ISSUE 14 by utexas2018

EDITORS Brennen Birch, Editor in chief Hannah Bacon Eeshna Gupta Eric Joyce Annie Liu Krishnan Mistry Hannah Williams

INTERVIEWERS Brennen Birch Rebecca Kennedy

SUBMISSIONS COMMITTEE Hannah Bacon, Coordinator Hannah Williams, Coordinator Tian Bian Pooja Chaudhari Marett Flores Rachel Hudson Dylan King Marjan Miri Janelle Nelson Kellie Nguyen Tim Petersen Michael Rahmatoulin Miguel Rodriguez Savannah Simenhoff

Dear Reader, Supposedly, ISSUE has an office. It’s in a closet in the West Mall Building. There’s a chance it’s filled with back issues of ISSUE, or spiders or snakes or piñatas or old plots or old models. Your guess is as good as ours. Without an official space, the planning of ISSUE happened on the first floor of Goldsmith and the classroom in the Materials Lab. The book was put together on laptops at our studio desks and in our beds or coffee shops or wherever we could find an outlet and a reasonably comfortable chair. The book we present is a collection of student work, and it represents a year of architectural fantasies, fictions, and one or two realities. In the following pages, we’ve tried to show what it means to be an architecture student in Austin, Texas in 2017. We have feelings towards it. We’re sure you do too. It’s one way of looking at UT and understanding the school’s identity, and it’s us—the editors—trying to understand the role that ISSUE plays within the school. We hope that what we’ve done excites something in you. The Editors

On Interior Design Interview with Nerea Feliz

Studio Paris Nuova Isola Connecting Urban Fabrics

Why Study History? Interview with Sarah Lopez

Georgian Landscapes

Bourbon, Bullets, and Bodies Essay By Kathleen Conti

Berlin Techno Club 24

38 Icelandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Digital Economy 46

Objects of an Uncertain Nature Horizon Shift Whole Earth Subvertisement HQ Scuba RuskÂ National Culinary Institute Afterimage

W.E.S.H Brick, Brick, Vault WALL Compounding Urbanism Guelph Market Hall

The Eastern Archipelago 84

Santa Elena Spine Rooted Vertical Compound

90 Monastery of Refuge

146 Urban Farming 106

Digital Collage Amalgam The Park The Ideal Made Real Rosedale School

116

Dwell-ification: Essay by Hannah Simonson

124

Future City Cut / Color / Copy Serial Stools KMA3

Forum 152

Presentation and Representation Essay by Juan Jofre

158

Sling Chairs Inhabit Ginko Chair Store Invisible Buildings Civic Pool Collective Space and Water Intersecting Tracks Bouldering Park Hydro-Thinkery Analog Foundations

136 H/P/H 142

Harlem Housing Spectre

Goldsmith Studio. Photo by Katie Hill. Courtesy of the School of Architecture Visual Resources Collection, The University of Texas at Austin.

ISSUE XIV

On Interior Design

Hotel Room Vignette, Brennen Birch, MID I

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN NEREA FELIZ AND BRENNEN BIRCH

UTSOA Sure. Interior organization, surface treatments and furnishings enable the appropriation of space by its users, at the same time, interior design is a manifestation of social and cultural values. Interior design’s focus on the body’s most immediate layers of the built environment makes it a key discipline in shaping human comfort both at a physiological and a cultural level.

Nerea, I’ll preface this question by saying that I’m having trouble wording it. Because it takes the position that interior design is something separate from architecture. You studied architecture before going on to work for Foster and Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects, where you became interested in interior design. Can you talk about your journey from architecture to interior design? What would you say is the division between the two disciplines? Are they becoming more distinct—more specialized— practices, or more similar over time? Zaha Hadid was the type of architect who designed everything from a city masterplan to a vase. My architecture education at the ETSAM in Madrid didn’t make clear distinctions between interiors, urban planning, architecture, or landscape. There is definitely a degree of naïveté to this type of attitude that overlooks the complexity and specific knowledge required to successfully perform each, but there is also the potential for a fertile cross-pollination among different design fields. I have always been drawn to the design of the spaces within buildings. I fully agree with Michael Benedikt when he says that buildings are designed to host interiors. During the two years I worked for ZHA, I worked exclusively in interiors. We designed every single detail up to the door knobs. Working at ZHA opened my eyes to the richness and complexity of designing interior spaces and the potential for radical transformation of space derived from the use of surface treatments and furnishings; it made me aware of how interior design converts neutral space into a time-specific cultural product.

Moving up in scale, I’m interested in this idea of interior urbanism championed by architects like Winy Maas of MVRDV. The idea is that some buildings now are taking on the character of an indoor city. I think it’s an expansion on some of the ideas from Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York and S, M, L, XL. This semester, Primo Orpilla is teaching an advanced interior design studio here at our school—one could argue that the workplaces from his practice Studio O+A are examples of interior urbanism. When Primo describes the workplace environments that his firm designs, he sounds like he is describing a small town, and not the tenth floor of an urban high rise; one workplace might contain a town hall, a workshop, a library, and a café. Beyond workplaces, we see this urbanistic organization happening in other indoor environments traditionally handled by interior designers, like hotels and museums. Maybe there is a need for a new type of specialist that is someone more like a hybrid of an interior designer and an urban planner. How do you think a student of interior design can prepare themselves to succeed as this new type of design practitioner? Interior urbanism is an increasingly common condition. Interior spaces have progressively grown in scale, also, contemporary environments are challenging the traditional associations of the interior with intimacy and the exterior with pub-

You've spoken at length before about interior designers’ unique relationship with materials and tactile surfaces. Can you speak a bit about that?

ISSUE XIV While talking with Anupama Kundoo before her lecture yesterday, I was struck by something she said about the effects of globalization. She said, "I can go anywhere in the world, and I already know what the person at the front desk at the hotel is going to be wearing. This kind of corporate globalization reduces the human to a common person; we no longer know how to be natural and intimate." This resonated with me because that sentiment echoes the conversations weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re having in the Places Where I Have Slept studio. I just said a few moments ago that interiors in general are becoming more like cities, but I think they are all also becoming hotels; hospitals and movie theatres now feature concierge desks as a standard feature. What is it about the hotel that is such a rich topic for discussion? What is very interesting about tourism is that, while globalization inevitably homogenizes the built environment, the tourism industry relies on cultural identity to maintain itself. The design of a contemporary hotel needs to reconcile these opposing forces: local versus global, authenticity versus familiar comfort, the

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m taking your studio Places Where I Have Slept this semester. The class is a pretty even split between students studying architecture and students studying interior design. As the first exercise toward designing a hotel, you asked each person in studio to select one element from a hotel room to design. The choices were bed, floor, wall, ceiling, mirror, and curtain. What do you think about the way students assigned themselves to the different elements for this exercise? Do you notice the two types of students approaching the same element in different ways? Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m very excited about the combination of students' backgrounds in my studio this semester. We have only been working on the project for a few weeks but as a first impression I would say that interior design students and architecture students do bring different skills to the classroom. Interior design students are used to working with surfaces and furnishings and engaging materiality at a very early stage of the design process, while architecture students are more inclined to start thinking in terms of spatial organization. I think both approaches are complementary and I can already see a rich and productive exchange of skills taking place in the classroom.

Hotel Room Rendering, Georges Fares, MID II

NEREA FELIZ

lic performance. Just as interior spaces become increasingly "urbanized", the semiotics of the interior are often adopted in outdoor public urban environments. I am very interested in the multifaceted intersection between private interior spaces and public urban places. As part of the School of Architecture at UT, interior design students have access to the range of expertise from the Architecture program, the Urban Design program, the Landscape program, and the Community and Regional Planning program. I think students here are in a privileged position to learn from each other and explore these areas of multidisciplinary overlap.

UTSOA Hotel Plan, Gabriel Gatica, M Arch II

appeal of uniqueness versus the influence of worldwide trends. Hotels raise a number of core architectural design issues such as branding, globalization, gentrification, authentication, and lifestyle. I am personally interested in hotels because they present an interesting combination of intimacy and collectiveness. It’s an opportunity to reflect on the construction of a public and generic form of instant intimacy.

the present. My course introduces students to a selection of seminal experimental projects within our discipline in order to learn how the authors of these projects have addressed, through design, some of the major preoccupations of our time. I think that the return of collage as a generative design tool is quite natural given the availability of drawing and modeling software and the infinite online availability of images. Contemporary collages are very different from their predecessors because they are digitally produced through a combination of techniques: modeling, rendering, line work, and fragments of found media. I think digital collage is very promising, not so much as a reincarnation of preceding aesthetics, but as a medium that has the potential to create fascinating, new and complex hybrids. Superstudio and thinkers like them were popularized through publications like the magazine Casabella. I feel that, because of the rise of the Internet, we have lost these singular critical voices that were the design magazines. I think it is unfortunate that many students now start and end their design research on platforms like Pinterest and Instagram. There is an overabundance of images and a dearth of criticality or curation. In this environment, how can students be critical and engage with a more intellectual or academic dialogue again?

BRENNEN BIRCH

You also teach a seminar each spring called Inside Utopia. In the seminar, you use the idea of utopia as a pedagogical framework to examine architectural theory and drawing techniques. Just walking around school during pin-ups and reviews, you can tell that students are really drawn to this sort of surreal, collage-driven drawing style from groups like Archizoom and Superstudio. Why do you think this kind of visual representation is re-emerging now? I believe that utopia is a great pedagogical framework because it enables critical thinking—the fact that Superstudio’s drawings are trendy in some circles is a bonus! In my seminar Inside Utopia, students learn about the ideas behind utopian projects, as well as how these ideas are manifested through specific graphic techniques. I think utopian projects are interesting, not as mere speculative projections into an indeterminate future, but as a vehicle used by designers as a critical consideration of

ISSUE XIV

NEREA FELIZ

Following up on that, what are some of your favorite architecture or design journals? I particularly enjoy reading MONU, Harvard Design Magazine, and The Architectural Review. When it comes to interior design, IDEA JOURNAL, Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture, and Int|AR are my favorite. And there are a number of insightful design journals that are fully accessible online, like MAS Context or CityLab.

Nerea Feliz is a licensed architect in Spain and the UK, currently teaching as an Assistant Professor at UTSOA. She has previously worked for Foster & Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects, among others. Brennen Birch is a graduate student in the Master of Interior Design program at UTSOA. He has previously worked for the design consultancy Frog and this summer will work under Petra Blaisse at Inside Outside in Amsterdam.

Worm's Eye View of a Hostel Room, Mitch Flora, B Arch

Finally, there seems to be a lot of disagreement among interior design programs about what to call themselves. Here at UT, our program is called interior design, but many schools go by other names such as interior architecture or spatial design. What do you think these schools are trying to accomplish from veering away from the more traditional title of interior design? Interior design has a short history as a recognized and distinct discipline. By referring to interior design as interior architecture or spatial design, these programs are trying to challenge a number of misconceptions, such as interior design being reduced to interior decoration, or its association with luxury and outdated gender roles. Docents and practitioners seek to communicate how the construction of interior space is comprehensive in nature, often involving major spatial manipulation, as well as the inclusive nature of interior design and its role in the overall establishment of safe and healthy environments (including many non-exclusive environments such as schools and hospitals). In this respect, I think all programs, despite using different terms, actually agree that beyond creating a beautiful backdrop for human activities, interior design can determine the quality of peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lives, just like architecture and urbanism, but at a different scale.

Students today are very lucky to have immediate access to so much information but as a result they face the challenge of needing to filter and select what to read. Fortunately there are a lot of academic design journals that are carefully curated. Students should actively seek these kinds of platforms and avoid consumption of mere eye-candy. With so much available digitally, I hope that students still take advantage of the amazing collection at the architecture library here at UT, it is one of the most beautiful spaces to hang out in the whole of campus!

Hotel Curtain Print,Brennen Birch, MID I

UTSOA

BRENNEN BIRCH

ISSUE XIV

BERLIN TECHNO CLUB

INDEPENDENT STUDIO

Dylan King

UTSOA

This nightclub is dedicated to the potential patrons of Berghain who were denied entry at the door.

FRANCISCO GOMES

INDEPENDENT STUDIO

ISSUE XIV

Order has no place here, compelling users to develop autonomous relationships with the spaces that surround them. Through compounding forms, a variety of spatial conditions are conceived. Chaos ensues, producing the allusion of organic space. Users create personally-tailored mental maps of the building, recalling specific spatial conditions, geometries, textures, and colors based solely on affection. Through exploring the complexities of the resulting maze, one becomes preferential toward certain characteristics. Individuals organize themselves spontaneously through these personal affinities. Amplified in multitude, this process breeds hyperspecific pools of collective consciousness under the veil of disintegration. In the social climate of a nightclub, where hundreds of people share the same space while maintaining vastly different experiences, users become more likely to â&#x20AC;&#x153;find the others.â&#x20AC;?

UTSOA

FRANCISCO GOMES

INDEPENDENT STUDIO

ISSUE XIV

UTSOA

FRANCISCO GOMES

“My style is out of my control.”

Tim Petersen

Paul Hazelet

Megan Linquest

Objects of an Uncertain Nature was a three-week design exercise conducted in Michael Benediktâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Advanced Studio in the fall of 2017. The concept of object-oriented-ontology was explored in the form of physical artifacts.

Patrick Schoonover

Yiqun Yang

Ian Randall

Evan Greulich

Clayton Cain

OBJECTS OF AN UNCERTAIN NATURE

ISSUE XIV

HORIZON SHIFT

VERTICAL STUDIO

Jayme Gritch & Mabel Loh

UTSOA

Supported by a network of steel framing from the neighboring buildings, the site is filled with a vivid field of light composed of 160 pink LED tubes. The luminance level of the lights is set at a default of 15 lux and controlled by the movement of people,

MATT FAJKUS

to specifically light up spaces that are occupied. A system of water pipes interlaces with the field of light, carrying water to certain zones. Pockets of atmospheric zones featuring different levels of light and water provide the public with various experiences as they are invited to linger in a space that was once an underused, informal circulation path between the two campus buildings.

Horizon Shift is a light and water installation designed for the courtyard between the Student Activity Center and Gregory Gymnasium at UT Austin. The project creates a experiential public space that questions the function and aesthetics of conventional light design and water features in public spaces. The field of lights and water is lifted off the ground, shifting the field of view to above, allowing for an open, uninterrupted ground space for public activities.

