Constructs Yale Architecture Spring 2008

Constructs Spring 2008 Table of Contents

02 Chris Sharples 03 Thomas Heatherwick 04 Richard Meier 05 “Writing on Architecture” by Emmanuel Petit Architecture Events at the Whitney Humanities Center 06 Yale in China: Alan Plattus and Leslie Lu 07 Eastward Drift by Jason Carlow MAD in China review by Kai-Uwe Bergmann 08 A Field Guide to Sprawl review by Andrew Friedman “Photography and the Built Environment” symposium 09 Energy. Design. Synergy review by Anna Dyson 10 “Constructing the Ineffable” review by Gilbert Sunghera 12 Building Experience by Ted Whitten 13 Blow Me a House by Richard Hayes 16 Book Reviews: Yale’s Re_Urbanism, Perspecta 39; Nina Rappaport’s Support and Resist; Felicity Scott’s Architecture and Techno- Utopia; Archis’s Al Manakh. 18 Spring events: Symposia: “Unprecedented Collaborations”; “Building the Future, The University as Architectural Patron”; and “Mobile Anxieties” MED Symposium Exhibitions: Painting the Glass House and Hawaii Modern 19 Books from the School of Architecture 20 Fall 2007 Lectures 22 Advanced Studios, a snapshot 23 Green at Yale 24 Faculty News Build in Uncertainty by Brad Walters 26 Alumni News Yale Women in Architecture 02 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 INTERVIEW: CHRIS SHARPLES

Chris Sharples is the Spring 2008 Chris Sharples Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor and will teach an advanced studio and offer a seminar, Design Space. Sharples is a partner in the firm, SHoP, Series of based in New York, renderings where he discussed by SHoP the firm’s work Architects and the process of showing the fabrica- making architecture tion and with Nina Rappaport construc- for Constructs. He tion process for a will give a lecture, residential “In Practice,” on building on Monday, April 7. Houston Street, New York, 2007.

Nina Rappaport How differentiated in terms of interests are the five partners in your firm? Have your individual roles become more defined now that you have 70 staff members? Chris Sharples We are all interested in the whole process of making, not just the creative act of design, but how one defines a problem and evolves the design criteria. Often this process begins by asking a series of questions that often leads to very unexpected opportunities. Louis Kahn loved “beginnings.” NR This aspect of how to begin a project is fascinating. Often the point of difference or identity between architectural and design by engaging every level of a The precast molds were a large part of the are designing aircraft, you are operating firms is their initial approach to a problem. project—is this rare? cost, while the form liners used to locate the within a specific performance envelope. Even Do you think it is even more diverse between CS We came into the field when brick units in the concrete were relatively though there is variety of forms and programs those who use new fabrication technologies it was still very compartmentalized, in that inexpensive to fabricate. Utilizing a series that different aircraft designs address, the and those who don’t? people crafted their architectural practice of plugs for a single mold, we were able to only common requirement they all must CS The desire to execute what you based on a specialized way of working in achieve a high degree of variability without fulfill is their ability to fly. I never thought our design requires a much better understanding order to limit risk. As a result, many young having to customize each pane. We also passion for aircraft design would eventually of the building industry, and particular skill designers faced a defined path of fixed learned working with the fabricator that we inform the work. We are now dealing with sets need to be brought into the process experience, which may not have directly could project our brick units four inches out fluid environments and sustainability, and earlier. What excites us at SHoP is how taken advantage of their personal strengths. of plane with the adjacent masonry unit. This often the form of the building is a direct we can be more proactive in making the What we are seeing with many recent allowed us to produce multiple versions of correlation of these effects. You can visualize construction process integral to design. graduates is the diverse number of software curving brick panels. There are a number of and model them; you realize that buildings I think that understanding the process packages they have mastered while in historic precedents where the techniques are living environments. I never thought that holistically is a strategy, not just in terms of school. They may know very little about used to manage complex form influenced a building—which doesn’t move—could be developing criteria, but also by bringing in putting an actual building together, but they the way architects could reveal a material’s just as, if not more, complex than an aircraft. industry experience to the table, such as have the capacity and confidence to navigate qualities through the effects of fabrication. NR How does the integration of subcontractors, cost estimators, and CMs. a complex process with these new tools. You Rudolph Steiner’s Goetheneum and Gaudi’s design and all the elements that go into NR How do you develop a model match these new skill sets with an architect Casa Mila are two good examples. making a building or urban-design project for thinking creatively about design while with five to ten years of design experience NR The more you understand the relate to your Design Space seminar at Yale? planning all the organizational aspects and you have a fabulous combination. From technology, the better you can manipulate CS Locating a project’s design and staying within the parameters of the day one, young graduates and interns have the effects… space is all about understanding the forces client’s budget so that design is not value- the potential to be directly involved in the CS Absolutely. For Battery Park that inform the design criteria—real estate engineered out at the end of a project? design process. With urban design it is a bit City we designed a permanent bridge using models, planning models, public-agency CS In some cases you might know different. What we try and expose to the staff shipbuilding technology and ETFE cladding. impact, constructability—all of which have enough about the parameters to make is how important it is to draw city agencies We produced the CD drawings and will different scales of importance. The more yourself dangerous, and that is something and communities into the design process work with a boat manufacturer to build forces you bring to the table, the better you that architects in general are not used to in order to build the design criteria from the larger sections and then barge them in. We are at fashioning a specific problem to get grappling with. People think the process feedback before one actually even begins hope to do it in a matter of weeks, rather the right answer, which takes a lot of creative of building is getting complicated with the process of design. This approach asks than months, without shutting down the 9A input. You are trying to define a working new technologies, but it has always been the architect to be more proactive about the highway. envelope and the effects of all the conditions a complex negotiation—it’s just that the process of public engagement. NR You have always referred to the that define that, and, if it is done right, it profession over the years has abdicated NR How are the new technologies prowess of automotive and aviation industry will be the best envelope to manage those much of its involvement in the process of changing what is being produced? How technologies. Why do you think architecture criteria—and that is what makes up your construction because of the concern over do you take all the information and use it to has missed out on that kind of mass customi- design space. I just want to add that Steve liability. In fact, I think construction is becom- make a significant place? zation, and is it possible to build buildings Van Dyke [’04] and Steve Sanderson, both ing a more transparent process. Utilizing 3-D CS In Beijing we wanted to use that way? SHoPpers, will be teaching this seminar with modeling packages like Revit, Digital Project, wood and brick, but marry these traditional CS The difference between the me in the spring. and Generative Components allows the materials with twenty-first-century fabrication aviation and automotive industries and archi- NR What will be the theme and team to coordinate and fix problems before techniques, which is what the Porter House, tecture is that they are designing a repeatable program for your studio? they occur on the job site. And even if a in New York and the Hangil Book House, in object that will be copied, but in architecture CS We will be looking at the project is stopped, you have a virtually Korea sought to do. We are interested in how there are a limited number of opportunities potential for the airport of the future. Airports complete model of the building. You can we can craft traditional materials using new that could utilize such an approach. How can were a direct result of new technology. As really say that you have constructed or technologies and methods of fabrication to design manage a level of changeability? this technology flourished, the experience of assembled a building, even if you haven’t. fashion them in a way that would be reflec- NR Every building could be fabricat- flying became more vivid. Exotic experience Steve Burrows, director of Arup’s San tive of our time. Our direct collaboration with ed the same way using mass customization, was a hallmark of airships and clippers; they Francisco office, puts it this way: a “virtual precast fabricators in Canada has led to a which would save cost and energy. did not treat people as cattle, but as part prototype” exists as a virtual 3-D artifact of wonderful opportunity to rethink the current CS That is where having a relation- of an experience. Airports should be the the process. That’s pretty exciting. mode of concrete form making and casting ship with the builder comes into play. Ruskin gateway to an urban center, but they have NR And that makes it possible of standard precast brick panel systems criticized the industrial revolution as a loss of always been on the periphery. There has to design, assemble, detail, or program for buildings such as Houston Street, in the builder’s relationship to his materials and never been a fully realized infrastructure with elements that weren’t built for use in a later New York. the process of fashioning those materials. We meaningful connections to the city center. project—like your design concepts for the NR How do you take your knowl- believe the builder would rather collaborate Some airports have begun to address this, unbuilt Museum of Sex becoming the unbuilt edge of technologies to various materials with the architect to develop the design and like Hong Kong and Schiphol. Last year School of Arts at Columbia that is now the and scales, and how does it then impact the understand how it can be produced with SHoP was asked by New York magazine to Fashion Institute of Technology. material effect both historically and today? materials and tools they are familiar working design a scheme, and we devised check-in CS It only gets better with each CS Once you understand the differ- with—digital or not. That is where the craft services right in Union Square that would iteration: it constantly updates itself so ent tools and how materials are fashioned, and the creative interface come to inform allow you to take a subway directly to your that if a project dies it does not mean the you can manage the effects, as we are the process. It is not a linear process; it is all departure gate. The studio will question DNA is forgotten or deleted. It still exists currently doing for Houston Street. A large based on feedback. accepted modes of travel and the current as a complete virtual model and design portion of residential construction in the NR Where else does the model infrastructures that support them. The airport experience. city is done utilizing brick precast panel of the aviation industry become your has become much more than a connection NR Do you see a bigger divide systems because of their ease of construc- touchstone? point—a destination in and of itself. How do today between the interests of younger and tion and limited cost. We learned early on CS Kelley Johnson, the founder of we define those linkages to make the airport older architects in terms of technologies and that if we wanted to push this façade Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development a greater part of the city experience? approaches to urban-design issues? SHoP system, we would need to understand the Programs, Skunk Works, said, “If it looks has embraced all aspects of architecture cost of fabrication. good, it probably performs well.” When you 03 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 INTERVIEW: THOMAS HEATHERWICK

London-based Longchamp’s first designer Thomas contemporary Thomas Heatherwick Heatherwick will flagship store, in New be giving the Eero York, and East Beach Saarinen lecture Café on England’s on March 31, 2008, south coast. As a at the School of way of introduction, Architecture. His Constructs editor work includes the Nina Rappaport renowned Rolling discussed his current Bridge, in London, projects. the design of

Rendering of the British Pavilion, Shanghai Expo 2012, Thomas Heatherwick Studio, 2007.

La Maison Unique, Longchamp, New York, Thomas Heatherwick Studio, photograph by Nikolas Koenig, 2006. Rolling Bridge, London, Thomas Heatherwick Studio, photograph by Steve Speller, 2003.

Guy’s Hospi- Nina Rappaport You have variously tal corner not necessarily need to be aesthetic, but been called a sculptor, architect, and indus- approaches, would involve the fundamental restructuring Heatherwick trial designer. How do you identify yourself Studio, of the sites’s access points. Our main moves as a professional in the world of design and photograph included things like widening the pavement architecture, or does it matter one way or by Edmund and improving the signage and lighting. Sumner, the other. 2007. There was also a problem with the Thomas Heatherwick I feel that I boiler-house building at the hospital have a quite defined discipline, which is that entrance, which was on the main sight line of 3-D design. It is common practice to divide to every access point into the hospital. up the professions into subcategories; but At the moment we have two differ- tects. Most of our projects at the moment are To maintain the building’s square frame how other people choose to subspecialize ent ideas for timepieces that we are hoping architectural, and there is a lot of analyzing and allow it to sit comfortably among the is their own choice. Because 3-D design to develop. We fabricated the prototypes in and evaluating, rigorously looking at the complex series of additional buildings around covers so many of these subcategories, to our workshop and are in discussions with a ways to approach something. We also get it we created a new façade for the build- deliver our projects we have employed over well-known watch manufacturer to see if they frustrated and have anxiety, but that is what ing. Because the boiler house needs to be a hundred people in the past thirteen years can be produced. forces you into the next phase of thinking. regularly accessed for maintenance purpos- from an enormous range of disciplines, NR Do you think there is an There is a lot of figuring out what is wrong to es, we started looking at cladding systems including model making, engineering, and issue today in the way design and architec- get it right. that could be flexible. We ended up develop- industrial design. ture are taught in terms of the lack of focus NR This year you worked alongside ing undulating square tiles, like those used in NR Your interest in invention and on invention and how to actually make designers Casson Mann, structural engineers the entrances of 1960s Modernist buildings, innovation began when you were very young. things? Should students be taught strategy, Adams Kara Taylor, and sustainable consult- but on a bumped-up scale so the tiles were This interest in well-designed functional approach, and process in 3-D design, rather ants Atelier Ten to create a winning entry for on a human scale. By repeating the same objects has carried through your career, so than encouraged to mimic their designer- a competition to design the British Pavilion element, it could be manufactured economi- much so the Conran Foundation Collection teachers formally? at the Shanghai Expo 2010. What was the cally and then tessellated together to make at the Design Museum invited you to curate TH While I am not a teacher, I have process in the design? 8.5-by-8.5-foot panels. The tiles were formed its 2004 exhibition, where you further spent a lot of time with people who agonize TH Building in the context of an from stainless steel woven through frames, confirmed your focus on everyday objects over what to do because of this subdivision exposition is a great challenge. We have been to allow it to breathe. It basically became an and their making. How did you select the of disciplines, so they feel they have to make given a space the size of two football fields, experiment in softening the impact of the objects in the show, and what was your goal these big decisions about where they are and need to build a structure that represents building on the site, and allowing the building for the exhibition? going. It is hard to just go with the flow of Britain. A lot of the work so far has been to become a welcoming beacon for staff and TH Every year the Conran Founda- things that interest you, because when they planning out the brief and trying to figure out visitors and a positive focal point for the site. tion invites someone to spend £30,000 on bounce against the sides of your “specializa- the problem we are trying to solve. We went NR What are your aesthetic and things they’d like to live with. For me, it was tion,” you think you have a problem. When through the various layers, tried out different formal interests? They seem to have synergy not about finding iconic pieces in house- I was a student I was aware architecture responses to the proposition, ricocheted with the current design zeitgeist around wares or furniture by famous fashion design- had become removed from its making; it back and forth, and then something tight- themes of folding, ribbing, and wavy forms. ers, like the ultimate sofa or lemon squeezer. was turning into a cerebral and intellectual ened into a project that now feels clear in its TH That is a hard question to I was more interested in publicly consumable exercise. Yet I feel it is vital that architecture core ambition. answer. The first building I ever built was and usable projects—functionality in both does still embrace its physicality and crafts- I think it became clear that a large a pavilion; it was meant to be a temporary the most obvious and subtle senses. No manship—especially as it is the discipline in part of our response would be directed structure, but seventeen years on it is now one spends millions of dollars on something which the biggest things are made. We have toward how to make our pavilion memorable: on permanent display at a sculpture park in without functionality; even in the art world a workshop at the core of our studio; this we wanted to wake visitors up from their Goodwood in the South of England. In a way, things exist for a reason, and I was interested space is vital in allowing us to maintain our Expo fatigue. So we focused our budget on all of my work has been about buildings— in that reason and the ideas and inventive relationship between thinking and making creating one special element on the site, thinking about the built environment and thoughts behind them. So the exhibition because it is where we can test and experi- which would then be surrounded by an methods for constructing things. I am became an opportunity to display objects ence our ideas. open landscape. Our main building is an interested in zeitgeist, the funny things that are typically overlooked: things that you NR How do you jump scales in your enclosure covered with a mass of long, people do, and what they are responding wouldn’t expect to find in an international projects and the commissions you receive— radiating rods, or cilia (to use its posh term), to. It isn’t that we are interested in, say, design museum. For example, windshield from the small scale of a handbag to that of which provide its only means of support. nature, but we are interested in people’s wipers, the round tea bag, or, say, paintball— a bridge or a masterplan—and still focus on Each cilia tip is a tiny light source that acts as responses to nature and what affects the who really thought about shooting paint? fabrication and making? What is the most a pixel, so that our entire structure becomes public experience in a building. NR Do you have products your engaging element of working on a project? this mass interactive display device. Because studio is introducing to the marketplace or TH I love working with people who our pavilion can express its content both those that never made it? Your expanding are passionate about making things, and internally and externally, it creates an experi- ribbon-zipper handbag for Longchamp is some of the best conversations I’ve had have ence that is accessible not only to those a fabulous invention, as well as a very been with engineers and contractors. When within the structure, but to all visitors in the functional object. it works, there is a mutual interest. Unlike surrounding landscape. TH The idea of the Zip Bag originally speaking to another architect or designer NR When you were invited to draw arose because there was a zipper factory who might have similar thoughts to you, it is up a master-plan for the entrances to Guy’s where I used to live. I went one day to look key to have chemistry with the contractor. Hospital in London, how did the concept for around and ended up buying a 200-meter- I try to imagine what the chemistry was like the redesign of access routes for pedestrians long length of zip on a roll. I thought the idea some of Gaudí’s projects—for example, and vehicles and what you call the “Boiler of making something entirely from a zipper between the metalworker and the concrete Suit” develop and integrate with the hospi- was an interesting one. We started off by contractor on the Casa Mila. It can’t have tal’s planning needs? making a dress, which looked great, but been a cold, detached contractor to make TH One of the main problems at unfortunately, it was one of the ideas that metal like that happen. Guy’s is that it has experienced drip-fed never made it—as it took over 45 minutes to On the thinking side, we have funding over the past few decades that has undo! Instead we started using the idea for conversations at the studio that bring really prevented any strategic development bags, where the zip could work functionally, together the broad range of skills of those of the site as a whole. We realized if we trans- and that led to the Zip Bag. who work there, not just designers and archi- formed the entrance, a lot of our work would 04 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 INTERVIEW: RICHARD MEIER

Richard Meier is the lecture, “Hans Arp interview below Davenport Visiting and Others,” on he discusses his Richard Meier Professor in spring Thursday, January recent buildings and 2008. He gave the 10, 2008. In the interests.

Ara Pacis, Richard Meier & Partners Architects, Rome, photograph by Thomas Mayer, 2006.

Nina Rappaport What do you think about the tendency for stylistic consumption both by developers and for the public and the star-architect phenomenon? Is architecture being consumed like fashion? Richard Meier I see architecture being consumed more like the visual arts, like painting and sculpture. Architecture is not regional or national; if something is done here in New York it is known the next day in China. Jubilee Church, Richard Meier & Partners Architects are practicing in a wider arena, Architects, Rome, photograph by Edmund more than they were twenty years ago. There Sumner, 2001. is an increased public awareness, which I attribute in part to Ada Louise Huxtable’s wonderful writings in The New York Times— Rendering of On Prospect Park, Brooklyn, Richard Meier & Partners the way she wrote for the public, not just Architects/dbox, 2007. architects. It was really a turning point for a general interest in architecture. Then, other newspapers around the country hired critics to write about architecture. People are interested in architecture; they go to public open space in the center of the site too fragile to be moved, so instead we were visit architecture when they travel. There being designed by James Corner of Field requested to build a new structure to protect has always been an interest in architecture Operations. However, I would love to do a it from the pollution. They also decided to and works of the past, but today there is an museum in New York; as you know, New add a restaurant, an auditorium, and more interest in contemporary architecture as well. York has fabulous museums, but there is exhibition space. That is how it all began. NR Where have you placed your always room for one more. NR What was your design approach focus in architecture, and how do you advise NR How did the Getty project and did you get involved with the program- younger architects in terms of how to be change your status in the arena of projects ming of the site? involved in the profession? and programs? How do you obtain commis- RM This was the first modern RM I am interested in seeing things sions in general? building to be built in the historical center of built, used, and lived in, and that is why we RM The Getty caused some people Rome since the time of Mussolini. I thought it have never gotten involved in long-range to think we were so involved with that project should be calm. The location was prominent. urban planning, which I think is worthwhile, we wouldn’t focus as much on other work, One thing about Rome is the open public Jubilee Church, Richard Meier & Partners Architects, but not part of our activity. I have always which wasn’t the case. During that period, I spaces are very important, so I thought it Rome, photograph by Edmund Sumner, 2001. told younger people that architecture as a spent half the month in New York and half the should have a plaza and a fountain, since that profession offers an infinite variety of ways month in L.A. We have never done much in is what Rome is known for—a place to play to work. You don’t have to be an architect or terms of marketing, but every so often I have and sit. I make sketches and give them to someone a designer; you can influence the environ- thought we should be more proactive. NR I am going to ask you a really to make some computer drawings. It really ment in myriad ways that have a value to our NR The Ara Pacis, which was basic question: Why white? depends on how defined the project is. Right society, whether it be by going into politics, recently completed in Rome, became a long RM For me, whiteness is all colors: it now I have some drawings on my desk for a city government, or planning. As an architect process because of politics. It is interesting changes with the time of day, it reflects color, project that no one knows about. I have chosen what I like to do, which is that as a foreign architect you were selected and it refracts color. It is every color you can NR How do you collaborate with making buildings. for two significant projects in the city—that think of. You can perceive color most clearly engineers and other professional consult- NR How does the experience one and the Jubilee Church. How would because of its whiteness. It also expresses ants, especially on nonstandard projects from your numerous European projects over you describe your relationship with the city architecture in the clearest way: the differ- such as the Jubilee Church, with the curved the years transfer to your current work in as a client? ences between openness and closure, wall and concrete-block systems? the United States? Do you continue to RM I met the mayor at the time, between opacity and transparency, between RM The engineer Guy Nordenson practice abroad? Francesco Rutelli, at a conference in linear elements and planar elements—all was extremely important to us with the RM We have worked in every Davos, Switzerland, and we spent a long of the elements that make up architecture church and brought in a view of how it could continental European country except time talking. He said, “Would you like to and that clearly express the ideas inherent be possible. It is easy to say, “I want to do Belgium, which is both interesting and do a project in Rome?” and I replied, “Of in the architecture. These are more clearly this,” but I didn’t know how it would stand up, difficult, because someone is always course!” So he asked me to come and see perceived because of the whiteness. If the and making sketches together is what makes traveling to the location of the work. It seems a deteriorating building that housed the Ara space has no natural light, then I think about it possible. The engineers’ work enables us to me we should be doing more here and less Pacis that needed some immediate attention. using color; if it has natural light, then that to do something we couldn’t otherwise do. abroad. Today, we are finishing up a number Then I did some drawings for a renovation natural light is what gives it color. NR Why do you want to teach at of projects in Europe, such as in the Czech of the existing building—which became a NR How is your office organized, Yale, and what do you hope to impart to the Republic and France, but frankly, I am more political issue, because someone who was in and how do you work with your partners students? interested in working in this country. the opposition party was running for mayor and associates? Do staff members have RM I taught for many years at NR In New York you have worked and came out against it as a way to attack a lot of freedom, or is there a hierarchical Cooper Union and Harvard a long time ago. on mostly residential projects. Not only have the current mayor. Then Walter Veltroni was organization? But then I felt stretched and too conflicted you completed the West Village apartment elected mayor. He is a wonderful, thoughtful RM I like to think that there is no with work, so I stopped teaching for a while complexes on the Hudson, but also develop- man. He said, “This is a great project. Let’s hierarchy in my office organization, but of and gave more lectures. I gave five or ten ments at the Con Edison plant on the East see it through.” course there is—although there is not much lectures a year, and then I realized that it took River and in Brooklyn. How have those When I first went to see the Ara difference between partner and associate, so much time to lecture, that I might as well experiences played out? Are these the Pacis, it was falling apart. I learned Mussolini because each has a certain responsibility for teach. So I said I would be delighted to come kind of projects you would like to be doing had moved it to the site because he had a project and is involved all the way through: for a term and assign a project for students in New York? anticipated he would be buried next to this Leading a team of people who are involved all to design a museum in Frankfurt, next RM At the East River site there are important monument. I thought it should be the way through. The way we work is to give to mine. Hopefully, I am there to open five residential buildings and a commercial moved back to where it was originally located responsibility to those people who are willing students’ eyes and encourage them to think building by SOM, and we are working on the in order to deal with the problem of the vibra- to take responsibility about architecture perhaps differently than residential portion of the project, which has tion being caused by the automobiles along When we get a new project, some- other people. been a great experience. There is a large the Largo Trarre. But the planners said it was times we begin by making study models, or 05 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 WRITING ON ARCHITECTURE Writing on Architecture

The panel discus- Fernández-Galiano, sion, “Writing on the Franke Visiting Architecture,” took Fellow at the place at the Art Whitney Humani- Gallery’s McNeil ties Center; Kurt Lecture Hall on W. Forster, the October 8, 2007. Vincent Scully Yale University Visiting Professor; Press’ director John Paul Goldberger, Donatich opened the architecture critic for discussion with five The New Yorker; and panelists, including Robert A.M. Stern, Peter Eisenman, the dean of the School Louis I. Kahn Visiting of Architecture. Professor; Luis From left: Robert A. M. Stern, Paul Goldberger, Luis Fernández-Galiano, Kurt W. Forster, Peter Eisenman, and John Donatich.

Drawing by Santiago Calatrava made during his talk, “Wings and A Prayer,” at the Whitney Humanities Center, 2007.

