Constructs Yale Architecture Fall 2007

Constructs Fall 2007 Table of Contents

02 FAT: Sam Jacob, Sean Griffiths, and Charles Holland 04 Nick Johnson 05 REX: Joshua Prince-Ramus and Ezra Ella 06 Developing the UAE: Keller Easterling and Ali Rahim 08 UN Studio: Evolution of Space 09 The Market of Effects 10 Delayed Gratification 12 Common Ground, Yale’s New Partner 13 In the Field: The New Chicago Architecture, The Rotterdam Biennale 16 Book Reviews: Frederick Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz’s Josef Albers: To Open Eyes; Nathan Glazer’s From a Cause to a Style; Carter Wiseman’s Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style; Ray Ryan’s Gritty Brits; Diana Balmori and Gaboury Benoit’s Land and Natural Development (LAND) Code. 18 Yale Fall Events Symposium: “Constructing the Ineffable: Contemporary Sacred Architecture” Exhibitions: A Field Guide to Sprawl, and Ecology. Design. Synergy. 19 Books from the School of Architecture 20 Spring 2007 Lectures 22 Advanced Studios, a snapshot 23 Colin St. John Wilson: A Eulogy and A Reminiscence 24 Faculty News Hope House Kolkata, Fabrication on Display, Kevin Roche Archives to Yale 26 Alumni News New Architectural Centers 02 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 INTERVIEW: REX

Joshua Prince- Nina Rappaport for Ramus and Erez Ella Constructs. Ramus of the firm REX, in and Ella will be giving New York, are teach- a lecture, “It’s Not REX ing as the Saarinen All About You,” on Visiting Professors Monday, October 29, in the fall. They at the school. discussed their new firm and work with

Nina Rappaport Where do you see constraints: “We need a stage 90 feet by 40 your architectural practice going now that feet, a proscenium wall of this thickness, REX has been established independently concrete walls around the auditorium, acous- from OMA New York for the past year? tics determined by these panels, these lights, Joshua Prince-Ramus Yes, it was doors that work like this.” We responded, about a year ago that we changed the name. “This is already a solution to a situation. NR That is how you put it, “changed What are the first principles? Let’s say that the name”? I am a magician. What do I actually need to JP-R Well, we purchased Rem’s perform?” They then started discussing the half. The New York office was always an underlying criteria: required noise levels, a anomalous condition within OMA, and that person entering without noise or light infiltra- is why we separated. Its uniqueness started tion, etc. We tried to think about solutions out because of legal requirements: architec- that met these requirements but did not tural entities in the U.S. have to be free and necessarily conform to, and often exceeded, clear of other firms. So we had to create an the conventional approaches. That is how we REX, development proposal for Governors Island, New York, 2007. independent entity that was owned half by work from first-principle requirements. We Rem and half by me. In time, what bound are saying: there is no universal solution—we New York to Rotterdam was my relationship will find the specific solution for your set of to Rem, not a larger relationship with the issues. Sometimes the client doesn’t know other partners and a need to coordinate what the problem is or doesn’t recognize it, business decisions. We would give and so it must be a process—a mutual education. receive input to and from Rotterdam but were NR Often it is said that architects act gradually becoming more and more autono- as psychotherapists, especially on residential mous; people were hiring us because of our projects. When you’re working with a client, own work. At one point we had a meeting to do you have a standard process to get to a rethink our relationship. I don’t think any of client’s real needs, whether it is looking at a the partners expected the New York office museum and understanding the collections to separate, but we decided that it would be or working with your new residential client on best for both sides. The projects that the New the Lower East Side to organize a space for York office had developed—Museum Plaza, his specific life style. in Louisville and the Wyly Theatre, in Dallas— EE This is our first residential stayed with us, but the Cornell School of project in New York, and it has an interesting Architecture and the New Jersey towers problem in that the client said, “Right now continue, with Rem. I am a student, so I want a house that will NR The press was so nice about accommodate me now. When I become a it being a friendly divorce, but is that really CEO of a high-tech company or when I have true? It is rare today that a young architect a family, I don’t want to have to move.” We leaves a firm and gets the going-away were asked to design a layout that would present of projects to start his own company. allow him to alter the functions of the spaces Erez Ella It was amicable; we’re as his life changes. While we are not quite lucky that we had a peaceful separation and psychotherapists, it is too intimate a process that Rem has been so supportive. Instead of to think with him about where he is going REX, rendering of Wyly Theatre, Dallas, Texas, 2007. being one company that confusingly acts as to sleep and how much time he is going to two, it is better to be two separate compa- spend in each space. nies that can collaborate. Rem had never NR What are the ways that program met some of our clients. It was a process that then directs the office as you evaluate the evolved naturally. But everyone does ask us basic principles? the same question. JP-R If you dig deeply enough into NR You have criticized the star- a core problem, you will unearth its uncon- architect phenomenon, insisting that you ventional aspects. Cost efficiency can also are collaborators. FAT, a British firm, which generate discovery. Going back to basics is also teaching at Yale this semester, wrote leads us to the unexpected; sometimes the about how to become famous and thus made result is an unusual form. its own fame. I find it interesting that as you NR Are you also interested in creat- are talking about authorship you are in the ing new typologies such as the way in which limelight. Did you think about it that way? you elevated the art center in the Museum JP-R It is not that we are against Plaza to invent a new way of using space and fame. It is that we are for accurate attribu- a new program? tion. If there is a project that is really done by JP-R If every time we engage a one person, fine, but that person should get project we could invent a new typology, we proper credit. We are obsessed with correct would be really happy. Sometimes we are crediting. An incredibly complex building not sure that we can step out of our own that involved many people should have the experiences—like the library typology we names on it of everyone who was instrumen- developed for the Seattle Central Library— tal, not of one lone person. and come up with a new idea. Now that we NR Such as the Seattle Central are starting to design the library in Oslo, we Library? cannot simply regurgitate our previous ideas, JP-R Seattle Central is a great even though we had huge conviction in what example of a project that would not have we were doing at the time. The book spiral become what it is if our partner, LMN, had was the appropriate solution to a specific not felt a sense of ownership and a confi- problem. This situation and problem requires dence that they would receive appropriate a new, tailored solution. recognition. But people still don’t properly EE It is easier to ignore the world’s credit the building to OMA/LMN. It simply observations than your own. Now we need to wouldn’t be the same project without LMN. fight what is in ourselves. They were just as passionate and committed NR So you have to wipe out your to it as we were. But if our profession and the internal hard drive. Do you also think about media continue not to credit properly, then the way people would experience a new the quality of work is going to decrease. Who kind of space and new technologies and the would want to give his soul to a project the potential for that experience? next time if he learned the last time that only JP-R That is really what we are one, famous person would get all the credit? obsessed with. We don’t talk about “Wow, It was amazing how invested and committed this is a great space,” as so many architects LMN were; it would be great if they received do. We are more concerned with the person fame for the Seattle Library too. functioning in that space, how they move NR You often use the concept of across it and operate within it. first principles, which is something that NR What is your approach to the engineers discuss in terms of the basic Governors Island park competition that you principles of Newtonian physics. What do were selected to compete in against four you mean by it in terms of architectural other architectural teams? design, and how does it make for specific EE Our theme with landscape projects rather than generic ones? architect Michel Desvigne was that this is not EE When we started the design a landscape proposal; this is a development of the Wyly Theatre, we sat with theater strategy. We thought, “They don’t know what consultants and asked what was needed. will happen there. How can we find a solution They responded by giving us solutions, not to an unpredictable situation?” REX, rendering of Vakko Plaza, Istanbul, Turkey, 2007. 03 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 INTERVIEW: REX

We had to define a strategy that would challenge here was to design and build a ensure that Governors Island would be building in nine months and incorporate the great if A happens, and would be great if B existing concrete structure in a convincing happens, and would be great if B changes way. Here, we didn’t go to first principles; to C, and would be great if nothing happens. we used what we did know. We had to keep It had to be great no matter what. In the what was there but make it different. For beginning it was going to be a landscape that the façade, we wanted to dematerialize the could change and accommodate develop- glass rather than have a strong structure, so ment. We suggested a 55-foot-by-55-foot someone on the team said, “Let’s fold it.” grid that would remain coherent and clear, And with Front as façade consultants, we whatever the scenario. folded the glass panels like paper into an JP-R Our critique of the problem X-shape. So the building will have unique, is that $200 million is an awful lot to spend slumped structural-glass panels. on speculation, so it would be smarter to NR How has the architect’s role spend the money on a strategy that is based changed in terms of project control within a on something credible, even if development collaborative? doesn’t come, rather than just begin part of JP-R An architect has to orchestrate the development and not finish it. Our original like a conductor who has fifty virtuosos in push was very program-centric, but we the orchestra and knows when to allow the weren’t given a program, so the absence of musicians to express themselves and also program became the program. when to rein them in. Sometimes the most NR If your projects and buildings exciting things happen when we haven’t are based on programmatic requirements, asserted control but still have hold of the then how do you find that the iconic form reins. When the structural engineer takes the transforms the architectural ambition, even lead, you can let them take you someplace perhaps after it is built, in terms of your where you never would have gone. You still design approach? have to have an incredible knowledge base. JP-R We don’t have a problem with I played French horn in the Seattle Youth form but with anything that doesn’t perform. Symphony, and the conductor, Vilem Sokol, There is reason to make something formal could play each person’s instrument and in order to achieve performance. In Museum even knew each instrument’s fingering well Plaza, there was a discussion about form in enough to say it should be played a differ- which we argued that the client could not ent way. Our sense is that architects have raise the two towers to the same height—we lost this breadth of knowledge. In the early thought it would look like the World Trade parts of our careers, Erez and I were put in Center. That is a formal issue but also an positions beyond our level, where we didn’t issue of performance. What form enables know what we were doing but could set the the building to perform optimally? We are not agenda and ask the questions and knew anti-form, but we also are not interested in when to push people who did know. the willful gesture. EE Architects have limited EE We don’t start by saying that themselves to being shape-makers who it has to be tall or iconic, but that it has to don’t care about structure or the technical establish what the problem is from first performance of a façade or lighting. Now the principles, take a position, and then propose younger generation is trying to reclaim the solutions. The solution could be formal or profession. aesthetic… NR By teaching do you hope to REX, rendering of Museum Plaza, Louisville, Kentucky, 2007. JP-R It could be that the best way show them this new path? What will you to address the problem is through form, but bring to the students at Yale? we have no preconceptions about it. You JP-R We haven’t taught before, can almost map a firm’s confidence level as we are critical of pedagogy. The most by looking to its comfort with form. I once important thing is to teach students to be gave a lecture—while I was still at OMA—on self-critical. Students aren’t taught denial; the frame. During my early experiences they are taught that it is all about them. with OMA there was suspicion about form, They are taught to be creative but not about so program was usually bracketed by a constraints; creativity without constraints is frame: Jussieu, Trés Grand Bibliotheque, not very relevant to our field. The Yale studio the Kunsthal, even IIT were all squares or will design an opera house in Istanbul. Erez rectangles. My observation was that at some and I are teaching together, but we’re each point OMA had the confidence to break free wearing a different hat. One of us will play of the crutch of the frame in its program- the studio critic and the other the client. matic explorations. Then came Haus um die We won’t meet the students together, so Schenkung, the Seattle Central Library, and the studio will be fraught with real-life Casa da Musica in Porto. At REX we are at contradictions. the beginning; we are still suspicious of form, so we are setting up brackets and working within them. We would always eschew a style. EE Architecture is not about form and style for us. Even Modernism has become a style. Everything has a shape, but sometimes it performs, and sometimes it does not. NR Have you ever not been restricted in terms of an existing program or been left with a project of OMA that you had to continue? EE Our project for the Annenberg Center at the California Institute of Technol- ogy was cancelled. Two months later we were approached by the CEO of Vakko, a luxury fashion house and media company in Istanbul that had to evacuate its offices within eight months because of the city’s development plans. They had bought an unfinished concrete structure for a hotel, which they wanted to make into their new project. It had to be completed within nine months! Since the existing structure is almost identical to the ring of our project for the Annenberg Center, we said that we could do it as long as we could use the Annenberg concept. It will be a headquarters with unconventional spaces for meetings and exhibitions in the center, with generic office space on the perimeter. We didn’t challenge the program as we normally do. Instead, the 04 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 INTERVIEW: FAT

The partners of this fall, teaching the They discussed the FAT: Fashion. developer/architect origins of their work Architecture. Taste, studio for a site in with Nina Rappaport Sean Griffiths, Sam Shoreditch, London at the Blue House FAT Jacob and Charles with Nick Johnson in Bethnal Green, Holland, will be of Urban Splash, London, and in their the Louis I. Kahn the Edward P. Bass office last summer. Visiting Assistant Distinguished Visiting Professors at Yale Architecture Fellow.

Nina Rappaport I have heard that classes, who are the sort of liberal intelligent- Bob Venturi likes your work and writings. sia. We had a house project for two writers, How have you used his work as a basis from and we said, “Let’s have a look at what which to project your own ideas? How did people like Venturi and Charles Moore would you come to reassess Post-Modernism, and do. Let’s go to this taboo ground called Post- where has it led you? Modernism.” There are two levels to read: Sean Griffiths I wrote a review in on the one hand, you can be an architectural the RIBA Journal a few years ago of the aficionado and see historic references in our exhibition Out of the Ordinary, in Phila- Blue House in Bethnal Green, but somebody delphia, saying that I thought Venturi and walking by on a wet Sunday morning might Scott-Brown were extremely misunderstood say, “Cute house,” and smile, and it lifts their in Great Britain, in that their work was more spirits for five seconds and maybe adds three radical than people thought. When the Prince weeks to their life. of Wales intervened in the debate about NR Early Post-Modernism was the National Gallery Extension, they were often a commentary on modern architecture seen as being conservative imposters, and and society, but then it got absorbed as a architects here were weary of their attacks on style. Are you trying to go back to that transi- Modernist orthodoxy. Everybody hated that tion point? Is your approach intellectual or building, but of course I quite liked it. Venturi playful? wrote a very appreciative letter to me, and Sean Griffiths I think a bit of both; I was thrilled. One of the reasons we were we don’t use the Post-Modernism word that interested in them is because they were so much because it is an automatic label. If our unfashionable in the 1990s. work has a relationship with anything, it is Sam Jacob The basis is that we linked to the Post-Modernism of the 1960s bought books from a shop that sold used and 1970s, not the bastardized 1980s stuff, books, including Post-Modern architecture as you just said. There is a cycle of making books, and ended up with a vast collection an interesting beginning to something that from the late 1970s and early 1980s at a becomes compromised, which is found not fraction of the cost. only in Post-Modernism but also in midcen- Sean Griffiths One book was by the tury Modernism today. artist Dan Graham, whose work I like, such NR Even your name, FAT: Fashion. as the altered-glass house with the mirror in Architecture. Taste, is a bit irreverent. I the middle, which was a dialogue between a remember first seeing your Web site about Miesian house and a suburban tract house. five years ago and the discussion around this Graham’s essays about Robert Venturi alternative architecture firm that was making were different in terms of the attack on the fun of architects, but your architecture wasn’t Modernist orthodoxy and how radical it was known at all in the United States, or maybe to expose all of those conceits that existed there wasn’t any yet to speak about. within Modernist light. Graham saw the Charles Holland Architecture is work as being parallel to what environmental a very sober profession, and it is seen as artists Robert Smithson and Richard Long a profession, which makes it much more were doing in the late 1960s. My interest in sensible than art, for instance. Architects are Venturi was sort of like admitting to liking soberly dressed professional advisers to the pornography, something you don’t talk about client, and so irreverence, wit, and humor in polite company. Venturi was also inter- seem remarkable, but to us it seems normal. ested in the Pop thing, the whole deadpan Silly is the danger, getting back to the Web FAT, rendering of Tanner Point Housing, 2007. approach to creation. site; what people perceived as silliness has Sam JacobThere was a fortunate often gotten in the way of the seriousness. coincidence when we were finishing our The work is extremely serious in intent but façade on which residents can stick different architecture can play, so that we can debate studies in the 1980s, and we were trying has irreverent qualities in the way it is done. I windows and balconies, for example. what good design is. In large regeneration to find an approach that could work on think the point about exclusivity of audience NR Do you see your approach to projects developers can’t just come in and tiny budgets and small scale. We looked is tricky. Most of the criteria that architec- these housing projects as utopian or as more buy a piece of land; they have to demonstrate backward and saw in Post-Modernism—now tural critics might judge it by are obsolete; pragmatic? what value they are adding, how they are thought of as the developer’s style—a project it becomes about experience: how do you Sean Griffiths Utopian projects are helping to provide social housing, what are that was open-ended and incredibly relevant coordinate that experience with a more very difficult in today’s culture, even if one their green credentials, and what other uses in terms of the way people were making narrative idea of how you use the space. wanted to do them. In a culture driven by a and facilities are they providing. things in other disciplines. Our early clients Sam Jacob Maybe the constant is vision of diversity, one might think of it as Sam Jacob Developers like Urban were in advertising and the arts, and the an idea of content. The name was supposed a utopia where everyone is happy together Splash recognize that there are young Post-Modernist approach was totally differ- to be a magazine, but we only got as far as regardless of race, class, and so on. Now architects who will work hard to realize a ent from the mainstream British approach designing the cover and a failed applica- there is a certain kind of utopian vision good project. It is a more optimistic scenario to architecture because it engaged in the tion from the Arts Council that left us with a emerging from the environmental movement, than ten years ago; they get a much better everyday and allowed us to deal with political name and logo. We got known through the which is promoted in particular in this city. product because of it, as well as innovation issues. We realized that small-scale projects, Web site because of the one thing we wrote, Charles Holland Going back to on an appropriate scale. Developers are also like the design for an advertising agency or “How to Become a Famous Architect,” which Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction, much more sophisticated in conveying ideas nightclubs in provincial English towns, could got e-mailed around to pools of interested I always liked the idea of two things that through different media; and the market is have agendas. friends all over the world. It was a semi-auto- are oppositional and incongruous coming encouraging them. Ten years ago if you told a Charles Holland Venturi was biographical story of a ten-step plan, which together, which seems to be a true represen- developer that you could deliver them value, also engaged in the American landscape, was published in Perspecta 38: Famous. That tation of what life is like. Formal juxtaposition they would ask, In what way? But now they involved in Pop Art, and looked at vernacular got us famous, which was quite ironic. plays a big part in what we do. The Tanner understand what you mean. That is the sort architecture in the same way that Pop artists NR How do you incorporate place Point Housing project was about reinventing of cultural shift that has occurred. were. He tried to reconcile being a high-brow and context in the narrative of your work? an original idea for the vertical city through architect but not being exclusive. How does the concept emerge from the a specific response to the East End of NR Do you feel that Modernism is place rather than being imposed from the London, which has huge ethnic and social too conceptual and thus not appreciated? outside? For example, your New Islington diversity and is short on family housing. We Sam Jacob Our work is an attempt project for Urban Splash was a community- are adapting the standard apartment block to widen the canon of architecture; referenc- based project. to demonstrate how you can accommodate es that are repeated endlessly without any Sam Jacob The work is quite five-bedroom units along one side, so there theoretical backup or agenda are so boring. journalistic. Even Sean’s house, an explora- was a core in the middle and half of the block We were not only interested in architecture. tion of urban loft living that inhabits leftover would be one apartment. You would put a Sean Griffiths We started with structures between urban and suburban, has great big balcony along the back that a kid street-based art projects, where we were a lot of points that are poetic in an enigmatic could ride a bicycle up and down, and you putting radical interventions in familiar way. The design is not coming from within us, could build in a certain amount of adaptability spaces like bus shelters, where you are just as a poetic vision, although the interpretation to give residents a say in the design, which is standing there waiting for a bus to engage has all sorts of idiosyncrasies. It is an attempt a bit utopian. somebody in something. We were inter- to understand the different forces that are NR How do you think your work ested in communication, how you touch an at work; it is that sort of tension between attracted the interest of property developers audience; and people in the art and archi- the familiar and the unfamiliar that we are such as Nick Johnson of Urban Splash, and tecture worlds said, “Hey, there is something interested in. how is development in London becoming interesting there.” But being contrarian has Charles Holland The apartment- more socially conscious? blighted our careers ever since. We began to house project, Tanner Point Housing, has Sean Griffiths I think there are two ask, “What the hell is radical about making a very Pop approach: we cut things up and sides of it. An organization like Urban Splash some art? What is radical about a bunch of distort them, using fragments and collage is not your typical commercial developer. It people walking around in black?” I come with referential material that has a particular has broken the mold of how you do inner-city from a working-class background, and I potency based on the context. Rather than regeneration. It is incredibly innovative and would say that actually it is not radical; it is saying you should all live in clean, white brave. In the last ten years there has been FAT, The Blue House, Bethnal Green, London, 2005. a form of entertainment for the chattering boxes, this becomes a giant do-it-yourself a much greater recognition of the role that 05 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 INTERVIEW: NICK JOHNSON

