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2023 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part XII

Welcome to Part XII of the Study Architecture Student Showcase! This week, the featured student projects invite viewers to reimagine performance centers through a new lens. The following designs use film, sustainable construction, and music to create innovative spaces. As the venue for artistic expression, these performance centers provide opportunities for exploration, inspiration, and celebration. 

Delaminated Ground by Austin James Barcelona, B.Arch ‘23
Woodbury University | Advisors: Aaron Gensler and Erin Wright

Site Location: Governors Island, New York City

“Art makes the familiar strange so that it can be freshly perceived. To do this, it presents its material in unexpected and even outlandish ways: the shock of the new.” —Viktor Shklovsky

This project alludes to spaces of leisure – a park, a field, a golf course – while delaminating the ground plane to offer spaces of diversion initially defamiliarizes the original subject, and thus, distancing it from the observer. It asks one to perceive in the ground for the first time – to fully grasp something that seems routine in hopes to trigger one’s imagination and inspire new ideas. In a time where our world is at our fingertips and with navigational tools and endless algorithms force-feeding us ideas, this project encourages one to get lost and to see the world anew offering a space exploration – celebrating what can happen when we lose ourselves – in a place, in our feelings, or in an experience. These poetic consequences hope to influence our environmental, ethical, emotional, and esthetic prejudices and understandings to create a sense of wonder while one wanders through the delaminated ground. When fully immersed in space, one is encouraged to develop new connotations and celebrate the art of collaboration through discovery and happenstance.

Sound studies were conducted to meticulously design and create three distinct types of spaces on the site: music, painting, and performance areas. The music spaces have been strategically placed underground to optimize acoustic performance. By situating the painting spaces above ground, artists can benefit from abundant natural lighting, fostering an ideal environment for their creative expression. The performance spaces have been integrated into the landscape, submerged within the topography to provide visitors with an immersive theatrical experience that transcends traditional boundaries.

This project was recognized in the Woodbury Thesis Archive (MADE Woodbury Exhibition).

Instagram: @austinbarcelona / @austinbarcelona_archives

Ambivalent Theater by Chris Saour ‘23
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute School of Architecture | Advisors: Ryosuke Imaeda, Faculty Advisor. Rhett Russo, Final Project Assessment Committee Member

We perceive architecture in perspective despite its ubiquity of flat construction. This project reevaluates the relationship between flat and perspective through a series of camerawork and explores architectural anonymity and ambivalence.

The two visual modes are unfolded through an ideological interpretation of fisheye lenses, telephoto lenses, and dolly zooms. Films like Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro’s The City of Lost Children (1995) use fisheye lenses to warp characters, while photographs like Arne Svenson’s Neighbors and Michael Wolf’s Tokyo Compression employ telephoto lenses to hide subjects’ identities. Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), and Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982) dynamically oscillate between them by using dolly zooms. The ideas of anonymity and program are further linked to Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986), and Walter Gropius’s Total Theater (1927). Rooted in, yet, contrary to three theories of Jacques Rancière, Michel Foucault, and Walter Benjamin, anonymity in this project is redefined as an effect that bestows identity over time and dynamically changes between speaking and unspoken.

The ambiguity of the materiality of the theater, whether concrete, metal, or fabric, is created by the vinyl façade, which inflates and deflates by the heat produced by the audiences and performances. Located in Boston, Massachusetts, the building offers the fluctuations of the temperatures between inside and outside, which contributes to the movement of the façade. When it expands, the skin becomes flat in some places while wrinkled in others. When the theater is not operating, the façade deflates and remains loose and flaccid. One can view the building from afar, and perhaps recognize if two auditoriums are operating together or independently by seeing their expressions.

This project is not to produce a spectacular theatrical experience as an urban icon, which for some reason tends to be a common goal of contemporary theaters. Rather, by ideologically understanding the dolly zoom as both orthogonal (flat) and fisheye (indexical), it finds its own architectural significance through the quasi-material change granted by the modulation of the façade between tense and flaccid. The theater, thus, lies in the center of discrete materials, the ambivalence of which yields new aesthetics.

Instagram:@chrissaour, @ryoimaeda

Galveston International Juneteenth Museum by Jermaine Jones, Morgan Lewis, Dominique Lang, Sidpaoda Yougbare, and David Galo, B.Arch ‘23
Prairie View A&M University | Advisor: Huiyi Xu

“Juneteenth Museum” is an iconic symbolic building in the state of Texas and the United States of America. The location of the project is in Galveston, Texas. The building is a place to show the culture of African Americans in the state of Texas. The new museum should be the epicenter for education, preservation, and celebration of Juneteenth nationally and globally. The program is supported by the African American History Council and the Galveston African American Community. The programs include a lobby, exhibition spaces, an auditorium, administration offices, lecture rooms, a gift shop, outdoor exhibitions, equipment rooms, and outdoor parking spaces.

Harvesting Education by Lydia Roberts and Michael Lee, Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies ‘23
Illinois School of Architecture |Advisors: Isabella Hillman and Francisco Javier Rodríguez-Suárez, FAIA

Harvesting Education is a sustainable and cultural architecture design for a primary school in rural Senegal, Africa. This design’s main features are individual garden spaces for each classroom and an expansive courtyard that doubles as a presentation and performance space. The design was created using locally and easily sourced materials, with construction techniques that can be performed by the community. Rooms are naturally ventilated through the use of perforated walls, a lifted roof structure, and carefully placed windows. Each classroom has a number of fabric shading devices connecting to the roof structure. These pieces of fabric provide a location for cultural expression, as well as artwork produced by the students to be displayed.

This project was awarded the 2nd Place Earl Prize, Senior Studios, Illinois School of Architecture.

Instagram: @archatillinois

International Juneteenth Museum by Jarvis Hawkins, B. Arch ‘23
Prairie View A&M University |Advisors: Dr. Rania Labib and Stephen Song

The goal of this project was to design an International Juneteenth Museum in Galveston, Texas.  Juneteenth is a holiday celebrated on June 19, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. Today, Juneteenth is becoming increasingly recognized as an important part of American history. For African Americans, Juneteenth symbolizes their resilience, perseverance, and the fight for equal rights.

The inspiration for the Juneteenth Museum’s design was drawn from Deniece Williams’ song “Black Butterfly,” and it embodies three fundamental concepts: Union, Freedom, and Reflection. These words were derived from the historical synopsis of Juneteenth, and they form the basis for the museum’s design.

This student’s work is currently exhibited in the Nia Afro-American Gallery in Galveston, Texas, and the TIPHC Gallery in Prairie View A&M University in part of Juneteenth Celebrations.

See you next week for the next installment of the Student Showcase!

2023 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part XI

Welcome back to another week of the Study Architecture Student Showcase! In Week XI, we highlight student projects that use space as an avenue to create equitable community resources. From neighborhood civic buildings to multi-faceted housing units, this week’s featured projects address bridging societal gaps and emphasize the importance of creating opportunities for social interaction and dialogue between diverse communities. By taking a look at the projects below, you will learn how each student project proposes a space that promotes inclusivity and fosters community connections.

Center for Tolerance by Rebecca Dejenie, B.Arch‘23
The Boston Architectural College | Advisors: Peter Martin and Robert Gillig

This design imagines the Roxbury Crossing station as a free station as it becomes a new node for the city of Boston. The Center for Tolerance is a civic building that would allow different activities from music studios, makerspaces, food court, material exchange library, multi-purpose classrooms, exhibits, offices, studios, therapy clinics, and meditation spaces, to gardens with seats to encourage users to sit and converse with one another. As the site is located on the border of two neighborhoods, it will provide a spatial bridge for people from different backgrounds to come together to heal. This building will be used as a resource for all – especially those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. This building is a representation of what equity in the built environment can look like.

This project was awarded the Best of B. Arch Degree Project 2023.

Dis-Luxury from Luxury: Inequality Brought by Consumerism and Luxury Reimagining by Eduardo A. Caraballo-Arroyo B.Arch ‘23
Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico | Advisors: Pedro A. Rosario-Torres, Luis V. Badillo-Lozano & Manuel De Lemos-Zuazaga

In Curitiba, Brazil, an architectural project is reimagining luxury and addressing social division to foster a community that values inclusivity, sustainability, and social equity. By challenging the pursuit of material wealth and status, this project aims to create an inclusive society where individuals feel fulfilled and valued. The project recognizes that luxury is often associated with abundance and comfort but can lead to marginalization, inequality, scarcity, and disconnection within communities. In a capitalist and consumerist society, luxury is marketed as an asset of ease and comfort, perpetuating social divisions and excluding those who cannot afford it. To address this problem, the architectural project seeks to interconnect both ends of the wealth spectrum through spaces that foster communication, action, and self-development.

The objective is to design an urban-social space that combines the rewards and necessities derived from luxury. This space offers physiological resources, developmental opportunities, a sense of belonging, and luxurious experiences, becoming a social equalizer and a support system for the community. By emphasizing the emotions associated with luxury, such as power, confidence, security, and contemplation/enjoyment, the project creates spaces for interactions and community communication. Elements such as small-scale farming, community/cultural integration, open spaces for social and community activities, and emancipatory and cultural educational spaces are included in the program. The project also aims to reduce limitations by embracing degrowth and minimalist systems.

The main strategy revolves around luxury as an emotional reaction. Luxury consumption triggers psychological responses associated with trust, power, contentment, and security. The architectural design incorporates pathways and axes that lead towards focus areas, lifting the first level and creating porous volumes to enhance openness and connection. Strategically positioned openings offer views towards the focus areas, creating voids and spaces that provide experiential and spatial experiences. By implementing this design, the project aims to address luxury inequality, foster social cohesion, and create spaces that promote inclusivity, equal access to resources, and a sense of well-being for all members of society. Through its transformative power, this project challenges conventional notions of luxury and redefines its role in creating a more connected and equitable world.

