BERKELEY ARCHITECTURE 2021 THESIS REVIEW by wursterlife

THE SIS 21 BERKELEY ARCHITECTURE

BERKELEY ARCHITECTURE THESIS REVIEW 2021

UTOPIA, MYTOPIA, DYSTOPIA HERE MARK ANDERSON We are living through a moment of great uncertainty everywhere in the world. Shaky institutional structures fail us at the very moment our world can no longer postpone unavoidable struggles with racial injustice, pandemic, climate change, economic inequity and general cultural confusion. As architects, we are responsible for imagining, proposing and seeking to build the form and space of human interaction within the physical world. It is sometimes believed that this responsibility sits aside from policymaking and social-political decisions. Sometimes it is believed that policies must be decided first by other disciplines, and then that architects can apply physical structure in support of those policies. Some architects propose that our mission should be primarily aesthetic and functional rather than political. Other architects have argued that physical structures and spatial organization are always political, and that architecture can and must lead in developing the material world to best serve and enable progress and change in social structure. The literature on such debates is enormous, opinions diverse. Within this long standing debate we find a history of utopian thinking in which architects have been great contributors. We also find large bodies of work by architects that might be regarded as critical analyses of the world, dystopian projections of current contradictions. Just beneath the radar, we will find even more contributions to mytopic architecture. Here I need to explain, because mytopia is not actually a word. It finds itself here in our seminar title first of all because (as we will discuss later), a thesis must often struggle in creative word play as well as in drawings. Writing is one of the essential media in the production of architecture, beginning first of all with drawing, but then also encompassing creative acts in making, writing and mathematics, most often all essentially codependent and “cross-platform” in our working processes.

While writing consumes much of an architect’s work day, texts are most often expository in architecture, earnestly structured to convey specific information that is about something. Less frequently in architecture, we imagine that we can sketch freely with words, we can explore and search and delight ourselves in surprise as words flow forth, just as we more often pursue such discovery through drawing. I like to sketch and explore with words, to write just one step ahead of what I am able to think. Or more precisely, to sketch my writing as a process of thinking. That is what you are seeing here--a search for my own clarity about issues that are important to me as an architect. This brings us back to the seminar title, which we can use as an example of an architect sketching with words. First of all, words have a life, they have sound, they connote association, reference, context. This doesn’t have to be fancy-let’s pick this apart: Our current moment is dire, as I mentioned above, and as you may well have noticed yourself. Therefore, we need to have big ideas if we have any hope of making the world better. This suggests the word utopia. Already this word is enormous in its context and connotation, and often seems frighteningly bombastic. This is probably why projections of utopia only rarely come into fashion among architects and why we are usually so hesitant to engage utopian projections out loud. In my own case, whenever I design something, or write something, I am highly doubtful about the potential for great certainty in human acts. In fact, I never trust certainty, and typically do my best to poke fun and undermine its possibility wherever positions of certainty assert themselves. As a result, in every project of mine, you are likely to find intentional “poison pills” acknowledging doubt and denying closure or circumscription in the work. Thus, if we have thoughts of utopia (visions of a perfect world), we must equally entertain dystopia (visions of an imperfect world,

often serving to critique the world as we know it). Many students might resist having to make a thesis projecting utopia. They may not believe in such possibilities--it would be a waste of time, even irritating in concept. Utopia and Dystopia together might offer something for everyone, even the cynics and grumps. This could lead to interesting discussion, may even require staking a personal claim to one or the other, possibly a first step into a personally significant thesis. But even these two powerful words may not be enough on their own, they suggest too much certainty of one extreme or another. Perhaps we need more sand in the oyster. What happens when we avoid considering either utopia or dystopia? I mentioned that words have a life, they have sound, they connote reference far beyond immediate purpose--just like elements in a building. As I was sitting down to write this syllabus with these “opian” words, a pointless old American rhyme came strangely to mind: “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” I suppose I was making fun of myself. The title needed a little more oomph, and here was some inspiration, carrying along with it another subtextually deprecatory poison pill so important to someone like me (having never quite fully shaken off that lingering taint of American anti-intellectual embarrassment as I’ve wandered from construction sites into the halls of serious scholarship). Utopia, Mytopia, Dystopia: that was starting to have a nice ring to it, ripe for open-ended flights of architectural fancy in a thesis seminar.

But wait!--is mytopia even a word? I didn’t think so, but looked it up everywhere and I was right-it is not really a word, but I could not actually claim it myself, because the Urban Dictionary had already collected it:

Mytopia: A society built on ideas and actions that have negative effects into the future because of not thinking about the consequences (A combination of the words myopia and topia/dystopia).

