Volume 7 - Impact

WENTWORTH ARCHITECTURE REVIEW

WENTWORTH ARCHITECTURE REVIEW

v7

WAr 16/17

Wentworth Architecture review

Wentworth Architecture review is an independent student-run publication that presents the rich culture of Wentworth design students.

Cover art courtesy of James Charves (M.Arch '17).

v 7

This book was set in Din. It was printed and bound on Rolland Paper at DS Graphics in Lowell, MA.

Wentworth Architecture review: Stefan Burnett Dylan Bush Jeffrey Dike James McDonnell

Morgan McMahon Brian Sandford Carolyn Severino Esti Shapiro

Wentworth Architecture review Wentworth Architecture review would like to acknowledge the contributions of: Wentworth Architecture Department, Wentworth Center for Student Engagement, and Wentworth Student Government.

This volume would not be possible without the help of: Rima Abousleiman, Carissa Durfee, Kelly Hutzell, Michael MacPhail, Anne-Catrin Schultz, Rob Trumbour, and DS Graphics.

All rights revert back to original artists or writers. The pieces contained herein were created to fulfill either assigned or personal projects and are intended for display purposes only. Elements or portions of featured pieces may contain borrowed materials. It is not the intention of WAr to infringe upon the rights of the original artists or the sources of the material’s origin.

Wentworth Architecture review Department of Architecture 550 Parker Street Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5998 war@wit.edu

Letter from the Editors: Tracing Our Impact

Our world is made of an infinite expanse of ideas that have, over time, begun to intersect, manipulate, dictate, and inform their surroundings with increasing complexity. The resulting impact of each of these interactions forms the ever-changing fabric that each of us understands as our emotional and physical realities.

As we design, it is the ideas we disseminate, the words we speak, and the things we create that impact these realities. In our architectural education, we learn about designing with awareness of context.

However, it is only through practice and an open mind that we can develop an understanding of how contextual factors relate and interact. This appreciation begins to define design outside of our personal perceptions.

Key to understanding our influence as designers and architects in an increasingly global industry is the willingness to identify and omit our personal biases and perspectives in order to rigorously engage our surroundings as objective, but not indifferent, observers and analysts. This can engender the pursuit of a deep understanding of the variables at play prior to disrupting them.

It can be easy to get lost in pursuit of a goal, concept, or vision; it takes constant reflection on the tangible impact of our decisions to stay rooted in what is real. At the same time, impact can be used as a tool - to disrupt, to experiment, to spark change. While a radical approach is often appreciated in academia, in practice there are real consequences that impact all scales of life. Even as students, we can already see many ways in which we impact one another. Through our individual pursuits and areas of interest, we are able to enrich those around us, pushing one another to reach a higher level of personal development.

We are pleased to see our own impact growing as we reach out to more young designers and expand our presence in the design community. This year, we celebrate the launch of onWArd: the Wentworth Architecture review blog. onWArd reflects our continued commitment to participatory dialogue that encourages the close examination of our diverse perspectives. The curation of this seventh installment of the Wentworth Architecture review has highlighted the enduring importance of promoting this within the discourse of our community.

As we dissect the layers of this journal’s theme, the Wentworth Architecture review invites you to appreciate the meaning of our impact in the world we are designing.

Enjoy, The WAr Team

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37 L'histoire d'un griot un moment en Afrique

GEOLOGICAL

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HISTORICAL 12 A ‘Slum’ in a Good Location 20 The Reality Of It

CULTURAL 56 Designing for Local Culture, Globally

110 Architectural Kinetics WAr 7 When Facades Move 124 Building Up Back Bay

BUILT

78 E-BAR: A Sustainable Campus Installation

ECOLOGICAL

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C COMMUNAL 90 Designing for the Common Good

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The built environment is most commonly understood in terms of its spatial character and materiality. Rarely do we appreciate the temporal quality of architecture. The process by which an architectural language comes into being is not instantaneous. It is just that, a process.

An individual’s inhabitation of a building can be a relationship that develops over time as well. Additionally, the aggregation of architectural forms that create our cities is constantly evolving. An awareness of our position in time, the influence of the past, and the HISTORICAL IMPACT which we have the capacity to influence, is critical to meaningful design.

There is awesome value and merit in the lessons we have to learn from studying historic architectural theories and techniques in order to apply the lessons of the past to today’s designs. We also have the opportunity to critically evaluate yesterday’s architecture.

We can celebrate the successes of the past, and remedy its’ failures or shortcomings.

HISTORICAL

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^ Andrea Welsh | Acorn Street Collage

^ William Toohey III | MIT - Reconstructing Saarinen

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^ Tyler Nguyen | South End Housing

A 'Slum' in a Good Location A conversation between WAr and Jim Campano.

In the late 1950s, the City of Boston and the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) proposed a plan to redevelop the West End of Boston in order to take advantage of new federal legislation that awarded funds to renew urban spaces that were considered "slums". Through dishonest political dealings and biased media coverage, the City of Boston and the BRA rallied enough support for their agenda to declare the West End a slum and seize forty-six acres in the heart of the city under eminent domain. Ultimately, in an act now often referred to as The “Taking,” the West End was completely razed and redeveloped into a series of luxury residential high-rises without consideration of any of the rich social or cultural populations that resided in this neighborhood for decades. The West End redevelopment is widely considered to be one of the worst and most controversial examples of urban renewal in the world.

Jim Campano is an original West Ender that has dedicated much of his life to preserving the memory of the neighborhood of his childhood. Campano was only eighteen when the West End was taken and demolished.

His fond memories of the West End motivate him to serve on the Board of Directors at the West End Museum on Causeway Street.

Additionally, Campano founded and currently serves as the editor of The West Ender, a newsletter that circulates letters, stories, and memories of the old West End.

WAr: Each neighborhood of Boston clearly has its own distinct character. How would you describe the character of the West End? JC: The neighborhood was essentially a series of tenements - four and five stories in height. There was, however, an enclave called “Poplar Place” which were old colonial buildings. I'm not sure how old they were, but they must have been there forever. Most of them were built for three or four families each. Additionally, I think there were a few wood-framed houses, but most of those were gone by the time I was there.

The demographics of the West End depended on the specific time period, and changed significantly from decade to decade. Around 1900 it was largely Irish immigrants, but as the twentieth century progressed, it transitioned to a largely Jewish neighborhood. Ultimately, however, it became a largely Italian neighborhood as individuals emigrated from the North End. Additionally, towards the end of the Old West End, the neighborhood saw an increase in “DP”s, or Displaced Persons, that were coming from Europe as they fled persecution. When they tore the West End down, there were twenty-three different ethnic and racial populations. The largest of these populations was the Italian community, followed by the Jewish and Irish.

WAr: Do you have a memory of what it was like to be a member of the West End community?

JC: They tore it down when I was only eighteen, so most of my memories are standing on the corner with the guys playing ball. We often went to the settlement houses, (I guess they call them the Boys and Girls club now). The West End House, the Peabody House, and the Heath Christian Center. Here, we would go play basketball and a couple of them had pool tables, too.

As a teenager in the West End, you could do so many different things. We played basketball, football, and baseball. From our point of view, the corner was everything.

Now, I don’t suppose people hang out on street corners. They hang out with their cell phone or their Xbox.

WAr: You describe a really rich street life.

Can you contrast that to what it’s like now, or what it feels like to walk around this area today?

JC: The streets of the West End were much more like the ones in the North End than any other place in Boston. However, the West End was actually newer than the North End. In the North End, most of the residential units had to share a common bathroom. Some of them didn’t even have baths. You had to share a toilet and they had a community bathhouse over on Hanover Street.

In the West End, most of the apartments had their own toilet and baths. Which doesn’t seem like a lot now, but it was back then.

Growing up, it was more people-oriented.

When they were building the development that currently houses the West End Museum, they asked why we wanted money for this project, and they were reluctant, and they said "Well there's already Charles River Park there". We simply replied “Yeah, but we [the original West Enders] are more of a neighborhood through The West Ender now, than Charles River Park will ever be.”

WAr: Can you describe the feeling of what it was like to be suddenly displaced and uprooted?

JC: Well, there were about 8,000-10,000 people living in the West End at the time.

The first time they talked about taking the West End, I heard them call it a slum. I used to feel bad because on television I used to watch, in Chicago and New York, in slum neighborhoods. I used to feel bad for those kids. Then, I found out that I was living in a slum! I was one of those kids, too.

The West End was a low-rent neighborhood, sure. But the place was clean. What happened, though, was that two years before they said they were going to take it, around 1954, street cleaning stopped. Garbage pickup became spasmodic. Newspaper reporters came in and took photos where there was garbage in the streets. Throw in some trash, and you’ve got an instant slum.

WAr: As we were walking to the museum, we noticed a series of art pieces in the park

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^ Photos courtesy of the West End Museum

^ Photo courtesy of the Charles Frani Collection at the West End Museum

across the street. Would you be willing to elaborate on how the memory of the West End is recalled, preserved, or changed in these public gestures?

JC: I’m sort of proud of this. I was on the West End Arts Committee for the Big Dig. When the West End was taken, they just wiped out all of the streets. So if you walk around the area now, you’ll find brass plates in the concrete that have the names of the different streets of the Old West End. Also, on the wall on the ramp for the expressway, there is an engraving in the concrete. There was a guy, George Leery, he was a really great guy who we interviewed for a thing called “What Do You Miss About the West End?” George said, “The West End was the greatest neighborhood this side of heaven.

So on the side of the ramp it says, “The

Greatest Neighborhood This Side of Heaven.”

WAr: Can you speak about how your work on the West Ender and at the West End Museum has helped sustain the memory of this community.

JC: It started off pretty innocently. We had a reunion of West Enders, and someone went around and took all the names and addresses of all of the people who were there. When I got home I had to call everybody on the phone, roughly one hundred and fifty people. I figured next time we did this, I would just send out a newsletter to everyone. So, I sent out a one-sided periodical called The West Ender.

Later, I figured I would send it out four times a year. When I went to send it the next time, I sent nearly two hundred and fifty copies.

At its height, I circulated The West Ender to nearly 4,500 families.

And while we were doing that, all of a sudden, a lot of development in the city was going on. A number of politicians, especially under the Flynn administration, had a plan to develop the properties in the West End. So, we got involved with some of the politicians on the project. Then, when Weld was elected governor, he decided he wasn’t going to build housing, he was going to build a courthouse.

Developer Jerome Rappaport, who owned Charles River Park, said that he had the right to build there, and there was a lawsuit.

It ended up going to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, where the court ruled against Rappaport. This allowed for the creation of a new housing development that included space to house the West End

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^ Esti Shapiro | West End Today

Museum. The court proceedings dragged on for a long time. The building opened in 1996 and we finally got the museum in 2004.

The first 10 years were a struggle. A lot of people didn’t want to see this place. Because the BRA doesn’t like the whole idea of the perception of the West End. They are hated throughout this city and the museum would only further damage their reputation.

WAr: In more recent years, the BRA has made some overtures to apologize for or take ownership of the “taking”.

JC: Well yeah, that one time, they apologized.

I was here, in the museum, when it happened and it was the first time that anyone ever formally apologized. I think the Globe ran a little blurb about it. It would have

been nice if they had come up with some money to go along with their apology or something. Anything. But, I guess after fifty years, we shouldn’t expect anything more.

actually newer than the North End. But the West End was chosen, in part, because the North End was all or mostly Italian, and they would stick together and organize politically.

WAr: Obviously the BRA apology could never make up for what happened. How do you perceive their actions, now and then?

WAr: It sounds like this type of urban renewal was quite popular at the time.

Can you speak to your experience with the “taking” of the West End compared to other similar governmental planning projects? ` JC: They can’t use eminent domain unless the property was condemned. I’m a member of the Institute for Justice; they fight eminent domain all over the country - and they’re still doing it. For example, there was a place outside of Cleveland, I think, that was a well maintained suburb. They found two houses there that were beat-up, so they condemned the whole area because they wanted to

JC: Well, you’ve got to remember, “urban renewal” was new when they were doing this. Local governments across the country started spending money on projects to improve their cities. In most places, they were taking black neighborhoods. In Boston, they did a project in the South End, the New York Streets, and it didn’t go over all that well. It became an industrial area. So, they were looking for a location; a slum in a good location. The buildings in the West End were

redevelop it.

Your decisions affect people’s lives.”

And look, there are a lot of benefits that the West Enders could have had that we didn’t know about at the time. The laws also said that anyone displaced by eminent domain should have the right to return. But the West End became all luxury housing. There was no affordable, or even moderate housing.

There was a whole list of things that, if you were evicted by eminent domain, you could have benefited from, but we didn’t know about it. And they weren’t going to tell us!

WAr: Is there anything else that you feel our readers should know?

There were probably people that knew, who were better off. That’s the way it always works, unfortunately. There doesn’t seem to be much difference when it comes to your own special interest. Everybody does what’s in their own best interest. Or at least that’s the way it looks to me. And I’ve been around for a while.

WAr: Do you have any thoughts or suggestions for architects and planners as to what we can learn from the West End? JC: I used to give a talk at MIT, to Master’s students in urban planning and I always ended it by telling them, “Remember this.

^ Photo courtesy of the West End Museum

JC: It was a good neighborhood to grow up in. It was the interpersonal relationships that made it what it was. I live in Davis Square now and I don’t know anyone even though I’ve been there since ‘67.

Today, people think that being a good neighbor means saying “hi.” and that’s it. So, it’s different; neighborhoods just aren’t the same.

The taking of the West End is one of most tragic and unjust moments in this city’s history. It represented an era of thinking that elevated the privileged at the discount of the disenfranchised. Jim Campano advocates that we must heed the lessons of histories like the West End’s in order to improve the lives of everyone in our communities. It is the responsibility of designers to understand and appreciate that our actions and decisions affect people. / Image Ref. 134.

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^ Hana Oji | Boston City Hall - Kallmann McKinnell & Wood

^ Merna Haddad | Komoyoji Temple

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^ Dario Boyce | Istanbul Revealed

The Reality of It Nathaniel St. Jean, M.Arch '14

“Wait for it...Just wait. Are you ready? Any moment now, keep your eyes focused.”

