disinvestment and on their lifestyle. 45

Today, the “difficult pasts” 3 of gentrified neighborhoods have long-lasting impacts on residents and their environments. Long-term residents resent the programs, and the actors and agencies responsible for the change in the neighborhood. They see them as drivers for increased housing costs, the displacement of residents and the loss of neighborhood culture. 4 Federal, State and Local governments, politicians, private historic preservation organizations and new residents are also strongly associated with this change. This resentment is a major barrier to historic preservation for primarily three reasons. One - historic preservation activities are facilitated by local governments and residents do not trust local governments. Therefore, historic preservation programs are not trusted. Two - historic preservation is strongly associated with the “pioneers” or early gentrifiers who took a chance on an up-and-coming neighborhood, moved in, and facilitated the change. This leads to fractures between resident groups – longtime residents versus transplants – and longtime residents resist what transplants propose or support. Three - ultimately the change in the built environment leads to disconnection. The built environment contributes to a place’s distinctiveness, and past experiences act as a sort of lens or filter for

how a person interprets and attaches to place. How can we reduce or lighten these barriers so that historic preservation can help residents preserve what they love about their neighborhoods, their traditions, their culture, and their buildings? By making new connections and making amends. Sharing stories through an oral history program creates meaningful connections between people, people and their place, and people and their local governments (when it is incorporated into planning processes). Oral history illustrates how complex history is, and gives a voice to multiple perspectives.5 Giving people an outlet to share their stories and perspectives encourages feelings of connection, a greater sense of meaning in life, 6 It gives people with difficult and traumatic pasts a chance to make sense of what happened and provides another cultural touchpoint and insight into a community’s values today. It also gives people the opportunity to tell their story in a non-threatening way – on their own terms, and when people are comfortable and connected, they tell the difficult stories of their pasts, in a forum that fosters healing and connections to community. 7 An oral history project was created for Charlestown as part of this thesis project. Residents that have

Figure 3: Urban Renewal Map Map showing the number of families displaced by Urban Renewal programs by city. Taken from Digital Scholarship Lab, “Renewing Inequality,” American Panorama, ed. Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers, accessed April 20, 2021, https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/renewal/#view=-1041.8/-312.56/2.62&viz=cartogram&city=bostonMA&loc=13/42.3755/-71.0399 46

Figure 4: Image of the demolition of the Kelly family home on Jackson Street. Taken to make way for the Edwards School. Image courtesy of John Kelly.

lived in the neighborhood their entire lives identify as Townies. 8 Townies feel an extreme nostalgia for the old neighborhood, both for past experiences they associate with it and for experiences that can no longer occur. At the same time, Charlestown and its Townies are notorious for what was known for generations as “the code of silence.” 9 The code of silence has been diminished, but it very much remains today as a way to protect residents from prosecution as well as persecution for the negative neighborhood reputation. I took a risk choosing this tough neighborhood as a subject. Not only did it risk my relationships and reputation in the neighborhood, but I also risked not being able to crack the code of silence to get

to the difficult stories that needed to be told. To my surprise, the program was successful. Through a carefully crafted, sensitive oral history program, narrators shared stories about the difficult events in both the neighborhood and their personal histories. The telling of nostalgic memories and personal family histories changed their feelings of place attachment, feelings of disconnection with the local preservation organization and the City of Boston’s Planning and Development Agency (BPDA.) These stories contradict the popular or known history of the neighborhood, documenting them created a multi-dimensional and well-rounded interpretation of these events that long-time residents could identify and connect with.

Figure 5: The John Hurd House prior to restoration in 1972. Taken from City of Boston Archives, flickr.com (Left) and May, 2021 Photo by Author 47

The short and long-term purposes of this project were three-fold: to document the stories that most likely wouldn’t have been documented and lost with the last Townie generation; to give the BPDA a better sense of the trauma that they inflicted, as that trauma will affect the PLAN: Charlestown initiative; last, to make connections between myself, a “Yuppie / Preservationist,” and Townies, with the intent of healing fractures between the two resident groups and the Charlestown Preservation Society. When the basic idea for this project first came to me, the world was in chaos trying to get a handle on the COVID-19 pandemic. People around the world had been living in various degrees of isolation and quarantine, and thousands of Americans had taken to the streets to protest racism with calls for systemic change. Limits on travel and movement forced people to turn inward and focus on family and home. It was an incredibly difficult time for many people, and many began to reflect on past difficult experiences as a way to cope. It is human nature to look to the past for similar events to find strength and insights that will help us see a path forward. I had recently formed a few friendships with people in my neighborhood who had lived their entire lives within the one square mile that we call home. As I got to know them better, they would tell me stories about the “old neighborhood,” and I began to notice some common themes. Most stories included little digs aimed at the City of Boston, or the Mayor, or the “Yuppies” that changed the neighborhood. I had just a slight sense that the neighborhood’s difficult past affected how its long-time residents felt about it, as well as each other. That is just human nature. The more research I conducted, the more I came to see my idea as highly relevant to historic preservation, not only in my neighborhood, but around the country. There are many places that bear the deep wounds that the government’s disinvestment of urban areas caused. Resentment and distrust has evolved from the trauma of displacement and broken promises and it is ingrained in neighborhood culture. The historic preservation field has a social responsibility to understand and document the difficult stories that are the foundation of the place’s culture. Oral history is a way to achieve this. It can also produce intangibles such as better connections between community members, better understanding of the neighborhood’s values, and stronger feelings of 48

place attachment, all which can convey additional material benefits. The idea to use storytelling and oral history as a means for connection and understanding to improve the outcomes of formal historic preservation activities cannot be overemphasized. An oral history community program should be the foundation of every historic preservation project, as it can aid in the creation of authentic, multi-perspective historical narratives, and truly form an inclusive team of a place’s stakeholders. Going forward, my work would benefit from establishing deeper relationships with the narrators in additional interviews and revisiting the topics they were interested in discussing in more detail. Although not part of my original project, many of the people that I interviewed reached out after the interview to continue the chat and the connections have only improved. There are topics that I encountered that I would like to explore in more depth, but time and focus would not allow. Among them was one in Charlestown where some residents think that the government purposely “broke up” the close-knit neighborhood because they were seen as “nothing but trouble.” I can understand why they could think that as Federal Homesteading programs began to take shape the same year that busing thrust the neighborhood into a negative light. I was able to find a couple of references to houses that may have been part of the homesteading program, but an oral history program that incorporates the stories of the pioneers who took a chance on a difficult neighborhood would be powerful on so many levels. Oral history is a powerful tool that historic preservationists can implement to document the difficult histories that are intrinsic to our historically significant places, and to reduce the barriers to preservation with an inclusive process.

1 Newman, Kathe. “Newark, Decline and Avoidance, Renaissance and Desire: From Disinvestment to Reinvestment. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 594 no 1 (2004 / 7) 34-48. Accessed April 15, 2021 P 37 2 According to the Oxford University Press, “gentrification is the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process.” 3 Max Page in his book titled “Why Preservation Matters “quotes Naomi Klein, author of Shock Doctine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism on the definition of “difficult places” as follows: “difficult places are the places of pain, of violence, of controversy, the places we normally want to avoid.” The term “difficult pasts” is used throughout this work to define the past events that contributed to the makeup of a difficult place. 4 Billingham, Chase M. “The Broadening Conception of Gentrification: Recent Developments and Avenues for Future Inquiry in the Sociological Study of Urban Change.” Michigan Sociological Review 29 (2015): 75-102, P 77 Accessed January 27, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43630965 5 Aras, Ramazan and Douglas Boyd, Mary Marshall Clark, Mehmet Kurt, S. Mohammad Mohaqqeq, Claudia P. Gonzalez Perez, Lucine Taminian. “Documenting and Interpreting Conflict through Oral History: A Working Guide.” Columbia University, Center for Oral History, N.D. P 1. Accessed March 18, 2021 6 Zhou, Xinyue; Wildschut, Tim; Sedikides, Constantine; Shi, Kan; Feng, Cong, “Nostalgia: The gift that keeps on giving.” Journal of Consumer Research, Journal no 39, issue 1 (2012): 39-50.” 7 Aras, “Documenting and Interpreting Conflict through Oral History” P 1-3; Menninger, Robert. “Some Psychological Factors Involved in Oral History Interviewing.” The Oral History Review 3 (1975): 68-75. Accessed October 12, 2020. http://www.jstor. org/stable/3674974 P 74-75; Panichelli-Batalla, Stéphanie, and Olga Lidia Saavedra Montes De Oca. “Dealing with Sensitive Topics in Communist Societies: Oral History Research in and on Cuba.” Oral History 45, no. 2 (2017): 31-38. Accessed October 12, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26382598 8 Residents who are born and raised in Charlestown selfidentify as “Townies.” Typically, Townies are from the poor and working-class families that have deep genealogical ties to the neighborhood. Most are descendants of Irish and Canadian immigrants. 9 “Sandy King and the Code of Silence” Charlestown Patriot Bridge, February 24, 2011. https://charlestownbridge.com/2011/02/24/ sandy-king-and-the-code-of-silence/#:~:text=Charlestown%20 was%20famous%20for%20generations,whatsoever%20to%20 say%20about%20it

The Colonial Period Can Be Compared To A Butterfly Fluttering Its Wings In One Region Of The World And Creating Changes In Another

Two Interpretations of the Truth

THEA BARTON History and Theory Elective - Novel Histories B.Arch , Fall 2021 The repercussions of colonialism include ethnic conflict and racial tension, which are strongly associated due to the massive influence race and ethnicity had on how one existed within society. Despite the fact that race is commonly associated with biology and physical features such as skin complexion or hair texture, ethnicity is associated with cultural expression and identification. During colonial and post-colonial times, the two were treated almost identically. In her book Intimacies of Four Continents, Lisa Lowe examines the relationships between Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, analyzing the links between colonialism, slavery, imperial trades, and Western liberalism. The first intimacy of spatial proximity calls attention to how the British were able to forcibly transport Chinese and Indians to the Americas and the Caribbean as indentured labourers to work on plantations in order to sustain the Euro-American plantation economy after the abolition of the African slave trade. These 50

labourers were utilised in the Trinidad Experiment, as well as similar experiments in other countries, to build a “racial barrier between the British and the Negroes.”1 This was part of a larger system that involved changing the way race and labour were managed as a way of suppressing black slave revolt at the time and explicitly introducing a racialized solution of “free race” Chinese. Indentured labourers and the enslaved were divided not only by skin complexion, but by accommodation, type of labour assigned to their respective groups, and overall treatment within the society. This example gave a better understanding of how Chinese and Indian indentured servants contributed to the western wage-labour system and how this system of stratification was the driving force behind constructing a division. Lowe’s third intimacy, on the other hand, suggests that there was a “sense of intimacies embodied in the variety of contacts among slaves, indentured persons, and mixed-blood free peoples living

together on the islands,” which resulted in a “collision of European, African, and Asian components within the [Caribbean] Plantation, that could give rise to rebellions against the plantation structure itself.”2 Those who have faced oppression at the hands of white supremacy have a stronger sense of unity. As much as people cling to their differences (which they have every right to do), they sometimes overlook the tremendous commonalities they have as simple but extremely complicated human beings. Within the global community, there is discourse over whether there is space for solidarity and support for Indigenous people, Asians and Pacific Islanders, Latinos, and Hispanics and other groups within movements such as Black Lives Matter, which has become not only a significant movement in the United States and globally, but also a Pop Culture trend. The Black Lives Matter movement has been exhibited in several demonstrations over the previous eight years as a means to confront police brutality, racial profiling, and discrimination. However, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been more instances of hate crimes against the Asian community as a direct result of former US President Donald Trump’s statements about the “Chinese virus,” or “Kung flu.” This has occurred not only in the United States, but also in Germany and Australia. As a result, the #StopAsianHate movement was born. There have been protests in which there is not only a Black presence but also a presence of other minorities such as Indigenous people, Latinos, and Hispanics. I am fully confident that there is more than enough room for solidarity and support for other minorities, as much as the Black Lives Matter movement seeks to raise awareness about the issues of the Black community. There is an understanding that we are fighting not only for ourselves but also for our fellow victims of colonisation and imperialism. We all want a “piece of the pie,” but we must overcome the strains of the underlying twisted tension in which we compete for the attention of the “white man,” who not only survives but thrives on the legacy of colonialism. We must fight it, and we must fight it together. People frequently comment on sensing a change coming, but with change being so constant, when will it stop coming and simply arrive?

the modern world, the cultures of colonised were constantly alienated. They were pressured to give up their mother tongues, as well as their social, religious, and cultural customs. To be modern (through the perspective of a coloniser) meant to speak Queen’s or King’s English, dress as the masters demanded, and engage in their religious, social and cultural traditions. Their warped version of modernity, however, created a challenging environment for the colonised people. As the colonisers freely appreciated and evolved with the realms of their culture, the colonised were compelled to survive in a world of abstractions, ideologies, narratives, signs, and symbols produced and propagated by colonial masters. There was a perception and sensation of disconnection between their original culture and the culture to which they had to adapt. This overpowering yearning for truth and self-identity manifests itself in both facets of their existence.

