flows and disruptions globalizing architecture

102ND ACSA ANNUAL MEETING

FLOWS AND

DISRUPTIONSGLOBALIZING

ARCHITECTURE

John Stuart + Mabel Wilson, Editors

ABSTRACT BOOK

Copyright © 2014 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Inc., except where otherwise restricted. All rights reserved. No material may be reproduced without permission of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture1735 New York Ave., NWWashington, DC 20006www.acsa-arch.org

GLOBALIZING ARCHITECTURE / Flows and Disruptions Miami Beach, FL - 3

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSACSA wishes to thank the conference co-chairs, John Stuart, Florida International University, and Mabel Wilson, Columbia University, as well as the topic chairs, reviewers, and authors for their hard work in organizing the Annual Meeting.

A Changing Global Context for Architecture: Emerging Technologies, Disciplines and Design ResponsesJeff Carney, Louisiana State UniversityThomas Colbert, University of Houston

Architectural Education and Building Resilient Practices in Developing CountriesAnselmo Gianluca Canfora, University of VirginiaMegan Suau, University of Virginia

Building Change: Public Interest Design as CatalystJohn Comazzi, University of MinnesotaJim Lutz, University of Minnesota

Chasing the CityJoshua M. Nason, University of Texas at ArlingtonJeffrey Nesbit, Texas Tech University

Design PedagogyLaVerne Wells-Bowie, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University

Design/Build Xchange Ted Cavanagh, Dalhousie UniversitySergio Palleroni, Portland State University

Disrupting the ‘Space of Flows’Marie-Alice L Heureux, University of KansasSonia Hirt, Virginia Tech

Emerging Workflows, Techniques, and Design Protocols for Carbon-Neutral BuildingsThomas Spiegelhalter, Florida International University

From Study Abroad to Global Programs: Beyond the Grand TourAriela Katz, New York UniversityPatricia Meehan, École nationale supérieure d’Architecture de Grenoble

Game On: The Use of Location Based Technologies In Design TodayEric Gordon, Emerson CollegeAmy Murphy, University of Southern California

Global Architectural Machine TraditionsPeter Olshavsky, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Landscapes of the UrbanAziza Chaouni, University of Toronto

Learning from Modernism and Beyond Armando Montilla, Clemson University

Local ModernismsLisa Findley, California College of the Arts

New Orders of MagnitudeJordan Geiger, University At Buffalo, SUNY

Parametric Visual/MaterializationsDavid Benjamin, Columbia University

Partage, or Strategies for SharingJennifer Bonner, Georgia Institute of TechnologyChristian Stayner, University of Michigan

Realizing the Right to the City: Architectural Methodologies as Agents of ChangeNadia M. Anderson, Iowa State University

Reflective Practices in a Global Age; or, Is Boyer Still Meaningful?Phoebe Crisman, University of VirginiaJosé L.S. Gámez, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Resituating InteriorsJoel Sanders, Yale University

The Architectural DerivativeCurt Anderson Gambetta, Woodbury University

The Elements of Urban Intelligence: New Pedagogies in Global Architectural TheoryDimitris Papanikolaou, Harvard University

The New Global City and the End(s) of Public SpaceJune Williamson, City College of New YorkNandini Bagchee, City College of New York

This is Your FutureSunil Bald, Yale University

Towards a Typification of the Unique -The Tall Building as a Constituent of a Non-generic Urban FutureEric Firley, University of Miami

TOPIC AND SESSION CHAIRS

EDITORS/ANNUAL MEETING CO-CHAIRSJohn Stuart, Florida International University Mabel Wilson, Columbia University

4 - ACSA 102nd Annual Meeting

CONTENTS

Thursday, April 10, 201412:00PM - 1:30PM

5 A Changing Global Context for Architecture: Emerging Technologies, Disciplines and Design Responses

6 Disrupting the ‘Space of Flows’

8 Global Architectural Machine Traditions

9 The Architectural Derivative


10 Local Modernisms

12 Partage, or Strategies for Sharing

13 Realizing the Right to the City: Architectural Methodologies as Agents of Change (1)

15 The New Global City and the End(s) of Public Space (1)


17 Learning from Modernism and Beyond:

19 Realizing the Right to the City: Architectural Methodologies as Agents of Change (2)

21 Resituationg Interiors

22 The New Global City and the End(s) of Public Space (2)

Friday, April 11, 201411:30AM - 1:00 PM

24 Building Change: Public Interest Design as Catalyst

26 Landscapes of the Urban

28 Parametric Visual/ Materializations

30 TowardsaTypification of the Unique: The Tall Building as a Constituent of a Non-generic Urban Future

Friday, April 11, 20143:00PM - 4:30PM

32 Architectural Education and Building Resilient Practices in Developing Countries

33 Design Pedagogy

35 Design/Build Xchange (1)

37 From Study Abroad to Global Programs: Beyond the Grand Tour: Institutional Perspectives

Friday, April 11, 20145:00PM - 6:30PM

38 Design/Build Xchange (2)

40 From Study Abroad to Global Programs: Beyond the Grand Tour: Current Approaches

42 The Elements of Urban Intelligence: New Pedagogies in Global Architectural Theory

43 Game On: The Use of Location Based Technologies in Design Today

Saturday, April 12, 20149:00AM - 10:30AM

45 Chasing the City (1)

46 New Orders of Magnitude

47 ReflectivePracticesinaGlobal Age; or, Is Boyer Still Meaningful?

Saturday, April 12, 201411:00AM - 12:30PM

48 Chasing the City (2)

49 EmergingWorkflows, Techniques, and Design Protocols for Carbon-Neutral Buildings

50 This is Your Future


THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2014 - 12:00PM - 1:30PM

“Out of Failure” Disaster Relief and Digital FabricationStephen Michael Slaughter, University of Cincinnati

Praxis PolemicThe techniques of digital description and information technology in architecture have begun to shift the basis by which architecture is analyzed and evaluated. Concerns of form following function have been displaced by the idea that form is a product of tech-nique at the service of affect, primarily pictorial, sculptural and phenomenal. Marjan Colletti, self proclaimed digital aesthetist and guest editor for the “Exuberance” issue of Architectural Design Magazine, frames the prevailing work in digital formalism as a re-action to the rational and conservative practices of computing in engineering and commercial or corporate architecture. He argues that unlike engineering, which uses computing technology to opti-mize and modulate, the exuberance inherent in this new trajectory of architectural investigation gives occasion for the architect, not engineerorprogrammer,tofinally“showoff”.

“…Thecelebrationofexuberancedefinesanarchitecturethatbe-gins where common sense ends.” Colletti states. An architecture, arguably, not responsible for anything greater than the successful execution of technique for aesthetic effect. As the academy strug-gles to shift it’s mode of investigation and production to churn out yet more representation of procedural, script based tropes, and online media outlets such as ‘suckerpunch daily’, ‘dezeen’ and ‘ar-chitecture lab’ promotes and celebrates the cult of imagery, and deify their couturier, the culture and discipline of architecture as a whole, the typologies architecture has historically been in the service to describe and attempt to accommodate, and the overall builtenvironmenthasyettoreapthebenefitsfromthesearchitec-tural explorations and their representations of exuberance.

Seminar These three topics; the increase in extreme weather events due to climate change, the ineffectiveness of FEMA to offer sustainable solutions for disaster relief, and a critique that prevailing digital practice in architecture, both in academia and the profession, fail tomakeuseoftheinfinitepotentialofcomputingpowerandtech-nology to address real human need, were the motivating factors for a seminar taught in the Fall of 2012, called “Out of Failure.”

Overlooking Urban Design: Unseen Spatial Conflict and De Facto Designers of Coastal SpaceTravis Bost, Independent Scholar

In the past decade, the design community has been inundated by large competitions and calls-for-proposals for schemes address-ing various dangers to coastal urban areas, whether in the wake of high-profiledisastersorprojectiveplanningresponses to loomingslow-burn concerns of climate change and sea-level rise. 2013 ap-pears to be a competition crescendo as One Prize’s Stormproof, FARROC supported by NYC’s Housing Preservation and Develop-ment Department, and the US HUD-sponsored Rebuild by Design all simultaneous address conditions in New York and New Jersey. De-spite earning design accolades, in their singularity of scale these de-sign efforts nearly always fail to inspire any real application by their insensitivity to the complex political ecology at work across many scales on their given coastal sites. By the same token, the competi-

tions themselves are often backed by sponsors with narrow geo-graphic or programmatic interests, reducing complex coastal issues to headlines: this competition is about temporary housing, this one for waterfront industry, this one just for Ocean County. Together this has made for a general missed opportunity on the site certain to be one of the most in important in the coming future; meanwhile that future is being written by dozens of other actors outside the disci-plineorasnotexplicitly‘urban’influences,defactodesigners,fromwhom architects may stand to learn a great deal.

By exploring the many overlapping agents of power at work on the LouisianaGulfCoast,Iarguethatthisistheoutcomeofanarrowdefi-nition of ‘the urban’ and concomitantly of ‘urban design’ on the part of architectswhichmaylimittheefficacyoftheirdesignsandtheirabilityto participate in the shaping of what will be the most intense locations for design in the coming decades. By reconsidering such a limited definition,architectsmust lookto themanyexistingcoastalagentsas powerful, if not innovative, designers of urban spaces to learn from the practices of urban transformation—administrative, logistic, engi-neering, or industrial—and retool themselves as effective transform-ers of coastal urban space. But while innovative in strategy, these ac-tors rarely work in coordinated, socially productive, or resilient ways, instead competitively advancing their own interests on a given site, stem,orscale.Theroleofarchitectsasmediatorsmultipleurbaninflu-ences through space is also an imperative for coastal regions.

Using Immersive Computing Environments in Environment ResearchWinifred Newman, Florida International UniversityShahin Vassigh, Florida International UniversityShu-Ching Chen, Florida International UniversityScott Graham, Florida International UniversityKeqi Zhang, Florida International University

To address disaster event mitigation and resiliency in urban coastal areas,weproposedtodevelopanintegratedgeospatialscientificinteractive and immersive virtual-reality environment targeted to support research in disaster and extreme event response. Decades ofresearchatinstitutionsworldwideestablishedthescientificval-ue of immersive displays or CAVEs as a research tool. Our I-CAVE’s hybrid 2D and 3D capabilities facilitates two key areas of research indisasterstudies:1)emergencyresponsewayfindingandpost-disaster site navigation, and 2) strengthening physical infrastruc-ture and building resiliency to minimize risk before and after disas-ters occur. This paper discusses our I-CAVE and research enabled through our instrument.improvements.

A Changing Global Context for Architecture: Emerging Technologies, Disciplines and Design ResponsesJeff Carney, Louisiana State UniversityThomas Colbert, University of Houston



Control Structures and Volatility Engines: Dialectic Design Agents for Glocal Public SpaceJeff Ponitz, California Polytechnic State University

Information technologies and telecommunications networks are substantialdriversofglobalization:timeandspacearebothinfini-tesimally reduced as the world is compressed to right-here, right-now. Manuel Castells introduced the terms “Space(s) of Flows” and “Timeless Time” to describe this phenomenon in 1989, in opposition to the status quo of “Space(s) of Places” and “Real World Time.” Under Castells’ paradigm one can imagine a world rendered scale-less both spatially and temporally, but this scalelessness extends both ways: “Timeless Time” indicates not only instantaneity, but also perpetuity, and as connections are made at a global scale they may be lost at a local scale (as evidenced by the social oblivious-ness of smartphone users in close proximity to each other). This is less a removal of barriers than a frenetic relocation; what is lost (or gained) in theshuffle,andhowcandesignersworkproductivelyin thespaceandtimeof thatshuffletocreatepublicspacethatresponds to the demands of contemporary society?

In the years since Castells described the Space of Flows, the con-cept of “glocalization”—in which competing processes of globaliza-tion and localization shape environment and society—has gained prominence. Sociologist Roland Robertson characterized glocal-ization as “the simultaneity—the co-presence—of both universal-izing and particularizing tendencies.”2 Robertson’s description is notable in that it proposes glocalization as a work-in-progress: a juxtaposition of top-down and bottom-up forces that constantly makes connections across global and local scales, while maintain-ing a contrast between them. Whereas Castells’ Space of Flows is scale-less and time-less, glocalization points towards a “Place of Flows” that is multi-scalar and multi-synchronous. This may sug-gest a productive model for contemporary public space: a dynamic negotiation between material and immaterial pressures, played out simultaneously across a range of scales, that reveals the linkages between the individual and the collective.

This paper examines two proposals for a recent design competi-tion in order to identify strategies for understanding and shaping public space in a glocal context. In doing so, two types of design agents—Control Structures and Volatility Engines—are proposed as a dialectic tool for addressing the contradictory demands of the glocal city, and designing for a Place of Flows. Control Structures areentitiesthatpurposefullyharness,manage,orre-orderflows;Volatility Engines are entities that unpredictably disrupt or redirect flows.Boththeseentities,andthenetworkofflowsinwhichtheyare positioned, may be either material or immaterial. These dialec-tics of control/volatility and material/immaterial create a dynamic feedback loop that can create meaningful connections between global and local notions of space.

Currency = Territory: Force, Circulation, PrecarityAdrian Blackwell, University of Waterloo

It is easy to conceive of landscapes and buildings in terms of mon-ey, but it is far less intuitive to make the general claim that currency is based in territory.Currency isbydefinition amobile tokenofexchange, whose value is symbolic rather than physical; it is im-material and mobile, and as such it is apparently opposed to the base materiality and stability of land in every sense. However the assertion that currency both begins with and tends to become ter-ritory can lead us to a different understanding of contemporary urbanization and the practices through which we produce space.

Tobeginweneedtodefinewhatexactlywemeanbythetermscurrency and territory. The following argument will focus on three dimensions of the concept currency all found in its root word “cur-rent”,theflowofwaterinariverasforce,circulationandperpetualpresent. First of all currency is a measure of force, it is a symbolic token that represents the quantity of force required to transform matter into commodities. Second it is a thing that circulates, mov-ing through different people’s hands as a means of exchanging value – the more it circulates the greater its force. In physics, force isdefinedasmassmultipliedbyacceleration,whereastheforceofcurrency is measured by its value multiplied by circulation. Third andfinally,currencyiscurrent,inthesenseofpurepresent-ness,a thing without history or future. The word territory is used here in order to imbricate the problem of land as a qualitative space formed through diverse natural and social forces, and designated by two forms of property: the sovereign property of nation states and the private property of individuals.

This short essay will assert that currency is founded in territory. As such territory embodies relations of force, is constantly circulating, and appears as pure presence. These dimensions of currency as territory are each produced through the imbrication of the state and private individuals, politics and economics. What follows is a short explanation of this matrix as a foundation for understanding contemporary processes of urbanization.

Disrupting the ‘Space of Flows’Marie-Alice L Heureux, University of KansasSonia Hirt, Virginia Tech


Retracing Propinquity and the Ethno[flow]Armando Montilla, Clemson University

Transnationalmigrationflowsaretheconundrumofmobilityandglobalization: While transforming entire urban sections of the city into ‘ethnic enclaves’ - allowing for hosting nodes of reception to new arrivals - they translate into extrapolated patches of these flows’geographiesoforigin,conforminganewurbanpolynationalmetropolis. The results of this extra-national presence in the city generates transnational connections in terms of financial,mediaandpolitical links,whichsimultaneouslyreversetheoriginalflowbacktothepointofdeparture.Thus,bothflowsconsolidatethem-selves into a continuum: Biopower (Negri) (1) aggregates to form theincomingflow,whileImmaterialLabour(Lazzaratto)(2)con-figuresthereversedflow.BothofthemconformtheEthno[flow](3)TheEthno[flow]bothgeneratesandhindersmultinational in-tegration and propinquity, allowing for simultaneous tension and harmony.Itenhanceslocalurbaneconomies,whilefinanciallysup-porting far away points in the globe. Both the ‘Transnational Sub-urb’ (Davis) (4) and the ‘Transnational Communities’ (Portes) (5) areproductsoftheEthno[flow]

The Paper will gravitate about the concept of Ethno[flow] andmany of its impact in the polynational metropolis. Fieldwork and case study analysis will but be used to generate the critical mass for critical work resulting from the study of this phenomenon af-fecting the contemporary city.

1. NEGRI, Toni and HARDT Michael: Empire, Cambridge: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 2001. Part 4: ‘The Decline and Fall of Empire’, 4.1 ‘Virtualities’, ‘General Intellect and Biopower’ p. 164.

2. LAZZARATO, Maurizio: ‘Immaterial Labour’, trans. Paul Colilli & Ed Emory, in VIRNO Paolo and HARDT Michael, Eds: Radical Thought in Italy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996 pp. 132-146.

3. AllEthnoflow,Ethnospace, and theEthno[city], havebeencon-cepts announced as part of an in-progress PhD dissertation: “ ‘Fractal City’ or New Babylon? Urban geographies of multicultural-ism and the ‘Ethnocity’ ”, at the Departament of Urban Geography, FacultatdeFilosofiaiLletresofUniversitatAutònomadeBarce-lona (UAB)

4. DAVIS, Mike: Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. Big City. New York: Verso, 2001 ‘Transnational Suburbs’ p. 93

5. PORTES, Alejandro: ‘Global Villagers: The Rise of Transnational Communities’

Trans-Arctic Urbanism: Toward a New NorthMatthew Jull, University of Virginia

The dual forces of globalization and climate change are combin-ing to rapidly transform the Arctic. With increasing temperature, retreating sea ice and permafrost, and the opening up of new ship-ping routes and opportunities for natural resource exploration, the arctic is poised to become a network of development and human migration as this new frontier is reshaped (Smith, 2010). The typol-ogy of existing urbanization of the arctic is in large part a legacy of political and economic cycles competing against geographical and environmental inertia (Culjat, 1975; Matus, 1988; Marcus, 2007; Jull, 2008; Farish, 2009; Ritchot, 2011). Nowhere is this more evident than in the North America and Russian arctic, which have histori-cally experienced vastly different trajectories of development. In or-der to frame the future of the arctic in the face of current economic, climaticanddemographicpressures,itisimportanttofirstunder-stand the history of efforts to urbanize this last frontier. Toward this goal,thispaperwillbrieflyreviewthetypologiesofNorthAmericanandRussianarcticcities,withspecificfocusoncomparingResolute,CanadaandNorilsk,Russia;thefirstbeingasmallmilitaryandsci-entificoutpostonaremoteislandandthelatteramajorindustrialmetropolis in the Siberian arctic. Both cities have served as sites for urban design experimentation and, despite their difference in scale and vastly different political, economic, cultural, and geographic contexts, show an interconnected set of design principles

Disrupting the ‘Space of Flows’ Continued




Architecture and the Image of Fluidity Nana Last, University of Virginia

While under modernism, architecture had developed according to various tropes of progress from the dialectical to that of the ma-chine, the past two decades have seen the rise of architectural gen-erationbasedlessinmodelsofprogressthaninonesoffluidmodelsof ongoing formation that reject both production as repetition or the drive towards predetermined ends. A paramount model of this is the Rolex Learning Center on the Lausanne campus of the Ecole PolytechniqueFédérale,bythearchitecturalfirmofSANAAwhichopened in2011. This paper explores how the architectural paradigm offluidityproducesanewmodelofarchitecturalproduction thatcounters the modernist model. To do this the paper examines sev-eralmodelsofarchitecturalfluiditybasedontheirassociationstotheories of history, subjectivity and materiality. Through this the so-cio-spatialmodeloffluidityisplacedinassociationtoothermodelsof history, progress, spatial imagery and subjectivity.

Thepaperproposesthattheconstructoffluiditymightbeunder-stood to operate not as a material or as matter, but as formative of matter, comparable to the manner in which quantum theory depicts force carrying particles to mediate interactions between other par-ticleswithinparticular (quantum)fields. Thepaperproposes thatfluidityorchestrateshowmaterials,spaces,functionsandbehaviors,conjoin smoothly in relation to a set of forces: social, physical, spatial or temporal. That orchestration produces the visible and palpable smoothingnotablein-andseeminglydefinitiveof-fluidarchitec-tures. This smoothing process all but conceals its underlying forma-tive forces to produce something that seems effortless, even inevi-table. The result is a seamless aligning of container with contained, the behavior of inhabitants with one another and programs with spaces, leavingmanifestationsoffluiditytoappearunforcedevenwhen determined by competing and interacting forces. Through its introduction of inhabitants with agency, architectural manifestations offluidityentailformsofagreementthatintroducesocialforcesinrelation to spatial ones.

With that in mind, the paper argues that the promise of architectural fluidity lies in a continuum that bringsmultifarious forces, actorsand spaces into an ongoing state of formation, one that replaces entrenched dichotomies, such as idealist-materialist debates with a modelofafluidinterchangeofmultipleactingagents.Itconcludesthatfluidityemergesfullonatthemomentwhenentrenchedforcesof development, as dialectical ones have been all but vanquished and the image of the uniform masses dissipated; at the point when the search for a replacement can no longer be viably sought or found in the image of individual subjectivity or indistinguishable repetitive mass movements based on the image of the machine.