“You may want to…” *crash* The eerie noise will make you cringe, but you can’t look away. How can something so robust, so solid and uniquely crafted fall like a delicate house of cards? The destruction turns your stomach over, but yet, you cannot seem to pull your eyes away. This time you brace yourself knowing what’s to come. *crash* No, this is not the work of Gordon MattaClark.

Although destructive, this epic sight does not have the surgical precision to slice, cut, peel, and extract portions of whole structures revealing any unique architectural innards. You could not even reconstruct this sight we’re looking at right now. This is chaos. Wood floors ripped apart like giant splinters that would do more damage to one's whole body rather than getting jammed unexpectedly into one’s finger. Tweezers would not be able to save you ouch. *crash* The exterior brick facade bursted into dust. If Louis Kahn were to interview a brick today it would not say, “pulverize me to dust.” If an arch is one of brick’s grandest gestures as a building material, dust must be at the bottom of the list.

“Oh, look over there.” In the distance behind the chained fence, a 1960’s armchair, with classic burgundy leather, brass nails, and gold legs, sat perfectly upright on a pile of rubble. *crash* Nevermind.

A giant steel beam disconnected from its partner, falling perfectly plumb what are the odds turning the chair into a kabob. I doubt the owner will miss it, though, unless they forgot it. Yikes!

“What time is it?” “You don’t know?” “Take a look at your watch!”

“What, it’s only been 15 minutes?” An entire elevation has been demolished. All that design work erased. All the coordination, labor, skill, craft, alterations, and maintenance hours are gone. Physically erased from history. All that could remain is a plaque on the wall in the lobby of the dazzling, new crystal tower that will take its place.

That’s assuming it doesn’t get cut from the budget. *crash* For whatever reason we cannot look away. The destruction is fascinating; to see steel beams warp, bricks implode, toilets shattered, and structures attempting to remain upright. I cannot prevent myself from smirking. Watching what is happening before me is like watching the rising tide take over a sand castle. As much as you tried to fortify the castle at some point, you give in and watch it become consumed by the sea. *crash* “You don’t feel the same way?” “No, you’re right, that’s the same feeling I get deep down. That’s why my stomach is turning over.” As an architect and history aficionado, this is an event that is painful to witness. The flip of a coin, you watch it all, taking it in, but yet, wonder why it came to this?

We’re watching architecture die. Watching craftsmanship become erased. It cannot fight back. The activists tried. And failed. Architects united and took a stand. They, too, failed. * crash* In the end the building succumbed to death. As the 12,000 pound concrete orb took its final swing...The building fell.

We just witnessed an execution.

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^ Christina Ziobrowski | MIT Residence Hall Section

^ Jared Guilmett | Ambiguity of the Center

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^ James T. Fan | The Chidori Bookshelf

^ Rima Abousleiman | Sites of Reconciliation (Above)

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^ Sasha Bachier | A New Light: Transforming Our Urban Environments (Below)

GEOLOGICAL

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The physical structure of the earth has effectively been the only constant in an overwhelming sea of variables influencing how humans shape and inhabit space.

Geology has impacted how life on Earth operates at every level, from the nuances in our evolutionary history to our cultural values.

With the dawn of the Anthropocene epoch, and the complex threat of anthropogenic climate change at our doorstep, it is increasingly important that we examine our relationship with the only planetary body we know to harbor life. The pursuit of an understanding of our GEOLOGICAL IMPACT, as well as its impact on us, is a medium that is increasingly necessary for our continued successful habitation of this planet.

< Alec Foucault | Timeline of Resource Depletion

the moon dances with the ocean like our brains with oxytocin interwoven by a moment

you can see it in the waves the patterns always shifting shape perpetual creation; an ethereal state

^ Dario Boyce | Restoration of the Shipping Neighborhood of Tophane

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^ Freddy Pendleton | Color

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^ Merna Haddad | Sanctuary Space

A champion of the Paulista school of Brazilian architects, Paulo Mendes da Rocha proved, through his work, his philosophy that architecture should be made and thought of as an “inexorable transformation of nature” [1]. Years after the peak of the heroic style, this message is still impacting how we view urban design- reaching as far as Ireland’s Grafton Architects, the competition-winning firm for UTEC Lima’s new vertical campus.

While this may seem an unlikely match, Grafton have masterfully drawn connections between Peru’s Machu Picchu and their native Ireland’s Sceilig Mhichíl. Through layers of research and the act of making, Grafton were able to craft a masterpiece that has already been recognized in the form of the inagural Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) International Prize. / Note p. 134.

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we found common ground in the mountains and cliffs common soil pressed into our fingertips

the air here is thinner, but the sun still casts shade we carve our impressions in stone much the same

a city in the clouds- still learning its worth a concrete cliff face extends the earth

^ Dylan Bush | UTEC Lima - Grafton Architects (Left) & Machu Picchu (Right)

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^ Jeffrey Dike | Moments of Discovery

^ Sara Zettler | Bottom Up Development

L'histoire d'un griot - un moment en Afrique John Stephen Ellis, Professor

Upon landing please leave your preconceived conceptions of city, neighborhood and architecture on the baggage carrousel!

On September 1, 2016, I arrived here in Bénin, Sub-Saharan West Africa as a Fulbright Scholar. For 10-months my life will be focused on urban research, or what I have chosen to call (re)Search. To search again or anew, for a broader, more open-ended understanding of city, neighborhood, and architecture.

In the west, or so-called developed world, when we refer to research we often mean to investigate what has been documented or written – books.

What happens when there are no books?

What happens when you enter a culture of the spoken word, a culture of the story and enter a land of oral tradition?

What happens to all those ‘analytical tools and methodologies’ which we learn and continue to teach to our students?

As I suggested earlier, we leave them behind on the baggage carrousel, and begin anew! We stop talking and begin looking and listening anew. We listen to the stories, from the peoples, from the landscapes, from the built environments, and as my dear friend and colleague Habib Meme often says, we listen to their ‘Humanity.’

Enter the land of the griots the keepers of the oral tradition!

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Traditionally the griot is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet and/or musician. More importantly, the griot is a repository of oral tradition and the keeper of societal memory.

The griot of modern times, says the Senegalese film director, Djibril Diop Mambéty, remains true to the oral tradition, but moves beyond.

“The concept of the griot has proved flexible and attractive. A whole variety of artists have found meaning in the title which helps them tap into centuries of authentic tradition.”

“The griot is a messenger of one’s time, a visionary and the creator of the future.”

It is this contemporary concept of griot which informs my Fulbright (re)-Search, as well as the work of the L’Atelier des Griots - cofounded by Habib Meme and myself.

The UN released a report in May 2015 suggesting that 10 million more people are added to the urban population of Sub-Saharan Africa each year, over two-thirds (7 million) live in informal settlements or slums and only 2 million can expect to ever move out from them.

So, it is within the ever-growing city and its informal settlements that we listen to the stories, observe the built environment and witness their ‘Humanity.’

Humanity for us is a word for the qualities that make us human, such as the ability to love and have compassion, to be creative.

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Story one… of hope A young boy works on math problems in an abandoned school which has been ravaged by the rising Atlantic Ocean!

“don't need four walls to make a room brecht tore away the 4th but the ocean give it time give it time give it time wires tether a remaining wall wires touching the remains of a wall chalk touching a board? or is it les mains touching the charcoal sky, the endless horizontal earth that is Thought that is action that is magic of writing out ...problems... ...problematizing our minds... thru our hands les mains les mains les mains” (poem - un griot)

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“Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories, not the single-story,” from Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ted talk entitled ‘the danger of the single story.’

Professor John Stephen Ellis, AIA and his colleague Beninese architect and WIT Alum Habib Meme are cofounders of l’Atelier des Griots, a non-profit international studio devoted to the study and implementation of low-tech ecological urban architecture and planning.

L’Atelier des Griots is dedicated to the West African tradition of the griot – telling the many stories of the community through the medium of art, architecture and urbanism. / Image Ref. 134.

^ James T. Fan | Stony Brook Community Center (Above)

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^ Project Team | A Thousand Suns (Below)

^ Vrajesh Patel | Abstract Diagram

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^ Cory Cook | Abstracting Adjacencies

^ Dylan Bush | Reflecting On Us

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^ James T. Fan | Museum of the Senses

The built environment is a collage of reactions to, and reflections of, culture.

As fast as ideas are exchanged in the era of globalization, so must our environment constantly adapt to unfamiliar perspectives.

As this can cause a certain fearful friction, often today expressed in the form of increasing defensiveness toward immigrants and foreign cultures, it is important to examine the impact of our increasingly interconnected world, and how we can benefit from a more worldly and diverse global culture.

The innate human drive to explore, furthered by modern forms of global transportation, allows identities to become less rooted in place and therefore more complex.

As a result, we find modern cultures to be in a greater state of flux than ever before. In a world that continues to blur the lines between societies and cultures, understanding the CULTURAL IMPACT of the spaces we inhabit is of paramount importance.

CULTURAL

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^ Katya Stassen | Conceptual Sectional Diagram (Left) Merna Haddad | Sanctuary Space (Above)

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^ Kean Nam Goh | Kuala Kurau, Perak (Left) & Petronas Towers (Right)

^ Freddy Pendleton | Personal Identity

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^ Eric Petro | Metropolitan Storage Warehouse Residence Hall

Designing for Local Culture, Globally A conversation between WAr and Regina Yang.

MASS Design Group is a non-profit design firm based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Despite their American roots, MASS has been involved in projects in over a dozen countries throughout Africa and the Americas. MASS's practice is based on the idea that architecture has the power to impact and serve communities in a intentional and positive way. Furthermore, MASS core values align with an emphasis on Lo-Fab, or local-fabrication, methods of construction to empower the individuals of a community while strictly heeding vernacular and cultural typologies.

Regina Yang has been practicing with MASS since 2013 and has worked on a number of projects that focus on local building methods, culture, and need. Yang graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Civil Engineering and Architecture and continued her education at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.

During her education, Yang was interested in cultures, communities, and cities from around the world and her work at MASS intrinsically aligns with this social interest.

WAr: What is Lo-Fab and how did this philosophy come to be central to MASS? Has it changed your outlook on design as a profession?

RY: Lo-Fab (local fabrication) principles have been central to MASS since our first project—the Butaro District Hospital, which was constructed with local materials and labor to deliver contextually appropriate, sustainable design that invested in people.

For example, instead of a bulldozer to complete steep hillside site excavation, Rwandan engineer Bruce Nizeye, suggested we leverage an element of Rwandan culture called ubudehe, which means “community works for the community.” Hundreds of people from the community excavated that hillside in half the time it would have otherwise taken. And instead of importing materials, MASS crafted facades and walls with stones sourced from the nearby Virunga Mountains. Together, these decisions lessened the facility’s carbon footprint and stimulated the local economy with over 4,000 jobs. This approach also reduced the facility’s price tag to roughly two-thirds of what a comparable hospital would have typically cost in Rwanda, saving 2 million dollars in construction fees.

From Butaro, we learned lessons that continue to influence our daily work: First, that design can have a deep and positive impact on an organization’s ability to achieve its mission. Second, the design process itself must be thoughtfully engaged, prepared, and planned. And finally, that the building and its process can amplify and extend a project’s impact into the community and beyond—even catalyzing systemic change that reverberates far beyond the site itself.

In its essence, Lo-Fab strives to showcase a design process that highlights and scales local innovation and ideas with 4 pillars: 1. Hire locally 2. Source regionally 3. Train where you can 4. Invest in dignity WAr: How does engaging local fabrication affect design decisions? How do you educate yourself about a place or community so that you can make informed

analyses and decisions? How do you build the relationships necessary to making the Lo-Fab process work to its full potential?

RY: Engaging the communities we serve is critical to every project and drives every design decision. Our Lo-Fab process is uniquely tailored to each context, and is informed during our pre-design phase, which we call immersion. While many in the market deemphasize the importance of the pre-design phase, we believe that intentional and robust research is necessary to anticipate and plan the short- and longterm impacts that a project will have on the community and surrounding environment.

Our immersion phase lasts anywhere from two weeks to two years, during which we gather qualitative and quantitative data to guide and support the project. Through large community gatherings, focus groups, interviews, exercises, observations, and secondary data collection, our team of researchers and designers seeks to identify the true, and sometimes unidentified, causes of need in a community.

With a deeper understanding of constraints and challenges, we can better identify opportunities to leverage and enhance local skills and resources. We use the design process, not just the final design, to create jobs, build capacity, and lift and dignify communities.

WAr: What challenges arise in working out the “nuts and bolts” of projects in foreign communities where the building process is different than in the US? RY: Although working in developing economies has many challenges, those same challenges provide opportunities within the design and construction process to create direct and lasting community impacts. Our direct and close relationship in certain regions has resulted in productive partnerships with local governments. For example, our relationships in the Burera District have led government entities to partner with us to incorporate our projects into their imihigo—a performance contract set by different levels of government as a commitment to their communities. These partnerships create multilateral buy-in for

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^ The construction process at Butaro maximized local labor, hiring over 4,000 workers through the duration of the project. Images courtesy of MASS Design Group.

multiple-benefit projects, which helps to scale our impact in the region.

Additionally, while working in Rwanda is obviously as foreign to me as to any American designer, our office in Kigali is comprised of a majority of Rwandan staff who work in their home communities. When MASS first started working in Rwanda, it was challenging to identify and develop local staff. There was not even a word for “architecture” in Kinyarwanda, much less an educational program to build design capacity and a workforce. So our work was focused not only on developing projects and processes, but also on building skillsets and knowledge in designers and craftsman. This work is currently manifested in the African Design Centre, a program that welcomed 11 students from 8 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa this past year.

WAr: How do you bridge the gap between contemporary and digital tools which allow you to optimize the performance of your designs, and the highly contextual (and often low-tech) fabrication and construction labor?