ISSUE XIV

WHOLE EARTH SUBVERTISEMENT HEADQUARTERS Ian Randall In an exploration of the potential influence that architectural design holds on how America’s socio-economic and political concerns are shaped— the notion of speaking truth to society’s underlying authorities—a multi-story structure will serve as the new headquarters for a collection of subvertisement publication and media outlets. Drawing from the ideals of Guy Debord’s Situationism and Graham Harman’s Object Oriented Ontology, Building, interpreted as Object, provides an outlet of expression and disruption of the image-driven “society of the spectacle.”

ADVANCED STUDIO

From the 80’s-born, anti-capitalistic print activists, Adbusters, to a YouTube-production documentary film collective, Truth Industries, such organizations’ office spaces were paired with public program including a night-club, coffee shop, and art gallery. The building’s site takes the place of the previous Whole Earth Provisions headquarters at the corner of San Antonio and 24th Street in West Campus. In the given design proposition, a subdued and diagrammatic approach is taken in which a tapered structure cuts the site in half, reserving a portion for an enclosed civic space of human proportion. Within the building, a number of strategies are employed to dissolve the division between private office and public leisure space; with an exposure of the inner-workings of subvertisement to the public, the speaking of “truth” is put on display.

UTSOA

MICHAEL BENEDIKT

ISSUE XIV

SCUBA

COMPREHENSIVE STUDIO

Ui Jun Song & Anthony Vannette

for a unique viewpoint of the subsurface aquatic exercises. Every aspect of the building emphasizes the critical role water plays in our lives.

Scuba reimagines how a school can better serve its students, as well as how a performance venue can engage the public in a novel and informational manner. The combination of a magnet school with an urban scale athletic venue produces an unique intersection of experiences. For the students, it offers a focused understanding of aquatic activities in addition to general education and vocational training. For the rest of the city, Scuba provides a place to watch the aquatic skills being taught within.

Scuba utilizes a radiant heating and cooling strategy that capitalizes on the diving tank, which acts as a heat sink. Interior spaces are organized around the diving tank as well, so that students can also enjoy the aquatic activities even when they are not training. The project also proposes to relocate the Second Street Districtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cooling tower from the adjacent block, anticipating the future growth of the city and freeing space to allow for active programs to be designed around the block.

Visitors to the park can view the three-story diving tank from afar and watch students hone their scuba diving, free-diving, and underwater construction and welding skills. Moving onto the site, visitors are introduced to a sculpted landscape that either elevates audiences to watch students compete in various aquatic events or submerges them to allow

UTSOA

MATT FAJKUS

ISSUE XIV

RUSK STATE HOSPITAL Ui Jun Song

of vertical circulation creates a gradient from low-level interaction in the therapy mall to high at the public court area at the top. The perpendicular programmatic layers also contribute in controlling interaction and isolating circulation for staff, guests, and patients. These systems maintain consistent visual connections with nature while maintaining the presence of the existing Building 501 façade, creating a new face for the Rusk State Hospital.

Rusk State Hospital uses therapeutic landscapes to promote mental healing for the patients. Following the overall concept of the campus, the renovation of Building 501 also preserves the patient’s physical and visual connection with nature as a method of healing while providing the security required for patients. The main goal was to achieve visual transparency throughout the building to allow engagement with the landscape, control the level of patient interaction, and give a new face to Building 501 by layering program, nature, and structural systems.

INTERMEDIATE STUDIO 4

To achieve this concept, a system of light steel and glass is layered with program and landscape at the front of the building. This system makes Building 501’s existing wall and concrete structure part of the new layered system, marking a threshold between conditioned and unconditioned space. The dematerialized steel and glass system allows visual connections with the therapeutic landscape while creating a physical buffer for the patients. A system

UTSOA

DEAN ALMY

ISSUE XIV

NATIONAL CULINARY INSTITUTE

ADVANCED STUDIO

William McCommon

UTSOA

By emphasizing unique traditions which evolved from scarcity, the National Culinary Institute brings this food culture into the 21st Century and to the world at large. Located at the edge of the water, the projects acts as a beacon, and projects in and out to educate visitors.

Four historic food preservation techniques are emphasized: smoking, drying, brining/infusing, and fermenting. Each technique is housed within an

KEVIN ALTER

articulated â&#x20AC;&#x153;hearth,â&#x20AC;? all of which are spanned by a large greenhouse roof. Below, four kitchens and five markets engage the public and present the culinary face of Iceland.

The National Culinary Institute preserves traditional Icelandic culinary techniques and encourages new talent among Icelandic chefs. Located at the intersection of the cultural district, the harbor, and the cruise ships docks, the National Culinary Institute brings together tourists, local traditions, and innovation.

ISSUE XIV

AFTERIMAGE

TRAVEL SCHOLARSHIP PHOTOGRAPHY

Asher Intebi

UTSOA

In the beginning, my interest in film photography stemmed from several factors: a rebellion against the limitless nature of digital photography, a desire to reconnect to an heirloom film camera passed down to me, and an interest in exploring the various amenities of the School of Architecture. Unexpectedly, my film camera grew to become one of the most profound influences on my architectural education at The University of Texas.

meaning and poiesis that exists in our world. Simultaneously, it forces the hand of the photographer to maneuver the mechanics of the camera in an unforgiving synchronization with the subject. As a result of the riskiness of the film and arduous sequence of development, the final image not only physically modifies the silver-halide crystals suspended within the paper fibers, but also transforms our own memory of the subject. That is to say, through darkroom development techniques, we can do more than just create a physical memory of the experience; we can alter the images to communicate the emotion of the experience. Further, we have the ability to use photography to curate and retell our past, just as we use architecture to sequence and shape our present experiences.

The concepts discovered through my architectural education have forever altered my perception of film photography, and likewise, my film photography has greatly informed my design ideology. Despite the additional burdens associated with shooting on black and white film, the analog process trains the eye to more sensitively filter the abundance of

ISSUE XIV

ICELANDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S DIGITAL ECONOMY

ADVANCED STUDIO

Will Powell

UTSOA

KEVIN ALTER

With few natural resources save for an abundance of cheap and renewable energy, Icelandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s government has declared its support of the digital arts as an alternative to the increasingly decadent and unsustainable tourism industry.

ISSUE XIV

Sited on Reykjavik’s historic Old Harbor, this project is a tool library and incubator for the digital creative economy, providing Icelandic artist with inspiration through interaction, access to equipment and a platform to display their work. Beneath a translucent curtain of glass, a series of district interiors and intermittent open spaces are protected against the harshness of the North Atlantic coast. Each interior corresponds to a particular program with specialized spaces for the inspiration, creation and exhibition of a particular art form. the interiors are interconnected with vertical circulation between them. Acting as a second skin, the translucent curtain facade exemplifies the unique and ever-changing conditions at the edge of the arctic circle by both obscuring and capturing the world outside.

Isolated on an infertile and geologically unstable island, the nation of Iceland has historically been dependent on the sea as its primary source of life. However, the 21st Century has seen a rapid pivot to an economy largely based on tourism. The harbor warehouse becomes a gift-shop, the formidable volcanic landscape becomes the backdrop for an ever-growing number of selfies and the reclusive puffin is served between two buns with a side of chips.

ADVANCED STUDIO

With few natural resources save for an abundance of cheap and renewable energy, Iceland’s government has declared its support of the digital arts as an alternative to the increasingly decadent and unstable tourism industry. This project endeavors to give the digital creative economy a physical home and a symbolic presence as an increasingly important part of Iceland’s industry and culture.

UTSOA

KEVIN ALTER

ADVANCED STUDIO

ISSUE XIV

UTSOA

KEVIN ALTER

“While we wish to engage architecture directly, the fact that we don’t produce its final version forces us to talk about it in the abstract.”

Juan Jofre

ISSUE XIV

W.E.S.H. Patrick Schoonover

ADVANCED STUDIO

The Whole Earth Subvertisement Headquarters, WESH, aims to speak truth to power. Informed by Object Oriented Ontology and Situationalism, WESH houses several institutions and activities whose purpose is to discover and disseminate information that interferes with, corrects, satirizes, and replaces some part of the flow of mis- and disinformation that constitutes the society of spectacle today. In OOO, objects are m orethan what they do or are used for. Extrapolating to architecture, WESH is other than superficial. This architecture is a sheep in wolves clothing. Taking cues from the modernism of SOM and the ubiquity of the generic plan, this building satirizes a typical capitalist corporate headquarters through amplification. The counterculture programs of the interior are enveloped by an intensely regular facade order, asking the city to both “look at me” and “move along” at the same time. It is both extraordinary and mundane, outgoing and selfconscious, yet thoroughly a whole. The subtle relationship of the horizontal facade to floor plates, as two distinctly separate systems which interact and overlap, creates a buffer between an aggressive, ordinary, outward posture and a phenomenological, introverted, interior experience. This order, as well as the regular structure throughout the plan, is paramount to the affect, allowing for unexpected and advantageous adjacencies to arise from the mundanity of an office tower. A second glance is necessary to unwrap the credibility of this institution (or any institution). Perhaps a passerby will ask what is really going on inside WESH, and who am I to ask?

UTSOA

MICHAEL BENEDIKT

ISSUE XIV

BRICK, BRICK, VAULT

INTEGRATIVE STUDIO

Savannah Simenhoff and Tim Petersen

Located off of Northland Drive and adjacent to Shoal Creek, The Rosedale School provides a safe and inspiring environment for children with cognitive and physical disabilities to learn and grow. Bound by the creek, and protected by a dense network of trees, the campus is both secluded and inviting. Using a unique system of structural brick vaults coupled with modern and light channel glass, the resulting campus reflects durability, security, and a sense of discovery. The project can be best under-

stood through our attempt to achieve three main goals. The first, to create a comfortable and secure learning environment for students to mature and progress. The second, to provide multipurpose and flexible spaces that encourage social interaction across age and ability. And lastly, to help students feel at ease in their surrounding natural environment through the use of frequent yet protected outdoor circulation and close interior and exterior spatial relationships.

UTSOA

FRANCISCO GOMES

ISSUE XIV

WALL Angela Vanella & Ezra Wu

research clusters, each formally manifested in a different way.

Introverted architecture is uncomfortable to talk about for contemporary designers. When asked to interrogate the “urban compound”, many of which have historically manifested themselves in dramatically interior-oriented constructions, combined with today’s political milieu, in which the country’s concerns seem to have shifted inward, this project became a testing ground for exploring inward-focused design. This project became about the Wall.

However, the project also includes certain programs that were not as private, such as an auditorium, gallery, night club, food truck lot, running path, and gym, requiring the boundary to be broken down. This is where the project lies. While strict with its denial of physical access, this boundary allows for those who cannot enter the interior of the compound to experience something unique as well. The Wall becomes the destination. The Wall is a place where those inside and those outside come together instead of a means by which they are divided. WALL is to redefines the role of boundary.

INTEGRATIVE STUDIO

The traditional walled compound was a clear approach to providing the physical security necessary for a scientific research institution. The inside of the wall enclosure is composed of five

UTSOA

MARTIN HAETTASCH

ISSUE XIV

COMPOUNDING URBANISM Philip Richardson & Patrick Schoonover

loose and experiential program weaving through and around the complex. The figural space around the nodes opens up at key moments to reach out to and pull east Austin through the compound, establishing a horizontal datum which only the four nodes break through vertically. This series of gestures animates the public realm to work in conjunction with the rigidly formal nodes in a cohabitative relationship and extends the reach of the institution beyond its property boundary. The result is a compound which is both familiar and intriguing, serving as a model for connecting institutions to a developing city.

INTEGRATIVE STUDIO

In opposition to current development happening in Austin, and at a critical point in the transition of East Austin, we reject the developer strategy of filling an entire site with enclosed volumes of program. Rather our goal is to define primary nodes of specialized program which are enveloped by public figural surfaces. This relationship promotes promiscuous proliferation of program within the compound and induces a dialogue between the private research institute and the general public. These relationships are manifest by separating the program into four functional nodes of private, specific, program contrasted and connected with

UTSOA

MARTIN HAETTASCH

ISSUE XIV

GUELPH MARKET HALL Christian Peña

INTERMEDIATE STUDIO 3

This proposed market hall creates a new center for the heart of Guelph, Canada. The market hall brings order to the site by creating two new axes. One connects the river to city hall, and the other connects the residential area to the train station, providing a point from which the city can grow. This imposing form marks the new cultural hub of Guelph at an urban scale.

UTSOA

MARTIN HAETTASCH

PARIS STUDIO Roland Fontaine, Laure Mouly, Danielle Ndubisi, Joshua Padilla, Kaylen Parker & Côme Rolin

Roland Fontaine, Laure Mouly, Danielle Ndubisi, Joshua Padilla, Kaylen Parker & Côme Rolin

Sarah Boulerhcha, Federico Caciagli, Greyson Rubin, Axel Sonesson & Nina Unger

Nathan Chen, Andrew Hong, Camille Montbel, Ida Rey & Samantha Shiminski

The Europe / Paris Program is a semester of study that emphasizes a broad and integrated experience covering the buildings, landscapes, and urban fabric across Europe. With a unique itinerary every fall, each city visited presents its own special study opportunities with regard to design, history, and visual communication.

Layal Al Haddad, Theo Alliot, Dana Moore, Franco Palomo, Madison Schell & Francesco Venini

ISSUE XIV

NUOVA ISOLA

INTERMEDIATE STUDIO 2

Nathan Chen

UTSOA

a series of structures that maximize commercial, residential, and, recreational aspects of the site. A singular bridge and market hall + restaurant structure connects the new island housing the International Trade Fair with the rest of the city. On the island side, a rowing center structure engages pedestrians on the waterside promenade. A recreational green space brings rare open space to the city on the island side. A tertiary mixed-use zone on the city-side buffer between the land and the recreational island. The flexibility, proximity, and richness of both the current site programs and introduced programs creates a new waterfront for Genoa’s citizens. The project focuses upon the Genoan citizens who have been overshadowed by the city’s large trading and tourism industries.

This project seeks to maximize the Blueprint plan by introducing a new layer of urbanism along Genoa’s waterfront. Sited south of the Port of Genoa and adjacent to both the International Trade Fair and Genoa’s largest sport venue, the project acts as a programmatic anchor to the city’s new canal. The newly carved canal is engaged through

CHARLTON LEWIS

The Port of Genoa has the most maritime traffic in Italy, attracting industry shipments, trading, ferries, and cruise liner tourism. However, the physical location of these industries has long separated the city’s citizens from direct access to the sea. Thus, Renzo Piano introduced the Blueprint, a master plan that carves a canal from the Old Port of Genoa to the International Trade Fair in order to reconnect the city with the sea.

