Design-Build Studio Syallabus and Project Outcomes

Design Feedback: a trans-scalar inquiry into the production of forests and fiber + TIMBER (intensive + Extensive): design | build | test | measure | report

Arch 5250, Spring 2017 - Syllabus

Module 1 – Background The trans-scalar topics of this inaugural lab are Forests and Fiber. Our collective research will focus on the performative feedback loops embodied in tree|timber|wood that necessarily connect forested landscapes to wood fiber buildings across space and time. What are the performative variables attached to Minnesota’s forested landscapes and how can their design positively impact the buildings whose materials are sourced from them? How can material specification and construction impact the management regimes of forested landscapes and the design of rural economies and communities that live in them? This Lab is open to architecture and landscape architecture students and will ask both to carefully reconsider the appropriate systems’ boundaries for their design interventions.

Module 2 - Background Building on the outcomes of DDL1 (spring 2017 module 1), we will design and build a series of prototype structures at the Anoka Heritage Lab. Our design interventions will critically explore the extensive properties of timber (which are divisible and dependent on construction unit size and configuration), and intensive properties of timber (which are indivisible and inherent to the material itself properties of timber). Students will work in teams to design a pair of pavilions that meet a prescribed set of program needs for the Heritage Lab as well as provide our own lab with an experimental armature to test a set of inquiries initially established by DDL1. This Lab is open to Architecture students – it is not required that students enroll in DDL1 to enroll in DDL2.

PROGRAM This year’s Minnesota Decentralized Design Lab will focus on understanding the system dynamics attached to Wood. Minnesota boasts over 15.5 million acres of timberland, covering over a quarter of the state’s total area. Timberland is considered forest land that is productive enough to produce a commercial crop of trees and is not reserved from harvesting by policy or law. Minnesota’s timber resources are incredibly heterogeneous, characterized by the USDA through sixteen distinguishable forest types.i The economic development of the state was founded on the timber industry, and the current condition of Minnesota’s vast timber holdings is in large part the result of a collection of historical decisions made around the economy of wood products. Minneapolis is actually sited on the first sawmill in the state constructed at St. Anthony Falls in 1821 to supply timbers for the construction of Fort Snelling; presenting a historical twist on the urban forestry movement.ii

This laboratory’s research seeks provocations that act as catalysts, affecting change beyond their immediate circumstances and stimulating paths for growth along sustainable trajectories. These inaugural modules will form the foundation of a body of work that will be created to probe large-scale architectural, landscape, cultural, and economic questions through discrete physical and theoretical interventions. Our research and design efforts this year will focus on the questions: 1) Given the rate of change, and the pervasiveness of change - all inputs are both fluid and dynamic - what ‘formations’ of wood should we pursue in Minnesota, why? 2) Can the intervention of ‘a wood building’ or ‘a timber harvest’ become the basis for a self-sustaining process of economic or environmental regeneration? 3) How can we position the management of timber resources to build connections across Greater Minnesota in order dismiss the polarizing dichotomy simplistically characterized as the “urban/rural divide”? The theme for the research phase of our design-build lab was Forests and Fiber. The research focused on the performative feed- back loops embodied in tree|timber|wood that necessarily connect forested land- scapes to wood fiber buildings across space and time.

Exploratory research models the studio used to initiate the research – the model- ling exercise made wood a tacit material while still allowing for scales of design inquiry. SCREEN LAYER Designed Construction Logic – 1. rain screen - outside envelope layer 2. formal varia�on layer Mock-up 3. primary ac�va�on layer 4. so�wood (red pine, spruce, tamarack The final design logic leveraged LIGHT WOOD LAYER 1. screen structure cross-laminated tmber (CLT) enclo- 2. triabiated tectonic logic 3. metal Fasteners sures mounted on steel trailers to 4. so�wood (red pine, spruce, tamarack) provide a lateral support system for a set of framed constructon logics HEAVY TIMBER LAYER 1. light wood structure that subsequently support each other. 2. rigidly a�ached to CLT layer 3. in-plane construc�on The interior frame layer consists of 4. all wood joints 5. hardwood (black ash) heavy-tmber members that support a balloon framed roof system that in turn supports an exterior layer of charred wood screens that define the CLT LAYER buildings’ overall geometries. 1. primary lateral structure 2. bolted to trailer, heavy �mber bolted to CLT 3. in-plane construc�on 4. prefabricated w/ metal fasteners 5. secondary ac�va�on 6. so�wood (SPFs)