1 Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies Of Four Continents (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), 194. 2 Lowe, The Intimacies Of Four Continents, 202.

Another of the system’s techniques was alienation. When European empires embarked on their zealous endeavour to bring “primitive” nations into

Note from the Novel Histories course instructors, Scott Harrison & Eleni Glekas In her 1927 novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop, novelist Willa Cather revivifies interactions between Spanish conquistadores, French Catholic missionaries, and indigenous peoples in what is today New Mexico (U.S.). In our Novel Histories course, we focus on the ways in which characters encounter and are shaped by space, particularly landscapes, in order to ponder space as an autonomous actor, an actor with as much power to shape historical outcomes as human beings themselves. Moreover, we also use Cather’s text as an alternative historical archive through which to recover indigenous lifeworlds that were violently reshaped through the processes of European colonialism.

COLONIST LANDSCAPES ERIN CARLO History and Theory Elective - Novel Histories B.Arch., FALL 2021

Both natural and manmade landscapes play important roles in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. Her detailed descriptions of the South-West territories and how they are treated is key to understanding the relationship between native people, French holy men, and the landscape. The viewpoints of both the native people and French holy men are derived from cultural and natural influences during the era of European settler colonialism (late nineteenth century) in what is today the American Southwest. Cather uses natural landscapes to point to cultural differences between native people and French priests/colonists. The colonists almost always take an assertive, dominant approach towards the landscape while the natives take a more gentle, 52

forgiving approach. Even the characters in the story see this difference: “... Father Latour judged that, just as it was the white man’s way to assert himself into the landscape, to change it, make it over a little, it was the Indians’ way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like a fish through the water, or a bird through the air.” Father Latour, as a white man, saw it as his duty to force his ideology onto the landscape. His desire was to somewhere build a church that would serve as his immortal body after his soul left this earth. He did not want to build the church using any vernacular architecture of the region, a method used by natives to blend with the landscape: “The Hopi villages that were set upon rock mesas were made to look like the rock on which they sat, were imperceptible from a distance. The Navajo hogans, among the sand and

willows, were made of sand and willows.” This was not a method meant for Latour. He needed to “assert himself into the landscape.” He did this by locating a rare natural occurrence and turning it into something man-made (that looked man-made) and unnatural to the area. “This ridge was covered with cone-shaped, rocky hills, thinly clad with pinons, and the rock was a curious shade of green, something between seagreen and olive. The thin, pebbly earth, which was merely the rock pulverized by weather, had the same green tint... On the western face the earth had been scooped away, exposing a rugged wall of rock - not green like the surrounding hills, but yellow, a strong golden ochre, very much like the gold of the sunlight that was now beating upon it... ‘It is curious, is it not, to find one yellow hill among all these green ones?’ remarked the Bishop, stooping to pick up a piece of the stone. ‘I have ridden over these hills in every direction, but this is the only one of its kind.’” His church was then built upon the rare yellow hill, covering it and concealing it from others, stripping it of its irregularity. As a designer this is fascinating. In a situation where an architect is given a site with a rare feature (a yellow hill amongst green hills), our instinct would be to create our building to focus and celebrate this anomaly. This “find it and take it” way of thinking is vastly different from the native way of thinking. Latour felt that traveling with a native “... was like traveling with the landscape made human”. The natives were always respectful of the earth and the landscape. “When they left the rock or tree or sand dune that had sheltered them for the night, the Navajo was careful to obliterate every trace of their temporary occurrence.” The native peoples built out of necessity, not vanity. Living atop a mesa or on sides of canyon walls is not ideal, but it is better than being attacked from all sides. Using adobe bricks and gypsum plaster may not be the most beautiful of materials, but they work to keep the houses cool in the sweltering sun. They would build using easy to find local materials. This both made construction easy (building material is all around them) and created well designed homes (the materials have survived in that region for a reason). Thinking again about this from a design standpoint, buildings are given awards, accolades, and appreciation for being part of their site. Even buildings that mimic nature in any way are more pleasant to inhabit than their inherently manmade counterparts. While native intervention on the natural landscape is one of intended coexistence, the colonist intervention is to alter it to a man-made landscape, to “make it more finished”.

Throughout the book, Cather describes the manmade works of the priests, including their building of their gardens - projects that the priests envisioned as “bringing order” to an untamed indigenous world. The holy men would sometimes construct a garden (or force native peoples to construct and tend the garden) for the native people, but there were also those who constructed gardens out of vanity. Fray Baltazar was one of the priests who forced natives to maintain his garden: “He was never done with having earth carried up from the plain in baskets. He enlarged the churchyard and made the deep garden in the cloister, enriching it with dung from the corrals. Here he was able to grow a wonderful garden, since it was watered every evening by women, - and this despite the fact that it was not proper that a woman should ever enter the cloister at all.” The garden was a point of pride for the priests who felt that they were taming a feral land, massaging the clay into a finely crafted sculpture. “He [Baltazar] cultivated his peach trees, and watched over his garden like a little kingdom, never allowing the native women to grow slack in the water supply.” While Father Latour was never cruel in forcing native people to cultivate his, a similar sense of pride was behind his garden as was Baltazar’s. “Father Latour’s recreation was his garden. He grew such fruit as was hardly to be found even in the old orchards of California: cherries and apricots, apples and quinces, and the peerless pears of France - even the most delicate varieties.” I was presented with mixed feelings behind Latour’s motivation: “He [Latour] urged the new priests to plant fruit trees wherever they went, and to encourage the Mexicans to add fruit to their starchy diet. Wherever there was a French priest, there should be a garden of fruit trees and vegetables and flowers.” He seems as though he means well, wanting to feed his patrons. But I feel that his motivations are spurred on by an inherently “colonist” thought process similar to Baltazar - “taming the land will tame the unrefined natives”. The gardens act as the colonists amongst the natural landscape. The priests also choose to grow plants that are not inherent to the hot, dry, arid southwest. “The early churchmen did a great business in carrying seeds about, though the Indians and Mexicans were satisfied with beans and squashes and chili, asking nothing more.” These non-native (invasive) species of plants could affect the land in one of two ways. One - the plants would not be able to thrive in the landscape without tedious and extraneous care, which could include removal of native plants, extra water, extra 53

An all-green landscape weaves in and out and around a special gold mountain. It is a rare moment in an otherwise ordinary blanket.

nutrients. Or two - the plant could thrive so much that it overwhelms the natural vegetation until there is nothing that remains except the invasive species. In both cases, the invasive species act as a form of landscape colonists. The different approaches to the landscape only further distanced the native people and the colonists. Invasive gardens were meant to help the natives in the same way that colonizing them was meant to help; it allowed the priests to feel they were healing or putting the natives back together. Cather does a great job in emphasizing the colonists’ illusion of superiority through descriptions of how they are using the landscape. Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop. New York: Vintage Books, 1971.

THE WEIGHT OF IDENTITY

ERIN KEARNY History and Theory Elective - Novel Histories BLA, FALL 2021

In Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed, Jama is the central character who guides the reader throughout his story. His story allows the reader to understand the colonization of Africa from the perspective of a native, which in itself reveals the hidden histories of the colonized countries of Africa. Throughout the novel, Jama is forced to adapt to a new meaning of identity in a modern world and is forced to encounter technology in both war and modern society. The hidden histories throughout this book are brought out by Jama’s original journey to find his father and enhanced by Jama seeking out wealth to bring home to his wife. Through observing his life, the reader is able to understand the relationships that Jama had with his fellow clansmen, the colonizers of Africa, technology, and the identities of the various characters in the book. Identity becomes a major theme throughout the story. After being colonized by European powers, all of the clans of Africa seem to share the same identity to the Italians and the British soldiers. All of the history that the different clans and countries of Africa were summed up by the idea that European powers owned the land and the people in the land. Through this novel, Jama is able to demonstrate the diverse histories behind the clans and the overall diversity of the people of Africa. “Despite everything, he had his name and his grandfathers’ names and that made him something” (162) . One of the most abundant themes throughout this book is the concept of having an identity and what that means for the character who portrays that identity. Through his clan, he also has a large network of people who are able to support him on his journey to find his father and even as he goes on a journey to find work later in the book. The idea of identity

even serves to tell the story of the multiple characters that travel alongside Jama, including Liban. The large network formed by the Somali people is incredibly useful for Jama in getting a passport and even finding work, but the reader quickly learns that this is not the case for Liban. Mohamed provides a summarized version of the history between the Somali people and the Yibros that allows insight into the history of Africa before colonization. One important part of the story that interacts with the idea of identity and its importance to different governments is how a passport becomes a stepping stone in Jama’s journey. It is established early in the story that Somali people did not carry documents to state who they were: it was often demonstrated that they cared for anyone in their own tribe. Jama even stated at one point that “Their faces were passports inscribed with many places but in their countenances was something ancient, the variety of those who went wandering and peopled the earth” (232) . The Somali people that Jama relies on throughout his journey to find his father and even to get from one place to another demonstrate the overwhelming sense of community in the story. His identity as a Somali person allows for him to use this to his advantage in finding places to stay and jobs to pay him even though he did not originate from wealth: he was able to survive off of his people. The passport becomes the speedbump in Jama’s journey that stopped his ability to go and get work or even move into Egypt without issues. This is also the moment, though, that the reader gets to observe Jama starting to actually enjoy technology to some degree. He talks about the cinema and how some of the actors and actresses were idolized and even takes a photo trying to mimic

the styles that he sees in the photos. This is one of the moments in the story where Jama begins to adjust to the modern world and really starts to enjoy his interactions with technology. His ability to adapt and understand the meaning of identities in comparison to his own is also shown with the Jewish refugees on board the ship. In this instance, the reader can see how Jama is almost infatuated with how Chaja held herself, and even compare her to his own mother. This comparison of identities almost catches the reader by surprise, because it demonstrates the power that this mother held, while the rest of the people on the ship almost seem to blend together. She is given this identity to separate her from the rest of the refugees on the ship because of Jama’s attention to how she both holds herself and how she reminds him of his own mother. This identity is only seemingly significant to Jama on the ship due to the treatment of the refugees by the British. He draws the comparison of the Somali people and the refugees on the ship after watching their powwow. The identities of the refugees and the Somali people are linked in this section of the book, specifically in how both cultures came together with the Elders discussing before the younger men take over to sing. They also seem to be linked in the idea of suffering at the hands of oppressive powers, but this emphasizes the hidden histories of this time period. Not only was the reader able to see Jama’s perspective of working on the ship, but they also saw the power dynamics between the British troops, Somali people, and the Jewish refugees. That power dynamic allows Jama to step out of being the lowest on the totem pole of power and instead serve as simply an observer to oppression instead of being oppressed himself. Jama’s interactions with technology are heavily influenced by his location. At the beginning of the book, the reader can see how Jama is afraid of technology because he only interacts with it with instances of hatred or war. With Jama’s initial brushes with technology, he is often the target, and specifically, after he survives the bombing of the cave as a child, he seems to dislike technology. The development of Jama’s character is shown later in the book when he is working on the ship and most prevalently through his time in London. “Jama finally had a chance to play and live his lost childhood and his father’s motoring dream; the frustrations of a caged, demeaned, stunted life exploded out

of him in that fairground” (273) . The juxtaposition of technology in Jama’s life is extremely abundant through the readings. On one hand, it stole away his childhood and he was forced to adapt to a rapidly changing Africa in order to survive. He was constantly facing a new issue throughout his travels in Africa where he had the Somali people to rely on, but in Africa, it was evident to Jama that he would never be able to become wealthier. As a strong contrast to that, after going to London, Jama does not have nearly the amount of Somali people to rely on for his safe travels. He ends up in the Eidegalle hostel and is not traveling near as much as he was in Africa. In London, Jama turns to rely on technology in order to bring him the happiness that he could not find otherwise in London. Overall, in Black Mamba Boy, Jama circles back on his journey through multiple facets of the story. The reader can draw the themes and importance of the lost identities in Africa after it was colonized through the narration of his travels. Throughout this entire narrative, the reader can see how technology both negatively and positively impacted Jama’s life and how this modernized world filled with technology heavily impacted Africa. There were a lot of negative connotations with technology that Jama faced throughout the beginning of his travels that took away his ability to be a child. He started to adjust to newfound technology through having to make the trip to get his passport, working on the ship, and even living in London for that short period of time. What stands out the most throughout Jama’s narrative is the idea of identity as a whole, the theme of having this everlasting imprint on the world.

