Discipline: ASU Architecture Journal 01 by The Design School at Arizona State University

discipline

aias at asu architecture journal Arizona State University Herberger Institute of Design Spring 2015 | Issue 01

PREFACE | A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

The Architecture Journal is an endeavor to underline the need for connection between students within the Architecture program at the Herberger Institute of Design. It acts as a snapshot of our architecture program which, not only highlights the diversity of projects pursued within the boundaries of our discipline, but also the student and faculty ventures beyond the Design School at ASU. As an organization, the American Institute of Architecture students seeks to create experiences outside of studio. This past year, this included a number of efforts. Mentorship emphasized the collaboration that can occur when ideas are transferred between older and younger individuals of the discipline. Firm Crawls emphasized where we fit into the professional climate. The Studio Culture Workshop brought students and faculty together to discuss education in an open setting. All of these events are a means to strengthen the ideas surrounding the profession of architecture. The Architecture Journal is a part of this effort, seeking to close these experiential gaps by way of other means, which are not necessarily provided within the often insular studio environment.

While Architecture studios often push students to learn the discipline at a very high level of rigor, there is only so much that can occur during the course of a semester. The need to complete a number of tasks often does not leave room for critical discussion. While we are familiar with expressing ideas in the form of some sort of physical output, using a project, a model, or a rendering as a representation of our ideas, ideas also exist in other formats. The journal stems from an effort to push students to understand where these ideas are derived from. As an effect, this sheds light back on the processes that lie behind great ideas, not just on a packaged final product. It also emphasizes the spaces that fall in between ideas- moments where it is necessary to pause and recognize the friction that occurs when ideas challenge one another. With architecture, room is always allotted for more than one approach. The journal celebrates this and engages students to realize the impact that critical conversation can have as a guide to follow as they move from studio to practice. While the theme of this year’s issue is Discipline, we have defined it such a way that allows the journal to drive the conversation between the academy and the practice of architecture. At an essential root, Discipline is an expression of two core ideas. 1. Rigor. 2. Practice. We hope to set a strong basis for how future years may choose to define this term and to, in effect, stimulate a deeper cultural understanding of the work within the Architecture Program. This conversation is meant to be shared both within the boundaries of the discipline as well as outside of it.

PREFACE | A LETTER FROM THE COMMITTEE

EDITOR CHRISTINE BUI

Our journal committee is an assembly of individuals who desire to contribute to a new academic tradition within the Design School by engaging the collective architecture student body in this issue. The wide scope of works from all years are showcased, enabling readers to gain insight into the diversity of how people view, experience, and create architecture—not exclusively through coursework, but also along the perimeter of academia. In particular, faculty interviews highlight unique areas of interest which become a platform for the journal’s organization. Some common threads appear throughout the submissions—responsiveness to place, attentiveness to details, and exploration of lesser pursued areas within the discipline of architecture—and it is fascinating to divide these broad categories into multifaceted approaches and investigations. When initiating this academic journal, we acknowledged that this pursuit would be ambitious and difficult to attain on our own. We began with our own definitions of what a “successful” journal would be, and have been pleasantly overwhelmed by the deluge of support from both the architecture students and faculty within the Design School. This is emphasized by the amount of student projects, exhibitions, competitions, essays, and other work featured within this journal that reflect the diverse influences on the discipline of architecture within our student body.

The first edition of the Arizona State University Architecture Journal would not have been possible without the support of a number of students as well as faculty members who contributed their time and support toward helping us shape the Journal. We are honored to have curated the first issue of what we believe is the beginning of a new tradition in the Design School at ASU.

PRODUCTION EDITOR CATHLEEN KEBERT

An Act of Practice | An Act of Rigor Architecture exists as a discipline in two respects. One, it exists as an act of practice in which students are taught to think in a very specific way. Two, it exists as an act of rigor, expressive of the time and effort that is required to learn a profession to very high degree in order to excel within it. Through this experience, we have been taught to think of architecture as a singular discipline. As a body of diverse and complex individuals, is that enough to define us? The act of adding our individual experiences, insights, and beliefs into the practice of architecture is what contributes a deeper, more personal meaning to the field. The intent of the journal is to challenge architecture students within The Design School to consider the personal worldviews, experiences, and beliefs that they bring to both their individual projects as well as to the greater profession of architecture as a whole. Whether these contributions stem from memories, were developed during a school project, or inspired by the landscape, they are all important in defining what architecture is to us.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

Darren Petrucci Interview

Cathleen Kebert Ancient Architecture: Implied Impact

Santiago Tolosa Environmental Health Eye

Elena Rocchi Interview | Lapsis Imaginus

Emmanuel Angulo Multi-Family Housing

Jussara Scarle The Open Structure

Claudio Vekstein Interview

Hailong Li The Missing Door

A. Abbaszadegan, A. Buettner, T. Sternberg Colegio De los Piletones

Maria Wilson Flood

Wesley Tafoya The Harmon Center

Victor J. Irizarry Why Sketching?

Aung Tun Lin Bamboo Village

Marthe Rowen Slot Sketches

Nicole Bone Development of Architectural Process

Kelsey Ayotte Upon the Expanding Horizon

Ryan Kiefer 405 Farmer Artist Community

Bruna Nakhle Waiting to Exhale

Christian Stayner Interview

C. Kebert, D. Lemma, D. Smith Emergency Response Station 55

A. Ditchey, J. Fletcher, E. Twilling Superior Book

Mark Ryan Interview

L. Bonin, C. Bui, M. Naderi Mapping Visibility

Daniel Gault Farmer Education Building

Gracie Wen Plaster Case Studies

Richard Van Horne Arcadia Connection

Kyle Fiano Spomenik: Revolutionary Structures

Morgan Sumner Buzzzwork

Josh Greene Beautifully Broken

Arianna Pizzino Study Abroad Sketches

Olivia Raisanen Climate Considered

Peritoneum X-Square

Jack DeBartolo III Interview

Philip Horton Interview

Jack DeBartolo Studio Glenn Murcutt Exhibit

ASUNM Solar Decathlon SHADE House

A. Nikkel, R. Van Horne Station 55

D. Smith, K. Spresser Microdwelling Exhibition

Wendell Burnette Interview

C. Kern, H. Rodriguez Microdwelling Exhibition

Tim Berry Ministries in Ghana, Africa

Index

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

DARREN PETRUCCI | INTERVIEW

Darren Petrucci is an architect and professor in The Design School at Arizona State University where he serves as the Coordinator of the Master of Urban Design Program. He received both a Master’s Degree in Architecture and a Master’s Degree of Architecture & Urban Design with distinction from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

His design thinking work focuses on leading, teaching, and consulting with collaborative transdisciplinary teams that work toward transformative design solutions to complex problems. Through his design work, he focuses on what he calls “Amenity Infrastructures” that facilitate the integration of pleasure, comfort, and convenience within new forms of public and private infrastructure and architecture.

Studio, and understand what they were trying to do. This was possible because I was in that culture and environment that promoted different ways of thinking and practicing architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture. It exposed me to a plurality of ways of thinking and working, and forced me to find my own way and my own thing. It wasn’t a place where everyone thought the same thing. If everybody thinks the same thing, then all you are going to end up with is work that all looks the same and deals with the same issues. But, if you’re exposed to a number of different ways of working, you have to negotiate that landscape yourself because there isn’t only one way of thinking and working. That gave me certain skills in crossing boundariesnot only between disciplines, but also between ideologies. I think what I bring to ASU is a way of trying to connect across disciplines and doing it in a way that hopefully produces new ideas or new ways of thinking or working.

Why do you teach architecture? When I started architecture, I never thought I’d be a teacher. I always thought I’d be a practitioner. When I was at the GSD, I realized that I didn’t know anything about architecture. I thought I knew everything, but I didn’t know anything. It opened my world to a whole way of thinking and working in a much more intellectual way. I fell in love with ideas. Teaching is one of the richest landscapes to explore ideas. I always knew I was going to practice, but I realized that teaching is a job that I can’t wait to do. I love teaching. It’s more of a lifestyle than a job. I’m constantly surrounded by, and challenged by, a world of ideas and that feeds my practice. I’m someone who doesn’t have an office, per se. This means that I have an office but I don’t have employees, and I’m building my body of work a little bit later in life. That was conscious because I wanted to make sure that, as I did projects, I was as informed as I could be at the time when I started them. That’s one of the reasons I teach; I think students bring a kind of necessary naivety to the ideas. When they start to explore things without the baggage, they tend to come up with ideas or notions that people who have been working with the conventions all the time might not have come up with. So, I like looking for those moments in the students’ work and trying to make them something bigger than just what seems like a crazy idea.

How important do you see Urban design and Landscape Architecture as being a part of Architecture education? An architectural education, in my opinion, is a great education for anyone. It’s art. It’s science. It’s culture. It’s the synthesis of a way of thinking and working. It’s projectbased problem solving. If we just look at architecture education in terms of the proficiencies that we developstorytelling, systems thinking, complexity, management, leadership— we find that all of these things are useful in any career. What’s interesting about this list, is that you find all those ways of thinking and doing in a single disciplinearchitecture. What’s exciting about The Design School, is that we have all of these disciplines that are design related, even within our own school. But, the more that architects look outside of their own discipline to inform Architecture, the faster Architecture will advance. We have a discipline that is arguably, of all the design disciplines, one of the oldest, but it’s also one of the slowest to move. Things like Visual Communication and Industrial Design move “But, the more that architects much more rapidly because their turnaround is look outside of their own discipline to inform architecture, much faster and, in some ways, their impact on the faster architecture will society can be immediate. There are things to advance.” learn from those disciplines. Architects typically think that they know how to do everything, but it would be a breath of fresh air to embrace other ways of thinking and working. And not just in design. Biomimicry is one of those examples—biology and design coming together to help change and advance the way we inhabit the earth in a positive way—that’s cool. You can’t do that as easily in practice as you can in academia.

What do you bring to the ASU Architecture school? I think most architects are good at this, but I think one of the things that I really enjoy doing is what you might call synchronic or tangential thinking. I really like connecting things across platforms, as opposed to just in a linear way. My degrees in Architecture and Urban Design and my notso-secret wish that I had a Landscape Architecture degree allows me think about issues at a variety of scales. When I was in graduate school, Harvard was a school that was a supermarket of ideas. It wasn’t a single ideology. At the time I went to school, Princeton had an ideological bend, Columbia had an ideological bend, but Harvard was more of a supermarket. You had Rem Koolhaas, Rafael Moneo, Lebbeus Woods, and Sam Mockbee—all in one room. As a student, it was an incredible education because I could look at an Enric Miralles studio and understand what they were trying to do and I could look at a Samuel Mockbee and the ideas he brought to his Harvard studio, from the Rural

What do you see as the strengths in the current architecture education and what are some of the opportunities to develop? One of the single greatest strengths of our architecture education here is something that most students don’t take advantage of, and that is the concurrent degree programs. My own experience and my own work is that, when I did my Masters of Architecture and Masters of Urban Design, I found that there is a space between there that is not just urban and not just architecture. Students interested in trying to find their own niche in the world, as they go out in the world, can find those opportunities offered in this school. It’s in the interrogations of those various different disciplines that new ideas come forward. That’s a huge advantage. I think our international travel is really positive in this school. We have a lot of students that grew up in Arizona- maybe they have travelled and maybe they haven’t. But the opportunity of getting out, seeing the rest of the world, and understanding how that effects what they are doing (and

His work has been exhibited and published in numerous national and international books, journals, magazines, and museums. Recently, he spoke at a TEDx conference on Amenity Infrastructure.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

there are a lot of schools around the country that don’t offer any travel) is a huge benefit.

academy is here for. It’s not just to train you to be an architect—I mean you could go and apprentice to do that.

I also think that the larger university is a real asset. One of the problems with architecture programs, nationally, is that they often are quite myopic. I remember that, during my first year of graduate school, I lived 1000’ from the building and that was it. I went to studio and I went home. When I realized that Harvard had an amazing set of resources outside of the GSD, I was like, I’m going to look at this lecture or go to that thing at the Fogg Art Museum. The Business “The stuff you are learning now, School at ASU has the same thing and even more you aren’t going to get to do for another 20-30 years. But think so, in some capacity, because we are bigger. about it, what will happen in 20 That’s another resource that our students tend to years will be the things you are not take advantage of as much as they can. learning now.”

The main thing is to get you to think bigger than the discipline, especially in graduate school, because you guys are the ones that are going to change the discipline. It’s not going to be the professionals out there. It’s the new generation coming, so what have you learned in school that has changed that? Everything that Rem Koolhaas is doing now, he learned 40 years ago when he was in school. Everything. He has evolved it, but the basic thesis that he left his education with has been the premise for Delirious New York, for his work he is doing now. It’s the same thing for you guys. The stuff you are learning now, you aren’t going to get to do for another 20-30 years. But think about it, what will happen in 20 years will be the things you are learning now. So, I don’t think our school is fashion based—based on form and certain kinds of exploitation of digital tools—which you see schools like Penn doing now, and Columbia and Pratt and other places, University of Washington St. Louis. These are schools that, if you look at their books from the schools, they almost look like the same school. Literally, I’ve looked at three books—they might even be the same publisher—but the work looks exactly the same. It’s some parametric—whatever it is. SCI-Arc has a bit of that. I think all of that is good and it is important to the discipline. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be doing that, but I don’t think that is what we are doing here. So, I think understanding what we bring to the table is important because, if you don’t have that consciousness, then you don’t know how you fit into the larger project. I think we have great assets here. I think it’s very hard for the faculty and the students to understand what those assets are all of the time.

We have a diverse group of faculty. There are certain groups of people that work in different techniques and different ways. I think that’s hugely positive. If we were all doing the same thing, it would be a horrible place to go to school. This place, Phoenix, is also important to this school. This is not because of the Arizona School [of architects], since I’m not necessarily sure that it is a way of going forward with things. There are things about Phoenix and the context that students can learn here, that is transferrable to about 80% of the world. 80% of the earth’s surface that is occupied by humans is arid. The kind of projects that you do here, you can transfer ideas to parts of the Middle East, South America, Africa, Australia, etc. So that alone is another important thing about being in this school. What are your thoughts on where architectural education here at ASU can go? It’s a little like what we are talking about in the Urban Issues seminar that I teach. If we are going to look at ecological urbanism, we have to develop new devices to look at it so that we are not approaching it on the same point of departure that we have historically. So, if we are going to look at advancing architecture, things like the Center for Biomimicry become a whole new way for us to reinterpret our own discipline, and it’s through that interrogation of our own discipline that we might find new ways of building, working, and thinking. I think that there are schools around the country that are trying to advance architecture from within, meaning, a lot of them deal with things like parametric design or the techniques and tools of form-making, so it’s a kind of research into the forms and ways of generating form. I don’t think that this is a school that does that, necessarily. I think there are other schools around the country that are interested in advancing the discipline through complexity and multi-disciplinary aspects. I think that we have that unique ability to do that here. I don’t know that all of our faculty believe that, and frankly they don’t all have to believe that because it’s good to have not everybody doing that. But this is a school where, you’d like to think, that when a student leaves here, they have seen a landscape architecture project, they’ve seen an industrial design project, they’ve seen a visual communication project, they’ve seen an interior architecture design project, you know, at the very least. But, if they’ve also, maybe even relative to the larger institute, understand what AME is doing, understand what is happening in the School of Sustainability. Those are the kind of things that would fundamentally help them change the discipline— advance the discipline—because that’s really what the

So going forward, more complexity, more interdisciplinary work, and more crossing boundaries is the way to go? I think so because we have some very good design faculty here. One of the reasons that I teach is because I’m constantly advancing my own thinking. I’m not somebody that believes I have one technique and way of working. All the faculty—the more they teach, the better designers they become. There’s a point where I think that someone coming in from the outside could influence the way they are thinking as well. There are ways to do that—we are talking now, in the Design School, about running the international studios with one faculty in one discipline and one in another. If Prasad and I do a biomimicry studio in Ecuador, you’ll have industrial designers and architects working on biomimicry together. Or, to see John Takamura doing something with Claudio Vekstein in Japan—that would be a radical studio. That’s a place where the industrial design faculty bring a kind of remarkable research ethic and human centered approach to things and the architecture faculty might bring a contextual, formal, technical strategy to it. Who knows what might come out of that? It could be amazing! That, for me, is the next iteration for this school and I think, for the most part, the faculty are willing to doing it. However, you have to have the structure to make it work. In some ways, it’s like returning to the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus was non-discriminatory in terms of who an artist was, who a designer was, who a craftsman was, who a photographer was. They all were together. All of them were working together and that evolved culture. What we do is we produce culture. We consume it, but it is important to realize that we are cultural producers. The business school consumes it. We produce it. AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

SANTIAGO TOLOSA | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: RICHARD LABONTE YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2013 PROJECT NAME: MARICOPA COUNTY ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH EYE

This adaptive reuse project hinges on the concept of revitalizing built environments for the desert. Different scenarios that explore the constant flux of the Phoenix metropolitan area are adressed in this office building. It does not only become a question of, “how do we design for the desert?” but also, “how do we, as designers, select different possibilities and values for the location?”

This project allowed me to understand the choices that we make as designers. Through a distillation process, we make selections and adaptations. This is a sort of Darwinian process which, in the end, becomes the focus of a single momentum.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

EMMANUEL ANGULO| STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: THAMARIT SUCHART YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: ARTISTS AS ART

This project was a proposal for Multi-Family Housing, located in the middle of downtown Phoenix. The challenge of the studio was to design the project to include art studios while simultaneously revitalizing the area.

