Final Penn Work 08 091web

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Work 08–09 University of Pennsylvania School of Design Department of Architecture William Braham, Interim Chair Annette Fierro, Associate Chair Winka Dubbeldam, Director of the PPD David Leatherbarrow, Chair of the Graduate Group in Architecture

Introduction foundation core advanced COURSES / Events / News

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Introduction Since its founding in 1890, architecture at Penn has emphasized the link between theoretical speculation, professional practice, and artistic expression. Our faculty is distinguished precisely by uniting trajectories, engendering new ways of seeing, new directions for imagination, and new models of practice. Our Master of Architecture program is a rigorous, professional degree that develops expertise and innovation in all aspects of design and construction. Penn provides a robust infrastructure for students to acquire the diverse skills and knowledge needed for creative practice today, as well as a critical orientation to contemporary issues of culture, technology, ecology, and urbanism. Taking advantage of developments in technology and computation, we create novel environments that support fuller and richer lives in diverse settings around the world. Our design studios foster students’ abilities to conceptualize latent potentials and to realize new cultural formations that may contribute to the co-evolution of social and natural systems. Digital media were initially introduced in schools over a decade ago. They now permeate the curriculum, as they do contemporary practice and everyday life. Students learn techniques of visualization in a discrete sequence of courses closely bound to the design studio. Their power to assemble information, analyze, integrate, and simulate are simultaneously developed in technology courses, and critically examined in history-theory courses. The design studio sequence begins with abstract models and techniques—generated through diagrams, models from geometry or nature, experiment, and even computer scripts. During the studio sequence students will move beyond this beginning, to incorporate all the aspects of design, use, and construction which are required of serious architectural propositions. On the one hand, digital media have been the subject of specific experiment and inquiry in architecture, while on the other, digital models are so pervasive in engineering,

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fabrication, and project management as to engender convergence and demand collaboration. Computers provide powerful tools for analyzing sites and developing programs. They enable students to distill ever more extensive and detailed data and to understand less tangible dynamics of behavior and change: flows of people, energy, water, resources, goods, information, images, and capital. Our curriculum extends beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries at many points, allowing students to deepen their skills and explore other aspects of design. Environmental sustainability is addressed at almost every level of the program, and more explicitly in our certificate program in Ecological Architecture, which includes the study of contemporary approaches to environmental design, of performance simulation, and of the political and cultural aspects of implementation. The work of that program is complemented by the ambitious research agenda of the TC Chan Center of Building Simulation and Energy Studies. In other areas, new approaches to the generation of complex form are supported by an on-line scripting group, and complemented by the research activities of the NonLinear Systems Organization (NSO) and the innovative collaboration in biological research of LabStudio. The new program in Integrated Product Design (IPD), offered in collaboration with the School of Engineering and the Wharton School of Business, introduces the materials and methods of industrial design and product development, and explores the integration of advanced sensing and control technologies in design products at all scales. A range of other certificates and dual degrees provide opportunity for students to combine their studies with the other disciplines in the School of Design. Especially popular have been the dualMaster degree with Landscape Architecture and the certificate programs in Urban Design and in Real Estate Development. Many graduates use these opportunities to launch themselves into hybrid and specialized careers. We foster a culture of research

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Huishi Li on Demarco Christopher Mackowiak drew Gierke Brenna Martin o Yon Hwang Jeffrey Olgin alina Ibarrola Parvathi Rao an Kelley and communication that mines fields of knowledge and activity a Kenyon beyond architecture asHoma well asFarjadi a capacity to integrate diverse (even nisha Lewis through the creative process of design. Agarwal e Ruiz competing) objectivesKapil Research Studios and Thesis offered in the final semester, as Michael Forejt niel Whipple well as our one-year Post-Professional Program, have become the Jacob Fry eng Zhou John Li locus of advanced experimentation, pushing the boundaries of pro@PD ARCH 703practice andSylwia Olewicz fessional advancing the discipline. Advanced studios nka Dubbeldam/ Gillian Stoneback link seminars, travel, and research, allowing intellectual and design Takebayashi vid Ruycollaboration betweenAkari faculty and students. Advanced studios Xiaopeng WangLast year, student projects pil Agarwal engage situations around the world. uni Fengproposed catalytic interventions for Dhaka, Dubai, Delhi, London, David Ruy shi Li Mexico City, Monterrey, Rio de Janeiro, and along the US-Mexico Leslie Billhymer n-Hao Lin border. At the same time, studios at every level engage the potenJared Bledsoe ongshi Liu tials of community development in Philadelphia, from Fish Town Young-Suk Choi frey Nesbit and West Philadelphia to the Delaware Waterfront and Center City. Joshua Freese wia Olewicz It is our hope that Penn Design can help students to find ways to Catalina Ibarrola mir Shah critically engage with the world that they live in. Danisha Lewis el Vansteenkiste To develop creativity a school Kristi Loui requires more than academic hael Wacht programs, facilities, and financial resources. While these are vital Meagan Marchant openg Wang ingredients, the infrastructure is just a support for the academic Todd Montgomery eyi Zhang community of faculty Elias and students, Padilla which is a special kind of but loose. The freedom to Jose generous Ruiz CH 704social experiment—open, connections, Silvera and even to disagree, is cruRahimform different kinds ofIsaac cial for the chemistry that makes a school productive. Great things a Kenyon areKim possible when students ARCH are 706given the freedom to explore ung Kyun ideas, exceed limits, and take risks in the company of others doing ??????? nghak Ko young Lee the same. Learning to design requires a social milieu disposed to gwon Lee welcome the anxietiesPH.D of uncertain trajectories, the exhilaration of Jody ‘09 eph Leffelman discovery, and the thirst forBeck, connectivity in new directions. Alison Hirsch, ‘08faculty for making 2008/09 nny Lin I want to thank all the students and Tania Calovi Pereira n-Hao Lin such a productive year. Thanks also to our??dedicated staff— CharlesKathleen L. DavisMaiorano, III ??? ongshi Liu Staci Kaplan, Valerie Beulah, Tanya Yang, and it Muskara Wang n Yang 6  introduction uo Zhang

Nysia Petrakis, our coordinator. This publication has only been possible through Staci’s conscientious work, Katie Bonier’s copy editing, and the design talents of Thumb. Dean Marilyn Jordan Taylor and her staff deserve equal thanks for all their support and encouragement. —Dr. William W. Braham, FAIA Interim Chair, Department of Architecture

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foundation

Architecture 501 This course is an introductory architectural design studio intended to develop critical, analytical and speculative design abilities in architecture. Students develop representational techniques for the analysis of social and cultural constructs, and formulate propositions for situating built form in the arena of the urban and natural environments. This studio initiates innovation through the analysis of complex systems and algorithms, as a means to explore ecological concepts. It introduces computation, develops geometric techniques, and explores modes of digital fabrication. Projects will explore the formation of space in relation to the body, and the development of small scale public programs. The semester consists of three projects, each progressively more complex in scope. The first project concerns the design of an assembly with a given set of parts. The second is situated within a limited environment, and addresses the spatial and temporal organization of objects in a space, and the body’s relationship to them. The last project concerns a comprehensive building proposal for a small pavilion, and its integration into the landscape. —Rhett Russo, coordinator

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Assignment 1: Assembly

­ —Rhett Russo, critic — Ildo Yang, Michael Wetmore This project is an exercise in the use of a nature-derived logic to map a specific surface with a modular component system. Using Schoen’s I-WP triply periodic minimal surface as a formal inspiration, we combined card units following a specific logic derived from the cell growth of leaves. Plants commonly form sheets of new matter in rigid cellulose patterns which force growth to the outside of the structure. More elastic organic materials, such as leaves, petals, or in our case cards, allow growth to acquire more flexibility and to occur throughout the entire system. When more material is added to the edge of the structure than

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to the center, wavelike curvature begins to form. Applying this natural algorithm to our card units, the hyperbolic curvature of the triply periodic surface begins to take shape from the simple organization of the unit surfaces (cards). Likewise, the curvature can be softened by decreasing the number of units. In the resulting nonlinear progression, speed, curvature and method of attachment are controlled by substituting cards. Each card settles differently depending on its own degree of torque, and the torque of its predecessor. In this way a complex and organized behavior can be controlled and applied to processes of surface generation. 1. Ildo Yang, Michael Wetmore

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­ Ben Krone, critic — —Qianqian Sun Studio 501 Design Project 2. Qianqian Sun

­ Julie Beckman, critic — — Eli Linger, Thomas Michael The inherent geometry of the playing card presents a logical genesis for an organizational system. The card as an object contains limits represented by its length and width. Our initial organizational system explores incremental shifts along the diagonal axis of the card in a closed system until its boundaries are breached. At this point the closed system is no longer able to connect to its neighboring card, and a new organizational system is required.

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Whereas the initial closed system was based solely on an incremental shift governed by the geometry of the card, the new system is dictated by the surface information. The decks are first shuffled and divided into two piles containing red and black suits, then one color is dealt until an ace triggers a color change. The suit of each card informs the location of the connection and allows the surface information to govern the final result.

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3–6. Eli Linger, Thomas Michael

—Cristina Rodriguez-Vazquez Studio 501 Design Project 7–9. Cristina Rodriguez-Vazquez

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Assignment 2: Display

reach strategically placed irrigation. The irrigation lines, in turn, change shape and path. As the irrigation lines shift, new opportunities form for previously unwatered grasses. Over the lifetime of the armature, the grass will devour and reshape its armature and irrigation system. The wall is a study of the peculiar growth system of turf grass, and an art piece for the urban community in which it is placed.

—Julie Beckman, critic — Brian Zilis In botany, a rhizome is the horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, sending out roots and shoots from its nodes. “Any part of the rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be… The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, offshoots… The brain itself is much more like grass than a tree, the rhizome is altogether different from the genetic axis of a tree or root; a map and not a tracing.” —Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

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10, 11. Brian Zilis

— Rhett Russo, critic — Michael Golden This living wall was designed to accommodate two types of sedum, which through their vibrant, varying colors over the This is a study of rhizomous plant growth. course of a year provide a visual cue for A system of variables— plant type, materiality, irrigation, and solar exposure— the changing of the seasons in an urban context. Sedums were selected for their determine the armature on which to grow hardiness with a smaller creeping sedum sod. The resulting “tapestry” is depenused to fill in the vertical areas around a dent on these variables and their taller, upright variety. The planting and interactions. As the plants grow, the space requirements of the two plant rhizomes bend, twist, and even break species determined the parameters for the weaker materials in their efforts to

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the actual growing space on the wall, and so a simple rule set was applied to a flow study conducted in oil and watercolors to derive the wall’s form. The modulating thickness of the trays, while providing the topology necessary for the growth and care of these two plants, also creates a screen of varying opacity dependent on its depth and the viewer’s location. The tectonic system, also derived from the original study painting, further delineates the various areas of transparency, sometimes retreating into and sometimes protruding beyond the boundary defined by the outer edge of the individual trays. 12, 13. Michael Golden

— Ben Krone, critic —Shannon Brennan Designing a turf wall for a site in downtown Philadelphia, I created a gradient system to carefully control water, sunlight, wind, and vulnerability to disease. This gradient allows various diseases to develop and spread, but also detains and controls them. The process of weakening

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the grass and letting it compete to become healthy again inevitably increases resistance to future diseases. This newer, stronger, turf is then suitable for other, less favorable, urban settings. 14–16. Shannon Brennan

—Julie Beckman, critic —Thomas Michael Studio 501 Design Project 17–19. Thomas Michael

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Assignment 3: Pavilion

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—Ben Krone , critic — Peter Hanby SEED BOMB This urban farm rejects traditional planting methods, in favor of opportunistic growth and fluctuating environmental conditions, to create a range of possible vegetation patterns. Foot traffic is redirected from Manayunk’s riverside walk to provide kinetic energy, which triggers seed release 19

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from a series of elevated pathways. Pedestrians are thus (perhaps unknowingly) recast as agents of dispersal. The ground plain below is tuned with a network of channels that allow for the influx of river water to further distribute seeds throughout the site. Rising water levels activate additional channels, altering seed distribution, plant dispersal, and circulation possibilities. 20–23. Peter Hanby 26

—Ben Krone , critic

— Oladipo Obilana Studio 501 Design Project 24–26. Oladipo Obilana

—Julie Beckman , critic — Eli Linger Studio 501 Design Project 27–29. Eli Linger

— Cristina Rodriguez-Vasquez The inspiration for my Urban Farm started with a study of the crop patterns of lilacs, hydrangeas, carrots, potatoes, wheat grass and other herbs. Each of these plants has a particular growth pattern. Using the same principles, an 24 20  Design studio — Foundation — ARCH 501 

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interactive mesh covers the entire site, expanding or contracting according to the activity or crop in each area. In some cases, this mesh becomes a floor pattern. Where shelter is required, the mesh is elevated from the ground and transformed into structure. The program is divided into park-like pavilions that you discover as you walk through the farm. 30, 31. Cristina Rodriguez-Vasquez

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—Jenny Sabin , critic —Rebecca Fuchs This project proposes an urban farm on the site of an old flour mill in the floodplain of the Schuylkill River. The Urban Farm encompasses a complex concert of interactive ecosystems, inhabitants, production efforts and visitors. Imbalances within these relationships may have immediate and long-lasting effects. To address this, students began with parallel investigations within algorithmic modeling techniques that explore the unstable and the complex; relationships that oscillate, stimulate, provoke, transform, grow and adapt. In this project, urban agriculture parallels post-industrial decay, for both occupy the space between the city and nature, between the smooth and the striated. In the event of a flood, container vegetables float, tethered to the site, while farm animals don life jackets and move to safety. 32–34. Rebecca Fuchs

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—Roland Snooks, critic

—Benjamin Lee We used an algorithmic approach to formulate our architecture. The implementation of rule sets (either using software or by hand) provided the underlying logic to create something which might be ugly or beautiful, but was, more importantly, bizarre. We were constantly seeking the balance between the explicit and the generative. The accumulation of research led to the design of an urban farm. My initial interest was in the bridges crossing between the mainland and the island site. I imagined the bridge as a single strand, and treated each strand as an individual agent in a multi-agent system. Some strands would bond together in a controlled way to create structure, while others would bond differently to generate the programmatic elements of the bridges. These then

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interacted in a predator-prey type of relationship, in which the structure ‘chased’ the program strands. With an alteration of the parameters of these strands, a completely different outcome would occur. This was a significant aspect of the research/project. 35. Benjamin Lee

—Rhett Russo, critic

—Kathryn Green The joint programmatic and infrastructural design for this project was derived from a material study of the composition and flow of multiple streams of paint across a flat surface. The result was a generative circuitry of small and large streams flowing into, out of, and along one another. Relationships between interstitial spaces, nodes of origination, and directional paths were then extracted from this

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network and re-formatted to function within the program of an Urban Farm. The design for this project integrates building and landscape so that neither can embody form or give rise to function, as individual entity, but only as an assembly of interrelated parts. Their interconnectivity allows for various flows of traffic throughout the site, as well as for the development of programmatic hierarchies and symbiotic relationships between systems. 36. Kathryn Green

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Architecture 502 The second semester of the core studio curriculum, Architecture 502, explores architecture as it develops from contemporary urban conditions. Students undertake research using different analytical models that have historically been available to represent urban morphologies, and extend these models using complex, dynamic representational technologies. Techniques and methods acquired in the previous semester are reinvigorated. Every year the topic of this study shifts, addressing cultural aspects of the city with different questions of infrastructure, typology or environment. The first contention of site in this studio is that it expands beyond the confines of defined property, embracing contexts that are as broad as regional attributes and policies. This year’s studio asserts a particular environmental urban situation as a design problem. Working with the new sustainability department in the City of Philadelphia, watershed management was identified as a particular current concern. While there were many technologies and techniques learned for rainwater retention and treatment, the studio was poised first to understand water moving through a vast urban context as the dynamic morphological setting of the site. The studio design intention called forth an “infrastructure of surfaces,” with hydrology as a preeminent element of urban form, and a primary constituent of public space. The strategies for handling water locally, within the site and the building program—a municipal public “wellness center”—was layered with organizations of human occupation and function. This conjunction was the device of the studio’s pedagogy: personal bodily and mental health is equivalent and analogous to the health of the city. —Annette Fierro, coordinator

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­— Keith VanDerSys, critic

— Mark Shkolnikov Textural Circulations This project distills pattern and rhythm from the city of Philadelphia in order to develop a strategy for a Healthness Center, an extension of city life—where one can bathe, replenish, and interact. The Healthness Center proposes a solution to Philadelphia’s burden of a combined sewer system by not only collecting all storm water runoff within the site, but also by celebrating water through architecture, as it pools, flows, vaporizes, and trickles towards a centrally located bioretention basin. The design process began with a contextual analysis of the city of Philadelphia, informational mapping, and the super-imposition of surface versus sub-surface conditions. From these studies and further abstractions, I created three-dimensional models to generate new spatial techniques for the layering of ideas of density and flownetworking, between intensified local activity and macro-scale urban infrastructure. These relationships were classified according to texture: smooth to rough, wet to dry. Program, form, and circulation were developed from further textural investigations, from which hybrid textures emerged to navigate and allow water to pass. The integration of the Healthness Center with its environment

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is seamless. Visitors are encouraged not only to see, but also to feel the building as it operates with nature, further blurring boundaries between building and landscape, city and park. 37–40. Mark Shkolnikov

­— Rhett Russo, critic —Sean Bang Rainwater changes its characteristics depending where it first has contact with the site—this was the foundational idea of my project. Each different surface within the site—whether building surface, landscape area, or outdoor recreational space— changes the qualities of water from gray to storm water. Undulating building surfaces and roofs were designed so that the shape itself would guide and collect gray water

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towards water tanks within the site, either outdoor tanks or indoor water features. Additionally, the landscape and outdoor spaces were designed to collect storm water from the ground level, and to redistribute it into the underground storm water tanks to prevent overflow into the city’s existing sewer lines.

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41–43. Sean Bang

­— Julie Beckman , critic —Shannon Brennan Retying Franklintown Franklintown is an urban area just north of downtown Philadelphia, divided because of the segregation of users within the site. By playing out multiple scenarios to strategically place program, I designed the Healthness Center to socially “knot” the various typologies through potential

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areas of interaction. Public programs are openly dispersed and overlapped, while private programs remain within the structural cores of the building. These programmatic cores work with the multi-sloped roof of the building, which is a storm water strategy, collecting and pushing water through the building and out to the newly tree-lined streets.

contains moments of transformation, extension, and overlap. Such conditions are amplified by the interaction of two independent skins systems which allows a specificity of light, view, and porosity to augment the program. The intensity of these moves allows a gradient to be established which is then projected to the skin in a series of slits and perforations.