Nick Johnson, the tive of Urban Splash, wider “regeneration” Yale on August 30, fourth Edward P. a property-devel- agenda throughout titled, “Profit and the Bass Distinguished opment company the organization. Planet: Place-Making Visiting Architecture based in Manchester, Nina Rappaport for the People.” Nick Fellow, is teaching England. As an origi- met with him, in a studio with the nal founder in 1993, London, to discuss architecture firm FAT he has been working his new development this fall. Johnson is on local projects and projects. Johnson Johnson deputy chief execu- is currently forming a is giving a lecture at

Nina Rappaport The interests and goals of younger developers in the new British building boom seem to focus more on design and in making cities vibrant places rather than cookie-cutter commercial projects. How has the younger generation of developers made an impact on the selection of architects in property development? How do you work with architects in general? Nick Johnson I do think that clients are now more design literate and adventur- ous; and a younger architectural practice in England can get commissions from invited competitions, where there is a chance to compete on a level playing field, because the entries are anonymous and not prejudged. Some architects don’t consider what it feels like to stand where they have just drawn a line. Their ability to impose rather than celebrate living is harsh. Some architects will corrupt function purely for aesthetic satisfac- tion, and that really irritates me. As the client you aren’t locked into Will Alsop’s Chip, residential project by Urban Splash, New Islington, Manchester, 2007. A new park in New Islington, Manchester, 2007. any particular style. I consider architecture to be a bit like a record collection. You don’t listen to the same artists or genre all the time. People have very eclectic music collections. your neighbor bought their house, nor organization. As chairman I’m responsible so flexible frameworks are essential to The privilege of being a client is the ability to whether it is socially subsidized rent. for establishing a new strategic direction for responding to societal changes over time. deliver that mixture and not be locked into NR If you make social issues part the organization, which will focus around the NR The process to choose FAT as a particular style or genre of architecture— of the moneymaking equation when the work of graphic artist Peter Saville, who has the architects for one section of the housing for example, I would say New Islington, in standard developers only care about high- proposed “Manchester. Original. Modern.” development for the Methodist Housing Manchester, is my record collection. end rental potential for both residential and Peter, Tony Wilson [founder of Factory Association was an interesting one for Urban NR New Islington is diverse commercial spaces, how do you subsidize Records and the Hacienda Club], and I are Splash. Why were they selected as the archi- stylistically because you broke away from and finance tenants with these various big fans of Richard Florida’s Pop-academic tects? Now that their housing units are built, your earlier projects that were smaller, more income levels? proposition that the liveliness, diversity, and how has it worked out in terms of financial “stylish” loft developments to expand toward NJ We work with government soul of a city influences its future economic and community success? creating a mixed-use and variable-income agencies that provide funding to allow people success. Punk music, Factory Records, NJ The residents worked with us community. Where does good design turn to buy into the housing market at the entry and the Hacienda Nightclub, which is now on all decisions, including the selection of a profit, and how did you switch from being level. We also work with housing associa- celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, still Alsop and FAT. We ran a competition with a residential developer to designing entire tions, that have to provide “social rented” have a dramatic effect on teenagers. Tony RIBA in which the brief implied that we were communities and regeneration projects? accommodation. Embracing the agenda of Wilson says that the reason that the music a client interested in architectural adventure NJ The traditional adage in the social issues also results in making more from Manchester is so strong is that the kids and expressed the residents’ desire to 1980s was that good design costs money, money. Traditionally, the private sector deliv- have the most eclectic record collections, build what they already have, since they and we grew up through the punk era of the ered profit without social responsibility. But and so what you hear is a fusion of eclecti- were being relocated. We were looking for a late 1970s and the nightclubs of the 1980s there is no more socially responsible job than cism and attitude. Apart from football, it is practice that could articulate that apparent with visual references from the likes of Neville building. It is the most public of art forms. It the second-biggest export of the city. That’s friction between our wider aspirations for Brody and Face magazine. It was the age has the capacity to influence the way people where the Marketing Manchester thing fits in, design, but we didn’t want compromise. We of design consciousness; fashion became exist in a city and to bestow joy and satisfac- and if I do my job correctly we should be able downplayed the opportunity to manage the part of everyday life. Objects started to be tion or instill terror and fear in equal measure. to have an influence on all aspects of wealth- architect’s expectations. Some were put off packaged and designed well, so we became NR How did the New Islington generation. by that, but FAT wasn’t. The residents asked more design literate. Design was seen in the development project come your way? Why NR On top of all the social and dead-simple but unnerving questions of the more ephemeral, the less permanent arts did you want to work on it, and how do you cultural interests, what about the integration architects, which showed how much they rather than the built environment; it was in envision it? of environmental issues in a new develop- had learned in the community workshop furniture and graphic design. NJ New Islington was a government ment? How are you able to incorporate process. One reason FAT was chosen was We believed that our first step was initiative formed as a partnership between sustainability in large-scale projects? Is it that they were fun and relaxed, and they that good architectural design adds value the Manchester City Council, the English through the infrastructure or the individual made everyone comfortable. The residents to buildings rather than just expense. That Partnership, and the Millennium Community architectural units, in terms of design or the weren’t that interested stylistically in what it stood us in good stead for five years. But Initiative, launched by John Prescott. Our organizational structure of a site? would look like and just wanted a new home. the ability to pick a good architect to come model will show that embracing social NJ Environmental responsibility We were delighted that our first competition up with a good solution gets boring, quite responsibility will result in them making more should be integrated so that the only lifestyle was won by the agent provocateur FAT. This frankly, and it was apparent that more people money. The council estate in Manchester was choice required from purchasers or tenants is goes back to the record-collection idea: they were catching up with us. In the late 1990s the most deprived, with the ring road around household recycling; the rest should be done were the wild card at the opposite end of the the agenda was beginning to shift politically, it and a 1980s shopping mall perched on the by us. We should be using all of our creative spectrum from the slick Modernism that we and we moved from the “scorched-earth edge, which cut off the city. We were selected capital to make what we do better for the are known for, taking us into a different realm policy” of Thatcherism and the belief in the as a developer in a competition based on planet. We’re just in the process of establish- and challenging our own set of values about market and started to move toward a socially our philosophical approach and track record ing our own utility company to control the the relevancy of what we are doing. It was responsible agenda, which then was not rather than an actual scheme, which is way in which energy is generated to ensure an intellectual test for us that I knew would just about design but also mixed-use and liberating. We worked with the residents to that it’s as environmentally responsible as aggravate and provoke the architectural vital communities. Thus we have shifted choose the architects for the master plan and possible. We’re going to generate energy world, especially in Manchester, which is in the last twelve years from being just a short-listed the practices: Rogers, Arup, Ian locally from combined heat and power units, locked into a perceived set of polite modern property developer to being a regeneration Simpson, Erick van Egeraat, and Alsop. That which have the capacity to generate up to contextualism. company with more than 250 employees for was a defining moment in the transition of 50 percent of the peak electrical load and all NR Were you concerned with larger sites and communities. my view about architecture. When we asked of the heating and cooling on a site. We’re at aesthetic considerations in the end? NR What led you to start to develop Alsop about what it might be and what were the point where the fuel for the CHP engine NJ The aesthetic is not irrelevant but large-scale, former industrial sites in the opportunities for it, he made us laugh will be biodiesel, so it will be carbon-neutral is very cleverly worked out, and you have to downtowns, and how were the developments and talked about wonder, delight, and fun, at the outset. Once we become part of the be gifted to know how to balance kitsch with maintained as mixed in use and income whereas the other architects were overly energy supply chain to our developments, the profound and challenge preconceptions levels? professional and incredibly boring. which I see as a natural progression, then we about what architecture is and what it should NJ Industrial buildings were NR Since Manchester only had become much more interested in how much look like. FAT is intelligent enough to get that cheaper per square foot than carpet at the a small residential population even in the energy our apartments and office buildings balance right. You don’t read it as kitsch or time, but no one would buy them. We began industrial revolution, how do you bring consume. Post-Modernism, but as fun, delight, and to explore mixed tenure, a variety of means people into the heart of the city to live, and NR If cities are constantly chang- surprise. to buy a home. We liken it to buying a car what is its new identity? Your new role as ing in terms of population, development, and wherein you decide what car you want to buy chairman of the Manchester Marketing activities, where in a project can you anitici- first and then which way you will buy it—you group must naturally integrate with attracting pate change and build-in flexibility, what the can rent it, buy a share, or buy it outright. people to buy your properties. 2006 Edward P. Bass developer/architect We also wanted to take the stigmatism out NJ This chairmanship came about studio, called “future-proofing”? of mixed housing with apartment buildings in rather an odd and typically Manchester NJ The key is to create a flexible that have a complete mix of tenure, which we way. Ten years ago I chaired the “anti” framework rather than a prescriptive master called “tenure blind.” The affordable-housing Manchester Marketing group, the McEnroe plan. I even said at a recent lecture for CABE, element is the same as property available at Group, to respond to its campaign to market “Ban the master plan.” At New Islington we market value: traditionally developers would the city with the tagline “We’re up and going,” called it a strategic framework plan. But more build a block of lower-quality housing at a which came about after the IRA bomb important were the five key moves and the lower specification in the worst part of the blew the heart out of the city. We described establishment of a “tone” that would allow site to discharge obligations to provide it. For it as “mediocrity at its most mediocre” each architect to interpret in his or her own our projects the goal is to not even know how and brought about the downfall of the way. New Islington is a twelve-year program, 06 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 DUBAI DISCUSSION

With three spring in part on the UAE, economic issues as studios (those along with Yale well as those of local of Zaha Hadid, University’s inter- identity around the Saarinen Visiting est in establishing burgeoning develop- Development Professor; Ali Rahim, an arts institute in ments for the rich Louis I. Kahn Visiting Abu Dhabi, Keller and newly landed Assistant Professor, Easterling and Ali wealth in the region. and Keller Easterling, Rahim discussed the in the UAE professor, focusing current political and

Nina Rappaport How do you zone and offshore financial center for its The good news is that the most navigate your work in the UAE, and what entire territory. Indeed, the free zone is the influential policies are controlled by discrep- attracted you to the place beyond its wild aggregate unit of development. Dubai has ant characters such as butlers, go-betweens, architectural forms? rehearsed the “park,” or zone, with almost shills, and confidence men. And architects, Ali Rahim My introduction to Dubai every imaginable program, beginning with as the classic facilitators of power, have long occurred in 1988, when I stopped there Dubai Internet City in 2000, the first IT been seated at that particular table. Our to visit my brother, who was working for campus as free-trade zone. Calling each studio swam very happily in these sneaky a U.S. investment bank. There was very new enclave a “city,” it has either planned or waters, working with fictions, persuasions, little development compared to the Dubai built Dubai Health Care City, Dubai Maritime and politics that architects already have of today. There was mostly desert with the City, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai Knowledge running through their fingers. Moreover, beginnings of infrastructure toward the Village, Dubai Techno Park, Dubai Media City, given that so much extra-statecraft juggles north. The initial development had come Dubai Outsourcing Zone, Dubai Humanitar- fiction to disguise abusive situations, we to the south, close to Dera, which was the ian City, Dubai Industrial City, and Dubai were thrilled that two can play at this game original fishing village that existed in the vast Textile City. to leverage outcomes with entirely different desert land. The region has been trying to Now major cities and national political leanings. define its identity through architecture since capitals are engineering their own world-city NR How do architects actually its creation twenty-seven years ago. Herein doppelgängers—nonnational territory within participate in this process, when branding lies the dilemma: the people of the Emirates which to legitimize nonstate transactions. companies are actually hired to find the archi- have been nomads with ephemeral lives and The world capital and national capital can tects and the developers choose projects are exploring the potential of fixed structures shadow each other, alternately exhibiting a based on style? What do the vast sites offer to provide for their settlement. They are of regional cultural ethos and a global ambition. in terms of architecture and urbanism? And Immigrant workers on break in Dubai. Photograph by Elisa course finding this a challenge. The fixed These new world capitals are newly minted how does the politics influence the architec- Lui, Ali Rahim’s studio trip, spring 2007. structures generally collage onto them a cities with not only commercial areas but a ture and the practice of architecture? motif that is recognizable, one that is rich in full complement of programs. For example, AR In Dubai people are trying to pattern but has no other association to the New Songdo City, an expansion of the find a new way to represent themselves building. Here lies the opportunity for archi- Incheon free-trade territories near Seoul, is through architecture, and of course we tecture: how can we develop the social and a complete international city on the Dubai should participate. The problem is a difficult economic conditions into the architecture or Singapore model, designed by American one, but perhaps by developing pattern in its such that it alleviates some of the tension architecture firm KPF. Similarly Astana, in richest sense—for living and working—one between the fixed settlement and the ephem- Kazakhstan, is a newly minted national can inherently organize these migrations and eral mentality of the local people? There capital as free-trade zone. have them perform structurally and spatially, are some ephemeral factors that affect the NR How do you incorporate into leading to an architecture that is relevant for growth and development of the city, including your own work what you have each learned the region. the economic accumulation that is occurring by teaching studios or conducting research KE I am somehow more comfort- due to the rest of the region’s instability. The about the region? able with environments that are capricious, emirate of Dubai has taken advantage of this AR In the final year of the design hilarious, and illogical. Both the United States and has become a safe haven for the region’s curriculum, my concern is for the complexi- and the UAE tutor spatial entrepreneurialism wealthy. This has included a liberal banking ties of Dubai, which I have been following for and impure ethical struggles. One doesn’t system and change in property-ownership nineteen years, but framed in such a way that rely on things like reasonable legislation or a laws, releasing some of the earlier restric- the students are inherently addressing all the government that resembles the participatory tions of land ownership to foreigners. Thus most crucial issues for the project and site democracies still found in the EU. Instead foreigners have flocked to Dubai and have without being overtly aware of all that goes there is a rich medium of subterfuge, hoax, put pressure on the city to catalyze its devel- into thinking some of these issues through. and hyperbole that finally rules the world. As opment. This pressure has placed demand I tend to focus on the design problem that global powers juggle national and inter- on the amount of development as well as the uses a particular set of techniques that looks national sovereignties and allegiances to quality of the spaces being marketed. The at questions raised by designing anything in citizens or shareholders, their behavior is by Dubai construction process. Photograph by Elisa Lui, Ali Rahim’s studio, spring 2007. market pushes developers to think in ways the Emirates. Having traveled to Dubai with necessity discrepant. that are not commonplace, allowing archi- my students, it is clear that the complexities NR Has development in the UAE tects the freedom to determine what may or on the ground are hard to grasp in a short contributed to the way infrastructure is may not differentiate one building from the visit. So much of the development and its now considered, specifically related to the next. Herein lays the foundation for what is attendant causes and methods are invisible. environment and humanity’s überpower referred to as a landmark-building project in Therefore it is difficult for developers who are to move and make landscapes, islands, the region. not based in Dubai, and therefore not versed mountains, interior ski resorts, and oceans? Keller Easterling The UAE is a in the nuances of the local condition, to work Is it worthwhile, and what are its ramifications kingdom reawakened by oil just in time to there. For example, our client based in New elsewhere? skip some of the most bombastic chapters York is running into very difficult issues, KE Dubai has long been an entrepôt in national sovereignty and to discover from the different development models to with expertise in storing, laundering, and some very sympathetic forms of contem- the complexities on the ground. Clearly smuggling goods. Because it has chosen to porary piracy. During the very centuries understanding these intricacies adds work sustain itself on the movement rather than that nations have emerged as a dominant for developers not situated in the local arena, the retention of business, it perceives fewer framework, so too have substantial networks which is why our projects are on hold. Some problems in embracing innovation. Many of multinational and transnational business of the smarter students understand that the economies steel themselves against legisla- exchange. As a kingdom-nation, it reshuffles complexity is too great to understand in a few tive changes that might disrupt their hold one’s expectations about polity. There are days and are able to leverage techniques to on a market, and consequently innovation partial reflections and tinctures of Western develop their ideas based on the program and can occur only when there is low financial governmental institutions, but there are spatial quality of the buildings. At the same risk associated with the change. Western also significant structural differences. The time, the ideas and tactical deployment of democracies often sustain very obdurate UAE sometimes even thrives off of the very the techniques resonate in the final proposal. political problems with regard to transporta- complications that trouble Western democra- Students who take the Dubai experience at tion, energy innovation, and public health cies: the contradiction between citizenship face value are completely unaware of how to care. So it is interesting that in the UAE and and the need for cheap labor; the curious proceed once they have learned the inherent in Saudia Arabia, at the epicenter of oil, one position of public space within urbanism techniques and struggle to find new knowl- finds some of the world’s most sophisticated conceived as a privately themed spatial edge and ideas in their own work. experiments in, for instance, high-speed rail. product; the naturalized state of exception KE In my studio last spring, The UAE plans to join the Arabian Railway from law in corporate paradigms, and the “High-Speed Rail,” we assumed that it was network connecting Abu Dhabi and Dubai influence of special interest in official political crucial to have a working knowledge of the and eventually linking a larger circuit that New building with “traditional” elements Photograph by representation. As if in a state of amnesia for logics of duplicity rather than the practices rings the entire Gulf, making it possible to Elisa Lui, Ali Rahim’s studio trip, spring 2007. these perennial problems of contemporary of righteousness. We were attracted to travel from Dubai to Damascus and Beirut to participatory democracies, the UAE seems obdurate urban problems that continually Cairo by train. The Emirates have their own not to perceive them. What Étienne Balibar resist intelligence. Equally attractive were the internal plans for a railway that would link the has called “intensive universalism” nurtures consortia of parastate leaders—the corpo- coastal cities. Dubai is also building one of in the West an evangelical assumption that rate elite of construction, finance, and energy. the most sophisticated metro systems in the the world awaits democracy and national Cunning forms of stupidity and subterfuge world, and Abu Dhabi plans to follow suit. citizenship. Already an anational society, the are most inspiring of all. They tutor spatial In November 2006, Abu Dhabi sponsored UAE evolves, within the legal climates of free entrepreneurialism, impure ethical strug- a global conference on alternative energy, trade, a form of commercial governance for gles, and a new species of spatio-political and the UAE has entered into new energy which national and anational, democratic activism. While architecture and urbanism partnerships with Africa. structures are mimicked for use in organizing are clearly delineating some of these realms There is incredible savvy in captur- dynasties. of extra-statecraft, the profession often ing global political sentiment concerning Together with Singapore and Hong claims to be excluded from political decision- energy and oil. Yet the preponderance of Kong, Dubai has become the world-city making or claims to be “not at the table” building in Dubai and the UAE ignores energy paradigm, assuming the ethos of a free when policy is determined. 07 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 DUBAI DISCUSSION