Instagram: @_eaca23

Kordilyera Vernacular Inspired Interpretive Center in Paradise Hills, San Diego by Greco Cosente, B. Arch ‘23
NewSchool of Architecture and Design |Advisor: Raúl Díaz

With historical and cultural aspects of Paradise Hills being mainly single-family dwellings from the 1950s and its relation to the military, specifically the navy, a demographic group of the Filipino population has emerged throughout the years. Generic designs of suburban parks do not cater to the needs of the current population. In an attempt to advance green space, park designs drawing from culture with the architectural language of pavilions are explored. The project caters to bridging the gap between community park design and Filipino residents through a Kordilyera-inspired Interpretive Center in Paradise Hills, San Diego; A reinstitution of cultural identity for U.S.-born Filipino-Americans.

The project was awarded the Outstanding Design Award – Degree Project.

U Belong: A New Live/Work Housing Prototype by Jada Rezac and Margaret Phillips, M. Arch ‘23
Kansas State University |Advisor: Zhan Chen – Assistant Professor

The current housing crisis in the US challenges architecture to address a critical need while presenting the opportunity to propose new solutions. The studio, titled: In With the New, operates as a laboratory in which to explore innovative possibilities for multi-family living. Students design new models that reframe housing as a multi-faceted domain, able to navigate various scenarios and support diverse communities.

Jada and Margaret’s project responds to the evolving needs of contemporary living by integrating residential units and workspaces. The project uses a calibrated arrangement of U-shaped modules to create new possibilities for both living and working.

The unit clusters maintain a high degree of porosity, which allows more access to natural light and promotes cross ventilation. These considerations enhance human comfort and productivity while presenting an innovative strategy for improving the overall health of its inhabitants.

The relationship between living and working units and their arrangement also seeks to alleviate social isolation. The units are grouped into smaller neighborhoods, fostering familiarity and more meaningful social interactions. Communal spaces within these neighborhoods and intersecting circulation paths also help build a stronger sense of community within a large complex.

The project was nominated for the Nominated for the Heintzelman Prize at Kansas State University.

Instagram: @jadarezac ; @margaret_rose_phillips ; @studiozhan

See you next week for the next installment of the Student Showcase!

2023 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part X

Welcome back to another week of the Study Architecture Student Showcase! In Week X, we shift our focus to student projects that address the urgent and critical challenges posed by natural disasters. The devastating impact of natural calamities often necessitates innovative and resilient design solutions to ensure the safety and well-being of communities. This week’s featured projects go beyond traditional architectural approaches, presenting thought-provoking concepts that explore resiliency and transformation in the face of adversity.

Resiliency and Transformation in Appalachia by William Robert Clark, M.Arch‘23
University of California, Berkeley | Advisor: René Davids

This past summer, Eastern Kentucky was hit with record breaking rain which caused floods killing dozens of people and destroying millions of dollars of infrastructure and property. While discussion and design around flood resiliency is not new, these events in Central Appalachia create a new opportunity to reimagine the idea of resiliency, and how it applies to some of our smallest and most isolated communities. Drawn from precedents of industrial mining infrastructure, the design seeks to maximize the safety and wellbeing of the community, while minimizing the exposed footprint of the site. The result is a systematic transformation of the landscape and community environment. Ultimately, ‘Resiliency and Transformation in Appalachia’ is meant to be a provocation against longstanding habits of living so that communities can find stability in an extreme environment.

This provocation takes form in a series of towers, which emerge from base of the mountain along the river’s edge. The design challenge of these towers wasn’t the flooding or the extreme topography, it was how to design around the people, and the lives they wish to lead in connection with their landscape. This turned the core driver of the design to minimize the feeling that one is living within a tower. Each unit has its own individual “yard,” and floor plates are suspended by cables, eliminating the use of columns. A series of bridges connect the residential spaces back into the mountain, allowing the forest to meet the tower, and to provide a buffer for the community programs along the ground. The towers are connected by a Hollow (hol-er) Bridge, allowing residents to travers up through the towers, as if they were walking up through the mountain valley to their neighbors. This bridge meets the tower at a common area, which serves a variety of community functions. Along the ground, community spaces are connected by a greenway along the railroad tracks, which serve both pedestrian and commercial use. The towers create a form that is resilient in emergencies, protecting its residents and their spaces, but the design pushes to maintain a way of life, inseparable from the mountains.

Instagram: @robert_clark_arch, @r.davids

Augmented Reality for Emergency Responders by Krunali Shah & Mary Riccio, B.Arch ‘23
New Jersey Institute of Technology  | Advisor: Andrzej Zarzycki

The studio combined advanced building technology and resiliency knowledge with virtual/augmented reality and ubiquitous computing. We showed various aspects and scales of smart designs. The project was a combination of knowledge in the development of building systems and components and the integration of smart technology. The goal was to seamlessly weave ubiquitous environments with many computational devices and systems. It is a testament to adapting our physical space to the modern environment. The purpose of this project is to improve the efficiency of emergency responders by using augmented reality (AR) platforms interfaced with the Internet of Things (IoT) devices. By implementing sensors throughout the building, information on occupancy and temperature can be collected. Emergency maps can be placed on each floor as markers to be viewed in 3D using HoloLens/smartphone. These maps will provide information on room temperatures, and occupancy, and can highlight egress/emergency paths from the map’s location. This system aims to ensure safety and decrease emergency response times. The primary focus will be creating a plan to respond to emergency fire incidents. The design intent is to develop an Internet of Things technology that focuses on enhancing the safety of the building occupants and supporting emergency responders. The primary focus will be creating a system to respond to emergency fire incidents. Future adaptations of this system can be used in crises with intruders, shooters, earthquakes, hurricanes, natural disasters, and power outages. Another advancement would be to add the ability to run without any direct electrical power source. Advancing the IoT systems during situations where the sensor stops working, storing the last meaningful communication, and setting up the last will of the device will add a safety net for when the system shuts down. One major component to enhance efficiency is for the device to automatically recognize what room it is in and provide egress through a 3D Augmented Reality model using map image targets.

Instagram: @krunali_shahh, @maryric

Interrogating Boundaries: Miami Lines of Endurance by Alexandra Wise, Maryam Basti, M.Arch ‘23
University of Miami | Advisor: Shawna Meyer

Miami, Florida faces pressing environmental and social challenges that require the city to rapidly adapt to ever-changing conditions like rising sea levels and an increased rate of severe tropical storms. An in-depth understanding of existing edge conditions and the social, environmental, and governmental implications of the US Army Corps of Engineers Coastal Storm Risk Management Study was needed to develop a project that serves to fortify the city’s edges while letting nature regain control. An ecotypic response to these challenges, the Brickell Key Disaster Outpost Center and Ferry Terminal breaks the intrusive barriers that disconnect the land from the sea. By dissolving existing hard edges and rebuilding with softer and looser conditions that accept and evolve with the dynamic environmental forces that exist at the site. The elevated building complex prepares for the rising sea and monumental king tides while reducing its footprint in the landscape. The outpost center and ferry terminal provide a haven for those affected by catastrophes by facilitating movement and providing equitable access to disaster relief resources. This project was awarded the Integrated studio Prize.

Instagram: @u_soa, @ateliermey, @maryam.basti, @_alexwise

See you next week for the next installment of the Student Showcase!

2023 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part IX

Welcome back to the Study Architecture Student Showcase, and a joyful start to the New Year! In this ninth week of the Student Showcase, we’re excited to highlight outstanding projects that delve into the realm of cultural centers and museum design. Our featured projects span diverse locations and tackle unique challenges, each a testament to the creative minds shaping the future of architecture. Join us as we explore the intriguing designs of the following projects. Each project is a unique journey into the intersection of architecture, culture, and community, offering a glimpse into the transformative power of thoughtful design.

Chinatown Cultural Activity Community Center (CCACC) Learn, Create, and Spread! Space by Jessica Ivana, B.Arch‘23
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona | Advisor: Katrin Terstegen

Community centers have always served as a place for locals to engage in independent study and receive support. The proposed Chinatown Cultural Activity Community Center (CCACC) is located on an underdeveloped parking lot on the east side of Chinatown and seeks to activate and expand the cultural values, activities, and character of this part of Chinatown, which currently lacks pedestrian-friendly activities compared to Broadway Street and the rest of the neighborhood.

The CCACC serves as a hub for innovative exploration, offering a comfortable workspace for people of all ages to learn, create, and exchange knowledge and wisdom, regardless of their talents or impairments, whether they are residents or visitors. It fosters a sense of belonging to the community while breaking down the boundaries between arts, culture, and creativity, and aims to act as a medium for people to develop new hobbies or knowledge. On the exterior, the center has a gentle and slightly playful character that blends in with the surrounding buildings but stands out with its white perforated skin, offering a glimpse into the activities and knowledge celebrated within the structure through a composition of aperture sizes.

As an urban response to the through-lot site condition, the volume of the center is elevated, providing porosity and connecting the two streets. At the street level, a grid of arches penetrates through the lower levels, acting as legs or roots that tie the learning community center above and below. In the interior, spaces and structure are more expressive and flexible, providing a variety of activity spaces and spatial experiences. This project was awarded the Senior Project Award at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Culinary Center for Los Angeles by Leo I. Dumonteil Cabanas, B.Arch ‘23
Tulane University  | Advisor: Rubén García Rubio

This new culinary center has the purpose of revitalizing the knowledge of cooking that has been lost in newer generations. Many young adults have evolved to rely on fast food chains as a result of their fast-paced lifestyle. Providing a place where simple knowledge such as cooking can counter this trend. The building itself is an expression of two worlds of architecture. The ground floor is designed by following the parallel strips of the green canvas it is set one. This provides a one-way porosity connecting two ends of a garden. This first level is meant to represent a heavy and solid architecture style which translates into the materiality choices. Moving into the remaining floors the change of atmosphere changes immediately. This isolated box has an architecture reminiscent of Mies van der Rohe. The space is light and airy with almost no existing walls. The program is not set by walls other than by the structure itself allowing for a continuous space to be created. This structure extends into the lateral wings of the box which create two cantilevered ends. These cantilevers then create two public spaces into the outdoors providing shade for the public in LA’s harsh climate. Lastly a set of different topographical offsets are introduced into the landscape. Some may rise while others may sink. These special conditions are then introduced to different gardens that contribute to the growing of crops. These micro topographies also allow the building to express its present as some areas near the building have deeper topography offsets. This mélange of architecture styles allow the public to experience learning in a way that challenges the perspective one has on architecture and culinary.