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­ Julie Beckman, critic — — Michael Wetmore The proposed Franklintown Health Center, sited in the southeast Fairmount district of Philadelphia, acts as a connecting node, unifying a disjointed community. By exploring programmatic and spatial blurring, new architectural outcomes are enabled. Such outcomes arise out of the collision or elongation of diverse programs. Users are drawn through the floor plan to various blurred zones which contain functions of multiple programmatic elements. These elements facilitate new opportunities of social interactions not intrinsic to program. Formally, the project

­— Annette Fierro, critic —Andrew Tetrault This studio charged students with developing a site strategy and program reactive to a rigorous Philadelphia water treatment plan, while developing a new architectural typology and landscape based around human health. My project began with an investigation of a series of flows and intensities across the site, and proposed strategies for manipulating or informing these flows as a part of a greater strategy. During the initial, intensive diagramming phase, I focused on the emergence and movement of sound, and its effect on the organization and 33

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operations of the site. I used this research to inform not only formal, but also programmatic design decisions. A further investigation into the physical outcomes of the combination of water and sound [project, dampen, filter, direct] help me to create a series of tools to develop a programmatic strategy based on the regulation of sound intensities. These sound levels characterized specific programmatic ‘healthness’ zones, creating thresholds between zones of varying magnitudes. The zones were developed around three distinct types of health program — mental, physical, and social—and their relationships with sound. The landscape plan focused on the natural introduction of a series of emergent plant species. Soil depth was controlled by building height. As a result, the building’s relationship to terra firma would inform and control the growth and proliferation of certain plants across the building and subsequent landscape.

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49–52. Andrew Tetrault

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— Fleet Hower This project demanded delicate environmental contextualization and responsiveness to unique urban conditions. The enhancement of existing local circulation routes was my primary concern. The site experiences heavy pedestrian traffic that fluctuates hourly in terms of direction, volume, and speed. In early stages of the project, I studied an expanded geographic area in order to identify multiple instances in which existing circulation flows could be enhanced to increase mobile efficiency across the site. The second phase resulted in a detailed architectural proposal for a very specific portion of the site. Inspired by programmatic aspirations and the urge to improve existing urban circulation, the resulting building creates new adjacencies and connections both internally and

across the site. I addressed issues of programmatic adjacencies and exterior circulation using similar elongated formal techniques, bringing multiple architectural objectives together within the same representational language. Long and low, the building’s winding faceted façade is its dominant feature. Its form was derived parametrically, according to both the program and the immediate external conditions, mediating between interior and exterior. In this way, the façade is a microcosm of the goals of the project, an intervention that seeks to be not only a responsible addition to the neighborhood, but also one that improves the existing urban fabric. 53–55. Fleet Hower

—Matthias Hollwich, critic — Michael Golden Embracing the 30 foot by 60 foot ditch that runs across her site, Rota embeds all her program into the existing concrete walls. The ditch, conceived as a railway bed and later imagined as a canal, runs from the center of Philadelphia to the Schuylkill River. Nearing the centennial of its abandonment; Rota attempts to reactivate this space by turning the walls into facades and the ditch itself into a pedestrian thoroughfare. Utilizing an early cubic program massing, Rota takes her formal cues from a blurring of the lines between discrete program spaces. The rotation of floor into wall dissolves the boundaries between individual elements, leaving unique transition spaces in their place. 56–59. Michael Golden

core

Architecture 601 After the intensive preparation of the 500 year, the 601 studio is the first point in the curriculum at which students work on a single project for a whole semester, and so presents the first opportunity to bring design techniques to a project of greater resolution. Each section uses a different program and formulation of studio techniques, and its own orientation to issues of technology and ecology. Students engage architecture in its role as a cultural agent and examine the way buildings establish and organize dynamic relationships between site, program and material. The design of a complex building of approximately 100,000 SF provides the pedagogical focus for this research. Students extend previously-developed skills in geometrical organization, site analysis and building massing/ orientation and relate it to programming and program organization, circulation and egress, building systems and materials. Through research and experimentation, students integrate energy and resource use, bio-mimetics and other ecological processes into their design methodology. These ecological methodologies support design innovations in the building’s structure, its construction assemblies, environmental systems, and materials. —Cathrine Veikos, coordinator

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­— Cathrine Veikos, critic MATERIAL ECOLOGIES

This studio researched and developed an inquiry into the dynamic relations of site, program and material. We studied themes of eco-effectiveness through experiments with material models, and developed design strategies that use excess energy, or save and recycle energy to help design buildings that create sustainable urban environments. The program, an institute for the study of sleep, grounded the studies since the accommodation of sleep determines the zoning for a structure, its egress requirements and its allowable building materials. Students worked towards a high level of design resolution and visual representation to understand and capture the means and effects of the modulation of environmental and sensory conditions such as daylight, temperature and sound on the design and scale of the building, the building envelope and the interior spaces.

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— Nicolas Koff University of Pennsylvania Sleep Research Center Converting the postal lands site into both a sleep research center and a public park, the project plays the roles of both an oasis and a signal. As a signal it relies on image and visibility, becoming an attractor, a destination point. As an oasis, it evolves into a place of repose, a shelter from the expected dynamism of a medical center. Rather than being focused on the directness and linearity of the signal as attractor, it relies instead on phenomenological experience, narration and the private meandering exploration of the space. It is a veritable Locus Solus, a place perpetually imbued with the surrealism of dreams; within its boundaries we witness the creation of a space which is that of imagination, innovation and discovery. 60–65. Nicolas Koff

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—Aroussiak Gabrielian Material Ecologies: PROGRAMMING THE LIMINAL Sleep was studied as a threshold condition in which day and night, conscious and subconscious, activity and inactivity are blurred. This blurred condition served as the conceptual framework of the project. Light, a material that is crucial for sleep, became the backbone of research and analysis, especially its potential to create certain effects, its ability to change to meet specific programmatic demands, and its capacity to instigate provocative spatial and programmatic blurring. 66–68. Aroussiak Gabrielian

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Every skeleton within a shell space has a fundamental meaning towards the whole, and cannot be deducted or isolated without jeopardizing the organic coherence and well-being of the system. This system, among other things, is based on reciprocal information flow, coevolution and a careful calibration of matter, structure and pattern, which allows for adaptability, sustainability and emergence. Housing is pushed to the edges, maximizing the river view. The connections between housing, as well as most public spaces, are formed by two layers of bridges. 69–72. Weijia Dong

—Joseph Littrell The Anatomical Abode is a proposal for a residential development in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood along the Delaware River. The design takes cues from patterns and systems of organization found in nature in order to adopt their intelligence, efficiency, and simplicity, allowing a re-thinking of the notion of ecology. The project focuses on achieving a non-linear network of spaces created through the distribution of similar cell structures about a field of varying intensities, which was drawn from an early conceptual site study. The center of each cell acts as a “nucleus” through which infrastructures, including the primary circulation for the site, are distributed. Surrounding each nucleus are residential spaces, which are connected in various ways to accommodate a variety of apartment sizes.

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­ Ferda Kolatan , critic — BIOME-RIVERVIEW: Novel Housing Prototypes Along the Delaware Biomes describe ecosystems in a defined geographical and climatic area. Within this zone every component is co-dependent with its environment and all other individuals residing in it. This intricate balance insures that every part within a biome has a fundamental meaning towards the whole and cannot be deducted or isolated without jeopardizing the organic coherence and well-being of the system. This system, among other things, is based on reciprocal information flow, co-evolution and a careful calibration of matter, structure and pattern, which allows for adaptability, sustainability and emergence. This studio explores design strategies that seek to generate a live/work/leisure environment based on these essential principles of ecology. An emphasis is placed on the building

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design as a fully integrated formal, material, technological entity within which a new set of relationships govern our everyday lives. BIOME-Riverview is an experiment to reclaim valuable waterfront property for urban dwelling while benefiting from the relative lack of regulation and existing infrastructural constraints. BIOME thus engages design methods in equal parts complex and robust, to achieve alternative ideas for progressive yet sensible living in the 21st-century urban environment. —Weijia Dong This riverside residential project lies in east Philadelphia by the Delaware River. It seeks to generate live/work/ leisure environments based on the essence of ecology; every component is co-dependent with its environment and all of the individuals residing within it. This intricate balance insures a spatial individuality within a shell-like structure.

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­ Scott Erdy, critic — THE AUTARKIC URBAN DWELLING There is an inextricable link between purpose and form. If one studies an object of purpose: a hand tool, milling machine, or cell phone, the formal deposition of each object is a clear example of its expression of reason. Form, embodied with purpose, ultimately results in universal legibility. This direct connection between form and purpose invariably insulates the object from discussions of style as a measurement of value: subjectivity is replaced by objectivity. Current approaches of domesticity require unsustainable amounts of energy and natural resources. This semester’s studio will focus on sustainable techniques for the creation of an energy autarkic urban dwelling complex. This energy neutral project will be achieved through the balancing of programmatic needs and available site resources. The basis for this research will be the creation of an Environmental Pro Forma™ that will act as a dynamic site analysis that will look at all energy and ecological assets that the site might offerfor harvest. This data will be used to adapt the assigned program to create a site-specific model for sustainable urban dwelling. Fundamental to this process will be the broadening of ones perspective and through a new found understanding of the urban environment as a harvestable natural resource. The focus of our studio is the environmental, sustainable potential of architecture. The goal for the semester will be the resolution and development of an architectural project, using the tectonics of building to express the relationship between architecture and its environment. —Chi Dang What is the urban nature of waste? Waste, in its creation, movement, and accumulation, is directly related to the actions of humans. In urban settings, waste col-

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lects at the intersections of rail corridors and city streets. This condition is specific to streets that bridge over a rail, allowing access to both vehicles and pedestrians. We can take advantage of the urban nature of waste by collecting it and harnessing its potential energy via Trash Processing Research Stations (TPRS). TPRS are mobile units that can attach to bridges over rail corridors, which are accessible to both drivers and pedestrians. Motion sensors in the pavement detect pedestrian movement and prompt a TPRS to slide towards human activity. The TPRS will collect anything that is tossed over the bridge and will sort out recyclables and tires. The remaining waste is combusted in order to fuel the TPRS. The separated recyclables are unloaded onto regularly scheduled freight trains and distributed to appropriate facilities. The tires are shredded and converted into fuel within the TPRS, and

then also distributed via rail. Tire-derived fuel produced by TPRS is primarily used for energy by The Temenos Priory (TP) and any excess can be sold to fund research conducted by the TP. 76. Chi Dang

—Nate Rogers The programmatic and formal relationships of the proposal were generated out of the needs and attitudes of the clients, two unlikely organizations building a coalition headquarters called the Tenemos Priory. These groups were the Earth Charter initiative (a holistic, new-age monastic community) and the Natural Capitalists (a “green” venture capital and lobbying firm). In the proposal, two ramp volumes climbing in opposite directions create autonomous zones of dedicated programming for each organization—the monastery’s ramp climbs clockwise in three rotations and the

venture firm’s counter-clockwise in two. The ramp systems intersect at multiple locations, and the communal program that the organizations share locates itself in the volumes of overlap. The spatial configuration and circulation strategy encourages convergence and communal interaction on the one hand, but also fosters privacy and organizational identity on the other. This balance was an important goal, given the significant differences in mission and lifestyle between the two groups. The parti is also meant to reference historical cloister typologies: infrastructural circulation around a void. Here, the introverted medieval cloister model (with all views facing in), has been unraveled vertically to let both the outside city and sunlight in. The fields of wild grasses on the abandoned Lehigh-Reading railroad viaduct are launched up inclines which meet off-balance and wrap themselves

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up the building. While the uppermost portions of the building hold the most secure programming within the interior, the public can ascend to the top via the inclined roofs that carry a mix of native plantings and urban farming zones. 77, 78. Nate Rogers

—Jackie Treat Temenos Priory A duality between two extreme organizations. Transitions between spaces should emphasize a journey as a means of discovery. Both work together as a balance of program and structure. The twisting and turning of the building is patterned with a diagrid design of 60 degree angled members. Inspiration for the structure came from Rem Koolhaas’ CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, and the Seattle Public Library. Primary structure is organized in the hierarchy stress patterns within the design. Members are in tension or compression, and those with the highest levels of either are sized larger than those with less. A retaining wall separates building and ground, providing light for program located below the ground surface.

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­ Phu Hoang, critic — LIVE/ WORK/EAT: Urban Dwelling and the Urban Food Supply Network 80

This studio explores whether it is possible to conceive of a new urban paradigm of interaction in which the independent networks of urban dwelling and global food supply are inextricably linked. We asked several critical questions, including: How will cities eat in the future with ever growing populations and diminishing food availability? In these cities, how will our dwellings be inhabited — not only by the residents but also in terms of the food required to feed these residents? The studio generated future urban dwelling scenarios in which the current food transport

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model from transcontinental plane and boat to city, through market and supermarket to kitchen and dinner table, and eventually to landfill, will be critiqued and re-imagined. The studio integrated two programs— urban dwelling with a global food supply program. The urban dwelling program also consisted of two housing types that require both long-term and short-term occupation durations. The food supply programs—from growing, producing, packaging, marketing, purchasing and disposal—were chosen based on their potential for producing a radical new prototype of urban dwelling.

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— Lily Trinh Living lab is a LIVE experiment. Living lab pervades all scales of inhabitation. Living lab is constantly being processed and processing. Living lab investigates the cycle of food and living from consumption to waste. Living lab questions: How can food  and water waste be used for productive methods? Scientists and researchers will be the demographic that incubates the site. Their inhabitation will serve as the basis for change of the typical live-work-eat cycle. Their water and food habits, as well as those of the immediate region, will be investigated in living lab. Stormwater, wastewater and food waste are processed and researched within the building and site. Processing of these “dirty” elements is calibrated in such a way as to create enclosure. Waste is collected in sorter units, becoming less “dirty” as it travels through the modules. At stages within the processing of bacteria “waste” exits the system for use in experimental plots, agriculture, or drinking. Stormwater from the roof also combines with the existing waste remediation system when the processes are in sync, working like bacterial relationships. 80–82. Lily Trinh 82

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—Hui Ying Candy Chan Living on Display is a “store-and storage” prototype that incorporates housing units and a refrigerated warehouse, as well as retail and wholesale programs. Its ambition is to learn from, reinvent and thus preserve the industrial. It also strives to raise awareness about refrigeration and its related energy consumption. By having the kitchens of the housing units and warehouse share a refrigerated space, this prototype radically exposes the private side of people’s daily lives to the public. The retail and wholesale program adopts the ‘cutting out the middleman’ business model, shortening

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the food supply chain. The installation of a conveyor belt not only minimizes waste by serving in small portions, but also examines the notion of movement, display and spectacle. Living on Display challenges the way people live, eat, store and shop. 83, 84. Hui Ying Candy Chan

—Helene Furjan, Keith Vandersys, critics

E MERGE STUDIO: Ecotonal urbanism and ‘thick’ atmospheres

This studio examines the intersection between landscapes, architecture and urban-scapes, utilizing concepts derived from landscape ecology: terms that specifically describe the behaviors of threshold conditions where competing systems meet. Cities take part in larger scale biological and climatic ecosystems, but they also operate as ‘ecosystems’ in terms of their ‘synthetic’ organizations: economic, political, demographic, infra-

structural, and so on. Ecosystems are almost always a patchwork of heterogeneous communities that change and fluctuate, creating what is called the patch dynamics of the communities. In coming together, they conflict, merge, mash, hybridize, or produce entirely novel subsystems: these transition zones or “edge effects” are termed ecotones. We engage with patch dynamics and edge effects as both analogy and model— in other words, as a means to understand the processes and variables that determine urban morphology and organization at many levels (economic, cultural, infrastructural, programmatic,

etc), and as a means to activate and influence them through a simultaneous engagement with landscape, urbanscape and builtscape. Ecotones produce the kinds of intensifications, variations, novel adjacencies and hybridity that Rem Koolhaas calls the “irresistible synthetic.” We study the ways in which gradients of change across program, infrastructure, and mood-scape (locally specific ambient conditions) translate architecture-asobject into architecture-as-environment, leading to new vibes and atmospherics. This is a different notion of transition zone: the air itself is latent with design

potential, in which architecture is able to produce a “thick atmosphere.” We will redefine urban living through the tooling of ambience and mood, curating differing modules and durations of living space, combined with recreational and moodvariant eco-scapes to produce urban ecotones: e-merge lounge ecologies.­ —Andrea Hansen The blocks north of Philadelphia’s Market Street, along the Schuylkill River, are a challenging site for a hotel. Though heavily utilized by people, cars, trains, ferries, and buses, the normal paths they trace rarely interact with the site’s

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environmental elements—sunlight, water, etc. The start and endpoints of each path is typically outside the site. As a result, people move through at a uniform pace, without lingering or experiencing environmental change. This hotel aims to shift the site’s paths so they flow through its environmental gradients. A passage network results in which ambiance is enriched and altered by the environment. Two types of passages are woven into the hotel: texture, and ambiance. The common denominator between these passages is their ability to choreograph social activity, in a non-linear fashion, through environmental gradients. For example, where passages converge, people move together in denser clusters. An amphitheater at 20th and JFK Blvd is designed to act as a vortex, pulling people together and then pushing them throughout the hotel. As the passages diverge from the amphitheater, interstitial spaces are created, which become private programs such as service corridors and hotel rooms. Unlike a traditional hotel, these private zones are energized by being wrapped and perforated by a matrix of active lounge-lobby-passages.