From left: John Donatich, Robert A. M. Stern and Paul Goldberger, Luis Fernández-Galiano, Luis Fernández-Galiano The Whitney Focuses carry responsibility for their stability and their and Kurt W. Forster. physical behavior. The difference between on Architecture architecture and engineering appears in a certain moment in history. Before, there was In the introduction to his A History of the self-advertisement of architects is valued Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center hosted no difference between them, but, still, that Architectural Theory, German architecture more than reflective writing. The master-slave a series of lectures examining the place of grave between architecture and engineering historian Hanno-Walter Kruft makes the case relationship between architects and writers architecture in society today. The programs is enlarging. for an intimate intertwining of the history of has to be reconsidered or all architectural centered around the selection of Santiago architectural thinking with its written record. writing will be reduced to that of architects Calatrava as the 2007 Tanner Lecturer on While architectural ideas can be expressed merely promoting their personal programs. Human Values, a recognition for uncommon in built form, no act of interpretation of these Peter Eisenman rebuffed Fernán- achievement and outstanding abilities in Luis-Fernández Galiano artifacts merely reproduces the state of mind dez-Galiano’s notion that self-centered the field of human values to advance and Franke Lecture (sumation) and the principles that led to a particular writing was particular to architects, and reflect upon scholarly and scientific learning. physical edifice at the moment of its concep- cited Philip Roth’s fictional alter ego, Nathan Calatrava’s lectures took place on October Thinking with Images tion; instead, a building gets interpreted in Zuckerman, as an example. Picture books 3 and 4, with the talks, “Wings and a Prayer” The poster announcing the lecture repro- accordance with the theoretical assumptions like Le Corbusier’s Oeuvre Complète, and “A Collection of Pearls,” at the Whitney duced a quote from Fire and Memory (MIT of each historical period, and its meaning Eisenman maintained, are among the most Humanities Center Auditorium. Press, 2000), a book I wrote originally in is contingent on the cultural concerns and effective documents to generate, formulate, In conjunction with Calatrava’s Spanish twenty-five years ago and in which, “episteme” of each moment in time. Faced and promulgate ideas about architecture. appointment, the Whitney also hosted Luis under the impact of the two oil crises of the with the relative silence of the architectural In reference to Jacques Derrida, he argued Fernández-Galiano, architect and editor of 1970s and under the spell of thermodynam- object and its shifting meaning, Kruft hopes that architects operate on the architectural the Spanish architecture journal Arquitectura ics, I tried to extend architecture from matter the written document has a true capacity text, regardless of whether their output is Viva, as the 2007 Franke Visiting Fellow. to energy, from geometry to flows, from to both make explicit and to “preserve” an a building or an actual piece of writing. For Fernández-Galiano, who was in residence at building to environment, and from the visual initial theoretical intent, as well as become this reason, “architectural writing” is the very the Whitney and lived on campus as a fellow to the tactile. When I first saw the poster I the proper locus of the discipline’s theory. activity architects are engaged in and is in no in Calhoun College, participated in numer- was surprised that the Whitney Humanities Therefore, he claims, “for practical reasons, way peripheral to the design work. ous reviews and activities at the School of Center (WHC) wanted to go so far back in architectural theory [becomes] synonymous Dean Stern articulated how the Architecture and gave a public lecture at the time, but then I thought it might provide a with its writings.” For this reason, despite ambition, purpose, and mode of writing alters Whitney on October 24. Also a part of the fitting introduction for the presentation, in the multitude of conserved physical edifices throughout the different stages of an archi- Whitney’s architecture focus, John Donatich, which I hoped to extend again the bounda- from antiquity, it is difficult to overestimate tect’s career. At times, writing is the young Director of Yale University Press, chaired a ries of architecture to place our work in the importance of Vitruvius’s collection of Ten architect’s way of getting his or her voice panel discussion on October 8, with distin- the social and political arena, examining Books of Architecture, which is the unique heard, contributing to the “talkitecture” of the guished architectural critics, called “Writing the current dilemmas of architecture in the written source for reconstructing ancient moment or a strategic way of formulating and About Architecture.” (See adjacent article.) context of a world in a turmoil. This I tried to architectural intent. For Kruft, “Ceci tuera justifying the trajectory of his or her work. Or do with the help of images, not only to prop celà” does not apply. it can be a mature architect’s means to relate my own linguistic shortcomings—being both All the same, today’s episteme his or her own thoughts to broader cultural a non-native speaker and an architect more makes it difficult for us to think of writing contexts. Stern compared the different Santiago Calatrava at ease drawing than writing—but also as an as a stable “sanctuary of meaning” at all. modes of writing with the changing character Tanner Lecture (excerpts) homage to the classical tradition that estab- Texts only yield meaning in the act of reading of the texts he has produced throughout lished intimate links between poetry and and interpretation, and therefore are no his own career, explaining that the tension Wings and a Prayer painting, and that has produced of late the less historically contingent and no more between European idealism and American You discover that, for the ancient Greeks, flowering of visual studies and the popularity categorical in character than buildings and pragmatism has been a central thrust of his there was not a difference between technique of visual culture. Words and images were other artifacts are. Accordingly, writing is not writing endeavor. and art. They understood art as the sublima- thus used to present the role of architecture merely a space representing a physical reality From the vantage point of a critic, tion of the technique. Then they realized in a turbulent planet—suggesting both a which preserves some existential autono- Paul Goldberger discussed how much there is also something in the art that goes “state of the art” and a “state of the world.” my—Immanuel Kant’s “Ding an sich”—but is distance should intervene between an object beyond, which is the fact that art touches One of the guiding threads of the architectural by analogy: textuality is one of of architecture and the writing about it. After us. By touching us and moving us the art lecture was the architecture of information the dimensions of architecture. reviewing the various responsibilities along has a kind of spiritual force. Then the Greeks or, more precisely, the geometrical order Conceptually, the tension between with the dangers of architectural criticism, arrived at the conclusion that the artist was a imposed on words and images to deliver the realities of the text and the textuality of he deduced that the critic needs to offer very skillful technician who was able to move consistent narratives. This implied a discus- reality was the pivotal theme for the panelists guiding principles of judgment while staying other people, so he was possessed by the sion of continuity, and therefore of the of “Writing on Architecture.” Kurt W. Forster open to a whole range of different aesthetic gods, he was possessed by the muses, and codex vs. scroll debate which articulated illustrated—with a colorful bouquet of travel responses. The difference between the they called this the origin of enthusiasm in the simultaneous lecture series at the WHC; accounts reaching from Marco Polo to writing of architects and the writing of critics our day. a discussion of visual culture, so often Goethe, all the way to George Nelson—how thus becomes apparent in that a passion- As a worker, guiding other workers diminished or unnoticed in word-driven “writing” is instrumental in causing architec- ate writing practice might be necessary for through techniques, trying to achieve art, intellectual environments; and a discussion tural ideas to travel along with the people architects and theorists alike, whereas the even getting beyond, they say, what is of the arbitrary, as complex realities are who record them on paper. Travel stimulates critic’s ambition for public advocacy requires the essence of the profession, and where orchestrated with the stern discipline of the both the senses and the imagination, and a different tone. Goldberger concluded on an can I get a link with the rest of the people? grid. These three blurred fields of enquiry therefore the accounts written during a optimistic yet cautionary note, explaining that Indeed, if you imagine a building with a void, converge in my main interest which, crudely voyage acquire a “third life” situated between a look at contemporary architectural writing where no one is there, the building is there stated, is to offer a pixelated portrait of the reality and fiction. Forster concluded that shows we might expect too much of archi- for nothing. In order to be a building, it has world we live in, using architecture as a the fate of books and that of buildings are tecture today, whereas in the past we might to be full of people. The deep sense of our focusing device. History is understood as intimately connected. have expected too little. profession, in terms of a projection outside a convergence of stories, and continuity Luis Fernández-Galiano reminded The discussion reestablished the of ourselves, is given by a very old word from is entrusted to a collage of fragmentary us of the different roles the biblical figures of fundamental interconnectedness between the language of antiquity that has been alive perceptions; both words and images are Aaron and Moses played in relationship to writing and architecture—a bond that is vital and preserved by many people: it is literally placed in a demanding visual order, often the question of “writing”: while Moses came for both the writing on architecture and the “laheim,” which means “for life.” So, as an so extreme that it mocks itself; finally, close out in defense of the word by transmitting the architecture of writing beyond any specific architect you work for life, for everything that readings of buildings and distant reading of divine scriptures, Aaron made the physical historiographic, theoretical, or ideological is living, if you want, the sense of living contexts are given structure with arbitrary image of the golden calf for adoration by the agendas. To Goldberger’s suggestion that and the sense of people living “in,” which rhythms, or random alphabetical patterns people. Fernández-Galiano claimed that in “architecture does not sustain life, but makes is the crystallized essence, particularly in that echo the inclusiveness of the atlas or today’s architectural culture there are many it meaningful,” it is appropriate to add that architecture. the archive, because—hopefully—there is Aarons, yet hardly any Moseses. He criticized “meaning” does, nevertheless, participate in A Collection of Pearls method to this madness. the attention to the spectacle of images over sustaining life. One of the proposals of this lecture is to the depth of writing in the contemporary focus on the humanistic aspects of engineer- publishing business. The dictatorship of the —Emmanuel Petit ing. I am an engineer. I am the engineer of eye has created a cultural climate wherein Petit is an assistant professor at Yale. all of my constructions; because of that I 06 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 YALE IN CHINA — CHINA IN YALE

The Yale School of for the past nine associate professor Architecture has years and involving and head of the Yale been conducting approximately ten to department of archi- joint Advanced twelve students from tecture at Hong Kong Studios with Hong each school each University, discussed Kong University year. Alan Plattus, the studio’s origins and Tongji Univer- professor at Yale, and evolution. in sity, in Shanghai, and Leslie Lu (’77), China

me, down from the university to the Central

district via that escalator as a cross-section through the city. This can provide students — Yale with techniques for exploring new sites in

more provocative and creative ways.

Lilongs in LL Having foreign students in Hong Shanghai, Kong has also shifted our teaching method photograph in and focus. We used to follow a very pragmat- by Tom

Bosschaert ic British model with local sensibilities, but (’08). now we are leaning toward a more open and

international teaching and learning environ- ment. The culture of the three places and China China schools still comes through in the designs, even though the student’s approaches remain different. AP Leslie’s students are better than ours at challenging the limits of a site, and the first thing they do is expand it. On the other hand, the Yale students are perhaps a bit Alan Plattus The Yale-China studio better at architectural invention. The Tongji program is really a complex global enterprise; students, whose professors are important it was proposed, coordinated, and in many local architects, are sensitive to the realism ways has been mediated by Leslie, who Lilongs in deconstruction, photograph by Tom Bosschaert (’08). of the problem. Our students will, say, make has helped us to get to know Hong Kong, a new subway stop or change the course and then together we have come to know of the river; the Tongji students will be more Shanghai. China has strictly controlled levels LL The idea of a joint studio involv- making real estate available for new devel- pragmatic. We have the advantage of some of access for information, which is true for ing three schools was put into practice by opment along the Suzhou Creek and other critical distance. Compare this to Rem businessmen, architects, journalists, and professor Eric Lai and myself. We took the waterfronts. Those sites and programs have Koolhaas’s position, which is more cynical, anyone who goes to the East. I appreciate idea of Hong Kong as a hinge between China been reconfigured conceptually as well as when he says, “This is the way the world the extent to which for centuries the Chinese and the West literally and began to work with physically by the urban issues and develop- works—grab onto it and take a ride.” Frankly, have liked it that way, so that it has become various partner schools. The initial partner ments that Leslie has discussed, such as Asia produces a totally opposite reaction for part of the game as one passes, or does not was with the AA, offering a joint workshop the emergence of cultural incubators and me, which is: we better figure it out before we pass, through the various gates. in Shanghai. After that we collaborated with districts. Now, for example, Shanghai has mess it up as badly as our own environments. Leslie Lu Hong Kong is an evolv- Princeton. When Robert Stern became dean a lively art district on the formerly industrial LL It is important for us to arrive ing concept gathered from various popular at Yale, I spoke with him on this collabora- corridor of the Suzhou Creek. at the next step: How do we innovate with fiction, ranging from Richard Mason’s The tive idea; he put me in touch with Alan, and LL Over the course of seven continuity in mind? This year we moved away World of Suzy Wong (1957), to Ian Fleming’s the rest is history! At one point Hong Kong projects of the joint studio on Suzhou Creek from the creek and are tackling the issues postcolonial classic Thrilling Cities (1963), University had joint studios with TU Vienna, in the past nine years, we not only witnessed embedded in the urban fabric. It has taken us to even James Clavell’s Noble House Princeton, and Tsinghua, but the collabora- the physical growth and change, but, more ten years to begin to address the challenge (1988). Written after the cultural revolution, tive effort with Yale and Tongji has been the significantly, the change of cultural mind- of the lilongs; they are a design problem most they typically depict the city as a colonial longest, and therefore, most fruitful. set—the recent value China is placing on other joint studios would work on as an initial hybrid performing as an expedient bridge or AP When I went to Hong Kong for the conservation of “industrial heritage” and exercise. I hope our experience will give us gateway to China. From a socio-economic the first time in 1998, Shanghai was the Wild the associated development of “creative insight to tackle this most serious of urban angle this is largely true, but the interpre- West; it was raw and difficult, and doing industry” and the “cities of creative indus- problems in China. tive function of Hong Kong from a cultural business was not easy or transparent. We tries.” The work of the China studio began AP The sites change before our perspective has largely been ignored. traveled with a wad of travelers’ checks and with the reuse of industrial sites and incuba- eyes. Last September the lilongs were being AP Akbar Abbas, a professor at had trouble getting maps for the studio. In tor programs. It seems like our studio’s work demolished, people were moving out, and Hong Kong University, wrote in 1998 of Hong the nine years we have been going there, offered some ideas to the city planners. there was an ad hoc salvage industry on the Kong culture as one of “disappearance.” it has settled down; now that level of raw, Suzhou Creek was the first place where the site. Shanghai is in a new optimistic period Hong Kong citizens, he observed, said they explosive, nasty development is seen in new art scene happened in China, slightly triggered by the anticipation of the 2010 didn’t have a distinctive culture, so he did a Chongqing and other second-tier cities. ahead of Beijing. Currently, there are over Expo; they are using it to make a statement riff on that theme in the film, architecture, and We tell the students the kind of experience sixty-five different creative industry sites as a world city—as it was in the 1920s, but in literature of Hong Kong. Just as Leslie was they will have will be as close as they can in Shanghai, which is part of the city’s new a different way. The official motto of the Expo suggesting, in Hong Kong many people seem get to turning up in Chicago around 1890, growth and planning strategy. is “Better City, Better Life,” which shows their to think it is fine that there is no “there” there, in terms of the pace of urban development AP We have also presented the faith in the instrumentality of urbanism and which allows the city to play a continuing role and the extent to which people were coming studio projects to the city planners, and accessibility to a better life, economically and (almost by stealth) that historically has been to the city in droves to “get rich.” There is some of our colleagues at Tongji have now culturally. At the same time, there are huge that of the quiet but powerful middleman, an unavoidable encounter with explosive taken prominent positions in city govern- environmental and political issues, such as or mediator, in business deals, but also, it development that you might not like, but you ment. There is now, for example, a Shanghai the recent wave of corruption scandals in the turns out, as the cultural encounter of West can’t pretend doesn’t exist. version of Beijing’s 798 Factory, a former Shanghai government. and East. LL Since the studios began, we steel factory redeveloped as an arts district LL Many architects in China are LL The stereotyping and fabrication have experienced one boom-bust cycle in that the government has made into a demon- questioning why foreign architects are of Chinese culture through the Hong Kong Shanghai. The city is now much more mature stration project. But the scale of develop- building the Expo’s major pavilion buildings. frame has literally built up a school of knowl- and very aware of the need to develop new ment is noticeably more incremental than It is in contrast to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics edge. In the post-1997 cultural environment, culture while retaining old traditions and the big development parcels that have been and the Osaka Expo (1968), when Kenzo on the surface very little has changed, but in values. For architects this means the conser- characteristic of contemporary development Tange and his Metabolists group arrived on reality so much has happened—especially in vation of the traditional residential urban in Shanghai and Beijing and much of the rest the international arena, bringing Japanese the development of a postcolonial democ- fabric, namely the residential districts—the of Asia. design culture to the forefront. Most are more racy, and in an identity based on subcultures lilongs. In the past few years Shanghai LL The deputy head of planning, Wu comfortable with the 2010 Expo, for unlike and locality, that Hong Kong is rapidly residents have perceived the new shopping Jiang, was a member of the first joint studio. Beijing, Shanghai is not focused on individual evolving to another conceptual framework malls and high-rises very differently; they He is instrumental in the development of the buildings, but on urbanism. Three years (prophetically depicted in Fruit Chan’s no longer represent the notion of progress Shanghai Sculpture Space, the most famous ago the joint studio developed some very post-handover film, The Longest Summer). and modernization, and there is a growing industrial/art site and creative business interesting programs on one of the expo sites The interpretation of Chinese culture from distrust of the development sector. center outside of Suzhou Creek, and the along the Wangpu River. Shanghai officials the Hong Kong perspective has definitely AP There also has been a shift in home for the 2006 Shanghai Biennale—in are looking at our studios; they are aware of changed in the past nine years since attitudes among the Yale students, who, fact, the space resembles some of our studio our projects; they can see the potential. we started working on the joint studio. while not inclined toward nostalgia, became projects. AP One thing is certain, China will I am not sure the cultural values are disap- quite conservative in terms of preservation AP The studio’s experience in China not stand still, and if we were ever worried pearing anymore. as a reaction to what was going on; whereas is very different from other Yale studio trips. about the studio getting repetitive, each visit AP The Yale studio gets deeper into the Shanghai students seemed less senti- In many respects, we were the stalking horse. to Shanghai reveals new and unexpected the culture than the superficial guidebook mental. But now the Shanghai students Dean Stern has now made travel resources challenges. If it is in some, and not always or tourist view, even though we have layers have become advocates of preservation, available, but the difference is that ours has happy, respects a glimpse into the urban to go through, and other layers that we and our students are less troubled because been a sustained effort over time. Leslie history of modernization in the West, it is will never penetrate. Over the past nine the local culture is taking charge of these and others have helped us see more of an also assuredly a super-heated fast forward years we have built up some expertise, preservation issues. Over the years the insider’s view—behind the picture postcards, of the next wave in architecture and but the studio as a cultural exchange was projects became radically different, which as so to speak. For example, Leslie has written urbanism—even if we choose not to surf that Leslie’s idea. Now the collaboration with the a process reminds me of the classic Borges about the mid-level escalator in Hong Kong, wave. It has, of course, been a pleasure to schools and their students provides a much story of writing the same text, but, because which was designed by public-works officials develop friendships and collaborations in deeper experience, and many alumni of the context has changed, means something with no pretensions, but has transformed the course of the studio, but also extremely this joint studio have gone to work or even different. The sites that have been recom- that section of the city. On our first morning exciting to see many of one’s friends come teach in Hong Kong or Shanghai [see mended for the studio have been associated in Hong Kong I always take the students into their own as designers and thinkers on adjacent article]. with the de-industrialization of Shanghai, on a walk, which Leslie first mapped out for an incredible stage. 07 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 YALE IN CHINA — CHINA IN YALE

project there soon. A restaurant designed Yale. Unlike his classmates, Bu was sure he by the firm opened recently near the Bund would return to China. In 2001 he started in Shanghai, and they have been invited to working with MADA s.p.a.m, in Shanghai, but participate in the Cooper-Hewitt’s August left two years later to start his own firm, One 2008 exhibition, China Constructs. Design, which now boasts a staff of eighteen. Zephyr (U.S.) Architects was Its projects represent a wide range of scales, founded in New York City in 2005 by Yale from regional and urban planning to technol- graduates Zhonggui Zhao (’01), Ching-Chyi ogy parks and resort hotels. Yang (’01), and Dong Fu, of Tsinghua Univer- Bu suggests there has been a sity in Beijing (’01). Now based in Beijing, change in the way architects are generally the firm is working on a gateway compound perceived by the public in China over the last for Zhongke Science Valley, in Langfang; a decade. “Lots of people still don’t know the campus master plan for Tsinghua University; difference between an architect and a civil planning for Zengdai Ideal City, in Chang- engineer, but most developers have started chun, and the schematic design of a residen- to call their architects ‘designers.’ The value Wulongtan tial community project on Chongming Island, of architects is shifting from the construc- Resort in Shanghai. tion documents to the design ideas. The Hotel, Zhao and Yang note that one of abundant construction in China is helping Ningo, the greatest challenges of running a practice the general public to understand how close One Design, 2006. in China is competing with the large, well- modern architecture is to their everyday life, established design institutes that are and a greater public interest in architecture is holdovers from the years of a planned very apparent.” economy. Before political and economic Yansong Ma (’02) is founder and the more recent graduates who are now reforms in China throughout the 1970s and director of MAD Office, in Beijing. After Eastward Drift: taking advantage of the construction boom 1980s, buildings were designed largely by finishing his studies he worked with Zaha Five Yale Graduates in China. Originally from Singapore, H. Koon state-, municipal-, or ministry-owned design Hadid Architects as a project designer before Wee (’03) earned a bachelor of architecture corporations. moving back to Beijing to found the firm Practicing in China from the University of Western Australia, Yang explains that although he and with partners Yosuke Hayano, who first went moved to New York in 1998, and worked with his partners have tried hard to distinguish to Waseda University (2000) and then the The new buildings and construction cranes Bone/Levine Architects for seven years while Zephyr from the design institutes, they are AA in London (2003), and Qun Dang, who filling city skylines across China are the completing his M.Arch. at Yale. Then, togeth- often forced to collaborate with them. “We graduated from Yellow River University and physical manifestations of acute concen- er with Eunice Seng (M.Arch. Princeton and enter only invited competitions, but we find Iowa State in architecture (’03). MAD Office trations of wealth and an unprecedented currently a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia) ourselves competing with a pool of big-name has grown with the pace of the national population shift from agricultural hinterlands and I-Shin Chow (M.Arch Columbia, 2003), design institutes and international firms, economy; since its founding in 2003, the staff to cities. To keep pace with the scope of he formed SciSKEW Collaborative, based including BIAD and XianDai, which have has grown from three to about forty. The firm recent development, China has attracted in Shanghai, New York, and Singapore. literally thousands of employees. Our clients has won numerous international competi- architects and consultants from all over the The three partners began their practice in are obviously looking for someone who can tions and is working on projects not only in world. But the number of domestic firms New York in the typical way for young firms, provide a different point of view. Since we China, but in Toronto, Dubai, and Malaysia. has also grown and now vastly exceeds that working on competitions, installations, and are actually licensed in the United States, MAD Office recently inaugurated its first solo of the foreign architects practicing there. small apartment renovations. When asked we also have to pair up with local design exhibition in Copenhagen, Denmark, titled According to the 2006 annual report of the the reason for shifting the practice to Shang- institutes as architects of record.” MAD in China. (See review below.) Ministry of Construction of China, there are hai, Wee said it was a mixture of pragmatism Global and national changes have Although Ma left Beijing to find new 33,751 architects in China. The country has and idealism: “Moving my focus to Shanghai affected the way architecture is practiced in opportunities abroad and ended up returning also significantly expanded the number of wasn’t easy. Shin left New York for Shanghai China, as well as the way it is taught. Zhao to discover and reclaim “home,” the perspec- schools offering degrees in architecture or after Columbia graduate school. By 2005, we suggests the influence of Western architec- tive and experience he gained abroad were related fields, from twenty to approximately were convinced that Shanghai would bring ture has had a major impact on architectural important. By building up his practice and 170 over the past decade. More open social opportunities more suited to a young and education in China. “The Chinese economy achieving a certain level of architectural policies have allowed greater numbers of growing practice. The range is broad and opened the door to the West in the early stardom in China, Ma and his partners have students from China to study abroad. This the pace is intense. Instead of spending two 1980s, while Chinese architecture did that become one of the few Chinese architecture shift in the Chinese economic system and the years on a loft renovation in New York, we much later. During my years in college firms to win international competitions and new demand for trained design professionals can wrap up a 38,000-square-meter exhibi- (1990–1995), Chinese architectural education find commissions outside of Asia. While have created opportunities for smaller and tion space and build up a respectable track still followed the system of Beaux Arts train- the fame and notoriety have given the firm younger design firms. record in a fairly short time.” SciSKEW has ing. After 1995, many architecture students incredible opportunities in its first years of Recently, I met with a group of Yale indeed been able to build a diverse portfolio went to graduate school in the United States practice, what these five young architecture School of Architecture graduates practicing from exhibitions, residences, offices, and and Europe, and then some of them returned firms are most excited about is not the in the rapidly evolving milieu of east Asia restaurants to a series of small schools, a and started teaching or practicing in the late thought of getting new projects, but the who described some of the challenges of seaside hotel, a shopping mall, and a high- 1990s, which brought in fresh air and increas- prospect of actually building them—and establishing an office in China today. While rise residential district. ing communication with Western universities. doing so quickly. other Yale graduates have been in Hong Even with the time and energy But I think the fundamental change hasn’t Kong longer—such as Leslie Lu (’77); Ame needed to run a busy practice in Shanghai, happened yet. It might need another five to —Jason Carlow Englehart (’62), director of SOM Asia; Wee and his partners are committed to ten years.” Carlow (’02) is an assistant professor of Mildred Lee Sung (’90); Alec Stuart (’91), maintaining a global practice. He travels Bing Bu (’00) is the principal archi- architecture at Hong Kong University where who established his firm Alexander Stuart frequently to Singapore and around south- tect of One Design, in Shanghai. Like Yang he has an exhibition on display with Jonathan Designs Limited in Hong Kong; and Li Hua east Asia. SciSKEW maintains its office in and Zhao, he graduated with a B.Arch. from Solomon called CTLR Shift that explores (’99) of Universal Architecture Studio—it is New York and will likely begin a residential Tsinghua University (1996) before attending studio fabrication projects.

Featuring the work tion MAD in China 2007, to January 6, of China-based Yale was at the Danish 2008, and is traveling graduate Yansong Architecture Center to Berlin later in the MAD in China Ma (’02), the exhibi- from November 3, year.

The Danish Architecture Center to be completed in 2009—the first project a portraying what it is like to work in China. recently opened the first solo exhibition of Chinese architecture office has won through Having competed in more than one hundred Chinese architectural collaborative MAD, a major international competition outside architectural competitions in its first two established in Beijing in 2002 and one of the of the People’s Republic. In the United years, the office has a very dedicated country’s most visionary offices. Yansong States, the Architectural League of New York work ethic. Ma heads the firm with his two partners recently presented the firm with the Young The most profound project on and wants the studio (called “MAD” for Ma Architects Forum Award. In general, the show display is part of visionary Beijing 2050, Design) to blaze a trail for new models for presents MAD’s provocative approach to its which illustrates how a denser version of future cities in China—a future in which it projects and process. One room is dedicated the city could be imagined. With the coming will mature into a modern and democratic MAD, rendering of Danish Pavilion, 2006. to a series of models hanging from the ceiling of Beijing’s Olympic Games in 2008, the country. to create the experience of the studio’s 2050 studio envisions planting trees on Tiananmen The exhibition title is a play on the vision of Beijing, where future developments Square and submerging public institutions label MADE IN CHINA, which, from a Western are hovering above the existing skyline. Their under its wide expanse, thereby discharging perspective, is equated with poorly fabri- Beijing Central Business District of 2050 its political connotations and giving a much cated secondary products. For example, would not be a landscape of ever-higher more friendly and usable space back to the Scandinavia’s IKEA stamps its furniture skyscrapers, but a hovering mushroom filled people of Beijing. with MADE IN CHINA, QUALITY OF SWEDEN. A few with cultural institutions, restaurants, and As Ma stated during the exhibition companies have requested a copyrighted public functions, and including an artificial opening, “Our designs are an alternative logo that states NOT MADE IN CHINA. But imagine lake. The voices emanating from some of to Modernism’s principle of simplicity. We a time when the term could take on a whole the models are those of average Chinese wish instead to focus on the complexities of new meaning, when the Chinese produce citizens talking about their expectations and today’s modern society.” and expect their own products to compete dreams of their country’s future in interviews, with those of the West in quality, style, and MAD in conducted by the MAD Office, that offer a —Kai-Uwe Bergmann China, concept. This is the vision MAD presents exhibition sensual experience of being in China. Bergmann is an architect with Bjarke Ingels through its exhibition in Denmark, home to a installation In a second room the projects Group, in Copenhagen and coordinated the long tradition of high-quality design. at the are shown through a series of multimedia firm’s exhibition at Storefront for Art and The exhibition includes MAD’s Danish projections as renderings and animations, Architecture, in New York, last fall. Architecture competition-winning entry for the Center, further depicting the models in the first room, “Absolute Towers” in Toronto, Canada— 2007. with Ma in a voice-over describing MAD and 08 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 A FIELD GUIDE TO SPRAWL A Field Guide to Sprawl

The exhibition, A Field Guide to Sprawl, organized by the Hudson River Museum, in Yonkers by curator Bartholomew Bland was shown at Yale from August 31 to October 19, 2007. Based on the book by the same name, this project includes aerial photographs by Jim Wark and an analysis of American sprawl by Dolores Hayden, professor at Yale.