ISSUE XIV

CONNECTING URBAN FABRICS Winn Chen & Molly Spetalnick

increase at transportation notes along the spine of the S-Bahn. We propose a series of network-wide improvements aimed at increasing connectivity and permeability throughout the site, followed by a variety of focused improvements at each identified transportation node. These six nodes support six zones, three of which retain the existing fabric and employ a strategic infill approach and three of which establish new street networks that are sized to combine the typical Berlin perimeter block typology with a space syntax-driven approach to bikeable and walkable connectivity.

ADVANCED STUDIO

Faced with the projection that the city of Berlin will grow by over 1.5 million people by 2050, this proposal looks specifically at the BundesstraĂ&#x;e 96a Corridor in the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Southeast, and re-imagines it as a spine for a series of transit-oriented urban developments. This corridor, one of 14 radial transit catchment zones that the project identifies within Outer Berlin will have to accommodate an estimated population increase of 117,500. As we expect alternative modes of transportation to become integral to 2050 Berlin, the multi-modal approach requires that infrastructure and density

UTSOA

WILFRIED WANG

ISSUE XIV

Why Study History?

Photo: C.J. Alvarez

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN SARAH LOPEZ AND REBECCA KENNEDY

UTSOA Sarah, you describe yourself as a built environment historian, but your research often concerns the present, as well as much more than buildings themselves. So, what does being a built environment historian mean to you? It means studying the entire built environment, all of the different building types and landscape elements that are material evidence of social, political, and cultural history. It means using all the different aspects of the built environment as a primary source of evidence. So, the thing that I think of that distinguishes me from, say, a typical social historian, is that they are using correspondences, let’s say, or diaries, right? And I’m using the material artifacts of everyday people’s lives, I’m using all kinds of building types—from houses to gas stations, farmsteads to post offices. It’s just a more inclusive term. My PhD is in architectural history, but it’s a term that signifies that within architectural history I’m someone who looks more broadly at the built landscape.

20th Century, late 20th Century period, because I’m interested in looking at subjects for whom those early periods are harder to come by, in terms of architecture. There’s amazing stuff that’s been written by historians about migrants, in the early 20th Century, and I rely heavily on that material for background, but in terms of some of the architectural stories that I try to get at, that oral history and that ethnography is a necessary component. History is present. History is around us, history shapes everything. And, history is the primary way for me to understand and decode my built environment. And my surroundings. So, for other people, maybe they have a different point of reference, right? Maybe they primarily understand where they are through the shape and form of things, like they look at something and they can immediately relate with and resonate with the formal aspects of this place. But my first point of entry into a place is like, what happened here to make it like it is? That’s my first question. And then come the other questions. Our orientations are different.

So, it’s a different way of looking at the world from, say, a designer or another architectural historian? Yeah, so it’s a way of looking at the world, but it’s also because the subjects I’m interested in—I’m interested in migration, I’m interested in migrants—they’re subjects that often are not in archives at all. And if they are in archives, they are in archives because of their contact with other more formal sectors of society. They’ll show up in the archives as the employees of a big hacienda, or a big corporate farm, but they often don’t show up in the archives on their own right. So, in order to build up that history, what kinds of documents can we find, and how far back can we go? In some ways I am interested in the way that history is evident in the current landscape, and in current issues, and I am interested in contemporary moments and times. But in some ways I’m locked into looking at this more recent past, this more recent kind of

Some students don’t understand why they need to be learning history in the first place. So I’m curious, what gets you excited about teaching history, and what do you think the value of it is, of having that point of entry to the world around you, at any given moment? That’s an excellent question, and I could have several answers, so I’ll give you one and then I’ll change it. First, history is power. I think knowing the past and then knowing the past that informed that past, and then knowing the past that informed that past, and layering pasts over time, that is power. It’s individual power to decode and to be a critical active participant in your own life and world. To me, if you don’t know history, you’re living in a void, you’re living in a subjective void, where you are unanchored to the reasons as to why and how things around you are the way they are, and where you’re unaware

SARAH LOPEZ

ISSUE XIV You talked about history as being power, and you also talked about this subjective void. The research that you’re doing related to migrants is, in a sense, trying to fill a void. I’m curious about what you think the role that buildings play in this work is, or using the built environment as as a tool for empowerment, or as a tool for justice or equity. How do you see uncovering those types of connections as important to that type of work? Maybe I can answer that by giving examples and stories from my research that are more suggestions than absolute answers. So, currently, I’m working on the architectural history of immigrant detention. I was really amazed to learn when I started this project in 2015 that it hadn’t already been written. Partly it hasn’t been written because when most people think about incarceration, they think about civilian convict prisons, and the immigrant story inside of that is just smaller, and has been less in the limelight. Also, it hasn’t been written about because the real explosion of immigrant detention has happened since the 1990s. So it’s too recent, or it seems too recent to do an architectural history. However, then you start thinking about Ellis Island as one of the early detention enters, and you start thinking about Angel Island, over on the Pacific, as an early detention center. These are places that are talked about in history all the time when we talk about our immigration history, but that aren’t really talked about as places. And then you start to connect the dots about these two early institutional buildings and how we get to here from there, and what those spaces were about, to where we are today, where in Texas we have this growth and explosion in detention facilities. So, in terms of this question you were asking about empowerment, and architectural history as evidence of that, our current detention infrastructure is funded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, and before ICE it was INS, right? They

of the extent to which and the ways in which your life is structured by the past. We’re not these utopian, free beings where anything is possible, at all. The second we start to go off script and do crazy things we get arrested, we get policed, right? We’re living in such a layered, complex series of structures that tell us how to act and what to do and what the rules are and what the laws are. All of those structures are spatial. There’s the legal past, but then there’s the spatial past. So to me, it’s power. See, the mistake I think that students make is that, without pointing fingers at elementary school education, but in general—people think that learning about history is learning about facts of the past. Like, dates, and wars, what happened when, and the Civil War, and this treaty and that, and that is all tiny—like nails or staples in the larger tapestry of history. That’s not the stuff of history that’s the supporting, backgrounded pieces of evidence that help to do the investigation of history, which is always just asking questions. Questions like: what, and who, and, how did this happen? I think people come in with this idea that history is memorizable, and that it’s a fact. That it’s factual. Really it’s an investigation, and it’s much more theoretical, and conceptual, in terms of who and how the remembering is happening. So once you figure that out, as a person, once you realize that history is maybe not what you thought it was, then you realize that just about anything you’re interested in has its own wild and cool history to uncover. So, if you’re interested in hip hop, why wouldn’t you want to learn all about the history of the evolution of those sounds and body movements? If you’re interested in architecture, then specifically what kind of architecture are you wanting to learn about the genesis of? Big skyscrapers, little sheds? They all have their genealogy. For me, history is so kinetic and so dynamic, and I, I think it takes a little while sometimes when I’m talking to some of my students, for them to see it the way I see it. But, that’s definitely my hope, to impart that. So there! So there you have it!

UTSOA

REBECCA KENNEDY

SARAH LOPEZ

ISSUE XIV do not want me to know the architectural history of their bureaucracy. And I can tell you that as almost a fact, because, even though we have laws that grant the public certain amounts of accessibility about what our government does, they don’t make plans and sections and elevations—they don’t make design documents available. And you might think, well, that would make sense because it’s a prison-type building. But they also have not made available— and I’ve asked through the Freedom of Information Act requests—they haven’t helped me to access their office of detention policy and planning, not even to talk with them, or to see any of their internal memos, about how it is that our government views its job as a as a detainer, like what are their plans for the future? What’s their vision of what these buildings should look like? Where are we headed? They’re basic questions we’re asking as a country. Like, well, this is one thing we do as a country, we detain migrants. So how do we do it? And, what’s the plan, you know? And they won’t share, they won’t talk to me. So, when you, as an architectural historian, are trying to research something, and you’re interested in the buildings— I’m interested in the buildings—and I mean of course I’m interested in the people as well, but I’m really trying to understand, how have these places been commissioned over time? Who has designed them, why have they been building them where they build them? And you realize that the people who know those answers don’t want to relinquish that information. That, to me, is direct evidence of how it is that the architectural story is a powerful story. A story that holds within it certain amounts of evidence that ICE, as a bureaucracy, doesn’t want the public to have. People see the buildings as background. They see the policy as foreground. So we have an immigration policy, and then they understand that policy in various ways, and then the building is background. ICE knows that the building is not background.

ICE knows that the way those buildings look, and where they’re located, and how many solitary confinement cells they have, are all evidence of their beliefs and practices, and they know that that building is powerful evidence. And they don’t want to make that knowledge public. To me, that’s a perfect example of getting at what I think you were asking about. As students of architecture, many of us at UT believe that buildings can serve as a tool for creating a better world. Yet, I would say a lot of people are disillusioned by the Modernist conception that architecture can fix everything with some omnipotent design. What power do buildings have to you? I think there’s a point of distinction in your question that needs to be made, which is the distinction between how you view buildings as having the potential to change from the point of view of the designer, or as the point of view of a historian. You’re speaking from the point of view of a designer, where, if I was a designer, which I’m not, and I don’t have any background in design, and some people who are historians do, so that’s an interesting difference. I think if I were a designer today, again, as a total hypothetical, I think I would greatly struggle with that question. Partly why I’m a historian is because for me the power is in uncovering the knowledge of how it has come to be, and how that shapes what’s possible for the current moment. So it’s about building a certain kind of knowledge and then using that knowledge to inform the decisions that we’re making. Of course that would then apply to designers, but as a designer, I would be paying very keen attention to the evolving structure and relationship between design thinking and the design world, and real estate development. And, that’s been a relationship that has taken on kind of a life of its own. I don’t know if we want to start in the 1950s and a post-WWII moment, or move forward in the 80s and think about what’s happened in the

UTSOA last 30 years, or then even in the last 15. In terms of thinking about the production of architecture, and the extent to which certain kinds of individual, unique place-based projects are possible, and for whom, and when, and how we are seeing that design thinking cut out of the building process, or seeing it minimally applied in terms of thinking only of programmatic function, like these big massive warehouses that are being built. As a designer, I would really struggle with that, myself. And I would constantly be looking for opportunities. The thing that I would be excited about as a designer right now is that designers hold the magic key. You guys have the representational skills that are necessary for social change, period. You just don’t necessarily go into the right rooms with those skills. But those rooms are there waiting for people who can represent certain ideas to come in and show them those ideas so that they can be convinced to change policy.

would strengthen their own arguments that they’re already trying to make about these dynamics that they’ve noticed. My hope is that I can make an argument or shed some light or some insight on what they’re talking about that otherwise was invisible. To uncover some aspect that’s slightly different than what they were able to say with the sources of evidence that they were looking at. There is nobody who escapes living amongst buildings, nobody. This is a universal fact; I don’t know of any societies, as nomadic or tribal as they might be, who escape living amongst buildings. So, not only that, we live amongst buildings continuously, for our entire lives, from the very beginning to the very end, right? And yet, there are people who will spend an entire life never talking about or thinking about the buildings that they live amongst, how is that possible? And then, when you start to think about the fact that so many of the buildings we build today are crappy, and terrible, and aspatial, you realize, oh, those people who aren’t thinking about the buildings at all, they are also inhabiting the spaces that they don’t connect with or read about. And it starts to help explain why and how it is that there is not more of a collective, agreed-upon, concerted understanding and effort toward having certain kinds of meaningful spaces.

Sarah Lopez is a built environment historian, as well as a migration scholar. Lopez' research focuses on the impact of migrant remittances— dollars earned in the U.S. and sent to families and communities in Mexico—on the architecture and landscape of rural Mexico and urban USA. Rebecca Kennedy is a graduate student in the M Arch I program at UTSOA. She is interested in vernacular architecture and the intersection between culture and building technology.

REBECCA KENNEDY

You've mentioned in past lectures that you often have to defend your reasons for being interested in buildings when talking about these complex social issues. Why do the buildings matter to you in all of this? I often go to conferences—law and society conferences, history conferences, you know, I’m not usually at conferences that are by and for architects, or architectural historians, either. So it’s people who, when they think about migration, they think about policy, and it amazes me that all of the projects that I see talked about in those conferences, whether they’re talking about gender issues in farm labor in California, or whether they’re talking about linguistic issues...I mean basically any talk I see, I sit there and I have the spatial image in my mind going on, of where the talk they’re giving is situated. And of the buildings that those stories they’re talking happen in. And it is always clear to me that if they were to add that dimension to their talk, it

â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is nobody who escapes living amongst buildings. Nobody.â&#x20AC;?

Sarah Lopez

ISSUE XIV

GEORGIAN LANDSCAPES

TRAVEL SCHOLARSHIP PHOTOGRAPHY

Patrick Klimaszewski

Georgia is a small country in the Caucasus below Russia, above Turkey and between Asia and Europe. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always been curious about it. Maybe it was the images I was seeing in various places of stone towers wedged in valleys surrounded by snowcapped mountains. I began wondering how these towers fit into a broader architectural context. My knowledge of Georgia and my interest in site design theory led me to formulate a research proposal to study how Georgian towns and cities deal with a complicated past to create a cohesive architectural present. However, like much fieldwork, when I began exploring Georgia, I witnessed a different architectural present than the one I expected.

onto balconies; cows graze and vegetables grow in the extant Soviet gridded town plans; people build human-scale structures next to looming towers; markets pop up at the feet of Socialist realism murals.

Georgia is a landscape comprised of cultural remnants. Over the past 100 years, it has experienced a number of power shifts, resulting in a built environment that is a palimpsest of competing political ideologies. Georgia has a strong cultural history and identity. However, when one looks at Georgian cities and towns, one doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see the manifestation of a cohesive group of people. Instead, one sees the efforts of different regimes making permanent marks that have resulted in an eclectic built environment.

The dialectic of idealist vision and observed reality is present in all cultural research. It is clear from this trip that the desire to preserve cannot slow down the need to build symbols: ideologies manifest in plans and concrete. The way we evolve our world to meet our contemporary vision is in response to how we want to live in the present. Therefore, the past cannot be preserved as a passive relic; the past reflected in the built environment is an active force influencing our daily lives and shaping our social spaces, not a static background in front of which lives are lived.

The marked distinctions between the built environment and the different power systems is striking. The photographs in this exhibition aim to highlight the juxtapositions and remnants manifest during political uncertainty by capturing the contrast of object and landscape. The images invite the viewer to contemplate how architecture is used and manipulated as an instrument of power, and as a symbol of resiliency.

Based on online photographs of Tbilisi, I expected to find a city devoted to both historic preservation and new development. Instead, what I found was a lot messier: neighborhoods are planned without planners and buildings designed without architects. Wandering through the city I observed braces holding up neighborhoods and unfinished projects. Buildings constructed under different extinct regimes are used by people as they see fit. There are planned Soviet neighborhoods reimagined by their inhabitants: homes expand out

UTSOA

ISSUE XIV

Bourbon, Bullets, and Bodies Berkeley Plantation today. Photo courtesy of the author.

