WAI Architecture Think Tank Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski
3rd Year Studios as Hyde Chairs of Excellence in Architecture University of Nebraska-Lincoln Fall 2017 Spring 2018
AN ATLAS FOR
THE CAMPUS OF EASY PARTS Ben Friesen David Huismann Emily Tetschner Jared Andrews Jessica Larsen Joshua Frederick Marwa Al ka’abi Megan Waldron Madeline Whitted Noah Schacher Tyler Koraleski Brenton Rahn Hieu Nguyen Caleb Goehring Andres Villegas Adrian Silva Joshua Pfeifer Joseph Synek
CAMPUS OF THE EASY PARTS Editors: Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski With projects by: Ben Friesen David Huismann Emily Tetschner Jared Andrews Jessica Larsen Joshua Frederick Marwa Al ka’abi Megan Waldron Madeline Whitted Noah Schacher Tyler Koraleski Brenton Rahn Hieu Nguyen Caleb Goehring Andres Villegas Adrian Silva Joshua Pfeifer Joseph Synek Project realized during the first year as Hyde Chairs of Excellence in Architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln First Published in 2019 by Intelligentsia Publishers 3116 Brereton Street Apt 2 15219 Pittsburgh, PA waithinktank.com/Campus-of-the-Easy-Parts waithinktank.com/After-the-Campus-Condensers
AN ATLAS FOR
THE CAMPUS OF EASY PARTS
INTRODUCTION TO AN ATLAS FOR
THE CAMPUS OF EASY PARTS
The Easy Parts In the last architectural manifesto of the 20th Century, Robert Venturi tried to construct an argument for the ‘difficult whole’. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) argued for an architecture exploring ‘the difficult unity through inclusion rather than the easy unity through exclusion.’ This architecture resulted, in part, in the reduction of architecture to a stylistic straightjacket of often contradictory elements in detriment of a transcendental critique of architectural form with its ideological and sociopolitical imperatives. Still affecting the discourse and practice of contemporary Architecture, the shortcomings of the difficult whole can be tackled with a form of architecture exploring the sublime simplicity it aimed to deconstruct. The Easy Parts explores through research and design the relationship of pure form and architecture’s capacity to address complex programs. The Easy Parts invites to reconceptualize ancient and contemporary spatial and programmatic strategies in order to explore the limits, challenges, and potential of pure form in Architecture. Hardcore Architecture Carl Jung defined as an archetype, the patterning forces contained in the Collective Unconscious—the deeper layer of images that is inborn in the human psyche in people indifferent to time and place. Hardcorism surges when those images become architectural. Based on the theory of Hardcorism —architecture as Hardcore, pure geometric form, the studio aims to explore the legacy of form by creating a critical genealogy of the use of pure form in architecture and parallel constructions in the realm of modern, postwar, and contemporary art practices. Students will study the principles, challenges and potential of pure form in Architecture, not just by looking at seminal projects by Claude Nicolas Ledoux, Aldo Rossi, Giovanni Guerrini, El Lissizky, and Le Corbusier, but also by understanding the role of form in the evolution of installations in avant-garde, conceptualist, minimalist, land and contemporary art practices by focusing on pivotal works by Blinky Palermo, Marcel Duchamp, Lawrence Weiner, Isa Genzken, Rosemarie Trockel, Michael Heizer, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Joseph Beuys, Carl Andre, Jorge Oteiza, and more Eleven Hardcore Archetypes, Eleven Hardcorist Buildings For each of the campus buildings (or Easy Parts) a final archetype was selected out of eleven archetypes: Cube, Spiral, Courtyard, Surface, Stacked Boxes, Loop, Architecton, Wall, Void, Pyramid, Megalith. These archetypes were explored through physical models, drawings and images that stripped the original buildings out of any architectural detail, material, scale or context.
Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski, Pure Hardcore Icons: A Manifesto on Pure Form in Architecture, (London: Artifice Books on Architecture, 2014).