TRAILER 1. founda�on LEARNING STATION 2. earth screw anchors - if permanently located 3. mobile CONSTRUCTION LOGIC 4. prefabricated steel structure

LEARNING STATION VARIATIONS D D D A A A BB B B

C3 C2 C1 STATION 1 STATION 2 STATION 3

D D D D LINKED A A A BB A BB B B

C3 C C AGGREGATIONS 2 2

C1

3

2 C C D

A A B B

BB A D

D C

BUTTED 1 D

3 D C A BB

AGGREGATIONS A A B B D C2

C1 B A B C D D C C D 3 1 3 PERPENDICULAR B B AGGREGATIONS A D D D A BB A BB A A

C2 C2 C1 Milling

The project worked with materials milled in three different ways. Students and faculty using a portable chainsaw to mill the bulk of the heavy timber framing material. The material that went into the screens was milled and kilned dried by a local band sawyer from a company called Wood From the Hood that makes lumber and wood furniture from fallen street trees. The lumber that went into the roof frame was processed at the Potlatch mill in Bemidji, MN - the state’s largest commercial mill.

All three processes yielded vastly different materials and were attached to vastly different logistical streams. Through this pro- cess students were able to develop a critical position what using “local” materials really entail – both on the positive and negative side, from their own personal experience. Wood Logics

The project exposed students to a range of wood construction logistics.

• Mortise and tenon framing green timbers • Lightweight wood framing • CLT rigging and assembly • Prefabricated panel design and assembly

Lecture Course Syallabus

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE | COLLEGE OF DESIGN FALL 2018

Building Technology and Making: Matter, Energy and Inquiry ARCH 5562

Instructor Jacob Mans

COURSE SUMMARY This course introduces ways of seeing and comprehending architecture and the factors that contribute to its continuous emergence. It introduces students to the topics of energy and materials as they relate to architecture and technology. The course frames technology as a kind of designed construct, organized to collect, channel and distribute energy and matter to meet particular design goals for a question under consideration. These “constructs” are systems whose “organization” is defined by a particular logic. while these systems pertain to technology, they are not technologically isolated; they are socio-technical systems intractably nested within some of society’s most wicked and conflicted issues.

More important than the limited material and technological facts that students will pick up from this class are the frameworks taught to help students develop their own critical questions, design or identify methodologies for probing these questions, and learning to identify actionable linkages between researching socio-technical inquiries and designing architectural interventions that positively affect them. In this way, this course is at least as focused on “Inquiry” as it is focused on “materials” and/or “energy”. The reality is that the factual content embedded in the current discourse on materials and energy so thoroughly out paces our ability to effectively memorize and recall rote facts that it is more for you to learn “how to learn” about materials and energy.

In the context of this course, “Material Logic” is defined as a broadly adopted technical and cultural system of reasoning prescribing a material’s order and arrangement toward a purpose. This essential definition challenges designers to eschew a tendency to consider material systems as fully formed and deployable. Instead, they should consider such systems as “open systems”, open to other forms of reasoning as well as being changeable, mutable and novel through the discovery of all factors at play.

This course asks you to take a position on both the material logics we study as well as the media we use to inquire and represent them. The ability to articulate a position on the technical description of material systems, their in- situ applications, and whether or not their qualities intractable or mutable will serve you well when arguing for a particular approach toward the instantiation of architecture.

Revised, 09.01.18 1 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE | COLLEGE OF DESIGN FALL 2018

Building Technology and Making: Matter, Energy and Inquiry ARCH 5562

COURSE WORKING METHODS As inferred earlier, this course is rooted in inquiries of architectures that are, as of yet, un-formed. Students will adopt a structured systems approach to inquiry, carefully developing the questions we set out to answer as well as openly acknowledging the boundaries we place on our research. Beyond developing worthwhile questions, we will develop skills to conduct research that help us identify and/or construct methods for interrogating these questions.

