Discipline: ASU Architecture Journal 02 by The Design School at Arizona State University

discipline

aias at asu architecture journal Arizona State University Herberger Institute of Design Spring 2016 | Issue 02

Short Essays

Studio Projects

Competitions

Sketches

COVER IMAGE CREDIT: AUBREY JAROS, BRUNA NAKHLE

Transformative Agency agency (noun): an intentional action or intervention to pursue a particular result or outcome As a body of diverse, multifaceted, and skilled individuals, we are all agents of our profession and must respond accordingly. Agency is not an acquired ability, but rather an inherent desire to continually surpass the expectations of oneself and others. Do not fall under the limiting constraints of current conditions, but rather explore ways to reframe relationships to forge new opportunities in social spaces. As those who embrace architecture, we must not act alone but rather respond together to enhance our profession and all of its innovative outputs. We are a dynamic network of ideas, creative intuitions, and empowering negotiations who welcome contributions from others in the spirit of continuous learning to actively engage transformation. WRITTEN BY: CATHLEEN KEBERT EDITED BY: PHILIP HORTON

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

It has been an absolute honor to have continued the ASU Architecture Journal with its second annual issue addressing transformative agency. This collection of ASU affiliated individuals’ work builds upon this newfound tradition which was initiated during the spring of 2015. Last year’s efforts were realized with such strong support from faculty, students, and professionals in the valley that a second issue was predestined. This celebration of students who are actively engaged with both architectural education and the profession amazes me. Surrounded by students and faculty constantly exploring new methodologies and practices through their work, I knew that the journal was something worth pursuing, especially with playing a role as production editor in the previous edition. This year, there is an underlying hope that this issue not only demonstrates the motivation and impact the contributors have and will continue to impress on the profession, but also prompts a critical discussion as to how each and every one of us can become an agent and what we should advocate for.

The variety of student work encased in this issue embodies the practice of agency since it demonstrates students’ own personal motivations to pursue projects not just following the guidelines of the project or discipline, but also in their eager exploration of the ‘what if’s and pushing past the unspoken or defined boundaries. Unique combinations of ideas and systems are integrated into a multiplicity of creations that range from extremely conceptual in nature, technical in terms of inventive assemblies or responses to climate issues, and unimagined phenomena. New additions to this issue include both undergraduate and graduate independent thesis topics in development and faculty essays revealing their stances and motivations for design. Within these submissions, second year through sixth year students exhibit their architectural intentions through a variety of mediums and methods of thinking, learning, analyzing, and crafting. Furthermore, a new supplement to this year’s journal is the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) Arizona State University chapter’s events showcasing how ASU’s students are collaborating and interacting with professors, and engaging with professionals, architecture students, and professionals from other schools. A few notable events from this past year document AIAS members truly acting as agents yearning to enhance the current status and relationships formed within studios and foster even greater learning. To name a few, AIAS members engage in events with professionals such as Jack Debartolo’s tour of his Bicycle Haus, and they immerse themselves in weekend-long design charrettes with Design School faculty, Herberger Youth Student Academy members, and philanthropists of this endeavor to share their voices in the new building design. As you look through these pages, I hope that the student and faculty contributions encourage and urge you to continue to act as agents in the transformation of architecture as a discipline and a creative output. The innovative outputs of others can be incredibly inspiring, acting as the spark to create a sudden, undeniable enthusiasm to persistently surpass the expectations placed on you by others and yourself. Continue to excel in all your efforts as you act as agents of our profession.

EDITOR CATHLEEN KEBERT

SPRING 2016

Renata Hejduk A Response To “Transformative Agency”

Nicholas Shekerjian Media-TIC Building Case Study

Philip Horton A Response To “Transformative Agency”

Felipe Mancero Enzo Ferrari Museum Case Study

Studio Culture Written by Maria Wilson

Baker, Melton Free University’s Philology Library Case Study

Richard van Horne Design School Intervention

Elena Rocchi “Prima Materia” Exhibition

Cathleen Kebert Overpainting ASU’s Art and Neeb Buildings

Michael Downs Caravansary

Jaros, Nakhle Corrosive, Erosive, Abrasive

Christopher Smart Evolved | A Catalyst for Community

Adalsteinsson, Leber, Ramalingegowda, Simmons FABRICA

Christopher Ford University Center

Bicycle Haus Written by Bruna Nakhle

Xueke Yang LOOP | Adaptation Design of Art and Neeb Buildings

Cleveland, Palav HIDA Glassbox at Circle Records, Downtown Phoenix

HYSA Design Charrette Written by Josh Greene

Marthe Rowen and Students Frame and Frameless Sketches

Afrida Hoque Urban Patshala

Duplantier, Raisanen Dualities

Dane Lemma ASU Art Network of Translucent Volumes

Liebgold, Whitesides Fire Station 9 | Common Ground

Zachary Bundy HMMD Casablanca Bombing Rooms Competition

Catherine Spellman Water Ways: Reveries with Water

Diaz, Santos Walking, Reading, Knowing: Piestewa Peak Phoenix Branch Library

Matthew Boylan Incision

Tucson Firm Crawl Written by Quoc Truong

Josh Greene Capture

Joshua Melton Bathing Space

Ford, Hu, Kizzar, Kolden Design Build Research Institute

Nicole Bone Philips Exeter Academy Library Case Study

Howser, Kiefer Fire Station 55 | Responsive Passive Design

Frank Lloyd Wright Day Written by Olivia Raisanen

John Meunier Intricacy and the Schroeder House

Yousef Al-Roumi Addition to Cambridge Boston Library Case Study

Kevin Kolden Goodyear City Masterplan and Public Spaces

Cristian Salinas Tanzende Turme by BRT Case Study

Bates, Cleveland, Dehghani, Willie Catalyst Tower

Submission Index

31 32 34 36 40 42

Ryan Kiefer Increasing Well-Being with Urban Biophilic Microdwelling Communities

Arcosanti Sketching Workshop Written by Nicole Bone

La Cosa: THPHCH Written by Susan Brewer

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RENATA HEJDUK | ESSAY

A RESPONSE TO “TRANSFORMATIVE AGENCY”

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.”

“The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” Karl Marx 1852 in Karl Marx: Surveys From Exile, David Fernbach, ed. New York: Vintage Books: 143-249. We gather up our notes, drawings, case studies, and ideals and hope to do work that is responsible, ethical, and beautiful all at the same time. We want to be change agents and make a difference. To be transformative, to be the change, to transgress the limits of thought and practice, you must first be fluent in the language that you use. This is a fluency so profound that you forget that you once did not know the language—you dream in it, you wake up speaking it, and you go to bed cursing in it. You must remember that: every room that you walk into is already set up; every street that you walk down already knows where it wants you to go. So, if you think you are walking the street in a way that is new and jaunty, you obviously don’t know the street. If you walk into a room and sit in a chair and don’t realize that you had but little choice to sit in that chair, you don’t know the room. When you make a mark on a page with your hand, stylus, or keyboard and think it is the newest best mark that ever was made, you can’t see the trace of that mark, nor know that your hand remembers that it has made that mark before, or that your eyes have always already seen it. Some will say that agency is impossible, that there is no way ever that we can be agents because the invisible structures that hold us are unknowable and impassable. Some will say that you are always acting in the place of that structure—its invisible strings pulling at you like a marionette. Others will say that there is an actual, but there is also the possible. The possible leaks out of the binds of power. The possible is action, desire, and lines of flight that escape that which holds it, and it offers up new possible situations, new collaborations, new songs, and new assemblages. If you want to be an agent of change, learn the language, make up some new words in it, and then dream in it.

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PHILIP HORTON | ESSAY

A RESPONSE TO “TRANSFORMATIVE AGENCY”

“The world today is defined by a constant state of crisis. From environmental degradation, ageing populations, financial instability, natural disasters, housing shortages, global migration, xenophobia, and a growing wealth disparity, to name just a few; our societies are increasingly challenged by systematic issues on an unprecedented scale. All of these crises have spatial consequences that architects are well prepared to confront, and yet instead of diving in, we seem to be having our own crisis: a crisis of relevance.” “Introduction” by Rory Hyde 2012 in Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture New York: Routledge: 17-25. Architecture—with the exception of pro-bono work, research and scholarship, temporary installations, etc—is a professional service industry.

serv·ice in·dus·try (n.) a business that does work for a customer, and occasionally provides goods, but is not directly involved in manufacturing. The 2012 AIA Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct is comprised of six canonical “Obligations.” And while Canon III is Obligation to the Client; Canons II, IV, V, and VI are Obligations to: the Public, the Profession, Colleagues, and to the Environment, respectively. How can architecture—a service industry commonly commissioned to work within one tightly defined scope, schedule, and budget at a time—meet such extensive and systemic ethical and professional obligations? Are architectural clients—even institutions who commission major works of architecture—resourceful enough, altruistic enough, enlightened enough to underwrite the architectural works needed to fulfill an architect’s ethical and professional obligations? If client-commissioned architecture does not provide the platform for architects to fulfill these obligations, then how and when does a professional architect fulfill them? Agency is an ethical and professional obligation of architects. When architectural clients are not bringing these extensive and systemic problems to professional commissions, then architects are obliged to seek these problems through work that may not be contracted through client relations. Architects must be agents, not only for Clients, but agents for: the Public, the Profession, for Colleagues, and for the Environment. How might the challenges that these extensive and systemic obligations pose be addressed by the future of architecture? “We cannot wait for our bosses to hand us commissions. Politicians and other decision makers are in retreat, so we will have to take care of our future ourselves, set our own goals. We need to investigate our environment, develop models, create strategies and make our results available to people free of charge. We need to prove that there is a new way of looking the future in the eye. Today, now.” “Epilogue” by Eduard Sancho Pou 2014 in Function Follows Strategy: Architects’ Strategies from the Fifties to the Present Munich: DETAIL: 172-173.

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STUDIO CULTURE | AIAS

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY: MARIA WILSON PHOTOS BY: CHRISTINE BUI

Studio culture affects how we talk and think about the profession of architecture. In the studio students perform their own response to a set of problems that they are given or that they invent themselves. It is a place where a community of people that are struggling with the same questions, can work together. The studio houses an intensely personal irritate process of evaluation that becomes very public in a critique. It is a haven where one can fail or one can push the envelope.

The American Institute of Architecture Students and the Design School hosted a Studio Culture Workshop on April 8th, 2015. It was a round-table discussion where students, faculty and professionals were given the opportunity to speak openly and honestly, without judgment, about their experiences in studio and their ideas to change studio culture for the better. We asked ‘What is Studio Culture?’ and ‘How can ASU create a resilient studio culture policy?’ Discussion Topics: Studio Culture, Studio Curriculum, Studio Instruction, and Other. Facilitators lead the conversation beginning with an introduction to inspire the students, faculty, and the professionals. We asked ourselves who students would feel comfortable speaking to and who would be able to keep the conversation constructive. Dr. Wil Heywood was our facilitator. The introduction included the history of Studio Culture through the lens of NAAB. Each accredited school is required to have a policy that is publicly accessible. Discussion Logistics: Small groups of students, faculty and professionals sat in circles. Each group with a large “post-it” note pad wrote down everything that was discussed. Within each group were six attendees and one scribe. The hour and a half was broken in to three 20-minute discussions regarding the aspects of studio culture. After 20 minutes the attendees switched groups and the scribe remained. The switching was done with the intention to give

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attendees many different choices to hear and learn from during the session and to keep the discussion from going stagnant. The session ends with a wrap up and the scribe reading a few of the main topics discussed within the group. Facilitators from the AIAS board were assigned to each small group and given a list of questions and topics to help keep the conversation productive. The questions were pulled from the studio culture policy that is currently under revision. Not all were discussed but some were used to help give purpose to the discussion in the small group.

“It’s all about student empowerment and asking for the educational environment that you deserve. We’re really proud of everyone that came out and spoke out.” -AIAS Historian Christine Bui

Students, faculty and administrators alike, agreed that studio is a second home to architecture students. Critiques can be frustrating but a good critique inspires thought. The goal here is to learn how to communicate clearly so to understand and translate the need of individuals. “Architecture is human behavior, human life, how we relate to the world around us, it is atmosphere and inspiration for the generations ahead.” –Thom Mayne

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RICHARD VAN HORNE | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: DARREN PETRUCCI YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: DESIGN SCHOOL INTERVENTION

Arizona State Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Design School today is the home to six separate design institutions who are currently in the process of transferring to the new mission of being the New American University. However, the state of the existing building does not fall in line with the ideals of the New American University.

The project began by identifying a key few issues where the current design is failing. First of all, the building is the home of six design schools who all function independently. Second, the design school is currently divorced from the public. We design for the public yet they are unaware of the work we do. Lastly, the building is currently failing in its response to the climatic conditions of the site. The proposed design is striving to solve these goals and bring the ASU design school up to and beyond the standards of the New American University. The proposed design takes the buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; existing voids (Red Square and the Pit) and merges those into one interior space, which is then flanked with new additional program. The new design results in an urban building which invites the public in, enhances collaboration between all of the disciplines, and responds sustainability to the climate.

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CATHLEEN KEBERT | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: DARREN PETRUCCI YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: OVERPAINTING ASU’S ART AND NEEB BUILDINGS

Overpainting is the process in which an object is added to the original artifact which highlights and/or obscures elements, ultimately revaluing the perception and latent potential of the piece. The original Art and Neeb Buildings are bracketed, solid, restrictive buildings and are countered with new volumes containing program not previously present in the buildings such as a theater projection room and an event space. These volumes, especially the stairwell, help change the perception of the building from a private building into a more public

entity. To facilitate a microclimate within the plaza, existing microclimates—which are significantly influenced by wind, evapotranspiration from vegetation, shading elements, and the presence of water—were mapped and manipulated. The continuous surface of the plaza and open art studios allow for a seamless interaction of student activities with its topographic nature leading itself into the articulation of the facades which are made up of contour-like louvers that address the sun and shading. Overall, the aspect of overpainting is incorporated into these buildings and plaza to establish a fluid site and plan--softening the harsh, solid, unapproachable materials with contoured volumes of a light material that publicizes the building and enhances the climate for a more engaging and comfortable public realm.