Mohamed, Nadifa. Black Mamba Boy. F.A. Thorpe, 2011.

UNDERSERVED YOUTH IN MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES

KATHERINE IIPINGE Architecture Thesis M.Arch, Fall 2020 This thesis focuses on underserved youth in marginalized communities in Boston. These are groups with limited involvement in economic, political, and social decision-making leading to their livelihood due to their living conditions. The intention was to create a space that empowers youth with various programs that will have an incredible impact on their lives and the community.

Conceptual Planning Process

Youth Centers in Dorchester

A Battle Cry for

Design Activism Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton was invited to give a lecture at the BAC as part of the 29th Cascieri Lecture Series on April 8th, 2021. In this lecture, she presented her groundbreaking ideas for Design Activism in the New Age. Her upcoming book, “The Pedagogy of Hope: Pursuing Democracy’s Promise through Place-Based Activism.” describes how underserved BIPOC youth can develop agency by working hands-on to heal wounds in their neighbourhoods. Edited by Jessica Gilbert & Dyuthi Prakash

64 Image Credit: Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton

DR. SHARON EGRETTA SUTTON 65

Dr. Sutton’s work began when she accepted a job as Architect-in-Residence at the lowest achieving public school in Brooklyn, NY. Situated in a middle and upper-middle class neighbourhood, she was tasked with demonstrating their creativity. She addressed it by engaging from grades 4, 5 and 6 in design-build activities. In the first semester, a hundred students learned to design and represent three-dimensional space.

Dr. Sutton at P.S. 152 in Brooklyn, NY. Image Credit - Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton

In the second semester, the team designed and built a structure in the school yard. with the neighbours volunteering as well. She received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the local community for this communal project. This eventually led to her doctoral dissertation in Psychology. Her findings with this research demonstrated that the students who participated in the designbuild activites were more collaborative and environmentally-aware than those who did not. Soon after, in 1986, she accepted a position at the University of Michigan, where she received a W.K. National Fellowship to study leadership. She then went on to conceive the Urban Network, a Program in Urban Design for K-8 schools. This program helped teachers engage their children in improving their deteriorated school surroundings. Dr. Sutton at P.S. 152 in Brooklyn, NY. Image Credit - Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton

The Urban Network The Urban Network, a national outreach program, reoriented the methodology she had developed as an architect to teachers who lacked design expertise, but wanted to engage students in improving their deteriorated school surroundings. The program distributed construction materials, made site visits, held competitions that her graduate students juried, documented projects for others to replicate, and offered teacher workshops in various cities in the United States.

CEEDS In 1998, she left Michigan to join the faculty of the University of Washington to join CEEDS (The Centre for Environment, Education, and Design Studies), which brought together an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students to advance participatory research and design through partnerships, government agencies, and grassroots organisations.

Community Trajectory

Its most successful project by the Urban Network in the Lower East Side of New York City, with sixth grade students, teachers, parents, and volunteer architects transforming a concrete jungle into a

lovely playground, over a period of years. A separate one-year Urban Network in Mexico City placed one architecture student in residence in an elementary school, where the student worked with students in similar design-build activities as those that Sutton had begun her career with.

A commercial for the Urban Network Right: Dr. Sutton addresses a group of teachers. Image Credit: Dr. Sharon Sutton

During her time with CEEDS, their most long-term partnership was with a suburban school district in Tukwila, which began with classroom activities and ended five-years later with a community designbuild for an outdoor classroom. After this, CEEDS reoriented its work to after-school communitybased youth programs. Brooklyn College Community Partnership This was an after-school program that was directed by a mother of three children, who ran a summer internship for high school students that would pair them with artists to redesign their space as a maker studio. 67

The University Trajectory

Students surveying buildings in Detroit.

The trajectory that engages university students in community design began after Sutton achieved tenure and could take advantage of its protection while taking on this risky form of teaching. The Village of Dexter When Sutton received a request for assistance in planning a Methodist church in the Village of Dexter, she hired three research assistants to aid in the process of design for several months, which eventually led to a House for the People of God. They eventually presented their drawings and a model of the vision at a social. The church was receptive and received pledges of over $100,000. Although the end result was not successful, the planning process was exciting and the right decision was made. Surveying Buildings in Detroit Sutton applied the same techniques to a Graduate studio at the University of Michigan in Detroit, where none of the students had ever encountered a black professor. The students and Sutton developed a process for working with many Detroit communities, as the city became increasingly devastated. Detroit and the surrounding towns did not have accurate planning maps, so their work began with surveys. Many of their projects were adaptive reuse, which was a little-known building technology at the time. Presenting at the University Presentations at the university were communityorganizing events that led to the next stage of the project. The clients attended these presentations, and other students were able to attend as well. Sometimes, they presented at the clients’ offices, with the residents and communities present. These interdisciplinary studios served non-profit organisations, and community groups, and offered any services that the community needed.

Community Design Charrettes Through CEEDS, Sutton convened many community design charrettes, involving many stakeholders and students working in teams. One of the projects was a business district with several historic buildings, a park, and heavy vehicular traffic. This led to a four-day charrette with over a hundred participants, which resulted in illustrations that were used as design guidelines to increase density while maintaining a pedestrian scale.

Interdisciplinary studios at the University of Michigan Image Credit - Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton

Community Engaged Studios When Seattle was building a Light Rail system, one of the stations required the demolition of a beloved park. The end result needed to enhance the park and replace affordable housing units that were compromised. Sutton tasked undergraduate students with redesigning the new development, by creating models, and attending community meetings and developing proposals. Their work was on display at the local Chamber of Commerce, where it remained on display for everyone to see. Collaboration with Donald King Architects Sutton occasionally partnered with Donald King Architects, Seatlle’s largest Black-owned architecture firm. With this firm, the students explored the feasibility of turning an existing community center that served African-American seniors into an intergenerational facility with housing. The students collaborated with students at the school of social work, who were aware of a funding stream for aged-out foster youth. As a result, accommodating that population along with seniors and families became a feature of their housing concept.

INHABITED BORDERS A communal space to celebrate human condition along the Turkey-Syria border

DILA ECE OZYAZICI Architecture Masters Thesis M.Arch, Fall 2020 This thesis focuses on the obstacles and limitations that borders create, forcing humans to remain indifferent in their territories and national identities, which consist of the culture, social life, language, geopolitical location from one and all. However, the thesis project proposes an unordinary space on the borderline for its habitants to gather, share, and educate each other about one another, where there are no limits and boundaries around them. Opposing the idea of a border as an invisible but forceful element in people’s lives, the proposal aims at the border as an approachable area where it becomes a negative space through nature that builds a connection of the differences. Borders are there for people to cross, wander around, feel the present spirit, and exchange the moment. 71

BORDER SECURITY The Syria-Turkey border is secured by a border wall and fences along the entire border line. The border wall, which is third largest wall after the Great Wall China and US-Mexico border wall runs the full length of the 911km border. The border wall consists of physical layers: concrete walls, patrol routes, manned and unmanned towers, and passenger tracks.

Built border wall all along the Turkey/Syria border

Turkish forces and border control guards brought heavy machines and trucks into Syrian territories, making a dirt road and digging a trench while installing cement pillars to build a separation wall.

Military forces along the border

REFUGEE CAMPS In Turkey, about 250,000 Syrian lives in refugee camps. Others choose to live outside of the camps to be able to work in the cities.

Refugee camp containers in Turkey

The people who live in the camps struggle in harsh living conditions and economy. The children who go to schools in Turkey need to know the language before they begin their studies. Althrough it is easy to learn a language in that age, there are not enough facilities for those who dont know the language. People who live in the camps are not permitted to work or leave the camps due to the overcrowding and security issues. Refugee camp tents/containers in Turkey 72

CONDITION ON THE BORDER The ongoing bombardment at the Syria side of the border forces people to mass near the Turkish border with a hope for a safe passage into the country to find peace and calm. The Syria-Turkey border crossing opens only for important cases, which are medical emergency, commercial purposes, or transporting goods to and from Turkey. Syrian children on the border wall

Commercial activities, meaning product trading, have been a means of income for war profiteers on both sides of the conflict. The permitted crossing along the border is limited by the government forces to provide a better security for both sides. Since the government of Turkey has stopped the crossing from the border to prevent more flux into the country, many Syrian citizens remain without homes and even without shelter, protected from the harsh weather conditions.

Syrian refugees attempting to cross the border

The displaced people who are lucky enough to leave their under-attack countries and seek a place to return to their lives need many shelters, tents, and food products. 1

1 NewsHour, P. (2016, January 17). Inside the harsh living conditions for Syrian refugees in Turkey. Retrieved December 04, 2020, from https://www.pbs.org/ newshour/show/inside-the-harsh-living-conditions-for-syrian-refugees-in-turkey

Syrian refugees at the Oncupinar Checkpoint

Trucks/cars crossing the border through checkpoint

View from a Border Gate 73

TURKEY/SYRIA BORDER CLIMATE

TURKEY/SYRIA BORDER CLIMATE Kilis,Kilis,Turkey

Kilis,Kilis,Turkey

TURKEY/SYRIA BORDER CLIMATE

Kilis,Kilis,Turkey

36.658N, 37.095 E Kilis,Kilis,Turkey

36.658N, 37.09536.658N, E 37.095 E

36.658N, 37.095 E

AVERAGE TEMPERATURE CHART

AVERAGE RAINFALL CHART 70

(mm)

Month

(C)

50 40

20 10 0

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

10 Jan

Jun

Feb

Mar

Jul

Apr

Aug

May

Sep

Jun

Oct

Jul

Nov

Aug

Sep

Dec Jan

Oct

Nov

Feb

88.0

Feb

7.1 Feb

Temp

5.3

Month

Temp

Pre

5.3

69.6 Mar

7.1

11.0

15.8

May

20.9

Jun

25.8

Jul

29.2

Precip Jan

88.0 Feb

7.1

69.6

Feb

7.1

11.0 Mar58.7 11.0

58.7

Mar

41.6

11.0

Apr 58.7

Apr

15.8

41.6

May

20.9

25.6

Jun

25.8

2.6

Jul

29.2

5.9 Aug

2.9

Aug

15.8 Apr41.6 15.8

May

20.9

Jun

25.8

Jul

29.2 Aug100.4 29.2

Aug

29.2 Sep 2.6 25.6

May

20.9

25.6 20 25.8

Jun

Jul

5.9 29.2

25.6 5.9 0.4

Sep

0 36.6 20.0 25.6 Oct 2.9 Mar Jan Feb

Dec Oct

20.0 Apr

Temp

Jan

88.0

Apr

Nov Mar Dec

Month

Precip

5.3

Jan

40 69.6

The site lies at 695 m/2280 ft above sea level. The climate around the site is warm and temperate. The winters are rainier than the summers. The driest month is July, with 1 mm/0.0 inch of rain. The greatest amount of precipitation occurs in December, with an average of 93 mm/3.7 inches.

(C)

Precip 50

Month

5.3

Mar

Temp

Jan

Nov

12.5

58.6

Dec

7.2

79.9

Jul

Aug

36.6

12.5 May 7.2

58.6 Jun 79.9

Apr

Sep

May

Oct

Jun

Jul

Nov

Aug

Dec

Sep

Oct

Sep Nov

Dec

Sep 0.4

25.6

29.2

Oct 2.6

20.0

25.6

2.9

Nov

12.5

Dec

7.2

Oct

20.0

36.6

Nov

12.5

58.6

Dec

7.2

79.9

July is the warmest month of the year. The temperature in July averages 27.8 °C | 82.0 °F. The lowest average temperatures in the year occur in January, when it is around 5.0 °C | 41.0 °F.2

Site Accessibility Analysis

Site Information Analysis

EXISTING BORDERLINE MOVES AND EXPANDS

EXHIBITION AUDITORIUM

The boundary line is used as a reference for creating the outline of the design space. As shown in the figure, the line expands on both sides.