Each Tuesday, over fourteen weeks, students will dissect, disassemble, reassemble and transform energy and matter iteratively through discussions and experiments into individual material inquires that expose the entire class to some of the most complex social, political, economic, and ecologic issues of our time. Matter, as I refer to it in the context of this class, is simply concentrated energy. Thus, the smallest material inquiry can inform how we think about some of the world’s largest and complex issues. Energy transforms into matter; transforms into material; transforms into material units; transforms into construction systems; transforms into buildings, communities, cities, states, governments, etc. Small questions effect decisions that scale to affect huge open thermodynamic systems. These discussions, this part of the course, is referred to as the “Transformity Lab”.

Each Thursday we will have lectures that present content on the “theories and methods of inquiry”, baseline “material logics”, and energy topics relative to architecture that will help students establish their individual research paths for substantive material exploration. During the semester, we will take five field trips to visit local material production facilities and explore how they transform raw matter into the material things we use. Dates and locations TBD. All facilities are located around the Twin Cities; we may need to run class slightly longer these days – to be discussed on the first day of class.

Two last things: “For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert.”- AC Clarke. We are to become students of construction and media, not experts. The expert pontificates while the non-expert inquires. We will not lament this position. We will learn to exploit it!

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” - AC Clarke. Throughout, the content of this course – lectures, reading, and discussion – are positioned within the realm of the limits of the possible, as all construction logics and their materials are continuously emerging. Do not discount that the impossibilities of today are the possibilities of tomorrow.

Course Learning Objectives Introduce students to the following baseline material Logics: 1. Wood 2. Ceramics 3. Concrete 4. Metal 5. Plastics Introduce students to the following Inquiry topics: 1. Question formation 2. Measurement 3. Research and experimental methods 4. Design Thinking 5. Translating inquiry into action

The objective of this course is for students to gain a nimble first-principles definition of several general “material logics” and also to learn a set of translatable research methods that will help them explore the factors that contribute to the selection, design and transformation of energy, matter, and technology in architecture. .

Revised, 09.01.18 2

Collaborative Design Studio Syllabus

University of Minnesota | School of Architecture | Arch 5250

Collaborative Design Lab 2019 Building Community Resilience Spring 2019 - Syllabus

INSTRUCTORS Jacob Mans, AIA Fatima Olivieri, AIA, LEED AP, BD+C

Lab Description The Collaborative Design Lab is a design research project developed with KieranTimberlake that leverages distinct architectural assets from both academic and professional practice sectors to engage communities and to develop actionable projects that can improve our global resilience. The lab leverages a pedagogical approach structured around a set of progressive workshops that combine foundational skills development, design thinking, and written and verbal narrative development within an architectural office framework that maintains a healthy work-life balance and is structured around the realities of developing a project under a deadline that can we continue to develop and later implement.

Collaborators The lab is built around a collaboration between the University of Minnesota, KieranTimberlake, and the University of Puerto Rico’s National Institute for Energy and Island Sustainability. The goals of this collaboration are to (1) identify and co-create a set of design interventions that can increase the resiliency of our community collaborators University of Minnesota | School of Architecture | Arch 5250 in Puerto Rico, and (2) to leverage our distinct assets to create a project together that would otherwise not be able to create on our own.

KieranTimberlake Founded in 1984, KieranTimberlake brings together the experience and talents of over 120 professionals of diverse backgrounds and abilities in a practice that is recognized worldwide. Their projects include the programming, planning, and design of new structures as well as the conservation, renovation, and transformation of existing buildings, with special expertise in education, government, arts and culture, civic, and residential projects.

Common to all of KieranTimberlake’s work is that each project begins with a question and continues its development within a culture of continuous asking, ensuring that design results from deep investigation. KieranTimberlake is committed not only to delivering the highest quality services to our clients, but also to pursuing ideas that push the practice of architecture forward.

Fatima Olivieri - AIA, LEED BD+E, Associate Fátima Olivieri integrates elevated design thinking with meticulous attention to craft, culture, and context to deliver spaces that enhance people’s appreciation of architecture and its environment. Since joining KieranTimberlake in 2011, Fátima has worked on award-winning projects including the renovation of Harvard Dunster House and a master plan for Yale-NUS, a joint liberal arts college between Yale and the National University of Singapore. Currently, Fátima is a project architect for New York University’s new 181 Mercer, where she is spearheading the design of the building’s lobbies, commons, and theatres.