Incongruity, Bizarreness, and Transcendence: The Cultural/Ritual Machine v. Technocratic Rationalism at Expo ‘70 Marcus Shaffer, Pennsylvania State University

In hosting World Expo 1970, Japan presented its technologically advanced society to visitors through a utopian theme of Progress and Harmony for Humankind. The central architectural component in this experience was the Big Roof and Festival Plaza—a cybernetic environment that was simultaneously Expo ‘70’s public plaza, and the realization of the Japanese Metabolist Movement’s techno-ratio-nalized fantasies. There, in a corrective act of subversion by Arata Isozaki, giant tectonic robot occupants—hosting, dancing, and con-structing—met visitors as “choreographers” of the new, techno-uto-pian Japan. This paper explores Isozaki’s critical and transformative role in Expo ’70, and touches on the correlation between his archi-tectural machines and the ritual/rational duality of the machine in an architectural context.

When Boring Becomes Interesting: The Machine and Its Aesthetics in 1960 USA Andreea Mihalache, Virginia Tech

This paper argues that boredom as a malaise of modernity engen-dered by faith in technology, prefabrication and mass production influencedthearchitectureofthe1960sanditsconsequenceshavenot been fully explored. The study examines the mid-century di-chotomy boring - interesting as a result of the shift from traditional technology to newer “machines” such as electronics, television, emerging computer technologies, and faster and more affordable automobilesthatfindtheirechointhearchitecturaldiscourse.Theoutcomes of this dichotomy are illustrated in Robert Venturi’s work until 1967 and his use of billboards as architectural elements.

Broadly acknowledged in the 1960s as a sociological, aesthetic and phenomenological problem, the question of boredom remains critical today when the production and obsolescence of images have never been faster. One becomes quickly saturated with in-formation presented in succinct displays that are easy to produce, easy to delete and easy to consume. Rarely fully digested, images requirenewerandbolder‘selfies.’

Global Architectural Machine TraditionsPeter Olshavsky, University of Nebraska-Lincoln



Building Urban Narrative: Themed New Towns in China Mari Fujita, University of British Columbia Jason Anderson, University of British Columbia

While China’s rapid urbanization has provided designers opportuni-ties to test new forms of urbanism, the results have met mixed re-sponse. Through an examination of contemporary themed housing developments in China, the authors evaluate some of the criticisms that have been leveled at such developments against historical fac-torsspecifictotheChinesebuiltenvironment.Thepaperpositsthatwhile themed housing developments appear to be ruptures with the past, principles of their spatial organization do, in some cases, sus-tain those of communist housing typologies. The paper also argues that following privatization in China, the desire to use narrative as an instrument of community formation is of particular importance. However, the warm reception of narratives that are ecology and sustainability-focused compared to the cold reception of narratives that have to do culture or place point to a discrepancy in how aca-demia, the profession and the press assess value in these narratives. The much-criticized British-themed contemporary housing devel-opment Thames Town in Songjiang City, Shanghai is the backdrop to an exploration of the derivative. Texts by Sharon Zukin, Bianca Bosker and Brian Lonsway are used to explore the tradition of the derivative in Chinese history and in relation to theories of the theme-park and the experience economy.

Can We Patent Architectural Knowledge? Preliminary Notes on Recent Debates in Architectural Intellectual Property (IP) Urtzi Grau,

This paper explores the three recent positions on the ownership of architecturalknowledgecomingfromthewithinthefield:PierVicto-rio Aureli’s essay “The Common and the Production of Architecture: Early hypotheses,” Ana Miljacki’s exhibition Fair Use; An Architec-tural Timeline and the Open Source Architecture Project (OSArch). All three argue that the collective nature of architectural knowledge is a value that has to be protected against excesses of copyright regulation. All three respond to current debates on IP positioning ar-chitectural knowledge in relation to creative commons, fair use and shared authorship. And all three implicitly recognise that architecture is in the initial stages in the regulatory process and architects have the opportunity—and the responsibility—to enter the discussion over whichmodelofIPshouldbeappliedintheirfield.Butmoreimpor-tant, their different understanding of collective production outlines threeradicallydistinctdefinitionsofarchitecturalknowledge.

Stealing from Ourselves; Derivations of the Gable Roof Form in Contemporary Architectural Design Craig S. Griffen, Philadelphia University

The form of the gable roof has been copied for centuries, possibly millennium. It possesses a great deal of iconographic power as a symbol of human construction, especially when it represents the concept of dwelling as House or Home. Yet with the advent of International Style or Modern architecture in the early 20th century the gable roof fell out of favor as it was seen as a derivation of pasthistoricstylesofbuildingwhichwouldnotfitinaprogressive,forward-looking world. Anyone reproducing a gable roof ran the risk of ridicule and being labeled as not a truly ‘modern’ architect. There have been short-lived revivals of the form, especially in the 1980’s, but those designs were also quickly dismissed as derivative as well, so to this day there are many architects who would not design a building with a gable roof out of moral principle. The form still holds an attractive power as a conveyor of meaning so some architects have started to embrace it again. However, perhaps as a way of rationalizing its use to make it acceptable to themselves and theirfellowarchitects,theyhavemodifieditinvariouswaysto,ineffect, steal the traditional form back from their own architectural history.

The Wayward Cast: Gipsotecas, Digital Imprints, and the Productive Lapse of Fidelity Joshua G. Stein, Woodbury University

The speed with which imitations can now be produced (sometimes appearing even before their “originals”) may soon render this form of mimicry obsolete or simply uninteresting. In his account of the loss of aura, Benjamin notes the discrepancy between the time-in-tensive methods of reproduction by hand versus those by machine: the quickness of the eye replaces the labor of the hand. While speed may be a primary factor in this transformation, materiality is equally at play. An investigation into the traditions and techniques of physical transference of qualities from model to imprint may of-fer a more “productive” form of reproduction than the imitation, one in which each instantiation embeds layers of information and perspective into the original. Rapid advances in digital scanning and surveying technology in archaeology, historical preservation, and geomatics offer means of reproducing formal information that are no longer tied to the visual, our primary mode of reproduction. Architecturewillneedtoquicklyredefineitsjudgmentandexploi-tation of historical material.

The Architectural DerivativeCurt Anderson Gambetta, Woodbury University



An Asian Avant-garde: a Lexicon of Asian Modernity H. Koon Wee

This short paper traces the formative influences that led to newavant-garde positions and theories of Singapore architect and the-orist William S.W. Lim. Under the tutelage of the London County Council architects at the London AA in the 50s, most notably under Bill Howe, John Killick and John Partridge, and later at the GSD, un-der Josep Lluís Sert, Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and Kevin Lynch, one could argue Lim had an education that blended a potent concoction of a number of neo-avant-garde pedagogies. Lim’s early writings and built ideas were predicated on the sheer aura and astonishment of constructing in reinforced concrete, but tempered with the logic of efficiency,socialresponsibilityandnationhood.Hecelebratedandrejected the ideas of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius in equal mea-sure, vis-à-vis the institutional formations of CIAM, following in the footsteps of Team X and Ekistics. The debate and rejection of high modernism would be embodied in Lim’s writings about cities and architecture in Asia. Sert’s GSD served as an intellectual refuge after the dissolution of CIAM, and powerful alternative positions came out of this period. Positions favoring pluralism and diversity were being formed concurrently in the work and writings of his contemporaries, namely, Cedric Price, who was similarly under the tutelage of the LCC architects at the AA, and Fumihiko Maki, Lim’s classmate at the GSD. Lim invented an unparallel lexicon in his urban theories, which favored the autonomy of the individual and sought to elevate cre-ativity in all participatory functions of the design process. The power of Lim’s theories is found precisely in the manner they coalesced into an alternative space outside of mainstream governmental poli-cies. Through his writings, he continued to project an alternative his-tory and theory of Asian urbanism and architecture.

Antipodal Architecture: Traces of the ‘Other Tradition’ in Piano’s Tjibaou Cultural Centre James Thompson, University of Washington

Alongside any of today’s internationally-recognized architectural practices, the work produced by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop perhapsbestexemplifiesColinSt.JohnWilson’snotionofan‘OtherTradition’. Grounded in contextual practicality, Piano’s work is endur-ing and adaptable, able to transcend the reductive discourses of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Refusing theoretical dogmatism, he chooses instead to poetically reveal contradictions through form, material, and construction decisions. In no Building Workshop proj-ect is the marriage of modern and traditional more evident than in the Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Nouméa, New Caledonia--Piano’s only completedprojectinthe‘developingworld.’Thoughatfifteenithasyet to reach the maturity of St. John Wilson’s case studies, the Centre extends the spirit of the ‘Other Tradition’ into the present millennium and a programmatic realm with greater political potency.

The Tjibaou Cultural Centre is a valuable, postcolonial addition to St. John Wilson’s catalog for at least two reasons. First, the manifestation of the Centre was made possible by a unique compatibility between the localized, postcolonial politics of ‘the other’ and the pragmatic, and therefore politically malleable, approach of the architect. Exam-ining the historical and political circumstances of the project reveals that many of the major architectural decisions represent as much the politics of its namesake, the local political activist Jean-Marie Tjibaou, as it does the design process of the Building Workshop. Thus, while the architect may hail from the continent of colonizers, the project itself is an attempt to embody localized postcolonial beliefs and as-pirations. In fact, the architectural representation of cultural identity is potentially the project’s greatest achievement. Second, the design process for the Tjibaou Centre recognized several contradictions—in this case, the dialectical struggles between modernity and tradition, global and local, individual and community, tolerance and resistance—then synthesized them into architectural form. Not only does this ‘contemporaryvernacular’harkenbacktoSt.JohnWilson’saffinitiesfor ‘an alternative philosophy’ to the modern movement, these dialec-tical pairings precisely match those that distinguish the postcolonial paradigm. Therefore, the Tjibaou Centre may indeed offer valuable lessons for those seeking to revitalize the project of local modernism. This essay is an attempt to extract those lessons by recounting the project’s germination, design, and construction through the lens of ‘the uncompleted project.’

Local ModernismsLisa Findley, California College of the Arts


Other Localisms: Reframing “Social Architecture” Within Globalism, the Case of the Butaro Hospital Sharon Haar, University of Michigan

Withintheglobalflowsofarchitecture,symbolizedmostprominentlybytwenty-first-centuryskyscrapersfromDubaitoShanghai,“local”traditionsofbuildingareidentifiedas‘’other,”outsidethemainstreamof contemporary practice. Similarly, architectural projects that ad-dress community needs in developing countries—humanitarian hous-ing,communityschoolsandsoccerfields,andhealthclinics—areiden-tifiedas“alternative”or“socialarchitecture,”somethingotherthan“capital A architecture,” representing moments of resistance to the movement of global capital, production, and imagery that captures “developed world” imaginations. Using MASS Design Group’s Butaro Hospital (2011) in the Burera District of Rwanda as a case study, this paper argues that not only are the binaries of “alternative” and “main-stream”and“usandthem”inadequateindefiningcontemporaryar-chitecture, the binary “local” and “global” is equally limiting to our un-derstanding of contemporary architectural practices working within frameworks of humanitarian concern and social justice.

The National Schools of Art: A Flow Often Disrupted in Cuba Juan Antonio Bueno, Florida International University Julio César Pérez, Harvard University

! The Escuelas Nacionales de Arte (National Schools of Art) of Cuba, located in Cubanacán, formerly the upscale residential subdivision of Havana Country Club and currently within the municipality of Playa in La Habana, were designed by the architects Ricardo Porro from Cuba, and Vittorio Garatti and Roberto Gottardi, who lived in Cubaatthetime,fromItaly.Thegroupoffiveschools,programmedfor higher education in the plastic arts, modern dance, ballet, mu-sic, and dramatic arts, was originally meant to attract students from Cuba as well as Asia, Africa, and Ibero-America. The complex was incompletely constructed between 1961 and 1965. Subsequently, the schools suffered from abandon, neglect, and inappropriate interven-tions until partially restored in 2008 and 2009. In spite of all, the schools of art have become an icon of local modernism in Cuba.

Since the incomplete construction of the schools, they have been much published in the architectural press, often turning to contro-versy. Recently, Foster and Partners, the renowned architectural firmbasedinLondon,wasretainedbytheMinisteriodeCulturatowork on the school of ballet. Since the original architects are still alive, Porro in Paris, Garatti in Milan, and Gottardi in La Habana, the polemics surrounding the completion, restoration, and possible re-habilitation of the schools has risen. Garatti feels that a commission should be his, since he has the rights of authorship. In addition, he ar-gues that the original designs should be respected as a collaborative effort of considerable merit that is under consideration by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

The fate of the schools of art is deplorable. For example, the school of ballet was almost completed, never used, and then vandalized. Once the proud achievement of a group of architects, the schools of art suffered under a bureaucracy that favored massive, anonymous prefabrication of foreign construction devoid of cultural meaning, but supposedly aimed at solving social problems, instead of the tra-ditional craft and ingenuity of a society. But globalization has inten-sifieditsdisruptiveaspectandhasthreatenedagaintointerruptthecritical development of Cuban architecture. Against such disruption, the paradigmatic spirit can only be enhanced and perpetuated by the original architects and by a new generation of Cuban architects. The original fabric of locally weaved, transcultural and transnational threads needs to be recaptured.

Local Modernisms Continued




Partage, or Strategies for SharingJennifer Bonner, Georgia Institute of TechnologyChristian Stayner, University of Michigan

Kremlin FormAnna Neimark, Southern California Institute of Architecture

Architecture’s engagement with urban form always operates within the aesthetic structures associated with the technologies of drawing, such as paper material, bounding frame, and the means of reproduction. In a course taught at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in the fall of 2012, students were asked to conceptualize the Moscow Kremlin through instruments of annota-tion. Though the site itself was out of reach, relying on drawings and photographs of the monuments and the walls surrounding them, the seminar constructed a survey of analytical drawings that were based on compositional rather than political or religious principles. These analogical recordings were neither objective documents of carefully measured forms, nor authored myths of imagined narra-tives. Instead, they aimed to dislocate the Kremlin from a closed political space in order to open it to architectural interpretation.

Let’s Get Small: Strategies for Urban ComedyJulia Sedlock, Cosmo Design Factory

Our contemporary global condition exerts enormous pressure on architecture to expand its disciplinary tools in order to facilitate connections across greater and greater distances. For the last twenty years architecture has generally responded to these pres-sures by adopting Rem Koolhaas’ attitude that the small tools of architecture (composition, scale, part to whole legibility) are ob-solete in the global production of contemporary urban life. This paper provides a counterpoint to such trends – a way to assert an equally ambitious agenda for architecture while holding on to the power of the architecturally small interventions that give shape to thecity.Theemphasison thesmallmayatfirstappear to favorseparation over connection, the local over the global and the in-dividual over the collective; however the strategies of sharing dis-cussed in this paper describe both a methodology and an attitude that advance the dual meaning of partage as both division and sharing to describe ways in which small scale interventions aggre-gate to produce a coherent whole, a transformation that is greater than the sum of its parts. Through Rancière, the concept of partage provides a framework in which “Getting Small” is a prerequisite to practice that acknowledges the interdependence of aesthetics and politics. Steve Martin’s contribution illustrates how his unorthodox comedic style generated a democratic condition among his audi-ence, encouraging individuals to laugh on their own terms and in their own time. Martin shares strategies of sharing through spatial smallness, relationality and re-presentation with three architectural case studies – Atelier Bow-Wow’s Made in Tokyo, David Brown’s Available City and Cosmo Design Factory’s Murphy Monsters – that demonstrate how smallness is not always an abdication of ambi-tion, but rather a strategy for achieving more ideas, more interac-tion and more architecture.



Realizing the Right to the City: Architectural Methodologies as Agents of Change (1)Nadia M. Anderson, Iowa State University

From Mutual Self-help to ExNihilo: The Evolving Role of Architectural Tactics in Empowering the Informal CitySarosh Anklesaria, Syracuse University

Sarosh Anklesaria, Syracuse Universityz In the next twenty years the global south will account for 95% of urban growth and a large portion of this growth (nearly half) will be driven by non-formal architectures. Already by 2006, a billion people or a third of the world’s urban popu-lation lived in squatter settlements. With the emergence of neoliberal, late-capitalism, architectural discourse has moved away from address-ing the ‘crisis of mass housing’ - a subject that was canonical during postwar modernist reconstruction. In the decades following postwar reconstruction the site of the ‘crisis of mass housing’ progressively shift-ed territories, to the global south. It became increasingly apparent that the prototypical postwar housing block typology, originally formulated in Europe, was hopelessly inadequate in dealing with the economics andscaleofthehousingdeficit.Itwasunderthesecircumstancesthatself-help housing emerged as a preferred alternative to mass public housing and promised to integrate professional architectural expertise withtheinnatebenefitsofharnessinglocalcommunityresources.

This paper traces the trajectories/ methodologies of two ends of a broad spectrum of self-help housing by analyzing four key projects 1]PREVI-AlandmarkexperimentalHousingProjectinLimainvolv-ingvariousarchitectsofinternationalrepute2]Aranya,IndoreinIndia-asiteandservicesprojectbythearchitectB.V.Doshi.3]Villa El Salvador a squatter community in Lima founded through selfhelppractices.4]TheSlumNetworkingProjectinIndorewhereinnovative infrastructure practices were deployed.

Whilethefirsttwocasesinvolvedarchitectsworkingonlarge‘ta-bula rasa’ sites employing modernist ‘master planning’ ideals; the two latter cases do not involve centralized architectural inputs but are instead interventions on sites where squatting has, in time, been supplemented by infrastructure and the provision of basic civic amenities. Over time these two very different paradigms of self-help housing have evolved such that their contemporary conditions are much more similar than their origins would have us imagine. Instead of having diverse futures as one might have anticipated, their urban trajectories have been convergent over time. A comparative analy-sis of nascent and current scenarios can help glean various insights into this phenomenon and in doing so locate the larger question of shaping architectural methodologies in realizing the right to the city.

The study unpacks the evolving role of architectural tactics in em-powering the informal city and marks a favorable shift in emphasis from the design of the dwelling unit to the design of physical and social infrastructures. It demonstrates the prescient role of public infrastructure projects, both social and physical, in generating de-sirable frameworks that support and empower informality. Self-help reconstituted in this way, is not an ExNihilo condition but a practice that must be intensely symbiotic in forging relationships with the formal city - with formal structures of governance through which the right to the city can be realized. It is here that the archi-tect can play a vital role not only as a catalyst but as an advocate of providing the informal with infrastructural and spatial agency.

The Adaptive Governance Lab: Learning About Government in the Architecture Design StudioRosie Webb, University of Limerick

The Adaptive Governance Lab at University of Limerick is a studio andfieldbasedteachingandlearningenvironmentwhichbringsto-getherarchitecturestudents,localgovernmentofficialsandcom-munity leaders in action research projects addressing urban and rural areas which appear to have intractable problems or which have not developed to their full potential. The Lab provides practi-cal experience and application of emerging sustainable urban de-sign practice with an emphasis on the use of mapping as a tool in planning and development processes. It involves architecture students in working directly with operational managers in local governance and neighborhood community leaders on real issues articulated by the community. Strategic mapping techniques and processes being employed as a way of enabling creative thinking and using design processes to coordinate local authority direction in managing the development of public realm projects. In strate-gic mapping, two types of maps are produced corresponding to thoseprocesses,ReflectivemapsandProjectivemaps.Reflectivemaps involve creating conceptual diagrams about the city and its neighborhoods to highlight what is already there and how it works, what makes that place unique. Projective maps suggest social mi-cro planning proposals addressing a concept about how we might begin to behave with an immediate and easily achievable action whilst maintaining the long term goal as the strategic end point. The maps isolate, highlight and make visually clear an idea or con-cept pertinent to one of seven broad themes common to urban development; Water, Landscape, Energy, Exchange, Performance, Community and Memory, and Mobility. Proposals promote random tinkering and prototyping, experimenting with our built environ-ment to suggest an evidence-based strategy for future develop-ment. The maps act as props to encourage civic engagement in conversations and instruments for learning about places. The idea is to promote practices which become a framework for active de-sign creativity and consensus building.


Designing The Village Tapestry-New Architectural agency(ies) of Community Building and DesignShannon Bassett, University of South Florida

Tactical Urbanisms, including pop-up, DIY (Do it Yourself) and guerilla urbanism, have emerged as significant informal designstrategies with which to program public spaces. Characterized and shaped by civic participation, informal tactical urbanisms have cre-ated, arguably, more democratic space in opposition to top-down planning and design processes. How can tactical urbanisms inform and transform into the formal design processes through new forms ofarchitecturalagencyandexpandedfieldsofoperation?Howcanthis reframe pedagogy and practice? This essay examines these concepts through the lens of a design research project by the au-thor, the Village Tapestry, an urban design masterplan for the Vil-lage of the Arts, Bradenton, Florida.