MEMORY AND PRESERVATION AT BERKELEY PLANTATION

UTSOA

Carrying an extraordinarily rare and valuable nineteenth-century map and a never-before-seen painting from the Civil War, I walked slowly to my car as Malcolm “Jamie” Jamieson, the owner of Berkeley Plantation, called after me, handing me a bag of still-dewy corn, tomatoes, squash, and zinnias he’d just harvested. We both laughed at the juxtaposition of the plantation resources I held before I insisted on making it two trips so that no misstep would lead to the map and painting being coated with tomato juice. Words by Kathleen Conti I’d gone to college a few hours away from Berkeley, located halfway between Richmond and Williamsburg, Virginia. Evidence of the Virginia’s confederate legacy were all around us, from Appomattox Courthouse 45 minutes down the road to the local bookstore’s section on “The War Between the States.” After years away, living everywhere from Moscow to Madison, Wisconsin, I returned to Virginia for a three-month fellowship to document Berkeley’s historic landscape. The parameters for the fellowship were clear: research the site, focusing on the landscape and especially the formal gardens, and produce a detailed site plan and a booklet detailing its history and current conditions.

my analysis off of existing and easily accessible sources. Yet the Harrison narrative makes up a tiny fraction of the landscape’s history. Native American artifacts found on the property demonstrate their use of the site dating back over 8,000 years ago. The Berkeley Company later landed here in 1619 and celebrated the first Thanksgiving in America—a claim bursting with complexity but not without merit—and in 1621, distilled bourbon for the first time. Allegedly, the first ten presidents of the U.S. all frequently dined and danced in the current manor house, constructed in 1726. During the Civil War, General McClellan camped here with over 140,000 Union troops as he waited to take Richmond, and one of his officers composed “Taps,” the famous military bugle call, here as well. Systematic neglect and multiple fires after the Civil War substantially damaged the main house and other extant structures, erasing nearly all paper documentation. In 1907, John Jamieson, a Scottish immigrant who is said to have served as a drummer boy

Berkeley Plantation seemed so well-documented—it is home to Benjamin Harrison V, the fifth Governor of Virginia and signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his son, William Henry Harrison, the ninth US President— so I naively assumed that I could build

ISSUE XIV

“Tobacco both built and destroyed these great plantations, though people say it’s because they built their fortunes off the backs of slaves,” Jamie said two days after a terrorist drove his car into the crowd following an alt-right rally in Charlottesville to protest the town’s planned removal of Confederate statues in August 2017. It is, however, a statement he has made for decades that alludes to cultural, sociological, historical, and ecological complexities of preserving and interpreting a plantation. Designing interpretation at privately-owned sites, especially ones that the families still inhabit, creates another set of complications. The current generation must sort through messy family narratives and attempt to gain some perspective and distance from their heritage; this is a tall order for any family, but especially so for those trying to present their own histories, dealing with the intensely personal made public. No one likes to speak ill of the dead, especially when they gave you Christmas presents and called you pumpkin.

Conti used historic images like this one to piece together a richer history of Berkeley Plantation and its built environment. Photo courtesy of the author.

BOURBON, BULLETS, AND BODIES

under McClellan and later built the base of the Statue of Liberty, bought the property for a summer home. He fully restored the property by 1915, and it remains in Jamieson family, run by his grandson Jamie. Jamie loves history and sharing the site with visitors who come from all parts of the world. Ticket sales do not create the revenue necessary for them to hire the experts to help them preserve, document, and present the site’s complex history. Like many other sites of difficult heritage, the staff at Berkeley struggles to present the darker side of history, especially its long legacy of slavery. Some visitor comments reveal that some tour guides fail to mention that enslaved people built the manor house, farmed the fields, raised the child that would become America’s president.

Berkeley, like many plantations, is privately owned but Jamie’s father opened it to the public in 1938. Mac knew how to spin a good tale, and quipped on more than one occasion that you should never let history get in the way of a good story. And he wove a beautiful, entrancing story about how a family of Scottish

UTSOA A photo of the infamous cannonball lodged in a building at Berkeley Plantation. Photo courtesy of the author.

immigrants came to own a Presidential plantation in Virginia, turning it into the narrative still presented at Berkeley that a 1989 newspaper heralded as “Cinderella story.”1 Mac soon earned a reputation as the “P.T. Barnum” along the James River for the ways in which he saw tourism as essential for maintaining a historic landscape of this size. He served on numerous local, state, and even national committees for tourism and historic preservation, eventually advocating—unsuccessfully—for the abolition of the estate tax for certain note-worthy historic properties. At first, Mac and his wife Grace gave tours to visitors as they would come, charging 25 cents, until enough came that he began to hire tour guides to help manage the flow of visitors.2 He emphasized the presidential grandeur of the site, its centrality to American history from the first Thanksgiving to the home of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, so much so that he made one of the plantation’s mottos, “Welcome Home, America.” All ten of America’s first presidents danced on those wooden floors and grasped the door handles you can touch; by some tellings, though, all the presidents from Washington until Buchanan dined at Berkeley.3

Southern land, and so Mac made sure to stress his role as the property’s steward and his wife’s long Southern lineage.

In interviews decades after he first moved to the plantation, Mac acknowledged how little of the history he knew. A 1976 article, as part of a larger series for America’s Bicentennial, explored how fervently Mac sought to bring the Berkeley and the Harrisons who once lived there the notoriety they deserved: “‘All I knew when I got here was that the Harrisons had built Berkeley and that McClellan had used it as his headquarters during the Seven Days Battle in the War Between the States.’ Jamieson is very precise about using War Between the States. As an ‘immigrant’s son,’ he suggested, he must be sensitive to old Southern semantical nuances and niceties.”4 This turn of phrase, while problematic, is not entirely unexpected. Many Southerners perceive(d) the Jamiesons, despite their Scottish origins, as Yankee interlopers. Worst yet, they were nouveau riche Yankees claiming ancestral

Stuart and his army did shoot cannons at the Army of the Potomac in 1862, but they did so from the James River, whereas the possible trajectories that would allow a cannonball to land there place the cannon nearly on top of the current manor house. While visiting the site in 2017, I started talking with Cheyne Greek, a tour guide and retired soldier, about the cannon, asking him if my proposed trajectories seemed plausible. He laughed at me, as we stood underneath it, telling me to read

KATHLEEN CONTI

A cannonball lodged precariously in the wall of the east dependency poignantly embodies the showmanship history with which Mac constructed Berkeley. Nothing about the accompanying plaque—which states it is “from the attack by General J. B. Stuart on the Army of the Potomac, 1862,”—is, strictly speaking, untrue. The popular and reasonable assumption from seeing the cannonball wedged into the brick and stucco is that Stuart fired a cannon at the house, where the cannonball has remained until this day; it makes the damage from the Civil War tangible in a way that the rest of Berkeley’s built environment does not, as Mac painstakingly endeavored to erase the scars of war.

ISSUE XIV

BOURBON, BULLETS, AND BODIES

A photo of the author poring over blueprints, maps, receipts, and other documents housed at Berkeley Plantation. Photo courtesy of the author.

the plaque aloud. I did so, and then again, until I realized: nothing on the plaque lies, in that nowhere does it say that his shot hit the house; prompted by the sign, the placement of the cannonball, and physical condition of the house surrounding it, visitors read what the plaque’s author intended them to believe. Greek said that Mac had found the cannonball while farming one day and, after an argument with Grace about how he had fallen behind repairing, decided to plunk the cannonball into an existing hole and strung up the plaque. Curious, I then started reading more articles and interviews with Mac from the earlier days, and he never once mentioned the cannonball, despite having thoroughly discussed the damages wrought by war, until the 1970s. Nevertheless, visitors love it, and it is one of the most frequently photographed places at Berkeley.

toric preservation often prioritizes a moment in history, whereas cultural landscape emphasizes the process, allowing us to move beyond the spatial level of the building. This change in scope and framing allows Berkeley—and other similar sites—to reframe and refocus their narrative and interpretation. It gives them a path forward for presenting and interpreting the plantation’s vast and intertwined network of other peoples and histories, other buildings, structures, sites, and features. I expanded my focus to the plantation’s 1200 acres rather that than curated, sculptured landscape immediately surrounding the house. By studying the site in the longue durée, I hoped to challenge to absences and omissions in the official narrative. After gathering hundreds of historical documents and maps from archives throughout Virginia, Washington, D.C., Indiana, and Ohio, I began plotting this information over current aerials and a topographical survey with one-foot contours. I walked the landscape, repeatedly, at different times of day, often with Cheyne showing me all the oddities he’d

Looking at this complex and complicated web of created narratives imbued within Berkeley, I decided to build off of the methodology and methods of cultural landscapes and create documentation of the whole landscape. His-

UTSOA tracked down over the years. Traces of the past manifest through subtle shifts in topography and patterns of vegetation. After a heavy rain, small relics will make their way to the surface, from Civil War bullets to fragments of seventeenth-century pottery and once, a prehistoric bison tooth. Combining all of these, we tracked down the probable location of the slave quarters, the slave cemetery, the Indian panic room, the birthplace of bourbon, the tavern, and the commercial shipyard, where hundreds of slaves were bought and sold. In my last two weeks there, Tammy Radcliff, the manager of the site, asked if I might be interested in some old scrapbooks. She opened a small closet filled with old photographs and newspaper clippings, and I spent the next few days poring through them, finding the map from the property’s sale in 1845 buried under receipts and old brochures. A small slip of paper stuck out from between the wall and a shelf, and some careful maneuvering, it revealed a beautifully detailed painting, dated July 2, 1862. No one at Berkeley had ever seen or heard of it, but it depicted two African Americans riding horses in front of the manor house, giving us a snapshot of life in Virginia prior to emancipation.

Currently a doctoral student at UTSOA, Kathleen Conti received the Rudy J. Favretti Historic Landscape Fellowship to research Berkeley Plantation after completing her MS in Historic Preservation in 2017. Her deep grounding in transnational studies—she is also a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison—allows her to interrogate the intersections of history and preservation.

Notes 1.

A few minutes later, a visitor came up and asked Jamie a question. “Well, the story goes,” he said, with the broad smile on face fading as he looked at me. “Well, I was about to tell the story of what my dad always told me. But, with what you showed me today, you taught me not to believe in stories. And I think that’s what Berkeley needs.”

Parke Rouse, “Jamiesons Reclaimed Berkeley from the Past,” The Daily Press, Jan. 8, 1989. http://articles.dailypress.com/1989-01-08/ news/8901080026_1_berkeley-gen-george-mcclellan-harrison-iv Marian Marsh Sale, “Squire of Berkeley: Virginia’s Master Host Recreates ‘Golden Era,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, Jan. 25, 1970. File: Berkeley, Charles City Vicinity, Charles City County. Colonial Williamsburg Archives. An undated document—presumably from the late 1950s, as it states that the Jamiesons acquired the property “about fifty years ago”— detailing the “Architectural Features” of Berkeley alongside historic photographs repeats this claim. File: Berkeley, Charles City Vicinity, Charles City County. Colonial Williamsburg Archives. Shelley Rolfe, “By the Way: Righting Historical Wrongs,” The Richmond-Times Dispatch, 1976. File: Berkeley, Charles City Vicinity, Charles City County. Colonial Williamsburg Archives.

KATHLEEN CONTI

In a strange twist of fate, the painting remained so perfectly preserved precisely because no one knew about it. There are so many details of Berkeley’s history we may never know, and it’s unlikely that I’ll find another map or painting tucked away, forgotten in a closet. After I presented my findings to the Jamiesons, Jamie quietly admitted that he had never thought about how much they had not been preserving, since keeping up the house alone took up so much energy, time, and money.

ISSUE XIV

URBAN DESIGN

THE EASTERN ARCHIPELAGO Robert Anderson, Weishu Chen, Miao Feng, Nupur Gunjan, Michelle M Hipps-Cruz, Chetan Kulkarni, Noel R Kuwabara, Zhaoran Li, Uttara Ramakrishnan, Valentina Scalia, Seonhye Sin, Anna Lake-Smith, Jingrong Zhao, Ruifeng Zhou & Xue Yang 78

UTSOA

future development will look, the city is in need of a new “Structure Plan” that predetermines where development and the construction of roads will take place over the next century. An area-wide transportation, development, and open space infrastructure strategy will allow the city and county to guide development to achieve a more compact, connected, safer and affordable Austin.

Considering that the private sector builds approximately 80 percent of our infrastructure, and that city departments do not have the capacity to pre-deﬁne road locations on private land or how

America 2050 identiﬁes the Texas Triangle as one of 10 emerging Mega-Regions in North America. The Texas Triangle’s population would sit at

DEAN ALMY

As Austin’s population continues to burgeon, growth pressures are already impacting areas that are slated to become regional, town, and neighborhood centers. Much of this growth is occurring on the east side as a result of issues such as gentriﬁcation, land costs, the construction of SH-130, etc.

URBAN DESIGN

ISSUE XIV

UTSOA

DEAN ALMY

ISSUE XIV

nearly 24 million by 2030. Under that scenario, the Triangle would swell by about 6 million people from 2015 to 2030, or more than 30 percent. The population of the Austin-Round Rock region is projected to reach 2,854,501 in 2030. The resulting demand on resources is already generating signiﬁcant developmental pressure and increased demands upon the urban and environmental infrastructure of the region. As the Austin-Round Rock Metropolitan Region looks to the future, each of its cities are attempting to address common concerns on a regional scale and to share in complementary economic and environmental strengths. The City of Austin is undertaking a series of initiatives intended to transform Austin into a world-class city capable of sustaining this massive change. The ‘Eastern Crescent’ is a new term in the Austin lexicon introduced by Councilmember Ora Houston. The ‘Eastern Crescent’ describes a large portion of East Austin with notable social, economic, and demographic challenges. These challenges, such as food deserts, declining population of

black residents, income inequality, and low voter participation, appear as a crescent shape when individual variables are mapped across the city. Because the City of Austin is working to establish multiple population and employment centers, a ‘crescent’, with its uniform layers and single common center, is an unhelpful metaphor. Like a crescent roll’s layered dough, the term ‘Eastern Crescent’ connotes concentric layers moving away from the downtown center.