RY: In most of our projects, we maintain an extensive on-site construction administration role to ensure that the design is implemented to the highest degree of quality, as well as to track and maintain relationships with the laborers and contractors on site. Our engagement with these stakeholders allows us to discuss, teach, and learn throughout our Lo-Fab construction process. Through a developed understanding of people and processes, we are able to tailor our representation and communication strategies to each context.

WAr: How is the work that MASS does different from more common or “typical” means of humanitarian outreach?

RY: The social and psychological aspects of architecture are very important to us. We want people to see beauty, feel peaceful and healthy, and have a sense of dignity in their built environment. MASS does not believe that “capital A” architecture is mutually exclusive from “humanitarian” architecture or design for the public interest—every project has the opportunity for meaningful community impact. In essence, we believe that good design should not be a luxury

reserved for the rich, but a fundamental human right .

WAr: How do you see MASS Design Group’s embrace of local fabrication, as a driver of design, expanding in the future at MASS and in the profession as a whole?

RY: In order to advance a movement that demands more from architecture, we believe we must continually question how architecture functions, and demonstrate through our projects how thoughtful design, research, advocacy, and training lead to innovative buildings that improve people’s lives in measurable ways. Photography, short video, and long-form documentary have been powerful storytelling tools for us. The people and communities affected by our work have compelling stories to tell that drive home the urgent need for ethical design and allow people to see the potential for improving quality of life. By exposing audiences to the experiences of those who are lifted by the architectural process, we build empathy, and we hope this will inspire others to change the field of architecture.

WAr: Given the centrality of research to

^ In Butaro, doctors and nurses frequently cited the lack of appropriate living conditions and community support.This finding resulted in later projects in the Burera District: beautiful and dignifying housing for doctors and staff. Image courtesy of MASS Design Group.

MASS Design Group’s process, how do you research the performative aspects of space/ architecture in context? How do you begin to push the boundaries of functionality in architecture?

RY: We identify and develop the desired results for our designs during the immersion process. While we engage stakeholders and identify the project mission, our research team also identifies opportunities to track and measure impact. For example, during the pre-design phase for Mubuga Primary School, a school that opened about a year ago in the Musanze District in Rwanda, both our primary and secondary research showed that poor learning environments (i.e., classrooms that were stuffy, smelly, poorly ventilated, poorly lit, and noisy) affected students’ educational outcomes. The literature also revealed that, in communities where parents felt more connected to the school, students were more likely to attend and stay in school. So, we designed both the building and engagement processes to achieve these direct and indirect goals that would lead to better educational outcomes for the students.

WAr: How do you anticipate the long-term and short-term effects of your designs?

RY: Our immersion research period provides us with an intimate understanding of the community that will use and be affected by the building, the process, and the site itself. That helps us establish metrics to measure long-term and short-term success.

Additionally, our precedent research gives us established examples to learn from. For example, we know that poor maintenance and stewardship of buildings and landscapes is a major issue, frequently leading to significant decreases in the lifespans of buildings––buildings that may also fail to serve their community appropriately. Our LoFab process responds to this long-standing issue by intentionally involving local staff and contractors to develop not only skill and knowledge transfer, but also trust, so that the facilities are not only maintained, but loved. Even as much as we try to anticipate and plan for short- and long-term impacts, human behavior is tricky. So, we foster and develop relationships and stay involved with the communities long after the building handover. Every project is a continuous learning process for us.

WAr: What kind of lasting impact can

be observed from MASS Design Group’s human-centered works? How do you measure/analyze this impact and what have you learned from this research?

RY: Haha, I’m not sure where the best place to begin is! I will start by saying that MASS’s first project, the Butaro District Hospital, only opened in 2011—about 6 years ago. So for us, I think the better question is: what type of lasting impact are you hoping for, and how do you know that projects are headed on the right trajectory to achieve it?

That said, we’ve already seen short-term outcomes that will likely have long-term impacts on individuals, organizations, and communities. There are so many types of impacts: environmental, economic, political, social, or health-related. Depending on the type of impact, the system of measurement or analysis will vary widely. I’ll skip over some of the more straight forward issues (i.e., measuring operational costs or daylighting) and talk about more challenging ones that are extremely interesting to me and my work.

In Rwanda, one of the challenges of healthcare delivery is a distrust of the system. This means that frequently Rwandans will avoid going to see a healthcare professional until it’s absolutely necessary, often resulting in missed diagnoses or harsher treatment regimens— outcomes, which, in many ways, furthers a dangerous cycle of distrust. By hiring locally and opening up the hospital to monthly community service (called umuganda) to maintain the landscaping, our hope is that we’re able to break the barrier between your average citizen and healthcare professionals.

In theory, potential patients will be much more likely to go to a healthcare facility that they’re already familiar with from healthier times. We’ve already heard anecdotally that patients have been feeling more comfortable coming to the hospital and have had positive experiences.

But, this type of impact tracking is obviously difficult to measure. There isn’t a control group or a single variable to hold constant, and many—particularly in the monitoring and evaluation field—would view this as a lost cause. However, our research team is working to understand, through exercises like conducting a theory of change and maintaining longer term engagement, how to capture and share these impact narratives,

WAr 59 so they can be learned from, improved, and replicated.

Ultimately, our audacious goal is for designers to think about the impacts of the built environment differently, and for the market (NGOs, private developers, governments, communities, etc.) to demand something beyond the status quo. This means we need to be continually developing a better understanding of what is actually happening. We are currently in the process of making more partnerships with evaluation professionals in different fields, like healthcare and economics, but we are always looking for more, so that we can better analyze, systematize, and share our findings.

WAr: How do you teach for impact driven design? What can students do to learn more about the human implications of design?

RY: The class that MASS taught at Wentworth in 2016 divided the semester into three sections: The first third of the course addressed the question: "Why should we talk about impact?", focusing on different frameworks that structure how design has impact.

In the second part, we discussed different qualitative and quantitative metrics and methodologies regarding evaluating the impact of design.

The final third of the course presented methodologies for incorporating planning for impact into the design process.

You’ll notice that the traditional phases of “design” and “construction” are missing.

While, obviously, these phases are critical to the design process, we believe that the market vastly undervalues the pre-design and the post-occupancy phases, frequently resulting in built environments that fail to fulfill their potential. And students are rarely taught to consider the design process as critical to the design. I had a student tell me recently that he had never thought about looking to precedent projects to understand their process or impacts, and had only ever looked for form, figure, or facade precedents.

We need to be doing more to change how design is taught; but of course, learning about it in a theoretical setting is not enough.

There are many programs that are trying to engage communities and stakeholders through hands-on training—placing students in real-life settings, and encouraging human-centered design and participatory planning. If a program like this doesn’t exist at your school, I’d encourage you to demand it, or cross-register into one that does.

error to realize: At the risk of being a bit repetitive, it’s that design and the design process, while necessary, is not sufficient to create a lasting impact for the communities that need it most. Governments, thought leaders, institutions, design professionals, and communities need to know, buy-in, and demand more from our built environment.

believes that it would be a disservice to our partners to simply move forward with a design without questioning if it’s appropriate for their true needs at the time. Instead, we work with our partner to reassess their mission or to develop a fundraising strategy—sometimes something other than their initial request.

WAr: Regina, you’ve worked in low income housing development in the past. How has that experience informed your current work? Has your work with MASS influenced how you look at domestic issues?

Inherent in the vision of achieving impact at scale are a few questions I continue to wrestle with: What does working in a local community mean, and what significance does it have when you are trying to enact change at a national or international level?

To be honest, as an Asian American woman who grew up in the suburbs of Texas, I’ve struggled to figure out where I belong professionally. I constantly question how my identity and experience influence not only my work, but my friendships and volunteer activities, as well. In many ways that’s been a blessing: as an individual, I don’t feel significantly further away from or closer to the struggles and opportunities available to communities living in rural Rwanda, urban Port-au-Prince, or downtown Trenton. I’ve been taught, and I’ve grown to understand that when I earn trust from the communities where I work, it’s an invitation to fight against injustice alongside friends.

We believe that architects not only have the power, but also the responsibility, to create a beneficial impact on the people, organizations, and communities they serve through the buildings they design—through the building’s final form and lifecycle, as well as in their processes from pre-design to completion.

RY: As a student of Civil Engineering at Princeton, I was fortunate to be mentored

by Professor David Billington, who defined structural art as major works of engineering that were able to achieve excellence in economy, efficiency, and elegance. This education allowed me to hold in balance a tension that I had always understood but was never able to fully articulate: the impact of our work is not only just as important as the design, but also inextricably linked—and to talk about one without the other is a pointless exercise.

Because of this desire to see and scale impact, I was disappointed when I experienced the field of architecture as one that avoided discussing the implications of the built environment. Environmental impact was summed up in a lot of paperwork and a plaques that frequently had no relation to actual measured energy reductions. Clients were more concerned about the bottom line than about the surrounding community. And project timelines seemed so slow, and the need so big. Because of this, I left the design field to work in public policy monitoring and evaluation, focusing on energy affordability and energy efficiency policy programs across the US. But that experience, in turn, forced my design hand. Low-quality, low-income housing was not only a financial burden to their inhabitants, but a health hazard; I met students and families suffering from levels of carbon monoxide or lead poisoning, who were unable to do well in school or keep a job. Policy could not work alone to create the necessary change. That realization led me to urban planning and then to MASS. MASS’s desire to scale architecture’s positive social impact in communities exactly aligns with what took me years of trial and

WAr: On the MASS Design Group website, there is a mission statement that reads, “Architecture is never neutral. It either heals or hurts. Our mission is to research, build, and advocate for architecture that promotes justice and human dignity.” What are some of the missteps or misconceptions of designers today that contributes to “harmful” architecture?

RY: Designers sometimes take the stance that their job is not to enter into the politics of the building—that their job is to be neutral in these respects and only concern themselves with aesthetics, functionality, and the satisfaction of the client. We believe that architects are not only empowered to advocate for and with the community, but it is our responsibility to do so.

Sometimes, for example, we’ll be approached with a request for a building design for several hundred-bed hospital, but, during our immersion process, we realize that what our partner really needs is support fundraising or developing a business model, plan for growth, or organizational operations and maintenance strategy. Our team firmly

Regina Yang advocates that architecture has the power to shape people's lives and empower individuals to grow and advance.

One of MASS's fundamental principles is that "architecture is not neutral; it either helps or hurts." As designers, we are responsible for fully understanding the possibilities within our architecture to change a community, culture, or individual for the better.

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^ Marie Amelie Ntigurirwa interviews a student to understand the baseline conditions at Mubuga Primary school. Image courtesy of MASS Design Group.

^ Dario Boyce | Mapping Istanbul

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^ Artem Batuyev | Throughout

^ Artem Batuyev | Process (Right)

William Toohey III | Museum of the Senses (Left)

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^ Hana Oji | Harvard

War is an event that the world can’t seem to escape. Interstate and intrastate conflicts are so common in today’s society, and are only going to continue to progress. Interstate conflict, in particular, is so detrimental because it focuses all of the negative energy upon it’s own culture, and threatens the identity of individuals, and of the place. However, the element that holds the heaviest weight is the divide.

The space between opposing sides is often left physically desolate, uninviting, and emotionally lost. These spaces have the potential to embody so much memory and progression but, instead, sit as a damaging reminder of an unfortunate situation. Why can’t these spaces be readdressed to be useful rather than useless? Instead of staying empty, the space between should be filled with habitable spaces that create a third area that doesn’t obstruct circulation but encourages it. This central space should thrive with life to serve as a positive beacon to the people for what potential unification holds. The increase in circulation will lead to the development of socialization within this area, which will inevitably result in the construction of actual spaces that house these activities that revolve primarily around community-based programs. The most crucial aspect of this new development is that it remains autonomous. While it’s important that it successfully embodies its own individual identity, the memory of what once was must also be factored into the equation, so that they both help in maintaining the balance of a successfully crafted Utopian community.

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^ Rima Abousleiman | Sites of Reconciliation

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^ Neil Daniel | Name of Piece ^ Neil Daniel | Sound Abstraction

^ Project Team | Boston University Art Museum

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^ James T. Fan | Art Institute of Chicago (Renzo Piano)

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^ Merna Haddad | Journey

When considering the full narrative of any given site, conscious human intervention is only a brief moment. Until this moment, a siteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s physical and spatial characteristics were defined by ecology and other natural processes.

The introduction of design as a problem solving medium is a pivotal event in the history of our planet's ecological landscape.

Over time, design problems have become increasingly complex, and, as a result, many contemporary materials are not directly harvested from ecological systems as they once were. As such, it is important to remember that the ECOLOGICAL IMPACT of a material in its finished form cannot be considered without awareness of the impact of its fabrication, construction, and decay.

When intervening architecturally through modern construction processes, there is a responsibility that each one of us has to use our command of science and technology to ensure that we do not sacrifice nature in favor of the built environment.

ECOLOGICAL

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^ Dylan Bush | Sensory Exploration (Left) James Dalessandro | Kale (Above)

^ Dylan Bush | Andean Village

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^ Elana Walker | Moku

EBAR:

A Sustainable Campus Installation Peter Comeau, Jason Hasko, James T. Fan, and Nathaniel Villemaire, BSA '17

^ Project Team | EBAR - Fall 2016 Community Impact

The Impact of Making

Our focus has always been on the Wentworth campus and community. From the conception of the project to the tectonic expression, our intent was for the installation to embody what Wentworth represents. One of our biggest successes was gearing the project toward what the community desired. We started by reaching out to students around campus that might be interested, and gained support from the Assistant Director of Campus Life, Chris Scanlon.

By hosting a questionnaire during finals week last year, we received some insight from the student body and raised awareness about our project around campus. This idea was somewhat unprecedented, as we had not seen an initiative for Wentworth students to build a functioning social space on campus, and this was one of our biggest motivations. Our goal is to inspire students, so that in one, two, or ten years, another group of students can build an installation similar to ours, and in turn make a lasting impact on campus. Through working with the Colleges of the Fenway Sustainability Committee, it became evident that this project doesn't just have to stay on Wentworth's campus. The installation offers the opportunity for an intercollegiate application, seeing how other colleges could utilize our process and structure to ascertain what exactly their campus needs from the installation. The modularity of the pavilion makes it easy to tailor towards multiple college campuses and environments.