Working within the context of public and community space de-sign in the contemporary American city, one is often faced with a prevailing “terrain vague” condition, as coined by Ignasi de So-là-Morales, referring to the form of absence in the contemporary metropolis, in abandoned areas and obsolete and unproductive spaces. Here the strategy of “bricolage”, working from the diverse range of things that happen to be available, becomes critical in the designing of meaningful public and community space. As described by Alex Wall in Programming the Urban Surface, “the extensive andinclusiveground-planeofthecity,tothe“field”thataccommo-dates buildings, roads, utilities, open spaces, neighborhoods, and natural habitats. This is the ground structure that organizes and supportsabroadrangeoffixedandchangingactivitiesinthecity.As such, the urban surface is dynamic and responsive; like a cata-lytic emulsion, the surface literally unfolds events in time. The pro-cess of meaningful community building and physical design also must engage in an active weaving between social connections and relations which are constantly shaping and negotiating the design of public space and reclamation of the city tissue. New representa-tions and methods of working become crucial within this context. Research has demonstrated that in order for masterplanning to be successful, civic participation has been key. Traditional plans are notsuffice,butinsteadlayereddiagramsofthedifferentsystems,including that of social relations and connections. The concept of a tapestry a conceptual driver for the project emerged through the design process. This was adopted by the collaborative agency as a generative conceptual framework for the physical planning for the master plan. The diagram of this tactic served both as the basis of the design and planning framework, in addition to an understand-able graphic for the community when visioning urban strategies to serve as the social and connective tissue for the project.

The analogy of the weave becomes instructive in diagramming with two distinctive yarns are woven, and interlaced- physical space and social connections, the warp running longitudinally and the weft that crosses it, creating new relationships, as well as juxta-positions and layering of programs.

Incubating Uncertainty: Anticipating Change in Vine City, AtlantaKevin Moore, Auburn University

This paper will present a history of the changing urban fabric of Vine City, Atlanta, noting connections to larger social and economic chang-es in the city. It will extend an understanding of how local change, tied to unpredictable forces outside of any single community, could be embraced as an architectural strategy of increasing uncertainty. Uncertainty in the design process attempts to create a building of poise, one that affords options in the future to add value over time.

Vine City is an historic African-American neighborhood in Atlanta with a strong local identity. Among its many cultural assets are nearby Spelman and Morehouse Colleges, Clark Atlanta University and Wash-ingtonPark,thefirstparkinAtlantaopentoAfrican-Americans.Thisneighborhood of large trees and distinct houses is punctuated with landmarks but also with shuttered properties and vacant lots. 78% of housing units are renter-occupied, and house values are almost a third of the value in the rest of Atlanta. This poverty is long-standing.

The challenges and prospects of Vine City have been tied to larger social and economic changes. Over time, property has been pieced into larger and larger developments such as Eagan Homes and the Georgia World Congress Center. Similar to the large-scale residen-tial projects Dana Cuff details in her history of L.A., The Provisional City, pockets of Vine City are now “convulsive.” In these areas, change is more volatile both in space and time. In fact, Vine City is fascinatingly unpredictable but resilient. Recently, the subprime mortgagecrisisstifledinvestorsbettingonitsimmediateproxim-ity to downtown and two rapid-transit stops. The neighborhood is poised for change, but the future is uncertain.

Recently, a “community incubator” at the Ashby MARTA stop was the subject of a national student design competition. For such a project, change is built in; it’s the goal. If successful or not, an in-cubator will inhabit a new context and hopefully adapt to altered demands. As a larger-scale development, however, the challenge is to conceive of an architecture that is more resilient by increasing uncertainty. Rather than profess to the complete and durable, or surrendertotheprovisionalandrapidlyflexible,anuncertainarchi-tecturewouldbecomfortablewithandconfidentinanunpredict-able future. Increasing uncertainty is an elaboration of techniques peculiar toarchitecture,and iterativedesignprocedures refineascheme by approaching multiple possible scenarios. Designing for an uncertain future challenges students to organize buildings as spatial and temporal frames of experience simultaneously ideologi-cal and circumstantial, enduring and resilient.

This method makes no great claim on what the future should look like, only that buildings that afford change are absorbed into their com-munity over time. For this reason, a poised architecture is particularly welcome in underserved communities, areas historically susceptible to gradual neglect and catastrophic displacement. These communi-tiescanbenefitfromadesignmethodologythatextendslessonsfromtheir history to increase uncertainty in productive ways.

Realizing the Right to the City (1) Continued




The New Global City and the End(s) of Public Space (1)Nandini Bagchee, City College of New YorkJune Williamson, City College of New York

Hellinikon: Tactics of Capital Urbanization and the Collective SuperstructureAristodimos Komninos, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Today, urban space is the receiving end of a long process of capital accumulation aiming for economic growth. The formal state not only promotes capitalist investment but also its accompanying urbaniza-tiontacticsasthemeansforitsinfinitereproduction.Thispaperpro-poses alternative strategies for the production of contemporary ur-banspace,and,morespecifically,tracestheopportunitiesofferedbythe recently vacated Athenian airport, Hellinikon. In a critical time of economic recession and social segregation, this paper questions the ongoing developmental practices that aim to transform Hellinikon into yet another space of capital accumulation and social exclusion. Instead, the answer to the question of spatial justice lies in grass-roots initiatives currently active within Hellinikon which creatively harness the collective potential of Athens’ public land. Through the scalar shift from spontaneous and individual activities to a more ho-listic self-instituted narrative for the Hellinikon area, a new and more just urban vision emerges: the “Collective Superstructure”.

Negotiating Public Spaces in the ‘World City’: The Interplay of City, Nation and the Global as Overlapping Spatial Oeuvres on Tel Aviv’s ShorelineYael Allweil, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology

This paper aims to rethink the global-city-nation relationship as overlapping spatial oeuvres (Levebvre, 1991) where political com-munities are produced and negotiated. It examines negotiations over inclusion and exclusion from the Israeli national polity, con-ducted in public spaces of the ‘World City’ of Tel Aviv by the gay community. Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest metropolitan center, devotes great effort at branding itself as a ‘non-stop World City’, part of the networkof‘spacesofflow’between‘globalcities’(Castells,2000;Sassen, 1991). These attempts include blurring Tel Aviv’s national setting in the contested Israeli nation state, and embracing trans-nationalpoliticalcommunitieslikethe‘gaynation’andflowsoftour-ists and capital (Kipnis, 2009).

This paper examines the appropriation of Independence Park on Tel Aviv’s shoreline by homosexual cruisers, and later the revoking of this territory, as means to negotiate their social inclusion in the city and the nation. Independence Park, located on the global-touristic shoreline by the Hilton Hotel, was appropriated through the mutual re-shaping of territory and body, Israel’s founding mechanism of the mutual shaping of territory and proto-citizen (Weiss, 2005).

Interestingly, claims for inclusion into the political body of the na-tion as ‘proper citizens’ are made by producing surprising ‘urban de-sign’ of public spaces in the city. Examining ‘urban designs’ of public space in a ‘World City’ as means to negotiate inclusion in the nation unsettles our understanding of the city, the nation and the global as competing political spheres. This paper thereby proposes an ana-lytical framework for reading these spaces as overlapping spatial oeuvres where the political body is being formed via concrete sites and bodily performances.

The New ProjectsSusan K. Rogers, University of Houston

While the old public housing “projects” have been demolished in Chicago to make way for saccharine sweet mixed-income neigh-borhoods—in cities like Houston (and suburbs throughout the U.S.) disinvestment, changing desires, and shifting socio-economic and spatial conditions are combining to create the “new projects” on the periphery. The new projects look nothing like the old, the large multi-family developments follow a suburban superblock model—privatized, gated, and disconnected from the surrounding city. The new projects were built quickly and cheaply in the 1970s and 1980s, most often for young professionals, and with little open space or amenities. Today, these projects are increasingly home to more families than singles and a vastly expanding number of people who live below the poverty line. Furthermore, in the absence of a na-tional housing policy, where vouchers comprise the largest portion of low-income housing subsidies, this housing is, in many ways, the new de-facto public housing and subject to many of the same chal-lengespublichousingcommunitiesfacedfiftyyearsago.

In Houston the scale of the problem, and the potential salvaging effect of a solution, is immense. 315,357—is the number of multi-family apartments housed in buildings comprised of ten or more units. 40% of this housing, or just over 140,000 units, were con-structed between 1960 and 1980 to meet the needs of a rapidly ex-panding population. Today, this housing is home to more than 20% of Houston’s two million residents. As policy, displacement, and disinvestment draw more and more families with children to the new projects on the edge of the city the missing public and social infrastructure becomes more poignant—and the need to re-imag-ine how these complexes can be transformed into a site of hope becomes more pressing. As our focus shifts back to the center, the totalizing suburban models of large-scale gated and privatized development is at risk of being transplanted. The lessons present in the failures of this model remain buried. It is from this founda-tion that “The New Projects” interrogates the conditions that have lead to the failure, or pending failure, of so much late 20th century multi-family housing and the proactive strategies that could be ap-plied to intervene in this trajectory.



The Post-public City: Experiences from Post-socialist EuropeSonia Hirt, Virginia Tech

This essay presents case studies on the evolution (or, perhaps more precisely, devolution) of public spaces in post-socialist East-ern Europe. Following recent scholarly calls to “provincialize” the much-studied cities of the Global North as centers of urban theory-building, it looks to “ordinary cities” in the European countries that are often categorized as “developing,” “emerging” or “transitional” (e.g., Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia) as potential loci in which radical public-space transformations may occur. Consistent with Soviet theory on the importance of public space for the construction of a new “socialist man,” in the aftermath of World War II cities in the Eastern-Bloc countries were endowed with massive public spaces, such as parks and plazas, whose purpose was more ceremonial and disciplinary thandemocratic.Yet regardlessof theirflaws, thesespaces were sites of intense interactions between multiple pub-lics across class and other traditional social distinctions. Over the last quarter-century, since the fall of state socialism, these public spaces have been under intense attack by private capital; many have simply vanished. The paper proposes that Michael Sorkin’s andotherinfluentialtheorists’noirpredictionsofthe“endofpublicspace” in Global-North cities may actually have come to pass to a much greater extent in cities where a once-exaggerated public sphere suddenly collapsed circa 1990.

The New Global City and the End(s) of Public Space (1) Continued



Learning from Modernism and BeyondArmando Montilla, Clemson University

Farangestan as a Wonderland: Perceptions of Modern Architecture in 19th Century Iranian Travel DiariesVahid Vahdat Zad, Texas A&M University

PROBLEM STATEMENT: This paper studies how Iranian travelers visiting Europe in the mid-19th century perceived and represented modern architecture. Mirza Saleh and Rezaqoli, the two travelers that I discuss, although hold different social status, share an es-sentializing view of Europe as part of the larger farangestan, i.e. the land of the other. Their expectation of farangestan and its ar-chitecture, as an alternative to the decadent condition of the build environmentinstitutionsinIran,influencestheirwritingandleadsto a representation of modern architecture that vastly differs from all the styles that had been practiced in 19th century Europe. The travelers adopt storytelling techniques, exaggerative attitudes, and in instances, a poetic tone to build upon the wonders of far-angestan. The Europe that they represent has a utopian dimension that roots in the Islamic heaven and the Persian paradise. Looking at the circulation of modern architecture in Iranian travel accounts of Europe in the 19th century, I argue that the route that modern architecture takes from Europe to Iran is a mental journey between the self and a preimagined other.

LITERATURE REVIEW: Otherness plays an important role in situat-ing my research within the postcolonial literature that I expand. Applying a Foucauldian genealogical method to the study of Ori-entalism,EdwardSaididentifiedOrientalismasaself-definingproj-ect for the modern West. In his view, West, as the center of a pow-er relationship,constructsan imaginedother,filteredbycolonialinterests and colored by exotic fantasies and romantic memories. Through my paper, I have kept Said’s explanation of how othering creates a distorted imagery but changed the direction of the gaze. Here, it is the Iranian observer who constructs modern architecture based on an “Occidentalist” imagery.

METHODOLOGY: To see how the message of modernity was trans-formed by the travelers’ intentions, prejudices, ideals, limitations of the language, and expectations of the audience, I ask, what are the differences between the descriptions of space in each travel ac-count and the actual space? What causes this difference? Is a pat-ternidentifiable?Toaddressthesequestions,Iconductacompara-tive study between the descriptions of space in each travel account and the actual space in my dissertation. I look closely at the literary styles,figuresofspeech,narrativedevices,settings,themes,motifs,and tones to identify the imagery that descriptions of architectural and urban space produce in the minds of the readers.

SIGNIFICANCE: Building upon the recent scholarship on modernity in non-Western societies, this study unsettles the previous Euro-centric assumptions that depict the global circulation of architec-ture as one way transit between the center and the periphery, the original and the copy. Situating the origins of early modern archi-tecture of Iran in-between Persian utopia and an imagined other problematizes categorical oppositions between indigenous and foreign, as well as modern and traditional architecture in Iran.

Miniaturize or Die! Paolo Soleri’s City as ArchitectureAlicia Imperiale, Temple University

Paolo Soleri (1919-2013) was best known for his visionary drawings of cities, “arcologies” that were published in the lavishly illustrated 1969 “Arcology: The City in the Image of Man.” Arcology, a term of his own invention, referred to a fusion of architecture and ecology. Soleri was also only slightly less famously, or perhaps infamously, known for his new “city” of Arcosanti, in the American desert sev-enty miles north of Phoenix, Arizona. Begun in 1970 and based upon decades of research and theoretical projects, this experimental city designed for 1,500 inhabitants was intended to concentrate human settlement into a highly dense built environment set within the nat-ural landscape, far fromurban sprawl. Soleri’swork is significantnot because it has been put into practice successfully, but because it shows us a concept of city as architecture that addresses, ahead ofitstime,ourtwenty-firstcenturyconsciousnessofenvironmentalsustainability. In doing so, he addressed the ruin of the natural land-scape that had occurred as a result of unrestrained development. Cities must contract and be densely built on a small footprint, allow-ingthenaturallandscapetoreturntoitsprimordialstate,flowingseamlessly below the connected new cities, the arcologies.



Space of Continuity: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Destruction of the Box and Modern Conceptions of SpaceEugenia Victoria Ellis, Drexel University

Late 19th-early 20th century America was an era of confluenceof science, philosophy and religion: a contemporary polemic that equated religion (belief based on faith) with science (knowledge based on empirical data of physical phenomena). Modernity in 20th century America would be shaped by a pervasive Theosophical at-mosphere that coupled science with religion to cause a reconsid-erationofmental/spiritualrelationshipsandaredefinitionofspace/time concepts. Theosophy’s introduction of Eastern metaphysics to Western culture revealed possibilities of the inner self with re-spect to the outer being and opened the way to conceive of inner space,orinteriority.Theosophyembracednewscientificdiscover-ies and used them to support their philosophical belief system, es-pecially new concepts of space and time such as the fourth dimen-sion and relativity, which together with contemporary technological advances promoted a popular fascination towards movement and inaugurated the modern conception of continuity in space, most profoundlyexemplifiedbyFrankLloydWright’sorganicarchitec-ture. To follow is a reconsideration of Wright’s work with respect to thetheosophicalandoccultinfluencesthatguidedhiscontributionto today’s conception of spatial continuity in architecture.

The Martyr and the Juggernaut: Disrupting Global Assumptions in Architectural PedagogyJoseph M. Godlewski, Syracuse University

Theobjectiveofthispaperistoreflectontheconsiderableschol-arly work devoted to globalizing architecture, to critically examine its logic, and by way of constructive examples begin to suggest generative pedagogical strategies that disrupt persistent global assumptions in architectural pedagogy. While not putting forth a grand theory or new agenda in architectural education, this paper does draw attention to the productive value offered by a selection of recent works investigating global architecture. The aggregate of their insights, it is argued, potentially form the basis of future pedagogical models questioning the Western origins of modernity, emphasizing the values of design thinking, interdisciplinarity, con-tingency, historical perspective, and a more dialectical and pro-cessural understanding of globalization and space. In looking at the globalizing architecture discourse, two diametrically opposed figuresrepeatedlypresentthemselves—themartyr,usuallypartofa buzzing multitudinous swarm, and the oppressively huge, seem-ingly ubiquitous juggernaut.

Learning from Modernism and Beyond Continued



Realizing the Right to the City: Architectural Methodologies as Agents of Change (2)Nadia M. Anderson, Iowa State University

Northern Designers in Africa: A Political Diary of Building a House in RwandaYutaka Sho, Syracuse University

Though not a new phenomenon, recently more architects from the Global North have been working with transnational and non-gov-ernmental organizations, churches and corporations in the South. Personnel, technology, capital and policies from the North are transforming the built and natural environments, especially in Af-rica. Compounded by the global pressure to adopt northern-style democracy, local pressure to prioritize one’s constituents, and the universal pressure to develop, how can we collaborate without any of us losing our agency in the process? How do northerners chal-lenge or become complicit with the structure that controls south-ern people’s right to architecture?

In this paper I argue that a task for northern architects in the South is to critique our own practice. Experimenting with building mate-rials, techniques and organizational models that are necessary to improvebuildingpracticesaredifficulttocarryoutforresource-deprived peoples. Failure could be extremely harmful to those without a safety net of savings and insurance, or necessary time and space. As a result, construction projects in Africa and else-where in the South are directed by northerners in the name of hu-manitarianism and modernization. They tend to exclude tradition-ally underrepresented peoples from the decision making processes. Northern development agencies combined with local politics and social hierarchies could constrain access to space especially for the poorandwomen.Clientelism,genderrolesandpoliticalaffiliationssometimes enhance, and sometimes limit, the right to space. Here, northern designers should seek ways to de-normalize the conven-tionsandusearchitectureasareflectivebreak.

Our recently completed housing prototype employed affordable andeasytoconstructEarthBagwallsforthefirsttimeinRwanda.During the construction process, realizing that they have gained skills and knowledge, the workers established their own associa-tion to build and teach construction. The project attests that ar-chitecture can claim right to space even in a strictly controlled po-litical environment such as Rwanda. The paper cites this EarthBag house as a case study to show how architectural processes and products may challenge the presumptions of how and by whom houses should be built, and to create an opportunity to test aspira-tions and scenarios in real space.

Space as Event as OeuvreGerard Nadeau, Drury University

Situated at the intersection of architecture and art, architectural in-stallations are increasingly recognized as a legitimate form of archi-tectural discourse and practice. The communities created through the process of fabrication and installation are often an important, if publically overlooked, aspect of the work. A form within architec-tural installation comprising ‘space as event’ focuses on the latent civic potential of the work, deriving from materials, methods of construction, and the self-organization of labor. While hand craft is important to architectural installation, even the digitally fabricated, ‘space as event’ emphasizes engagement with the work through physical manipulation of materials, and methodologies that intro-duce indeterminism into the process of construction, allowing the work to be designed, to a greater or lesser extent, as it is built. This form of practice has a great potential to create oeuvres, and to signify the possibility of the city as oeuvre, particularly when implemented as a consistent program of consecutive or simultane-ous temporary construction. Space as event is a method of priori-tizing time over space, acknowledging that time itself is written in space, an aspect of space emphasized by the evidence of its mak-ing. Existing structures of urban and cultural revitalization, such as strategic plans, action plans, and cultural plans, can facilitate the implementation of space as event, even though a fundamen-tal contradiction arises between the appropriation and integration inherent to the oeuvre, and the fundamental goal of promoting investment in neglected spatial infrastructure with strategies that increase the exchange value of urban districts. Indeed, under these circumstances, oeuvres themselves can become signs for con-sumption, adding exchange value to the places where they occur. Space as event embodies a resilient methodology of action and signification,experienceandmonument,thepossibilityofasocialpractice unburdened by commerce and resistant to commodifi-cation.ArtofSpace,aprojectcurrentlyunderway inSpringfield,Missouri, suggests that ‘structures of enchantment’, realized as a ‘regulated succession of acts and actions,’ have the potential not only to signify appropriation, integration and social accumulation, but also to demarcate and inscribe place-form as counteraction to the homogenization of space and the fragmentation of experience.


Realizing the Right to the City (2) Continued

Spatial Stories in Nothern ManhattanAki Ishida, Virginia TechLynnette Widder, Columbia University

The comparatively recent resurgence of community engagement in architecture and architectural education has produced a host of methodologies and techniques for approaching unloved spaces and to address populations traditionally under- or poorly served by architecture. The opportunity to take stock of these techniques also offers the chance to compare them to their predecessors in Event Art and community activism, both different manifestations of the productive dissatisfaction that characterized the late 1960s and 1970s. The loose contemporary use of the term “Participatory Design”, with its roots in Human Computer Interaction research in Scandinavia, deserves equal scrutiny. But it also begs the question of whether any of those methodologies are inherently “architec-tural” – or how architecture’s contribution can compare to a meth-odological approach derived from sociological practice or to the temporal ambivalence of event or installation art. Our collabora-tion on designing participatory events and workshops with a com-munityorganizationledbyacademicsandactivistsinthefieldofPublic Health underscored the need for these questions: it offered sharp reminders, too, that others pioneered the capacity to derive community data and to assess it in ways that are playful, inclusive and socially meaningful.

ThroughdesigNYC,aNewYork-basednot-for-profitthatmatchesdesignersandnot-for-profits,wehaveworkedsinceJanuary,2013,with CLIMB (City Living is Moving Bodies), a group co-directed by Dr. Mindy Fullilove, Professor of Public Health at Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and Lourdes Rodriguez, Pro-gramOfficeratNewYorkStateHealthFoundation.Itisdedicatedto the revitalization of Northern Manhattan’s most easterly parks. In her book Urban Alchemy, Dr. Fullilove describes two aspects of community-based work that can “heal” cities undermined by the policy of clearing “urban blight”: the recognition of a spatial story’s power, and the surprisingly indirect communication lines along which diverse cohorts can take part in that recognition.