A native of Puerto Rico, Fátima earned her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design at the University of Puerto Rico and a Master of Architecture at University of Virginia. Shortly after joining KT, Fátima helped formalize KieranTimberlake’s Community Involvement group, which collaborates with nonprofit organizations on a variety of pro-bono projects. Fátima has worked on four projects for the initiative, including serving as the Project Architect for Mars City, an interactive 3D simulation of a Mars colony used as an educational tool for high school students. Additionally, Fátima has lectured at national architectural conferences like Facades + and the 2017 NIBS Conference. Her writing has appeared in a variety of online publications including HiddenCity Philadelphia, and she has taught architecture at her alma mater, University of Virginia, and Temple University.

Stephanie Carlisle - Principal Stephanie uses her background in environmental science and architecture to bridge research and design, bringing data-driven analysis to complex design problems. Her research investigates the interaction between constructed and natural environments, focusing on green infrastructure, urban ecology, high-performance landscape design, Life Cycle Assessment, material health and toxicity, and environmental modeling and mapping. She has piloted spatial surveys of Love Park and the Emergency Department at Jefferson University Hospital, and led the materials database development for Tally®, a custom LCA application that allows architects to calculate the environmental impacts of their building material choices. She has brought her expertise to projects such as the US Embassy in London, the Consortium for Building Energy Innovation, and a new art gallery administration building.

Stephanie's writing on life cycle assessment was published in the book Embodied Energy and Design in 2017, and her award-winning research on green roofs has appeared in Cities and the Environment (CATE) and Green Roof Ecosystems. Stephanie also serves as a lecturer of Urban Ecology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Scenario Journal, an online publication devoted to showcasing and facilitating the emerging interdisciplinary conversations between landscape architects, urban designers, engineers, and ecologists. University of Minnesota | School of Architecture | Arch 5250

She has spoken and served on juries at Columbia University, Cornell University, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, and Wesleyan University.

Billie Faircloth - AIA, LEED AP BD+C Partner In her professional and academic research, Billie Faircloth conspires to pursue an answer to the question, “Why do we build the way that we do?” Billie leads a transdisciplinary group of professionals leveraging research, design, and problem-solving processes from fields as diverse as environmental management, chemical physics, materials science, and architecture. She fosters collaboration between disciplines, trades, academies, and industries in order to define a relevant problem-solving boundary for the built environment.

Billie oversees the queries and investigations that begin and inform each project at KieranTimberlake. During design, she guides project teams through empirical experiments, prototypes, and analysis. She leads the development of technology that informs high-performance design, including Pointelist™, a wireless sensor network, Tally™, a life-cycle assessment application, and Roast, a post-occupancy survey tool. She is also working on Ideal Choice Homes, an affordable, quick-to-build housing solution for India's emerging middle class.

Billie has taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and Harvard University, and has served as Portman Visiting Critic at Georgia Institute of Technology and VELUX Visiting Professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Prior to joining KieranTimberlake, she was an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture, where she instructed research studios exploring applications for conventional and emerging material technologies and conducted seminars on emerging construction and fabrication technologies.

National Institute of Energy and Island Sustainability (INESI) INESI is a multidisciplinary and multi-directional institute at the University of Puerto Rico that seeks to insert the university community more effectively into the Puerto Rico’s public energy policy discourse and engage UPR in resolving Puerto Rico’s energy and sustainability problems with the use of empirical research and academic knowledge. INESI is a platform that promotes interdisciplinary collaboration on island energy and sustainability issues and identifies UPR System resources to assist community groups, government agencies, private companies, the press and other sectors of the Puerto Rican society.

Marla Perez-Lugo, PhD - University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Dr. Marla Perez-Lugo is a professor of Sociology at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Puerto Rico- Mayaguez (UPRM), since 2002. She received her Ph.D. in environmental sociology, with a special focus on vulnerability to natural hazards and risk/disaster communications, from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (2003). She has published in international journals such as Professional Geographer, Sociological Inquiry and Organizations and the Environment. Since 2005, her research has focused on the social aspects of energy, energy policy, interdisciplinary energy studies and public engagement in energy decision-making processes in Puerto Rico. She is a Co-Pi in an ongoing NSF-CRISP interdisciplinary grant for the modeling of a sustainable energy market for islands, co-founder of INESI with her colleague and life partner, and co-author in a forthcoming publication on Puerto Rico’s energy transition.