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JAROS, NAKHLE | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: CLAUDIO VEKSTEIN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: CORROSIVE, EROSIVE, ABRASIVE GROUP MEMBERS: AUBREY JAROS, BRUNA NAKHLE

The project for the Phoenix Branch Library in Piestewa Peak was a challenging one that tackled very dense topography. With steel columns that pierced the ground, almost like needles would, the building was propped up unto a platform and sat somewhat level with the mountain, sharing in its domineering height. The library, with its changing steel and copper panels, came to reflect the sad state of the site in the form of a scabbing wound that was being pulled out of the core of the mountain.

In the end, the library took the form of something almost suspended in time. It resembled the scaffolding seen on buildings under construction. It came to represent, in its entirety, a tectonic form at a standstill, not appearing complete but functioning as complete at the same time— often what a library is or appears to be; there is always another book that can be added to a collection but as long as there is at least one book, then the establishment functions as is meant. An emotional driving force that inspired this in the project was the aspect of nostalgia and its proliferation on the highly geometric site. The site appeared to be, for us as the designers, almost previously touched in history or almost even previously “engineered” into existence. Through precedents mostly derived from the video games we played ourselves, we were able to visualize the potential for what the project could be and tried, in the process, to damage the site as least as possible, hence the propagating columns. The mysterious light wells, recognized as the large cut-outs into the platform, lessened the boundary between being at grade, on the platform, or on the “brown” roof; additionally, they brought in pools of light framed by their forms and spread it in multiple spaces. The quality of the light was almost transcendental, connecting once more to knowledge and its everlasting power. A vital feature of the library is the ADA ramp. When approaching the towering establishment, visitors have a choice to either take an elevator up or traverse the long, winding ramp that weaves within the forest of columns, giving people a new experience of the building from below. As they climb, the views from where they stand change, and the users also have the opportunity to experience the light wells in a more interesting way as well. Looking up, their eyes settle on soft, beaming lights that guide their way up, almost a symbolic representation of the library and the enlightenment it spreads.

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ADALSTEINSSON, LEBER, RAMALINGEGOWDA, SIMMONS | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: ELENA ROCCHI YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2015 PROJECT NAME: FABRICA GROUP MEMBERS: DAVID ADALSTEINSSON, NATHAN LEBER, SUSHMA RAMALINGEGOWDA, RON SIMMONS

FABRICA From word etymology meaning; workshop, craft, art, craft of metalwork, workmanship evolved from the root word “Faber” meaning “skillful, artisan, forger, smith”). Creating the design for the new College of Architecture and Construction, Fabrica best illustrated the intent of creating a place where old crafts can be taught in new forms, adapting to the evolution of new and ever changing practices. This team project throughout the semester set our program upon the site analysis consisting of observations and studies of activity and movement associated with ASU’s Block 12 surroundings. Analyzing the different modes of movement [circulation] as well as modes of congregation. We then evaluated the

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high-density circulation created and from there, created a matrix exercise to identify an abstract series of hubs [places of convergence]. Collectively, the team used this tool as a means to direct our own design exploration. This circulation web became one of our design mechanisms measuring how the team member’s individual concepts would come together. From this mechanism, we were able to unify and formalize our design. First, we constructed a collage of existing buildings in order to create a series of interior spaces. Secondly, we applied the same method of collage to create the exterior façade. Next, we used circulation to bind the two separate collages together into a single meaning. Through the process of collage, we translated the meaning of existing buildings into something new, a college of architecture and construction. The final design created a building intended to support the College of Architecture and Construction through an evolution of the next 30+ years. It is also meant to act as a social connection between the University’s activity, Tempe’s Civic Plaza and the adjacent Mill Avenue business district.

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BICYCLE HAUS | AIAS

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY: BRUNA NAKHLE PHOTOS BY: EMREY KARENZI

The event kicked off with Jack DeBartolo giving us a warm welcome and the owners offering a table full of food. For starving college kids, that was basically where most of our hearts were stolen away. But Jack did not leave us hanging either. He introduced us to a family with a lot of colorful history and a building with just as much cultural wealth.

At first sight, the Bicycle Haus is a fresh eye-opener to the duller street that it sits on. It sports a small variety of materials, mainly wood and weathering steel. After a general overview of the factual information behind the Bicycle Haus, Jack leads all the AIA and AIAS members into the building and introduces us to the famed family that helped make the renowned building happen. The 5,000 square foot building is composed of a main floor that shows off most of its equipment and a mezzanine with some extremely cool bicycles on it. The first thing that really caught my eye, and everyone else’s, was probably the main wall behind the reception, which featured an impressive collective assortment of reclaimed barn wood, and the stairs which were re-purposed from high-school bleachers. These two interesting materials came from Missoula, Montana where the owners, Kale and Shasta Keltz were raised. The Bicycle Haus did a good job of juxtaposing a more modern, sleek building design with more traditional means. It brought out spunk and a type of authenticity most buildings strive to achieve.

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Most of us milled around, exploring the cycling sanctuary, and stole chances to talk to the Keltz’s about their colossal bicycle collection. The visitors were amazed by the impressive view from the mezzanine: the glass façade opens up the compact store to the beautiful Arizonian sky and helps cyclists, so anchored to the ground, free their minds further and soar into the possibilities behind their trusty two-wheeled treasures. Walking around slowly and taking in the atmosphere of the building, I saw many of my fellow AIAS members gazing at the material distinctions, their hands skimming the surfaces of wood and steel alike, trying to feel for the essence of what the establishment was composed of. Every surface had a tempting quality about it; the mystery of where some of the materials were acquired and shipped from seemed to entice us and awaken within us a thirst to understand their more vernacular nature set within a more modern frame. The view at sunset from the mezzanine pretty much sealed the deal, too. It brought about a contemplative mood upon most of the people present and almost seemed to make me wonder about whether the people that walked in every day truly recognized and appreciated the marriage of the materiality. Towards the end, people collected more near the back of the store where they discovered a kitchenette and an adjacent parking lot. The kitchenette featured a large window, almost a hole in the wall, where the employers and employees alike could enjoy some coffee and experience their morning

routines in a more refreshing way. The back entry funneled people out into the Keltz’s “backyard” and reunited them with some of the natural landscape that peppered the lot. The transition shocked me a little…perhaps more so than I would have expected. Walking through such a dense tectonic environment, I felt almost thrust back into the natural world even though the vegetation was somewhat sparse. It seemed to me that it was well thought out: there was enough to make you understand the importance of vegetated space and sense the presence of nature around you, but not enough to take away from the built experience either. All in all, the Bicycle Haus seemed to be a warm and inviting place, meant to encourage people to foster better relationships with not only people in their community, but with themselves as well.

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CLEVELAND, PALAV | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: MARTHE ROWEN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: HIDA GLASSBOX AT CIRCLE RECORDS, DOWNTOWN PHOENIX GROUP MEMBERS: AARON CLEVELAND, GAUTAM PALAV

While traveling throughout Venezia, we observed the city is a catalyst which helps individuals bring out their own artistic values. Venezia also sets a perfect example of recycling urban land parcels. Phoenix has built buildings and infrastructure to meet specific purposes, but as time goes by, the structure becomes redundant and unnecessary in the current context. Venezia sets a bench mark for other historic cities to recycle nowredundant land parcels by adding new programs and a minimal infrastructure in order to revitalize the site and surrounding area. Inspired by the poetic architecture of Venezia, we took a similar route to address the issues Phoenix is facing now and selected a parcel to apply this altering of identity. As art critic John Ruskin argues, “For a design to have integrity, it must be a product of its own time.” Imitation architecture is most of the times unsuccessful and the essence of restoration is lost. Extreme contrast can cause enhanced appreciation of both new and old. For this project, we took a similar approach where we preserved and restored the old brick Circle Records studio, and juxtaposed against it the new additional program. One can distinguish between the old and new by the contrasting material palette. The best work resulted when we combined respect for the old with a skilled command for new. In doing so, the new program was inserted into the building’s outer shell which was only altered by strategic adaptations made to allow for more visual connection from the street to the interior of the building. The newly proposed HIDA Glassbox is a host to various activities including faculty live-work spaces, a tech-shop, café, and student housing found in the ‘cloud.’ The glassbox seeks to be a branding identity for the ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, in the downtown cultural community and fervently reinvigorates the site.

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1 program masses

2 tech shop

3 faculty live/work

4 cafe

5 gallery

6 courtyard

7 graduate lofts

8 completed

4 3 4

1 1

GROUND FLOOR

1. TechShop 2. Faculty Live/Work 3. Graduate Lofts lobby 4. HIDA plaza 5. Courtyard 6. CafĂŠ 7. Installation Space 8. Restrooms 9. Mech Room

5 3

MEZZANINE

1. Sleep 2. Live 3. Flex 4. Cafe Mezzanine 5. Shop Computers

1. Bed 2. Live 3. Work 4. Laundry/Lounge 5. Corridor 6. Deck

THE CLOUD

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MARTHE ROWEN | SKETCHES

“FRAME AND FRAMELESS SKETCHES”

During Marthe Rowen’s freehand drawing course, “Drawing in Place,” and her summer study abroad program, she promotes the use of a frame to help individuals contain what they wish to draw. This allows them to focus on capturing the most critical details in order to record the special qualities of a place to which they are drawn. As of late, Professor Rowen has been exploring the absence of the frame through six-foot long panorama sketches.

Unlike any drawing made on a single page, such as the drawing of S. Giorgo Maggiore, where one chooses where to place the element on the page (i.e. to compose the picture), in the panorama sketches, the only choice is where to start the drawing. From there, you make no choices, you just see where the drawing takes you... you become more like a cinematographer than a still photographer. This was the case for her drawing of the Venice Aresenale, done in pencil on her sixth year travel studio in the fall of 2015, where she captured a stretch along the shipyard basin. Of the collection of students’ sketches shown here, all of them use some kind of frame. In some cases, a rectangular frame is drawn on the page and filled in. In the case of Libby Weiler’s “vignettes” of her feet, the delight is the many different ways her feet play with the frame. The frame helps to give clearer figural quality to the negative spaces created by her two feet.

Phoenix Art Museum-Libby Weiler

In others, the “frame” is created from selected elements in the picture frame: vegetation, the side walls of the building, people etc., in order to focus on the things seen through the frame. Only in Derek Knochel’s Cartel drawing and Professor Rowen’s own drawing of the Ronda bullring, are the “frames” literal frames, and in both of them, you see both through the frame and in front of the frame. What makes the Cartel drawing so wonderful is that he colors in only what he sees outside the window. In Professor Rowen’s drawing of the Ronda Bullring, there is a sense of being both inside and outside of the frames made by repeated columned arches so that you are seeing both the interior and exterior of the same curved surface; the columns are both foreground and background, but frame and framed... Color Study (red, blue, yellow pencil)-Nicole Liebgold

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S. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice -Marthe Rowen

Galleria Milan-Marthe Rowen

Cacti at the Phoenix Art Museum-Derek Knochel

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Feet Studies-Libby Weiler

Cartel, Tempe-Derek Knochel

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Plaza de Toros, Ronda-Marthe Rowen

ASU Art Museum-Andre Poernomo

Design North and Bridge-Nicole Liebgold

Venice Bienale, Aresenale Norte -Marthe Rowen

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DUPLANTIER, RAISANEN | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: CATHERINE SPELLMAN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: DUALITIES GROUP MEMBERS: RENE DUPLANTIER, OLIVIA RAISANEN

The derivation of dualities within the design of the library is rooted in the balance of mass and delicacy found throughout the site. The dualities most predominantly displayed are those of the mountains in contrast to the delicacy of the vegetation covering them, along with the mass of boulders that contrast the intricacies of the layering of the rock.

Integrating this idea into the driving forces of the design is the spectrum of personalities contained within the duality of introversion and extroversion of the personality types of users and the working spaces provided for both. The floors go from group work environments to more individualized working spaces as they ascend so that those working alone are not distracted from the noise of groups. Each floor has exterior and interior spaces, arranged so that the combination of all floors accommodates all views around the library building. Natural lighting from the north is maximized with the largest windows being located on the northern walls which also allows for the views of Piestewa Peak to be enjoyed by users with the provision of seating along the windows. The library is located on an existing trail so as not to create an extraneous one. Hikers can navigate the trail through the library without ever entering an interior space; roughly half of the first floor is exterior space sheltered by the floor above without walls enclosing the space with an exterior stair connecting the deck area of the second floor, where the main entrance to the interior of the library is located.

Core

Roof Garden

Individualized Spaces

Children and Teens

Stacks

Community Space and Cafe

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LIEBGOLD, WHITESIDES | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: DENNIS BREE YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: FIRE STATION 9 | COMMON GROUND GROUP MEMBERS: NICOLE LIEBGOLD, ASHLEY WHITESIDES

Common Ground, our vision for the future of Phoenix Fire Station 9, radically redefines the fire station model in both spatial and social terms. Whereas the traditional fire station adheres rigidly to the tenets of functional efficiency, Common Ground transcends this precedent in favor of a model that prioritizes and cultivates the vital relationship between its primary users—the firemen (and women) who will spend onethird of their working lives within this “second home”— and the adjacent communities they support. In direct contrast to this potential for social interaction, the standardized fire station maintains an architecturally ambiguous relationship with the public it serves due to insular programmatic orientations and impervious building facades that conceal life and activity. Rejecting the notion that function necessitates isolation in the future design of our fire stations, we envision a new prototype for Station 9: one in which the station’s residential component is suspended above—liberating the ground plane and reclaiming it for public use. Located in Midtown Phoenix, Fire Station 9 is positioned within a transitional area between single-family residences to the east and high-rise development to the west along the Central Avenue Corridor. As the population of this area continues to increase in density, we expect a need for a meaningful and equitable public forum within this urbanizing community to arise. It is our belief that future municipal building projects should respond to the projected needs of the communities they serve, expanding and capitalizing on the potential for public space and civic engagement at every design opportunity. Guided by this principle, we have proposed a visually permeable ground-level experience beneath Station 9 that erodes traditional boundaries of institutional formality in favor of an open and informal public realm. In order to accomplish a fully liberated ground plane, a system of load-bearing columns and giant, 8-foot deep cantilevered trusses is utilized to provide a structural base for the raised residential component of the station. Fire fighters at Station 9 inhabit a series of cubic volumes suspended above an open-air apparatus bay which are supported and linked by the truss system—a system which

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both visually defines the station’s interior and metaphorically relates to the station’s support function provided to the surrounding community. The columns that support this truss system double as vertical circulation, MEP conduits and emergency response via fire poles. While the privacy of the station’s residential component is maintained within raised interior spaces, the open-air apparatus bay beneath the station allows the public to observe the station’s emergency response functions in real-time and in close proximity. The public is able to interact with the station as an icon of the community without intruding on residential life within the station.