When we started the project, we knew it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t something that could just be thrown together. To make a system that works well and has the right aesthetic requires a lot of failure and patience.

We had some terrible ideas along the way, but we wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have gotten to where we are today without going through such a rigorous process. The process began with brainstorming a clear objective with specific characteristics. From there, we were able to start visualizing and exploring different systems at a variety of scales. We went through many iterations of Rhino models as well as countless sketches on trace paper and white boards, spending several hours a week challenging, arguing, and speculating ideas. There were several presentations we had to prepare for throughout the process, which were crucial for us. We had to essentially freeze our process and make a critical evaluation of how we were meeting our initial objectives. This process went on for months, until we sat down at one of our bi-weekly meetings and decided to start making with the materials we really intended to use at a one-to-one scale. We had to learn by making mistakes with the materials we chose, which influenced the design. The next couple of months consisted of making prototypes of each detailed connection to study the ways different materials came together. This process revealed points where we were over or under compensating for forces, and where we needed to tweak the aesthetic.

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^ Project Team | EBAR Architecture Boston Expo (ABX) Rendering Collaborative Impact It was important for us to minimize the use of machining, gluing and fasteners to maintain our sustainability goals. Once we were satisfied with where our connections were, we progressed to the full-length material and assembled one complete column.

This ultimately lead to the construction of the full-size mock-up.

The Architecture Department was generous enough to give us designated space to construct and assemble the mock up. We spent the weeks leading up to the installation in the Architecture Fabrication shop milling out rigid insulation formwork to cast the concrete footings, assembling the pre-fab columns with cnc milled plywood supports, and milling the wood joinery for the top of the column. Wentworth Physical Plant was also easy to work with throughout this process, and gave us good guidance to ensure we had a safe project for everyone to enjoy. The day of the installation, we brought the footings, columns, and joists outside to be fit into place. All of the dimensional lumber was left uncut in order to maintain it for reuse after disassembling the mock-up. This also made it very easy to assemble. The bar top material, three solid core doors donated by the Boston Building Resources, required some detailed joinery which was done in the architecture shop and then carried outside to be fit on the structure. While the final mockup stood, we wanted to challenge people's assumptions of raw materials, and how they can be aggregated into a structure.

After we built the full scale installation as a prototype, we realized that our portion as architects was nearing an end. So we started getting excited about the idea of the engineering phase becoming our new focus, and designing a solar panel system for the canopy above. Our primary goal is to have this installation managed and designed entirely by Wentworth students. We didn’t want to settle for getting funding to buy some top-of-the-line solar panels to simply adhere to it. We’re currently working to implement this project into a curriculum for engineering students within the Institute to experience the same real-life application of their skills and passions that they’re studying in their majors. After about 1.5 years of massaging a design, meeting and getting feedback from great clubs like WECo (Wentworth Environmental Collaborative), WAC (Wentworth Architecture Club), ASCE (American Society for Civil Engineers), and WDC (Wentworth Design Collaborative); presenting with esteemed faculty and staff members such as the Dean of Students, Director of Physical Plant and the Director of Risk Management; and receiving guidance from our Architecture Professors and Chris Scanlon as mentors we were finally able to build our installation on the Wentworth campus.

^ Cory Cook | Finding Form

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^ Christian Roidt | Outdoor Learning Center

^ Melvin Morales | Vaxt

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^ Jeffrey Dike | Moments of Discovery

^ Brian Sandford | Barbican Estate - Chamberlin, Powell, Bon

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^ Melissa Allen | Presence

From its beginnings, architecture has been a communal effort; it is made by communities for communities. Design that serves its community well values the worth of the many over the worth of the few. The many, composed of unique individuals but linked by shared values and location, breathe life into a design and sustain its continued performance.

Our common identity is at the core of any act of architecture. It is witnessed both through small actions and larger movements. Architecture stands as a powerful way to inspire this positive force, vesting within people the power to improve streets, neighborhoods, and whole cities. Empowering action from the middle out serves as a catalyst for comprehensive change.

When individuals observe their COMMUNAL IMPACT, it opens doors for intentful improvement, congregate growth, and participatory advancement. We all have something to learn from one another, and our communities are the forum for this dialogue.

COMMUNAL

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^ Christian Roidt | Spatial Relations

^ Artem Batuyev | Beacon Hill Hostel

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^ Project Team | Boston University Art Museum

Designing for the Common Good A conversation between WAr and Ben Bruce.

The ArtsCommons is an experimental project initiated by the nonprofit Boston APP Lab. It is based on the idea that small, community-based interventions in public urban spaces can be a catalyst for civic engagement. These interventions, which are also strongly rooted in supporting the arts, are largely improvised from recycled materials, including the adaptive reuse of shipping containers to create architectural form.

Ben Bruce is a Boston-based architectural designer. He graduated from Wentworth Institute of Technology with an M.Arch in the spring of 2015, where his thesis involved studying Boston City Hall Plaza as a public urban space and a place of civic engagement. He continued to explore these ideas through the ArtsCommons project, and is a firm believer in the capacity for design to inform greater social change, and the ability for our built environment to impact people and communities for the better.

WAr: What is the ArtsCommons?

BB: The commons part came out of the idea of a theatre commons, and that there is a relationship between public space and the arts that could be expanded upon. It’s not necessarily just sculpture or mural, but it’s a sort of mix of civic engagement out in public spaces, visual art, and performing art.

It’s the overlap between those three things.

Those were kind of the tenants; making sure that there was a constant collaboration between those three pieces of the puzzle, like a venn diagram of sorts.

WAr: How did the ArtsCommons start, and how did you come to be involved with this project?

BB: It started in November of 2014 and I came on in early March of 2015, while in my Masters program. I was living with my friend Greg MacGlashing, and the two of us had gone to these workshops with a nonprofit organization called Boston APP Lab. He had been attending those workshops prior to that and knew the director really closely, Ron Mallis. Greg came home one night super frustrated about this problem that had come out of a workshop and charrette about these shipping containers that needed to be retrofitted. It seemed like a lot of the conversation wasn’t really focused and he thought there was a lot of potential, so we just kind of started sketching out ideas, talking, and making models really quickly, and starting to get the fuzzy idea of what this thing could look like physically.

WAr: You’re no longer working on the project. Can you speak to why you left?

BB: This is a really complicated project, with a lot going on. It became really difficult for me, because I had to wear many hats.

I had to work on marketing, branding, communications, making sure that we were really clear in our mission, trying to keep the thesis focused, working with nonprofit organizations and community members, working on the architectural design of what the spaces might be like, and constantly remaining flexible; just trying to grapple with all of that and make sure that it got tied together, and that the idea didn’t get torn apart in the process. But the toughest

part was that there was really no money for a very long time. We were all imagining these really great things and working with incredible people, and we had built so many partnerships and some really great relationships with a whole host of organizations across the city, but it became incredibly difficult without the funding. So that ultimately lead to why I’m not working on it right now.

WAr: Do you think that is an issue that often plagues this kind of impactful, sociallyconscious work and public interventions?

BB: Yeah, slaving is kind of the problem. I think what was really motivation for me to continue to work on it as hard as I did, while practicing full time, was that I wanted to find a way to bridge the gap between the way we practice as architects, which is this sort of traditional model of a client, and the architect providing a service, the drawings, and being a middleman in the process of this whole construction. But it definitely plays a part in any of these public interest projects or socially charged projects because in order for those kinds of projects to be really successful, and to mean something to the community that they exist in, it needs to be built from the ground up. Not everything can come from the top down. You can’t impose something. We tried everything we could at every step of the way to make sure that we weren’t imposing our perspective on the communities that we were engaged with.

We were listening to their needs and trying to absorb that and mix it into the design.

Only then could we try to articulate that, in any way we could, to generate interest, momentum, and some money. It became kind of clear that there were different ways to get that money, and we were chasing every single one. I think it's important that you have to seek out money from corporate sponsors if you can, you can’t shy away from that. Unless it’s a corporation that you think should be boycotted, or something, which could be the case.

WAr: It sounds like the lack of funding really limited the scope of the ArtsCommons project.

BB: We started with a very big vision about what the physical response could be, and

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^ Image courtesy of Ben Bruce

^ Image courtesy of Ben Bruce over the course of a year and a half, as I'm going through the process and learning everything, I’m noticing the need to scale it back more and more. So over the course of a year and a half, we started with a huge vision, spent a long time on it, and at the end the resulting success is actually what the ArtsCommons has been able to achieve until this point. Right now, we are a series of really small interventions - placemaking activities and community-based activities.

Events like these will convey the potential that the ArtsCommons hold. What that looks like, is yet to be determined. Whether it's economic, or whether it's just activities for youth, or people who feel like they can get their hands on something tangible, and learn how to make something and be involved in that.

WAr: You started to touch on the success in community-building of this project, what do you think, or is there even any, relationship between its social impact and the environmental sensitivity in the adaptive reuse of materials?

BB: Everything is related. Architects like to look as things as systems, so there are two systems; the social system and the

ecological, but also economic system. Those shipping containers were donated to us, and that’s kind of what got the ball rolling on the project. They were incredibly generous, and that became a driver. From the start, I wanted to hate the project because I’ve seen so many shipping container projects; it was tired and people are kind of exploiting the same idea. It's not a bad thing, I think it’s fine for the world, but as a really interesting architecture project, it wasn’t. So, we wanted to find a way to make it meaningful.

We wanted to find every possible way to make sure that those containers could be seen as something different. When you start looking at reclaimed, recycled, or repurposed materials, communities that try to organize or have a somewhat connected culture share the pursuit of their own identity - one built on hard work and resourcefulness. The resourcefulness of communities is sustainable in and of itself.

When communities are stronger, economies are stronger. It keeps people employed, keeps people off the street, keeps people from getting into trouble or making poor decisions, just because of their environment.

However, we've identified another feedback loop. When people are involved in taking

those materials and reassembling them in their communities, they take pride in their work and have ownership over the beautification of the spaces that they inhabit every day. They can walk by and feel more than they used to about a specific place. That was really our ultimate goal. It turns out you can do that in really small steps very easily.

You can do it just by talking to people, and that's kind of where we began.

It's funny, I was working on it during my Master's program, so my head was in the world of theory. I was doing all of these architectural drawings and crazy models and super intellectual exercises. Then, I went into the world with that training. It's always good to have the intellectual background and knowledge of how these systems work, and that was important. However, what was really important, was being able to be pragmatic and understand what the problems were.

Then, you just needed to be creative in how you responded to having no resources. So, I started with this utopic, all-encompassing idea and I know that the project wouldn’t have gone as far as it did if we didn’t start with that. Because those ideas carried through, we became more realistic as we got beaten up more and more.

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WAr: You bring up an interesting point about the origin of this during your thesis, in which you studied City Hall Plaza. What kind of lessons in the relationship between civic engagement and public space stand to be learned from that space?

BB: I haven’t been asked about that since I graduated. City Hall Plaza is, for all intents and purposes, the center of the city. It’s unfortunate that urban renewal tore apart communities the way that it did. However, that was all sort of the zeitgeist. That was a socially-minded movement. There are a lot of things that are complex with that, and it’s pretty loaded, but the designers of City Hall Plaza and City Hall wanted to create a civic forum; wanted to create something that acted like the gathering place for the city to be able to voice their opinions about democracy. It’s a really political place. Where I think all of these things overlap is that when you start to see why exactly City Hall Plaza doesn’t work, it gets into really deep questions. That boils down, essentially, to things like neighborhood and community. The reason City Hall Plaza doesn’t work, in any way shape or form, is because the community that once tied the fabric of that part of the city together is no longer there. There’s nothing around the periphery that would allow it to become a neighborhood gathering place. And the scale is so huge that it became a testing ground of ideas in how to take the best parts of the city or the most successful physical aspects of the city and reassemble them.

I think with the ArtsCommons, it’s just a smaller scale idea. You could have all of this unique program that you tap into and support; the local businesses, for instance.

When we were in Hyde Square at the Blessed Sacrament Cathedral, we were, at every opportunity, looking to engage not only people on the street, but the local businesses. We were trying to find a way that our activities could support them as businesses and support them economically. I think with City Hall Plaza, there is an absolute absence of all of those things. I wanted to study whether or not architecture could become an urban planning solution by way of people’s social interactions. If architecture just took a backseat, maybe people could collaborate and take ownership of city space again. I think there’s a lot there.

^ Images courtesy of Ben Bruce

WAr: You touch a lot on the importance of the user-centric design, and that's maybe something that ArtsCommons is doing a lot more successfully than City Hall Plaza, but how do we, as designers, better meet the needs of the people that we’re designing for?

was either kicking a soccer ball or dribbling a basketball or riding his bike. Every time we were there (we were there weekly, sometimes twice a week), he would come back and want to kick the soccer ball with us, want to draw with me, or want to just tell us about his brothers or his family.

BB: Ask questions. Ask a lot of questions.

Every day that you’re involved in a project with people, wake up and assume that you know nothing about what their lives are like.

Be curious about how to make their lives better.

This was someone we didn’t really know at all, and we wouldn’t have known unless we were in that public space doing weird things.

I ended up putting together a soccer goal for him out of a shopping cart and some plywood and a tarp, whatever we had lying around at that time. We ended up spending hours just kicking goals with this kid. There were so many different levels of mentoring going on, but that changed the physical space. I didn’t think I was going to wake up that day and build a soccer goal and I think that's something to be said. Because you go to a site, and if you have any preconceived notions about what it should be used for, then I think you’re wrong. If you go to a space, you’re going to impact it in one way or another. I think that’s why this topic that you’re dealing with struck me so hard. No matter what you do, it has an impact. Every single thing you do has an impact. And if, by nature of you being there, you’re going to make an impact, why not make it the most sensitive one possible. Instead of seven shipping containers with work bars and really hip things and God knows what else - flexible art galleries and black box performance theatres, that space really needed a soccer goal. That’s what you learn when you spend time somewhere. It wasn’t an ideal site for what we had initially planned, and it was telling us that the entire time. We just had to be patient enough to listen and make sure we didn’t do anything stupid.