Some pictures are warnings, like those in Dolores Hayden’s exhibit, A Field Guide to Sprawl. Forty-five portraits-from-above of America’s subdivisions, roads, and centers of commerce, storage, and disposal, the photo- graphs break the perhaps not useful, perhaps inevitable, term sprawl down to its basic built forms. Like much of Hayden’s work on the suburbs, they bring to bear a humanistic eye on the landscape to reduce the homogenous rock-drawing inlay of the Landfill. Your car cropped. New boundaries emphasize a to the knowable. They depict the supposed ride to the gallery is someone else’s missile raw sculptural beauty sometimes muted in Photography and the disorder of the contemporary suburban silo–like Tank Farm on the waterfront. Your books. The big prints renew, recharge, and Built Environment built environment as an order, if at times an walk to the museum through the reformed even hallucinate the colors. The sizes reveal unappealing one. In doing so, the photo- streets of New Haven is some other commu- hypnotic inner textures, like sand paintings In conjunction with the exhibition A Field graphs demand the viewer acknowledge this nity’s Rural Slammer. The Mansion Subsidy or mosaics. A young woman at the show Guide to Sprawl, Dolores Hayden delivered order could be different. you glare at might be the place where you addressed these issues when she leaned to a lecture on September 20, 2007, and on the The show has an explicitly activ- celebrated your holiday. With its depictions her friend and murmured, “Where can I get morning of September 21, a panel discussion ist content. Hayden is an architectural of the physical traces of some of our most a TOAD?” The monument to the grinding “Photography and the Built Environment” muckraker. But as a field guide as well, the unencumbered, thoughtless, or devil-may- obsolescence machine of cutthroat capital- was held at the Yale Center for British Art. photographs arm the dweller in this field—all care “personal choices,” the visual material ism is also an aesthetic here, like it or not, Chaired by Laura Wexler, professor of of us—with images of sprawl’s forms and rejoins the “species” with a concept of its resonant in the weird beauty of the blast American studies, and chair and professor its temporal progression, its narrative. The ecosystem. furnace in Youngstown, Ohio. of women’s gender and sexuality studies at Ground Cover of today’s storage sheds is Yet, the photographs are also oddly Hayden’s project diametrically Yale, with speakers including Jock Reynolds, the fast-food Logo Building of tomorrow. The generative, not just in their presumed wider opposes this aestheticization of the politics the Henry J. Heinz II director of the Yale Truck City is the early stage of the Tire Dump. social sense, but in their literal architectural of landscape. The potential loveliness of the University Art Gallery, Martha Sandweiss, Houses that leapfrog miles past the suburban sense. Details too obscure in the book, too sad, beautiful world of real estate specula- professor of history and American studies, edge to take advantage of cheap land and minute to grab the eye, raise plateaus for tion, free-trade dream-slaying, and environ- Amherst College, and photographer Jim subsidies for new construction are some dreaming. Spatial arrangements so common mental destruction, is essentially undermined Wark. The following are excerpts from other green field’s Car Glut junkyard. Who as to be reflexive become oddly estranged by the nausea of repetition. The exhibit Sandweiss’s talk, “Taking the Long View: The knows what comes at the end? Apocalypse? and endowed with their newness. Diagonal moves you alphabetically and information- Photography of Urban Sprawl.” One thing is apparent: to Hayden, rows of cars in the Asphalt Nation have so ally through its horror show of death-wish The aerial photographer William sprawl is a kind of ecosystem. Unfortu- much space between them. The spaces architecture. Yet it is perhaps not all bad, this Garnett flew high over the nascent town of nately, as she makes clear through her subtly are so gray. One wants to lavish them with side effect of these grand photographs. In Lakewood, California, in early 1953, as earth indignant wall texts, this is the ecosystem of foliage, to thread them with pedestrian stirring up thoughts and brainstorming about graders rolled in to transform the southern real estate. It runs not on air and water but on paths, with rose gardens, to tint the asphalt our common spaces, it offers the potential for California beanfields into a network of money and a latticework of tax breaks, tax to emphasize what region they’re in, what using the accidental beauty of mundane and streets. He worked for the town’s developers, hustles, dusty federal laws, ridiculous federal they’re being used for. Why must the Ball ostensibly ugly places as a way into altering and over the next three years took to the air bailouts, mortgage manipulations, atrocious Pork, a baseball stadium, barricade itself them, engaging their occupants politically again and again to document the assembly- planning, bad habits, lax oversight, sneaky from the city, just because all stadiums do? on their capacity for beauty if they won’t leap line construction of the 17,500 houses, each loopholes, and other inequitable and unsus- If the stadiums are publicly funded, why into the fray on the call of their consciences placed precisely on its 1,100-square-foot tainable housing policies, some hurtling back shouldn’t we picnic down the right-field line? alone. Is there a way for the people of Sun lot. The development corporation had little to the Great Depression. The gap between The ridiculous grayness of the Category Killer City, Arizona, to feel the arresting and epoch- interest in either architectural or photo- this ecosystem and our ecosystem—we rooftop is such an obvious outdoor movie making circularity of their Zoomburb as they graphic aesthetics. They simply sought visual being the ones who want to breathe and live theater, basketball court, playground, or exist inside it? Physically connecting the documentation of their construction project. rather than destroy our world—induces a LEED-certified energy garden. The TOADs— outscaled shapes in these photos with the D. J. Waldie, Lakewood’s public informa- moral crisis. Hayden identifies the ecosystem temporary, obsolete, abandoned, or derelict dreams of the people breathing inside tion officer and the author of Holy Land—a of sprawl to give us the visual evidence we sites—are the art galleries. The Mall Glut is them might be the planners’ first step into brilliant and quirky memoir about growing up need to bring the one ecosystem closer to merely the foundation for the city that should retrieving a purchase on both the places there—explains that the developers never the other. rise and ripen on top of it. If we have Pods and the people. used Garnett’s photographs for marketing. This exhibit is expanded from her that can be lived in, can we experience our One only awaits a successor exhibit They simply compiled an in-house photo- 2004 book of the same name. Photographer podness? The cleared trees under the Power called A Field Guide to the Metropolitan graphic album to serve their own limited Jim Wark’s aerial images are blown up and Grid leave us with a secret carpet of intima- Region, which would unite these aerial needs and occasionally supplied images to recropped. More starkly, they emphasize just cy—and if not poisoned by the lines above— images with more familiar indigenous spatial their suppliers for use in corporate reports. how outsized, for a single human passerby, every town’s trans-American trail. The sitcom forms that already haunt the American Garnett’s Lakewood pictures have the landscape of sprawl has become. Our suburb’s huge lawns and green continuities cultural vernacular—the Street, the Block, become iconic images of America’s post- landscape is getting away from us. It lumbers are natural postclassical Central Parks (as the Stoop, the Park, the Skyscraper, the war sprawl. But as works for hire, made at an inconceivable scale: the Zoomburb of Hayden herself argued in Redesigning the Downtown, the Central Station, the Market to support the ambitions of the develop- concentric circles tempting the distance, American Dream). Why is the cellular Tower Place, the Empty Lot, the Factory, the Docks, ment corporation, they at first found few the Mondrian-ish puzzle of crushed cars, Farm not the heart of contemporary architec- the Housing Project—or even beyond—the viewers. When the development corporation the phenomenal Cloverleafs, and the tural vision, rejoining the sides of our roads Forest, the Farm, the Mountain, the Sea. disbanded soon after Lakewood’s comple- Litter-on-a-Stick of the Brobdingnagian with the chorus of our voices? To see these contemporary phenomena in tion, its copies of Garnett’s prints largely roadside billboards. These images express Now these reveries are clearly the borderless totality and oneness of the disappeared. Garnett, however, retained angst about a scale frankly unseeable by the uncertified by the morality of the exhibit. American landscape and all its extensions (or simply invoked) his right to use them for human eye, even as they show it. But in exhibit form the photos beg skewed, would only deepen the urgent conversation his own purposes, and just a few months How to experience the tiring creative re-seeings, notings of extras, lost about shape, critical choice, future, and the after the construction work at Lakewood aerial illogic of the Clustered World and the spaces, irreconcilabilities, shapes inside staging ground for life itself that Hayden so ended and his assignment was complete, he Boomburb from the living room and the shapes just by the very largeness of the admirably and insurgently opens here. began using the pictures in other venues. In lawn? How to gain proximity to or conversa- photos. This effect also begs the typical March 1954, Garnett supplied one to Fortune tion with the gated Privatopia? How to see documentary-versus-art question: Are —Andrew Friedman magazine for a photo essay titled, “Over past the Snout House’s protuberant garage? they beautiful? And are they art? Wark, the Friedman is a Ph.D. candidate in American California: A Portfolio by William Garnett,” a In one sense the exhibit is the answer: look photographer—a former real estate execu- studies at Yale. multi-page spread with a short introductory around—you’re already in it. The plastic tive, navy pilot, and mining engineer—thinks text by Walker Evans. This marked the first bottle in your hand is the enameled-looking so. The photos are carefully and often subtly publication of one of the Lakewood pictures. 09 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 ENERGY. DESIGN. SYNERGY

The exhibition Ecology. Design. Ecology. Synergy was displayed at Yale from October 29, 2007 to February 1, Design. 2008.

Exhibition Synergy installation of Ecology. Design. Synergy at Yale.

Jim Wark photograph on display The traveling exhibition Ecology.Design. Schuler of Transsolar stated that “the laws surprisingly by the academic sphere, where in A Field Synergy, on display at Yale from October 29, of physics naturally permit us to dream up it has been ubiquitously relegated to the Guide to 2007, to February 1, 2008, featured Stuttgart- building products that are not available,” one “technical” and/or elective courses. Sprawl, at Yale School based firms Behnisch Architekten and wished that there was the societal support With the engagement of several of Architec- Transsolar ClimateEngineering, and revealed and research infrastructure to allow those figures among its faculty—including Stefan ture, 2007. how much cultural priorities have shifted in dreams to be more substantially pursued Behnisch and Thomas Auer, of Transsolar— recent times. within experimental labs protected from the Yale is now at the forefront of schools of If we indeed have experienced a financial constraints of delivering a product architecture that are infusing these issues transition from an industrial to an ecological within a couple of years to a building site. Yet throughout the design curriculum. This From the moment it appeared, it had a kind worldview—as expressed in the shift from the building industry has been catastrophi- is an encouraging development, and it of temporal distance from the time-bound materialistic modes of thought articulated cally underfunded in these endeavors, in would be great to see their involvement go phenomenon it documented. It seemed in the philosophies of Adam Smith and Karl such a way that has not permitted the huge beyond teaching and become associated less photojournalism than art. And because Marx to the revisioning of the relationship technological strides seen in other fields. with fundamental research that draws in the it appeared in a portfolio that highlighted between “mind” and “nature” by seminal Given the enormous impact of the building major scientific disciplines. The School of Garnett’s aerial pictures of the natural thinkers such as Gregory Bateson and sector, the environmental agenda of these Architecture is an ideal test site for this kind environment, it seemed concerned less with William Irwin Thompson—then the Ameri- architects and engineers is surely worthy of intensive coalition. Not only has it long had social issues than with the purely formal can architectural profession has mostly of more societal support for research and ties to the School of Forestry, and recently elements of the construction site. In Garnett’s trailed far behind European contemporaries development than it is currently receiving. formalized a visionary collaboration with that aerial images, familiar landscapes appeared in capitalizing on this shift. The installation Within the contemporary context school, it has also had a historical commit- newly strange, miraculously transmuted into on American soil of exemplary practices of the architectural profession, there ment to pluralistic approaches that naturally abstract patterns of line and form. such as Behnisch and Transsolar not has been mounting concern for several lends the environment to the socially and Over the next sixteen years, only provides ample evidence that there decades surrounding the decreasing logistically challenging work of transdis- Garnett’s Lakewood pictures appeared in a is increasing demand and support here capacity to effectively influence many of ciplinary research required for substantial variety of books on urban planning. Though among clients for a more ambitious environ- the critical factors informing the design of material innovation. the pictures themselves did not change, the mental agenda, but also substantially raises our built environments. In this country the A New Kind of “Space” Race? interpretations of them did, moving from an the playing field for performance within the environmental performance of buildings has When the built fabric constitutes between appreciation of their beauty and abstract profession in general. With American firms previously ranked comparatively low in the 35 and 55 percent of our total energy form to an argument that they documented exporting building technology at break- socially constructed hierarchy of priorities for consumption (depending on who is count- the very worst of America’s suburban sprawl. neck speed to emerging economies that technological innovation. However, politi- ing what), as well as the major part of our The architect Nathaniel Owings, writing in are quickly adjusting their expectations cally infused value structures are also clearly nonrenewable material resource depletion, An American Aesthetic (1969), found a dark, for comfort accordingly, the striving for shifting across every field as a result of the it seems plausible that a massive social ironic meaning in Garnett’s documentary environmental innovation was ecological imperative. The projects exhibited shift could underwrite the kind of intensive views. Here was no suburban Eden, but a a timely imperative that this engaging in this show provide a powerful challenge to cross-disciplinary research required to place where suburban man was held hostage show incited. the widespread misconception that substan- substantially alter our material approach to his environment. The exhibition was arranged tially addressing environmental challenges to the built environment. But this research Garnett never considered himself an according to themes of sensory perception: will make architects less financially competi- requires a more robust connection between ironic photographer. He was a conservation- temperature, air, light, sound, material, and tive. Through their collaborative approach, those conducting fundamental research in ist, lecturing on the hazards of air pollution human scale. The environment created by the two firms have effectively inverted that fields such as physics, ecology, and biotech- in the L.A. basin as early as 1941, and he Stuttgart designer Frank Ockert was suitably equation, partially by sidestepping a purely nology with the profoundly broad experience considered beautiful photographs his most immersive, mirroring the sensorial themes of quantitative approach to environmental and insight gained by practitioners such potent weapons. This use of photography the large panels, lit with overhead ambient problems and also focusing on quality. as Behnisch and Transsolar. In the quest as a positive tool of moral suasion linked lighting in colorful domes, which focused As the ambitious projects in for radically biocompatible and responsive Garnett to his slightly older peers, Ansel more on bringing the ceiling down to the Ecology.Design.Synergy suggest, there is building models, the physicists need figures Adams and Eliot Porter, who likewise used “human scale” of the observer than on the now enormous opportunity for a massive like Mathias Schuler as much as he needs their photographs of nature’s wonders information exhibited. While the phenom- shift to occur as a result of the possibilities them. to engage popular support for conserva- enological themes admittedly induced a suggested by the convergence of advances There are some particularly fine tion issues. Owings and others may have slightly queasy cynicism in this reviewer, the in information technology with the increas- examples of just how far the practition- interpreted Garnett’s pictures of Lakewood’s format is refreshingly devoid of the reduc- ingly undeniable ecological imperative. With ers featured in Ecology.Design.Synergy sprawl as searing indictments of urban tive measurements that are typical of much the alliance of engineering and architecture have been able push innovation within the sprawl, but Garnett did not interpret them current discourse on ecological themes. from the inception of schematic design—one constraints of project development, for that way himself. The projects in the exhibition that is fully immersed in tangible data but not example, the envelope for the new Suvar- More contemporary images of reflected a long-standing and mature pursuit defined by it—the criteria considered within nabhumi Airport, in Bangkok. However, in urban sprawl have what I would characterize of environmentally responsive architecture, these designs is much broader than the the grand scheme of life-cycle analysis, by as a kind of spirit of diminished expectations. ranging from competition proposals to information flows we have previously been many means of measurement the construc- Today, however, while many large-scale built work both in Germany able to manage within the design process. tion of that airport is still closer to being photographers work with an awareness and internationally. Recent work in North Yet with respect to biologically compatible part of the problem than the solution to our of the older traditions, they challenge the America included significant projects such material systems, the work still reflects our mounting environmental crisis. Pushing as assumptions about the beneficence of as Harvard’s Allston Science Complex, in serious material limitations as a technological much as practitioners such as Transsolar growth that underlie them. Cambridge; Senscity Paradise Universe, in society, whereby even the most advanced and Behnisch do on the conventional build- One reason for this is certainly a Las Vegas; and the Arizona State Univer- proponents of biocompatible material ing envelope is laudable enough within the growing cultural awareness about the social, sity Gateway Project, in Tempe, all highly cycles are far from their proposed ecological budgetary and time constraints of archi- economic, and environmental downsides of ambitious programs following Behnisch’s targets. tectural practice. However, they should urban sprawl. But another is the growth of first major foray into the continent with the A New Academic-Industrial also be supported in the invention of an the art market. Many contemporary photog- Genzyme Corporation Building, in Boston. Alliance? entirely different envelope, not just for new raphers have found a way to work outside of Perhaps because the projects are Foremost among the many casualties of construction but for insinuating radically a commercial structure, making pictures that so impressive in striving to address certain increasing economic disenfranchisement of new biocompatible models into the carcass appeal not so much to a real estate devel- environmental criteria without substantially conventional architectural practice has been of the postindustrial built fabric as well. oper as to an art collector. There would have diverging from current models of conven- a general “reductivism” in programmatic been no market in the nineteenth century tional practice, they have the slightly unfair inquiry. As the context for deeper innova- —Anna Dyson for photographs documenting urban failure. effect of inducing a desire for a more radical tion shrinks, ecological design research Dyson (’96) is an assistant professor of Now, however, we have an insatiable desire agenda than what is possible within “best has been foremost among the issues to be architecture, Rensselaer Polytechnic for pictures that show us the dark underside practices.” But the protagonists in the show marginalized in the last couple of decades, Institute, and co-founder of its MATERIALAB. of our follies. seemed up to the challenge. When Matthias both by the architectural profession and also 10 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 CONSTRUCTING THE INEFFABLE: CONTEMPORARY SACRED ARCHITECTURE Constructing the Ineffable: Contemporary Sacred Architecture

“Constructing the the symposium phers, theologians, Ineffable: Contempo- focused on the and theorists. It was vista of Jerusalem and beyond. For Tiger- rary Sacred Archi- challenge of design- sponsored jointly by man, a slippage emerges between the two tecture” was held ing contemporary the School of Archi- prime forms that define the memorial and at Yale School of sacred spaces, with tecture, the Institute the education center. This 5.9-degree shift Architecture on contributions from of Sacred Music, and honors the difference between true east—a October 26 and 27, a diverse cross- Yale Divinity School. cardinal point shared by many agrar- 2007. Organized by section of architects, ian societies and symbolic of the coming lecturer Karla Britton, historians, philoso- messianic age for the Jews—and the desire to locate the sacred (though Tigerman uses the term belief) in a location other than the immediate. For Jews this is the Western A symposium dealing with the interrelation- meaningful discourse on this illusive quality, Wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. As ship of architecture and religion was a daring which proliferated through the contemporary Tigerman noted in his presentation, “The undertaking for a school of architecture, framing of the problem of the sacred in archi- Tribe Versus the City-State: an Architectural since discourse on religion is often suspect tecture, were provided. A rigorous structure Conundrum for the Jewish Project,” this in architectural education. These gatherings through a broad framework of meanings desire for the otherness of one’s own desires usually draw a small select and specialized allowed speakers to focus on questions signifies absence. Yet because this absence audience. Yet this was not the case at Yale of memory and identity, constructing the pulsates with desire, it is virtually present. Art Gallery’s McNeil Lecture Hall, which was immaterial, and language. Even with this rich narrative, Tigerman filled to capacity: more than 500 people On Friday afternoon Karsten explained, several Reform rabbis and preregistered. A diverse audience waited Harries, the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen scholars oppose eastern orientation, since in anticipation of an intellectually spirited Professor of Philosophy at Yale, opened the waiting of a messianic age undermines exploration by prominent architects whose the “Memory and Identity” session with his the existential reality of Jerusalem. For built works successfully capture the ineffable paper, “Untimely Mediations on the Need for Eisenman, meaning cannot be cleansed and noted theologians and philosophers Sacred Architecture,” setting the theoretical and collapsed by time, but “is written who speak with authority on the matter of the stage for the event. Harries pondered the into the void”—captured in destabilizing sacred. There has been a series of recently conundrum in the form of a question: Does moments when one transcends the controls built projects that charge the imagination of the sacred need architecture, and does that navigate us in this sensate world. The religious architecture—works by Greg Lynn, architecture need the sacred? Harries’s audience was reminded by philosopher Office dA, John Pawson, Santiago Calatrava, argument opened further ground for explo- Mark Taylor and theologian Miroslav Volf Rafael Moneo, Peter Zumthor, Maya Lin, ration of the ineffable by challenging the that architects are not writers of memory, a Antoine Predock, to name a few—and so a architectural establishment’s surrender of concept hauntingly illustrated by the photo- weighty investigation was warranted. Other the art of construction to engineers that he graph Eisenman showed of a youth caught recent conferences on religion in art and and other presenters noted as critical for midflight while leaping between the columns architecture include the 2007 meeting of the establishing the ineffable. It is in re-binding, of the memorial, forming the shape of a Society of Architectural Historians, with a the root meaning of “religion,” where the swastika with his body. In a lively exchange session devoted to twentieth-century church sacred is encountered. He opened with a with Harries, the participants discussed the building; the MIT doctoral program in history, surprising contrast between Cesar Pelli’s conflicted theological positions that emerge theory, and criticism of architecture’s spring Petronas Towers and the Lincoln Cathedral. when situating the constructs of violence, 2007 conference, “Deus X”; and the Interfaith In doing so, he questioned whether meaning horror, and reconciliation in time and space. Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture, a from past iconic building systems could The second-day sessions, on focus group of the AIA, which has recently legitimately serve contemporary societies. Saturday, “Constructing the Immaterial” and joined forces with the Academy of Neuro- Harries countered the eulogistic sentiments “The Language of the Ineffable,” highlighted science for Architecture to explore issues of that sacred spaces are being replaced by expressions of the immaterial in physical the sacred. But none of these combined the secular buildings like museums as a vehicle form and turned to the use of traditional disciplines so completely within the Modern- for encountering the sacred—a mindset forms of sacred buildings: a Roman Catholic ist construct of the “Ineffable” as the October that is rooted in a commonly held belief that cathedral, in Los Angeles; the mother temple symposium at Yale. modernism has relegated the sacred to for the Bahá’í faith, in New Delhi; a small In conjunction with the School of the periphery. student chapel for a Jesuit University, in Architecture symposium, the Yale Institute Other presentations deepened Seattle; a parish church in a suburb of Rome of Sacred Music held a pre-symposium this inquiry, questioning whether buildings commissioned to mark the new millennium; conference, “Sacred Space: Architecture designated for mainline religions can still and contemporary chapels and temples in for Worship in the 21st Century.” Organized serve as legitimate vehicles for the sacred Japan. Although rich in narrative, these by associate professor Jaime Lara, this in today’s pluralistic society distinguished structures lack the singular focus of the event explored contemporary spaces for by vigorous skepticism. In various talks the memorial/museum, creating a jarring transi- Christian worship in an American context architects, philosophers, and theologians tion in the symposium discussions. Hayden with a diverse group of speakers, ranging recognized the power in the search for Salter, project architect for Rafael Moneo, from the televangelist, the Rev. Dr. Robert patterns of meaning entailed in contempo- presented the design for the Cathedral of Schuller, of Crystal Cathedral Ministries; rary academic discussions in the humanities. Our Lady of the Angels. He hinted that if artist/liturgist Friedhelm Mennekes S. J., of This theme framed a rich session of presen- Moneo had been able to attend, he would St. Peter’s Church in Cologne; and architects tations by architects focusing on memorials have raised the important question of how an Michael Crosbie, Joan Soranno, Trey Trahan, and museums devoted to the expression architect can address the issue of the sacred and Duncan Stroik (’87). The idea to present of collective memory and social identity in when it is popularly experienced in such a this university-wide event on sacred spaces the Holocaust. Memorials in general serve pluralistic manner. Thomas Beeby’s (’65) talk emerged through suggestions from the staff important roles in discussions of the sacred on Rudolf Schwarz was a forced application at Yale’s Battell Chapel. since they provide a focal point to bridge of theories from Schwarz’s influential book As Karla Britton reminded the communal and individual experiences of The Church Incarnate, to gain insights into audience in her introductory remarks, Le the sacred. the urban fabric of Chicago and the layout Corbusier’s fourth dimension—ineffable Moshe Safdie’s Yad Vashem for Mies’s IIT campus. However, Beeby’s contained in the aesthetics of the whole, space, as discussed in his 1946 article Museum, in Jerusalem, brings to the fore reading of Crown Hall through the lens of the sacred is found in the void of the center. “L’Espace Indicible”—when achieved, opens the impact the Holocaust had on the identity Schwarz—especially the loss to the middle She contrasted her church’s sacred void, up a boundless depth that effaces walls of the nation-state, including in this cultural ground—was insightful. Such design control which provided room for apophatic prayer, and drives away contingent presences. Le landscape key identity-forming events such was not evident in Mies’s campus chapel, with the sacred void of the Bahá’í Temple Corbusier’s mystical use of weighty materials as the burning bush, enslavement, and the leading again to the question of whether the in New Delhi, the loss of middle ground in to achieve a threshold to the transcendent, exodus. Stanley Tigerman’s (’60) Illinois sacred has been relegated to the periphery. Mies’s Crown Hall, and the luminous nave of as evident in his design for the pilgrimage Holocaust Museum and Education Center— Finally, Fariborz Sahba presented his design Moneo’s cathedral, while provoking a debate chapel at Ronchamp and the monastery at currently under construction in Skokie, for the Bahá’í Lotus Temple, in New Delhi, as to the significance of the aesthetic void of La Tourette, has a quality of crafted struc- Illinois—honors those who escaped Europe- with its open, sacred void intended to share the storefront churches of her past. tures that can transport the user to a new an persecution, but relocated to a town that religious texts and experiences from other Robert Nelson, the Robert Lehman reality that is often evoked for the sacred became a center for national debate over traditions. Sahba’s journey through Eastern Professor of History of Art and Medieval in contemporary times. In its most literal the civil liberties of a neo-Nazi group. Peter thought was a refreshing journey from the Studies at Yale, opened the afternoon meaning, the ineffable is that which cannot Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews Western traditions, which was prevalent in session, “The Language of the Ineffable,” by be uttered because of the limitation of human of Europe, in Berlin, confronts the physical the symposium. recasting Harries’s original question about reason and language or because of fearful ground where the initial planning for those Theologian Emilie Townes, the the sacred to believers: Do believers need deference to the holy. In this more literal use atrocities took place, and addresses the need Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African- architecture, and do architects need believ- of the term, constructing the ineffable is what to represent this reality to current and future American Religion and Theology at the Yale ers? This moved the discussion to buildings divinity schools do regularly. Yet, for archi- generations. All three architects expressed Divinity School, masterfully knitted this that capture Le Corbusier’s concept of the tects, the challenge is compounded by the the challenge of responding to communal diverse collection of talks into a coherent fourth dimension of architecture: the ineffable materiality of the craft. As Britton noted, there memories rich with narrative and continually response, placing it in the broader continuum space. Yale art historian Kishwar Rizvi offered are certain rare cases when the ineffable is shifting in time and space. of the holy. With a litany of names recalled narrative reflection in her response, citing a successfully given constructed form. The An interesting goal in two of these from the rural Baptist storefront churches of recent Turkish mosque in Berlin and asking presentations at Yale represented an impres- projects was the architect’s instinct to find her youth, she demonstrated how the ineffa- whether ineffable space was a characteristic sive mix of those instances. resolution and hope in physical form. At Yad ble was present not through building form, that the spaces could be afforded. In this By keeping the conference focused Vashem, Safdie peels back the triangular but in the struggle to give name to these final session participants spoke about how on the issue of the ineffable, opportunities for form driven through the hill to throw open a “undecorated sheds.” Rather than being the spaces in Richard Meier’s Dio Padre 11 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 CONSTRUCTING THE INEFFABLE: CONTEMPORARY SACRED ARCHITECTURE