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— Richard Baxley By rigorously mapping the site and surrounding areas according to detailed programmatic criteria, patches began to emerge manifesting ecotonal relationships between them. I used this information to make observations about trajectory types through the site—slow, meandering trajectories as well as direct routes for faster travel. I found that the EcoBoutique Hotel could effectively mediate and facilitate these different trajectories while pulling the river-front park through the city, taking a stance to blur this boundary. Delamination studies were a starting point for the spatial solutions of the hotel. I investigated relationships between multiple layers of programmatically representational plates, holding between them a semi-solid material. These were systematically pulled apart to create a network of branching organizations between the layers. I then analyzed and cataloged these diverse relationships according to their spatial organizations, differentiated primarily between large veins (utilized as hybrid, flexible spaces) and smaller veins (more specialized generally smaller spaces). By arranging these different spatial organizations on the site, the hotel accommodates a wide array of visitors, for both short and long term visits, while providing a much needed revitalization of the Schuylkill riverfront. 87–89. Richard BaxLEy

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—Tina Manis, critic

URBAN CULTIVATIONS + GLOBAL MOVEMENTS

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We are in one of the most extravagant moments of experiencing the ‘global lifestyle’. The words, luxury, service and lifestyle, have become synonymous with global living. This ‘lifestyle’ can travel with any individual from place to place across the globe via an emergent programmatic identity: the ‘Lifestyle Hotel’ provides long and short stay occupations, as well as permanent residences combined with luxury programs of different grades such as infinity pools, concierge, conference/ meeting facilities, basketball courts, party lounges and media screening halls as well as private sky gardens and dog runs. Admittedly a venue of ‘excess’, the program is slowly becoming a generic footprint around the globe. Conversely, we are in a time of gastronomic crisis; many heritage foods that are coveted are being lost, food seed banks are being built as future resources, and distribution of ‘exotic’ foods is becoming more and more expensive as fuel costs rise. Across the globe a food crisis

spreads without solution. On average, food travels 1500 miles from field to fork in the US. One third of the greenhouse gas emissions we create come from food and agriculture. Urban sites within many industrial cities are still defunct, abandoned or toxic. Citizens desperate for new uses are developing these sites via numerous grass-roots movements. Our Global program calls for a 25+ story luxury accommodations building with hotel rooms, service apartments, and luxury residential units, as well as sky gardens, conference center, spa pool, gym facilities, restaurants, etc. Our Local program is an urban agricultural slow food garden(s), market place, restaurant or retail. This program must consider seasons, programmatic relationships, notions of exchange and commerce, etc. and must be supported as part of an argument ‘marketing’ package from each individual student. — Kristen Smith A Boutique Hotel for Busy Bees This project capitalizes on the emerging typology of the boutique hotel to combine two unique perspectives on lifestyle: that of the ever-shifting cosmopolitan

business person (the global nomad) and the local seasonal cycles of the American honeybee. Replacing standard hotel typology, the hotel rooms were developed to accommodate hourly, daily or monthly guests, all with the luxury of office space, meeting space, data sharing and remote conference rooms. The L-shaped rooms are structured to stack and provide light and views for all guests while fitting into a constrained center city Philadelphia site. Intertwined with these stacked multilevel spaces are living wells for honeybees. With their actual hives located in the core of the building at the lower levels, the honeybees are encouraged to snake through the open air wells and pollinate tea gardens at each level as well as plants within the local area. While guests’ interaction with the honeybees is specifically auditory and visual (there is always a barrier between what constitutes people space and bee space), hotel staff may access the tea plants and wax deposits for harvesting. The result is a unique space that both shapes and is shaped by the interaction between a constant flux of people and the natural cycle of bees. The hotel accepts the contemporary view of luxury and integrates that view with a model for sustainable living. Changing with the seasons, the hotel connects global society with the local needs of the natural environment and serves as an icon for the new luxury lifestyle. 90–95. Kristen Smith

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— Katherine Mandel Hotel Eden A boutique luxury hotel in downtown Philadelphia that also acts as an urban agriculture center for the neighborhood. This project focused on redefining the 1940s Victory Garden into a modern day version through the use of vertical garden walls. The ‘walls’ led to explorations in thresholds, degrees of enclosure, and gradients of porosity throughout the public and private aspects of the building. 96–98. Katherine Mandel

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Architecture 602 Current technological advances, in combination with novel construction techniques, have begun to define a new synergy in architecture. More than just another step in a technological progression, this development in software, material intelligence and digital fabrication heralds radical changes within the construction industry. In order to comprehend and evaluate our position within this transformation, a series of questions have become critical, ranging from the practical to the conceptual. How has the development of digital tools provided a common platform for the convergence of design disciplines regarding information flow during project development? What impact does this have on the nature of “integrative design,” which was traditionally understood as the mere layering of largely autonomous technologies and systems into a functional and coherent whole? What are the specific issues and benefits for architectural practice in using integrated software packages such as BIM (Building Information Modeling) and building simulation tools? The new technologies have created yet another important point of intersection. Design generated through abstract algorithms and dynamic parametric modeling results in increasingly complex geometries and non-linear models. The ensuing designs often display a high degree of difference, which at times may interfere with notions of optimization and performance enhancement. How can design strategies that rely on redundancy become sufficiently robust to address all aspects of building? Is it conceivable that the new digital tools can bridge and connect aspects of optimization and difference in order to create a truly novel design expression? 602 Integrative Design Studio investigates these questions through a unique approach that emphasizes collaboration with experts in the fields of design, engineering and manufacturing. Outside consultants are invited to guide the students through their design process via a series of events such as reviews, lectures

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and workshops. The goal is to create a practice oriented atmosphere within which innovative design ideas can be researched, tested and implemented. —Ferda Kolatan, coordinator

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­—Ferda Kolatan, critic

BLOOM: Urban Botanic Garden in NYC

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Botanic gardens have a history almost as long as human culture itself. Ancient Mesopotamia’s Hanging Gardens of Babylon were considered one of the seven wonders of the world. Medieval European monastic gardens were succeeded by the physic garden of the 16th century, in which the healing powers of plants were studied. During the 17th century’s age of exploration, botanical gardens were transformed into large exhibitions for tropical and exotic plants, while by the 18th century the pleasure garden had become an orderly place for leisure and intellectual musings. Today, the conservation of plant species and scientific research is as integral to botanic gardens as are the education and relaxation aspects. This studio will design an enclosed urban botanical garden in New York City. The aim will be to reintroduce this program to a contemporary audience as a vivid place where science, education and pleasure meet in an exotic atmosphere. Through the deployment of parametric techniques the students will investigate issues of morphology, growth, structure and organization towards a novel design expression. The conventionally open and horizontal botanic garden typology will be re-investigated in order to reflect the densely urban structure of NYC. While synthesizing the most advanced

technologies in design (software, fabrication and material) with a complex organic program, the students will also engage the provocative cultural implications of this particular program and project. — Carrie Chan, Olga Karnatova Genetiscape: Hybrid Genus Botanical Research  and Development Center Genetiscape questions the notion of a botanical garden in the context of an urban condition that is specific to the neighborhood of Chelsea in New York City. The proposal takes into consideration a programmatic reciprocal duality, by incorporating elements of cultivation, development and consumption of plant life, particular to plants with medicinal and herbal potential. These species, varying in scale, color, production, and growth, allow for a diverse program, yet perform in the urban context due to their educational and holistic qualities. The proposed plant species allow for a diverse building morphology, with varied degrees of enclosure and program conditions. In essence, the object becomes an armature for plants and program alike, linked through a spiral morphology which arose from our initial research. Genetiscape creates a landscape that encourages one to meander through, while learning and discovering the genealogy of different plant species. While traveling various paths, one may stumble upon small garden interventions, which foreshadow the language of the

architecture ahead. The research and development center seamlessly emerges from the landscape, through the play in both form and planting material, reflected in the landscape and in the architecture. While the landscape draws you in from all points of the site, the building entangles you within its complex matrix of paths, converging and diverging in a system of spirals. The path system plays an important role in the curation and location of plant types, to both showcase the species and trace its genealogy. This allows the botanical garden to perform as an armature for a diversity of species, while tracing the ecological links between them. 99–101. Carrie Chan, Olga Karnatova

—Guy Zucker , critic

CRITICAL FORMALISM: Efficiency Beyond The Box

In the past two decades we have seen unprecedented freedom in the exploration of form in architecture. The rapid technological advances that during the 90s produced mainly autonomous professional research, have now managed to capture the hearts and wallets of developers from Dubai to Shanghai. In the past few years architects were not afraid to say it—they generate forms. This global proliferation of high-end designs and designers marked an incredible achievement for architecture as a cultural commodity, which was fused by extreme excess in global finance. As

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these days come to an end, it might be an opportunity to peek beyond the shimmering museum and into the endless desert sands. To quote Stan Allen: “the irony is that architecture, which is nothing if not a social art form, loses effectiveness precisely to the degree that it becomes exclusively a cultural phenomenon. The same public that happily patronizes the Disney Concert Hall in LA more than likely lives quite conventionally in traditional houses.” The question is: how do we capitalize on the advances of the past decades and still make them relevant in a more mundane setting with a more pedestrian program? How can more common programs benefit from the application of complex form and at the same time demand more spatial, economical and organizational efficiency? The shopping mall might be the closest ‘everyday’ facility to urban cultural institutions. It is basically a piece of urbanity packaged in an insulated box which floats on a sea of asphalt. It is the most public space in private suburbia, and it needs to attract its users on a daily basis in order to survive. It has all the potential of being architecture, yet it is only interior design. Initially the mall wasn’t intended to prioritize its interior, but over time, because of its inability to renew itself, the mall emerged as a building type with a short life span perceived as a temporary venue where the only thing that matters is the fantasy world that is created inside the ‘tent.’

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— Chi Dang, Karyee Tam ‘mazingMALL Our project began with the research of different maze typologies. We studied how the system of internal paths and circulations manipulates and disorients users, encouraging exploration. Next, we created our own maze components—for example, nodes, rings, spirals, zig zags, shuffles—which facilitate the crowd’s exploration while maintaining the flows in the shopping mall. The second level reveals the journey one went through in the first floor. ‘mazingMALL is identical from the outside, in order to draw people in while accommodating a complex circulation system inside. The shopping experience is enriched by mixing the programs of department stores and individual retail stores. Offices, lecture rooms, conference rooms, and convention centers are housed in the cores. 102–106. Chi Dang, Karyee Tam

—Andrea Gulyas, So Sugita Muscle Mall “Never Pay to Workout! Come to the Mall!” “Eat Smart. Play Hard.” Muscle Mall reexamines the topic of health and the suburban context. The project is divided into three categories— sport, program, and structure. The Mall, an ideal living and shopping environment, is centered on sports related activities, using a 400 meter running track as its organizational pattern. Commercial and residential programs are distributed

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on this pattern, creating interior arena spaces for sports functions. The outdoor arena’s design is influenced by sun path during the months sports are played. The indoor arena houses indoor sports and convention center programs, enclosed in a grid shell structure. The design utilizes folded plates and grid shell to maximize the area for pedestrian use, while providing the square footage per unit typical of a standard suburban house. The folded plate structure creates bleacher-like steps for viewing sports, with commercial areas underneath. Areas devoid of bleachers, and with the most direct sunlight, include skylights with residential spaces underneath. The track area has a range of designated functions—shopping,

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walking, running—as well as benches, plants, and water features. 107–109. Andrea Gulyas, So Sugita

­— Hina Jamelle, critic

MIGRATING FORMATIONS: Transformations for the Museum of Modern Art [MoMA] Expansion

This studio examines emergence and its relation to the formulation of architecture, using digital techniques in an opportunistic fashion to generate growth and evaluate patterns in the development of form. Digital techniques allow us to deal with the full complexity of material systems, leading to effects that are greater than the sum of their parts. This studio examines organizations that are highly integrated formal and spatial systems, which operate similarly to organic systems, in that the forms result from their adaptation to performance requirements, in this case structure, inhabitable surfaces and enclosure. Achieving an integrated whole entails the refinement of spatial and structural organization and the integration of building systems, including stairs, structure and skins which inflect and adapt to each other, providing an overall intelligence of fabrication and assembly. The ambition for the studio is continuous transformation in a building. We explore the potentials of different rates of change in the buildings formal manifestation. Different rates of change occur in program, space, structure, material and fabrication logics. These transformations are accumulative and shift in type, kind, or other manipulation. In addition, material, spatial and social interactions are bundled

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into one formation. The continuous transformations provide a more nuanced and architecturally sophisticated understanding of form. The goal for each student is to use strategies to design architecture that flows from topological surfaces and component arrangements in transformation, and to apply these to a range of familiar architectural issues. The final proposal of each student, for an eight story addition to the MoMA in MidTown Manhattan, emerges out of this inter-related working method. —Adam Hostetler Two discernible, yet mutually dependent systems combine in this expansion to the MoMA. The extension to the museum is suspended above a largely open, public ground plane, which looks into the theater below. The fluid galleries allow for seamless transitions between gallery spaces of different levels. Similarly, the merger of floor, wall, and ceiling into a single element enhances this fluidity while allowing unrestricted media art to encompass visitors and patrons. The second system wraps the first, creating a distinct boundary, but refuses to play by the rules of a traditional skin. The single system transforms to function as weatherproof roof, solar screen, occupiable roof, wall, and floor. The perforated metal portion of this skin allows appropriate levels of sunlight during the day, but the building is transformed to a glowing beacon for public gathering and celebration of art by night. Views through and between these two systems, as well as views into the gallery spaces, enhance not only the social aspect of the project, but the art it contains. 110–115. Adam Hostetler 110

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—Brian Phillips, critic MIXED-USE EQUILIBRIUM

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Dense, spatially complex, mixed-use developments are gaining traction as our sustainable urban future. This complexity is driven by overlapping and inter-related economic, political, and social conditions. The search for performance efficiencies drives formal and programmatic inter-connections in new ways, challenging conventions of urban land use and zoning codes. This studio investigates efficiency through three lenses: urban, programmatic, and energy. Research begins with a very rational and measured understanding of how building programs consume energy. Concerns

of pure building performance were then positioned relative to other urban, siterelated and programmatic goals in order to integrate ecology into a series of larger, more complex considerations. — Rob Diemer/AKF Engineers, Naree Phinyawatana/Atelier Ten, J Cohen/ Buro Happold, consultants —Joseph Litterel, Kimberly Nofal The Energy Enterprise is a proposal for a vertical mixed-use community at the heart of a major transportation node that aims to minimize ecological footprints of inhabitants and serve as an ever-present icon for the utilization of alternative energy sources in Philadelphia. While this emergent ecosystem will be

observed every day by millions of people in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, over half a million people will directly experience the project every day—some living, some working, some playing, and others who are just passing underneath. But no matter what the level of interaction, the Energy Enterprise will constantly stimulate interest in solving the energy crisis at hand. The otherwise unfortunate micro-climate provided by the exhaust from major transportation lines passing through the site will be taken advantage of as the project parasitically feeds off of the extreme levels of carbon dioxide present. The standard Philadelphia city electrical grid will be accompanied by algae grown

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within the tower’s skin to synergistically meet the tower’s energy demands, leading to a considerably diminished net energy consumption; the result is a “hybrid building” of sorts. Research proved algae to be the perfect candidate for the “alternative energy” role, with inputs of water (grey water is sufficient), carbon dioxide, and sunlight, all of which are overly abundant on the site. The project will be composed of mostly residential and office space but will also incorporate retail space, restaurants, a theater, and the manufacturing

laboratories necessary for harvesting the algae and converting it to usable oil. Building programs were chosen based on their variety of user groups and percent of total energy demand required for heating. 116–119. Kimberly Nofal, Joeseph Littrel

­—Shawn Rickenbacker, critic A DIGITALLY GROWN SUPERSUPERMARKET

Following 6 years of record urban growth and development, New York City is now

facing a potential food shortage crisis spawned by a rapid increases in housing density and population. The potential of a shortage is further augmented by a lag in the development of urban grocery and supermarkets. In addition increased urban land costs have eliminated the economic viability of standard big box development Through the use of digital, simulation, and analog technology, this studio addresses the food supply crisis in NYC, while simultaneously exploring the potential of infrastructural architecture to reduce

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energy consumption, even harvesting and distributing energy. Digital technology is an important evolution in defining the usefulness of architecture as a critical professional practice. Design processes, procedures, and outcomes have been restructured, creating an ever increasing potential for soliciting and inputting information. This assists us in the provision of design solutions which are increasingly environmentally and performatively responsive. Students investigate environmental performance criteria as a conductor of form. During design and processing, distinctions are blurred between geometry and analysis, and in evaluation, between appearance and performance. The studio operates as a collective research group organized into teams. Design research explores the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of

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component-based, parametrically-derived designs. Development will evolve from a series of variations of a singular concept to create a useful indoor/outdoor energy harvester that is accessible to the public, both aesthetically and functionally. Collaborative communication and workshops with engineers and software specialists will complement the studio work.

—Margaux Schindler, Dwight Engel Converge Absorb Disperse SUPERSUPER MARKET is a highly efficient design that is responsive to its environment, context, and program. Through the implementation of convergence, absorption, and dispersal on the site, we created a series of systems that utilize openness as a means for ventilation and program flexibility. These systems harvest light energy as both daylighting and electrical energy, and direct rainwater. A highly calibrated network of trusses creates the underlying infrastructure. Their placement on the existing grade and vertical undulation enables multiple levels, and opens the ground plane for active programming such as farmers’ markets and community events. This organization allows for the dynamic movement of air, light, and people through the site.

The location of program and the consequential form are predicated on the use of daylighting as an energy source. Programs that need more lighting are placed in the higher exposed areas while those that benefit from controlled/artificial lighting, i.e. the auditorium, are in nested areas that are less exposed. The enclosing components vary in amount of photovoltaic cells and translucent ETFE pillows. The variable component technology unifies and defines this flexible space based on programmatic degrees of convergence, absorption, and dispersal. 120–125. Margaux Schindler, Dwight Engel

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Architecture 700/800

701 Design Studio V —Ali Rahim, coordinator 703 PP@PD, Post-Professional Program (M.Arch II) —Winka Dubbeldam, Director PP@PD 704 Design Studio VI, Research Studio —Ali Rahim, coordinator 706 Design Studio VI, Independent Thesis —Annette Fierro, coordinator 800 PhD Dissertation

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701 Design Studio V — Homa Farjadi , critic

ART/SITES: Transformational Geographies of Cool London Spatial effects of art in the city are not limited to physical design and intentional public development. Active temporal occupations of the city by operations and practices of art production, exhibition and sale often find discrete mappings and alternative geographies. Cool London, or in hip London, or other counter-cultural notations of territories, work in parallel or even against the planned city. Whereas one produces real estate value, the other is dependent on affordable space. Where one wants accommodating architecture, the other looks for an alternative type of space, which works outside the norm, against the grain. In London the areas of Chelsea, Soho, Notting Hill, Clerkenwell and, more recently, Hoxton Square, Hackney and Bethnal Green are reminders of these moving targets of art in the development of the cultural and spatial cool in the city. This studio analyzes the operative geography of these sites, producing dynamic models for their historic and current developments in East London. The students

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follow graffiti art, alternative markets, young and alternative fashion and cheap rent, passing through sites of immigrant cultures, as well as disused sites of industry and infrastructure. The potential of abject sites and architecture is discovered in their alternative contiguities with noise, dilapidation, poverty, crime, the unkept, the throwaway, and finally in the affinity of strategies of un-design with the sites of cool in the city. ­­­­— Bryan Kelley, Lisa Kenyon Oscillating Horizons of Parametric Urbanism The Hackney Wick stop on the London Overground Line provides an elevated vantage point from which to observe the rapidly changing conditions around the Olympic site and the Borough of Hackney. This privileged point of view contrasts with the reality of the street level below, where one quickly becomes immersed within the immediate urban context. The project investigates the relationship between movement within the space of the transit hub and the limits of perception at the horizon beyond. Its form takes advantage of movement flows and sight lines to emphasize particular conditions between internal spaces and external landmarks. By framing certain views and

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obscuring others, the building increases the awareness of its position in the city. As the Olympic site develops and the Borough of Hackney grows, the density of forms on the horizon will increase dramatically, continually altering the perception of the horizon. 126–129. Bryan Kelley, Lisa Kenyon

—Matthias Hollwich , critic ADAPT! Studio

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$4.00 a gallon for gasoline has revealed the tipping point in America’s relationship with the automobile. The same shocking event that rattles the foundations of American transportation will transform every part of American society. We will open our eyes to the inevitable! We will embrace change! We will ADAPT! Adapt! = A proactive studio fusing future needs with today’s realities. The Adapt! studio envisions a new way of life in a radically changing world. The studio is based on programmatic research, sociological considerations, ecological findings, futuristic considerations, and real market economic objectives. Like the industry redefining the Toyota Prius, we design a product for today’s market that is calibrated to the needs