Instagram: @rubgarrub

Allegro by Ryan Call, B.S.Arch ‘23
Texas Tech University Huckabee College of Architecture | Advisor: Erin Hunt

Inspired by the cultural and climatic conditions of Lubbock, as well as the Llano Estacado region at large. Allegro fills a niche within the musical scene, providing a place for up-and-coming artists to live and perform in the heart of the arts district downtown. Programmatically, this space provides practice rooms, community multi-use spaces, a recreational area, and part-time housing units for musicians to live and perfect their craft. The form of Allegro is a repeated figure, stacked, mirrored, and rotated, opening in the center as a point of gathering and passage for the downtown area. ​ The façade is wrapped in a kinetic screen to provide solar shading in the warmer months and opens for more sunlight in the colder months. The screen is made up of a single unit, divided into nine smaller units mimicking the sublet undulations of the land. Each block was created through computational design and digital fabrication using clay 3D printing. Allegro explores the possibilities of clay as a dynamic building unit that performs both for efficiency and visual effect while functioning as a place of community for Lubbock.​

What’s in a Monolith? by Peter Rosa, B.Arch ‘23
Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc)| Advisor: Russell Thomsen

“The simplicity of the architectural monolith does not aim at abstraction, nor does it share the minimalist aspiration to non-referential object hood. Rather, it seeks to maximize the expressive potential of common architectonic configurations by condensing their figurative allusions into one eloquent gesture.” — Rodolfo Machado, Monolithic Architecture. The thesis interest lies in exploring the idea of what Machado posits as the expressive potential of the architectural monolith. It questions how the role of architectural monolith differs across various expressions and how these can begin to reframe our understanding of the contemporary architectural monolith.

In wanting to expand our definition of what a monolith can be, I began to think of a monolith as one of many kinds, each of these lending itself to a multitude of expressions with their own behaviors. By establishing a set of monolithic behaviors and deploying these across different scales, orientations, and material expressions; the thesis argues against a rigid definition of monolithicity and presents various in an attempt to subvert the conventional notions of monolithicity while simultaneously expanding upon the lexicon of work that informed it.

This proposal for the Museum of the Twentieth Century in Berlin is comprised of shrouded monolith with figures that become subsumed and embedded within it becoming a catalog of monolithic expressions. In its context, the proposal reframes the spatial experience of the museum by deploying a range of monolithic expressions each with their own spatial consequences.

Instagram: @rntarch

Blackness in Architecture: A Library and Cultural Center in Gary, IN by Miranda Cuozzo, B.Arch ‘23
University of Notre Dame | Advisor: Sean Patrick Nohelty

Architecture is shaped by group identity, which, in turn, is shaped by architecture. This interdependent process is what allows a culture to develop its own architectural character. Unfortunately, constant oppression has denied African Americans the freedom to fully participate in this process. This gap in American architecture contributes to the continued dehumanization of African Americans and their culture, and is a gap that can be filled by developing architecture that truly expresses the beauty and depth of African American people. Through the design of a Library and Cultural Center in the heart of the often forgotten city of Gary, Indiana, this project explores what architecture that intentionally represents and embodies Black American culture looks like and is ultimately about affirming Black people’s humanity. Throughout the completion of this project, I was often forced to defend the notion that Black Americans had a culture distinct from that of other Western people, events that further proved the necessity of this work. While this may seem like a minor oversight, the inability to see a people’s culture and heritage is an inability to see their full humanness. Architecture and culture go hand in hand, and by developing architecture that speaks to the Black American experience, I hope to fill a gap in the American architectural tradition and to contribute to a broader understanding and acceptance of Black American culture that will one day render the questioning of Black humanity obsolete.

This project was awarded the Noel Blank Design Award.

Instagram: @rando_studios

Re-Encanto by Emir Taheri, B.Arch ‘23
NewSchool of Architecture and Design | Advisor: Daniela Deutsch

Encanto, once a semi-rural district, has experienced a decline in recent years. Our urban studies have identified the Imperial Avenue corridor as a prime location for redevelopment, with its rundown infrastructure and low occupancy. The presence of the South Chollas Valley hills and canyons further adds potential for commercial revitalization. Our project aims to capitalize on these opportunities by creating a central hub area focused on an Afrofuturism museum. The Afrofuturism museum will serve as a dynamic space, showcasing the intersection of black culture with science fiction, fantasy, and technology. By providing a unique platform for exploring the rich history and creativity of black communities, the museum will promote cultural appreciation and understanding. To enhance the overall experience, the surrounding area will be thoughtfully designed with public art displays, interactive installations, and green spaces. These elements will encourage exploration, interaction with the environment, and cultural exchange. Through this transformative project, Encanto will regain its vibrancy, becoming a catalyst for cultural enrichment and inspiration.

Instagram: @rhythmarch

A REGENERATIVE DEVELOPMENT & TOURISM CENTER: HOLISTIC DESIGN AS A CATALYST FOR CO-EVOLUTIONARY GROWTH IN DEVELOPING COMMUNITIES by Mason Reinhart, M.Arch ‘23
Catholic University of America | Advisor: Jason Montgomery

This thesis demonstrates how architecture can be a catalyst for regenerative growth through the holistic design of community development projects that co-evolve with natural systems over time. The Regenerative Development & Tourism Center in Chiweta, Malawi is a phased development project that serves as a community resource, educational hub, and restorative tourism destination. The center’s multi-purpose programming provides economic, educational, and experiential benefits to its various stakeholders. Construction with zero-kilometer materials and operation through closed-loop systems produces positive environmental impacts. The campus is a prototype for development in rural communities that addresses issues on local, regional, national, and international levels. The center in Chiweta is site-sensitive in responding to the physical and climatic conditions, celebrating the local community’s agricultural lifestyle, and contributing to Malawi’s national development and tourism goals.

This project was nominated for Super Jury.

Instagram: masonreinhart_, 007jmontgomery0888

See you next week for the next installment of the Student Showcase!

2023 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part VIII

Tune in for week VIII of the student showcase. This week we feature student projects focused on the theme of safety, demonstrating thoughtful responses to diverse challenges. Check out the student work below!

Mesa Refuge by Joy Christensen and Megan Sun, BA in Architectural Design ‘23
University of Washington  | Advisor: Elizabeth Golden

The Iglesia Cristiana El Buen Pastor is located in Mesa, Arizona, a suburb of about 500,000 inhabitants east of Phoenix. Each week U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—the federal law enforcement agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws in the United States—transports groups of asylees to the church as a temporary measure while arrangements are made for travel to a final destination. At the church, guests can take a shower, change into clean clothes, and eat a meal before the next phase of their journey. Asylum seekers typically come from a variety of countries and backgrounds and may have experienced persecution, violence, or other threats in their homeland. Many arrive to the U.S. after a long and difficult journey, often having fled their homes with only a few belongings.

The Mesa Refuge will shelter the asylees on the church campus. The program contains short term housing for individuals and families (between twenty to forty people ) as well additional shower and restroom facilities. When not in use, the building will be used as a multipurpose room for the congregation. The church has a very limited budget and there is a need to build economically as well as sustainably.

Our proposal focuses on the privacy of the asylum seekers and their connection to nature through views to planted areas around the building and filtered daylight that fills the main spaces. A strategy of layered walls and masonry screens promotes natural ventilation and provides a sense of protection without feeling fully enclosed. Colorful murals cover benches and the wall facing the main entry to the church, welcoming guests and inviting them into their new home.

Instagram: @megan.sun, @joy_architecture, @elidorata,

Urban Living Room by Zoe Qiaoyu Zheng, B.Arch ‘23
Academy of Art University  | Advisor: Sameena Sitabkhan

Naturally, we tend to keep a certain distance when interacting with other people, especially during the post-pandemic era. The Urban Living Room aims to bring neighborhood life into public space while creating blurred boundaries that create conditions of privacy. The design introduces public programs like cafes, shops, galleries, and varied open spaces which blend traditional library and private spaces with adjacent buildings. Formal moves respond to natural light, wind, and views, but also create opportunities to block visual contact with adjacent residences and provide private programmed spaces for users.

The building was divided into two parts connected by a bridge providing flexible circulation. By utilizing different material patterns to guide visitors through the space, the design enriches relationships with neighbors. Originally the site featured the natural environment, so the building is elevated for people to enjoy the natural vegetation on different levels. Visitors are welcome to celebrate their time here and the architecture creates invisible boundaries to protect their personal space as needed. This Urban Living Room is not just a library or another public space for people to hang out; the proposal also provides opportunities for people to safely interact in personally acceptable proximities.

This project was awarded the B.Arch Thesis Design Excellence Award at the Academy of Art University.

Instagram: @aauschoolofarchitecture

Where Density and Desire Meet by Rita Momika, M.Arch ‘23
Arizona State University  | Advisor: Claudio Vekstein

In Phoenix Arizona spreads in the art district of what is named Roosevelt Row, an approximate 3,000 feet long street where the multifunctional businesses take advantage of using the district for portraying their own voices and talents.

In light of the global movements calling for more inclusivity, it is crucial for spaces like Roosevelt Row to ensure that everyone feels safe and welcomed. This means taking active steps to address any discrimination or harassment that may occur within the community. Creating safe and inclusive environments require a commitment to creating microcosmic monuments of different social issues that are a safe space for conversation and alignment between people.