Ron Mallis, Director of the Boston APP Lab, taught me so much about urban planning. By virtue of the fact that you assume you know nothing, you have everything to learn. That was his MO, and it quickly became our MO. That was the ArtsCommons. Every opinion was valid and it was our mission to make sure that we had every perspective around the table, regardless of how marginalized or discounted they were. Furthermore, if we were missing a perspective, we would not only seek them out, but treat their opinion as equal and often times more important.

That is something that I’ve learned over the past year that I cannot stress enough to designers, to architects, to whoever has control over the way the world looks and is engaged with. Start at the margins of society, the people who are most marginalized, most vulnerable. Because if you design something really well and sensitive for them, it's going to work for everyone else. Our best moments were engaging with people in Hyde Square; my best moments had almost nothing to do with designing something “cool”. They had to do with people’s stories, and getting to understand their perspective. There were so many little improvisations on the site, so many great decisions made, so many things that were designed on the spot, and it was all done hand-in-hand with people or because of what people said.

There was this kid, Leandro, and he lived down the street. I had initially met him kicking a soccer ball around with his friend.

He was just so amped up, he showed us his sketchbook that he would draw in. I don’t know how old he was, eight or nine, but he had great drawings, and was so fired up to show us these things. We made a connection with him in that we were talking about supporting the arts and talking about the arts, and we were in this public place, in this space, and he kept coming back. He

WAr: What kind of advice would you give to an architect or student who is interested in socially conscious design, which is becoming more common in the profession, but when you look at architectural education, it doesn’t really touch upon those kinds of things?

BB: You have to get paid. You have to get paid enough to live. I think what the problem is right now if you want to do it, is you have to struggle. And I think what needs to change is that you shouldn’t have to struggle to do good work for good people. I practice at an incredible architecture firm and we have really wealthy institutional clients. My ethos and values align with a lot of the clients

that we work with in that they support the arts and they support education and often times are incredible economic and cultural spurs in the communities that they exist.

Sometimes, that can be enough. That's putting a roof over my head and letting me pay my loans, letting me eat food - and that’s a full time job. A lot of this work that’s being done, that’s really good work, that people actually need, and people and communities value, is being done heavily by volunteers.

The organizations that need it most don’t have help and it's going to be a struggle for a long time. But I feel like if I have advice to give, it's to pace yourself. Don’t wear yourself out, don’t kill yourself over it, keep working, nagging, and digging to try to find an opportunity. You'll find somewhere you can practice, and practice for people who don’t have enough money to pay you. There’s money that comes from all of these places.

It's a dance, and it's a game, but you can be very clever about trying to find the ways to funnel the money from the right people, who really care, into the organizations and the built environment that needs it most.

Probably half of the architects out there hate the idea of architects trying to give up what they’re good at, which is designing.

However, it's necessary to take the time to put the pencil down and ask questions in order to be someone who can advocate for the population that needs it. You need to be really good at marketing, and at connecting organizations, and at dancing all of these dances that have nothing to do with a building, until they do. I think that you were right in that the problem kind of begins with architecture education. There is incredible merit and value to the way it exists now, and there is a reason it exists the way it does, but there’s also a reason it’s shifting. There’s a reason that like at the Biennale this year, for example, there’s this shift towards, “What are you doing for people?” It’s amazing that every part of the process in which you’re designing, you have the opportunity to do something socially-minded. It’s just whether or not you have the courage to stand up to do it.

WAr: Do you have any thoughts on either what is the most pressing issue, or where in the world is in the most need of these kinds of interventions?

BB: Housing. Like I said before, start at the margins. Housing, first, is the most successful way to ameliorate the problem of

homelessness at large. House people first, then they’ll get a job. Then they’ll become integrated into society again, they’ll be destigmatized. Homelessness is absolutely horrible for everyone who has to experience it. It is the worst thing that people can have to experience. People think they’re immune to homelessness because they have a home.

However, it affects our community so deeply.

In every other major city in the world, it’s the same exact issue. The population is too high and the resources are too scarce. We need to be extremely creative about how to leverage the tiny amount of resources that we have in our cities, and put them in the right places and get people shelter, which ties into how cities should be planned. I think cities should be planned with housing in mind first, because every other type of activity stems from that. Once people can wake up in the morning and know that they’re not in danger, then they can go out and do whatever it is that they want to do. It’s scary, it’s totally daunting, it’s a responsibility that is of epic proportions. Billions of people need better housing, and it’s our responsibility as changers of the built environment to address

that need. It’s about the pragmatism that we gain in problem-solving. We have the skillset to do it, it’s just a matter of us advocating for that and being able to make money off that.

To be able to make a living ourselves.

WAr: How do you picture yourself returning to that kind of work that obviously is very difficult to be in monetarily, but the passion is still there?

BB: I try not to imagine it, because I know that one day it’s going to hit me over the head or it’s going to just walk right in front of me. I left because I needed to recharge.

I left because I ran myself into the ground trying way too hard, on a personal level, to do the right thing. I left nothing for myself.

Right now, I’ve just been totally focused on honing my skills at the practice I work right now, and giving everything I have to that traditional kind of design, so that I know how to navigate that, and I know how to solve really technical problems and stuff that architects should be good at. I’m constantly honing a skillset, and every day I get better at what I do, and for me that couldn’t be

WAr 95 more important. Because when it comes time that I find that little in-roads, then I’ll understand what I can actually bring to the people who need it, or bring to the project, from a totally different perspective. From a perspective that has nothing to do with gypsum wall board. I don’t know what it is, but I keep my eyes open.

Ben Bruce has dedicated much of his education and professional work to continually improving the social experience in our cities and in our communities. Bruce charges all designers to think of everyone's perspective and to continually ask questions.

Only then will relevant, worthwhile, and meaningful work begin to impact the world that we are all living in.

^ Image courtesy of Ben Bruce

^ Jakob Hyde | South End Millennial Village

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^ Danny Stevens | MIT Residence Hall

^ Owen Madden | Old Police Headquarters, New York City - Hoppin & Koen

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^ Tyler Nguyen | South End Housing

^ James McDonnell | London Travel Studio

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^ Project Team | Yerba Buena Lofts Facade Study

^ James McDonnell | Discourse

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^ Kyle Stroveglia | Air Rights Tower Massing Model

When deftly articulated, elements of the built environment such as materiality, structure, and form can begin to display the multi-faceted value of a place while having a sincere impact on spatial quality. Without these elements, design would not be able to realize meaning or hold value.

BUILT IMPACT can be observed through a multitude of lenses based on scale or perspective. Whether it be the tactile quality of a material, the tectonic composition of parts, or the revitalization of a previously unsuccessful space, a buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s language begins to spark a dialogue with its users during the course of their inhabitation.

Similarly, the impact of a structure on a site holds lasting effects. It is important to understand that just as we inhabit the built environment, the built environment inhabits its context. Our world consists of a quasiinfinite number of interconnected variables, and we must recognize the importance of consciously shaping our environment with continuous revision and reflection through design.

BUILT

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^ Sachia Chin Loy | World Trade Center Transportation Hub - Santiago Calatrava (Left) Paul Arduini | Leob Drama Theatre Extension (Above)

^ Josh Pruitt | The Veil Tower

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^ Neil Daniel | Table Concept Design

^ Project Team | Boston University Art Museum

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^ William Toohey III | Museum of the Senses (Right) Seantel Trombly | Glimpse (Left)

Architectural Kinetics: When Facades are Moving Christina Lanzl, Adjunct Professor, PhD Anne-Catrin Schultz, Assistant Professor, PhD

Kinetic facades, still an architectural novelty, have the potential to impact urban and architectural spaces tremendously. In the last twenty to thirty years the integration of elements animated by the wind, sun or water into building envelopes has increasingly been explored by cutting-edge designers and architects––both as an aesthetic element and as impetus for sustainable design. The scale and type of architectural kinetics ranges from the experimental to the monumental. Manifold questions of impact arise in relationship to moving facades and how they fit into the built environment. The co-authors investigated an international interdisciplinary group of noted architects, engineers, artists, and scientists in an inquiry that considered the present and future of kinetic applications in facade design. We focused on a selection of projects that involve kinetic mechanisms and explore potential already realized and evolving visions. A dearth of literature can be found on the subject to date, hence our goal was to better understand the status quo of the genre, to position designs, mechanics and intentions in a common context.

Excluded from the framework of this essay were large-scale LED video screens, projections and lighting design as a means to animate facades.

potential has been translated into movement of architectural parts that respond to a stimulus. In the field of physics, kinetics describes the production of forces in producing or changing motion. For architectural skins and facades, the stimulus can be environmental (sun, wind, earth movement etc.), data driven (measuring and initiating a reaction) or user driven. The goals might be linked to protection from sun and other climatic elements, narrative and informative or entertainment. The architect Socrates Yiannoudes offers the following definition of architectural kinetic systems: […] kinetic structures are physical constructions consisting of moveable interconnected parts that can rearrange their relative positions, according to demand, either manually or through feedback control systems. The result is an overall change of the physical configuration of the structures, which is determined by the set relations of their internal components and their inbuilt kinetic mechanisms. The latter may range from mechanisms of deployment, folding and extension, to rolling, sliding and nesting techniques, and from scissor-type mechanisms and inflatables, to tensile systems embedded with electromagnetic, pneumatic or hydraulic actuators [2].

Historic Framework of Changeability in Architecture Architecture is typically associated with longevity and permanence and therefore might be considered largely immobile. At the same time, buildings always had to respond to different conditions and users’ needs during day and night, changing seasons and overall climate. Architects and engineers have been fascinated by the idea of mobile parts beyond windows or doors, and have worked on creating responsive spaces that would carry their messages and respond to human needs. The recent architectural discourse shows an increased interest in kinetics. Moving and responsive membranes, intelligent facades and adaptive buildings are discussed on many levels. The more traditional approaches to movement in architecture frequently involve changes related to program and use, the optical effects of changing light and shadow or the effects of weathering and aging or actual decay. This exploration is concerned with moving parts and elements that are frequently linked to a mapping of the environment, reading of specific context conditions and user interaction. It deals with elements tied to sensors and data collected, measured and visualized, having environmental impact or offering an artistic message. The design of kinetic facades requires innovative design parameters: architect and theorist Jules Moloney writes: “For kinetic facades it is argued that composition shifts to the design of patterns of movement – the manner in which parts move in relation to each other over time” [1]. The tectonics of kinetic facades differs from traditional designs. Moving parts come with different requirements for construction, maintenance and upkeep than static systems.

The term kinetics is used in chemistry or biochemistry and is concerned with measuring and analyzing the rates of reactions and the impact of a combination of elements. In architecture, this reactive

Current digital technologies allow the creation of complex links between data collected and reacting hardware components. Rising awareness about energy consumption and pollution as well as the desire for interior comfort result in mobile façade elements that shield from the sun or wind turbines that contribute to a building’s energy needs. Natural ventilation can be combined with mechanical systems or moving mirrors and other reflective materials might redirect sunlight to the interior.

The need to share information and consumer industries result in lit signs and billboards that carry changing messages––all movement in our urban spaces providing an overlay paralleling the movement of users.

A Short History Architects have long dreamt of moving parts in architecture envisioning the possibility of spaces that change and adapt to accommodate varying activities and conditions. The Modern Movement explored the notion of a building as a machine responding to the phenomena of industrialization, mass production and rationalization of life in general. The formal aspects of movements and motion is expressed in Italian Futurism and German Expressionism where buildings seemingly are in motion displaying dynamic forms and smooth surfaces possibly as a reaction to mechanized transport and fast moving events of the early 20th century.

Buildings for many years suggested movement by displaying a regular or musical rhythm in their facades. The colonnade

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^ Erich Mendelsohn, Einstein Tower, Potsdam, Germany

^ Gerrit Rietveld, Truus Schröder, Schröder House, Utrecht,

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Netherlands of Antiquity and the Renaissance displays rhythmic column arrangements based on refined proportions, moving eye and viewer.

Steen Eiler Rasmussen writes: “If you feel that a line is rhythmic it means that by following it with your eyes you have an experience that can be compared with the experience of rhythmic ice-skating, for instance.” [3]. Rasmussen also points to the Spanish Steps in Rome as an architecture that appears to move and supports human movement without moving itself. Le Corbusier’s collaborator, the composer Ianis Xennakis, designed façades suggestive of musical movement for the monastery of La Tourette near Lyon, France.

a house with moving interior walls that permit different spatial configurations for day and night conditions, thus opening up a large living space or offering small intimate bedrooms at night. Erich Mendelsohn expressed movement without actually moving elements in Potsdam, Germany’s Einstein Tower observatory with its dynamic form and “fast” profile. Rayner Banham traced the development of architecture along the lines of technological innovations and builtin machinery, for example central heating, ventilation or moving systems of circulation such as the elevator. Digital technologies add potential to the connection between sensors and reactive forces.z

The impact of actual moving parts within building facades adds another component to human perception. Kinetic facades are changing appearance and sometimes even formal configuration or pattern based on use conditions or evolving daylight and seasons.

Similar to an organism that exhibits different behaviors, moving elements bring buildings and streetscape to life. Static forms are replaced with a built process leading to a range of forms, thus bringing buildings closer to nature. Based on the modernist paradigm of the free façade, moving parts will be especially relevant in building skins, Two major areas can be established within the field of kinetic facades: performative in reaction to energy requirements or solar management and formal or experiential as a medium for people to interact with or enjoy as embedded artwork.