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of the future. The studio focuses on a large-scale multi-use development in a prototypically blighted urban area of New Jersey. The site is in Jersey City, on top of a New Jersey PATH/New Jersey Transit transportation hub, 15 minutes from Manhattan. The studio is steeped in real-world pragmatic considerations that will be reevaluated and distorted by radical new types of sustainable living. ­­­­ Kyo Ho Chun, Kenta Fukunishi, — Jaeyoung Lee The pollution level increases drastically during the 21st century. In 2050, the Environmental Protection Agey declares that it is no longer safe to breathe outdoor air. A group of architects, engineers, scientists and developers collaborate to find a solution. This solution is called ‘NEO ARC.’ NEO ARC incorporates mixed-use residential and commercial spaces with a major transportation hub. It integrates green technologies, such as solar panels and rain water collection that is filtered by plants and soils which generate oxygen and hydrogen. The façade of the building is a hyper-efficient structure that provides thermal mass for insulation and shade for residents. The building typology is a continuous landscape. Spaces of the building

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are generated by the deformed surfaces that play an important role in providing an optimized shelter for both nature and human beings. In-filled soils and water in the space will filter the rain water and offer the inhabitable ground. Stored water not only contributes to the performance of building, but also becomes an important resources to produce clean air, hydrogen, gas and potable water. In 2050, petroleum is depleted. Decomposed hydrogen from the water will be used for public transportation as well as for private cars owned by residents. Moreover, it will be delivered with oxygen through a cavity cable embedded in the

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train tracks to Manhattan. NEO ARC becomes a lung for the city that provides clean air and resources. NEO ARC’s façade varies according to intensity of program. The scale of tessellation and triangulation also responds to structure, water channeling, and glazing systems. Cultural spaces are for social network interactions between neighbors. Residential and office spaces are the most private spaces, in which the ecological relationships between people and nature are strongest. 130–133. Kyo Ho Chun, Kenta Fukunishi, Jaeyoung Lee

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components; they are as much strategy as they are technique, and establish a process for developing the site. 134–136. Joshua Freese, Nadine Kashlan, Yadiel Rivera-Diaz

— Peter McCleary, Dr. Mohamad Al khayer, critics A PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE IN PARIS

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—Joshua Freese, Nadine Kashlan, Yadiel Rivera-Diaz In the age after logical formalism, new desires and tolerances have emerged calling for more ecologically sensitive, honest and direct ways of working with existing (brutal) forms. This eco-brutalism affords a new way to adapt our understanding of the image of architecture, and what that image means to convey. The operations work on multiple scales. They are urban planning moves, building and spatial constructions, and environmental and urban service frameworks. The operations are the logic behind our

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Students design a replacement for the Pont St Louis that bridges between Ile de la Cité and Ile St Louis, over the river Seine in Paris, France. Students begin with reading, case studies, research, and site visits. From this they attempt to describe the relationships among the variables in the continuum that conjoin matter, material, structure, skin, construction, space and place. All concepts are modeled in the geometric language of the vector (direction and magnitude) analysis of the isotropy (flow of space of human activities and poetics of construction) and rheology (flow of all matter) in the bridge itself, its site (local, urban and environmental) and use (pedestrians, cyclists, street performers). The design takes the systemic form that considers: Physics (vector analysis of all flow patterns at all scales), poetics (rhythmic patterns of joints of structure, construction and visual geometry), the essence of the archetype (from which the cases are derived), and the aesthetics of beauty (the configurations states of equilibrium, mechanical and visual) and the sublime (experiences that are beyond the human threshold). —Alexander Dunham Pont and CIRCUMSTANCE At its most basic, the new Pont St. Louis is a dual path Seine crossing, deriving its shape from the existing urban fabric. The primary deck, to the south, accommodates a speedy traverse— connection to elsewhere in the city. In contrast, the smaller pedestrian deck, to the north, allows contemplation — connection to the river. Between the two, a permanent amphitheater provides a place of rest and show. While the bridge’s form evokes a sense of dynamic “frozen motion,” its

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celebratory events. Both an external crossing and an internal experience, the new Pont St. Louis enables a way through, and a trip to, emerging as both Pont and Circumstance. 137–140. Alexander Dunham

and then strung between banks. Once they are tightened at the anchorages, they are prestressed with deployable diaphragms. Hangers are then clamped into place and the woven metal deck and handrails are hung within the structure. 141–143.Alex Muller

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material palette remains pedestrian. Aspects of the visual experience include: --Occupation of the structure (stairs connecting the lower quay) --Sleek curving profiles—additional members to compensate --Austere, muted colors --Deck surface differentiation — French Oak versus metal grating The bridge’s primary structural system — twin arched trusses of a triangular section — carries the two decks below. These trusses tilt inward at mid-span, producing a visual disequilibrium and a continually changing spatial envelope across the span. Hung from these arches 88  Design studio — Advanced — ARCH701

via steel tension rods, each deck curves in opposition to its truss, creating a structural equilibrium. A below-deck grid of steel ribs stiffens the assembly and provides support to the handrails. The new Pont St. Louis’ potential lies in its dual identity as transition and destination space. Capable of transforming into event space, the bridge can become a floating room, hovering above the Seine. Vinyl fabric curtains, which deploy from the trusses to the inside edge of each deck, enclose a space for street performers, festivals, historic and cosmic observances, art exhibitions, fashion shows, screen projections, and various other

—Alex Muller The bridge is a “hollow rope.” This structural technique, pioneered by Robert Le Ricolais and Peter McCleary, uses tension and weaving to provide strength with minimum material. The woven wires are put in tension and create stiffness, while the diaphragms take compression. Since the banks of the river are weak, the anchorages allow the horizontal forces to be transferred vertically to more solid ground. By using a minimum amount of material, the cost and time of fabrication and construction decrease. The only major construction done on site is the excavation and the erection of the anchorages. The diaphragms, deck and handrail are prefabricated and shipped by boat to the site. Cables are woven through the diaphragms while they are on the ground

—Angela Spadoni This design creates a continuum of matter, material, structure, construction, space and place. The essence of the project was to develop a framework that would allow visitors to experience the structural forces of the bridge. The bridge uses multiple tension members to create a web that allows the deck to vary vertically along different paths. Experientially, this allows the visitor to walk within the structure. 144, 145. Angela Spadoni

— Enrique Norten , critic MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT: Mexico City

The aim of this studio is to develop a mixed-use project in the downtown area of Mexico City. The complexity and contrast of Mexico City places the students on a platform where multiple layers of information collapse and overlap, creating a complementary and contradictory network of forces. The site is located diagonally across from the Plaza de la Republica, between two main avenues: Av. de la Republica and Paseo de la Reforma. The site has a prominent location within Mexico’s Centro Histórico and is part of a network of public spaces of great importance. The design process begins by mapping the site (edges, landmarks, paths, immediate context, zoning, program, etc.), while researching Mexico’s economy, market trends, and construction opportunities and demands. The students create a proposal that demonstrates the results of their research and analysis. The design

strategies which follow must address different scales, and include a business plan which works within the reality of the site. Each student has the opportunity to view the project through two very distinct lenses: the architect as a designer, and the real estate investor as a developer. — Brandon Donnelly, Joseph Leffelman, Matthew Smith Parallel Grounds considers the difference between a vertical city, such as Tokyo, and a tall city, such as New York or Chicago. How does the experience of these two types of cities differ? But, more importantly, what does a “vertical city” within the dense urban metropolis of Mexico City look like and how does it perform? Our project is built on the premise of creating a dense, mixed-use urban environment that replicates the vibrancy of a Mexico City street—above grade and multiple times. Using a strategy of continuous circulation bands and dense attractor programs to draw people up and into the system, it was our objective to re-think

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the normative skyscraper typology and to propose a new type of urban experience in Mexico City.

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existing museum. Each student will determine and refine their own program during the course of the semester. Students deal with a range of familiar issues—how to turn the corner in a high-rise, and how to design vertical circulation and structure, for example. The resulting projects will contribute to the development of the high-rise typology, exhibiting innovative architectural features in variation, produced using topological surfaces, and component arrangements with different spatial and material qualities.

idents, infrastructure, facilities, and the larger city, and work within the human, economic, and formal migrations that pressure the city to respond. The program for the studio is a mixeduse 75 story high-rise building, to be located adjacent to the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown Manhattan. The only given program is that there must be at least one connection, either to the retail or cultural component of the

— Rui Guo Digital design techniques enhance the potential to create brand new forms, which reflect the fact that the world is dynamic and complex. Consequently, the top-down design process which results in simple forms is questioned. With the assistance of computer software, the architecture evolves from a series of parameters and components in a way that is beyond the designer’s

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— Ali Rahim , critic MIGRATING FORMATIONS: Vertical Urbanism for New York City Private and public infrastructures allow New York City to function at extreme levels of density. To some extent, the fascination of vertical urbanism resides in its qualities of instability. Absences and deficiencies in the city’s physical and social fabric carry a transformational potential. Densities allow for diversity, conflict, and change, and reflect qualities pertinent to our time, such as vicariousness, transformability, and the almost limitless absorption of information. Vertical Urbanism can create new types of material organization that catalyze exchanges between New York City’s res-

imagination. In other words, computers can not only assist in the design process, but they can do design itself. This project is a high-rise building adjacent to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The program is exhibition spaces, offices and residential spaces. In this studio we used Maya software as a basic digital design tool and explored some of its fundamental functions, such as polygon modeling, blend-shape and sub-division tools. The topic of the studio is “Migration Formation” which places an emphasis on forms that are composed from qualitatively different parts in a continuous way. Different areas of the high rise building have different effects. For instance, some parts have more exposure of the building’s structure, or skeleton, and some parts are more surficial, like skin tissues. Color is another crucial component, for it enhances or blurs the reading of the geometry. In one example, a blue color grows from a white surface, but finally the two colors intersect, creating a

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paintbrush effect. While at one end it is watercolor, plain and smooth, at the other end it is oil paint, composed of separate strokes. Such parts, qualitatively different, produce spaces for different uses. In this sense, the program is not predetermined, it is dependent on the inhabitants. 150, 151. Rui Guo

703 PP@PD — Winka Dubbeldam, David Ruy, critics FROM THE MECHANICAL TO THE ORGANIC

This year’s project looks to invent a new architecture between the house and the automobile. The rewriting and innovation of architectural design and its structures requires a revolutionary change in how architecture is conceived. From the notion that a building is a composite of standardized elements such as columns floors and walls, we must rethink a building as being composed of mass-customized

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“generative components.” Prefabrication as pure repetition of standard elements is an outdated mode of operation; masscustomized units are evolving as a series of varying elements, defined by an analysis of specific performance, rather than just structural requirements. Standard repetition has been replaced by custom variation. The components’ intelligence refers more to automotive and aerospace design than to architectural design, and is more system-based than mechanical assembly-based. Though the twentieth century largely celebrated the freedoms of a mobile transnational culture, the twenty-first century is quickly being defined by the environmental impact of the expansion. As we enter this new phase, architecture is clearly in the spotlight, and design culture needs to cultivate a fresh set of ideas. In particular, a new

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convergence between the automotive and the prefabricated housing industries presents fascinating opportunities—The mobile and home as an integral unit, provides a new green alternative to urban housing as a neighborhood. Structure, traditionally a result of engineering, will now be analyzed as a biome—“structures which develop and behave not unlike organisms evolving in an ecosystem.” (Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy) The students developed unit aggregations for Shanghai and Tel Aviv. They entered the Tel Aviv Centennial Competition: “From Garden City to Ecosystem,” and exhibited in the urban installation “Parasolar” in Tel Aviv. Two students, Michael Wacht and Nan Yang, won two of the five Awards. ­— Todd Costain and Tian Qi, TAs

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—Tien-Hao Lin Proliferate Invasion My research focused on communication and mobility. Being connected is an unavoidable issue in modern life. Proliferation Strategy: The design strategy utilized the type of accumulated units that form a new urban style in Shanghai. The intent was to use the existing urban social structure, and to allow the new dwelling units to proliferate on this structure. The progress of proliferation was based on the different needs of, and relationships between, users.

Hence, a different dynamic shapes public and private spaces. Stay Connected: Our modern lifestyle is based on connecting to various services which bring us information or convenience. Mobility and telecommunication create the most dynamic “space” in our lives. Therefore, my research focused on designing single units, and applying a strategy to connect them with the urban fabric, forming new dialogues and spaces via the aggregation. A graph represents the intensity of each dwelling element as defined by its

users. This graph determines the basic dwelling layout. The spaces and elements are morphologically and visually continuous, an integration similar to that found in a car’s dashboard. 152–154. Tien-Hao Lin

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—Axel Vansteenkiste Individual housing units are designed from the inside out, focusing on the performance of a core component which combines vital living functions. By connecting individual housing units into an aggregated whole, structural, technical, and other connections can occur through these core components. The skin of the housing unit is defined by activity poles related to the core component. With a double skin system, the outer membrane connects openings

and inter-unit connection points with a continuous surface. An inner membrane is attracted towards the core component to create space dividing folds. Variable openings allow for a skin which is reactive to climate stimuli, thus adapting living to local environmental conditions. 155–161. Axel Vansteenkiste

94  PP@PD — ARCH703 / Design studio — Advanced — ARCH703/PP@PD — ARCH704

704 DESIGN STUDIO VI — Cecil Balmond, Roland Snooks, critics

COMPLEX PHENOMENA: Developing Non-linear Methodologies

This studio investigates non-linear systems and self-organization at both a methodological and programmatic level. This exploration takes the form of design research into algorithmic methodologies tested through the brief for an Institute

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for Self-Organization. The model for the institute is loosely based on the Santa Fe Institute, considered the premier institution for the study of complexity. Since the 1960’s the world in which we live is increasingly being understood as an emergent outcome of complex systems. Research into complexity cuts across traditional boundaries as the self-organizing systems which underlie one phenomena can be found to operate at various scales within a diverse set of circumstances. Consequently this studio will explore the nature and operation of complex systems as well as their application to design. This will involve extracting the processes that operate within the physical world as well as developing new models of self-organization. The development of non-linear design methodologies involves a shift in the design process from invention to that of orchestrating systems in the generation of an emergent architecture. Algorithmic design does not operate through a specific technique or medium — digital or analogue— however scripted techniques are encouraged as they enable a rapid investigation and testing of algorithmic methodologies. Research is focused by, but not restricted to, successful models brought forth from the fall semester seminar’s Form and Algorithm. Algorithmic workshops will be conducted in the first half of the semester to help in rapidly developing scripted techniques. Students will have the opportunity to work directly with the Advanced Geometry Unit, Arup, London during a week-long intensive workshop at the Carlow House, Arup, London UK. — Pablo Kohan, Difeng Zhou, Dan Whipple, Andrew Gierke SKYNET is based on the idea that surface and volume can emerge through the accumulation of lines which self-organize to achieve structure and enclosure. By using the bottom-up logic of a dynamic system with embedded intelligence (a multi-agent system), the project achieves biomorphic qualities. Its main goal, however, was to

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meet certain programmatic requirements using simple recursive processes. The advantage of designing through algorithmic procedures, rather than directly designing form, is that effects can be directly controlled by altering overall behaviors. The process should not be seen as some form of alchemy, nor do we believe in letting the algorithm design for us, design intent should be present from beginning to end. SKYNET was created from a unique combination of modeled geometry (Rhino, Massive, Maya), complex texture mapping in Vray, and color filter layers in Photoshop. The geometry was created by weaving artificially intelligent agents, using both Massive and Rhinoceros programming to create something that is made digitally, but that seems organic in origin.

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—Song-Ching (Alan) Tai, David Ettinger, Kyo Ho Chun This project explores the generation of complex topologies through the selforganization of program. A multi-agent design methodology was created to

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generate a stigmergic interaction of agents seeded with programmatic intent. 168–172. Song-Ching (Alan) Tai, David Ettinger, Kyo Ho Chun

— Stefan Behnisch, Martin Haas, critics

ECOLOGY—DESIGN—SYNERGY

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Identity, discernability and recognizability are important assets in our post-industrial society. Hence, there is an increasing demand for iconographic architecture all over the world. Spectacular architecture has left the feuilleton and has made its appearance in the yellow press. But this development has not resulted in a sound building culture for our daily building tasks. Fortunately, an awareness of the impact that architecture has on our natural resources has triggered a far more important development. A balance must be struck between human beings and the environment, and architecture today must be judged by the quality of its content and not by its cipher-like appearance. Moreover, it is clear that high quality constructions do not merely reduce energy consumption and use environmentally responsible mat-

erials. Rather, they pay attention to the human experience so as to create better places to live and work. From this comprehensive, environmentally sensitive approach, a new architectural development will emerge, a development which will have positive effects on all aspects of construction. This studio examines urban residential life and ultimately makes proposals for a residential, mixed-use development on an inner-city site. Students look both back in time and into the future and develop residential structures composed of many elements interlinked in a variety of ways. These new residential models must agilely respond to life in the fast-changing sometimes “place-less” internet age, while offering inhabitants a high quality of life in communities that have a distinct identity. What is so exciting is that the IT age doesn’t make personal contact superfluous. On the contrary, it requires even more of it. Our design task is to support Philadelphia in its endeavours to transform a run-down and seemingly chanceless inner-city district into a vibrant urban arts and residential centre. The optimum exploitation of already sealed and interlinked structures and the design

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the two, becoming an icon at the fringe of East and West Philly. 173, 174. Hyunjoon Cho, Yosuke Kawai

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of liveable, dense urban spaces are among the challenges we face. — Hyunjoon Cho, Yosuke Kawai Philadelphia is a historic and cultured city. Its many galleries and exhibition spaces provide tourists and residents with a window into the fine arts. This, combined with the phenomenon of a growing residential population in Center City, gives rise to a unique opportunity. Located along the river which separates the universities from the business district, our site must handle the dynamic relationship between users and find a balance in the tension between two programs. As a premise for enhancing lifestyle,

the hybrid program between residential living and museum exhibition challenges typical typologies and redefines the meaning of ‘mixed use.’ This new approach lends itself to a transparent gallery and the public display of private collections. We attempt to heighten what is visually perceivable— ultimately placing people as well as sculptures on display. Between the museum program and the extended sculpture park, the journey, whether inside or out, is in constant flux. liveFRAME seeks to energetically disassociate itself from traditional static museum exhibitions and private residences. It blurs the separation between

— Kimberly Cooper, Kirsten Shinnamon Locust Landing Between the river and the formal city, this site is a natural nexus point for a dynamic waterfront destination. Along Locust Street, the urban grid extends to the water linking to a pedestrian bridge and opening into an urban square, reinvigorating the community and enhancing commuter connectivity. The river’s edge and a linear park weave perpendicularly to this new space, activating the waterfront. Inspired by both the urban and residential living qualities of the Philadelphia rowhouse, the existing post-industrial loft building is reused and reimagined as vertical units, providing high quality living spaces and environmental conditions for every residence. This new urban landmark creates a strong indoor-outdoor architecture, encouraging transient and leisure activity within multiple scales of program. 175–178. Kimberly Cooper, Kirsten Shinnamon

—Vincent Leung, Alex Muller, Matthew Smith re-fit Located on the banks of the Schuylkill River, the site links Fairmount Park to 176

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the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood, and forms the social and recreational basis for re-fit. We envision re-fit to be part of a westward extension of Locust Street across the river, connecting Rittenhouse Square to University City. We were inspired by the asymmetric, jagged extensions that form the backyards of row houses. Carving from the existing warehouse structure, the design marries the vernacular forms of the neighborhood with contemporary ideas of environmental design to provide safety, nature, and community. Careful coordination of spaces allows these voids to form nesting and overlapping neighborhoods: spaces we see as lively, lush “branches” to Schuylkill River Park below. 179–181. Vincent Leung, Alex Muller, Matthew Smith

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— Michael Wacht, Siae Sung, SCHUYLKILL BLOEMENMARKTS The goal of Schuylkill Bloemenmarkt [Dutch: Hidden River Flower Market] is to seamlessly activate a barren riverfront zone into a year-round destination for visitors, city dwellers, and nearby residents, by integrating unique programming around existing urban travel patterns. Above existing freight train tracks and hidden service areas, we create a landscaped park to connect the riverfront promenade, the upper level of Walnut Street, residential streets, community gardens, and a new wholesale flower market. A sculpture park is also envisioned along the Schuylkill River, connecting the Philadelphia Museum of Art located one mile upstream to a visitor’s center on site. The upper level of landscaping

would thus be activated by outdoor art, seasonal gardens, greenhouses, retail spaces, and cafés. The adjacent mezzanine level of the main building houses gallery space for the sculpture park and a restaurant. Residential apartments above are designed as year-round greenhouses as well. Three vertical streets provide circulation and flexible outdoor patio spaces for residents. Ecological operations: (1) River water is used in a heat exchanger for building cooling needs. (2) Gray water from the building is filtered through year round greenhouses positioned in the hills of the landscape, stored in a pond at the southern tip, and used for irrigation. (3) A glass skin is operable during the summer for cross ventilation and closed during the winter for winter

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of the avant-garde once again to bear on the design of housing and its contemporary demands. We examined the work of Alison and Peter Smithson through the lens of the avant-garde. This was not to delight in copying, but to probe with a counterfactual discourse between the two positions in its displacement to now, of thinking formally and strategically through those terms. Our task concerned understanding the positions of the two texts historically—Smithson’s and Foster’s—and to affect the design of a housing project; in their intersection we were prompted by the question: “can housing be avant-garde now?”