Campus References The ultimate test-ground for idealized models of collective inhabitation, the campus offers the opportunity to stimulate the programmatic imagination in order to find ways for architecture to affect directly the construction of society. The Campus of the Easy Parts follows the tradition of rethinking the ground as a radical space for the performance of all human activities in the same way as Koolhaas’ Parc de la Villette with its programmatic strips, Wright’s Broadacre City with its rethinking of productive land division and the abstractly hyperfunctionality of the plots of Leonidov’s Magnitogorsk. Divided in three main parts: contemplation, recreation and production, The Campus of the Easy Parts brings through straight forward form, and clear programmatic allocations, a plan that integrates seamlessly technology with culture. Part I Fall 2017 Campus of Easy Parts The Campus of Easy Parts consists on reconsidering the question of the campus as a territory of strategically organized buildings addressing a common, greater program. The Campus explores the ways in which buildings on their autonomous, self-contained forms relate to a designated landscape while simultaneously addressing a complex series of spatial and programmatic challenges. The second introductory design studio moves beyond the scale of the single family house to explore more diverse and complex programs and their relationship to their environment. Divided in three parts, the studio starts with pure research, and concludes with the design of the campus landscape and the autonomous mix-use buildings that occupy it. The Studio focuses on the relationship between research, architecture and its spatial, programmatic and environmental imperatives. Students will continue developing their capacity for the critical gathering of information and their design and discursive skills when addressing complex spatial requirements. Studio Structure Project 1: Hardcorist Ontology The first exercise of the studio consists on creating through research an ontology of pure forms with architectural potential. Students will gather visual information in the form of images and drawings about historical references of buildings dealing with pure geometric forms and contemporary deviations of these practices. Students will gather similar research with the work of practitioners of diverse forms of art including conceptualists, minimalists, avant-gardists, land and contemporary artists. As a result each student will document twelve case studies of each of the formal archetypes including: Cube, Pyramid, Architecton, Stacked Boxes, Void, Spiral, Loop, Surface, Courtyard, Monolith, and Wall. Project 2: Faculty Buildings Following the creation of an ontology of forms, each student will be assigned a specific building with a set of spatial, programmatic and formal requirements related to their research in the first part of the project. Divided into exhibition, research, recreation/ sports, and living spaces, each of the buildings will respond to the collective programs of the ‘Campus of Easy Parts’. Each of the buildings will respond to the principles of the planning of the campus while offering alternatives to pressing spatial, social and conceptual issues. Their representation will include drawings, images and physical models addressing basic structural and spatial schemes.
Campus References Above: OMA, Parc de la Villette, 1982-83 Right top: Frank Lloyd Wright, Broadacre City, 1934 Right Bottom: Ivan Leonidov, Magnitogorsk, 1930
Project 3 A Campus of Easy Parts The last part of the project consists on the elaboration of a collective masterplan following basic land, and programmatic division strategies. The campus serves as a model for territorial organization based on the concept of the ‘Easy Parts’, while promoting innovative ways of land usage and division/integration. The Campus is divided in three main zones, or programmatic areas: Production: for the study, and exploration of farming technologies that allow for the sustainable productive use of the land. Contemplation: where art is produced, and new forms of action welcome collective knowledge exchange through the arts. Recreation: where students, faculty, and staff play games, train and compete in sports as an integral part of a healthy societal interaction. Students create documentation of the site by constructing a collaborative large scale model, and by taking into account the landscape and architectural design of their neighbors. Students take into consideration for their design elements of (dis)urban/rural planning and landscape design, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, Ivan Leonidov proposal for Magnitogorsk, and OMA ‘Parc de la Villette.’ The Program of the Campus responds to 10 points: 1. The Campus is divided in three zones: Production, Contemplation, Recreation 2. There’s no hierarchy between zones 3. Each Zone has an Agora 4. Every building has direct access to green space 5. The campus is universally accessible 6. The maximum distance between buildings is ten walking minutes 7. Plots are 150x150 feet 8. Open Campus with Boundaries defined by buildings 9. All resources will be harvested in the campus 10. Each zone contains elements of other zones
Presentation poster for the final presentation of Campus of the Easy Parts, Fall 2017.