when it might create global benchmarks and so environmentally in the fabrication and new economies of scale. Moreover, one is manufacturing industry but definitely within not certain about the nature of the partner- the delivery of a project. The piggyback- ships with African countries, especially ing of systems is a good diagram, as the when one sees Dubai-style developments outsourcing of all the products as well as the like Almogran, in Khartoum, which seems to manufacturing is occurring globally. Because exacerbate violence between the north and of easy port access, the network is both the south in Sudan. far-reaching and well coordinated, leading to AR Well, this question on the local economies. environment is certainly a good one. I am KE What is the definition of these sure there will be ecological ramifications. new places as centers of capital? To answer this in perhaps a slightly different AR Perhaps these new centers manner, there is an arms race between two of capital are the indefinable hybrids for developers, Emaar and Nakheel Proper- moving money out of the United States and ties, in Dubai. One has taken the land while reinvesting it that has accelerated its growth. the other has taken over the waterfront. But in another vein is an inherent tension The negotiation between them, and the in the development there of an identity in properties that have fallen between the two the projects due to the fact that the local extremes, have been really problematic. population were nomadic tribes that are now For example, the waterfront of the marina settled. What is referred to as indigenous district—or the “necks,” all the pieces of land building is imported from Iran, as in Bur Model of Saadiyat Island Development, on display at the Emirates Palace Hotel. Photograph by Marc Guberman, July 2007. that connect the islands to the mainland— Dubai, and when the locals try and inflect an have been overdeveloped in terms of density. identity it is one that comes from storybooks There are structural issues in the Burj as well and fantasies. What role should nomadic as one of the Palms. Speeding up the rate cultures play in the formation of a new of development is definitely having negative identity for the UAE? consequences locally. KE It is such an interesting question, KE How does one navigate especially since the UAE has adopted an questions of taste in a kingdom, especially identity that helps to mask their previous one that likes shiny things? For example, nomadic life. Even the national dress is not one of the sheikh’s sons asked how I would something that was worn by most people in describe the style of their palace. And Sheikh Abu Dhabi or Dubai when they were lucky Sultan asked us what we thought of Gehry’s to have anything at all to wear. One still cultural building. He beamed over Hadid’s sees a great deal of meaning attached to building because it simply communicates the movement between Abu Dhabi or Dubai something ineffable that he can share with and Al Ain, the oasis to the south. Sheikh the most sophisticated architects in the Zayed’s palm-tree planting and falconry world. It is absurd when architects try to find were, I suppose, outward signals of a desire meaning here. The meaninglessness is the to preserve that identity. As Abu Dhabi meaning. attempts to position itself as environmentally AR You are correct in assuming innovative with regard to landscape and that the predominant taste is shiny, but all experiments with alternative forms of energy, Construction workers in Dubai. Photograph by Elisa Lui, Ali Rahim’s studio trip, spring 2007. taste that is new is shiny. Remember that the this too seems to gesture to and take pride region is very new, only twenty-seven years in a native ecological intelligence. Might this old, and it is an oil-wealthy nation, which be one of the flavors of regional identity, means that the only wealth is new wealth. All even at a moment when the most nomadic new wealth has similar tendencies and can agents in the region are petro dollars and be identified easily. New wealth can take two foreign direct investment? trajectories: remain new when it traverses generations or mature with time and become more restrained and discerning as it moves from generation to generation. We can also take two approaches here: be critical of the shiny and operate in its meaninglessness, or see an opportunity within the passing of the generations—which we can see happening: Emaar’s CEO is in his thirties—and educate and participate in the development of taste. It is a challenge, but it is also great to see this as an opportunity. It requires a lot of work, but slowly they are learning from their mistakes. You can see this in evidence as they are hiring some of the better architects in the world, which is better than most places that have built at a very quick pace, such as Dubai skyline from the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Photograph by Marc in the Far East. Guberman, July 2007. NR What formal, technological, and environmental innovations might one piggy- back on such a large volume of production? Are there any bargains in trying to find new economies of scale? KE Since we design buildings while also handling huge numbers of repeatable fittings, it is intriguing to keep an eye on the economies of the parts. In Dubai, these are the components of curtain walls. There are so many factors that would entirely alter feasibility of a repeatable component: volume, investment in new material enter- prises, transportation. Knowing that certain kinds of material and formal experiments really do require economies of scale to be feasible, in the studio we tried to devise a few components like a bait-and-switch such as light-sensitive materials as shimmering luxury to build some economies of scale for a more overt energy-sensitive experiment. Sometimes I fantasize that one might have even more of the world running through your fingers. AR Formally and technologically Left and right: View of Burj Dubai from Shikh Zayed Road. Photographs by Marc Guberman, July 2007. there are innovations taking place, less 08 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 EXHIBITION REVIEW An appraisal in exhibited at the Yale “Here is what we have eleven non-linear School of Architec- points of the exhibi- ture Gallery, February to offer you in its most tion UN Studio: 12–May 4, 2007. elaborate form, confusion UN Studio: Evolution of Space, a traveling show that guided by a clear sense originated at the Deutsches Architek- of purpose.” Evolution of tur Museum and was —Gordon Matta-Clark Space UN Studio: Evolution of Space, Yale School of Architecture Gallery, spring 2007. Gallery, School of Architecture UN Studio: Evolution of Space, Yale

1. Not Pretty views of the artifacts as it crests in the air and of diagram-makers shares in the effort to 10. Color It could have been called Idea as Model. urges the eye to bounce around from model democratize the field of semiotics, to flatten Imagine the logic, or just imagine. UN Studio Browsing the exhibit, you realized to model. it out so that signs, icons, text, images, and gives us a Fantasy Landscape Room, immediately that you were on their turf—a even physical objects become interchange- much like the total landscape designed by Wunderkammer of artifacts culled from the 4. Proust able and combinable. Van Berkel explains the another Dutch designer, Verner Panton, for UN Studio design process and displayed in a How can the diagram work for you? A heart of their design process as “assembling the 1970 Cologne furniture fair. This room gregariously “nonstandard” way—and it is all burning question in the late 1990s, it had and integrally organizing layers of signifi- appeared as part of a show on psychedelia about thinking out loud. In 1976 a show titled academics feverishly leafing through Deleuze cance, both material and immaterial,” so that called “Summer of Love,” designed by UN Idea as Model, at the Institute for Architecture and Guattari. With the help of the French the imagination can work like a computer, Studio for the Tate Liverpool in 2005–2006. and Urban Studies, in New York, was also the theorists, Van Berkel and Caroline Bos found zapping from a visualization of construc- For its “Evolution of Space,” UN Studio has scene of boisterous thought. Here, Gordon an answer in another Frenchman, Proust. tion to a visualization of organization. It is resurrected Panton’s warm, gradated colors, Matta-Clark famously blew out windows of They saw his narrative structure punctured perhaps normal then that in conversation Van folding planes, and soft textile surface to the exhibition space with a BB gun so that he with holes, which they called black holes. Berkel confuses the relationship between trigger our imaginations. With the persistence could hang his own photographs of shattered They wrote, “The black holes are a literary diagram and model, switching from one to of branding experts, UN Studio includes the windows and urban decay in their place. In construction that enables change. If there the other. While discursively the exhibition exhibition publication in the total display perhaps an uncomfortable clash between were no black holes for the protagonist to fall does not use the term model in its traditional experience, using color to index its projects artistic and academic realities, Matta-Clark into, the landscape of the narrative would be handcrafted sense, the memory undeniably both on the page and in the display. The methodically cut and blew holes in things an unrealistically smooth and timeless plan, persists through the many physical artifacts: colors also tie each project back to one of to make a point, even an argument. And which would make it impossible for the hero, in the age of the computer it is architecture’s UN Studio’s five presiding design principles, things could be clearer for it. Lest we forget, whose character and adventures are formed special purview to “model” concepts, both where gradations in hue show declensions expressing an idea, even in architecture, has by this landscape, to evolve.” Holes are virtually and physically. of each. Like any of UN Studio’s diagrams, been controversial and not always pretty. good. They evolve us. however, the display can’t be taken literally 8. Pop since the index colors and declensions don’t 2. Freedom 5. Black Holes The exhibition presents a model for the match throughout. If you get lost, that’s If Matta-Clark’s anxiety was that architecture Black holes remind us of many things, Mercedes-Benz Museum next to china probably all in the plan, as you’ll be busy tends to close up from the world like a hermit, such as theoretical physics and an empty tattooed with the museum’s trefoil diagram. scanning the room, figuring out how things UN Studio shares in this concern, which computer screen. Sanford Kwinter, who can As one critic has noted, UN Studio works relate, and moving around. UN Studio places stays at the heart of its modus operandi— effortlessly divine the connections between across media as if in a cyber version of you in a logic that requires some imagination its “diagrammatic design technique.” In a science and architecture, might add that a Andy Warhol’s Factory. Given UN Studio’s to resolve the gaps. blitz on the diagram orchestrated by ANY diagram is like a black hole because it knots penchant for strong shapes and colors, its magazine in 1998, Ben van Berkel and so much together so tightly. As he once said, avowed references to classics like Warhol 11. Felt Caroline Bos led a team of essayists that it is a “complication of reality.” We are light or Lichtenstein are almost unnecessary in Shiny, chocolate-colored felt covers all the refreshed our views on the nature and uses years away from the diagram clarity of a Le reminding us that it practices in a world that surfaces, as one of the most distinctive of the diagram. It stated, “The diagram is a Corbusier. Or are we? So much has been Pop begot. For Van Berkel, Pop was repro- aspects of the exhibition. Easy to cut, clean, loophole in global information space that said about any one of the master’s scratches grammed by the Architectural Association, roll, glue, print on, and touch, felt charmingly allows for endlessly expansive, unpredict- that it would tend to show, as UN Studio’s in London. Of the influences he may have captures Deleuze’s notion of smooth space able, and liberating pathways for architec- contemporaries would acknowledge, tuned into, such as his onetime professor in One Thousand Plateaus, a notion that ture.” Holes are good. They free us, and they that every diagram can unfold into myriad Zaha Hadid’s graphic diagrams, there is architects working between blob and box focus us. There is so much to see in a hole, consequences. a touch of Cedric Price, to whom several have been deciphering for sometime. Vision especially when it’s a diagram. generations owe their ease in combining in smooth space, Deleuze says, operates 6. Stuff graphics with qualitative and abstract like a finger, touching what is immediately 3. Alice This generation of diagram-makers shares information. UN Studio shows us how digital present and moving over the world as if it is UN Studio has bred herds of diagrams the belief that the power of diagrams is not practice has since spoiled the designer with a braille book, unaware of the depth of field through its diagram work. The exhibit what it means. Like black holes, they are very interminable ways of merging all kinds of beyond. Everything is curved toward the parades those fed and reared for archi- much abstract but also material and dense. semiotic registers. None of the diagrams and viewer, brought close-up to make an impres- tectural purposes, and not surprisingly Matta-Clark had a precocious insight about renderings imprinted on the folding exhibi- sion. UN Studio’s images printed on felt—in many of these are mathematical in origin. this sort of conundrum: his paper cuts, his tion deck challenges the 1:1 relationship some cases with low, fuzzy resolution—are For example, we are asked through the culinary drawings, his destructive building with the screen, none are larger than the size as tactile as they are visual. Almost all the projects to appreciate the specific role of inscriptions embedded the diagram in the of a screen, and most suffer from having working models on display are featherweight, the asymmetrical curve, the oblique and stuff of reality and conversely drew the a proportional resolution. Yet UN Studio’s hand-size, and easily manipulated, rarely the pivotal point. Ben Van Berkel explains, diagram out from the stuff. In the exhibition semiotic chimeras are enticing to the eye, larger than a sheet of A3 or A4 office paper. “Geometries can imbibe architectural quali- there are a few process models (Wien Mitte living iridescently on dark grounds—dark like In a candid moment during his recent lecture ties very easily. They can absorb a lot.” These competition in 2003) that suggest that UN holes. at Yale, Van Berkel admitted his own fascina- thoroughbreds are awarded the rubrics of Studio likes the conundrum. It displayed a tion with the completed Mercedes-Benz “Design Principle” or “Design Model.” While few chunks of citrus-colored foam spiked by 9. Turf Museum: “It’s almost as if spaces are follow- the exhibit layout may suggest the contrary, oversize steel nails to a thick white block or In the exhibition you stand on UN Studio turf. ing you.” No wonder Van Berkel predicts that principles and models are not created equal. synched by strips of Scotch tape; elsewhere It is underfoot and all around, even before “the column grid system won’t go on for the Design principles, we are told in an introduc- a steel mesh matrix was embalmed in skin- you step up to it. Running the length of the next fifty years.” From this perspective, little tory chart, are decisively overarching and colored panty hose. And when the skin color, deck, candy-colored stripes that seem lifted will separate our roofs from our floors. Will pervasive, and like anything that can gloss citrus shades, synching, spiking, and strap- from a Savile Row dress shirt announce an it all feel like tunnels and caves? In the UN an entire argument one wonders if their ping end up in the competition rendering with idiosyncratic display. While the change in Studio exhibit, space and its organization dominion is not rhetorical in fact. The not people on a city street to indicate scale, the floor elevation occasioned by a plywood closed in around us. But, of course, that’s quite Vitruvian “Manimal” is one of their most conundrum is real, raw, exciting, and visible. deck winks coyly at the hovering floor planes where the holes come in. seductive devices since it seems to capture of Rudolph’s Art & Architecture Gallery, the the genetically enhanced posthumanist 7. Democracy exhibition’s original setting at the Deutsches —Alexander De Looz state of architecture today: all-inclusive and What is a diagram? It has a few lines and Architekturmuseum reveals UN Studio’s De Looz (Yale College ’96) works at Mesh apparently seamless. If the Manimal looks a shape, but it also has a field of color and intention of a total display environment. Architects, in New York, and is a co-editor of like the Jabberwocky, then you are rightfully shade. It looks like a picture but is stamped There, the installation occurred under a Pin-Up magazine. feeling the Alice effect—UN Studio places with words and arrows. It looks like a sign or vaulted ceiling with an expressed structure, you in a tricky exhibition space, warped with an icon, but it is in fact a rendered 3-D image. cupping the viewer in a striped landscape reason and riddled with holes. The display It could be an image, but it’s a paper model. overhead while nestled among the display surface, which turns smoothly from the floor It might be a model, but it’s scrawled over bands on the ground. underfoot to pedestal height, frames curious by markings and notes. This generation 09 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 SYMPOSIUM REVIEW