Misericordioso Church, in Rome, and Steven such wholesale secular substitutions for the Holl’s Chapel of St. Ignatius, in Seattle, are sacred. He also challenged religious institu- Paul Goldberger’s Closing ineffable. Anecdotes are helpful, but explain- tions which create structures lacking the Remarks (Excerpts) ing the ineffable seemed more challenging to sacred; it is in such structures that funda- the architects than actually constructing it. mentalism finds its breeding ground. Scully’s There has been a paradox that has been Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor keynote reflected the wisdom gained in over hanging over some of these proceedings: of Architecture at Columbia University, drew forty years of spirited intellectual pursuit of the fact that in the realm of the sacred, attention to the ineffable spaces of architect the sacred. Was his ability to seamlessly architecture, the discipline most dependent Tadao Ando, inspired by ancient Taoism and narrate this comprehensive exploration, on materiality, indeed the ultimate expression Shintoism and then applied to contemporary delivered with a sense of urgency, borne from of materiality, must try to express what is not Christian chapels. If narratives are critical for an encounter with mysterium tremendum et material, what cannot ever be material. In the discerning patterns of meaning so that the fascinans? quest to create sacred space, architecture is ineffable can emerge, then this approach The more threatening challenge of in a way working against itself, struggling to presents a challenge. These ancient forms whether religious buildings today can serve use the material to express what transcends are rooted in fundamental beliefs that often as vehicles for the sacred was illustrated the material, using the physical to express conflict with the frameworks of established most clearly in Salter’s presentation of the transcendent. Western religions, such as the body-and- Moneo’s design for a chapel to Blessed I would like to also note that even soul dualism and the less-developed sense Junipero Serra, in the Cathedral of Our Lady when the experiences, the aesthetic, and of nature imbued by the sacred. Frampton of the Angels. Moneo prominently placed the sacred co-exist, we as architects tend to illustrated this with Ando’s Church of Light, a statue of Serra—the friar who founded assume the power of the experience comes where the cross is formed from darkness and the chain of missions in California—on a wholly or largely from the architecture. I think light penetrating narrow slits in the concrete pedestal framed in a glass corner, which this is architectural hubris. While great archi- that visually dissolves as the sun moves dominates the entry façade of this small tecture surely can and often does enhance across the sky. Theologians would argue that chapel. Grateful for the efforts of this early religious experience, it is not particularly the cross also dissolves in the resurrection, apostle to the West, the faithful venerate likely to create it. The aesthetic qualities we Tadao Ando, so the discord introduced by contrasting him inside, while the general public views might feel confer sanctity are not always the Church of Light, belief systems may not be great—however, him from the outside, acknowledging the ones that make space sacred for the people Osaka, it is present. Given the heightened respect controversy surrounding this historic figure. for whom it was, at least ostensibly, created. Japan, of nature found in these Eastern traditions, Moneo resolved this question by allowing for It is transcendent for them at least as much photograph Frampton extended the contradiction of these two views, the sacred and the secular, because of what they bring to it, not because by Richard Pare, 1989. this “secularized spirituality” to include its to coexist and inform each other. of what the architect has done with it. resistance to consumerist society. It thus Holocaust memorials and museums This is not to minimize the potential provides a provocative direction for future did not seem to need this tenor of question- of architecture, even in our time, to create a inquiry about our understanding of how we ing, which was one reason the discussions sense of awe and the aura of the sacred. That construct the ineffable within denominational were so fruitful during the first session. They we continue to aspire to the sacred is itself frameworks. inherently attract and repel; the Holocaust significant—since, as Rudolf Schwartz would What do we fear? This question was so horrific that it reached a level of remind us, the quest for the sacred is itself was posed to an architect during a selection profound mystery. It may also explain why, sacred. Often the quest is successful. Ando’s interview for a chapel project and recounted on the second day the transition to traditional work surely achieves a level of the sublime, at the pre-symposium conference hosted by religious buildings was awkward. Religious its qualities emerging, as Kenneth Frampton the Yale Divinity School. It was an obvious institutions are suspect in today’s skeptical explained earlier, in part from his view that response to whether or not one is able to world, and it is not clear whether society nature is not static but active, that we can achieve this ineffable fourth dimension that can embrace any religious building as often come closest to nature by being the Le Corbusier identified. But fear from a legitimate vehicles for the sacred. Thus, the most man-made, not by deferring to nature religious perspective is not simply a negative link between the sacred and the ineffable is but by actively reinterpreting and almost emotion. Holy fear attracts and repels; it is tenuous in these familiar spaces. controlling it, by abstracting it. Mysterium tremendum et fascinans, referring Mega-churches, a contemporary The ability of architecture to create to the seminal work of Rudolf Otto, of which movement, echoes earlier revivals, especially the sacred and not merely to enclose it, Mark Taylor of Columbia University reminded the Great Awakenings. Coincidentally, these so to speak—the ability of architecture to the audience. landmark events in the historic landscape of create a sense of awe, regardless of whether For architects the ineffable is American religion emanated from Yale. The one comes to it with the rituals of religious experienced; however, it is not clear whether Awakenings were often housed in tents or practice in mind—is borne out, paradoxically, Berlin the sacred, as holy fear, is encountered. For other nonreligious structures when crowds by nonreligious buildings, since they are Holocaust believers the sacred is experienced, but not were too large for traditional religious places to whom no one brings an expecta- Memorial, Peter necessarily in places designated by archi- buildings. However, these contemporary tion of ritual or a predisposition to religious Eisenman tects as ineffable. This tension was best illus- mega-churches seem to be replacing experience. Where in the realm of sacred Architects, trated in Paul Goldberger’s closing remarks mainline churches rather then reviving space are we to place, say, Jefferson’s Lawn 2006. about his visit to Jože Pleznik’s Church of the them. These churches are becoming more at the University of Virginia, Sir John Soane’s Sacred Heart of Jesus, in Prague, where he substantive, but are drawing strategically breakfast room, or the Farnsworth House? observed worshippers who were moved in on a secular architectural vocabulary that There, architecture is transcendent, as surely spite of the architecture and the presence of counters traditional core religious values. as in the chapels of Tadao Ando. What are we architectural pilgrims. Replete with food courts and coffee bars, to make of the fact that, while Unity Temple’s Thus, one can finally ask: Is the the mega-churches raise compelling issues extraordinary space surely possesses a sacred linked to the ineffable? This question regarding what is classified as sacred, sacred aura, so too does Fallingwater. We was manifest in two recurring techniques echoing the concerns of Scully. The Rev. Dr. might say the same of Kahn’s Unitarian deployed by the presenters: the desire to Shuller challenged this prevailing ethos by Church and his Kimbell or his British Art Illinois Holocaust transfer the ineffable to secular buildings and engaging the services of noted architects, Center right here. In these and other cases, is Museum, to question whether buildings at service to including Richard Neutra and Philip Johnson, it merely that an aesthetic has reached such Tigerman mainline religions can legitimately function to create his California campus. However, intensity and risen to such heights that it McCurry Architects, as vehicles for the sacred at all. Art museums in his keynote address for the Yale Divinity becomes indistinguishable from the sacred? Skokie, were suggested as potential candidates for School conference, he recounted Johnson’s Still, I’m not entirely sure that Illinois, 2007 the ineffable, portrayed most dramatically concern about his request that the worship Karsten Harries’s fear has been borne in Steven Holl’s orchestrated silence during space, in seismically active Southern out, that we have simply substituted the his presentation of his design for the Nelson- California, be enclosed completely in glass. aesthetic for the sacred—or, to use Fariborz Atkins Museum. This was in sharp contrast Shuller’s retort to Johnson was to hire better Sahba’s formulation, that we have chosen to his more rambling presentation of the St. engineers, foreshadowing Harries’s concern to be attracted to the beautiful rather than Ignatius Chapel, raising the question: Which that architects are perceived to have surren- to the divine, to have our hearts or our eyes one is the ineffable structure? dered the art of construction, which is critical satisfied instead of our souls. I am not sure it On Friday, Vincent Scully, profes- to the ineffable. However, this mega-church is so simple, in part because the connections sor emeritus in the history of art at Yale, cannot be so quickly written off, as Scully between art and religion, between art and the gave the keynote address, a highlight of reminded the audience in his talk. soul, are far deeper and more interdepend- the symposium. He seamlessly placed this In Judeo-Christian thought, the ent, not to say ambiguous. I would hope our contemporary struggle in a broader historic fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. failings are not quite so clear-cut as art over context, adding a personal sense of urgency Similar sentiments are found in many world the sacred. We also need to keep in mind that reflecting the destructive forces of funda- religions; their search for the ineffable, our time is quite different from any other in mentalism (both religious and architectural). marked by this holy fear, should be no less terms of what architecture can do to create The ancients continuously searched for ways beneficial. For the School of Architecture the aura of the sacred. to reengage the sacred, the earth with sky, to engage the topic of the sacred and the There will always be those to the schism between nature and built form, Divinity School that of the built environment whom the aesthetic is the sacred, and there Ronchamps Chapel, Le Corbusier, France, photograph by Ezra Stoller © Esto, 1955. expressive of Greek worship of body versus allowed each to cross boundaries. Discourse will always be those to whom the sacred the Roman worship of space. Le Corbusier on religion is often taboo in architectural has no need for the aesthetic. But I would and other Modernists were able to capture education; however, both disciplines like to believe that part of the reason all of the earlier sense of the sacred in primitive construct the ineffable in and of different us have gathered in these two connected form, continuing the heroic aspirations of the materials. This combined event feeding on symposiums is in the hope that it can be ancients. He sounded a cautionary note of the strength of both disciplines provided a otherwise, and that the very idea of the the hidden agenda of Modernism to attain spirited space to explore the ineffable transcendent can in itself become a kind of the sacred without comprehending the in depth. common language that joins architectural power of meaning. He noted that architects and religious experience, seeing them not today love form, no matter what the meaning. —Gilbert Sunghera, S. J. as the same, but each of them as something In this way secular buildings may take on Sunghera is a priest and an assistant profes- that can enrich the other, bringing it to a new a sacred sense—though his witty image of sor in architecture at the School of Architec- level of meaning. the Guggenheim Bilbao as a sacred vessel ture, University of Detroit Mercy, and consults sailing through the city with its mediocre nationwide on liturgical space issues. He has —Paul Goldberger Bahá’í Lotus Temple, Fariborz Sahba, New Delhi, India, collection of art, producing a sadistic laugh, a master’s of sacred theology from the Insti- Goldberger is the architectural critic for The photograph by Charles Nolley, 1986. cautioned the audience of the fallacy of tute of Sacred Music, Yale Divinity School. New Yorker magazine. 12 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 BUILDING EXPERIENCE Building Experience

On October 9, 2007, a crowd gathered at the Architectural League of New York to hear a panel discussion on the history and influ- ences of the Yale Building Project.

Bryan Bell, Design Corps, Biloxi project in progress, 2007. Design>Build>Texas Project, University of Texas, Austin, 2007.

Peter Gluck Architect, Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Services, East Harlem, New York, 2006. MADE, installation at the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2004.

Yale Building Project, New Zion, Kentucky, 1968.

The evening opened with a presentation 1970s, the Building Project became a staple of the broader design-build movement. His and Partners Architects, in New York City. by the Building Project book’s lead author, of Yale’s curriculum. In 1972 Paul Brouard organization, Design Corps, uses the design- With classmate David Sellers, Gluck led one Richard Hayes (’86), who recounted the (’61) became its first coordinator, as the build model of practice, along with creative of the most celebrated student projects of the birth of the Building Project and the broad institutionalization and growth of the program financial partnerships to make good design mid-1960s: a house for his parents that was social phenomena from which it grew. became his responsibility, along with its accessible to needy communities. featured in Progressive Architecture, stoking Although it was Charles Moore who made success. He spoke about his mission to “Traditionally,” writes Bell in his book, the interest in building that led to the creation the program an official part of Yale’s curric- expose architects to the realities of construc- Good Deeds, Good Design (2004, Princeton of the Building Project. After establishing an ulum, he was capitalizing upon a series of tion, especially after learning as a student Architectural Press), “architects and clients office in 1972, Gluck maintained his interest independent student-led building projects that few of his classmates had ever set foot start their working relationship when the in construction, and in 1990 he established that occurred at Yale throughout the 1960s. on a building site (he came to Yale after clients, who understand what architecture AR/CS, a full-fledged construction- Some of these were motivated by youthful working as a carpenter). Over the course is and what they need from it, contact the management company dedicated to building impatience—a desire to short-circuit the of his thirty-five Building Projects, Brouard architect. But when architecture is a commu- his designs. Gluck’s practice is design-build slow path to professional certification and has instructed more than one thousand nity service, it is the architect who seeks without the quaint woodsy associations. His directly experience design and construc- Yale students, and it was clear from the out the clients.” In this vein, Design Corps portfolio is typical of a successful New York tion. Others were driven by idealism, a warm applause that he was the evening’s has sought out partnerships with farmers City firm: urban schools, religious buildings, longing to use architecture for social good main attraction. who employ migrant workers. By using and ritzy neo-Modern estates. For Gluck, and to offer design services—and shelter— During the Building Project’s these relationships to obtain Department of design-build is a calculation about how best to diverse underserved communities. forty-year history, several of its alumni have Agriculture grants, Design Corps has worked to control his work and about how to wring as During the summer of 1966, several taken their experiences and applied them with the farmers and the workers to design much out of a budget as possible. It allows Yale students travelled to Appalachia to help in a variety of professional settings, and and build attractive and comfortable housing the firm to bring high design to low-budget build a boathouse for a children’s camp. As the evening’s second set of presentations projects. The farmers benefit from the higher public projects, and, at the other end of Hayes described, the impoverished region brought together four such practices. productivity that results from the workers’ the scale, to do a $6 million house on a had become a focus of social activists in Louise Harpman (’94), for seven goodwill; the workers benefit from having $4 million budget. the 1960s, attracting students to leave the years the Building Project’s studio coordina- a safe and dignified place to live; and by In the final panel of the evening, friendly confines of their campuses and travel tor, has started Design>Build>Texas, at the building their work. By finding new ways to Adam Hopfner (’99), Brouard’s successor as to gritty eastern Kentucky to lend a hand. University of Texas at Austin, where she is practice, Bell has not only been able to director of the Building Project, presented the Moore followed the efforts of his students associate dean. There are important differ- use design to help people, he has made 2007 house in an eloquently philosophical closely, even visiting a few that had stayed ences between the Texas program and the better buildings. way, and current studio coordinator Alan in Kentucky after classes in New Haven Building Project. For instance, the Texas Design-build can provide a means Organschi (’88) discussed the program’s had resumed. He saw a larger educational program is an advanced studio with limited to achieve greater control over one’s work new collaboration with the housing opportunity, and through contacts with local enrollment rather than a required first-year and to see more income from a job, and in advocacy group Common Ground, which activists, the first Building Project was born: a course. Also, there is no conceit that the these respects it has steadily become more was represented by its director of design community center for the town of New Zion, program is out to produce an affordable common in commercially oriented practices. and construction, Nadine Maleh. The 2007 Kentucky, which Hayes described in detail. building (“affordable,” meaning financially The last two presenters, MADE and Peter Building Project is a house for a wheelchair- Moore was intellectually and accessible to low-income people). While Gluck, were examples of this. Based in bound veteran of the first Iraq War with a temperamentally inclined to find the Building showing images of their latest project—a Red Hook, Brooklyn, MADE was started by second-story rental unit to provide her with Project worthwhile. Although he was unable “demonstration” house open to the public three teammates from the 1998 Building a source of income. Unfortunately, Hopfner to attend the October event, Kent Bloomer that showcases sustainable design and Project, Oliver Freundlich, Ben Bischoff, and Organschi were cut short, the evening recalled that Moore felt strongly that students technology—Harpman took issue with and Brian Papa (all ’00), whose scheme was having gone well over schedule, leaving the should “get out of the drafting room and the possibility that academic design-build not selected to be built. Although they were audience and participants with a shared into the world,” and that direct experience programs could produce affordable build- active in the Building Project throughout their feeling that there was, and is, much more is essential to the education of an architect. ings. An earnest accounting of a building years at Yale—each served as a teaching to discuss. In the first few Building Projects, this direct project’s cost would include figures for the assistant in the program—when they started experience was of an America radically donated labor, the cost of the site, the design their professional collaboration they set up a —Ted Whitten (’00) different from the protected world of an Ivy fee (including the professors’ work), and traditional design-bid-build practice, in which Whitten is an architect and writer in New League university, and the students were sundry legal, development, and insurance the architects design and the builders build. Haven. He was a contributing author of the immersed in it. Turner Brooks (’70) supplied costs, making the real cost of a building After a series of frustrating experiences book, The Yale Building Project: The First 40 several memories of his experience as a project house uncompetitive in its inner-city with unreliable contractors, however, they Years (Yale School of Architecture, 2007). student at New Zion—of sprawling potluck New Haven market. There is nothing inher- saw an opportunity to use their Building lunches and the modest homes of local ently wrong with this, Harpman was quick Project experience and build their projects townspeople with whom the students lived. to say: the Building Project is an academic themselves. Today, they employ more than Moore believed that good design arises from program, the university makes a valid choice twenty people and act as a design firm, its particular context, and he knew that this to pay for it, and the city benefits greatly. general contractor, and fabrication shop. radical engagement with vernacular culture— However, as she has discovered since The culture of design-build— the so-called real world—would shake the leaving Yale, it is not a model that can be and to some extent that of the Building grip of European Modernism on his students’ exported to every university. Project—has always possessed an air of imaginations, suggesting new formal and While Harpman’s work grapples 1960s earthiness, of beat-up pickup trucks programmatic possibilities. with the pedagogical legacy of the Build- and timber-framed barns. In this context As the freewheeling and troubled ing Project, Bryan Bell’s (’89) engages its perhaps the most unusual presenter of the 1960s faded into the tougher realities of the strains of social activism, as well as those night was Peter Gluck (’65), of Peter Gluck 13 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 BLOW ME A HOUSE Blow Me a House

Yale Foam Houses, 1968, photographs In the 1960s and 1970s, architect Felix technique proposed by Grover—spraying by William Drury taught several studios at the School the foam onto inflated burlap forms. The Grover (’70). of Architecture and organized a number of designs of three teams were selected for independent projects in which graduate construction: one by Turner Brooks and Andy students designed and built structures using Burr; another by Roc Caivano and Rod Lack; an experimental technique of spray-on and the third by Daniel V. Scully and Anthony polyurethane foam construction. Although Zunino. In a recent discussion Brooks now largely forgotten, the work of Drury and recalled that his team’s design consisted his students received extensive media atten- of a series of domes, the largest of which tion at the time and was featured in The New was twenty-two feet in diameter. The main York Times, Vogue, Progressive Architecture, entrance was through a circular hall shaped and House & Garden. (The title of my essay like an umbilical cord. As part of the learning is taken from a 1969 Vogue article illustrated process, the students inflated test balloons with photographs by Claude Picasso.) The in the main exhibition space of the A&A work of Drury and his students is a fascinat- Building, an event that turned into a school- ing example of the culture of hands-on wide happening as the blown-up forms filled learning that characterized the Yale School of the two-story volume. The burlap bags were Architecture in the 1960s, the most important transported to the golf course, inflated, and manifestation of which was the founding in sprayed with foam. Class member Alberto a borough of Pittsburgh on the banks of and widely reviewed in the architectural 1967 of the First-Year Building Project. Lau made a film of the process, with a story the Allegheny River. They transported the press. However, in a recent interview Drury Although Drury taught a 1966 studio line involving one of the students being component pieces—described in a local denied Kiesler was an influence. For Drury, that was a direct precedent for the Building hatched out of an egglike shape and then newspaper as “the foam thing”—by barge the fundamental significance of working with Project, he developed a personal approach leaving the foam house “as if he were the first along the Allegheny to downtown Pittsburgh foam was to explore nonorthogonal forms to teaching that was somewhat different caveman to inhabit the Earth,” according and assembled them on a traffic-island park and nonstandard structures. Drury told a from that of his Yale peers. Born in Ohio in to Brooks. Design historian Jeffrey Miekle bordered by Liberty Avenue and Stanwix New York Times reporter, “From an educa- 1928 and educated at Phillips Academy accurately pinpointed the “Stone Age” Street, near Point State Park. Arranged in a tional standpoint, the idea is to get away and Princeton, Drury went on to graduate characteristics of the students’ designs. “The circle, the elements held vitrines to display from the stick mentality—thinking exclusively study at Princeton’s School of Architecture polyurethane foam dome, a kind of petrified small sculptures and objets trouvés that in terms of the post and beam—so that with a group that would prove important inflatable,” Miekle observed in his 1995 book, were part of an exhibit called, The Artist students after they graduate will feel at ease to twentieth-century American design: American Plastic: A Cultural History, “invited Looks at Industry. with a material like this, with its curved lines.” Charles W. Moore, Donlyn Lyndon, William comparisons to prehistoric cave dwellings or, Assembled in a festive spirit as One of the main attractions of Turnbull, and Hugh Hardy. In fact, Moore in a more timely reference, to the hobbit holes a group effort, the installation evoked the the foam projects for the students was the once observed, “Felix had masterminded my of J. R. R. Tolkein.” happenings of Claes Oldenburg from the immediacy of the building experience—the own Ph.D. at Princeton.” And it was Moore Brooks returned to the foam early 1960s. Just a year earlier, Yale students structures could be built in a few days who, as chairman of Yale’s Department of houses a year or so later to discover a had helped Oldenburg install his sculpture, and altered in a few hours. But the ease of Architecture, hired Drury to teach. Yet Drury group of eight naked hippies living in one Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, in application was also problematic. As Turner differed from Moore in a number of ways, of them. The presence of squatters did not the Beinecke courtyard at Yale. For Drury, the Brooks recounted after trying to build more most significantly by exploring experimental go over well with the university or with Yale foam structure at the Three Rivers Festival foam houses following his 1970 graduation, means of construction in the foam projects golfers who happened to encounter them was an urban instigator: a device to encour- “It was almost too easy. Foam proved an he organized for his Yale students. when chasing down an errant shot, so the age visitors to interrogate their everyday unsatisfactory material. It was very organic, The first foam project took place in houses were sealed up. Nevertheless, the environment. “It is meant to raise questions but wood construction gave more of a 1968 as a second-year studio for members photogenic constructions were featured in about what is inside and out, what is under “resistance” to design with. of the class of 1970. Teams of students an article in The New York Times, which led and over, what is slow and fast. It is meant to The foam projects reflected other built three foam houses during the spring to an invitation from New York’s Museum of be slightly absurd and totally useful,” Drury currents of the era. Architect Robert Godley semester in the woods by Yale’s golf course. Contemporary Crafts to design an installa- wrote in the brochure that accompanied (’74), described Drury as “a Merry Prankster,” The idea of using spray-on foam was actually tion for the exhibition, PLASTIC as Plastic, the exhibit. “This structure asks a few basic referring to Ken Kesey, author of One Flew a student’s. William Grover, a member of the which opened to enthusiastic reviews in architectural questions. What is a wall? What Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, who in 1964 led a class of 1969, saw a television commercial November 1968. Drury and three students— is an opening? What makes a room? What bus tour of psychedelic popularizers. In tune for the Union Carbide Corporation in which Brooks, Thomas Dryer, and R. Jerome is its size? How does it feel to be around it? with Kesey and other prominent figures of polyurethane foam was sprayed onto an Wagner—came to New York to design and Most of us never ask questions like these the 1960s counterculture, Drury focused inflatable object set on a deserted island. execute a cavelike “foam environment” about our surroundings, and most will find on ludic activity—the element of play. Yet in Seeing architectural possibilities in the idea, later illustrated in the May 1970 issue of this structure radically different. Is it frighten- contrast to most avatars of the countercul- Grover obtained funding from the school to Progressive Architecture. A recent gradu- ing or is it friendly?” ture movement, Drury worked from within the fly to Union Carbide’s plant in West Virginia, ate of the School, Craig Hodgetts (’67) also Described by one commentator as establishment. The foam structures he and where he convinced the company to donate had a piece exhibited, a study of modular a “foam castle,” the project had a quixotic his students made evoke a moment in Ameri- both spray equipment and several 55-gallon housing that he called “Maxx.” Drury would element, which Drury emphasized when can history when a Yale professor could take drums of polyurethane to Yale. Grover go on to build several more foam projects he suggested that at the festival’s end the on the role of homo ludens seriously and proposed spraying the foam onto shapes until the mid-1970s, when he stopped after structure “could be lifted into the river to float devise both learning experiences and experi- made of paper-backed burlap stitched learning of the deleterious health effects of to the Gulf of Mexico, where it would raise ments in alternative construction. together with a heavy-duty sewing machine. polyurethane. new questions. Back in Pittsburgh we should Leaf blowers would then be used to inflate One of the most interesting projects be left questioning everything around us.” —Richard W. Hayes the burlap shapes. Grover secured donations was a temporary outdoor installation for the The free-form shapes of these and Hayes (’86) is an architect at Rafael Viñoly of burlap from the Bemis Company, a Three Rivers Arts Festival, an annual ten- other foam projects by Drury inevitably Architects, in New York, and author of The manufacturer of burlap bags founded in day event in downtown Pittsburgh that recall the Endless House of avant-garde Yale Building Project: The First 40 Years (Yale 1858 in St. Louis, Missouri. The School gave originated in 1959. In mid-May 1970 Drury Romanian-born architect Frederick Kiesler, School of Architecture, 2007). approval to organize a project, and it became and a small group of participants—including who worked on the visionary project from Drury’s spring 1968 studio, with Grover as his son, Fritz, and former Yale student James 1950 to 1961, exhibiting a large-scale (With thanks to Turner Brooks, Robert teaching assistant. V. Righter and his wife, Sandy—fabricated concrete model at New York’s Museum of Godley, Bill Grover, Felix Drury, Fritz Drury, The studio students held a competi- a number of large conical and domical Modern Art in 1960. Kiesler’s book, Inside Jim Righter, and Dan Scully for their insight.) tion to design prototypical houses using the foam elements in a factory in Aspinwall, the Endless House, was published in 1966 14 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 CENTERFOLD

Louisa Lambri, Untitled (Mandel House, #05), 2005, Laserchrome print, courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. 15 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 CENTERFOLD 16 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 BOOK REVIEWS Book

Re- Perspecta 39 the differences engendered may appear marginal, they have an undeniable asset: that Re_Urbanism: of concrete impact. Transforming Capitals In contrast to major contemporary views Edited by Kanu Agrawal (’04), Melanie criticism regarding globalization, much of Domino (’06), Edward Richardson (’04), the writing in this volume is the result of the and Brad M. Walters (MED ’04). realization that the new American imperial- MIT Press, 2007, pp. 164. ism has also carried its positive side effects: the Internet and access to information, both The Uninvited Outsider virtually and physically, started to allow I am writing this while sitting in a hotel lobby for ongoing research projects that previ- in Jumeirah, Dubai. As one of the cities that ously seemed impossible. Furthermore, the is going through major changes right now introduction of inexpensive travel allowed for and most certainly over the next decades, it direct engagement with physical territories probably symbolizes most radically many of abroad. These days one can find out about the urban transformations taking place at the everything and everyone in almost no time. outset of the twenty-first century. One often Unburdened by the weight of the twentieth wonders how to engage with these cities and century, the world appears to be the exact places that are the result of the relentless opposite of what one expected from globali- process of globalization. The Yale volume, zation: a rediscovery of specificity that is Re_Urbanism: Transforming Capitals, offers based on the belief that certain problems insight into how one might deal critically and need tailor-made solutions rather than formal productively with those challenges. As I am meta-narratives. This notion, based on such in Dubai to set up the Architectural Associa- real geography of the world, is part and tion’s Winter School Middle East, Keller parcel of why one can witness an increasing Easterling’s essay, “Extrastatecraft,” which rejection of pure objects of style in favor of a dissects the power structures of capital specific and more precise kind of problem- (and wannabe capital) cities with a focus on solving on various scales. It is carried by the Dubai, could almost be read as a preface belief that there is a possibility for proactive to our engagement here—dealing with the spatial politics. labor housing situation and the direct spatial Although I couldn’t get my head implications of the politics of archipelagoes. around the piece on Kuwait City Villa Moda While some argue that “The Earth has a by Nader Tehrani—which from my point of new centre,” it becomes increasingly visible view represents a problematic route that that its flipside, the unprecedented need architecture and urbanism can possibly for construction workers as one example, take, not because of the spatial ambition produces repercussions that go well beyond but because of the deeper implications of the, by now well-established, reading of how architects become manipulated by their Dubai as a place somewhere between clients—this volume of Perspecta offers a pirates, coffee-table books, and real-estate helpful and needed manual for critical spatial techniques. practices. What seems crucial as a next step Perspecta performs a very interest- is to be able to find means and channels to ing act: it serves as a navigation device for turn investigation into spatial effects. It is the globalized spatial practices that have now the task of the new generation to further emerged over the last decade. Whether transform practice, enable students and in Tina Di Carlo’s piece on China and the upcoming practitioners to understand and subversive texture of the politics of SMS, utilize these ideas as a critical and stimulating Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss’s thoughts on the platform for their future work, and recalibrate spatial practices of the Western Balkans, or the outdated author relationship. Instead of Filip De Boeck’s and AbdouMaliq Simone’s breeding the next generation of facilitators reflections on the invisible urbanism practic- and mediators, we should aim to encourage es in Africa, one cannot escape from the the “uninterested outsider,” who is unaware blatant implications which space shades on of prerequisites and existing protocols, politics. What they all share is an urgency to entering the arena with nothing but creative rewrite the profiles and protocols for the role intellect. Running down the corridor with of the architect in contemporary practice. neither mandate nor fear of causing friction Addressing the question of what spatial or destabilizing existing power relations, practice could possibly imply, they attempt to such a practitioner is opening up a space stimulate an optimistic and proactive outlook for change, one that enables “political toward practice concerned with both physi- politics.” Given the increasing fragmenta- cal and nonphysical applications. tion of identities and the complexities of The volume smartly documents the contemporary city, we are now facing a recent shifts in architectural practice and situation in which it is crucial to think about a propagates new readings as an extension form of commonality that allows for conflict of its territory, such as Teddy Cruz’s projects as a form of productive engagement: a model on border politics between San Diego and of bohemian participation in the sense of an Tijuana. Such projects illustrate clearly the outsider’s point of entry, accessing existing shift toward subverting the historic norm, debates and discourses untroubled by their being reactive to the city that is present disapproval. versus abstract codifications of the city, space, and time in light of the reformulation — Markus Miessen of “the brief” as a critical design tool. Consid- Miessen is a German, London-based ering alternative mechanisms of change architect, researcher, educator, and writer. as a means of affecting existing spatial Co-director of Miessen&Ploughfields and conditions, these practitioners utilize parallel director of the Architectural Association investigation and non-populist modes of Winter School Middle East. He is co-editor participation to fuel ambitious and often self- of Did Someone Say Participate? An Atlas of generated projects, such as Teddy Cruz’s Spatial Practice (MIT Press/ Revolver, 2006). “Political Equator” series or similar inves- tigations and projects. Getting involved in political, social, legal, ephemeral, or educa- tional territories—to equip themselves with Support and Resist: the knowledge that enables them to pursue spatial human-rights research, community Structural Engineers involvement, framework and policy design, and Design Innovation ethics of planning, spatial intervention, or the By Nina Rappaport, The Monacelli temporary appropriation of urban struc- Press, 2007, pp. 232. tures—they effect change on several scales. Whereas similar approaches from the second From the looks of the table of contents, half of the nineteenth-century dealt with the Support and Resist: Structural Engineers city on the basis of hypothetical projects and Design Innovation appears to be a tidy within the context of (almost exclusively) the compilation of fourteen profiles of prominent artworld, we are now facing practitioners engineers, suggesting that it’s time to give who are no longer satisfied with small-scale them their due. After all, there is a preoc- direct action, but are vigorously pushing cupation in the architectural media and in toward applied theories and products. Just the lecture halls about who really designs look at Eyal Weizman’s, Alessandro Petti’s, or those daring new buildings, which are made Philipp Misselwitz’s work in Palestine; while of unfamiliar materials and appear to defy 17 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 BOOK REVIEWS