URBAN DESIGN

‘Eastern Archipelago’ is a preferable conceptual framework for East Austin. Rather than a uniform development pattern radiating away from downtown, East Austin is envisioned to have targeted centers of development. East Austin will be characterized by an area of conservation and agriculture punctuated with islands of population and job centers. According to Envision Tomorrow, the city of Austin only has approximately 17,000 acres left to develop within its 174,000 acres.

UTSOA

result, previously established suburban areas are evolving into local centers as they develop their own economic activities outside city limits. This urbanization pattern has resulted in a system of isolated centers that are continuing to grow. Austin is becoming a disconnected polycentric city that needs to be steered into a more efďŹ cient polycentric network where commuting is no longer centralized. Suburbs must become self-contained, that is, these centers must grow to become independent towns in which residents can enjoy a complete community environment in which they can live, work and socialize.

Austin, as a monocentric region, is becoming increasingly problematic: traffic jams and unaffordable dwellings are becoming common characteristics of life in the city. Cheap land, lower rents, and decreasing transportation costs have been driving Austinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population to its edge. As a

DEAN ALMY

Most of the available land in Austin is found within this Eastern Crescent. As such, the area is expected to grow by over 350,000+ people during the next 20 years. Because there is not sufficient land area to accommodate this growing population within city limits, Austin will be pushed to develop eastward.

ISSUE XIV

SANTA ELENA SPINE Tian Bian, Jingrong Zhao & Ruifeng Zhou

Santa Elena is a small Mayan town located in the Puuc region of the YucatĂĄn Peninsula, Mexico. Once hidden under the flourishing forest, Ancient Maya Civilization sites of the Puuc region are today connected with lively Maya towns like Santa Elena. The area of the municipality where Santa Elena is located was inhabited during the Classic Maya period (600-1000 A.D.) and later conquered by Spanish colonization, which brought a church, a chapel, and six oratories to the town.

heritage sites and isolated public spaces with local peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s daily life both spatially and spiritually. Since the mayor of Santa Elena once mentioned that the quality of life and environment needs to be improved with a small budget, the approaches are proposed in a humble manner, addressing the capacities of the local government and considering the feasibility for future implementation. Through multi-scale design based on connections, cultural heritages (both Ancient Maya and Spanish Colonial), daily routines of the local people, and environmental features, the newly designed townscape is a place to connect, produce and play.

ADVANCED STUDIO

This proposal for the typical living Mayan town aims to revalue and reestablish its unique urban, environmental and cultural identities. It creates an ecological network that integrates abandoned

UTSOA

GABRIEL DIAZ MONTEMAYOR

ISSUE XIV

ROOTED: MAKE. LEARN. GROW. Luke Kvasnicka, Miles Payton, Chris Perkes, Kirsten Stray Gundersen & Mason Rathe The core of the development revolves around the co-evolution of modern manufacturing, education, and a productive landscape. As the development takes root, it resourcefully meets the needs of Chicago today, and evolves to meet the needs of Chicago tomorrow. Rooted creates a uniquely gritty, transparent, and adaptable urban community where both residents and visitors alike can make, learn, and grow.

ULI HINES COMPETITION

Rooted, winner of the 2017 ULI Hines Competition, was built upon the inherent power of food culture to bring together people of diverse backgrounds in a comfortable and lively space. Chicago has long served as the heartland for food production, processing, and distribution due to its prime location as the gateway to the East and West. By creating a center of gravity for food and manufacturing, a unique urban experience materializes, tying together past, present, and future. The proposal not only reimagines the localization of the food supply chain, but creates an equitable and inclusive environment conducive to building human capital.

UTSOA

SIMON ATKINSON & EDNA LEDESMA

ISSUE XIV

VERTICAL COMPOUND Michelle Cantú, Natalie Hugentobler & Luke Kvasnicka

The urban compound is inherently vertical. While Austin is a predominantly horizontal city, we see CodeNEXT as a step in the direction towards greater urban density and increased vertical growth. We chose to explore the dual (dueling) natures of a compound in the city: united and distinct elements; legibility and obscurity; structural density and expansive space; continuity and interruption. We began by organizing program types into like categories and allowing those to take form as distinct volumes. Stacking those volumes on top of each other, the L-shaped tower takes shape. Shifting the public moments creates

INTEGRATIVE STUDIO

a more dynamic form, and increases legibility of the component parts. These are also the points at which the screen, the compound’s binding element, breaks to introduce points of entry or visual interaction between those within and without. The compound’s many layers allow for nested interiorities, translating the traditional compound typology vertically.

UTSOA

MARTIN HAETTASCH

ISSUE XIV

MONASTERY OF REFUGE

INTEGRATIVE STUDIO

Mabel Loh & Claire Townley

UTSOA

VINCE SNYDER

At its heart, the project seeks to break landed boundaries and open up to the borderless desert sky.

ISSUE XIV

The projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s arrangement of buildings and landscape is set not only by the program and topography of the site, but also by the solar patterns of West Texas. Each year at winter solstice, the 160-foot tall observation tower casts its shadow over the sunken ambulatory at the back of the site. To the Trappist monks and desert travelers, this solar phenomenon marks the time of Christmas. The Monastery of Refuge is a project that investigates poetics with purpose. It provides shelter for the monks and guests not only through spatial accommodation, but also by its use of structure, materiality, and building systems. Through the overlapping and intertwining of its inquiry, the project takes a holistic hold and becomes an anchor in a sea of sand.

Located 600 miles east of the US-Mexico border, the Monastery of Refuge is a sanctuary in the desert, providing physical and emotional shelter for clergies and refugees. At its heart, the project seeks to break landed boundaries and open up to the borderless desert sky.

INTEGRATIVE STUDIO

Set on the east-west axis, the scheme is organized by two linear buildings, a tower and a patchwork landscape of fields and gardens. The north wing of the campus comprises the public zones of the monastery, including the workspaces, dining area, library and underground chapel, while the south wing houses the private living spaces for the monks and guests. In composition these two buildings and their tower serve to register the topography and frame the mountains beyond.

UTSOA

VINCE SNYDER

INTEGRATIVE STUDIO

ISSUE XIV

UTSOA

VINCE SNYDER

ISSUE XIV

ADVANCED STUDIO

URBAN FARMING

Sarah Rousey & Sarah Spielman 98

UTSOA

Benefits spread beyond the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s residents. HILARY SAMPLE

ADVANCED STUDIO

ISSUE XIV

100

UTSOA

Much of central Harlem is a modern food desert. For local residents, access to fresh produce and healthy food options is limited. Harlem Grown is a local institution looking to change this. Born in abandoned lots throughout the borough, Harlem Grown cultivates these urban interstitial spaces through organized supervision and maintenance. Largely targeted towards children, Harlem Grown engages local youths and empowers them with skills and values often overlooked within their traditional educations. They also produce a fair amount of healthy produce for the surrounding community. Our project embodies the basic mission of Harlem Grown, an organization that brings fresh produce and healthy options to the residents of Harlem. Specifically, our Co-op program of grocery, retail, growing, and residences seeks to cultivate education and healthy futures for Harlem residents through families owning and operating much of the program. The benefits of our design spread beyond the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s residents. A large public stair provides new access to the street above, the grocery store helps alleviate some of the need for fresh produce within the neighborhood, and the headquarters of Harlem Grown provides space for community education and greater experimentation for advancing urban growing techniques. Beyond this, residents and passersby alike are enriched by an increased presence of nature within the greater urban environment.

101

HILARY SAMPLE

The primary catalyst for our design â&#x20AC;&#x201D; growing â&#x20AC;&#x201D; happens at a variety of scales. On the street level, the retail spaces are capped by wedges with small green roofs. The grocery store supports an openair working farm above. Within each apartment, residents have a small sunroom that protrudes from their apartment and eases the implementation of year-round indoor growing. Finally, the roof of the structure supports extensive greenhouse space that provides fresh produce year-round for the Co-op, residents, and Harlem Grown.

ADVANCED STUDIO

ISSUE XIV

UTSOA

HILARY SAMPLE

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Drawing is a tool to mislead the audience. Misunderstanding is a deeper way of understanding.â&#x20AC;?

Ezra Wu

Robbie Anderson

DIGITAL COLLAGE

Fatima Betts

Marett Flores and Xinmei Li

Prashant Narayan

Eliah Cappi and Bruno Canales

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Contemporary collages are very different from their predecessors because they are digitally produced through a combination of techniques: modeling, rendering, line work, and fragments of found media. I think digital collage is very promising, not so much as a reincarnation of preceding aesthetics, but as a medium that has the potential to create fascinating, new, and complex hybrids. â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Angela Vanella and Ezra Wu

Nerea Feliz

Eliah Cappi and Bruno Canales

ISSUE XIV

AMALGAM Mitch Avitt & Avignon Greene

The New Rosedale School is a reinterpretation of grade school typology and accessibility. The Rosedale School is a K-12 Austin Independent School District (AISD) public school for students with severe disabilities. Currently situated in the north Austin neighborhood of Rosedale, the school plans to build a new complex in the neighborhood of Allendale to support their future growth and student needs. As part of their proposed expansion, the Rosedale School hopes to connect with the surrounding community even more than they currently do by expanding the vocational program for students and designing a more engaging campus.

As part of this new outlook on the school, the project team has proposed a building that would act as a micro-community with school villages for each age group and a thickened “wall” of occupiable public program to support both students and the community.

INTEGRATIVE STUDIO

The building consists of a thickened wall of public program providing a threshold between the surrounding neighborhood and the private classroom space. Nestled beyond this occupiable

wall of program lay three school ‘villages’ divided by age group, each with a centralized courtyard. Furthermore, because of the limited mobility of the student population, the building seeks to create sectionally diverse spaces by gently sloping the hallway spaces to match the surrounding topography, enhancing student circulation between each village. Careful consideration was taken to ensure the gentle slope could remain fully accessible to all persons occupying the space, allowing handicapped students to experience elevation change generally inaccessible to them.

108

UTSOA

FRANCISCO GOMES

109

ISSUE XIV

THE PARK Silvia Marcela Calderon Laiton

surrounding environment and community functions, the design seeks to develop an integrated connection between neighborhoods.

The town of Mario Campos, is located in the heart of Minas Gerais, the iron ore mountains of Brazil. Here, roughly 18,000 low income inhabitants make their living from horticulture while the rest of the working population commute to job opportunities in other cities. Consequently, Mario Campos has become a dormitory town made up of humble houses of brick and concrete.

ADVANCED STUDIO

The Park provides a flexible, refined public space in the undeveloped heart of Mario Camposâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; new side of town. With approximately 106,000 square feet of developed land, The Park is envisioned to inscribe a new identity for the town of Mario Campos. A privately owned underground water pipe that runs the entire length of the site has previously made this area undevelopable. By responding to the

The new programs are organized by a grid system of columns that are complemented by manmade landforms of varying diameters and heights. The columns and topography organize the space to create a spatial continuity for a broad range of activities. The grid of columns and the natural trees exist together as a single melding of both, architectural and natural elements. An entirely native palette of trees provides shade and shelter from wind and rain, while the steel columns provide light and water to the site, as well as the main structural infrastructure for the proposed market.

110

UTSOA

FERNANDO LARA

111

ISSUE XIV

THE IDEAL MADE REAL Brennen Birch

The Ideal Made Real presents the transformational impact of the Arts and Crafts movement from its inception to our present moment in time. The exhibition presents the proliferation and dilution of the movement’s ideals through original texts and a small number of consumable objects. The intimate gallery setting evokes the feeling of being in someone’s home and brings to mind the domestic nature of this creative movement.

ADVANCED STUDIO

The Ideal Made Real will take place at the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center in 2019.

112

UTSOA

TAMIE GLASS

113

ISSUE XIV

ROSEDALE SCHOOL

INTEGRATIVE STUDIO

Brooke Burnside & Whitney Moore

The Rosedale School is an innovative institution that primarily serves students who have physical and medical needs. However, their current site lacks the facilities necessary to support their program. This project explores two primary goals put forth by the administration: a building that cultivates a close-knit, internal community, and one that opens up to the local neighborhood and broader ADA population. This scheme addresses these aspirations by using two buildings, one that provides a monumental community presence, and one that cultivates community within. The more private building is sited next to the neighborhood and scaled to the heights of the nearby houses. The public community building rises above the storefront on Burnet Avenue, giving it a monumental presence on the most populated area around the site.

On the main level, classrooms are organized around courtyards that provide links of communal spaces. A porous concrete shell encloses the courtyard, but allows light to enter classrooms. The organization mimics an urban scheme, providing a mosaic of different spaces and no singular path of circulation. This multiplicity of space and path cultivates a continual sense of discovery and multiple social spaces. Juxtaposed with the lower-lying building that features a network of spaces engaged at the horizontal plane, the taller, more public building vertically weaves together different programmatic elements. One moves through the different levels on a ramp that not only takes you to different spaces but through them.

114

UTSOA

FRANCISCO GOMES

115

ISSUE XIV

THE LOSS OF TIME AND PLACE IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE

116

A Joseph Eichler house in San Francisco undergoing extreme Dwell-ification. Photo courtesy of the author.