The first graduate- March 20–21, 2007, students in the student symposium, at the School of Master of Environ- “The Market of Architecture and mental Design The Effects,” was held organized by the program. Market of Effects

UN Studio: Evolution of Space, Yale School of Architecture Gallery, spring 2007. Gallery, School of Architecture UN Studio: Evolution of Space, Yale site interface. Crystal Cathedral Web documentation of three experientially intri- cate architectures in the aptly termed session “Spaces of Immersion.” First, Grace Ong-Yan (Yale ’00 and UPenn ) translated the money- saving mission developed by the Philadel- phia Saving Fund Society in the nineteenth century into its advertising campaign in the early twentieth century and then the design for the famous tower begun by Howe and Lescaze in 1929. Each telephone booth and doorknob in the building, Ong-Yan argued, was engineered to ease the worried bank customers back into depositing their savings in the vaults during these pessimistic years of the Great Depression. During Lydia Kallipoli- ti’s (Princeton) meticulous presentation of the utopian schemes of Takis Zenetos, a strange, science-fiction landscape, brought the issue of experience to a virtual breaking point. Here, atrophying bodies were suspended in an endless grid of bubbles, illustrating the harsh underbelly of this extreme technophilia. But then immersive experience immedi- ately flipped from one of total vacuum to the glistening spectacle of media coordinated under the roof of the Crystal Cathedral. Erica Robles (Stanford) led a lightening-paced tour through the history of the church, charting the radical reformatting of religious experi- ence in the era of the automobile. Worship smoothly moved from the church interior to the surrounding parking lots and has now reached a new level of abstraction in the form of a virtual Crystal Cathedral on a Web site targeted at kids. “The Market of Effects” focused six student as diverse as Haussmann’s Paris and test of history. The abstract discourse on the papers and a keynote lecture on the architec- mid-twentieth-century Greece. marketing of experience was elegantly set Yale Assistant Professor Emmanuel Petit’s tural context for the “experience economy,” into three archive-based research projects response to the afternoon session proposed a new competitive battleground for business Still, the keynote talk was decidedly unhis- in which architectural Modernism struggled that each of these projects was premised strategy identified by Joseph Pine and James torical and curiously limited to America. to engage the turbulent upheavals of capital. on strong notions of the subject, some of Gilmore, just short of ten years ago. Pine Delivered by sociologist Mark Gottdiener Bernard Zirnheld’s (Yale) paper interrogated which echoed the most haunting projects of and Gilmore are the cofounders of Strategic (University of Buffalo), the lecture tackled the effect of advertising on architecture along modernity. The danger of designing spaces Horizons LLP, “a thinking studio dedicated the problem of “theming” in architecture the Rue Réaumur in Paris. He concluded of immersion, it seems, is the unproblematic to helping companies conceive and design as a core concern in this new economic that by the turn of the century, Parisians erasure of an individual’s critical conscience. new ways of adding value to their economic environment. Drawing a sharp distinction were essentially building inhabitable posters. What modes of resistance are reserved for offerings” (www.strategichorizons.com). A between landmark and signature build- These were neither landmark nor signature the worshipers in the Crystal Cathedral? portrait on their Web site has them seated on ings as the models available for theming, buildings, but Zirnheld’s inquiry showed that Designing experience as a totality may the edge of directors’ chairs, thus fashion- Gottdiener argued that landmarks positively the problems of urban orientation and the indeed have the worrisome consequences ing their self-image as “provocateurs” who contribute to cities by providing familiar invention of desire were just as fundamental pointed out by critics of modernity. These challenge companies to engage in strategies forms in the same way that franchises like to fin de siècle Paris as they are today—and historical repetitions are not coincidental; that upgrade their position for the experi- McDonald’s or Starbucks do. This approach, fortunately do not inextricably lead to black- the symposium’s participants, who set “The ence economy. In others words, Strategic he continued, should be distinguished from glass pyramids in the desert. Then Sara Market of Effects” in this broad cultural Horizons sells experience, which it claims the negative effect of signature buildings, Stevens (MED Yale ’06 and Princeton) took context, proved that the category was is “not an amorphous construct” but rather designed by famous architects, which are Vegas head-on, contextualizing the studio nothing new. It is, however, a powerful “as real an offering as any service, good, or necessarily flawed because their “insides taught by Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour contemporary reframing of the commodity commodity.” (“Welcome to the Experience are disjointed from their outsides,” as in the at Yale in 1972. Stevens’s paper set the issue fetish, first theorized by Karl Marx in Capital Economy,” Harvard Business Review, July- case of the Seattle Central Library by OMA. of architectural iconography into the contest- as the mental replacement of a relation August 1998, p. 98). “How can anyone think that this building ed field of billboard regulation. Through the between men onto a “fantastic form of a means library?” Gottdiener asked. Having agencies set up by the Federal Highway relation between things.” Capitalizing on For them, experiences are no longer simply offended the taste of many of the architects Act and a few court cases, she related this experience, then, requires the realization that a part of subjective desire; they are valued gathered in the audience, he still concluded architecture research program to the concur- the commodity fetish itself has value and according to their effect on price and that the apotheosis of the modern urban rent political, legal, and economic logic of can be designed and sold in any form. The competitive position just as the forms of experience could best be found in Las Vegas. American advertising. The centerpiece of the presentations in this symposium showed that capital defined the industrial and service His prime example was the Luxor Casino, symposium came with the final paper of the architecture has engaged in this aspect of the economies in the past. So from the title of the a 350-foot-high black-glass pyramid that morning, given by Winnie Wong (MIT). Her market ever since the earliest of bourgeois symposium, “Market of Effects,” it was clear fulfills all the experiential and practical needs analysis of “trade dress” in two warring Texan revolutions and the consumer society. So it is that the guiding interest for the weekend of its occupants by establishing itself as an taco restaurants exposed the seemingly critical that architects become aware of the would be the causal link between experience identifiable landmark and providing users minor legal apparatus that will eventually relation between the fetish and the market, and capital—i.e., how the former affects with all the amenities they could possibly force the copyright of ambience down the not as a new paradigm but as something they the latter. Provocatively, the organizers saw desire in one location. throat of all contemporary architecture. necessarily do anyway. this form of marketing in a much broader historical trajectory within the discipline The Saturday’s morning session, “Spaces of If the drama of market forces, legal battles, —Michael Osman (’01) of architecture than Pine and Gilmore did Consumption,” was devoted to the student and fights over intellectual property charac- Osman is lecturer at Yale and a Ph.D. for business, and they invited speakers to presentations and thankfully opened Gottdi- terized the research in the morning session, candidate at the Massachusetts Institute address these designed effects in contexts ener’s rather facile categories to the rigorous the afternoon turned toward the methodical of Technology. 10 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 SYMPOSIUM REVIEW

The symposium School of Architec- “Seduction: Forms, ture from January 19 Sensations, and to 20, 2007, and the Production of featured architects, Delay- Architectural Desire” critics, curators, and ed Gratifi ca- was held at the Yale artists.

From January 19–20, 2007, the Yale tion School of Architecture hosted the sympo- sium “Seduction: Forms, Sensations, and the Production of Architectural Desire.” While the title includes terms associated cosmopolitan readership of the “Arts” with the branch of contemporary architec- section. Muschamp’s tenure at the Times ture that favors exotic form-making, digital coincided with what he identified as the techniques, and an emphasis on ambient “conspicuous emergence of a new audience effects such as mood and atmosphere, for architecture.” His writings were both an it would be inadequate to suggest that effect and a driver of this trend. He proved those ideas were the exclusive focus of the there was an audience for architecture that weekend—the scope of the proceedings was thought to be too esoteric for a mass was more far-reaching. As Peter Eisenman audience, making architecture reviews into observed, the organizers picked the cast first full-color front-page news. and then proposed a common theme to unite them, instead of the other way around. Henry Urbach, now the architecture curator of SFMoMA, spoke of a similar goal from the Rather than being the impetus of the event, standpoint of his efforts as a NewYork gallery the title emerged from the overlapping inter- director. He supported emerging practices ests of the selected participants as organized like R&Sie, Lo/Tek, An Te Liu, Jürgen Mayer by Mark Gage (’01), assistant professor H., and Lindy Roy by exhibiting their work at Yale. There was no opening statement, in a way that architecture wasn’t used to no explicit manifesto, no heavy-handed being shown: as art. Urbach’s gallery made desire to fit everyone into neat polemical architecture as exciting and relevant as the arguments. Instead the symposium relied on work in neighboring Chelsea art galleries. the strategy of compilation to make its point, Both Muschamp’s reviews and Urbach’s like a mix tape. A hallmark of the generation exhibitions demonstrated that a curious and that grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, mix educated audience was willing to engage tapes (now in the form of CDs and mp3 playl- with contemporary architecture, but it had ists) are traded between friends as a gesture to be convinced and lured—in other words, Gregory Crewdson, Untitled (yankee septic emergency), 1998 C-print, 50 x 60 inches. Courtesy of John Berggruen of fraternal bonhomie. Mix tapes depend on seduced. Both implied that to reach a Gallery, San Francisco. balance and contrast, a little comfort and broader audience, architecture could tap a little surprise—you need some familiar into audiences that were passionate about favorites, “oldies but goodies,” as well as contemporary art, music, and film by appro- new discoveries: “Since you like X, you might priating some of the tactics of those disci- like Y.” A well-conceived mix tape needs no plines. Audiences wanted to be seduced, if added explanation—the selections say it all. only architects were willing to show some interest and ask them out on a proper date. The symposium should be considered as In fact, the title of Urbach’s symposium talk, one of a larger sequence of similar events: “Plays Well with Others,” could not be more “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” (UCLA), fitting: as architecture learns to play better “Mood River” (OSU/Wexner), “Intricacy” with others, the limits of its discipline are (ICA/UPenn), and “Loopholes” (GSD), among called into question. others. Like a gathering of the tribes, these events bring together architects, scholars, II. Promiscuity: Interdisciplinarity theorists, curators, and writers from various and the Limits of Expertise positions, ideological and geographic, on shared ground. And though each of these “There’s a gap in between. / There’s a gap gatherings have their own agendas and where we meet. / Where I end and you specific details, they are united by similar begin.” themes and often by similar participants. But —Radiohead, from the 2003 song “Where I if one expected this symposium to elucidate, End and You Begin” situate, and define the term seduction, it may not have been satisfying; however, using the The definitive strategy of many of the theme as a point of departure, the partici- participants was to alloy extra-architectural pants offered an effective glimpse into some references with architectural ones. Almost of the broader issues that constitute the all the speakers used nonarchitectural focus of architectural inquiry today. examples as a point of comparison, clari- fication, or metaphor. A parade of cultural I. The Objects of Affection, references, high and low, were employed: the Subjects of Seduction Ali Smith’s novel The Accidental, Will Ferrell’s skit “Cowbell,” on Saturday Night “You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are Live, Richard Hell’s punk-rock androgyny, you talking to? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m Delibes’s “Flower Duet,” dime-store romanc- the only one here.” es, Nancy Drew mysteries, 1980s fashion, —Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in the 1976 1970s pornography, and one fervent sapphic film Taxi Driver courtship. In some cases the examples emphasized the point that seduction— In its performance, seduction has a direction as a cultural practice and an aesthetic of intent, from seeker to sought, preda- strategy—is not exclusive to architecture. tor to prey. This relationship between the These outside references served to make the seducer and the seduced was central to the architectural descriptions more palatable, contributions of a number of participants. more legible, and more entertaining. But not Hernan Diaz-Alonso, Xefriotarch, project for cell-phone display prototype. Implicit in the discussion was the idea that all of them were illuminating. At their worst in the discourses of autonomy that emerged they confused rather than clarified, serving in the 1970s, architecture had developed a as a shorthand available only to the initiated reputation, perhaps not undeserved, of being or a smug inside joke. However, at their isolationist, appealing only to those educated best, they were the perfect counterpoint to in its languages and codes. The symposium a description of architectural effects. One suggested that it was the role of contempo- of the most successful references was Jeff rary architects to seduce a popular audience, Kipnis’s use of the seduction scene from one that presumably needed to be convinced Tony Scott’s 1983 film, The Hunger. He of the relevance of architecture. pointed out examples of doublings, triplings, confirmations, redundancies, and repetitions, Herbert Muschamp opened the symposium comparing it to architectural work including by describing his former role as architecture Kivi Sotamaa’s PS1 entry, in which vibrantly critic of The New York Times during the colored perforated screens in matching 1990s. His style was atypical for architectural colors sit on piles of sand, as if the sand had criticism. Full of pop-culture references and been punctured from the perforations. personal anecdotes, his entertaining, whimsi- cal, and sometimes surreal reviews made the The most convincing example of the work of innovative contemporary architects aesthetic sensibility of seduction was given accessible and relevant to much of the not by an architect but by photographer Left and right: Servo Los Angeles, installation of Joshua Decter, Dark Places exhibition, Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2005. 11 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 SYMPOSIUM REVIEW When you got it, you got it. / Seduce me, baby, seduce me.” —Usher, from the 2005 hip-hop song “Seduction”

Gregory Crewdson, on the first day of the culmination of the conference; if the sympo- to each group seemed not to coincide or symposium. Crewdson, adjunct professor sium was going to offer examples of contem- overlap. While the architects favored an at the Yale School of Art, discussed his porary architects engaged in the production optical and experiential understanding of recent series “Beneath the Roses,” which, of ambient effects, it was going to be here. sensation, the theorists favored a sociopoliti- like much of his work, is heavily narrative, As Gage observed, all four relied on a fiction cal reading. It’s hard to see what the four creating magisterial tableaux of strange of some sort to frame their work. Sotamaa’s designers of the morning would do with the situations in otherwise mundane environ- talk, “All the World’s a Stage,” would have type of seductions described in the after- ments. The pictures, which at first glance been fitting as a theme for the session as noon. This divide was illustrated poignantly seem to capture quite ordinary scenes, are a whole. by Yale Assistant Professor Emmanuel Petit’s produced through elaborate logistics on observation that the symposium seemed the scale of feature filmmaking. Crewdson’s Gage and Hernan Diaz-Alonso are the two to favor optical sensibilities over prolonged talk was compelling in part because he designers at the symposium most dedicated deep thought. He argued that seduction does was able to describe with precise language to using digital techniques to create exotic not just mean “the curvy and the colorful”— the techniques he uses to generate certain forms, though with dramatically different there is also a seduction of intellect. He could sensations. Keeping everything in the inspirations. Diaz-Alonso showed the work have been speaking on behalf of most of the frame—foreground and background, center of his firm Xefirotarch which—inspired by theorists of the latter session. But perhaps and periphery—in hyperfocus maintains a cinematic effects from horror films and expecting the two groups to agree on the sense of anxiety. Employing multiple framing pornography—often conveys a sense of purpose and place of seduction in architec- devices like hallways, mirrors, and windows the grotesque. In contrast, Gage used the ture is asking for the wrong thing. They need provokes a sense of claustrophobia and work of German Romantic painter Caspar not look toward each other for validation; voyeurism. Capturing “pregnant” moments, David Friedrich to explain his desire to create they can each play themselves and have their such as a yellow traffic light, produces an inexplicable sense of depth and infinite own distinct voice. suspense. Much of what united symposium vastness. He offered specific examples of participants is the belief that architecture can the techniques used by his firm, Gage-Clem- IV. Eisenman’s Endgame produce ambient sensations like mood and enceau Architects: for instance, the extreme atmosphere. Crewdson’s inclusion demon- curvature and distortion of the horizon to “He speaks in your voice, American. strates that the desire to produce particular convey depth of field. In his talk, “Recent And there’s a shine in his eye that’s halfway ambiences is one that other arts have made Mysteries,” David Erdman, of David Clovers, hopeful.” more explicit. It also explains why so many presented a number of incandescent, —Don DeLillo, from the book Underworld, participants in the symposium chose to translucent gallery installations designed by 2002 adopt nonarchitectural examples to bolster his former firm, Servo Los Angeles. Erdman their architectural points. However, there was is interested in using digital-display infra- The term seduction says nothing about still apprehension about how architecture structure that encourages users to interact attainment. It describes the lure, the flirtation, can maintain its unique disciplinary expertise with his installations. Sotamaa continued the the foreplay. It promises but doesn’t deliver. while adopting techniques from other artistic discussion of the problems of representing As a work-in-progress and as one event in a fields. Questions regarding how one could atmosphere. Like the other participants, he series of many, the “Seduction” symposium translate Crewdson’s techniques for use in resisted discussing a process, instead focus- was aptly named. As respondent to the architectural work remained unanswered. ing on the types of effects he wants to create. work of the four young architects, Peter Eisenman’s remarks were anticipated to be a If anxiety about architecture’s encroachment The organization of the symposium implied blessing of the young work. upon the territory of other fields was perco- a conversation between the morning and lating over the course of the conference, afternoon sessions. The afternoon session, As the bridge between the morning and it was assuaged by Sylvia Lavin’s keynote “Forms of Seduction,” gathered theorists to the afternoon sessions, Eisenman was the address, “Supercharged.” Her masterly examine the concept from a cultural perspec- perfect figure to straddle the zone between survey presented examples of architecture tive. Greg Lynn, Davenport Visiting Professor practice and theory; his comments were that, by prioritizing the production of experi- at Yale, identified some of the aesthetic measured and optimistic. The Louis I. ence, don’t quite behave like we expect them characteristics he finds seductive—charac- Kahn Visiting Professor, Eisenman began to. By including such architectural examples teristics describing some of the traits shared by describing two types of seduction, the as Andy Warhol’s Factory, Paco Rabanne’s by the work shown in the morning session. sublime and the spectacular. He claimed the boutiques, Paul Rudolph’s “accumulation Chrissie Iles, a curator at the Whitney work of these four to be part of a “late style,” of décor,” and John Pierce’s contribution Museum, described the reverse trajectory of evoking end-game strategies of chess. As a to the Pepsi Pavilion, at Osaka, in 1979, artists whose work borders on the architec- whole the work may not indicate the arrival Lavin demonstrated that architecture has a tural. Roemer van Toorn of Berlage Institute of a new paradigm; but in that it represents recent history of producing sensory environ- and Mark Linder (MED ’88) of Syracuse a late style, it hints at a new paradigm. Like ments. She came closest to defining the role University presented the subject matter from Crewdson’s pregnant moments, capturing seduction plays as an aesthetic strategy, a different angle than either the architects the instant before decisive action, Eisen- with instances of architectures that “operate from the morning or the speakers from the man seemed to say that we were seeing in appetites,” that are “reflective, dazzling, day before. Van Toorn cautioned against the the prologue to a new thing. That is no indulgent.” By maintaining that contemporary abuse of sensation and argued for the need faint praise. The ultimate seduction defers architectural theory doesn’t know what to do for architecture to make connections with consummation, always leaving something with this material, Lavin called on theorists to society at large. He seemed troubled by the more to be desired. After all, holding out, develop narratives that include these histori- reliance on outside media to describe archi- pacing, getting more than halfway, and cally understudied precedents. It should be tectural work and cautioned architecture to leaving your subject wanting more is the noted that most of the projects were interiors, move away from its interest in the techniques hallmark of successful seduction. and a number of them were commercial retail of film. Similarly, Linder situated seduction in spaces. The material Lavin showed provided the political arena, noting President George —Frederick Tang (’03) a useful base of comparison for the presenta- W. Bush’s fascination with seduction by Tang works at Polshek Partnership, in New tion of work the following day. power and former President Bill Clinton’s York, and is a project editor of the journal with seduction and power. Praxis. He is a critic at Yale this fall. III. Role-Playing: From Practice to Theory The juxtaposition of the morning and afternoon sessions demonstrated the “Who’s gonna play me? I think I should play awkward relationship between practitioners me.” and theorists. Although it was not expressed —Chris Cooper as John LaRoche in the 2002 explicitly, one sensed that the theorists film Adaptation were expected to contextualize the work presented in the morning. In one of the more Seduction is an act of persuasion. Its transparent moments of the conference, success is judged on results, regardless of Gage suggested that, as practitioners, he the sincerity of the means. Seduction says and his colleagues were making work that nothing about honesty. In all seduction interested them, and that it was the role of scenes, everyone is playing a role. As Yale the theorists to make sense of their efforts Professor Keller Easterling commented at the within the larger cultural and historical end of the first night, “To convey truth, you context. Lavin’s keynote address certainly can’t tell the truth: you have to give the sense demonstrated the value theory can have in that you are conveying the truth.” contextualizing the work of architects, but it was unclear what the theorists of the second Despite their varied interests and preoccupa- afternoon had to offer in terms of commen- tions, the four architects participating in the tary on the state of design work or even its second-day session, “Practicing Seduction,” direction. (The exception would be Lynn, all discussed their work in terms of the who, by virtue of being an architect, didn’t fit production of atmospheric effects. The work the organization of the afternoon session.) . of these architects was anticipated as a The respective “seductions” that mattered 12 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 COMMON GROUND Common Ground, Yale’s New Partner