This mytopia is perfect for our purposes! It cannot be typed without spellcheck jumping in and corrupting its letters into normative blandness-something to get our hackles up and demand productive resistance every time it is used. More than that, mytopia explains everything about bad architecture, bad politics and the unintended consequential mess our world has frequently fallen into. Mytopia explains what happens when as designers or politicians or citizens we fail to think broadly, fail to think deeply and contextually, fail to act with a clear thesis well-studied, wellreferenced within the broadest context. And, this word lays the whole mess at my own feet. Now we’ve got three great words pretty much summing up the full spectrum of potential approaches to architecture, good, bad and indifferent: every student can find something of interest here, even if by default.

But the title still didn’t quite sing to me. It needed one further hammer on the issue of context-here: ideas in context, thesis in context. Here is very specific. Here happens in a certain place, with actual people, surroundings, history and reference. Better than that, in my own movingmy-lips-while-I read, jive-rhyming sensibility, it sounds good. And one more extra: we now embed yet another pomposity-popping, goodold American, aw-shucks poison-pill: dys, topia, here. (“Dis here topia, you know what I mean? Your ‘topia, My ‘topia, dis here ‘topia; everybody’s got their own ‘topia.”). Something for everybody-but nobody has it all to themselves. We have to see everybody’s else’s ideas, too, right here next to us, in the whole big picture.

DIFFERENCING: CONTINUOUS PROJECT ALTERED DAILY* TOM BURESH Differencing is to cause or constitute a difference in or between something. In this seminar/studio it means - to make a difference. *Continuous Project Altered Daily is collection of essays by sculptor and author Robert Morris from the 1960s to the 1980s addressing wide-ranging intellectual and philosophical problems of sculpture, raising issues of materiality, size and shape, anti-illusionism, and perceptual conditions. We cite it here to underscore the consistent pursuit of an idea and an architecture rigorously and patiently revealed over a finite period of time.

Esthetics and ethics and are not mutually e xclusi ve ambitions. Architecture is complicit. There exists no shortage of concerns/challenges that we confront where architecture plays an important role. You will be asked to uncover and define that role for architecture generally and yourself specifically. We will seek an initially broad then deeper understanding of our current situation and speculate on a differing futures. We will acknowledge then engage the small, medium or large yet difficult issues of our time- the environment, energy, the economy, politics, health, ethnicity, housing, spirituality, immigration, diversity, equity, inclusion, etc... That is, circumstances and events that are neither easily defined nor resolved and imagine an architecture in response. We will not seek perfection. Questions are as important as proposals. We are as concerned with tomorrow as much as yesterday and today.

We will labor to make connections between, matters of the day, resources, ways of making, human activity, perception and experience. We know these connections are contingent, unstable even slippery. We favor the adoption of temporary truths as a method to navigate the unknown. While skeptical by nature we are not cynical. We believe architecture is consequential and makes a difference. A difference that matters. The seminar/studio progresses through weekly assignments that are structured generally as a reflection of one’s advancement through a thesis in architecture. The assignments are consecutive, but will become generative, interdependent, and cumulative, through concurrent thinking, making and deliberation. Research, critical thinking and visualization are the core of the seminar’s pedagogy. We begin by broadly examining architectures constituent parts; Players (roles, responsibilities and potentials), Situations (a social/cultural/environmental/etc. condition) and Methods (architectural techniques and effects) and conclude with a clear and provocative position on architecture’s role in a contemporary cultural setting.

Difference, making a difference, difference makers, difference machines, differencing – to make a difference.

Differencing: Continuous Project Altered Daily is sponsored by The Church of Anything Goes (TCOAG). TCOAG is a nondenominational, tax free, free range, free speech and nonprofit, organization dedicated to the expansion our collective architectural imagination We are guided by the Hejdukian maxim paraphrased here, “The first decision is arbitrary. Every decision after that is not arbitrary.” TCOAG is inspired by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon’s “academic adult comic book” ”UTOPIA MYOPIA: 36 PLAYS ON A PAGE” and will refer to it as a model.

INSIDE-OUT LISA IWAMOTO What is a building if not a compilation of its parts? Walls, doors, windows, skylights, stairs, ramps, chimneys, handrails, frames, beams, columns, ceilings, floors, corridors, roofs,facades. The list goes on. These elements gang together to perform one essential purpose – separate inside from out, space from space. Encoded in this separation is a host of conventions, meanings and expectations. This thesis term proposes that we take a focused look at one or more of these elements to reconceive new possibilities between inside and out, space from space. By doing this, can we find innovative ways to design for more inclusivity? Social justice? Unexpected encounters? Better and healthier airflow? Unconventional access to light? By asking a simple, purely architectural design question first (e.g. how do I design a window?), we can also address a larger question (e.g. How can a building façade can create an equitable civic space? Or, What are alternative ways to bring in natural light?), and subsequently arrive at a thesis topic (e.g. 25 Apertures: The Vertical Public Realm. Or, The Deep Floorplate: Alternative Modes of Living in Urban Centers). These made-up examples serve to illustrate the possibilities of starting with a narrow architectural focus. The opportunities for innovation are vast. Thesis is ultimately about asking relevant questions through design and representation. Without each of these three elements – Thesis Inquiry, Design, Drawings – the architectural thesis is incomplete. Importantly, each of these elements is the representation of an idea through different formats -- one in words, one in space and form, and one in representation. As alluded to in the premise, our strategy will be to work in reverse order by prefacing the design and re-conception of a particular element first. As we shelter-in-place, this better provides a clearly defined platform for discovery. However, it is not only the design of the element itself that is important. HOW the design is revealed through drawing is what will further broaden and enrich ideas.