Cecilio Ortiz García - PhD, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Dr. Cecilio Ortiz García is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science at University of Puerto Rico- Mayagüez. He received his PhD in Public Policy and Administration from the Arizona State University, School of Public Affairs. His expertise lies in the intersection of the social acceptance of renewable energy technologies, University of Minnesota | School of Architecture | Arch 5250 energy governance, intergovernmental relations and energy transitions. He has authored several research articles, book chapters and technical reports in those areas. He is also a collaborator with National Academy of Sciences Committees working on the impacts of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria in 2017. Dr. Cecilio Ortiz Garcia is considered an institutional builder in university circles having founded the National Institute for Energy and Island Sustainability at the University of Puerto Rico in collaboration with his colleague and life partner Dr. Marla Perez Lugo. He is the creator of the RISE conceptual framework.

Marcel J. Castro-Sitiriche - PhD, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Dr. Marcel J. Castro-Sitiriche is an associate professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus (UPRM) since 2008 and adjunct professor at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) in Arusha, Tanzania. He received the Ph.D. electrical engineering degree from Howard University at Washington DC in 2007 and his B.Sc. electrical engineering degree from UPRM. He spent the 2014- 2015 at NM-AIST as a Fulbright Scholar. His research interest includes appropriate technology, rural microgrids, solar home systems, rural electrification, power electronics, and responsible wellbeing. His latest efforts have been focused on the bottom-up grid concept for remote rural areas and the use of decentralized power to decrease the total number of customer hours of lost electric service after an intense hurricane.

The Collaborative Design Lab is a part of a much broader collaborative at the University of Minnesota. A community of interest developed in the aftermath of the devastating 2017 hurricane season, involving more than twenty mainland universities, the University of Puerto Rico, and multiple community groups across the island. In June of 2018, the first Puerto Rico-based Resilience through Innovation in Sustainable Energy workshop brought together over ninety representatives from twenty-six universities, from both Puerto Rico and the mainland, fourteen from local and federal governments as well as community based organizations, and several private sector participants. The workshop developed work groups on issues such as the relationships between universities and communities, the macro political, economic and cultural context of resilience, the relationship between resilience and the built environment, and students’ experiences in disasters.

In January of 2019, students and faculty from the University of Minnesota converged with students and faculty from the University of Puerto Rico in a relational research inquiry focused on energy transitions. The course, called the Global Convergence Lab, developed a set of project specific inquiries with communities from Puerto Rico, working collaboratively to produce design ventures ideas that could span geographic, political and economic divisions between Minnesota and Puerto Rico. Resulting from these efforts, an extended community of practice has emerged to define a set of design projects for the Collaborative Design Lab to explore. In addition to the key coordinating collaborators outlined above, we will also engage the following collaborators throughout the development of our design project.

Project This year’s project works with the Super Hero Foundation (SHF), and it director Soammy XXX XXX, to develop a program and design concepts for the foundation’s adaptive reuse of a decommissioned public school that it acquired in Aquadilla, Puerto Rico. The SHF is currently working to transform this existing building into a new Montessori school that focuses on providing therapy and educational support to children with physical and learning disabilities.

Our goal is to help the SHF understand and prioritize a program, develop strategies for increased school and community resilience, and to develop design concepts for the project that communicate its potential. We will package our designs for the SHF and will connect them and our initial concept plans with local architects in Puerto Rico to develop the project further.

University of Minnesota | School of Architecture | Arch 5250

General Objectives • To develop awareness of design habits and presumptions, to introduce new ways of generating ideas. • To discover which visual and verbal methods are most useful for exploring and transforming various concepts into material and cognitive architecture. • To understand how architectural designs can engage discourses that extend beyond buildings. • To implement an architectural design that responds to its material surroundings as well as historical, social, cultural, and environmental relationships.

Project Objective

• To develop collaborative design methods to rapidly identify and develop design concepts • To leverage rigorous inquiry in the design process • To develop representations that are both provocative and communicate information clearly (plan, section, axon)

MODES OF EXPLORATION

The lab consists of a sequence of workshops developed to both rapidly progress our design’s development as well as to instill a focused studio that is time conscious, critical, and supportive. We will work collaboratively to make decisions and will hold ourselves accountable for shared deliverables. The project is divided into three (3) phases. Phase one (1) deals with project definition and site characterization; phase two (2) deals with research and defining design interventions; and, phase three (3) deals with project development and documentation.