A program that spans 2,000 feet long, an infrastructure capable to contain multiple activities and functions. An architectural base, a steel system able to put up with changes through time as well as establish relations between the public and the private. The structures become the skeleton, the connection, and the network of systems throughout the dynamic street.

By actively promoting diversity and inclusion, Roosevelt Row alleyways begin to foster spaces with a sense of belonging for people from historically oppressed communities, such as people of color, women, indigenous people and immigrants. By valuing and respecting the diversity of voices within the community, Roosevelt Row can help to foster a culture of inclusivity and create a more equitable future for all.

ST.LOUIS R.EFUGEE I.NTEGRATION M.ODEL (RIM) by Saad Khan, B.Arch ‘23
New York Institute of Technology  | Advisor: Farzana Gandhi

In 2022, the U.S./Mexico border witnessed a significant influx of migrants, reaching a staggering total of 2 million encounters. Among this population, approximately 30,000 individuals seeking asylum have been granted admission this year. However, those whose asylum claims are rejected or pending face the challenging circumstances of residing in makeshift tent cities located along the border ports of Mexico. Even for those who are admitted, overcrowded centers, tents, and cities lacking plans for economic development and social integration pose additional hardships. One proposed intervention after the migrants’ arrival at the border involves the relocation of these refugee and asylum-seeking populations to declining urban areas like St. Louis, Missouri. This strategic relocation would include the implementation of a transitional housing typology that encompasses co-living spaces, shared working environments, and public amenities. Another intervention aimed at fostering cultural integration and combating xenophobia entails establishing an exchange center within St. Louis. This center would offer diverse programs designed to cater to the needs of both the incoming and existing populations residing in the city.

This project was awarded the faculty thesis award at NYIT.

RE-BUILDING FROM THE BROKEN FRAGMENTS: YOUTH CENTER IN BALTIMORE by Kevin Ufua, M.Arch ‘23
Morgan State University  | Advisor: Carlos A. Reimers

How can architecture mitigate the affiliation of young adults with street gang violence in local under-served communities?

Low-income environments, limited parental involvement, peer pressure, and low self-esteem are all factors impacting under-served communities in Baltimore. The social unrest and crime can draw youth into joining gangs and violent behavior because of how dominant they are and the lack of safe spaces to redirect the attention of young people to engage in constructive activities and personal growth. Young adults can benefit from having access to proper amenities and mentorships that can impact their choices later on in their adulthood. This thesis addresses this issue, creating a youth center in a landmark location of social unrest in the city of Baltimore.

Instagram: @swagboy__kevin, @reimerscarlos

Living in Thresholds by Darren Petrucci, M.Arch ‘23
Arizona State University  | Advisor: Claudio Vekstein

The theory of feminist architecture contends that we need to rediscover the spatial relationships that have defined modern architecture. Coming from a matriarchal family in Venezuela, I wanted to explore if the ramifications of my upbringing (a matriarchial structure) were influenced by the neighborhood environment in which we lived. This project hopes to examine the concepts of public and private spheres within which we live, through the analysis of case studies, and to explore the impact of the transition between these spaces. It is these transitions, or the combination of them, that introduce architectural conditions that lead to more caring housing communities.

To begin we must understand that how we live extends past the boundaries of our house and encompasses how we move throughout the home, neighborhood, and city. The majority of housing developments undermine spontaneous social safety nets and contribute to the loss of community cohesion; it’s usually removed from the city center, thereby alienating already socio-economically vulnerable people from city resources. The single-family prototype does not address the diverse members of society — single mothers/fathers, seniors, young professionals, single women, LTBQ+, multigenerational families, etc. To create a community of care is to meet all the needs of a person (physical, emotional, health, and safety). This happens when we re-evaluate housing, based on our existence, as multi-dimensional and design our spaces to redefine the “social” aspects of housing, where the collective experience of community creates a natural threshold identity between the public and the private.

The articulation of the project applied these ideas of thresholds to an existing site in Phoenix, AZ. The restructuring and rezoning of the site allowed for the implementation of differing degrees of housing densities brought together by public urban spaces that served the community. The articulated bands became the varying housing typologies that allow for the agglomeration of different combinations of families to inhabit; while the “voids” became a place to maintain a sense of openness to the immediate and greater community. These public spaces became the extension of the house and blurred the concept of public and private.

Instagram: @paolavalentinaaa

See you next week for the next installment of the Student Showcase!

2023 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part VII

Welcome to week VII of the showcase. This week we feature student projects on furniture design and projects that use innovative materials. Check out the student work below!

The Moth: The Contemporary Comfort Chair by Alondra Pulido, M.Arch ‘23
University of Washington  | Advisor: Rick Mohler

The Moth lounge chair combines modern striking shapes with a flexible form factor that adapts to all body types. Its design offers an unexpected seating experience, capturing the unconventional elegance and beauty of a moth. This lounge chair combines steel and wood to create a contemporary piece that ensures durability and comfort.

The lounge chair’s flexible quality is attributed to its steel rod base that is welded together to form a continuous loop structure. This steel framework supports a cantilever seat and adds a playful element to the overall seating experience. The chair’s back and seat are defined by four laminated walnut panels, evenly spaced apart and gently sloping toward the center for enhanced comfort. These panels are affixed to the steel structure using black delrin standoffs, creating a floating feeling and highlighting the contrast of wood and steel materials. This striking contrast is further enhanced by the framework, which mirrors the sharp angles on the backside and underside of the wooden panels.

The walnut veneers used in the chair are sourced from a single walnut slab, which was processed and milled in the student fabrication lab. The steel components are also bent, welded, and blackened in the same space. This ensured a cohesive production process in which the interaction between materials informed each other, resulting in the final product.

Instagram: @alondrapul, @swithycofurniture, @mohler.rick

DK22 by Dominic Kaufer, M.Arch ‘23
University of Washington  | Advisor: Rick Mohler

In this studio we were taught Danish furniture design principles and encouraged to consider those principles in our designs. I was particularly interested in the principle of minimalism, which I interpreted as using the least amount of material and “moves” necessary for a given idea to work well.

This chair is the result of a handful of prototypes using steel and felt, built over the span of a ten-week quarter. The design strives for apparent simplicity, with motifs taken from single-line drawings and tattoos. While the frame appears to be a single bent piece of round steel rod, it is actually four pieces in total – two sides and two stretchers. Concealed joints were turned on the lathe and are held together with small, allen head set screws. The steel frame was treated with a mixture of beeswax and boiled linseed oil to minimize rust and wear. The sling is 1/4” thick f7 industrial felt and is attached to itself around the stretchers with hammered copper rivets.

This chair would not have been possible without the help of my classmates and instructors. Special thanks to the instructors – Erling, Kimo, and Steve – for their help and insight throughout design and construction. I would also like to thank the UW Fabrication Lab staff – Rae, Jack, and Brian – for their help in turning this idea into something tangible (and sit-able)!

Instagram: @kominicdaufer, @swithycofurniture, @mohler.rick

Recovering Surface Addict by Kevin Cendejas, M.Arch ‘23
Cranbrook Academy of Art  | Advisor: Gretchen Wilkins

Recovering Surface Addict is a fabricated surface of encounter and mixture; configuring and reconfiguring relations between body, space, craft, color, and light. The surface consists of seventy-eight unique aluminum panels unified by a color gradient while also disrupting the glow of fluorescent fuchsia through each panel incision and bend. Neither wall nor window, the surface possesses qualities of both by mediating between inside and outside, and between separation, connection and interaction. Folds in the metal panels produce a dense yet floating surface in which light and color might be sensed as material and fabric through dynamically changing hues and shades. The luminous surface is textured by plays of light, sensitive to shifting weather conditions outside which become absorbed by and dispersed across the surface. The experience of mediated color and light on the surfaces produces an environment that changes through movement, proximity and time. Observers become accomplices to the layered temporal and sensory effects of the surfaces in real time and space.

Instagram: @kevin.cendejas, @grtnwilkins

Footwear to Facades by Shaun Rankin, M.Arch ‘23
University of Southern California  | Advisor: Alvin Huang

Tectonics in architecture is the integration of structure and construction, implementing technical aspects, detail, and cultural and aesthetic qualities. It involves both the process of making architecture and the product of that process, elevated to an art form. I examined the relationship between architecture and footwear through an aesthetic and tectonic lens. I critically analyzed the process of creating footwear art and how it is derived. Through specific techniques of footwear design, such as stitching, weaving, and branding, I aim to develop new ways to generate architecture. By using these techniques, I hope to encourage the discipline to design and think more creatively about how we enclose our spaces, develop spatial relationships, and consider materials. This perspective raises the question of whether architecture can be temporary or even switched out daily, much like a pair of shoes.

This project was awarded the USC Master of Architecture Distinction in Directed Design Research and the A+D Museum Design Awards In School Category.

Instagram: @shaunrankin_, @ryantylermartinez 

deadstock by Christopher Torres, M.Arch ‘23
Lawrence Technological University  | Advisor: Masataka Yoshikawa

Deadstock refers to merchandise that’s never been sold. The project challenges itself to accumulate different merchandise to evolve itself into a structure that keeps evolving and producing deadstock in the form of architecture and spatial construct.

This project was awarded the Dean’s Award at Lawrence Technological University

Instagram: @creesetoepair

See you soon for the next series of the Student Showcase!

2022 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part VII

In part seven of the Study Architecture Student Showcase series we share eight student projects that focus on Wellness and the importance of healthy lifestyles in society. From dreaming to reflection to exercise there are many ways that architecture can help facilitate movement and a healthy community. These projects span globally from Canada to Lebanon to Korea but all have the same focus: wellness.

For a recap on the 2022 Student Showcase series so far, check out Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI.