Narrative and Attempt of a Chronology

Buildings have been featuring movement and transformation at a small scale. Houses used to have wooden shutters to protect from intrusion and intensive climatic conditions. Layers of fabric, curtains and blinds serve as insulation and shading, and can be manipulated by the user. Windows and doors open and close to allow entry of people, goods and sunlight. Some historic examples however paved the road to contemporary kinetic facades. In the early 20th Century in the Dutch city Utrecht, Gerrit Rietveld and Truus Schröder designed

Functionality, urban design context and aesthetics are key considerations of architectural design. The social or psychological impacts of our built environment are increasingly investigated as well, instigated by the groundbreaking research of Jan Gehl and William H. Whyte. The contextual dialog is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, which has found placemaking as its platform for communication. In looking at kinetic building envelopes, the question arises how these facades engage people and what kind of an effect they have on the place or the urban context.

Placemaking theory has a focus on the psychological impact of the built environment and on social interaction in public places. Kinetic facades, by the nature of their physical activation, attract any viewer’s attention. Alan B. Jacobs talks about the importance of considering eye movement in the experience and design of successful streets, an asset he has termed “qualities that engage the eyes” [4].

Traditionally, the changing light conditions of lively surfaces offer an interactive experience for people: Generally, it is many different surfaces over which light

^ Times Square, New York City, NY, USA (Left)

Jean Nouvel, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France, 1988 (Right) Steven Holl and Vito Acconci, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, USA. 1993 (Bottom)

constantly moves that keeps the eyes engaged; separate buildings, many separate windows or doors, or surface changes.

Or it can be the surfaces themselves that move and therefore attract the eye, if only for a split second, before something else gains momentary ascendency: people, leaves, signs. Visual complexity is what is required, but it must not be so complex as to become chaotic or disorienting [5].

Jacobs points out the mesmerizing effect of visually complex, moving surfaces as part of the experiential principle. Typically, the owners or municipalities where such buildings exist have a keen interest in both great design and in attracting public interaction. These elements individualize buildings and create sense of place, both at the local scale but also in a citywide context. The architectural uniqueness sets them apart and initiates dialog at every level. The passer-by becomes engaged as an acteur on the permanent stage of the cityscape. As often, more is less. By no means should all buildings be equipped with kinetic elements. Visual overload and a stressful experience would be the result.

The temporal offers an opportunity for engagement and continual change. Moving parts on buildings catch the viewer’s attention and make a familiar facade vary over the course of the day. A kinetic system offers an experience: the viewer can “read” the reasons for movement or can in some cases contribute. West 8’s Schouwburgplein Square in Rotterdam in the Netherlands allows visitors to move the large lanterns that illuminate the plaza framed by concert, film and event venues. Times Square in New York City is a well-known place, visited by millions of tourists every year.

Its messages, lit billboards, advertisement and blinking images give the sense of something happening but are at the same time testimony of capitalist decoration, a culture of speedy passing rather than slow contemplation. Moving lights and images work as an urban spectacle. The Times Square Advertising Coalition, in an effort to showcase contemporary art in addition to advertising, replaces the commercials with video art for three minutes during Midnight Moment, a nightly digital art exhibition across all electronic billboards throughout Times Square from 11:57pm to midnight since 2012. Only during this brief, off-hour window of time artistic expression replaces commercial advertising.

How light affects façades in the course of the day and during different weather conditions continues to offer changing views of the cityscape. As a means to relate a narrative moving facades have been extremely impactful. Often, they enhance or serve as an aperture to a building’s program or they make nature visible, such as water or air currents. Contemporary kinetic façade designs enhanced with artistic or commercial art elements have added a new dynamic to experiencing architecture. On contemporary moving facades, software aesthetics and computing compete with electrical or strictly mechanical systems. The new design vocabulary features the modular parts of sculptural surfaces activated by the wind (e.g.

Ned Kahn), water (e.g. Blur Building, Diller & Scofidio) motors (e.g.

Institute du Monde Arabe, Jean Nouvel; MegaFon Pavilion, Asif Khan; San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, KMD Architects) as well as architectural elements like louvers or rotating, sliding building elements (e.g. Storefront for Art and Architecture, Steven Holl and Vito Acconci; One Ocean Thematic Pavilion, soma; Demonstration Building, P+ Studio). Following below is a chronological spotlight on some of the visionaries and their projects serves as an overview of recent innovations, leading designers, clients and buildings.

Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, France, 1988

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In 1988 Jean Nouvel designed a kinetic façade for the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, France. The façade features a square grid filled with mechanical apertures that respond to sunlight by narrowing their openings and simultaneously displaying changing patterns across the interior of the building. The façade appears with a different pattern depending on the time of day and weather. On a cloudy day, the apertures show many openings; on a sunny day, the metallic sheets close down to very small pinholes. Nouvel’s Agbar tower in Barcelona, Spain pushes further the idea of a dynamic sun shading system with a skin pattern that reacts to sensors measuring the temperature and closing exterior blinds as necessary. At night, LED lights paint luminous images on the facade, a reversal of the shading devices active during the day. Both buildings combine expression and performance.

Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City, 1993 The Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City is a gallery space built to house a nonprofit organization that organizes exhibitions and events around architecture, art and design. Designed

by New York architect Steven Holl in partnership with artist Vito Acconci, the project was completed in 1993. The facade acts as a mobile exhibition system featuring a large rotating wall within its facade panels to make the objects shown accessible to passers-by on the streets of Manhattan. Since the actual space is very small, the moving elements extend the available square footage into a viewing room that stitches the interior and exterior together. The openings are an expansion of a conventional window, manually operated with the simple goal to share materials and statements about art and architecture.

Blur Building in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, 2002 For the temporary media pavilion at the Swiss EXPO 2002 at the base of Lake Neuchatel in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland the New York architecture firm Diller+Scofidio took a different approach, using a skin made from water and setting up an unusual experience. The Blur Building’s façade was composed not of moving mechanical parts but of tiny droplets of water generated by over 30,000 nozzles, which expelled a fine mist of water from the lake and turned it into a façade cloud that shrouded the metal armature of the pavilion space. A refined set of sensor and digital interactions scripted the user’s experience, taking into account data collected at the entry to the ramp that recognized and tracked the visitors. Users wore a “braincoat”, a digital raincoat that stored movement data. Linked to the profiles, the data collected in the computer system would change the garment’s color depending on compatibility to other visitors.

Instead of offering formal excitement the building offered “nothing.”

The architects wrote: Similarly, our response was intent on delivering nothing. We gave the site back to itself disguised as architecture. In the ‘cafe’, visitors could drink the building (and thus the site) in the form of packaged water. Instead of a media rich, high definition visual environment, upon entering blur, one can see nothing and hear nothing. The sound of the building being perpetually remade through 30,000 high-pressure fog nozzles was dominant.

Vision was foregrounded as the paramount sense through its repression” [6].

The application of moving parts led to the unusual depiction of a weather phenomenon, materialized atmosphere that is of the site and ultimately inhabitable.

Technorama/Swiss Science Center in Winterthur, Switzerland, 2002 Ned Kahn completed his first international commission in Winterthur, Switzerland, together with the local architectural firm, Durig & Rami in 2002. The Technorama/Swiss Science Center is a science museum offering interactive exhibits on natural phenomena.

The common interests of the museum administration, the architects and the artist found an ideal convergence, which led to the active participation of the staff in the development of the facade for the building. The outcome is a screen structure mounted on the semitransparent building envelope. It is composed of thousands of small, suspended aluminum panels that are animated by air currents, thus visualizing the complex patterns of nature. A sizable plaza in front of the museum provides an ideal viewing platform for the Technorama façade. Since the early 2000s, Ned Kahn has completed 60 major works. His most recent project, in partnership with Moshe Safdie architects, covers major portions of the building envelope of LuOne, a large-scale, 6-story shopping mall and 21-story office tower complex in downtown Shanghai, China.

The beginnings of Ned Kahn’s artistic development can be viewed on the façade of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s School of Engineering (ITL). At four by four feet, Kahn’s Slice of Wind (1996) is an early experimental panel composed of 10,000 small round metal discs set in a frame. Button-sized reflective elements dangle freely as they move with the air currents, simultaneously reflecting light as the parts move. Slice of Wind was followed just four years later by the 260 feet long and 6 stories tall Gateway Village parking garage in Charlotte, NC, where 80,000 small aluminum plates animate the entire length of the structure to reveal the wind currents. In the interior, the reflections project shadows akin to rustling trees onto the walls––pure poetry for the user. A key design aspect was to provide ventilation and shade for the 50% open building.

The name Ned Kahn has become synonymous with kinetic facades.

Today, the California artist collaborates worldwide with leading architects and engineers on a variety of building facades, ranging from museums, office and commercial buildings including parking garages to infrastructure. Besides wind, Kahn has also worked with fog and the flow of water to create similar, large-scale effects. Ned Kahn’s fascination lies at the intersection of science and art. He is inspired by atmospheric physics, geology, astronomy, and fluid motion: I strive to create artworks that enable viewers to observe and interact with natural processes. I am less interested in creating an alternative reality than I am in capturing, through my art, the mysteriousness of the world around us. My artworks frequently incorporate flowing water, fog, sand and light to create complex and continually changing systems. Many of these works can be seen as “observatories” in that they frame and enhance our perception of natural phenomena. I am intrigued with the way patterns can emerge when things flow. These patterns are not static objects, they are patterns of behavior – recurring themes in nature [7].

Kahn’s wind-activated facades make the movement of the wind visible and further establish the similarity to the movement of water surfaces activated by the wind. His wind-activated façade designs are purely mechanical. They are aesthetic, mesmerizing and science experiment all at once.

PUC Building in San Francisco, 2012 Many buildings display moving elements to accommodate the environment and perform better with operable windows and doors allowing air movement through them and a more comfortable climate inside. Increasing productivity or reducing consumption while visualizing the flow of energy is the goal of the PUC Building at 525 Golden Gate in San Francisco, designed by KMD Architects.

Completed in 2012, the building houses the Public Utilities

^ Diller+Scofidio, Blur Building, Swiss EXPO Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, 2002 (Left)

Ned Kahn, Technorama/Swiss Science Center Facade, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2002 (Right)

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^ Ned Kahn, Technorama/Swiss Science Center Facade, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2002 (Left) KMD Architects, Public Utilities Commission Building, San Francisco, California, USA, 2012 (Right)

Commission’s administration and combines a variety of sustainable systems. Natural ventilation is combined with vertical wind turbines and photovoltaic panels to harvest energy from wind and sun. The technology is not free of challenges, but was meant to be educational and to serve as a demonstration project. Experimentation with energy-related kinetic systems will lead to more viable versions, and provide users with a more interactive type of office building than commonly seen today.

One Ocean at the Theme Pavilion Expo, Yeosu, South Korea, 2012 Expressing the Expo’s theme “The living Ocean and Coast”, the One Ocean pavilion by Austrian architects soma features a façade structure that sports lamellas acting like gills along the side of the organic form of the pavilion. According to the architects the kinetic façade evokes “sensuous experiences through analogue means.

During daytime the lamellas are used to control light conditions in the Best Practice Area powered by solar panels on the roof of the building. After sunset the analogue visual effect of the moving lamellas is intensified by LEDs” [8]. This building is reminiscent of large ocean creatures and uses its organic volume to blend with surrounding topography. The kinetic façade exhibits several layers of material and experiences representing natural phenomena through its configuration. One Ocean’s complex engineering was developed in partnership with the University of Stuttgart.

MegaFon Pavilion at the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, Sochi, Russia, 2014 Like Ned Kahn, Asif Khan, a London-based architect of Pakistani and

^ Soma, One Ocean Theme Pavilion, Expo, Yeosu, South Korea, 2012

Tanzanian heritage, works at the intersection of architecture, the arts and science. Born in 1979, he launched his own practice in 2007.

For the London 2012 Olympic Games he designed the Coca-Cola Beatbox Pavilion, his first collaboration with the Swiss engineering firm iart. Based on this precedent, his first major international commission became the MegaFon Pavilion at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic games. The façade, also an iart collaboration, made history: MegaFaces generates a changing parade of three-dimensional portraits, a participatory kinetic portrait ‘gallery’. To do so, a visitor captures five self-portraits at slightly different angles. The images are then transformed into a 3D profile by 10,000 telescopic cylinders, which transform the images into a 20-second, raised portrait profile.

The LED-lit actuators [9] are located underneath the building envelope's elastic skin. Asif Khan explains: Facial impressions are created once every minute and are relayed to the kinetic facade from multi-camera 3D scans made in proprietary instant 3D photo booths installed within the building and in public locations across Russia. An electronic queuing system manages the face data and enables participants’ names to be displayed within and in front of the pavilion on screens, which indicate the time their face will appear. The system also sends a SMS message to participants with this information. A scaling and positioning algorithm was developed which transforms the faces on-the-fly considering day lighting, scale, rotation, form and additional colour. Each of the facade transformations is filmed and the feed is simultaneously chopped into individual clips. Participants are emailed permanent link to their video [10].

Software is the key driver of the MegaFaces installation, allowing the individual controlling of each translucent RGB-LED light. Dubbed the ‘Mount Rushmore of the digital age’, the randomness of the participatory experience allows all individuals to have a presence on a public stage, however brief it may be. In the age of digital communication tools, universal access is an opportunity that can also turn into risk and liability if usurped by the ill-concerted. Asif Khan’s groundbreaking design received the 2014 Cannes Lions Grand Prix for Innovation––the first architect to be bestowed with this award. Currently, he is developing the new Museum of London together with his colleague, Stanton Williams.

P+ Demonstration Building, Green Building EXPO, Wujin, China, 2015 Kinetic research at the cutting edge of design without a breakthrough for commercial applications, is paving the way towards a more sustainable future of energy autonomy for the individual consumer.

In 2015, a new prototype building, the P+ Demonstration Building, by the international P+ Studio research and design cooperative was constructed in Wujin, Changzhou Province at China’s first government accredited “Green Building EXPO”. The project, which received two stars as part of China’s new Three Star Green Building Design Label, is situated inside a new research park that showcases and tests sustainable build¬ings and emerging technologies, prototypes as well as products.