BERKELEY ARCHITECTURE THESIS REVIEW 2021

INTERLUDES MARCEL SANCHEZ PRIETO Thesis proposals are reflective journeys, an interlude to study our environment’s challenges and pressing issues, a dialogue, medium and strategy. It is a lens to see through and construct observations on how architecture could interlace and operate. For better or worse, the current global crisis has accelerated the latent changes in architecture, highlighting many of the fundamental questions for the future of cities already in question before March 2020. In the midst of it all, thesis proposals exchange perspectives about the city and architecture, addressing climate change, mobility, equity, health, and the state in which architecture is produced. A common thread between the proposals are concepts such as inclusion, redistribution and adaptation towards emergent needs, questioning architecture on how it can adapt to the depopulation of cities? How ingrown be an alternative to the established neoliberal capitalist approach? Are territorial ambiguities opportunities for new types of settlements? Is food production poised to change community integration? As a whole, the proposals explore axes in which architects could intervene, evaluating the present, and a call to act on; do we need to reconsider the bareness of modern ideals in architecture detached from the idiosyncrasies of daily life? What have we lost in our communities in the rapid urbanization of our cities? Can architecture perform as a backup plan to the increasing natural disasters? How can we integrate the influx of data centers in our cities’ core as we become ever so dependent on the commodity of information? Is developing the underground our new frontier for dwelling? This moment of interlude is a spatial problem, alternating between the civic values of the individual within the boundaries of the collective; architecture can act in our environment as a direct expression of democracy

MASTER OF ADVANCED ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN RONALD RAEL Overview California is on fire. One of the primary reasons for the phenomena of seasonal fires in the state, particularly Northern California, is the excess of small diameter timber present in forest ecologies. While wood harvesting companies in the United States focus primarily on timber that is greater than 10” in diameter, leaving behind large amounts of small trees, brush and a flammable ecology that has been made vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, particularly drought and global warming, lending to disastrous outcomes. California also has a long history of earthen construction, buildings made of unfired clay-rich soil (adobe) and the use of fired ceramic materials for the roof, which has been overlooked in contemporary design. Each of these material resources, wood and earth, have the capacity to be rethought through technologies contributes to a fire-resistant strategy for building-making, but also for improving our forest to reduce their susceptibility to forest fires, while providing a resource to establish new models for technological development and application with the intent to establish Residential Urbanism through a Wildland-Urban Interface.

Image by (by Sinae Jung)

Provocation By harvesting small diameter timber for the development of new wood technologies and using clay based materials for fire-proof building component systems, there is the potential to reduce the risk and hazards of fire, to both forests and our build environment. This year-long studio will look at two ways of conceptualizing a response to forest fires in California that pertain to the key issues of Technology, Society and Ecology by: 1. Harvesting of small diameter timber for the production of cross-laminated timber (CLT) and wood based additive manufacturing applications and explores ways that contemporary technological building practices can arrive at new strategies for building 2. The exploration of California’s traditional earthen building practices (adobe and ceramics) coupled with additive manufacturing to produce fire-proof building materials and systems that engage with the ecosystems of the wildland/urban edge.

THURSDAY, MAY 6 THESIS REVIEW 2021 10AM 1:15PM

10:00AM

SESSION 1 Presiding: Mark Anderson Critics: Laura Bouwman, Leo Chow, Mona Ghandi, Megumi Tamanaha, Terri Thornton BUFFER David (Xinwei) Chen

10:30

BACK IN TIME Yimo Sun

11:00

THE POTATO AND THE BUCKET BRIGADE Safia Dziri

11:30

BREAK

11:45

PHYGITAL UTOPIA Yifeng Wang

12:15 PM

NEO_BABEL TOWER Jingran Chu

12:45

INDIVIDUAL PUBLIC Steven (Yu) Zhang

1:15

BREAK

10AM 1:45PM

10:00AM

SESSION 2 Presiding: Tom Buresh Critics: Gordon Kipping, Perry Kulper, Jeana Ripple, Gretchen Wilkins, Jason Young FUTURE FAILURES Adam Kor