Our paper discusses some of the implicit and explicit precedents to the current practices loosely subsumed in the term “participa-tory design.” It discusses the Neoliberal turn to “design thinking” and the problems this genre presents for the potentials of design workshops and critical interventions. It will also describe our work withCLIMBandfinally propose that our outcomes can serve asevidence of architecture’s unique contribution to community en-gagement in its capacity to locate story and communication within the spaces at stake.

Dissonant Architecture, Architectures of DissidenceAdrian Parr, University of Cincinnati

This is a tale of two urban agglomerations separated by a vast ocean: Nairobi and Shanghai. Political and cultural specificitiesaside, the two share a great deal in common. For both everyday life, architectural difference, and public spaces are shaped by the forces of neoliberalism – privatization, competition, individualism, free market forces, and property rights. For both urban life is stark-ly divided by the disadvantage and inequities neoliberalism pro-duces along with the anxieties and suspicions that come along with this in the form of increased surveillance and security. As such, this essay is another tale: a tale of the mutually reinforcing urban mo-dalities of formality and informality. It is also a universal tale of the larger economic and demographic shifts underpinning planetary urbanization. The driving question: How do growing inequities af-fect architecture?




Resituationg Interiors Joel Sanders, Yale University

A Path to Elsewhere: The Transcenium ExperienceAmir H. Ameri, University of Colorado Denver

From early to mid 1930’s, Movie theater interiors in the United States underwent a profound transformation. By the end of the decade new movie theater auditoria bore little resemblance to movie theater au-ditoria of the preceding decade. Significant as the introduction ofsound was and closely as it was followed by calls for change in movie theater interiors,movie theaterhistorianshave found itdifficult tofindconnectionsbetween thewidespreadadoptionof soundandthe advent of a new movie theater auditorium, besides their temporal coincidence. For instance, “the rise of the talkies and the simultaneous demise of the Atmospheric Theater,” Richard Stapleford notes, “seem too coincidental to be unrelated. Yet a clear causal link between the twophenomenaisdifficulttoestablish.”Thelinkisindeeddifficultto establish insofar as it is posited as a technological and/or acous-tic question. It is not so as an ideational question. This paper closely examines the motivations and justifications of the proponents ofchange, as expressed in various trade and professional publications, incontrasttothemotivationsandjustificationsoftheproponentsofthe Movie Palaces of the prior decade. The transformation, the paper argues, was meant to forestall the ideational challenges of a vocal imaginary. It was meant to re/constitute an illusive ideational distance betweentheaudienceandthefilmicevent,orelsetherealandtheimaginary, lost to the uncanny advent of talking images on the screen.

Fluorescent Architecture, Or Dan Flavin at the SupermarketDavid Salomon, University At Buffalo, SUNY

Thearchitectureofsupermarkets.Thehistoryoffluorescentlighting.TheartofDanFlavin.[Figure#1]Giventhefundamentaldifferencesbetween these three, it is not surprising that when examined indepen-dently they tell distinct stories about post-WWII America. However, given their obvious intersection, when studied together they reveal important historical relationships between aesthetics, architecture, and suburbia. These relationships revolve around a sensibility shared by Minimalist art, suburban building typologies, and the technologies of everyday life; a sensibility that is best described as the banal spectacle.

Wetendtothinkofsensibilitiesandstylesaseithersuperficialoras the result of other cultural forces. They are what covers up or comes after the important stuff.

This paper reverses this sequence and hierarchy. In examining these three interrelated phenomenon this essay asks: What is to be gained by starting with sensibility and aesthetics when generat-ing and analyzing architectural artifacts? Can they be robust tech-niques for producing desirable social effects, especially in suburbia?

This paper will use these questions to examine the interrelated histo-riesofsuburbia,thesupermarket,thefluorescentlightandtheworkofDanFlavin.Indoingsoitwillargueforthearchitecturalefficacyof employing aesthetic practices and products to better understand, engageandfulfillitssocialandenvironmentalresponsibilities.

Superthickness: A Genealogy of Architectural Control from Surface to VolumeAndrew Santa Lucia, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

This paper argues that there is a contemporary practice within the domain of interior space that architects are actively mining for new disciplinary possibilities. I call this graphically derived volumetric practice within the interior, Superthickness. This study will show how a genealogy of graphic oriented surfaces after the industrial revolu-tion,findsorigins in thecommercialVictorianera, theearly20th-Century Art Nouveau, and in the 1970’s postmodern practice of Su-pergraphics. In both effect and realization, Superthickness pushes graphicsoutofflat,decorativeand/orabstract surfaces,creatingphysical volumes within interiors. The three iterations of Superthick-ness on which I will focus are (1) textured/extruded graphics on wall surfaces, (2) ambiguously defined furniture/walls/volume and (3)color as a spatial device. As a contemporary condition, architects are doing more with interior surfaces than purely dividing spaces and in effect creating a new global visibility for architecture.

This focus on surfaces emerges through three different points in modern history. First, ornate graphic appliqués and organic wall-paper patterns on interior walls become mainstay during the late Victorian era between 1890-1900. Second, the Total Graphic of the Art Nouveau movement during the beginning of the 20th century showed an attempt to graphically control the room in totalizing ways, both visually and physically. Last, during the late 1960s and 1970s, Supergraphics became emblematic of a pop-sensibility that used larger-than-life graphics on wall surfaces to achieve faux-spa-tial effects. Superthickness emerges within the last 10 years and has pushed the disciplinary identity of architecture to include tech-niques and strategies outside of normative architectural practice, yet steadfast in an ultimately spatial and volumetric commitment.

Superthickness operates as another entrance point for architects to interject themselves back into a global discourse on the interior and create a new visibility for contemporary practice in a broader cultur-al sense, by shifting the focus on the interior from surface to volume.



The New Global City and the End(s) of Public Space (2) Nandini Bagchee, City College of New YorkJune Williamson, City College of New York

Building Space Not Building: A Case Study Jorge Eduardo Prado, New Jersey Institute of TechnologySilva Ajemian, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Since 2008 our practice has been engaged in reanimating a public space on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. We teamed up withresidentsofEast1stStreettocreateFirstStreetGreen,anon-profitcollaboration with the goal of converting a seemingly derelict lot of land located at 33 East 1st Street from an inaccessible, garbage-strewn, rat-infested piece of “vacant” land into an active public space. Our in-volvement with the residents of 1st Street began as a pro bono advisory position but quickly evolved into a partnership that lead to the estab-lishment of FSG as the driving force behind revitalizing the lot.

The purpose of this paper is to share with you our experiences creating a public space - and our thoughts on a contemporary ar-chitectural practice engaged in such a project - and to bring our perspective to bear on the question of local vs. global permeating today’s critical discourse.

On the Silent Ethics of Globalism: Louis Kahn’s Unrealized Master Plan of Tehran Civic Center Shima Baradaran Mohajeri

Toward the end of the 1970s, when Foucault, following his short visits to Iran, called the shah’s pseudo-modernization agenda “deadweight” or “archaic” form of modernity, he was posing a critique of State pow-er that had imposed a dialectical tension between modernity and tra-ditional history in Iran. While the shah’s modernization plan was an attempt to fast forward a traditional culture into a Great Civilization (tamadun-i bozorg) parallel to that of the West, the shah’s alternative court, run by the queen, initiated a campaign to incorporate history and tradition into these recently fabricated modern landscapes. Un-der the patronage of the queen and her cultural protégé, the shah’s progressive and rapid modernism underwent smooth criticisms. This soft and almost reverted vision of modernity took place in the period following the 1963 White Revolution when a series of development plans were hastily introduced into Iran’s socioeconomic structures.

It was amid this dichotomous space of power and cultural place that Louis Kahn visited Iran to participate in the First International Con-gress of Architects in Isfahan in 1970. Three years later in 1973, with the advent of the oil boom, Kahn and Kenzo Tange were commis-sioned by the queen to collaborate in the design proposal for the New Civic Center in Abbas Abad district that was supposed to house the growing population of Tehran within the focal point of modern social and economic institutions. The Abbas Abad Civic Center thus became a site of struggle between the shah and the queen, and their dual vi-sions of modernity. As this paper argues, Kahn’s unrealized layout for a modern public space in the heart of the Iranian metropolis suggests his indirect resistance to authority in the form of politicized and insti-tutionalized culture and identity. Although, Kahn’s democratic blue-print was bound to be suppressed and excluded in favor of a conser-vative plan, Kahn’s silent message of globalism can still be heard in the face of those narratives of power and national identity.


Songdo, Korea: Aerotropolis, Metropolis, and Cyberopolis Madlen Simon, University of Maryland

Songdo IBD was conceived as an international business district and free trade zone, emerging from the Asian tradition of trading cities along the Silk Road. Marco Polo’s descriptions of the cities he encoun-tered along this route form the basis for Italo Calvino’s tales in Invis-ible Cities. Calvino’s tales tease apart various aspects of the different cities that Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan, different cities that, in the end, are really all the same city. We will use selected passages from Invisible Cities to inform an analysis that views the city of Song-do as three distinct cities.

The paper looks at public space at three scales of urbanism, in cities that we will call the Aerotropolis, the Metropolis, and the Cyberopolis. TheAerotropolisisapan-Asianbusinessdistrictdefinedbytraveldis-tance from Songdo’s travel hub. The Metropolis is a clearly delineated physical city in the process of becoming upon newly created land ad-jacent to the port city of Incheon. The Cyberopolis is the city in the cloud that touches down in the lives of the earthly denizens of Songdo.

Will Songdo become a sustainable model for a humane global city? Or will it be an example of what Michael Sorkin dubbed variations on a theme park in his book of the same name? We will examine the three scales of Songdo using as lenses Michael Sorkin’s three salient char-acteristics of the postmodern city: ageographia, controls, and simula-tions. Sorkin describes ageographia as a destabilization of the rela-tionship of the city to physical and cultural geography, where generic public space is articulated by applique. Controls encompass both physical and technological segregation, surveillance, and manipula-tion of the populace. Simulations refer to the substitution of applied imagery for authentic place-based culture.

Since Songdo is a city in the process of becoming, not yet fully built and inhabited, this case study of Songdo’s public space is largely based upon interpretation of visual and verbal information about the city by the Korean government, the developer, and the master plan architect.Ratherthanadefinitivecritique,thisanalysiswillproposesignificantquestionstobeconsideredastheurbanformtakesshapeandfillswithlife.Inthispaper,weexaminethevisionandquestionwhether realization will match vision. What factors are likely to pro-mote the vision? What factors might challenge the vision?

Songdohasmultiplepossible futures. Itmaymatureto fulfillMi-chael Sorkin’s negative vision of the city as theme park. Or, Song-do may become a positive model for sustainable urbanism in the age of ubiquitous global and cyber culture. This paper suggests a framework for future analysis of a more fully constructed, inhab-ited, and functioning Songdo.

1. Calvino, Italo, Invisible Cities (San Diego: Harcourt Inc., 1974).2. Sorkin, Michael, ed., Variations on a Theme Park: The New American

City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), xiii.

Spaces of the Recent Past: Cinematic Investigations for a Marketplace in the Space of Flows Jennifer Lee Michaliszyn, Wentworth Institute of Technology

The subject of this investigation is a physical crossroads of people of different ethnicities, nationalities and socio-economic status, both lo-cals and foreigners, and which hosts a spontaneous mix of formal and informal programs. It connects to several large palaces of consump-tion (shopping malls) and a major international stock exchange. And, it is a marketplace, which is both metaphor for, and host of, the global exchange of capital, goods and services. If there are sites where the “spaceofflows”materializes,HongKong’sCentralMarketwouldar-guably be one of them. Like other enclaves that inhabit the public imagination about the city, such as the (long demolished) Kowloon Walled City, the Chung King Mansions, and even the Chek Lap Kok International Airport, Central Market is a miniature of the global city nested within itself. The market ceased operations in 2003 and the building has been abandoned since. What to do with the Central Mar-ket has been the subject of the city’s public discourse on authenticity in the urban realm, and the site of opposing claims to public space.

THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2014 - 4:00PM - 5:30PMThe New Global City and the End(s) of Public Space (2) Continued


FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014 - 11:30AM - 1:00PM

Building Social Building Leah Kemp, Mississippi State University Emily Roush Elliott, Independent Scholar

Asthefieldofpublic interestarchitecturestruggles todefine it-self,parallelshavebeendrawnwiththepublichealthfieldanditsdivergencefromthefieldofmedicine.Shouldasimilardivisionbedrawn between socially impactful architecture and an otherwise definedtraditionalpractice?Thepublichealthanalogyislimitedinitsapplicationwhenspecializationwithineachfieldisconsidered.While specializationwithinmedicine defines education and pro-fessional practice (there are over 130 medical specialties offered inuniversitysettings),specializationinthefieldofarchitectureisgainedprimarilythroughexperience.Individualsandfirmsdevelopspecificorbroadexpertiseorganicallyoverthecourseofacareer.Branding,portfoliosofwork,andawardsindicatespecificareasofexpertisewithinthefieldofarchitecture,ratherthanaregulatorybody.Therefore,thepressuresthatrequiredpublichealthtodefineitselfasseparatefromthetraditionalfieldofmedicinedonotexistin regard to public interest architecture.

Withinthiscontext,theonusofdefiningpublic interestarchitec-ture currently lies within discourses such as those spurred by this ACSA call for papers. The quantity of students and emerging pro-fessionals clamoring for socially driven architectural opportunities clearlyindicatesthatthefieldwillburgeoninthecomingyears,anditisforthoseactivelyparticipatingtodaytoprovidedefinitionandexamples of best practices to guide the development of social im-pactarchitectureintoaclearlydefinedareaofexpertisewithinthebroaderfieldofarchitecture.Towardthisend,andframedwithinthespecificexperiencesofanongoingneighborhoodrevitalizationproject in the Mississippi Delta, this paper will address questions ofwhatdefinesanddifferentiatespublicinterestdesignfromtra-ditional practice, inherent challenges in social impact design, and howthefieldcanexpandbeyondthedo-goodervolunteerismthathas long characterized the movement.

Catalytic Approaches to Humanitarian Design: Critical Reflections Upon Twenty Years of Public Interest Design and Education Joseph Kennedy, NewSchool of Architecture and Design

Architects are not solely responsible for problems in the built envi-ronment (Thorpe & Gamman, 2011). Other stakeholders must also be part of the solution as well. Long-term successes in sustainable development are rooted in local communities, and rely on commu-nity assets, skills and agency (Kennedy, 2004). But, architects can be catalysts to spark a positive reaction in willing communities (Pe-terson in Bell & Wakeford, 2008), and through well-considered part-nerships and interventions, humanitarian architects can effect signif-icant change. “Catalytic architects” could describe those designers that seek to enable positive community change in an ongoing way. A catalyst is a substance that enables chemical change without itself being changed. Through catalytic approaches to the work of hu-manitarian architecture, the profession can conserve human capital and more likely achieve the levels of global solution needed.

Once it is clear that agency, control and responsibility lay in large part with the local community, designers can act more strategically and avoid wasted effort. Local social, physical, and knowledge as-sets can be maintained, grown and replicated through long-term associations. Given the pace of social and environmental trauma, this will only be possible through a comprehensive and holistic ap-proach (Cousins, 2013). This paper describes some of the issues and provides recommendations for the profession and academy for effectivelearningandworkinthefieldofhumanitarianarchitecture.

Building Change: Public Interest Design as CatalystJohn Comazzi, University of Minnesota Jim Lutz, University of Minnesota


FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014 - 11:30AM - 1:00PMBuilding Change Continued

Partner - Translate - Impact: A Method for Public In-terest Design in Architectural Education Nadia M. Anderson, Iowa State University

Contemporary conditions such as increasing disparities between rich and poor, global climate change, and the higher frequency of natural disasters demand that architecture rethink its role with re-spect to the natural and built environments and to the people who occupy them. This also requires architectural education to recon-sider how studio education can move away from over-emphasis on exclusive language and form-making while retaining its valu-able tools for synthesizing diverse information, creating concep-tualclarity,andexploringmultipleoptions.The [programname]at [institution name] using amethodology of Partner-Translate-Impact to introduce design students to Public Interest Design as an instrumental approach to achieving social, environmental, and economic impactsthroughthebuiltenvironment.The[program]partners with community organization to build knowledge of place and articulate values, translates these ideas into design ideas for discussion with partners, and achieves a range of impacts for stu-dents and communities. Partner-Translate-Impact is a method for both architectural pedagogy and community service that is rooted in the traditions of Public Interest Design while expanding their rel-evanceinaddressingtheissuesofthetwenty-firstcentury.

Reflecting on Service-Learning in Architecture: Increasing the Academic Relevance of Public Interest Design Projects Alexis Gregory, Mississippi State UniversityApril Heiselt, Mississippi State University

Most architecture programs include public interest design as a form of both outreach to the community and education for their students. This is done either through design studios working with a real client, or a community design center. The community de-sign center is within the architecture program and typically runs on grants to provide free or low-cost design services to the com-munity, especially those that would not otherwise be able to afford design services. Some architecture programs even have both, but very few of them actually incorporate service-learning in the tra-ditionalsense.Themajorityoftheseendeavorsreflectonlyonthearchitectural impact of the project: how it educates the students, meetscurricularrequirements,andfitsintoafacultymember’sre-searchagenda.Rarely,ifever,dothestudentsandfacultyreflecton the actual service-learning, or the impact on the client, end-user, and community-at-large. This paper challenges the architec-ture education community to integrate service-learning into public interestdesigntofurtherunderstandanddevelopthebenefitsofproviding these services as part of architecture education. A ser-vice-learning course that worked with a local Habitat for Humanity chapter will be used as a case study to discuss the pros and cons ofintegratingreflectionandreciprocityintopublicinterestdesign-based architecture courses.


A Saturated Landscape Atmosphere as the Qualification of Space Eric D. Bellin, University of Pennsylvania Over the last half decade, the term ‘atmosphere’ has become in-creasingly popular in contemporary architectural discourse. David Gissen’s book Subnature (2009) is divided into four sections; one of them is titled “Atmospheres” and it elaborates on four sorts of atmospheric phenomena. The term occasionally appears in peri-odicals such as the landscape and urban design magazine Topos and the journal architectural theory, Log. And the Swiss architect and Pritzker Prize winner, Peter Zumthor, as even published a book on the topic, its text adapted from a lecture he had delivered on “Atmospheres”. But still, in all these circumstances there is a cer-tain ambiguity to the term’s use. What exactly does atmosphere mean in relation to the built environment, and of what use is it to the designer?

TheOxfordEnglishDictionaryoffersseveralusefuldefinitionsofthe term. By the first, atmosphere is “a gaseous envelope sur-rounding any substance.“ And we’re all familiar with this in rela-tion to the planet Earth—we know it has an atmosphere, a layer of airthatwrapsitlikeanaura(fig.1).Inthis,onecanacceptthatacritical aspect of anything one would consider an atmosphere is its aspect of surrounding or enveloping something. Another help-fuldefinitionisthatatmosphereisa“surroundingmentalormoralelement or environment… a prevailing psychological climate… or a pervading tone or mood.” Here again it is something that enve-lopes, but also something sensed through our mental or emotional faculties, something that not only surrounds, but also seems to em-anate from things in the world charging the air with an almost tan-gible feeling. One might say one’s favorite café “has a wonderful atmosphere” or equally that the character of Mr. Hyde is “cloaked inanatmosphereofviolence” (fig.2). Anda thirddefinition isthat atmosphere is “the air in any particular place, especially as affected in its condition by heat, cold, purifying or contaminating influences.”Yetagainwe’reofferedanotionofsurroundingsthatsomehow com to contain and be affected by substances or ener-gies. But what does all this mean for the designer, and how does it bear upon our experience of the landscape?

Learning from Adjectival Urbanisms: The Pluralistic Urbanism Dongsei Kim, Columbia University

Rem Koolhaas declares that there has hardly been any theoretical description of the city by architects since Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (1961), Robert Venturi’s “Learning from Las Vegas” (1972), and his own “Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan” (1978) that describes how a city “performs and how it should perform” (Koolhaas 2007, 320). Despite Koolhaas’

proclamation, in the North American context, one can observe the growing number, and recent proliferation of diverse urbanisms modifiedwithheterogeneousadjectivesinthelasttwodecades.

Some of the recent adjectival urbanisms include, Bicycle Urban-ism (c. 2013), Tactical Urbanism (c. 2012), Combinatory Urbanism (2011), Fast-Forward Urbanism (2011), Post-Traumatic Urbanism (2010), Radical Urbanism (2009), Ecological Urbanism (2008), Parametric Urbanism (2008), Sustainable Urbanism (2007), Trans-Border Urbanism (2006), Recombinant Urbanism (2005), Splinter-ing Urbanism (2001), Green Urbanism (2000), Everyday Urbanism (1999), Landscape Urbanism (1997), New Urbanism (1993), etc. Most of these urbanisms are manifested through publications that carry their titles and often are promulgated through academic or profes-sional conferences and exhibitions. The extent of this proliferation has reached a point where Jonathan Barnett went on to write, “A Short Guide to 60 of the Newest Urbanisms: And there could be more” in 2011. There is even a blog entry by Yuri Artibise titled 101 Urbanisms dedicated to 101 adjectival urbanisms. However, discern-ing the many mentioned and other emerging adjectival urbanisms, it is obvious that not all are equal in its seriousness, depth nor its theoretical robustness.