After nearly a decade and the Connecticut the school sought to configurations to of successful Veterans Adminis- target a population serve as models collaboration with tration to provide at particular risk for single- and nonprofit New Haven housing for female for homelessness. two-family houses developer Neigh- veterans returning This year’s Building in other communities borhood Housing from the wars in Iraq Project is a prototype across the country. Services building and Afghanistan. for a two-family For Constructs, three-bedroom Recognizing the house containing Rosanne Haggerty, single-family houses enormous value of a fully accessible Common Ground in New Haven, the the intellectual and three-bedroom Community execu- Yale Building Project physical investment owner’s unit and tive director, and Yale has joined forces this Yale School of a single-bedroom Studio coordinator year with national Architecture faculty tenant unit. For the Alan Organschi (’88) supportive-housing and students make next few years the discuss the new developer Common in the design and project’s studios collaboration. Ground Community construction of a will explore different house each year, program and site

Yale Building Project, Common Ground, under construction, summer 2007. Photograph by Reuben Herzl (’09).

homeless: about 27 percent, according to repeated by Common Ground in different faces not only the obvious constraints of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Other cities. How does the design collaboration tight schedules and demanding budgets but research shows that female veterans have between the Yale Building Project and also the “not in my backyard” concerns of a particularly high degree of trauma to Common Ground contribute to your goal of neighbors, organizations, and city admin- contend with after military service, including replication? istrations reluctant to be a part of such an homelessness. At Common Ground we are RH We view this as the first of what experiment. This year the students wrestled focusing substantial energies on creating we hope will be many uses of this model to enthusiastically with a more difficult program replicable solutions to prevent homelessness create homes for those who are homeless or than in past years: a three-bedroom house among those we know to be vulnerable. struggling to secure housing. The Kossuth with an additional one-bedroom rental unit. We hope the Yale project will be a beacon Street design is an in-fill solution that can The program configuration was complicated in showing other communities what can be work in a number of communities. We by the VA’s request that both the owner’s done on a small scale with a very deliberate have already had inquiries from two other and the tenant’s units be entirely accessible focus—to prevent homelessness before it communities, and we are thinking ahead to for veterans with long-term disabilities. The happens. There are not many neighborhoods other New Haven sites that we could work obvious solution would have been a one-story that could build or absorb a 416-unit high- on with Yale in the future. There is an oppor- building, but many outside of the studio rise, so we must be committed to a very big tunity to have a large impact on the issue of expressed concern about placing such a vision of what the “solution” looks like. Every homelessness among vets with a series of building on an urban site characterized by community can create projects like Yale’s small projects that provoke thinking by their higher density and larger houses. So innova- to serve returning veterans, young people very straightforwardness. tions in program design (providing accessible leaving foster care, patients leaving hospitals AO Five student teams developed houses for the disabled within the city) and or treatment programs—people very under- designs for this year’s Building Project in development strategy (adding rental standably in need of a community’s help and house. The model we ultimately selected for income for the homeowner provided the a stable home to make a good transition and construction created two distinct entrances needed subsidy to make the financing work) avoid becoming homeless. around a common court at the street and, generated a building form that was, in the AO The VA’s representatives, both in doing so, provided two distinct building minds of some, “unsuitable” in its traditional social workers, were invaluable critics in the identities for the inhabitants within a single context. After some discussion we arrived at design studio this semester. They spoke building that sits comfortably in the street- a compromise that placed the tenant on the of their experiences with veterans, probed scape. The interior spaces feel secure and upper floor of a two-story building. students with specific questions, concerns, yet are full of daylight, with good views of the RH The question of how to reconcile Yale Building Project with Common Ground Community. and suggestions about different design street and yard. Both units appear to solve the desires and competing concerns of all Model photographs, spring 2007. solutions, the functionality of architecture the demanding functional requirements of stakeholders in a project is a difficult one. The for a potentially disabled parent, the sense housing for the disabled while providing a particular issue we face as developers tends of security spaces might provide a person variety of interior and exterior spatial experi- to be about tenant mix, not building form. wrestling with post-traumatic stress disorder, ences. How important is good innovative The fact that we exist specifically to create Alan Organschi Common Ground and the particular relationship between two design to the work you do? housing for those typically excluded from Community has gained a substantial reputa- families living within one small building. RH Good design—especially design the mainstream generally requires neighbor- tion for delivering and sustaining permanent They addressed the question: What social that responds beautifully and comfortably to hood education. Having been around for housing for the homeless and the vulnerable, support programs are critical to Common particular requirements of those who are not seventeen years now—with many success- renovating historic buildings such as the Ground’s strategy, and how do the people served by the mainstream housing market— ful projects and many happy neighbors to Times Square Hotel and the Prince George, who administer them typically contribute to is one of the pillars of our work. We’re not attest to the quality and contribution of our both in New York. The Yale Building Project the development of the projects? interested in innovative design for its own buildings—that education process is usually produces a single new house each year. Can RH When we start planning a new sake but as a way of solving some of the effective, but we’ve learned we need strong you speak about this shift in scale and poten- project we bring together the staff members challenges of providing a secure and digni- partners in a community. We have received tial reach for Common Ground Community? who actually manage our buildings and staff fied home for vulnerable people. The Building important help in those education efforts How does this new collaboration correspond from our social-service partners to help us Project house accomplishes that with from faith-based groups and community to your mission to “solve homelessness”? think through how a building that will serve the thoughtful and practical gestures you organizers. I think we should develop similar Rosanne Haggerty Common a particular group of homeless and lower- describe. The design of all of our buildings relationships with colleges and universities. Ground’s mission is to solve homelessness, income households needs to work. Staff responds to the particular group that will live In Boston and in Denver they have enlisted and that is why we appreciate the relation- members who place homeless individuals there. We designed our “foyer” program for students to help with community-wide ship with Yale. This is not an issue with a living on the street directly into housing have young people coming out of foster care and education efforts. Beyond dealing with the single solution but is fundamentally about been particularly helpful in educating all of facing homelessness to resemble a college stigma faced by people who have experi- two things: expanding the quantity and range us about the barriers faced by those with dormitory. A project now in construction, the enced homelessness, we face the same of types of affordable housing and ensuring particular disabilities. Right now we’re think- Schermerhorn House in downtown Brooklyn, challenges of every developer: concerns that the most vulnerable are connected to the ing through what type of housing we need which will provide affordable housing for about density and whether a building is housing they need. to develop for the chronic homeless with artists and the formerly homeless, is built contextual enough. Much NIMBYism, Our large-scale buildings demon- traumatic brain injuries, who often cannot around a black-box theater. we find, is generic antidevelopment senti- strate that mixed-income housing is an manage well on their own or socially. What AO Common Ground has demon- ment, for which good design is critical to important part of the solution. With 416 we ultimately design will be driven by the strated a real commitment to innovation in overcoming. studio apartments, the Prince George, in experience of our social-service team, who architectural design, welcoming unconven- New York, combines housing for a workforce know what people need to be successful in tional ideas and solutions from the students. earning between $15,000 and $30,000, with housing. What design experiments and ideas would shelter for those who had been “chronically” AO The “very big vision” that you like to see come out of a longer-term homeless, i.e., a long time with many you describe entails the development of collaboration with the Building Project? complicating issues. As a completely a solution at many scales and in different RH We are interested in innovations integrated building, it shows that a diverse contexts. It also seeks strategies that are, in design and construction practice that can range of people can have their housing as you say, “replicable,” which you have lower the cost of producing housing, speed needs met in single developments. On developed into a program with interna- the pace of development, create appealing the other end of the spectrum is the Yale tional partnerships that produce supportive new living arrangements that make housing project, which will benefit two families of housing in Europe and Australia as well as accessible for the full range of homeless recently returned veterans who are in need throughout the United States. This year a people, and reduce the environmental impact of affordable housing. We think the important critical programmatic shift in the Building of buildings. We see it as a fundamental statement here is that we collectively know Project studio has taken place in that the part of our mission to be innovators in both a lot about both what causes homelessness students are developing a two-family house program and building design. and what causes it to persist. Veterans are prototype rather than a unique project: the AO These innovations must carry disproportionately represented among the new house on Kossuth Street could be some risk for the nonprofit developer, who 13 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 IN THE FIELD In the Field

Third Rotterdam Slums of Caracas, Venezuela, UTT Caracas. Architecture Biennale

Near the end of Keller Easterling’s inaugural Informal cities include the sprawling slums Architectural Innovation “Power Talk” at the 2007 International in São Paulo, as documented in the IABR Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), on by the young Brazilian firm MMBB, and the in Chicago the explosive transformation of Dubai, she explosive, transnational region that straddles was asked whether the city and its new breed first-world San Diego and third-world Tijuana, Chicago’s architectural community was of urbanism could offer any “Machiavellian depicted by architect Teddy Cruz. There is energized in April of this year when the U.S. wisdom” to her design students at Yale a strong sense of urgency in the discussion Olympic Committee chose the city over Los School of Architecture. She pithily responded of these cities. One has the feeling that Angeles as this country’s proposed site for that the success of Dubai shows that in unchecked urbanization is to these architects the 2016 Games. Skidmore, Owings and Jeanne Gang, rendering of Acqua Tower, Chicago, 2007. today’s world “you must be too smart to be what global warming is to the environmental Merrill (SOM) developed a master plan, with right,” which could easily serve as a slogan movement: the primary threat produced consulting architects Jeanne Gang, Kahn for the biennale itself. by modernization, which is spiraling out of Visiting Assistant Professor Spring 2005, Jeanne Gang’s brilliantly designed, undulat- control faster than anyone can do anything Doug Garofalo (’87), Jim Goettsch, Brad ing residential tower proposal, for the former The third installment of the IABR, Power: about it. The informal city also illustrates Lynch, John Ronan, Ben Wood (Yale College architect and current developer Jimmy Producing the Contemporary City (May that in the contemporary city, “power” often ’54), Joe Valerio, and David Woodhouse Loewenberg, is yet another example of a 24–September 2, 2007), focuses on the works both ways: it is a force both wielded by designing preliminary plans for Olympic structural departure superimposed upon a current condition of cities throughout the the few who typically produce cities (bureau- venues. SOM’s design partner, Ross Wimer conventional rectangular box that is unheard world—largely grim and chaotic—and asks crats, financiers, and sometimes architects) (Yale College ’84), authored the Olympic of in recent residential tower designs in the whether architects can or should do anything and by the human tidal wave that threatens Village proposal, with consulting architect United States. These examples join two other about them. to overwhelm all efforts to contain it. Stanley Tigerman (’61) weighing in from unique condo towers by Lucien le Grange’s time to time. The Olympic Village scheme firm. The Rotterdam Biennale echoes many of Surprisingly, between the grim realities of as proposed to the USOC is being updated the themes raised by last year’s Venice the informal city and the unchecked growth for submission to the International Olympic Recently re-elected Mayor Daley’s efforts in Biennale, Cities, Architecture, and Society, of free-trade zones, there is a lot of beauty Committee (IOC); but according to Mayor “greening” Chicago have anointed him the and is likewise primarily devoted to research at the IABR. Easterling appears to derive Richard M. Daley, it will be built. The commit- “Daniel Burnham of the twenty-first century.” and analysis rather than current work from something akin to aesthetic satisfaction from tee will make its final decision in 2009, which Ahead of the curve of any of his national architecture studios. However, while the the corporate city, with its sparkling newness, coincides with citywide plans for centennial counterparts, Daley’s efforts at making research itself was the main event in Venice, cleanliness, and almost mythical appear- celebrations focusing on the Chicago Plan, Chicago the most sustainable city in the the ambition of the Rotterdam Biennale is ance, created in an eye-blink from nothing: developed by Daniel Burnham. nation are exemplary. His appointment of to use the research to produce concrete desert magically transformed into hotels and environmental activist Sadhu Johnston as the solutions and strategies for change. theme parks. In April the Chicago City Council ratified the Commissioner of the Environment has not Chicago Plan Commission’s approval of gone unnoticed. It seems that soon a building In choosing power as the theme, the organ- Beauty is also a big part of a display by Santiago Calatrava’s design for what would permit will be denied to any proposed project izers of this year’s biennale, which include Alexander Sverdlov that addresses the be the tallest tower in the United States— that is not LEED-certified (as a spot-on George Brugmans and the Berlage Institute, “aesthetic crisis” of a design for four hundred and clearly the iconic form associated with minimum requirement). have created an opportunity for architects to prefabricated towers, in Moscow. The project Chicago. The corkscrew design eschews examine the complex interaction of political, echoes Stalin’s dream of forty wedding-cake conventional rectilinear towers, which over According to the turnout it seems that the economic, and social forces that underlie the towers for the city, of which seven were time have progressed from shear walls to recent “green” fest at McCormick Place was city and at the same time to critically analyze realized. According to Sverdlov, Moscow’s tubes (Hancock) to bundled tube towers a huge success. And Chicago’s Museum their own role as agents in the process. In this architectural crisis is the result of an ongoing (Sears), all designed to resist lateral loads. of Contemporary Art hosted the success- sense Easterling’s comment is very appropri- building boom that lacks formal cohesion ful Massive Change exhibition, curated by ate. The IABR aims to provoke a response or any clear idea about how all the new Construction on two major mixed-use Bruce Mau, together with a show in which to the contemporary city that is too compre- construction can come together to form a projects in Chicago’s Central Business a number of Chicago architects—Doug hensive to propose simple answers, yet too new city. District is well under way. The first, innocu- Farr, Jeanne Gang, Elva Rubio, Helmut engaged to avoid taking a position. ously labeled “Block 37,” has a less-than- Jahn, Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill, Stanley The towers are a response rooted in the laudatory history in discounted land sales Tigerman, and Martin Felsen and Sarah A driving question behind many of the closest thing to an architectural pedigree through many decades of art-of-the-deal Dunn—presented projects in various stages projects is whether “city” is still a good term belonging to contemporary Moscow: the land-trading schemes (see Ross Miller’s book of completion that focused on sustainability. for the new urban manifestations developing typically brutal and often boring aesthetic Here’s the Deal). After many false starts by rapidly throughout the world. More and more of the Soviets. As a result, all the towers are developers long gone, Ralph Johnson’s large Finally, a number of recent personnel it looks like the term is inadequate or simply identical and constructed with only one type mixed-use development is at long last under changes augur well for Chicago’s move into outdated. of mirrored glass panel that has no articula- construction. the twenty-first century. Joe Rosa has taken tion either at the ground or the top. They are over John Zukowsky’s role as chief curator For example, Dubai is full of cities and yet pure mirror from top to bottom and in their In addition, the newest Trump Tower is of the Architecture and Design Department is nothing like what we typically expect emptiness aim to produce an identity for rising majestically alongside the Chicago at the Art Institute of Chicago. And Rosa’s from a city. There is Dubai Internet City, Moscow simply by reflecting what is there. River. Former SOM partner Adrian Smith appointment of the well-regarded Zoë Ryan Dubai Health Care City, Dubai Silicon Oasis, has produced a skin and building image (formerly of Van Alen Institute in New York) even Dubai Humanitarian City, among Despite the beauty and good intentions in entirely undeserved, if one looks at the as curator of design has only added to the many others. None of these are cities in the projects of the IABR, one leaves with schlock bearing the Trump name in casinos luster of the institution. Sarah Herda, formerly the conventional model of urbs and polis. the impression that no one actually knows as well as all over New York City. Perhaps director of the Storefront for Architecture, in Instead they are “zones” where various what to do with the modern city or even has it’s the Chicago tradition of excellence or the New York, was recently appointed director types of economic activity are concentrated a handle on what it really is. Clearly we can structure’s proximity to Mies van der Rohe’s of the Graham Foundation for Advanced and liberated from the obstacles to profit observe its apparitions—the slum, the free- IBM tower neighboring its site, but something Studies in the Fine Arts, replacing the found elsewhere. The liberal attitude toward trade zone, the offshore casino—but there has produced a visible halo on this well- esteemed Richard Solomon (MED ’69), corporations coupled with an openly partisan seems to be no underlying logic or rule that proportioned, beautifully detailed behemoth. whose untimely death saddened us all. Bruce political system make Dubai a prototype of ties these together other than the unmiti- Mau has joined the faculty of the School of what is becoming a leading form of twenty- gated expression of commercial self-interest. In the condominium arena, Chicago Tribune the Art Institute, together with Ben Nicholson first-century urbanism: the corporate city. architecture critic Blair Kamin’s (MED ’84) (recently of IIT), while Annie Pedret has It is no accident that there are no manifestos usual roughing up of architecturally second- moved from IIT to UIC. At the other end of the spectrum, as defined or big ideas presented at the IABR. The rate housing proposals seems to have at the IABR, is the “informal city.” The first contemporary city appears too massive, eased considerably as exceptions to his rule It seems that the state of the art of architec- thing you see in the Visionary Power exhibi- chaotic, and inconsistent for any architect to continue to populate the city’s skyscape ture is alive and well and at home in Chicago. tion, at the Kunsthalle Rotterdam, is an be foolish enough to give it a cohesive theory. with welcomed frequency. The sleek, nearly incredible chart informing you that 150,000 What we have instead are a collection of complete John Hejduk–like residential —Morris Lesser people leave their rural lives daily for a city. episodes, conditions, and clever solutions. tower and town homes rising on the Gold Lesser is a freelance architectural and cultural That means every five days another Rotter- If the IABR is any indication, the urbanism Coast—by architect Laurence Booth, critic from Chicago. dam, every three months another Lagos or of tomorrow will certainly be passionate working successfully with the developer Bill New York. Even more incredible is the fact and political but tempered by skepticism of Smith of Smithfield Development—joins a that the majority of these people arrive in whether the city can ever again be consid- list of recently completed condo towers that random but dense places, rapidly growing ered a collective and common project. gives the lie to the Kamin condemnation of areas broadly defined by the word informal in anything residential accomplished in recent that they often lack managed infrastructure, —Jonah Gamblin years in Chicago. law, order, or a viable economic base. Gamblin (’05) works at OMA in Rotterdam. 14 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 CENTERFOLD