LARGE GATHERINGS MEETING SMALL THE HUBS ARE BROKEN POINTINTO PIECES GATHERINGS

LARGE

EXHIBITION AUDITORIUM

GATHERINGS The hubs are divided into shards to specify RESTAURANT CLASSES programs through theMEETING shards. Each shard SMALL ACCOMODATION POINT STUDIOS GATHERINGS provides users with different experiences WORKSHOPS and moments of interaction with each RESTAURANT CLASSES other. ACCOMODATION STUDIOS WORKSHOPS

CREATES A CARVE OUT/ NEGATIVE SPACE

EXHIBITION

The expansion creates a negative spaceAUDITORIUM LARGE on the site. Negative spaceGATHERINGS provides users with SMALL an open public space. MEETING GATHERINGS

CLASSES STUDIOS WORKSHOPS

POINT

RESTAURANT ACCOMODATION

EXHIBITION AUDITORIUM

LARGE GATHERINGS SMALL GATHERINGS CLASSES STUDIOS WORKSHOPS

MEETING POINT RESTAURANT ACCOMODATION

SITE IS DIVIDED INTO 3 MAIN HUBS

The site with the negative space is divided into three main hubs to place programs along the borderline/site. 76

PIECES CONNECTED THROUGH PATHWAYS

The underground corridors aim to provide a connection between the fragments. This also arouse the curiosity of the users and makes them feel disoriented, to experience liminality.

S GAT

CLASSE STUDIO WORKSH

The thesis intends to activate an imaginative place where the space allows distinguished identities to come together and interact with one another. The chosen site is on a checkpoint where it embraces two different but similar cultures. I looked at the cultural identities of both countries that can be shared and exchanged on the same site through the chosen program. The program also aims to solve the common problems of immigrants in the analyzed statistics shown on the previous pages. The diagram on the top shows the similar cultures in the same colors and the chosen programs that are related to those cultural activities. To this end, a cultural and educational center was designed on the Syria/Turkey border within the existing checkpoint. 77

Top View Section Perspective

Section Perspective

Level 01 Plan

Long Section

Level 02 Plan

View From Outdoor Area

View From Library

View From Ground Plane / In-Between Area

RESILIENT DESIGN AND PLANNING FOR THE MUNICIPALITY OF GUARNICA: A Model for Inclusive Emergency Community Shelters Written by RUTH SUPER Design for Human Health MDS, Spring 2021 We are ALL at our most vulnerable in times of emergency, disaster, and pandemics. This is precisely when design equity and inclusion needs are at their most urgent and critical, and this is often also when the built environment fails us the most. During the Intensive Week in the Design for Human Health Inclusive Design program, Yanel DeAngel, the founder of the non-profit organization ResilientSEE, gave a presentation and workshop on Resilient Design and Planning for the Municipality of Guanica so that the students could get an understanding of the issues surrounding inclusive emergency planning and could contribute to the project by brainstorming and applying Universal Design principles to the problem. Yanel explained the importance of an emergency shelter to be ready-to-go at any time. To solve this, ResilientSEE was testing a model of a kit-of-parts, community-based, basketball court facility used yearround, which could expand or contract to meet the different emergency types and sites. Two students - Ana Rios-Sabatier, who lives on the island of Puerto Rico and has experienced hurricane and earthquake emergencies there first hand, and Ryan Downs, who has worked on FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) in the past, wanted to get involved further. Under the guidance of Ruth Super, the instructor of the Inclusive Design Course, and Ana and Ryan, a collaboration was set up between ResilientSEE-PR, Voluntariado de Ingenieros and Profesionales de Puerto Rico, and the Boston Architectural College to enhance the Municipal Emergency Plan and create a model for community centers that transform into community shelters during emergency events.

Ana, Ryan, and Ruth joined the ResilientSEE group virtual meetings twice a week for five weeks to identify issues necessary to make this shelter an inclusive space for all community members. The team researched demographic data of all genders, ages, abilities, and cultural preferences. Questions were asked, such as: Who were the people who would be coming to the shelter? What will they bring with them? What do they fear? What health issues might the population bring? How do they navigate from entering the site, to finding a specific person or facility in the space? Ana identified the issue of equity and privacy in sleeping arrangements and toilet adjacencies and wayfinding throughout the space. Ryan used his previous experience with FEMA to plan the site and took on the highly controversial and challenging issue of creating non-gendered, culturally appropriate, inclusive showering facilities. Ruth Super used her prior inclusive design and emergency management experience to contribute inclusive guidance for the use of the facility at the administrative and policy level. The conceptual phase has been completed. In 2021 grants and funding need to be secured with community organizations and the Municipality leadership. The model is being used by States and Island Countries as a model for emergency planning of community shelters.

TOWARDS JUST SPACE

Written by KAREN NELSON Dean, School of Architecture We know that power in society is manifest spatially in access to good jobs, robust schools, efficient public transportation, healthy food, safe drinking water, and good air quality. We also know that a lack of power can be expressed in the absence of these things. Safe neighborhoods made up of healthy buildings engender a sense of well-being while their absence diminishes it. When we speak of Just Space, we mean an inclusive environment that makes all community members feel welcome and confers a sense of balance, belonging, and well-being. The BAC’s lecture series, exhibits, and our revised curriculum aim to critique current conditions, suggesting ways to correct conditions of inequity, and bring awareness and visibility to the design of just spaces.

Courses in the School of Architecture that have addressed inclusion and social good include CityLab|CityX, Community Practice, Design Convicted: Rethinking the Spaces of Incarceration, and Design for Cultural Difference. We have more work to do. We eagerly include students in the conversation to make the next steps together – informed and inspiring a new generation of designers.

The lecture series of academic year 2020-2021, Just Space, featured four Black and brown designers in the fall and four in the spring. While the BAC has a diverse student body and many students who are the first in their families to attend college, the BAC needs to do a better job of sharing role models of color and having all members of our community reflect upon and act to undo structural racism. We aim to create an archive of recorded lectures as well as the work of the college to undo structural racism. This archive will include these lectures alongside those of Mabel O. Wilson, Walter Hood, and Sharon Egretta Sutton. This archive will also gather in one place courses, exhibits, and symposia that address this issue. The exhibits that have actively addressed issues of spatial injustice and recovery include Black Spaces Matter (exhibit and symposium), Undesign the Redline: The Transformation of Race, Place and Class in America (course and exhibit), and Who Builds Your Architecture? (exhibit, gallery talk by Kadambari Baxi, lecture by Peggy Deamer).

The Digital

Beyond the Screen

THE NEW ARCHITECTURE WITH HAMZE MACHMOUCHI Interviewed By Sana Aladwani

I had the pleasure of interviewing Hamze Machmouchi, a Boston Architectural College Alumnus and a current Zaha Hadid Architects employee. Machmouchi’s ideas of architecture and technology are truly unique, and his ever changing perspective and background go hand in hand in making that. - Sana Aladwani

What made you decide to study architecture?

So I’m from Lebanon, and the way this started for me was that my family was in the construction industry there, and I always wanted to be a robotics engineer. I really wanted to have something to do with technology and I just didn’t realize back then that it was mostly revolving around architecture. I later realized it was more like interactive architecture. So later I wanted to become an engineer in France, and then I thought maybe it’s just better to become an architect; it offers so many ways to interact and develop different projects. I just needed that kind of general aspect; I didn’t want to be a specialist. I think that’s how I ended up being an architect. I still don’t know if I’m an architect, honestly. So why did I choose to study architecture is because of the flexibility and simplicity I think that’s the, that’s the simple answer.

How was y o u r journey through the BAC?

It was an interesting experience, the beginning was a bit tough, honestly, it takes you by surprise.

The experience when I started was very troubling because I was starting a new program, and I just didn’t know how intensive it was going to be. The first studio was very intense; it was actually the marble exercise and I was so intimidated. I was really shocked by the constraints in the beginning, because they (the faculty) pushed us to get a job from the first day, I had so many questions like how would that work? How exactly would you do that? After a while, the experience got better and better. I was really lucky actually to have some instructors that really pushed the kind of creative aspects that I was really interested in, the transdisciplinary, the, the ability and the thoughts that you can do anything, that’s what I really came for at the beginning. I later started making a lot of things that were a lot more interesting in my eyes and I really started loving what I was doing and I really became enamored with the research. What I take from my BAC experience was that it forged the experience of understanding architecture as something that crosses boundaries.

When and how did that shift happen where you went from being intimidated to confident?

Shockingly, it’s not even a studio that changed my perception, it was a workshop class, Representing Ideas, that I took with Professor Junko Yamamoto. She actually studied at the BAC then went to Harvard after that, and she was teaching us while going to Harvard doing her masters. In her class, she brought in a lot of her friends that were coming with fresh ideas, and it really brought in the sense of, what is, what are we exactly doing as architects? We’re presenting ideas, right, but what exactly are these ideas and where exactly do we find ourselves? She was advocating for the real, but also talking about the things that could go beyond that. One of the guest teachers was Matthew Williams, and he just showed a process that wasn’t even from a sketchbook, it was just from Photoshop collages. And he was just saying that this was his architectural process, which was so shocking for me. He brought up questions like why are we just drawing in a sketchbook? Why can’t we already have the render and project what the space could be like. The medium is the massage, and that’s the outcome that I got from this. After that, I started really doing a lot of things like playing with materials, playing with different technologies. I was always at the 3D printer or the CNC, I even ended up doing a residency at the build space and where I got the opportunity to work on a really cool installation with a friend of mine who is also a BAC grad. That class was definitely the shifting moment for me, where I realized you shouldn’t stick to this image of the architect.

I mean, definitely sketch and definitely use any type of medium that brings out your creativity and brings out your kind of passion, at the end of the day, you have ideas that you want to explore and everyone gets scared of that blank sheet of paper that you’re always like trying to fill when, what if that blank sheet of paper, wasn’t a blank sheet of paper anymore. What if you were doing something else with your hands where maybe you were using the computer, or maybe you’re using a painting material or both, the multimedia. Sketching is also important obviously for foundation purposes, but there’s more to expressing ideas than that.

Your final year thesis at the BAC was “ ‘absence/ essence’: a music library that illustrates the architectural expression of the Doppler Effect”. Can you explain more about that?

So this project specifically had a lot of interesting aspects that I didn’t know that I was going to end up with! The thing that was super important for this project to be successful was my studio instructor, and I don’t think that project would have ended up like this without them. It was amazing to have a process that was emphasized right from the bat, with something that wasn’t even architectural.

I started my precedents with the B Hammond organ, which is an electric organ. So the Leslie speaker was something that was developed after the Hammond B3, and it was an extension of that device that was created. And if it wasn’t for that, the sound wouldn’t sound as good. So the Hammond that was used in churches turned into a jazzy punchy sound with the addition of the extension, and that made it the most famous instrument. And funny enough, the creator of the Hammond wasn’t even recognizing that as a speaker because he thought it was a fraud. So for me, I saw this as taking advantage of the Doppler effect and actually extended something that was very classical,which correlated with my project. I was thinking about Boston as a whole, as something that was very classical and very traditional like the original Hammond Organ, and then the extension that comes in makes it super interesting, and it was falling in line with the music library itself. After the research is where I started doing different models and trying different methods, like using concrete, and fabrication, which was a huge part in my process. It was using the strange ideas that kind of motivated the project, like having a movable stage that would activate different spaces at different times of the day and having musicians that would use one space for research and another one for performance, and here is where the Doppler effect is being presented, you know, like you have this very cubicle plot, the box and you have the extension of it that’s kind of reverberating and extending the building to its original form.

It was a super interesting project to work on, like I still look back to them and I can’t even believe this was a one year project. I mean, it was fun, more fun than stressful, but there were a lot of sleepless nights for sure where me and studio partners were working late nights, but it was fun. And if it wasn’t for David and Dahlia, my instructors, I don’t think I would have had as much fun. I mean, as an architect the goal was to engage with an audience that doesn’t know much about architecture and how can I actually bring out that element to them.

Has the professional experience during school helped you? If so, how? Yeah, the professional experience definitely helped me. Working at Elkus Manfred’s in Boston Really shaped the way I was thinking about obligation because I ended up actually doing a lot of the fabrication work of my thesis there, like the 3d modeling and they were part of the schematics design team. The BAC does a really good job at pushing us to get work experience, and that really pays off.