ECO-SCAPES: From Dreams as Spatial Experiences to Ecological, Social & Economic Alternatives by Hussein Zarour, B.Arch ’22
American University of Beirut | Advisor: Carla Aramouny

Long being a subject of artistic inquiry, dreams are often defined as successions of ideas, emotions, images, and sensations that occur in the mind. Research shows that dreaming serves its own important functions in our well-being, often associated with therapy. It conveys a spectrum of past experiences, recent events, defensive operations, perceptions of self and others, conflicts, problems, and attempts at their resolution. By doing so, dreams represent a certain adventure in a world where our internalized thoughts, feelings, unfulfilled needs, and wants come to life as many theories state and support (Jung, 1974).

This project titled “ECO-SCAPES: From Dreams as Spatial Experiences to Ecological, Social & Economic Alternatives” thus investigates dreams as an entry point to design explorative, therapeutic, and experiential spaces/landscapes which stand as ecological, social but also economic alternatives to an environment defined by destruction, deterioration, and deprivation.

The location of intervention, the capital city Beirut, has been facing continuous challenges, being ecological, social, and economic, favored by unhealthy spaces and unethical political systems. Most of the citizens, mentally and physically affected, find themselves deprived of most of their basic needs, thus naturally seeking a spatial alternative in response to this destructive environment.

Instagram: @zarour_hussein, @ard_aub

Architecture and the Oneiric: An Imaginative Translation of the Intersubjective Dream Experience by Amanda Scott, M.Arch ’22
North Dakota State University | Advisor: Stephen Wischer

“One has never seen the world well if he has not dreamed what he was seeing” (Gaston Bachelard). How can architecture be reimagined through oneiric thought? Could this evoke an architectural representation akin to dreams?

This thesis explores such questions by examining the phenomenon of dreaming from an embodied architectural perspective in response to an increasingly objective architectural framework. Drawing from psychological, philosophical, artistic, and mythical sources, we can examine aspects of dreaming not as something to escape into, but rather a primary form of reality, which is often overlooked in our rational, modern way of interpreting the world. Through the piecing together of historical and fictional fragments, architecture is reconstructed into a dreamlike re-description of reality that breaks down the distinction between real and imaginary, inside and outside, conscious and unconscious, acknowledging that we may actually see in the same way that we dream.

Walking along Freedom Tunnel in New York City, existing structures are transformed into transitional elements blurring realms of verity and obscurity, providing movement through a journey of dreamlike encounters. Drawing from six influential plotlines, with the hidden infrastructure of the tunnel as its setting; surrealist spaces are reimagined through a living translation of oneiric experience.

Instagram: @amandaa_scottt, @ndsu_sodaa

The Forever Home: Redefining Aging-In-Place by Laura Deacon, M.Arch ’22
University of British Columbia | Advisor: Inge Roecker

How do we house our aging population? This question – often overlooked, is one that requires an immediate solution. The population of individuals over 65 in Canada is projected to nearly double from 2020 to 2046, reaching 22% of the overall population. With this in mind, it is essential that architectural solutions are able to meet the dynamic needs of this aging demographic. The existing housing stock consist of reactive solutions, whereby individuals sequentially progress from one typology to another in accordance with their needs. This causes strain, confusion, and requires extensive support from the community as individuals orient and adapt to a new environment.

The primary objective of this thesis is to create an engaging environment that eliminates the burden of aging by allowing individuals to age-in-place throughout ones entire lifespan, in a vibrant community that facilitates architectural flexibility while simultaneously building resilience for future generations.

The Forever Home is a seven-story development situated in the heart of Yaletown, Downtown Vancouver, within close proximity to surrounding amenities and services. The proposed development features 196 adaptable modular units that allow for families to expand, contract, and divide at various stages of life, supplemented with a palliative care unit and guest suite located on each floor. Units are configured in a single-loaded corridor typology shaped around a central courtyard, which ensures adequate natural daylighting and cross ventilation is achieved. Residences are dichotomized into blocks consisting of eight units clustered around shared residential green space. Units also feature a semi-private buffer space between the public corridors and private units, which promotes socialization and neighborly connections amongst residents. Reverse community integration is achieved using a public grocery store, child care and adult daycare facility, restaurant, and smaller scale shops dispersed vertically throughout the building. In addition, residential amenities are also located on each floor. A clear wayfinding strategy assists residents to circumnavigate the building using a bright red bulkhead and a highly contrasting change in floor material, colour, and texture.

Instagram: @laurdeacon @ubcsala

Changing Place: A Persuasive Multipurpose Park for Healthy Lifestyles by Cesar Tran, M.Arch ’22
NewSchool of Architecture and Design | Advisor: Michael Stepner, Kurt Hunker and Rebekka Morrison

Sedentary lifestyles are becoming a standard that may lead to adverse health impacts over time. Surmounting these impacts include daily non-exercise physical activity (NEPA) to support mental, social, and physical health. In many scenarios, providing the space for NEPA may not be enough to encourage participation. Built environment designers can combat this by incorporating persuasive psychological techniques for physical activity. These methods are typically found to stimulate consumerism and addiction, therefore, this thesis reclaims these methods to promote wellness through the suggestion of healthy lifestyles.

A literature review was conducted to better understand the components of a healthy life, the types of psychology employed for increased engagement, and the different architectural environments that encourage NEPA with or without intention. The review culminated with the creation of a framework consisting of nine strategies that can be considered in architectural design for habitual NEPA. Case studies were then analyzed to better understand the usage of the strategies in today’s built environment. The results were then utilized and demonstrated in a theoretical project to encourage NEPA in National City, CA which is known to have high rates of coronary heart disease and stroke.

A multipurpose park with flexible food markets and co-working spaces was designed to attract community members to participate in NEPA. The primary reason to journey here is to satisfy a person’s basic needs, sustenance. Pairing this program with multiple incentives associated with stress relief and play creates convenience for users which can lead to a routine over time. This example supports the thesis through framework application and exhibits one of the ways the built environment can encourage healthy routines through the power of persuasion.

[A]WAITING TO DIFFUSE by Joseph Chalhoub, B.Arch ’22
American University of Beirut | Advisor: Carla Aramouny

When starting any design project, we, as architects, always start by analyzing the site, mapping out conditions and studying human behavior in order to better understand how we can intervene. However, while we look at walking patterns, climatic conditions and many other aspects, we are always neglecting one very important factor: WAITING.

During the most recent economic and infrastructural collapse Lebanon has been going through, the project zoomed into ‘waiting’ as a research topic. At the time, waiting was something happening on various scales, from existential waiting to waiting in line for gas.

With a blend of anthropological research, design experiments, and research in the arts, architecture, and placemaking, the project tackles how the notion of waiting can be repurposed, reused and activated to make the most out of this urban condition. In fact, the project presents a set of functions tailored to the needs of the neighborhood and encourages users to participate and help out in the different activities. Here lies the notion of interconnected functions. By taking the waiting out of certain functions, we can repurpose them towards others and so on and so forth.

This type of adaptive reuse can feed back into the architectural intervention in more than one way. Waiting would be recycled by giving the individual multiple outlets for their time. The project presents a new kind of “Waiting Typology” that can possibly be adapted and integrated into different neighborhoods in order to answer the need of the person waiting and change depending on the site specifications. Waiting then becomes something that we can use within our research, something that is regenerative, something that is awaiting to be diffused.

Instagram: @joeych99, @ard_aub

Wellness in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ): Connecting with Culture and the Environment by Briana Pereira, B.Arch ’22
New York Institute of Technology | Advisor: Dongsei Kim

The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea is one of the most militarized areas in the world. Protected from urbanization for the last 69 years, the DMZ has become an involuntary park for flourishing flora and fauna with minimal human intervention.

This project takes advantage of this unique condition and nature’s healing ability to house a new mental health wellness center within the DMZ open to both Koreans and foreigners. Located on the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) within the DMZ, the project is integrated into the cascading landscape in the heavily forested eastern region of the DMZ. Immersed in nature, visitors engage the natural environment through the project’s landscape and architectural spaces to recuperate and improve their mental health.

In addition, visitors engage in traditional Korean cooking and pottery, tea ceremonies, meditation, yoga, reading, walking, and other reflective programs and activities to improve their mental health. Here architecture becomes a container for shared Korean cultures. Further, the project benefits visitors’ mental wellness through how the architecture frames the immediate mountain ranges’ beauty and how it captures the Korean peninsula’s four distinct seasons.

Instagram: @briana_pereira_, @dongsei.kim

Wood is Good: Informing Wood Architecture Through the Investigation of Craft in Furniture by Daniel Rodrigues, M.Arch ’22
Laurentian University | Advisor: Randall Kober

The act of craftsmanship, specifically woodworking, gives a sense of accomplishment that is therapeutic. Improving the well being of someone who is part of this maker culture yields positive benefits to the state of their mental health from making as a form of therapy in a nonclinical manner.

The final project will be a community oriented woodshop, located in the downtown of Sudbury, Ontario. This is a methodology driven thesis, where the primary method is learning through making; specifically, the design and construction of an intricate workbench as the most important experiment.

The focus of the research is to investigate how the design and craft of furniture can inspire and inform contemporary wood architecture at varying scales. This architecture will be didactic in nature, exemplifying craft through the tectonic connections of complex wood joints that embody the inherit potential of wood as a building material.

Instagram: @danielrodrigues343, @randallkober

I WENT FOR A WALK Observations, Reflections, and Imaginings upon Montréal’s Everyday Thresholds by Shane Villeneuve, M.Arch ’22
Carleton University | Advisor: Piper Bernbaum

I went for a walk.

Borrowing from the methods of The Situationist Movement and setting out to explore “the in-betweenness” of the city of Montréal, this thesis engages in a series of personal “drifts.” The moments explored in the work are liminal spaces – most commonly defined in architectural practice as thresholds. A threshold is a space of anticipation existing at the convergence between different spatial conditions. It possesses such depth that it may elicit a profound stimulation of the senses in the human body. Perception is personal and tied to our own needs, desires, and experiences; a wanderer may perceive a threshold in the public sphere of the city as monumental or banal depending on their subjective and personal relationship with it.