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garden space. It is also designed to mitigate the prevailing eastern winds in order to protect points of entry. 182–185. Michael Wacht, Siae Sung

— Homa Farjadi , critic THIS IS TOMORROW AGAIN: HOUSING THE CITY Can It be Avant Garde Now?

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TEXT 1: Alison and Peter Smithson, “From a House of the Future to a House of Today” TEXT 2: Hal Foster, “The Return of the Real” Having rounded critical modernism and bypassed post-modern regressions in architecture, and in the rush of globalization and the ecstasy of mega-scaled developments, the urbanism of housing invites rethinking. Social politics of

modernist “existence minimum” or coded regulations set by state economies may not be driving the bulk of development this time round. Whether in the form of high-rise apartment buildings, integrated townships or gated communities, capital and its modern luxuries are now the primary drivers for most global developments. With the profession now better equipped with new technologies of strategic modeling, formal transformations, manufacture and production, we ask, where does this situation leaves the architecture of urban housing? Our tools for this probe come from the positions of the two texts offered to be reconfigured in a new discourse. Aware of uncanny repetitions, Hal Foster suggests that the avant-garde “returns to us from the future.” With ‘Housing tomorrow again’ we brought the utopian project

—Jacob Fry This vernacular system was informed by challenging the components of the Shingle Style to systematization, as discussed in Sanford Kwinter’s essay “Fuller Themselves.” The Shingle Style—a populist style— was driven by templates of details and plans reproduced in books and publications. Its balloon framing offered democratic construction techniques which employed readily available local materials and standardized units for skin and structure. The result was a non-hierarchical assembly. My contemporary residence utilizes these constraints— reconsidered based on context, performative intent, material, and fabrication and retooled through an algorithmic approach —within the Southwest Vernacular. The algorithm was designed to create an infrastructural knot between massing and landscape. Formally this manifests as a stepped and static rotation of three residential units that bridge parking below. The twisted form shades summer

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—Akari Takebayashi Twin House In our time, the concept of territory in different cultures and lifestyles is becoming an increasingly important issue and the meaning of living space needs to be readdressed. How do we revive our sense of place? What is our understanding of locality and individual inhabitation? How can this notion of territory be embodied in architecture? Located in Fort Davis, Texas, Twin House seeks to examine a new housing model where two separate dwellings are set within one organizational system, forming a unique level of privacy while sharing territory. While previous models of dividing land emphasize ownership of the individual, this project investigates how a territory may be cohabited. By accepting the condition of separate social occupancies within a given set of spatial constraints, the shared spatial experience is articulated not by indifferent separation but by a strategic formal and programmatic negotiation that leads to differentiated territories.

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189–191. AKARI Takebayashi

—Stephen KierAn and James Timberlake, critics

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sun and accepts low altitude winter sun. The semi-tensile skin is constructed by binding tailored laminate wood “shingles” cut from a 4'x8' sheet to a redundant lattice of 2"x8" laminate wood. Material and dimension were guided by a vernacular motivation towards palpable fabrication, but within a personal machinic environment. The final assembly rests upon saw-cut concrete retaining walls which structure the knotted terrain. 186–188. Jacob Fry 188

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This studio was undertaken in pursuit of a methodology for architecture as an engaged practice, and was motivated by the belief that design is not limited to the architecture we produce. To attain deeper control and understanding, we must fully engage the social, environmental, material and productive processes that are the context for what we produce. An architecture practiced in this way enables a proactive rather than reactive stance. This studio was the 3rd year of an ongoing open source collaborative laboratory. By focusing on Dhaka, Bangladesh this studio was intended to hone research agendas developed in the previous two years around questions of fabrication logistics, building life cycle, embodied energy, infrastructure and economic impact. Students were asked to develop design proposals responding to specific conditions at the intersection of two critical problems in Bangladesh; water

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and shelter. Students identified design problems through an informed critique of the previous proposals and deep research into topics exposed by these critiques. This research was the basis for design proposals that act as catalysts, effecting change beyond their immediate circumstances as the basis for self sustaining processes of economic or environmental improvement.

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one of incremental upgrade. Phase 1 utilizes the filtration technology of Terafil, which can be locally produced and recycled, and retrofitted into existing kolshi containers to purify water at a personal level before consumption. Phase 2 is the purchase of a 50 gallon barrel in order to collect and store rainwater from existing roof structures, to then be purified by the Terafil container. Phase 3 upgrades the household to a built collection unit which is connected to a plastic bladder that becomes a part of the raised foundation of the home. The system emphasizes value through ownership, as well as portability, which averts issues of permanence within the slum. Incremental upgrade is the only method of implementation which can be successful at this level of poverty. The system begins at local Terafil production centers, which provide storage, sales and education in proper use and consumption safety. 192–195. Tina Hsiao, Chris Mackowiak, Brenna Martin, Parvathi Rao

—Tina Hsiao, Chris Mackowiak, Brenna Martin, Parvathi Rao H2Ouse Can knowledge, skills and labor be applied to the processing of Dhaka’s solid waste stream, to supply valuable resources for the design of an economic and durable composite building typology at multiple scales of intervention, providing clean water to the slums? The solution is

— Brandon Donnelly, Adam Fenner, Natalie Golnazarians, Jill Lagowski Dig-Elevate-Develop The title Dig-Elevate-Develop is a play on an existing settlement pattern found in Dhaka, Bangladesh called Dig-ElevateDwell. Our proposal aims to further develop this technique and create a sustainable model for riverside develop-

ment in Dhaka— one that manages water, creates more developable and economically useful land, and allows the fluid movement of goods and people. In Dhaka, water is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the circular waterway is the economic lifeblood of the city; it is the backbone of a number of local industries, such as the brick kiln industry. But on the other hand, the constant floods and flooding pose a tremendous risk to settlements adjacent to water. One consequence of this phenomenon is greatly inflated land values in the central portions of the city. Our proposal recognizes that Dhaka is one of the fastest growing cities in the world and, therefore, strives to create a sustainable and innovative model for riverside development that can be adapted to similar sites throughout Dhaka. 196–198. Brandon Donnelly, Adam Fenner, Natalie Golnazarians, Jill Lagowski

—Ali Rahim , critic

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Beyond Techniques to Elegance: For design innovation, the development of techniques is essential, however the mastery of techniques, whether in design, production or both, does not necessarily

yield great architecture. As we all know— the most advanced techniques can still yield average, or even terrible, designs! In this design research studio we will attempt to move beyond techniques, mastering them to achieve nuances within the formal development of projects that

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exude an elegant aesthetic sensibility. Architects who have been able to add that layer of aesthetic sophistication to their designs share several characteristics which are pivotal to the current digital design discourse. All of the projects operate within emerging paradigms of generative

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—David Ruy, critic

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techniques, and move past methods completely dependent on the rigorous application of scientific standards. Each project exhibits a systemic logic that eschews mapping a specific process, or revealing the process of an algorithm as strategies to generate a project’s form. Instead, mastery of technique allows each student to assume a more sophisticated relation to the creation of form — using malleable forms differentiated at varied rates that are systemically correlated a position made possible only through the use of an aesthetic sensibility concomitant with a highly developed design ability. Interiorities 1: The notion of interiority suggests the elaboration of tectonic systems which unfold and differentiate within the terms of their own internal logic. This can be most clearly pursued if we start with interiors, that is, without immediately placing the architecture into an environment and exposing it to external influences. We are interested in developing complex, layered and highly differentiated tectonic systems that begin to compete with the best historical examples, in terms of their richness, coherency and precision of formal organization. We aim to reach the level of designed luxury we find, for instance, in the most filigreed Gothic spaces, or the most excessive Baroque or rococo interiors. And we aim to go beyond all known historical precedents in terms of qualitative differentiation and the intensity

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of part to part and part to whole relationships. Another way to express this, is to say that we are aiming to build up a multilayered complexity, with a high degree of lawful differentiation within each system, and with a high level of correlation between the various subsystems that constitute the overall tectonic system. Each subsystem’s internal differentiation is associated with corresponding or complementary differentiations within the other subsystems. For example, structural differentiation is correlated with material/textural differentiation, etc. 1. Co-authored with Patrik Schumacher [Studio Hadid]

— Nan Yang, Xueyi Zhang This project, an interior design of a night club in New York, focuses on the differentiation of qualities in each space. We extracted variations of geometry, color and texture from the sea dragon in order to form components. These, in combination with the lighting design, reveal qualitative atmospheric differences in each individual space. The overall building is designed from the inside to the outside. Components in multiple scales are accumulated in various ways, but by manipulating the speed of transformation, the whole building acquires morphological continuity, both exterior and interior. 199–201.Nan Yang, Xueyi Zhang

—Marion Weiss, critic Michael Manfredi, Weiss/ Manfredi, guest critic SECTIONAL ECOLOGIES: Waterfront infrastructures Climate change has brought into sharp focus the potential impact of rising water levels for all urban centers at the water’s edge. Surrounded by water on three sides, the future high density development planned for New York City at Hunters Point South presents a laboratory to challenge the conventional opposition between built structure and open space. Initiated with an in-depth investigation of organic and constructed models of resilience, the studio proposed new strategies for a reciprocal relationship between the surface and perimeter. Individual design proposals suggested new paradigms for a more porous interface between city and water, density and retreat, resilience and urban life. — Megan Born, TA — Noah Levy RESILIENT HYBRID: Urban Tectonics Hunters Point South, Queens, NY Hunters Point South sits at the confluence of ecologies, urbanities and histories. The Newtown Creek and the East River converge at this point, creating a platform for potential interactions and overlapping experiences. A Resilient Hybrid realizes the inherent conditions of the urban

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sphere and the unique ecologies, and seeks to create a vibrant interface that infuses urban inhabitation with public open space and restored wetlands. This new vision of urbanity occurs through the extension and connection of the city to the water’s edge. A street swale system filters stormwater into constructed wetland geometries which allow for emergent ecologies. Multiplicities of experience are made possible through a redefined public open space network, including bridges, walkways and water transport. Fractured courtyard spaces create a hybridity between buildings and landscape, and allow the urban fabric to filter through the new system,

inviting inhabitation at the water’s edge and beyond. Through these structures of extended urban networks and pedestrian flows, the neighborhood becomes a thriving nexus of communication, a place of social and ecological interactions, a place for habitation, movement, and recreation. This site is resilient, as it grows, filters, and adapts to accommodate a range of activities. Thus, its inherent flexibility insures longevity for future generations. 202–204. Noah Levy

The acculturation of nature is an ambition that marks the boundaries of the human being. Who knows where exactly it started. The discovery of fire? Agriculture? The sharpening of a stone? The techniques of cultivating a wild universe of materials and forces, that may have started with the planting of a seed, spans millennia and finds us recoding organic structures and reformatting entire ecologies. The sunlight that was once nothing but divine inspiration is now vibrations in space-time. Teasing little electrons out of a sandwich of silicon, patterning the flows of those very same electrons through circuits and switches, we calculate and index our thoughts and activities on a planetary scale. We farm energy and construct virtual clouds that serve as everyday adjuncts to our lives. It is nothing short of sublime. The long view of humanity’s acculturation of nature is necessary to witness the absolute magnificence of where we are and what we are now capable of doing. It is in this historical perspective that sustainable and green agendas start looking like necessary, but overly modest, ambitions. We are not at the moment where we pull back and reach a gentle homeostasis with nature; we are at a place where we witness radical transformations of the natural order. So radical, that the distinction between the natural and the artificial becomes difficult, or perhaps even unnecessary. The goal of this studio is to design a SYNTHETIC LANDSCAPE in the Mojave Desert of California. This synthetic landscape is to be understood as a large scale public works project sponsored by the United States government. Three

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important components comprise this project: 1. A public data center (server farm). 2. A solar field (energy farm). 3. A program of architecture to facilitate public access and engagement. The data center and the solar field are to be tightly integrated. This massive data-energy infrastructure is to be cultivated as a radical conjuncture between natural and artificial systems. Projects are expected to explore novel architectural expressions appropriate to this problem and speculate on new experiential modalities afforded by this synthesis. —Todd Montgomery The energy in sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to global energy consumption for a year. The U.S. is lucky to be endowed with a vast resource; at least 250,000 square miles of land in the Southwest alone are suitable for constructing solar power plants, and that land receives more than 4,500 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) of solar radiation a year. Converting only 2.5 percent of that radiation into electricity would match the nation’s total energy consumption in 2006. MOUNTAIN MACHINE is a tightly integrated data center and solar field including these important project components: 1. The largest public data center (server farm) in the world, incorporating 5 million square feet of floor space, housing 3.5 million server units. 2. The largest solar field (energy farm) in the world, generating 1000 megawatts of power, covering 14 square miles of land. 3. A program of architecture to facilitate public access and engagement. Though the design seamlessly integrates the data storage and solar farm requirements, it does so in the presence of the awesome and the sublime. Our

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intent is to magnify the wildness and raw beauty of the desert and contrast it with the slick organization of near-futuristic technology employed on site. This disjunction between desert and data will be at the crux of this exciting new place.

up as more containers up, creating an artificial ridge system. It is all created to augment a spectacle of environmental machinery with particular spatial effects. 208–211. Leslie Billhymer

205–207. todd montgomery

— Leslie Billhymer Displacement/ Diswastement Displacement / Dis(waste)ment seeks to redefine the way we think about out productive, massively-scaled industrial sites. Through the implementation of novel toxic waste storage and bioremediation techniques, what was initially a solar farm in the desert now becomes a highly differentiated landscape of material management. Material management, storage and remediation become the effect. A canyon is carved out of the land to allow for cooling for the server volumes, bioremediation tanks have dynamic lids, at different times the tank may be a field or a shaded, semienclosure. The nuclear storage shifts

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706 Independent Thesis

During their final semester, students may elect to do an independent thesis, on a topic they develop, with an advisor of their choosing, subject to approval by the Thesis Committee.

— Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss,

advisor — Nadine Kashlan REQUIEM BEIRUT: Eventscapes Of Possibility Urbicide and amnesia are the main components that shape this study of Beirut, Lebanon. Through a constant bombardment, Beirut has been forced to wrestle with its historically important architectural past and a practical, privatized conception of its future. Between traces of the existing and the remnants of a past a new terrain is sought, one between the ordinary and the extraordinary, one of future potentials. This intervention

seeks to discover an architecture that constructs a condition in which collective memory, cultural identity, and public space work simultaneously. The memory of an event is recorded through experiences. Replications of the past mimic what was, as if a vacuum existed and content replicated from the past could refill it. How then can architecture participate in the creation of experiences that recall a memory of an event or of the past? The Green Line of Beirut is a desolate parking lot filled with remnants of a danger zone. How can this space be reconditioned to activate it once again into the city’s life through constructive means rather than destructive measures? Through what ordering of chaos can we create spaces of experiences that interconnect to create a new landscape of possibility? An audio visual archive: film, photography, object, and sound. These are the

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main vessels through which generations after the civil war have been able to document their experiences. If the premise is to use these artworks to create architecture of identity and culture, how can their representation inform the creation of space? By studying nature’s unflinching survival the project transforms the derelict site of Martyr’s Square into a space subdued in the face of beauty, acknowledging its history. What is the role of the audience? Every witness and participant is integral to the completion of this experience. By rethinking the archive typology and creating an interactive environment, the spaces couple the spectator with the daily functions of passing citizens. This duality in program manifests as an interface between random and normative systems, placing the participants in a condition simultaneously of reflection and of movement. 212, 213. Nadine Kashlan

—Jenny E. Sabin, Peter Lloyd Jones, advisors

Shu Yang, materials scientist Erica Swesey Savig Phenotypic Skin What does it mean for architecture to be life-like? What opportunities lie at the intersection of science and architecture? This thesis project answers these questions through the speculative design of a responsive architectural surface that enables people to more fully engage, physically and emotionally, with their built surroundings. The skin completely covers an interior space, and continually adapts to the tactile behaviors of its interacting users and changing environmental conditions. Its naturally occurring material reactions (investigated in collaboration with the Shu Yang Materials Science Group at Penn) result in dramatic alterations to the skin’s texture, form and color. The proposed design focuses on an intervention in an existing preschool

classroom at the Penn Children’s Center. It also takes into consideration the user base of preschoolers, whose developmental tendency is to seek attachments to inanimate objects as a means of easing anxieties. The work stems from over two years of research at the intersection of cell biology and architecture, conducted through the Sabin+Jones LabStudio. The design objective was formulated through intensive laboratory, digital and material studies on the interdependent relationships between living cells and their surrounding environments. I investigated behaviors of cells by looking at their interfaces with their surroundings, and questioned the inherent material mechanisms that enable them to respond to both physical and chemical stimuli. The project contributes a minimalenergy material system as an interactive interior surface to the field of responsive architecture. It also demonstrates a radical, research-intensive design approach that merges science and architecture. 214–217. Erica Swesey Savig

— Rhett Russo, advisor

Lily Jencks Orskid-in: Architectural Ornament for The Sustainable Age Sustainability has become the contemporary global value, driving rhetoric, politics and architecture. But in this period of carbon-footprint-reducing optimization, what is the value of architectural ornament—an essentially superfluous extravagance? This thesis imagines an architectural ornament that is living and breathing, using the existing climatic control systems of a building as a fertile site for growing different climatic gardens. The site is an attachment to an existing hospital waiting room with the desperate need, but without the space, for a garden. The resulting vertical garden creates varied interior microclimates, ranging from an arid desert, to a cloud-

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forest. The ornamental forms mimic the forms, color and phenomenological experience of each climate, taking a cue of mimicry from the orchids that now grow here. The effect is a fully immersive environment, using the existing pumpingbreathing metabolisms at work in any building and incorporating the waiting room seating. The distinction between man-made and ‘natural’, ‘useful’ and superfluous, performance and ornament, is not clear. 218. Lily Jencks

800 PhD Dissertation

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Tania Calovi Pereira

Max Bill: Art of the Intellect and Architecture of Functional Beauty — David Leatherbarrow, supervisor This dissertation studies the theory and works of the Swiss artist and architect Max Bill, and more specifically the relationship between his art and architecture. In the Bauhaus from 1927 to 1929, Max Bill studied under the directorship of Walter Gropius and his efforts to unify the arts with a rational orientation and input from sociologists and gestalt psychologists. Though this synthesis of the arts was never realized by the school, it has long been, and remains, a sought217

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after ideal. This dissertation argues that Max Bill’s artwork and architecture represent a way of achieving this synthesis. In demonstrating how this developed, it also examines the historical lineage of Bill’s work and the particular and functional methodologies he used. To this day formalism and a superficial regard for aesthetics hinders the discussion and exchange of concepts between art and architecture. I argue that Max Bill realized a consistent body of works and theory that deeply integrated and mutually benefited these fields, and also reconciled aesthetics with scientific inquiry, which is a goal pursued today even more that in the 19th Century. The primary sources for this study are images of Bill’s art and architecture, and those of painters and architects reaching back to the ancient and primitive that were influential in his career, and which compose the lineage underpinning his theories of Concrete design. This dissertation begins with Bill’s education and the direct theoretical influences that led to his Concrete design, then traces these modern sources back across two millennia, and concludes by analyzing his art and architecture to define how, through several discreet architectural functionalitie, Bill achieved a meaningful and diverse range of production. 219, 220. Tania Calovi Pereira

Charles L. Davis II

Tracing the Integrations of Race and Style Theory in the Nineteenth-Century Architecture Style Debates: Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Gottfried Semper, 1834–1890 —Dr. Detlef Mertins, supervisor This research identifies the implications of the integration of race and style theory in Gottfried Semper (b.1803, d.1879) and Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc’s (b.1814, d.1879) architecture theory. Both architects established ‘organic’ conceptions of style that emulated the generative principles of organic processes in nature. Semper’s theory of the Four Elements emulated the principles of morphological development in his outline of the history of ornament, while Viollet’s explanation

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of the structural organization of Gothic churches was influenced by explanations of the internal organization of the body. However, in their parallel search for the ‘scientific’ principles of style, each architect specifically referenced scientific race theories as source material for their style theories; Semper’s use of racial anthropology endorsed a Eurocentric conception of style that privileged Greek art, and Viollet’s reference of philology’s Aryanmigration theory conditioned his 1876 ethnographic history of construction entitled Habitations of Man in All Ages. In an effort to explore the practical and theoretical implications of Viollet and Semper’s theoretical references of scientific race theory, this research isolates the parallels and tensions that existed between the scientific and architectural uses of the terms ‘type’ and ‘degeneration’ in the nineteenth century. The presence of both terms in Viollet and Semper’s style theory permitted the nineteenth-century architect to interpret race as a natural expression of style in the architecture style debates. Using this interpretation of ‘race as style’, this dissertation produces a reading of the integrations of the biological, ethnographic and nationalist paradigms of race in three domestic building case studies

of the period: Semper’s 1843 apothecary for his brother Wilhelm in Hamburg, and his design of Villa Garbald for Augustino Garbald in Castasegna, Switzerland of 1863; and Viollet’s Villa la Vedette of Lausanne, Switzerland of 1875. An interdisciplinary approach to the nineteenth-century architectural style debates provides an analytic framework for reconsidering the historical relationships the emerged between race and style theory in two traditions of twentiethcentury modern architecture; structural rationalism and tectonics. 221, 222. Charles L. Davis II

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COURSES / Events / News

COURSES— reqUIRED ARCH 511 History and Theory I, Andy Payne This course explores fundamental ideas and models of architecture that have emerged over the past three hundred years, with a specific focus on constructive and generative models. Students learn skills that will assist them in interpreting buildings in relation to the circumstances immediate to their construction (technological, political, economic, social, and cultural), and in view of the durable problems and issues that have emerged from architectural traditions. ARCH 512 History and Theory II, David Leatherbarrow The aim of this course is to introduce some of the basic topics of architectural order and the typical situations in which they occur. The course structure and its arguments rest on two premises: one, that these topics, this order, and these situations have been developed historically, and two, that architectural order cannot be understood without seeing the building in relation to a wider horizon of reference—the city. While these premises give orientation to both this course and architectural theory, they also bear on contemporary design, for it can be argued that the single most important challenge facing design today is to resume the battle for the city as the most effective and eloquent embodiment of contemporary culture. ARCH 521 Visual Studies I, Cathrine Veikos (coordinator), Ximena Valle, Jason Easter, Andrew Lucia, Todd Shapiro, Jackie Wong This half-credit course helps students learn to exercise visual thinking and develop fundamental graphic skills for the architectural representation of

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spatial relationships. Through a series of conceptually based exercises, running in parallel with studio projects, the course interweaves salient concepts from architectural drafting with specific digital media techniques. The exercises emphasize spatial inquiry through constructions with line and projective drawing. They provide skills for clear and well-crafted drawings, sketches, perspectives, and orthographic projections (plan, section and axonometric). Drawing skills reviewed include conventions of line weight, line type and notation, composition, color, tone, and rendering techniques. The course demonstrates and inculcates a digital drawing methodology, based on workflow through various softwares, as well as teaching criteria for digital presentation and printing. ARCH 522 Visual Studies II, Cathrine Veikos (coordinator), Jason Easter, Andrew Lucia, Angie Co, Todd Shapiro, Ximena Valle This half-credit course enabled students to develop the drawing skills and practices required to manifest complex spatial, temporal and quantitative information in two-dimensions, indexing architectural relationships of space and time. Exercises continue to promote spatial inquiry, and provide skills for the successful communication of architectural ideas and intentions. The theme of drawing as an “Information Graphic,” following the work of Edward Tufte, is developed in lectures over the course of the semester, accompanied by instruction in both static and dynamic techniques. Architectural information graphics is constituted in support of visual thinking, evolutionary design strategies, and design feedback in the critical evaluation of architecture’s agency in the complex systems and networks related to the urban context.

ARCH 531 Construction I, Lindsay Falck This course introduces students to the basic principles and concepts of architectural materials and technologies of fabrication and assembly. It describes the interrelated nature of structure, construction and environmental systems. ARCH 532 Construction II, Lindsay Falck This course continues the introduction of materials and methods of construction begun in ARCH 531, focusing on light and heavy steel frame construction, concrete construction, light and heavyweight cladding systems and systems building. ARCH 533 Environmental Systems I, Ali Malkawi This course studies human needs, comfort, performance, and sense of well being in relation to the physical environments both natural and man-made which occur in and around buildings. It introduces the mechanical systems in modern buildings with emphasis on tracing environmental, energy and waste problems. These problems make it imperative that architects be familiar with the systems that affect building energy use. Students gain understanding of those elements of buildings that contribute to their heating and cooling loads and methods that reduce the energy consumption. Different methods of analysis, evaluation, and simulation are introduced and employed. ARCH 534 Environmental Systems II, William Braham In this course, we consider the environmental systems of larger, more complex buildings. Contemporary buildings are characterized by the use of such systems—ventilating, heating, cooling, dehumidifying, lighting, communications and controls—that not only have their own demands but also dynamically interact with one another. The relationship to the classic architectural questions about building size and shape are even more complex. With the introduction

of sophisticated feedback and control systems, architects are faced with conditions that are virtually animate and coextensive at many scales with the natural and manmade environments in which they are placed. The first task of the course is to understand those systems and their purposes in simple linear forms through analysis and calculation. The second task is to examine their dynamic interaction with one another— between lighting, cooling, and building shape for example—and with the environmental conditions they are meant to ameliorate. Coursework includes the environmental analysis of a room in a building on the Penn campus. Such investigations involved measurements and performance simulations of environmental behavior and documentation of the HVAC systems of the building. ARCH 535 Structures I, Richard Farley This course provides a study of structural elements and their assembly into building structural systems, concentrating on design principles and structural behavior. The analysis and design of twodimensional elements (flat and curved) and foundation systems are covered, as well as dynamics and composite elements. The course focuses on observing and experiencing structural behavior, as well as the influence of the construction process on design of structures. ARCH 536 Structures II, Richard Farley This course is a continuation of the equilibrium analysis of structures covered in ARCH 535. Students study static and hyper-static systems and design of their elements while learning to design for combined stresses and pre-stressing. The course focused on various structural elements, systems, materials and technical principals.

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ARCH 611 History and Theory III: Architectures of Complexity, Helene Furjan This course examined the prevalence of complexity theory in architecture today: the near ubiquity of systems models, dynamics, genetic processes and emergence, networked organizations, digital fabrication and so on. Central to this investigation is the vital influence of “diagrammatic” practices and theories and techniques of nonlinear dynamic organizations, coupled with advanced mathematics and emerging technologies. At the basis of architectures of complexity lies systems theory: a relational understanding of the world opposed to earlier mechanistic and atomistic models that break the world into isolated parts. Systems theory thinks in terms of dynamic, self-creating and complex assemblies. Complex systems are redefining the way we understand material behaviors and structures, allowing material to be rethought as “matter.” The genetic evolution of morphology— morphogenesis— is replacing more conventional notions of form and tectonics. Models of distributed, co-adaptive systems are shifting older notions of “sustainability” towards new formulations of ecology enmeshed with the theory of ecosystems. Because “systems” thought in architecture can be found as early as the Renaissance, if not before, the course tracked back from its basis in the present to locate the genealogical ancestry that prefigures much of today’s preoccupations. ARCH 621 Visual Studies III, Cathrine Veikos (coordinator), Andrew Ruggles, James Kerestes, Patrick Stinger, Paul Coughlin, Megan Born, Adrienne Yancone The final semester of Visual Studies extends the trajectory of ARCH 521/522 further into digital media, to introduce new technical skills and to develop methodologies for the production of expressive and communicative drawings. The series of workshops explores the

potential of drawings as dynamic visual repositories of data, from which information can be gleaned, geometries generated and tested, and designs refined and transmitted. Rendering and accurate lighting simulation, processes of drawing assembly, the establishment of hierarchical/ parametric relationships, the use of generative techniques, and the successful management of physical output are introduced over the semester. There is an in-depth attention to workflow, data transfer across multiple softwares, and to other areas tailored to the specific requirements of each design studio. 223. David Chen 224. Derek Molenaar 225. John Jakubiec, Andrew Ruggles

ARCH 631 Technology Case Studies I, Lindsay Falck This course focuses on current trends in technology being developed in the construction of buildings. In some cases, the emerging technologies involve new techniques for processing or assembling previously used materials, as with structural glass walls, whereas in others, completely new materials and processes of production are evolving, as with composite materials, such as carbonfiber and resins formed and processed in autoclaved molds. The course also examines the rapidly changing methods of fabrication and on-site assembly of construction components, as in the CAD/CAM processes. These emerging technologies relate to structural components, enclosure components for roofs and walls, service and environmental control components and to the processes of fabrication and on-site assembly techniques. Emphasis in the case studies presented by visiting lecturers and faculty was on the holistic nature of the design and construction processes. This extends into the assignments undertaken by students in their analysis of a completed project, where all phases of design and buildings were studied.

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ARCH 632-001 Deployable Structures, Mohamad Al Khayer This course introduces the rapidly growing field of deployable structures through hands-on experiments conducted in workshop environments. The course provides an introduction to the history, theory and application of deployable structures in two parts. The course begins with a workshop in geometric studies of Platonic and Archimedean solids and space filling geometries; topology and morphological transformations; studies of different mechanical joints; computer visual analysis of the structural behavior of deployable structures; and computer simulations of the deployment using Visual Nastrand. Students build basic deployable structure with link, skeletal and continuous members. In the second part of the course, each student develops and examines a deployable structure derived from a real case. The final assignment is the construction of a to-scale physical working model and its computer simulation. ARCH 632-002 Simulation and Design, Yun Kyu Yi Simulation is the process of making a simplified model of some complex system and using it to predict the behavior of the original system. During the past decade, advancements in computer technology made it possible for building simulation to be part of the design process. This course provides students with an understanding of building design simulation methods, hands-on experience in using computer simulation models and exploration of the technologies, underlying principles, and potential applications of virtual environments (virtual reality) as a simulation tool in architecture. Stateof-the-art computer models for thermal, lighting and acoustic analysis are introduced and applications of these models in architectural design are explored. A building is analyzed throughout the semester in the following areas: climate and site analysis; energy and passive

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solar systems; lighting and daylighting systems; acoustic systems; virtual visualization and design integration. ARCH 632-003 Surfaces/ Effects, Cathrine Veikos The subtle and dynamic effects of the building surfaces of recent works by architects James Carpenter, Jun Aoki, Kenzo Kuma, Sejima + Nishizawa/SANAA, and Herzog & de Meuron are achieved through well-orchestrated details grounded in built reality. The perceptual effects of a building surface as a whole are directly related to the design of its elements of construction, its specific material and tectonic assemblies. Initial research by students identified and examined the possibilities for organizing and structuring perception through the design of surfaces. Lecturers demonstrated a range of effects created by selected architects and installation artists and examined how these effects are produced. The seminar was conducted as a workshop where students developed digital and material models towards the design of their own dynamic, environmentally responsive surfaces. These proposals were reviewed and discussed with a series of design consultants. The seminar/workshop not only addressed materials but their integration into building systems. The class reviewed requirements and criteria for doubleskin facades, exterior, interior and interstitial solar shading, natural (buoyancy-driven), forced (mechanically-driven) and mixed ventilation, as well as experimental proposals. ARCH 632-004 Design for Light Structures, Jon Morrison This course focuses on structural design principals at the intersection of dematerialized and weight-minimized structures. It includes a review of fundamental structural elements realized with low-mass/high-strength materials, the flow of forces and contemporary structural engineering methods using a generally visual and intuitive approach.

Light structures are considered in terms of: light weight/ high-strength materials; weight-minimized structural elements and configurations where bending is avoided and geometry is exploited; holistic approaches to overall structural systems design incorporating load transfer functions with other functions; transparent and translucent materials in load bearing applications; component based design, digital fabrication and off-site fabrication methods, on-site assembly and disassembly (recycling); the relationship of light structures to site; anticipating and avoiding failure; and, aesthetics and the overriding need and desire for visible light and the nature of collaboration between engineer, architect, artist and fabricator. ARCH 632-005 High Performance Materials and Systems, Phu Hoang This course explores the role of constraints in the design of performative building envelopes. The course defines performance as a feed-back loop between architecture and the users and systems it enables. Performance is measured by the efficiency of its systems’ ambitions. Embedded within these systems are the constraints that help to define them. Students locate moments of constraints in order to transform them into opportunities for architectural innovation. Working in groups, students design a building envelope that is responsive to two types of constraints. Both the constraints and the performance of the building envelope are parameters in which to create architectural innovation. ARCH 632-006 Component Based Design, Mark Igou This course explores how traditional and cutting edge materials in conventional and non-conventional applications are used in building assembly design. Students are exposed to case studies presented by scientists, engineers and fabricators to convey the decision making process of how to arrive at innovative, high performance design solutions for building assemblies and systems.

Students participate in collaborative teams with outside professionals to develop and build their own high performance materials and building systems. ARCH 638-001 Building Acoustics, Joe Solway This six-week course covers the fundamentals of architectural acoustics. The course includes measurements and testing in Irvine Hall and two assignments, one practical (Boom Box) and one theoretical (Sound Space). ARCH 638-002 Building Skins, Alberto Cavallero This course focuses on the parameters guiding the design, analysis and construction of high-performance building enclosures. A heuristic methodology forms the core of the semester: by designing a small portion of a wall for an actual project for the FDA, we critically study the entire process toward the realization of a sophisticated enclosure. During the exercise, a series of lectures allows the class to apply a widening set of fundamental structural, constructive and thermal criteria, through a selection of materials, conceptual estimating and scheduling, testing procedures and finally to construction. The result of the exercise was intended to be both experimental and possible. ARCH 638-003 Building Systems, Stuart Mardeusz/Joe Castner Building systems exert a growing influence on architectural design, particularly in America. This course examines how evolving technologies in mechanical engineering influence our work as architects, designers and planners, exploring a range of topics that have enormous cultural and technical implications for architecture, landscape and urban design. Each week, the seminar focuses on a different building typology, considering how its systems and infrastructure are driven by specific functional requirements. The class traces both current

and emerging techniques with a special emphasis on areas for design innovation.

of practice by taking three separate field trips including visits to eighteen firms.

ARCH 638-004 Daylighting, Naree Phinyawatana The course introduces the use and optimization of daylight in buildings, examining the differences between toplighting and sidelighting, and reviewing specific aperture techniques for regulating the use of natural light. Fundamentals of daylight availability and visual perception are introduced. Advanced design techniques are developed in exercises and a final project.

ARCH 672 Professional Practice II, Charles Capaldi This course is the second workshop on professional practice, and addresses the organizational, institutional, and legal context of architectural practice. Students examine the building process from the viewpoint of the different participants, developing an appreciation and understanding of the importance of the relationships between key ‘players’ through panel discussions with clients, consultants, contractors and fabricators. They explore the different roles of each in order to learn how each figures into the building process as a whole.