A smart louver system of façade membranes on the mixed-use building’s south façade is designed to control optimum indoor

WAr 117 environmental quality. Paired with the introduction of a solar chimney to provide natural ventilation, the movable exterior blinds reduce energy loads during the warmer months and provide passive heating during the colder months. “The building itself has two distinct faces, the South, with its overhangs and smart louver systems designed to maintain stable internal temperatures and prevent overheating, and the North, which acts as an environmental buffer zone and creates a unique viewing platform from which to experience the rest of the park” [11]. Dedicated to testing new green technologies, the 6,500-square-foot mixed-use building was realized programmatically in the form of exhibit, meeting, office and residential space. This interdisciplinary effort seeks to create a platform of exchange for diverse partners from the private sectors, academia and government agencies.

Another initiative by Michael Pelken and his P+ team is the Turbine House with its vertical wind turbine for a building with a circular floor plan. The rotor could be incorporated inside the core axial shaft of a cantilevered balcony. Research on the Turbine House project continues and a prototype yet needs to be constructed.

GROW by SMIT Design Integration of solar and wind power into building facades has been the objective of SMIT Design (Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology). Born out of an undergraduate studies and graduate thesis project by the brother-and-sister-team of Samuel and Teresita Cochran, this sustainable design initiative took inspiration from ivy growing on buildings. The outcome was GROW, a novel concept of

^ Asif Khan, Megafon Pavilion at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, Russia (Left, Middle, Right)

^ P+ Studio, P+ Demonstration Building, Wujin, China, 2015 (Left, Bottom) P+ Studio, Turbine House, rendering (Right)

a hybrid energy delivery device that harnesses both solar and wind energy. “Using a series of flexible solar cells as leaves, GROW takes the shape of ivy growing on a building––the leaves are solar cells while the wind that causes them to flutter is harvested as viable energy using a series of piezoelectric generators on the underside of each leaf” [12]. This prototype, exhibited as part of the 2013 exhibition Applied Design, is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York [13]. The project appears to be dormant at the moment, offering potential for further exploration.

Experimentation and Opportunities for Sustainable Design What are the parameters for moving facades? The motivation for the integration of kinetic elements can be driven by energy generation, thus improving functionality and the application of sustainable energy technologies. This promising proposition offers great, unfulfilled potential. Innovation and experimentation are obviously part of the world expos’ agenda. Prototypes are continuously being developed and more widespread commercial applications can be anticipated, as demonstrated with the featured buildings by Diller+Scofidio, P+ Studio and soma at international expositions.

The architectural commissions by the Institut du Monde Arab and the municipality of San Francisco are still rare, noteworthy efforts to promote sustainable design. Often, the fear of potential, additional maintenance costs thwarts the best of intentions at the outset. Much remains to be accomplished to further develop, educate and change often deeply set, negative perceptions. Unfortunately, some planned commercial developments have also proposed sustainable design features as sheer window dressing. A prominent example is the 2008 proposed Anara Tower in Dubai by Atkins Architects. The 1,968-foot tall, 135 floor skyscraper is designed to appear like a giant wind turbine, although without the commitment to produce energy.

Summary and Outlook The examples introduced above share the presence of multiple moving parts in architectural facades, some performative, others experiential. Many of the reactive façades make the spaces of the building usable and well-conditioned, limit glare and heat gain and at the same time display a spectacle of intrinsic elements to watch and view. The impact of movement frequently includes the reintroduction of “play” and playfulness, random consequences and varying rhythm that is impacted either by the environment, the wind, the sun or the different minds of the users. The buildings shown engage the environment, react to it and thus display a simple narrative that might link them firmly to their place while employing high tech solutions. Stagnant architecture is difficult to engage in while poetry is found in the leaves blowing off a tree and in the shadows cast into its leafy canopy with the wind lightly moving it all. Kinetic architecture might get buildings a step closer to the phenomena of nature in allowing the parts to move, react and play.

Kinetic facades hold great potential for the future, particularly in terms of advancing the technology of building envelopes in the age of global warming. While the executed facades do not all have this aspect as a focus, moving elements on buildings could offer important sustainable design solutions for the future. The involvement of digital design and fabrication tools brings innovation to the built environment but seems to remain in an experimental stage, especially in the realm of façade technology and design.

Engineering, art and architecture move closer together to design and

build the interfaces and kinetic systems.

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Reviewing only a small selection of kinetic facades it becomes obvious that the messages are mixed and varieties are many. They share difficulties and maintenance requirements that come with more complex technologies. The danger of failure can be seen in some older projects. All examined facades share the poetry of movement that brings buildings to life beyond the daily reflections of light and shadow. They are not still objects or a graphic image of a flat street front, but three-dimensional with depth. By mapping data and responding to environmental conditions they become site specific at a time that searches for regional identities.

Kinetic facades can turn mute boxes into dynamic participants within the urban context, sharing spectacle and creating a place to visit and see. Kinetic systems overcome the static character of architecture and allow an exploration that brings us closer to nature and its phenomena, thus creating dynamic environments. We found the West coast of the United States seems to attract more experimental kinetics than colder parts of the country with seasons that could impact the longevity and functionality of complex mechanics. Many unanswered questions remain, but our initial inquiry can serve as a point of departure for continued research. Innovative, responsive kinetic facades can and will have an impact on our built context and new, groundbreaking design applications. / Note p. 134, Image Ref. 134.

^ Christian Roidt | Flexible Formwork Casting

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^ James McDonnell | Serpentine Pavilion - BIG

^ Samuel Fernandes | Tate Modern - Herzog and De Meuron

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^ Paul Arduini | Leob Drama Theatre Extension

Building Up Back Bay A conversation between WAr, Ronald Baker, and Gary Johnson.

The Boston skyline has been relatively static for quite sometime, in contrast to the everchanging skylines of major cities around the world. The challenge of adding to the historic skyline of Boston is met with the unique design of One Dalton. One Dalton, with its slender profile and soft edges, provides an extension of the High Spine, continuing the urban axis down Huntington Avenue past the Prudential Tower and the John Hancock Tower located in Copley Square.

Ronald Baker is a principal at Cambridge Seven Associates. He has degrees from Texas A&M University and Wentworth Institute of Technology. Baker is well known for his technical expertise as it pertains to the execution of the design and documentation process. His ability to take lead on technical challenges throughout the design process, like those of One Dalton, have given the firm the ability to see their design vision carry through to the completion of the project.

Gary Johnson is an internationally recognized architect, urban designer, and principal at Cambridge Seven Associates based in Cambridge, MA. Johnson graduated with a Master’s degree from Harvard's Graduate School of Design, and undergraduate degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design and Wentworth Institute of Technology. He is currently the lead architect on One Dalton and the 30 Dalton Residences in Boston’s Back Bay, designed in collaboration with Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

WAr: How do you understand One Dalton’s place among the buildings of the Boston skyline?

GJ: On the skyline, we’ve got the exuberance of 111 Huntington Avenue, then you have the stayed, but perfect gentleman-like qualities of the Prudential Center, and the Hancock Tower, which is such an elegant building, but much bigger in terms of its height and its breadth than One Dalton. One Dalton is unique in that, because of its soft triangular geometry, you see its presence against the sky very differently than you see either 111 or Prudential where you have 90 degree corners. This is a very soft shape against the sky, and the incisions along the facade go right up to the top. So you actually see a little staccato rhythm around the perimeter, which, I think, is going to make it maybe the most unique building in Boston. The Hancock Tower goes right up to the sky and it’s flat. I think this one is going to be something that’s pretty special in that you get some sunlight on these vertical expressions, and you’ll see this presence against the skyline. So I think that’s where it becomes important.

WAr: One Dalton sits on such an important site, how did this significance impact the design initially and throughout the entire design process?

GJ: Well I think the site is important in two very different ways. One is that it’s important for its prominence on the skyline – it’s really the end of the High Spine. But there was also a pedestrian importance. In this particular area, at the moment, some of the retail comes out to the street, but it was a very underpopulated part of the city; there was no life and action. We thought that one of the things this project could do better than practically any other use on that site was to create real activity on the street edges along Belvidere Street, Dalton Street, and Clearway Street. We hope to bring active and vibrant elements into the neighborhood that, frankly, was not so active and vibrant.

So I think it’s two scales. At the skyline scale, it was very clear that we wanted a building that would be important from every angle.

That’s one thing that’s amazing about that site. You can see it coming in on the Mass Pike and the Southeast Expressway, you

can see it from Cambridge, Huntington Avenue, and Brookline Avenue. So having the building be a beautiful object that comes up and shows itself off as a residential tower was very important to the client, to Harry Cobb, and to myself as we were developing the building. Harry came up with the idea of this soft triangular shape with rounded corners. And at the request of the client, they asked us to find some kind of architectural expression that would be reminiscent of living in Boston; so, we developed a language of incised columns that become bay windows.

At the ground plane, the whole building actually spreads out as much as we can, with cafes, a residential lobby, hotel lobby, and an entrance to the restaurant. The idea was to create this very energetic base that would be seen by the public. While you’re on the ground you can see what’s going on up above, be it the ballrooms or the restaurants, and so forth. So even though it is sheathed in a granite base, it’s mostly glass. The granite acts as the receiver of the tower, if you will.

You’ll actually be able to look in and out of the building.

WAr: What role has this site’s neighbor, the Christian Science Church, played in this project?

GJ: The Christian Science Church, who owned this property, really spent nearly four years, before we got involved, in neighborhood meetings and meetings with the BRA. They hired their own architect to develop a masterplan for the site that included a below-grade connection to their existing garage. Working with the Christian Science Church has been an absolute joy; they’ve been very cooperative. This project is obviously important to them, as it is to the developers. It’s success is their success.

They’re renovating and restoring the whole plaza area; One Dalton has been the catalyst for most of that.

This is really a project that they started. It was their idea to take this land that they owned and convince the city to transfer development rights. And that took four years to negotiate with the neighborhoods, the city, and the BRA. Once they did that, the people understood the wisdom that this

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^ Image courtesy of collaborating architects Cambridge Seven Associates and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

^ Images courtesy of collaborating architects Cambridge Seven Associates and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

site was actually at the very terminus of the high spine, it became sort of obvious to the communities, the BRA, and the Mayor’s office that this was a good location for a very tall building.

There were two parcels. The rectangular one was a parking lot and the triangular one was a patch of grass. They weren’t particularly adding to the vibrancy of the corner of Belvidere Street. When the time came to expand, they essentially told the involved parties, “look, if we were to take out the reflecting pool and develop the land, this is how many square feet of space the current zoning would permit us to build”. They didn’t want us to do that because they wanted this perpetual open space to remain that way.

However, they wanted to be able to make these parcels more vibrant and viable. So, by transferring the development rights onto these smaller parcels, the reflecting pool and open space of Christian Science Church became permanently open to the public forever. Even though it’s a privately owned space, it’s open to the public. It’s one of the most wonderful and gracious things that any institution could possibly do for its city.

WAr: You mentioned bringing vibrance to this area along Belvidere Street. Would you say that One Dalton can inspire similar commercial activity that exists on Boylston Street and Newbury Street and begin to bridge the disconnect between those areas and Huntington Avenue?

GJ: Well, I think the project itself is probably too small to make such a connection.

However, we’ve utilized the space on the ground plane to continue the theme of those areas. There’s an outdoor cafe, a reception to the residential lobby that is all glass, and a small retail kiosk. So, we’ve used as much of our available square footage on the ground plane, that isn’t taken up by services or structure, to open to the street and create that vibrancy that we envisioned, and that the client wanted. Across the street, at 30 Dalton (another building that we did at the same time) there’s another lobby and a little cafe called “Flowers”.

So, I think that we’ve really enriched the area with the variety of uses that each of these two buildings offer. I can’t, however, say that you get a Boylston Street bridge. Now, I think that the owners of the properties across the street will want to rethink their street presence along Belvidere Street and as time

goes on, I would think that this will happen naturally. It would be a good thing.

WAr: How did the scale of the other highrise towers in the Back Bay impact the height of the building?

GJ: I don’t think it had any impact on the aesthetic of the building. The triangular site was really what drove the building’s shape.

When the Christian Science Church went to the BRA to do their master plan of the site, this building was actually capped at the same as 111 Huntington, at 555 feet. When we won the job it was just that - 555 feet.

However, the BRA also granted the Church the rights to build a building right along Huntington Avenue that would essentially be the same height as the tower at 101 Huntington Avenue.

Early on in the process, a couple of things came into play. One, the neighborhood always questioned that future building on Huntington Avenue. And not so much for what it would become; they questioned it because it was going to cast a shadow across the church itself. That was voiced in community meetings and the Church was trying to preserve future development opportunity (without knowing what that might be or who it might be with). But somehow, during that period of time, a lightbulb went off for the community, for the city, for the Church, and for the developer. It went something like this, “what if we were to buy that FAR square footage, and instead of having a future building on Huntington, what if we made One Dalton taller”.

And you have to remember that in Boston, height has been a very touchy subject for many years. However, all of a sudden now, with Millennium Tower, this tower, and the Winthrop Square tower, height is no longer seen as a bad word. For a long time, height was a real bad word. If you used it in certain areas within the city, you’d be chastised for it and accused of overpowering the city with tall buildings. But I think, fortunately, that people are realizing that tall buildings did not reduce the “pedestrian-ability” of a city.

Rather, they actually increase it because the density shifts off of the ground. So all of those factors played in. When this was presented to Mayor Menino and the BRA, they all said, “Yeah, sure. Let’s do that.”

After much legal wrangling to get it all -

WAr 127 don’t forget, so much of architecture takes place in a lawyer’s office - the building went from 555 feet to 700 feet. Currently, this building’s parapet reaches about 742 feet.

I think the very top of the Prudential is 750 feet, so these buildings are, virtually, within 8 feet of each other. At the city scale, this is almost meaningless.

There’s some grade differentials, so Prudential is still a little bit taller. But there was never a time when we looked at the Prudential, or Hancock, or 111, or any other building for inspiration on the tower. You know, our partner on this is Pei Cobb Freed, and in particular Harry Cobb. Harry brought a broad skill set and a lot of experience in high rise construction to the table. One Dalton is a very tall, thin building, which led us to some structural challenges of course.