Dwell -ification:

UTSOA

Let me start by saying that I am a subscriber to Dwell magazine. I like it. I don’t love every project, and I am not infrequently horrified at how expensive some of the featured products are, but overall I enjoy the magazine. After all, shelter magazines generally function as inspirational, or aspirational, rather than critical or editorial. Words by Hannah Lise Simonson Dwell has done a great job at becoming a household name, so most people already have some idea of what you mean when you say “that looks like it could be on the cover of Dwell magazine.” And given the magazine’s recent push to become more of lifestyle brand with a greater online and retail presence through Dwell Media, I don’t think that the term dwell-ification is unfair. For the purpose of my research, I chose to define dwell-ification (and its variants, dwell-ify, dwell-ish, and dwell-y) as the trend of building or remodeling houses to fit the streamlined, contemporary design aesthetic espoused by the popular San Francisco-based shelter magazine Dwell. While frequently drawing inspiration from Midcentury Modern design, the magazine strives to be current—modern with a lowercase “m.” Sometimes used pejoratively, fans of the magazine, including former editor in chief, Sam Grawe, use the term dwell-ification as a positive descriptor.1 I, by no means, coined the term dwell-ification; however, I found it to be a useful term in my thesis research in the historic preservation program at UT Austin while I was researching Diamond Heights, a neighborhood in San Francisco that features Midcentury Modern

homes and apartments designed and built for the middle class.2 Modest in size, the homes feature simple, often off-the-shelf materials, and a regional take on Modernist design. While some architectural styles, such as Classical Revival or Queen Anne, have a relatively standard form language and material palette (which can still result in endless variety), contemporary dwell-y architecture is harder to pin down and define. Often recognizable by boxy, cubic massing, light woods and metal materials, bright white spaces, and expansive glazing, in some ways, dwell-ification is like pornography—you just know it when you see it. The challenge in defining contemporary design is partly due to our lack of historical distance and hind-sight, and partly due to the rejection of the very notion of style that began during the Modern Movement and continues to this day. By the early 20th century, many architects and designers were beginning to reject the canon of architectural “styles,” in favor of an abstracted, stripped-down aesthetic defined more by industrial production, material economy, and built precision. The rejection of superfluous ornament led to an emphasis on the inherent aesthetic details of industrial material fabrication and building technologies. The innovative nature of the Modern Move-

117

ISSUE XIV

DWELL-IFICATION

ment, tied to the emerging industrialization of Europe and America, espoused newness in the aesthetic qualities of design and building uses—newness was a cultural imperative. The interest in developing a modern architecture freed of the historicist associations of the past was indicative of a cultural interest in finding a way of building that reflected the contemporary moment—design of and for the modern times. While borrowing the clean lines, industrial production, and stripped-down aesthetic originating from the European International Style, California architecture brought a casual and low, sprawled massing; softer materials such as redwood; and flowing indoor spaces connected to the outdoors through large expanses of glass. California Modernist architecture reflected the forgiving climate and attitude toward modern life. Modernism was conceived as a way of living in and relating to the modern world; the aesthetic manifestations of which could be seen in architecture, graphic design, cars, furniture, and everyday objects. The term “Modern Movement” seeks to encompass this idea of the Modernist aesthetic as it relates to a lifestyle and attitude toward technology and rationalism. The particular social and environmental conditions of the San Francisco Bay Area lifestyle were addressed by Modernist architects with nuanced adaptations of space, material and form to create what become known as the “Bay Tradition” or “Bay Region Modernism,” which was, in the words of architecture critic, Lewis Mumford, “a native and humane form of modernism which one might call the Bay Region style, a free yet unobtrusive expression of the terrain, the climate and the way of life on the Coast.” Of course, while many Bay Area architects did not reject this characterization, some thought it was unnecessary to distinguish a separate Bay Area regional style as Modernism was supposed to be a more of an attitude about lifestyle and aesthetics, and thus adaptable, rather than a formulaic style that could be dropped into any site or geographic location. While my own research focused on the Bay

Area, we can see parallel phenomenons of regional Modernist architecture throughout the United States, including in Texas with examples such as O’Neil Ford’s use of local limestone materials and a sophisticated attention to climate, environmental controls, and solar orientation. Architectural historians and historic preservationists have a tendency to want to classify architecture into styles for organizational, theoretical and/or regulatory purposes. The pitfall of treating Modernism as a style is that it divorces the formal, material, and tectonic choices from their cultural context of time and place. When Modernism is conceived of as a style with a set of mix-and-match character-defining features, it follows that: flat roof + large windows + unornamented planes + Eames chair = Modern. It is also at this point where the Modern Movement and modern become semantically confused. Contemporary architecture, which is to say that of our current moment in the 21st century, is still rehashing the formal and aesthetic ideas of 20th century Modernists. Many architects and designers are still very much inspired by or subscribe to the basic tenants the Modern Movement and thus if one is to describe a 2018 building as looking “modern,” it is not exactly clear if we mean of-this-moment in 2018, inspired by the 20th century Modern Movement, or just not historicist. The semantic slippage between “Modern” and “modern” presents challenges for the field of historic preservation as it makes it difficult to define material integrity, and to therefore determine what constitutes a compatible alteration that does not result in a complete loss of said integrity. Perhaps the most insidious aspect of dwell-ification is the false sense of history that it can convey. Along with Dwell magazine, Midcentury Modern design has seen a resurgence in popular culture (perhaps due in no small part to the success of Mad Men and IKEA) which is evidenced in the abundance of knock-off Midcentury furniture pieces that proliferate from social media to big box store advertising. The irony is that the

118

UTSOA more people are inundated with imagery of “Midcentury-inspired” design and remodels, the more this dwell-ified or contemporary revivalist version of Modernism becomes confused with the real thing. I am currently seeing this happen in Diamond Heights, a postwar redevelopment neighborhood in San Francisco that features numerous custom and tract homes with Bay Tradition regional Modernist design—including a tract by famed developer Joseph Eichler, a condo by Joseph Esherick and Arthur Gensler, townhouses by Beverly Willis, and a church by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill—as houses are being remodeled to embody a contemporary, commodified ideal of “Modernism.” Why is dwell-ification a threat to 20th century tract housing? While the material integrity of Modernist architecture cannot be measured by the preindustrial metric of craft, we can still think about integrity as a building or district’s ability to convey its significance within time and space. While the replacement of a door or siding material with an “in-kind” substitute might not diminish the integrity of a building, the cumulative effect of numerous alterations with new materials can result in the loss of integrity. The complete re-cladding of a building in contemporary materials can have an enormous aesthetic impact as the massing and texture of a building are altered, and edge conditions and joints no longer relate to the overall structure in the same way. New rough openings, or enclosing outdoor areas too can have a dramatic impact on the spatial sequence of the building as it transitions from indoor to outdoor. Through this process of dwell-ification a homogenization is occurring, wiping away the traces of the regionalism of the Bay Traditions that were once evidenced by material choices, orientation to the landscape, and adaptations for local climate. This is already occurring to the point where 20th century, postwar tract homes don’t look Modern enough to our tastes—we want them to look more like the high-end and highly stylized contemporary idea of Modernism we

Top: Historic view of homes developed by Joseph Eichler in San Francisco's Diamond Heights (c. 1966). Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library. Bottom: Design drawings from an Eichler home. Courtesy of the University of California, Berkeley College of Environmental Design.

119

ISSUE XIV

DWELL-IFICATION

This "high-integrity" building looks much as it does when first built by Eichler in the early 1960s. Photo courtesy of the author.

This Fisher-Friedman designed home has been completely Dwell-ified, resulting in the loss of its regional Modernist features. Photo courtesy of the author.

120

UTSOA see in Mad Men or Dwell. The insidious nature of dwell-ification, though, is that, incrementally, the common understanding of Modernist architecture is being eroded as it blends into contemporary trends and nostalgic Midcentury Modern revival. During the Modern Movement, architects and designers reacted against historicism and revivalist styles by rejecting styles and trying to conceive of architecture as a process driven by rationalism, technology, material honesty, and space. While we can identify typical features of Midcentury Modern design, such as fluid connections between indoors and outdoors, flat or low pitched roofs, and open plans, if these features are divorced from the underlying logic of the Modern Movement, then they can be applied as a veneer to any spec house that could just as easily be in the Craftsman style or Colonial Revival style. Which is, simply put, to say that they can be commodified.

While the loss of historic materials and features in Midcentury Modern buildings is of concern to many historic preservationists who are professionally interested in retaining significant buildings and neighborhoods to be able to tell stories about our past, this phenomenon should also be of interest to current architects. Perhaps we can ask whether the trend of “Modern farmhouses” in Austin residential design or the construction of new “Eichler” homes (Joseph Eichler died in 1974) in Palm Springs is representative of a true architectural response to our current time and place? Is regionalism relevant to contemporary archi-

Hannah Lise Simonson received her MS in Historic Preservation from UTSOA in May 2017. She is currently an architectural historian and cultural resources planner at Page & Turnbull in downtown San Francisco. This piece was adapted from her master’s thesis, Modern Diamond Heights, supervised by Prof. Michael Holleran, Prof. Richard Cleary & Justin Greving.

Notes 1. 2.

121

Nancy Keates, “When Concepts Clash,” The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2010. Hannah Lise Simonson, “Modern Diamond Heights: Dwell-ification and the Challenge of Preserving Modernist,Redevelopment Resources in Diamond Heights, San Francisco,” Master of Science in Historic Preservation Thesis,The University of Texas at Austin, School of Architecture (2017). Lewis Mumford, “The Sky Line: Status Quo,” The New Yorker, October 11, 1947.

HANNAH LISE SIMONSON

We need look no further than P. Terry’s—a local Austin institution—to see an example of commodified Midcentury Modern revival. The graphic design is clearly derivative of Googie roadside architecture of the post-World War II period, and the design of many of the drivethru restaurants bear striking resemblance to Midcentury Modern icons in Palm Springs and Los Angeles. P. Terry’s is an example of retro nostalgia and kitsch that is not uncommon, but lest we forget our true examples of Midcentury Modern Austin such as Top Notch or Taqueria Los Jaliscienses (formerly, Cross Country Inn).

tecture, or is architecture now global? What cultural values—social, technological, and aesthetic—are conveyed by the architecture that we create in 2018?

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Interior design converts neutral space into a timespecific cultural product.â&#x20AC;?

Nerea Feliz

Prashant Narayan

Daiyiqing Qin

FUTURE CITY A masterplan project developed for the city of Medini Iskandar in southern Malaysia a hundred years in the future, this studio led by Kory Bieg predicted developments in economics, technology, and culture to generate new methods of urban composition. Xiwen Wei

Xiwen Wei

Farnaz Koohifar

Xiwen Wei

Farnaz Koohifar

125

ISSUE XIV

CUT / COPY / COLOR Bruno Canales

Cut / Copy / Color is an exploration in the relationship between color, texture, and form. The geometry is treated as a blank canvas upon which other dimensions of the project are varied serially. To accomplish this, it was important that the form remained amorphous and indeterminate. Then, a series of topological conditions that allowed for variance in surface characteristics were created to show its full effect.

SUPRAFICIAL

Through the use of generative and procedural techniques, the project continuously iterates through different tones, displacements and animations. These tweaks change the nature of the object dramatically. In combination with a fast-paced and stark video editing style, which also experiments with forwards/backwards playback, it unveils the importance of color and texture in the subjective comprehension of form.

126

UTSOA

KORY BIEG

127

ISSUE XIV

SERIAL STOOLS

PROTOTYPE

Alistair Benckenstein & Alex Yen-Jung Wu

Contemporary digital fabrication have allowed greater customization of objects or products, much of the design world today remains within the 20th Century framework of mass production. This series explores the new possibilities of mass customization through the creation of a family of related, but unique, stools. Four prototypes were fabricated, but the intent is for infinite design variability. What is a stool? A stool is a surface lifted off the floor to support a human body. Our design distinguishes the seat from the legs through pairing processes of customization and repetition. While the legs are identical, the variation and

customization of the seatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s form create greater variability. The geometries are driven by Grasshopper scripts that allow for infinite variations. The resultant design utilizes various digital fabrication tools. The seat is CNC-milled so that all forms are unique. The legs angle outward to varying degrees. The 3D printed parts (the joint and parts within the seats) are used to mediate the varying height differences caused by the changing leg angles. Across the same stool, all legs are identical, allowing them to be off-the-shelf and cut to the same length to reduce errors in the process of making.

128

UTSOA

IGOR SIDDIQUI

129

ISSUE XIV

KMA 3.0 Alex Yen-Jung Wu & Connie Chang

Berlin is a dynamic city whose urban fabric is the manifestation of its discordant past. Each period of architectural style developed and layered one on top of the another, giving the city its unique, multicultural, and revolutionary identity. The neighborhoods adjacent to Karl Marx Allee are a large scale embodiment of the modernist urban design concept of “Towers in a Park”. Within this context however, the “park” is left undeveloped. The combination of typological “towers” and lack of ownership of the “park” generates dissonance through these ambiguous distinctions between public and private space.

ADVANCED STUDIO

Our urban intervention introduces an alternative system of densification specific to this area of East Berlin. The system is antithetical to the ideology of the existing Modernist blocks and shies away from singular architectural and urban forms. Through the utilization of diverse, smaller scale components, this methodology creates cohesive communities that layer within the existing context and reclaim underutilized open space. The design seeks to promote new methods of urban living. By rejecting the singular apartment building, the aggregation of units and shared spaces instigate a more cohesive urban community. Visual porosity across levels and interstitial conditions generate opportunities for spontaneous community interaction. The design is organized by a tessellation in which the unit is comprised of enclosed mass, inhabitable surfaces, and voids. Through a process of mirroring and rotation, the resulting aggregation of components generates a variety of unit and spatial conditions with an inherent solid-void relationship.

130

UTSOA

BARBARA HOIDN

131

ISSUE XIV

MaSA Jordan Sheets

Maker Space Austin, or MaSA, is the design for a new community arts center in Austin, TX along Lady Bird Lake. As churches were once the historic center of cities where people gathered and ideas were shared, MaSA is a proposal to re-center the arts district of Austin as a place where people can learn, make, perform, and display their creative talents.

ADVANCED STUDIO

Building on south Austin’s proliferation of tree canopies, the site is covered in an orchard. The buildings, parking, and circulation are nested within this canopy. The choice of planting Texas Redbuds is a nod to the inherent meaning the tree has for the city and provides a landscape that will sever the ties from the contextual urban conditions to make one aware of their immediate surroundings, especially when flowering. The site is developed as varied conditions, the buildings negotiating between them. Recognizing the difference in defined and undefined urban space, considerations were defined based on how one would want to experience transparency, scale, and proportion within plazas, the forest, and the buildings. The matrix of trees was used as an organizing tool to provide a sense of order for the perceived randomness in which the buildings that were atomized and scattered throughout the site. The buildings were situated dependent on their program and their interaction between the “field of Austin” (as an iconic gesture) and the “field of trees” (as a landscape exuding casualness). This is a project of the mixing of different agencies and providing an inclusive, safe, fun, and open resource to the citizens of Austin to learn how to make.

132

UTSOA

KEVIN ALTER

133

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Meaningful design is made through a process of integrating social, political, and environmental responses with ideas of program, function, space and details. The worst kind of design is the design that fails to address multiplicity.â&#x20AC;?

Claire Townley and Mabel Loh

ISSUE XIV

H/P/H

ADVANCED STUDIO

Hannah Ivancie, Max Mahaffey, Hannah Frossard

136

UTSOA

Democracy relies on individual passions, fostered at home, to be expressed in an open forum. By layering familiar spaces of the home and the forum for performing political acts together, liberty achieves its highest expression. HILARY SAMPLE

137

ISSUE XIV

Harlem/ Performance/ Housing or H/P/H, a performing arts center with low-income and artist housing above, reckons with layers of typological, topographical, programmatic, contextual, and architectonic references to develop a difficult whole. Topography provides constraints and establishes points of departure. Mixed programs create implicit relationships and directives for occupants. Thresholds and colonnades examine how tenants and passersby engage with the project. Embodied material and formal associations offer touchstones for understanding its social and temporal context. Visual and experiential information provide embedded understanding of the origin of forms and the inner life of the building.