Therefore, this thesis attempts to explore and question the most mundane experiences of the everyday thresholds encountered in the drifts and consider what extraordinary value is found in some of the most overlooked spaces. How do we slow down? How do we feel safe? How do we learn from the way space is used and appropriated, and the complexity of how it serves the city through its everydayness instead of only considering it for how it was originally designed? Thresholds become places of crossing over, of repose, of exchange and of transition, and become a space where the public can engage in the architecture of the city in the in-betweenness. Through “drifting”, this thesis eventually becomes a space to imagine new threshold conditions revealing and amplifying the potential that these moments offer to everyday citizens.

Instagram: @villeneuves @piperb @carleton_architecture

Stay tuned for Part VIII of the Student Showcase!

2022 Study Architecture Student Showcase - Part VI

Welcome back to installment Six of the Study Architecture Student Showcase series! This week we share six student projects that take a look at the role of architecture in conflict. From Korea to Russia to Afghanistan, these projects show how conflict effects the identities of communities and how architecture fits into that balance.

For a recap on the 2022 Student Showcase series so far, check out Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.

Angle Masses: Korean War Memorial Museum in Seoul, Korea by Joo Young Lim, B.Arch ’22
Auburn University | Advisor: Il Kim

History of Korean War
At the end of World War II, Joseon (archaic name of Korea) was freed from Japanese occupation. Soon, the victorious countries drew the border line on the Korean Peninsula based on 38th degrees north latitude. The north side of this border, the 38th Parallel, was occupied by the Soviet Union’s socialist force, and the United States’ capitalist force took the south. As Kim Il-Sung (North Korea) invaded the south across the 38th Parallel, the peninsula became a field of proxy war of ideological forces.

Design
A history timeline is set as X-axis, and a territorial shift between the north and the south as Y-axis. The representation of the 38th Parallel is parallel to the X-axis. Various historical events, including conflicts, were expressed as slits on the passage of the 38th Parallel.

The triangular masses are designed to pierce across the representation of the 38th Parallel. These triangular masses symbolize the military forces in the Korean War, and they vary in size depending on the strength of the forces. Interlocking with the axis of time, each of four triangular masses represents Kim Il-Sung’s invasion of the South Korea, U.S. and U.N.’s military supporting the South, the Chinese People’s Army supporting the North, and lastly, months of long siege.

Each of reversed-pyramid triangular masses elucidates war’s grave consequences. They are seemingly unstably connected to each other, and their dark metal exterior panels represent the gloomy war. Inside, the viewer, walking on the ramp between RC concrete columns, thinks she/he is passing through the ruins of war. The floating tips of the reversed pyramids are visible in the underground gallery. This sense of floatation was achieved by extending the RC concrete columns in the middle of the structures. The shards of glass-like tips represent the agony of the victims and refugees. These tips visually connect the upper gallery and the lower, underground gallery. The upper gallery illustrates the power game of the war written by the political forces who started the war, while the underground gallery displays the relics of the victims who were anonymous citizens.

Instagram: @limarch94

The Two Sides of Otherness: A Cross-Cultural Regeneration of Reality by Daniel Porwoll, M.Arch ’22
North Dakota State University | Advisor: Stephen Wischer

In our current context, “identity” often stands as an edge where one being ends and the next begins; simultaneously separating and unifying. Yet, this inherent overlapping between self and other continues to be threatened by ideological and homogenizing narratives; either as a force of assimilation or division.

Among the many affected areas around the world is the Korean Demilitarized Zone, the Russo-Ukrainian Border, and the Carlisle Pennsylvania Indian Cemetery, in which hostile situations pose a unique yet difficult edge condition that might be mediated by empathetic imagination instigated by architecture. Responding to each situation, we examine how architecture might act as an archive for deeper understanding and exchange in an attempt to mediate new realities.

Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty confirms this method through his concept of “flesh”, which examines the relationship between oneself and the Other as “reversible,” wherein edges become folds in order to gain a deeper interpersonal, intercultural and intersubjective understanding of the Other ourselves.

Instagram: @dkp.arch

[IN]visible by Ying Xuan Tan and Xi Xiang, B.Arch ’22
Syracuse University | Advisor: Lawrence Chua

This thesis is a conservative proposal seeking an eclectic solution to provide a stable environment for Afghanistan’s people and the preservation of human history. The project [IN]visible seeks to create a point of balance between the turbulent environment and its rich historic heritage meanwhile following a preliminary, iconoclasm.

Bamiyan valley was marked as an important trans-cultural portal for Afghanistan and Central Asia. Statues, stupas, viharas, shrines, and grottos here have all witnessed the cultural creolization of this land. The government today had promised to engage in international diplomacy and make compromises. Preserving artifacts at Bamiyan is a humanitarian act and brings the government financial income.

The project seeks to find ways to preserve precious artifacts in the age of the Taliban’s regime, respecting the Taliban’s ideology on the surface while showing the real deal on the inside. Using various materials, water, and light as a tool to hide the artifacts from the surface. The design process discovers methods of visual illusion. Water, an essential element in Middle East architecture, would orient throughout the project. The stream would lead the locals and visitors to enter the project to see the actual side of these cultural artifacts.

This thesis is a pioneer experimental practice toward religious conflict that does not follow mainstream standards. It is also a conservation proposal seeking an eclectic solution to ensure a stable environment for Afghanistan’s people. In the end, no matter how the government change, it is the people’s life happiness that matters the most.

Instagram: @tototan_yx, @xxixixiwest

Guerilla Museology: By All Means Necessary by Brendan Wallace, B.Arch ’22
University of Tennessee | Advisor: Jennifer Akerman

For many, it is believable that colonialism has met its end. The latter half of the 20th century witnessed a global spirit of liberation, specifically within African and Asian continents. New annexations of land allowed nations to declare sovereignty in watershed spirit. Yet, the residual effects of the colonialist era has effectively perverted contemporary spaces, especially those typologies which have a legacy deeply rooted in the violence of looting, stealing, raping, and pillaging- namely, the museum.

While direct subjugation under colonialism may have met its end, the 21st century has challenged this premise, understanding that colonized structures remain to inhibit this “autonomy”. The likes of the Louvre, The Met, The British Museum, and the Saint Hermitage Museum, are all national treasures which lie of the heart of an imperial memoryscape. Their educational commentaries have transitioned from the national to the global scale as they are catapulted into the role of a universalist museum with artifacts from all parts of the globe. Their objects represent a past which has been bastardized, deceptively rewritten, and Westernized. Their place in the arena of global memory has prevailed on top and contribute to modern day racism, xenophobia, necropolitics, and various forms of othering.

The museum is unyielding, working as a contemporary agent for cultural genocide.

This thesis works to acknowledge these power structures and subvert them as a way of envisioning a new, equitable museumscape. I am interested in all scales of museum work to invite democratized curatorial practice. The steps are as follows:

1. creating a new museum infrastructural system to ensure curation is achieved as a global practice
2. engaging the city as a system of participatory intelligence
3. decolonizing the museum aesthetic whose expression implies subordination
4. proposing curatorial machines as curatorial agents
5. ensuring the appropriate and holistic contextualization of all objects

These steps are meant to ensure the redevelopment of public trust and redefine the everyday museumgoer as a worthy contributor to curation and exhibition practice. Guerilla Museology inspires an aggressive reclamation of curation by acknowledging the possibility of a post-museum world where the globe itself is a museum site.

Instagram: @brendan.com_, @j_akerman

Stored Labor by Kristabel Chung, B.Arch ’22
Syracuse University | Advisor: Lawrence Chua

This project examines the relationship between domestic labor laws and the “spatial practices” of migrant domestic worker (MDW) spaces in Hong Kong. The project asks, how do the designed and spatial practices of domestic worker accommodation inform us about the hierarchy and future of domestic space in Hong Kong?

In 2003, Hong Kong issued a law requiring domestic workers to live with their employers. For apartments without a designed servant space, makeshift accommodations have been created within those apartments to comply with the law. The research studies these modifications within the home and creates spatial abstractions through differently scaled models.

The spatial practice of employers and the designs of residential developers of migrant domestic worker accommodations in Hong Kong creates a hierarchy between the servant and the served through varying means, ranging from porousness to confinement. We see this in examples such as sharing spaces with other household members, living in the living room or kitchen, and in objects such as fabric partitions, unlockable doors, or security cameras.

The research is based on a survey that was carried out in collaboration with the Mission for Migrant Workers, an NGO in Hong Kong. Additionally, in-person interviews revealed that employers renovated servant spaces antithetically to the developer’s designs. The survey asked questions about privacy and had the workers draw a floor plan of their accommodations, while the interviews allowed for an intimate understanding of spaces and casts that preserve the material damage due to their labor. This project proposes shifting furniture and structural changes to the participants’ apartments to expose the absurdity of the condition.

Since many employees struggle to voice their opinions about space, the passive-aggressive act of rethinking the functions of these household objects as weapons to ensure privacy also critiques power dynamics in the household. Furniture alterations allow for the employee to play more games of resistance during the hours when the employer is at home. It utilizes what is of importance to the employer as leverage for the employee to get privacy, respect, and dignity.

Instagram: @kristabelchung

Living with Ghosts by Ximeng Luo and Shihui Zhu, B.Arch ’22
Syracuse University | Advisor: Lawrence Chua

“Maps! Living with Ghosts” is a thesis project on representation based off from our research of the border region between China and Russia, in which we translate the data collected from official statistics, policies, documents, and more private travel logs, interviews, diaries, memoirs, and literature, into a composite drawing, to explore the possibilities of images and representation techniques.

In the contemporary context, the same piece of natural land often displays a superimposition of various truths. The collapse of overlapping spacetime can be found in marks created by human construction activities, compressed into the concept of contemporaneity.