the laws of physics as they pull away from interesting. A pioneer in glass innovation, out the sophistication of Ant Farm’s engage- an exhaustive 493-page study principally Cartesian tradition. the firm is making great strides in turning a ment with media and consumer technolo- focused on the Middle East’s Gulf Region, “Is engineering the new architec- nonstructural material into a structural one. gies. Equally, her remotivation of Superstudio titled Al Manakh, or The Climate in English, ture?” The question is a red herring, even if Macfarlane speaks eloquently about the role and Archizoom through Ambasz’s 1972 will do little to change this. the answer is yes. Architects have collabo- of the engineer in taming dynamic physi- MoMA exhibition, Italy: The New Domestic Al Manakh is divided into three rated with engineers since the design and cal forces into a state of equilibrium, then Landscape, undermines the homogenizing sections: “Dubai Guide,” edited by Mouta- construction of buildings necessarily evolved adding the dynamicism back in. Complexity label of the “visionary” and re-presents their marat, “Gulf Survey” by AMO, and “Global into specialized camps. And yet one must and contradiction in engineering is not a work as contestatory activism situated in Agenda” by the magazine, Archis, AMO’s acknowledge that the rules of engagement metaphor, but Macfarlane and others such image culture. Her positioning of them within “Gulf Survey” is the dominant subject matter have changed. Traditionally, the process was as Werner Sobek, speak of the power of Operaismo and Autonomia milieus could only by sheer size, and it uses the now-typical linear. The architect’s design was passed intuition in their work. Sobek says intuition is be enhanced by a closer consideration of smattering of statistics, photo collages, along to the engineer to be made buildable. when scientific knowledge is absorbed into these movements’ nuanced theories along- and historical documentation to prove With extraordinary and ongoing advance- the “nonthought level of the brain”—and then side translated material made available to beyond doubt the explosive and seemingly ments in computer technology, materials he knows he’s got it right. Italians during the period: Althusser, Lukacs, nonsustainable growth now taking place in science, integrated systems, and sustainabil- One important lesson to be taken Chomsky, McLuhan, and even H. Rap Brown, the region. ity science, the process has become holistic, from this book is that the discourse about and Rudi Dutschke. Those searching for probing critique with the engineers and architects collaborat- architecture—the so-called public art—which The most lamentable part of Scott’s or explicit condemnation of this development ing from the beginning as Nina Rappaport has deteriorated into chatter about imagery book is the object itself. The pedestrian should look elsewhere. As its name suggests, emphasizes in her book, Support and Resist. and status, would be greatly expanded if graphic design and grainy photographs do Al Manakh is a catalog of the blitzkrieg of In her introduction, Rappaport engineers would stop hiding their light under not please, though perhaps her intent was for new construction now enveloping the region, offers a well-researched overview in Modern a bushel and teach their language to the rest them to not distract from the text. The font not necessarily a rigorous exploration of the building history beginning with Eiffel, pausing of us. is terribly thin and lightly printed, making it long-term fallout of this type of growth. to hear Le Corbusier marvel at the engineer’s difficult to read even in ideal lighting condi- Though discrete in feel and subject role, moving on to Nervi and Candela, and — Sara Hart tions. Finally, she needed a firm editorial hand matter, the three sections of this publication finally bringing the reader to the brink of Hart is an architectural critic based in to resolve the foreseeable discontinuities do share a lingering and implicit question: a new era in which hierarchical organiza- New York. and redundancies that arise from stringing How does a self-respecting architect who tion and proportional symmetry are being together essays to produce a book. cares about the future of the world, good replaced by explorations into “forms based These cosmetic critiques are minor design, and every stratum of society operate in nature, such as…cellular automatons, given the quality of Scott’s analyses and in such a political, economic, and social or those structures evolving from genetic Architecture or Techno- their strong contemporary resonances—for “climate?” By the time Ole Bouman and algorithms, breeding truss and other this book is anything but an “historical” Archis present their “Global Agenda” in construction systems.” Utopia: Politics after text. Citing Walter Benjamin, hers is not response to this question, one can’t help but Rappaport goes beyond the typical Modernism an effort to “recognize history…the way feel burdened and overwhelmed by the task profile and gives exhaustive, yet highly By Felicity D. Scott, MIT Press, it really was” but rather to “brush history at hand. readable, firm histories. The case studies 2007, pp. 374. against the grain,” exposing suppressed Indeed, as in life, it seems the best, that follow offer fascinating insight into the narratives. Architecture or Techno-Utopia most accessible place to find these answers collaborative process. She also has a knack In her first book, Architecture or Techno- performs a double critique: undermining may be on the fringes of the subject matter, for presenting technical information without Utopia: Politics after Modernism, Felicity claims by the “new grannies” to the myths rather than the glossy advertisements and weighting her narrative with arcane language. Scott reconsiders the “radical” 1960s, when of the successes and failures of 1968 as an boosterish assertions. The most interesting Having said that, I was startled by the author Modernism’s machine age began to yield to intellectual sine qua non and reinvigorating and telling shorter essays of the collec- saying in one case that engineering “is not post-Fordist information-based economies. the positive oppositional qualities of alter- tion come from Carlos Ott and Todd Reisz a science because it’s subjective.” It’s more Scott focuses on the transition from the native tactics beyond grand strategy. Her (’03). The former, titled “Fairness,” details a useful to acknowledge that engineering is 1950s, when the inefficacies of Modernism’s invocation of extra-parliamentary political melancholic and personal account of fledg- an applied science, as opposed to a “pure” political aspirations became all too clear— theory reminds us that it was during this ling intellectual property rights in emerging or theoretical one. By definition, an applied set against social and institutional upheavals, period that autonomous self-organization architectural markets; the latter investigates science uses knowledge from one or more the rise of media culture, and predictions was linked to emergent subjectivities and Dubai worker camps, where an army of men fields to solve practical problems. of ecological apocalypse—into the 1970s, emotive desires as a project of freedom. This and women search for civility in the chaotic Consider Cecil Balmond, Arup’s when the crises of the discipline’s intellectual tradition has also been overwritten, in part and cacophonous city that surrounds them. resident visionary and cofounder with agenda and the instability of architectural by the “delirious Deleuzianism” of the 1990s, Indeed, bolder assertions that the Charles Walker of the firm’s Advanced semantics settled into an institutionalizing which sought to operationalize and illustrate Gulf’s flashy and fantastical architectural Geometry Unit. Rappaport nails the essence dialectic. the extra-formal qualities of French thought. wonders are “reconfiguring the world” (as of the Advanced Geometry Unit with The book consists of nine vignettes, Thus, her most poignant critique Koolhaas states in his upbeat introduction, Balmond’s own words: “Structure has moved most adapted from earlier articles in Artfo- targets the contemporary academy and the “Last Chance”) come off as a kind of boost- from a complex interdependency and is not rum, October, Perspecta, and Grey Room, alliance of reactionary convenience between erism that fits neatly within the region’s own viewed as a dumb skeleton. …When you the journal Scott cofounded with Reinhold the postcritics and the digital vanguard: “An pattern of media exploitation: “If there were break from symmetry, instability is threaten- Martin and Branden Joseph in 2000. Despite ethical response to postmodernism...would no Burj Dubai, no Palm, no World, would ing, but it gives you a sense of order, and that its patchwork quality, common threads stitch thus. . . have to include a historical critical- anyone be speaking of Dubai today?” (Mike is what’s so hard for architects to understand: together her analyses. The first half of her ity toward form and a nonservile virtuosity Davis quotes a developer asking a reporter the edge of instability.” Rappaport goes on book targets the rapport between the New with respect to new technologies, and it from The Financial Times, in his own account to explain Balmond’s rigorous computations York architecture scene and the institu- would have to refuse both the conservative of Dubai, titled, “Fear and Money in Las and structural refinements, which made tions supporting it, especially the Museum rejection and the inadequately theorized Vegas”). In a city of only 1.5 million people possible some of the daring experiments of Modern Art. From exchanges between adoption of new technological potentials. (Shanghai has fifteen million), one can’t of several architects, especially the work of Meyer Schapiro and Lewis Mumford to the Despite suggesting a vanguard character, the help feel that the moral dilemmas posed by Rem Koolhaas. The two have collaborated curatorial tenures at MoMA of Arthur Drexler uncritical adoption of new technology has Dubai’s explosive growth are the very same on international competitions that have led and Emilio Ambasz, from the “Universitas” the possibility of operating, like historicism, ethical problems faced elsewhere in the to commissions such as the CCTV in Beijing. conference to the origins of the Institute as a form of conservatism, as demonstrated world—in a Singapore building a regional Rappaport’s lucid narrative about their for Architecture and Urban Studies, she in postcritical and posttheoretical streams of casino hub, a China clogging its own skies collaboration is a fascinating read. interrogates the curious but not surprising contemporary practice.” with stifling pollution, and a New York and It’s appropriate that the book begins symbiosis of leftist thought and high culture Architecture or Techno-Utopia London on the tail-end of a historic commer- with Arup, an international incubator for the alongside and within the East Coast estab- offers provocative examples of a “third way” cial building boom. brightest young engineering minds, many of lishment. Rather than producing differences, beyond Le Corbusier’s imperative: “Architec- In the end, it’s hard to argue with the whom have gone on to start their own firms her analysis suggests this symbiosis was all ture or Revolution.” Scott is hopeful regard- publication’s assertion that the Gulf region after putting in as many as twenty years too easily assimilated within debates that ing alternative practices today; yet, between represents one future of the world. What isn’t there. Ted Happold’s journey from Arup entrenched Post-Modernist inclusionism Post-Modernism’s both-and and the Oedipal clear is whether it is the best future of the wunderkind to founder of Buro Happold, and and exclusionism as the undisputed dialectic impulses of that tradition’s children, the world or whether it is all that different. his firm’s subsequent research into fabric, within the academy. drive to choose a position among the grand tensile, and air-supported structures has From the White–Gray exchange to theories and cool countertheories or to adopt —Forth Bagley laid the groundwork for performance-based Tafuri’s quasi-totalizing critique of capital- an anti-intellectual ideology of management Bagley (’06) is an associate principal at KPF in structural design, which has revolutionized ism’s subsumption of all design theories, or technique is increasingly difficult to avoid. New York. use of structural fabrics in architecture. Chris it is this historical institutionalization of Beyond the tired banalities of “theory versus Wise, one of the founders of Expedition “radical” disciplinary failures that Scott practice,” her lesson is that grand strategies Engineering, also got his start at Arup, where criticizes. She convincingly argues that can be quite binding when not inflected the philosophy of “total design” continues our capitulation to these master narratives through constantly changing tactics. to influence his firm’s work. Guy Nordenson, overwrites peripheral experiments pursuing another alumnus of Arup, has gone on to “other forms of engagement with new social —Britt Eversole realize both Steven Holl’s sponge metaphor movements, new technologies, and theoreti- Eversole (’04, MED ’07) is a lecturer at Yale. for MIT’s Simmons Hall and Richard Meier’s cal paradigms, as well as with...emergent cantilevered shells for the Jubilee Church, economic, administrative, and military in Rome, exquisitely made in concrete. logics.” Her best chapters reframe fringe Jane Wernick, the only woman in the book, and nontraditional practices, which briefly Al Manakh, Dubai Guide spent two decades at Arup as a protégé of produced lines of flight beyond dominant By AMO, Moutamarat, Archis, 2007, Peter Rice, designing domes and a series of paradigms. Her celebration of Ant Farm pp. 493. eccentric structures before starting her own (cofounded by 1967 Yale graduate Doug firm in 1998. Michels in 1968), the Fulleresque cults of Keeping up with the litany of publications, Not every engineer was incubated “dome” culture produced by 1960s dropouts pamphlets, and paraphernalia produced in the Arup womb. The chapter on the and Architettura Radicale make for the most by Rem Koolhaas’s AMO can be a mind- articulate and thoughtful Tim Macfarlane and entertaining reading. Beyond their dark boggling and daunting task for even the his firm, Dewhurst Macfarlane, is particularly humor and neo-shock antics, Scott singles most avid of supporters. His latest venture, 18 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 SPRING EVENTS

that heightened the unreality of the abstract structures. The artists return to these images Spring Events with an enormous sense of melancholy. Artists such as Luisa Lambri explore the possibilities of the medium of photogra- objectives and processes. Each presenta- phy beyond the straightforward documentary Sustainable Architecture: tion is intended to bring out one area critical Mobile Anxieties image. Her photographs of iconic Modern Today and Tomorrow to recasting our understanding of the built interiors, mainly windows, enhance the environment. The second session looks at A symposium, “Mobile Anxieties,” organized reflections on various surfaces, imbuing light the question of sustainability through the by senior students in the MED program on with a materiality that animates the space. In A symposium will lens of other multidisciplinary fields—from April 11 and 12, 2008, will consist of papers her interpretation of Edward Durell Stone’s be held from Friday, public health to public policy and planning— presented by advanced graduate students Mandel House, the interior is infused with a April 4 to Saturday to foreground how problem domains are from other universities in architecture and peaceful atmosphere of subdued vitality. OUR April 5, 2008, as the determined. The third session will highlight allied fields, with responses by Yale faculty. Other artists, such as Terence kick-off for the Hines three cases in which the architect/planning The keynote address will be the annual Roth- Gower, have engaged in a discourse with COMMON Endowed Fund to the team stepped out of their normative bounds Symonds lecture, which brings scholars from Modern architecture through videos of School of Archi- to radically challenge the prima facie content the social sciences to speak about the built images from 1950s and 1960s Mexican FUTURE tecture, with Gro of contemporary practice. The final session environment. That lecture, “Mobility, Security, Modern architecture portrayed in films: for Harlem Brundtland brings together leading architects in the area and Creativity: The Politics and Economics of example, the Museum of Anthropology, of Sweden as the of sustainable design to discuss the possibili- Global Creative Cities,” will be delivered by by Pedro Ramirez Vazquez; the apartment keynote speaker. ties of achievable innovation—to help set the Adrian Favell, associate professor of sociol- buildings of Avenida de la Reforma and the stage and the priorities for a new generation ogy at UCLA. Hotel Presidente, in Acapulco. In Bridal Party of building research. The speakers include Architecture has had a long and (Despedida de Soltera), the title of a popular Margaret Livingstone, Jack Spengler, frustrated romance with mobility. Notions Mexican film, Gower uses film stills and To celebrate the inauguration of the Hines Daniel Esty, Danny Pearl, Sheila Kennedy, of movement are frequently at odds with erases the main characters and other distrac- Endowed Fund for Advanced Sustain- Kristina Hill, Lisa Curran, Fred Koetter, Stefan architecture’s perpetual longing for founda- tions to focus on the built environment. For ability in Architectural Design, the School Behnisch, Bill Odell, and Ken Yeang. tions, permanence, and fixity; however, him, as for other artists, there seems to be of Architecture will hold a symposium, architecture has often embraced mobility as a desire to believe again in the idealism of “Unprecedented Collaborations,” which a reflection of the anxieties that mark wars, architecture and utopian ideas, however will question and reframe the fundamental natural disasters, sociocultural changes, feckless that may be. assumptions currently guiding the field of Building the Future: technological leaps, and economic varia- Daniel Arsham looks back on sustainable design. The Hines Endowed tions. Consider, for example, the relation- Modern architectural sites with a perspec- Fund will promote research and teaching in The University as ship of Archigram’s Instant Cities to the tive that is almost despairing. His piece, The the attempts to minimize, mitigate, and avoid Architectural Patron turbulence of the 1960s, or how new national M-House got lost and found itself floating adverse impacts on the natural environment identities and the International Style were in the sea, affecting salination [sic] levels in and human health, while also enhancing In response to the many building campaigns forged. Hurricane Katrina heightened fears the North Atlantic (2004), depicts a Modern beneficial contact between people and under way at campuses across the nation, about climate change and disaster response house encrusted in a solitary iceberg, natural systems and processes in the built including Yale’s, the Department of the while highlighting architectural issues of symbolizing a precarious future, along with environment. Gro Harlem Brundtland, of History of Art, with support from the Presi- prefabrication, temporary housing, and urban the possibility of survival. Here Modern Sweden, whose influential Brundtland dent’s Office and the School of Architecture, rebuilding. Mass migrations during the indus- architecture reemerges like a wounded Report of 1987, also called Our Common will host “Building the Future: The University trial revolution upset city plans, significantly hero after a catastrophic war. Arsham Future, spearheaded sustainable agendas as Architectural Patron.” On January 25 changing the way people and goods flow chooses Modernism as the only represen- worldwide, will be the keynote speaker on and 26, 2008 architects, planners, school through urban space. tation of history worth saving or with the Friday, April 4, and the symposium will focus administrators, and historians will gather to The “Mobile Anxieties” sympo- potential to survive. on intersections between architecture and ask what universities can do to assure good sium will take a critical look at the idea that In contrast, artists such as Angela disciplines beyond the normal frame of refer- architecture and in turn what architecture can mobility—both literal and metaphoric—sub- Dufresne show optimism. Her paintings ence, establishing new directions for sustain- do to foster good universities. Speakers have verts the authority of boundaries, allowing for portray many of the utopian residences able design by developing the concept and been chosen for their experience in several spatiotemporal shifts that render foundations envisioned for the general public but practice of achievable innovation. fields, from design and planning to teaching contingent and identities mutable. What are ultimately affordable only to the privileged. The urgency of climate change and administration, which has given many the precedents for mobility in architecture, Dufresne reconfigures dwellings by Walter has propelled the architecture profession of them the opportunity to take on disparate and how are they related to a sense of Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright to fit new toward more environmentally responsible roles in the process of building universities. general unease in architecture and beyond? functions and users. She also repositions practices. From the proliferation of sustain- The symposium will include a How do cultural, technological, economic, them in lavish landscapes or historically ability consultants and green-design firms keynote lecture on Friday, January 25, by and sociopolitical mechanisms stimulate or charged sites. to the sweeping adoption of energy building David Brownlee, the Shapiro-Weitzenhoffer limit designs for mobility while exacerbating Cyprien Gaillard revisits massive codes and LEED certification, a wide range professor and chairman, history of art, or mitigating their attendant anxieties? We Modern housing complexes that were of sustainable objectives and methods have University of Pennsylvania. His talk, “Building hope the symposium will open questions often developed and sponsored by Eastern entered the profession, profoundly reshaping Education,” will survey the intricate histori- about the dynamics between the internal European governments. He focuses on the the practice and products of architecture. cal interrelations between architecture and disciplinary angst of mobile architecture and social implications of these megastructures, While earlier programs in sustainable education, and look ahead to challenges external fears. presenting both their beauty and their horror. design focused on intention and informa- facing universities in the future. As architects and theorists struggle In Desniansky Raion, Gaillard documents tion to develop commitment to the cause The following day, two panels will to engage the increasing mobility of capital, a massive gang fight that occurred in front and to disseminate best practices, current examine recent work. The first, “Do Good labor, information, and culture—and as of a public-housing project. He reveals the programs are geared around standardization. Buildings Make Good Education?” will anxieties of every type seem to be on the housing developments as sites not only of Implementation is now commonly regarded feature practicing architects: Chris McVoy, rise—a critical examination of architecture’s repression but also of victimization. Gaillard as the next necessary step toward a more senior partner, Steven Holl Architects; Mack mobile anxieties is timely and will contribute is fascinated with buildings that embody the sustainable future. It is timely to ask whether Scogin, principal, Mack Scogin Merrill Elam significantly to contemporary debates. contradictions of the utopian promises inher- enough is being done and whether what Architects, and former chairman, Harvard ent in social housing, which became a setting is done is truly effective. Signing a pledge, University Graduate School of Design; and of contemporary social conflict and violence. making a commitment to a target, adopting Frances Halsband, partner, R. M. Kliment an array of best practices, and using state- & Frances Halsband Architects and former Painting the Glass House: of-the-art evaluation tools are all aspects that dean, Pratt Institute School of Architec- we associate with sustainability, but do they ture. Panelists will discuss their work on Artists Revisit Modern Gordon Cheung, lead to effective results? Energy use by build- campuses around the country and comment Architecture Rented ings is increasing not only faster than that of on the university’s role as a unique patron Reality, 2004, any other sector, but also faster than the rate of architecture. The panel will be chaired by on display in of construction. Perhaps most disturbing is Robert S. Nelson, the Robert Lehman Profes- Painting the Glass House: that the largest increases are in buildings that sor of the History of Art at Yale. Artists Revisit have adopted many of the accepted sustain- The second panel, “Campus or Modern able practices. Museum: The University as Architectural Architecture. We yearn for well-defined solutions, Patron,” will comprise teachers and planners, but perhaps we need to look beyond our including Karen Van Lengen, dean, School Using another stage for dystopia, normative context for the questions we of Architecture, University of Virginia; Jay Gordon Cheung presents monumental should be asking, instead of coming up with Chatterjee, professor, School of Architecture versions of the Modern skyscraper as solutions for ill-defined problems. We frame and Interior Design, University of Cincinnati; representations not of progress and hopeful- our problems in terms of what we know William J. Mitchell (MED ’70), Alexander ness but of disaster. For him, the failures and how we do things, but what would or W. Dreyfoos, professor of architecture and of Modernism have served to associate its could happen if we had the ability to step media arts and sciences, and director, MIT architecture with corporate capital. And back and question the very construction of Design Laboratory, and Robert A.M. Stern, these accidental symbols of excess have our assumptions? Organized by associate dean, Yale School of Architecture. This Luisa Lambri, (Mandel House, #06), 2005, on display brought Modern architecture into the popular professor Michelle Addington, the sympo- discussion will address the ways universities in Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern imagination in a new and unexpected sium proposes to introduce multiple contexts can work with architects to create buildings Architecture. way—as potential terrorist targets—since from which to reexamine the underlying that contribute to education and the produc- September 11. questions of sustainability, in the expectation tion of knowledge. The panel will be chaired The multimedia work of contemporary artists For all of the artists in this exhibi- that such core knowledge can help identify by Sandy Isenstadt, assistant professor in fascinated with Modern architecture for its tion, Modern architecture may have “failed,” new approaches grounded in the practice of the Department of the History of Art. promise of utopia will be displayed in the but its utopian ideas succeed in providing architecture, but informed by the knowledge Each forum will leave ample time for exhibition, Painting the Glass House: Artists a source of inspiration for considering the of other disciplines. open discussion and will close with a focus Revisit Modern Architecture, at Yale School future. The first session of the symposium on “The Future of Architecture in Education,” of Architecture from February 11 to May is devoted to presentations by leading featuring Brownlee; David Joselit, professor 9, 2008, and at Aldrich Contemporary Art —Mónica Ramírez-Montagut and experts in extra-architectural disciplines. and chairman of the history of art department Museum, from March 9 to July 27, 2008. Jessica Hough From neurobiology to fluid mechanics to at Yale; and Laura Cruickshank, university These sixteen emerging and Ramírez-Montagut, of the Guggenheim environmental science, these “absent” planner at Yale. midcareer artists from eleven countries, Museum, and Hough, of Mills College Art disciplines have undergone rapid change in recall a Modern architecture that was often Museum, are co-curators of the exhibition. recent years, yet without a rethinking of their depicted through unpopulated photographs 19 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL BOOKS Archi-

Four books by the School of Architecture tecture have been produced this past year. Layered Urbanisms, just published, features the work of the first three Louis I. Kahn Visit- ing Assistant Professors, endowed in 2004 Vladmir School to bring young innovators in architectural Ossipoff, design to the School. The book includes Blanche the projects of the advanced studios of Hill House, Kahala, Gregg Pasquarelli in “Versioning 6.0,” Galia Honolulu, Solomonoff in “Brooklyn Civic Space,” and 1961. On Books Mario Gooden in “Global Typologies.” It was display in Hawaiian edited by Nina Rappaport with Julia Stanat Modern. (’05), and designed by Mgmt.design, and is published by the School of Architecture and and Linus Pauling, Jr., built award-winning being distributed by W. W. Norton. Hawaiian Modern religious structures for the Punahou School Exhibition Opens and Hawaii Preparatory Academy, and was Building A New Europe: Portraits of Modern the chief design architect of the Honolulu Architects features a series of articles from in Honolulu International Airport. Upon his death, Pencil Points in 1935 and 1936 by architect, Ossipoff was deemed “the dean of Hawaiian designer, and architectural critic George Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of architecture.” Nelson (1908–1986), who was a graduate Vladimir Ossipoff, a comprehensive exhibi- Sakamoto initiated this multifaceted of Yale College in 1928 and Yale School tion of the Modernist architect, opened at the four-year project, which includes a catalog of Architecture in 1932 and a fellow of the Honolulu Academy of Arts on November 28, published by Yale University Press in associ- American Academy of Rome. The articles 2007, to a huge crowd and unprecedented ation with the Honolulu Academy of Arts, a include profiles of the architects Marcello media attention for an architectural event in documentary by KDN Films, and the exhibi- Piacentini, Italy; Helweg-Moeller, Denmark; the fiftieth state. Academy of Arts director tion of more than two hundred artifacts. The Luckhardt Brothers, Germany; Gio Ponti, Stephen Little (’87 Ph.D., art history) and exhibition catalog, edited by Sakamoto with Italy; Le Corbusier, France; Ivar Tengbom, guest curator Dean Sakamoto (’98 MED), the Karla Britton, lecturer in architectural history, Sweden; Mies Van der Rohe, Germany; School of Architecture’s exhibition director, and Diana Murphy, includes a foreword by Giuseppe Vaccaro, Italy; Eugene Beaudouin, welcomed the nearly two thousand museum Kenneth Frampton and essays by Britton, France; Raymond McGrath, England; Walter members and guests, including journalists Don J. Hibbard, Spencer Leineweber, Marc Gropius, Germany, and Tecton, England. from New York, California, and Japan, who Treib, and Sakamoto. KDN’s feature-length The book also includes a provoca- came to get a first glimpse of this retrospec- film, True To Form: Vladimir Ossipoff, Archi- tive essay by Kurt W. Forster, architectural tive of Hawaii’s legendary Modernist. tect captures Ossipoff’s fascinating life historian and Vincent Scully Visiting Profes- Hawaiian Modern is the first and contributions to modern Hawaii. The sor at Yale, about George Nelson, situating show to present a critical view of Ossipoff exhibition, also designed by Sakamoto, him both in an architectural and cultural (1907–1998), who at a time of swift political displays thirty Ossipoff buildings organized context. The book brings to light the period and social change in Hawaii contributed to in five design themes portrayed in archival from the perspective of an outsider who an aesthetic that represents a combination of black-and-white photographs by noted worked to bring to the fore European modern local and global influences, fusing Western Hawaiian photographer Robert Wenkam, as architecture to an American audience, while Modernism with elements of Japanese well as Julius Shulman and others; original at the same time influencing the editorial and island vernaculars. Today, Ossipoff’s drawings by the Ossipoff office; newly direction of the journal Pencil Points. The work remains influential in Hawaii and also commissioned color photography by Victoria book was featured in the New York Times provides a model for architects who value Sambunaris; fifteen analytical scale models Book Review on September 16, 2007, and stewardship of the land and the reconciliation made for the exhibition by Dean Sakamoto it was published thanks to the generosity of of disparate cultural legacies. Architects; and many international publica- Herman Miller Inc. and Vitra AG. The son of a Russian diplomat, tions in which Ossipoff’s work was featured Ossipoff was born in Vladivostok, Russia, during the postwar years. The exhibition, The Yale Building Project: The First 40 Years, and schooled in Tokyo and Yokohama, on view in Honolulu until January 27, 2008, by Richard W. Hayes, published by the Yale Japan, where he survived the Kanto has been featured in publications such School of Architecture and distributed by earthquake in 1923. He completed his as Modernism, Art & Auction, I.D., The Yale University Press, was released in July architectural education at the University of San Francisco Chronicle, and Wallpaper. 2007. This book represents an invaluable California, Berkeley, in 1931, and then moved The show will travel to the Yale School of history of the Building Project since its to Honolulu to begin a career that spanned Architecture gallery from September 2 inception in 1967 with text contributions from over six decades. Ossipoff’s work was through October 24, 2008, and the Deutsche alumni, especially Ted Whitten (’00), and widely published; his Architectural Record Architekturmuseum, in Frankfurt, from Febru- other contributors including Adam Hopfner homes of 1960 and 1963 stood alongside ary 7 to May 10, 2009. (’99), Tim Hickman (’00), Adam Ruedig, those of Paul Rudolph and Marcel Breuer. For more information see Jeff Goldstein (’01), Marissa Brown (’05), He designed residences for Clare Booth Luce www.hawaiianmodern.org. Vanessa Ruff (’05), Abigail Ransmeier (’06), Benjamin Smoot (’08), and Marc Guberman (’08), who was also photo editor. The book was reviewed in the December 14, 2007, Architects Journal and was the topic of the panel discussion at the Architectural League of New York in October, 2007 (see page 12).