Intent and Outcomes The Laboratory seeks a methodology for architecture as an engaged practice. It is motivated by the belief that design is not limited to the architecture we produce, but that it can address and find solutions to the larger, more critical, global issues facing us today. To attain deeper control and understanding, architectural professionals and students alike must fully and holistically engage the social, environmental, material, and productive processes that are the context for what they produce. Architecture practiced in this way enables proactive rather than reactive outcomes and becomes a means by which the student and the professional participate together as global citizens. This Laboratory seeks to solve real problems affecting social, environmental, and economic conditions largely unmet by the profession, and to expose students to opportunities for design intervention that are not apparent in more conventional design studios.

PROJECT PROGRAM This year’s Laboratory will focus on developing design solutions for adaptive reuse of an abandoned school in Aquadilla, Puerto Rico. The client for the project the Super Hero Foundation, who recently acquired the building and adjacent properties are now working to adapt the existing building into a Montessori School focused on serving children with learning and development disabilities. The project will also explore how the design of the school could increase the resilience of surrounding community. In addition to school program, our design interventions will also incorporate therapy pools, gardens, food production and storage programs, teacher housing, and renewable energy and water systems.

Schedule

See Handout KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Catalyst Workshop Syllabus

Catalyst 2019: Extended Communities of Practice - Syllabus

ARCH 5110 - Architecture as Catalyst 2019: Extended Communities of Practice March 11th – 15th

Instructors Jacob Mans Alex Heid Virajita Singh Thomas Fisher

Architecture as a Socio-Technical System People do not experience artifact in isolation. People experience artifacts within a context. Artifacts require integration with human agency, social structures and organizations to take on functionality. This context is shaped by more than direct human/technology interaction, it is shaped by the broader network of systems that influence human behavior toward technology - by regulation, user preference and practices, financial markets, economic standing, existing infrastructure (and access to it), production cycles, and maintenance, etc. In this way, the things we make are not static but moments of fixity in a continuous flow of materials and energy circulating throughout our continuously changing societies.

Even simple design artifacts link to socially constructed contexts; they are components of much larger technological systems that actively shape the societies that produce and/or use them. In this regard, whether obvious or not, design is inherently wicked. When we go down the system thinking digression, eventually everything connects to everything else.

What is the culture of inquiry attached to the making of socio-technical artifacts? Tim Ingaard points out that theorists and critical thinkers, “make” through thinking, while craftspeople and builders, “think” through making. As designers, we bridge these worlds, producing concepts, theories, and artifacts in our engagement with communities, clients, and the built environment. “Making” is a trans-scalar practice that requires critical discourse. This workshop explores the culture of “Making”. It is not only an opportunity to make things (which we will do), but an opportunity to unpack the systems and circumstances that leads up to making. To critically unpack production and co-productions as a form of extended practice.

This year’s Catalyst is intended to create a critical discourse around the practice of “making” as it relates to design and architecture, and to engage in the production of artifacts with communities to address ongoing social and environmental challenges. Our production builds on the work of the 2018 Catalyst bringing back the communities we worked with last year to “make” something together. We will focus on the development of a significant prototype with help of an extended community of practice that we will engage to transform our catalyst inquiries.

1 Catalyst 2019: Extended Communities of Practice - Syllabus

Program Last year we worked with communities from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, Minneapolis Homeless Communities, Milan Minnesota, and Puerto Rico. This year, along with representatives from these communities, we will also be working with in increasingly diverse, and hopefully even strange (at least from a traditional architectural disciplinary perspective), project teams to “make” something out of the ideas we established last year.

This workshop seeks to solve real problems affecting social, environmental, and economic conditions largely unmet by the profession, and to expose students to opportunities for design intervention that are not apparent in more conventional design practices or traditional design studios.

Catalyst Projects

Wachusko weesti 2018 Reserve Housing A community project with the Opaskwayak Cree Nation

Invited Project Team – Alex Wilson, Chris Cornelius, Ryan Hunt, Jason Surkan Material Inquiry - Deployables, animal architectures, and non-industrial assemblies

Project Summary The wachusko weesti project is a community-led collaboration between an interdisciplinary research team (including Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics, professionals and students, working in Education, Natural Resources, and Design-Build Architecture) and First Nation leadership and community members. The project addresses two critical issues that affect First Nation communities: inadequate access to safe water, and a shortage of adequate housing.