Indigenous knowledge and local understandings get lost in the supersession of the old understanding of space by the new that is observably dictated by modern maps. Hence, memory itself becomes a representation of the space being understood and remembered, and it continues to influence people’s perception of reality, like a ghost that haunts the living. While the nation state can easily encroach upon ungoverned spaces and wipe out their past, the people who lived on the land carried their ghosts with them as they proceeded in life.

In the project, individual memories are collected and translated into certain forms of representation and overlaid on top of the scientific map, showing transparency as well as complexity, a new composite representation of spatial relationships and identities.

The scene is set along the Heilongjiang. A fluid water body that feeds populations in the Russian Far East and Northeastern China, simultaneously delineates the long and winding national border between contemporary Russia and China.

The project traces the river downstream, investigating five specific sites. From man-made landscapes in the forms of nomad camp, temporary settlement, village and town, and cities in this borderland far from the state’s central power, we are looking into both the natural landscape and environment, presence of the authority, and the resulting forms of living.

Instagram: @sximengl, @sunnyynnuss

Part VII of the Student Showcase coming soon!

2020 Student Thesis Showcase - Part II

We are back with week two of the 2020 Student Thesis Showcase featuring five more projects from schools across the US and Canada! This week’s projects range from large scale community interventions to small-scale material based projects. Check on August 7th for the next group of projects. Make sure to check out Part I of this series!

Finding a New Commons: ReInhabiting the School in Post-Urban Japan by Julia Nakanishi, M.Arch ’20
University of Waterloo / Advisor: Lola Sheppard 

Japan’s megacities are often captured as dense, dynamic, and ever-expanding. These images, disseminated in popular media, belie a growing national phenomenon: urban migration, a declining birthrate, and an aging population have transformed Japan’s countryside over the past thirty years. These demographic changes have had a slow but dramatic effect, resulting in socio-economic decline, abandoned buildings, and a loss of local cultures across the country. This thesis explores how reinhabited architecture might facilitate the preservation of culture, knowledge, education, and community connections to local contexts. 

Among the vast number of leftover buildings in Japan’s rural areas, the public school is becoming increasingly prevalent due to waning fertility rates. These vacant structures, referred to as haikō in Japanese, are imbued with collective memory. In villages needing a revival of public and cultural spaces, schools with existing relationships to the community are potent opportunities for reuse. Using fieldwork that documents haikō in three culturally and geographically distinct sites (Sado Island, Niigata Prefecture, Tsuyama Municipality, Okayama Prefecture, and Kamiyama Village, Tokushima Prefecture), along with ethnographic interviews with community members, the three design projects of the thesis explore how the reuse of haikō could generate new rural lifestyles and micro-economies. 

The research presents emerging methodologies for designers working in the context of depopulating communities, which includes interviews with communities, analytical site mapping, and techniques of building reuse. This concept of “degrowth” poses a challenge for architecture — a profession significantly influenced by the capitalist structures and administrative frameworks of urban areas. In this way, Japan’s rural areas, or “the post-urban,” are the testing grounds for new design processes, programmatic overlaps, and plurality in public architecture.

Autopsia in Abstentia: The Continued Collapse of Chernobyl by Marco Nieto, M.Arch ‘20
University of Michigan ARCH 662 “Reassembling the Earth” Studio / Advisor: El Hadi Jazairy

This thesis explores the complicated history and identity crisis of Chernobyl and examines its post-mortem reality through ameliorative apparatus that allows it to heal from its trauma. It investigates the death, or fallout, of an event while not being present at it by using the remnants and traces of its existence. This has helped create a profound framework focused on process and factors of time, allowing for the embedding of five specific interventions that react and respond to the pain of the existing environment: Radiosynthetic Needle, Bioremedial Bubbles, Reverse Repository, Half-Life Lab, and Carbo Conclusus. Read more about the project: http://myumi.ch/Nx3my

This project won the Burton L. Kampner Memorial Award which is presented annually to one student in the thesis program whose final design project has been selected by a Super Jury as the most outstanding. View more award-winning work from Taubman College students

Follow Marco on IG: @m_nieto24

3D Printing Adobe Vaults and Domes by Wanchen Cai, Taoyu Han, Hanyang Hu, Sinae Jung, Vasudha Maiya, Pei Li, Dingtong Wang, Shengrui Xu, Xu Zhang, and Churan Zheng
University of California at Berkeley /
Advisor: Ronald Rael  / Course: ARCH 205

The primary focus of Studio One over the fall semester has been the design and development of 3D printed roofs in the form of vaults and domes. Nubian vault and squinch dome structures, popularized by the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy in the early 20th century, have been constructed for thousands of years, employing fundamental principles of laying mudbrick in courses that require no shuttering to create roof enclosures. The primary building material for these architectural structures was mud brick, comprised of water, locally available soil, and straw. The coursing of mud bricks by traditional masons followed particular patterns to allow for these complex structures to be constructed without formwork. By emulating and altering these coursing patterns, and using a customized Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) robot, an array of complex vault and dome structures can be created through the robotic deposition of an adobe mud admixture.

3D printing earth through vertical layer deposition for walls is relatively straight forward. However, when it comes to printing a roof or enclosures, the self-weight of the adobe often leads to the collapse of the printed roof structure due to gravity. The resolution of this challenge is crucial for the realization of a completely 3D printed building. This research is further extended to the proposal of a shelter in Darfur, Sudan.

This research culminated in the design of five unique, 3D printed shelters. The proposal was for a low-cost housing prototype for Darfur. The house has three main functions: gathering, sleeping, and eating. Locally sourced soil was used for printing. Further, materials like straw, palm leaves, jute, and fabric were used as cladding for roofs and openings. The potential for generating apertures, integrated furniture, and staircases that integrate with vaults and domes were tested at a 1:50 scale. Techniques for inserting wooden sticks between layers of prints were explored to accommodate auxiliary systems like a staircase or secondary roof structure. One of the printing methods took the unconventional approach of layer depositions in a bath of sand to eliminate the need for conservative print angles or printed support material. Once the clay print was dry, the sand was excavated from within the dome. The projects also looked at the experiential quality of the printed adobe spaces, where the entry of light, air, and water into the built space is carefully crafted. This research is being further developed in the ongoing spring semester, where the mud printing is integrated with a wooden roof.

Inflection Point By Satoru Igarashi, Katherine Martin, Josymar Rodriguez, and Matthew Stoll, M.Arch ‘20
University of Oregon / Advisor: Justin Fowler

Developed in the Winter 2020 graduate studio on housing relief at the University of Oregon’s Portland Architecture Program, The “Inflection Point” is a social housing proposition for Northeast Portland that argues for a Green New Deal program of decarbonization that does more than just the “less bad.” This prototype employs an adaptable framework that integrates modular housing, energy and water infrastructure, and an accessible landscape to provide social, recreational, and productive amenities for the residents and broader community. The proposal includes a mass timber structure, water reclamation strategies, and solar energy capture for its distribution to the site and the surrounding neighborhood.

Conducted by Program Director Justin Fowler, and working in consultation with Portland’s Public Housing Authority (Home Forward) and Lever Architecture, the studio explored proposals for Home Forward’s Dekum Court site in Northeast Portland currently being redeveloped for increased housing density on its heavily-sloped 5.5-acre lot between residential and industrial areas. In the spirit of past social housing design practices and reform from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of Red Vienna to the London County Council, students worked in teams to address issues of climate-induced migration, sustainability, and public health through care- and justice-based approaches to housing and landscape design. 

Team
After working in the field of brand design for many years, Satoru Igarashi had decided to pivot his career by finding an outlet which can provide more meaningful and improved experiences through design. 

Katherine Martin is a graduate of Georgia Tech and worked for two years in one of the largest firms in Atlanta. She enrolled at the University of Oregon to further her knowledge on passive sustainable design strategies.

Josymar Rodriguez a Fulbright Scholar and a 2017 Young Leaders of the Americas Fellow. She is the co-founder of INCURSIONES, an architecture studio and social initiative in her hometown of Caracas, Venezuela.

After four years of working professionally on radically-adaptive reuse projects in the historic urban center of his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, Matthew Stoll returned to Portland to focus on creating positive social impact through space.  

Center for Autonomous Witness by Will Reynolds
Georgia Institute of Technology / Advisor: Keith Kaseman – CORE III Studio, Arch 6030 

The intent of this project is to facilitate a new form of justice – one that holds those enforcing the law to a new standard of honesty and transparency. Body cameras (bodycams) have proved to be ineffective. Though they are mandated by every state, less than 10% of cases of police brutality are captured on body cams. This is because officers do not use them, will turn them off leading up to the conflict, or will tamper with the footage after the event. This is unacceptable

It is now time to use the advancements of technology and the accessibility of digital information to hold law enforcement officers accountable for their actions.

This system of drone outposts is dispersed throughout a city. The structures, or outposts, deploy drones when a civilian reports a police stop. Ideally, this report could be vocally activated with a smartphone – “Hey Siri, the police are here.” The drone arrives onsite and records the police throughout the interaction. The information is streamed back to the outpost to be monitored by civilians.

These drone outposts would act as a facility to store and maintain drones, store and broadcast information securely, and create a safe space for civilians. This new building typology could be freestanding or occupy existing structures like the space between billboards.

Check back on Friday, August 7th for the next edition of the 2020 Student Showcase. Thanks for reading!

2020 Student Thesis Showcase - Part I

Have you ever wondered what students design in architecture school? A few years ago, we started an Instagram account called IMADETHAT_ to curate student work from across North America. Now, we have nearly 3,000 projects featured for you to view. In this series, we are featuring thesis projects of recent graduates to give you a glimpse into what architecture students create while in school. Each week, for the rest of the summer, we will be curating five projects that highlight unique aspects of design. In this week’s group, the research ranges from urban scale designs focused on climate change to a proposal for a new type of collective housing and so much in between. Check back each week for new projects. 