You were a recipient of the Ames scholarship, where you took a trip to Tokyo, Seoul, and Daejeon. How did your design interests develop through the Ames? The Ames scholarship was honestly when the game started for me, I didn’t know, that it was gonna be something that I was going to win, because I was in a room full of people and we’re just out there advocating for a trip to Japan and Korea and talking about robotics and data relationship to architecture, and I somehow won. So I started with Tokyo, and I had different questions that I had in my mind when I, when I was going there, like, how do you feel about space? How would you interact with different types of technologies? How do executives affect architecture as a whole? One of the places that interested me was TeamLab, which is a sensory space, where I had the opportunity to have these different interactive installations that were all using lights, projection, projection mapping,and different actual physical elements.

So here I was walking in water and this was like the water itself. I was also really interested in modularity and for me, the NASDAQ was definitely something that was super high end and it wasn’t something that was done in the seventies. I had the opportunity to sleep in a pod, for the length of my trip. And I went to this futuristic museum, the future museum, where they had different robots and actually lived my childhood inspiration.I was in awe, like how am I now seeing all of this in person, and I didn’t really know back then what to make of it. I just thought, I just want to make spaces like these that are super engaging. I also attended meetings with major tech companies like Sony, and I had the opportunity to meet very inspiring people. I was trying to understand and see how mobility and modularity can all interplay and create something that’s quite interactive. I had the opportunity to actually meet with people from the urban design lab and they understood that robotics is not really the answer to a question that we don’t know, It was more the artificial intelligence. They were using these apps to track where people are going left and right, like some people were going more to the gym, and the designers were just observing their mobility and they were just making design decisions and planning decisions, based on that they were seeing, like if we made this gym here, they would clog less the circulation and this area, what if we did this?

“I mean, the new architect is the developer, when you Google architecture, you’re not just getting the architects, you’re also getting the software engineers, coders etc.”

The main question I wanted answered was how robotics can inform architecture, and that’s how it started, but it ended up being bigger than just robotics, it just became more of how can we use artificial intelligence? How can we use mechanical props? How can we use modularity and reactivity? Working with these aspects kind of brought in the next step of my life.

What made you want to further your architecture studies?

Without a doubt my Ames trip was the push I needed to continue my education. I think it made me more motivated and more excited at the idea of studying architecture because I was going place after place and it kept breaking the notion, and I thought I was interested in robotics, now I’m realizing that I’m more interested in things like gamification and how robotics can actually come into play is how you actually develop the fabrication methodology, like using a robotics machine. My Ames trip was the thing that defined how I think about architecture today.

How was your journey through the Architectural Association? Actually, I developed an app there, a game actually. In the game, you select your avatar and you’re able to interact with different people and actually connect with small,and medium enterprises and buy materials from them online, like non-refundable land. We’re talking about non-fungible land where you’re able to actually own a parcel of land virtually, but also have the ability to translate it into the physical realm, using a set of tools that we developed around the fabrication and geometry of materials.

In the game, you had all the costs, the budget, and you, as a property investor, is able to develop this whole parcel of land and then someone else next door is also developing his own parcel and using assets that he bought from the lobby of material from enterprises. From there, you can just bond again and just see the thing in real life, interact with different people, get a feedback loop, before it gets built in real life. Or maybe you can just stay in the virtual realm and still generate profit, for the interested parties. There was a lot of fabrication and geometry neurological aspects that were researched. So here my partner and I were really interested in the minimal surfaces and then cell structures, because we’re using fabric as formwork, you know, and when you’re using fabric as formwork, you pretty much have to consider the fact that you have the weight of the concrete or the plaster or whatever you’re using to cast. We even went from using the 10 side manual method, and then we use the robotic arm and then translate that into whatever, it could be anything, but we just decided to use these boundaries for us. So the AA brought in an aspect of mine that I didn’t know, I mean, I was always really interested in gamification, like I love playing video games, but I just didn’t know I could apply it to architecture. I was actually very dubious at the beginning, I was telling my partner that I don’t know about this gamification program that you’re telling us, but as I went through it, I was just so fascinated with it, because it’s just the missing link. I mean the same way, the Ames scholarship. I had to present a missing link to them, saying that these things already exist and people are using them in order to get the scholarship. I had the same thing here with using gamification as a means to bring in different actors into one project, and how can you actually develop a project from scratch, how can you bring in property, developers, architects, and designers, all into one platform, and that was the end result. It’s kind of crazy, it just fell into place, all of them were at the right place, right time.

What are you working on now? I’m working at Zaha Hadid now, in the competition cluster. I was just working on the company project that actually tied in with a lot of the application of what I did at the AA, which is really exciting, so all that work wasn’t in vain. I even ended up working with my tutor, collaborating with his team, and it was super exciting. Obviously the hours are long and there’s a lot of work, but it feels like I’m still learning and I love that feeling. If I should describe the ideal job to someone, it is the one that you feel like you’re still learning and you’re still researching and you’re still enjoying the pleasures or the bliss that we used to get out of academic work. It feels like I still haven’t graduated, and I don’t think I’ll ever graduate because I’m always curious, I’m always interested in developing interesting methods.

What words of advice do you have for current BAC students? “It comes down to the medium is the massage.” Like, what are you going to do with all the tools that are offered to you? People should really think about this because they make the tools, the tools don’t make them, the 3D printer isn’t there to teach you, it’s there so you can learn through the process, don’t think about how it could model your idea, think about the idea itself that you want to model. Also make sure to work and use these tools, don’t disregard them, go to the CNC and the 3D printer, work with them, make a prototype, a bracelet, anything, work with the mediums that are offered to you. Also always have questions, keep thinking about the next step, something is wrong when you don’t have any new questions.

When you get obsessed with the tools you end up missing the point; that’s something that I noticed also happened a lot at the BAC is that you get fascinated with a 3D printer or you get fascinated with the laser cutter. Now, the new fascination is probably be the robot, and it completely makes sense, I was super fascinated with them too, but you have to always look at what you can do with them, not what you can learn from them because they’re not here to teach you something you’re there to use them so that you learn something. You’re learning from what you’re doing with it. Always be aware that your tools don’t define what you’re going to make. I used to say to my friend, everyone in every work field should do an architecture foundation for a semester or a year, because it really situates you, it brings out so much perspective on how you think about your built environment. And it’s important to not walk around in a city and be clueless about different details around you. People work so much for these buildings, it’s important to come and look around with an architect’s perspective.

How do you see yourself in 10 years? Each time I was moving throughout my career, I was answering questions of mine and then I was just going on with new ones, and that’s why for me, it’s important to stay in academia and not to stick to that nine to five job, because in my opinion you always need the new questions to explore and answer, otherwise you never have the passion. Answering these questions may mean you’re going to end up working long hours, but you’re learning so much, and that’s just so exciting. In the future I want to own a start-up company, I don’t believe that we should just open architecture firms anymore, I mean, what’s the point of it? There’s so many architecture firms everywhere.

Even in the AA specifically, if you go to their project reviews website, there are so many interesting projects, and they don’t even have to be buildings, some of them are just interventions that can be built now, more on the actionable sides, like activists or artists.

Architects are now becoming activists in the eyes of the AA, and you have to be able to act upon it. My AA thesis that I worked on, I had the opportunity to develop it into a startup. It’s still in the works, but something like this out of an architect, like having a tech startup and being CTO and all of these things, is that even possible for an architect? Well, yeah, it is. It’s important that architects realize that architecture is not the end goal. What is the end goal is what you have as aspirational, what you want to make, what you want to distribute to people. It may be spaces, may be products, may be anything that you find interesting. You shouldn’t think of architecture as I’m going to end up working for an architecture firm, it’s a good experience, but you can also end up being a set designer. Like Steven, my friend is now designing something for Gunna the artist, it’s insane. You can do so much other than designing buildings with your architectural education.

VIRTUAL SHOP TOUR CNC: Computer Numerical C Control Laboratory Providing experiences that are familiar but in new formats, widening accessibility of those formats. Changes in environment and space now. Making field trips that are accessible on a wider scale.

This CNC is hosted by others but seeing it used in the profession is more exciting and comprehensible in use of the tech outside of academia. Utilizing the specific nature of virtual connection to capitalize on virtual connection to give a “quiet” walkthrough – without voices, it captured the space but gave it to the viewer, and then asked students to respond. We acknowledge the differences between physical and virtual. Providing experiences that are familiar but in new formats, the workshop aimed to widen accessibility of those formats and allow field trips that are accessible on a wider scale.

Edited by Jessica Gilbert in discussion with Peter Atwood

GLOBAL FRACTALS WORKSHOP An exploration workshop that creates shared spaces for serious play and new investigations with digital media.

TAKBIR FATIMA, DIRECTOR, FRACTALS WORKSHOP + DESIGNAWARE PETER ATWOOD, DIRECTOR, DIGITAL MEDIA, BAC The Fractals workshop was founded by Takbir Fatima in 2011 as an exploration workshop to introduce parametric design to students in India and was eventually incorporated into Designaware (designaware.org). Fatima learned of the teaching methodologies and mission and reached out to bring Fractals to the BAC. In 2020, in partnership with Peter Atwood, Director of Digital Media and Faculty, the workshop launched its first BAC iteration. Per Atwood, workshops allow a unique and different opportunity within educational spaces that allow for “serious play,” which he believes to be important. The workshop initially began as a tactile workshop using cups and straws. Current workshops start with paper and move to digital creations that are viewed in virtual reality. 95

Shared Spaces

Serious Play

Each workshop’s specific time and place will allow for a group of 8 - 12 BAC community members to participate. There will be no cost to community members to attend. A single workshop instructor will be hired to develop the experience and learning resources. The instructor will also be responsible for providing structured guidance during a dedicated 4 hour period of time. A $500 stipend will be provided. Each workshop will expressly state a plan for sharing the experience and learning resources with the entire BAC community asynchronously. While not limited to the following, opportunities to accomplish this could include photo documentation, video capture, written explanations, publicized community notes, etc.

Each workshop’s experience will stand apart from a traditional classroom environment where academic credit is evaluated and given. BAC Community members participating in the workshop will have the opportunity to freely and calmly play with the digital media subject matter of the workshop. Learning resources will be designed to prompt participants to enter in at a middle point. From there, the instructor will support the individual participant’s movement through the process. The instructor will also be responsible for contextualizing the shared experiences with connections to the education provided by the BAC.

New Investigations Each workshop will dedicate its subject matter to a specific “new” investigation. This newness will stand apart from the existing curriculum within the BAC’s degree programs or courses. The workshop will present and allow students to investigate digital tools or spaces, not institutionally required for professional education credit. The goal is to create a space between the essential educational purposes and the workshop’s subject matter within which students can wonder and ask different questions about design thinking.

The main benefit of workshops is that they teach both ways, with facilitators providing initial instruction and basic principals but learning from that implementation from each participant’s approach. In working with the BAC, Fatima and Atwood exchanged and evaluated methodologies to both further the development of Fractals, and discuss aspects of documenting process and failure. As Fatima stated, in science we document failures and share them with the public to acknowledge that they were not good ideas, and explain the process to the end goal. In sharing failures, it takes the aspect of perfection of design off the table and allows design to be evaluated and contemplated.

FROM THE 2021 BAC NANO-CONFERENCE

The BAC’s Faculty Development Project (FDP) – coled by Davis Harte and Mark Rukamathu – is pleased to announce the funding of six faculty innovation projects with resources from the Davis Educational Foundation following a rigorous application and screening process. The faculty development project grant was received from the Davis Educational Foundation, established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis after Mr. Davis’s retirement as chairman of Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc. Each award allowed BAC faculty to pursue innovations in online teaching and learning. Grant recipients presented their findings at the nano-conference held in May 2021. Please read the abstracts of the faculty research papers and projects in the following pages. 98

Matterport as a Tool for Understanding Existing Site Spatial Detail

Innovative Digital Media Education: Promote Collaboration through a Hybrid Teaching Model and Inclusive Content in Remote Learning

Written by JESSICA WOLFF & LUKE SINOPOLI Adjunct Faculty Davis Foundation Grant Recipient

Written by WENDY WANG & GRACE S. WONG, Adjunct Faculty Davis Foundation Grant Recipient

When understanding a site and its potential for design rethinking, a student can study the site in a variety of digital methods when they cannot visit the site in person. Recently, advancements in digital photography, modeling, and videography have allowed for a more robust picture of existing conditions of a site.

Collaboration is essential in design education and a foundation for innovation. During the pandemic, the collaborative environment has been significantly challenged by remote learning. In this study the digital media course DME 2044 Advanced 2D&3D Digital Media and DME 2045 Visualization course were re-evaluated and reformed to encourage class communications, redistribute long screen time, and offer more flexibility to improve student performances. The objective of this new structure was to utilize different digital coworking platforms to foster effective collaborations, prototype flexible teaching models that could be adapted by future digital media courses, and upgrade content that reflects diverse and equitable values.