At the site level, Station 9 is defined by a massive canopy system which shades the south portion of the site, generates the ground-level microclimate needed for yearround occupation of the site, and visually unifies the station, apparatus bay and site features. The site is composed of an amphitheater enabling the site to serve as an urban cultural venue, a fitness park and running path to promote public health, outdoor seating and gathering spaces of varying scales, a themed playground and picnic space, a flexible community center (hosting workshops, lectures, after-school study, etc.), and a self-watering landscape accommodated by a rainfall collection system and bioswale.

As the adjacent community activates and makes use of the site, fire fighters are given the valuable opportunity to live directly among the community they serve and protect. Over time as personal relationships are formed between fire fighters and community members, these users of Station 9 become bonded and unified establishing a strong base of social capital fueled by the architecture of the station. Fire Station 9 thereby becomes more than a rigid architectural expression of function, instead becoming a source of cultural vitality, a generator of chance encounters, a backdrop to community lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a place where fire fighters and community members both share and discover common ground.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

CATHERINE SPELLMAN | ESSAY

“WATER WAYS: REVERIES WITH WATER”

In water lurk the mysteries of time. There is a kind of river of things, passing into being, and time is a violent torrent. For no sooner is each seen, then it has been carried away, and another is being carried by, and that, too, will be carried away.1

Architecture is “both dream and function, it is an expression of utopia and instrument of convenience,”2 it mediates between mental and physical realities to inspire us both spiritually and empirically. Thus, one of the challenges of architecture is to engage our imagination by making these realities apparent; to heighten phenomenal experience while simultaneously evoking meaning; and to develop this duality in response to the particularities of site and circumstance.3 Water—like fire, earth, and air—is an element in a preSocratic4 sense and therefore embodies both these realities. Just as the poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote that “the universe is made of stories, not of atoms,” so too is water composed of stories, above and beyond its molecular fusion of hydrogen and oxygen.5 In Phoenix water could be used to play an essential role in the making of a poetic city that stimulates and relates to us as human beings. This study considers water in Phoenix as a means of exploring the relationship between oneiric and material phenomena in the making of architecture. In desert cities such as Phoenix, water is the physical and spiritual essence of the place.6 Without water it would be impossible to inhabit desert environments, and yet here in Phoenix water is mostly invisible to the community it supports. Subconsciously we know that water is here, the grass is green, trees grow, pools are filled, but we do not consciously acknowledge, celebrate, or utilize water to enhance the quality of our community life or embellish our collective memory of this place. The project Water Ways explores the significance and meaning of water to the urban environment of Phoenix. We began with a broad study of the phenomena of water—considering its physical qualities,

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sources, systems, role in history, and inspiration to creative acts. Then we considered water in the context of Phoenix— where it comes from, how it is collected and distributed, how it has allowed for growth, and what effect it has on the culture of this place. This research raised certain questions that were explored through the design interventions: What do present and ancient systems of water reveal about the history and culture of a place?7 How does contained water differ in meaning from water left in a natural state and how does the container become a mediator between the natural and built environment? As the technology of water advances how has society’s values and involvement in the urban environment changed, and how do traces of advancement influence a collective memory of a place? How have architectures in different regions of the world respond to, interact with, and give presence to water? What are the representational techniques that best capture the dual realities of water and how can these techniques be utilized in making architectures of water? In memorable experiences of architecture, space, matter, remembrance, and time fuse into one single dimension, that penetrates the consciousness.8 As we identify ourselves with this space, this place, this moment, and these dimensions—they become ingredients of our very existence and enable us to place ourselves in the continuum of culture. The first collective memory of any culture is established with the act of settlement. Early cultures lived in a type of co-dependence that fostered a unification of the natural and the artificial. Survival depended on their ability to be amongst the forces of their surroundings. Within Central Arizona, the first known settlers were the Hohokam Indians (100 BC to AD 1450). They established a productive agriculturally based society with the construction of an elaborate irrigation water system. Following the slope of the land, the Hohokam constructed over 900 miles of major and arterial canals, connecting and uniting many villages with a common physical and social infrastructure.

Ultimately water is tied to the physical wellbeing and spiritual life of both early and present cultures that live in the desert. As well, water connects the past to the present because it flows in various imitations of time; the steady current of clock time, the ceaseless tide of universal time, the whirlpool psychological time and the enigmatic mist mnemonic time. An understanding of its significance, to both body and mind, allows one to see the collapse of all temporal states onto the image of themselves reflected in the surface of water. This is why the reflective quality of water has such mesmerizing powers and has obtained so much presence in the arts and architecture. The history of relationships between architecture and water exist in the layers of structures that support its distribution. The splendor that is Rome relies, in part, on a water network of tunnels, arcades and cisterns, imperial baths, monumental fountains, water terraces, public water spouts, private pressurized taps, and man-formed ponds from many epochs. The great Italian tourist Goethe describes an ancient aqueduct as “a succession of triumphal arches,” expressing in a single phrase the architectural structure of the arcade, the value of the water they delivered, and the stereotypical Roman pride in conquest.9 The entire book VIII of Vitruvius’ treatise is dedicated to the theme of water, its research, its nature, and the ways to transport and distribute it. Indeed, to supply water to a city is more than a service: it represents the collective effort needed to ensure the communal life of the settlement.10 It imposes a geometry, connects city to territory, exposes the palpability of water and it implies the psychological makeup of a culture.11 Here in Phoenix Water Ways is attempting to bring together the “dream and function” of urban life by re-considering the structures, presence, and memory of water. What follows is a brief description of the Water Ways project: Water Memory wa’ter, n. (AS. waeter; akin to G. wasser, water) 1. the colorless, transparent liquid occurring on earth as rivers, lakes, oceans, etc., and falling from the clouds as rain: it is chemically a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, H2O, and under laboratory conditions it freezes hard, forming ice, at 32’F. 0’C) and boils, forming steam, at 212’F. (100’C). Memory: The important thing about memory is that you do not need to erase it to create a new memory. Memories exist in layers. They are not sequential, they do not follow the order of a line. Memories overlap each other, altering what and how we know a situation. Memory effects who we are and how we are in the world. It is the layers of memory that makes us whole.12 We began our research by constructing a memory of water that would offer us the ability to see and understand its inner nature, how it functions, and what are its design possibilities. These water memories are achieved through perception and experience, precise recording, reflective thinking, and creative making with water. From this research we assembled a wall of images and descriptions that outline the meaning of water to us. The wall constructed with plexi-glass and transparent film conveys the reflective and transparent qualities of water while creating a surface which juxtaposes our collective memories of the substance. The list below describes the 12 categories we used to organize our research, which was then recorded graphically

using drawings, models, tracings, maps, photographs, montages, collages, rayograms, etc. 12 categories: Water Perception, Cultivating Water, Water Worship, Liquid Straightjackets, Free Water, Water Works, H2O, w art er, Water Tables, Working Water, Water Wars, Water Wings Water Way Sites and Interventions way n. 1.a line of communication between places. 2.the best route. 3.a method or style, a person’s chosen course of action. 4.traveling distance. 5.the amount of difference between two states or conditions. 6.space free of obstacles so that people can pass 7.the route over which a person or thing is moving or would naturally move. 8.a specified direction 9.a manner 10.a habitual manner or course of action or events 11.a talent or skill 12.advance in some direction, progress. 13.a respect, a particular aspect of something. 14.a condition or state. The Arizona Canal, the site of our study, is the northern most canal on the irrigation system. It starts at the Gila Bend damn on the Pima Maricopa Indian Reservation, passes through Scottsdale and Phoenix and finishes at the Skunk River in Glendale on the west end of town. It is 38.5 miles in length flowing over 200 feet down hill across the metropolitan area. In our initial survey, we selected 18 sites that had potential for a strong connection back to the community. The sites are sometimes at the intersection of two busy streets, crossing a public park or school, adjacent to commercial development, or connecting to an abandoned lot. Though extremely different in scale and context each site evoked some memory of our previous research. These memories in combination with the sites’ possibility for physical connection to the community, tended to guide our design work. The initial design ideas are captured in 1 to 100 scale model/montages. These montages were used to outline and construct series of design strategies that could be implemented at various points along the canal. These strategies are illustrated with site photographs and collages. At this point the studio decided to test some of our ideas through the construction of one to one scale interventions along the canal embankment at the 18 sites. Each intervention addresses a water memory created by the initial research and the specific contextual possibilities of the site. With these interventions we were able to briefly create an amenity out of infrastructure, and observe how the public engaged it. Beginning, End, and Two in the Middle Four sites were selected for development at a larger scale one at the beginning, one at the end and two in the middle. The Arizona Canal begins on Granite Reef Dam which is the convergence of the Salt and Verde Rivers, and ends at Skunk Creek Wash which is also the emptying basin for the Arizona Canal Divergence Channel. Granite Reef Dam stops the flow of river water through the valley and redirects it into the canal system. The ACDC was built to take the overflow waters from the 100 year flood. Thus the situation at the beginning and end of the Arizona canal embodies the memory of river water that is no longer (the past), water re-directed into the canals (the present), and the image of water that will fill the ACDC (in the future). The projects for the Beginning and the End are engaging these three states of water. AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

The projects began with two towers that mark the difference between the elevation at the beginning and the end, 113 feet. The two towers are given the same elevation thus the one at the end is 113 feet high and the one at the end is 113 feet deep. The second decision was to erase the physical manifestation of the towers and record there once considered presence on the sites. To retain the memory of the tower, a type of analog is designed. Each site records with a proposed construction, the ephemeral qualities of the towers. For example at the beginning a water maze is proposed that mixes the three separate water sources as they would have been mixed if allowed to flow into the negative tower. Or, at the end of the site the constantly moving shadow of the tower is etched into the ground becoming a water park for neighborhood children. (first image in left column) The project at 48th street proposes that the leftover space adjacent to the shopping center become public gathering space in a way similar to gathering spaces along the canals during the 1950s. These spaces refer back to the conditions of the 1950s by exposing the workings of the canals at that time. For example, an underground water trough that crosses the site is opened again and used to feed a field of newly planted orange trees that replace the grove of trees lost with the construction of the mall. Or, the drainage channel on the east of the site is made accessible with a stair and viewing tower to watch the occasional rush of overflow water. And on the north side of the site a highdensity housing project is proposed that re-introduces an ancient typology, dwelling along the canal. (second image in left column) On the Northern Street site several of the eucalyptuses trees from the 1950s remain. They shade the canal and recall a day when life along the canal existed. This project makes use of this memory and proposes a vision of an environmentally considered park that creates a series of follies with the themes of water, earth, and wind. (third image in left column) Water Exhibition Finally, the studio wanted to heighten public awareness of our water system and its great potential to become a wonderful public amenity. The studio invited city officials, arts commissioners, and neighborhood association members from the three municipalities that the Arizona Canal crosses, to view the work in a public exhibition and participate in a group discussion about canal development. The exhibition was designed with the intention to display the work and simultaneously create a provoking experience with water. A system of temporary walls were constructed with wood and cloth. The walls contained water in motion which when lit from above reflected this movement on to the cloth walls. All drawings were displayed on transparent plexi-glass, therefore the motion of the water was superimposed onto the surface of the drawings. Section models through each project created several tight spaces that the visitor could pass through to view the work, thus experiencing tension and precarious quality of many of the design proposals. (fourth image in left column, image on right page)

Studio Members: Tim Boyle, Doug Brown, Mike Clark, Luis Cruz, Heidi Hesse, Victor Irizarry, Ankur Jain, Rob Rager, Brie Smith, Catherine Spellman, Mary Spilotro, Johathon Spinner, Adam Strong DISCIPLINE

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Marcus Aurelius in Meditations, (Oxford Press, London, 1989). Roland Barthes, The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies, (Hill and Wang, New York, 1979). 3 See: Steven Holl, Questions of Perception, Phenomenology of Architecture, (Architecture and Urbanism, Special Issue July 1994) p.40. 4 Pre-Socratic philosophers focused on cosmology and natural philosophy, placing reason and nature ahead of mythological traditions. Their work made significant conceptual progress in providing a framework for scientific and philosophical ideas. 5 See: Charles Moore, Water and Architecture, (Harry Abrams Publishers, New York, 1994). 6 See: Catherine Spellman, "In Response to Context, Re-considering the Phoenix Irrigation Canals," in Re-envisioning Landscape/ Architecture, (Actar Publications, Barcelona, Aug 2002). 7 Ivan Illich in H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness, (Marion Boyars, London, 1986), makes the argument that "the way an epoch treats water and space have a history: the very substances that are shaped by imagination—and thereby given explicit meanings— are themselves social creation to some degree." 8 See: Juhani Pallasmaa, “An Architecture of the Seven Senses,” Questions of Perception, Phenomenology of Architecture, (Architecture and Urbanism, Special Issue July 1994) p.37. 9 See: Peter Aicher, Guide to the Aqueducts of Ancient Rome, (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Wauconda, Illinois, 1995), p.9. 10 See: Vittorio Gregotti, “Editorial,” 57 Rassegna (Aqueducts), 1994. 11 Ibid. 12 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents. 1 2

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

MATTHEW BOYLAN | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: DIEGO GARCIA-SETIEN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: INCISION

This is an adaptive reuse project of the College of Design North and South buildings on the ASU Tempe campus. The future of design education is becoming more collaborative and will continue to incorporate more hands-on learning.

Therefore, the center of each building is strategically cut away, and a louvered glass atrium is inserted, connecting the two buildings. This semi-interior, semiexterior atrium incorporates new studio spaces through hanging and projecting platforms which will foster greater collaboration between the design disciplines. This greenhouse-like space, which houses the majority of the activity, becomes the new core of the building and a key source of light. The support spaces, such as offices, restrooms, and storage, are located along the edges, or â&#x20AC;&#x153;crust,â&#x20AC;? of the two buildings. Additionally, by incorporating vegetation and the science of biophilia, productivity and attitudes can be improved and provide a stronger connection between nature and the inhabitants of the building. Within the Design North building, which has a waffle slab construction, the centers of the waffles are cut away. These cuts create a lattice-like pattern for vegetation to grow, and allows filtered light to be carried down through the building.