Future-Proofing, published in fall 2007 was the second book in a series of the Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Fellowship in Architecture and featured developer Stuart Lipton of London; architect and Davenport Visiting Professors Lord Richard Rogers and Chris Wise of Expedition Engineering, and Malcolm Smith of Arup. In spring 2006, Installation Yale students designed a contemporary of Yale urban environment in Stratford City, in east School of London, the site of the 2012 Olympics, as Architecture a community around a new transit hub. posters in Graphic The students were encouraged to provide Virtuosity, sustainable projects as well as solutions for a Toronto future-proofing strategy of a minimum of one School of Architec- hundred years. The book was edited by Nina ture, 2007. Rappaport, with Andrew Steffen (’08). The first book in the series was Poetry, Property, and Place, featuring Gerald Hines as the They were arranged thematically by style, Bass Fellow in Architecture and architect Yale Posters Exhibited lecture series, individual architects, and and Saarinen Visiting Professor Stefan exhibitions in a variety of graphic expres- Behnisch. The third book in the series will be Ten posters produced by the Yale School of sions that “served as a tool and forum for The Human City: King’s Cross, with Roger Architecture and designed by Michael Beirut graphic experimentation, as a vehicle for the Madelin of Argent Group LPC and Demetri of Pentagram were included in the exhibition, exploration of expressive opportunities in Porphyrios, to be published in fall 2008. The Graphic Virtuosity, Architectural Posters typography, and as a voice for new architec- series has been designed by Mgmt.Design. from the Robert G. Hill Collection, at the Eric tural imagery conceived by leading architects Arthur Gallery of the Toronto School of Archi- around the world,” notes Hill in the exhibition Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, tecture from September 1 through December catalog produced for the show. edited by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Donald 8, 2007. Hill has amassed a collection of Albrecht (Yale University Press) was awarded over 1,600 posters from 1967 through 2007 the Author’s Club Banister Fletcher Prize from which 75 were selected for the show. for 2007. 20 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 FALL 2007 LECTURES Fall 2007 Lectures

The following are excerpts from the fall 2007 that’s too bourgeois. Bourgeois is a term that when aerial images are shot at oblique angles lecture series. means nothing today. All of our politicians and at relatively low altitudes, showing land are talking about the middle class—what and buildings, they entwine natural and Nick Johnson happened to the working class? Where are constructed elements. Low-level oblique- Edward P. Bass Distinguished the poor? Everything is being done for the angle pictures can establish a complete Visiting Architecture Fellow middle class. I don’t think there ever was a visual inventory of a town because they can “Profit and the Planet: Placemaking real bourgeoisie in this country. The idea was show inaccessible places, such as wetlands for People” that the bourgeois like comfortable things. or steep terrain, and reveal hidden sites such August 30 They like easy chairs. as dumps or gated communities. The design of buildings has always been Peter Eisenman Who runs the I contend that sharpening citizens’ Nick Johnson critically important to us. One of the things compound, by the way, now that Philip and professionals’ ability to critique bad we are challenging through our career is is dead? building patterns helps them to visualize that good design doesn’t cost money; good TW After I wrote this book, I positive changes. design adds value. could have shot myself as a bad reporter. New Islington tells a story about Every month there was a group that Philip Pier Vittorio Aureli the development of our thinking. In the Johnson had at the Century Club called the Brendan Gill Lecture early projects, our only solution was to work High Table. Around the High Table were the “The Project of Autonomy” with a good-quality architect to produce leading architects, the most prestigious in October 1 an amazing building. The agenda became terms of architectural reviews, in the country. I believe one of the major problems between much more developed by having to work, by It was quite a group. Think what I could have architecture and urbanism today is that— our own choice, with communities to deliver done with that. and perhaps this is coming from my local affordable housing. We are also embrac- PE Yeah, you could have? We context between London and Holland—the ing the environmental agenda to develop should have never invited you. contemporary city is constantly researched, environmentally responsible solutions. TW But I’m a good guest. I wouldn’t but is no longer theorized. There is a strong The first of a few rules I discuss is even talk about it in a public place. fundamental difference between research Tom Wolfe & Peter Eisenman about being unprofessional. When we first PE Let’s be honest: Philip ran the and theory in the sense that research is started to talk to people like Lilly, who lived compound, and we had to be there. In other something that belongs to scientific criteria, in the housing estate, we were naïve and words, when he called a meeting, Cesar Pelli which is always based on hypotheses that arrogant, actually. We believed everybody would come down from New Haven—the guy are due to change and therefore somehow wanted to live in an Urban Splash flat. But never would miss a meeting—and Bob Stern lead to different conclusions than the ones Lilly was quite happy with the house that she was always there. We didn’t agree with each produced by the hypothesis. Theory is not had. We had to find a way of dealing with the other, but that was the compound at least an activity that updates our own vision of the residents and engage them in this process for the United States. People like Jim Stirling contemporary city, or any other vision, but of regeneration, renewal, and the redevelop- and Aldo Rossi—all of the nearly famous it theorizes the fundamentals of the vision ment of their homes, which is a very frighten- and famous would always come to the table. itself. Theory is never another representation ing prospect for them. They wouldn’t refuse a Philip invitation. of the city or of architecture but a questioning Rule number two was to be TW Well, no one has taken his of the criteria through which we define these unaccountable. I’m really concerned that place today. presentations. This is precisely what I would this idea of accountability makes it easier for PE Let’s come to something like to do tonight by defining what I believe Dolores Hayden people to do nothing than to do something; closer to you: Isn’t there a literary compound, are the fundamental criteria of architecture, play everything safe, so the spirit of adven- my friend? especially in relationship with the city, which ture is killed. In the desire to create quite a TW Yes, it has ruined the novel. is actually the formal and the political. fantastic piece of the public realm, one of The mission statement of work is the things that we were mindful of was that, Dolores Hayden to produce more with less. Basically “less is first of all, this was not a master plan, but a “A Field Guide to Sprawl” more” is not Mies’s statement; it is capital- strategic framework. September 20 ism’s statement. All the evolution from the Another rule is to be irresponsible. “Sprawl” is unregulated growth expressed modern to the contemporary city are shaped The new street in New Islington has no curbs. as careless new use of land and other by this process to make it more efficient, This would be deemed to be irresponsible, resources, as well as abandonment of older more rational—even Guy Debord understood because we’re used to rules for barriers to built areas. While policy analysts debate this forty years ago. The spectacle is not just control the way pedestrians move through the causes and consequences of sprawl, because humanity has become a bunch of space. In actual fact, we have taken the many planners and environmentalists use a monkeys; spectacle is a more efficient means notion of the irresponsible decision to working definition of sprawl as a process of of reproduction of labor force because it Pier Vittorio Aureli reinvent the idea of controlling people, to large-scale real estate development result- shifts the politics of work from coercion to allow for the natural passage of vehicle and ing in low-density, scattered, discontinuous persuasion. Of course, liberalism and the pedestrian traffic. We’ll see if that works. car-dependent construction, usually on the development of your power is precisely this. In terms of this notion of respon- periphery of declining older suburbs and It is not to live in freedom but to produce sibility and irresponsibility and what it shrinking city centers. freedom, to somehow construct an environ- means for me to be at Yale, what struck me Sadly, federal support to stimulate ment where the maximum of integration last time I was here was that architecture development has been crafted without regard coincides with the maximum of freedom, doesn’t seem to be able to, from what I for the physical damage to urban places and choice, and pluralism. saw, consider the ability to solve many of natural landscapes, or the economic damage We know Mies as an architect was the social problems that exist in the U.S.; I to large groups of people that they might not interested in politics; he was always think that we need to see how that can be cause. In the 1950s and 1960s, highway standing away from any obvious political reworked and reapplied—not to dumb down planning involved the demolition of hundreds meaning. But I believe that because of his the architecture, but to create some fantastic of thousands of urban businesses and choice of the plinth, Mies’s work is essentially and stimulating new buildings in new places dwellings, frequently in neighborhoods political as it constantly defines the most for the people in a very egalitarian way. inhabited by people of color. Between 1934 crucial point of architecture of buildings, Reinhold Martin and 1960s, mortgage insurance programs which is actually their own siting. The siting Tom Wolfe favored credit for men over women and of a project is much more important than Peter Eisenman, Louis I. Kahn whites over people of color. As a result, the its design. So establishing the appearance Visiting Professor American landscape was transformed both within the public space of a project is the “From Bauhaus to Our House: physically and economically to favor subur- most critical moment in which we design a A Conversation” ban white populations and male-headed building. It is interesting that this form of the September 10 households. Income tax provisions that allow plinth has completely disappeared in the Tom Wolfe Originally I was going to name the Americans to deduct the amount they pay recent history of architecture. book From Bauhaus to Our House: Inside for mortgage interest, points, and property the Compound, which would have been a taxes from taxable income serve to deepen Reinhold Martin better title strictly speaking, but I couldn’t this discrimination. Myriam Bellazoug Memorial Lecture resist this translingual rhyme—Bauhaus and When people struggle to interpret “Islands and Worlds: Postmodernism our house—it was too much for me, so I their local landscapes, aerial photographs After Globalization” used it. As far as I can tell the compound still reveal the scale of existing and new develop- October 22 exists; it’s more corporate and everybody’s ment. In an era when a truck stop can be Perspecta 39 is dedicated to the theme in it, but it hasn’t expanded. The boundaries larger than a traditional town, aerial images of capital cities. One reason we might be are the same. I was just reading an essay by convey the vast spread of much twenty- interested in them is that the authority and Jean Nouvel, and when you read that essay first-century development and can bring perhaps even the relevance of the political and his theory, you feel like you are about up-to-the-minute data on the process of arrangement that they and their architecture to see the most explosive new direction in construction. Also, aerial photographs can represent, a world organized around sover- architecture—something that would make be understood by people without technical eign nation-states, has been undermined at Frank Gehry look like a blank wall. But when training, in a way that zoning maps, zoning different levels and to different degrees by you actually see what he has done, it’s that codes, satellite surveys, and traditional so-called globalization. same building. It has to be steel, glass, site plans cannot. If shot at altitudes from My book, The Multi-National City concrete, linoleum is okay for the floor, but 1,000 to 2,000 feet, they can show building (Actar, 2007) is a guidebook. It’s a tour of it mustn’t be anything rich. It mustn’t be façades as well as site massing. Although the monuments of corporate globalization paneled with wood, for example, because they rarely include recognizable people, written specifically for architects and 21 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 FALL 2007 LECTURES

Erez Ella urbanists in that tradition of books by be unfavorable against certain interests, but to reframe what is currently an amalgam of architects for architects about cities. New take these positions. 3) Doggedly explore neglected federal lands at the mouth of the Delhi and its architectural histories is one those positions to an almost absurd point, Hudson River and to reframe these disparate stop on the tour, which also includes New taking them well past when convention lands as the seam between the nation’s York and Silicon Valley. MNC signifies both would say, “You are getting into dangerous most densely populated metropolitan “multi-national city” and “multi-national territory,” which leads us to things that we region and its environment. My naive hope corporation.” never could have predicted at the beginning. was that it could become a pilot project for In keeping with a postmodern sense both American cities and the National Park of history, out of joint or out of sync, I want to Stefan Behnisch Service—that it could spark a realignment in suggest that utopia is not exactly dead either; Thomas Auer its mission from solely preserving, protecting, rather, it is in a technical sense undead, “Contesting Expectations” and defending nature from human interven- having returned as a ghost in the very midst November 1 tion to one of actively cultivating a dynamic of the fantasmatic city of multinational capital Stefan Behnisch Since the early 1990s we relationship between thriving human commu- that seems to have replaced it—a city of have looked into the issue of sustainability. At nities and ecosystems. Joshua Prince-Ramus spectral signs and hallucinatory wish images. the time the term sustainability wasn’t really This concept of nature, while it is And the name of that ghost is, dare I say it, popular. Since we have worked on many always changing at a certain slice in time, has postmodernism itself. projects with Transsolar, we try to define a plan and section, a plot and a maintenance For the great majority of modern the term a little bit broader to include the schedule that we can refine through trial and proto-modern utopia propositions, from perception of quality. Nobody really wants and error. By working with different tools— Ledoux to Le Corbusier, the Corbusian ocean to talk about qualities because they are not books, reports, guidelines, projects—I’ve liner, transformed into the Marseilles block, measurable. Quantities are mathematics. It’s tried to address different issues and scales can be taken as paradigmatic. But the island very simple, so it’s easy to focus on energy of engagement and to follow my own is also the basic unit of the multinational use. We also like to focus on the usability of idiosyncrasies and my own interests. I think or postmodern city: gated communities, buildings, on the cultural aspect of build- the challenge remains not to overact by not self-contained shopping malls, manicured ings, and on the qualities of buildings. Do acting and not being purely reactive, but to corporate campuses, weather-sealed they serve their purpose? In the end there is navigate the academic, professional, and atriums, barricaded office buildings, golf always the question: Has it been worth it to research worlds in some sort of dynamic courses, and spaceship-like towers. build this building? The pure focus on energy relationship to the real and interesting However, just as the distorted mirror is not enough. problems now relative to urbanism and Stefan Behnisch & Thomas Auer images of these urban enclaves, slums, We tried another approach. We tried environment. prisons, refugee camps, and so on—just to define comfort. That was partly more a as these spaces harbor the repressed and medical question than anything else—trying Homa Farjadi generally oppressed other side of the shelters to find out how people perceive. How do “Contingent Localities” led by the global business elite, with which people react to air, to heat, to light? What November 12 architects tend to identify the echo chamber does daylight mean for people? What does Contingency as the question of chance of postmodernism, is haunted by voices from heat mean. . .coldness? and possibilities of divergence can actually the outside coming from deep within. This, How did life in the public realm become productive in the design process in too, is globalization. Not so much an expan- develop? It is very interesting that we tend to the way in which architecture is experienced sion outward but a turning inside out. In other blame everything on the car. The car is not and is expected and how it intersects inten- words, topologically speaking, an island is the problem. The first real break in the use tionality. An approximation or errors, which never just an island. And this is basically the of the public realm was the invention of the happen in the process of design and are point: we are going to try to read postmod- refrigerator. When everybody got a refrig- accepted, later become part of the project. ernism topologically. erator, people didn’t have to go out on the It’s a position in making architecture and also Kate Orff In conclusion, I hope you will streets anymore to buy food on a daily basis. has something to do with how we do things. indulge me when I suggest that one name The next one was air-conditioning. Perhaps doing means taking actions and we must give to repressed representations of The way to make the public realm therefore represents the way in which we get world-historical change driving and driven by safer is to bring more people, more density, involved with the larger cultural problem of a humanity, which like utopia’s ghost may no onto the streets. That’s how the city started being political, or economic, or dealing with longer be human, is simply—architecture. inventing jogging in the city: sports, protec- our clients. The most important thing in terms tion, shopping again, and so on to animate of our time is that we have recognized this Joshua Prince-Ramus and Erez Ella and bring back the public realm. lack of fit between what we intend to do and Eero Saarinen Visiting Professors Thomas Auer There are always what we do. “It’s Not All About You” discussions here at Yale: Can a glass building In the production of approximation, October 29 be a green building? We always say it’s not a what is the role of the contingent at work? Our sense is that over the last fifty years the question about how much glass we use, but We know that contingency in itself refers to a architecture profession has run from liability, how do we treat the glass? The important whole host of words that suggest unplanned, and in the process we have become margin- aspect to glass is that we get light through unexpected, conditional, circumstantial alized because, with liability comes respon- it. We always say that you can shade glass, events that may be taken to the extremes as sibility, and with responsibility comes power. but you never get light through brick. I think fluky, inadvertent, fortuitous, arbitrary, and Now, we may be cowards as a group, but we that’s what we have done at Norddeutsche random. Or, in the other direction, as used by are also very intelligent, so we have been very Landesbank. The interesting aspect is that the Army and the stock market, it is the ally, good at branding our retreat as conquest. there is a double façade to the street. There cohort, battalion, accomplice, companion, We have created an artificial schism between is a big street with heavy traffic here. We follower, and friend in unsuspected circum- creation and execution, and we have started shield the inner offices from the noise coming stances. In all of these meanings we find the to discuss an autonomous language of from the street, but the double façade also use of structure in its conditional relationship architecture. Worse, we have denigrated protects against the fumes coming from with that which we plan, expect, or hope those who execute and have started to show the cars. for—basically the problem of intentionality— and emphasize this notion that architects opens the structure of decision-making or create one-off genius sketches, which is Kate Orff architecture’s intentions to the incidental our great value. We are stylists, and the Timothy Egan Lenahan and, more importantly, as Richard Rorty underlings—be it in our office or executive Memorial Lecture describes, to that of events finding their form architects, engineers, project managers, and “On the Ground” in practice. so forth—just go off and execute our vision. November 5 A project using contingencies in This is an extremely dangerous position for I feel part of a new generation in terms of a very different way, such as the repetition us to be in. where landscape is now and design culture of projects for Louis Vuitton, which would Rather, we propose that architects in this moment relevant to environmental actually go from one city to another so that should go back to authoring processes, and political issues, as well as the overall the design of something would be able to processes being the mixture of creation approach to work. This generational shift is be reconstructed and changed, yet find new and execution. If you author processes you the focus of my lecture. What motivates me is kind of formations every time it was redone. also have an increased responsibility to fully how to respond to the interesting questions The straps of aluminium, which would be understand and be able to vet contracts, to and to ask how designers take on the big constructed and then tied in nodes, would be able to use to your advantage issues of questions relative to environment and devel- be stretched and make a different form escalation, and understand pricing and cost opment. How do you even begin to partici- every time. indexing. You also have to be able to get pate in that? How can you be constructive? I believe the contingency is kept in yourself a reasonable fee for once. Please, These interests have resulted in what I’m the way the experience is put at risk—say, an when you graduate from here do not start working on now, which is a mixture of writing, inverted column that you do not necessarily to negotiate your contracts on a percentage researching, building projects with my office, experience the way you are supposed to. basis of construction costs. The example and teaching at Columbia. Or a room with walls and ceilings. What is a I always give is: how much does it cost to A big part of what I try to redefinition of horizon or infrastructure? The design a paper clip? Seven percent of the do—across project scales, within studios, contingency is to work in the way the infra- cost of the paper clip? That is ridiculous— and between disciplines—is to synthesize structure is reinhabited by landscape or the why do we as a profession do that? disparate approaches, different types of logic of geometries start to put it in tension. We can return to having significant information, and different political points import other than within our own academic of view to come up with something new —Completed with the assistance of Marc discussion. Therefore, we argue to take three and really try to make change in this way. Guberman (’08), Zachery Heineman (’10), steps: 1) work with our clients to delimit This might be something that distinguishes and Brandt Knapp (’10). what are the issues they are facing. In this landscape and architecture; we have special case, “It is not all about you” (or us). 2) Take training in the art of synthesis. key positions, positions that may turn out The Gateway National Park project to be wrong, positions that may turn out to had several parts. The overarching idea is 22 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 ADVANCED STUDIOS Advanced Studios Fall 2007

A snapshot of the Fall 2007 Advanced Studios at Yale.

Kyung Sook Kim, Massimo Scolari Advanced Studio, fall 2007.

Christina Wu and Gabrielle Ho, FAT and Nick Johnson Advanced Studio, fall 2007.

Aaron Taylor, Leon Krier Advanced Studio, fall 2007.

Erica Schroeder and Leo Stevens, Peter Eisenman Advanced Studio, fall 2007. Alan Knox, Billie Tsien and Tod Williams Advanced Studio, fall 2007. Dylan Sauer and Ben Smoot, Alan Plattus Advanced Studio, fall 2007.

FAT and Nick Johnson initially planned to host the 1942 Universal to appreciate that traditional language by Shohei Shigematsu, and Billie Tsien. The Charles Holland, Sam Jacob, and Sean Exposition (E42) and divided by major distorting the precedent buildings and final proposals were carefully calibrated Griffith, principals of the London-based firm axes into clear quadrants punctuated by “impersonating” classical vocabulary. Their to reflect the requirements of both the Fashion.Architecture.Taste (FAT) and Yale’s monumental classicized buildings and new building plans grew from their assem- audience and the performers, while allow- Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professors, hierarchies, producing a sense of timeless bled lexicon of parts, new massings, and ing for a reconfiguration of space and form. with Manchester developer Nick Johnson order. Students were challenged to develop recombination of formal elements. Incorporating public lobby spaces, more of Urban Splash, the Edward P. Bass alternatives to these idealized part-to- In the second half of the semester private boxes, and back of the house, some Distinguished Visiting Fellow, and Andrei whole compositions through the notions of the Krier students worked to create classical projects integrated with the urban fabric as Harwell (’06) jointly taught a developer- palimpsest and undecidability. vernacular structures in the EUR. Assigned a open air theaters, “unpacking the box” to architect studio for the site of Bishops Gate After a trip to Rome, where students set of small blocks within the new low-rise, see behind the scenes (to some jurors, this Goods Yard in east London. The site with its from both the Eisenman and Krier studios high-density neighborhood plan, each removed the mystery from the performance). Victorian two-story railway station, which were confronted with the immense scale of student designed a site plan comprising a Another proposal created a literal crossing the students visited prior to midterm, is EUR, the Eisenman studio located the urban number of buildings hierarchically arranged of public and private realms, breaking out of now being considered for a commercial scheme in relationship to its actualization around a public space and a series of the traditional shoebox volume into a cross. development by Hammersons, with Foster + of 1942, studying numerous past schemes, smaller, semi-private residential courts. Others choreographed entry sequences in Partners as the master-planner. Early design including traffic diagrams, landscape studies, Each of these sites was organized around longer horizontal cubic groupings. Some exercises were aimed at freeing students’ and competition entries, which had failed a central piazza where a new town hall and analyzed spatial potential based on seating creative approach to the site; they generated to submit to the site’s rigid axiality. First, public library were to be located. In order hierarchies—from outdoor picnic and bleach- one hundred sketches of possible formal students developed urban schemes obscur- to address the commercial benefit of such er spots to elite plush boxes—all combined in compositions; evaluated people in cities; ing the site’s axial composition, drawing on a proposal, each student was challenged one form. hybrid programming potentials, and depic- historical and formal analysis, infrastructure to provide a greater amount of building Operable buildings seemed to tions of their preferred urban spaces using conditions, and the concept of the urban area than currently exists in the typically be key in a few projects. For one team, a film, pen, collage, and narrative. strip. Students moved through models at mid-rise buildings of the EUR, as well as to pneumatic bubblelike performative skin After visits to the site and meetings different scales to produce final projects provide below-grade parking. enabled the theater to open up to the in London with the developer, the students whose scale and form resisted the “object- As in previous studios, Krier outdoors in the good weather. Another worked in pairs to design site concepts hood” of buildings. stressed ecology and sustainability as under- created a flexible space with reconfigurable utilizing varied approaches and hybrid At final review, to jurors Harry Cobb, lying principles of traditional and vernacular walls able to move across the stage as programs. At final review, to jurors Kieran Luis Fernández-Galiano, Carlos Jimenez, architecture. The resulting buildings, one demanded by operas ranging from Wagner to Long, Frank Lupo (’83), John McMorrough, Léon Krier, George Knight (’95), David Niland residential and one a public project in quasi Puccini. Emmanuel Petit, Elihu Rubin, Michael (’59), Emmanuel Petit, Gabriele Mastrigli, classical language, paid critical attention to Speaks, Susan Yelavitch, and Mimi Zieger, John McMorrough, Sarah Whiting, Mark the monumental scale and context of the Tod Williams and Billie Tsien the students presented more complex and Wigley, and Guido Zuliani, students, working EUR, while proposing challenging modifica- Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Bishop Visit- detailed schemes for individual buildings, in pairs, showed their diverse diagrammatic tions and manipulations. These projects ing Professors, with Andrew Benner (’03), mixing programs for public and private use schemes. Some students aggregated infor- were presented to a final review jury of Dan offered as their project a 30,000-square-foot and animated plazas proposing a revised mation on the site’s plans through history to Cruickshank, Darren Cook, Peter Eisenman, Dialogue Center at the Indian Institute of postmodernist vocabulary. From reinterpre- produce an urban strip disrupting EUR’s Dan Parolek, Alan Plattus, Tom Rajikovich, Management (IIM), Louis Kahn’s majestic tations of the picturesque ruin to fragmented main axis, while generating structures whose Massimo Scolari, and Dhiru Tadani. campus in Ahmedabad, India, and the plans with hyper-articulation of specific relationship to the ground inverted the trope premier business school of India. The forms, the architecture defined new spaces. of monumentality. Others produced a dense REX proposal was for a multi-use residential and Some students designed build- urban fabric by insisting on the figured quality Joshua Prince-Ramus and Erez Ella of study center to bring scholars and econo- ings with greenery integrated vertically, of space with a sophisticated interplay of REX, Eero Saarinen Visiting Professors, mists to the institute. while another team used the scenography façades and courtyards. The contrast of with Frederick Tang (’00), proposed the The studio visited the site, tradition- of a medieval hilltown with housing above intricacy with monumentality resulted in design of an opera house in Istanbul, Turkey, al architecture in the area as well as projects museum spaces allowing natural light to building clusters of an intimate scale; others The studio challenged the students, who by Le Corbusier and Balkrishna Doshi and penetrate through skylights. Others brico- went even further, using the repetition of worked in teams of two, to derive architec- Charles Correa in Ahmedabad and Mumbai laged form and material to create dense megastructural urban circuitry. One team tural proposals out of a project’s unique in order to understand the contemporary urban space as well as an intricately textured countered EUR’s massing with the idea of constraints. First, students were asked to challenges of building in India within its cultural district. The non-prescriptive surfaces that integrated topography and identify and evaluate the Turkish opera’s core larger context of 1000-years craftsmanship programs allowed for diversity of style, infrastructure. A latticework infill retained the requirements for technical, cultural, program- traditions. The premise, in contrast to Kahn’s function, and form to create livable places traces of EUR, but also offered a reinterpreta- matic, and political needs, and to question separation of functions in the massive build- that might be seen as evolving from the site tion of visionary proposals from the 1930s, as the elitism of the opera and the hermetically ing complex, was to create flexible public organically, with constant attention paid filtered through a quasi-utopian vocabulary sealed box as base principles driving their spaces that would foster intellectual innova- to the people inhabiting figural space, in of the 1960s. designs. Students traveled to Istanbul to visit tion and more fluid interpersonal interaction. contrast to the typically abstract developer’s the three potential project sites, meeting with To the final review jury of Martin tower, retail, and plaza schemes. Léon Krier the municipality and opera company as part Finio, Deborah Gans, Mario Gooden, David For a parallel studio at the EUR, Léon Krier, of the initial concept phase. Heyman, Bijoy Jain, Carlos Jimenez, Jennifer Peter Eisenman Davenport Visiting Professor, with George The projects that evolved out of Leung, Alan Organschi (’88), Hilary Sample, Peter Eisenman, Louis I. Kahn Professor, Knight (’95), began by assigning the students that trip and research and design process Tom Zook (’95), the students synthesized conducted a studio with Ariane Lourie for three Roman buildings to analyze in their were presented in final large-scale models aspects of Kahn’s design and local traditions Rome’s EUR in parallel with Leon Krier’s classical language, proportion, material, and drawings to a review of Patrick Bellew, into final projects. Many students incorpo- studio at the same site. Eisenman’s studio tectonic assembly, decoration, and symbol- June Cohen, Benton Delinger, Mark Gage rated craftmanship of Indian vernaculars in investigated the idea of part-to-whole ism. After a site trip to Rome, along with (’01), Charles Holland, Bijoy Jain, Andy their projects, using customized concrete for relationships. The EUR district was the Eisenman studio, the students learned Klemmer, Philip Plottel, Thomas Rearson, wall screens and rippling canopies, as well 23 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 ADVANCED STUDIOS / GREEN AT YALE Green at Yale