This image series temporarily housed rain-screen wall four-story structure, is underground ramp shows the new during the Gwathmey and a green roof, enclosed by a high- joins the studio and gallery and studio art Siegel renovation of is connected by performance curtain gallery buildings. complex designed the Art & Architecture an urban passage, wall that envelops Four new mid-block by Kieran Timberlake Building. facing historic fourteen-foot-high pedestrian paths for the Yale Sculp- Edgewood Avenue. studios on the upper are landscaped ture Department, A 3,000-square-foot Mid-block, the levels and shops to connect the where the School of gallery space clad 51,000-square-foot and teaching space new complex to Architecture is being in glass with a wood studio building, a on the first floor. An surrounding streets. 15 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 CENTERFOLD Construction photographs courtesy of Kieran Timberlake, 2007. Facing Howe Street, The new studio for increased energy ance, a curtain wall a four-story, 280-car building is LEED- efficiency and of triple glazing and garage houses Silver certified using improved thermal insulating, translu- ground-level retail a displacement comfort. To maintain cent spandrel panels space temporarily ventilation system a transparent has been combined used as class that introduces air envelope, without with an exterior rooms and offices at low velocities and compromising the sun-shading system for the School of at higher-than-usual building’s high level to reduce solar heat Architecture. supply temperatures, of energy perform- gain in the interior. 16 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 BOOK REVIEWS Book Reviews

acute analytical and observational skills, where modern art and its highfalutin defend- not just beautiful images. Several animated ers are only specious provocateurs bent photographs of Albers in front of a group of on “subverting the context,” and Modern- transfixed students underscore how passion- ist public buildings expose our collective ate he was as a teacher. Albers’s tenacity and disregard for a meaningful public realm. integrity persevered and had a lasting effect To illustrate this point, in his first essay, on the curriculum even in his later years at Glazer points to Philip Johnson’s 1972 Yale when his controversial opinions clashed addition to the Boston Public Library, with other strong-willed educators such as criticizing it as “bare and functional.” The Paul Rudolph. Danilowitz and Horowitz in original Renaissance-style palazzo from this collection of quotations, reminiscences, 1895, designed by McKim, Mead, and White, archival research, creative design, and certainly set a high standard, featuring the beautiful images demonstrate Albers’s belief stunning contributions of artists such as John Gritty Brits: New London in the relationship between a material and its Singer Sargent, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, final form as a kind of destiny. and Daniel Chester French. Some critics Architecture may appreciate Johnson’s fresh adapta- By Raymund Ryan, with an essay by —Elizabeth Bishop tion of the palazzo block, abstracting with Iain Sinclair, Carnegie Museum of Art, Bishop is an MED student at Yale. some elegance the basic organization of 2007, pp. 120. the original’s design without reproducing its detail. In this way the second building For the exhibition Gritty Brits (January accentuates the impact of the first, heighten- 30–June 3, 2007), at the Heinz Architectural Josef Albers: To Open ing the revelry of its meticulous ornament. Center of the Carnegie Museum of Art, in Others may join Glazer in his longing for Pittsburgh, curator Ray Ryan (’87) has Eyes—The Bauhaus, craftsmanship at a human scale, a quality compiled a companion catalog that is a Black Mountain College, often lacking in the worst Modernist archi- compelling amble through the canals and tecture of the 1970s. But Glazer’s critique of streets of today’s London, engaging the and Yale Johnson’s design detracts from the building’s reader in a walking tour of thirty projects By Frederick Horowitz and Brenda forceful contribution to the public realm. He on the city’s horizon by six architectural Danilowitz, Phaidon, 2007, pp. 288. also does not explain the fact that in 1972 the practices: Adjaye and Associates, Caruso St Boston Public Library was assigned valuable John Architects, FAT: Fashion. Architecture. When Josef Albers was invited to Yale in downtown real estate to expand its opera- Taste, Níall McLaughlin Architects, MUF, and 1950 to head the design department, his tion. If pressed, Glazer might admit that the Sergison Bates architects. The spatial and pedagogical technique, already codified, public quality of a building is not secured by temporal context in which these projects created a dramatic shift in the structure of virtue of historical gimcracks, but rather by are situated is considered carefully, allowing the school. In Josef Albers: To Open Eyes, factors more elemental, such as accessibility, the reader to appreciate them relative to the Frederick Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz porosity, and sheer space. scale of the city, its architectural history, and present a compelling portrait focusing From a Cause to a Style: its cultural legacies. The projects celebrate on Albers’s teaching methods and novel In his provocative essays on the design of interstitial spaces that are too small, approach to education, highlighting his Modernist Architecture’s memorials, “Monuments in an Age without unimportant, remote, or unique to attract the formation and evolution as an instructor Encounter with the Heroes,” Glazer laments the “muteness” attention of developers. against the backdrop of his life and the of minimalism and the “draining of overt institutions at which he taught. American City meaning and communication from A departure from vitreous showcases for By Nathan Glazer, Princeton University monuments.” He is on the wrong side of the privileged living, the more humble approach The book is a comprehensive portrait of Press, 2007, pp. 310. argument when he subtly maligns Maya Lin’s emerging from these design studios is Albers’s teaching career. Although the Vietnam War Memorial, in Washington, D.C. evidenced by their material palettes, social circuitous rehashing of certain events in his Nathan Glazer’s disenchantment with “The fact that it asserts nothing, in contrast agendas, and site strategies. Photovoltaic life tends to be confusing, the photographs Modernist architecture reflects his own intel- to the monuments of the past, undoubtedly panels and wind turbines sprout from the and illustrations redeem the biography, lectual odyssey: from youthful days in the helps make possible its universal popularity.” ground as beacons of self-sufficiency, especially the abundant sampling of student left-wing milieu of New York’s City College to But consider that the greatest memorials collaborations with artists enrich the public studies, sketches, and course assignments influential social essayist writing from a perch are mute, and so stimulate human response realm, and premanufactured elements ease that allow the reader to visually understand at Harvard. Once enamored by the social without patronizing didacticism or point- financial concerns. Each project is described Albers’s approach. potential of Modern architecture, Glazer has less triumphalism. They complement and briefly and represented by a series of photo- come to see Modernism as merely a preten- encourage our depthless capacity to feel—a graphs and renderings, and, in some cases, Danilowitz, chief curator of the Josef and tious style. In his introduction to this collec- capability now greatly tested in an age orthographic drawings and models. While Anni Albers Foundation, writes of Albers’s life tion of essays, he writes: “It had broken free of media saturation and preprogrammed the majority of these projects are success- before he arrived at Yale and paints a picture from its origins and moorings, drifted away emotional response. Glazer likewise targets fully depicted, a few fall short in quality of his later years. For example, as is widely from the world of everyday life, which it had Peter Eisenman’s Holocaust Memorial, in and scope of images. And the departure known, Albers’s teaching experience at the hoped to improve, into a world of its own.” Berlin. But why enter Eisenman’s labyrinth? from the convention of “North is up” in the Bauhaus is shown to have clearly influenced Precisely to slip the clockwork of Berlin plans frustratingly deprives the reader of an his work at Black Mountain College, where From a Cause to a Style organizes eleven toward a sea of muteness and to find the understanding of the changing quality of light he taught after his immigration to the United essays into three parts (many published physical and emotional space to grieve. captured within the spaces. States in 1933. The utopian atmosphere previously and others substantially revised of the school eased his family’s transition from public lectures). In part one, “The Glazer is less persuasive as a critic of Author Iain Sinclair wrote the introductory from Germany to America. Albers knew little Public Face of Architecture,” Glazer takes Modernist design than he is when writing essay, “A City Revised: Purple Clouds and English and frequently resorted to drawing on on modern art, assailing Richard Serra for about New York as a tolerant observer Ladders of Glass,” in which he evokes a the blackboard to make his ideas clear. The crudely undermining public open space of the city’s social geography, leading us London of shortsighted, paranoid fashion authors note that, after ten years of teaching in Manhattan; asserts the unsuitability of on a journey through the subway system victims, a cacophony of urbanism cobbled at the Bauhaus, Albers had established a Modernism for monuments and memorials, and a long walk across East Harlem. In together over the centuries where catastro- magnificent classroom presence along with a particularly in Washington, D.C.; and delivers a critique of high-rise housing estates in phe was a catalyst for change. He attributes well-established series of drawing exercises a well-deserved encomium to the late New that neighborhood, Glazer condemns the the overscaled and underdesigned occupa- designed to challenge how students saw York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who Modernist attitude toward city planning tion of London’s frontiers to the free-market their surroundings. At Black Mountain championed quality in public architecture. that could not perceive legitimate forms of planning dominance under Thatcher. College, Albers continued to develop both In parts two and three Glazer turns his gaze social life in chaotic urban environments. his Bauhaus pedagogy of “opening eyes” to design and development in New York City The Modern housing movement began with The variety of scale, tenor, and program in and his engaging classroom performance. and laments the loss of “social vision” in city good intentions but ended in a misguided this collection of projects is well composed. Danilowitz and Horowitz convey both of planning. crusade that confused neighborhoods for Each, from FAT’s utopist rococo parking lot these elements with quotes from students, slums. The acknowledgment of this mistake to Níall McLaughlin’s marine living-machine such as a recollection of Albers teaching a Glazer’s appeal is his folksy, “aw, shucks” in the late 1960s hastened a retreat from Houseboat and Adjaye/Associates postin- drawing course on the verandah of one of attitude toward the heady and inventive the hubris of planning professionals. Glazer dustrial Lost House, is responding to the the school buildings. “‘What do you see in forms of Modernist design and its contempo- thinks the profession has retreated too far. city’s changing landscape as it resolves its these chairs?’ he’d ask, demonstrating with rary expressions. For him, ornament is not a His recent experience with planners has been future with its past. As commerce rapidly his hands and body movements the gestures crime. On the contrary, it is the clearest mark exclusively procedural, and he hopes the replaces industry, the population continues of the chairs. ‘Are they dancing teenagers? of value in the public realm. In his reenact- profession will engage again with a strong to grow, immigration exacerbates a multiplic- Sedate oldsters? Flying horses? These chairs ment of the social and even moral evacuation social vision. But he could be more charita- ity of social issues, global environmental aren’t just sitting there. Look at them. They of Modernist architecture, Glazer reveals his ble. City planning today is more complex with issues come to the forefront, and London are dancing.’” preference for the richly encrusted architec- respect to advocacy, social justice, advanc- prepares to host the 2012 Olympics, archi- ture of the Belle Époque. He is convinced ing multiple interpretations of modernity, tects have the burden and the privilege of As a former student of Albers’s at Yale, that classicism—familiar, legible, clearly and accepting broadly the notion of a locally instituting change in the city’s built environ- Horowitz also provides insight from the symbolic of something important—is still produced, undesigned public realm that ment. London is therefore a perfect labora- student’s perspective. The design exercises the best choice for public buildings today, rejoins the bejewelled spectacles of our great tory for architecture and herein is presented are revealed as rehearsals, preparation for and he chides “star architects” for designing monuments. thirty experiments. making art that is distinctly not art. Albers beyond the aesthetic comprehension of the gave students tools to find new perspectives general public. What emerges is more than —Elihu Rubin Ryan’s approach to the show as an impetus rather than having them slavishly copy a style just a polemic on taste. From a Cause to a Rubin (Yale College ’99) is the inaugural for discussion is pertinent as its host city, or the work of others. Precise and demand- Style charts a narrative of national decline, Daniel Rose Visiting Assistant Professor of Pittsburgh, struggles to find its own post- ing, he required his students to develop a kind of “slouching toward Gomorrah,” Urbanism at Yale. industrial identity. But one of my favorite 17 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 BOOK REVIEWS