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JOSH GREENE | COMPETITION

COMPETITION: ARIZONA RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTS HOUSE DESIGN COMPETITION YEAR COMPLETED: SUMMER 2015 PROJECT NAME: CAPTURE

With striking views towards the southwest and a wash that carves through the site, it was the beauty of the raw Sonoran Desert that inspired this project. The design captures elements of the surrounding landscape in a way that enhances the relationship between the built and natural environment.

This contemporary space that engages its surroundings completely aligns with the client’s passion for the outdoors and their demand to experience it within their walls. This is done quite literally through the aesthetic effect of rammed earth, a traditional building method that brings the colors and textures of the desert into the house. The centrally located rammed earth walls briefly welcome visitors into the home before extruding outwards, directing viewers towards the picturesque Camelback Mountain. This pivotal wall also serves as a main structural member that holds up the modern butterfly roof used for collecting rainwater. The roof returns unused water to its natural path in the wash—allowing it to bring life to the desert. This wash provides an excellent opportunity for architecture to connect with the natural environment and extends the meaning of life in the desert. In an attempt to become closer to this connection, the lower level master retreat opens up to a private terrace that runs along the contour of the wash. This connection to the terrain is solidified with the main upper level of the house. It sits atop the site as a large and definite mass oriented to frame the views of Camelback. This level is specifically designed to accommodate guests and the eldest resident who is showing early signs of Alzheimer’s. The open floor plan is carefully designed in compliance with ADA requirements to create functional spaces that will alleviate any future restrictions. The resulting experience is a comprehensive response to place and client.

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FORD, HU, KIZZAR, KOLDEN | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: PHILIP HORTON YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2015 PROJECT NAME: DESIGN BUILD RESEARCH INSTITUTE GROUP MEMBERS: CHRISTOPHER FORD, XINYU HU, RYKER KIZZAR, KEVIN KOLDEN

Phase II of the ASU’s Block 12 development was designed to be a Design Build Research Institute that features a state of the art facility for students and faculty to explore the sciences of design and building technologies with an emphasis on collaborative research.

Therefore, the building was designed to encourage collaboration through the use of visual and physical connections between key programmatic elements of the building through the use of a unique sectional relationship connecting the studio spaces, research labs, and fabrication lab. This sectional relationship not only connects these key elements, but also makes a connection to the Del E. Webb School of Construction located in the adjacent College Avenue Commons (CAVC) through a cantilevered bridge allowing the free flow of people and ideas between the construction school and the many programs of the Design Build Research Institute. These key programmatic features are fed off a central atrium space that is designed to be the collaborative mixer within the building by encouraging chance interactions as students and faculty move vertically throughout the building in hopes that a short hello can be transformed into a substantive discussion located in one of the adjacent collaboration spaces. The building form was driven by the desire to presence the program on the building’s façade while actively engaging the public on the ground floor. Driven by the proximity to the Design School and the importance of College Avenue as a major pedestrian core for the campus, the building features two main entries in hopes of amplifying the building’s role as a collaborative mixer. The structural and mechanical systems are split, separating the fabrication lab from the rest of the building while a ventilated façade made of perforated steel panels allows for reduced cooling loads and optimal daylighting for the interior. In order to preserve the views from the CAVC atrium, the roof was angled and planted with a vegetated roof system creating a visual transition between the vegetated roof in the foreground and A Mountain in the background.

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AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

HOWSER, KIEFER | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: SCOTT MURFF YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: FIRE STATION 55 | RESPONSIVE PASSIVE DESIGN GROUP MEMBERS: ZAC HOWSER, RYAN KIEFER

This studio project presented two distinct challenges: working within the rigid framework of fire station building code to design a passive and exceptional new station and working on a studio project with a partner for the first time. During this project, therefore, there was a very conscious exploration of process and of cause-effect relationships. What happens to the passive qualities when efficiency is most important? How is functionality impacted by form? How does the public influence the private lives of the fire fighters? Teasing out the intricacies of these relationships yielded an exemplary fire station design for Northern Phoenix and a much better understanding of collaborative design processes. Responding to the biological, cultural, and vernacular characteristics of the community and environment, Fire Station 55 has the opportunity to go beyond conventional functions and set a precedence to encourage community sustainable design strategies and conscientious lifestyles. Contextual features influenced the form and angles of the station in order to respond to the community and environment. Amplification and emphasis of sustainable elements and systems provides a palpable inspiration for the community to follow the lead of the fire station. The site is larger than what is required for the basic fire station

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program. To take advantage of this opportunity, an analysis was done to see if a training station specializing in mountain rescue would be sensible. Analyzing the location of our site relative to the locations of the existing phoenix training center and other fire stations, combined with predictions for Phoenixâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s northward expansion and inter-municipal cooperation, led to the conclusion that our site would be excellent as a training station able to serve north phoenix and surrounding stations within its geographic sphere of influence. The disproportionate number of stations in south phoenix is not expected to stay disproportionate as phoenix grows northward, and a training station at our site would mitigate the future use demand at the south training center. Models were an important part of the design process for this project. Besides the detailed final models which tested the combination of systems (roof, glazing, public plaza, etc.) at a fine level of detail, study models were used to investigate form and function with quick iterations photographed to refine elements of the design.

27th Avenue

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

JOHN MEUNIER | ESSAY

“INTRICACY AND THE SCHROEDER HOUSE”

This essay is a part of my work on Intricacy in Architecture and Urbanism, specifically in this case the contribution of the program to the achievement of Intricacy. A few years ago, after thinking hard about Desert Cities and Compact Urbanism, I came to the conclusion that what distinguishes a great city, and also great architecture, indeed all great work in any creative field, whether music, literature, film, or art, is that it possesses the quality of Intricacy. The argument behind this thesis could/will be the subject of a future essay.

Although there is no question that Rietveld is the designer of this house in that it bears the unmistakable imprint of a formal language developed by him in his previous work as a furniture and interior designer, it is also clear that this house stands out as an example of Intricacy largely because of his client and collaborator, Madame Schroeder. It was she whose program for the house drove him into territory more daring and elaborate than was probably natural to him. The house is famous for its second floor plan of moveable sliding partitions that offer a rich array of options between totally open or closed, between a set of individual spaces identified with specific uses and ownership, and a single large space with overlapping functions. That was Madame Schroeder’s idea. The following are some quotations from an interview with her on May 12 and 14, 1982, three years before she died, having lived in the house and actively promoted the work of Gerrit Rietveld for over sixty years: “I think that in this house Rietveld isn’t so completely ‘Rietveld’. I think he adapted himself somewhat to what I wanted. And I believe I loved this house more than he did.” P84 (The Rietveld Schroeder House by Paul Overy, Lenneke Bueller, Frank den Oudsden, and Bertus Mulder, De Haan/ Unieboek B.V. 1988) “So when Rietveld had made a sketch of the rooms, I asked, ‘Can those walls go too?’ To which he answered, ‘With pleasure, away with those walls!’ I can still hear myself asking, can those walls go, and that’s how we ended with the one large space. But I was still looking for the possibility of also dividing up that space. That could be done with sliding partitions. I think that was an idea of Rietveld’s, though he found it a shame. He did it, but he thought it was a pity….He always regretted it, primarily I think because the space upstairs became considerably more complicated with the placing of partitions. You see it was like having your cake and eating it: yes and no. And Rietveld would have preferred: its either like this or like that.” P56 “…he said once: ‘It’s really quite a nice house’. But it was too complicated, according to him, especially with the sliding partitions. He didn’t even know how they worked.” “And he didn’t really like all the admiration the house got; I mean, he wasn’t particularly interested that it was so famous. Of course he was pleased that someone like Lissitzky admired it. And also that it provided him with openings to do more. But it wouldn’t be true to say that Rietveld really basked in the fame of the house.” P93 These are not the comments of a jealous client trying, as DISCIPLINE

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so often is the case, to claim that she really designed her house, and the architect was only a technician. She was an enormous admirer of Rietveld ever since he transformed a room in the house where she lived, somewhat challengingly, with her older husband. “It was a beautiful room, really beautiful, all different hues and shades of grey”. P44 She talked about him as a good client will about their chosen architect. “I knew what I wanted, and it appealed to Rietveld straightaway. Only, he added to my ideas, he took them further.” P46 What is important here is that the intricacy of this house is born from two sources: an extremely detailed and innovative program that generates a rich diversity of needs, and a highly resourceful but disciplined formal language that remains coherent and consistent as it reacts to and finds ways to meet those needs at all scales, and then transcends them to create a convincing piece of architecture. The first came from Madame Schroeder, the client, the second from Gerrit Rietveld, the architect. It is notable that none of his subsequent work as an architect achieved the same level of intricacy. It is often noted that Rietveld was first a furniture designer. While it is true that he came from a family of furniture manufacturers and created some remarkable furniture himself, he also received some training as an architect and also as a jewelry designer. In fact his first efforts at designing beyond the scale of furniture were the design of jewelry shops. Nonetheless it was as a furniture designer that he developed the formal language, including color, that he used, and elaborated, in the Schroeder house. Although the RedBlue chair is his best-known chair, it is his Berlin Chair

that most clearly anticipates the house. But the furniture not only provided the language; it introduces other factors. A piece of furniture interacts directly with the human body, that either occupies it, as a chair, or manipulates it, as in opening and closing drawers or doors. It makes defined and constructed space for human needs. It is designed to welcome the touch as well as the eye. It is dimensioned and scaled anthropometrically. It is often freestanding in space and also articulates space, but it does so purposefully, meeting social and/or practical needs. We will find that in this house all these factors are repeated at both the scale of the house and at the scale of furniture. One of the experiences that might surprise a visitor to the house is the almost naively frank and open way in which components like the drain pipes from the wash basins Madame Schroeder required in each bedroom, the water storage tank in her bedroom, the fuse boxes and the telephones on the stair half landing in the entrance hall, the speaking tube between the entry and the upper floor, the external rainwater pipes, a circular extract fan, a small ventilation and lighting window to the ground floor WC, wrought iron window stays, a cast iron stove and industrial metal radiators are all left exposed. No attempt has been made to conceal them or contain them in a way that ensured that they did not conflict with the predominant planar formal language. That does not mean that the architect left it to the plumber or electrician to locate them: there is every evidence that both the selection and location were very carefully decided. Madame Schroeder tells us for example: “We thought central heating systems with vertical radiators were very ugly. Very much in the decorative style, it was all curly metal work at that time. Rietveld liked what we’ve got here very much; he chose it. The only thing we didn’t know was that it would be so expensive. It turned out very complicated to install.” P60 By carefully revealing all these ‘workings’ of the house, Rietveld made it more real, more intricate; in the same way a watch designer might leave the back of a watch transparent to show the way it works, revealing the intricacy of its mechanism. In fact in 1925 Rietveld designed and made for the Rademacher Schoner family, Utrecht acquaintances of Madame Schroeder and himself, a glass radio cabinet that revealed both the battery and all the components of a radio. A further example of this willingness to show how the house worked is the simple hand lettered sign beside the front door pointing to the openable hatch where food deliveries might be made, alongside which is hollowed out opening into a speaking tube, a circular opening in the wall that echoes a rather larger and more visible circular opening for the extract fan at the upper level. But these are not the primary reasons for which this small house has been widely recognized as one of the most important houses of the early modern period, and why it is here selected as an exemplary achievement of intricacy in architecture. A rich and inventive program, and the revelation of its operative components, while certainly contributory needed to be integrated into a spatial and material composition that is both richly diverse and convincingly unified. In the early sketches of the house it was a relatively simple box, with its walls penetrated by rectilinear window openings, within which there were equally simple rectilinear rooms. There was one corner at the upper level eroded by wrap-around windows, and a simple canopy jutted out AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

between the ground and upper floor on a half of one side. In the completed house nearly all the simplicity of basic volumetric form has gone. Only one room, the one on the ground floor that was originally intended to be a garage retains its simple rectilinear shape. All the other interior spaces are now much more complex as their bounding edges move in and out, or open up at higher level to reveal the ceiling of adjacent spaces. The movement in plan often accommodates built-in furniture or the impact of adjacent functions such as the central stairs or chimney core. Even the moveable partitions are not along straight lines as they create the upper level sub-spaces. In section too spatial boundaries move as windows and walls advance or recede. It could be claimed that this latter is simply a by-product of the decision by Rietveld to decompose the three exposed sides of the house into a series of discrete rectilinear panels separated from each other both by color and by spatial location, but that would be to undervalue the sense of pulsating energy at the edges of all these spaces, an energy that is ultimately released by openings to the outside, in particular the well-known dissolving corner by the dining table on the upper floor where the rectilinear casement windows swing out at right angles leaving the corner of the room and the house unmarked, and the interior space and the exterior space merged. Bertus Mulder, the architect who carefully restored the house in 1987 having at an earlier stage worked with Rietveld, identified “five areas of transition from outside to inside, or vice-versa. Four of these are horizontal, one on each of the three sides of the house and one on the eastern corner, and one vertical running through the centre of the house”. P121 Each of these consists of territories which both exist beyond and within the boundary of the interior. They are marked by balconies, patios, roof overhangs, wall extensions, supporting posts, doors (sometimes split in half so that the upper half might be open while the lower half remains closed) and, of course, by the outward swinging casement windows. The vertical transition is a glazed lantern alongside the chimney that extends the vertical volume of the central stair well above the roof surface. These transition areas allow the house to engage the exterior world not simply by adding a porch or portico to a discrete box, but by applying to the periphery of the house the same sense of almost kinetic energy we find in the interior spatial order, and in the actual kinetic reality of the upper floor.