Matterport is an immersive 3D digital program using laser scanning to assist with a detailed understanding of the site, in order to better help students grasp site constraints and opportunities when they cannot perform in-person site visits. Matterport’s visualization of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West allows viewers to see indoor and outdoor spatial relationships in detail, as well as perform an in-depth walk-through of the entire site. In the spring of 2021, Jessica and Luke collaborated with Abraham Landes, a professional architectural photographer and videographer, to explore how to best utilize Matterport technologies for the Arch3 studio.

The Hybrid Teaching Model broke down the 3-hour class time into shorter segments, distributing time among in-class lectures, discussions, short program introductions, and pre-recorded technical tutorials. All tutorials were recorded and made available on Google Drive for students to learn at their own pace and schedule. The course contents were redesigned to include critical topics that were relevant for today’s landscape profession, such as the designing of the Green New Deal and climate change, and students worked together to complete one case study. The end-of-semester survey and instructor assessment showed that the new structure has successfully provided learning dynamism, flexibility, and demonstrated higher effectiveness for those technical skill learning. The survey also showed that the Hybrid Teaching Model was not as effective on students motivated by learning in an class setting with counterparts and the physical presence of an instructor, which remains a challenge in remote teaching.

Physical Models, Digital Feedback Bridging the Gap Between the Analog and the Digital in Remote Architectural Education

Finding Common, Shared Space to Think, Work, and Play at a Distance: Experiments in Virtual and Augmented Reality

Written by IGNACIO LÓPEZ BUSÓN Adjunct Faculty Davis Foundation Grant Recipient

Written by SAMUEL MADDOX Adjunct Faculty Davis Foundation Grant Recipient

Remote education is naturally pushing architecture students to replace traditional creative approaches (sketching, physical models) by working directly on their computers. This proposal aims to revitalize the importance of physical model-making in the current architecture education environment by bridging the gap between the analog and the digital, thanks to photogrammetry technology.

One of the aspects of design studios that has been most sorely missed over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the shared, creative space— traditionally physical space—that facilitates novel connections, messy overlaps, and comparative analyses between students’ work and thought. In an effort to reconstruct such spaces in a remote setting, the Degree Projects studio (Spring 2021, Section C) incorporated a variety of virtual and augmented reality exercises of varying degrees of difficulty into the studio curriculum via a short series of workshops. The final outputs of these VR/AR exercises were treated as optional opportunities for students to earn additional credit. Only one exercise was considered mandatory: the submission of digital artifacts for a studiowide virtual gallery, including technical drawings, perspectives, diagrams, and massing models. Over the course of this experiment, it became clear that students were both interested and proficient in testing out these tools; however, the timing of their introduction (mid-spring) was too late in the semester for students to fully embrace all of them while still meeting their core requirements of their comprehensive studio. Nonetheless, the AR/VR tools that were tested had great outcomes as part of the final review. In future studios, these technologies should be introduced sooner and employed as tools for iterative design testing in addition to their utility as final presentation tools.

Photogrammetry is the scientific field that focuses on the extraction of information from the physical environment through photographic imagery, allowing for the generation of accurate 3D models. The democratization of technology and its exponential development in the last decades has given almost everyone access to a technique that was exclusive to the mapping and aeronautic industries. Today, smartphones incorporate near-professional cameras, and laptops have enough computer power to use specialized photogrammetry software. This proposal provides the students with a comprehensive toolkit to: build initial physical models of their projects, use their phones to photo-scan those models, generate 3D “digital twins” in their laptops, and use design software to measure and analyze them. This methodology aims to create an efficient design back-and-forth between the physical and the digital in order to facilitate creative exploration and experimentation through three-dimensional work in architecture education.

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Reimagined Forms of Architectural Drawings, Media, and Material Culture in an Online Classroom

2024 Project: Learning Events for a Virtual Design Curriculum

Written by YOONJEE KOH Director and Faculty, School of Architecture Davis Foundation Grant Recipient

Written by RASHMI RAMASWAMY Adjunct Faculty Davis Foundation Grant Recipient

Traditionally held ways of design (i.e., handsketching, physical modeling, and drawing) and the ways of digital design (i.e., software rendering, animation, VR, and production) are often seen at opposite ends. While the traditional versus digital dichotomy may hold its own right, the ever-blurring boundaries between what is digital and what is physical and the significance of the moments of learning that can happen through those boundaries of transition warrants a closer study.

What will the field of design look like in the future and what world will design create? How should we rethink the design curriculum given the recent transition to virtual learning? This study uses a participatory approach, bringing together faculty, students, and practitioners to investigate these questions and co-create a design curriculum for the future. The exploration led to a replicable curriculum, including modifications to a proposed format based on student feedback and lessons learned for future use either as a summer class or as an elective.. There was a lot of interest from the community of teachers, learners, and faculty to progress this into an actual course offering. Students offered to be teaching assistants for the course, and it was remarkable to see the excitement on partaking of something meaningful and fun. Conversations with faculty in other disciplines revealed that Modules 1-4 can be offered as the foundation of integrated design, thus bringing design literacy to the forefront of tools for the next generation. Modules 5-6 are particular to the discipline of architecture and could be similarly customized to suit other disciplines.

Design is a field of study of constant negotiation. In practice, design negotiates between what is drawn and what is built. The transition of an idea from paper to reality requires the architect to become the negotiator between those two realms. Learning architecture in the studio classroom teaches students to conceptualize ideas, to design through manifestations of an idea, and to create works of design that generate discussion on its potential to become a realistically built entity or hold theoretical strength and significance for critique and dialogue. As carriers or generators of a design idea, the role and the scope of studio materials (i.e., drawings, models) hence need to be discussed, especially in the increasingly emerging currents of online teaching The role of the designer would be that of a and growth of digital media. facilitator of design process that is embedded, This study reimagines the potential of the architectural centered in, and initiated by the knowledge and material beyond a two-dimensional project drawing lived experiences of those who are most impacted to introduce multimedia diagrams, footages, and by the processes and results of the design. The dimensions of media into the realm of architectural designer’s responsibility would be to locate the design process. The findings of this study were power and ownership of design within communities carried with an aim to encourage discussion around so that we can collectively restore our planet to one material and media culture in online architectural that is livable not just for some but for all. education.

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The pool of applications that the Faculty Development Project jury received was incredibly rich, and additional meritorious proposals were identified. The following projects were funded jointly by the President’s Office and Academic Affairs. Please read the faculty research abstracts in the following pages.

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Rethinking the Materials Library Innovations to an Interior Architecture Student Resource for Online Education

Interactive Interface for Online Asynchronous Learning

Written by SARAH GILLEN REDMORE Director in School of Interior Architecture Jointly funded by the President’s Office and Academic Affairs

Written by JASON PIEPER Adjunct Faculty Jointly funded by the President’s Office and Academic Affairs

Due to the COVID pandemic, and the move to remote teaching and learning, Boston Architectural College (BAC) School of Interior Architecture (IA) students no longer have access to the Materials Library (located on campus). This traditional analog sample library is a valuable resource for in-person classroom-based courses. It contains a curated collection of hundreds of high-quality products that have been vetted by industry.

The Boston Architectural College has delivered a fully remote architectural education through the use of tools such as live video conferencing, recorded asynchronous video content, cloud-based file sharing, and the BAC Cloud Canopy. This has afforded students access to this education from anywhere in the world with an adequate internet connection. Traditionally, international enrollment at the BAC has most often come from countries with the presence of an established institution of higher education offering a program in architecture. In the absence of a physical institutional presence, interest in the profession as a whole could increase where an online education is substituted for a fully remote online asynchronous architectural education. While restricted access to physical learning environments during the Covid-19 pandemic has not provided many alternatives to an online architectural education, innovative uses of technologies and best practices will have to be utilized to keep a remote education competitive with in-person learning. Providing a variety of interactive tools within a welldesigned platform gives students autonomy in an online learning environment. Embedded feedback features aid instructors in delivering quality content based on defined patterns of use, and a two-way taggable chat function allows both students and instructors to interact when separated by time and distance. All of these strategies together combine to offer a robust remote educational environment. Broadening access to an architectural education will bring more diverse and varied voices into the dialogue of the profession, resulting in fresh and innovative solutions and perspectives within the field.

“Necessity is the mother of invention”. This wellknown proverb perfectly summarizes the creative problem-solving that led to reimagining the Boston Architectural College (BAC) Materials Library. The quick pivot to online web-based courses in March 2020 magnified the fact that all design students need access to product information regardless of the method of course delivery. Therefore, IA faculty began rethinking the Materials Library. In November 2020, a team was assembled to create a digital spreadsheet that contained hyperlinks to websites for materials, furniture, lighting, and equipment. The spreadsheet, now named the Interior Architecture Quick Source (IAQS), has been very well received by students and faculty. Since the project began seven months ago, it has evolved, and now contains links to a variety of relevant IA topics (list-leading design firms, professional organizations, social media groups, trade magazines, industry conferences, tutorial videos for basic design skills, ADA guidelines, and international building codes). All BAC IA students received a copy of the IAQS as a pdf document by email. The vision for the future of the IAQS is to move the information to a mobile device application or website. Ideas for new categories include links to free CAD libraries, BAC practice and portfolio requirements, examples of outstanding student work, academic scholarships, and a list of typical career paths for people with a degree in Interior Architecture. The possibilities are endless.

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Asynchronous Teaching – A Beginner’s Guide Curated Guide: Best Practices to Develop and Redevelop Online Courses

Virtual Travel Tour

Written by DONALD HUNSICKER Dean and Faculty, School of Design Studies Jointly funded by the President’s Office and Academic Affairs

Written by KYLE TORNOW Adjunct Faculty Jointly funded by the President’s Office and Academic Affairs

The BAC’s strategic plan envisions becoming a mid-sized, non-residential institution through its global cloud initiative. Offering education programs and courses in an asynchronous only format or in a primarily asynchronous, low- residency format can make a significant, if not the primary contribution to achieving that goal. To succeed in contributing to that goal, however, these online programs and courses must meet a standard of excellence.

This project applies Google Maps to do walking tours of Italian Renaissance Cities. With the ability to access the public squares of architectural significance, this virtual tour allows students to discuss the character and quality and real-life context of these urban spaces. Where feasible, the interior of buildings can be presented and equally discussed.

If excellence in online education is to be reached, a substantial investment will need to be made in teaching teachers to teach in an all-online environment – and in particular in an asynchronous environment. The work product proposed for this research was to develop a “version 1.0” asynchronous guide to creating an asynchronous course for BAC faculty. This course, entitled “Asynchronous Teaching – A Beginner’s Guide,” has been uploaded to Moodle: https://online.the- bac.edu/course/view.php?id=8821.

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The skill development objectives are twofold. First, by means of a virtual tour of these towns, students are introduced to the scale, material quality, and architectural definition of classical renaissance and later period buildings, streets, and urban spaces. The second objective is the development of the student’s “eye” to analyze these spaces via the application of SketchUp. Students will use this tool to develop their technical proficiency while they create abstract analytical models of these urban spaces and buildings. The use of Google Earth will give the students an experiential awareness of the various cultural places while studying the principals of figure ground, axial alignment, and use of geometry to resolve the spatial order of urban piazzas..

The following faculty did not receive any grant funding but submitted and presented at the Nano Conference:

“Design Convicted” by JANA BELACK & RAND LEMLEY, Adjunct Faculty “Mining Minecraft for the Making of Place” by MILTON LAU, Adjunct Faculty “Modern Architecture for Migrant Children” by LESLIE CORMIER, Adjunct Faculty “Building Student Engagement Through Embracing Uncertainty and Risk Within the Online Classroom” by JONATHAN CAVE & CHIEN YU LIN, Adjunct Faculty “Using 3M Visual Attention Software (VAS) to Understand Experience of Design” by ANN SUSSMAN, Adjunct Faculty

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Surrounding Fabric Woven Topographies

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RECOVERING URBAN DENSITY Reconstruction of Historic Urban Fabrics Destroyed During Modernism

Perspective

ALBERTO GUTIERREZ Architecture Masters Thesis M.Arch, Fall 2020 By carefully studying the physical and social conditions of disjointed urban fabrics, this project aims to transform desolated plazas and streets into the vibrant communities that once flourished in their place. Compact and cohesive urban fabrics serve as an optimal setting for human habitation and are a physical embodiment of their population, but many were deemed obsolete and destroyed. This thesis aims to reclaim a space relegated to apathy and disrepair, transforming it into a built environment relevant to the present, respectful of its past, and apt for the future. 107

FUTURE

Re-layered typology. Socially & culturally successful / technologically appropriate

FUTURE

PRESENT

Contextually disjointed. Socially inert / technologically sufficient

PAST

Conceptual Development

HISTORIC CHURCHES ORIGINAL URBAN FABRIC

LAYERING OF TIME

Layered through time. Socially & culturally successful / technologically inefficient

PAST

PHYSICAL CONNECTION

MODERNIST CONSTRUCTION

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Proposed Site: Plaza del Rosario & Paseo Ciencias, Maracaibo. Venezuela

This site is located in the old city center of Maracaibo, Venezuela. The area is composed of two linear public plazas framed by the old city. Adjacent to this public promenade, several historic structures were preserved from demolition, as well as historic churches within. Originally established as a humble port town, the urban fabric grew organically through time, eventually becoming a rich and layered urban core from which the rest of the city grew.

This large open area sits where the old Barrio del Saladillo used to be. It once was the cultural and economic center of Maracaibo, but during the 70’s it was demolished to put in its place large affordable housing projects. These proposed housing blocks were only partially built on adjacent lots, and the main area that was cleared for this purpose was turned into two unsuccessful public plazas. 109

Exterior Conceptual Intent

Interior Conceptual Intent

Zone 1: Ground Plane

Exterior Conceptual Intent

Residential

Densification of the void in such a way that users cannot perceive the whole site at once, as it previously was perceived. By making users turn corners and discover new perspectives as they proceed those users can develop cognitive maps.

Traditional houses were tightly grouped next to each other, often sharing walls, with their front at the edge of the sidewalk. Narrow streets divided these groupings into tight urban units. Because of these conditions a “sidewalk community” emerged, where the living rooms at the front of the house served as an extension of the public streets, with its residents sitting at the front to greet and interact with passerby. New units recreate this social condition through a new architectural typology. Located on the upper level, they maintain a level of privacy in relation to the city below but foster communal bonds between them.

Interior Conceptual Intent Create a hybrid architectural typology that incorporates the monumental aspects of modernism with the human scale present in traditional architecture.

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Zone 1: Level 1

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Exterior Conceptual Intent

Interior Conceptual Intent

Zone 3: Ground Plane

Architectural Elements Organized within a regular grid, which contains anomalies or disruptions, similar to the orthogonal modernist grid and the meandering traditional layout. Within this intervention, these two opposing systems become juxtaposed, bridging the gap between two periods and proposing a unified typology for the future. Introducing monumental elements to reference modernist towers and church towers, in the form of concrete chimneys.

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These chimneys also serve the purpose of cross ventilation and visual framing through openings. Existing water features are reallocated to a new below-ground level to aid cross ventilation. Free plan at ground level houses an outdoor market. This commercial space can be rearranged within the grid to accommodate the needs of its inhabitants. A subway system that directly connects the larger urban fabric to this area without disrupting historic construction.

Zone 3: Level 1

Perspective View 113

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“In place of engineered defenses, architectural defense systems better suit areas of high tourism along the coast.”

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ARCHITECTURAL DEFENSE CAITLIN FLINN Architecture Masters Thesis M.Arch, Spring 2021

Well-known as a summer vacation hot spot, the beaches, shops, boardwalk, boating, and recreation areas of Virginia Beach provide desirable activities to those looking for a place to escape with their families. When storms come through, big or small, flash flooding occurs. Residents prepare to barricade their homes with sandbags as those homes on concrete slabs expect inches of water to enter their homes, and those on crawl spaces are no longer high enough to keep water out.

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The City of Virginia Beach has devised a plan, called “Sea Level Wise”, identifying 7 different areas in the surrounding watershed that are at higher risk for damage with rising waters.

Context Plan

ACTIONS PROPOSED: - NATURAL MITIGATIONS - ADAPTED STRUCTURES - PREPARED COMMUNITIES - ENGINEERED DEFENSES

Proposed Concept

THE PROBLEM The Sea Level Wise plan is a wholesome approach to combat rising waters. It takes into consideration environmental strategies to lessen the impact, emphasizes the importance of educating the community on the phenomenon, gives residents an option to stay in their homes by providing alteration assistance, and introduces barriers to protect the city.

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If followed through, it would be effective under the circumstances; most of the locations of the engineered defenses are reasonable in areas that are protecting homes and businesses. However, some of these engineered defenses are placed in highly populated tourist areas where they have the potential to offer more than just a barrier.

Proposed Concept

THE OPPORTUNITY Engineered defenses lend nothing back to the community in terms of use. The plan stations defenses in the middle and on the perimeter of major watersheds, protecting land and neighborhoods beyond them. In many areas where homes and businesses are at risk, the defenses are the most reasonable solution.

However, they are also in areas of highly populated tourist attractions, and it would be beneficial to implement an architectural solution in these areas by contributing a new space for community use and activity, in addition to security.

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THE QUESTION Is the architecture habitable? The Sea Level Wise plan is a wholesome approach to combat rising waters. It takes into consideration environmental strategies to lessen the impact, emphasizes the importance of educating the community on the phenomenon, gives residents an option to stay in their homes by providing alteration assistance, and introduces barriers to protect the city.

Proposed Site

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FOREDUNE PROGRAM

REAR DUNE PROGRAM

The dunes closest to the coast, the windward side, are expected to experience changing conditions first, and most often. From high and low tide, to flash flood and storm surge, the structure remains mostly solid with the ability to hold back water and withstand said conditions. The foredune program takes these elements into account, therefore their concrete structure is mostly solid for stability, and is a maximum of 10 ft high.

Rear dunes are stationed as the final two rows staggered behind one another. The rear dune program is high enough to provide promenades to the beautiful views of the beach and is large enough to provide open spaces for events. The main protective focus of these structures is to block oncoming water on the windward side. The rear dunes consist of spaces for rest, beautiful courtyards with openings for light, rain gardens, circulation, and more.

SECOND DUNE PROGRAM

CIRCULATION

These dunes sit back far enough on-site that they are not expected to experience everyday conditions, but will rather experience the effects of sea-level rise in time. Because they are specifically designed to block and hold water, a pit-like structure results, creating opportunities for outdoor programs such as amphitheaters, playgrounds, swimming holes, and spaces for lockers or showers.

The paths of circulation are elevated as one moves from structure to structure. Visitors can hike from grade to 30 feet as they hop from one dune to the next; paths occur on the exterior. Visitors entering from the parking lot, the leeward side, will enter at grade. However, as one moves closer to the windward dunes, these circulation paths become elevated structures leading visitors to the foredunes, and down to the beaches.

Proposed Program

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Perspective View

Section View

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Perspective View

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KINETIC ENVELOPE Interactive Skin, responding to the stimuli

NANDINI JAIN Architecture Masters Thesis M.Arch, Fall 2020

Perspective

A building enclosure wraps itself around the built space, acting as a barrier between the interior and exterior. When this enclosure responds to the changing climate and the living organisms around it, it becomes a kinetic envelope that can transform by the changing stimuli around it. It needs action, based on which it showcases a reaction.

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DEFINING THE CONCEPT This enclosure waits for a change such as sensing a touch, detecting your presence, or a major change in external climatic conditions. It responds by transforming to display motion. Ideally, this behavior can foster interaction between humans and buildings, responsive structures, and enticing spaces. It can also create a visually engaging streetscape with a unique aesthetic for a dynamic experience that is ever-changing. IDEAL KINETIC ENVELOPE A kinetic envelope transforms to adapt to human comfort, interacts or responds to the stimulus, and can provide an additional factor to the space such as producing visible motion, to engage the users and help reduce the overall energy footprint.

Concept 128

Kinetic Envelope

SPATIAL INTERVENTION

FORM EVOLUTION - A DYNAMIC FORM

The form digests the varying spatial intervention cases developed for the interstitial space formed by the layers of the envelope. This design exploration supports the use of the in-between space depending upon the transformation of the envelope components.

The form evolves from contextual connections of spatial functions, to draw users from the periphery towards the core of the site. The corner entrances to the site, and stepped form, give the opportunity to visually connect the public spaces and the dynamic components.

Spatial Intervention 129

Form Evolution

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FORM EVOLUTION - A DYNAMIC FORM

CIRCULATION - INTERACTIVE FORM

The levels create multiple spatial interventions to display the kinetic envelope, which compels people to interact with the built structures. The addition of height and a connection between the divided towers unties the building and ties the loose ends of the form together. The kinetic elements and layers of the envelope develop highly active nooks and spaces of the proposed design. The final form results in a complex curvilinear form that allows for various users to cut across the site, on foot or via bicycle, and yet interact with the envelope at various junctions.

As this thesis is about designing for the kinetic envelope with dynamic components of the envelope, there is a need to address the user movement throughout the project, as it is an essential part of creating the kinetic experience for the user. The circulation spaces of the interiors are brought to be adjacent to the multipurpose space or to overlook the multipurpose space. This not only activates the ramps used for navigating the varying levels on the site, but it further adds a layer by displaying the literal movement of people in addition to the movement of envelope components.

Circulation

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LAYERS OF ENVELOPE - DEFINING THE INTERIORS Hiding behind the layers, some spatial programs require artificial light for the functioning of the space. Fabrication labs need the least amount of visual connection to the outside world. The canopies formed by the layers of the envelope, in the multipurpose terrace, shade the secondfloor space, and absorb natural light. This solar canopy provides a dull visual connection as it is a semitransparent sheet of PV. Interior Rendering

RESPONSIVE SKIN TRANSFORMABLE ENVELOPE The envelope at the main street front exhibits the most dynamic part of the kinetic envelope. It is the most visible part of the site, which always experiences high foot and vehicle traffic. The eye-catching pyramidal fins transform based on the solar conditions, detected by the sensors. This acts as a curtain for the interior spaces to reveal or conceal the space from the street level. Interior Rendering

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ACTIVE SKIN - VISIBLE TRANSFORMATIONS The envelope of the connecting bridge consists of a screen of shingles that move with the wind. It extends beyond the height of the bridge, hovering over the highest level of the multipurpose space, which connects all the circulatory paths on the site. This space welcomes people from all directions to experience the reflective moving shingles, which create a visually dynamic experience.

Exterior Rendering

THESIS CONCLUSIONS

Exterior Rendering

A kinetic envelope can draw people in, by displaying activities at street level and by presenting movement on the envelope itself, to captivate attention. There should be a balance of active and passive kinetic solutions, to give a sense of relief for the users, from the moving and changing elements. Making it interactive, having volumetric and landscape interventions, creates an interest throughout the space, making it an exploratory venture.

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IN-BETWEEN SPACES Sculpting Urban Void

Perspective Render

KATARZYNA FRYCKOWSKA Architecture Masters Thesis M.Arch, Fall 2020 To support the idea of a walkable city, the project must have a dialog with all urban surroundings and adjacent buildings. The goal is to reconnect the urban components using pedestrian circulation through the in-between spaces. The power of in-between spaces is that they are democratic since they are open to all. Also, intriguing spaces can be accepted or easily rejected by the users. Therefore, this project will take abandoned, leftover urban spaces and give them back to the people. 134

Concept Diagram

The design process includes two steps. First, the thesis seeks to develop the design principles that respond to basic users’ needs, such as walking, sitting, and gathering. Moreover, by using tectonic techniques, including carving, stretching and compressing, and overlapping, the student tries to understand scale, proportions, and human-scale perception in an urban setting. The second step is to apply those design principles in the specific urban context of in-between spaces.

Finally, as designers, we can rethink the inbetween spaces to trigger social participation and engagement. Also, we can inspire users and make them more comfortable in our urban jungles.

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Site Strategy

Vignettes

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Site Plan

Perspective Renders 137

Site Section

Perspective Renders 138

TERRA-SCOPE

Built Installation Photo

BAC MAKERS BAC Makers is a foundry of architects, designers, and builders from across the world, who came together at the BAC to implement all aspects of research-guided fabrication and installation. Since their beginnings as a Techniques of the Observer research workshop, they have used the sum of their enthusiasm, entrepreneurship, and architectural knowledge to create immersive optics installations across Massachusetts. Recent endeavors include putting on classes with the Mattress Factory Pittsburgh and YouthBuild Boston, a pop-up camera obscura and cyanotype printing studio in Somerville, and TerraScope, the US’s largest periscope at Art on the Trails. 139

Plan

The work of the BAC Makers has been steadfast in its attempt to interact with and capture an audience’s wonderment, by introducing them to the fantastical nostalgia of 19th century optics, as demonstrated in Terra-Scope. Having spent the past several years working to introduce such visual experiences to a contemporary audience, the opportunity to install a device which restores 1:1 human interaction in an unexpected way excited the team. They proposed this work to Art on the Trails because they felt the visitors at the Beals Preserve have already initiated the mental groundwork of being present by seeking the serenity of nature.