things about the catalog is that it stands on benefit of divorce, Kahn later engaged in a soil, water, and air quality, as well as perform- its own as a retrospective, making only brief romance with colleague Anne Tyng, who, ance criteria to evaluate how well we work mention of the exhibition. I appreciate the referring to her subsequent pregnancy, with any given site. author’s casual approach, as highlighted in recalled, “I tried discussing the problem the hand-marked map of central London, with Lou, who offered no suggestions. If he With virtually no rhetoric, this book sets out photographs of unkempt canal scenes, didn’t want to deal with something, he simply to make sustainable development green reverence for the urban weed and the butter- clammed up.” A daughter, Alexandra, was in multiple dimensions. Many of us have fly bush, and in the quality of the paper on born in Italy. been disappointed to see the highest LEED- which the book is printed. Vacant lots filled standard buildings reach exquisite strata of with car tires are just as worthy of mention as Another affair followed, with landscape technological accomplishment but incor- fussy window details because they show true architect Harriet Pattison, resulting in another porate no tangible features of an aesthetic insight into the urban condition. Gritty is cool. out-of-wedlock child, named Nathaniel. perhaps intrinsic to human beings. Since the Wiseman reports that relations between last ice age, a thousand generations, we have —Genevieve Fu Kahn and his children were less than smooth. lived with visions of woodlands, savannahs, Fu (’06) works for Heneghan Peng Archi- But in a happy turn of fate, a resurgence and water-bodies, perceptual experiences tects, in Dublin. of Kahn’s lofty reputation can be traced to that still move us beyond words. How to Nathaniel, who produced a film about his conserve this in a sustainable future? father, My Architect (2003), which was not only comprehensive and informative but Land and Natural Develop- By an amazingly simple technique of basing as affirmative as one might expect from an ment (LAND) Code: the LAND Code on a multiple-point system affectionate son. The documentary is the grounded in comparative ecological and source of many of the intimate facts of Kahn’s Guidelines for Sustainable environmental engineering studies, the life that Wiseman fleshes out. Land Development interactions of human constructions with the biosphere we all inhabit can be redirected. Wiseman’s candor about Kahn’s personality By Diana Balmori and Gaboury Benoit, The one-point metric of LEED certifications is matched by his full treatment of Kahn’s Wiley, 2007, pp. 256. is noted as an apparent weakness, but LAND architecture. One of the worthiest aspects does not harp on the self-evident, that LEED of the narrative is the importance given to To codify the interaction of water, air, soil, is therefore one-dimensional for any specific each of the various stages through which and all things built: this worthy aim orients criterion. Instead, this work unfolds a method a design moved. Playing an integral part in the book by Diana Balmori, Ph.D., who is on for getting multiple dimensions on the same the process was one of Kahn’s consulting the faculty of Yale School of Architecture, site-design map. structural engineers, August Komendant, and Gaboury Benoit, Ph.D., who is on the who altered some of the architect’s original faculty of Yale School of Forestry & Environ- The hope of this reviewer is that the exact ideas and ultimately affected the final shape mental Studies. A collaboration between quantity of LAND Code points for a given of the Richards Medical Research Building a landscape designer and an hydrologist, practice is argued and contested. If multiple and the Salk Institute. In Fort Worth, Kahn the work lays out what should become a measures, including carbon capture, are Louis I. Kahn: Beyond listened carefully, and with substantial common currency for design and engineer- incorporated into the framework, we will have eventual rewards to Richard Brown, who ing practitioners as well as planners and a new instrument for guidance on the path to Time and Style wanted natural light to play an important part. developers in the emerging landscape of sustainability. By Carter Wiseman, W. W. Norton & In the chapter “Light Unleashed,” Brown is applied ecology. Company, New York, 2007, pp. 288. quoted as saying, “The effects of changes —Paul S. Mankiewicz, Ph.D. in the weather, position of the sun, seasons, Well-known contributors to the field are Mankiewicz is executive director of the Principal among the merits of this recent must penetrate the building and participate acknowledged, such as Herb Bormann, Gaia Institute which combines ecological study of Louis I. Kahn (1901–1974) is the in illuminating both the art and the observer.” whose studies on the ecology of temperate engineering with integration of communities information obtained by author Carter One of the most memorable qualities of woodlands, meadows, and wetlands (often in natural systems. Wiseman, lecturer in the Yale School of Archi- Kahn’s final design is the silvery light that with Gene Likens, president of Institute of tecture, through interviews with people close descends into the galleries from the vaults Ecosystem Studies) transformed the field to the architect. Previous writers have made that he cunningly devised in response to of ecosystem studies. The example of Kahn’s work the nearly exclusive subject of Brown’s request. clear-cutting Hubbard Brook forest made their investigations, which have generally ecology immensely practical and intrinsically led to the consensus that he was one of the In a single sentence in the chapter dealing dynamic, as research on ecological develop- most illustrious designers of the twentieth with the Salk Institute, Wiseman summarizes ment about similar control sites, compared century. Wiseman agrees, but in arriving at his view of the architect: “If structure had to quantified disturbance. This has made that assessment he devotes a comparable been his main concern in the Yale University the best of learning from destruction and amount of attention to Kahn’s character and Art Gallery and the Richards labs, space regeneration. personal relationships, as derived largely (both interior and exterior) and light now from the recollections and opinions of clients, began to play equally important roles. Here Land and Natural Development assumes business associates, and family members, as were all the elements that would distinguish the foundations of ecology, but these are well as independent observers. Kahn’s best future work: a profound interest not under discussion. Instead, the code is in the way a building was made, a fascination grounded in a cohort of just less than two Thus while we read Wiseman’s formal with the manipulation of natural light, and hundred references, by and large peer- critiques of Kahn’s pivotal accomplish- a commitment to the role of architecture in reviewed comparative studies covering and ments—such as the Yale University Art the support of institutions that could have a quantifying a suite of sustainability effects. Gallery (1951–53); the Richards Medical positive impact on the human condition.” These range from air pollution removal by Research Building, in Philadelphia (1957–64); urban forests to assessing the economic the Jonas Salk Institute of Biological —Franz Schulze, Ph.D. viability of construction and demolition waste Studies, in La Jolla (1959–65); the Indian Schulze is the Betty Jane Schultz Hollender recycling to compost organics effects on Institute of Management, in Ahmedabad Professor of Art, Emeritus, at Lake Forest highway embankments, urban wetlands (1962–74); Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Capitol College, and the biographer of Mies van der degradation thresholds, and xeriscaping. Complex, Dhaka, Bangladesh (1962–83); the Rohe and Philip Johnson. Phillips Exeter Academy Library, in Exeter, Coverage is comprehensive for a book of 240 New Hampshire (1965–72); the Kimbell Art pages. The simple language is at times a mite Museum, in Fort Worth, Texas (1966–72), and dry. This work has a compelling purpose: the Yale Center for British Art (1969–77)—we management practices are needed to couple learn of the vital role Salk played in the La infrastructure and the built environment with Jolla design; of a remark by Abba Tor, an ecosystem services. Built structures must Israeli engineer who sat through Kahn’s work with nature. Operative principles here many declamations about asking bricks must be so self-evident that all builders can what they want to be: “Lou, what was it the recognize and incorporate them. They are wall said to you the last time you spoke to needed now. it?”; and of the warning issued to Kimbell director Richard Brown by Charles Sawyer, No color spreads dress up the book’s layout; Kahn’s former client at the Yale Art Gallery: instead, pointed, focused black-and-white “You must be prepared to sit up all night photos and figures frame stories of hydro- working with [Kahn], for otherwise you will logic cycles, hundred-year storms, berms, find that he has changed his mind while geotextiles, vegetated swales, and water you were sleeping.” That tendency to labor courses. This work assumes that sustainabil- obsessively on designs, sometimes even ity has a geometry, a form we can all recog- after construction of the original plans were nize across scales ranging from sidewalks under way, is cited in Wiseman’s account as to buildings and blocks to landscape one of the key elements of Kahn’s personal- interactions across whole watersheds. One ity. Not unrelated is the discussion of the hundred and fifty images demonstrate how architect’s relations with women, which were to conceive and solve problems sustain- just as compulsively driven and as elusively ably. From this, landscapes, water features, motivated. In 1930 he married Esther Israeli, building designs, and development options who bore him a daughter, Sue Ann. Without emerge that lead to efficiencies measured in 18 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 FALL EVENTS Fall Events Exhibitions

Constructing the Ineffable: “Constructing the Ineffable: Contemporary A Field Guide to Sprawl Ecology. Design. Synergy Sacred Architecture” seeks then to open Contemporary Sacred a discussion about contemporary sacred The exhibition A Field Guide to Sprawl, Ecology. Design. Synergy: Behnisch Architecture architecture by addressing the following organized by the Hudson River Museum, Architekten + Transsolar ClimateEnginering, concerns: in what ways do architects today in Yonkers, New York, and curated by an exhibition that originated at the Aedes The Yale School ways of widening the seek to shape concepts of transcendence Bartholomew Bland, is based on the Gallery, in Berlin, in November 2006, and of Architecture will circle of discussion through material and built form? How do they eponymous book (W.W. Norton Press). This then traveled to Stuttgart, London, and sponsor the sympo- about the nature of conceive of their design as having a broader collaboration between aerial photojournalist Manchester, with support from the Institute sium “Constructing the sacred in relation public function beyond serving explicitly Jim Wark and author Dolores Hayden will for Foreign Cultural Relations, Stuttgart, will the Ineffable: to architectural and religious functions? How do they understand be on display at the School of Architecture, be shown at the Yale School of Architecture Contemporary urban space. architecture to contribute to recent discus- in the Sculpture Building, 32-36 Edgewood Swing Space Gallery, 32-26 Edgewood Sacred Architecture,” sions on the nature of religion and reason? Avenue (between Howe and Park streets), Avenue, from October 29, 2007–February 1, on October 26–27, This symposium is largely focused on the from August 31 to October 19, 2007. 2008. The show displays the collaborative 2007. Jointly contributions of architects who have recently works of Behnisch Architekten and Trans- sponsored with designed or built sacred buildings, with The project is a devil’s dictionary of the bad solar ClimateEngineering. the Yale Institute of respondents from the fields of architectural building patterns that define sprawl verbally Sacred Music and history, theology, philosophy, and religious and visually in America today. From “alliga- Stefan Behnisch, Yale’s Saarinen Visiting Yale Divinity School, studies to help reflect and amplify on the tor” to “zoomburb,” the show includes fifty Professor in fall 2005, spring 2006, and again the symposium significance of this important cultural discus- color aerial photographs conveying the in spring 2008, and Transsolar’s Thomas seeks to explore sion within the wider university. impact of excessive development. Hayden’s Auer, who is a visiting critic at the school, essential vocabulary includes not only have collaborated in the search for sustain- familiar terms such as subdivision, highway, able and responsible architectural solutions and parking lot, but also the more exotic that reach beyond those reflected in the growth-machine category: killer, privatopia, basic point system of U.S. LEED certification. tank farm, and tower farm. Their joint projects range from projects in Germany, such as the Norddeutsche Landes- An urban historian and architect, Hayden bank, in Hannover (2002), the Therme Bad is professor of architecture and American Aibling (2007), and the Ozeaneum Stralsund, studies at Yale University. Wark is a photog- along with a recent crop of projects in the rapher whose images show the excesses of U.S. such as the designs for the Harvard the built environment categorized by type of Allston Science Complex, in Boston, and the sprawl rather than by location. Exploring the RiverParc Development, in Pittsburgh. impact of increasing traffic, development, and density in the United States, the exhibi- The exhibition and graphic designer, Frank tion highlights the often overwhelming social Ockert of Stuttgart, has organized the materi- and physical changes of the country. Sprawl al into themes based on bio-physical basics is visible in the constant new construction of temperature, air, sound, light, materials, at the fringes of cities and suburbs, coupled and human scale in boldly colored panels with a lack of investment in older downtowns that are juxtaposed with projects. Architec- and suburbs. tural models, plans, and photographs with texts describe the buildings’ designs as well In conjunction with the exhibition, Dolores as scientific issues relating to consump- Hayden will give the lecture “A Field Guide tion of natural resources. The collaborative to Sprawl,” on Thursday, September 20, sustainable projects promote the belief 2007, at 6:30 p.m. On Friday, September that a high-quality built environment can be 21, 2007, from 10 a.m. to noon, there will achieved with use of fewer natural resources, be a panel discussion on “Photography and that is typical, and moreover that sustain- Zaha Hadid, proposal for the Grande Mosque, in Strasbourg, France, 2000. the Built Environment,” chaired by Laura able design can be achieved through a Wexler, professor of American studies, combination of cutting-edge technology and chairman and professor of women’s, gender holistic design encompassing interdepend- While religion is a motivating force behind The symposium begins Friday afternoon, and sexuality studies, Yale University, with ent comfort issues, building systems, and many political and social movements in the October 26, on the theme of “Memory and speakers Jock Reynolds, Henry J. Heinz II components. In joint projects, they seek world today, questions of faith are often Identity,” with participants Karsten Harries, director of the Yale University Art Gallery, to integrate the factors of daylight, natural discussed only cautiously in the academy. Moshe Safdie, Miroslav Volf, Stanley Martha Sandweiss, professor of history and ventilation, air temperature, and acoustics, Yet the building of religious spaces such Tigerman, Peter Eisenman, and Mark Taylor American studies, Amherst College, and Jim maximizing the interdependence of the built as mosques, synagogues, churches, and and a keynote address by Vincent Scully. Wark. Both events will take place in Linsley- and natural environments rather than soley memorials has engaged and challenged the Saturday’s sessions begin with “Constructing Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street, Room 102. energy conservation. Breaking the vicious creative capacities of the most prominent the Immaterial,” with Jaime Lara, Thomas energy cycle of our tempered “artificial architects of the late-twentieth and early- Beeby, Rafael Moneo, Fariborz Sahba, and environments” by inserting a more natural twenty-first century. The relative marginaliza- Emilie Townes. The final session, on Saturday climate into contemporary buildings directly tion of religion from issues in architectural afternoon, will focus on “The Language of impacts the comfort and well-being of users debates, however, has limited the discussion the Ineffable,” with Robert Nelson, Richard as well as their productivity. of the role these works play in forming ideas Meier, Kenneth Frampton, Diana Eck, Steven of citizenship, culture, and identity. The inten- Holl, Kishwar Rizvi, and Paul Goldberger as This synergistic collaboration between tion of this symposium, organized by Karla the symposium respondent. architects and environmental engineers has Britton, lecturer at the School of Architecture, resulted in a series of innovative solutions and Jaime Lara, Yale Institute of Sacred Also, on October 25 and 26, the Institute of adapted to various needs, broadening the Music, is to open a discourse between Sacred Music will hold a pre-symposium meaning of responsible and sustainable architects, sociologists, philosophers, and conference on “Sacred Space: Architecture architecture to a more interconnected theologians by engaging an international and for Worship in the 21st Century.” Speakers relationship between man and nature. interfaith audience in the consideration of the will include Robert Schuller, of Crystal Cathe- powerful influence religion has come to exert dral Ministries; Friedhelm Mennekes, SJ, of Thomas Auer and Stefan Behnisch will share in contemporary civic life and the concretiza- St. Peter’s Church in Cologne; and architects the lecture platform at Yale in conjunction tion of that role in the design and construc- Michael Crosbie, Joan Soranno, Trey Trahan, with the opening of the exhibition, on Novem- tion of prominent religious buildings. and Duncan Stroik. Additional information is ber 1, at 6:30 p.m., in the McNeill lecture hall available online at www.yale.edu/ism. at the Yale Art Gallery. Their lecture, is titled, Giving convincing expression in built form “Contesting Expectations.” to the ineffable or the transcendent is arguably one of the most difficult forms of representation. Moreover, beyond serving as houses for the faithful, buildings of sacred architecture play a significant role as public monuments and vehicles of collec- tive memory within the urban environment. The historiography of modern architecture, however, has largely ignored discussions Gridlock, photograph by Jim Wark from the exhibition, of the evolution of this building type. Issues A Field Guide to Sprawl, 2004. related to sacred space—the investigation of new forms of structure and material, religious institutions as patrons of the arts, and the search for the purity of abstraction—have largely been discussed only within more Behnisch Architekten and Transsolar ClimateEngineering, specialized circles. scheme for Riverparc, Pittsburgh, 2006. 19 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 FALL EVENTS

Lord Richard Rogers, and Chris Wise, of Expedition Engineering, as well as Malcolm Smith, of Arup. The studio offered students the opportunity to build a contemporary Yale Books urban environment in Stratford City, in east London, site of the 2012 Olympics, as a new community around a high-speed interna- tional transit hub. The projects addressed environmental, sustainable development in Celebrated both master-planning and individual build- ing designs, as well as “future-proofing” strategies for a minimum of one hundred years, exhibiting robust thought processes in new urban design concepts. The book is published by Yale School of Architecture Architecture at the Whitney Building Project and will be distributed by W. W. Norton & Humanities Center Book and Event Company in October. In fall 2007 the Whitney Humanities Center A panel discussion to celebrate the publica- For event information please see at Yale University will host a series of events tion of The Yale Building Project: The First 40 www.aiany.org. examining the place of architecture in society Years, by Richard Hayes (’86), will take place today. Centered around the selection of at the Architectural League, in New York, at world-renowned architect Santiago Calatrava 457 Madison Avenue, on Tuesday evening, Building a New Europe: as the 2007 Tanner Lecturer on Human October 9, at 6:30 p.m. Participants include Values, the program will bring together archi- the organizers of the Building Project as well Portraits of Modern tects and architectural critics from around the as young Yale graduates who have been Architects world for both formal presentation of ideas influenced by their work as students in the and open discussion of the topic. All events program. The book, Building a New Europe: Portraits will be free and open to the public. of Modern Architects by George Nelson, with The Yale Building Project is the first compre- an essay by Kurt W. Forster, was published Appointment as a Tanner Lecturer is a hensive history of one of the most important in September by Yale School of Architecture recognition for uncommon achievement and educational initiatives of the Yale School and Yale University Press (www.yale.edu/ outstanding abilities in the field of human of Architecture. Every year since 1967, yup). values. The lecturers may be elicited from first-year graduate students have designed philosophy, religion, the humanities, the and constructed a building for a community- Architect, designer, and architectural critic sciences, the creative arts, and the learned based client. This hands-on experience has George Nelson (1908–1986), who was a professions or from leadership in public or been a special achievement in American graduate of Yale College in 1928 and Yale private affairs. The lectureships are interna- architectural education. Begun under the School of Architecture in 1932, was a fellow tional and intercultural and transcend ethnic, leadership of Charles W. Moore (1925–1993), at the American Academy in Rome when national, religious, and ideological distinc- the program originated in the intense social he undertook to write a series of articles tions. The purpose of the Tanner Lectures is activism of the 1960s. published in Pencil Points, 1935–36, about to advance and reflect upon scholarly and the state of European architects and their scientific learning related to human values. The Building Project has also been a mirror work during the politically and artistically for changes in American society during crucial years that he lived in Europe. A great Calatrava’s lectures will take place over two the past forty years. Initially Yale students feat for a young aspiring architect, Nelson days. On October 3 at 4:30 p.m. he will give traveled to impoverished rural Appalachia, wrote twelve essays on the architects a talk, “Wings and a Prayer,” and at 6:30 p.m. where they built two community centers, a whom he personally interviewed: Marcello the next day his lecture is titled, “A Collection health clinic for an area afflicted with black- Piacentini, Italy; Helweg-Moeller, Denmark; of Pearls.” Both lectures will be delivered at lung disease, and a recreation center on a Luckhardt Brothers, Germany; Gio Ponti, the Whitney Humanities Center Auditorium lake in the coal-mining region of Kentucky. Italy; Le Corbusier, France; Ivar Tengbom, (53 Wall Street). On the following Monday, During the 1970s and 1980s, students built Sweden; Mies van der Rohe, Germany; October 8, at 6:30 p.m., John Donatich, pavilions and recreational structures through- Giuseppe Vaccaro, Italy; Eugene Beaudouin, director of Yale University Press, will chair a out Connecticut. Recently the project has France; Raymond McGrath, England; Walter panel discussion, “Writing about Architec- returned to its socially conscious roots, and Gropius, Germany, and Tecton Architects, ture,” with Luis Fernández-Galiano, Franke students have designed and built affordable England. Visiting Fellow, Whitney Humanities Center; housing in New Haven in conjunction with Kurt Forster, Vincent Scully Visiting Professor Habitat for Humanity, Neighborhood Housing In addition to Nelson’s essays, Building a in Architectural History; Peter Eisenman, Services, and currently with Common New Europe includes a provocative essay Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor, and Dean Ground. The organization and writing of the by Kurt W. Forster, the Vincent Scully Robert A. M. Stern. book, with a team of students and gradu- Visiting Professor in architectural history, ates, has uncovered a trove of archival situating Nelson in both an architectural In conjunction with Calatrava’s appoint- material. In addition numerous interviews and a cultural context. The publication is a ment, the Whitney will also welcome Luis were conducted with School of Architeture significant contribution to the scholarship of Fernández-Galiano, architect and editor alumni. The book documents each of the Modern architecture because it includes the of the distinguished Spanish architecture forty building projects and includes two well-known architects Le Corbusier, Mies journal Arquitectura Viva, as the 2007 Franke historical essays that situate the program van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius, as well Visiting Fellow. Fernández-Galiano will be in in its historical and educational context. as presents the work of many lesser-known residence for the fall semester at the Whitney Published by Yale School of Architecture, it is architects in the politically and economically Humanities Center and will live on campus now available through Yale University Press turbulent inter-war period, when many lives as a fellow in Calhoun College. In addition (www.yale.edu/yup). and careers were cut short. It brings to light to taking part in campus life, he will deliver a the period from the perspective of an outsid- public lecture, “Thinking with Images,” at the er who worked to bring European Modernist Whitney Humanities Center, on October 24. Bass Distinguished Visiting architecture to an American audience. The book is published with the assistance of Architecture Fellowship Herman Miller Inc. and Vitra AG. Book Event Upcoming Book A panel discussion will be held at the Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place, in New Layered Urbanisms features the work of the York, on the evening of November 2, at 6:30 first three Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant p.m., to celebrate publications documenting Professors endowed in 2004 to bring young the first two terms of the Edward P. Bass innovators in architectural design to the Distinguished Visiting Architecture Fellow- school. The book will include the projects of ship: Poetry, Property, and Place: Stefan the advanced studios of Gregg Pasquarelli in Behnisch/Gerald Hines and Future-Proofing: Versioning: Privately Owned Public Spaces; Sir Stuart Lipton/Lord Richard Rogers/Chris Galia Solomonoff in Brooklyn Civic Space, Wise/Malcolm Smith. and Mario Gooden in Global Typologies. It will be published by the School of Architec- Poetry, Property, and Place is the first of ture in the late fall and distributed by W. W. the Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Norton. Architecture Fellowship series that describe the collaborative process between architects and developers. In a Yale advanced studio students designed projects that would trans- form Garibaldi Repubblica, a neglected site in central Milan, into a vital urban place. The book includes interviews with Bass Distin- guished Visiting Fellow Gerald D. Hines, Saarinen Visiting Professor Stefan Behnisch, and those professionals who participated in the studio research process. Published by the Yale School of Architecture in fall 2006, it is distributed by W. W. Norton & Company.