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One of the characteristics we have identified as contributing to intricacy is a diversity of scales, from that which engages the hand to that which engages the community while offering a consistent formal or architectural argument. This is one of the most convincing aspects of the Schroeder house. The formal language of Rietveld, a language that is often associated with the De Stijl movement, a highly disciplined language of rectilinear planes, linear elements in strictly vertical or horizontal orientations, and a restricted palette of colors – black, white, grey, yellow blue, red – can be used at many different scales, from that of small scale furniture, to walls, floors, roofs and ceilings, and ultimately to the building as a whole. The fact that Rietveld honed his formal language in the design of furniture and then was able to expand it to the scale of architecture in this house is undoubtedly a major reason for its success. It is a language that allowed him to meet the needs of Madame Schroeder’s complex and challenging program with wit and resourcefulness while still retaining formal coherence. And it is a language that allowed him to respond to the larger cultural issues that were beginning to transform the field of architecture. Compositionally the house is adamantly asymmetrical. This, together with its irregularity, might suggest that it could be said to be picturesque, at least in the sense described by John Macarthur in his The Picturesque: Architecture, Disgust and other Irregularities of 2007. “The core of the picturesque idea….. is the aesthetic possibilities of the everyday world.” p.107 “seeking aesthetic value in the mundane and ubiquitous p.107 “‘uniformity’, …… is the enemy of the picturesque….. ‘intricacy’, which is a visual texture and tonality the opposite of ….. smoothness; and ‘variety’, which opposes … uniformity…..The Picturesque by ‘its intricacy, its partial concealments, it excites that active curiosity which gives play to the mind’. Picturesqueness concerns not the inflection of regular forms, but a thorough ‘irregularity’; a concept of form based not on the symmetries of the human figure but on landscape.” p.125 But although each of the three exposed faces of the house is certainly asymmetrical and irregular, and different from

the other two; each is carefully composed and in balance. Unlike Le Corbusier there are here no ‘regulating lines’ to impose a proportioning system that would guarantee a set of forms that shared the same ratios of width to height, so in that sense they are ‘irregular’. But rectilinear forms with a vertical emphasis, and there is one of these on each face, are balanced by rectilinear forms of a horizontal emphasis. Vertical posts are balanced by horizontal beams or rails. The small vertical window to the WC on the ground floor has the small round extract fan opening as its reciprocal on the second floor. There are two subtly different door heights at the ground level, two larger solid doors divided in two – the front door and the door to the atelier where the original garage was are higher, and three glazed doors – to the kitchen, the study, and the small room next to the kitchen originally intended for a maid servant are lower. At the upper level there are three glazed doorways, but again subtly different; the door onto the balcony from the son’s space is in fact double but with one leaf much narrower than the other, while the doors onto the other balconies are single. These door heights generate horizontal frames that carry across the windows above which are the fixed panes and below which are the openable windows, which are the only ones with blinds. The glazed doors were filled with openable solid panels for privacy at night. Insofar as these panels only covered the glass their height was lower and generated another referent that was picked up, for example, by the bottom of a wall hung cabinet in the girls’ space. When that panel was open and held back against the wall it occupied a space defined both by the cabinet above and by another beside it, a space that was painted a lighter color than the rest of the wall. In such ways are the various discrete components of the house woven together. AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

KEVIN KOLDEN | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: KRISTIAN KELLEY YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: GOODYEAR CITY MASTERPLAN AND PUBLIC SPACES

The fiber of a restored riparian habitat will be the catalyst for ecological development in Goodyear, AZ. Sited at a unique place, the Salt, Aqua Fria and Gila Rivers converge creating a landscape that should be celebrated. This proposal elaborates on the initial concept put established by Professor Kristian Kelleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sixth year

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collaborative studio. Goodyear City is imagined to become a vibrant community of interrelated systems that will be an example of sustainable development. In order to restore habitats and create a connection to nature for the community, this sustainable development needed to be fully integrated into the master planning scheme. Systems weave together to create a sustainable urban center within the context of suburban sprawl. The Gila Riverfront will be a preeminent example of ecological urbanist practices, implemented within the context of typical American suburban sprawl. As a beacon

of smart growth, the Gila Riverfront strives to set the new benchmark for urban development on a global scale. Cities with vast ecological space often struggle with being taken over by the typical suburban development. When this occurs, the likelihood of those cities losing their identity and resiliency is high. As a stance against those statistics, the aim of this studio was to preserve the resiliency of the landscape and use it as a model for the design of the new central city. Instead of sprawl, the city will grow in dense clusters, always surrounded by and celebrating restored natural habitats.

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RYAN KIEFER | THESIS

INSTRUCTOR: DARREN PETRUCCI YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2016 PROJECT NAME: INCREASING WELL-BEING WITH URBAN BIOPHILIC MICRODWELLING COMMUNITIES

Downtown Phoenix is a fragmented urban landscape with under utilized area, spacial barriers, and much more commercial development than residential, contrary to a growing desire for a sustainable urban lifestyle.

This ongoing thesis project aims to connect these landscapes to form a cohesive and ecologically viable urban fabric which will increase the well-being of people and natural systems through community activation, increased biodiversity, and environmental awareness. The implementation of biophilic microdwelling communities will begin to transform the city by introducing key vegetation with small urban housing. Critical vegetation and water will attract animals which will further transform the urban landscapes and increase biodiversity. An increased emphasis on simple living in a biophilic setting will strengthen personal and ecological well-being. [Excerpted and Abridged]

There is an issue today concerning social equity where people are experiencing a general unhappiness about their current condition. According to a study by Tori DeAneglis, American happiness peaked in the late 1950s.1 This project is focused on improving well-being through architectural solutions including biophilia and urban microdwelling communities. One explanation for the decrease in happiness is the disconnection from nature felt as a result of urbanization, which also causes lethargy, and an overall apathetic and non-creative society.2 Connecting people with nature again will provide them with the intrinsic value of nature described in great detail in Timothy Beatleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book, Biophilic Cities.3 With the implementation of biophilic concepts in both public and private areas there will be an overall improvement of living which will only increase with positive feedback loops. Not only will there be direct human benefit, there will be indirect human benefit following the

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direct benefit humans share with the rest of the natural world.4 Typical biophilic schemes focus on the public space in transition zones between buildings but do not have as strong a focus on more used spaces that people spend most of their time. Interpenetrating space and blurred lines are an important next step in applying biophilic characteristics to homes, businesses, streets, plazas, and other urban areas because it addresses where people really spend time and allows them the opportunity to passively or actively engage with natural elements at all times. Focusing on human disconnection from nature would provide an opportunity to look at the different causes of discontent experienced by people across many areas of their lives. The architectural solution to this problem is evident as the basic concept of biophilia is to reconnect people to nature. The less defined aspect of the solution is how to use ideas of biophilia as a catalyst for social change. Introducing aspects of biophilia into the public and private realm would have a positive impact.5 The natural sounds found in a vegetated environment could have a positive impact much like music offers personal and social benefits.6 Biophilia is verifiably desirable and interpenetrating space is a solution to the basic problem of human disconnect with nature.7 Other elements of biology-based design solutions, including biomimicry, biomorphism, and biodesign, can contribute to the goals of biophilia8 and other concepts that aid in the ultimate goal of moving toward a happier and more sustainable society. In addition to fostering a relationship between nature and people, a biophilic environment combined with smaller private dwelling places would foster social relationships between people themselves. The current paradigm of large private domains excludes social interaction within the public realm. Reducing dwelling size decreases the public spheres and, coupled with a pleasant natural urban environment, encourages social activities and connections which have been linked to happiness and human well-being. This on-going thesis project is focused on addressing these issues in Phoenix. Among young adults and students there is an increasing desire for urban living with shorter

commutes and a lively atmosphere. There is also a growing interest among other types of people who have been impacted by the recession of 2008 who have become disillusioned of the American suburban dream and are now seeking smaller houses and a reduction in belongings. The desert environment of Phoenix creates a challenging location for biophilic design for the obvious lack of water. The hugely disproportional commercial to residential ratios suggests a need for permanent residents to occupy and enliven the downtown district. Current plans for the progression of this thesis involve utilization of condensation from HVAC units in the dense downtown area and greywater, storm water retention, and natural rainfall to irrigate newly introduced keystone species of vegetation integrated with microdwelling units. These key plants species will draw more animal species which will in turn begin to transform the vacant and fragmented areas of the city. By integrating these biophilic micro-dwelling units with the existing infrastructure of parking garages, these catalysts for urban change will take advantage of both horizontal and vertical surfaces within the city and create a visual and functional network along Central avenue, reconnecting landscapes and bringing a functional, ecological set of systems to Phoenix. ---

1 Tori DeAneglis. “Consumerism and its Discontents,” American Psychological Association 35, No.6 (2004), 52. 2 Timothy Beatley. Biophilic Cities. (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011), 65. 3 Beatley, Biophilic Cities, 10. 4 Sean B. Cash, “Bringing Corporate Stakeholders to the Table in Collaborative Ecosystem Management,” in Pragmatic Sustainability, ed. Steven A. Moore (New York: Routledge, 2010), 264. 5 Beatley, Biophilic Cities, 4. 6 Nikki S. Rickard and Katrina McFerran, Eds. Lifelong Engagement with Music: Benefits for Mental Health and Wellbeing. (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2012), Ch.8. 7 Pijawka, Sustainable Cities, 3. 8 Thomas Knittell, “Generous Cities: Design Informed by Ecologies of Place” (lecture, Arizona State University, Tempe, March 25, 2015).

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ARCOSANTI SKETCHING WORKSHOP | AIAS

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY: NICOLE BONE PHOTOS BY: EMREY KARENZI SKETCH BY: OLIVIA RAISANEN

We are living in a time of great change - bound to the man-made tools of progress, like governments, economies, and technologies, that inhibit the sanctity of the human experience. Arcosanti is an ecological haven that invites us to engage within the art of community, reviving our consciousness of how our decisions affect the greater mass. Residents and patrons of the architectural sanctuary support the authenticity of living in community. “Welcome to Arcosanti: An Urban Laboratory” Paolo Soleri envisioned this self-sustaining ecosystem with a mission to revitalize the beauty of nature, not with grandeur of the past, but with the humility of the individual. Outgrowing the vices of Modernity, he constructed this city upon a hill, or rather, a retreat within a desert, as a response to the repercussions of consumption and standardization in order to inspire creative resourcefulness.

From the lens of an ASU architecture student, Mecca is only an hour away. In planning a pilgrimage to Arcosanti, the goal at hand was to broaden the horizons of our fellow peers, provoking a dialogue for how Arcosanti links urban and vernacular units for living. In visiting a place like this, understanding and appreciation is found through the medium of pen and paper, a nugget of wisdom I learned from Professor Marthe Rowen my first year in the architecture program at Arizona State University. Through hosting a drawing workshop, with the guidance and direction from Professor Marthe Rowen, the design student is acclimated to a new level of understanding in immersing oneself within the tangibility of place and space, form and function.

27 February 2016: Arcosanti Experience 10:00 a.m.: Arrival at Arcosanti The crunch of the warm gravel of each step taken by our small group created a melody to our explorations ahead. As we descended into the space, wonder and awe filled the air once immersed within Soleri’s creation. What lied ahead was a fantasy brought to life. 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.: Tour of Arcosanti - led by Jeff Stein, AIA While strolling through the corridors and nooks of this architectural masterpiece, Jeff Stein, Director of Arcosanti discussed what he calls “Paideia.” When integrated into design, it provides a method for residents and visitors to reflect on how they and their work are part of the natural world. “Paideia is advocates for an understanding of life that is about transformation. Transformation, after all, is what we are encouraging from Arcosanti: transformation of our thinking, of our shared physical reality, of our cities and of our ecology in the direction of coherence. We are after design and understanding more coherent with living systems, more coherent with the natural world with what is to come as we design our way out of the current global breakdown.” --Jeff Stein 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.: Buffet Lunch 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.: Drawing Workshop, led by Marthe Rowen Returning back to basics, Professor Marthe Rowen led the afternoon with a fundamental drawing workshop, focusing on foreground, middle ground and background through the techniques of line drawings. Each student, enthralled by the detail in drawing, submitted to a sensory experience, translating their perceptions onto a piece of paper. 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.: The Voyage Back Home

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LA COSA: THPHCH | STUDIO

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY: SUSAN BREWER INSTRUCTOR: ELENA ROCCHI YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2016 STUDIO: LA COSA: THPHCH, (THE PHOENIX CHALLENGE)

Paolo Soleri had a deep relationship with water as evidenced by his daily noon swims when he lived at Cosanti and Arcosanti. Even in his bell making process he used a wet-sand casting process. His designs didn’t originally offer much recourse for the flooding waters of the summer and winter monsoons: he almost seemed to relish in their looming advent.

But Paolo Soleri’s earth built architecture altered the natural topography first with brute manpower and then through heavy machinery and it allowed cool air to sink, creating microclimates within the harsh desert. This has allowed his complexes to stay relatively cool enough in summers for human habitation without fully requiring system integrations, and warmer in the winter. According to the Energy Information Administration, in Phoenix over 25% of our energy goes to AC usage—over quadruple the national average of 6% a year. To counteract this and many other issues that he saw as emergent, Paolo developed what came to be his passion: his arcologies, which he built in miniature within the embrace of the Arizona high Sonoran desert at Cosanti and Arcosanti. Part of our studio’s exploration has been to ask how to adapt Paolo Soleri’s Thing into a new era, translating his frugality into a modern solution, using as a basis a sensitized skin: our site for La Cosa—the Thing, the sensitized skin of overdeveloped cities like Phoenix. In medicine, a sensitized skin is a reflection of the environment, a lifestyle, or the physiology of a person. Pollution, stress, poor diet, over-processed or exfoliated skin can cause sensitized skin in humans.1 What happens in ecology when we over-process the ground, overextend our resources, pollute and out-stress the balance within the ecosystem? Essentially instead of sensitized skin on an organism, we end up with a landscape that could be considered sensitized—overly sensitive to small changes, to the fluctuations inherent to any construction process. By creating a system much as Paolo did with his topographical fluctuations, we can help correct some of the issues that plague over-developed cities: heat island effect, temperature rise, over-reliance on mechanical and technological systems that cause further, (chemical, visual and acoustical,) environmental pollution. This becomes possible by recognizing that soil is not simply dirt, but the myriad combination of living organisms, nutrients, sand particles, rock particles, minerals—all of