Site Plan 140

Artistic Render

The proposal encourages participants to activate the sculpture. The observer allows for the piece to become whole, and completes it as a connective experience rather than an artwork. In the absence of a participant, the installation still represents a human link between two natural elements. Put more simply, you can either look at the art or look as the art. The experience seats two participants 27’ away from one another, in high back chairs that act to eliminate other wouldbe sightlines. Connecting them is a long serpentined periscope made of ductwork and a similar run of PVC that serves as a talk tube. The gesture intends to set aside everyday distractions and provide a moment of harmony, inspiring the viewer/listener to reacquaint themselves with others.

Plan Detail 141

Artistic Render

The selected site for the proposed installation is at the fork of the Hickory Trail loop, because it permits the sculpture to borrow the horizon line upon the viewers’ approach, and, moreover, because we believe it strengthens our narrative of repaired fractions to suture the division of the trails. Essentially, it foces people from diferent walks to communicate and recognize themselves in others.

Process Photo 142

Process Photos 143

Spectra

View Inside Built Installation

BAC MAKERS Using their most recent project, Spectra, BAC Makers have mastered the science of shrinking even the most hardened skeptic down to the size of a small child, looking starry-eyed through the technicolor of its first kaleidoscope. This summer, the curious grandmothers, the blushing lovebirds, the science professors, and the playful pups of Open Newbury were spun and refracted through the gigantic lookingglasses, and captured for family scrapbooks and social media platforms across the city. 144

Makers represented the BAC by welcoming queues down the block. The piece is made up of optics woodwork, a mosaiced stud wall, and a misting station, to become the perfect photo-op with some serious play.

BAC Makers plan to take Spectra on the road in the coming months, by collaborating with SoWa and other seasonal markets. Their ever-expanding group is currently looking to evolve the piece, by incorporating light, lasers, and color, for a more festive experience.

Installation Photos 145

NORTH END: Storytelling Immigrant Museum on Boston Waterfront

Perspective Render

EKATERINA SIEMONEIT Architecture 4 Studio M.Arch, Spring 2021 3rd Place in ACSA/AISC Steel Design Student Competition The project is located in Boston - a city that appreciates education and art, and celebrates diversity and culture. The site is located in the historical neighborhood of the North End on the waterfront. The North End is the city’s oldest residential community, which people have continuously inhabited since it was settled in the 1630s. It is known for its Italian-American population and Italian restaurants. 146

Historical Context By 1890, the North Square area was known as Little Italy. The population of Italian immigrants in the North End grew steadily until reaching its peak, in 1930, of 44,000, which is 99.9% of the neighborhood’s total population. Although many businesses, social clubs, and religious institutions celebrate the neighborhood’s Italian heritage, the North End is now increasingly diverse. North End Community The North End is a heavily populated neighborhood, however, project site is not populated. Surrounding areas have on average, 16 - 30 persons per acre. The North End has 880 foreign-born residents. Most residents have prominently Italian heritage; other groups include Irish, French, German, Jewish, and Indian origins. The average household income on the waterfront is significantly higher than in the rest of the neighbourhood ($100,000-$176,351 versus $51,136-$71,738) Collection of Stories The USA is known as the melting pot due to the integration of different backgrounds, and as that evolution of cultures happens, we want to be able to look back and appreciate the lifelines that melded to create what we have now. The proposed design strategy is dedicated to collecting the stories and heritages of the immigrants of North End.

Site Plan

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Circulation Diagram

PV Panels

Mechanical Support

Atrium Educational Center

Lobby and Stair

Restaraunt

Temporary Exhibit

Permanent Exhibit

Observation Deck Mechanical Support

Auditorium

Program Diagram 148

Fourth Floor Plan

Third Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

Rendered Section 149

Structural Details

Render 150

Maverick Hills

LUIS RUIZ Architecture Studio 3 M.Arch, Fall 2020 Water, a challenging element, has made society create bridges, ports and other physical structures to make us pass through it. At the same time, we use these structures to go from one place to another, they are spaces of contemplation. They have become nodes to interact and exchange values; they are also points to stimulate economies.

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Interior Render

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ENGAWA To Be Alone Together

HANA OJI Architecture Masters Thesis M.Arch, Spring 2021 “Engawa” is an ancient Japanese concept, referring to a socially significant, flexible, transitional zone between the interior and exterior of a dwelling. The engawa concept is broadened and modernized for this thesis. It explores relationships between interior and exterior, human and earth, and solitude and company. The architectural manifestation of this idea uses screening techniques to create formal gestures with elemental flexibility, and to manipulate spatial relationships. This emphasizes how we connect to or disconnect from each other. By paying special attention to interstitial zones, engawa creates experiences that gradate from solitude to social interaction. This fosters a healthier sense of community for young professionals. During times of prolonged isolation, we do not have to feel lonely; the architecture allows us to be together when we are alone.

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How We Connect This architecture facilitates different levels of connectivity; direct, mutable, and inferred. Direct connections are clear and obvious, inferred connections rely on implicit cues, and mutable connections vary with movement of building parts, and user interaction.

Diagramatic Sketch

Floor Plan

Spatial Flexibility The building form consist of modular units, organized along a spine that is governed by site conditions. Unit interiors derive the idea of flexible use of space in traditional Japanese dwelling. Plumbing and mechanical shafts are fixed, and the rest of the unit utilizes moveable partitions to choreograph the space to suit individual needs. This flexibility fundamentally changes the way one relates to their home and to what is beyond.

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Facilitating Connections with Building Skin Vertical screening elements are specifically designed and placed to manage the level of connectivity. The blades of varying depths are deployed in strategic plans, orientations, and densities. The simple floor plan of each unit, configured to suit individual needs, culminates to a complex overall architectural expressions. The result is an experience that is simultaneously public and private, solitary and sociable, alone and together.

Axonometric View Exterior Perspectives

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On chaos, and making sense of chaos On the spaces between the chaos, the spaces for calm Or the void spaces The spaces for isolation Or meditation Or loneliness Or solitude. On finding our place in an uncertain world A world that can be thrown into flux at a moments notice without a foreseeable end date. We all have that in common now, don’t we? We are all connected in this way. We are apart but we are connected. We will not forget this connection. I won’t allow it. The same way we have not forgotten that a tragedy we all have in common - that we are all existing through a long-term disaster - is no replacement for real connection. The laugh of a friend The smile of a lover The energies we shared when we were allowed to exist near each other. We remember. And we will create that life again... - Hana Oji, 2020

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MAVERICK HILLS

Rendered Pespective

THOM BOESSEL Architecture Studio 3 M. Arch, Spring 2020 Terraced architecture and landscape forms, nestling in urban areas can excite and invite guests to share, learn, live, eat, and sleep. Guest scan relax in the microclimate softscapes of the valleys or engergize on the overlooks of the “Hills.”

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Vehicular Flow

Pedestrian Flow - Waterway Level

The goal is to increase vehicular and pedestrian circulation from the surrounding neighborhoods. The program focused on a live/ work development that required improved circulation to provide the level of services Maverick Hills intends to bring. The site seeks to provide housing and amenities that the neighborhood lacks. The main street serves retail, dining, and entertainment to guests along with serene, calming environments within the “Hills” for the academically inclined. Pedestrian Flow - Main Street Level 164

Architectural Plans

Parti Diagram

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Enlarged Plan 1 - Live/Work Building

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Design Day

20 Year Flood

100 Year Flood

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Site Perspective

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MUSEUM OF TRANSPORTATION + INNOVATION

CAROLYN JUDD Architecture Studio 4 M. Arch, Fall 2021 Boston was figuratively and literally built on a complex transportation backbone, made of up rail, shipping, ferries, and underground tunnels, in addition to modern additions such as expansive bike lanes and harborwalk trails. Logan International Airport also serves as a major hub for domestic and international flight traffic; it is one of the most predominant on the east coast. There is so much that Boston has going for it in the realm of transportation, which can be showcased alongside rotating exhibits of new innovations in the field of transportation.

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The museum is located at Sargent’s Wharf in Boston’s North End Neighborhood. Existing conditions reflects the density of transportation arteries that are in very close proximity to the museum’s site. The master plan for the Transportation Museum was framed around several design objectives: 1. As a 21st century museum, it will be dynamic in its function and play a multifaceted role in the Boston community. 2. In addition to standing out as an icon along the waterfront skyline, it will inform, educate, excite, and inspire people. 3. Resilient and environmental design strategies will be central to the museum’s ethos. 4. The museum will contribute to the public realm by serving as a place of gathering, community, and growth. Existing Site Analysis

North St.

Commercial St.

Site Masterplan

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Nort

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t St.

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Museum Massing - Main Entrance

Museum Massing - Building Spline

Museum Massing - Projected Exhibits

Museum Massing - Terraces

Site Circulation - Harborwalk

Site Circulation - Proposed Boardwalks

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Building Circulation - Egress Cores

Floorplates Concrete on metal decking

Structural Frame Steel Beam, Trusses and OWSJ

Column Grid System Steel Columns

Building Core & Central Atrium Stairs

Foundation Concrete footings & piles

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By the year 2100, the site is expected to be affected by the rising sea level. Considerations were taken to raise the ground level higher than the expected flood plane. In addition, special attention has been paid to building up a robust landscape that will promote a healthy natural ecosystem as well as act as a floodable natural garden. An array of photovoltaic panels on the roof takes advantage of, and harnesses the southern sun exposure.

Enlargement Zone Sectional Perspective

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To Clothe A Working Landscape for Denim Manufacturing in New Bedford

TIANLIANG WU Landscape Masters Thesis MLA, Spring 2021 This project proposes to transform a brownfield site in New Bedford, Massachusetts into a littoral landscape at work. With vertical flow constructed wetlands, the landscape will cleanse industrial wastewater collected from its surrounding garment mills. In addition to providing ecosystem and infrastructural services, the landscape doubles as a neighborhood park for bluecollar workers and residents that catalyzes the City’s planned effort in regenerating the Upper Harbor Historic Mill District into a twenty-first century mixeduse community.

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Site Analysis

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As part of a larger working waterfront along the Acushnet River and the New Bedford Harbor, the landscape will contribute to the broader goals of the City and its fashion industry in ameliorating environmental quality and justice, creating economic development opportunities, and enhancing compatibility of urban manufacturing with social life and public recreation.

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Enlargement Zone 1 Sectional Perspective

Enlargement Zone 2 Sectional Perspective

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WATER ECOLOGY MUSEUM Explore the Importance, Science, and Beauty of Water

QIANYUN WEI Degree Project BLA, Spring 2021 Water is essential to every life on earth. Some people lack basic knowledge about water and the current challenges related to water. The effects of human activities like urban stormwater, sewage disposal, and plastic usage are polluting and threatening water bodies. Therefore, it is necessary to educate people about the science of water.

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The first goals of this project are environmental: to manage water quality and quantity by storing rainwater and snow fall for reuse, and to construct wetlands to purify polluted water. The second type is educational: to educate people about the natural water cycle and water states by encouraging them to interact with water. The third type are social and culture goals: to build a museum within an environmental justice population where education levels are low, so as to give the surrounding neighborhoods educational opportunities and provide more job opportunities. A final goal is to build a new landscape system upon a historical former structure like the Changchun Culture and Water Ecology Park, to give a new life and reactive to old abandoned site while keeping the historical culture intact for locals.

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Master Plan 1. On Water Performing Platform/Stage 2. Waterfront Amphitheater 3. Recreation Park with Gentle Terrain 4. Wetland Factory 5. Ripple Land Art 6. Water Molecular Structure Fountain Playground 7. Skateboard Park 8. Waterfront Boardwalks 9. Entrance Plaza with Seasonal Ice-Skating Park 10. Water Wetland Indoor Museum 11. Wetland Outdoor Museum 12. Gathering Plaza 13. Parking Lot 14 Water Sculpture Park 15. Snow Mountain Cafe/ Plaza 16. Snow Mountain 17. Snow Mountain Skywalk 18. Sky-walk Overlook 19. Double Way Roads

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