Part II Spring 2018 AFTER THE CAMPUS, CONDENSERS! While the Campus offers an idealized blueprint of ground occupation in order to find ways for architecture to affect directly the construction of society, the Social Condenser is the ultimate concretization of these values in building form. After the Campus of Easy Parts provided a test-ground for reclaiming the land in productive, active and balanced ways, a new adjacent development aims to take its values and integrate them to the future of collective living. Social Condensers are buildings that provide space for the intensification of human relations. The Semester is divided in two projects. First, to create social condensers through the design of open spaces and landscapes strategies. These ‘condensing scenarios’ are displayed through a series of images, collages and a two-minute animation documenting the atmospheres of exchange, relationships and coexistence that the campus provides. The second part of the project consists on bringing the values of the social condensers in the landscape and make architectures based on those programs. Following the principles of Hardcorism explored in the first semester, each of the new buildings act as an extension of the landscape and vice-versa. A four-minute film documents each of the ‘condensing scenarios’ both, in the landscape, and in the architectural condensers. Studio Structure Project 1: Condensing Landscapes, Condensing Scenarios The first exercise of the studio consists on the analysis of the current state of the Campus designed in the first semester. Each student, assigned to a site designed by a classmate, has to interact with the previous landscape design and architecture in place. Through collaboration, knowledge exchange, each student develops a ‘condensing scenario’ for social interaction following the three planning principles of the Campus: Production, Contemplation, and Recreation. A new large scale model is produced to substitute the previous ‘Campus of Easy Parts’. Project 2: Faculty Buildings, Social Condensers Learning from the Hardcorist shapes explored in the first semester, each student is assigned a specific form (different from the first semester) including: Pixelated Clouds, Architecton, Gem Box, Brutal Arms, Cells, Topography, Polyform, Horizontal Condenser, Stacks, Plinth, Sky Hook, Stacked Boxes, and Matt Buildings. Each student develops a series of images, drawings and models of these Hardcorist forms stripped out of material, context, and scale, and after selecting one archetype, proceeds to ‘insert’ a series of ‘Condensing scenarios’ in the form of architectural programs. The buildings is presented through images, drawings, detailed models, site models and animations that take into consideration of experience of living in Social Condensers in the Campus of Easy Parts. About the Book The first part of the book ‘Campus of the Easy parts’ consists of each of the Faculty Buildings followed by a black spread with 12 of the reference Hardcorist shapes. The second part of the book ‘After the Campus, Condensers!’ includes each of the Faculty buildings followed by a black spread containing six ‘condensing scenarios’ of the landscape design component of the studio.
Presentation poster for the final presentation of ‘ After the Campus, Condensers!,’ Spring 2018
PART I
CAMPUS OF EASY PARTS
ELEVEN HARDCORIST BUILDINGS
MONOLITH FACULTY & RESEARCH BUILDING Ben Friesen
LOOP COLLECTIVE HOUSING Marwa Al ka’abi
STACKED BOXES RESEARCH & FACULTY BUILDING Jared Andrews
WALL STUDENT HOUSING Joshua Frederick
SPIRAL RECREATION AND SPORTS CENTRE David Huismann
PYRAMID RESEARCHER HOUSING Tyler Koraleski
COURTYARD MULTIMEDIA CENTER Jessica Larsen
CUBE STUDENT UNION Noah Schacher
VOID GALLERIES Emily Tetschner
ARCHITECTON MUSEUM Megan Waldron
SURFACE RESEARCH CENTER Madeline Whitted
PART II
AFTER THE CAMPUS CONDENSERS!
POLYFORM ART CONTEMPLATION CENTER Marwa Al Ka’abi
CONTEMPLATION LANDSCAPE Marwa Al Ka’abi
PRODUCTION LANDSCAPE Joseph Synek
GEM BOX ANIMAL APPRECIATION CENTER Joseph Synek
CELLS NEW MEDIA CENTER Adrian Silva
CONTEMPLATION LANDSCAPE Adrian Silva
RECREATION LANDSCAPE Megan Waldron
TOPOGRAPHY ATHLETIC TRAINING CENTER Megan Waldron
PIXEL CLOUDS GRAIN STUDY CENTER Madeline Whitted
PRODUCTION LANDSCAPE Madeline Whitted
RECREATION LANDSCAPE David Huismann
POLYFORM CAMPUS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER David Huismann
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HORIZONTAL CONDENSER BOTANICAL RESEARCH CENTER AND HERBARIUM Jared Andrews
PRODUCTION LANDSCAPE Jared Andrws
CONTEMPLATION LANDSCAPE Andres Villegas
ARCHITECTON STUDIO TOWER Andres Villegas
STACKS SCHOOL OF POLITICAL SCIENCES Caleb Goehring
RECREATION LANDSCAPE Caleb Goehring
RECREATION LANDSCAPE Tyler Koraleski
BRUTAL ARMS CAMPUS LIBRARY Tyler Koraleski
PLINTH ATHLETIC REHABILITATION CENTER Joshua Pfeifer
RECREATION LANDSCAPE Joshua Pfeifer
CONTEMPLATION LANDSCAPE Brenton Rahn
SKY HOOKS ART COLLECTION REPOSITORY Brenton Rahn
INVERTED AXONOMETRIC 3/32”=1’
SECTION AXON 3/32”=1’
STACKED BOXES WINTER SPORTS COMPLEX Hieu Nguyen
RECREATION LANDSCAPE Hieu Nguyen
PRODUCTION LANDSCAPE Noah Schacher
MATT BUILDING AUTOMATED FARMING TECHNOLOGIES RESEARCH CENTER Noah Schacher
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