But from an architectural standpoint, Harry was adamant that this building should be a single material, so that it read as a single object and not as a pastiche of multimaterials.

WAr: You mentioned how you were thinking about the ground plane with regards to the human scale. What sort of influence does the scale of the surrounding neighborhood have on this project?

GJ: That’s a really good question. This was a part of the guidelines that the Church put together for the developer competition.

One of the things that they wanted, and we certainly agreed with, was there should be a relationship with the height of the neighboring 101 Huntington Avenue. So, the height of our base is 67 feet - the same height as 101 Huntington Avenue. The idea was that you’d match these two buildings together. Additionally, we felt that the base materiality could continue to integrate the tower into the context. When we first started, we were actually thinking about the stone being a cream limestone that would match the current color of the Christian Science Church complex, which is a beautiful warm-toned concrete. However, our client thought that would make the buildings feel too similar. He wanted an indigenous material that rooted the building into Boston.

So, we went with a Chelmsford granite, a beautiful gray granite, quarried right here in Massachusetts.

The other reason is the tower has a smaller footprint than the base. It’s not by much.

I think it’s a couple thousand square feet,

but it’s just enough to give those public floors on the base a little more breathing room because they’re filled with services, restaurants, ballrooms, storage rooms, and coat checks. The tower does, however, come right to the ground wherever you have a moment of entry and of keen interest.

WAr: You mentioned the characteristic slenderness of the tower. Could you describe any challenges that came with the structure, wind-loads, etc. during the design process?

GJ: There were a couple of things. From day one we knew that the aspect ratio of the building is pretty slender. This is not a super tall building, but still a reasonably tall building at 740 feet. The tower footprint is only about 11,000 square feet. So, comparatively, it’s pretty small to the height.

We wanted an engineer that had dealt with these kinds of buildings; slender and tall.

There are only a couple of them, and two of the best are in New York. So, we went to those two, and we picked WSP to become a member of our team. They did One World Trade Center and 432 Park Avenue in New York.

RB: If you go to their office, all you see is models of tall, slender buildings. The 61 story building they did with us is a bit out of their comfort zone. It’s too small.

GJ: It’s very different than building a 30 story building. It’s on three-foot thick slurry walls that are 160 feet deep and they’re socketed into the rock by another five feet.

And if you know what a slurry wall is, it’s a complete ring of solid concrete that goes into the ground. And they’re able to get down to the rock and drill and grind out the rock to a specified depth. Then you pour the concrete, so the concrete and the rebar cage is actually down in the rock, and you pour the concrete as you come back up. It’s a very sophisticated, challenging, and expensive system for a foundation. But it does a couple of good things; it makes your building sit on rock, and because it’s slurry, it has a great ability to keep water out. The basement levels are actually below the water table.

Additionally, we have similar load-bearing elements and slurry walls to hold the core.

The core of this building is solid concrete, poured concrete, that goes all the way up, and it varies in thickness from 42 inches to 24 inches. So it’s a very thick wall at the bottom.

RB: This can prove to be challenging when you have entrances to elevators.

GJ: And because the building is a triangle, and the core is also a triangle. They took the three points of the triangle and they made those into what they call “super columns”.

So it’s still a poured-in-place wall, but it gets thicker at the 3 apexes of the triangle. Those “super columns” end up carrying most of the load and transferring a lot of the wind resistance back to the core.

Then, 24 floors up, we have the bell truss, which is a two-story high steel and concrete truss that goes around the whole perimeter of the building to help resist the wind.

RB: We actually did five different designs for the bell truss to get it to a point that the contractor actually felt comfortable building it. There is not another bell truss in Boston, but they are common on high rises of this size.

GJ: Ron and I have both done a bunch of 30-story buildings, right? A 60 story building is a very different animal, so we’ve learned right alongside. And what we’ve learned is that on a building like this, you start with the structure and the wind. Then you work backwards. As it turns out, the notches that create the bay windows work a lot better than I originally had thought. I was always afraid that they were going to act like a series of propeller blades in the wind and try to twist the building. But, in fact, the wind does exactly the opposite. The wind actually gets broken by them. It creates little eddies around them and slows down the wind around the perimeter of the building. They actually help the overall wind resistance.

RB: You’re right. When you first designed this you didn’t know that this would’ve been so effective.

GJ: No, when Harry first came up with this I was a little bit nervous. I didn’t know if it was it going to try to ratchet around like a gear.

RB: We didn’t know it would be beneficial.

WAr: You both have noted that you’ve worked on numerous 30-story buildings.

Would you like to continue working with more projects around this scale?

GJ: We love buildings. We really do. I think this has been a phenomenal project for

us. Working with Pei Cobb Freed has been equally phenomenal. I think we’ve learned a great deal here at Cambridge 7 Associates from them and from our design partners on this. I would love very much to take this to the next level and try one of equal scale whether it’s in this city or somewhere else.

We’re doing a very similar one in the City of New Orleans. It’s a little different in that it’s an existing building, rather than new construction. So, it’s got a few challenges that are different that this, but we’re having fun with that one. But it would be really fun and challenging to take on another one like this. You cannot enter these design commissions lightly. What you build here is important, not only at the street and at the sky, but also the way it sits within the urban context of the city. You have to take it very seriously.

WAr: It impacts the character of the whole city.

GJ: Very much.

One Dalton's sensitivity to its placement within the urban context distinguishes this project from other residential developments.

There is a clear concern for the pedestrian experience from all parts of the city. One Dalton is a reflection of the new wave of building that is rapidly growing the skyline of Boston.

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^ Image courtesy of collaborating architects Cambridge Seven Associates and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

^ James Dalessandro | Speaker Design

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^ Adam Zapotok | IMF Design

^ James McDonnell | Parametric Lamp Design

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^ Stefan Burnett | Transformative Housing

NOTES From page 12. "A 'Slum' in a Good Location" Interview with Jim Campano.

Image Reference From page 13. Photo courtesy of the West End Museum in Boston, MA. From page 13. Photo courtesy of the West End Museum in Boston, MA. From page 17. Photo courtesy of the Charles Frani Collection at the West End Museum in Boston, MA. From page 18. Photo courtesy of the West End Museum in Boston, MA. From page 32. "UTEC Lima - Grafton Architects" Dylan Bush.

1. http://www.graftonarchitects.ie/Venice-Biennale-2012-CommonGround From page 37. "L'histoire d'un griot - un moment en Afrique" John Stephen Ellis, Professor.

Image Reference All Photos are from the Akpakpa-Dodomey settlement, Cotonou, Bénin, where John and Habib are currently working on a video (documen-story) entitled ‘Learning from the Akpakpa-Dodomey’ which will speak to the dignity and humanity of all its inhabitants.

From page 111. "Architectural Kinetics: When Facades are Moving" Christina Lanzl, Adjunct Professor, PhD, and Anne-Catrin Schulz, Assistant Professor, PhD. 1. Moloney, Jules. Designing Kinetics for Architectural Facades: State Change. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2011. p. 6 2. Yiannoudes, Socrates. Architecture and Adaptation: From Cybernetics to Tangible Computing. Reprint edition. New York: Routledge, 2016. p. 38 3. Rasmussen, Steen Eiler. Experiencing Architecture. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1959, p. 135 4. Jacobs, Allan B. Great Streets. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1993, p.

281.

5. Ibid. p. 282.

wgb-expo-building-2/ (accessed 9/30/16) 12. Pilloton, Emily. “SMIT’s GROW: Solar and Wind Photovoltaic ‘Leaves’.” Inhabitat. March 1, 2008. http://inhabitat.com/smits-grow2project-new-solar-and-wind-solutions (accessed 9/30/16) 13. “GROW (Prototype).” The Collection, MoMA. http://www.moma. org/collection/works/110222?locale=en (accessed 9/30/16) Image Reference From page 111. Figure 1. Erich Mendelsohn, Einstein Tower, Potsdam, Germany. Photo courtesy of Anne-Catrin Schultz.

From page 111. Figure 2. Gerrit Rietveld, Truus Schröder, Schröder House, Utrecht, Netherlands. Photo courtesy of Anne-Catrin Schultz.

From page 112. Figure 3. Times Square, New York City, NY, USA. Photo courtesy of Robert Clocker.

From page 112. Figure 4. Jean Nouvel, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France, 1988. Wikimedia, Guilhem Vellut https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Institut_du_ Monde_Arabe%2C_Paris_24_January_2016.jpg From page 112. Figure 5. Steven Holl and Vito Acconci, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, USA. 1993. Wikimedia, Exterior. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Storefront_for_Art_and_ Architecture_interior.jpg From page 114. Figure 6. Diller+Scofidio, Blur Building, Swiss EXPO Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, 2002. Wikimedia, Norbert Aepli https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/20020717_ Expo_Yverdon_23.jpg From page 114. Figure 7. Ned Kahn, Technorama/Swiss Science Center Facade, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2002. Wikimedia, MediaFlema https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4953197 From page 115. Figure 8. Ned Kahn, Technorama/Swiss Science Center Facade, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2002. Photo courtesy of Ned Kahn.

From page 115. Figure 9. KMD Architects, Public Utilities Commission Building, San Francisco, California, USA, 2012. Photo courtesy of Mark Jones.

From page 116. Figure 10. soma, One Ocean Theme Pavilion, Expo, Yeosu, South Korea, 2012. Photo courtesy of soma.

6. “One Ocean, Thematic Pavilion EXPO 2012 / soma.” Archdaily, May 22, 2012. http://www.archdaily.com/239669/think-space-look-what-charlesrenfro-of-dsr-has-to-say-on-blur-building-project-after-a-decadeor-so-competition (accessed 9/29/16).

From page 117. Figure 11. Asif Khan, Megafon Pavilion at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, Russia. Hufton + Crow.

7. Kahn, Ned. “Statement.” http://nedkahn.com/statement (accessed 9/30/16)

From page 117. Figure 13. Asif Khan, Megafon Pavilion at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, Russia. Hufton + Crow.

8. Theme Pavilion Expo Yeosu, Yeosu - KR, 2012. Soma. http://www.soma-architecture.com/index.php?page=theme_ pavilion&parent=2# (accessed 10/5/16)

From page 118. Figure 14. P+ Studio, P+ Demonstration Building South Facade with kinetic louvers, Wujin, China, 2015. Photos Courtesy of P+ Studio.

9. An actuator is part of a kinetic machine responsible for moving or controlling a mechanism/system. An actuator functions with the help of a (1) low-energy control signal and (2) an energy source.

From page 118. Figure 15. P+ Studio, P+ Demonstration Building North Facade with viewing platform, Wujin, China, 2015. Photos Courtesy of P+ Studio.

10. Asif Khan. Email to Christina Lanzl, October 3, 2016.

From page 118. Figure 16. P+ Studio, Turbine House, rendering.

Photos Courtesy of P+ Studio.

11. “WGB Expo Building.” P+ Studio. http://pplusstudio.com/portfolio/

From page 117. Figure 12. Asif Khan, Megafon Pavilion at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, Russia. Hufton + Crow.

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All Content Rima Abousleiman (M.Arch '16) Melissa Allen (BSA '18) Paul Arduini (BSA '17) Sasha Bachier (M.Arch '16) Ronald Baker, Cambridge Seven Associates Artem Batuyev (BSA '17) Ben Bruce (M.Arch '15) Dario Boyce (M.Arch '16) Stefan Burnett (BSA '17) Dylan Bush (BSA '17) Jim Campano, West End Museum James Charves (M.Arch '17) Corey Cook (BSA '17) Sachia Chin Loy (BSA '17) James Dalessandro (BIND '17) Neil Daniel (BSA '18) Jeffrey Dike (BSA '18) John Stephen Ellis, Professor Tim Elrick (BSA '18) Kerri Estano (BINT' 16) James T. Fan (BSA '17) Samuel Fernandes (M.Arch '17) Alec Foucault (M.Arch '17) Rachel Giorgi (BINT '16) Kean Nam Goh (BSA '17) Jared Guilmett (M.Arch '16) Merna Haddad (BSA '17) Jason Hasko (BSA '17) Caleb Hawkins (BSA '17) Jakob Hyde (BSA '18) Gary Johnson, Cambridge Seven Associates Eleftheria Konstantinidis (BINT '16) Christina Lanzl, Adjunct Professor, PhD Owen Madden (BSA '19) James McDonnell (M.Arch '17) Chris Meyers (BINT '16) Melvin Morales (BIND '18) Tyler Nguyen (BSA '18) Hana Oji (BSA '17) Vrajesh Patel (BSA '18) Andrew Patterson (BSA '18) Freddy Pendleton (BSA '18) Eric Petro (BSA '18) Josh Pruitt (M.Arch '17) Christian Roidt (BSA '18) Collin Sabin (BSA '18) Brian Sandford (BSA '17) Anne-Catrin Schultz, Assistant Professor, PhD Esti Shapiro (BSA '18) Katya Stassen (BSA '17) Danny Stevens (BSA '18) Nathaniel St. Jean (M.Arch '14) Kyle Stroveglia (M.Arch '17) Danielle Sukovich (BSA '18) William Toohey III (BSA '17) Seantel Trombly (BSA '17) Nathaniel Villemaire (BSA '17) Elana Walker (BIND '18)

Brody Walsh (BSA '17) Andrea Welsh (BSA '18) Regina Yang, Mass Design Group Adam Zapotok (BIND '17) Sara Zettler (M.Arch '16) Christina Ziobrowski (BSA '18) Project Teams A Thousand Suns | Page 42.

Stefan Burnett Dylan Bush Samuel Fernandes Caleb Hawkins Boston University Art Museum | Page 71 & 89.

Stefan Burnett Cory Cook Rachel Giorgi Eleftheria Konstantinidis E-BAR | Page 94.

Peter Comeau James T. Fan Jason Hasko Nathaniel Villemaire Yerba Buena Lofts Facade Study | Page 101.

Tim Elrick Andrew Patterson Collin Sabin Danielle Sukovich Boston University Art Museum | Page 108.

Kerri Estano Chris Meyers Nathaniel Villemaire Brody Walsh

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