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the many things that create sediment and silt layers. Its complexity as a microcosm is why river silt and deltas create such superbly rich loam.2 Paolo combined trial and error with his gut instincts, (based on his studies under Frank Lloyd Wright and in Italy), and started adjusting the topography—the things that he could control with his frugality—to create the microclimate of Cosanti. He effectively manipulated the aspect, or orientation of a sloped surface, and created air channels to trap cooler air, wind corridors to create flow during the stagnant summer heat, and mitigated some of the worst effects of living in the middle of Paradise Valley.3 The attitude of using the land to create beneficial micro climates by using less ecologically disturbing methods is anti-establishment in the greater Phoenix area where the “growth machine,”4 as Andrew Ross, author of Bird on Fire, calls it, created vast subdivisions with no sustainable or ecological rhyme or reason, using far more resources, especially water, than the water table or river support system could natively handle. While Paolo himself did not venture far into the ideology of water preservation, the creation of his microclimate and water/air channel system has already created a much lusher environment by comparison in less than a hundred years. These vast growth periods occurred when the southwest, and especially the high Sonoran Desert, enjoyed a far wetter era than climate records and indicators have denoted for the last few hundred years. As we approach the more typical rainfall amounts that persist over our climatological data ranges, our ecological design philosophy becomes evermore critical. As our part in The Phoenix Challenge this term, our studio has collectively investigated Paolo’s methodologies, the artificial topography that he created, and how they have shaped a specific, new typology within architecture, “a living architecture.” Granted the forms of a living architecture can

be interpreted many ways: Is living architecture a domicile? Is it an information center? A living museum? Or is all architecture a living architecture, a place where humans live their lives with the possibility of living it in a way that is less intrusive, or even beneficial to the ecology of their surroundings. During the course of the semester, we have undertaken the task of measuring Paolo Soleri through Cosanti, and taking some of his Things, his sketched objects, his notations and his possible reasonings, and creating new Things, our Things in the shape of Paolo. Whatever else Paolo may or may not have been, we have been studying under the tutelage of his frugality in all things, whether they be materiality, earth, water or even sun, to develop new ideas to take into the future, to mold us as future architects, and to help create a new ideology to help the arcology of Phoenix—this mega city that must lead others through our new frugality—move into the future.5

Students who participated in Elena Rocchi’s studio and contributed to the planning, building, and documenting of the models include: Susan Brewer, Travis Chapman, Elizabeth Horner, Taylor Huston, Andre Poernomo, Zehua Qi, Dean Raccosta, Kevin Reyes, Rudy Sanchez, Quoc Truong, Ziao Wang, Chris Woolsey, and Zhaohang Zhang. --1

“The International Dermal Institute.” Articles. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. 2 “Learning Resources about Soil Carbon and Biological Work.” Learning Resources about Soil Carbon and Biological Work. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. 3 “5 Factors That Affect Microclimates.” Open Permaculture School. 2014. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. 4 Ross, Andrew. Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Print. 5 Ghosh, Santosh. “Perspectives on the Environment: New Options.” Urban Ecology (1998): 25-30. Web.

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NICK SHEKERJIAN | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: DIEGO GARCIA-SETIEN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: MEDIA-TIC BUILDING CASE STUDY

The Media-TIC Building by cloud9 is a Renaissance church for contemporary and future technology: a physical reading of the capabilities of building technology, displayed to the public. The essence and function of this building is to connect an aging industrial sector of Spain with the emerging tech companies that inhabit it.

The building still acts as a public forum by allowing the ground surface to be free of the commercial programming as well as many columns which is made possible from four rigid, braced frames. Running across these super structures is a sun protection and energy responsive system made up of ETFE pillows. These cushions, made up of several chambers, can inflate with nitrogen to acutely adjust to the environmental conditions such as temperature and sun angles. Not only does this inflation process improve the thermal insulation, it also alters the transparency levels to create shade or allow for views outwards. With this technological application to the facade, it allows the architecture to become a digital platform for the information and communication technologies businesses. Within the studio, a drawing exercise was conducted to convey these essential and functional aspects as determined by its facade within a single drawing. A half-inch scale model begins to demonstrate some of the technical connections made through the various structural and facade conditions.

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FELIPE MANCERO | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: DARREN PETRUCCI YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: ENZO FERRARI MUSEUM CASE STUDY

In order to create an awareness of building skins the fifth year advanced architectural studio took a look at projects designed by significant architects in different regions of the world. The Enzo Ferrari Museum by Future Systems in Modena, Italy is located in the house where the motor racing giant was born and raised. It is sensitive to the existing historical context, combines the latest in construction and energy saving technology, and resonates in spirit, language and materials with the cars it is intended to showcase.

The new exhibition building is composed of a sculpted yellow aluminum roof with its ten incisions, intentionally analogous to those air intake vents on the bonnet of a car allowing for natural ventilation and day lighting. Future Systems wanted to create a sensitive dialogue between the two exhibition buildings that showed consideration for Ferrari’s early home and underscored the importance of the museum as a unified complex made up of several elements. The views out of the new exhibition building dramatically frame the house and workshop, while views from outside the house and workshop immediately reveal the function and content of the new exhibition building. In order to convey the architectural intentions of the building I created a 30” tall x 10” wide wall section model built upon a 12” x 12” plywood base at 1/2”= 1’ and a 3D analytique drawing depicting the building wall section in relation to the overall conceptual design of the building.

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BAKER, MELTON | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: MARK RYAN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: FREE UNIVERSITY’S PHILOLOGY LIBRARY CASE STUDY GROUP MEMBERS: MEGAN BAKER, JOSHUA MELTON

The Free University was founded in 1945 and marked the rebirth of liberal education in Berlin in a post-war era. Norman Foster’s commission not only challenged him to restore some Modernist buildings on campus, but also to create a new library for the Faculty of Philology that housed the collections of eleven separate libraries. The original campus design, designed by Candilis Josic Woods Schiedhelm, was extraordinary. The facades of the buildings were done in Corten steel and based off of Le Corbusier’s “Modulor” proportional system. Unfortunately, the Corten did not hold up, and the damage was extensive by the 1990s. Foster chose to pay homage to this original Corten design by replacing the Corten with bronze that will replicate the original colors as it patinas over time. The library is one of Foster’s most ecologically advanced buildings for its use of passive and active technologies to increase energy efficiency. Its unique water drop shape was designed to house the maximum amount of floor area within the minimum building envelope. The new library site unites six of the university’s courtyards. The mat-like arrangement of the campus was designed to ensure buildings could be reconfigured as the university’s needs dictated. The library’s four floors and one basement floor are enclosed in a naturally ventilated, bubble-like enclosure. The enclosure is intended to be just as adaptive as campus, so the core of the library is entire independent from its enclosure. The enclosure can theoretically be redesigned without affecting the internal structure. The enclosure is clad in aluminum and glazed panels and supported on a tubular steel frame with a radial geometry. The design is rooted around natural lighting, so a translucent inner membrane filters in daylight and occasional transparent openings allow for direct sunlight. The serpentine profile floors have desk arranged around

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the perimeter and book stacks in the center. The floors take their unique shape, swelling and receding with respect to the floors above and below, to maximize natural light. The library’s cranial form has appropriately earned it the nickname ‘The Berlin Brain.’ The goal of this case study contained two parts. The first was to gain a comprehensive understanding of the library in its entirety. This analysis would prove itself fundamental later in the semester when we began designing a Phoenix Branch Library for our semester project. Secondly, this exercise taught the dwindling art of hand drafting, a truly invaluable skill.

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ELENA ROCCHI | EXHIBITION

“PRIMA MATERIA” EXHIBITION VISITING CLINICAL ASSISTANT PROFESSOR ELENA ROCCHI STUDENT’S WORK EXHIBITION: A SIMULATION OF DESIGN DIALECTICS’ INTERPLAY. MARCH 14 – MARCH 27 THE GALLERY, DESIGN SOUTH

“All things are from one, by the mediation of one,…. and all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.” --The Emerald Tablet of Hermes. At the beginning of March, I attended the 3 Million Stories conference, organized by ASU to bring together arts school deans, artists, administrators, faculty, community leaders, and students to examine the world of work among arts and design graduates in the context of a changing economy. The 3 Million Stories are the stories of people with arts degrees from American educational institutions.

When I first heard about the conference, I thought to set up an exhibition at the Design School as a way to add to those stories with 60 other stories of future graduates of the design school whom I have taught in the last two years. I thought that I could add stories of architects not made out of their words, but of the objects they produced at the very beginning of the design thinking process as a way to speak about their inner nature. How do we prepare the careers and the future of work of North America’s design graduates at a moment when higher education and the planet are facing a general rising change none of us are prepared for? How do we learn to learn? If who we include is how we succeed, my exhibition was a way for me to say that we (professors and students) learn by learning first from the core of who we are: if our profession is about telling stories to others and reaching individuals, it is crucial to learn how to be convinced and comfortable by saying them, by first telling them to ourselves. This learning phase requires the need of feeling uncomfortable for some time in order to reach the relevant core of who we are. One year ago, Google co-founder Larry Page announced a massive restructuring of the company involving significant financial restructuring: “We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes. But in the technology industry, where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant.” My courses are the environment where each student can simulate reality according to him/herself, a place I

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offer people to feel “uncomfortable” about themselves to empower them through learning architecture. The exhibition is titled Prima Materia: in design, a “starting material,” a prima materia, is the necessary medium for ideas to physically project from the first room of architecture, the mind, to the working table. It is impossible to specify what this starting material is because the projection that emanates from the individual is different in each case. As a Visiting Assistant Professor at Arizona State University’s The Design School in the last two years, I have conducted an experiment on group cooperative learning with students of the Design school, to touch upon questions in design of how to make personal intuitions physical, of what is the best material to use in each phase, and on how to faithfully carry the original design intuition to the final design proposal. With the use of one assigned material per phase of design (images, drawings, paper, plaster), and of a methodology based on “comparison” of these results, students were engaged in a simulation of design dialectics’ interplay, into observation of universality of design through the particularity of design, and into the understanding that individual design project’s tasks require interdependence to be accomplished. This exhibition is an opportunity for me to reflect on a selection of material, to start to draw conclusions on this experiment by classifying all prima materia I have been using. In my work as architect, the prima materia has often been shadow, iron, earth, or lapis. In my work as a teacher, prima materia is the student, or a “part of the student,” a microcosm of students; it is a phenomenon, or a skull as a chamber, a photoshop tool, the space of paper, a photograph of then becoming now, the fragility of a paper skeleton, the plaster, some synapsis, a new Nolli map of Rome, the registration of a process, and the post production of ideas. The exhibit is, therefore, a display of disjointed narratives of personal ideas framed into a prima materia, a collective work of individualistic endeavors, a narrative of fragmented and plural subjectivities. “All things you see (here) are from one, by the mediation of one.” This is a physical state of the intrinsic connection between students and their projects, as the soul is connected to the human body: a material that illustrates a shift in architectural and artistic thinking, from an Unitarian and objective truth to a subjective multiplicity, to demonstrate that artistic practice can be used as prompt for a design investigation.

The exhibition displayed different materials, all organized according 8 definitions of prima materia: #1 PRIMA·MATERIA: MICROCOSM: (a way to start a project by understanding the nature of a group of people composing the semester class). The first matter may be described as a Microcosm of Chambers, as a group of people of different cultures; as a Scenius (Brian Eno) a collective form of genius; as a catalogue of people; as a laboratory of identities. This part of the exhibition is a group of 13 drawings as a geometric synthesis of design students’s anatomic and physical bodies, in scale 1/1. #2 PRIMA·MATERIA: CHAMBER: (a way to start a project by understanding the nature of a person). The first matter may be described as a Chamber (a body), as an individual room for reflection. Alchemists recognize what goes on in their bodies: architects must find the First Matter in themselves. A series of individual drawings are done as an observation of how the rules of geometry may be admitted to aid the mental images to be made physical, namely imagination. Each drawing is a sum of cross-sections of architect student’s bodies (Albrecht Dürer, 1810). The idea of interior space of the mind is revealed by overlapping 5 horizontal cuts of the body: feet, knees, pelvis, shoulder, cranial box.

#5 PRIMA MATERIA: ÒRDO (a way to start a project by drawing). The first matter may be described as a drawing and geometry as a first Post-rationalization of primordial drawings as sketches. #6 PRIMA MATERIA: IMÀGINEM + ÒRDO. (a way to start a project intensifying drawings with images). The postproduction of an idea is to inhabit the space of the Autocad drawing with Photoshop, to carry the first extraction of the idea into a process of involuntary metamorphosis. Precise representation of atmospheres is obtained combining the drawing of Autocad with texture in Photoshop as a way to inhabit first the space of the paper. #7 PRIMA·MATERIA: MÒDULUS. (a way to start a project by making models). The first matter may be described as a prototype. MODELS, GYPSOS, PAPER SKELETONS, a PRIMA·MATERIA to carry the first extraction of the idea into a process of involuntary metamorphosis. 3D models. #8 PRIMA·MATERIA: SYNTHESIS. The first matter may be described as adaptation: Research Books.

#3 PRIMA·MATERIA: INK, THE MATTER OF ALL FORMS. (a way to start a project from ink). The first matter may be described as ink. In the exhibition, a video of a microscopic look into one of my ink drawings plays. The microscopic travel is in search for the timeless space of invention. #4 PRIMA·MATERIA: IMÀGINEM (a way to start a project by building images): the first matter may be described as an image. “D’Invenzioni, Interrupted Images,” are a PRIMA·MATERIA to carry the primordial projection of an idea and an intuitive understanding of a situation while NOT being in a place, from an image’s interpretation of an “ancient past.” “Uchronia,” the first extraction from the mind, is a PRIMA·MATERIA to carry the primordial projection of an idea and intuitive understanding of a situation while NOT in a place, from the image’s interpretation of a “recent past.” AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

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AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

MICHAEL DOWNS | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: ELENA ROCCHI YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: CARAVANSARY

The Lapsus Imaginus originates at this event in time. Rather than stabilizing and securing the future of Istanbul, a catastrophic event leaves Istanbul without any architectural permanency. Consequently, the people of Istanbul would be forced into an exodus, traveling out of the city and creating an existence as a nomadic people between space. How do the constructs, culture, and functional elements of Istanbul continue to permeate through its people? Without any formal architectural permeances to build off of, the informal and the functions that the Turks employ are the primary source that begin to define the spatial condition. In order to understand this existence, exploration into the historic patterns of the Turk reveal a common familiarity nomadic conditions through the Turkish Caravansarai. Using the provisional thinking of the Gecekondu and the functional definition of Caravansarai, the exploration began understanding the permanencies and non-permanencies of various arrangements. The idea behind this investigation was the notion that these elements would be cut, carved, added on to, destroyed, omitted, and implied in a variety of ways. Moreover, these arrangements would have varying degrees of functional permeances due to the people that occupy them. The white in the diagrams explores the arrangements that could be seen as permanent constructs. These areas would provide a formal element that informal elements could then accrete to. On the other hand are the gray areas which denote the moments that may be implied or tactical, rather than explicitly formal. These elements imply, but do not restrict activity in a variety of ways. Function in both of these situations is transformed and illustrate a sequence of caravansarai that operate as a dynamic, versatile fabric across the movement patterns of people. This variety changes how events, movement, and future development is applied to the caravansarai. The caravansarai for modern day Las Vegas would consist of one provisional energy super stage that would provide water collection, energy collection, and waste disposal

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for users. By providing the provisional need for what is required, the architecture becomes a limited element in the design. Moreover, this provisional notion would allow the stage to remain versatile for generations, allowing a variety of functions over time to be plugged in, removed, and reappropriated. In this sense, the stage becomes defined by the generation and the functions they use to appropriate the space. As the stage starts out, the stage provides sporadic need by users. As functions such as vendors, tourists, and travelers begin to understand the typology, they being to occupy it. By trying to understand the space, they misinterpret and begin accreting elements that become unique to that caravansarai. As temporary moments become more numerous, some of the moments stay, creating permanencies in the fabric. Functions such as markets or concerts begin to give the stage place in city. To capture the value this stage begins to have, more permanent functions are kept on the stage, leading to the development of an accretion city. Rather than having context define the project, the context of the caravansarai begins to react to the moment people have created on the stage.