To me this project represents an interaction between the residents of the apartments complex and the public through the sharing of space and ideas. I also believe that what ever we design has to be beneficial for both the people working or living in the spaces but also have these benefits extend outwards to the surroudning community.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

CLAUDIO VEKSTEIN | INTERVIEW

Claudio Vekstein is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Arizona State University. During the Fall 2014 Semester, he taught the 5th year Travel studio, located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. During the Spring 2015 semester, he taught both the second year and fourth year undergraduate studios. He studied at the School of Architecture and Urbanism Buenos Aires University, later he became disciple of South American master architect Amancio Williams, and completed Master Studies at the Frankfurt Art Academy Städelschule in Germany under Profs. Enric Mirèlles and Peter Cook.

His practice, Opera Publica, specializes in of Public Works and Urban Infrastructure, Aires Argentina and in Phoenix, Arizona. Publica is Public. Together, the two are crafting of projects.

the Architecture both in Buenos Opera is Work. realized in the

Why did you get into architecture and how would you describe your early education of architecture? I got into architecture for several reasons. The deciding one was a lecture that I attended before finishing high school. There were a series of lectures at the University of Buenos Aires done by professionals who were collaborating with dictatorships. This architect was designing all the public spaces for the military in the city. We knew that what they were doing had not only an architectural background or purpose, but a kind of concept about the space they wanted for a lack of public interaction. At the time, there were laws where people couldn’t meet more than three people in the public space because it was considered a plot against the government. Thus, many of the squares in the city that were previously very green were redesigned to have pavilions and heavy things, such as concrete, so that they were not friendly places. Instead, they were very monumental and architectural. I didn’t have any expectation of this lecture. As it happened, the architect just showed the work. It was not very interesting. Then he showed a piece that was completely not important for him in his career. That thing that he was not sure of showing was the thing that somehow encouraged me to do architecture. He said, “I’m going to show the headstone of the tomb of my father that I did when I just finished my studies.” And he showed what he did according to his father’s personality, and according to his relationship with his father. Everything was embedded in those stones- the lightness, and the materiality, and the color, and the shine. The shape. the symbolism. It was revealing because it was this completely charged materiality that was very, very personally related to circumstances and to relationships. That was something that marked me a lot because the function of the monument as being almost purely aestheticnot in the way it appeared, but in the way it related with the world, the question it proposed of how we see the world as humans, and what’s left of us in those stones- that marked me enormously. It’s not accidental that, after that, I made a lot of monuments and pieces that are related to that kind of world. My early education was very intense. I was mainly educated in studio with Professor Jorge Goldemburg. He was an architect, a professor, and a sociologist who concentrated DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

on social issues and social housing. He was very intense in studying architecture as a matter that transcends every one of the works- what’s left of the works that could be reinterpreted, reused, and refollowed in the next work. He was the most intense professor in the school. He came after the dictatorship. The whole government collapsed and new professors came in. It was an extraordinary time. All of the darkness that existed half a year before entering the university turned into complete light when I entered. It was the beginning of the democracy and it was an incredibly flourishing cultural time that allowed me to discover culture, to discover architecture, and to discover life in the public space. From there on, people could gather. People could meet publicly. That’s what motivated my early education. What are the differences between designing a public project in the US as opposed to a public project in Argentina? There are very opposed differences between the two. My experience, which is significant in designing public projects in Argentina, is that it’s very clearly tied to politics and political power. It’s not just about serving the power but more about serving the people and being the middle of the two situations. This is obviously in response to a public or political inquiry or interest but, at the same time, you are in a good position, probably by the fact that there is a lack of too much structure in the process. You are very much in control of what’s going to happen in terms of the relationship with the public. It has a lot to do with the vision of the political government that is, at that time, in power in order to serve the public interest in one way or another. In the US, it is a much more neutral process where the demand sometimes tends to be more objective, in terms of quantitative issues and not so much qualitative issues. At the same time, public participation is very important here. The processes are set so that the public participation is actually more powerful than the power of the architect to lead. That creates difficulty. It’s a great difficulty to operate because the project goes in many different “It was revealing because it directions without control of what the main was this completely charged objectives of the project are, in terms of how you materiality that was very, serve the public interest. It goes back to very very personally related basic issues of aesthetic taste, which are not real, to circumstances and to relationships.” bigger, social problems of architecture. Whether it’s one individual or the whole community, I think that public work should concentrate in the middle of that, focusing on the interest of the groups and on the interest of the minorities. We need to meet them all as individuals and not try to address the public interest of the groups and the people organized in intermediate scales. What are the challenges of designing in the public sector? The basic challenge is to serve the people to make the dreams of the people come true. The challenge is how to give back to them because they are actually giving their money, through taxes, to the governing public. The challenge is how to give them back something that really still belongs to them as their aspirations- or even surpasses that and gives them back a good amount of imagination of their own future. The other challenge is to figure out how to advance architecture while doing that. Because it looks like- and I’m really opposed to this- it looks like the best opportunities for advancing architecture will be very fancy commissions. It can be a very fancy museum to a shopping center to a very expensive house. It does not need to be all of that, but it

could be. It could be a highway bridge and it could be fine. It could be a hospital, a school, or a park. Any of those could be phenomenal challenges to practice this way of realizing a cultural aspiration, while advancing architecture at the same time. It is not prohibited to public works to be just engineering projects. Let’s say a bridge. Let’s say hospital. I’m exactly against that. When I go to a hospital, I hate to see this, in appearance, purely utilitarian structure. The money spent there is enormous and insane and is the same as doing it with a static or more elevated spiritual purposes, as if you were doing a church. For me, they are the same thing. A hospital is as important, spiritually, as a church, a cemetery, or a bridge. It’s the same thing because the community is the one that’s actually represented in those works, as a collective.

“Architecture is very wide and, in a way, any student could enter it in different ways. I don’t want all students to enter it in one way or they will crash.”

Another challenge is economy and budget. You have to make it for less money than you’re expected to do for a church or a museum or a concert hall. That’s good because it’s a great constraint that could allow you to do more with less, in order to make extraordinary things out of things that, in appearance, will be of less importance. How do you compromise the financial side of architecture with the need to realize a built public work? The truth is that public works are very expensive. If you look at the budget of a city, public works are incredibly big in the amount of a general budget they take up. At the same time, the constraints are very big. If you need to do a bridge, it needs to be engineered properly and so on. The fundamental purpose and the pragmatics of the thing need to be covered. That doesn’t mean that it’s separate from the architecture. But, for me, the challenge in any infrastructural work in the public work is that architecture is embedded. The aesthetic problems and the social problems are embedded in the pragmatics so it’s not a separate item in the budget. You don’t need to compromise the financial side of architecture. I think it needs to be embedded. What sort of process do you follow in your practice and in your teaching of architecture? In my studio, we are almost feeling the logic of a real practice and a real commission by working with the imponderables. These are the things you cannot control. It gives you a lot of opportunities to operate, to shift, to think differently, and so on. One of the interesting things that I found in public commissions is that you don’t have a particular client. For example, to address a couple that wants a house or something like that- I can barely deal with that. The good thing about the public is that the client is the public. It’s a little less defined. It’s a little vague. Instead of having one client, you have ten clients. This is more demanding but, at the same time, it gives you more freedom because you are responding to a more diverse series of minds, instead of responding to a husband and wife, where they could be stuck in, ‘I like that’ and ‘I want that’. That doesn’t happen, normally, in the public work. You could manage, better, the desires of those so many people if you’re able to and if you work hard enough to let also your interest come through- not your personal interest, but the interest of you as an architect or the interest of you within the discipline. Whereas, in the private commissions, it’s very much determined in many cases by the desire- the very strict, almost capricious, desire of the client.

How do you transition your ideas between the practice of architecture and the teaching of it? The practice of architecture and the teaching of architecture are the same. There is the need to cover the basics of the discipline so that you can get up to speed. In a way, architecture is running all the time and, with all the new people coming in, the students need to know the speed, to know the rules, to know the materials, and so on. At the same time, they must know what exactly it is that they are talented for. What are their dreams? What do they see themselves doing in the future? How do those two things match? Architecture is very wide and, in a way, any student could enter it in different ways. I don’t want all students to all enter in one way because they will crash. They will try to all do the same thing, and they will be competing with each other. Whereas, if you enter in a particular way- if you enter in through the window, as I used to- and you find your own niche within architecture, you will have a fantastic career. This is because no one will be doing it the same way that you do it. Finding that opportunity for the student to understand the path that they are taking within architecture, and knowing that that path will be theirs and they will have opportunities to expand, is the key for the process of architecture. Normally, you can do something about that. Although, sometimes, you can’t do much about that. This is because the time is very short in studios. In my country, you could enter a professor’s line and follow it for 5 years. Let’s say you enter my line in the first year; you will be studying for 5 years with me and my group of people. At the end, you will know really well what my tendency is. This is pretty much how it functions in Europe. You could always switch. I did, for instance, two years with Jorge Goldemburg. Then I was tired. Then I jumped into Horacio Beliero. I came back to Jorge Goldemburg and I went for two more years. I went to study in his practice with Amancio Williams, a big master. Then I studied for three more years with Enric Miralles, who was another big master for me. Three years in a row. Here, you hardly have more than one semester with a professor. In rare cases, you have two semesters; however, these semesters are not following each other. You did this and this- then you did that because it will follow the previous ones. Here, it’s more like shopping. You shop a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and then you go back and cook. For us, it’s probably a little more of a whole recipe. You go with your master and buy the ingredients. Then you go back and cook with him or her. I believe that it’s richer, even though the other one may look richer. In the other, you may have more diversity. In this case, you may go against it later and you may reject it, but you have more knowledge of that concentrated. Architecture is very vast so my belief is that, in four years, you are very far from being an architect. In six years, you are somewhere there, but you still need to form all of that in one direction. A master helps a lot to do that. When I started my Masters in Frankfurt with Enric Mirèlles, I had the feeling that I was starting to study architecture. Literally. All the rest was training. All of the rest was like going to the gym and making weights and push-ups of architecture. With Enric, I felt, ‘oh my God, now it’s coming together’. Now I understand why a column and a beam could make sense. Before, it was like practicing with a column and a beam- to do this and to do that. Now it is making sense. AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

ABBASZADEGAN. BUETTNER. STERNBERG | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: CLAUDIO VEKSTEIN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: COLEGIO DE LOS PILETONES GROUP MEMBERS: ALI ABBASZADEGAN, ALEX BUETTNER, TYLER STERNBERG

Adjacent to the proposed 2016 Youth Olympic Village in Buenos Aires, our team designed a sports high school. The project acts as an urban reclamation for both social and informal housing. The studio was a crossdisciplinary international study abroad in collaboration with Torcuato Di Tella University. The issues of unsustainable practices, water management, and social welfare all culminate in Comuna 8 of The Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. This area will serve as a pilot project for the city and will act as a case study to other sites across the globe that face similar challenges of how to

High School Circulation Wetland Villa Olimpica

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

manage and plan for social housing, public space, urban ecology, context related building typology, and sustainable infrastructure. This area contains strong assets like the Riachuelo River and an abundance of water flowing through the site. The main plan will be to focus on using existing infrastructure as an armature to help and design a network of connected greenways that will revitalize the polluted and strained ecosystem of the Banado all the way from the Airport to the Rio de la Plata. The Master Plan creates a wetland typology that in turn is both active and passive at different points. The linear tidal flow wetland system works its way from Lago Soldati through a multitude of programs spread across the site. The surrounding community is given new amenities and spaces to interact with. The circulation through the site acts as an interpretive trail to help educate the public about the diversity and the beauty of the natural wetland system that used to be vibrant in this area.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

WESLEY TAFOYA | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: JOSE BERNARDI YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: HARMON CENTER

South Central Phoenix currently has the negative reputation of being a struggling, poverty-stricken and crime-ridden community. The residents are eager to be involved in a community that has a safe environment; provides economic development, job training, and child care; and provides them with a sense of pride and identity within their community.

The Harmon Center is able to draw upon social diversity and address its assets to create a community connectivity that can solve challenges and make a lasting change. The design and architecture of the Harmon Center involves the construction of both a north and south building with a variety

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

of programs and resources that include and serve the community. Between these two buildings lies the Harmon Canyon which serves as an exhibition space, performance space, cultural events space and leisure promenade. A cloud canopy runs above the canyon and extends from the east entry to the park west of the site, connecting the park with the community. The cloud canopy includes sustainable water, solar and gray water collection systems that serve the adjacent site and buildings. Within the canyon space, residents are able to walk between the two programs and witness the activities, events, learning opportunities and growth of their neighbors, peers and children. The program and design of the space revitalize the community, inspiring it to establish an identity through both individual and community development.

AUNG TUN LIN | PERSONAL

YEAR COMPLETED: SUMMER/FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: BAMBOO VILLAGE: CONCEPTUAL PROJECT FOR 2008 CYCLONE NARGIS RELIEF

Bamboo Village is an innovative response to the devastating living situations caused by Cyclone Nargis that harshly hit the Ayarwaddy Region of Myanmar in 2008. It is designed both at the architectural and urban scale in order to meet the needs of the disaster victims and rural settlers. The concept of a traditional house and village are transformed into a more applicable design, capable of withstanding natural disasters within the environment. Sustainable developments are set twenty feet above the ground in order to prevent them from flooding. This is done through the implementation of reinforced concrete plinths and pilotis. Floods were a crucial factor during Cyclone Nargis, a disaster which wiped out most of the villages in the region. All of the homes will be laid out along a linear strip in the same way that traditional homes are laid out in a Burmese village. These modular homes are primarily built out of bamboo due to the surplus supply of bamboo within the region. In effect, this incorporates a vernacular language. Operable window and door systems are incorporated in order to embrace natural day light and ventilation throughout the interior space. The ceiling is recessed from the main wooden roof structure to allow hot air to be extracted from the interior space. The ceiling board is made out of bamboo strips in order to allow natural light to filter through the clear fiber roof above. The bamboo envelope of the building is wrapped with polycarbonate panels to protect the bamboo from weathering in hot, humid air and to filter natural light into the interior space. It also helps the aesthetics of the building illumination at night, portraying it as a glowing beacon. These houses are designed to be single-family detached homes that embrace the ideals of a central street by overlooking the street, in effect, elevating the spirit of community living.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

Issue | Mortality

NICOLE BONE | STUDIO

ala 226 spring 2015 | instructor: claudio vekstein |

student: nicole bone | site plan: 1”-100’

INSTRUCTOR: CLAUDIO VEKSTEIN YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2015 PROJECT NAME: DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHITECTURAL PROCESS

Within the mind of an architect, rapid decisions have to be made constantly, taking steps toward the implementation of an artful design. This is often referred to as the design process. This growth is easily lost amongst the myriad of other measures that are considered in order to reach a final design. The following images showcase the decisions that I made throughout my design process in order to address the challenge of designing a historical visitor center, reflection space, and a new burial area for the Pioneer and Military Memorial Park Cemetery, as part of this semester’s task. In order to fully grasp the following forms of representation, it is important to keep in mind my overarching concept of “No Light Without Darkness,” meaning that life cannot be celebrated without the inevitable end. The first inspiration was the extension of the organizing plot-grid of the whole cemetery. By extending the plot gird, I was able to find structure amongst the scattered chaos. This grid is later implemented to form the components of my holistic site design. The second inspiration was derived from historical research regarding the differing age groups of those buried, categorized by age groups and represented with different color groups. This topic inspired my concept for the semester. The following parti diagram demonstrates the process involved in drawing elements and simplifying them into obtainable and applicable components. The simplified grid was the inspiration for my building and park design. This initial sketch, taken from the simplified grid, not only creates the volume of my building, but also establishes the layout within, including the attached reflection space. From the exterior, these walls serve as pockets for private memorial spaces while from the interior, the walls provide the experienced exhibition space for the historic site. The note reads: “Walls and windows oriented to represent different perspectives from East and West light and building structure. Different (alternating) walls give different hints of light that will be fully embodied at the end of the path. The appetizers of light lightly quench the palette of intensity of light (north to south)” – meaning the reflection space. The reflection space is a dark room with a band of intense light coming in from below – the only source of light. Also, the grid served another purpose – designing the exterior remainder of the location. The walkway was designed to invite visitors from the exterior into the park while seemingly guiding them throughout the site including the memorial area and new burial area. Furthermore, the grid also shaped the walls that would section the burial area into more private cubbies of mourning and commemoration with offset burial plots. Seats are incorporated into built burial plot walls inviting them to stay as long as they need in order for people to be comfortable while commemorating their lost ones. These images demonstrate the iterative process that is involved in pursuing a final outcome.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

0 - 20 years

20 - 40 years

40 - 60 years

60 - 80 years

80+ years

RYAN KIEFER | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: THAMARIT SUCHART YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: 405 FARMER ARTISTS COMMUNITY

Architecture is a three dimensional discipline that cannot be fully captured with any drawings, no matter how well done. Models are an essential part of the design process and presentation to better understand the designed space.