The wachusko weesti project builds on the work of the One House Many Nations (OHMN) campaign, an Indigenous-led public awareness campaign that works to develop local solutions to the housing crisis for Indigenous peoples in Canada. It is a mobile, off-grid and sustainable washroom and kitchen unit, identified as a priority by OCN community members as critical piece of infrastructure for land defense and remote house building.

We will explore material and assembly concepts attached to Indigenous material cultures, deployable “pop-up” architectures, and will test spatial packing logics and community oriented construction systems to make a “micro”, ATV pullable, Wachusko weesti basecamp unit.

Solar Oasis 2018 Coastal Resilience A community project with Vieques, PR and World Central Kitchen

Invited Project Team – Carla Gautier, Marcel Castro, Will Heegard, UMN Global Convergence Lab Material Inquiry - Container Architecture and material re-use

Project Summary Following the September 2017 landfall of Hurricane Maria, millions of Americans awoke to an island devastated by wind and water - an altered landscape of fallen trees, toppled transmission lines, and broken shelters. In the months that followed, most were left stranded without power, communication, or adaquate support. Today, many communities are still suffuring from the effects of the neglected infrastructural systems that Maria exposed.

In response to this plight, a group of researchers at University of Puerto Rico organized a team to develop and construct a solar powered charging station to be used in disconnected communities. The original OASIS de Luz was installed in Jayuya, Puerto Rico in November 2017 and another was built in bario Borinquen in Caguas. 2

Catalyst 2019: Extended Communities of Practice - Syllabus

Our project builds on these ideas and extends the projects community of practice to explore containerized architectures in an effort to create a system of resilient pods that can be programmed and deployed across the archipelago of Puerto Rico (and beyond) to provide critical infrastructure to those in need.

Boat Cultures 2018 Rural Futures A community project with Milan, MN

Invited Project Team – Vincent Diaz, Dan Keefe Material Inquiry - Boat Craft and Trans-Cultural material practices

Project Summary This workshop takes a deeper dive into the material culture of two indigenous communities from Western Minnesota through examination and engagement with boat making and culture of the Micronesian context (outrigger canoes) and the Dakota context (birchbark canoes and/or dugout canoes). Through the lens of social anthropologist Tim Ingold’s concepts in Making; Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture which we will be reading from, we will engage in processes of observing, engaging with materials and making not as a process of forcing ideas on to matter but as an experience of joining the forces of matter in improvisation through discovery. Through examining physical artifacts we will understand the outrigger canoe and birchbark canoe or dugout, their making process and also learn about virtual reality photography and choreography of indigenous artefacts as connected to place.

The work of this workshop joins in work the interdisciplinary Grand Challenge project just beginning, Back to Indigenous Futures: Cultural Revitalization and Sustainability through Trans-Indigenous Partnerships, Participatory Design, and Embodied Computing, and builds on the 2018 Catalyst exploration with the Micronesian communities in envisioning their emerging needs around building and landscapes. We will collaborate and learn with professors and students from American Indian Studies and Computer Science and Engineering and technology experts through the week long exploration whose outcome will be a traveling exhibit of boat cultures from the Catalyst work.

Part of the workshop will involve learning about setup for virtual reality work along with physical making processes form an indigenous perspective while understanding cultural contexts, the role of design and the designer, and the craft of making in developing design solutions that catalyze cultural conversation and collaboration and perhaps design that is aligned with sustainability and regeneration.

Envision 2018 Abandoned Urban Assets A community project with Street Voices of Change Invited Project Team – Alchemy Architects, William Walsh, Street Voices of Change Material Inquiry - Prefabrication and Community Assembly

Project Summary Envision Community is a dignified and diverse community from across the housing spectrum, providing much- needed housing for people experiencing homelessness. Learning from this model will teach us valuable information about the role of health care in housing.

Traditional affordable housing projects start with the building design and work backwards to raise the money. We flipped that model by starting with the dollars that are sustainably available and then designed at that price point.

3

Catalyst 2019: Extended Communities of Practice - Syllabus

The envision project applies human-centered design process at every step to ensure the housing and community are co-created with the people who are most impacted.

Working with an extended community of practice that includes members of the Street Voices of Change, doctors, architects, affordable housing developers, policy makers and academics we will begin constructing the initial prototype for the Envision Community, and through this making finalize several key design and assembly aspects of the project.