Rendering of Kroon Hall, Hopkins Rustam-Marc Mehta and Jacob Reidel Joshua Prince- Christopher Starkey, David Petersen, Shu Architects Ramus and Erza Ella Advanced Studio, fall 2007. Chang, Fred Koetter and Ed Mitchell Advanced with Center- Studio, fall 2007. brook Archi- tects and Planners, executive architects. as ventilation. Others used towers for spatial study center included rooms for ten scholars, Kroon Hall length of the building will bring daylight into anchoring and plinths to situate Kahn’s a conference room, a library on two levels, the nearly double height top floor, created dorms in a datum carving below ground to a caretaker’s apartment, a storehouse for by the pitched roof, which will be used for create contrasts between the quiet study and artifacts, and an observation terrace. As a part of ongoing effort to reduce its large assembly rooms. On the levels below, the active collective spaces. First, students became familiar with carbon emissions, Yale has committed to offices and classrooms are arranged along Several students sought to the topography and morphological develop- building energy-efficient, environmentally with north and south walls. To make way complete the space at one end of the ment of the site, as well as the decorative sensitive architecture across campus, with for the building, the University closed and campus that had been left open after Kahn’s tradition and meaning of hieroglyphs on the target of achieving LEED Silver stand- demolished the Pierson Sage power plant, death. With new plazas, sunken pools, and descriptive wood architecture during the ards in all its new buildings. The School which did not meet contemporary environ- additional buildings, they knit together a new Third Dynasty. Then they traveled to Saqqara of Forestry and Environmental Science’s mental standards. Science Hill is now tied campus fabric utilizing steps, underground and jointly decided on the specific project (FES) new home, Kroon Hall, now under to the main campus power plant, which is in connections between buildings, and roof site. As they designed, they were asked to construction on the site of the former power compliance with clean air regulations. gardens. Others went beyond the site to link respect proportions of the Fibonacci series, plant on Prospect Street between Sage Hall Hopkins was selected from a list of approxi- the Dialogue Center to the city of Ahmeda- which are found in the Djoser complex; and Osborn Memorial Laboratory, however, mately twenty-five firms from around the bad with gateway-type features, such as compositional principles of the historic demanded a higher standard, according to world that are known for sustainable design. groves of trees sheltering a new public architecture; and interpretation of stylistic Hopkins Architects, the designers charged Other finalists included Behnisch Architekten market space. elements (but not direct quotation). They also with creating what will be the greenest build- and Alan Short. “President Levin became designed a chair appropriate for the reading ing at the University. “The Forestry School involved in the selection because he felt it Alan Plattus room and built a full-size prototype. is interested in showing that sustainable was such a precedent setting project,” Kellert For the eighth year of a three-way collabo- The low-lying projects presented at technologies are here,” said Henry Kong, a said. “It’s about developing a new framework ration between Yale and the architecture the final review to Martin Cox, Trattie Davies project architect at Hopkins. When Kroon for sustainability at Yale.” students and faculty at Tongji University (’04), Kurt Forster, Kimo Griggs (’84), David Hall is completed in 2009, FES and London- in Shanghai and Hong Kong University Heyman, Keith Krumwiede, Josh Rowley, based Hopkins, working with Connecticut- —Alan G. Brake with Leslie Lu (’77), Alan Plattus’s students and Judi Shade, were often linear, extending based Centerbrook Architects (executive Brake is an MED candidate for 2008 and is an designed a block, slated for development, in over crevices in the desert landscape, with architects for the project), will seek LEED associate editor at The Architect’s Newspa- Shanghai’s early twentieth-century French small monastic cells for the guest rooms. Platinum designation, making it one of only per in New York. Concession filled with historic lilongs. The Orientation for light and air, and entrance fifteen LEED buildings in Connecticut, and students analyzed the character of the sequence became significant design drivers, the sole Platinum project, according to the historic and contemporary urban fabric in as well as the contrast required between the Connecticut Green Building Council. Foster’s New SOM order to propose alternative models for new more public and private spaces. One project While FES and the University’s Campus development that could incorporate the cut through the landscape with a torqued goals are laudable, and ahead of many other historic buildings and transform them into pyramid in a more voluminous form, while institutions, the LEED ratings system has new uses. others used intricate lacework as screen its share of critics, both in the architectural Yale School of Management (SOM) is The Yale students traveled to Hong shading devices. and environmental communities. Some proposing to build a new campus. In spring Kong and met the University of Hong Kong architects feel the system is nothing more 2007, Yale administrators organized an students and faculty, and then all visited Fred Koetter and Edward Mitchell than a cumbersome checklist, and some international invited competition. Foster + Shanghai to explore the site. They then Post-Professional environmentalists question its efficacy at Partners, led by Sir Norman Foster (’62), was worked with the Tongji students at their Focusing on the concept of the Temporal addressing major environmental problems selected as the winner over other partici- studios addressing site analysis and prelimi- City, Fred Koetter and Ed Mitchell used like climate change. What makes Kroon pants: Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Skidmore nary design proposals. At final reviews, to the site of Chicago’s proposal for the 2016 Hall different, however, is the way in which Owings & Merrill, and David Chipperfield. Sean Griffith, Sam Jacob, Nick Johnson, Olympic Games and its development into Hopkins Architects have integrated high Gruzen Samton Architects of New York will Jamie von Klemperer, Frank Lupo (’83), Leslie the future as the studio project for 4,000 technology and old-fashioned site-sensitivity team up with Foster + Partners as the Archi- Lu (’77), Albert Pope, and Fred Tang (’00), units of post-Olympic housing. After visiting into the architecture. There’s nothing tacked tect of Record for the project. It is the first and Sam Wang, the Yale, Hong Kong and Chicago and studying its historic develop- on about this approach. These systems and building by Foster at Yale, and only his sixth Tongji students shared the stage. ment, including its organizational patterns techniques are the building. The result should in the U.S. Recently Foster + Partners have The students, in teams of two, and the physical manifestation of its “image,” also satisfy the most stringent environmen- completed a number of university projects could choose their own program and specific the students did precedent studies. Other talists: the architects and their environmental including the Leslie L. Dan Pharmacy Build- development sites according to their analysis Olympic villages, urban manifestos, and consultants, Atelier Ten, hope Kroon Hall will ing at the University of Toronto in 2006; a of social, economic, and urban infrastructural postcard views help to articulate their own be a climate neutral building, meaning it will new library for the Faculty of Philology at the needs. The projects ranged from megastruc- schemes for the village. The flat Chicago be responsible for zero carbon emissions. Free University in Berlin in 2005; and Imperial tures for vertical hydroponic farms and urban topography along the lakeshore at the According to Steven R. Kellert, Professor of College’s Tanaka Business School in London agriculture as a way to harness the workforce south side served as the studio site, where Forestry, this may be an unattainable goal in 2004. to softer, more integrated interventions. proposals for Olympic housing by SOM and with students’ ever-increasing demand for Foster + Partners aims to eliminate To some jurors, the farm project was as Stanley Tigerman are currently in the design electricity. “I think a combination of carbon the disconnected nature of SOM’s current overwhelming an infrastructural machine as phase. The challenge was to find a means offsets, however, could make up the differ- facilities and bring together all faculty depart- high-rises currently in development. of integrating this large urban intervention, ence,” he said, referring to green power, such ments into a single centralized location. On a Other students encouraged the which has suffered from vast public housing wind, bought from outside sources. 4.25-acre site on the east side of the Whitney combination of uses on the block, wherein a developments, a separation from the The building’s sustainable features Avenue and Sachem Street intersection, community college campus with residential business district, and a lack of investment. include, solar hot water heaters and roof- Foster’s scheme for a 246,000-square-foot uses could mix with institutional uses. One The students worked in teams until integrated photovoltaic panels, recycled complex more than doubles the size of team focused on the hospitality industry in midterm and then independently towards final and sustainably harvested materials, locally SOM’s existing 110,000-square-foot of development strategies mixing workplace review, when they presented their schemes to quarried stone, and geothermal energy space. The SOM’s focus on social respon- and residential and layering open spaces in a jury of Keller Easterling, Britt Eversole, Doug system. Operable windows, ample natural sibility is also reflected in the new campus’s vertical structures, such as hotels and mixed Gauthier, Keith Krumwiede, Leslie Lu (’77), light, carefully oriented by the placement of focus on sustainability. The Yale building will uses with shared economies. Some tried to David Niland (’59), and Joan Ockman. Some the building, which is nestled into a hillside pursue a LEED certification. save and rehabilitate a significant amount of used towers to identify the site, creating formal for geothermal benefit, will make Kroon Hall SOM’s internal changes have the traditional lilong housing fabric, which icons for the Olympics and making connec- highly responsive to its site. The project’s impacted the program of the new campus. has an autonomous logic, while others tions back to the city center with use of the landscape architect, Olin Partnership, has Classrooms will be constructed to facilitate cleared the site for high-rise residential lakefront as an active edge. Others focused on designed a retention pond that will filter values-based seminars, and to create an buildings with street-level retail, intensifying the 24-hour city in a linear form, using a carpet run-off for use in irrigation and to flush the environment that encourages faculty-student an already dense urban fabric. All students typology to spread out the functions and carve building’s toilets. Planted with aquatic flora, interaction. The planning of the new building had to strategize how to handle a superblock bridges and pedestrian platforms into and the rectangular, bench-lined pond will be an has included a series of design assessment in a developing urban context. Discussions around the site; public and private spaces are attractive, tranquil gathering place. workshops with faculty, staff, and students. focused on the boom economy versus threaded throughout via three terraced levels The building’s simple, almost The project is expected to be completed by traditional needs. of matte layout housing. One scheme based barnlike form is meant to be contextual fall 2011. ideas on “organic” architecture as well as the yet contemporary. “We wanted to create a Massimo Scolari mayor’s call to make Chicago a green city building that is not alien to its surroundings, —Marc Guberman Massimo Scolari, the Davenport Visiting by using hybrid structures and low-density but is of its age,” Kong said. “The roof profile Guberman (’08) is in the joint SOM and Professor, with Timothy Newton (’07), asked development of temporal urban types, such echoes the surrounding buildings, but also School of Architecture degree program students to design a simple building dedicat- as big box retail and community gardens that provides an appropriate plane for integrated and was the student representative on the ed to the study of the work of Imhotep, the would also support the adjacent communi- PVs.” North and South walls are masonry building committee. architect of Djoser’s funerary complex in ties. Others focused on the vacancy issues of like the surrounding buildings, but also for Saqqara, Egypt, who also invented the art of post-Olympics and how to create a dynamic geothermal benefits, while the shorter east stereotomy 4,650 years ago. The two-story planning model rather than a monoculture. and west walls are glazed. A slot running the 24 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 FACULTY NEWS Faculty News

Michelle Addington, associate professor, Makram el Kadi, critic in architec- Deborah Gans, critic in architecture, tecture” at the University of Massachusetts published “No Building Is an Island” in the ture, taught a workshop in Dubai entitled lectured at a U.S. State Department– in Amherst, in September 2007. The book Harvard Design Magazine (spring/summer “Worker’s Habitat: Dubai 24hour City” as sponsored symposium on sustainability she co-edited with Donald Albrecht, Eero 2007), and “For Smart Materials Change Is part of the Architectural Association’s winter in Panama City, where she discussed her Saarinen: Shaping the Future (Yale Univer- Good,” in Architectural Record (September school program. With his New York-based project of 150 affordable homes in the Lower sity Press, 2006), received the Sir Banister 2007). She was invited to speak at sympo- firm L.E.FT, he is working on the new Beirut Ninth Ward in New Orleans, in collabora- Fletcher Award given annually to the “most siums including Columbia University’s Marina in collaboration with Steven Holl tion with James Dart Architects. In fall 2007 deserving architecture book of the year” by “Engineered Transparency,” in September Architects and has started construction on the work of Gans’s studio was exhibited the Authors Club in London, in November 2007, the University of Texas School of the firm’s first U.S. project, a 6,000-square- in Substance: Diverse Practices from the 2007. For academic year 2007–2008 Pelko- Architecture’s “CounterMEASURES,” in foot house, in Bridgehampton, New York, Periphery, in Denver, Colorado. nen is a fellow at the Whitney Humanities November 2007, and at the Canadian Center to be completed in 2009. His firm is also Andrei Harwell (’06), critic in archi- Center at Yale. for Architecture. Addington also gave talks working on new residential projects in Dubai, tecture, published the article “Churaevka: A Ben Pell, critic in architecture, with and lectures at MIT, Harvard University, the Beirut, and Turkey, as well as on their first Russian Village in the Connecticut Woods” in his practice Pell Overton, recently completed University of Cincinnati, Skidmore, Owings monograph. Russian Life magazine (July/August 2007). the construction of a 4,000-square-foot office & Merrill, and the Architectural League of Dolores Hayden, professor, gave space for iMentor, an education nonprofit New York. She conducted a workshop on the keynote address “Building Suburbia” at in Lower Manhattan. The firm is currently advanced research in sustainability at the the national meeting of the Society for designing a weekend house in Catskill, New AIA National Convention and served on the American City and Regional Planning History, York, a penthouse addition in TriBeCa, and jury of the Kansas City AIA Design Awards. in Portland, Maine. She also chaired a panel beginning construction for the renovation She was also appointed to the editorial on public art and memory at the American of a New York City public high school. Pell board of The Intelligent Building Journal and Studies Association annual meeting in Overton is also developing an installation for was interviewed for the archives of Sputnik Philadelphia and published work in the Yale an exhibition of its work at the Bridge Gallery, Observatory. Review and several other journals. in New York, scheduled for spring 2008. L.E.FT, model of HyPar Barn, Bridgehampton, Sunil Bald, critic in architecture, New York, 2007. Jennifer W. Leung, critic in archi- and his office, Studio SUMO, was awarded tecture, received grants from the Graham the affordable-housing project, Le Mitan, Foundation and the University of Pennsylva- through a 2006 competition; construction is Keller Easterling, associate profes- nia Institute for Urban Research, which will scheduled to begin in January on a block in sor, conducted research last fall on the allow her to write up her project “Baghdad the Little Haiti section of Miami. Bald’s other urbanism associated with the international Year Zero: The Strategic City and Its Archi- current projects include the Mizuta Museum submarine cable in east Africa. She gave tectures of Risk,” initiated when she was Pell of Art, in Saitama, Japan, scheduled to open talks at “Postopolis!” Storefront for Art and an Architecture and Urban Studies Fellow Overton, in 2009, and the design for an exhibition of Architecture, California College of the Arts, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in iMentor, African and African-American basket-making Penn State, North Carolina State, University 2006–07. New York culture, which opens at the Gibbes Museum, of Waterloo, and the ComPlot conference Ariane Lourie, critic in architecture, City, 2007. in Charleston, in fall 2008, the Smithsonian on urbanism, in Guadalajara. Her article defended her dissertation, “Mass-Produced in spring 2009, and at the new Museum “Exrastatecraft” was published in Perspecta Aura: Thonet and the Market for Modern- for African Art, in New York (designed by 39. Articles were also published in collections ism, 1930–1953,” in October, working with Alan Plattus, professor, was the Robert A.M. Stern Architects), in fall 2009. including “Archipelagoes of Exception,” Jean-Louis Cohen at the Institute of Fine Arts keynote speaker at the Syracuse Center Bald and partner Yolande Daniels gave the CCCB Barcelona, “With/Without: Spatial at New York University. Lourie’s disserta- for Excellence’s annual symposium on annual Charles and Ray Eames Lecture at the Products, Practices and Politics in the Middle tion centers on Modernism and its legacies environmental and energy systems, in University of Michigan in November 2007. East,” Bidoun, and “The Knowledge” in in furniture design, intellectual property, October 2007. He gave the talk “Three Kinds Volume as well as “The Maghreb Connec- and market-making for postwar American of Sustainable Community Design.” He is tion: Movements of Life Across North Africa” architecture, and her research led to the continuing work with the Yale Urban Design (Actar), “The Last Mile” (GallerySKE), and rediscovery of Thonet’s American archive. Workshop (YUDW) on the plan for the $250 “InSite Conversations” (San Diego Museum She participated in the exhibition Perfect million downtown revitalization project for of Art). As a fellow of the School of Inter- Doubts at the Cripta FAD, in Barcelona, in New Britain, Connecticut. The YUDW is also national Studies at Yale she taught a joint August 2007, and is currently working on a working on a 13-unit affordable-housing architecture/international studies course on landscape and building master-plan project development for the town of Bethany, global infrastructure in the fall. for a five-acre property within the Fire Island Connecticut, and was recently selected, Martin Finio, critic in architecture, National Seashore in coordination with its along with the Capstan Group, to develop with his firm Christoff:Finio Architecture, general management plan. a plan for the West End neighborhood of celebrated the opening of the “Museum as Joeb Moore (MED ’91), critic in Bristol, Connecticut. Plattus will be speaking Hub,” a new educational/curatorial floor architecture, received a 2007 AIA New on January 23 at the annual meeting of the in the SANAA-designed New Museum of England Design Award in the Residential South Central Connecticut Regional Council Studio SUMO, interior rendering of Mizuta Museum of Art, Contemporary Art on the Bowery, in New category for the Mianus River Residence, in of Governments, where he plans to address Saitama, Japan, 2007. York City. The firm won an invited competi- Greenwich, Connecticut. The house engages smart growth and transit-oriented develop- tion for the commission in January 2007. the site’s surrounding nature preserve ment in the region. Philip G. Bernstein (’83), lecturer, Christoff:Finio Architecture broke ground on unfolding within and into the house through Nina Rappaport, publications presented a future vision of digital technol- a 10,000-square-foot house in East Hampton transitional spaces: courtyards, corridors, director, wrote the book, Support and Resist: ogy in support of sustainable design at the that will generate all of its own energy needs pathways, and thresholds. It has also been Structural Engineers and Design Innovation Greenbuild International Conference and and received a 2007 AIA award for the design recognized with a Merit Award in the Eighth (Monacelli Press), which was released in Expo, in Chicago, November 7–9, 2007. of the Heckscher Foundation’s headquarters, Annual Residential Architect Magazine November and was featured at an event Other presenters included Rick Fedrizzi, in New York. Design Competition and was featured in the at the Architectural League of New York. CEO of USGBC; George David, CEO of Mark Foster Gage (’01), assistant magazine’s May 2007 issue. She was invited to participate in a panel United Technologies; and former president professor, with his New York firm Gage/ Herbert S. Newman (’59), critic in discussion at the Center for Architecture Bill Clinton. Bernstein’s talk “Manufacturing Clemenceau Architects, is designing the architecture, with his firm Herbert S. Newman co-sponsored by the Structural Engineers Material Effects: Rethinking Design and headquarters for a modeling agency in and Partners, received 2007 AIA Connecticut Association of New York on January 15, Making in Architecture” at the April 2007 Manhattan; a speculative house for the Design Awards. The firm won an honor award 2008. In addition, she gave talks at Columbia Ball State conference will be published by “T,” The New York Times Style Magazine; a in the Built category for work on the Science University’s “Engineered Transparency” Routledge in the conference proceedings in 3,000-square-foot showroom in SoHo, New Hill Parking Garage, at Yale University, and an symposium, in September 2007; the Dessau summer 2008. York, and participating in a competition for Honorable Mention in the Built category for Architecture Institute, in January; at a panel Martin Cox, critic in architecture, an integrated performance center in Dublin. the design of the Hobart and William Smith discussion for the Skyscraper Museum, on with his Brooklyn-based firm Bade Stageberg Recently completed projects by the firm were Colleges New Residence Hall, in Geneva, February 5, and has organized a panel at the Cox, is currently working on the design of Art featured in The New York Times, Wallpaper, New York. Architectural Association in London, at the Cave, a 5,500-square-foot gallery space on Wonderland, Space, and Archiworld. Its Alan Organschi (’88), critic in end of February. Her article on Chuck Hober- a 17-acre vineyard estate, which will exhibit exhibition design for the New Practices architecture, with his firm Gray Organschi man was published in Architectural Record art throughout the landscape, in Napa, London show at the Center for Architecture Architecture, received a 2007 AIA New (December 2007). California. Taking advantage of economical will be included in the upcoming book Genius England Design Award in the Residential Hilary Sample, assistant professor, cave-drilling technologies developed for the Moves: Icons of Design. The firm’s work is category for work on the Tennis House, which with her firm MOS, is designing a 30,000- local wine industry, the Art Cave is conceived currently on display in Figuration in Contem- includes a sod roof and a geothermal heating square-foot teen youth center in Lowell, as a large-scale, passively conditioned, porary Design, at the Museum of the Art system. The firm’s renovation of a church Massachusetts, with Transsolar as a consult- subterranean space. It was published in Institute of Chicago, December 13, 2007, to into a house was featured in Dwell magazine ant, and a 20,000-square-foot community The New York Times Magazine on December June 8, 2008. Gage recently chaired a think (December 2007) and its transformation of center, in Newfoundland, Canada. The firm 2, 2007. In addition, Cox is working on a tank on Computational Aesthetics at the the firehouse in New Haven into a loft and recently completed a 2,000-square-foot 15,000-square-foot gathering and training Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen and sound studio was featured in The New York boathouse in Canada’s Georgian Bay. MOS space in Brooklyn and a high-rise project in has given lectures at the Southern California Times, September 9, 2007. was invited to present design work as part of Amsterdam, in collaboration with Steven Institute for Architecture (SCI-Arc), the Center Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen (MED ’94), the Boston Society of Architect’s Conversa- Holl Architects. for Information Technology, in Copenhagen, assistant professor, continues to lecture on tions in Architecture, was a finalist in the the Architectural Foundation, in London, and Eero Saarinen and has started work on a MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program the Venetian Hotel, in Las Vegas. new research and exhibition project based competition, and exhibited design work in on the Kevin Roche collection, housed the Philadelphia Scripted by Purpose exhibi- Gage / at the Manuscripts and Archives of Yale tion, in September 2007. Sample’s research Clemenceau University. She spoke about her two archival for her book Sick City: A Global Investigation Architects, research projects at a closed symposium, into Urbanism, Infrastructure, and Disease exhibition Bade design, New “The Archives of the Modern Architect,” received Yale’s Frederick W. Hilles Publica- Stageberg Practices which took place at the Victoria and Albert tions Fund and a visiting scholar’s fellowship Cox, Art London, The Museum, in London, in June 2007. In to the Canadian Centre for Architecture. She Cave, Napa Center for addition, Pelkonen gave a talk on Saarinen presented research on BioMed Cities at the Valley, Architecture, California, New York at the symposium “Questionable Beauty: Sixth Annual International Conference on 2007. City, 2007. Re-Evaluating Midcentury Modern Archi- Urban Health, sponsored by Johns Hopkins/ 25 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 FACULTY NEWS

Shadrach Woods

University of Maryland, in Baltimore, October Through the concept of habitat, Woods 31–November 2, 2007. Nature Design proposed the integration of Le Corbusier’s machine à habiter into its neighborhood, In September 2007 the School of Fine Arts supplying public works and social services in Zurich opened a fascinating exhibition, as well as a functional living unit. NATURE/Design, at its Museum für Gestal- Woods advanced two major models tung, itself a remarkable building of 1928. Shadrach Woods of architectural organization over the course The show was curated by Angeli Sachs, who at Columbia of his career: the spine-driven “stem” and MOS, also edited a richly illustrated, beautifully the matrixlike “web.” Aimed at the gradual model of produced catalog designed and published Build in Uncertainty: Unpacking the Shadrach expansion of new urban developments, the boathouse, Georgian by noted graphic artist and publisher Lars Woods Archive was exhibited at Columbia stem is a planning scheme in which housing Bay, Mueller. A symposium on September 22 University’s Arthur Ross Gallery from is clustered around a spine of communal Canada, brought together a number of scholars, October 17 to December 7, 2007. The show facilities and infrastructure. The concept 2007. architects, and design professionals for a was the first exploration of the assembled shaped his firm’s winning proposals for the discussion of the recent fascination with papers of the American architect, urban- urban extensions Bagnols-sur-Cèze (1956) nature (in all its manifestations, whether ist, and teacher that were donated to the and Toulouse-le-Mirail (1961). The web’s Joel Sanders, adjunct associ- visible or hypothetical) as a source of design. Avery Library in 2005. More preliminary pedestrian-scaled grid of interconnected ate professor, with his firm Joel Sanders After decades of abstraction, of a particularly investigation than retrospective, the exhibi- open and built spaces continued the search Architects (JSA), won the competition with hard-edged variety in postwar Switzerland, tion wove multiple narrative threads through for a noncentric system of organization that Korean-based firm Haehan for Sumbunk- the recent turn toward self-generating Woods’s work, from his on-site training at Le was proposed for the rebuilding of Frankfurt’s dong Homes, an enclave of sixteen houses shapes (based on algorithms rather than Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation, in Marseille, war-devastated center (1963) and the Berlin on a steeply sloping site in Seoul that will formal similarity) has rekindled an interest in to his involvement with the Lower Manhattan Free University (1963). begin construction in spring 2008. JSA also earlier attempts to capture fluid and malle- Expressway project. On a regional scale, Woods won a competition to design a hotel in SoHo able manifestations of nature, such as those Curated by Columbia doctoral explored the dissolution of the urban-rural for Goldman Properties and is one of five encountered in Art Nouveau or in Louis candidates Elsa Lam and Brad Walters (MED divide in the firm’s proposals for Paris-Nord short-listed firms for the new University of Sullivan’s System of Architectural Ornament. ’04), Build in Uncertainty took its theme (1965) and Bresse-Revermont (1967). As the Houston Art Museum. It received a 2007 New Infused by color and nuanced in their effects, from Woods’s article “Waiting for Print-out work of Candilis-Josic-Woods expanded, he York AIA Design Award for work on the media nature’s infinite repertoire of shapes has been (Previously Known as the Technico-Soci- became an increasingly multifaceted thinker, center at the Yale University Art Gallery. expanded by new technologies of visualiza- ological Hangup),” published in Perspecta playing the roles of architect, urbanist, and Sanders has lectured recently at “Postopo- tion, multiplying the plethora of structural and 12, in 1969. Here he condemns the rise of writer. The 1968 exhibition at the Milan Trien- lis!” at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, ornamental models. Kurt W. Forster, Visiting technological determinism and postmodern nale, along with the accompanying publica- in New York, in May, and gave the keynote Vincent Scully Professor of the History of formalism and implores architects to address tion, Urbanism Is Everybody’s Business, and address, “Design Body Sense,” at the Architecture, gave the keynote lecture, “The social needs and engage with the world in the posthumously published polemic, The Society of Design Historians Annual Confer- Necessity of Chance.” which they build. Woods calls for architects Man in the Street, edited by Alexander Tzonis ence on September 5. He also gave the Forster also gave the public to “build in uncertainty”—that is, to act (’63), offer the fullest and most sophisti- lectures “Making Sense,” at Tulane University evening lecture in Vienna commemorating without a complete understanding of their cated expressions of his prescient ideas for School of Architecture in New Orleans on ten years of the Frederick and Lillian Kiesler environment and to design-in the potential cooperative city-centered organization at a October 15; “Rethinking Domesticity,” at the Foundation during the symposium “Modeling for change. global scale. Architectural League of New York on October Space.” After repatriating the Arnold Schoen- This concept of “uncertainty” was With his appointment by Paul 19; “Outing the Closet: Sex, Gender, and the berg Archive (from Los Angeles back to the integrated into the organization of the exhibit Rudolph as visiting critic at Yale during spring Public Toilet,” at New York University and composer’s native city) in the 1990s, the city itself. Around the perimeter of the gallery a 1962, Woods became active in teaching and the Center for Architecture on November 3, of Vienna obtained the Kiesler archive from roughly chronological timeline of public and lecturing at American universities. During and “Buildings and Fear,” at the Architectural his widow, Lillian. Dieter Bogner established private documents narrated episodes from that semester he was an adviser to students League of New York on November 15. its headquarters across the street from Woods’s career. Three central tables themati- such as Charles Gwathmey (’61), who would Robert A.M. Stern (’65), dean, and his the new Museum District. Alongside such cally displayed archival objects to explore the later work on the Free University competi- firm Robert A.M. Stern Architects, were Austrian architects as Rudolf Schindler and dialectic of public and private, freedom and tion in the firm’s Paris office. He describes selected to design the George W. Bush Richard Neutra, Kiesler was among early framework, and city and country throughout Woods as an “incredible mentor, a generous Presidential Library and Museum, in Dallas, immigrants to the United States searching for his architectural production. A reading table and caring friend, as well as a truly visionary, Texas. Other recent commissions include “organic shapes” that were briefly taken up holding the architect’s published and unpub- unique architect.” Woods continued to be 99 Church Street, a hotel/residential tower after the war by such European architects as lished writings gave a temporary structure to involved with Yale throughout the 1960s, in Lower Manhattan; College Square, a Hans Scharoun. Kiesler sought to realize his the largely unprocessed archive. The goal of sitting on studio juries and publishing articles mixed-use building in New Haven; a mixed- elusive concept of self-transforming spaces. the exhibit was to create productive juxtapo- in Perspecta 11 and 12. Peter Papademe- use complex in Gurgaon, India; and Tour He famously worked for (and with) Peggy sitions raising questions about the influence triou, an editor of Perspecta 12, remembers Carpe Diem, an environmentally responsible Guggenheim and acted for decades as a of Woods in his own time and the continuing Woods for the way in which his submission office tower at La Défense, France. The firm’s relay among New York artists and architects. impact of his ideas today. arrived: wrapped in the cardboard from a reinvention of an 1880 public school building, Forster heard him lecture to a desperate Born in 1923 and raised in Yonkers, yellow-lined notepad marked “15¢” under in Brooklyn, New York, to create the Excel- few in an empty Yale lecture hall in 1961 New York, Woods studied engineering which Woods had written “price of this lence Charter School of Bedford-Stuyvesant, and never forgot the diminutive and agile at NYU and literature and philosophy at article.” Such sardonic humor characterized won an Excellence in Historic Preservation man—half a John Cage of architecture, half a Trinity College, Dublin, before entering into his influence over several generations of Yale Award from the Preservation League of New cagy impresario of ideas. architecture. For Woods, as for his mentor students during the tumultuous 1960s. York State. Dean Stern will be honoree at Forster recently published the Le Corbusier, architecture and urbanism In 1968, toward the end of his brief events sponsored by the Kaufman Center in introductory essay “Hulls Held Aloft and were intertwined endeavors, and advanced but inspired career, Woods returned to New New York City, which reopened in January Bridges That Blink,” in Exploring Boundaries: technologies should be applied to construc- York. Setting up his own office, he was hired with improvements designed by the firm; The Architecture of Wilkinson-Eyre (Basel, tion to create economical and efficient build- by Mayor John V. Lindsay’s administration to by Bronx Community College, for which Boston, Berlin: Birkhauser, 2007), as well as ings. Woods explored these ideas with the consult on the controversial Lower Manhat- the firm is designing a new classroom and an extended study on Karl Friedrich Schinkel interdisciplinary group Atelier des Bâtisseurs tan Expressway and several public-housing library building; and by the Sir John Soane’s in Joerg Trempler’s, Schinkel Motive (Berlin: (ATBAT) throughout France and its overseas projects. Never abandoning his commit- Museum Foundation. Matthes & Seitz, 2007). territories. Through ATBAT he met architects ment to community-based design, Woods Barry Svigals (’76), lecturer, with his Georges Candilis and Alexis Josic and joined worked in New York until his untimely death firm Svigals + Partners, is collaborating with —NR with them to form the Paris-based partner- in 1973. At the meeting of Team X that year, Behnisch Architects on the design of 55 Park ship Candilis-Josic-Woods in 1954. the choice of theme—“the responsibility of Street, a 140,000-square-foot clinical labora- Active in the proceedings of CIAM the architect”—reflected Woods’s legacy of tory building for Yale–New Haven Hospital. and Team X, the firm initially focused on political and social engagement. It will function as a 24/7 “main entrance” projects addressing the postwar housing leading to the new cancer center and will also crisis. Contributing to Team X’s critique —Brad Walters (MED ’06) be the primary delivery point to the hospital of high Modernism, the theory-oriented Walters is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia via underground loading docks and a tunnel Woods expanded the call to provide for the University, focusing on the ABTAT. to the main campus across the street. In basic needs of espace, soleil, and verdure, addition, the firm’s John S. Martinez School as expressed in CIAM’s Athens Charter. was recently awarded the 2008 Citation Honor in Tampa, Florida, by the Architectural Jury of the AIA and American Association of School Administrators. Carter Wiseman, lecturer, has Carrières spoken widely on Louis Kahn in connection Centrales with the publication of his book Louis I. Kahn: housing Beyond Time and Style, a Life in Architecture by ATBAT Morocco, (W. W. Norton, 2007), including at the First Bodiansky, Unitarian Church, in Rochester, New York; Candilis, the Philadelphia Athenaeum; at the Connecti- Piot and cut AIA annual meeting, in Hartford; at the Woods, 1952. Boston Public Library, sponsored jointly by Images the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate courtesy of School of Design and the Boston Architec- Drawings and tural College; and at the Kimbell Art Museum, Archives, in Fort Worth, Texas. Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. 26 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 ALUMNI NEWS