In order to better translate the spatial characteristics of an apartment unit within a multi-family, mixed-use artist residential complex in Tempe, a section model was constructed. Each unit has an open floor plan on the bottom floor with a bathroom, stairs, and kitchen in line. This service section doubles as acoustic separation from the busy street

and train. A double high space with north facing windows offers a creative studio space for the artist. The shifted second floor shades the entrance on the south side and creates a balcony on the north side. Models offer a sense of space impossible to comprehend through any two dimensional drawings. Plans and sections offer clear understanding of the program and certain experiential qualities. Renderings provide a photo-realistic and emotional depiction of a project. Yet, models can be understood instantly for spatial relationships, one of the hardest things to glean from conventional drawings.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

CHRISTIAN STAYNER | INTERVIEW

Christian Stayner is an Assistant Professor for the architecture program at Arizona State University. He is teaching the fourth year studio with a focus on investigation into the source of the matter from which architecture is made. He also teaches a digital design and fabrication class. He recieved an undergraduate degree from Harvard in Human Rights Theory and a professional degree in architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

He is a founding partner of Stayner Architects, a Los Angeles based practice, that provides architectural services across a broad range of scales and programs. Describe your early education or exposure to the field of architecture. I grew up in a family that ran an architecture practice. I knew how bad architecture could be as a professional undertaking, and saw that from a lot of friends and family friends with their own firms. I intentionally did not go into architecture school immediately; I deferred it for a long time. It was only until graduate school that I went into architecture, despite trying to address it from a variety of different ways leading up to that point. As an undergraduate, I took literature courses on aesthetics. I took independent studies on land management issues. I tried to see the discipline in a variety of ways. I poked at all of the edges that I could find: I was a photo editor for an architecture magazine for a while. I worked for the business side of the profession. The idea was that I was interested in architecture but, in order to understand it as a discipline, I had to first find the edges—or, at least, try to understand it from outside. There’s a sort of value to leaving the profession or of leaving architecture in order to see its position in society , rather than just assume that you, from within it, can understand its role. People have a various sort of fluid understand of what it is that we do, and almost never does it actually match up with how we see ourselves. What is architecture as a discipline versus architecture as a practice? Architecture requires a lot of discipline. You’re in studio a lot later than the rest of your classmates. You sacrifice a lot to do architecture. While it doesn’t require sitting in a room and playing the same sequence of notes again and again and again to perfect your technique, there is an demand of rigor and applying methodology and of some sort of repetition, or at least constant revision and iteration. You’re coming back again and again to the same set of controls of the world around you. Then there’s the discipline itself. You can make a distinction that there is a way of looking at architecture. It has a whole set of histories and disciplinary specificities. What makes architecture different than any other number of other undertakings? That is the sort of history that it has as well as the position that it has in terms of making a contribution to society. The profession is its own set of architectural concerns. There are definitely overlaps between the discipline of architecture and the profession of architecture. Studio should try to play in the overlap between the two. You’re dealing with issues that are disciplinary- that are bigger than one particular building or one particular project or being a service provider that the profession is essentially embedded within. Meanwhile, you are not forgetting that DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

architecture exists within a much more complex set of interactions- financial realities or economic realities— social and political context—that have to be considered in relation to this interdisciplinary discussion. You can’t just have a discussion that is about, what does the client want? Because, then, you’re ignoring the fact that architecture has to exist for something more than simply fulfilling the client’s demands. Otherwise, that would be a pretty pathetic sort of future for architecture—if we were just here to draw things for others or fix problems. Whereas, we can’t leave behind the issues of professional context or the constraints in how the discipline, itself, addresses this. What’s your viewpoint on collaboration among disciplines? In order to be able to understand multidisciplinary collaboration, you would have to first understand where that boundary line between one discipline and another discipline is located. That isn’t a line that is fixed; that is a line that is constantly moving around and being appropriated. A classic example is urban planning programs in a lot of schools. They jumped from colleges of design into the government schools, then into the geography schools, then back into schools of architecture. These lines are very blurred and messy. At the very least, you have to isolate when you’re transgressing into someone else’s competence. Otherwise, you’re just being irresponsible. A lot of multidisciplinary work is meant to reinforce your disciplinary capabilities. It also involves saying, “Actually, I can’t do that. However, I can make a specific contribution to that in conjunction with someone else.” You are doing this rather than just saying everything is open to my design and my control and my input. No, that’s not interdisciplinary. In fact, architecture is a “To suggest that you can very limited project and capabilities but, if you’re stop the design and start able to understand what agency we actually the representation can be problematic; or that there do have, that’s where you have actually a lot of should be a sort of universal control, power, or sort of contribution. You have way that architecture should be to understand this sort of disciplinary boundaries represented is problematic.” in order to be multidisciplinary. How does discipline of architecture extend outside of architecture? [In the studio I am teaching now] we’re taking on things that are clearly not architectural issues—things that are far bigger than architects could ever hope to have agency within. We’re invisible from most of these issues that we’re trying to address. But the idea is that you can apply certain sorts of architectural methods, whether they’re issues or methods like representation—as just one example. We have a specific disciplinary ability in that domain. Not that many other fields are addressing representation in a highly self-critical way. Form is another thing. There are not a whole lot of other form makers out there, in terms of disciplines. We have a hold on that. Another thing is that architects are the people who look into the future. Not as zany futurists—it’s not the far future—it’s the near future that we’re proposing to enact, which is actually a combination of a reading of history and a projection upon the current We’re rare enough to make proposals that are not necessarily in reaction to something. That’s why, I would argue, architects are not necessarily about problem solving, alone. I bristle when I hear that suggestion: that the core of architecture is problem solving. No. It’s about projecting an alternative future through the work that we do. I don’t think there is anyone out there- or any disciplines out there—that really do that. Politicians are proposing new organizations of the world, but it’s always in response to some condition. Law is there to produce obstacles and conflict; to make people

operate in a certain, predetermined way. Technology, perhaps, is closing in on our claim to the future, especially as the discipline has given up manifestos and Utopian declarations. Ideally, both our profession and our discipline are about presenting what could be and, just as importantly, how to get there. That’s why you can look through the history of architecture and say that there’s a commitment towards, not just speculating, but actually enacting some type of an alternative possibility.

and has shut off the world from a lot of engagement. How many of us can go outside and smell something, and can describe what we smell or what it is without an image in front of us? There used to be much greater environmental understanding. That will be representation not just that way but also representation in terms of people that aren’t within the profession, especially, have not had the same level of visibility and I think that’s another type of representation that is not.

How does representation play a bigger role in architecture? Architecture is unique as an art form in that it doesn’t actually make the thing that it is making. There’s always a sort of separation, and that’s what the representation is. There was a time, long ago, where the architects were the actual builders of the projects that they designed. Now, there needs to be some sort of intermediate document. You could say that these documents have gotten more and more complex. There are more and more consultants involved in their creation. They’re more and more legally problematic. It’s an estrangement from the actual thing that we produce. Maybe you could draw a timeline of the relationship between the architect and the thing that they make becoming a greater and greater distance, but paradoxically there are some ways in which that gap is actually getting smaller. Simultaneous with separation, is the ability that you can represent the building in greater and greater precision and realism prior to it being built through the use of technology. I suppose this is, at the same time, inverting that distancing between what the architects are making and what he or she is actually making.

The other missing representation in architecture is that of gender distribution in the profession, discussions of race, sexuality, economic disparity—these are all issues that other disciplines have realized they cannot ignore. But somehow both the profession and the academy turn a blind ear.

My interest, in terms of architectural representation, is maybe two-fold in a slightly different way. Rather than representation being something that happens after the design is over, it operates in parallel. In order to design something, you have to be representing it by virtue of this very distance I mentioned. To suggest that you can stop the design and start the representation can be problematic; or that there should be a sort of universal way that architecture should be represented is problematic. Schools and practices often tend to make a claim of, “This is how you represent a building.” So that’s how you do it in all of the projects and they end up looking the same, whether in the entire portfolio or in the process that you do. Personally, I believe that each project demands its own representation. You have to consider the way that you are explaining the project—and that means, through it, what you are trying to argue for. The representation is just one additional part of the total argument the project is making. The other part of the representation is representing people who aren’t discussed within architecture. You know, issues that are not necessarily visible within the conventions of architecture right now. We live in a world that has always been sort of biased toward the visual and graphic writing. That has become exacerbated by the fact that we have screens around us at every turn. They’re always on. They’re always flashing. They’re all representations of sorts. A lot of the other sensorial understandings have become taboo, forgotten, or overlooked. There’s a whole other world of thinking about how you could design with other senses— like, smell a taste or texture—the screen of your laptop or computer or iPhone does not allow for that sort of representation. Representation has actually gotten much more sophisticated and precise and real. But it’s also become much more narrowly focused

“This mantra of specialization is that architects have lost a lot of the building typologies that they used to have the ability to contribute to..”

Do you have a specific design process? No, the design process that we have developed within practice is, in essence, not to have a singular design process, but instead, to intentionally reinvent the wheel for each project to a certain extent so that they all start- and I think that that’s consistent with representation. But there are continuities or consistencies among the methodology. That’s more important than saying we do certain things. That said, there are certain strategies that get employed in each project. One of them is trying to understand whatever set of rules or regulations govern a project as carefully as possible, and to try to invert or use those limitations to our advantage. And we’ve become very good at operating, dealing with quasi-legal code based issues, not because we love building codes or zoning codes or whatever—or even just financial situations of the finances behind the projects, trying to understand what limitations there are in terms of the client’s funding structure--but because those are the limiting conditions that, if you don’t deal with, they become limiting to the grand vision of artistic brilliance that doesn’t really slow up in the projects. Is there a rigor to push those codes? Absolutely. To find the inconsistencies, to see what we can do that we want to do. But first you have to know the enemy very, very well before you can engage with it. Another thing is that there is always some sort of thesis within each project. I think that’s something you’ve probably increasingly heard me talk about [in studio]. Something has to be argued or a claim has to be made through the work itself or else I don’t think it’s really worth doing, just to make a pretty object. Aesthetics, in themselves, I don’t find particularly interesting. We try to produce irregularities or gaps in aesthetic flawlessness. That’s about some sort of an argument and how to communicate it through the project and also make it visible once you’re going through all of the different and competing demands on a project. How do you make that thesis or that agenda? How do you keep it intact through the fact that you have to comply with ADA or fire codes? You come up with a great form, it’s ultimately going to get dumbed down or interrupted in the process of translating it from the computer into reality. If it’s about making decisions based upon some sort of criteria of a thesis, then there’s a lot more flexibility. Is it difficult to run a practice where you don’t specialize? Architecture, I’d argue, is one of the last disciplines that is not about specialization. It can specialize. Academia wants everyone to specialize. This mantra of specialization is that architects have lost a lot of the building typologies that they used to have the ability to contribute to. AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

DITCHEY, FLETCHER, TWILLING | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: CHRISTIAN STAYNER YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2015 PROJECT NAME: SUPERIOR BOOK GROUP MEMBERS: ANDREW DITCHEY, JOSHUA FLETCHER, EMILIE TWILLING

Superior, Arizona is one of the numerous mining towns that exist across the state. The small town of a few thousand people, often associated with the Hollywood of Arizona due to its appearance in films, is a unique place 60 miles east of Phoenix. The site is home to a North American bird watching hotspot, prestigious world rock climbing competitions, an internationally known arboretum, the Guinness world record holder for smallest town with the most bars, and the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s smallest museum. Superior also sits adjacent to what may be Arizonaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest copper mine, capable of producing 25% of the US copper demand for the next six decades. The planned Resolution Copper Mine is currently being reviewed by the EPA and has been controversial for the past five years. The proposed block cave mining method would cause a surface impact zone of at least a mile wide and roughly a fifth of a mile deep. This book is an observation of the systems and scales of the traces humans leave on the land surrounding Superior. Whether intentional or unintentional, human interaction with the land has left traces in ways that we cannot entirely comprehend. These traces on the land are often beyond our perception, or initially go unnoticed because the scale at which they occur are too small, too large, or transcend beyond our lifespans. This book looks at a theoretical impact that the proposed mine would have on the Superior region. As you turn the pages, there are two scales on each spread. On the left, the aerial image of Superior is static but

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

there is a spread of color, from certain hotspots, that grows as you make your way through the book. On the right, the aerial image is zooming out with each page. In addition, this aerial loses saturation from beginning to end. These two scales are impacted by the growth of the mine. Each page has an oblique form cut out of it that grows in size, and, by the end of the book, the left page shows the theoretical impact that the projected mine would have on Superior and the land that surrounds it. The importance of this story is that Superior is only one place in which humans interact with the land, yet the scales of the impacts affect both the place and the land in which these traces are left.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

BONIN, BUI, NADERI | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: CLAUDIO VEKSTEIN YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2015 PROJECT NAME: CREATE ACADEMY GROUP MEMBERS: LOUIS BONIN, CHRISTINE BUI, MAJID NADERI

Create Academy is a school located at the intersection of North 16th Street and East Indian School Road. The educational model, provided to us by a real client, seeks to challenge traditional ideas of pedagogy in order to inspire children across all backgrounds to engage in the learning experience. This model is driven by the notion that an arts-integrated curriculum of education will engage students where other methods have failed.

The mapping strategy was used to convey ‘visibility’. The map of the landscape was manipulated through a series of smaller explorations, all of which started with the realization of the significant role that infrastructure plays in structuring the urban environment. The infrastructural decisions easily create restrictions in the landscape, changing the way that an individual experiences it. As a result, these elements act as key cultural artifacts. The boundary of the map was determined based on the distance that a student would take on their walk home from school. The lights were an indication of how safe the neighborhoods were to walk in at night. Both the canal and the highway acted as invisible dividers. In the 1960’s, the houses that ran parallel to 16th Street were razed in order to allow for the construction of the highway. The canal fell right along the line of a school district boundary. On the south side of the canal, sixty percent of the school-age children were in poverty. On the other side, fifteen percent of the children were in poverty. Through this exploration, the traces hidden in the landscape slowly emerged. As a conceptual idea, we understood ‘visibility’ through many mediums. Jose Padhila’s Bus 174, Robert Irwin’s artwork, and Lina Bo Bardi’s Teatro Oficina were only a few of the works that we investigated during the process. This process was about consistently questioning what we saw and, then, continuing to push it, so that “visibility” described transparency of material, parallels of spatial experience, rituals that shifted in between different individuals. It is accurate that, throughout our education, we have been advised to listen to the patterns in the landscape. However, the technique that we were advised to employ felt different. This technique pulled out layers of the process that had been left behind in early discussions of “site analysis.” As we narrowed in to the scale of the site, we settled in on a final proposal for a playground. However, the same materials that we had acquired earlier were employed in the approach towards designing this structure. The playground is a spatial experience, in itself, serving the scale of the child. It creates different experiences of ‘visibility’ in its shifting planes, it’s vertical and horizontal divisions, and in the new activity that it initiates. The playground is mapped with a level of intricacy akin to the approach taken towards the first map. Every layer of the wood-frame structure is sliced in section in order to emphasize the spaces that are pocketed within the shifting members. There is a great consciousness to the approach of the object from one scale to the next, and in using all of the different connotations attached to the term “visibility” to provide a dynamic perceptual experience to the children.

I DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

GRACIE WEN | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: CHRISTIAN STAYNER YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2015 PROJECT NAME: PLASTER MATERIAL STUDIES

The basis of this material study was to use various methods of extraction on a given material with a focus on documenting its communicated changes, duration, action, and narrative. Each specimen started out in a cubic form with various extraction methods applied to each one. Plaster was cast into the cubic form with objects embedded into it such as salt, dowels, styrofoam, and mesh, that were then extracted during different phases of curing. This produced a variety of different results from adjusting only a few variables. The second phase of the analysis was to focus on a couple of the extraction methods; this offered both a breadth and depth of the material. The value of the study was to create a sort of taxonomy of specimens where the aesthetic value was not predetermined but a result of the experimentation with the tools or knowledge gained from the study. This exploration served as a basis for how to approach the greater semester project in Superior, Arizona.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

KYLE FIANO | COMPETITION

FUNDED BY: CLASS OF ‘77 SCHOLARSHIP (THE DESIGN SCHOOL, ASU), TRAVEL GRANT (HERBERGER INSTITUTE, ASU) YEAR COMPLETED: SUMMER 2013 PROJECT NAME: SPOMENIK: REVOLUTIONARY SCULPTURES TEAM MEMBER: COURTNEY LARSEN, ART DRAWING

Description

While researching architecture and public art for a proposal to travel abroad, an encounter with monuments labeled “Spomenik” became of great interest. Fascinated by their presence in vividly serene landscapes, further in-depth research solidified the desired destination for the proposed trip. The majority of findings fell within the former Yugoslavian border, and were built during a period of Socialism from the 1940s to the 1990s. Designed by architects and artists, these immense pieces portray the brutal construction style of this time period. Yugoslavian president, Josip Broz Tito, commissioned many of these monuments to be built, commemorating World War II battles and concentration camps. Some of them are sculptural and some are inhabitable. Only a few have been restored or maintained, but many have become abandoned or overrun by the landscape, destruction, or vandalism. Our proposal was to study these monuments as moments of connection between architecture and art. The proposal was accepted by a committee, and our travels took place in May-June of 2013.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

JOSH GREENE | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: RACHEL RASMUSSEN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: BEAUTIFULLY BROKEN

The built environment and the natural environment demand constant interaction in order to achieve a successful balance. In this project, the built pavilion takes advantage of the wind and water patterns of the desert as a means of leading the observer to immersion within it. The approach, which involves integrating passive design strategies, is one which is a necessity in order for the visitor to fully understand the natural patterns that are embedded in the surrounding environment.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

OLIVIA RAISANEN | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: TOM HARTMAN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: CLIMATE CONSIDERED

The design allows birds to coexist with human observers. This occurs through the careful design of a bird habitat which takes into consideration the nesting tendencies of the Verdin. The synthesis of the two groups results in an experience of seclusion. It shelters the city and allows them to connect with nature. Despite the open-air quality of the structure, it still maintains a feeling of enclosure. The simplification of the structure and the minimal alteration of the surrounding environment allow the design to fully focus on the Verdin in its natural habitat. Proximity to natural vegetation and the canal just south of the structure provide a cooling effect.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

JACK DEBARTOLO III | INTERVIEW

Jack DeBartolo 3 is principal and design leader of debartolo architects. Graduating from The University of Arizona and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, DeBartolo received honors for his Master’s thesis in 1994, which addressed the critical nature of “sacredness” in architecture. In 1996, DeBartolo joined his father, Jack DeBartolo Jr. FAIA, together forming the studio of debartolo architects, where for twelve years they collaborated as design partners, constructing significant, awardwinning academic, religious and residential projects.