ADVANCED STUDIO

A peristyle along the eastern edge of the site opens onto two discrete public plazas and offers a public entrance into the performance facilities. A grand stair to the north announces the entrance to the

main lobby level with additional classrooms and the largest of the performance venues. Below, a public concourse with observation points for the public to engage with all parts of a performance artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s process links practice and training spaces with dedicated venues for experimental and informal performances. The housing block recalls the courtyard complex typology seen at the nearby Dunbar Apartments, the adjacent apartment building typology characterized by U-shaped light courts, as well as the porches and row houses seen along Astor Row. A private entrance off Hamilton Terrace takes residents to a verdant courtyard with direct access to their units. The project presents many faces to its myriad inhabitants. Its formal and experiential character subdues hierarchy in favor of a dignified presence that fosters democracy, idiosyncrasy, and appropriation.

138

UTSOA

HILARY SAMPLE

139

ADVANCED STUDIO

ISSUE XIV

140

UTSOA

HILARY SAMPLE

141

ISSUE XIV

SHIFTING HISTORIES Bruno Canales & Eliah Cappi

In the rapidly changing neighborhood of Harlem, Shifting Histories, positions itself at the intersection of past, present, and future, pursuing an architectural relationship with cyclical rather than linear time. This is an architecture that is rooted in the neighborhood’s rich history of place, addresses contemporary socio-economic issues brought forth by shifting populations, and attempts to posit the question of how the future of the neighborhood will unfold. These central values were motivated by a 2016 quote from the New York Times of a young boy standing on a Harlem street looking towards one of the many new luxury housing projects, and saying, “You see, I told you they didn’t plant those trees for us.” Prompting the exploration of how architecture can feel of its place and at the same time facilitate positive communal change.

The residential half of the project is strongly driven by the thesis of shifting histories, in its emergence from careful study of local typological precedent. This was developed through analysis of historic housing types located in Harlem, with the specific focus on the archetypal element of the light well. These studies led to a subtractive methodology of design, in which footprint is maximized, and then stereotomically carved from to allow for the abundance of natural light and ventilation on the interior. The housing bar is subdivided into five blocks or micro-communities that are then shifted from each other, allowing for every unit to achieve a minimum of two faces of natural daylight.

ADVANCED STUDIO

The first two floors of the project provide previously unavailable resources to the community, such as a library, theater, and covered basketball court. These

two floors just like the program located inside bring a new language to Harlem, employing expansive amounts of transparency to welcome street life inwards. Above the community center lies a neighborhood park which is a shared resource for both incoming and existing groups of people.

East Elevation

142

10’

20’

30’

40’

UTSOA

HILARY SAMPLE

143

ISSUE XIV

SPECTRE Fatima Betts

There is one path that wraps around the hotel units but that does not lead directly to any one room. The path encourages the visitor to engage in the authorship of their path by encouraging the freedom to wander in the space between buildings. The project explores the idea of liminal space and playful aspects of light. It also explores the idea of building as object by highlighting the space in-between the objects.

VERTICAL STUDIO

Located in Marble Falls, this Boutique Hotel was designed to challenge the repetitive rhythms found in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urban and suburban developments. The units are sites to engage and create liminal space. This design results in semi-public spaces where people interact with both one other and the space itself. Aspects of randomness are molded in. The use of transparent glass panes coated with dichroic film introduces a playful element of transient light that moves throughout the site and the rooms during the course of the day. The presence of the changing light elusively marks the boundary of the hotelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s site.

144

UTSOA

JOHN BLOOD

145

ISSUE XIV

ADVANCED STUDIO

FORUM

Hannah Bacon and Charles Beckendorf 146

UTSOA

147

DANIEL BONILLA

A space dedicated to the exchange of ideas. A family of volumes, each with their own character, and each designed to house a particular use.

ISSUE XIV

Our project begins with the assumption that public space—designed for, and dedicated to the open source consumption of a neighborhood—has the power to transform, empower, and enrich a community. We see this to be a valuable asset in Colombian culture, and a need expressed by the City of Bogotá. Inspired by the library parks we currently see appearing throughout the country, the project challenges the notion that great urban public space exists primarily as a manipulation of the ground plane in the voids between important architecture.

ADVANCED STUDIO

The proposed design is an architecture of public rooms, organized as a family of assembly, making community use probable, rather than just possible. Clay, a material with cultural significance, is used in the form of meter-thick structural brick walls to create an air of permanence. This brick forum aims to create a cohesive identity for the site, recognized and claimed by the people of Bogotá in the hopes of repairing and regrowing a community.

Brick Detail Axonometric 1:40

148

UTSOA

DANIEL BONILLA

149

ADVANCED STUDIO

ISSUE XIV

150

UTSOA

DANIEL BONILLA

151

ISSUE XIV

Presentation and Representation

OR, THE IMPORTANCE OF THE EXHIBIT 152

UTSOA

“I was soon struck by what seemed at the time the peculiar disadvantage under which architects labour, never working directly with the object of their thought, always working on it through some intervening medium, almost always the drawing, while painters and sculptors, who might spend some time on preliminary sketches and maquettes, all ended up working on the thing itself which, naturally, absorbed most of their attention and effort”. -Robin Evans, Translations from Drawing to Building Words by Juan Jofre

Architecture is a strange discipline. We are, much like tourists touring their own homeland, “neither here nor there”.1 I imagine most of us already know that, or at the very least sense it in some primal way, because for the majority of the time, particularly in school, we seem incapable of finding the proper way to discuss our own work. While we wish to engage it directly, the very fact that we don’t produce its final version forces us to talk about it in the abstract. We are not builders and we are not artists; our output is not the end product. Therefore, we end up talking about the process, or the relationships our designs have with other topics, or their relative place in history, or their cultural implications, but rarely do we talk about the things directly in front of us, those three or four sheets of paper that

we hurriedly print minutes before the review, and which ostensibly represent our ideas. And here lies the problem, because those drawings end up being just that, representations—they are not themselves the final product. Which is to say, we talk of our work as representational rather than final, and consequently we think of ourselves as representing ideas instead of just presenting them. I am fully aware that this topic has been much discussed by others, many of whom are certainly more qualified and well-versed, but I would like to return to it not to discuss the output, but instead the act. For I believe that we do a great disservice to our discipline by subjugating our work to a representational role rather than allowing it to both represent and stand on its own.

153

PRESENTATION AND REPRESENTATION Found Objects exhibition in the Goldsmith Loggia, November 2017. The exhibition featured work from Juan Jofre-Lora's VisCom III class. Photograph by Amelia Mickelsen. Courtesy of the School of Architecture Visual Resources Collection, The University of Texas at Austin.

JUAN JOFRE

Found Objects exhibition in the Goldsmith Lobby, November 2017. The exhibition featured work from Juan Jofre-Lora's VisCom III class. Photograph by Amelia Mickelsen. Courtesy of the School of Architecture Visual Resources Collection, The University of Texas at Austin.

PRESENTATION AND REPRESENTATION

ISSUE XIV

156

UTSOA

Much has been said about the drawing and its relationship to the building, most eloquently by Robin Evans.2 I would like to suggest a similar take on the relationship between representation and presentation at the moment of review. As Robin suggests, there is a kind of loss in translation that occurs when one represents an idea rather than just presenting the thing itself. But there is also an opportunity, a slippage that allows for unexpected interpretations and pointed ambivalence. This slippage, however, can only be instrumentalized if we acknowledge that it is itself an act, and that it separates two very different things. Once we acknowledge translation, we recuperate both the initial act and its interpretation. It also provides the opportunity to do both acts simultaneously. I find the exhibit to be a singular tool that engages both representation and presentation. Exhibits, unlike reviews, are almost always presented as finite and complete. They are expected to stand on their own, usually for a determined period of time that extends past the ability of any single individual to continuously defend them, they must produce their own aesthetic and spatial sequencing, and they end. All of which makes them autonomous and gives them agency.

Juan Jofre is currently the Emerging Fellow in Design at the School of Architecture. Prior to joining UTSOA, he was a practicing architect and educator in New York City, where he was a part-time faculty member at Parsons The New School and a designer at the firm A+I. Juan has worked for several other renowned firms, including Tod Williams & Billie Tsien and Weiss/Manfredi, and participated in multiple public exhibitions, including as the research coordinator for OfficeUS, the American Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale. Notes 1. 2.

157

Bryson, Bill. “Neither Here nor There - Travels in Europe” Harper Collins Publishers Inc. New York New York. 1992. Evans, Robin “Translations from Drawing to Building” MIT Press. Cambridge, MA. 1997.

JUAN JOFRE

However, exhibits are almost always also representative of a larger set of ideas. They are the testing ground for new production techniques, or the collection of historical narratives, or a microcosm of a complex set of issues. They operate within a context much broader than their physical production and in many instances are preceded or coincide with a presentation, often in a format similar to a traditional review. All of which makes them entirely subservient and translational. Therefore, an exhibit is judged both on its

content and its form. It is the testing ground and the final output. It creates the possibility of a productive symbiosis where presentation and representation coexist. A moment where the final product is strengthened and strengthens the interpretation it engenders. For that reason, I think it extremely productive that we, as architects, engage in the production of exhibits. But more importantly, I believe that we would significantly improve our lot, and give new life to reviews, if we treated them more like exhibits. At the very least, I hope we remind ourselves to consider the paper, to build our presentations, and see the review as both final and projective.

ISSUE XIV

SLING CHAIRS Asher Intebi

WOOD DESIGN

The design of the chairs orchestrates the inherent anisotropic nature of the wood, the relationships of the various materials, and the balance between the desired form and the necessary ergonomics. From an early point, I envisioned using a tensile material—ultimately leather—as a mediator between the human and the frame for comfort. The chairs were designed around two cross sections: the perfect circle used for the vertical members, and the elongated circle used for the horizontal members where the leather connections exist. The dialogue between these two sections created a rigor to the eye that accents the areas of exception, namely the way the members meet the ground, meet the hand, and meet the other members. In addition to these exceptions, the design breaks its own set of rules along the back rail to merge the language of the chair with the human body. At this moment, the design sweeps from a

perfect circle profile to an angled elongated circle to meet the leather and the back of the user. Both chairs are built from the wood of a single piece of solid American Black walnut stock, with accents of Gabon ebony. The leather is locally sourced and fastened to the wood through threaded inserts and blackened steel finish bolts; this allows the leather to remain simple and replaceable, with no stitching or leatherworking necessary.

158

UTSOA

MARK MACEK

159

ISSUE XIV

INHABIT

ADVANCED STUDIO

Andrea Becker, AndrÃ© Boudreaux, Brooke Burnside, Avignon Greene, Rebecca Kennedy, Whitney Moore, Hugo Reynolds, Sean Reynolds, Joey Rocha, Ui Jun Song, Anthony Vannette

160

UTSOA

The shade pavilion is expected to serve between three and four thousand students and park visitors throughout the year. They will use the built facility through the spring, winter, and fall when school is typically in session. In the summer the park offers bay tours for the public.

The 450-square-foot structure sits on the bayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s edge, nestled between yaupon holly shrubs sculpted by southwest winds. A short walk along an informal path from the parking through the hollies leads to the structure. A gabion wall filled with recycled concrete provides the opportunity for the environmental educator to talk about the importance of recycling. The wall protects visitors from afternoon sun while also providing habitat for native lizards, pollinators, and other tiny creatures typically found in this coastal environment. This inhabited feature is a living example of the Gulf Coastâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interdependent ecosystems. Wooden louvers are angled to maximize shade throughout the summer, and a wood screen provides shading from the southern sun.

161

COLEMAN COKER

In 2017, the studio partnered with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to design and build a shade structure at Galveston Island State Park, one of the most visited parks in the state. The shade structure will be used by environmental educators teaching middle and high school students in the region. Students will use the shade pavilion for an orientation talk before they begin a bay walk.

ISSUE XIV

Bunt, erterfe conloctus o con senterit face none furniqui tam ret vica; hae quit. Git; Catilne tantra? in diocaet; nem, ut L. Elabisque init.Cur. Catum fac oc, C. Ahae abenatum iaedo, que iae nonsi terit. Urem ponfextum, mentre faciis. Ad in sunterei pondetil virit. Upio ternum dio, ponventee quit. Git; Catilne tantra? in diocaet; nem, ut L. Elabisque init.Cur. Catum fac oc, C. Ahae abenatum iaedo, que iae nonsi terit. Urem ponfextum, mentre faciis. Ad in sunm inpro nonloctum o maximultus re caes consilibus issi ia deestrio utem

ADVANCED STUDIO

Bunt, erterfe conloctus o con senterit face none furniqui tam ret vica; hae quit. Git; Catilne tantra? in diocaet; nem, ut L. Elabisque init.Cur. Catum fac oc, C. Ahae abenatum iaedo, que iae nonsi terit. Urem ponfex nosultis, consusquid sin din ve, videm utendem in Ita, publici enintis? Pors cae que aceport andeatilnes rescere nostiae abemus bonos, Ti. Serorit; esse tarbestori senitam quam adeludentra, Cat L. Seratil hos erit, vivesci treis. Fultius volto num temnit. Icidicae enerfectum, mentre faciis. Ad in sunterei pondetil virit. Upio ternum dio, ponventem inpro nonloctum o maximultus re caes consilibus issi ia deestrio utems rescere nostiae abemus bonos, Ti.

162

UTSOA

COLEMAN COKER

163

ISSUE XIV

GINKO CHAIR Ashley Chung

WOOD DESIGN

Emerging from a long-standing admiration for the only two ginkgo trees on campus, the Ginkgo Chair explores the fine line between metaphor and form. Built with a bent plywood lamination process, the chair is comprised of four leavesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;one for the back, two for the seat, and one as the supportive connection. Iterative studies of ergonomics and leaf forms were conducted to examine the comfort and aesthetics of one such abstraction of nature. Every aspect of the chair was completed in the woodshop with exception to the veneers, courtesy of The Wood Gallery, Inc. in Dallas, Texas. Each leaf was bent in the vacuum press on a polystyrene foam form cut out from plywood jigs. Using the vacuum press, 1/16â&#x20AC;? bent plywood layers were glued together on the forms and left overnight. The veneers were adhered to the layered wood one side at a time upon the forms in the vacuum press. To express the ginkgo metaphor past the physical shapes of its leaves, the veneers were ordered with

a sunburst pattern to emulate its veins and midribs. As such, the grain orientations of the veneers were laminated to the bent wood pieces with respect to the overall composition of the chair. The final four leaves were jigsawed out before being sanded and assembled together. An investigation of how design may balance the natural metaphor of gingko leaves and constructed wood design, the Ginkgo Chair sits as a piece rooted in the imperfections of the wood and craft and the precision of the bent plywood lamination process. The metaphor gave notion to the design, and the design gave form to the metaphor.