In the meantime, Archinect has also created a series featuring the work of 2020 graduates in architecture and design programs. Check out the full list, here.

Redefining the Gradient by Kate Katz and Ryan Shaaban, Tulane University, M.Arch ‘20

Thesis Advisors: Cordula Roser Gray and Ammar Eloueini / Course: 01-SP20-Thesis Studio

Sea level rise has become a major concern for coastal cities due to the economic and cultural importance tied to their proximity to water. These cities have sustained their livelihood in low-lying elevations through the process of filling, bridging, and raising land over coastal ecosystems, replacing their ecological value with infrastructures focused on defining the edge between city and nature. Hard infrastructures have been employed to maintain urban landscapes but have minimal capacity for both human and non-human engagement due to their monofunctional applications focused on separating conditions rather than integrating them. They produce short-term gains with long-term consequences, replacing and restricting ecosystems and acting as physical barriers in a context defined by seasonal transition. 

To address the issues of hard infrastructure and sea level rise, this thesis proposes an alternative design strategy that incorporates the dynamic water system into the urban grid network. San Francisco was chosen as the location of study as it is a peninsula where a majority of the predicted inundation occurs on the eastern bayside. In this estuary, there were over 500 acres of ecologically rich tidal marshlands that were filled in during the late 1800s. To protect these new lands, the Embarcadero Sea Wall was built in 1916 and is now in a state of neglect. The city has set aside $5 billion for repairs but, instead of pouring more money into a broken system, we propose an investment in new multi-functional ecologically-responsive strategies. 

As sea levels rise, the city will be inundated with water, creating the opportunity to develop a new circulation system that maintains accessibility throughout areas located in the flood zone. In this proposal, we’ve designed a connective network where instance moments become moments of pause and relief to enjoy the new cityscape in a dynamic maritime district. 

On the lower level, paths widen to become plazas while on the upper level, they become breakout destinations which can connect to certain occupiable rooftops that are given to the public realm. The bases of carved canals become seeding grounds for plants and aquatic life as the water level rises over time. Buildings can protect high-risk floors through floodproofing and structural encasement combined with adaptive floorplates to maintain the use of lower levels. The floating walkway is composed of modular units that are buoyant, allowing the pedestrian paths to conform and fluctuate with diurnal tidal changes. The composition of the units creates street furniture and apertures to engage with the ecologies below while enabling a once restricted landscape of wetlands to take place within the city. 

The new vision of the public realm in this waterfront district hopes to shine an optimistic light on how we can live with nature once again as we deal with the consequences of climate change.

Unearthing the Black Aesthetic by Demar Matthews, Woodbury University, M.Arch ‘20

Advisor: Ryan Tyler Martinez
Featured on Archinect

“Unearthing The Black Aesthetic” highlights South Central Los Angeles’s (or Black Los Angeles’s) unique positioning as a dynamic hub of Black culture and creativity. South Central is the densest population of African Americans west of the Mississippi. While every historically Black neighborhood in Los Angeles has experienced displacement, the neighborhood of Watts was hit particularly hard. As more and more Black Angelenos are forced for one reason or another to relocate, we are losing our history and connection to Los Angeles.

As a way to fight this gentrification, we are developing an architectural language derived from Black culture. So many cultures have their own architectural styles based on values, goals, morals, and customs shared by their society. When these cultures have relocated to America, to keep their culture and values intact, they bought land and built in the image of their homelands. That is not true for Black people in America. In fact, until 1968, Black people had no rights to own property in Los Angeles. While others began a race to acquire land in 1492, building homes and communities in their image, we started running 476 years after the race began. What percentage of land was left for Blacks to acquire? How then can we advance the development of a Black aesthetic in architecture?

This project, most importantly, is a collaboration with the community that will be for us and by us. My goal is to take control of our image in architecture; to elevate, not denigrate, Black life and culture. Ultimately, we envision repeating this process in nine historically Black cities in America to develop an architectural language that will vary based on the history and specificities of Black culture in each area.

KILLING IT: The Life and Death of Great American Cities by Amanda Golemba, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, M.Arch ’20

Advisors: Nikole Bouchard, Jasmine Benyamin, and Erik Hancock / Independent Design Thesis

For decades, post-industrial cities throughout the United States have been quietly erased through self-imposed tabula rasa demolition. If considered at all, demolition is touted as the mechanism for removing unsightly blight, promoting safety, and discarding the obsolete and the unwanted. Once deemed unworthy, rarely does a building survive the threat of demolition. 

In the last decade, the City of Chicago has erased over 13,000 buildings with 225 in just the last four months. Not only does this mass erasure eradicate the material and the spatial, but it permanently wipes the remnants of human bodies, values, and history — a complete annulment of event, time, and memory. 

But why do we feel the need to erase in order to make progress?

Our current path has led to a built environment that is becoming more and more uniform and sterile. Much of America has become standardized, mixed-use developments; neighborhoods of cookie-cutter homes and the excessive use of synthetic, toxic building materials. A uniform world is a boring one that has little room for creativity, individuality, or authenticity.

This thesis, “KILLING IT,” is a design proposal for a traveling exhibition that seeks to change perceptions of the existing city fabric by visualizing patterns of erasure, questioning the resultant implications and effects of that erasure, and proposing an alternative fate. “KILLING IT” confronts the inherently violent aspects of architecture and explores that violence through the intentionally jarring, uncomfortable, and absurd analogy of murder. This analogy is a lens through which to trace the violent, intentional, and premature ending and sterilization of the existing built environment. After all, as Bernard Tschumi said, “To really appreciate architecture, you may even need to commit a murder.”1 But murder is not just about the events that take place within a building, it is also the material reality of the building itself. 

Over the life of a building, scarring, moments in time, and decay layer to create an inhabitable palimpsest of memory. This traveling exhibition is infused with the palimpsest concept by investigating strategies of layering, modularity, flexibility, transparency, and building remains, while layering them together to form a system that operates as an inhabitable core model collage. Each individual exhibition simultaneously memorializes the violence that happened at that particular site and implements murderous adaptive reuse strategies through collage and salvage material to expose what could have been.

If we continue down our current path, we will only continue to make the same mistakes and achieve the same monotonous, sterilizing results we currently see in every American city and suburb. We need to embrace a new path that values authenticity, celebrates the scars and traces of the past, and carries memories into the future. By reimaging what death can mean and addressing cycles of violence, “KILLING IT” proposes an optimistic vision for the future of American cities. 

      1. Tschumi, Bernard. “Questions of space: lectures on architecture” (ed. 1990)

A New Prototype for Collective Housing by Juan Acosta and Gable Bostic, University of Texas at Austin, M.Arch ‘20

Advisor: Martin Haettasch / Course: Integrative Design Studio
Read more: https://soa.utexas.edu/work/new-prototype-collective-housing

Austin is a city that faces extreme housing pressures. This problem is framed almost exclusively in terms of supply and demand, and the related question of affordability. For architects, however, a more productive question is: Will this new quantity produce a new quality of housing? 

How do we live in the city, how do we create individual and collective identity through architecture, and what are the urban consequences? This studio investigates new urban housing types, smaller than an apartment block yet larger and denser than a detached house. Critically assessing existing typologies, we ask the question: How can the comforts of the individual house be reconfigured to form new types of residential urban fabric beyond the entropy of tract housing or the formulaic denominator of “mixed-use.” The nature of the integrative design studio allowed for the testing of material systems and construction techniques that have long had an important economic and ecological impact.

“A New Prototype for Collective Housing” addresses collectivity in both a formal and social sense, existing between the commercial and residential scales present in Austin’s St. John neighborhood as it straddles the I-35 corridor; a normative American condition. A diversity of programs, and multigenerational living, create an inherently diverse community. Additionally, a courtyard typology is used to negotiate the spectrum of private and shared space. Volumes, comprising multiple housing units ranging from studio apartments to four bedrooms, penetrate a commercial plinth that circulates both residents and mechanical systems. The use of heavy timber ensures an equitable use of resources while imbuing the project with a familiar material character.

ELSEWHERE, OR ELSE WHERE? by Brenda (Bz) Zhang, University of California at Berkeley, M.Arch ’20

Advisors: Andrew Atwood and Neyran Turan
See more: https://www.brendazhang.com/#/elsewhere-or-else-where/

“ELSEWHERE, OR ELSE WHERE?” is an architectural fever dream about the San Francisco Bay Area. Beginning with the premise that two common ideas of Place—Home and Elsewhere—are no longer useful, the project wonders how disciplinary tools of architecture can be used to shape new stories about where we are.

For our purposes, “Home,” although primarily used to describe a place of domestic habitation, is also referring generally to a “familiar or usual setting,” as in home-base, home-court, home-page, and even home-button. As a counterpoint, Elsewhere shifts our attention “in or to another place,” away. This thesis is situated both in the literal spaces of Elsewhere and Home (landfills, houses, wilderness, base camps, wastelands, hometowns) and in their culturally constructed space (value-embedded narratives determining whether something belongs, and to whom). Since we construct both narratives through principles of exclusion, Elsewhere is a lot closer to Home than we say. These hybrid spaces—domestic and industrial, urban and hinterland, natural and built—are investigated as found conditions of the Anthropocene and potential sites for new understandings of Place.

Ultimately, this thesis attempts to challenge conventional notions of what architects could do with our existing skill sets, just by shifting our attention—Elsewhere. The sites shown here and the concerns they represent undeniably exist, but because of the ways Western architecture draws thick boundaries between and around them, they resist architectural focus—to our detriment.

In reworking the physical and cultural constructions of Homes and Elsewheres, architects are uniquely positioned to go beyond diagnostics in visualizing and designing how, where, and why we build. While this project looks specifically at two particular stories we tell about where we are, the overall objective is to provoke new approaches to how we construct Place—both physically and culturally—within or without our discipline.