The studio continues along the trajectory set by the father-and-son team, who gained a reputation for creating potent architecture through the innovative use of common materials with restraint and simplicity, shaping new spaces with light and material as a response to people, place and context. How did you first encounter architecture and become passionate about it? My personal experience responds to the fact that I was a son of an architect and was able to grow up in an architectural environment. I was like a frog boiling in water that never quite realizes it. I was in the environment of architecture; I was looking at buildings. As a boy, I would jump in the car with my father to go see a building under construction and I would appreciate the things that he saw. I perceived these things from an extremely young age. After that, it was through a pre-architecture program at Carnegie Mellon University as a high school student. Then there were greater levels of exposure through professors who came from the Bauhaus who had a really deep understanding of architecture. During my second year, a professor exposed me to European architecture. That shattered my little world of architecture and revealed to me that there was this massive, referential history of architecture. It showed me how large the practice and profession of architecture really was. I then studied parallels between historical buildings and modern buildings and saw that there was this deeply rooted history that we are connected to and a big story that we are a part of. This exposure continued and matured throughout undergraduate school and on into grad school. As a result of being exposed to better and better architects, and better and better thinkers, a passion for architecture was created within me. My upbringing in Will Bruder’s office obviously infected and impacted me. Being around Will’s passion and his architecture instilled in me a passion for design. The same could be said of my father. We started the practice of architecture really believing strongly that, in everything we did - whether it was a letter we were going to write or a project we were designing or a drawing that was going to inform the contractor how to build something - that everything was a design problem. Everything requires a series of responsive and thoughtful moves in order to communicate what you are saying. You just talked a little about the profession of architecture. Switching to the academic side, do you feel like there is anything missing from the Architecture program at ASU? That is a great question that I believe we can all answer yes to. I am sure a lot of things are missing, and that there are a lot of things that can be done to improve it. My answer is related DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

to what I am trying to bring to ASU. There is a piece that I believe is missing that I am trying to teach which is maybe two or three very simple things. The first is a collaboration of students with one another. I don’t think students learn the extremely important skill of collaboration in school very much. I think, typically, they work very individualistically and generate a portfolio of individual work. Architecture school, for them, is a personal journey and is always about them; they refer to their projects in first person all the time (i.e. me, I, this is what I did, I thought this was the best, etc.) and they don’t have a client, they don’t have a consultant, they hardly have outside forces other than a professor nudging them in a certain direction. One of the things that needs to be done more in architecture school is teaching students how to collaborate, coordinate efforts, and realize that they’re better if they can team up with other like-minded thinkers. Sometimes these are actually contrasting thinkers. In any case, they can generate something even better through collaboration. The second is to bring more reality into students’ practices and students’ experiences so that they are really getting a dose of the real world. I’m afraid that the anemic quality of student work is not the problem as much as it is the problem of the professors because they are not introducing the students into enough realism. When students have to make what they’re thinking - when they have to make a full scale model of a corner of a project or execute an exhibition - they realize what it really takes to build a louvered wall or to suspend a wall on one aircraft cable. They gain a totally different appreciation for the challenge of construction and become more holistic as designers. A third component that I would probably add to it is this idea of serving. Serving is such an easy way for architecture students to get a dose of reality in a simple way. For example, many of the problems that need to be solved in the developing world are problems that are not that common. They are complicated, but I don’t have to bring in seventeen consultants and brief you on the understanding “One thing our professional of how multi-city mechanical systems work. We organization ought to do is don’t have to bring in specialists that help us pull these worlds together and understand the nature of acoustics. We can talk realize that this is a singular practice. “ about pretty essential things and really be a huge service to the developing world. That is why I love doing these projects with the Ethiopia Studio as well as some of the other things I have gotten to be involved with in places where these projects are super essential. They are really very simple. But the question is, “can you do something really good, even when you’re only asked to do something very minor?” That’s really excellent if you can pull that off. If we can collaborate with students, and if they could deal with enough reality that they could leave school going, “okay, maybe I haven’t dealt with a lot of reality, but I’ve dealt with a little of reality.” It may be enough for them to know that it takes patience, it takes research, it takes reading, it takes going to meetings, it takes more than just being creative and sitting at a coffee shop and coming up with a clever design. Are the theoretical questions proposed at the AIA conference intended to refresh the minds of architects because they do not get that exposure in the practice? It’s very difficult to continue that conversation. The answer depends on how you set up your practice. As architects, we have to get rather pragmatic to figure out how we are going to talk to a builder or a craftsperson to actually make

our ideas inhabitable, real, buildable, on a budget, and on time. How do you draw drawings that real people can put numbers to? A lot of architects get bogged down in this reality that is so consuming and overwhelming. It is really hard to leave that reality and go back to the playfulness of the form and art of architecture. It can be difficult to have a deeper theoretical discussion about materiality and the appropriateness of a material on a site; to speak about the nuances of how one space relates to another space. There is a delight that you enjoy by discovering a place in its relationship to another that you never discovered before. That’s hard to experience in that nuanced world of semitheoretical, experiential architecture. We also live in a real world over here. How do you find the black oxide screw that goes in so that it’s exactly flush with the material? Where do you go online to find the square drive, black oxide, self-tapping screw? That is something that a lot of brains don’t like to handle. It also continues into writing specifications for the right ceramic tile, how thin the joint should be because you want the joint to be perfectly aligned all the way around the room, knowing the difference between wall tile and floor tile, how you detail the light cove so that you don’t see the light, and designing the counter so that the water doesn’t splash. That list continues miles down that road. There are also miles of nuanced theory in the other direction on that road. Why aren’t you thinking about the qualitative sensory nature of coming into a space and smelling the desert or about the texture you get when you understand what it sounds like to be in a wood room versus being in a concrete room? You can get way down this road and, yet in the middle of it, someone is budgeting it. Academics like to get way over here and have more fun, and I get it. I also love that discussion. A lot of practicing architects run very far to the other practical side, and become experts at writing a spec, or doing a set of construction documents. We’re trying to hit a deadline and trying to finish a set of drawings. It’s not as romantic as some of this other stuff. Yet, it takes the pragmatism of doing a beautiful set of drawings that are really precise, where every node is consistent, and that never refers to the same thing two different ways to prevent confusion. You have to do that to make these amazing, experiential, quality things a built reality. I like both of these spectrums (the pragmatic and the theoretic) and sometimes wish that I was more broad in both areas, but then I fear that I am too broad and am not good at either of them. I need to focus on specific areas so that I can get good at them.

“To me, a profound idea is an idea that solves two, three or maybe four problems that is unique to that specific issue, or to that site.”

One of the roles that the AIA can play is to bring design back to the forefront of what we are as architects. We’ve been using this line the past few weeks, “Where are the architects?” When you go to downtown Phoenix and you look at these buildings and warehouses that developers are buying, gutting, and turning into new buildings - where are the architects? Do we have a voice? Do we have a role? Should we be speaking? Because no one is there. There are no architects on the street. There are no architects in the building. There are no architects involved. Where are the architects when it comes to city decisions being made about parks and large urban spaces, and light rails? Are they shaping this? What role do we have? One thing our professional organization ought to do is pull these worlds together and realize that this is a singular practice. It is an extremely broad practice that has such a magnificent impact.

What is the equilibrium of the three spheres of academia, profession, and serving? I really think that those are the three handles that I am grabbing. If you can, imagine that all three are consuming and vast. They are oceans far deeper than I can navigate or swim. By switching between them, I get a chance to take a breath. For example, right now we are designing a house that is exhaustingly thorough and deep. I sit there for three hours talking about inches of movement that might impact the lives of the peoples living in this house. It is so refreshing to step out of that and then talk about designing an exhibition with a bunch of architecture and design students to celebrate the work of Glenn Murcutt. Then, after five hours of trying to shape an exhibition, to go downtown to an AIA meeting to begin to bring relevant issues back to the forefront of the discussion of architecture - to put design back on the table. We should be talking about design and architecture in all that we do. Essentially, these three spheres both help to keep my head above the water as well as stay motivated. You’ve taught a lot of really unique studios that aren’t typically common in students’ education. Is there a common theme that ties them together, or maybe a reason why you are teaching them? To me, collaboration is such an important piece to all of them. While I think design is my number one reason, I think that it is design in light of collaboration. Collaboration to me is infused with reality. It is not about being a little designer over here where I just can pretend with my own budget. I have a hard time when professors don’t assign a specific site to a project. I think, “wait a second, isn’t architecture always about responding to place?” I mean, when is architecture ever not about its site? There seems to be very few reasons where you would ever not promote a student to experience a strong interaction with place. When they have a site, they really have to deal with the stuff that we deal with when we deal with real sites. These include building envelopes, height limits and terrain. You can’t just put buildings anywhere. There are always pragmatic realities that we deal with. I am not saying that you need to be super experienced in school, but you need to deal with a handful of these realities. When I sit at final reviews, I do not hear what I would consider to be brilliant solutions to at least two or three problems which generated a unique idea which solved all the problems so well that it was a profound idea. In school, I’ll say to come up with one profound idea. To me, a profound idea is an idea that solves two, three or maybe four problems that is unique to that specific issue, or to that site. That starts to be profound. I don’t know if we have ever created truly profound architecture, but that kind of architecture begins to speak beyond the project, beyond the place. All of a sudden, when people come and experience it, their single response is, “Wow. That’s it. They solved it.” You don’t have to stand there and explain, “You know, I did it for this reason. You can see that I flipped this upside down and did this cool thing. Look how great I am.” Instead, the architecture speaks for itself. I try to bring work like that to the table.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

GLENN MURCUTT EXHIBIT | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: JACK DEBARTOLO YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: ARCHITECTURE FOR PLACE

A traveling exhibition of Australian architect Glenn Murcutt’s built works made its U.S. debut at the ASU Art Museum beginning December 12th, 2014. The exhibition, “Architecture for Place,” was designed and built by a collaborative team of sixth year graduate students in The Design School at Arizona State University.

Murcutt works as a sole practitioner, producing residential and institutional work all over Australia. Although he does not work outside his country, or run a large firm, his work has a worldwide influence. His motto, “touch the earth lightly,” is evident throughout his works, which are highly economical and multi-functional. Murcutt pays attention to the environment such as wind direction, water movement, temperature and light surrounding his sites before he designs the building itself, making them highly sustainable. Murcutt was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2002, an honor bestowed upon architects whose work makes significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

The exhibition is a collection of sketches, photographs, working drawings and models. The ASU Art Museum hosted its first appearance in the United States, following the cities Montreal, Helsinki, Brussels, Vienna, Sydney and Tokyo, among others. The design team was comprised of graduate students in architecture, interior architecture and graphic design who traveled to Montreal, New York City and Washington, D.C. during the fall semester to study exhibition design at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim in New York, among others. The project was a semester-long studio class for the students who were collaborating with the curators and staff of the ASU Art Museum. “The opportunity to see the work of Glenn Murcutt in this studentdesigned context is a rare experience,” said guest curator and Phoenix architect Jack DeBartolo 3, who led the student design team. “Not only will the exhibit expose his influence on many of our local architects, it will display the precision and poetry of one of the world’s most significant voices.”

Simpson Lee

DRAWINGS

Our Process

VID

q os

Magney Bingie

./L

BOOKS

PROCESS ROOM

als

Rid

Glenn Murcutt's Timeline

ne yP

din

Boyd Center

Students who participated in Jack DeBartolo 3â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio and contributed to the planning, construction, and execution of the exhibition include:

Marie Short

Marika Alderton

Boyd

F./

Int

Title

TIT

Tim Berry Candy Choi Alyssa Hitt Robert Samuel Huff Bryson Kahala Kirsten Keane Jay Sciarani John Thomas Sutton Jennifer Testamarck Lee Tribbie Cristina Sohandeep Valencia Francesca Zucchi

M. Architecture M. Visual Comm. M. Interior Architecture M. Architecture M. Architecture M. Interior Architecture M. Architecture M. Visual Comm. M. Visual Comm. M. Architecture M. Architecture M. Architecture

To see more of their process work and to learn more about Glenn Murcutt, visit gmexaz.org

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

NIKKEL, VAN HORNE | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: SCOTT MURFF YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: FIRESTATION 55 GROUP MEMBERS: AUSTIN NIKKEL, RICHARD VAN HORNE

The intent of Phoenix Station 55 was to design a response station successfully able to achieve a certain balance between the work demands and the lifestyle of the firefighters. These two spheres are highly interconnected architecturally while responding to the surrounding desert context of the site. Located in North Phoenix, on Jomax Road and the Black Canyon Highway, the station works to achieve a balance of responsive architecture, acting as a community beacon that works to serve and protect the community. Station 55 incorporates sustainable systems into the architecture of the building, while establishing clean lines and a simplified program in simultaneity.

27TH AVE.

I-17 FAST RESPONSE ROUTE

USAA

THE SHOPS AT NORTERRA

DISCIPLINE

JOMAX RD.

SPRING 2015 FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

EXERCISE

GROW

A LEVEL SURFACE IS USED AS A RUNNING PATH FOR THE FIRE FIGHTERS, BUT CAN ASLO SERVE AS A WALKING PATH FOR THE PUBLIC.

THE BASIN WORKS TO RETAIN UNUSED WATER FROM THE ROOF COLLECTION SYSTEM. THE LANDSCAPE BECOMES UNAFFECTED BY THE RAISED PATH. THIS ALLOWS FOR NATURAL WILDLIFE TO RE-ENTER THE SITE.

0 -2.5 -5 -7.5 -10 -12.5 -15

TRAIN THE RAISED SURFACE ALLOWS FOR PRACTICE FOR CLIMBS / REPELLS. THE BRUSH VEGETATION ALSO WORKS TO PREPARE THE FIRE FIGHTERS FOR WILDFIRES

27TH AVE.

I-17 FAST RESPONSE ROUTE

USAA

THE SHOPS AT NORTERRA

JOMAX RD.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

NOTERRA HOUSING COMMUNITY

NORTERRA CANYON SCHOOL

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

COMMUNITY BEACON

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

WENDELL BURNETTE | INTERVIEW

Educated in the practice of architecture through 34 years of direct experience spanning a wide range of public and private work, Wendell Burnette’s self-taught curriculum includes a three-year period at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. He founded his studio in 1996. He is also a Professor of Practice at The Design School at Arizona State University where he has been teaching since 2000.

Describe your first encounter with architecture, or how you became passionate about it? I thought about becoming an architect at an early age. I got serious when I was thirteen; I got a drafting table and started contacting architects. I was on small and large construction sites and I was designing my own projects. I would make the trip down to the Downtown Nashville public library a lot. I would be studying books on Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies, Corb and the first project that I ever emulated was the ‘Dome in the Desert’ - one of the few built projects by Paolo Soleri - that I ended up living in. I started working for an architect when I was sixteen. I was working thirty hours a week my senior year in high school and supervising someone with a Master’s degree in architecture. I compensated some of my high school courses as an apprentice in a young architectural practice in Nashville. I did not go to University and only have a high school diploma. Instead, I went to Taliesen and ‘learning by doing’ was my mode of education coupled with a kind of self-study curriculum, which included a very long apprenticeship with the studio of Will Bruder, I worked with Will for 11 years, the last six of which was as codesigner, project, and field architect on the Central Library. Before we got the Central Library, I bought a piece of land and I designed my own house and, when the library was under construction, I was also building my house. When both projects were completed and my house was a Record House on the cover of Architectural Record in May 1996, I launched my own practice, Wendell Burnette Architects, which was about 19 years ago. What have you gained from working with individuals who studied in a University? I have learned a great deal from my colleagues here at ASU; mainly ‘how to teach’ but I believe we’re constantly students and for me apprenticeship and ‘learning by doing - learning through direct experience and working with architects’- is actually an older, more conventional process of learning architecture. My early formative experience was that and my mentor Will Bruder followed a similar path with only a degree in sculpture. Frank Lloyd Wright never went to architecture school. Later, I got into the academic world here at ASU and I have been teaching here as a member of the faculty for over nineteen years. Many people that I respect and admire and that have inspired my work are of course architects that have received a more ‘formal training’ different than my own. But my method was not this, which I think is a big part of my story and it’s the reason that I teach. I teach here because I bring a to the School a seasoned architects’ perspective. How would you define discipline within Architecture? Design is a discipline. Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Graphic Design, Urban Design, Interior Design are all design disciplines. Sometimes we are engaged in any one of these disciplines, ourselves, through years of experience and years of observation and, then, often with consultants. And for me actually that collaboration with people who are

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

more experts in their individual disciplines have led me toward a broader understanding of design. Ultimately, our shared goals toward a better-built environment is design where those boundaries are not understood by the user. It’s a seamless designed builtenvironment. So, I think the design discipline is this Apple IPhone and how we interact with it as a person. My thumb, my fingers, and my eyes connect to this. It’s an industrial design product that is still about resonating with people and place and time and urban design or architecture or interior design or graphic design is still about resonance and about relevance for humanity and contributing to humanity. It does not exist in a vacuum. What you bring, as far as your personal narrative and your personal ethics, to that, is how design moves forward. How we all contribute to the discourse of design is how it moves forward. I think that design is good business. I think that design can be ethical. There is right and wrong. Sometimes, humanity determines whether it’s right or wrong. If design fails, it doesn’t go anywhere as a business. It doesn’t work. That stark reality between something that works or doesn’t work - that’s our responsibility as design professionals to push - is the status quo designing the way it has always been designed. Is that actually beneficial to our clients or to humanity? Not necessarily. If we don’t push the discourse forward, we might repeat the same mistakes. The things that do improve and expand the discourse usually work and it’s actually our responsibility to push - to push the envelope to always do the highest quality work. Quality is defined by how well it works, whether it inspires, and whether people love and cherish it. I want to do work that people cherish - that they will fight for. Because it worked well, it was beautiful, and it was aspirational, it has a better chance of being a hundredyear building. And I think that’s one problem we have, is we have a disposable society of making things that are not designed for the long term. It’s not easy. What is architecture as a discipline versus architecture as a practice? I don’t see a difference. For me, discipline is practice. Practice requires discipline. It’s a way of life. I don’t see it as a job. I don’t really see it as a profession- like a doctor or a lawyer. I see it as a way of experiencing the world, observing the world, and engaging the world. Wherever I am and whatever I’m doing, I experience the world as an architect and, in that way, I don’t see a difference between discipline and practice. It’s really one and the same thing. Teaching architecture is difficult. Architecture is “If we don’t push the discourse hard. Alvaro Alto said it in his famous lecture. forward, we might repeat He just said, “Architecture is hard,” and he left. the same mistakes.. It’s our responsibility to push the That was his lecture. I think teaching architecture envelope to always do the is hard, is difficult. The most important thing I highest quality work. can do as a teacher is ignite or kindle a passion for architecture as a way of life - as a way of experiencing and observing the world, perhaps contributing to a better world and a better built environment. What I think is most important, is to ignite that passion. The rest will come. Certainly, there is a discipline that must be learned. We have to learn the discipline and then I think we have to constantly hone our craft. It’s in the early part of one’s career. You go on this journey to become an architect. There are the conventions of design- of drawing, modeling, programming, and so on. There are a lot of aspects that one must learn and that one must, eventually, master. Then, you move into practice. In my case, engaging practice was

how I learned the discipline. I started running blueprints, sweeping the floor of the office, and listening. As I was running the blueprints, I was looking at the drawings. I’m looking and I’m absorbing. I think that the most important thing about ‘learning by doing’ is that your education does not stop with the degree. The profession does not even acknowledge that you can take your exam without apprenticeship; although this has recently been changed by NCARB. Historically, apprenticeship has been a way of extending the understanding the discipline. For me, teaching is a way of bringing the practice into the academic environment so I’m teaching the discipline through my knowledge as a practitioner. I’m trying to bring practice into the academic environment earlier.

“Architecture is an iterativeit’s refining, and refining, and refining, and listening to other viewpoints and, then, farther refining the design.”

What is the typical process of your design and how do you respond to place in different ways, following that process? What is most important for me is that we hone the skills to observe the people and the places that we design for. How we do work that resonates with people and place is the most important thing to me and my work, and I think it’s very important for architecture. The reason I think that’s important is that, if we don’t do work that resonates with people and place, it will not be work that stands the test of time. It will not be sustainable. Work that resonates with people and place is the first rule of sustainability. How do we design buildings that work for the long-term? They should not be a fashion statement. They are not an ego trip. They are not about what looks good in the magazines. It’s about work that resonates with people and place. I’ve always looked at context as the most malleable material that architects work with. How we read place is how we might work with that context. What comes into that is your own personal narrative and your own personal ethics about what is important. Context is what I would define as something that artists and historians have been very successful at - in how they tap into the soul of a place and reveal something about place that you wouldn’t have seen on the surface. What I’m talking about is not a kind of Disney-fied version of place but doing something that resonates with place at a deeper level. It’s not superficial. It’s something where, the more you experience it and the more you engage it, the more it resonates. It’s a deeper connection. Coming out to the desert - the boundless landscape of the West, from Nashville Tennessee, spatially spoke to me. It was more spacious with this amazing quality of light within it, and it taught me how to see things with more clarity. When I go to places that are not the desert, I can look at them more clearly because I grew up in the desert. The desert is this naked landscape where - why it is what it is is more apparent. Now, I can see places that are perhaps less apparent with ease. How I respond to places or ‘place’ outside the boundaries of the desert is with a kind of quickness - a quicksilver clarity that I wouldn’t have been able to do had I not, in a sense, grown up here. In my process, I try to do work that is, at once, functional and poetic. What we’re doing as architects is listening to the parameters of our urban context, our natural context, our clients, our site, and our budget. We are trying to be creative within a set of parameters. I wouldn’t know what to do with a white canvas. I like being creative within parameters. I like solving many of the functional requirements of a project. I like discovering when things that are apparently

conflicting are the same solution. Beyond the functional, I think architecture must be poetic - it must be aspirational, it must resonate with people and place. It’s not poetic for poetry’s sake. It’s poetic in that it reveals something about people and place in the same way that the poet might. The work goes beyond mere building, mere function, and then it approaches Art. Therefore, it is more sustainable. How do you know when you have achieved that? It is done through a fairly rigorous process; through working with many people - a dialogue with the client, the planning authorities, internally in the studio with my collaborators, with the consultants, with the cost estimators. It is done by getting all the information through a messy and rigorous process - a kind of fact finding, fact gathering, and a kind of reconciliation of those facts into something that is a functional and poetic resolution; that is self-evident and that speaks for itself. Certainly, as we go through that process, we might be challenged, we might be inspired to resolve it better, and better. It’s really a kind of rigor of never thinking that we have arrived at the solution. Architecture is an iterative process - it’s refining, and refining, and refining, and listening to other viewpoints and then further refining the design. When it’s built, it either works or it doesn’t. Then, it’s too late if it doesn’t. One learns to be very rigorous about that, and to listen because the implications of getting it wrong are too great. The worst thing would be that it is ugly. Or that it doesn’t resonate with the place or the people that you designed it for. That’s the true test of architecture. The true testament of whether we got it right is really the post-user feedback and unsolicited responses from people who might not know anything about architecture, but they respond to architecture at a visceral, gut level. They get it, they appreciate it, and they understand that it is for them. That is why I do architecture. A public building should be for the people; private work should be for the client. If they like it, and they like it for years and years and decades, then that’s when I know that it worked. You do that a number of times. You visit work that does that, and you hear people talk about it. You see it function and you see it work. I look at that and that is what has educated me. It is not what it looks like. It is the experience of the work and I would add the experience of others that has taught me the most. You have read the desert for a long time. Do you have to apply more rigor when you’re working with something less familiar? I feel I have honed a unique shorthand way to see a place in a very short amount of time. I no longer have to be an expert on that place. I’ve kind of developed eyes, here, in the desert to be able to see a new place very quickly and very precisely with a lot of insight. I think this is the way historians work because they’re always confronting new situations. We have to be keen observers of human behavior and of place, regardless of what that ‘place’ is, whether it’s part of a man-made, a natural, or an altered condition. We have to hone the skills to observe the human condition, the natural condition, the urban - whatever we are asked to do. I made a recent pilgrimage to India. I traveled to many places but Fatehpur Sikri near Agra was probably the most profound construction in a single material that I’ve ever experienced in my life. It was almost entirely out of one material, red sandstone. In short, it was a sublime construction. And, that is architecture too - something that was crafted out of this one material, and still stands today. The way that it was designed, detailed, and constructed is a kind of essay in how to construct well. AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

TIM BERRY | PERSONAL

YEAR COMPLETED: SUMMER 2013 PROJECT NAME: ORPHANAGE AND SCHOOL DESIGN FOR CLOSECARE MINISTRIES IN GHANA, AFRICA

Closecare Ministries is an organization that reaches out to orphans, poor, needy and abused children in under-served coastal and rural communities in Ghana, West Africa. They requested a master plan and building designs to enable them to take care of these children. The new site will primarily operate as a school and an orphanage. It will also include community oriented projects in the form of a soup kitchen, clothing bank, hygiene facilities, health screening programs and a financial learning center that can all be easily accessible to the poor and needy in order to improve the resilience and independence of the community. In June 2013, I traveled with a team of ten architects, engineers and surveyors (as a part of Engineering Ministries International) to Ghana and spent two weeks carrying out extensive site analysis and conceptual designs for a phased use of a ten acre plot in the rural village of Fintey. My primary responsibility while on the trip was to develop the master plan for the proposed site while coordinating with other aspects of the design. The challenge was to create a site that could simultaneously provide public services and programs for the community while also creating a safe environment for the school and orphan homes.

ORPHAN HOMES

COMMUNITY SPORT FIELD SCHOOL

ADMIN

H SC

TIO CA

YOUTH CENTER

CLINIC

STAFF HOUSE ENTRANCE

ORGANIZATION DIAGRAM

PUBLIC ACCESS CONTROLLED ACCESS PRIVATE ACCESS

PUBLIC/PRIVATE DIAGRAM

It was a privilege to serve alongside both Closecare and the great team of volunteers that I was a part of on this trip. Through strong collaboration, we were able to develop a design that could greatly impact the underprivileged people in the village of Fintey in rural Ghana. The strong connection that Closecare had already made with the leaders of the village of Fintey means that the project will be able to have a lasting and meaningful role in the village for years to come. The effective communication between our team and Closecare was essential in ensuring that this design would be realized in the short two weeks that we had to achieve it.

SPRING 2015

The final master plan reflects this thinking by placing the orphan homes in the back of the site with a private access point in the most secure location available. The school and staff housing make up the middle zone that has controlled access - meaning that it can be either public or private depending on use. The public community programs and services are located along the primary entrance road in order to create a strong relationship to the surrounding community.

DISCIPLINE

SERVICE

COMMUNITY HALL

In order to solve this challenging problem, it was crucial to develop a strong conceptual framework that would identify the essential relationships between the various proposed programs on the new site while also organizing the buildings from most public to most private. A series of diagrams were developed in order to visualize these complex programmatic relationships in a spatial dimension related to the master plan.

This experience had a profound impact on my life. It changed the way that I see the world. I have seen the potential that architecture can have in helping to solve some of the most challenging problems of our day. I learned that these complex issues do not have a simple solution, but through strong collaboration and a team of talented professionals that are willing to work together, much can be done to improve the world through the discipline of architecture.

STAFF HOUSING

FINAL MASTER PLAN

ORPHAN HOMES

PRIMARY SCHOOL

COMMUNITY HALL

LIBRARY

AERIAL

ORPHAN CHILDREN AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

CATHLEEN KEBERT | ESSAY

“ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE: IMBUED IMPACT”

When a place can be so enriching, perplexing, and resonate with an individual so quickly and in a single visit, it begs the question of what wealth of meaning these ancient structures have invisibly intertwined within their borders.

visit, it begs the question of what wealth of meaning these ancient structures have invisibly intertwined within their borders. Three prime examples include the Ben Youssef Madrasa, the Lisbon Cathedral, and the Notre-Dame de la Garde Basilica.

It is astonishing to witness a fragment in time and know that this place has impacted the lives of countless individuals. For some, this ancient architecture could be a place symbolizing a political shift in power, honoring a deity, or reminiscent of bathhouse cultural traditions. Sometimes structures multiple centuries old go unnoticed, passersby unaware of the secrets, memories, and stories hidden within. Although no one could ever fully comprehend the expansiveness of any given place, the depth of meaning is profound. Through my travels, a handful of places have truly connected with me in a sense that made me continuously ponder this depth, even to this day. A handful of places have become so engrained in my memory, although I only experienced them as a split second compared to their existences. When a place can be so enriching, perplexing, and resonate with an individual so quickly and in a single

By far, one of the most inspiring places I have ever visited is the Ben Youssef Madrasa in Marrakech, Morocco. The unassuming threshold to the 14th century Madrasa includes a narrow, partly-shaded porch extending over the overwhelmingly hectic street adjacent to it. Stepping inside, a slender, dimly-lit walkway propels me towards the integral central space of this Madrasa: its serene courtyard. The sudden stillness of this area provides immediate, needed relief to my overwhelmed senses after experiencing the cluttered, compact, and swarming bustle of the nearby city streets. As picturesque and mesmerizing as the courtyard is, the Madrasa’s small, component-like rooms resonate and impact me the most. Although comprising approximately one hundred compact rooms, the structure surprisingly contains no two identical rooms. Completely scarce of any decoration within their roughly 8 feet by 8 feet space, each room achieves its own personality through custom components and distinguishing windows— some have metal scrollwork or tapering geometric forms, while others have scalloped edges or decorative arches. Though some of these miniscule rooms have loft spaces that double its square footage and others have built-in shelves or storage areas, almost all have a distinctive window opening varying the amount of light brought into each room. The beauty of soft, framed, screened light within each of these spaces, as well as the sharply defined lighting in the designated hallways connecting the multitude of rooms is truly remarkable. Learning that the Ben Youssef Madrasa was actually a college in its past life astounds me, especially considering that the numerous rooms were the dormitory rooms for its almost one-thousand enrolled students. Imagining daily life for those students is difficult to fully picture, yet makes me wonder if they were responsible for transforming their individual spaces into the luminous, charming rooms I witnessed.

BEN YOUSSEF MADRASA, MARRAKECH, MOROCCO

LISBON CATHEDRAL, LISBON, PORTUGAL

Reflecting on travels abroad and, in particular, those structures that have become so engrained into my memory, have greatly shaped my definition of architecture with profound impact.

Relatively recently built structures made out of durable materials are sometimes deliberately destroyed despite their projected lifespan. Yet, ancient buildings made out of simpler materials and construction are specifically chosen to remain in existence and be preserved. This cultural decision of placing a great deal of importance on certain buildings or areas is what transfixes me when I witness these ancient structures. There is nothing so powerful as a building infused with meaning bestowed by dozens upon dozens of generations, whether political, religious, monumental, or even everyday reasons or usage.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

An interesting relationship between a 12th century structure, ancient Roman and Moorish remains, and a current day archaeological excavation is found within the Lisbon Cathedral in Portugal. Very common with religious structures, this Portugal Cathedral was planned to be built over past theological buildings in order to ‘absorb’ the strength of the prior religion. Although the ruins are very compelling as one pauses to imagine the life that occurred in these ruins, as an architecture enthusiast, I appreciated the gentleness of the archaeological execution. A shaded structure was introduced over the open excavation and barely impacts the existing site by supporting the walkways and cover on small posts. The added beauty of this shading structure was caused by the plastic sheets having been discolored and aged which flooded the cloisters with a golden light in the afternoon. Pictures still cannot do justice for the ethereal contact this current day structure casts over the cathedral structure and archaeological remains. In respect of not only the ancient ruins, but also for the cathedral cloisters, the current day archaeological support structures are added with an extreme sensitivity. The minimal contact of the overhead structure causes a golden glow about the site in the afternoon which slowly fades as sunset approaches. The palpable palimpsest from multiple cultures in a single site leaves me curious as to how evident they were to those generations that preserved and cherished this cathedral.

of their own boats or vessels. Over the course of years, so many nautical models were accumulated that in order to save space, the boats were strung together and hung from the basilica’s ceiling. These strands could go easily unnoticed with all the other striking details but still held my attention because of the sheer number of boats suspended in midair. The magnitude of so many people’s answered prayers instilled a strong, lingering connection to people unknown to me because of the commonality of having hope and thankfulness. Outside and somewhat underneath the basilica lay an approximately 12 foot by 6 foot chapel dedicated to “Our Lady of the Guard.” This modest, secluded, quiet space was unoccupied and gave me a moment to take in the plaques on the wall. As the basilica became known for answering the prayers of travelers, more people were drawn to the basilica in hopes that their other prayers would be answered. Since the collection of tribute items became overwhelming, the church instigated a new system revolving around plaques. Every inch of the chapel’s wall space was covered with hundreds of names and dates. To me, the chapel and the dangling ships inside the basilica were by far the most powerful aspects because they signified the enduring wishes and hopes that have been answered.

Venturing through Marseille, France one has difficulty not to notice the Notre-Dame de la Garde Basilica with its prominent position atop the highest natural landmark in Marseille. Its white and green stone exterior facade masks the grandeur of the small space inside. Despite the elaborately rich gold accents, mosaic murals, and extremely detailed decorations, what fascinated me the most was the story behind visitors’ propensity towards this specific site. The name “Notre-Dame de la Garde” translates to “Our Lady of the Guard” and it was originally used by sailors and their families as a specific place to pray for a safe voyage. Upon their safe returns, offerings were often made to the church as a token of their gratitude. Many captains of their ships would carve small, detailed versions

Individuals experience architecture in unique ways. Although a group of people may have similar reactions, there are different architectural aspects individuals are drawn towards. So when a collection of individuals feel so strongly about a place as to preserve it, this tangibly expresses the power of their connection and meaning embedded within a specific place. Very few places, when compared to the sheer number of structures ever constructed or attempted, will achieve this level of satisfaction and sacredness. Studying these places inspires me to infuse more meaning into my work. Although it can never compare to the centuries of meaning emanating from these ancient places, a stronger meaning can become imbued into those generations that do witness, inhabit, and discover these architectural ventures.

LISBON CATHEDRAL, LISBON, PORTUGAL

NOTRE-DAME DE LA GARDE BASILICA, MARSEILLE, FRANCE

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

ELENA ROCCHI | INTERVIEW

Architect, Active artist and Clinical Visiting Assistant Professor in architecture and interior architecture programs at The Design School and Teaching Fellow at Taliesin Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.

MARISSA MENDOZA, SHIFTING THE CENTER

She is a current PHD student in Theory and History of Architecture at ETSAB and received her Master of Theory and History of Architecture in Barcelona, Spain. She received her Bachelor’s Architecture degree from “Universitá degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza” in Rome.

Elena Rocchi worked for Miralles Tagliabue EMBTAssociated Architects in Barcelona. Her design work emphasizes rehabilitation of existing structures to promote Contemporary Reuse, New Rituals and Innovation in the production of Traditional Materials. How would you describe the Lapsus Imaginis Studio from the fall? What motivated you to teach such a unique Studio? Lapsus Imaginis: Bulding a future past, translates to lapse—a mistake that we do involuntary, through speaking or writing, which hides a desire—and images. It is very complex for me in only one sentence, to describe what this title and the Studio are about. I can tell you that images to me are somehow errors of reality, intending error as a deviation from reality: we create them through manipulations as a desire for a different reality. Images of a city like Rome are errors and wishes of Rome, expressed by all those people that produced them. So Lapsus Imaginis is a Studio Course based on the Image of a city (Rome for example) that has always been in my mind as something I wanted to do one day. There was a wish in the reason and the pretension to do it. Moreover, with the traveling Studio, I have found the other opportunity to accomplish a desire of mine and to travel to Rome with architecture students that have never been to Rome but that have the desire to travel to that city and to learn from that city. What is the Image of the City more than what the city is? I believe that this question and my interest in teaching narrative and architecture/design were the 2 aspects of the wish that motivated the Studio. I believe the future of our discipline is comprehensive in the sense of going beyond the differentiation that exists in between the definition of different disciplines of design. Design needs to be taught as a Cultural Project. The Studio was based on this idea of focusing on the value of narrative in design and it was a Studio we all enjoyed—me, the students and the jurors at the end—because, by bringing together narrative and design, it went beyond Design. I am an architect that was taught during the late 80’s as architect as well as interior designer, industrial designer, landscape architect, scenographer, historian: I was taught everything. It’s amazing how now, by bringing the idea of interdisciplinarity and cross-disciplinarity, we are back into that idea. The thing that finally motivated me to offer the traveling Studio was having the opportunity to have students from different programs and with many different backgrounds. The Studio was composed by landscape architects, urban designers and architects, and it was amazing to see them, through the lesson of Rome, going beyond their own disciplines to meet the ones of their colleagues. It was a wish and an opportunity to teach this Studio. How did the students develop such interesting narratives for the basis of their Studio projects? The basic idea of the Studio was that the students had to DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

go to Rome to learn about what the Image of a City is. The Roman trip was a pre requisite. We travelled to Rome to found our basis for a project to develop once back home in Tempe. Rome has been our teacher on how to develop a narrative, especially using the drawings of Giambattista Piranesi as a reference: before traveling to Rome, the students had to explore here in Tempe the images of Rome produced by Piranesi and build their own expectation of the city, the mental image of it. Piranesi’s images, in the Studio, were intended to show the history of the images of the city, not of the city. Piranesi was an architect from the18th century that, without having a job and real commissions, started to build Rome as it existed in his imagination: the production of images of his Rome was mainly “This Studio was not about celebrating a kind of memory of the Grandeur of guessing a different future: it it. My students, after, had to travel to Rome with was about digging into the past to imagine a different present. I me and study the object of those images in reality, call this a ‘future past.’” to discovered that the Image of a City as seen and represented by an architect, is much greater than what reality is; that the city is different from our expectations. So, when we were back here in Tempe, we did the same exercise learnt from Rome, and we started to build an Image of Tempe. We went first to the archive in the Hayden Library looking for images of the recent past of

PARTICIPATING STUDENTS INCLUDE: MEILING CAI, ROMAN CERVANTES, GURNOOR KAUR, NATHAN LANDREVILLE, HAILONG LI, MARISSA MENDOZA, JUSSARA SCARLE, SANTIAGO TOLOSA, YUDAN WANG, MARIA WILSON, AND XI ZHU.

YUDAN WANG, LAPSUS IMAGINIS: LANDSCAPING ARCHITECTURE

Tempe. We looked at images from the beginning of the last century as ruins of Tempe. The students then had to rebuild a 360-panorama image and to speculate and imagine a narrative from that one picture they selected. For example, Marissa Mendoza found an image of the white washing event of the “A” on the Tempe mountain: she built the entire panorama and narrative that started from that picture. Of course, students were not only digging into the past through the photographs but also through history in order to build a story from an imagined event that existed in a lapse of Time of an image: a Lapsus Imaginis. All of them pictured a specific event in a different past and imagined that the event was developed till the present as a different image of the present. This Studio was not about guessing a different future: it was about digging into the past to imagine a different present. I call this a ‘future past.’ Over the semester, the students were dealing a lot with guessing to comprehend the profession of architecture as one of the best tools to speculate about the future, to understand design as a way of simulating and testing. We, the designers, have the capacity to invent a different future and, in order to do this, we have to be able to speculate. So, when I speak about narrative and architecture, I am trying

to give back to architecture the cultural aspect it has innerly and essentially and that I consider is sometimes missing in architectural education. What did you perceive as the biggest challenge students had to overcome? Whatever I teach, in general—whatever country I am in, whoever I am teaching, whatever year I am teaching—I am only interested in the person. So the biggest challenge was, through bringing the students through narrative and architecture, to facilitate the discover of their own and natural talent, their Genius. I am always telling my students that they all have a talent if they are able to discover it. So, whatever I am teaching, the biggest challenge is to help you overcome and discover this talent that is inside of you. If you are not aware of it, it is a lost talent. Secondly, the Studio was a pretext to reflect on knowledge of history of architecture as a tool for designing. At the end of the course, when we had the final review and the exhibition of all the works, we had that crucial moment in between students and the reviewers when the critical discourse of architecture was finally happening. The conversation reflected many Times on the value of the Precedent as a tool to design the future and how important is for contemporary design to learn from the AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

lesson of the history. When we were in Rome, I could show the students 27 centuries of architecture in one building just because Rome is one of the few places in the world that has all the levels and layers of Time visible to you, Anyone can see and understand how the upper part is based on a foundation that before was an upper part too and that Time pushed it down below. When we were in front of the Marcello Theater, the students were able to understand that the design of the upper floor was only able to exist because it was based on what was already existing and strong enough to support it. When we were back in Tempe, all of them had to build their projects starting from the Precedent which was an Image, a letter, a ritual or whatever they could find as a ruin in the archive, our improvised archeological site. During the weeks of the semester we had to put together the Precedent, the existent, and the future, and, in this sense, try to understand that, whatever we do, we always need to reflect on what is existing—including existing architecture, the site and the intricacy of their relationship with Time. I all of them went through this process and opened their eyes into this new awareness of what a Precedent means—and I call it the Precedent—of what comes before you. History represents to me what is not visible anymore because it is past. It represents in a way the non representable—so this Studio challenged the students on how to represent the non representable through using narrative and Images. Designers are one of the only people who can see these invisible lines made evident through our projects. The world will always need Designers. Therefore, we are the Agents of the non-representable stories because history teaches us how to do it. The students all had very poetic projects taken very seriously and which images, the only things we produce the most while we design, were very seriously built. Another challenge from a narrative-type Studio was that the students had to forget about reality. The first step in design is to imagine in order to have the capacity in our mind to not really think technically, but to first have an understanding of what is the narrative of the place. I was sharing this idea with the students in order to show how to not have the reality limiting our imagination at the beginning of a project. It was also a challenge to convince them of that idea. What do you believe was the strongest aspect of your college education? Did this become integrated into the “Lapsus Imaginis” Studio? It is my passion. First of all, I am an architect because I grew up in Rome: I wanted to be an architect because I am from Rome and because I wanted to contribute to the history of my city. If you have ears enough to hear the invisible, Rome seems to always tell you “be an architect!” The school of architecture, la Sapienza at Valle Giulia, was teaching us, through representation, how to be the narrator of a story. That part of the narrative learnt through education is what I am bringing all over. And, when I speak about education, I am not referring only to the one received at the college. Our education as architects requires us to be as our building: as them, we need Time and Phases. One day, one year after my degree, I went to look for my Mentor in order to start to have a conversation with him while working, and to finally manifest as an architect. So, when I was twentyeight, I left Rome and went to Barcelona to meet with Enric Miralles, who taught me a lot more about this way of having a conversation with myself in order to put my talent into my projects. What I was bringing in the Lapsus Imaginis Studio was my city, which is my main education, passion, and talent. And I was very lucky to have this opportunity of matching things—my college, my life, my architecture—to teach the DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

students while finding myself again through them, to learn from them, and in a way to bring back my entire experience and fitting it into the semester. I have been the teacher and the student; I was exactly like when I was back in my early university years but with a distance. And I am very thankful for this opportunity that the school gave me because it is amazing to talk about architecture of your city in your city, which is exactly the way I have learnt architecture: Rome is the best of the laboratories of architecture under the sky. What was your biggest takeaway from teaching this past studio? This Studio started in a very peculiar way—at the beginning of 2014 I introduced it to the audience that had to pick one option to travel by projecting a mysterious video I put together with a Cello Bach Suite as a background and, in that moment, the students who selected the Studio were very special already—because none of them understood that video or the title (including myself) but have had an impression. So, on the first day of class, I asked them why they chose this Studio and they all told me, “well, the video you showed was mysterious, we didn’t understand what you wanted us to do.” That moment put together a mysterious group of mysterious people that wanted to travel together to a place to learn something together with the professor and other disciplinary colleagues. So, I think the best thing I took away was the experience of learning with them while they were learning: it is important for teachers to find the Time to learn when the students are learning and make Time by learning while waiting for them to learn. The traveling Studios have this amazing “Designers are one of the only component when you start. You start and you people who can see these don’t know anybody, but you live together in invisible lines made evident a place for ten days and that place does not through our projects...Therefore, we are the Agents of the nonbelong to anybody, and that synergy creates the representable stories because Studio. The level of documents that the students history teaches us how to do it.” produced was showed to the entire Design School through the exhibition we put together at the Tempe Arts Center. I think it was amazing to see the quality of the images: I like to call my Lapsus Imaginis Studio a 2D Folies Studio—which is a French word roughly translating to something peculiar and extravagant and, in this case, in a format of a flat image. Extravagant Images of Future Pasts. I believe one of the essences of architecture is the Image of it. Architecture starts and ends in images. And if the future of architecture it is going to be digitally produced, to me this future is Photoshop, not Revit. I taught my students how to build a Photoshop image with the tools of it and I taught them the method of collaging images as a common language we shared the 3 disciplines that composed the interdisciplinary class. The greatest achievement to me was the uniform Beauty of documents from students of different backgrounds; through the representation and the images, we were able to have a conversation between different disciplines. The fluidity seen at the final review exhibition showed the fluidity of what happened over the semester, which was all about having a conversation between us due the collaborative nature of the Studio. By offering the tools of imagination and representation, the students established a common conversation that I think was a great achievement. At the end, we all deal with the representation of ideas with the different scales of landscape and things and rooms and objects and words. How would you describe the rhythm of the semester? When I teach Studio courses based on the value of narrative

MARIA WILSON, SUPER SECTIONS

in architecture, the strongest and struggling point is to have the students forgetting about reality, to develop the capacity to invent a narrative of a place and to not only think it technically. I have, in my Studio, some very radical exercises to test your own strength because one of our most difficult part in a project is to sell it to someone else. How do you defend your idea? I believe that, if you bring the students for a while into speculation, you can make them having harder muscles to resist the effort. When you take a Studio with me, it’s like training into a dream, as we were in the movie Inception: loaded with very heavy weights, there’s a moment where I try to push you back and you fall down and the exercise is to stand up again. So the purpose of the Studio—just because I’m interested in student’s talent—is to make you stronger by being aware of it. So, every Time, I have to push my exercises to almost the absurd. Do you ever get to the point where you pull them back, or does the entire Studio focus on such a narrative that you don’t want to end the narrative at the end of the Studio? So that’s a very complex and interesting question, and I believe that there is something that we cannot teach you here at the school, which is called Time, because every Time that we deliver a project, we have some years to do it. You will learn about Time in Time anyway, we don’t need to teach this and we cannot. You understand when you study and when you work that the project must be delivered in phases. So, there is a preliminary phase and the basic project one and so on till you build something. I think that a semester its Time enough to simulate a preliminary design and a basic project, in my understanding. In other courses, you simulate the construction phase. In other, you simulate management. My course took into consideration the serious proposal for a preliminary design. So the student has to only make the hypothesis stronger by building the hypothesis and not the building, because that would be a second step. But, normally, if you are applying in a competition, and this

“When you take a Studio with me, it’s like training into a dream, as we were in the movie Inception: loaded with very heavy weights, there’s a moment where I try to push you back and you fall down and the exercise is to stand up again.”

competition is one of ideas, which is where we are always looking for a job, we try to really build a speculation. I believe that there is always a phase when a Teacher decides to have the Studio reflecting on. I can’t teach the entire process, because I can’t simulate the Real Time of architecture. Time is experience and that needs to be experienced in Time. So for example, now I am teaching the Integrate Studio ADE 522. We are learning about another phase. In that Studio Course there is no the same amount of Time to build the speculation of an idea. And I am learning a lot with Phil Horton and Tom Hartman because there is no Time for speculation which is my main interest. That Studio is more realistic and into the necessary of architecture. I think one day I should put a course together on the culture of all project phases. In my Studios, I always teach about everything but, mostly, I teach about Time and Design. In an office, if you have the problem of how to make it, if you are frustrated into your ideas and your imagination, you know that, for a while, you need to not think about reality and its reality. You let your ideas be explorative. And you step into the absolute and the pseudorealistic part of your ideas. You try to be in your mind. But there is a moment when you go out of your mind and you test what you have found into reality. To answer your question, there is a moment when the students are aware when the game of narrative ends and about the necessity to step back into reality. They know as a premise that they are acting in this space and not in that one. We can’t teach everything in a limited Time. A semester is a very short Time for a student to take in all of that information. It is the entire building of the curriculum that is feeding you everything you need. You have to have the awareness to comprehend it at the end of the program and you will. The knowledge it is made out of parts that you have to, at the end, put together into a body. Each professor is different because it’s delivering you a different pill to feed some part of your body. And over Time, that pill eventually will be an integral part of your body.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

JUSSARA SCARLE | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: ELENA ROCCHI YEAR COMPLETED: 2014 PROJECT NAME: THE OPEN STRUCTURE

Architecture and landscape architecture have a transformative role in cities. I feel especially lucky every time I have the opportunity to explore the public realm in a project.

“The Open Structure Project” is essentially a new urban strategy proposal based on a rhizome-like architecture. The open structure condition is a critique on the rigidity of the city grid and its fixed and static geometries that create segregation and leftover and junk spaces. The open structure project is a dynamic self-organizing system where a hybrid of possibilities and programs collide.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

HAILONG LI | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: ELENA ROCCHI YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: THE MISSING DOOR

The population of our planet is growing. Cities are expanding.

of a door to a space. A door represents the context. A door carries memory. A door completes the whole. A door expresses the desire.

Everything is randomly moving all around us without much notice. The forces driving this situation are difficult to stop. During this process, many things are lost--traditions, values, and conditions of space--yet few are conscious about these forces. By learning from history, we understand the significance

We once understood and realized this within architecture, as used to exist in Rome. However, now, the meaning has been lost. Not only do we not fully understand the physical door, we also are missing the greater significance of the mental door. A door to find yourself, a door which is never just a door.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

MARIA WILSON | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: ELENA ROCCHI YEAR COMPLETED: 2014 PROJECT NAME: FLOOD

“The nature of space reflects what it wants to be” -Luis I. Kahn

The proposal “Inter-digestion” is a study of layering through time as a process of growing, shrinking, adding, and destroying. A dynamic sensibility of adaptability rather than the perceived static and structured permanence of architecture exposes the latent desire in the context. This concept came about from the study of the Tempe 1910 flood. The damages to the existing infrastructure were severe; the dam was built in response. Now we are in a time were water is scarce. The dam changed the ecology of the place.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

This project seeks to implement an architectural theory of working with the natural processes of an environment. One should no longer look at nature as an object which has been human-centered, but instead focus on ordering and separating it from humans. Changing the way we view the built world should focus on cohabitating with nature, resulting in an architectural ecological system. Lessons learned from the imagination translate much further than the current Tempe area. We are in a world coping with rising sea levels. What will happen after another flood? Are we condemned to suffer destruction after every disaster? The response is an architecture that no longer fights against time or elements, but is adaptive and responsive to them. It follows the same system of a living organism in growth, decay and ultimately death that serves as the platform for new life.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

VICTOR J. IRIZARRY | ESSAY

“WHY DRAWING?” SEE MORE OF VICTOR’S WORK AT WWW.VODLINES.COM

“Drawing, for me, is both a vehicle for understanding and a gesture act unto itself Recording an experience via drawing embodies much more than an analytical intention. In fact, my drawings aren’t very analytical. When I draw historic buildings, they aren’t about detail or proportion. They are about the spirit of a building or a place, and the spirit embedded in the encounter and its translation. Drawing is a way of taking on a place, absorbing it, immersing myself in it.” Antoine Predock-Architectural Journeys, 1995

In the year 2002, I was teaching a second year studio as a faculty Associate at the School of Architecture at Arizona State University. As part of the assignments the students were asked to “represent” their ideas in a sketch format using different techniques such as water color and charcoals for the first time. Some students tried to “represent” their ideas but always ended up frustrated and feeling negative about their ability to draw. Some would say they could “draft” plans and technical drawings but they couldn’t sketch. Many would express the lack of drawing experience or simply say they could not place on paper what they see in their minds. I often asked students if they had any previous drawing experiences. And to my surprise, almost all of the students that I sat to review their work would say no. At that time I realized it was necessary to create a class on the topic of sketching. A class, which will not only teach the art of sketch but also, explores a critical thinking approach, using drawing as a tool of communication. That is how the name of my course became Looking, Thinking, and Sketching. The course is based on an experiential approach with the

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

premise that everybody can draw. This course is a Studio/ Workshop, meaning the majority of the work done for the course is produced in a studio with a relaxed environment. At the beginning of the semester students are encouraged to think “outside the box,” engaging their senses in a personal journey to their imagination. I call this process The Awareness of the body; during this time each exercise challenges everything we take for granted in drawing. Making sure we draw what we see and not what we think we see enabling the students to have an experience and become aware of it. Understanding that drawing has nothing to do with artifice or technique or aesthetics, it has only to do with the act of correct observation and by that I mean getting in contact with the objects using all the senses. In the Process of Making and Designing, all drawings and sketches, collages and words, photographs and models become documents of exploration and experimentation,

as well as documents of representation. Like printmaking that places layer over layer transcribing and transforming elements of the work of art, every sketch will play an important role in the thinking process. While thinking and sketching, the documents decode the objects, site, building, landscape, etc. transforming and creating a metaphorical structure that serves as a vocabulary used in the development of a project. Drawing affects the understanding of our surroundings and how we see and understand space in architecture. Looking and thinking are essential components in sketching; what we see affects the way we think. The importance of Sketching during the design process of any project is critical. It is one of the most effective and fast methods of communication that an architect uses when explaining an idea. It is fluid and direct and in many cases even clearer than words. “The impulse to draw is as natural as the impulse to talk. As a rule, we learn to talk through a simple process of practice, making plenty of mistakes when we are two and three and four years old-but without this first effort at understanding and talking it would be foolish to attempt to study grammar or composition. It is this vital preparation, this first mouthing of the words which mean actual things, that parallels the effort a student should make during the first years of his art study”- Kim on Nicolaides, The natural way to draw, 1941. The essence of a project can be described in a sketch diagram during a conversation with a client. Although words are helpful they can be deceiving, creating confusion and misunderstandings. The ability to think fast and “translate” ideas in to a quick sketch can be the path to a successful career. We hear all the time about the famous “napkin sketch” the one sketch that all great architects frame or publish. But the reality is that some clients are not interested in the perfection of the lines or the technical aspects of the sketch. What they are most interested is in the experience of seeing the confidence to sketch a “holy idea” on such secular surface. And to do so, as an artist/architect it is important to understand and learn that sketching is more than just a technique. Sketching, is a very personal experience that embodies all the senses.

cave summarizes what we can remember, what we can observe and what we can invent. At the same time we observe and interpret the graphic image that is before us. It carries the knowledge and the burden of memory. We bring to the drawing a state of consciousness: Is this line correct? Can we see where we are going? Is the drawing finished? How do we account for those markings that are accident or not correct? If we move a line, how does the image reconstitute itself? The drawing and the thinking process share the concept of image, itself a double mirror. One part is registered on the surface of the drawing the other is produced in the brain as a filter to inquiry. As we sketch/think/design we will discover new ideas that enhance our perception of the world from awareness of our experience. The human experience of architecture describes an essential continuity between thought and action, between mind and body. The window frames allude not only to the window itself but to the world that exists on both sides. As we explore different methods of design, creating buildings alludes not only to the eye and the continuity of spaces, but the entire body; drawings may become the method for recording the variety of our experiences. It has been almost 14 years now since I first started this journey in to teaching sketching and the success of the class is amazing. In the year 2012-13, I was able to teach the same course at the University of Economics in lzmir, Turkey for two semesters with great results. Seeing how some of my students develop confidence and control on their ability to think with drawings is what makes me believe that everybody can draw. Now, Stop reading and get a pencil ... it is time to draw! Enjoy the journey ...

The connection between drawing and thought is intimate and reciprocal. What we project in our mental image is susceptible to our will to create through invention. The exchange between the sheet of paper and the wall of the AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

MARTHE ROWEN | SKETCHES

“SLOT SKETCHES”

Marthe Rowen is a faculty member in The Design School who has taught Architecture and Interior Design studios as well as Freehand Drawing (“Drawing (in) Place”), and leads a summer study abroad program on Travel Drawing, She teaches drawing as a tool for seeing, and believes that drawing allows the individual to find and record the special character of a place in a personal way. She has a strong affinity for playing with the boundaries of the drawing, and is interested in how the frame of a drawing affects the depiction of space; The

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

“found frame,” the “made frame,” and the “drawn frame” all emphasize the point of few and sense of place and space. Left page images (left to right): Berkshire landscape (oil pastel) is drawn through a “found frame” made by window curtains; Ronchamp Steeple (pen) utilizes a “found frame” made by the boundary lines defined by the edges of intersecting planes. Right page images (left to right): Granada Cathedral (pen) utilizes a “made frame”, with elements isolated and drawn without reference to actual boundaries; Martha’s Vineyard Cliffs (oil pastel) uses a “drawn frame,” made by lines drawn on the page.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

KELSEY AYOTTE | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: ALLYCE HARGROVE YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: UPON THE EXPANDING HORIZON

This observation area design provides a habitat for Ash-Throated Flycatcher birds while blending with the natural landscape. An open space that overlooks a heavily dense vegetation area allows different perspectives on the birds. The site offers shade to visitors as they walk through the site with multiple rest stops available to them. To make the environment more safe for visitors to inhabit, a site analysis was conducted, and the observation structure was placed strategically to avoid steep slopes.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

BRUNA NAKHLE | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: RACHEL RASMUSSEN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: WAITING TO EXHALE

Waiting To Exhale embodies the notion of compression and decompression. Through this, the user experiences the site and the life occurring within it as one of its components rather than just as an individual passing through. The design conveys a sense of layering and a rhythmic pattern which parallels the concept of breathing. This idea leads the user throughout the entire site, encompassing both the bird habitat as well as other open spaces. The project integrates ideas that are key to both Landscape Architecture and Architecture. In this way, on the level of landscape, all of the vegetation compresses around the paths, creating an enclosed sensation that is highlighted even more when the vegetation branches out at “decompression” sites, such as the resting areas seen in the plan. At these “exhale” spots, vegetation changes from condensed Mesquite to breathy Desert Willow, Palo Verde, and other relaxing, colored plants. This pattern continues until the pavilion and main park space are reached towards the South. The pavilion mimics the rest of the design. It becomes a long path, manipulated with structure, to create the pattern of compression and decompression. Several seating areas for relaxation and contemplation are set as “breathe” areas, whereas, the long corridors with the suppressing steel beams stretching above, become compressed, tighter spaces. All in all, the concept is meant to be carried throughout the entire site and through every experience of the design.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

KEBERT, LEMMA, SMITH | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: PHILIP HORTON YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: EMERGENCY RESPONSE STATION 55 GROUP MEMBERS: CATHLEEN KEBERT, DANE LEMMA, DILLON SMITH

Emergency Response Station 55 is designed in accordance to function, ecology, and technology. These are expressed through vital life-support systems which ensure the success and perpetuation of the fire station’s mission and inhabitants.

It is essential that an emergency response station be able to endure its harsh desert climate; therefore, multiple passive and active systems were incorporated in regards to water (collection and filtration), solar (daylighting and harnessing its energy), cooling (utilizing systems such as a natural downdraft evaporative cooler, stack ventilation, and a quanat system), as well as algae production as an energy source. The majority of these systems are integrated into an axis that runs through the entire site. The two drivers for the floor plans regarded the direct access required to the apparatus bay and promoting camaraderie between the firemen. One of the challenges we presented to ourselves was to get back to the tradition of drawing by hand. This manifested itself through hand drafting plans, elevations, and sections throughout the course of the semester.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

Working collaboratively allowed us to pool our respective strengths. We took it upon ourselves to solve the problem in multiple ways, “sprinting to the finish line” each time. This produced a diverse set of viable and elegant solutions centered around the premise of our project. We balanced a playful approach with rigorous refinement resulting in pragmatic manifestation within the fire station. We would like to sincerely thank Philip Horton for his encouragement, straight-faced answers to our imaginative propositions, and for helping to bring a practicality to our project. Cathleen: I hope to imbue users with a stronger connection or memorability when experiencing architecture by paying attention to how humans inhabit and interact with spaces, and with a critical focus on details and climatic conditions. Dane: Desert architecture fosters sensitivities to light, space, and climate. This continues to inspire my design work. Dillon: We have singlehandedly destabilized the homeostasis of our host planet. Our future is precarious. We might be determined and resilient, but if we do not start designing like our lives depend on it, we will not weather the coming storm.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

MARK RYAN | INTERVIEW

Mark Ryan is a practicing architect based out of Phoenix, Arizona. After leaving his home state to pursue a college education, he returned to Phoenix to start an independent practice engaged in architecture, public art and education.

Since 2004 he has taught design studios, and seminars, at both Arizona State University and the University of Arizona. Recently, Mark has completed projects for native American communities, a children’s treatment center near Kansas City. He is currently under construction on a collaborative work space in the heart of downtown Phoenix as well as reworking space downstairs from his office, located on Roosevelt Row in the downtown arts district, to accommodate a new restaurant and café in addition to other on-going architecture and public art projects. Meanwhile, he is spending this semester teaching a third year studio that is focusing on adaptive reuse projects in Flagstaff, Arizona. How would you describe your early education of architecture? I left the desert and ended up at the University of Cincinnati. It was an interesting shift; in addition to being a five-year program, it incorporated a co-op system where students worked every other quarter. It was a combination of being in an entirely different environment academically, leaving the West, and also exploring different types of firms and different sizes of firms. As a student, I worked for Walter Gropius’s old firm in Cambridge, which was 300 people on five floors of a building. I also worked on Martha’s Vineyard for a firm that, at the time, was just two of us—that’s it. At other times, I worked in Cincinnati and Los Angeles. It was interesting to explore different work and different types of firms as well - a variety. That diversity of environments was also similar to the variety of studio courses offered. There were theory studios. There were structure studios. There were history studios. You could pick and choose. There was a lot of freedom and wonderful exploration—and looking at a variety of places. I’m not sure that the study of architecture is so different from school to school, at least in this country, but I think being attentive to place and being attentive to the environment that you’re in is really important. Responding to a particular place—it’s uniqueness—was something that was instilled in me during that early education. Since there were so many choices available to them, did students ever become set on one path if they found a skill within a particular choice? Some may have, but I think most of us were attempting, through this process, to find our own balance between theory and practice. The thought was, I’ve got three months on a job somewhere; I’m going to get exposure to the practical. Similarly, the following three months in school, we wanted to get the opposite experience. I tended to lean more toward theoretical, idea-based studios. On top of that, there were many students who were circulating in different ways – at times working two quarters in a row creating a different kind of rotation. There was always a choice, much the way ASU is now—choice within a particular range depending on what might be offered in a given semester. How did you transition those ideas as you work on projects across a variety of scales? I’ll admit, at the time, I was more interested in the big DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

TREE HOUSE STUDIO

ideas and less about some of the practical necessities. But, once I got out of school and started working on real projects, what became most apparent was that unless there’s an understanding of how structure works, how mechanical systems work, how all these often conflicting things fit together, and understanding them well enough to manipulate or impact them in service of the big idea, that idea would likely be lost. If we think about an overall idea absent of structure, absent of the reality, mechanical ducts and all of those necessities, there is going to be a “I’ve come to realize, for myself rude awakening. I think that’s certainly one of the at least, the more constraints, big transitions between being a student versus a the better. It allows you to see practitioner. It’s about an attention to detail, about where to focus the creativity. And I think the response imagining yourself inhabiting those spaces— becomes completely unique.” as opposed to creating imagery. It’s about the feeling, about the specific environment. In the end, the really good stuff, the really impactful architecture is work that engages the senses. It impacts us in a way that is often hard to put a specific finger on, but it is definitely something we feel deeply. Do you tend to work from the interior outward? It’s a combination. I’m thinking about the outside while I think about the inside. For me, the aspects of habitation are far more important than appearance. The outside certainly has an expression towards the community, yet it also has an expression of what’s going on inside. And, sometimes, there are little surprises. When we built this Tree House studio, the idea was to respect the existing structure, that any new intervention within the warehouse would be completely structurally isolated and self-supporting. I wanted to embrace and honor the old building. The existing building sets the stage - the beauty of the space – and the new insertions create the dialog. The old wood, the bowstring trusses, we don’t attach to any of that existing framework. However, when this floor was framed, we found in the original wall, a long ago bricked-over opening. The only reason there’s a window in that exact location is because

STUDIO DETAIL, NEW WINDOW IN EXISTING WINDOW

STUDIO DETAIL, FOUR-INCH SLOT DETAIL

that’s where the opening was found. It was an original opening; it was fair game. What’s interesting about this for me is the discovery changed certain details that afforded an access to natural light and ventilation that wasn’t expected. Originally, the perpendicular wall supported the soffit. Now the condition allows a four-inch gap, which is sufficient to understand change—of the sun, the time of day, what it feels like outside, whether it’s bright, whether it’s gray. You can feel it; it’s bouncing its way in through the little slot. It changes the environment. It’s expressed on the outside, yet it has a completely specific interpretation on the inside.

students will often talk about “my project” or comment “this is what I want it to do’—and I say “is that really important? Or should it be about what the user needs or what the program requires?” I hope it becomes more significant than what we might want it to do. I hope it might help to give it a greater depth of purpose and meaning.

How do you narrow down what to teach students when you’re in an academic environment? One of the most difficult things to learn is restraint. It’s not hard for me to remember back to being a student—in some ways, if I could make it financially viable, I would still be a student. I love the process and the engagement, and I think it’s part of why I enjoy teaching. As a student, I remember thinking, ‘if only I had a project where I didn’t have all of these constraints and I could just do what I wanted. That would be great.’ Ultimately you have to think about how real value and connection are derived. My own thinking has evolved; there are codes to adhere to, adjacent building conditions, ADA, everything – and it’s where I believe richness can be derived. Maybe that’s part of the reason the studio project this semester for the third year students engages existing buildings – all the wonderful messiness of real projects. The program is a collaborative work environment, situated in Flagstaff, within one of three existing buildings. Each student really needs to formulate a position relative to the context and their existing building. I’ve come to realize, for myself at least, the more constraints, the better. It allows you to see where to focus creatively. I think that helps the response become completely unique. The goal is to think about an existing condition and how things come together—how the program and the users and the history of the place all inform a specific solution. It’s interesting,

What is your view on collaboration? Collaboration is a really amazing thing. I love it because it’s an opportunity to get outside of self. The reason to collaborate is to open up to possibilities that you couldn’t preconceive alone. I have been fortunate enough to collaborate on several public art projects. It’s an act of coming together – artist, farmer, architect, citizen - and looking at the environment through an expanded lens. The dialogue and the conversation are always so rewarding, and revealing. Even the architectural collaborations—there’s lots of projects that I do outside of Phoenix, where I’m teaming up with an architect from another place whether it be in Kansas City or Boise, Idaho, it’s always stimulating. It’s a chance to learn something from them, something new. There’s always a necessary give and take. I might go into a new project with some basic notions, but those ideas are always enhanced by the collaboration with others. I have also enjoyed teaching collaborative or coordinated studios. I’m teaching right now with Max Underwood and Marty Rowen and it is really wonderful. We each have our own section and, yet, some days we might show up and say ‘You know what? Let’s switch today, let’s talk to a different set of students, or let’s see their work together.’ It’s a connection and a collaboration in a different way that I find stimulating and interesting, and I hope the students do too. It is, after all, undertaken specifically with them in mind.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

DANIEL GAULT | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: DARREN PETRUCCI YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2013 PROJECT NAME: EDUCATION + ADAPTIVE RE-USE: FARMER EDUCATION BUILDING

The existing, introverted farmer education building is outdated within the context of ASU’s thriving campus. This adaptation seeks to bring the building and its educational function into the 21st century.

Using ASU’s stated design Aspirations for a ‘New American University,’ the program was reconfigured to increase collaboration and transformation in education. Further consideration of the adaptation of the building was made using the biological concepts of Life’s Principles for natural resiliency. The reorganization consisted of programmatic strips based on the smallest module in the existing building. The new program blurs the boundary with the activity on the high energy malls of the campus. The result is a series of infrastructural voids that enable interdisciplinary cross-pollination, natural light/ventilation, and space for landscape planting at multiple levels. A more porous, useful, and extroverted building emerges for the New American University.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

Description

RICHARD VAN HORNE | COMPETITION

COMPETITION: ARIZONA RESIDENTIAL DESIGN COMPETITION YEAR COMPLETED: SUMMER 2014 PROJECT NAME: ARCADIA CONNECTION

ARCHITECTS

HOUSE

Arcadia Connection is a single-family estate home nestled in a local affluent community with northern views of South Camelback Mountain. The design’s form reflects the circular geometries of three Architectural delights of the neighboring communities: Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1952 Glady Wright residence in Rubicorn, the 1965 Valley Bank of 44th and Camelback, and Will Bruder’s Ingo on 40th and Campbell.