164

UTSOA

MARK MACEK

165

ISSUE XIV

STORE Ryan Carlisle, Emily Chaney, Clayton Cain, Sadie Dubicki, Samantha Gutteridge, Haley Lovelady, Chloe Malek, Marsden Merkle, Renica Naeva, Marriene Ondo, Alexandra Padila, Anjulie Palta, Julie Patterson, Ian Randall & Yee Sang Wong vest, paddles, water-coloring kits and educational tools. They also asked for an informal area where as many as twenty-five students could sit in the shade and have discussions about what theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d experienced. The new facility was to be just yards from the water with a sandy beach, where kayaks could easily be put in and taken out.

ADVANCED STUDIO

As their program has grown, Artist Boat needed a place on the Preserve to permanently store their kayaking equipment. At the same time, they needed a shaded structure where visitors could discuss what theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d learned from their kayaking trips. The Gulf Coast DesignLab took on the task of providing such a place. The program called for a secure storage area suited for sixteen tandem kayaks, life-

166

UTSOA

COLEMAN COKER

167

ISSUE XIV

prairie. The kayaks are secured behind a pair of rolling doors that open to allow full room for storing the kayaks. Paddles, vests, and art equipment are stored in the enclosed lockup. Hot-dipped galvanized steel frames denote rhythm, while overhead an open-framed 950-square-foot roof further expresses the tectonics of the structure. A raised wood platform on the western end is oriented to frame the setting sun.

ADVANCED STUDIO

Store uses materials that will weather well in the harsh salt climate. The structure is screened using number-4 steel reinforcing bars welded and hung on the steel structure. These and the COR-TEN sheathed storage area are left to rust as another way to find sympathy with the native grasses. The screen re-bars are double thick and dense at the enclosed storage area. But as they move westward toward the raised wood deck they become more widely spaced to allow more open views out to the

168

UTSOA

COLEMAN COKER

169

ISSUE XIV

INVISIBLE BUILDINGS Kai Liao

Some buildings on campus are hard to see in person. Where are these buildings? They may have existed a long time ago or will be built in the near future. They inherit various features of UT buildings, such as neoclassic motifs and human-scale public space. These invisible buildings are located on campus somewhere, and they arouse peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s curiosity to explore campus while they try to find them.

UT campus while presenting more interesting buildings. They look hyper-realistic even though they may not exist in real life. By taking multiple pictures around the UT campus, I collected materials to generate new buildings on the computer. Using digital manipulation, I transformed originals or invented new architecture into otherworldly yet believable scenes.

ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY

The project engages the context of UTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s campus by trying to create a new architecture that is integrated into the surrounding fabric. These invisible buildings are arguably a better representation of the spirit of

170

UTSOA

DAVID HEYMANN

171

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think there is any bad design. Sure, things are ugly, or beautiful, or in between, but as long as there is a rigorous exploration then I think it has value.â&#x20AC;?

Patrick Schoonover

ISSUE XIV

CIVIC POOL Mattea Cai

landscapes and programs in support of the pool. Completing the informal socio-political resistance, local commerce sits at the junction of the main promenade and the entries to the pool. The pool surface is kept an earthy-red color to prompt an immediate recognition from the citizens of the metropolis that the swimming pool is not a part of the port, not a part of the ocean, not a part of the Expo, but an extension of themselves. Explorations undertaken in formulating the project included considerations to the social construct of a swimming pool, the maintenance of the duality that exists with the pool and the Expo, as well as local empowerment.

INTERMEDIATE STUDIO 2

In Renzo Pianoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Blueprint Plan, an island condition was created in which a string of boats formed a barrier to the coast and to the city of Genoa, and as an island that only serves the Expo centers for the Genoa International Boat Show. These centers are representations of international commerce and exhibitionism, inevitably excluding the regular citizens of Genoa from its social construct. This counter-scheme to the presented configuration removes the boats in the canal and turns it into a public swimming pool. To the south of the swimming pool adjacent to the Expo center is a mediator building that contains an eatery serving both the swimmers and the Expo visitors. A bleacher structure allows its ascenders a view of the metropolis beyond. To the north of the swimming pool are

174

UTSOA

CHARLTON LEWIS

175

ISSUE XIV

COLLECTIVE SPACE AND WATER Tim Petersen

work. This additional structure could then be used for the artist to expand their unit. The living unit is stacked on the studio which allows for easy access, separation from the studio mess and efficiency in space. This tight building footprint allowed for a public rain/sculpture garden to occupy the street edge. This system would collect stormwater runoff and filter it back into the ground, lessening erosion. Retaining walls are also used to control water and are supported by cisterns. The roof collects rain water and runs it through the concrete and into the cisterns. The system of rain gardens and cisterns could be used as a model to mitigate erosion along the entire Red Bluff cliff.

VERTICAL STUDIO

Red Bluff Road is on the east side of Austin and runs along Town Lake. The neighborhood is mixed with residences, light industry, and artist studios. The site is disrupted by an abrupt 50-foot cliff that is eroding due to stormwater runoff. The units are lifted and pushed towards the edge of the cliff to capture the best view, but the structure is pulled back to avoid interfering with the sensitive cliff. This created a cantilevered condition and elevated the project to hover over the cliff. A deck is raised up to connect the studios for easy access. This allows for casual interactions to take place and strengthens the community of artists. The deck also creates a loading dock condition as well as a semi privacy threshold from the public sculpture garden. The structure is on the outside and the beams extend between the units for the artists to display their

176

UTSOA

ELIZABETH ALFORD

177

ISSUE XIV

INTERSECTING TRACKS Rem Kielman and Miles Payton

ADVANCED STUDIO

Bunt, erterfe conloctus o con senterit face none furniqui tam ret vica; hae quit. Git; Catilne tantra? in diocaet; nem, ut L. Elabisque init.Cur. Catum fac oc, C. Ahae abenatum iaedo, que iae nonsi terit. Urem ponfex nosultis, consusquid sin din ve, videm utendem in Ita, publici enintis? Pors cae que aceport andeatilnes rescere nostiae abemus bonos, Ti. Serorit; esse tarbestori senitam quam adeludentra, Cat L. Seratil hos erit, vivesci treis. Fultius volto num temnit. Icidicae enerfectum, mentre faciis. Ad in sunterei pondetil virit. Upio ternum dio, ponventem inpro nonloctum o maximultus re caes consilibus issi ia deestrio utems rescere nostiae abemus bonos, Ti.

178

UTSOA

Intersecting Tracks prioritizes expanding programming for visitors and researchers, enhancing ecosystem performance, engaging a sense of place through experience, and building local relationships. Two “tracks” of research—one looking up at the skies, the other down at the soil, plants, and animals—will coexist on this remote,

800-acre satellite campus. Four physical “tracks”, trail loops of differing lengths, allow researchers, land managers, and visitors to explore the site. These trails link the varying terrain, plant communities, water features, and telescopes, weaving research and experience through the landscape. The 20-30 acre plots shaped by the trail network become research plots for both bison grazing and controlled burns. Finally, a newly-designed visitor center acts as a hub for these four trail loops. Visitors explore a series of enclosed spaces designed to exhibit the unique geology, hydrology, biology, and astronomical research that the site hosts.

179

JASON SOWELL

Intersecting Tracks proposes a framework plan for the McDonald Observatory, a world-renowned observatory in the Davis Mountains of West Texas. The site was chosen for its remoteness and famous dark skies. Today, the observatory’s grounds are just as well known for their unique “sky island” ecology, their geologic uniqueness to Texas, and for surviving the destructive Rock House fire in 2011.

ISSUE XIV

BOULDERING PARK Faiza Tayyab

In addition, the site is faced by harsh western sun, and in response hosts a series of louvers that grow and attach onto the facade of the bouldering gym. The bouldering gym invites circulation from the elevated park space and continues the journey in a vertical direction. Visitors can circulate around the central rock on suspended walkways that wrap around in a rising, circular manner, while hosting a series of resting/observation spots along the way.

INTERMEDIATE STUDIO 2

This project places a MetroRail stop at the intersection of 53rd street and Bruning Avenue in Austin, TX. The goal of this project is to create an activated space for public transportation, one that not only serves a purpose, but also rejuvenates the surrounding landscape. By hybridizing a bouldering gym, an elevated public park, and a MetroRail stop, a destination is created. The form utilizes the concept of a peeling ground plane and occupying it in a way that creates a journey or procession to an intriguing “object in the landscape”—the bouldering gym. The project dresses itself in three layers that exist at street level: wood for pedestrian, stone for bike, and landscape as a buffer between the two.

180

UTSOA

SARAH GAMBLE

181

ISSUE XIV

HYDRO-THINKERY Prarthan Shah

VERTICAL STUDIO

The site strategy for this project dealt with ideas of juxtaposition in landscape and architecture. The project finds overlaps and connections within this framework. The site is an existing water utility plant for the New Braunfels Utility (NBU) company. The studio was asked to create spaces that help bring the community together by acknowledging the role water and the NBU play in New Braunfels. The genesis of these spaces began by answering what architecture of water can mean. The program dealt with water in multiple ways, and it was situated on the edge of the Comal River and an active spring. The inspiration of how water moves through the karst limestone provided the initial parti. The water moves within the limestone under the heavy mass with points of infiltration for fresh water. The project was conceived with similar conditions where the points of infiltration could be light and the path is undefined. The Hydro Thinkery is a proposed learning center for adults and children where each space deals with a different quality of water that are juxtaposed against one another.

182

UTSOA

NICHOLE WIEDEMANN

183

Coleman Brink

Ava Maggie Laird

Grayson Shepard

These drawings were produced by first-year architecture students in Francisca Aroso and Joyce Rosnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Visual Communications I course in fall 2017. In this class, students are taught hand drawing techniques as a way to learn the design process.

Ania Yee-Boguinskaia

ANALOG FOUNDATIONS Maggie Xie Hill

Alex Campbell

ISSUE XIV

Anderson, Robbie

106

Flores, Marett

106

Anderson, Robert

Frossard, Hannah

136

Avitt, Mitch

108

Greene, Avignon

108

Bacon, Hannah

146

Greulich, Evan

Beckendorf, Charles

146

Gritch, Jayme

Becker, Andrea

160

Gunjan, Nupur

128

Gutteridge, Samantha

Benckenstein, Alistair Betts, Fatima Bian, Tian Birch, Brennen Boudreaux, André Burnside, Brooke

84 10, 112 160

Hipps-Cruz, Michelle M.

Hugentobler, Natalie

Intebi, Asher

114, 160

166

Hazelet, Paul

Ivancie, Hannah

36, 158 136

Cai, Mattea

174

Jofre, Juan

Cain, Clayton

166

Kielman, Rem

110

King, Dylan

Klimaszewski, Patrick

Calderon Laiton, Silvia Marcela Canales, Bruno Cantú, Michelle Cappi, Eliah

107, 126, 142

Koohifar, Farnaz

125

Kulkarni, Chetan

166

Kuwabara, Noel R

166

Kvasnicka, Luke

Chang, Connie

130

Lake-Smith, Anna

Chen, Nathan

Li, Xinmei

Chen, Weishu

Li, Zhaoran

Chen, Winn

Liao, Kai

Chung, Ashley

164

Conti, Kathleen

Feng, Miao

178

Chaney, Emily

Feliz, Narea

44, 152

107, 142

Carlisle, Ryan

Dubicki, Sadie

INDEX

106, 144

Linquest, Megan Loh, Mabel

166

Lopez, Sarah

10, 122 78

188

78 86, 88 78 106 78 170 24 26, 90, 134 62, 68

Lovelady, Haley

166

Mahaffey, Max

136

UTSOA

Malek, Chloe McCommon, William Merkle, Marsden Moore, Whitney Naeva, Renica

166

Simonson, Hannah

Sin, Seonhye

166

Son, Jimin

114, 160

Song, Ui Jun

116 78 124 30, 32, 160

166

Spetalnick, Molly

106, 124

Spielman, Sarah

Ondo, Marriene

166

Stray-Gundersen

Padila, Alexandra

166

Tayyab, Faiza

Palta, Anjulie

166

Townley, Claire

90, 134

Patterson, Julia

166

Vanella, Angela

50, 107

Narayan, Prashant

Payton, Miles Pena, Christian

86, 178

Vannette, Anthony

Wei, Xiwen

Perkes, Chris

Wong, Yee-Sang

Petersen, Tim

22, 48, 176

Powell, Will Qin, Daiyiqing Ramakrishnan, Uttara Randall, Ian Rathe, Mason

Wu, Ezra

124

Yang, Xue

86 160

Reynolds, Sean

160

Rocha, Joey Rousey, Sarah Scalia, Valentina Schoonover, Patrick

30, 160 124, 125 166 128, 130 50, 104, 107 78 24

Zhao, Jingrong

78, 84

Zhou, Ruifeng

78, 84

52 160 98 78 24, 46, 52

Shah, Prarthan

182

Sheets, Jordan

132 48

INDEX

Simenhoff, Savannah

Yang, Yiqun

25, 28, 166

Reynolds, Hugo

Richardson, Philip

Wu, Alex Yen-Jung

86 180

189

ISSUE XIV

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to extend a sincere thank you to the faculty members who generously contributed funds from their endowments toward the publication of ISSUE 14. Without them, this book would not have been possible.

190

UTSOA

Henry M. Rockwell Chair in Architecture Michelle Addington, Dean, School of Architecture Sid W. Richardson Centennial Professor of Architecture Kevin Alter, Director, UTSOA Summer Academy in Architecture Hal Box Chair in Urbanism Michael Benedikt, Director, Center for American Architecture and Design Page Southerland Page Fellow in Architecture Richard Cleary Ruth Carter Stevenson Centennial Fellow in Architecture Coleman Coker Gene Edward Mikeska Endowed Chair in Interior Design Tamie Glass, Director, Interior Design Program Meadows Foundation Centennial Fellow in Architecture Francisco Gomes, Associate Dean, Graduate Programs Lawrence W. Speck Excellence Fund and W.L. Moody, Jr. Centennial Professor in Architecture Lawrence Speck Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Neil Ford Centennial Chair in Architecture Wilfried Wang and Barbara Hoidn Paul Phillipe Cret Centennial Teaching Fellow in Architecture Nichole Wiedemann Professional Residency Program Interior Design Program

191

ISSUE is the annual student-produced publication featuring graduate and undergraduate work from the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture.