Ike Kligerman Barkley Architects330 West 42nd Street 11th FloorNew York, NY 10036

IkIke Kligerman Barkley is a 25 person firm of architects, interior designers and supporting staff that offers both architectural and interior design services in an established diverse, design-oriented practice. With an emphasis on residential architec-tureture, thier work is articulated in a variety of styles, synthesizing histori-cal precedent with contemporary vision.

Since its inception in 1989, the firm has earned international recognition for successfully transcribing the language of their architectural influ-ences into a modern idiom.

Ike Kligerman Barkley has earned numerous professional and design awards, including the New York Chapter AIA Honor Award. The firm has been featured among Architectural Digest's "AD 100 Designers and Architects" the past five publi-cations including the most recent issue.

Professional practice has proved an invaluable components to my devel-opment as an architect. Full-time practice has challenged my abilities as a designer and employee. The evolution of my design process is owed in large part to the first hand observation of client / occupant user interpretation of architectural drawings and representations. Formulating legible presentation and

reading client design input, design input, requires the ability

to see beyond ones personal

architectural agen-das. In my experi-

ence, the ability to adopt an out-to adopt an out-side perspective

has lead tocountless de-

sign innovations.

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Ike Kligerman Barkely Architects office inthe former McGraw Hill Building 330 w. 42nd St.

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Compound in the DunesMartha’s Vineyard, MA

ArchitectsArchitects: Ike Kligerman Barkley Architects (Hans C. Herrmann Project Designer), construction supervision by IKBA., Photographer: Peter Aaron / Esto

740 Park Ave.construction sequence photo strip

existing prep. kitchen area

demolition of both maid’s bedrooms and a maid’s bath as well existing laundry and chef’s kitchen areas

construction of main kitchen and back kitchen areas renovation of existing maid’s bedroom and bath in rear

new stair install prior to handrail

finished view looking to park

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740 Park Avenue Kitchen Renovation: Documentation to realization

Axonometric drawing for custom fabricated stainless steel stair landing and handrail. The client requested that the stair be made “special”. In this situation the manipulation of size/scale was not an option so careful detail and attention was turned to the material components to accentuate the stair while also alluding to the additional program space located on the floor above.

740 Park Avenue;Servants Space to Family Domain

All aspects of this project were the sole effort of the author.

EnvisioneEnvisioned to be a comfortable contemporary living environment with a blend of classic materials and modern details the kitchen had to serve as a writing studio, profes-sional kitchen, living areas for both family and domestic help. Prim concerconcern was the attention to con-nection and material detail.

This project was a 1000+ sq.ft. renovation begun in late fall 2004 and completed in late fall 2005. The work took place primarily during the summer months as the building has strict “quite hours rules”. The “building” proved to be among the largeslargest construction challenge as it is a member of the New York City Historical Registry which required a great deal of precise documenta-tion of existing external aesthetic conditions before allowing any changes. The apartment was also owned by the building President thus adding additional pressure to ensure all work was completed to the highest standards as required by the building by-laws.

plan North

existing 1

existing 2

360 of Exsting Structure

1. East exposure2. North exposure3. West exposure4. South exposure

1. 2. 3. 4.

Existing 12.04.06

existing west elevation existing north elevation

existing east elevation existing south elevation

Roof + Windows/Doors + Chimney

Deck landscape masonry + grading

Demolition and Clean-up + Siding

Start Date

2nd Floor Plan

1st Floor Plan

Section at living space

The MidSouth House:Oktoc, Mississippi

3,100 sq.ft. 4 bedroom3 1/2 baths

1. Entry Hall2. Master Suite2. Master Suite3. Kitchen4. Living Room5. Laundry6. Dining Area7. Outdoor Living Space8. Reading Area9. Guest Suite9. Guest Suite10. Hobby Room11. Kids Bedroom 112. Kids Bedroom 2

Drawing on southern spatial and com-positional precedence the Mid South House in Oktoc, MS is designed to recall the true meaning of vernacular while advancing tradition. Built of numerous locally sourced materials including brick, lumber, and reclaimed millworkmillwork and timbers the house attempts to build character from its material latency. The modernly refined yet warm interior is comprised of an eclectic mix of repurposed materials and locally crafted components. The notion of using what, and who, was at-handat-hand to construct the house harkens to the definition of vernacular building not as an issue of style but as an idea of construction and use based on local concerns of value. Questioning what constitutes a modern southern home, the project leverages the potential forfor outdoor living to forge a spatial sequence that adjusts and adapts to register the seasonal shifts of the region.

Advancing tradition, the house takes advantage of local site conditions manipulating sun-path and prevailing winds to cool the exterior rooms and provide ample natural light to minimize energy use while improving inhabita-tional quality. Balancing the perceived soliditsolidity of masonry construction with the lightness of wood frame infill, the house defies one’s expectations by offering inhabitants the ability to occupy the perceptually stereotomic masonry clad circulation spaces. The house offers its occupants the ability to contract the conditioned space through the use or disuse of the suite located above the garage. Joined by the taller of the home’s two chimney elements the suite is designed to be accessed through the house or from ththe exterior alone. The central entry and stair hall directs views toward a 160 acre lake while also providing for a variety of secondary usage options recalling the flexibility of many tradi-tional southern home types.

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The MidSouth House:Oktoc, Mississippi

View from outdoor room through entry to master suite deck

existing west elevation existing north elevation

existing east elevationexisting south elevation

existing 2nd floor

existing 1st floor

existing lower level

Executedplan, section & elevational changes

Existing rear porch was found to be structural unstable and spatially useless. This foundation however was able to bare weight for renovation

Numerous previous addi-tions created a drainage issue to be corrected in creating the MasteMaster Suite Addition.

Pre Renovation Inventory / Analysis:

Northeast extension resulted in a visually unusual roof to roof connection detail. Spa-tially this addition resulted in an awkward side-porch entry.

H. Herrmann resDesignPrivate practice

The Cotton House RenovationWest Point, Mississippi

Project Budget: $84,000Purchase Price: $16,000 (tax sale)Sq.Ft. 1,260 (cond. space)Sq.Ft. 1,260 (cond. space)

ThThe Cotton House is designed to utilize an existing 1930’s developer house as a host structure intended to act spatially and functionally as a kind of ground condition upon which the addition elements appear as a figure. This condition is designed to occuoccur both spatially and visually with the sequence of occupation collaps-ing and is re-established as one traverses the transect of the house from front porch to rear porch. Light and material articulation reinforces the experience creating a strong sense of orientation and passage.

The house is designed to be constructed in phases as funds come available and numerous elements are designed around reclaimed materials such as brick used to frame and inform the entry sequence and front porch. RemnanRemnant windows procured from a local builder informed the design of the Light Chimney which is intended to remedy visual and roof performance issues created by one of the three previous additions. The windows are placed atop the chimnechimney element to create an ingle-nook space, bathed in natural light and refreshed by cooling passive ventilation, at the base of the chimney. The indirect light created by the chimney will wash light over an extensive collection of art which will hang in the living space directly below.

Manipulating the existing foundation, a Master suite is added to resolve functional issues of roof drainage and spatial issues of sleeping space and connection to the rear yard. Small porches extend the perceived bounds of the house while activating ththe exterior space available.

Cotton House Renovation West Point, Mississippi

Light Chimney Addition designed toincorporate and refine the ill-cosidered previous north wing addition.

New Sitting Porch / Vestibulewitwith elongated entry stair and repourposed brick privacy feature wall

Centrsl Circulation space redesigned to reconcile poor spatial flow and roof drainage

Master Suite addition located on existing slab to miniozed construction cost

New Cooking Porch and Renovated Kitchen

Renovated Plan

Existing Plan

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Existing Elevations:

1. North Facade (Drive way facing)

2. West Facade (Street Facing)

3. East Facade (Backyard) (Backyard)

4. South Facade (Sideyard Facing)

Proposed Elevations:

Sectional Lighting Studies:

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H. Herrmann resDesignFourth project of private practice

Delview Terrace, Delhi NY Res.

ThiThis project is the product of a number of interests and participating parties. SUNY Delhi College of Tech-nology has a history of construction within the local community. The college has partnered with the local government to help promote infill withiwithin the village district. Derelict, vacant and difficult land parcels are gifted to the college foundation with the commitment by the college to build or re-build and make livable a home or dwelling. This project is intended to be built for speculation or aa possible pre-agreed selling price to an early investor.

The home is to be built on an exceptionally difficult parcel of land which is bisected by a major sanitary sewer line with a 20’ wide easement effectively cutting the site in half and leaving the upper buildable envelope too small for constructionconstruction. In addition the site has a sanitary feeder line running along the northern boundary cutting off an additional 20’ with a drainage culvert on the southern boundary and a steep slopping grade. The commu-nity the parcel is a part of also has rules against free standing garages and a 25’ maximum building height rule. These factors made design and planning an interesting task.

The final condition was for the home to be LEED certifiable. System such as passive solar, and gray water capture are planned. All mate-rials are to be locally harvested or purchased and fabricated includ-ing rough sawn lumber and native blue stone. The home is designed to bridge or startle the easements landing only on buildable portions of the site while maintaining the 1 ½ story height limit and attached garage covenants.

Proposed Design: 5.7.07

ModeModel showing all site issues including (2) 20’ sanitary sewer easements, overhead power lines, setbacks for road, side yards, front ward and backyard.

Model Media: Bass wood, Chipboard, pencil.

The MidSouth House:Oktoc, Mississippi

3,100 sq.ft., 4 bedroom, 3 1/2 bathsProject Budget: $350,000

Model: River Birch Linear Retention Basin

Drawing:SectionSections a community nodes, Bike parking + Party Tree

The ground plane is inlayed with a mix of pavers and plantings estab-lishing a linear east- west grain pattern within the landscape func-tioning to create a network of vistas and paths for discovery. In the center of the court area one finds a simple Wall Pavilion that acts to delineate and punctuate a second-ary north-south axis. The pavilion is fitted with seating and table space for small informal events and gath-erings. Continuing the line of the pavilion north one finds the Flag Tower located in the center of a turning circle that defines the main entry. The tower serves to establish a landmark with the landscape that draws upon the shadows of the sun to reference the passing of time.

The Flag Tower, through material continuity, extends horizontally in the form of a low wall across the narrow street where it aids in buff-ering the three remaining housing units from the passing traffic. Fol-lowing the line of the Wall Pavilion south one arrives at the second defined space that is articulated not by the man made but by nature. The north-south axis is terminated by a great Weeping willow that is maintained to suggest a ceiling condition below its canopy. The greagreat tree is intended to absorb the stormwater from the adjacent reten-tion basin while offering a spheri-cal counterpoint to the built planer Wall Pavilion and Flag Tower spire element to the north. The complete effect is designed to both centralize ones perception of place while leading them into and through the grounds.

McKee Street Density and Landscape Plan Starkville, Mississippi

H. Herrmann landDesignStudies in Landscape Architecture

The creative and generative reuse The creative and generative reuse of abandon automotive infrastructure to promote urban core development and foster landscape remediation addresses numerous emerging design initiatives. The program and project scope intentionally engage project scope intentionally engage issues of architectural design, landscape architecture, and urban design to explore whole systems thinking and collaborative development.

A key concern of this proposal is the understanding that the work serves as a starting point for additional urban development. The project attempts to escape the ever increasing likelihood of design work to be overtly object oriented and self-referential. The project and self-referential. The project edges or boundaries are intentionally made vague to foster the interlacing of future works with the armature set out by this proposal.

Riverside Park Closed Swing-Bridge Urban Park Retrofit Columbus, Mississippi

This project aims to provide public amenities that act in the agency of increasing urban core development, water quality and quantity control, and architectural adaptive reuse. Situated adaptive reuse. Situated in Columbus, MS along the banks of the Tennessee Tombigbee waterway, the project addresses the site known as Riverside Park and the Old Highway 82 Bridge Old Highway 82 Bridge that abuts the park. Designed to promote urban infill while bringing civic activity to the waterfront, the proposal repurposes the abandoned swing bridge abandoned swing bridge as an observation deck, public events pavilion, and farmers market venue. What is remarkable about the design is the regenerative functions of the park functions of the park which form and inform the hardscape and softscape components. Designed to foster public interaction, the aesthetic is intended to entertain and educate the public of and educate the public of the regenerative functions performed by the landscape. By rooting this development in the fabric of prior civic artifacts and urban generators, the design generators, the design offers a culturally and functionally generative approach to urban parks and recreation design through the act of mending above imposition. imposition.

UNDER CONSTRUCTIONBlues Trail:Starkville, Mississippi

This marker was placed as part of the museum exhibit and will be incorporated into the ground design for the project.

from here to there

Rain GardenRainwater Irrigation CisternSand FilterOutdoor Theather Pervious Concrete Paving Parking Repurposed Green Roof Access StairGreen Building Demonstration PavilionGreen Building Demonstration PavilionPervious Paving Parking Lot (brick pavers)Improved Signage

Project Timeline: Official Course work May 1st-28th.

Remaining work done voluntarily by former students

April 2012

Week 1May 2012

Week 2May 2012

Week 3May 2012

Week 3May 2012

Week 4May 2012

Week 5May 2012

June JulyAugustSept.Oct. 2012

Accretion as a Means of Adaptation

Architectural education is moving toward hard science solutions, seeking to partition sustainable design concerns into discreetly addressed problems. The consequence is the perceived notion that Sustainable Practice is somehow different from Good Practice, and is therefore, likely to produce only a limited form of architecture. This common perception among students also implies a limited working palette, defined predominantly by technological application. Architecture is arguably a transformation-based discipline entailing, at its root, a building-upon or accretion of previous needs, ideas, and energy flows. Our current practices and pace of development, even with optimal technological developments, will not sustain our future generations beyond 2100.1. Given these conditions it seems critical that sustainable design must not register with students as a limited architectural pursuit nor an optional appliqué. Architecture of accretion as a pedagogy and practice seeks to offer an expanded definition of sustainable design by engaging the existing constructed field as an active host for development. Through the merging of existing and new construction an attempt to blur the partitions of sustainable design thinking is sought. This vain of sustainable practice attempts to coalesce physical, theoretical and ecological layers of development and thicken the built environment2. The various design projects outlined herein call to question these issues and reveal the greater context of sustainable practice. This form of praxis examines means of developing an appreciation for the generative potential of pre-existing forms, structures and materials by which students may find a foothold for progressive design. The methodology and theoretical framework invites one to perceive buildings as more than singular objects, and rather as a collection of parts, the ground included, held temporarily in place until a new state of being is required. Designing with equal parts context and invention the pedagogy seeks a kind of “architectural accretion”, defined here as a re-allocation and coalescence of formerly useful parts/materials to newly useful states of being. Accretion should only be understood as a working method, not an aesthetic device. Existing generative elements are referred to loosely as “sites” and may be a parcel of land, building fragment or material remnant. They should be understood as latent and persistent elements of the working field open to investment. A key distinction in how this is not simply adaptive re-use is that accretion is not a parasitic paradigm; it is not aimed to destroy one thing to profit another. Instead, it is saving what is valid and redistributing what is no longer viable. Practitioners learn to hunt for points of intervention as opposed to waiting to be fed abstract building sites. This act opens the definition to include more aggressive notions of scavengry and exploitation, while removing the stigma of sustainable design as a burdensome, less interpretive expression. Positioned amidst this session topic, will be a series of works created by various young architecture students investigating and helping to define the “architecture of accretion”.

Endless Fields + Boundless Constructs: setting the tone for a search

Practitioners and students today have instantaneous access to precise geographical data of nearly every inch of the earth. They can gather photographs of countless places, spaces and conditions and yet the most common issue among young designers is a forcefully timid engagement of site and context. This tendency to focus upon the design of objects, as opposed to the designing an environment, often leads small, self-referential, brittle projects. The ability to ignore difficult issues of formal juxtaposition, interconnection, and associated larger global issues of irresponsible practice is promoted when context is in disregard. As a result, the ability to find potential and excitement in architectural design derived

from existing context is minimal. The student work, outlined below (which is not terribly divergent from much of today’s professional work) demonstrates these tendencies in spite of the numerous measures taken to promote a meaningful confrontation and resolution. While many failures were found in the design of the projects, evidence of some success was also identified. The following is an account of three projects, by freshman and sophomore students, each of which aided in the outline of a principle of this Accretive Design Methodology.

Project 1: Spoliation and the first steps in setting a trajectory

Spolia: (Latin, 'spoils') is a modern art-historical term used to describe the re-use of earlier building material or decorative sculpture on new monuments.2 The practice was common in late antiquity: Roman examples include the Arch of Janus, the earlier imperial reliefs reused on the Arch of Constantine and the colonnade of Old Saint Peter's Basilica. The practice is so common that there is probably no period of history in which evidence for "spoliation" may not be found.

Interpretations of spolia generally alternate between the "ideological" and the "pragmatic." Ideological readings might describe the re-use of architectural elements from former empires or dynasties as triumphant (that is, literally as the display of "spoils" or "plunder" of the conquered) or as revivalist (proclaiming the renovation of past imperial glories). Pragmatic readings emphasize the utility of re-used materials: if there is a good supply of old marble columns available, for example, there is no need to produce new ones. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and there is certainly no one approach that can account for all instances of spoliation.

Fig 1. Spolia in the streets of Rome

As demonstrated in these investigations, an initial apprehension for using something “already designed” as a starting point was a concern among designers. As work progressed the designers found a delight in the hijacking of the sites through formal and theoretical manipulations. The term “spoliation” is considered in reference to finding that students seem exhilarated by the idea of hijacking and twisting

the sites’ form and intent, while also allowing the existing qualities to remain visible. Many students chose to perform interventions on their sites that countered the preceding designers’ intentions by weakening the strong, strengthening the weak, minimizing the decadent, etc. This operational underpinning provided a mechanism for the avoidance of the obligatory guilt of “using something they didn’t make”. The perceived bending of the prior designer’s intentions provided a powerful and intoxicating design stimulus. The paradox of this action became clear when the students recognized their own intentions were being swayed and opened to the incorporation of the existing sites as valuable and worthy of engagement. This project was simply intended to open one’s mind to recognize existing form, it’s mass, and implied force. The project asked students to first become familiar with an object of design, in this case a Corinthian arch. The designers measured and drew the object as a static specimen. Upon familiarizing themselves with the proportions and physical attributes, the designers made judgments regarding the phenomenal composition of the piece. Simple determinations of static and dynamic moments of occupation, visual force and compositional arrangement were diagramed. The project continued by requiring students to remake approximately one half of the composition with opposing design elements. In this case, what was determined to read as static had to be remade as dynamic and vice versa. Eventually a simple occupational program was added to introduce issues of scale - here a viewing platform for a single person and a means of ascent / descent. The project required students to reinvest in an existing element and in doing so forced a carefully account of what one had to work with. Because the project happened in white space only, the means of conveying the proper reading relied heavily on the manipulation of media and visualization technique. The students had to learn to draw their designs the way they saw them. Subsequently, numerous rendering techniques were learned / born. Issues of texture, joinery and surface had to be recognized and reconciled in the work due to the presence of these latent qualities in the existing arch.

Fig. 2 Projects by Nathan Alverado + John Fiderra First, the identification of localities for circulation and occupation was considered. Later, students assessed the artifacts for iconographic/expressional value and proposed programs and scenarios for their conceptual occupation and use. As students began to establish various strategies for engaging the remnant site, scenarios grew to include more advanced theoretical conditions and engaged numerous definitions of spolia. As the students’ design abilities matured so did their ability to project deeper, more meaningful theoretical frameworks. Elaborate ideas of how to use what they had began to form quickly

and soon they were not waiting to be given sites but were actively seeking them. They become self-motivated opportunistic designers. Project 2: Deconstructed Learning

Fig.3 Casting Demo by Melissa Sessum

A simple desk critique with a first semester freshman prompted the development of a project in Deconstruction + Remounting. Students had been exploring casting as a method of forecasting design via constructional means. After casting a component one student in particular was struggling to find a way of working into the object. She complained of its limited potential due to its scale and the restricted mutability of the material. As a remedy, she was asked to drop her casting on the floor and put it back together as she saw fit. Her, and subsequently the entire studio’s, dismay and appall at the suggestion of breaking something that was “already made” provided the impetus for further questioning. When it comes to items of their own crafting, what creates such attachment in the student? How might we harness that power to make better decisions about the crafting of architecture and environment?

The act of deconstructing was profoundly different for many students because they were so conditioned to learn by assembly, from nothing to something. Working from something to nothing forced a study of the process of disassembly/assembly and provided a precise ending point as opposed to the typical meandering process of design. The requirement of having no mass lost and no mass gained made every piece of material valuable. The assignment asked students to see their former “right answers” as only important and suitable given one set of design parameters. When those parameters changed and the castings were no longer suitable, rather than starting anew the defunct casting had to be “remade” by operations of composition as opposed to total removal.

The notion of “breaking” an artifact that the student invested so much time and energy in suggests that the students find value in the work. More precisely, the time and thought invested (the effort), not the material itself, is valuable. This finding corresponds with general attitudes toward fine community buildings, “we need to save these things because they are special, look at all the work it took to build them.” The student comments echo those of American society and were further correlated while visiting Atlanta, Georgia on a field trip. After touring the city students began to consider accretion at the urban design scale by contrasting modern Atlanta’s fabric against that of Savannah, Georgia. The scalar jump

of this student realization gives promise that further connections might be made among the tenets of this project and issues of sustainable architectural accretion.

These findings led to a conclusion that a less architectonic and more easily abstracted example of site might accommodate a deeper form of design activity. To provide this model students were asked to work with remnant furniture, tool / machine parts, and architecture school leftovers (site models, displays, etc.) as sites for design intervention. This limited the parameters of analysis while also introducing the notion of the “opportunistic eye”. Based on the observation that the act of physically taking a thing apart allows the student to understand the logic and energy needed to first put it together, a 3 credit course was launched where-in students had to first unmake to make.

Project 3a: Developing an Opportunistic Eye

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed” Charles Darwin-

It is a principle of this design methodology that sustainable design education must also include the development of the Opportunistic Eye. While the ultimate hope for society is that this design paradigm need not exist one could argue that all social and technological advancement is the profit of opportunism. The designers associated with these studies were not asked to turn the world on its head but rather slowly and carefully look for moments to draw more from what has been previously made.

All too often students find themselves finishing their projects before they have started them. The idea of doing the “right” thing the first time is the pervasive outlook. Students often stare at a white page awaiting divine intervention for entire studio periods only to finally make a few timid and meager marks which they then cling to blindly. One suggested reason for this type of paralysis may be the general condition of students to seek single and irrefutable correctness in all their coursework, i.e. calculus, physics and structures. The logic of these design assignments relies on a creative practice founded in opportunism, scavenging and the development of shrewd intuition for design potential and only profits through an iterational search. The method suggests that no silver bullet will be wrought to undo our global state; sustainable and responsible practice starts with avoiding waste. To work in this way as a means of building skill in design, one must abandon the modern notion of a planned approach and find comfort in a central proposition that, existence precedes essence. Students need to find something delightful in the work, not plan to make something delightful.

Instinctual design thinking is a difficult ability to convey to students due to its necessity of a fear. In this case, fear of lost opportunity. Fear in general seems something few students consider on a daily basis however, given the tenuous global condition, recognition may be forming. The majority of American college students are not faced with a lack of appropriate shelter however, as early beings this was a major concern. People instinctually sought shelter from convenient natural sources. This shelter was principally needed to protect against mortal harm from animals, opposing humans and conditions of weather. Eventually as a mastery of tools and defense systems grew so did our ability to

fabricate shelter devoid of natural influence. I believe our forgetfulness of instinctual response has led us to a condition of ill-considered design and construction practices. This irresponsible waste of potential is omnipresent and easily identified in project 3, which was aimed at addressing these shortcomings. In this fabrication elective students were challenged to find opportunity in what was given. This is not unlike the majority of studios I have encountered however; in many the site is often lost only to issues of aesthetics and program. The work described below attempted to evade this propensity by limiting the site and palette for design/construction to only a limited amount of waste material. As a critique, the artifacts produced are interesting and useful however, they required a great deal of physical labor to produce. The work unfortunately strove toward conformity and connection with typical furniture types. Students made furniture like the things they encountered daily; regardless of the challenges and opportunities put forth by the materials they were allowed. In many cases the sites were dismantled and cut into simple planar pieces more easily reconfigured to suit the new student visions. The constructs exposed the lost directive, ignoring the opportunities for creating “new” future types, and produced only mildly exploratory artifacts of design.

Fig.4 End table by Tyler Pence + Sit/Stand by Andy Graydon

Project 3b: making fresh by adjacency

As a way of pressing the students to see more opportunity they were asked to design a piece of furniture to become part of the architecture school building. This required the students to consider the context of the building including the occupants, usage types and any missing spaces of the facility. The students collectively determined a student lounge was needed but could not decide on a permanent location. The unit was accordingly designed to be mobile, thus allowing it to take on numerous uses and qualities depending on its adjacency to other spaces. The team inventoried all collected materials, including (2) 12’ x 12’ site models and 3 mild steel frames used by studios past. The designs grew from this material stock and the students’ limited access to fabrication equipment.

Fig. 5 Light FIXture by: Courtney Bolden, Chris Rivera, Scott Archer, Andy Graydon Student Domain by: Tyler Pence, Taylor Poole, Charlotte Fairley, Dennis Daniels, Ryan Morris

As the project progressed the students decided to divide into 3 teams and construct 3 complimentary components to be placed around the building. The addition of these building assets spurred much conversation in the way they reconfigured space and shifted the reading of adjacent building structure (context). The light fixture addition (see fig. 5) in particular created a new found appreciation for the roof framing and surface texture. The students were able to recycle all the materials with only meager additions and in doing so effectively “re-made” previously inert portions of the host building.

Conclusion:

At this point it is critical to acknowledge an obvious paradox; the suggested means of production in this model can only exist if someone else is working with the opposite of intentions. If this pedagogy were to truly inform future generations, one might argue it would burn itself out as all things were eventually put back to use. But in that we see a cycle. Things go defunct as technology expands and what we see as useful will fall into disuse and in this we guaranty our future productive value. Architecture of accretion suggests that design pedagogy must focus on the notion that things don’t ever go away, they just fall out of use. It is the role of the designer to pick them up and figure out how, if reconfigured/conceived, they may be useful again. The time is coming rapidly where we will be forced to acknowledge that the material supply limits will soon be reached and that we cannot simply cast aside our earlier works and try again. The positive aspects discovered, and flaws drawn out of prior works should form the directives for future projects. This pedagogical perspective is not new. It has however, often generated overly generalized conditions for investigation, in many ways mirroring our global condition wherein we acknowledge the issues, parties responsible, and reasons for being, but again leave it as only an easily overlooked social concern. These studies propose that a pointed and directed responsibility be asked of the student designer by recalling prior projects for reinvestment over multiple semesters.

Time constraints, differing faculty interests, and required learning outcomes contribute heavily to our inability to substantively address re-use in architecture. The majority of studios are premised on the students first establishing a thesis, ideological position or at the very least a formal parti from which the work progresses. To see the conclusions of prior student work, both built and theorized, re-engaged might present a rare and potentially influential paradigm.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin-

Numerous authors have written cogently of the many blurred facets of contemporary sustainable design. A common thread in nearly all current discourse concludes that architects must become system thinkers. Our far flung material supply network requires a great deal of additional accounting in regard to systems thinking. Architecture of accretion attempts to remove the vastness of this model by looking at and working with the potential at-hand. The accumulated knowledge and techné to vastly improve our practices exists if we choose to engage it. Perhaps by forwarding a pedagogy underpinned by mutualism and the ability to form lasting architectural accretions we may prime a future generation of truly sustainable designers.

Notes:

1. Meadows, Donella H., Randers, Jorgen. Meadows, Dennis I. 2004, The Limits to Growth. Chelsea Green Publishing.

2. Corner, James. 1999, Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Theory. Princeton Architectural Press

3. Kinney, Dale. June 2001, Roman Architectural Spolia, proceedings of the American Philosophical Society vol. 145, No.2

HOLISM IN FOUNDATION DESIGN: AVOIDING THE “SILO EFFECT”

Holism in Foundation Design: Avoiding the “Silo Effect” HANS CURTIS HERRMANN MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY

INTRODUCTION:

Standing in contrast to Descartes's scientific

reductionism, Systems Thinking is a logic and

working methodology which one may employ

to understand complex organizational issues. It

is change-based in that it often attempts to

understand and predict how actions result in

reactions and/or interactions. Architectural

design and its role as a contingent of (global)

environmental design has begun to embrace

this logic to better address ethical and

professional challenges facing the next

generation of architects. While this may be

happening in interdisciplinary and cross-

disciplinary practices such as OMA/AMO, SHoP,

MVRDV, Field Operations, as well as some

corporate giants, its application academia is

largely limited to the graduate level of study

where students are more likely to hold a higher

level of educational diversity. Foundation

design curricula (years one through four) have

often been anchored upon knowledge silos, a

term common among the business community

that is used to describe discrete knowledge

domains that lack an operational reciprocity.

The design studio has traditionally served as a

kind of anti-silo, or laboratory for knowledge

synthesis. Taking advantage of this latent

learning format, the interest here, is to

understand how a Systems approach to design,

if engrained in the students’ modus operandi,

might stimulate and advance the profession as

it works to address issues of ecology and

ethical development. This paper attempts to

outline how Systems Thinking is enabled via

retrospective causality diagramming and meta-

discussions regardless of a student’s

educational background or perspective. A

means of bringing a Systems Thinking

approach to the foundation years of a design

education are outlined utilizing the vehicle of

time-based performance.

Fig. 1 Grain Silos: Enduring Giants, Created by Man Photo by Cole Thompson

Silo Effect:

To begin let me make clear the term Silo Effect

or at least its definition within the context of

this paper. Common in the organizational

lexicon, the silo refers to a singular knowledge

domain, isolated from others and without

operational reciprocity. Modeled after the

functional purpose of the commonly witnessed

grain storage device, educators have been

using this term to isolate various forms of

knowledge and/or to delineate the boundaries

of a discipline. While the concept is useful, it

runs the risk of closing the door on cross-

disciplinary or even trans-disciplinary study. As

universities face ever-increasing standards of

educational effectiveness, silos become more

common as a means of clearly defining the

many subjects of education. Paradoxically, this

demonstration of “effectiveness” creates a

vacuum among the subjects or silos which,

according to trans-disciplinary researchers is

often the home of innovative discovery. In this

paper it is important to understand that all

elements of education, subject, method,

knowledge domain, discipline, etc. may be

separated and held as a silo irrespective of the

domain’s relative scale.

One application of this term in regard to

graduating students is that they are emerging

from professional education with skills in only

silotized design thinking. By this, I suggest

that students are being pushed more and more

toward fine-grain answers to small questions of

design. A building project is multifaceted and

in practice numerous players are involved in

many decisions. When a project is subject to

scientific reduction as an educational model,

facets of the project are removed to focus on

specific issues. This method of discovery places

the project facets into silos which, if never

reconnected, leave students with an

incomplete understanding of design as an

inclusive synthetic act. This is likely not

because educators do not see or believe in

taking a broad perspective, but because they

are under extreme pressure to ensure many

“skill sets” are covered. While the skills are

critical to the production of relevant

architecture they are not all that is needed to

ensure it.

Why the Silo is Dangerous:

The weakness of silo-based pedagogies is that

architectural theory, visualization, organization

and functional system/materials knowledge

domains, when separated into individual

course topics, become singular in dimension.

Much like the effect of a small hole in a grain

silo, when all the grains (knowledge domains)

are separated to the same size the silo may be

drained very quickly by a small hole.

Analogously, if a student hedges their entire

design on fulfilling or addressing a single facet

of a project, that project may easily be

dismissed by the finding of a single

shortcoming in the work. However, if the

grains were mixed within the silo the bottom

(like a student’s project) may not be made to

fall-out as easily. Operating like a soapy-foam

within a tube, an ethical design takes on a

multifaceted response to the question,

addressing it with answers that create a

dispersed response, like the structure of foam,

not relying upon one leg but many. This

approach to design results in a field-based

resolution which does not answer the question

in only one way but rather, it attempts to

reveal and answer the constituencies of the

original question. In this way, I suggest that

an architectural project aligned and justified

via numerous disciplinary acknowledgments

and intentions will run a far lesser risk of being

deflated or, returning to the grain silo analogy,

drained due to its’ lack of compositional and

operational variation.

HOLISM IN FOUNDATION DESIGN: AVOIDING THE “SILO EFFECT”

Fig. 2 Melamine foam at 100 microns

Achieving a Systems Thinking result requires a

great deal of commitment and time as well as

knowledge in one’s field. Because of this, it is

often reserved for graduate students arriving

with such a predisposition and knowledge. In

recent years I have seen numerous institutions

abandon the thesis project leading me to

believe that few students effectively achieve a

Systems approach to design even as advanced

students. This led to an investigation of where

and who might be accomplishing this form of

study in the design field. To narrow my search

I looked to allied programs of study including

Urban Design, Environmental Design, Interior

Design and Landscape Architecture. Of these,

Landscape Architecture offered a unique aspect

for discovery with its’ preoccupation with time-

based design parameters. In contrast to my

program’s fairly traditional architecture

curriculum, Landscape Architecture frontloads

issues of change and shift in design, devoting a

great deal more of their curriculum to systems

analysis and the causes and effects of

designing in the world.

Carl Steinitz, Professor of Landscape

Architecture at Harvard University, suggests in

his paper “A Framework for Theory Application

to the Education of Landscape Architects (and

other Environmental Design Professionals)”

three learning opportunities that educators

must offer their students: (1) the building of

competence in changing or conserving the

landscape (2) the building of experience and

confidence in doing so, and (3) the building of

the theoretical constructs that underlie the

above two.[1] This framework illustrates the

emphasis placed upon the issue of change

within the Landscape Architects’ means of

operation.

In 1971 Ian McHarg, in his book "Design with

Nature" popularized a system of analyzing the

layers of a site in order to compile a complete

understanding of the qualitative attributes of a

place. [2] McHarg would give every qualitative

aspect of the site a layer, such as the history,

hydrology, topography, vegetation, etc. This

seminal work in Landscape Architecture along

with its contemporary equivalent, Geographic

Information Systems (GIS), further highlights

the importance placed on understanding the

baseline upon which the design of a thing will

initiate a change. Where McHargs’ system has

been expanded is in the realm of scale and

cause and effect. With advanced simulation

software designers are now able to impart

ecological changes to a scenario ecosystem to

see what affect their changes may have to the

system at multiple scales.

Foundation level architectural education may

have lost sight of issues of change and shift,

focusing perhaps too intently on the idea of a

building’s materials and methods (essentially

shiftless silos) as the only measure of credible

architectural production. In reality, the

education must center on the ramifications of

our work acknowledging that the site, context,

clients, programs, energy flows and economies

of living constitute the fabric and productive

value of architectural design. The building’s

material palette and spatial composition are

only a part of our work which is easily lost if

we do not attend to and take advantage of the

generative potential the whole project offers.

The way the building influences change at the

community, city and perhaps even regional

scale are rarely considered in favor of fulfilling

personal indulgences of taste and style.

Balancing the foci of design studios is critical to

ensuring that silo-based pedagogy do not

come to dominate the undergraduate curricula

which often are overly put-upon to cover the

prerequisite skill driven components of design

education.

Change and the Measure of Performance:

Everyone designs who devises courses of

action aimed at changing existing situations

into preferred ones.

Herbert Simon-

Landscape Architecture has enjoyed the

necessary parameter of Systems Thinking

since its inception around 1828 when Gilbert

Laing Meason coined the title, which was later

institutionalized by Frederick Law Olmsted. The

advantage Landscape Architecture brings to

design pedagogy is it’s skill in understanding

life-cycle and larger 4 dimensional, or time-

based, issues. While architects have always

been required to consider their designs as

functional devices serving over-time, more and

more architectural design has become an act

of image production above the making of

functional space and place. Juvenile designers

have the propensity to follow down a path

trending toward isolated design devoid of time-

based performance issues and aggregated

affect. Given our vastly increased ability to

speculate and test scenarios digitally, why is it

so much emphasis has been placed on surface

manipulation and materials development?

Systems Thinking in design asks more of the

designer and educator. Advanced scenarios are

required to incorporate shifts in a building’s

life-cycle and community growth at the

planning scale; this added parameter is

complex and highly unpredictable yet crucial to

our professions advancement. Comfortable

issues of craft and composition are routinely

the focus with few examples of schools

preparing students for an education founded

upon holistic design in a world desperately in

need of empathetic, conscientious, and

innovative thinkers looking to create a

measurable and deployable means of change

to our built environment.

Returning to the question of how can the silo

effect be avoided or at least controlled, I

suggest time as a fundamental design

parameter to be placed in the center of our

pedagogical set of concerns. Landscape

Architecture addresses this issue via the

inescapable parameter of their material

palette, living vegetable tissue and its

dependence on the environment. Recounting

interviews with Landscape Architecture

colleagues and their writing, one trope

emerges within their design pedagogies. To

design a landscape is to design a change. In

architecture, particularly with novice designers,

design is increasingly understood as being

synonymous with invention and original

creation. This misunderstanding and lack of

correction by faculty builds a false belief that

architecture is only invention, when in fact I

would argue it is augmentation. In a world full

of design and design ideologies one, regardless

of design experience, cannot help but define

HOLISM IN FOUNDATION DESIGN: AVOIDING THE “SILO EFFECT”

his/her understanding and actions through

prior knowledge. In this, students should be

made to understand they are augmenting

architecture and its aggregate effect on

community and city. Planning and Urban

Design as allied fields of Architecture and

Landscape Architecture could and perhaps

should be taught as one continuum. While their

content would likely prove too much to cover

in a single undergraduate education, the

theoretical and operational means used in

considering the effects of change may be co-

opted and are absolutely passable.

Rolling-Start vs. Cold-Start:

A good Landscape Architecture and Urban

Design project is commonly initiated by an

extensive site inventory and analysis phase.

This form of Rolling-start puts the designer into

the mind-set that they are provoking a

change-of-state rather than creating a state.

While architecture is often considerate of site,

vis-à-vis a site analysis phase, it often only

results in a minor set of design considerations

forming a thin veil of groundedness.

Students do not begin a project seeking

questions; they begin by seeking answers to

only the questions we as educators provide in

the project statement. It is our job to teach

them to seek the unknown in order to create

their personal working knowledge. The

foundation skill is teaching students how to get

on to something not how to finish something.

The search is what everyone would

undertake if he were not stuck in the

everydayness of his own life. To be

aware of the possibility of the search is

to be onto something. Not to be onto

something is to be in despair.

Walker Percy-

At stake in the foundation years is the

students’ trajectory as a practitioner of design

in effect they learn to become Technicians or

Architects.

Engineering, medicine, business,

architecture and painting are concerned

not with the necessary but with the

contingent - not with how things are but

with how they might be - in short, with

design.

Herbert Simon-

Demonstration; how foundation design can

be about the gathering and interpretation of

information not just the means of making:

Fig. 3 Meander Project Fall 2010

One active means of pressing students into a

time-based way of understanding is the use of

Causality Diagrams. Causality is the

relationship between an event (the cause) and

the consequence (the effect) of the event. This

relationship can typically be expanded to

include as much or little information and data

as the instructor feels necessary. Critical are

the conversations about the diagrams and the

latent condition of change-over-time. I find by

doing these diagrams students recognize the

context of their work while realizing the paths

that their work may progress toward. Once this

understanding is made visible and hopefully

clear, the student is empowered to manipulate

the scale of the diagram including or excluding

issues to place their work in a position of

understanding that is appropriate for the

project duration and expectations. Beginning

students often lack this operational sensibility,

seeing the vastness of a project’s potential,

paralysis is often the result. By contextualizing

the design problem a student begins to

understand the problem’s local identity within

its global challenge and vice versa. What is

important is the fact that these models are not

design paths/tracks made for students to

follow in hopes of completion. They are

awareness models, intended to frame and

create the necessary context and push-back

that drives design.

Prof. Carl Steinitz defines design as both noun

and verb wherein the verb state is equated to

the methods and actions of design, while the

noun state is associated with design as its’

theory and purpose. [3] In this case, by

employing causality modeling I am able to

refer students to the noun (theoretical

conditions) and verb states of their projects,

bringing focus to their efforts.

Working with beginning students it is important

not to suggest a single answer or method

exists in design. I allow students to first just

work, produce and comprehend all they can

intuitively. After the project is presented we

take time to reflect on the work through a

Causal Loop diagramming exercise where

students list the issues they considered and

how they considered them. This is usually

difficult and slow to begin as students often do

not see the complexity of the work they have

produced. They are also uncomfortable in

writing out decisions that seem simple or

obvious, likely a conditioned response to their

secondary education which generally strives for

answer-based response above question-based

response.

To begin this process of reflection it is

important to address the question of

knowledge creation and management, it is

appropriate to develop some perspective on

knowledge so the student can better

understand the objective of the exercise. Neil

Fleming, an Educational Developer, suggests

these definitions for the constituents of

knowledge;

A collection of data is not information.

A collection of information is not

knowledge.

A collection of knowledge is not

wisdom.

A collection of wisdom is not truth.

The idea is that information, knowledge, and

wisdom are more than simply collections,

similar to silos. Rather, the whole represents

more than the sum of its parts and has a

synergy of its own. [4] Below is a Causal Model

I use to explain how a firm functions and how

it is composed of many moving parts similar to

their projects and the way their projects might

affect the world if built.

Fig. 4 Causal Loop for a Firms Operation

HOLISM IN FOUNDATION DESIGN: AVOIDING THE “SILO EFFECT”

This reflection brings students closer to an

understanding that their work will one day

have consequence on our built environment.

Exposing students to the notion of

consequence brings them back to the issue of

time and shift as a fundamental parameter of

design thinking.

The Hive and Meander Projects [fig. 3] were

first year design projects aimed at building

skills and confidence while also considering

communal consequence in design thinking. In

both projects students were given an abstract

yet clearly delineated site. The sites were

defined as base-lines upon which their work

would have effects. In addition to affecting the

site, students were asked to design

interventions which relied upon their

neighboring designers’ comprehension of

intent. These projects probed and provoked

cause and effect design scenarios resulting in

aggregated designs that relied on Systems

Understanding for project explanation and

presentation.

Fig. 5 Silo Education Model Moving Toward Non-Silo Model

Smudging the Silos:

At the foundation design level I believe the

critical objective to know is that students need

a place to stand. In this way I think the silo-

based system of education allows students to

“know” something, to have a confidence with

the methods of representation, project

organization, etc. However, these are all issues

that could be taught in a non-studio format.

The studio is the place where these distinct

knowledge domains become smudged and

muddled, blended and braided into new forms

of knowledge. To teach design is to both clarify

and smudge issues of design praxis. While

clarification via texts on theory, drawing,

material science, and construction abound, it is

the role of the instructor to introduce variables

that cause this information to be untangled

and transformed into new methods and

systems of project realization.

I conclude that the manipulation of time and

its uncanny ability to measure design

performance is the means by which

architectural foundation design may be

brought into a contemporary state. Time has

focused our attentions on the environment’s

decline, politically empowered disasters,

human tragedies and accomplishments. We

measure our lives and our successes on the

passing of time as we often do the value and

nobility of great buildings throughout time.

By reminding our students that time creates

the measure of performance, we the designers

of education, may create a class of architects

not interested in just now, but also tomorrow.

Endnotes:

1. Carl Steinitz. “A Framework for Theory Application to the Education of Landscape Architects (and other Environmental Design Professionals)” Landscape Jrnl. September 21, 1990 9:136-143; doi:10.3368/lj.9.2.136 2. McHarg, Ian L. “Design With Nature” February 6, 1995, Wiley; 1 edition 3. Carl Steinitz. “Design is a Verb; Design is a Noun” Landscape Jrnl. September 21, 1995 14:188-200; doi:10.3368/lj.14.2.188 4. Bellinger, Gene. “Systems Thinking: A journey in the realm of systems" 2004 http://www.systems-thinking.org/kmgmt/kmgmt.htm

Bibliography:

1. Mittelstrass, Jurgen. “Enzyklopädie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie” 4 volumes, 1980–1996

2. Nicolescu, Basarab. “Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity” 3 January 2002, Suny Series in Western Esoteric traditions, translation from French by Karen-Claire Voss

3. S. E. Jørgensen, “Integration of Ecosystem Theories: A Pattern”, 3rd ed. Kluwer Academic Publishers, (ISBN 1-4020-0651-9) (2002) Chapters 1 & 2.

4. Basarab Nicolescu (Ed.) Transdisciplinarity – “Theory and Practice”, Hampton Press, Cresskill, NJ, USA, 2008.

5. Jørgensen, Erik and Bendoricchio, G. “Fundamentals of Ecological Modeling” Volum 9 of Developments in Environmental Modeling. 1998 Elsevier Press

OPPORTUNISM IN BEGINNING DESIGN

Opportunism in Beginning Design Hans C. Herrmann, AIA

Mississippi State University

Introduction

Opportunism is often used as a pejorative when describing the immoral or unethical manipulation of a situation to further one’s self-interest. Unprincipled, deficient of character or at the least, showing a lack of propriety, the term holds sinister associations. The contemporary understanding is clear; however, one must ask if the same associations hold true when the word Design is placed before opportunism? This inquiry asks numerous questions of the term and contemporary practice. How have architects traditionally conduced their craft in the face of opportunity, which may often be closely coupled with necessity? Is Design-Opportunism a subject to be avoided by beginning design educators? Should students be taught to feel shame or comfort when given an assignment that requires them to observe, detect, and act upon situational design advantage, in essence, seek opportunity? Although it may be disapproved of or criticized -"there ought to be a law against it"- in the immediate sense opportunistic behavior is not necessarily criminal or illegal and may, if well considered, revive the profession by building an entrepreneurial opportunity-seeking ethos in future graduates. Opportunism holds a critical alignment with situational ethics that in many instances falls to a position of the lesser of evils implying that one may be doing the right thing within the situation that has been created by those outside of the designer’s sphere of influence; a common condition in today’s global economy and the architectural profession within a field of environmental design and construction. Given

the contemporary condition in which architects are being marginalized as makers of image, might it be wise to discuss the role of opportunism in design practice as a means of escape from the profession’s ever collapsing disciplinary bounds? Integrated Project Delivery and Design-Build offer unique advantages to architects when considering the opportunity to increase design quality and fees by taking on increased responsibility, risk, and liability. Is this opportunism or is this what William Deresiewicz of the New York Times might characterize as the rise of the “Millennial” ethic? Deresiewicz suggests the new crop of graduates will be highly entrepreneurial, interested in doing the right thing over the most profitable thing and most critically, not defined by tradition or preexisting disciplinary boundaries. If this is taken as true, how does foundation design education leverage these tendencies and perhaps even bolster them? Jane Jacobs once wrote: As in the pseudoscience of blood-letting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense. In this passage Jacobs is referring to the blind allegiance designers often hold the paradigms of their education. As educators we must always question the paradigm and bring perspective to our role in the larger issues of the built environment. Architecture is a pseudoscience and it is in many ways often founded upon nonsense. What is critical to understand is that certain forms of opportunism are often quite

OPPORTUNISM IN BEGINNING DESIGN

sensible and divorced from the highly abstracted, sometimes utopian, goals of theoretically derived design.

History of Opportunity

Contemplating architectural production over time one realizes that opportunity has consistently played a significant role in enabling architects to advance design and construction methods in the agency of an improved built-environment. Architectural heroes and innovators such as Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), Andreas Palladio (1508–1580), Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879), Antonio Gaudi (1852–1926), Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), Carlo Scarpa (1906–1978), Edgar Miller (1899-1993), Charles (1907–1978) and Ray Eames (1912–1988), to contemporaries like Norman Foster, Bernard Tschumi, and SHoP Architects + Construction, have focused on underlying opportunity to build works of architecture that define their age and the professional discipline.

Fig. 1 Leon Battista Alberti, Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini

Whether re-cladding a medieval church or a poorly designed NY Nicks stadium, the goal of these architects was to make more of the existing situation for the good of the built environment and those using it either by purpose or default. Natural disasters, war, social unrest, and other global strife have all, at some time, acted as

catalysts for architectural response. Often in the form of intervention, but at times as a reformative act, architects consistently respond to situational needs that must, in some form, be addressed. These conditions structure the thin line between opportunism and seeking opportunity. In the case of hurricane Katrina examples of what some might call opportunistic behavior was surely demonstrated and to a degree persists today.

Fig. 2 Francesco Borromini, Chiese Di SM Della Pace

However extravagant some design responses may seem, it is difficult to discern genuine concern for the built environment, people, and places over self-interests in design. Does natural disaster response necessarily imply self-serving action on the part of designers or are they simply doing their best within a situation? Not for profit groups like Architecture for Humanity and the myriad of university-based community design centers work tirelessly to build a better world. Istheir function opportunistic? Likely not. The question of whether or not to act is what may be the key to discerning opportunistic behavior from seeking opportunity. Architects design buildings, spaces, and places; if that is what is needed in the end how does one argue that no action is more principled then reaction? Surely action is necessary however, the skills and professional ethics professors impart to be enacted by their

OPPORTUNISM IN BEGINNING DESIGN

students does play a large role in how design effort is opportunistic or genuinely philanthropic. At question is the agency of architects to aggressively and proactively address the situations in need of attention, i.e. quality of life, sustainable design, stewardship or resources. With their expertise on the built and building of environment is it more principled to await requests for assistance or to actively engage the issues through practice? I believe most would argue that practice is paramount but if that practice, which is founded on methods and ideas presented during one’s education, is unprincipled then the issue once again becomes murky. It is the role of the educator to discern the difference and to teach these distinctions to their students. Shades of Opportunism Human opportunism should not be confused with "seeking opportunities" as such, or "making use of opportunities when they arise". Opportunism refers rather to a specific way of responding to opportunities, which involves the element of self-interestedness plus disregard for relevant ethical principles, intended or previously agreed goals, or the shared concerns of a group. Although human opportunism often has a strong negative moral connotation in contrast to biological opportunism, used as a neutral scientific description, it may also be defined more neutrally as putting self-interest before other interests when there is an opportunity to do so, or flexibly adapting to changing circumstances to maximize self-interest (though usually in a way that negates some principle previously held). The self-interests involved in justifying one’s actions are of course still open to corruption. In the case of the construction industry emerging architects need to understand the ongoing erosion of their fields’ responsibility and necessity. When put in perspective architects seeking opportunity by pursuing segments of project realization that currently do not belong to architects is hardly unprincipled but in fact a principled response to the systematic dismantlement of their profession

and livelihood. Foundation design education must, in such an instance, be consistently referred by the ethical considerations of building, including the greater good, public welfare, civic mindedness, and environmental accountability which often are concerns of design and building that other construction industry contingencies are not particularly concerned with.

Opportunism is sometimes also defined as the ability to capitalize on the mistakes of others, to utilize opportunities created by the errors, weaknesses or distractions of opponents to one's own advantage. In a war situation or crisis, this may be regarded as justifiable, but in a civilized situation it may be regarded as unprincipled "taking unfair advantage of the situation". Again this is a question of perspective. To the gorilla fighters in Vietnam perhaps the defense of their homeland, regardless of political ideology, was motive enough for their strategies, as was also the case for many militia groups in the war of Independence here in the United States. It is difficult to suggest their actions as wrong or unprincipled when viewed from the perspective of the defender rather then aggressor.

Taking a realistic or practical approach to a problem can involve weak forms of opportunism – for the sake of doing something that will work, or which will successfully solve the problem, a previously agreed principle is knowingly compromised or disregarded, with the justification that any alternative action would, in an overall sense, have a worse effect. Architects are increasingly finding themselves in such situations as more and more of the built environment is conceived, designed and built by non-architects with a different set of goals.

Systems Thinking and Opportunism

With regard to contemporary interests in systems thinking and holistic design it seems evident that opportunism be considered a component to improved design. At the center of opportunism is

OPPORTUNISM IN BEGINNING DESIGN

attentiveness. For one to be opportunistic one must have a goal and must understand what advantages may be sought to reach that goal. If the goal is outstanding design, which includes notions of ethical construction, environmentalism, public welfare, then the trait of opportunism is one to seek and / or impart on young students.

The selfishness of today’s students seems their insatiable appetite for object-oriented projects focused more on novelty of fabrication than quality of lived experience. To design in a field of preexisting buildings, social fabrics, material palettes, and vernaculars, in short context, has somehow become a deplorable chore and even worse, as one student called it, “less architectural.” In such cases the opportunism being witnessed is one of willful ignorance to the realities of design and those who will one day suffer its consequence. The separation created by abstraction of documentation methods, client correspondence, means of construction, and the standard business model, have all led to a small-minded, self-serving practice of work-a-day architectural hobbyists more interested in a picture of a building then a sustainable and fulfilling environment.

This form of opportunism does not reside in the academy alone and is in fact far more threatening when witnessed in practice. The suburban malls, subdivisions, and frontage-street shopping strips, what Rem Koolhaas might define as Junkspace, are all the result of opportunistic developers, architects, engineers, and contractors putting profit above design ethics and civic responsibility.

One might conclude that opportunism suggests the careful and strategic use of resources, maximization of effort to return. In such a definition opportunism aligns with environmentally accountable and sensitive ecological design. Logically ordered to make the most of things, opportunistic design thinking could lead to examples such as La Dallman

Architects Marsupial Bridge or the much celebrated Highline project by James Corner and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Their work highlights the possibilities of opportunism as an interventional methodology for design that results in a rich, functional, and poetic built environment.

Fig. 1 Highline by James Corner, Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Instrumentality

Utilization of potential is a trademark of opportunistic design however, this notion extends beyond the visually accessible alone. In the case of practices such as SHoP and Kieran Timberlake the opportunity for disciplinary expansion has extended to include the creation of building products and practices. For these practices opportunity has emerged from a self-derived necessity. In creating architecture, that many argue is an improvement of the built environment, these firms have gone so far as to design specific means of construction and construction materials. In doing so, the firms

OPPORTUNISM IN BEGINNING DESIGN

have expanded their influence on the realization of a project, adding fee to their practice, while also ensuring higher quality. As examples of contemporary practice both firms have shown the potential for “value-added” commonly associated with Integrated Project Delivery or IDP. While for some the invention of specialized fabrication and materials may seem self-serving and potentially opportunistic, when considered against the goals and accomplishments of afore mentioned architectural heroes, these practices register as contemporary exemplars, signaling the recovery of the role and value of the architect.

The issue of established norms, disciplinary boundaries, and professional conduct is at question in such instances. What may be perceived as aggressive or even out-of-line is in reality merely a retaking of the traditional responsibilities of architects in the construction of our built-environment. The opportunists, to use the term negatively, are those professional societies and institutes who are dismantling professional oversights in favor of limiting legal responsibility and the need for rigorous education and professional examination, affectively giving value and fees to those members of the construction industry who are concerned the least with issues of quality of life, art, and thehuman experience but most prepared to manage risk. These opportunists are not necessarily functioning out of intent to do wrong but rather an ignorance of the complexity and ramifications of their actions.

The notion of architects as aggressors has consistently referred more to their championship of design quality above higher salaries and personal wealth. When considered carefully a paradox is revealed that those most closely associated with Value Engineering and design cost reductions are also those who tend to profit the highest from construction as a business for generating wealth over better living.

Pedagogical application

One method of building an opportunist ethic in beginning students requires the use of well-defined design solution contingencies such as highly articulated sites, material stocks, or programmatic utilities as part of design exercises that result in intervention-based solutions. By presenting the ill-structured pursuit of design as a relational task rather than a purely invention orientated act of synthesis, students are confronted with elements of the problem that are real, scalable, and tangible, and therefore operable and generative. In contrast, projects and exercises that require the student to begin from scratch with nothing but a white sheet of paper present an extremely challenging learning curve. The level of abstract thinking and instruction (which is critical) required to begin,and effectively address such design problems,may become too daunting a task for even the well-prepared student and educator.

Fig. 4 Take / Put

When considering the notion of opportunism one must remember that it implies a set of givens (site, materials, program devices) that are open for tactical manipulation as components of a design solution. In this way alignments with vernacular design are made where in one operatestactically based on local understanding of the problem at hand and the contingencies associated with that problem in order to manipulate it to alter the result. Likewise it

OPPORTUNISM IN BEGINNING DESIGN

suggests that the problem is aggressive and that it contains a kind of inertia, perhaps formal, theoretical, or other, that may also be manipulated to serve the designers agenda. By designing problems that are loaded with inertial contingencies, design depth and scalable performative consequences are embedded in the work and therefore more easily made distinguishable and comprehensible to the novice designer.

Conclusion

If the act of design is to legitimize 'what should be done', opportunistic design thinking seeks to pursue 'what can be done and why it should', a position far more easily understood by a beginning student. Rooted in Discovery Learning pioneered by Jerome Bruner, the act of seeking answers, perhaps opportunistically, above applying answers is a critical skill for educators to advance.

The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion - these are the most valuable coins of the thinker at work. But in most schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated somehow with laziness. -Jerome Bruner

Architectural education is not about reinforcing dogmatic theory. It is about educating the next generation of people that will build in the world. The world they will enter is difficult to anticipate and their education should acknowledge this instability and openness to allow for a full and unencumbered engagement. The introduction of doctrinaire theory or simply a preferred aesthetic may create an immeasurable impression on the novice designer. Faculty seeking to impress students with what amount to nonsense syllables in the mind of beginners must be careful in their role as mentors and experts. Education is about giving not getting and faculty that are teaching to garner a following rather then a deeper

understanding should be mindful to occasionally question their motives. In this, I conclude by suggesting that opportunism is a way of thinking and working that aims to take advantage and make the most of things. As we enter a century where it is likely that we will need to explore our resourcefulness, students do not need to follow style, aesthetics, or outmoded theories, they need first to follow opportunity.

OPPORTUNISM IN BEGINNING DESIGN

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Image Credits

1. Leon Battista Alberti, Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini, Photo by Author

2. Francesco Borromini, Chiese Di SM Della Pace

3. Seemann, 636546 P1000786.JPG

http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/

4. Take / Put by Author