THE STAGE

THE ACTORS

The Permanent

The Temporary

Courtyard

Atrium

Alcove

Gateway

Porous

Permanent

Temporary

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CHRISTOPHER SMART | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: ELENA ROCCHI YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: EVOLVED | A CATALYST FOR COMMUNITY

For over 1000 years, the Walls of Constantinople existed as a boundary between worlds, keeping civilization safe from the untamed wilderness and barbarism of the outside. This divider of worlds, however, gave way to its own corruption, perpetuating separation between people and societies. For Istanbul, a city composed of extreme diversity, this divider has resulted in segregated communities, separatist political groups, and an unstable economy.

Is it possible for a wall to function instead as a social mixing space, uniting people instead of separating them? What if this Wall was filled with public meeting places, transportation, and foot paths to foster community connectivity and a healthy economy? Marketplaces, restaurants, and public parks could combine to create a distributed network of community-oriented programs throughout the city. It has been shown that a distributed system is a higher evolved organizational structure leading to happier and more productive people. Could this unite a divided city and its people?

ISTANBUL WALL MONTAGE

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Taking this idea into a contemporary context, we look at Las Vegas, a quintessential American city, plagued with a fragmented urban fabric and the betrayals of Urban Sprawl. Like many American cities, its downtown is in blight, corrupted by poverty, abandonment, drugs, and crime. Las Vegas is consumed by commercialism and greed. PreWWII, its downtown was seen as a bustling and walkable community. With the housing boom of the 50’s and 60’s, development shifted towards the suburbs with casinos moving their focus southwest of downtown where land was cheap. The development model became capital based with zero attention on building community. This resulted in a city that neglects the needs of its everyday communities. Lessons from Istanbul: Deploy an Evolved wall as an urban connecting device which distributes public amenities and community-oriented programs throughout the city. Light rail, footpaths, and linear parks could connect restaurants, cafes, museums, a “Wall–Mart,” and fitness centers. This circuit would connect downtown to “The Strip,” UNLV, resorts, and park n’ rides, making movement hassle-free for locals, suburbanites, and tourists. Las Vegas could finally have a more equitable distribution of power and money, in addition to being a vibrant community.

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CHRISTOPHER FORD | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: WENDELL BURNETTE YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2014 PROJECT NAME: UNIVERSITY CENTER

Located on ASU’s Downtown Campus, the University Center serves as both a metaphorical and physical gateway into the campus due to its immediate proximity to Civic Space Park and Taylor Mall. However, in its current condition, the structure lacks a definitive response to this role as it fails to acknowledge the university’s ideals and goals both aesthetically and functionally. While some renovations have been made over the years in an attempt to modernize the facility, it still maintains the identity of a building whose ownership has been dominated by the First National Bank of Arizona since its construction in 1955.

In an attempt to better respond to its context and role as a gateway, five simple yet impactful alterations were implemented in order to bring the building into the 21st century while making it an amenity for the University and the city as a whole. Guided by its context, these alterations were made in response to the existing shortcomings of the structure in hopes that the resulting facility would better respond to its role as the University’s gateway and a major piece of the Downtown urban fabric. Given the nature of the “skin” studio, the focus of this project was primarily placed on the sculptural louver system that dominates the building’s facade. The design of this system was derived from the prevalence of dynamic movement patterns in and around the building, specifically along Taylor Mall and Central Avenue. The color palette of the system responds to the neighboring Walter Cronkite School of Journalism while the sculptural qualities of the louvers

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were designed to complement the sculptural nature of Civic Space Park, specifically the Janet Echelman sculpture that dominates the park’s skyline. Additionally, the details of the louver system, including its spacing, thickness, and construction, were all based on a rigorous design process resulting in a system that maintains the aforementioned aesthetic goals while allowing for the maximum performance of the system.

XUEKE YANG | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: DIEGO GARCIA-SETIEN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: LOOP | ADAPTATION DESIGN OF ART AND NEEB BUILDINGS

This adaptive reuse design of two buildings encompassed in the Art School is based on an urban analysis of the ASU Tempe campus and surrounding area. Located in a transitional zone between school activities and residential communities, the Art and Neeb Buildings are provided with the opportunity of establishing itself as a new art center for ASU as well as local citizens, which helps to meet the manifesto of the New American University.

Built in the 1970s, the Art Building has been used as studios and offices for nearly 40 years. The original circulation system was designed as a narrow and closed loop surrounding the vertical core, with functional rooms occupying all the facades for openings. In order to create more public spaces for art education, corridors are extended through the non-bearing walls and connected with each other to form a circulation network for all levels. The surface of this new loop is covered by a series of metal belts. For the activity space in the loop, the metal belt can be opened at a specific angle serving as windows. While for the exhibition space, the faรงade is closed to protect the works from artists and students. This new loop can be used as public spaces not only for students in the Art School, but also for visitors with backgrounds in other disciplines. Exhibitions and teaching activities are organized in the newly-added gallery (loop) and courtyards which are open to the public, making this area an energetic place for both the ASU and local communities.

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HYSA DESIGN CHARRETTE | AIAS

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY: JOSH GREENE PHOTOS BY: EMREY KARENZI

In a signature and impactful event, the AIAS chapter successfully organized an all-day charrette involving students with a real project, a legitimate client, actual funding, and an opportunity to make a difference for the kids in the Herberger Youth Student Academy.

This event budded in the minds of Gary and Jeanne Herberger, philanthropists who established the Gary K Herberger Youth Academy and have been influential in providing art education to Arizonaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s youth. From a young age, Gary self-identified as gifted student with a passion for architecture. Throughout his education, he felt perpetually trapped by the rigid social constructs surrounding a traditional education and became determined to pave the way for young students going through the same struggles. The result was the establishment of the Gary K Herberger Youth Academy on the ASU West Campus which focuses on a curriculum addressing the distinct needs of gifted children. The Academy currently occupies a temporary structure nestled in the corner of the West Campus; their space is maxed out, and it is not conducive to the original vision of an innovative model for highly gifted learning. The Herbergers recently announced their desire to make a large contribution to ASU, stipulating that the money was only to be used for a new building that fits their original vision. Another stipulation for the donation made sure that current academy students and faculty had a voice in their new building. The AIAS chapter was responsible for coordinating all voices of the academy along with including the expertise of students and faculty from the Design School. Before the charrette, a team of architecture students interviewed the students and faculty of the Herberger Youth Academy. Their investigations prepped the members of the charrette with useful design information along with necessary background information on the current set up. Additionally, the team set out to do site analysis on potential new sites, and satellite sites across all four of ASU

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campuses. The work done before the charrette allowed for all participants to dive right into the design problem on the morning of the October 24th. After a brief introduction and some breakfast, the teams set out to design in diverse design teams. A team consisted of at least one gifted Herberger student, one faculty member from the academy, a professor of the Design School, a student of the Design School, and a board member of AIAS. Together, each team set out to design the future of the Herberger youth Academy. Teams worked all day, and the dialogue between the members was productive, engaging, and innovative. Gary and Jeanne even made the trip out to see their dream fulfilled. The room was filled with excitement as the two of them began to interact with each of the teamsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;their hearts filled with joy as they were able to see their ideas become a reality.

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AFRIDA HOQUE | THESIS

INSTRUCTOR: ELENA ROCCHI YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2016 PROJECT NAME: URBAN PATSHALA

“PatShala” is an indigenous system of education that existed in pre-British India. “Patshala” means “a seat for learning.” Education in this traditional institute was actually kept alive by the revenue contribution of the community including illiterate peasants. A wise man from the village were providing “shikha” and this was the watering holes of the culture of the traditional community. Thus the “school” is a weak translation of the role of this institution really played role in Indian society.

School was a term that was introduced when British education was implemented in India and the system of “patshala” was lost. Gandhi refers it as ‘a beautiful indigenous tree:’ “They scratched the soil and began to look at the root and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree perished. The village schools were not good enough for the British administrator, so he came out with his program. Every school must have so much paraphernalia, building, and so forth. Well, there were no such schools at all.” -Mahatma Gandhi The thesis project introduces the indigenous concept of “Patshala” to the urban context of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The question the thesis project is trying to find the answer to is how can “patshala” be an innovative learning tool that creates a spontaneous learning environment which is unique to the culture of contemporary Dhaka, Bangladesh. The project started by recreating the lost images of “patshala”. Like the village “patshala” the new school becomes a hub for the city. It brings the city closer to the existing water. The inspiration of “urban Patshala” came from the elements of the city that a child experiences in their lifetime.

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AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

DANE LEMMA | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: WENDELL BURNETTE YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2015 PROJECT NAME: ASU ART NETWORK OF TRANSLUCENT VOLUMES

My conceptual proposal for the ASU Art Museum focuses on the perceived qualities of light and space, which inherently improve the user’s art experience. The vibrant downtown campus for Arizona State University would benefit from a series of gallery volumes, which are interwoven through an integrated network of elevated skywalks.

These transparent skywalks unify the experience between galleries and create moments of reflection when observing the collections. The project’s ambition is the make light and form the highlight of one’s museum experience. Tall curvilinear forms filter natural daylight through an oculus from above, allowing a soft diffused light to wash the interior walls within the gallery spaces. The rectilinear volume toward the west of the site stands in stark contrast to the galleries, signifying its role as the preservation, research and curating component of the museum. Maintaining this separation brings a diversity of art experiences for museum visitors. A series of integrated pathways and shortcuts allows freedom to explore the various galleries as well as items within storage that are set on display. A courtyard facilitates the community with a restaurant/café, which shares an outdoor-indoor relationship. The arrangement and proportion of the gallery volumes serves to shade the outdoor courtyard and create comfortable outdoor spaces. The type of museum I envision for the new ASU Art Museum Downtown creates a strong urban edge for ASU’s downtown campus. The gallery volumes are indicative of the arts and create visual interest for the effervescent city of Phoenix.

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ZACHARY BUNDY | COMPETITION

MENTOR: CLAUDIO VEKSTEIN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: HMMD CASABLANCA BOMBING ROOMS COMPETITION

This project was designed for an international competition between professional architects, architecture enthusiasts, and architecture students. The challenge was to build a memorial library on the site of an infamous terrorist attack in Casablanca. In addition, designers were encouraged to think of ways to add community function and digital access within the library. The competitors were also expected to design a building while keeping in mind the hot and arid conditions in Morocco.

For my design, it was my goal to find as many ways as possible to bring up the themes of time and memory. Board-formed concrete and cold-rolled steel lattices make up most of the structure. For site organization, my entry utilizes a modified Moroccan Riad typology; the courtyard in the center is not perpendicular to the entry, and rather than a simple fountain, the courtyard has a 2-story depression in the center, marking the site of the bombing. In addition, the walls of the hollow courtyard filter sunlight into the basement floors of the library. The facade of the building makes a clear break from cornices of the connected buildings in order to highlight the seriousness of the events that transpired there. In addition, two tall board-formed concrete towers establish a circle of presence within the neighborhood, while also catching breezes in order to help cool the building. This project was first designed on paper, and then further designed and refined in Sketchup. Although Photoshop was used in post-production, 95 percent of the work was done with a combination of Visualizer and Sketchup. The renderings have intentionally been left grainy in order to achieve the feel of film grain in old cameras.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

DIAZ, SANTOS | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: CLAUDIO VEKSTEIN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: WALKING, READING, KNOWING: PIESTEWA PEAK PHOENIX BRANCH LIBRARY GROUP MEMBERS: FRANCISCO DIAZ, CLEYTON SANTOS

The studio’s approach to learn about and design a type of civic and cultural space was presented by our instructors in three steps. The first was learning about program, history and space by hand drawing the plans and sections of several world renowned classic library projects. Second, learning from the drawing and creating a physical section model examining the structure of these libraries. We were aiming to understand how the structure supports the architectural form and spaces within the library. The last step was the design of a Phoenix Branch Library on Piestewa Peak (Phoenix Mountains Preserve). The design process started by taking advantage of the existing pathways and topography of the site, thinking about how topography and existing pathways could designate the shape of the building. We took the idea of strolling through the existing landscape and the library aims to connect existing users of the Piestewa Peak to the library through community spaces and exterior rest areas. The library itself does not detract from the existing use of the peak, but adds to the trails and provides spaces for reflection, shaded rest,

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and community gathering. The title of the project has three concepts because we believe that these are the experiences which the users can have with the building. The spatial program is divided in three thematic axis: User: the program of the library where we can find the books and the spaces to study. This program is located as a whole in the second level of the building where the ascendant shape of the library is matched with a double vaulted block where users can find the tower of books as the bookshelves. Staff: disposed at the ground level of the library, the program shares the bottom part of the library with the community program. Staff is distributed in rooms facing the landscape with direct natural lighting coming through the openings of the facade. Community: these spaces are catered to the community in the nearby area and Piestewa’s users and hikers. This program can run after library hours, specifically the auditorium and the coffee bar designed in the building. Exterior public rest areas are available to enjoy the landscape or rest along the trails. This project’s aim is to engage the people and allow them to enjoy the natural site and its powerful landscape, through site seeing, walking, strolling, hiking, sharing, gathering, reading, communicating, and learning.

PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

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TUCSON FIRM CRAWL | AIAS

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY: QUOC TRUONG PHOTOS BY: EMREY KARENZI

Sometimes, when certain things align, our chapter is presented with an opportunity to venture far beyond our immediate community and behold a vision what an architectural education looks like outside of Tempe, Arizona. Whether it is Portland, Seattle, Chicago or San Francisco, the multitude of conferences that bring our organization together has provided a kaleidoscope of student experiences that has broadened my mind as to what an architecture education has the potential to be. But in between these monumental gatherings, there are moments when disparate chapters are reunited— often amidst the heat of a rigorous semester.

Despite the collegiate rivalry between our schools, the architectural student bodies of Arizona State University and the University of Arizona have always been on amicable terms—constantly learning from each other whenever our chapters meet. Last year, the ball was in our court when we hosted our Phoenix Firm Crawl where we visited the studios of Orcutt Winslow, Eddie Jones, Wendell Burnette and Will Bruder. This year, it was the Wildcats’ turn... and they did not disappoint. Line & Space, Rob Paulus, and Rick Joy were all on the agenda. It takes a colossal force of nature to wake a college student on the first morning of spring break but on Saturday, March 5th, more than a dozen of us hit the open road through 150 miles of Arizona highways that cut through a featureless desert expanse. One of us joked that we should just drive on straight through Tucson until we reach the rocky beaches of Puerto Peñasco... but the only shots we were downing that morning were espresso and not tequila. Our first stop was Line & Space, a small architecture firm less than two minutes away from UofA’s campus—made

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smaller with more than thirty students occupying the house they renovated into an amazing firm. The second firm was Rob Paulus, an architect with a down-to-earth sense of humor and a relatable work philosophy that reminded us of the simple joys of architecture. The finale of our journey was in the courtyards of Ricky Joy’s Studio, where in the embrace of rammed earth walls, we experienced something magnificent. At the end of the day it is imperative for us to venture outside of where we grew up so that we do not take things for granted. We learned that architecture does not discriminate between neither Wildcat nor Sun Devil.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

JOSHUA MELTON | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: WENDELL BURNETTE YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2016 PROJECT NAME: BATHING SPACE

“The motions we call bathing are mere ablutions which formerly preceded the bath. The place where they are performed, though adequate for the routine, does not deserve to be called a bathroom.” -Bernard Rudofsky

This bathing space sets out to create a relaxing, therapeutic, intimate, and private space. It separates the functions of a bathroom from that of a bath, providing users a place to not only clean themselves, but also to tend to themselves. Efficiency is key in any multifamily housing development; however, efficiency of space and cost do not detract from the materiality, function, and overall experience. All necessary components that make up a place for bathing: a toilet, sink, shower, towel racks, and bath are included in the design, with the toilet remaining visually separated from the bath. The implementation of filtered light, blurred exterior views, and surface materiality play a key role in the users’ visceral emotional connection. The bathing space is attached to the couple’s room and detached from all public aspects of the unit. Arranged by function and increasing intimacy, it begins with a private stall and single sink. These elements can easily be sectioned off, bypassed, and ignored. Next is a place for cleaning in which the shower is lit by filtered light and focuses on blurred exterior views. Lastly, the bath can be enjoyed by one or two people and evokes reflection and relaxation.

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NICOLE BONE | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: CLAUDIO VEKSTEIN YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: PHILIPS EXETER ACADEMY LIBRARY CASE STUDY

Completed in 1972, the Philips Exeter Academy Library houses Louis Kahn’s architectural philosophies. With the idea that “light is the giver of all presences,” Kahn’s focus was on the abstraction and influence of natural light for the benefit of the student.

incorporation of individual reading carrels. The presence and omission of light is dramatized by Kahn’s incorporation of Euclidean shapes. With the priority of the student in mind, the Exeter Library is “far from being a mere repository of books and periodicals, the library transforms into a modern laboratory for research and experimentation, a serene haven for study, reading and reflection, the intellectual center of the community.”

Two key features that set apart this institution was the dismantling of the central reading room and the

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FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT DAY | AIAS

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY: OLIVIA RAISANEN PHOTOS BY: EMREY KARENZI

Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect who has unquestionably affected the way architecture is perceived and approached. Taliesin West is located in North Scottsdale and was Wright’s self-designed home and studio, located near the David and Gladys Wright House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for his son. A Masters of Architecture program of twenty students is held at Taliesin West, and the students have the opportunity to live in and design shelters in the desert landscape as their place of living while school is in session. Both architectural works are near in proximity to ASU, so AIAS took advantage of the opportunity to organize a breakfast and shelter tour with the students at Taliesin West followed by a tour of the David and Gladys Wright House.

The morning began with a breakfast and mixer with the Taliesin West students, the experience a relaxed and enjoyable one complemented by favorable weather with coffee, bagels, and donuts on a balcony space overlooking the desert. We thoroughly enjoyed this space designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, conveniently tucked away from the public tours and clearly designed with intention for the view and comfort with just the right amount of shade and sun provided. Conversations were full of expression, interest, and passion as students from both schools listened and absorbed the stories and projects each was working on as well as casual conversation in general. Differences between approach to design and assignments were not as drastic as many had anticipated; the greatest differences between the stories shared by students from each school seemed to be lifestyles.

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While both groups clearly commit vast amounts of time and energy to their education with overwhelming passion, the Taliesin students were interested in our more “normalized” college lifestyle as ASU students were impressed with the fact that each of the Taliesin students sleep in shelters (designed by students) with no electricity or running water. The Taliesin students relayed that they enjoyed their education and the curriculum, but also really enjoyed the small amounts of time away from the school. It was fascinating that each student had the opportunity to put their designs to use personally in the design and building of their shelters, allowing for real experience of how the designs work and can be improved. Following the time spent at Taliesin West was the tour of the David and Gladys Wright house. The entire design contained circular elements of varying sizes to create a dynamic living space elevated above ground and overlooking the courtyard. First was a short explanation of the history of

the house by Mellie MacEachern, our tour guide, in the main living space of the house. The room was specifically designed for the acoustics of the beautiful piano it held, so one student played the instrument to demonstrate the acoustic abilities of the room. Shortly afterwards, the tour was lead to the roof of the building, from which the entire lot of land could be viewed comfortably. It was intriguing to see a house following circular gestures throughout the entire design directly after spending time at Taliesin West, which is full of angular elements. However, both designs were consistent throughout, creating architecture that provides a different, but fluid experience within each place, and exemplifying that they were indeed designed by one architect following a certain thought process. The day yielded a greater understanding of the great architect that was Frank Lloyd Wright and the way in which he designed using materials true to their nature to create architecture in which every element is integral.

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

YOUSEF AL-ROUMI | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: KASEY JOSEPHS YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: ADDITION TO CAMBRIDGE BOSTON LIBRARY CASE STUDY

Located in Boston, the Cambridge Public Library was restored and enlarged in 2009 to include a new addition designed by William Rawn Associates Architects (WRAA). Quadrupling the original library in size, the intention of this new addition is to connect the library to the adjacent public park. WRAA does so by creating a double glazed system that provides natural daylight and views to the park from its reading spaces. This library’s façade not only connects to the park through a continuous transparent front façade, but also helps cool or heat the building depending on the season.

Within the double glazed system, the louvers have the capability of rotating up to 45 degrees to manage the degree of light and air flow within the cavity. In the summer, the double glazing system opens up to allow for air movement inside the three-foot gap between the two glass walls; in doing so, the gap acts as a thermal flue which ventilates the hot air to the outside. In winter, the inlet and the outlet close, and the louvers are positioned to reflect the sun’s rays to heat the building’s interior. All in all, this addition pays particular attention to sustainability aspects, providing an optimal environment for library visitors who can enjoy a view out to its nearby park. This project has won several awards partially due to its innovation in façade design.

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CRISTIAN SALINAS | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: DARREN PETRUCCI YEAR COMPLETED: FALL 2015 PROJECT NAME: TANZENDE TURME BY BRT CASE STUDY

The Tanzende Türme, (Dancing Towers) in Hamburg, Germany is cladded in an innovative dual layer facade made up of aluminum and glass. Over 200,000 square feet façade make up for the movement of the “dancing building form.” In addition to that the skin provides adequate protection from the wind, sun, and sound while also granting great views of Hamburg as well.

The assembly of the curtain wall system is clearly the most innovative aspect about the buildings. To put it in perspective, each curtain wall panel is roughly 9ft by 11ft, and weighs around 1500 lbs. The largest of these panels, however, measures 9ft by 17.5ft, and weighs nearly 3,000 lbs. The units are secured from the ground, raised up via a crane, and “fished” by workers from up above. It is here where each panel is installed through a monorail system. Each individual units must be leaning towards each other at alternating angles with the inner façade twisting and facing the outer façade. In a way, the façade does a “passe doble” as its swings around the entire structures of both buildings. Regardless of the different angles of the facade, users of the buildings will still be able to open a window through an elongated door found in each panel. Adding to the already many layers of high technology, a compartment conceals a sun shading device on which sits in front of the inner skin. Similar to the interior door, the shading screen is operable by the users inside. Much thought and technology went into the development of the façade of the building, it literally is a building which began life from the outside and moved inwards.

Dancing Towers Hamburg Germany BRT ADE 521 Fall 2015 Petrucci Salinas

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

BATES, CLEVELAND, DEHGHANI, WILLIE | STUDIO

INSTRUCTOR: PHILIP HORTON YEAR COMPLETED: SPRING 2015 PROJECT NAME: CATALYST TOWER GROUP MEMBERS: SPENCER BATES, AARON CLEVELAND, SARA DEHGHANI, CHANDLER WILLIE

The programming for Catalyst Tower as set out by the studio called for a research center for design and construction management students at Arizona State University. The academic needs for the building would foster a collaborative environment between the two disciplines. We looked to push this programming further. Working collaboratively, we designed a building which met the needs of Tempe and ASU simultaneously. We saw the potential for infusing â&#x20AC;&#x153;industryâ&#x20AC;? into the program of the building. This would create a mutually beneficial space where students and professionals could exchange ideas and work together. The resources of the building could be shared between all. The project also included the redesign of an alley at the southern edge of the site which would become a public amenity for this emerging center of downtown Tempe. Working with this newly developed alley the project leveraged this public resource and supported it while also setting the

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stage for future development in the area. Concurrently, this building would act as a catalyst for urbanism in the emerging downtown Tempe, and a prototype for future development. Changing the current model of urban sprawl and isolated educational buildings, this project seeks to transform both these models and set the stage for future architecture at ASU and Tempe.

Academic Public

Public

Industry

Academic Industry

Industry Academic

Academic

“The Hinge”

“The Hinge” Industry

Industry “The Hinge”

“The Hinge”

AIAS AT ASU ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL

SUBMISSION INDEX

12 76 50 78 44, 73 30 46 67 16, 78 78 68 56 22 32, 60 31, 62 64 34 32 10 1, 2, 9 34, 42 32 18 32, 40 12 66 18, 24 49 50, 72 10, 14 16 18 22, 74 12 77 68 48 12 58 70 8 18 24 78 6 61 24 60, 66, 72 30, 48, 61 1, 32, 78 76 40 34 8, 9, 42, 49, 77 12, 46, 56, 58, 64 16, 18 50 22 10, 67, 68, 73

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Student Adalsteinsson, David Al-Roumi, Yousef Baker, Megan Bates, Spencer Bone, Nicole Boylan, Matthew Brewer, Susan Bundy, Zachary Cleveland, Aaron Dehghani, Sara Diaz, Francisco Downs, Michael Duplantier, Rene Ford, Christopher Greene, Josh Hoque, Afrida Howser, Zac Hu, Xinyu Jaros, Aubrey Kebert, Cathleen Kiefer, Ryan Kizzar, Ryker Knochel, Derek Kolden, Kevin Leber, Nathan Lemma, Dane Liebgold, Nicole Mancero, Felipe Melton, Joshua Nakhle, Bruna Palav, Gautam Poernomo, Andre Raisanen, Olivia Ramalingegowda, Sushma Salinas, Cristian Santos, Cleyton Shekerjian, Nicholas Simmons, Ron Smart, Christopher Truong, Quoc van Horne, Richard Weiler, Libby Whitesides, Ashley Willie, Chandler Wilson, Maria Yang, Xueke Instructor Bree, Dennis Burnette, Wendell Garcia-Setien, Diego Horton, Phil Josephs, Kasey Kelley, Kristian Murff, Scott Petrucci, Darren Rocchi, Elena Rowen, Marthe Ryan, Mark Spellman, Catherine Vekstein, Claudio

6 14 44 62 70 74

AIAS Studio Culture Bicycle Haus Arcosanti Sketching Workshop HYSA Design Charrette Tucson Firm Crawl Frank Lloyd Wright Day

31 67

Competition Capture HMMD Casablanca Bombing Rooms Competition

4, 5 26 36

Essay A Response to “Transformative Agency” Water Ways: Reveries with Water Intricacy and the Schroeder House

Exhibition “Prima Materia” Exhibition

4 5 36 52 18 26

Faculty Contributions Hejduk, Renata Horton, Philip Meunier, John Rocchi, Elena Rowen, Marthe Spellman, Catherine

Sketch Frame and Frameless Sketches

76 66 72 56 78 10 32 8 22 49 58 12 24 34 50 40 16 30 46 61 48 9 73 77 60 68

Studio Addition to Cambridge Boston Library Case Study ASU Art Network of Translucent Volumes Bathing Space Caravansary Catalyst Tower Corrosive, Erosive, Abrasive Design Build Research Institute Design School Intervention Dualities Enzo Ferrari Museum Case Study Evolved | A Catalyst for Community FABRICA Fire Station 9 | Common Ground Fire Station 55 | Responsive Passive Design Free University’s Philology Library Case Study Goodyear City Masterplan and Public Spaces HIDA Glassbox at Circle Records, Downtown Phoenix Incision La Cosa: THPHCH LOOP | Adaptation Design of Art and Neeb Buildings Media-TIC Building Case Study Overpainting ASU’s Art and Neeb Buildings Philips Exeter Academy Library Case Study Tanzende Turme by BRT Case Study University Center Walking, Reading, Knowing: Piestewa Peak Phoenix Branch Library

42 64

Thesis Increasing Well-Being with Urban Biophilic Microdwelling Communities Urban Patshala

Short Essays

Studio Projects

Competitions

Sketches

COVER IMAGE CREDIT: AUBREY JAROS, BRUNA NAKHLE

discipline

aias at asu architecture journal Arizona State University Herberger Institute of Design Spring 2016 | Issue 02