Alumni News reports Constructs, on recent projects Yale School of Architecture by graduates of the P. O. Box 208242 school. Please send New Haven, Connecticut Alumni News your current news to: 06520-8242

1960s entry pavilion for student lounges, an admin- J. C. Calderon (’92), of New York, Raj Patel (’97) is a principal designer Thomas L. Bosworth (’60) and his residen- istrative conference room, and new circula- restored the cornice of Bretton Hall on 86th at KEO International Consultants, which tial architecture are the subjects of the tion spaces. Other recent projects include Street. The building, designed by Harry received the commission to design the monograph, Thomas L. Bosworth: Building the Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center, Mulliken in 1903, lost its galvanized iron headquarters for the Kuwait Investment with Light in the Pacific Northwest, by Erika a branch library for the Cleveland Public cornice decades ago. Replicating the original Authority (KIA) from a field of six design firms. Rosenfeld (ORO Editions, 2007). Library system, and health-care and higher- projecting cornice was prohibitively expen- The 220-meter, 130,000-square-foot tower, Don Metz (’66) has published education projects, including the Cleveland sive, so the architect redesigned the rooftop, located in the heart of Kuwait City, is lifted Confessions of a Country Architect (Bunker Clinic, the largest in Ohio and one of four rebuilding the parapet in red brick and laid six floors above the ground on a podium Hill Publishing, 2007), which describes the LEED-registered projects. Bostwick will be cast stone in alternating stripes. inspired by the traditional form of the dhow. life of a residential country architect. He is presenting “An Adaptable Learning Village Louise Harpman (’93) and Scott Specht Construction is expected to begin in early an award-winning architect and pioneer of at Ohio Northern University” at the Society (’93), with their firm, Specht Harpman, 2009. sustainable architectural design who works of College and Urban Planners’ Mid-Atlantic received a Studio Design Award from the primarily on single-family rural residential Regional Conference in March. In addition, Texas Society of Architects for work on projects. he has been elected to serve as president of ZeroHouse, a small prefabricated home the AIA Cleveland 2008 executive board. that can be easily shipped and quickly 1970s Richard W. Hayes (’86) participated erected. It operates independently, without Calvert Bowie (’77), with his firm, Bowie in the publication event at the Architectural the need for any external utility or waste- Gridley Architects, recently completed the League of New York for The Yale Building disposal connections and is solar-powered, Norfolk Academy Tucker Arts Center, a Project: The First 40 Years (Yale School collects its own rainwater, and processes 92,000-square-foot renovation and addition of Architecture, 2007; distributed by Yale its own waste. The house can be used in for a co-educational day school in Virginia. University Press) in October. He also gave off-grid or ecologically sensitive locations, The project is organized around a new school talks at the Yale Club of New York, the such as ecotourism resorts or as live/work entrance and features a performing-arts National Arts Club, and the 25th annual modules for relief-agency workers, mining, or theater, music and art classrooms, computer meeting of the Southeast Chapter of the construction sites. The project was featured labs, a gymnasium, and a fitness center. Society of Architecture, in Nashville, Tennes- on the cover of the Texas Architect magazine McKee Patterson (’77), with his firm, see. He presented the paper, “Objects and in October 2007; in the January 2008 issues Austin Patterson Disston Architects, received Interiors: Oscar Wilde” at the University of of the Chinese-language Panda and Ketchup two awards from Connecticut Cottages & Oxford as part of the conference, “Subjective magazines, and in the Wall Street Journal Gardens’ Innovation in Design Awards 2007 Objects.” Hayes received a research grant in 2007, as part of DuPont Corporation’s for the design of the Darien Bath, a high- from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in “Design Innovations” campaign. Construc- design bathroom and a Greenwich residence, British Art, as well as a scholarship for his tion on the first ZeroHouse is scheduled to a renovation of the nineteenth-century men’s third residency at the McDowell Colony. begin in June 2008, in Hana, Hawaii. camp Braehead. Whitney Sander (’86), with his firm, Liesl (Elise) Geiger (’94), a principal Sander Architects, is working on Hybrid of Geiger Mason Design, in New York, and 1980s Houses, partly prefab custom homes that use a contributing editor to Elements of Living Carol Burns (’83) and Robert Taylor (’83), warehouse frames and shells, assemble like magazine, published The Essence of Home with their firm, Taylor & Burns, of Boston, erector sets, and are domestically produced (The Monacelli Press, 2007). The book is a completed a 10,000-square-foot addition from eighty percent recycled steel. For the step-by-step look at the planning process of Keo International Consultants, rendering of Kuwait Invest- connected to a student center at Vermont’s founders of Wired magazine he designed a building a house focusing on seven elements ment Authority, 2007. Bennington College. Connected with the site Hybrid that will encompass 13,000 square that are crucial to livability: design origins, pattern of campus buildings, spaces, and feet on a 40-acre site, in Sun Valley, Idaho. site and scale, language and style, openings pathways, the center stabilizes one corner Sander is also completing the design of a and light, spheres of living, flow of space, and 2000s of the main lawn and is a new social hub. science building for the St. Kitts Biomedical sustainability. Architects Richard Gluckman, Dee Briggs (’02) had her first solo sculpture The firm’s work is also included in a traveling Research Foundation, run by New Haven’s Deborah Berke, Ted Flato, Peggy Deamer, exhibition at the Regina Gouger Miller Gallery exhibition, Out of the Box, Design Innovations Axion Research Foundation. In 2006 his Turner Brooks (’70), William McDonough at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, in Affordable Housing on exhibit at RISD, in firm was a semifinalist in the Global Green (’76), and others offered practical advice and from August 31 to October 28, 2007. She February, and curated by Roberta Feldman. Sustainable Housing competition, sponsored experience. exhibited four large-scale pieces in carbon by Brad Pitt, to design low-income housing Michael Haverland (’94) was and stainless steel, along with her design- for post-Katrina New Orleans. The firm’s featured in an article on his residential and-fabrication process. Briggs is currently Canal House was featured on HGTV’s projects in The New York Times, January 24, working on private commissions in Pitts- “Beyond the Box” in 2007. 2008. burgh, New York, and London. Granger Moorhead (’95), with 1990s his firm, Moorhead & Moorhead, and his Juan Miró (’91), with his Austin-based firm, father’s firm, Richard Moorhead, designed Miró Rivera Architects, received several Mobile Chaplet, one of six portable spaces awards for a pedestrian bridge in Austin, for reflection commissioned to travel to including a 2006 Architectural Review Award rural communities around the state of North for International Emerging Architecture. He Dakota, as part of the Roberts Street Chaplet spoke at the RIBA in London as part of a Project. Inspired by the covered wagon, the lecture series held in conjunction with the Chaplet is constructed on a trailer bed with award. Featured in the April 2007 issue of a woven canopy of thermoplastic composite Taylor & Burns, Bennington College Student Center, Architectural Review, the bridge was also one rods that creates a vaulted space. A bench Bennington, Vermont, 2007. of two architectural winners of the first annual floats above the trailer bed supported by London International Creative Competition the rods, which also act as a backrest. The Dee Briggs, “eighteen rings – one line,” Regina Gouger and will be featured in an exhibition in March. project received an Honorable Mention in Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, 2007. Tim McKenna (’84) and Eric Oliner It was also included in the exhibition, Young Environments in I.D. magazine’s 53rd Annual (’76) are working in the New England office Americans: New Architecture in the USA, Design Review in 2007. The project was also of Hammes Company, a national health-care at the Deutsches Architecture Museum, featured in Architectural Record’s August real estate development and consulting firm. in Frankfurt. Miró Rivera Architects also 2007 issue. Moorhead & Moorhead was Emily Wilson (’02), after working As a senior project executive, McKenna received a Design Award from the Texas selected by the Architectural League of New for two New York architecture firms, is now coordinates strategic planning, real estate, Society of Architects and a Merit Award from York as a 2008 “Emerging Voice.” pursuing a MFA in photography and digital and project development efforts for major AIA Austin for the Stonehedge Residence. media at the Maryland Institute College of health-care providers. Oliner is vice president Art, in Baltimore. with the firm and manages its New England Clover Linné (’03) and Robert Berry operations. (’04) were featured in the annual Time Out Ted Trussell Porter (’84) published New York “Home Design Issue,” in October “Essay—The Interiors of Philip Johnson and 2007, in an article about small spaces. Asked David Whitney,” in Pin-Up Magazine (winter to propose a renovation of a 350-square-foot 2007), which discusses the little-heralded studio apartment for a 27-year-old fashioni- influence of the younger Whitney on Johnson sta, their design introduced a continuous and the mutual development of their design translucent storage wall that provided closet sensibilities. space and a variable visual effect by reveal- Marion Weiss (’84), with her firm, ing the shapes and colors of its contents. Weiss/Manfredi, received the 2007 Veronica In November Berry was awarded the Wiley Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design from Professional Award for Hand Delineation in Harvard for the design of the Seattle Art the 2007 Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park. An Moorhead & Moorhead, Mobile Chaplet project, 2007 Competition for his analytical sketch of the exhibit at Harvard’s Gund Hall featured the Teatro Marcello in Rome. project from November 29, 2007, through Frederick Tang (’03) has started a January 13, 2008. Established in 1986, the design practice, DeFT Projects, based in Green Prize is awarded every two years to Dumbo, Brooklyn. He was featured in Time recognize excellence in a project in urban Out New York’s annual “Home Design Issue,” design and the public realm that improves in October 2007. For the Drawing Rooms the quality of urban life. This is the first time project he proposed a studio design for a the winning project has been located in the hypothetical client, a 26-year-old media United States. junkie. DeFT Projects recently completed Robert Bostwick (’85), of the an apartment renovation on the Upper East Bostwick Design Partnership, completed Side and is working with New York City the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Miro Rivera Architects, Pedestrian Bridge, Austin, Texas, retail chain Scoop on a display system for Cleveland State University with a new glass 2007, photograph by Paul Finkel, Piston Design. a new toiletries department in its SoHo 27 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2008 ALUMNI NEWS

flagship store. Tang’s article, “Against the 3-D modeler Google SketchUp. Wadsworth of Architecture to honor a major contribu- on architectural history, such as Lily Reich Grain: Crafting the Complex Surface,” was also teaches an introductory 3-D modeling tor in the field of traditional and classical and Charlotte Perriand, despite having been published in Praxis 9: Expanding Surface. and illustration course at the Boston Archi- architecture. They will receive $200,000 forced to the margins of the male-dominated He was critic in architecture with the REX tectural College. and a model of the Choregic Monument of profession, and the influences women have advanced studio in fall 2007. Graduates from the class of 2007 Lysikrates during ceremonies on March 29, had in general on Modern architecture. are working for the following firms: 2008, in Chicago. They are the first pair to win The second women-and-architecture Joseph Alguire, Marmol Radziner + Associ- the prize, and Plater-Zyberk is the first female panel in New York was called “Women, ates, Los Angeles; Sandra Arndt and recipient. Past winners include Jaquelin T. Architects, and the City,” and was held at the Christopher Lee, Arnell Group, New York; Robertson (’61), in 2007; Allen Greenberg women’s professional society of the Cosmo- Sean Bailey, Konyk Architecture, New York; (’65), in 2006; Quinlan Terry, in 2005, Demetri politan Club, organized by Brooke Kamin Mohammed Balila, and Dryden Razook, Porphyrios, in 2004; and Léon Krier, in 2003. Rapaport and moderated by Mickey Fried- Kohn Pederson Fox, London; Gabrielle Duany and Plater-Zyberk were selected by man. At the event Yale adjunct associate Brainard, Bucholz McEvoy Architects, Dublin; a jury that included Richard Driehaus and professor Deborah Berke, Gisue Hariri, Yale Katherine Corisco, Kevin Kennon Architects; Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic of Davenport Visiting Professor Billie Tsien, and Brook Denison, David M. Schwarz /Archi- The New Yorker. Marilyn Taylor spoke to an engaged, primarily tectural Services, Washington, D.C.; Ayat female crowd about gender-specific issues Fadaifard, Steven Holl Architects, New York; in the practice of architecture. Each woman Harris Ford and Vincent Wan, Pelli Clarke briefly discussed her professional work Pelli Architects, New Haven; Khai Fung, Topaz to Tigerman in New York City and addressed how she WOHA, Singapore; Anya Grant and William believes female architects practice differently deFT Projects, rendering of studio for Media Junkie, 2007. West, Robert A.M. Stern Architects, New Stanley Tigerman (’61) was awarded in a male-dominated discipline. Hariri, with York; Sallie Hambright, Eisenman Architects, the 2008 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for her sister Morgjan, of Hariri & Hariri, advised, New York; Greg Heasley, Leroy Street Studio, Excellence in Architectural Education in “We must take on what is not expected. New York; Jeremiah Joseph and Mustapha honor of his outstanding contribution to We read somewhere that women architects Trattie Davies (’04) designed a new Jundi, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York; architecture education both formally and are afraid to build towers, so we tried that.” gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for Serra Kiziltan, Gage/Clemenceau Architects, informally. Jane Weinzapfel wrote in a When asked how she thinks women design Leslie Feely Fine Art. The exhibition, Frank New York; Steve Lee, Kohn Pederson Fox, nominating letter: “In a culture that struggles differently, Billie Tsien responded, “From the Gehry Process: Models & Drawings, was New York; Youngjin Lee, Sasaki Associates, to grasp a deep or broad understanding of very beginning of design we have a closer on exhibit there from November 15, 2007 Watertown, Massachusetts; Elisa Lui, Smith- the power and delight of architecture, Tiger- and slower understanding of space, which through January 12, 2008. She is critic in group (Healthcare Studio), San Francisco; man has been a remarkably influential and gives females a different connection to architecture working with Frank Gehry on his Karl Mascarenhas, Foster + Partners, New effective advocate of the profession we love space.” advanced studio in spring 2008. York; Sean Namgoong, Pickard Chilton, and the work we do. . . . Tigerman is a nonpa- Patrick Hyland (’04) works in the New Haven, Connecticut; Clinton Prior, Sam reil instructor whose impact on the students —Jessica Lupo office of Westlake Reed Leskosky, in Cleve- Roche, and Neil Sondgeroth, Hammond he has taught formally and informally for so Lupo (’08) was an editor of Retrospecta 06/07 land, Ohio, and is teaching architecture and Beeby Rupert Ainge, Chicago; Jeff Richards, long is magnified many times over by the and is a member of YWA. urban design studios at Kent State Universi- Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Chicago; Frida informed and passionate love of architecture ty’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative. In Rosenberg, AIX Arkitekter, Stockholm; Allen those students, now teachers and practition- spring 2007 Hyland was featured in Influence Slamic, Sage and Coombe Architects, New ers themselves bring to the world.” + Imposition, an exhibit at Cleveland Public York; Ayumi Sugiyama, SHoP Architects, Tigerman received undergraduate Art focusing on the work of designers who New York; Jean Suh and Michael Yeung, and graduate degrees in architecture from came to the city after pursuing graduate Joel Sanders Architect, New York; Julia Suh, Yale before returning to Chicago, where he education out of state. He displayed pencil Steven Harris Architects, New York; Adrienne became chief of design for Harry Weese. In renderings of industrial buildings and propos- Swiatocha, Aidlin Darling Design, San 1962, he went into private practice, which als for Cleveland’s Public Square. Francisco; James Tate, MOS, New Haven; he continues today at Tigerman McCurry Audrey Vuong, Michael Maltzan Architecture, Architects with his wife, Margaret McCurry. Los Angeles; Weston Walker, Studio/Gang/ At Yale he has been a visiting critic and is Architects, Chicago, and Lindsay Weiss, often on final review juries. He also received Gluckman Mayner Architects, New York. Yale University’s first alumni Arts Award. Enrique Ramirez (’07) and Molly Steenson (’07) are Ph.D. candidates at the Princeton School of Architecture. Timothy Newton (’07) is a critic in architecture at Yale Women in Architecture School of Architecture. E. Sean Bailey (’07), Jacob Reidel Founded in fall 2006, Yale Women in Archi- (’08), and Shelley Zhang (’08), known as the tecture (YWA) is a student group formed to Royal United States Architects, published offer a support network and critical forum “Towards a Model Railroad Urbanism” for students and faculty in which issues of Constructs To form by putting together parts; build; frame; devise. A complex image or idea resulting from synthesis in 306090 Models (Princeton Architec- gender can be discussed freely and openly. by the mind. tural Press, 2008), edited by Jonathan D. The group meets several times a semester to Solomon, Emily Abruzzo, and Eric Ellingsen. address such issues and gather information Volume 10, Number 2 on student enrollment, faculty representation, ISBN: 978-0-9790733-7-3 Spring 2008 and professional outreach at the School of Patrick Hyland, rendering of “Public Square as Tax and Architecture. Cost $5.00 Tariff Free Trade Zone,” Cleveland, Ohio, 2007. 2007 AIA New England For the fall 2007 semester YWA intro- duced the following year’s agenda that © Copyright 2008, Yale School of Architecture and Connecticut Design PO Box 208242, New Haven, Connecticut 06520 focuses on a proposed support network Forth Bagley’s (’05) article “Portfo- Awards and outreach program designed to bring Telephone 203 432 2296 lio: Hong Kong Cultural Centre,” published awareness to particular gender issues. The Web site www. architecture.yale.edu in the winter 2007 issue of Pin-Up Magazine, Brian Healy (’81) received an Honor Award gathering drew professionals, faculty, and summarizes the building’s controversial for the design of the Grant Fulton Recital Hall students together in an informal environment Constructs is published twice a year by the Dean’s Offi ce history as a catalyst for growth in the city’s at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode to talk about upcoming issues at Yale and of the Yale School of Architecture.

Kowloon district. He helped to edit “KPF,” Island. Chad Floyd (’73), with Centerbrook address future concerns at the school. The We would like to acknowledge the support of the in Visual Architecture, June 2007. Bagley Architects and Planners, was given a Merit main discussion recognized the tendency for Rutherford Trowbridge Memorial Publication Fund; the returned to KPF after an architecture tour of Award in the Residential category for work males in the field of architecture to develop Paul Rudolph Publication Fund, established by Claire Scandinavia and the Netherlands with his on the Floyd House, in the Connecticut River mentor relationships with other males. YWA and Maurits Edersheim; the Robert A.M. Stern Fund, established by Judy and Walter Hunt; and the Nitkin William Wirt Winchester Traveling Fellow- Village, and a Connecticut Design Award hopes the organization can become that Family Dean’s Discretionary Fund in Architecture. ship, which he received in 2005. At KPF he is Honorable Mention in the same category. sort of link for female students and faculty working on master plans in Chongqing and James Stewart Polshek (’55), with his firm within the Yale School of Architecture, as Dean, Robert A. M. Stern in Tianjin, China, and a luxury retail-hotel- Polshek Partnership Architects, received a well as for professionals already in the field. Associate Dean, John Jacobson Assistant Dean, Keith Krumwiede residential complex in Macau, now nearing Merit Award in the Renovation category for Member Miriam Peterson (’09) expressed completion. He is also working on a twelve- work on the Yale University Art Gallery and the desire of the YWA to create a networking Editor, Nina Rappaport story all-glass residential building on Park a Connecticut Design Honor Award in the Web site by the spring: “Our hope is that Graphic design, Jeff Ramsey Copy editors, Cathryn Drake and David Delp Avenue. Bagley was promoted to associate Preservation category. Jon Pickard (’79), with we can somehow foster the same type of Student assistant, Marc Guberman (’08) principal at KPF in December 2007. his firm, Pickard Chilton Architects, received camaraderie and kinship as males do in order David Hecht (’05) is working at TEN a Connecticut Design Award Honorable to promote and support each other.” Event photographs by John Jacobson, Tom Bosschaert Arquitectos, in New York, along with Brandon Mention in the Built category for the design of Also in the fall, the influence of women (’08) and Brandt Knapp (’10). Pace (’05) and Joyce Chang (’06). the Orville L. Freeman Building, in Saint Paul, in the architectural profession was exten- Cover image Lewis Wadsworth (’05), who works Minnesota. sively discussed in New York City during two Terence Gower, still from The Polytechnic, 2005, video for Goody Clancy in Boston, was featured panels. The first panel, “Women in Modern- sound; 8:20 minutes, courtesy of the artist. in “Fantasy Architecture,” in the July 2007 ism: Making Places in Architecture,” held at issue of AIArchitect. His Pavilion for Oblivion, the Museum of Modern Art, looked closely in the “Out There” category, was chosen for Driehaus Prize to Duany at the positive role women have played its intriguing design and poetic narrative. In and Plater-Zyberk throughout architectural history. Sponsored a casual experiment with the simulation of by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation complex geometry using basic off-the-shelf Andrés Duany (’74) and Elizabeth (last year Willis was a speaker at the fall YWA building components, mixed with an inter- Plater-Zyberk (’74) are the recipients of the event), the discussion’s participants included est in prehistoric anthropology, Wadsworth 2008 Richard H. Driehaus Prize. Estab- Sarah Herda, Toshiko Mori, Karen Stein, and discovered he could simulate megalithic lished in 2003 by Chicago investor Richard Gwendolyn Wright and was moderated by structures with basic software tools designed Driehaus, the award is presented annually curator Barry Bergdoll. The panel focused for children and throw them into the common through the University of Notre Dame School on women, who have had a lasting effect Non Profit Org. US Postage PAID New Haven, CT Constructs Permit No. 526 Yale University School of Architecture PO Box 208242 New Haven, CT 06520–8242

Yale School of Architecture Lectures, Symposia, and Exhibitions Spring 2008

For 2007–2008, while the A+A Building Chris Sharples, Kahn Visiting Assistant This symposium is supported by the do cultural, technological, economic, and Is undergoing renovation, the Yale Professor generosity of Yale’s Offi ce of the President socio-political changes stimulate or limit School of Architecture is located at 32-36 “In Practice” and by the Brendan Gill Lectureship Fund. fears and consequent designs for mobility? Edgewood Avenue (between Howe and Monday, April 7 Park Streets), in New Haven, Connecticut “Sustainable Architecture, Today and Friday, April 11, 6:30 p.m. Frank O. Gehry, Eero Saarinen Visiting Tomorrow: Reframing the Discourse” Keynote Address Professor Art Gallery McNeil Lecture Hall (enter on Roth-Symonds Lecture Lectures “Work” High Street) Adrian Favell Thursday, April 10 Friday, April 4 to Saturday, April 5 “Mobility, Security, and Creativity: Lectures begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Yale Art The Politics and Economics of Global Gallery’s McNeil Lecture Hall (enter on High Mario Carpo This symposium, marking the twentieth Creative Cities” Street) unless otherwise noted. Doors open “Digital Turns. Historical Thoughts from anniversary of the Brundtland Commission to the general public at 6:15 p.m. Abroad” Report, proposes to introduce multiple Saturday, April 12, 9:00 AM – 6:00 p.m. Monday, April 14 contexts from which to reexamine the Presentation of Papers Richard Meier, Davenport Visiting underlying questions of sustainability. Is Professor The School of Architecture spring lecture enough being done, and is what’s being The Yale School of Architecture is a “Hans Arp and Others” series is supported in part by Elise Jaffe done truly effective? Are effective results registered provider with the American Thursday, January 10 + Jeffrey Brown, the Myriam Bellazoug found by signing a pledge, making a Institute of Architects Continuing Educa- Memorial Fund, the Eero Saarinen Visiting commitment to a target, adopting an array tion System. Credit earned by attending David Billington Professorship Fund, the Gordon H. Smith of best practices, and/or using state-of- the “Building the Future: The University Gordon H. Smith Lecture Lectureship in Practical Architecture Fund, the-art evaluation tools? What would or as Architectural Patron” and “Sustain- “The Art of New Structural Engineering: the David W. Roth and Robert H. Symonds could happen if we had the ability to step able Architecture, Today and Tomorrow: Swiss Legacy and Mexican Marvels” Memorial Lecture Fund, and the Paul back and question the very construction of Reframing the Discourse” will be reported Monday, January 14 Rudolph Lectureship Fund. our assumptions that frame our problems to CES Records for AIA members. Certifi - in terms of what we know and how we do cates of Completion for non-AIA members things? Can we begin to set priorities for are available upon request. Panel Discussion Symposia a new generation of sustainable design research by identifying new approaches “Liberal and Illiberal Thoughts on Architec- “Building the Future: The University as grounded in the practice of architecture, Exhibitions ture and Modernity: A Conversation” Architectural Patron” but informed by the knowledge of other Anthony Vidler, The Cooper Union Art Gallery McNeil Lecture Hall (enter on disciplines? Exhibition hours are Monday through Karsten Harries, Yale University High Street) Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Joan Ockman, Columbia University Friday, January 25 to Saturday, January 26 This symposium is supported by the Saturday,10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Spyros Papapetros, Princeton University generosity of Gerald D. Hines and Hines The Architecture Gallery is located at Christopher Wood, moderator, This symposium, organized by the Interests Limited Partnership. 32 Edgewood Avenue. Yale University History of Art Department and the School Monday, January 28 of Architecture, will pose the following Friday, April 4, 6:30 p.m. Ecology. Design. Synergy questions to practitioners and historians Welcome Behnisch Architekten + Transsolar Climate “Painting Toward Architecture, Architecture of architecture: What is a great university Richard C. Levin, Robert A.M. Stern Engineering Toward Painting” A conversation in honor building? What is the university’s role as October 29, 2007 to February 1, 2008 of Robert Slutzky 1929-2005 (B.F.A. 1952, patron of architecture? How do university Keynote address M.F.A. 1954) buildings contribute to the production of Gro Harlem Brundtland Painting the Glass House: Peter Halley, Yale University knowledge? How does great university Artists Revisit Modern Architecture Robert Storr, Yale University architecture get made? Saturday, April 5, 9:30 a.m. February 11 to May 9, 2008 Anthony Vidler, The Cooper Union Michelle Addington, James Axley, Stefan Joan Ockman, moderator, Friday, January 25, 6:30 p.m. Behnisch, Patrick Bellew, Lisa Curran, Year-end exhibition of student work Columbia University Keynote Address Daniel Esty, James Hansen, Sheila May 23 to August 8, 2008 Monday, February 11 Brendan Gill Lecture Kennedy, Susan Kim, Margaret Living- David Brownlee stone, William McDonough, Daniel Pearl, The exhibition Ecology.Design.Synergy: Paul Andreu “Building Education” Hilary Sample, Jack Spengler, Ken Yeang, Behnisch Architekten + Transsolar Climate Paul Rudolph Lecture and Mitch Zakin Engineering, an exhibition of the Institute “Flux – Movement – Form” Saturday, January 26, 9:45 a.m. for Foreign Cultural Relations and Galerie Monday, February 18 “Do Good Buildings Make Good “Mobile Anxieties” Aedes, Berlin, is supported in part by the Education?” Friday April 11 to Saturday April 12 Goethe-Institut New York. Mabel Wilson Frances Halsband, Chris McVoy, Robert Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 102 “Time/Space Pressure: The Electronic Nelson, Mack Scogin Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Image of Architecture” This symposium, organized by students Modern Architecture, was organized by Monday, February 25 Saturday, January 26, 1:30 p.m. in the School’s Masters of Environmental The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. “Campus or Museum: The University as Design program, will look critically at Yoshiharu Tsukamoto/ Atelier Bow Wow Architectural Patron” the idea that mobility—both literal and The school’s exhibition program is Myriam Bellazoug Memorial Lecture Jay Chatterjee, Sandy Isenstadt, William metaphoric—undermines traditional supported in part by the James Wilder “Future Local” J. Mitchell, Robert A. M. Stern, and Karen notions of boundaries. When people, Green Dean’s Resource Fund, the Kibel Monday, March 24 Van Lengen buildings, capital, and ideas move through Foundation Fund, The Nitkin Family Dean’s space and time without boundaries, it Discretionary Fund in Architecture, the Paul Thomas Heatherwick “The Future of Architecture in Education” affects the way we think about identities Rudolph Publication Fund, the Robert A.M. Eero Saarinen Lecture David Brownlee, Laura Cruickshank, and and foundations in architecture and Stern Fund, and the Rutherford Trowbridge “Belief and Doubt” David Joselit beyond. What are the precedents for Memorial Publication Fund. Monday, March 31 mobility in architecture, and how are they related to a general sense of unease? How