Workshop Methods The 2019 catalyst workshop is intended to facilitate making with the communities we worked with last year, and from this making to develop the discourse at our school about how and why we make the things we do. To shape these conversations, the workshop has been restructured into a one day (Monday) intensive skill building workshop, followed by a three day (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) of making and conversation session with our extended community of guests, and a final day (Friday) of curation and sharing.

Part 1 - Skills workshops All students will attend three skill building workshops on Monday, March 11 to help build our capacities to probe, document, and communicate the projects we take on throughout the rest of the week. These workshops are focused on (1) videography and narrative building, (2) visual communication and problem definition, and (3) journalism and question formation. Each workshop will establish deliverables that you will work on throughout the week.

(1) Videography - Carolyn Corbin, Corbin Group (2) Visual Communication - Richard Merritt, Luther College (3) Journalism - Deborah Kelley, UMN

Part 2 - Making and Conversation From Tuesday on students will work in and across their assigned sections on projects with the extended communities of practice that we have converged for the week. Each of the four sections will make something that emerged out of conversations following last year’s Catalyst. All of these projects are unique, are at different scales using a variety of representational modes. We will have conversations about existing artifacts, mockups, prototypes, and scaled models. The goal is not to finish per se, but to engage in a conversation about why and how we are making things together. This is not to say that we should not try to finish but that the primary goal of our making is not the product but the conversations behind it and the process itself. There are consequences attached to the things we produce - as well as to their production - and we want to unpack these systems within the context of our making. To say it differently, there is a difference in designing something and making something that you design. This experience of designing and making should be reflective and should make you more critical of your design decisions at all scales - not just the detail, though the detail will gain new meaning as well.

Part 3 - Curation Perhaps the most important aspect of the week is its documentation; of the artifacts that we will make, the discourse surrounding this making, the characterization of the issues that initiated our production and the communities of practice that we engaged through it. Each of the three workshops (Part 1) will instruct students on producing communication materials that students will work on at night (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) and that we will curate into exhibits that tell the stories of our making.

**Panels** Monday-Thursday from 11:00-12:30 in the courtyard we will have panel discussions to prime the conversations that will unfold during our making throughout the rest of the week. See poster and schedule for details.

4 https://vimeo.com/showcase/5761504 Interdisciplinary Travel Course Website

https://www.umnconvergencepuertorico.org The University of Minnesota School of Architecture fall 2017 lecture series Decolonizing Design explores the relationships between colonialism and design.

Modern design practice, and its This is the basis of modernism, Addressing these habits forces This lecture series focuses on Decolonizing Design brings together engagement with the environment, and by extension modern architectural an uncomfortable construction of how design can help people and designers and researchers focused on perpetuates an ongoing colonial practice. Decisions over land new narratives. Narratives that communities move beyond these finding solutions to the fundamental narrative that positions the colonizer protection, preservation, restoration acknowledge contemporary settler habits. However, before we can humanitarian challenges facing the (i.e. those aligned with hegemonic and/or exploitation are often colonialism and the systemic racism engage the social, environmental, world. The work intends to explore power structures that have historically performed in the interest of colonial and violence that accompany it. and material narratives we need decolonizing narratives that emerge at seized and laid claim to foreign and agents and in alignment with colonial Narratives that question the roles to acknowledge the realities of the convergence of human need and Indigenous Lands) as external agents values and relationships to the land for design professionals and their the colonial context in which design theory in an effort to expose divined to manage the commercial (i.e. property ownership). Design agency to affect positive change we work. design’s agency as a decolonizing production and extraction of resources performed within this context is a within the complex systems they claim force. from colonially acquired property. colonializing act that perpetuates expert sway over. Narratives that a colonialist agenda. question the ambitions behind design and the nature of design delivery and service.

September 18, 5 pm October 23, 5 pm October 30, 5 pm November 13, 5 pm All lectures are free and open to the public. Pierre Belanger Chris Cornelius Olga Bannova Elizabeth Tunstall Harvard University Studio Indigenous University of Houston Ontario College of Art Lectures are held in Rapson Graduate School of Design and Design Hall 100 at the UMN School of Architecture located at 89 Church Street in Minneapolis.

For event updates please visit http://arch.design.umn.edu

Decolonizing Design lectures made possible by the Cass Gilbert Foundation Fund.