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Vertical Cities Exhibition at Yale School of Architecture

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(via Yale News)

“Vertical Cities,” a new exhibition at the Yale School of Architecture (YSoA), examines some of the most prominent and celebrated skyscrapers, both built and unbuilt, in the context of global urbanization and technological advancement.

Managing urban areas has become one of the most important development challenges of the 21st century, note the exhibition organizers. This increasing urbanization leads to higher density and consequently taller buildings in cities around the world. Every year a greater number of people will be working, living, or spending their free time in a skyscraper, or even in a vertical city — comprised of structures that combine these numerous functions, they note.

This evolution in building and living inspired Rotterdam-based exhibition designer Harry Hoek of M&H Traveling Exhibitions to create the installation “Vertical Cities.” This exhibition gives visitors a look at both realized and imagined efforts by architects from around the world to build towards the clouds.

The exhibition brings together over 200 models made of wood, paper, metal, and plastic at a scale of 1:1000 of the tallest and most well-known skyscrapers. It provides an overview of skyscrapers from the 1920s to futuristic vertical megastructures that have not yet left the drawing table.

“Vertical Cities” runs from Nov. 27 to Feb. 3, at the YSoA gallery, located at 180 York St. It is on view Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and Saturday, 10 a.m. –5 p.m. For more information, email arch.info@yale.edu.

Learn more about Yale School of Architecture!

SCI-Arc Exhibit | Maxi Spina: "Thick"

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July 7, 2017 – August 13, 2017 
Opening Reception: Friday July 7th at 7pm
Conversation with Hernan Diaz Alonso and Maxi Spina: Friday, July 21 at 7pm
Location: SCI-Arc Gallery

From SCI-Arc’s website:

“Thickness is an increasingly elusive condition in architectural design. Alluded to in section, camouflaged in the figure-ground, and presented as a foil in the developable surface drawing, material thickness is an understudied architectural condition. 

As a term, thickness does not refer to the actual solidity of a material (as in the standardization of sheet material or thickness of marble), but a conceptual and material problem that sits (literally) at the edge of architectural thinking. The condition of thickness — the necessity of thickness — carries no central import in any era of architectural thinking, but manages to circulate through different modes of architectural production. Its condition is linked to (but is not central to) the history of stereotomy and stone construction; in the emergence of new forms of architectural drawing (developed surface drawing); and in the classic problem of the Doric order. Even in the Modernist obfuscation of solid form, it remains an unavoidable consideration in the Miesian corner and Kiesler’s endless surfaces. 

In digital software, thickness is infinitely thin. Its default property is a single line or algorithmic curve. Its “thickness” must be added —  it appears as an offset, an extrusion, an enclosed surface — as a mere afterthought. Thickness is a constructive problem as much as it is a representational one. In construction, it’s become synonymous with material offset (due to the predominance of sheet material), as opposite to stereotomy, in which thickness is derived from subtraction and removal of mass. Thickness becomes a tectonic default rather than a techne to be designed.

Thick attempts to expand on the problems of material thickness through the topic of sections, ruins, fragments, constructions, figurations, simultaneity, and representation. Coupled with a public discussion, the exhibition will expand on the problems of material thickness through the topic of sections, ruins, fragments, constructions, figurations, simultaneity, and representation.

Maxi Spina (b. Rosario, Argentina) is the co-founder of Spinagu. He is currently Design Faculty and Applied Studies Faculty at SCI-Arc. He was previously the Maybeck Fellow at UC Berkeley, Lecturer at CCA and Associate Professor at Woodbury. His work has been featured in exhibitions at A+D Museum, Jai & Jai, Wuho Gallery. He received his M.Arch from Princeton University and a B.Arch from National University of Rosario, Argentina.”

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