This paper specifically examines Landscape Urbanism as a casestudythatemergedinthelate1990s,whichhassignificantlybeendebated, matured, and evolved in the North American context over the last decade or so. The explication of Landscape Urbanism’s ge-nealogy, its engendering socioeconomic structure, how it evolved, andhowitoperates—specificallyasaformofadjectivalurbanism—reveals some of the core values and roles adjectival urbanism holds that can assist architects to theorize, thus equipping them with new conceptual tools to rigorously understand the city.

First, these adjectives provide a framework that help critique cur-rent urban conditions and existing conceptual framework that lead to new alternatives and theoretical innovations. Second, they are a good representation of a healthy evolution of thoughts in the larger discourse of urbanism that makes itself relevant and potent for the period and stakeholder they operate for. This reiterates the impera-tivesofadjectivesenablingurbanismtoconstantlyrefine,question,and develop itself. Third has to do with the pluralism inherent in the notion of urbanism and the provocations generated and catalyzed by these adjectives that engender theoretical innovations and re-finements.Thesepointstogether illustratehowadjectivescanbe-come productive catalyst in conceptualizing, describing, mobilizing new and innovative alternatives in urbanism.

Lastly, the paper reminds us that we need to constantly reinvent the very notion of urbanism through inventing new adjectives that will assist us in comprehending and navigating the growing “huge tsunami of unknown urban substance,” that Koolhaas refers to, and

urbanism-modifying adjectives can equip us to do so.


Landscapes of the UrbanAziza Chaouni, University of Toronto


FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014 - 11:30AM - 1:00PMLandscapes of the Urban Continued

Ruins in Post Industrial Appalachian Culture Sarah Glenn, Miami University Growing up among the ruins of an Appalachian Ohio River town, an aesthetic of decay emanates from abandoned storefronts, factories, and civic buildings, while instilling an understanding of temporality, decline, and an acceptance of finality. Appalachia’sdecayed urban landscapes are products of industrial fervor that swept through the nation in the early 20th c., propelled by perpet-ual optimism and the promise of unstoppable progress. Now left with the skeletal remains of an imperious and obsolete economic system, Appalachian river city towns must explore with methods of savingtheirpastinordertodefineitsemergentculture.Ruinsarean allegorical representation of postindustrial Appalachian culture. Ruins are connections to the past, which can be adapted, reused, and reclaimed in the present in order to ground a culture struggling with identity and progress within an era of Post-Industrialization.

With this thesis I will establish connections between ruins and the post-industrialAppalachianculture.ByfirstdefiningruinsandAp-palachia, I will show ruins as an allegorical ruins of the post-indus-trial Appalachian culture. The first precedent studied is locatedwithin my hometown of Ironton, Ohio. The Grand Army of the Re-public’s Memorial Hall, an abandoned civic building, represents the effects of Appalachian population migration along the Ohio River. The second precedent, Ashland Kentucky, demonstrates the ef-fects of the emergent “New” Appalachia in the urban landscape, leading to questions of culture in contemporary Appalachia. Where in contrast Pittsburg, Pennsylvania has reinvented its city in its own unique way, by a preemptively negating the largest effects of dein-dustrialization, and through projects, such as the Armstrong Cork Lofts managed to create its own measure of progress, through its unique culture.


Identifying Style: Machine Recognition of Greek Temples and Gothic Cathedrals Frank Richard Jacobus, University of Arkansas

Computational synthesis tools that automatically generate solu-tions to design problems are not widely used in architectural prac-ticedespitemany years of research. This deficiency canbe at-tributed, inpart, to thedifficultyof constructing robustbuildingspecificdatabases.NewadvancesinartificialintelligencesuchasHierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) have the potential to make the construction of these databases more realistic in the near fu-ture. Based on an emerging theory of human neurological function, HTMs excel at ambiguous pattern recognition. This paper includes an experiment using HTMs for recognizing patterns in the form of visual style characteristics in Greek and Gothic architecture. Re-sults from the experiment indicate that HTM is able to successfully categorize images of Greek and Gothic buildings. This is a promis-ing development for future research in space and pattern recogni-tion in architecture and the related design disciplines and suggests potential for this software to eventually be used as a generative tool within design automation efforts.

Parametric Models in Hyper-Space Carlos Roberto Barrios, Clemson University

This paper presents a formalistic model to enhance visualization/ productivity/ efficiency/ when working with parametricmodels.The formalistic model allows to visually track all possible variations of any parameter in a logical structure that shows all the possible design variations at once. The formalistic model is an adaptation of the “hyperspace arrangements” structure studied by H. Lalvani in his dissertation. The paper introduces background information on parametric modeling and design; explains the problem of typi-cal arrangements of parametric modeling instances in traditional arrangements; and introduces a new formalistic model for logical arrangement of parametric instances. The paper also presents and discusses two examples of the application of the formalistic model to the variations in regular prismatic forms and the generation of the original designs of the columns of the Sagrada Familia.

Parametric Visual/MaterializationsDavid Benjamin, Columbia University



The Cultural Politics of Architectural Biology Charles L. Davis, II, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

The paper examines the cultural politics of biological metaphors in contemporary architecture in light of new research in genom-ics. After the completion of the Human Genome Project, biologists theorized the existence of an epigenetic layer of information that sits above the gene and regulates its interactions with surround-ing organic material. This secondary layer of information not only supplements those found within the human genome, but it stores crucial information about an organisms past; as a sort of cultural memory. Using these new discoveries, I reexamine the primary assumptions architects should make when they apply biological metaphorsintheirdesignprocesses.ThefirstassumptionIrecon-sider is the belief that all formal operations are reliant upon direct manipulation of the DNA coding of a system, which is metaphori-cally understood to be located in the scripting or coding of digital design platforms. I argue that overly autonomous interpretations of digital coding unconsciously reproduce the errors of neo-Dar-winian theories of evolution and other top-down systems theories that cannot formalize the fundamental contributions of cultural history to architectural forms. This argument critiques architects that move too quickly in transforming the lessons of the Human Genome Project into self-representational models of architectural construction without properly considering the cultural and histori-cal information that must be introduced into such closed systems. I then propose that the epigenetic layer introduces a novel oppor-tunity in avant-garde architecture to consciously identify and re-vise former essentialist constructions of ‘identity’ and ‘personhood’ with the non-essentialist models of contemporary genomics. While we have accomplished this at a formal level, we must move toward an explicit cultural project that situates individual desires for per-sonhood within the social and economic contexts of globalization.

In an effort to demonstrate what role the epigenetic layer might play in Architectural Biology, I participated in an exhibition last fall that reconstructed the long history of biological metaphors in ar-chitecture. This show, entitled “Primitive Parametrics: Biology as Architectural Catalyst” produced a set of analytical diagrams and 3-D printed models that attempted to reconcile the historical tran-sition from essentialist to non-essentialist models of biological de-velopment. Juxtaposing the architectural type forms described in Gottfried Semper’s der Stil (1860-63) with those of contemporary architects who have referenced and revised Semperian doctrine, these models demonstrate in visual terms the cultural implications associated with the model of nature introduced by genomic re-search. The role of this analytical approach is not to introduce a new style in architecture, but to externalize the cultural stakes of Architectural Biology in the present. I produce a reading of the representational meaning of the diagrams and models produced by the show, and theorize the future directions of such research in opening new territory for incorporating cultural information into digital design processes.

Using Computer Numeric Controlled Equipment for Customizing Repetitive Manufacturing Dana K. Gulling, North Carolina State University

In architecture, computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) has revolu-tionized the relationship between design and production. Proponents argue that CAM’s computer numeric controlled (CNC) machines can make individual and unique architecture components that are not prohibitively expensive. Architects and architectural educators have been exploring the direct impacts of CAM on architecture, but have been ignoring the indirect effect of CNC equipment on architecture. CNC machines have made it more affordable to customize the tools for repetitive manufacturing processes and therefore large produc-tion runs are no longer necessary. CNC milling machines, electrical discharge machining (EDM), and hot-wire foam cutters are used to create molds, patterns, and jigs for repetitive manufacturing. With the use of CNC equipment, repetitive manufacturing can be cost effective for small-volume productions and thus makes customizing repetitive manufacturing a viable option for architectural applica-tions. I am proposing the term ‘customized repetitive manufactur-ing’, or CRM, to reference this type of work.

Using CNC equipment to make tooling for repetitive manufacturing creates tension between CAM and CRM. Repetitive manufacturing is dependent on the technology of CAM in order to reduce tooling costs, yet CRM is a competitor to CAM. This paper explores the indirect impact of CNC equipment for facilitating customization for repetitively manufactured architectural components. This paper will use recent case studies of CRM in architecture to demonstrate that CRM is a viable alternative to CAM. The gathered case studies are located around the world and demonstrate a global application of this approach. All of the work uses CRM on a per project basis. That is to say that the architecture component design for the proj-ect and has not been mass produced.

The case studies will illustrate different approaches of using CNC equipment for CRM in architecture. CNC equipment can directly makes the tooling for CRM. It can be used directly to make soft tools out of milled foam or can be used to shape harder tools that are more durable. Second, CNC equipment can make the CRM tool, in-directly. This is when the CNC machine fabricates a master and then the tool is formed from the master. Typically, this is done when a larger production run is required and soft tools, such as CNC milled foam, are not durable enough to support the production run length. ThecasestudieswillalsodemonstratetheflexibilityandvaluethatCRM may offer over CAM for producing building components. Through this paper’s research, we can see that the implications of CAM on architecture design and construction are wider than its cur-rently highlighted use for making unique building components.

FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014 - 11:30AM - 1:00PMParametric Visual/Materializations Continued


John Portman and “La Nuit Américaine:” The Skyscraper in the Imagined City Daniel Lopez-Perez, University of San Diego

This paper analyzes the challenges facing the tall building in the 1970s, particularly in the relationship between the skyscraper and the city. It does so through the study of John Portman’s Marriott Marquis Project in Times Square (1973-1985) as an emblematic ex-ample of the urban paradoxes that emerge due to the implementa-tion of a mix-use formula and the introduction of an urban exterior deep within the building’s interior. The paper explores Portman’s distortion of the typology through the introduction of the atrium as a liminal space that synthesizes interior and exterior urban space throughagradientofnaturalandartificialspatialconditions.Rath-er than falling into a reductive dichotomy of “real” and “imaginary,” this paper argues that the virtue of Portman’s project in New York lies in its capacity to synthesize both conditions, shedding light intothisprojectasawaytoreflectupontheurbanchallengesfac-ing the tall building in the contemporary city.

Tall Buildings, the Increasing Gap between Fantasy and Reality: Iconic Opportunities in Need of Direction Terri Meyer Boake, University of Waterloo

This paper looks at the gap that exists between the “visionary” digi-tal proposals for tall buildings and the realities and potentials pre-sented by current design methods including structural and material technologies. Through a brief examination of the recent evolution of the tall building type, the paper proposes areas of concentration that can be used to engage architectural education. The expression of structure and exploration of contemporary systems such as di-agonalized tubes and diagrids are cited as means to understand the increasing complexity and challenge of the tall building type in its strive for an iconic presence in the city. Issues created by the drive to increase urban density are discussed with respect to the establish-ment of vitality in the pedestrian precinct by examining variations in the massing of towers and the impact of this on the streetscape in cities such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York and Dubai. Finally the paper looks at the education potential social media and current con-troversial tower projects as a focus to create discussion in the cur-riculum by looking at the further exploration of aspects of tall build-ing design that can either be seen to undermine the vitality of cities or to propel new approaches to creating a sustainable skyscraper.

TowardsaTypificationoftheUnique:TheTallBuildingas a Constituent of a Non-generic Urban FutureEric Firley, University of Miami



The European Skyscraper, Between Taming and Emancipation Julie Gimbal, La Sorbonne, Paris IV. Centre André Chastel

The capture and translation of high-rise architecture by European cities has taken an interesting twist in recent years: it is, again, the occasion to think about relations between horizontal and vertical dimensions, about breaking scales, links to be weaved and about symbolisms related to forms. But does the “European skyscraper” make sense, from both the semiological and the urban point of view? Does it escape from the double standardization stemmed fromthefunctionalistefficiencyandtheculturalhistory?Ourgoalis not to address these issues in absolute but to uncover the search for a balance between the strengths of tradition and the power of innovation, between individual initiative and community consensus.

Toward a Redefinition of the Vertical: The Skyscraper in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction Pasquale De Paola, Louisiana Tech University

The urban and systemic role of high-rise buildings has come a long way since Burnham and Root’s sixteen-story Monadnock Block in Chicago. While typologically repetitive because of programmatic, technological and economical contingencies, skyscrapers have become progressively and inherently entangled with the city’s economic patterning, while displaying a material embodiment of social and individual conditions often governed by a strong capi-talistic agenda. Within this framework the increasing ambition for verticality has transformed this building type into a living spec-tacle as well as the ultimate repository of modernization and its dominant modes of production. Historically speaking, high-rise buildings have been frequently associated to corporate and real estate self-absorption, which has consequently created a culture that seeks standardization and redundancy as a rather simplistic point of arrival. Yet, the redundancy of most systems of architec-tural production—especially those that promote repetitive seriality and disengage with local ecosystems—now require new modes of interdisciplinary research that engage in speculative and innova-tive modes of design production.

The methodology that I investigate in this paper seeks a more sys-temic and integrated approach to architectural design via compu-tation, which can provide a better understanding of material char-acteristics and the organization of matter and form. Interestingly enough, extensive research on new emerging materials, renewable energy, and ecological issues have created a design culture that focus on provisional modes of architectural production that offer unconventional approaches in order to avoid a nostalgic return to traditional solutions. Historically, if we look at the architectural pro-ductionthatdefinestheestablishmentofmodernism,wecanrecog-nize a proactive modality in which the functionality, especially that of a high-rise building, is strictly related to its structural modularity. Nevertheless, its repetitive nature and programmatic homogene-ity have led us to a sterile monumentality that seems to privilege static iconography rather than the heterogeneity typical of dynamic assemblages characterized by programmatic contaminations. How can we generate a new design methodology that through program-matic, urban, environmental and technological aspects create more site-responsive and operative high-rise buildings?

This paper in essence challenges the limits of architectural produc-tion regarding skyscrapers, rethinking its anthropological and cap-italistic-driven role through an examination of computational and parametric methodologies. To further validate this approach, my paper ultimately analyzes students work completed in two design studios taught in 2010 and 2013, which proposed a more systemic design practice discarding the idea of high-rises as static obelisks. Fundamentally, this pedagogy was implanted to ideologically re-defineandtransformthehigh-risefromafunctionalandcapitalisticapparatustoanovelindexicalmachinedefinedbyprogrammaticand operative hybridity.

FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014 - 11:30AM - 1:00PMTowardsaTypificationoftheUniqueContinued


FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014 - 3:00PM - 4:30PM

Challenging the Standard: Girls’ Schools as Agents for Change in Afghanistan Elizabeth Golden, University of Washington

Since the US led invasion in 2001, and the subsequent end to Tali-ban rule in the country, the Afghan government–with the help of various international organizations–has made great strides in es-tablishing an educational infrastructure that is more inclusive of women. The country is experiencing a rapid but unpredictable pe-riod of modernization, and schools are the setting where women and girls will negotiate this transition. This paper examines how one project–the Gohar Khaton Girls’ School, in Mazar-i-Sharif–challenges standard practices for building schools in the country, and sheds light on how Afghan schools can be designed as active agents, engaged with greater environmental, material, and cultural systems.

Design Build: Collaborative Labor Creating Community Shannon Sanders McDonald, Southern Illinois UniversityLaura Morthland, Southern Illinois UniversityChad Schwartz, Southern Illinois University

The pedagogy of design/build has developed into a standard for schools of architecture wishing to provide an opportunity for stu-dents, faculty, and professionals to work collaboratively toward the advancement of architectural learning through hands-on con-struction. Frequently, these endeavors allow students to engage in the pursuit of improving public welfare, building on Richard Sen-nett’s statement that “entering into others’ lives requires … an act of imagination” (Sennett 2008, 92). Less frequently, however, do these activities allow students to work side-by-side with students from other educational programs who are attempting to develop a construction skill set for employment. This framework embraces the philosophy of Foucault who believes that architecture “can and does produce positive effects when the liberating intentions of the architect coincide with the real practice of people in the exercise of their freedom” (Rabinow 1991, 246). This past year, University X’sSchoolofArchitecture[UXSOA]partneredwitha localcom-munity outreach organization, Delta Center in Cairo, IL to assist in developing their YouthBuild program. Fostered by a grant from the United States Department of Labor, this YouthBuild program brings together low income 16-24 year olds, who are attempting to turn their lives around with GED and construction skills training, and third year architecture students, who are striving to gain more practical experience in the development of their professional skills. This pa-per discusses the design/build “project” as a dialogue between the physical labor of construction, the dynamics of place and power, and the social interactions of building community relationships.

Librii: Case Study in the Anticipatory Library David Dewane, Catholic University of America

The bottom of the socio-economic pyramid represents the largest untapped and underserved market for design. There is currently significantpressure–bothfromsocialandmarket-drivensectors-to discover how to operate effectively in this space. What is need-ed at this critical juncture is radical cross-disciplinary approaches, which can leverage best practices currently in play and suggest new modes of operation ready to be explored. This essay offers a case study in a project that bridges social enterprise, the academy, and the world of corporate architecture.

Architectural Education and Building Resilient Practices in Developing CountriesAnselmo Gianluca Canfora, University of VirginiaMegan Suau, University of Virginia


Design PedagogyLaVerne Wells-Bowie, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University

Diagrams and Abstractions: Machines and Desires Frank Richard Jacobus, University of Arkansas

Diagramming has become a favored practice among many con-temporary critical practitioners. Often referred to as “abstract ma-chines”, diagrams characteristically focus one’s attention to a lim-ited, abstracted palette of ideas, and allow for design generation without the burdens of formalist thinking and its implications. This reductive process of the diagram mirrors that of the machine. If diagrams are conceived of as machines then it is important to ask who or what they serve, how they go about this service and the resultant effects on human perceptions and space creation. This paperprovidesadefinitionforthediagram,explaininghowtheyoperate within an emerging digital design realm, and elucidates as to their future role within a computational design context.

Drawn Through: The Sectional Perspective as a Tool of Engagement Shannon Criss, University of KansasLarry Bowne, Syracuse University

The sectional perspective is the quintessential drawing type in con-temporary design, capturing a multiplicity of viewpoints, simulta-neously analytical and experiential, bounded yet open-ended. As a mode of drawing, the sectional perspective goes beyond the normativeprojectionof three-dimensional spaceontoaflat sur-face, instead simultaneously entering the realm of the object and showing relations between interior and exterior, above and below, cavity and membrane. This paper explores the use of this drawing technique as a tool of representation, documentation, and explora-tion in the design studio, with a particular emphasis on the drawing as a mediation between investigation and intention.

Our text explores teaching techniques conceived in dialog among faculty at both the University of Florida Agrigultural and Mechani-cal University. In this paper, we outline three modes of engaging the design process through the process of preparing the sectional perspective. First, we look at techniques of representation, or how students merge multiple media (digital and physical models, ana-log delineation, computer rendering software, etc.) in the studio context. In particular, we emphasize the iterative nature of craft-ing the sectional perspective, as students oscillate between hand drafting and digital montage, seeking to optimize their frame of reference and the media most appropriate to communicating it.

More significantly, we examine how students use the sectionalperspective as an opportunity to reveal spatial and experiential in-tentions, as a documentation of the multifaceted nature of their design. Depending on their focus, the drawing may represent their project within the urban context, explore and reveal the relation-ship between structure and enclosure, and/or manifest their ap-proach to integrating daylight and electric light as well as accom-modating environmental control systems. We present drawings

that work not only experientially but also performatively, as they diagram phenomena such as circulation or passive systems (in-cluding cross-ventilation, the stack effect, thermal heat-absorption strategies, and the like).

While this documentary aspect of the work advances a holistic, comprehensive understanding of the means by which aesthetic and experiential intentions are integrated with structural, cladding, and environmental systems, the drawing can also serve as an ex-ploration. Under faculty guidance, students come to understand their designs through the process of making the drawings, which begin to reveal the phenomena of light, material character and scale of their proposals. In short, students learn to imagine their de-signs as constructed experience, one that relates to the landscape and context beyond the boundaries of their site.

The sectional perspective works most successfully as a develop-mental tool in upper level studios. Yet the very success of this drawing type as an integrating mode of representation paradoxi-callymight limit itsflexibilitytoadvancestudentdesigns intheirformative stages (students have to be able to glimpse framing, enclosure and building services; they struggle to integrate compo-nents that they cannot envision). We conclude with some teaching procedures and recommendations that can make this extraordi-narily useful drawing mode more than representation and docu-mentation but a genuine aid in formulating design intentions.

Medical Transplants Brian Kelly, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Throughout recent history, both the medical and architectural pro-fessions have incrementally developed their knowledge bases, as more is understood about the subject of their study; the human bodyorthearchitecturaledifice.Advancementsintheprofessionsassist in, among other things, developing public trust. Both archi-tecture and medicine are practice-based disciplines where contin-ual pursuit of better processes and results are demanded. In this pursuit there is not typically one right answer and the posture of the professional is to maintain what Le Corbusier called “a patient search.” Continual development has also occurred in the process-es, techniques, tools, and training of those professionals. While not necessarily always intentional, the history of these two professions hassharedvariousexchangesthroughouttime.Thistextidentifiestwo distinct exchanges, or ‘transplants,’ that have moved from the medical to the architectural profession with considerable resultant impacts. Transplant 1, the medical image, occurred from the Re-naissance forward, while Transplant 2, problem-based learning, oc-curred in the mid-20th century.

In her article titled “Skinless Architecture”, Beatriz Colomina sug-gests that architecture has always followed the medical profession:



“Today, there are new instruments of medical diagnosis, new sys-tems of representation. So if we want to talk about the state of the art in building envelopes, we should look to the very latest tech-niques of imaging the body and ask ourselves what effects they may have on the way we conceive buildings.”

She discusses how early 20th century modern architects, such as Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, as well as contemporary ar-chitects, including OMA and FOA, were inspired by medical im-agery,specificallythex-ray.Transplant1tracestheoverlapsanddevelopsataxonomyofexchangewherespecifictechniquesusedin the medical image are also strategically deployed in the archi-tectural image.

Aswell,themedicalprofessionwasthefirsttoembraceapeda-gogy seen today in virtually every architecture school around the world; problem-based learning. The history of problem-based learning dates back to the mid 1960’s and reportedly began at Mc-Master University in Canada. This technique was seen as a way to assist the medical professional in responding to a set of conditional situations in a profession that was rapidly changing the context of those decisions. Transplant 2 investigates the context and theories supporting problem-based learning and the reasons for its integra-tion into practice-based disciplines.

The relationship between the medical and architectural profes-sions has a long history of exchange. While the connections and exchanges might not always be explicit or intentional, history has shown that the exchange has served to push each of the profes-sions to new levels. The ability to remain current in a discipline with emerging information, tools, techniques, and technology is critical. As new techniques emerge in each, the ability to appropriate them into the other will ever be a temptation.

Works cited: Beatriz Colomina, “Skinless Architecture.” (Weimar: Wis-senschaftliche Zeitschrift der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, 2003), p. 124.

FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014 - 3:00PM - 4:30PMDesign Pedagogy Continued



A History of Community Design/Build in the United States in Four Moments Anna Gloria Goodman, University of California, Berkeley

This paper tells one history of community design/build through four cases. Moving chronologically it describes four projects built by students and volunteers under the direction of design educa-tors.Eachrepresentsasignificantexamplethatexhibitspedagogi-cal, professional and ethical principles often associated with com-munity design/build today. Although the combination of design/build pedagogy with social aims appears natural, the character and significance of this pairing requires exploration. This paperfocuses in each case on the way educators draw the connection between the labor of building and social goals. While any given program’shistoricandgeographicconditioninfluencestheshapeand meaning of this connection, a number of tropes and logics re-peat. I highlight the origins of the idea of “citizen architects,” the connection between place making and self-help, the association of design/build with grassroots politics and its use in crossing bound-aries and celebrating difference. Through this history, the paper works to demystify these explanations and exposes their basis on theories about work, poverty and technical expertise forged at mo-mentsofconflictandcrisis.Itarguesthatcommunitydesign/buildis a temporary form of education whose logics must be argued in relationtospecificconditions,ratherthanasablanketstrategyforthe education of all architects and the service of all communities.

Designing the Build Experience Through Inhabitable Deliverables - Three Case Studies Housing the Nature of Project-Based Instruction Daniel Butko, University of OklahomaAnthony Cricchio, University of Oklahoma

Academic curricula and pedagogical delivery methods vary, but coursework and opportunities outside the classroom offer new mil-lennial1 students encounters with the global professional practice of architecture. Design-build learning environments offer a means to engage today’s design students outside typical small-scale rep-resentations into development of full-scale inhabitable space(s). Varied in scale and disposition, opportunities focus upon deliber-ate and expressive inhabitable deliverables where design concepts address materials, function, and scale for global environments. Inhabitable deliverables begin as full-scale prototypes, allowing students the ability to incorporate various curriculum topics while designing within a project-based environment.

As Marshall McLuhan states, “everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influencesbehavior.”2Educatorscanprovideopportunitiesforexpe-rience, aspiration, and comprehension, but behavior is the outward manifestation of passion, knowledge, and opportunity. The reliance between design and construction phases establishes the foundation ofwhatdefinesthearchitecturalterminology“creating-making.”Thispaper explores the pedagogy of varied design-build engagements by showcasing three University of Oklahoma College of Architecture col-laborative projects focused on sheltering the “inhabitant” ranging in scale, scope, and diversity as listed below:

• Housing an inanimate object for human interaction Exhibited through the Little Free Library project integrated into Spring 2013 2nd year studio

• Housing children at play Exhibited through the 2012 CASA Playhouse Parade projects as a dedicated design-build short course

• Housing adults/families in a residential setting Exhibited through an on-going collaborative multi-disciplinary research based community project

Project-based instruction through inhabitable deliverables advances and enhances the education process. Vital to core requirements within a creating-making curriculum, incremental exposure to de-sign-build projects allows students kinesthetic correlations between learninganddoing. Oneopportunity isbeneficial,butmultiplede-sign-build experiences allow students to retain the knowledge and furtheringprofessionalproficiency.

In the professional spirit of “creating” and “making,” architecture cur-riculums must explore the constant integration across thinking, devel-oping, crafting, and physical building. Varied opportunities in and out ofclassallowstudentstobenefitfrominhabitabledeliverablesinlieuof small-scale models and drawings often taught as the only method

Design/Build Xchange (1)Ted Cavanagh, Dalhousie UniversitySergio Palleroni, Portland State University


of design process. The union of creating and making begins when a student possesses the drive and curiosity for bridging between ste-reotypical designers and constructors, thus recognizing the two as-pects of creating are intrinsically linked. A traditional design studio may not always be the most effectual manner to produce students with holistic qualities expected by the profession. Peer learning, applying content outside the classroom, compulsory participation, multiple levels of accountability, and the effects of projects beyond academia are key teaching components of project-based instruction.

1. Howe, N., and W. Strauss. Millennials go to College. New York: LifeCourse. 2003.2. McLuhan, Marshall.

Digital Fabrication in Design Build Studios William J. Carpenter, Jr., Southern Polytechnic State University

Historically, there has been a rift between design and construc-tion in architecture, but the growing popularity of design/build in the profession and in the university setting has begun to mend the gap. Currently, for many professional practices the integration of construction with design follows a set strategy; technology is re-served for the design sequence, followed by construction via tra-ditional methods (by hand). But, we are at a point of transition in architecture.Digital devices are now the norm in the office andthe academic studio. Students and professionals design with three-dimensional digital tools, and, through this technology, design and construction are inextricably woven together in a continuous feed-back loop. In particular, recent university design/build programs are following more closely the model of the Dessau Bauhaus, by employingthelatesttechnologiestofindnewwaystocreateandconstruct architecture. Because these programs have now propa-gated more widely, it is prudent to examine the different methods of application in order to understand the potential ramificationsofeachprogramtype.Itappearsthatmostprogramscanfitintoone of two categories: 1) Traditional Full-Scale or 2) Digitally Craft-edSegments.Inthefirsttype,theprogramadherestotraditionalbuilding methods, like the balloon frame. Technological advances are limited to environmental concerns; materials are chosen to in-creaseenergyefficiencyorreducetheimpactthebuildinghasonthe environment. The construction component of these courses is usually manifested in the erection of entire buildings (small, mod-est pavilions or homes). The second category of design/build pro-grams is focused on incremental construction. Students use digital tools for design and construction to create a portion of a building demonstrating a process or method of building. The building seg-ment is representative of the whole and indicative an allegiance to parametric design and the pursuit of research as a design tool. Studying the results of these two academic paradigms facilitates the exploration into the best course of action for prospective changes to design/build programs.

FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014 - 3:00PM - 4:30PMDesign/Build Xchange Continued



From Study Abroad to Global Programs: Beyond the Grand Tour: Institutional PerspectivesAriela Katz, New York UniversityPatricia Meehan, École nationale supérieure d’Architecture de Grenoble

Eternal City to Open City: Rome’s Postwar Academies as Architecture’s First Global Programs Denise Costanzo, Pennsylvania State University

Thissession’sdescriptionconfirmsthewidespreadviewthatfor-eign study for architects should achieve dramatically different goals than the ones that drew them to Rome and its academies for centuries.Studentsshouldgainflexibility,openness,andmobilityfrom their time overseas, and learn from places and cultures that point forward more than backwards. The idea of one city as an authoritative caput mundi is contrary to the ideological values and the practical realities of architecture as a modern discipline in a de-centered world. Today’s decisions about where students should go and what they should do while abroad are made in reaction to the tradition of academies in an Eternal City.

But Rome and its academies have provided more than a set of outmoded and conservative traditions. After World War II, a new generation of modernist architects had few reasons to spend start their careers at institutions whose very names announced a dis-credited design philosophy. Rather than stop welcoming archi-tects altogether, however, the British School, American, Spanish, andFrenchAcademiesredefinedtheirculturalmissionstobecomemore relevant to a changed discipline. This transformation took place to varying extents from 1946-1965; one would remain some-thing of a holdout where a more limited modernization was forced from without. Others became so open they would have been un-recognizable outside their grand facilities.

The various changes were made to address a series of immediate and practical issues: how strictly should architects’ work in Rome begovernedbyafixedstructureorspecificguidelinesaboutstyles,subjects, and types of projects? How much of their time should be spent in Rome and Italy, versus travel to wider destinations? To what extent should their experience be focused on an insular com-munity of compatriots and fellow architects, or emphasize access tothewiderworldofanewcultureandotherfields?Theseques-tions are as relevant today as they were at midcentury.

While multidisciplinary academies did not set out to do so, the re-sult of this process was a new and thoroughly modern framework for where, how and why architects should study overseas. It was still centered in Rome at venerable and still-traditional institutions, anddirectly influencedtheestablishmentofthatcity’sfirststudyabroad centers for North American architects in the late 1960s. To-gether, the war and the advent of modernism disrupted the ratio-nale and the mechanics of architects’ study at Rome’s international academies. But their postwar efforts to overcome academic tradi-tion and serve young architects within a rapidly evolving cultural contexthelpeddefinethevaluesguidingglobalprogramstoday.Byredefiningthemselvesasplaceswherearchitectscancarryoutanopen-ended journey of discovery, international academies helped continueaflowofpromisingyoungdesignerstoItalyandtofarthercorners of the world. As is so often the case, we can better under-stand architecture’s present condition by looking at Rome.

Incremental Initiatives: Global Programming X6Christopher Jarrett, University of North Carolina at CharlotteZhongjie Lin, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

To travel is to encounter the strange and unfamiliar.Marshal McLuhan

Contemporary architectural and urban design practices are in-creasingly international and global. In an era of increased inter-re-lationships, design professionals must be both globally aware and culturally adept. The SoA celebrates these responsibilities by plac-ing an emphasis upon the need to experience and study cultural, social, legal, economic, industrial, and other contextual differences throughout the world in order to understand how they may affect the built environment both at home and abroad.

Studying in a foreign country typically represents one of the most significant and unforgettable experiences in one’s architecturaleducation. The walls of an institution have the capacity to demate-rialize when students travel internationally. Traveling abroad gives studentstheopportunitytogainfirst-handexperienceofthelargerglobal community of which we all take part. To travel, as McLuhan cites, is to encounter the strange and unfamiliar. In so doing, one discovers insights into other cultures, develops new perspectives, and learns to reflectonhowone’sownculturehasshaped theirown understanding of the world around them. But how do such travel opportunities come to be? What is required of architecture schools to develop and expand innovative international program-ming for students? What steps, processes and strategies might facilitate increased engagement globally? This paper describes an evolutionary model, a set of incremental initiatives undertaken by amid-sizearchitectureschoolwithambitiousplanstosignificantlyincrease its breadth and depth of global engagement, immersion and collaboration, across both teaching and research.

MARKET/PLACE: Studies in (Genoa) ItalyMatthew Hamilton Rice, Florida International UniversityRiccardo Miselli, Florida International UniversityElisa Cagelli, Florida International University

This paper examinesmarket influences on higher education, ar-chitectural education and place through a consideration of study abroad in Italy, including educational tourism and “edutainment” as (unspoken) components of marketing for study abroad programs whichalsobenefit thehomeuniversity.Butwithin theattractionthat Italy offers and as a complement to the presumed value of its traditionaljustifications,thereisthepossibilityofrelevantcontem-porary critical inquiry of local and global themes that can mean-ingfully affect students’ understandings of their home culture and how they approach architectural practices in the 21st century. This is particularly so in the case of architectural study in Genoa, which exploits Italy as the draw but offers unexpected life experiences and learning opportunities on issues of modernity and contempo-raneity in complex urban, social and cultural situations.



Design/Build Xchange (2)Ted Cavanagh, Dalhousie UniversitySergio Palleroni, Portland State University

Design-Build: Personal Identity for the HomelessDavid Kratzer, Philadelphia University

A primary component of personal identity is a home. It is a place of stability, security, privacy, and a platform for the daily routines whichdefineus.ForKimDovey,”Wenotonlygiveasenseofiden-tity to a place we call home, but we also draw our identity from that of the place.” But what if one has no home?

This paper presents a homeless shelter dorm station design-build project and research completed by Philadelphia University archi-tecture majors. Fourteen students in a socio-political + design-build studio programmed, designed, and prototyped stations for the Women of Change “Safe Haven” homeless shelter managed byProjectH.O.M.E.inPhiladelphia.Thefacilityhousestwenty-fivechronically homeless women with varying degrees of mental ill-ness. After completing the design and prototyping, the agency fabricated the stations which were then assembled and installed by a team of students, faculty, and volunteers. Founded on the belief that architecture can provide for need, effect behavior and sup-port social change, the studio required the students to complete research on the homeless condition, the social agency and the po-litical context for public services. Initial understandings of “house” and “home” co-developed by the studio, the client, and the users will be summarized as part of this discussion.

With Project H.O.M.E.’s goal of breaking the cycle of chronic home-lessness, the team focused on providing a foundation for residents to establish personal identity. Central to this charge was the importance of privacy which quickly became the guiding issue of the project.

This paper will not only touch upon the design-build pedagogy em-ployed in the course and the process of “consensus building,” but will expand upon the role privacy played in agency’s goal of re-es-tablishing personal identity within its residents as the cornerstone of breaking the cycle of homelessness.

THE UNFLAT PAVILION: Adaptive Fabrication as New Direction for Design BuildNick Gelpi, Florida International University

This paper presents a series of graduate courses and a resultant case study pavilion, which embodies rapid and situational design methodologies demonstrating a shift in tendencies from some-thing static and ideal to something adaptive and reactive to pro-totyping, feedback and re-evaluation. Perhaps in the context of design/build, buildings can be liberated from the clear boundary conditions of discrete typological thinking through rapid prototyp-ing and feedback, better allowing us to embrace new forms of in-teraction by testing what works, and adapting our frozen strategic plans by dissolving the temporal progressions of design phases across multiple scales.

Prototyping provides us with a model for rapid collaboration with materials and performance. The practice of rapid prototypes and the feedback at multiple scales constitute a shift towards a new design practice which allows for adaptation and feedback as a re-sult of the fabrication process. As contemporary practice evolves technologically and new tools of digital fabrication evolve, the very nature by which we test and materialize our designs can also shift. These rapid directions in design build are suggestive of new forms. Certainly observing the mechanical and physical properties of mat-ter aren’t all that’s required to adapt to an uncertain future, but perhaps these insights into the nature of materials and the behav-ior of the world can help assure new collaborations between de-sign and how we imagine the built environments we inhabit. This suggests that feedback and prototyping plays as large a role as our discursive sensibilities, and as one changes so too must the other. This evolving collaboration with prototyping does the work offinetuningformforenvironmentandmaterial,andthisworkisthe focus for understanding the new possibilities for adapting to the feedback we gain in the process of design/build which isn’t ideal, rather contingent and always changing.


The Work of Robert L. Faust: A Case Study of Design Build in the AcademyChristian Dagg, Auburn University

For more than forty years Robert Faust taught in the Architec-ture program at Auburn University (1968 – 2011). He balanced his responsibilities as an academic with a small but substantial body of professional work. These built projects, which he constructed himself with a team of students, helped him to clarify his personal theories about space, material and Architecture. For Faust, Archi-tecture was a medium for personal expression and formal invention but also one that demanded precision and craft. Unusual in his approach in many ways, Faust often used materials other archi-tects would have ignored, and he built much the work for himself as the owner, an uncommon practice at the time. The existing work utilizes unusual forms, multiple material layers, and is detailed in a mannerthatreflectedFaust’sconcernforthecraftofconstructionand the impact construction methods had on his design choices.

By studying the work of an architect like Robert Faust, it becomes apparent that there is a history of the Architect led Design Build process, especially as it exists in academia that needs to be con-sidered. If we were to only look at the exceptional teaching envi-ronments that pursued design and construction, like Taliesin and the Rural Studio, the noteworthy individuals in between who pro-duced fascinating work under ambiguous legal and ethical condi-tions would be overlooked. The work of these architects and their students is often characterized by unusual forms, regional design motifs, unusual material choices and a commitment by the design-ers to be involved in the construction process. This involvement had typically been tempered by the concern that they would face discipline or critique from their colleagues or even worse from State Registration Boards. Because of this, these architects and educators learned that they often had to exist on the periphery, or exclusively in academia, or they found areas of legal ambiguity in which they could continue their practice.

Whenwe lookspecificallyat thecareerofRobertFaust,wecanseehowtheinfluenceofTaliesinmigratedacrossthecountryfromArizona and Wisconsin; through Louisiana, Iowa and Oklahoma; and arrived in 1968 in Auburn, Alabama. This is not an attempt at historical validation or a means to suggest that the Rural Studio is in fact the “Redneck Taliesin” as it has often been called. But more importantly, as we look at this period of time, it helps to underscore some of the current problems and successes of contemporary de-sign build projects conducted in the academy. Three issues that are visible in Faust work, and that reappear in academic design build are the question of ethics and the architect’s role in relation to construction, the question of job site rigor and the limits of craft, andfinallythecalibrationofprojectssuchthatformandconstruc-tion methods are integrated.

Design/Build Xchange (2) Continued




From Study Abroad to Global Programs: Beyond the Grand Tour: Current ApproachesAriela Katz, New York UniversityPatricia Meehan, École nationale supérieure d’Architecture de Grenoble

Critical Travel & Work- Mekong: Ho Chi Minh to Phnom PenhWilliam Truitt, University of HoustonShelby Elizabeth Doyle, Louisiana State University

Architectural study abroad programs have the potential to act as catalysts for students’ engagement in global and local issues and to have a transformative effect on their perception and understanding of context and place throughout their careers. However, this desired result is only possible when a careful merging of curriculum and study topic isachieved: facultymustclearlydefineamission for thepro-gram, administrators must devise a selective admissions process that isasfinanciallyneutralaspossible,andstudentsmustleavetheircom-fort zone and take risks that lead to academic discovery. While this set of goals can be achieved with programs in varying locations and durations, an intermediate length course of study in a dynamic urban center of a developing country offers a particularly conducive environ-ment for students and faculty to engage meaningfully with the city they are studying, in this case: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The 2013 Pan Asia program examined the uneven urban development in the Mekong Delta and surrounds, where both natural ecology and builtconditionsareinperilousflux.Despitepoliticalstrugglesbetweenthe countries of Vietnam and Cambodia, Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh have always been tied by the Mekong River and economic trade. Differencesincultureandgeographyhavecreatedspecificecologieswhere water meets urbanism. International capital trends toward a homogenous post-colonial city where the water infrastructure is re-garded as simply an impediment to growth. The program explored traditional Vietnamese and Khmer attitudes toward the city and land-scape while studying the forces of global capital on those vernacu-lar conditions. Students were charged with re-imagining both cities as different versions of a dynamic, hydraulic urbanism. Their design responses incorporated architecture, landscape architecture, and civil engineering in varying degrees depending on site and program.

This paper describes the College of Architecture’s 2013 Pan Asia study abroad program that was offered in the summer of 2013 and draws conclusions on how its successes and weaknesses can inform futurestudyabroadprogramsinanylocaleaswellasinfluencetheestablished course of study at the home institution.

Re-thinking Travel Abroad: Alternatives to the Typical TourMichael Zaretsky, University of Cincinnati

This paper is the result of having been a student on short and long-term travel abroad trips through Europe and having led students of Architecture and other disciplines on trips in Australia and East Africa. While the world is becoming more interconnected and ‘globalized’, the options for experiencing other cultures are growing. In this paper, I will make the case that students seeking travel abroad opportunities must have alternatives to the traditional European tour. I believe that all students must have the opportunity to study, interact with, and de-sign with other cultures. But, I also believe that there are many ways to provide this opportunity for students. Traveling to ‘developing’ ar-eas of the globe is a phenomenal learning experience and one that I highly recommend, given the appropriate support and structure for the experience. But, faculty can also provide levels of travel abroad without leaving the country.

Iwillprovidetravelabroadalternativesbasedonfiveyearsofteachingseminars and studios that work with communities in rural Tanzania as well as in impoverished urban areas within the US. There is no question that traveling is a unique, life-changing opportunity, but we can also utilize other means to introduce and engage students in the cultural specificityofanotherplace.Idobelievethatonemustbeabletospeakdirectly with someone who has been to the place that the students are engaging, but through sharing of stories, photos and videos one can begin to communicate the sense of a place. Video conferencing, when possible, provides a great way of connecting students with people in otherpartsoftheglobe.Workingwithnon-profitsthattraveltotheseregions can provide relationships to people who are deeply involved with these places. Historical, cultural, social, political, economic, techni-cal and design/construction related background research is essential whether students are traveling or not. Applied research to address designissuesthathavebeenclearlyidentifiedcanbeatremendoustool to engage students in real-world design development and innova-tion. We also utilize mock-ups to replicate the design and construction conditions for the communities with whom we are working. Through these means, we are able to introduce students to cultural difference, especially as it relates to design sensitivity and innovation.


Slowness: The Dialogue Between Architecture and Landscape in ScandinaviaJennifer Shields, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Architecture as a three-dimensional, inhabitable construct requires first-handexperienceforamorecomprehensiveunderstandingandanalysis to occur. Thematic overlaps can be found in contemporary critiques of current trends in architecture and the way we engage it. These critics include Michael Meredith of MOS Architects in New York and Finnish architect and theorist Juhani Pallasmaa, both of whom call for a multi-sensory encounter. The disengagement from the embodied experience of architecture is described by Meredith as a corruption of the attitude towards the study of architecture abroad. The prioritization of the visual in the engagement of archi-tecture results in a “rainfall of images” to quote Italo Calvino – per-haps a mental or photographic catalogue of diverse aesthetic mo-ments, but lacking depth and criticality. The rapid accumulation of trivial artifacts has replaced the gradual accumulation of knowledge. Pallasmaa relates speed not just to the way in which we encounter architecture, but to Architecture itself. We are challenged with how to reinforce the empirical and analytical nature of the Grand Tour – rejecting speed and instantaneity - while offering a diversity of experiences in a short-term study abroad program.

We found an opportunity to address these concerns in Scandinavia. A cohesiveness of cultural values with a diversity of natural and ur-ban environments can be found in the Nordic countries. The unique and dynamic natural landscapes of the Nordic countries have pro-foundlyinfluencedthedevelopmentofdistinctformsofModernism,rooted in a respect for the genius loci, or spirit of place. The revela-tion and prioritization of process in both our analytical methods as well as our methods of exploration offered a sense of slowness to thestudyabroadexperience.Bothwrittenandgraphicreflectioninsitu became important tools for processing the experiences of one culture before becoming immersed in the next.

The graphic process included traditional sketching on site but was augmented by analytical collage-making. As a more tactile medi-um, collage-making became a means of capturing the material and cultural substance of the architectural encounter. The founders of Cubism valued collage as a hybridization of painting and sculpture, existing at the threshold of two and three dimensions. Collage was used here as a tool for analysis. Collage has the capacity to abstract and communicate both formal and phenomenal characteristics. Like a collage, revealing evidence of time and its methods of construc-tion, a work of architecture contains this accumulated history. Ana-lyzing existing sites and buildings through collage can capture the givens,theunknowns,andtheelementsinflux.

Our explorations of the dialogue between architecture and land-scape in Scandinavia - experienced through an intentional, embod-ied, interaction - was imbedded in an inclusionary vision for the pro-gram. The students began to understand the interdependence of architecture, landscape, art, and culture, revealing that: “The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory…” (Milan Kundera) – forging these embodied experiences in their minds as resources to draw from throughout their careers.

Global Immunology: A Potential Cure for Being TwentyMason Andrews, Hampton University

An urban studies travel program called “Urban Rooms” is proving of critical value to a Master of Architecture degree program. The program has two overarching principles, both of which go back to Alberti’s observation that a house is like a city and a city like a house: First, that there is something fundamental to understanding how buildings can conspire to create a legible system of corridors (streets) and rooms (urban spaces). And second, that the function of this system is civic life, and that to understand how to design well for it, one must actively engage in conversation with its citizens and leaders. Thus its principle novelty may lie int the depth of its com-mitment to active engagement and conversation with design and political professionals in the cities in which it works.

The program is described, along with observations about its appli-cabilitytootherprogramsandmodificationsthathavebeenmadeduring its six years to preparation courses and itinerary. Also pon-dered is the cause of the profound alteration of students and their work subsequent to it.

From Study Abroad to Global Programs: Beyond the Grand Tour: Current Approaches Continued




The Elements of Urban Intelligence: New Pedagogies in Global Architectural TheoryDimitris Papanikolaou, Harvard University

Asset Urbanism: Ghosts, Zombies, and the Simultaneity of Amplified Growth and DecayMatthew Soules, University of British Columbia

Seismic shifts in the scope, scale, and tactics of global investment capital have made the closely aligned phenomena of market dy-namics and urbanization ever more complex, producing a wholly new form of socio-spatial dynamics, which this paper calls ‘Asset Urbanism.’ This novelmodeof urbanization ismarkedby thefi-nancialization of built space, where the physical increments of the city increasingly functionprimarilyasfinancial investmentassetscomplete with stock market like instability. This paper traces some of the dominant contours of asset urbanism as its ripples across the globe.

Cloud Colonies: Electronic Urbanism and Takes Zenetos’ City of the FutureLydia Kallipoliti, Syracuse University

In February 1972, Science magazine featured in capital letters: “Why cannot people live wherever they wish and congregate elec-tronically?” The editorial entitled “Old Cities, New Cities, No Cit-ies”commentedonthewondersofautomationthathadinfiltrateddesign thinking, especially in relevance to alleviating the chaotic and amorphous expansion of cities. The early 1960s witnessed sev-eral research programs on the transference of control principles in electromechanical systems to urban growth, as well as the im-plications of newly invented hardware technologies for the evolu-tion of urban structure and daily life. Jay W. Forrester’s theory on the growth and decay of cities (Urban Dynamics), Richard Meier’s Communications Theory of Urban Growth, and other studies, were all grounded on Claude Shannon’s communication theory, pledg-ing that information transmitters would advance a new course of metropolitan developments, minimizing distances and radically in-fluencingtheplanningofurbantertiarynuclei;Meierevenideatedfuturetraffictoclusteraroundimmaterialairflowelectromagneticchannels instead of highways. The central question these publica-tions raised was how electronic devices and hardware develop-ments would physically affect the urban corporeal body.

Such questions were largely addressed in the fictional project“Electronic Urbanism and the City of the Future” by the Greek ar-chitect and cybernetician Takes Zenetos, whose imagined city is vertically sprawled portraying the earth as a vacant desert terri-tory. This utopian schemes promise to unearth and re-synthesize the practices of everyday life, through the use of electronic com-munication systems. Individuals, if equipped with media structures, could be disconnected away from each other as corporeal bodies, as long as they were electronically connected to a centralized con-trol system. In hindsight, this forecast proves quite prophetic, con-sidering today’s ubiquity of wireless technologies and the culture of what Peter Sloterdjik calls modern individualization.

Pedagogy With and Against The Flow: Generational Shifts, Social Media, and the Gen Z BrainGabriel Fuentes, Independent Scholar

InTheDumbestGeneration:HowtheDigitalAgeStupefiesYoungAmericans and Jeopardizes our Future; Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Un-der 30 (2008), Mark Bauerlein—English Professor at Emory Univer-sity and former Director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts—argues that the cultural and technologi-cal forces of the Digital Age are turning America’s young into its dumbest generation, an intellectually anemic generation bred by social media to engage each other rather than aspiring to new modes of higher learning and deeper levels of historical/cultural consciousness. Generation Z’ers (Gen Z)—a term used to desig-nate the post-Millennial, digitally integrated demographic born roughly after 1991—navigate their world ephemerally and horizon-tally, immersing themselves, Bauerlein argues, in a trivial peer-to-peer ecosystem of online gaming, adolescent dialog, and pop cul-ture at the expense of more enriching activities outside of their social network, i.e. reading philosophy, history, or, for that matter, writing complete and coherent sentences. Rather than building (on)knowledge—philosophical,political,andscientifictruth—GenZ’ers merely retrieve and redistribute bits of information, rarely understanding (much less interrogating) their broader implica-tions. Contra Bauerlein, historian, economist, and demographer Neil Howe argues that these attributes make Gen Z the next great generation. They are intellectually agile, have a deeper sense of community, and are motivated to trigger political change from within the system. Interested less in moral and philosophical complexity, authenticity, and “original” culture, they have developed (a capacity for) a new kind of forward-looking derivative intelligence that sheds historical baggage and privileges pragmatic doing over deep thinking. Although indirect, Bauerlein’s and Howe’s quasi-political debate recalls recent debates within architectural discourse, namely a generational tendency to pit architectural theory (presumed to be high-browed thinking from above) against architectural practice (presumed to be pragmatic doing on the ground). Ideological pro-pensity notwithstanding, the cultural, technological, and psycho-logical shifts they identify among youth necessarily problematize both design teaching and learning. But maintaining such a hard distinction between deep thinking and pragmatic doing is coun-terproductive to effectively teaching Gen Z architecture students, failing to leverage their horizontally-wired brains and handicapping their ability tonavigatean increasingly fast-pacedandflattenedworld as intelligent and productively critical designers; that is, as designers capable of calibrating the degree of their negation and/oraffirmationofthestatusquo.Ifwetakeonarchitecturalpeda-gogy as a project, we must learn to operate as double-agents, to workwithandagainsttheflow,toleverageGenZ’sbesttendencieswhilefilteringouttheirworstones.Beforeprojectingarchitecture’sdiscipline onto them (in all its complex histories, methodologies, and ideologies) we must learn to operate both within and against Gen Z’s collective milieu. This paper constructs that milieu as a generational constellation of demographic, historical, and techno-social forces that frames our students attitudes, abilities, and tendencies and unpacks some its implications for architectural design pedagogy.



Game On: The Use of Location Based Technologies in Design TodayEric Gordon, Emerson CollegeAmy Murphy, University of Southern California

A Harvest of the Accessible: Potentials and Limitations of Utilizing Web 2.0 Data for Urban AnalysisAlex Webb, University of New Mexico

User-generated digital information, or Web 2.0 data, facilitates a direct,digital connectionofbillionsusers. Firstdefined in 1999,Web 2.0 describes a method of data transfer that is interactive and multi-directional, a departure from the static web pages of the initial internet. Web 2.0 technology allows users to converse and exchange information through web apps that create user-gener-ated content. The content ranges from text to images, frequently tagged with geographical information.

In The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch wrote “Environmental images are the result of a two-way process between the observer and his environment. The environment suggests distinctions and relations, and the observer… selects, organizes, and endows with meaning what he sees.” If designers could leverage Web 2.0 technology to retrieveuser-generatedcontentandfilteritrelativetogeographyandrelevance,thisrelationshiphasthepotentialtobeflipped;theenvironment, through the guidance of the designer, would select, organize, and endow meaning to the behavior of the inhabitants and the inhabitants would suggest distinctions and relations.

While the potential of Web 2.0 data is seductive, much of the infor-mation available is far from comprehensive or relevant. This paper will clarify conditions surrounding existing Web 2.0 data, describe several approaches of leveraging existing data sources for design processes, and discuss potential implications of utilizing similar techniques with future information technology.

Parallel Thinking: Networked Technologies for Enhanced UrbanityMarc Norman, Syracuse University

With the rise of the automobile and the easy access to suburbia there was a shift in our American cities from accommodating and welcoming density to accommodating cars. With cities hollowed out, but able to accept thousands of parkers a world was lost. In-novative thinking regarding technology took a backseat to mim-icking the ascendant suburban landscape. At the dawn of the 21st century,automotiveaccessremainscodifiedinfinance,codesandtraditional thinking hampering our now revitalizing urban environ-ments. We can once again create cities at once unique, welcom-ing and at the forefront of innovative thinking. New technologies, smart phone applications, and entrepreneurial initiative are chang-ing urban life. By systematizing these disparate innovations we can create the circumstances to change urban form.


Remaking Locations, Based on Fictions, Questions and SwapsAnda French, Syracuse University

Thispaperreflectsonthreeprojectswithinabodyofwork,researchand teaching, created between 2009 and 2013, that focuses on mo-bile digital communication and collaboration, situated in geographic locations, places in the City of Syracuse, NY. The projects are pre-sented here as experiments in various permutations of the pairing of mobile communications with urban sites to heighten associative experiences and strengthen public engagement. These experiments each draw from a consideration of Michel de Certeau’s description of strategies, tactics and “making do” in the urban environment. To operate tactically, each project possesses a unique combina-torymodelofcontentandparticipation.Thefirstdeliverscontentintheformofamultiple-location-basedfictionalstoryandasksforparticipation through movement across the city; the second solicits content in the form of provocative questions about the community, asking for participation at distinct physical intervention sites in the city; the third deals in two types of content, one, crowd-sourced sounds, evokes an understanding of the scale of the gathered com-munity and draws participants to the second, more literal content in the form of barters in which the community participates via a col-laboration with an existing local creative online bartering platform.

Zero Feet Away: Technology, Sex, Love, and the Image of the CityThomas Forget, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Location-based technologies that facilitate social, romantic, and sexual encounters are reconfiguring how certain demographicgroups map and otherwise visualize their communities. The extent to which the new modes of communication and navigation emerg-ing from these technologies signal a broader transformation of the public realm is an open question. As GPS-enable apps such as Grin-dr and Tinder regulate social rhythms and visualization strategies within pockets of contemporary culture, they may also foretell a fu-ture in which decentralized and desire-oriented mapping practices undermine long-standing paradigms of cartography.

Chorology is the study of overlapping phenomena that occur with-in a limited geographic region. Rooted in the discipline cultural ge-ography, it derives from Plato’s notion of chôra as a “third kind” of reality, one that is neither intelligible nor sensible, neither being nor becoming. Chorological research confronts the layers of place em-bedded within space and analyzes ambiguities between cause and effect. Chorological mapping practices, likewise, strive to represent the dissonance between objective space and the underlying forces that regulate it. While all maps are subjective, some are more ex-plicitly chorological than others, and new technologies, such as GIS (Global Information Systems), promise to heighten the ability of geographers and others to create visualizations that complicate, in productive ways, relationships between place and space. Location-basedmeetingappsareespeciallysignificantinthisregard,astheyare cartographic tools operated not by researchers external to a community, but rather by members within a community. Users of suchappsemploymethodsofvisualizationspecificallydevisedtointerpret ever-shifting data sets of which they are apart, and mil-lions of smartphones and tablets have become lenses that frame (and perpetually reframe) parameters of place and space with un-precedentedfluidityandinteractivity.

The following is a case study of Grindr, an app that serves com-munities of gay and bisexual men. The objective is to analyze an instance of an increasingly common phenomenon in the contem-porary city—the displacement of social structures from physical spaces through the democratization of previously rarified tech-nologies. The popularity and cultural relevance of Grindr renders its use in large cities an especially vital example of technology-inspiredchorologyintheearlydigitalage,anditssignificancelikelyextends beyond the community that it serves. The current moment provides a rare opportunity to study a technologically motivated paradigm shift in the nature of public space in its infancy. The ways in which Grindr differs both from physical meeting places, such as bars and cafes, and from web-based meeting platforms, such as Adam4Adam and Craigslist, raise issues of identity, privacy, and spatial cognition that have broad implications.

FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014 - 5:00PM - 6:30PMGame On Continued


SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 2014 - 9:00AM - 10:30AM

Chasing the City (1)Joshua M. Nason, University of Texas at ArlingtonJeffrey Nesbit, Texas Tech University

A Quantum City, or How to Master The GenericDiana Alvarez-Marin, ETH ZürichMiro Roman, SEC- FCL

Here,iswherepeoplelive.Yethere,isnotexactlydefinableingeo-metric terms. In order to locate us, one must consider n-dimensions, out of which none is correct or false. In fact, all of them coexist si-multaneously in a non-Euclidian condition, where (when) here is not a point in space, but rather a point and all its possible trajectories, reachable within a few digitations. Our city is no longer locked in one space and time, but can be engendered, and connected, at any time, in any place. Unmistakably, such an expansion of our capabilities was some centuries ago a privilege of emperors, popes and kings. Just imagine, today, any of us has more access to information, than Augustus back in roman times, or the president of the United States of America 20 years ago. Considering this as an enlargement of ur-ban experience towards more abstract and operational dimensions, what does it entail in the way one can engender and understand the city? What to do if, potentially, one could do anything?

Dubai: The Quest for a Global Urban UtopiaHussam Salama, Qatar University

During the last decade, Dubai managed to establish a spectacular and glamorous urban structure that attracted global attention and placed the city among top world ones. The urban experience of Dubaiisbecomingamodelthatisinfluencingtrendsofdevelop-ment in many major cities in the Middle East. It presents a new approach to urban planning for globalizing cities. In this paper I analyze the conceptions that have been shaping this experience of urban change. I argue that development in Dubai has been con-ceptualized by the idea of creating a series of projects that have two core features: 1)A spectacular image that can attract global attention,and2)Thecapacityoftriggeringglobalflowsofcapi-tal, people, goods and information to the city. I call these projects “placesofflows”whichtogethermakethecorecomponentsofthenew urban structure of Dubai.

Urban Interstate Rights-of-Way as Sites of InterventionTed Shelton, University of Tennessee-KnoxvilleAmanda Gann, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

This paper examines US urban interstate rights-of-way and pro-poses that they be repurposed for a variety of uses. It situates the issuewithabriefoverviewofthedifficultiesposedbyurbaninter-states and some key milestones in the history of their development. In considering the potential scope of such interventions, the paper classifies all of thediscretemid-sizedAmerican cities through atypological study of how they interface with the interstate system. The paper considers the shared characteristics of urban interstate rights-of-way that make them promising for repurposing. Finally, through four thought experiments, it proposes potential new uses for the reclaimed spaces and considers how these new uses might impact the city around them both spatially and functionally.

Allographic Urbanism_From Guerrilla to Open SourceMona El Khafif, University of WaterlooMarcella Del Signore, Tulane University

In a time in which city-wide planning strategies are failing due to a lack of city governance and the widespread bankruptcy of com-munities, bottom-up models present themselves as an alternative approach to balancing public-private partnerships governed by corporate bodies. Even European cities with relatively functional administrations are moving away from top-down planning mod-els, and therefore it would seem that the counterposed bottom-up strategy is taking its place. Characterized as deploying ad-hoc ma-neuvers stretching from guerrilla urbanism to DIY, these strategies are not an adequate response to the widespread need for city-wide design strategies. However, bottom-up approaches do possess a potentiality for rapid change, and this potentiality can be actual-ized if adequate notations and design frameworks are set in place that can capitalize on open source participation while simultane-ously regulating the large-scale outcome.

This paper examines strategies that take advantage of small-scale networked design implementations as a method of addressing is-sues of large-scale transformation. These projects navigate top-down and bottom-up strategies, combining the best of both and abandoning scenarios that are rigid, generic, or ad hoc. These proj-ects utilize interim design as a testing ground for user participation, while mediating the simultaneously embeddedness of dynamic ur-ban notations that address larger urban issues of long-term inte-gration. The notion of multiplicity, replication and directed partici-pation becomes a critical part of these game changing strategies.


SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 2014 - 9:00AM - 10:30AM

New Orders of MagnitudeJordan Geiger, University At Buffalo, SUNY

Better know a VLO: Realist Approaches to Very Large OrganizationsNicole Koltick, Drexel University

The Very Large Organization (VLO) may be thought of as manifest-ing not only at large scales spatially and temporally, but also at very small scales. At both of these extremes, such organizations hold compelling implications for how we contend with complex, highly entangled sets of relations between entities. Extreme scales, both large and small, exceed our ability to have physical hands-on knowl-edge of phenomena. Instead the means by which we operate on thesescalesarenecessarilymediated.Thewayswefigure,translateand operate on large organizations are inextricably entwined with questions of objectivity, representation and scale. This paper will examine current approaches to such problems and question how these may be expanded and challenged through emerging realist philosophical thought and aesthetic approaches. The translations that color our understanding of very large organizations result in a series of rather subjective revisions, deletions and additions. Partic-ularly suspect approaches would be those that claim a rationalist or deterministic understanding of networks and systems, which in fact embody chaotic and emergent phenomena at all scales of inquiry. Looking to philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze, we can trace an argument for the legitimacy of aesthetic responses including affecting and being affected as one very dis-tinct way of knowing. In addressing scalar extremes, I will attempt to sketch out a realist philosophy that seeks to engage objects and phenomena on the contradictory, illusory and slippery terms by which they present themselves. Aesthetic approaches have long been regarded as irrational, frivolous and not up to the task of deal-ing with large-scale, complex organizations.

This paper will contend that aesthetics may indeed be a wholly appropriate means of response, one particularly suited to the disci-plines of art, architecture, writing and philosophy in their engage-ment with such systems. The work of Steven Shaviro puts forth an idea of “critical aestheticism”. This critical aestheticism is interest-ed in realist approaches while also acknowledging the intangible and elusive plane of operation that encompasses the emotional and sensual response. This offers a novel stance by which we might engage new orders of magnitude. In addition to older philosophical work on the subject, the emerging realist philosophies of specula-tive realism and object-oriented ontology offer a potent set of con-ceptual tools to contend with a world that, as we focus in (or zoom out) to lesser or greater orders of magnitude, is revealing itself to be increasingly contradictory – at once somehow more real and yet increasingly harder to grasp.

This paper will call into question persistent biases which privilege static attempts to introduce clarity where fuzziness reigns. We will examine emerging developments across disciplines that reveal theexistenceofmultipleentangledrealitiesexertinginfluenceononeanotherinbeautifulandunpredictableways.Wewillfinishbyexaminingaestheticapproachesandnarrativetoolsfromfilmandfictionthatmayofferanunsettlingyetpowerfulapproachtocon-tend with very large organizations. These futures both large and small are messier yet more magical, terrifying and beautiful than we might have imagined.

How Big is Not Big Enough?Brendan D. Moran, Syracuse University

As more and more pronouncements of a new horizon in architec-tural design go by the name of parametricism, is something being overlooked? How do today’s parametric design attitudes relate to thewayinwhichparametricsareunderstoodinfieldsbeyondar-chitecture? Taking a cue from philosopher Bernard Stiegler, this paper suggests an overlooked political concern that may well prove an obstacle to architecture fully participating in horizons made available in today’s era of Big Data.

Soil cities: Unleashing material VLOs with natural computingRachel Armstrong, Independent Scholar

“Nature is always eluding being conceptualized – not because it transcends the material realm – but because it is relentlessly material” (Morton, 2007, p70).

At the start of the 21st century we exist within the consensual hal-lucination of Cartesian reality that underpins the modern age. This viewpoint imagines that information and matter are divided and therefore demands we must to choose to design and engineer in one realm, or the other. While we may move back and forth between these media, as yet, there is no readily available technological plat-form to unite them. Currently, our greatest opportunities lie within the swift, cybernetic realms of algorithms that free us from the brute materiality of the physical world. Conversely, our greatest challenges are in opposing the restless material networks that shape the natural world. These run counter to the order imposed by the virtually con-ceived, geometric programs that shape our modern cities. Despite their networks of straight lines and perfect arcs, incessant, subver-sive material acts invisibly unravel these geometries, as a thread of space-time. This matter-vandalism may be witnessed in the gradual wear and tear of buildings, or as sudden and catastrophic natural disasters such as, hurricane Sandy (Bloomberg, No date) and the Sendai tsunami in Japan (NBC News, 2012). While the information age has stripped many veils from the physical realm to try to ap-prehend the nature of its innate complexity, the insights gathered do not directly manifest in material outcomes but are open to interpre-tation when they are (re)transcribed into matter. Although modern computing allows us to more precisely place matter using 3D print-ing technologies, using increasingly ‘big’ datasets, these techniques operate in ways that do not encourage matter its to act beyond thegeometricconfinesoftheirorganizingvoxels.Evenwhenpoly-mers are encouraged to buckle in 4D printing techniques when they come in contact with water (TED.com, 2013), they are nevertheless required to perform according to geometric paradigms. While these principles work well at equilibrium states, they struggle when sys-tems are lively and far from equilibrium – a characteristic of the living world (Armstrong, 2012c). With such constraints on the way matter is imagined and processed, the production platforms that underpin human development have changed little since the age of modern computing. On the other hand, the rate at which we have been able to consume substances and deplete their biotic value because of the speed of utilisation has vastly increased. So, currently we are striv-ing to paternalistically reduce our negative impact on the vitality of the biosphere, through self-imposed ‘austerity’ measures, whose rhetoric characterises ‘sustainable’ practices. By engaging with less of more of the same kind of approaches that we currently use, it is hoped that it will be possible to attenuate resource depletion. How-ever,thisobjectiveislikelytobecomeincreasinglydifficulttoat-tain through conservation measures alone as our populations swell by another third by the middle of this century (Armstrong, 2012b)


SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 2014 - 9:00PM - 10:30PM

ReflectivePracticesinaGlobalAge;or,Is Boyer Still Meaningful?Phoebe Crisman, University of VirginiaJosé L.S. Gámez, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Building on Boyer: Heeding Curriculum Scholarship to Answer Architecture’s Global Call by Encouraging Leadership Studies in Design Studio Within a Liberal Arts Approach to Professional Architecture EducationBeth A. Bilek-Golias, Kent State University

The purpose of this curriculum critique is to propose that the nature of the culture created by a liberal arts approach to a professional architecture education can allow for leadership studies to become a necessary curriculum aim for design studio. Such progressive pedagogy can promote ways of working with prophetic leader-ship (McElfresh-Spehler & Slattery, 1999) in the spirit of Dewey. The National Architectural Accreditation Board (NAAB) suggests this subject matter to be taught in a lecture format professional practice course. Leadership study needs a deep meaningful demo-cratic self and social understanding through transactional (Ryan, 2011) and experiential learning (Eisner, 1998) and design studio can providetheplaceforsuchevidence-basedjudgmentandreflectivedecision-making. New architectural graduates who personify and have role played (Author, 2012) this inspired and visionary leader-ship possess the ability to immediately impact the profession and potentially strengthen its position in our global communities.

Invitingreflectiveinquiriesbetweencurriculumscholars(CS)andarchitects (A) in Disciplined Professional Learning Communities (Henderson & Gornik, 2007) can diversify deliberative curriculum conversations. CS-A DPLCs can explore “new insights, expand and modify old principles, and reexamine accepted interpretations” (Kincheloe, 2005, p.687) while strengthening our educational and professional cultures. Supported by strong educators and schol-ars leading our academic institutions, we can work towards col-laborative ways of becoming while design studio can encourage leadership studies to enable professional architecture education to address the complex demands of global contexts.

Challenges and Opportunities: Towards a Socially Responsible Curriculum in a Globalizing WorldMohammad Gharipour, Morgan State UniversityHooman Koliji, University of Maryland

The architectural curricula in American universities are often criti-cized for their inadequate and slow revisions in response to global and contemporary issues. These curricular changes, even with re-spect to National Architectural Accreditation Board (NAAB), have been criticized for their superficial and rushed responses to thefluctuatingmarketandinnovationsinotherdisciplinesratherthanfundamental attempts to take leadership in responding to critical global issues. Most recent revisions in architectural curricula have been focused on two mainstream trends of sustainability and digital technology, inwhichfinancial resourcesexist. With increasedat-tention to the issue of “Social Justice” in the humanities, questions arise on the viability of current architectural curricula in responding to growing sophisticate problems in a globalizing world. This paper critically examines this issue through an analysis of the NAAB as an influentialtoolforarchitecturalprograms,anddiscussesopportuni-ties and challenges offered by this tool. The paper concludes with reflectionsonimperativeissuespertainingcurriculaandtheirpoten-tial for social impact and ways these could be addresses as minimum requirements for program accreditations.

Creative Inquiry: A Case for Specialized Research as Foundation of the Undergraduate Architecture CurriculumDavid Lee, Clemson University

This paper examines some of the common shortfalls of research uni-versity education particular to architecture schools and proposes a model for an architecture curriculum based on creative inquiry and specialization. Architecture’s future, as a theoretical discourse and professional practice, is dependent on the incorporation computa-tional thinking, diversity of practice, and specialized education for it to remain relevant in social perception as well as to its peer disci-plines. These three areas can all be integrated in an undergraduate curriculum, however, careful planning of the curriculum is necessary to avoid the tendency to insert additional requirements to and sim-ply produce extraneous material.


SystemCityFrances Hsu, Aalto UniversityStuart Romm, Georgia Institute of Technology

If the greatest challenge to architecture since the turn of the century was posed by mechanization, then current preoccupations undoubt-edly concern technological approaches to information. The impact of empirical approaches on architecture’s spatial concerns and com-positional methods are part of a broad inquiry into how 21st century sciences,suchasgeography,haveinfluenceddesignandthepro-fession. This paper addresses “systems thinking” as a way of teach-ing design and practicing architecture. It presents student work that was conceived of and critiqued as a system. How can systems aid in the reformulation of our ideas of urban infrastructure, program-matic/social relationships, public space, and site constructs? The in-quiry is predicated on the ostensible need to further investigate the design of cities as systems that are resilient, responsive, and regen-erative;capableofabsorbingmultiple,variedandoftenconflictingand unpredictable forces to sustain changes in process over time.

The Making of Chinese Eco-New Towns: Three Case StudiesZhongjie Lin, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

China has been undergoing massive urbanization for more than two decades, which has resulted in an unprecedented construction boom and generated numerous plans of new towns. These ambitious new town projects not only serve to house the swelling population but also provide new venues to sustain economic growth in major cities. Concurrently, the country’s economic marketization and entrepre-neurial governance tend to encourage investments in previously un-tried environmental technologies, which are used in various eco-city experiments to explore future urban forms. The residential quarters often constitute the main component in the eco-cities, and embody primary planning ideas. To a great extent, these new towns and eco-logical communities represent emerging urban forms under China’s rapidurbanization, and reflect the changing relationshipbetweenphysical environment and social structure.

This paper studies three eco-city and eco-community projects, in-cluding Dongdan Eco-city, Binhai Eco-city, and Qingdao Eco-block, analyzing their different approaches to environmental technologies and ecological urbanism as well as different notions in applying them in community design. They were intended as “models” to exemplify the best practice in planning and development using present-day technologies, and supposedly able to be duplicated in other cities acrossthecountry.However,theyoftenranintopracticaldifficultiesthemselves when attempts were make to implement these plans. As a result, some of them still remain on the drawing board, and for oth-ers the initial environmental agenda was substantially cut back in the process of realization. It calls into question the economic and market feasibility of eco-city concept and its compatibility with current Chi-nese land and planning system. Through these case studies, the pa-per compares different approaches to eco-community and discusses the challenges facing the sustainable development of Chinese cities.

Three Scenes and Speculations from a Future CityRami el Samahy, Carnegie Mellon UniversityAdam Himes, Carnegie Mellon UniversityPhillip Denny, Carnegie Mellon UniversityKeith Lagreze, Carnegie Mellon University

If all design can be seen as ways to predict—and shape—the future, nofieldoughttolookfurtherforwardthanurbandesignandplan-ning. However, as a profession, planners tend to be fairly cautious, relying on historical precedents rather than future trends in shaping cities. There are perfectly rational reasons for this tendency; the past is a more knowable territory than the future. And yet, do we limit our vision if we fail to occasionally untether ourselves from the past, and seek where design opportunities may lie in the future?

Our research team—architects and urban designers, curious about alternative approaches to designing the urban future, especially as it relates to the Middle East—began by creating a digital compendium ofallthepredictionswecouldfind(pastandpresent)relatedtothefuture of urban environments. We tagged and sorted these in vari-ous ways to see what we might uncover. Among the most interest-ing (and obvious) discoveries: projections into the future are more telling of the present in which they are created. For example, many of the anxieties of the 1980s revolved around a potential nuclear armageddon;today,it’secologicaldisasterthatterrifiesus.

We then focussed our lens on urbanization in the rapidly develop-ingworld,specificallyexploringthedesignpossibilities inafuturedesert conurbation, one perhaps very similar to Doha, Qatar and its environs. Doha intrigues us for a number of reasons. While unique in many ways (high standards and ambitions, the world’s highest GDP per capita, highest carbon footprint per capita, and a overwhelm-ingly expatriate population), in many ways the rapid population growth and frenetic urban/suburban development here can be seen as harbingers of things to come elsewhere. The number of people living inQatarhas trebled in thepast 17years, and fourfifthsofthem live in the greater Doha area, which has quadrupled in size dur-ing that same time, growing not only up, but out as well. Inevitably, this growth has put a great strain on the fragile desert and marine ecosystems upon which the city sits.

We examined three distinct situations in greater detail, and offered design proposals for three potential future scenarios: the Linear Oa-sis, a hybrid vegetative and mechanized wall designed to address issuesofdesertificationandurbansprawl;SabkhaCity,apossibleresponsetorisingsealevelsandissuesofdesalination;andPetro-fit,a regionally-scaled investigation of possible uses for the infrastruc-tures of oil and gas following the industry’s demise.

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Chasing the City (2)Joshua M. Nason, University of Texas at ArlingtonJeffrey Nesbit, Texas Tech University


SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 2014 - 11:00AM - 12:30PM

EmergingWorkflows,Techniques,andDesignProtocolsfor Carbon-Neutral BuildingsThomas Spiegelhalter, Florida International University

Developing Architectural Tools and Curricula for Meaningful Energy AnalysisDaniel Chung, Philadelphia University

Sustainability and the design of sustainable architecture is an often promoted aspect of many architectural education curricula. In re-cent undergraduate admissions polls students have expressed that instruction in sustainable design is a core element they expect to receive in their education. Although many students have some ex-perience in sustainable design, their ability to measure and quantify the sustainability performance of their designs is often weak. Given the three standard categories of sustainable design as economics, ecology and social equity, the quantitative aspects and analytical skills needed to make effective designs that impact economics and ecology are often the least understood and developed by students. To address this issue, some architectural programs have integrated net zero and carbon-neutral building projects into their design stu-dios and building technology courses. Net zero energy and carbon neutral buildings represent singular quantitative goals that most stu-dents can conceptually grasp even if they are not able to skillfully manipulate the design parameters. With a clear quantitative project goal such as carbon-neutral design, students can develop sustain-able design skills over the course of a project to manage, measure and implement effective design parameters. Carbon-neutral build-ings and their designpose a significant challenge to architecturestudents due to the technical and analytical process required to achieve carbon neutrality. This often benefits from a long-termstrategy across multiple semesters of their education to meaning-fully empower students to not only walk through the steps, analysis and accounting of energy and carbon in a project but to have the critical thinking ability to thoughtfully manage and integrate a pro-cess that leads to a carbon-neutral design into their overall design process. This paper explores the obstacles in implementing mean-ingful energy analysis in design and a potential curricular method to address the issue of empowering design students to make thought-ful, analytical and well integrated sustainable designs via the topic of carbon-neutral design.

Educating for a Carbon Neutral Future: A Danish Perspective in a Global WorldMads Dines Petersen, Aalborg University

Inthepastdecadesthefocusonfirstenergyefficientarchitectureandlatercarbonneutralbuildingshasincreasedsignificantly.Apartof this focus has started discussions about the design process and terms like integrated design has emerged from here, focusing on integratingthedifferentfieldsofknowledgeinthedesignprocessfromtheverybeginning.However, ithasproventobedifficulttodo, though a broad range of successful projects using an integrated approach has been seen. A key point in the discussion has been the integration of simulations and calculations as a part of the design process from the very beginning. Using the traditional calculation andsimulationtoolsdevelopedforthishasproventobedifficult,thus raising the question of how to approach this, especially in an educational setting, where the talk is on multi-disciplinary design

teams, but the students rarely encounter the challenge of working in such teams. However instead of letting the students being limited bytherangeofdifferenttoolsandthedifficultiestheremightbeinimplementing them, the question is how they through an interdisci-plinary approach can use the knowledge from both architecture and engineering to break the boundaries between the tools for simula-tions and calculations and implement them in their design process, by learning to ask the relevant questions and interpret the results they get from the models they produce. The challenge is to design a framework where the students can do this and where the relevant professions teaching interact positively and helps to break the bar-riers.

Next Generation CLT: Mass-customization of Hybrid Composite PanelsTodd R. Beyreuther, Washington State University

The mass-customization of performance-based engineered wood buildingassembliesdefinesanewstate-of-the-artinthedesignandconstruction of the built environment. This paper describes a novel design research initiative at Washington State University that pro-poses high performance hybrid cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels to leverage the existing environmental and economic advantages of mass-produced forest products and to position CLT as a preferred mass-customized building assembly material in sync with emerging parametric design and digital fabrication methods.

Performance-Based Design Strategy and Parametric Design Goal SettingMing Hu, Catholic University of America

In this paper, alternative approaches to structure the parametric ge-ometry in relation to information on various performances are de-scribedandexemplified.Theyrelatetodifferentlevelsofknowledgethat concern the performances considered in the process and which are available to the designer while the parametric model is being set. A theoretic framework embeds the different approaches, for which the use of parametric modeling is structured in three phases: strate-gy-definition;model-building;andsolution-assessment.Thephasesand their interrelations are discussed. Finally, three case studies are presented, focusing on the relation between the knowledge avail-ableinstrategy-definitionandtheexplorationoccurringinsolution-assessment.


Bubbles BurstCaroline O’Donnell, Cornell University

In a globalized world-village, the role of the contextual versus the global (read: the placeless, the modern, the international) becomes crucial. “Bubbles Burst” addresses architecture’s unlikely yet persis-tent unwillingness to engage with issues of context. This reluctance can most notably be traced to Le Corbusier’s renowned comparison of architecture and the soap-bubble as “perfect and harmonious if the breath has been evenly distributed and regulated from the inside.”

In the same decade that Le Corbusier’s original bubble was born, bi-ologist Jakob von Uexküll proposed a different kind of bubble. Stand-inginaflower-strewnmeadow,vonUexküllimaginesblowingasoapbubble around each creature, representing the creature’s world and itsownspecificperceptionsofthatworld.VonUexküll’sbubble,con-sidered as a model for architecture, could not be more opposed to its Corbusian counterpart. While Le Corbusier’s bubble represents an ar-chitecture formed from internal forces, von Uexküll’s bubble, refers to an (architectural) organism which is formed as a response to external forces. Moreover, Le Corbusier’s bubble is the object of architecture itself,floating inavoid,whereasvonUexküll’sbubble reachesout,wraps around and pulls in many extracts of its environment.

Understanding architectural production through Von Uexküll’s lens—as a product of external forces— situates architectural thinking in a very different environment from the Corbusian-become-Koolhaasian bubble-model.

“Bubbles Burst” tracks the notion of the architectural organism as emergent from its environment through a number of instances, begin-ning, as one must, with Vitruvius, passing through isolated moments in the Renaissance, the Picturesque movement in England, and the various contextual movements of the twentieth century, to return to the present day and the ambivalence regarding the role of the context or environment in design. In particular, Rem Koolhaas’ 1990s provoca-tion to “fuck context” in his oft-quoted essay on Bigness is juxta-posed with his 2013 announcement of “Fundamentals,” the theme for the 2014 Venice Architectural Biennial, in which Koolhaas laments the sacrificeofnationalidentitytomodernitythathehimselfpropagated,and calls for an acknowledgement of the “process of the erasure of national characteristics in favor of the almost universal adoption of a single modern language in a single repertoire of typologies” which he himself promoted. Koolhaas, it seems, has come full-circle, realizing, at last that, architecture has a site, and in fact that site is, in fact, along-sidehabitation,architecture’sdefiningcharacteristic.

FUTURE + Living: A Scenario-Based Graduate Design StudioUdo Greinacher, University of Cincinnati

How will we live in the future? Will the separation between work and home become a thing of the past? Will the customization of dwell-ingsbecomethenorm,orwillonedesignfitall?Thisessayevaluatesthe use of scenario development, a strategy typically employed by Fortune 500 companies and governmental agencies, in the design studio.Insteadoffollowingadesignbriefthatspecifiedasite,spatialand functional requirements, and construction type and materials, a group of graduates students posed the question: How will an envi-ronment in which one can sleep, eat, and entertain in safety look like twenty years from now? And how can a text-based method yield working prototypes that can be tested in the marketplace?

Imagining Otherscape: Integrating Sociocultural and Natural Systems Through Soft-TectonicsHooman Koliji, University of Maryland

“Garden Curtain” is a design project that introduces a vertical micro-farming system appropriated for the built-environment. The initial design was conceived in Fall 2012 and was prototyped in Spring 2013; a proof of concept has now been achieved. Garden Curtain is a system design that emerged from a larger research-design effort known as “Soft-Tectonics,” which is a hybrid in both concept and practice. As a concept, it argues for an expansion of design thinking inarchitecturetothefieldofhorticultureandtheartofplanting.Atthe practice level, it refers to the systematic and innovative integra-tion of “soft” (natural systems) and “hard” (tectonic systems). In essence, Soft Tectonics explores the myriad possibilities of a new material culture leading to new urban ecologies as a viable option for system thinking in architecture.

Horticulture, the long-silent companion of architecture, requires re-visiting beyond the so-called popular “green building movement.” Instead, the integral incorporation of living systems into the built environment should be viewed as a critical route toward reimagining architecture and urban environments. Garden Curtain responds to this vision, offering new possibilities for reimagining buildings/urban spaces and ecologies.

SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 2014 - 11:00PM - 12:30PM

This is Your FutureSunil Bald, Yale University

Abstracts from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture 102nd Annual Meeting in Miami Beach, FL

Address: 1735 New York Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20006 Tel: 202.785.2324 Fax: 202.628.0448Web: www.acsa-arch.org

flows and disruptions globalizing architecture

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