ARCH 638-005 Lighting, Craig Bernecker Principles of Lighting is a comprehensive course in architectural lighting design intended to develop a basic understanding of the principles of science and vision relating to lighting, and a similar understanding of lighting measurement and terminology. It is also intended to help students build a knowledge base of electric lighting design technologies, in particular, lamps and luminaries. Using this understanding and knowledge, the balance of the course focuses on identifying appropriate lighting design criteria for specific applications and techniques for designing and analyzing lighting systems to address these criteria. The overall goal of the course is to establish an understanding of the impact of lighting on architecture and a foundation for the possible practice of lighting design. ARCH 671 Professional Practice I, Mark Gardner This course is the first of a two-semester workshop that familiarizes students with the organizational, institutional and legal contexts for practice. It opens doors for students through ties to leading practitioners and encourages critical reflection on the nature of architecture practices today. This initial workshop focuses on the organizational design of a range of contemporary practices. Students develop an understanding of the logics

ARCH 772 Professional Practice III, David McHenry This course, the third in a sequence in professional practice and procedures, focuses on the nature of projects in the context of activities within an architect’s practice and on the idiosyncrasies of managing multiple projects. Detailed studies of the legal, financial, marketing, management and administration issues associated with the different forms of office proprietorship are studied. The special set of contractual and ethical obligations of the architect, particularly in response to client needs and safety, are examined. Codes, standards and regulations and their relationship to the different activities in the practice of architecture were presented. ARCH 811 Advanced Theory I: Architecture and the Natural World: theory, history, technique, David Leatherbarrow This course is to provide students who are embarking on a career of scholarship in architecture a first introduction to some of the principal issues and writings of the tradition. It is a required seminar for first year Ph.D and M.S. Students, but is open to upper level Master’s students. The course consists of a series of

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presentations by members of the Graduate Group in Architecture, which address the course’s theme. No matter whether one considers the rise of “landscape urbanism” as approach to design, the emergence of “generative models” in current project making, or the profound and widespread concern for ecology in contemporary architecture, no theme is more important in current discourse and practice than nature. The seminars approach this broad topic in different ways, ways that exemplify the professor’s method or style of research. Readings come from the professor’s own writings as well as relevant texts from other scholars. Students lead discussion sessions the week after each presentation. Students also write both synopses of the several presentations and a longer text that compares them. The course thus not only introduces students to current thinking about this topic, but also acts as a foundation for scholarly research and publication. 226. Spring of 2008 for ARCH 502, a studio which focused on an urban study of the “Loft District” in Philadelphia. The project was for a public bath facility. 227. Johnny lin, Arch 704, Ali Rahim, critic 228. John Jakubiec, Arch 602, Andrew Ruggles, critic

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COURSES — eleCTIVE ARCH 711-001 Spaces in Tourism, Jose Castillo Tourism is not only the world’s largest industry, but also a spatial and temporal practice that transforms territories through economic, social and physical techniques as well as the specific management of time. This seminar investigates some of these techniques and procedures undertaken by tourism as they relate to the transformation of space. It uncovers the effects and potentials they have on architecture, cities and landscapes. The seminar considers specific cases, projects, histories and readings that frame the architecture/ tourism relationship. The students use maps, diagrams and representational techniques to discover tourism’s impacts on architecture and planning. ARCH 712-001 The Philosophy of Materials & Structures, Manuel DeLanda This course examines concepts in Materials Science, stressing not only the usefulness of this knowledge for the purposes of design but also its intrinsic interest as a basis for a technically sound philosophy of matter. The course is shaped by the belief that architects benefit from a more detailed philosophical knowledge of the theoretical principles behind structural engineering. At the same time, it is informed by the idea that the creative use of computer software and digital simulations benefit from additional philosophical resources. Specifically, the course highlights new software that simulates biological evolution (so-called ‘genetic algorithms’ that may be used to ‘breed’ new architectural designs) and illustrates its value in the practice of engineering. The course integrates insights from two different areas crucial to contemporary design:

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material science and engineering, on the one hand, and computer simulations involving a host of new ‘virtual materials’ such as NURBS surfaces, particles and meta-balls, as well as the intersection of these with the new evolutionary software. ARCH 712-002 The Changing Nature of Architectural Representation: Architecture between science and humanities, Dalibor Veseley Most of the questions facing architecture today are linked directly or indirectly with the problem of representation. This is an apparent and open problem created by the growing preoccupation with new possibilities of digital representation and virtual realities. The course will address the changing nature of representation, in relation to the new kind of knowledge developed in modern science, and in relation to the conditions under which meaningful design is possible, developed and cultivated in the modern humanities. ARCH 712 004. Transforming the Nursing Home, Matthias Hollwich There are 17,000 Medicare and Medicaid certified nursing homes in the United States today. Despite their ubiquity, they continue to be an underdeveloped architectural typology; one that lacks architectural innovation and design ingenuity. This research seminar uses the planned refurbishment of an existing facility built in the 1960’s in LA to envision a new future defined by progressive, sustainable, humanistic, technical and spatial advances. Beyond technical and spatial re-imagination, the projects will attempt to eliminate loneliness, helplessness, and boredom, and create an enlivened environment that succeeds where pills and therapies fail. The seminar will work in conjunction with other PENN departments, and will result in extensive documentation in the form of a publication and video presentation. The seminar includes a 5 day research trip, and ultimately will be the basis for a 700 level design studio, as well as an international conference on aging.

ARCH 712 006. Network Culture. The History of the Contemporary, Kazys Varnelis The purpose of this seminar is to introduce students to a historical understanding of our era, to come to terms with the changed conditions that characterize our new, networked age. This course explores how the network is not merely a technology with social ramifications, but rather connects changes in society, economy, aesthetics, urbanism, and ideology. As a history of the contemporary, the seminar is organized around topics that trace a genealogy of presentday culture. Students will read authors such as Bruno Latour, Friedrich Kittler, Gilles Deleuze, Manuel Castells, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrilland, as well as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. The situation of architecture and urbanism is explored throughout. ARCH 712 007. Designing Asia, Kazi Ashraf Asia’s architectural and urban landscape is being remade in unexpected and exuberant ways at this defining moment in global history. The course presents the emerging landscape as a theater of new challenges and conceptualizations for architecture. A vast part of Asia, from Kazakhstan to Mumbai, and from Abu Dhabi to Shenzen, is being rearranged by the turbulent wave of a “second modernity” that is also revising received precepts of culture, identity, traditions, practices and participations. At the same time, Asia has increasingly come to dominate the production and imagination of architecture in the West. There is a new matrix of exchanges and encounters that await understanding and mapping. A multi-disciplinary approach is essential to confront this phantasmagoric and dynamic landscape. The course will present materials, from literature to film, and from social science to new media, and will feature guest visits by sociologists, anthropologists and writers involved in charting the new coordinates. Architectural analogs will be sought in the

works of Wong Kar-Wai, Salman Rushdie, Arjun Appadurai, Yukio Mishima, Kim Ki-duk, and others. The course will include regional resources, including conversations with architectural firms in PA/NY, as well as with practices in Asia. Students will attend at a major conference on contemporary Indian architecture in New York City. ARCH 713 Ecology, Technology and Design, Kevin Pratt This course examined the ecological nature of design at a range of scales, from the most intimate aspects of product design to the largest infrastructures, from the use of water in bathrooms to the flow of traffic on highways. It drew on the history and philosophy of technology, as well as the history and theory of ecological design to examine the interaction between the built environment and on the biosphere, and especially to investigate the dynamic, systematic effects that have resulted. Over the past few decades, the attention of environmentalists has turned from the control of pollution to the productive use of natural resources, and consequently we must understand the markets, fashions and technological cycles that drive consumption. The course asked both “how much is enough?” and “to what end” do we design and build. 715-002: Writing on Architecture, Witold Rybczynski The aim of this course is to train students in the principles and techniques of nonfiction writing as it relates to architecture. Readings include different types of architectural prose, but you can only learn to write by writing. Writing exercises include brief, critical reviews of existing buildings and unbuilt projects.

which they emerge is not hard to grasp because it is planned to the last detail by a human bureaucracy. Other cities, such as Venice and its labyrinthine system of streets, emerged spontaneously without any central agency making the relevant decisions. But even those cities in which urban structure was the result of a deliberate act of planning, house many processes that, like Venice, represent the spontaneous emergence of order out of chaos. This seminar examines a variety of these processes, from markets to symbiotic nets of small producers, from epidemics of urban diseases to the creation of new languages and urban dialects. It also explores the interaction between these self-organized phenomena and centrally controlled processes that are the result of human planning. ARCH 718 Contemporary Japanese Architecture, Nancy Steinhardt This course provided an in-depth exploration of contemporary Japanese architecture from Meiji to the present. Informed by an historical overview of Japan since the mid-nineteenth century, the class examined the innovative and challenging work of Japan’s most prominent architects and placed it within the broader contexts of urbanization and globalization. Classes were organized thematically, and addressed topics such as culture and design, retail, construction technology, mega-projects, urban sprawl, prefab, and technology. A number of distinguished scholars and architects from the US and Japan participated as guest lecturers.

ARCH 717 Self-Organization & Dynamics of Cities, Manuel DeLanda Cities are among the most complex entities that arise out of human activity. For some of these cities (Versailles, Washington DC) the process through

ARCH 719 Archigram and its Legacy: London, a Technotopia, Annette Fierro Many of the visionary objectives of the 1960’s counter-cultural group Archigram neither began nor ended with the formation and dissolution of its membership and its brief stint of kitchen-counter publications. The unconventional, exaggerated technologies so much a vehicle of its rhetorical mission re-emerged

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repeatedly in British Hi-Tech during the last 40 years. This course delves deeply into the particular siting of Archigram’s influence with British Hi-Tech, studying effects wrought as visionary architecture was made tangible, probing into actual technologies of contemporary building and the thinking behind various excesses. The course also examines buildings on a case study basis and many of Archigram’s visionary objectives often manifest in non-causal ways in contemporary London. It studies Archigram through London and London through Archigram’s visions. This entails the construction of a network of influences and eventualities, paralleling the invasive and often subversive infrastructures proposed by Archigram itself—from relationships to urban infrastructures, especially transportation and communication technologies, to precedents in Victorian engineering, to influences of Gothic literature and 60’s science fiction, to ideas of event and happening, to other radical movements contemporary to Archigram’s rise and demise, especially Superstudio and Archizoom in Italy and the Situationists in Paris. ARCH 722 Advanced Drawing Procedures: Behavior & Response, Rhett Russo The making of architecture is executed through the reading of lines, mathematically described to indicate the boundaries and relationships of materials. Central to the act of drawing is the act of invention; illusion precedes realization. Line, surface, shadow, and perspective, explored through different media, are the language of inquiry. As a laboratory to test both analog and digital media, the intent of the course is to test how modes of representation can reveal the qualitative aspects of spatial propositions. The course is organized as a series of loops between media, layering and capturing their intrinsic effects and intensifying the potential for new expression. A series of investigations paralleled discussions with artists and

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architects exploring representations of space and form. This course seeks to engage the intuitive and ephemeral with the highly precise, recognizing that the act and the artifact of the drawing invite new possibilities for transformation. 237. Kristen Smith

ARCH 726 Furniture Design, Katrin Mueller-Russo This course provides a platform, in the form of furniture, to execute and deploy architectural and engineering principles at full scale. It is conducted as a seminar and workshop and introduces students to a variety of design methodologies that are unique to product design. The course engages in many of the considerations that are affiliated with mass production; quality control, efficient use of material, durability, and human factors, such as comfort. Students conduct research into industrial design processes, both traditional and contemporary, and adapt these processes into techniques to design a prototype for limited production. 229. Jacob FREY 230. Daniel Whipple

ARCH 728 Design of Contemporary Products, Josh Owen This course introduces students with design background in architecture, landscape architecture and engineering to the field of industrial design using a combination of seminar and workshop formats. The goal of the course is to inspire innovation in product development. By capitalizing on industrial design theory and process, which encourages the integration of engineering and business concerns along with the experience of human interaction and emotive qualities, students are encouraged to re-think a utilitarian product by exploring beyond models promulgated by disciplines that focus more exclusively on either form or function. 231. Adam Fenner

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ARCH 731 Experiments in Structure, Peter McCleary and Mohamad Al Khayer This course studies the relationships between geometric space and those structural systems that amplify tension. Experiments using the hand (touch and force) in coordination with the eye (sight and geometry) are conducted during the construction and observation of physical models. Verbal, mathematical and computer models are secondary to the reality of the physical model. In typology, masonry structures in compression correlate with “classical” space, and steel or reinforced concrete structures in flexure with “modernist” space. We seek the spatial correlates to tensile systems of both textiles (woven or braided fabrics where both warp and weft are tensile) and baskets (where the warp is tensile and the weft is compressive). ARCH 732 Building Systems Integration, Ali Malkawi This course explores the interrelationships of environmental control systems by means of building type studies. Innovative systems are emphasized and a variety of projects including residential, educational and commercial buildings, office and assembly building are analyzed in detail. The main principles of “integrated building design” are illustrated and studies and the relationship between energy conservation and the principles of initial building cost versus life cycles costs are discussed. ARCH 734 Architecture & Ecology, Muscoe Martin Architecture is an inherently exploitive act—we take resources from the earth and produce waste and pollution to make buildings. The construction industry is one of the single largest producers of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States as well as in other industrialized economies. Over the past ten years, a growing awareness of the negative environmental consequences of construction has led many designers

to look for ways to change how we design and build in order to lessen these impacts. These efforts have produced a number of revised construction techniques, innovative design tools, new products and marketing strategies, with significant effect on the building industry. This course explored the evolving notion of “sustainability” as it relates to the practice of architecture. We study how energy conservation, resource efficiency, open space preservation and indoor environmental quality are affecting design. We learn to track the ecological scale effects of architectural design decisions. We critically review the currently accepted metrics of sustainability including the LEEED® Green Building Rating System, the Ecological Footprint and other indicators. We investigate the integral connections between urban design, landscape architecture and hydrological engineering and their environmental impact. ARCH 739 Building Pathology, Michael Henry This course addresses the deterioration and failures of buildings and their component systems. It includes the technical aspects of materials and building failures, as well as the social and economic forces that also affect the fate of a built environment. Students are exposed to the techniques and vocabulary of construction, building failure assessment, restoration processes, and the techniques and methods of monitoring and testing buildings. Case studies are reviewed. For all of these topics, the course explores the various ways buildings deteriorate and fail physically, and the techniques of measuring and monitoring buildings for the purpose of assessing or foreseeing these changes. ARCH 741-001 Architectural Design Innovation, Ali Rahim This seminar explores systemic thinking and digital design techniques yielding architectural forms that have aesthetic aspirations. The mastery of techniques,

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whether in design, production or both, does not necessarily yield great architecture. As we all know, the most advanced techniques can still yield average designs. Architects are becoming increasingly adept at producing complexity and integrating digital design and fabrication techniques into their design process—yet there are few projects that emanate an aesthetic sensibility. The seminar explores some of the instances in which designers are able to move beyond technique, by commanding them to such a degree that they achieve nuances within the formal development of projects and guide their development with an iterative sensibility. ARCH 741-002 Experiments in Design Techniques: Textile Hierarchies, Jenny Sabin This course uses a combination of seminar and workshop formats to explore new design techniques from a number of sources including advances in digital technology, natural models, advanced geometry and material practices in allied arts, crafts and design disciplines. This section of the course focuses on algorithmic design techniques, and craft and fabricated material assemblies for the production of fiber structures at a range of scales and applications. The course considers historical and architectural connections between computation and textile fabrication and contemporary applications in scripting and generative models. Case studies will be used to explore subjects from responsive surface architectures in biology and buildings to diagrid structures at the scale of skyscrapers. The course will introduce scripting techniques in a parametric and associative environment, with feedback derived from material constraints as well as performance assessments. 232. Isaac Silvera, Akari Takebayashi 233. Alan Song-Ching Tai, Sunghak Ko, Kyu Ho Chun 234. Carl Nebel

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ARCH 743-001 Form and Algorithm, Cecil Balmond/Roland Snooks The seminar studies non-Cartesian, non-linear geometries and forms, from their inception and conceptualization to their realization in the form of space, program, circulation and structure. It investigates the unit (cell, bit, module), its relationship to the whole (body, program, building) and its environment within the context of generative and algorithmic design. It shows the organization of new forms of structure, demonstrating how these models can operate at various scales and levels in the built environments and investigates the role of material feedback in abstract systems. The seminar illustrates the power of numbers and number systems as means of generating form and structure, and explains how new geometries and forms are generated through the use of tools, demonstrating how these tools are important instruments of design. ARCH 744-001/002 Digital Fabrication, Ferda Kolatan and David Ruy This seminar investigates the fabrication of digital structures using rapid prototyping (RP) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) technologies, which offer the production of building components directly from 3D digital models. In contrast to the industrial-age paradigms of prefabrication and mass production in architecture, this course focuses on the development of repetitive non-standardized building systems (mass-customization) through digitally controlled variation and serial differentiation. Various RP and CAM technologies are introduced with examples of use in contemporary building design and construction. ARCH 745 001. Nonlinear Systems Biology & Design, Jenny Sabin/Peter Lloyd-Jones Systems biology examines the nature of nonlinearities, emergent properties and loosely coupled modules that are the

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hallmarks of ‘complexity’. New models and design in architecture have grown in response to radical breakthroughs in technology and an increasing interest in the use of algorithmic and generative tools within the design process. Algorithmic imaging and molecular tools found useful in analyzing nonlinear biological systems may therefore prove to be of value to new directions in design within architecture. This rapid manufactured prototype structure is the culmination of two year’s worth of research and work that started in ARCH 745 Nonlinear Systems Biology & Design. The final stage of this study involved the scalable reconstruction of embedded biological behavior within deployable structures to a pavilion prototype. The rapid manufacturing of a skin structure composed of water-jet cut aluminum flaps is married with the intricate design and fabrication of steel struts and mechanisms composed of hinges and pins. Information gained from studying geometry and matter at the cell and tissue scale is embedded in the final assembled prototype alongside architectural constraints dealing with issues of scale, material thickness and fabrication. This project was funded by the Sabin+Jones LabStudio through an UPenn Research Facilities and Development Grant. Manufacturing by Amuneal, Philadelphia. 235. Shuni Feng, Joshua Freese, Jeffrey Nesbit 236. Misako Murata

ARCH 762 Design and Development, Witold Rybczynski Many factors affect architectural design, including architectural style, building technology, functional demands, social needs, and the forces of the marketplace. The examples discussed focus on the places where we live, work, shop and play. This course introduces the relationship between architectural design and real estate development. Topics include domestic design, planned communities, and new urbanism.

ARCH 765 Project Management, Chip Arena This course introduces students to techniques and tools of managing the design and construction of large and small construction projects. Topics include project delivery systems, management tools, cost-control and budgeting systems, and professional roles. Cost and schedule control systems are described and case studies illustrate the application of techniques in the field. ARCH 768-401/402 Real Estate Development, Asuka Nakahara/Jonathan Weller This course analyzes the development process in terms of the different functions performed by real estate developers and architects, and the interrelationships between these two professions. Emphasis is placed on property evaluation, site planning, building design, underlying economics and discounted cash flow analysis. ARCH 780 Architecture in the Schools, William Braham “Architecture in the Schools” is a 20+ year program of teaching architecture in Philadelphia area schools run by the American Institute of Architects. As a participant in the AIE (Architecture in Education) program, students have the opportunity to work directly with children in the classroom making an impact on their lives and on the future of our neighborhoods and cities. Students work with a classroom teacher and a design professional to develop a weekly series of eight (1–1½ hour) interdisciplinary experiential lessons using the built environment as a laboratory to create stimulating new ways of seeing, learning, and doing.