Just as the other three Arcadia connections’ arching geometrical form originate from a single point, this residence’s focal point is based on a sweeping radius which aims at the heart of Camelback Mountain. The residence is primarily composed of rammed earth walls, cmu, and teak wood. The surrounding landscape remains indigenous to Arizona. The architecture celebrates the history and context of its place through the use of views, form, and material.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

MORGAN SUMNER | SKETCHES

INSTRUCTOR: MARK RYAN YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2015 PROJECT NAME: BUZZZWORK

I use architecture as a means of communicating ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and values. I allow a multitude of influences to mold my forms: nature, culture, character, and sustainable practices, to name a few.

This project asks for a program dedicated to a modern work office environment. The co-working space should be an area that promotes interaction and creativity. The project is in the heart of downtown Flagstaff, Arizona. The site houses an existing building from 1907, requiring the project to be of an adaptive reuse style. My personal goals for this project were to create a sense of community within the building itself, to distinguish between

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

the old brick building and the new building elements, to utilize the very prevalent natural aspects of the city in the design, to focus on wind and sun, and to create a space that can function as a comfortable work space for all types of workers. These sketches demonstrate some various methods of shaping the roof to deflect snow and to capture light.

ARIANNA PIZZINO | SKETCHES

INSTRUCTOR: MARTHE ROWEN AND ELENA ROCCHI YEAR COMPLETED: SUMMER 2014 PROJECT NAME: STUDY ABROAD AND TRAVEL SKETCHES

The distance between the phenomenal beauty of reality and a flat blank page is only that of a pencil. I had the opportunity to bridge this gap during a study abroad in Morocco, Spain, and Portugal where we followed a trail of Moorish architecture crossed with different and often conflicting cultures. The concept of line, value, negative space, and field of view became ways to process, interpret, and understand the exquisite experience of spaces. As I continued my own travels across Europe, the application of drawing to understand revealed more than the eye could behold. One of my favorite discoveries was the dark twisting staircase embedded into the pure wall of La Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain. My travels and sketches bridged the distance between then and now, the reality and the perceived, and self and space. Sketches (clockwise from right): Sagrada Família, Barcelona, Spain; Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome, Italy; Beach in Lisbon, Portugal.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

PERITONEUM | COMPETITION

COMPETITION: X-SQUARE ADVISOR: KIM STEELE YEAR COMPLETE: 2011 PROJECT NAME: PERITONEUM TEAM LEAD: KYLE FIANO (LANDSCAPE & ARCHITECTURE) LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: ERICA MACKENZIE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE: ANNA CHRISTY ART DRAWING: COURTNEY LARSEN VISUAL COMMUNICATION: JOSH GALLAGHER DANCER: ERIN GIORDANO

Peritoneum is a freestanding, organic shade and seating structure constructed to turn a transient campus location into an attractive public destination. This project was designed and constructed by a student team composed of three landscape architects, one graphic designer, one dancer and an artist. The organic nature of the structure is meant to create the feel of a comfortable and immersive environment that people would enjoy interacting with. Since the project was set in a desert climate, the color palette for the structure was chosen to contrast the harsh nature of the surroundings by focusing on cooler blue and purple hues, altering the

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

psychological experience within the space. Input to make a more successful end project in this collaborative design exercise was contributed by each student designer in his or her own specialization. Design integrity carried heavy weight in our post-design process. Collaborating with many professionals eventually led us to a well-melded set of construction methods that allowed the sculpture to pass all the required codes while still maintaining its identity. Originally located on the ASU campus in Tempe, the project has moved into the heart of the Roosevelt Row Art District in Phoenix, Arizona. It is located in a pocket park and has engaged the community significantly. Peritoneum’s placement in Phoenix has had political impacts as well, leading to a proposal in Phoenix City Hall for new approaches of public art on vacant lots, which City Council voted in favor for on January 16, 2013 (Agenda Item 104). Peritoneum’s goal is for a positive engagement in this emerging city. From its move from the ASU campus, four ribs have been painted red to symbolize its new location and to invite change in its appearance. Since then, a local artist has painted a mural and talk of a new color palette is underway.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

PHILIP HORTON | INTERVIEW

Philip Horton is a lecturer in the Design School as well as the Architecture Program Coordinator. He teaches Introduction to Architectural Construction, Building Systems I, The Integrative Design Studio, and a studio focused on soft infrastructure and passive design strategies. In 2013, Philip Horton was the ASU Solar Decathlon Team’s architectural faculty mentor.

Received his Master of Architecture degree from Arizona State University and his Bachelor of Science Degree in Architectural Studies from Souther Illinois University. He has collaborated with research faculty from various disciplines on project that ranged from mass-customized furniture, civic infrastructure, buildings, and urban design. How would you describe your role as the architecture coordinator? I’m still very new in this role. This is a position that is distinct from that of the Director of The School. I think the role of Program Coordinator is more like a management position, with leadership being woven together with The Director and other Program Coordinators. This is an interesting moment working from within the Faculty to see how we collectively want to see the Architecture Program evolve over the next few years, and to see what we want to improve upon that might be most beneficial to our students. What do you believe was the strongest aspect of your college education and do you believe that ASU fulfills that now? My own undergraduate education was pretty different than the undergraduate education we offer here; it had a more technical base. For instance, we had to take three different construction courses--in addition to structures and systems--which is probably why I was interested in teaching construction here. These were heavily weighted courses, equal in weight to my studios. The good things about it--for me--was that I got a really deep exposure to the technical aspects of the discipline, and I was working as an architectural intern at the time. Graduate school was very different; and that was a bit of a culture shock for me. For instance, when I was in undergrad we were all required to have Architectural Graphic Standards in studio, and we were given design problems which demanded it’s use (i.e. designing a program that included a loading dock for which we would have to resolve the turning radii, height of the dock bumper, etc.). So, when I got to grad school--and brought my Graphic Standards book to studio--I was surprised by the change of focus in studio. By, by then, I was hungry for the theoretical conversations and the exploration of broader perspectives of what architecture means. I needed that, because--for me--with a more technical undergraduate program there was not enough of that discourse. These two different experiences were each formative for me. What do you currently believe is the strongest aspect of the ASU Architecture Program, and how would you like to see this enhanced? We have a couple of things going for us that are currently underutilized. One is that this is a very rich university in its size, in the breadth of things happening here, and in the momentum that [in which] it happens here. In addition, DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

we are a small unit within the largest University in the country, and we could potentially benefit from tapping into other areas of the university at those moments where the curriculum is about exploring the edges of our discipline. So [the question becomes] how do we partner up with other disciplines? At the same time, our University sits within a very rich context. Phoenix is a great city, wherein there are a lot of new buildings being built quite frequently by a lot of great local architects--who are not always internationallyrenowned but often times nationally recognized. Certainly there is a high level of competition, since everyone within the local discipline knows that if they want to get big, public commissions they have to be at their best. I think that we also have the potential to do more to engage the local professional community in a way where that competition and rigor is more palpable within The “By the end School. undergraduate

of one’s education, everyone needs to have a strong point of view that they could argue for.”

It is interesting because within the Faculty here are individuals who are very focused on celebrating the core of the discipline of Architecture, and others who are more interested in exploring those things that are happening at the periphery of the discipline. This diversity of Faculty is a very advantageous. I think we have this potential to leverage this diversity as an attribute of our Program in order to set up debates, so that our curriculum can address both. I think we should take the coursework that is in the ‘middle of the road’--that is neither deeply disciplinary, nor interdisciplinary--and push it further to one side or the other. We have this field of polarity in the sense that we have faculty with expertise and interest in a lot of different areas. We are not a school that focuses on a very specific topic [that we solely teach]. What we have the potential for here is to have counterpoint [discussions]. What we don’t do enough of that I hope we do more in the future, is to have these point, counter-point debates in a public way. It could

be very powerful for the students to see because some students have certain leanings one way or the other, and the students that don’t know may begin to take positions when hearing debates. By the end of one’s undergraduate education, everyone needs to have a strong point of view that they could argue for. What’s missing from the current architecture program? We have this wonderful constellation of different perspectives; Faculty with expertise and interests in a lot of different areas. We are not a school that focuses on a single, specific perspective. We have the potential to have more discursive debates, which I hope we will do more of in the future. This could be very powerful for our students to participate in, because some students have certain architectural leanings already and others might be moved to take positions depending on their view of these debates. I believe that by the end of one’s undergraduate education, everyone should have architectural positions from which one would feel compelled to argue. What are your thoughts on how tied the architecture and the landscape architecture programs are? I think it’s all about where it occurs within the curriculum. I think there was a benefit that came with teaching both disciplines together in the second-year. The on-going Cemetery Project has been refined for several years, and it is a good project that challenges students to perform research which informs their designs in a way that is relatively unique within our curriculum. Interdisciplinarity this early in the curriculum gives the students exposure to both to the relationships between architecture and landscape architecture. But, to a degree, you could make an argument that in second-year one does not know enough about either discipline to contribute--in a meaningful way--to an interdisciplinary conversation. Perhaps the difference between architecture and landscape architecture students is second-year is rather minimal. But if students are--

instead--very focused on their own disciplines early on, with later opportunities for interdisciplinary, or trans-disciplinary engagements when students have a stronger sense of their design identity, and their skillset within their own discipline. I think that, for better or worse, second-year will change to become more discipline, more singular, with the intention that students will be more prepared for interdisciplinary conversations later in their studies. Are there any other classes where students could benefit from integration with studio classes (like structures or systems)? One question that we have briefly discussed amongst the Faculty that could be interesting is: How do we take what we did last semester [between ADE 421 and ATE 451] where Systems I and Studio are tied together, and really ratchet that up in a couple of curricular moments. This way aspects of Systems, Structures, and Construction can be specifically applied to Studio projects, so that the assignments in these classes are applied to Studio work. If we are able to do that, we could begin collecting these technical support courses in areas of curricular concentration and integration. Our History/Theory courses--the ones that are focused on broader questions about the significance of Architecture-could start to collect and inform Studios that could be a counter-balance to those with technical concentrations. I think that if we can solve the mechanics of these curricular changes, that could be very good for our Students and our Program, because of the counter-points. Students would be exposed to semesters that are more technical and specific to the discipline of Architecture, followed later by semesters that more broadly question and explore the social aspects of Architecture and its relation to other disciplines. These broader Studios can be those moments that really demonstrate the power of The Design School--as a collection of all of the major design disciplines, and the power of Arizona State University--as the largest University in the nation. AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

ASUNM SOLAR DECATHLON TEAM| COMPETITION

FACULTY MENTOR: PHILIP HORTON YEAR COMPLETED: 2013 PROJECT NAME: SHADE HOUSE

TEAM ASUNM is building a campaign, highlighted by an inviting residence, to educate our communities on and stimulate a new direction for affordable, adaptable, solar powered homes. These homes root themselves in our urban landscape, fostering sustainable growth of both the family and the ecosystem. The team was formed by students from both ASU and the University of New Mexico and was represented by students studying architecture, engineering, and sustainability. “SHADE” stands for “Solar Homes Adapting for Desert Equilibrium.” We celebrate our solar array by liberating it from the roof and bringing it to the front of the home, creating a solar canopy. Our photovoltaic array is sized to be net-zero through a grid-tied system. In addition,

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

it provides shade for the most exposed faces of the house. Due to this, a large solar array benefits us as every square foot of solar produces one square foot of shade. Our home is meant to be highly adaptable, with many opportunities to engage with the outdoors, making it an ideal neighborhood gathering space. Extending the living and kitchen space, the southern wall is able to open up to the expansive porch that faces the street, naturally engaging with the surrounding neighborhood. The landscape strategy of SHADE is designed to act as an interpretive garden to help educate the public about the diversity, flexibility, and beauty of desert environments. It is required that the site be socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable. The patio space that surrounds the house is an extension of the interior, promoting outdoor living as a healthy way of life.

Solar as Shade 1. Solar Canopy 2. Vine Screens 3. Skin Adaptable Spaces 4. Flex Space 5. Kitchen 6. Bedroom 7. Bathroom 8. Furniture Outdoor Spaces 9. Landscape 10. Outdoor Living Spaces 11. Rainwater Collection

Unique Systems 12. Mechanical Room 13. Low-e Windows and Doors 14. Micro-Capillary Heating and Cooling 15. American Clay Wall Finish 16. Phase Change Materials 17. Thermal Storage 18. The Solar Array Construction 19. Integrated Chassis Structure 20. Light Gauge Steel Studs 21. Staggered Stud System

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

SMITH, SPRESSER | DESIGN-BUILD

EXHIBIT: MICRODWELLING EXHIBITION YEAR COMPLETED: 2015 PROJECT NAME: TEAHOUSE TEAM MEMBERS: CATHERINE KEENE, DILLON SMITH, KELTON SPRESSER

Microdwelling 2015 was a five week design event hosted by the Shemer Art Center in the Arcadia neighborhood in Phoenix, Arizona. The display showcased several tiny structures that were designed and fabricated by local talent who were enthusiastic to show the public how to downsize their lifestyles. Structures were built with a diverse mix of materials including masonry, steel, and foam, and demonstrated different spatial solutions. Some of the constraints that the designers faced were that the structures had to be 600 square feet or less, self-contained, modular, and portable. Additionally, the organizers had to highlight the availability of building materials and resources, affordability, and demonstrate hands-on construction techniques. Every inch of Heat Waveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first collaboration supports a unique design philosophy intent on embracing the desert through luxury living and redefining our relationship to this arid landscape. Heat Waveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s complete concept design incorporates bespoke architectural detailing, furnishings, and interior styling for a singular goal: luxury outdoor desert living.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

KERN, RODRIGUEZ | PERSONAL

EXHIBIT: MICRODWELLING EXHIBITION YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2015 PROJECT NAME: HOME4 LEAD ARCHITECT: HECTOR RODRIGUEZ ARCHITECT: CHAZANDRA KERN ASSISTANT DESIGNER: CHRIS EWING ENGINEER: NATHAN EWING MARKETING: ANDREW ESPARZA CONSTRUCTION MENTOR: SETH ZIMMERMAN

Home4 was created for the MicroDwelling 2015 exhibition. It was designed in a month and constructed in 2.5 months. During the entire design process, the Home4 group also actively raised funds and managed the schedule in order to privately sponsor the project. The design consists of 64 sqft customizable modules that one would be able to combine together to form a habitable structure. For example, one would be able to attach a living, kitchen, and patio unit to create a cozy one-bedroom structure.

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

SUBMISSION INDEX

Student 10 7 54 36 14 20 10 20 18 23 18 60 24 38, 56 72 15 56 46 13 20 55 32 63 25 72 44 56, 70 70 10 62 12 6 18 32, 61 22 48

12 28 25 54 56, 68 6 32 60 24, 55 40, 44, 46, 48, 63 63 62 18, 22 64 7, 15 10, 14, 20

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015

Competition

Abbaszadegan, Ali Angulo, Emmanuel Ayotte, Kelsey Berry, Tim Bone, Nicole Bonin, Louis Buettner, Alex Bui, Christine Ditchey, Andrew Fiano, Kyle Fletcher, Joshua Gault, Daniel Greene, Josh Kebert, Cathleen Kern, Chazandra Kiefer, Ryan Lemma, Dane Li, Hailong Lin, Aung Tun Naderi, Majid Nakhle, Bruna Nikkel, Austin Pizzino, Arianna Raisanen, Olivia Rodriguez, Hector Scarle, Jussara Smith, Dillon Spresser, Kelton Sternberg, Tyler Sumner, Morgan Tafoya, Wesley Tolosa, Santiago Twilling, Emilie Van Horne, Richard Wen, Gracie Wilson, Maria

61 68 23 64

Studio Lead

52 62 63

Bernardi, Jose Debartolo, Jack Hartman, Tom Hargrove, Allyce Horton, Phil Labonte, Richard Murff, Scott Petrucci, Darren Rasmussen, Rachel Rocchi, Elena Rowen, Marthe Ryan, Mark Stayner, Christian Steele, Kim Suchart, Thamarit Vekstein, Claudio

Arcadia Connection SHADE House Spomenik: Revolutionary Sculptures Peritoneum Design Build

70 72

Teahouse: Microdwelling Exhibition Home4: Microdwelling Exhibition Essay

38 50

“Ancient Architecture: Imbued Impact” ‘Why Sketching?’ by Victor J. Irizarry Exhibit

28 40

Glenn Murcutt: Architecture for Place Lapsis Imaginus Interview

34 26 66 4 40 58 16 8

Burnette, Wendell Debartolo, Jack Horton, Phil Petrucci, Darren Rocchi, Elena Ryan, Mark Stayner, Christian Vekstein, Claudio Personal

12 36

Bamboo Village Ministries in Ghana, Africa Sketch “Slot Sketches” by Marthe Rowen Buzzzwork Study Abroad and Travel Sketches Studio

24 25 10 20 14 56 6 60 32 48 12 20 46 7 44 22 18 54 55 15

Beautifully Broken Climate Considered Colegio De Los Piletones Create Academy Development of Architectural Process Emergency Response Station 55 Environmental Health Eye Farmer Education Building Fire Station 55 Flood Harmon Center, The Mapping Visibility Missing Door, The Multi-Family Housing: Artists as Art Open Structure, The Plaster Case Studies Superior Book Upon The Expanding Horizon Waiting to Exhale 405 Farmer Artist Community

Short Essays

Studio Projects

Competitions

Sketches

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

DISCIPLINE

SPRING 2015