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News — Standing faculty Cecil Balmond exhibited Solid Void, which investigated spatial concepts in geometry, numbers and patterns through a large-scale, site-specific installation, which transformed the galleries at the Madlener House, a turn-of-the-century Prairie-style mansion in the Gold Coast of Chicago, on behalf of the Graham Foundation. William W. Braham led the preparation of the Action Plan for Carbon Reduction, University of Pennsylvania, 2009. He spoke about Oekonomics at the Urban Design after the Age of Oil Conference in November, and also spoke on Integrative Thinking about LifeCycle Analysis at the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership in March. Enrique Norten’s firm, TEN Arquitectos, won the AIA Urban Design Honor Award for the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, California Ali Rahim delivered lectures at Florida International University, Aristotle University, Rice Design Alliance, Universitat Internacional de Catlunya, Architecture Center, University of Calgary, and the University of Aalborg, and gave the keynote address at the 12th Meeting of the Heads of European Schools of Architecture, in Hania, Greece. Wall of the Future, an installation which highlights parametric design and fabrication techniques, was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling, and reviewed by Nicolai Ouroussoff of the New York Times. Projects were also included in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s Performalism: Form, Function and Performance in Architecture. The Art Institute of Chicago purchased the Reebok Flagship for their

permanent collection. Other current projects include Lutron Pavilion, a showcase of products and interactive environments, and Jingumae Orthodontics, a three phase project in Tokyo. Essays, interviews, and projects were featured in 1000 x Architecture of the Americas, Architecture Now, Yale Constructs, Frame Magazine, and The National Newspaper of Abu Dhabi, with another essay to be published in Architectural Design’s “Excess” issue. Witold Rybczynski lectured at the Institute for Classical Architecture in San Francisco, and at the 1000 Jahre Andrea Palladio Symposium in Marberg, Germany. He visited the new Israeli city of Modi’in, designed by Moshe Safdie, and is writing a chapter on urban design for a book on the city. He lectured on his latest book, Last Harvest, at the University of Windsor and Temple University. He was a featured speaker at a conference on Climate Change and the New Frontiers of Urban Development, at the Law School of the University of Colorado at Boulder. His architectural essays appeared this fall in the New York Times Book Review and the Wall Street Journal. Cathrine Veikos mounted Sheer Opacity, an installation work on glass that uses photography and line drawing to provoke questions about the visual perception of surface and depth, at the University of Minnesota, College of Design. She presented Surfaces/ Effects at the 96th ACSA National Conference in Houston and participated in the series, Conversations, and the symposium, Terms of Engagement at PennDesign in 2008. She lectured at the College of Design and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, at Yale University on the subject of display at the Museum of Art at São Paulo (MASP), and wrote, Technical Provocations­— The Changing Role of Representation for the European Association of Architectural Education (EAAE), Writings in Architectural

Education, Representation in Architecture: Communication-MeaningVisions. Fresh Air: Proceedings of the 95th ACSA National Conference, which she edited with Judith Bing, was published by the ACSA in 2007. Marion Weiss is the Graham Chair Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design. Weiss/Manfredi’s Olympic Sculpture Park was winner in the Nature category at the 2008 World Architecture Festival in Barcelona and the only project from the United States to receive an award. The project, which was winner of an international design competition, also won I.D. Magazine Environments 2008 “Best in Category” Design Awards, the EDRA 2008 Places Award for best urban design, and the VR Green International Prize for Urban Design. The sculpture Park was also recognized as one of the Best New Building Designs of 2008 in the USA by the Chicago Athenaeum. Most recently her firm won the Taekwondo Cultural Park international design competition which is scheduled to break ground fall of 2009. Her firm’s competition winning Nexus, a new arts building for Barnard College, is scheduled to open fall of 2009. Her firm’s work was featured in the Barcelona 2008 Landscape Architecture Biennale, and Princeton Architectural Press published the firm’s recent monograph, Weiss/Manfredi: Surface/ Subsurface. Weiss/Manfredi’s Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center received a 2008 Award for Excellence in Design from the NYC Design Commission. The awards will be presented during a reception with Mayor Michael Bloomberg at the New Museum in New York City.

Int. XLVII, No. 3 (November 2008), special section on Buckminster Fuller; Performalism: Form and Function in Digital Architecture, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2008; catalogue text for Winka Dubbeldam/ Architectonics; “Ambient Flowscapes,” DD Monograph: Servo (DD (Design Documents), Seoul, Korea: DAMDI, 2008), VIA: Occupation, eds. Helene Furjan, Tonya Markiewicz and Morgan Martinson (Philadelphia: PDSP/School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, 2008), VIA books, Vol. 1; “Exhibitionism: John Soane’s Model House,” in Intimate Metropolis: Constructing Public and private in the Modern City, eds. Vittoria Di Palma, Diana Periton & Marina Lathouri (Routledge, 2008); “Cities of Complexity,” in Models: 306090-11, special issue, eds. Jonathan Solomon, Emily Abruzzo, Eric Ellingsen (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008);“Epigenesis,” co-authored with Peter Lloyd Jones, in VIA: Occupation (Philadelphia: School of Design/PDSP, University of Pennsylvania, 2008); Global Cities/World Networks: Penn Institute for Urban Research Faculty Forum: “Cities around the World: Networks, Form, Function,” review, in VIA: Occupation (Philadelphia: School of Design/Via Books, University of Pennsylvania, 2008). 238. Weiss/Manfredi, Barnard College Nexus Student Center

Helene Furján lectured at TBA21 Lopud seminar: let’s go MENTAL!, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation and organized Conversations 2: Surface and Depth: Between Architecture and Landscape, Spring 2008. Helene Furján’s publications include:  “On Eco-Logics,” Art Forum

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News— LECTURER FACULTY Julie Beckman’s most notable project, the Pentagon Memorial, was dedicated and opened to the public on September 11, 2008. KBAS was named one of the 2006 Young Architects by the Architectural League of New York. Richard Farley, Alberto Cavallero, and Stuart Mardeusz of KlingStubbins were awarded design of the 3,425,000-SF, mixed-use Gateway Business Center in master-planned Songdo International Business District, Incheon, South Korea, a 1,500 acre project being developed by New York headquartered Gale International and Korea’s Posco E&C. Sondgo IBD brings together KlingStubbins along with renowned design firms such as Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, HOK, Daniel Liebskind, and engineering firm Arup to create one of the world’s most environmentally-friendly cities. Mark Gardner participated in a competition through his office, Stephan Jaklitsch Architects and had two prototypes fabricated by Dejah Enterprises. The prototypes have been installed by the city in Manhattan at Astor Place and also at PS1. The proposal is that the bike racks be mass produced by using recycled automobile parts. Phu Hoang was selected for the 2009 Young Architects Forum Award. Matthias Hollwich firm’s award winning vision of urbanism, MEtreePOLIS, was featured in the German Pavillion at the Venice Biennale. HWKN’s work has been widely published and was most recently featured in the Harvard Design Review, the New York Times, and Der Spiegel.

Mark Igou’s project, Hill County SEZ Office Complex in Hyderabad, India received a prestigious sustainable construction award from the Holcim Foundation at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.  Ferda Kolatan participated in Digital Pulse in Architecture at Florida International University and his project duneHouse was exhibited at “AAST Advanced Architecture Settimo Tokyo”. His project Composite House was exhibited at Slought Foundation, Philadelphia as part of the show “1:5:25 Emergent Perspectives.” He participated with a new project at this year’s Siggraph Exhibition in New Orleans. Tina Manis of Tina Manis Associates was selected among a group of five finalists to design The Art Fund Pavilion.  The Pavilion will initially appear as part of Tent London’s exhibit at the London Design Festival 2009 before taking up residence at The Lightbox as an annual summer pavilion and gallery space.  Brian Phillips’ Philadelphia-based ISA won awards for three separate projects at the 2008 AIA Philadelphia Design Awards as well as the 2008 Philadelphia Emerging Architecture Prize. The firm exhibited work at A Clean Break (a popup pre-fab exhibit) and the Center for Architecture in Philadelphia, and at the Suraci Gallery at Marywood University.  Shawn Rickenbacker, partner of Rickenbacker + Leung won the Breadth of Environmental and Design Research for their entry for RE:VISION DALLAS a Zero Carbon Community of 500 units of housing and commercial space. They also presented their proposal to the City Planning Dept. of Newark NJ for Renewable Energy and Remediation Public Architecture.   Jenny E. Sabin lectured on her research and design practice at numerous conferences and Universities including Siggraph Evolve 08 Design and

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Computation Galleries, ACADIA 2008 Silicon + Skin: Biological Processes and Computation, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Computation Group Lecture Series at MIT, the Algorithmic Design Research Group at Columbia University, the annual Smart Geometry Conference in San Francisco and the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University. Sabin’s design work and collaborative research with Peter Lloyd Jones was featured in several exhibitions most recently at the Slought Foundation, the Esther M. Klein Gallery and at Ars Electronica, Linz Austria. Jenny Sabin and Ferda Kolatan were awarded a book contract with Bentley Systems to co-author Meander Variegating Architecture. 239. SHAWN RICKENBACKER, competition entry, Re:Vision Dallas 240. JOSH OWEN, The Monroe 8125: The Monroe 8125 challenges the notion that all products are engineered to employ some degree of planned obsolescence as a business strategy. Designed for commercial use, the 8125 is the latest in a line of adding machines which benefits from nearly a century of manufacturing and interactive experience with Monroe’s users. This project is the result of a total brand program developed for Monroe which encompasses product, graphic, packaging and strategic brand management.

News— Student newS Hui Ying Candy Chan’s project from fall 2008 (ARCH 601 studio with Prof. Phu Hoang), entitled “Living On Display”, is one of the winners (cited by the votes of Honorary Members) of the World Architecture Community Awards 3rd cycle. Kyu Chun, Jaeyoung Lee, and Kenta Fukunishi won first place in the Evolo competition 2009 (skyscraper) with their Arch 701 project. Charles Davis was awarded a two year Provost’s post-doctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel and will be serving in the Art History Department where he will be transforming his dissertation into a monograph and teaching courses in his area of expertise. He also gave a guest lecture at Temple University in February 2009 entitled “Blackness in Contemporary Architecture Theory.” Riggs Skepnek and Rebecca Popowsky were one of six finalists in the GIMME SHELTER Competition. Riggs Skepnek won the ZGF scholarship —Zimmer Gunsul Frasca architectural scholarship Michael Wacht and Nan Yang won two of the five awards in the Tel Aviv Centennial Competition for From Garden City to Ecosystem, exhibited in the Urban Installation Parasolar in Tel Aviv. Daniel Whipple placed Honorable Mention in The John Stewardson Memorial Competition in Architecture 2009.

Karen Wong was the recipient of the 2009 AIA Corporate Architects & Facilities Management (CAFM) Scholarship.  VIA Series Editor/Director: Helene Furjan Founding Editors: Helene Furjan, Lily Jencks, Tonya Markiewicz, Morgan Martinson

Volume 3, VIA:Camouflage (forthcoming 2011) considers the relationship between identity and context; it sees camouflage as a strategy of visual play and as a performance that establishes customs and rituals. 241. VIA: Occupation, 2008 242–243. Todd Montgomery

Founded in 2006, VIA Books is a serial publication beginning its run in 2008. VIA produces books edited, designed, and marketed by graduate students across the many departments at PennDesign.  Each volume is a themed, polemical topic allowing the expression, engagement, and confrontation of critical issues within the facets of design. VIA recalls the work and success of its precursor, VIA Journal (1968–1980), yet extends beyond the field of architectural theory to employ the interdisciplinary concurrence that is unique to the school. The book series is inter-disciplinary and collaborative, representing the full array of design fields—architecture, art history, city and regional planning, digital fabrication, fine arts, industrial and product design, landscape architecture, media and digital technologies, preservation, urban research and urban design. Via aims to contextualize and sharpen ideas and terms that thread through theoretical and practical discourse: each volume is a book-length project that acts as a serious disciplinary vehicle, presenting projects, scholarship, theory and criticism of a high standard, and produced as a highquality design object in its own right. Volume 1, VIA:Occupation (2008) investigates the macro- and micro-scales that inform how we read, claim, and intervene in our evolving territories. Volume 2, VIA:Dirt (forthcoming 2010) explores the theme of ‘dirt’ through metaphorical and material connotations, taking up both the suggestive and literal qualities of this most fertile medium known to man.

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NEWS— Student Prizes and Awards American Institute of Architects Henry Adams Medal First Prize: Alexander David Dunham Second Prize: Carl Eric Nebel Arthur Spayd Brooke Memorial Prize Gold Medal: Joshua James Freese Silver Medal: Lily Jencks Bronze Medal: Nan Yang Paul Philippe Cret Medal Johnny Chai-Yi Lin Harry E. Parker Prize Misako Murata Alpha Rho Chi Medal Alex Gabriel Muller Warren Powers Laird Award James F. Hower Charles Merrick Gay Scholarship Janine Sutton Samuel K. Schneidman Fellowship Aroussiak Gabrielian Frank Miles Day Memorial Prize Tia G. Crocker Harlan Coornvelt Memorial Medal Mikael L. Avery and Michael F. Golden Mario J. Romanach Fellowship Nicolas Koff

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140  news — events — fall08–spring09

James Smyth Warner Memorial Prize Julio Guzman Faculty Prize Angela C. Spadoni Walter R. Leach II Fellowship Richard Baxley T-Square Club Fellowship Andrew Christopher Tetrault Mr. and Mrs. William L. Van Alen Traveling Fellowship Andrea Lynn-Miyoko Hansen Katherine W. Mandel Will M. Mehlhorn Scholarship 500-Level First Prize: James F. Hower Second Prize: Alexandria M. Mathieu Third Prize: Geoffrey W. Klein 600-Level First Prize: Nicolas Koff Second Prize: Karen Lisa Wong Ph.D., M.S. Architecture First Prize: Gabrielle Larissa Ruddick Second Prize: Catherine Bonier and Phillip Michael Crosby The Donald Prowler Memorial Prize Alexandria M. Mathieu Albert F. Schenck- Henry Gillette Woodman Scholarship First Prize: Derek S. Molanaar Second Prize: Peter B. Hanby Third Prize: Riggs Pearson Skepnek and Ildo Yang E. Lewis Dales Traveling Fellowships Richard Baxley Megan Burke Carrie Chan Hui Ying Candy Chan David Chen Kuan-Ting Fang

Rebecca Fuchs Aroussiak Gabrielian Andrea Gulyas Julio Guzman Andrea Hansen, Adam Hostetler Gregory Hurcomb Olga Karnatova Jonathan Kayton Nicolas Koff Hajung Lee Joseph Littrell Ding Liu Jamie Mastro Kimberly Nofal Raphael Osuna Segarra Rebecca Popowsky Margaux Schindler Julie Siu Kristen Smith Kar Yee Tam Lily Trinh Jennifer Trumble Karen Wong The 2009 John Stewardson Memorial Competition in Architecture Honorable Mention: Daniel Whipple 2009 PennDesign John Stewardson Memorial Competition Winners of the school’s internal competition; entered in the statewide competition. First Place: Zhongshi Liu Second Place: Vincent Leung Third Place: Daniel Whipple Honorable Mention: Katherine Lent 244. From Garden City to Ecosystem, exhibited in the Urban Installation Parasolar in Tel Aviv, PP@PD Arch 704

events— FALL 2008– spring 2009 Fall 2008 September 18 BOOK LAUNCH: VIA: Occupation Department: Dean’s Office, Architecture October 2 BARRY BERGDOLL The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, Museum of Modern Art Delivered Home: Reflections on prefabrication and digital fabrication in light of the current MOMA exhibition Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling October 11 SYMPOSIUM: The Engineering of Architecture: Remembering Professor Peter McCleary’s 43 Years at Penn Professor Peter McCleary has been teaching, conducting research, and mentoring students at Penn since 1965. In honor of these contributions, as well as his constant endeavors to deepen the level of discourse on issues of structure and space, colleagues and friends gathered at Skirkanich Hall to present essays they wrote for the occasion. Participants include Stanford Anderson, Nicholas Goldsmith, Peter Land, David Leatherbarrow, Claudine Lorenz, Ali Malkawi, Robert Marino, Antoine Picon, Mike Rubin, and Richard Wesley. Sponsored by Penn Design. Co-organizers: Catherine Bonier and Ali Malkawi. November 6–8 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM and EXHIBITION: Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil This symposium and exhibition examined how cities need to be re-imagined and

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re-designed to address the twin global challenges of reducing carbon emissions and unprecedented energy prices. This historic event marks the 50th Anniversary of the 1958 University of Pennsylvania— Rockefeller Foundation “Conference on Urban Design Criticism,” whose participants, including Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, Louis Kahn, Ian McHarg, and Lewis Mumford, helped to define the new field of urban design for the 20th Century. November 14 COLLOQUIUM and EXHIBITION: The Dresser Trunk Project and Places of Refuge The Dresser Trunk project brought ten prominent artists, architects, and landscape architects together to explore places of refuge for black travelers during segregation. These explorations take the form of “dresser trunks” in a traveling exhibition. The Places of Refuge colloquium explored many of the themes embedded in the exhibit in order to take stock of where we are today in relation to race and space. November 13 JEANNE GANG Studio/Gang/Architects, Chicago November 18 WILLIAM ALSOP SMC ALSOP, London Recent Work SPRING 2009 January 29 JÜERGEN MAYER J. Mayer H. Architects, Berlin, Germany The EwingCole Lecture February 18 STEFAN BEHNISCH Behnisch Architekten, Stuttgart, Germany The Donald Prowler Lecture

Antenna Design, New York Recent Work Host department: Architecture April 3 TALK 20 Host department: PennDesign Student group April 3–4 UNSPOKEN BORDERS CONFERENCE The Ecologies of Inequality and the Future of Design in Race + Space + Politics Keynote Speaker: Teddy Cruz, estudio teddy cruz Host department: PennDesign Black Student Alliance April 15 BOOK LAUNCH Sense Formations Homa Farjadi Conversation Homa Farjadi / Xavier Costa / Neil Leach April 22 BOOK LAUNCH Architecture Oriented Otherwise David Leatherbarrow May 6 BOOK LAUNCH My Two Polish Grandfathers Witold Rybczynski 245. Homa Farjadi, Sense Formations 246. David Leatherbarrow, Architecture Oriented Otherwise 247. Witold Rybczynski, My Two Polish Grandfathers 248. Attendees at the Unskpoken Borders Conference 249, 250. Branching Morphogenesis on view at Ars Electronica, Linz Austria through December 31, 2009. Design by Jenny E. Sabin and Andrew Lucia with Peter Lloyd Jones and Annette Fierro

March 16 SIGI MOESLINGER/ MASAMICHI UDAGAWA

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