Future-Proofing is the second book in the Bass series with Visiting Architecture Fellow and developer Sir Stuart Lipton, of Chelsfield; architect and Davenport Visiting Professor 20 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 SPRING LECTURES 2007 The following are excerpts from the spring Urbanism & Susan Fainstein There are many layers. One of them that 2007 lecture series. “The Just City” I think is the most interesting, apart from the Urbanscapes Eero Saarinen Lecture plan explosion and the idea of deconstruct- March 26 ing, is that the elevators and cores make it Roger Madelin All this critique of planning and of major a fragmentary nature of the interior, so that Spring Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting efforts toward redeveloping cities produced the project took on really fluid ideas about Architecture Fellow quite a bit of modesty in recent views of organization and fluid form. The study of “Building a New Piece of City” planning and what it could accomplish. At the ground, which at the beginning was Lectures January 11 the same time planning. . . . really grew out of about carving and how the displaced mass I have the best job in the United Kingdom. a vision. It was utopian in many respects. So becomes a different kind of space, led to this What other activity can change the social, I would argue that underlying most planning new idea of the ground: how do you multiply economic, and physical environments as is still a vision of an equitable and just city, the ground to make a civic space? I think 2007 much as development? The number of a democratic city. However, as a product of the connection between the idea of multiple Roger Madelin people and the different sectors and the this new modesty, this vision is rarely made ground and ground investigation led to ideas involvement you have in various areas of life explicit. I am just trying to make the criteria of of civic spaces or zones that allow the public is absolutely huge. planning explicit. to use them in a nonfortified way—in a fluid Development is not just about design- The issue of participation is very tied into way. In very simple terms, the concept is to ing and delivering buildings, leasing them the issue of who benefits. How then do we move away from the idea of the perimeter and selling them, and all of those kinds of find the appropriate criteria for public policy block as a kind of sealed mass and more things. It is about building a consensus, in regard to redevelopment? Can we justify toward a fragmentary mass to allow poros- because all of you guys who design buildings whatever public policy we choose? How ity of the ground, connecting every kind of have a huge responsibility, you are going do we reconcile the contradictions among building to the city. to physically intrude upon and hopefully them? Would more popular participation benefit society with your monstrosities produce a different outcome? Ali Rahim and lovely additions to the landscape. Of The term justice has tended to slide Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor William McDonough course everything needs to be scrutinized out of the vocabulary of architecture and “Catalytic Formations” and understood, and a consensus must be planning. So the first thing we need to do is January 18 reached. If not, you aren’t going to be able to to change popular discourse and by doing so The notion of process in my work is incred- do it. It is as simple as that. So we spend a lot change the boundaries of action, transform- ibly particular. It is not process-based work; of time and effort building consensus. ing the dialogue so that the demands for process is due to a particular goal in a At King’s Cross what we are trying to equity are no longer marginalized so that it project, and that goal develops the research. do is ensure that if you arrive there you will does not seem like it is some fringe group It’s really about design research, not about be guaranteed that there will be something that holds demonstrations in Seattle, but that experimentation. How my work situates itself going on. You will never have to buy Time Out it is always part of the discourse when we are is that it develops techniques. For example, again. talking about urban programs. here is an image of the Battle of Britain. What King’s Cross has got to feel like a new is important about this image is that the piece of London, not an alien arrival; it is Adriaan Geuze difference between the technical, technol- Belinda Tato and Jose Vallejo going to have streets and spaces that can Timothy Lenahan Lecture ogy, and techniques is crucial in the way I exist only in London. They will still be urban “Lost Paradise” understand it for my work. The technical here and gritty, and that is our challenge. April 23 is the horsepower of the engine, how big the The first topic is protest. We were kicked engine is, the airplane; the technology is in its William McDonough from paradise, and that was because the context, and the technique is how to maneu- “Cradle to Cradle: woman took the fruit and gave it to the man. ver and operate the airplane. What’s crucial A World of Good Design” Since then we have had to invent our own for me is that the technology or the technical February 12 paradises. I think that’s the whole story about will not save your life in this position; if you We are designing as if we don’t know where landscape architecture. And the Dutch, we don’t have the correct techniques, you’re we are going, and the endgame appears to have to create our own country because we dead. So techniques are really crucial to the be climate change, global warming, persist- live on the seabed, and we have a wonderful development of technology. How does that ent toxification, ocean acidification, heavy- landscape, which is close to paradise. . . . happen? Once techniques are outmoded in a Susan Fainstein metal contamination, and so on. If these are Now we are losing our entire countryside and situation and your adversary begins to recog- our plans, if this is our design, then we are cultural landscape, and Holland is adapting nize what techniques are used to move out of doing great. If this is not our plan, then what to a sort of Los Angeles kind of city, although these situations, they learn those techniques is our strategy, because these strategies it is in none of the landscape strategies. and shoot you down anyway. Techniques have now become strategic. If we don’t take There is a large group of young architects will only get you so far, but it’s a crucial point alternative paths, we have to say that our and planners who protest against this. at the feedback between technique, the culture has adopted a strategy of tragedy. When I was a student, my professors technical, and the technological. That is, I work principally in commerce at a bombarded me with soil mapping, and I as soon as your techniques are outmoded, conceptual level, where you realize that was completely lost, because I am from an there consistently occurs further research to if you are a businessperson, if you have a engineering family. My grandpa was a dike develop larger engines for the same air plane, strategy that is tragic, it is time for a strategy engineer, so he made new lands; he made and it situates that larger engine back into of change. This requires great humility paradise from the sea: he created Holland. the original chassis. You’ve all probably seen Adrian Geuze because we don’t know what to do, and And there was in my education a complete, the image where you put in an engine, and it’s unfortunate that the word architect and strange mental disconnection always; then the engine flies out of the chassis, but the the word humble have not appeared in the finally, when I was in my thesis, I got a clue: chassis doesn’t move at all. same paragraph since The Fountainhead. if you are an architect, you use the water of If we want to achieve design humility, all the building as a gray-water circuit, or you Aine Brazil we have to do is recognize that it took us make an energy-efficient building. This is Gordon H. Smith Lecture five thousand years to put wheels on our very normal, you don’t need to talk about it, “Pragmatic Creativity: luggage—we are not that smart. we do these kinds of things these days. It’s The Structural Challenge” The two urgent matters for design are part of the engineering of our process. I am January 29 how to get the carbon out of the air and a landscape architect, but I am trained as an I want to talk about one aspect of my philoso- sequestered into algae or calcium carbonate ecological engineer, so from day one I intro- phy, which I believe defines me as a struc- for construction, so that we develop a nutri- duce soil, water, evaporation, maintenance— tural engineer and, to some extent, Thornton Zaha Hadid ent flow from that carbon instead of having it’s part of the deal. And what I hated was the Tomasetti as a structural engineering firm. I it destroy our air quality, our water, and our cliché of landscape architecture that claims call it pragmatic creativity. What do I mean food source. The other ubiquitous form of landscape should be ecological landscape. by that? Looking back to the early days of global energy is solar. It’s like architects claiming that their build- building major structures like the Parthenon, It will come down to a question of ings should be accessible for handicapped Hagia Sophia, or Brunelleschi’s Dome, what fairness. As we move forward and realize people. Come on, this is silly. This should be was the process used in designing such that eighty percent of the population will be part of the discipline automatically. projects? I think there were the essential in cities, we have to think about our cities by ingredients: a patron or benefactor with design. vision and time, as well as a creative person Practice and The Object who was very often at one time the artist, the Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo Zaha Hadid engineer, and the builder. Today the process “Recycling the Non-City: Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor we use to design buildings involves collabo- Ali Rahim The Work of Ecosistema Urbano” “Current Work” ration ammong many professions. There is April 2 January 12 no longer one artist-engineer-builder but a We are inspired by the infrastructure of the What I think is very interesting in the office team consisting of the architect, the engineer, highway. We believed that we could create now is the variety of scales and dimensions, the contractor, and sometimes a lawyer. The a new kind of five-star service area, so that which we actually tackle equally, in terms of process can be quite complex, but the owner people would not stop in the previous one research, in a very interesting way. Nothing is still has a vision, usually with less time to or in the next one but in this one. We would really perfect. People always thought and still accomplish it. This vision is tied to a budget, use the existing information infrastructure to think that you do a doodle, and somebody a schedule, and a defined program. announce the kind of activities taking place goes and builds it. But of course it is not like If there is a pure, simple solution, I say and at what time. So this would be a particu- that; it is a connection between the inven- let’s find it. If we need to be heroic, let’s do lar service area that offers much more than tion of ideas. And you know it is not about the heroics. I am totally in favor of doing the the conventional one. . . . It would be a place construction, but it is about how this leads heroics required to achieve something, but I Aine Brazil where you can go to a concert, stay for one to a different kind of spatial experience. My don’t believe in creating a heroic solution to night, do some sports, and rest. The service early work was really mostly about how—first something that can be achieved in a simple area would be an infrastructure not only for through a proposition, juxtaposition, and manner. That is a very important aspect of the clients that drive the highway but also for layering, and then also bifurcating and cross- how we look at something when we start people from the city. ing lines—you can make planes with projects designing. We do urban actions for fun because such as Vitra, where the idea of volume and we think they are important, but we also space emerged as a way of moving forward. develop sustainable construction projects. In the last ten years that research has really We would like to do cities and larger-scale focused on a different kind of repertoire and work. We don’t believe that everything must also on a spatial experience that also makes be profitable. There are some projects that you feel or use space in a different way. finance others. 21 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 SPRING LECTURES 2007

Raphael Moneo and Peter Eisenman Peter Eisenman and Rafael Moneo Charles Rose Modernist; Osama Bin Laden is a Modernist. In Conversation “Liberation and Deliberation: Failed modernization has in a sense brought February 1 Recent Work” together Modernism and anti-Moderns into Peter Eisenman What is also really impor- February 26 an almost totalistic system—and it is an tant—and is the moment of realism entering The various legacies of Paul Rudolph economic system. in, the moment of pragmatism toward capital obviously had a profound effect on archi- In “Critical Modernism” I am attack- and mass culture, which is not that of Frank tecture in the second half of the twentieth ing this white elephant that still exists. . . . Gehry and Pop architecture—is the mass century, even as we in some ways lost our Modernism has ceased to be critical, which culture of many of Koolhaas’s attacks on way during the Post-Modern era, where so is why it is an oxymoron. Whether we agree mainstream architecture. much of the tactile qualities of architecture or disagree on this is another question. We Rafael Moneo In Delirious New York and even the joy of the architectural section have to expand criticality. Koolhaas looks at the skyscraper and the was lost. My firm has always looked to

Kengo Kuma city, and he says that the city has been built Rudolph with respect for his methods of Gwendolyn Wright without architects. It has been rationality that construction, spatial richness, and spatial “Permeable Borders: has been the true builder. With this conviction complexity. Modern Architecture in America” it is in the hands of the builders and those In a piano-theory book called Liberation February 15 who are developing the cities to determine and Deliberation, the idea was that when your When we think about Modern architecture, what the true logic of architecture and the technique became really good you could be we tend to have a notion of a big idea, of an city is. This means a change in Koolhaas’s quite free to express yourself in your playing. aspiration from the turn of the last century approach. And I think in a way we are playing with that was driving architects to want to make Peter Eisenman I think there’s a general that theme in our work, where we are trying a break with the worlds that existed and to uneasiness, and it is a situation that we to work in a free and sculptural way and create a major new change. Those changes all are in, in terms of being teachers or approach it with a kind of rigor that is quite were to some extent always varied, and we working. Although it seems to me that the deliberate. You have a liberated set of forms often say pluralistic, but there is an important uneasiness today is very different from which coupled with a precise architecture, precise difference to strike between pluralism and Deborah Berke brought about 1968. Then there was clearly tectonics. That is at the core of our work right diversity, because pluralism is one of the something to struggle against—whether it now. critical aspects to look at in American history. was the institutions, the dying of Modern- That is, Americans often feel that they are ism, or the monumentalism of corporate Mack Scogin many different people, but they are basically practices—and there was a cohesive energy “The Rhinoceros Next Door” all treated equally; all architects have the in philosophy, in architecture, in the arts, April 5 same opportunities, and all groups or individ- against those things. What is it that a young We have discovered over these years of uals have the same opportunities, and that’s architect today struggles with and against? working in architecture that it is absolutely called pluralism—essentially that you can Rafael Moneo You seem to give the never neutral, and it asserts itself through choose among many of these: what to buy, answer rather easily, and we need to be this kind of resonating condition between who to hire, what to do, where to live. But of against where we are. In a way the enemy the purpose it serves and the character it course there are inequalities within that, and is us. To resist the inconsistent world, I wish expresses. Sometimes that resonance is it is important to understand that the term Charles Rose college students would recover the relation- quite evident as you start a project, and difference is simultaneously a way of looking ship between what they are able to design sometimes it’s not. What we also know is that beyond one hegemonic or dominant culture and what they are able to build, to bring architecture can sponsor uncompromised and also a celebration of cultural differences something in for the benefit of the society as difference, and lastly that architecture with and individual particularities. But it can very a whole. all of its conditions can deal primarily with easily mask differences that are inequali- paradox. And that some of the best of ties. . . . In looking at the variety in Modern Kengo Kuma architecture is somehow the result of dealing architecture and, in this country, between “Anti-Object” with that paradox. clients for modern architecture as well as the February 19 This is a new school of architecture architects themselves, it’s important that we Today I would like to talk about my philoso- at Ohio State. . . . It is all about a kind of bear in mind this sense of difference in its phy, “anti-object,” which is not a simple efficiency, a utilization of space. Most of the various connotations. philosophy. My basic idea is to combine architecture is actually invested in the interior, Mack Scogin nature and architecture together. To meld in the section. The exterior form of the Ljiljana Blagojevic architecture into nature is a goal of my building is literally an extrusion of the site; we “New Belgrade: buildings. My idea is the opposite of the filled up every square inch. . . . The building The Capital of No-City’s Land” normal monument: I call it an anti-object. is all about an efficiency of the application April 9 Normally the building is an isolated object in of systematic conditions of materiality and In the thirty-year period between 1918 and the environment, but I would like to make it infrastructure. In other words, it’s made of 1946, the terrain upon which New Belgrade whole in the environment. concrete, gypboard, and glass, and that’s it. was founded had gone through a substantial I designed the Water Glass Villa, just The main strategy of investing in the change from a no-man’s land between the next to Bruno Taut’s Huga Villa. I tried to use sectional experience inside was to bury the borders of empires to the central political the same ideas for the terrace, but I made a floor plates and vary the structure. space of a new ambitious and modern terrace of water instead of bamboo to create socialist state. The forces engendering continuity between the Pacific Ocean and the Ben Van Berkel transformation of this space with no previ- Ben van Berkel building. . . . The detail of the terrace is very “Everything Is Curved” ous urban history or any other quality of important, that the edge disappears to create Paul Rudolph Lecture function beyond the military were those of the continuity between the environment and April 12 war, conquest, and violence. It is these forces the building. Some of our work has played with the idea of that set the course for the initial planning For each project I try to have a blank- how one can utilize what you could call equal concepts of New Belgrade to be based on paper situation. My method starts from potential organizations—those that have a the premise that empty sites represent, as talking to the neighbors and the local crafts- regular quality as opposed to organizations Henri Lefebvre defined it, a homogenous man, which gives me a hint about the project. that have a more meandering, fluid capacity. abstract space, a tabula rasa, its use value Before I designed the Bamboo House I had We are not choosing one particular geometri- being predominantly political. . . . New no experience with bamboo, but I met a very cal stylistic quality. We are more interested in Belgrade strongly reflected an ideological good craftsman who taught me how to treat the transformative aspect of geometry. and political construct of a new beginning, the material—so without having met him I Another interest we developed was that is, of building socialism on a clean slate Charles Jencks could not have done the project. Some archi- when we discovered that mathematical in a suprahistorical time constellation. tects, for example, Tadao Ando, keep to their models are equally interesting compared to a According to historical sources, some methods and purify them, but I always learn a gridlike organization. It adapts very easily to 10,000 out of 32,000 transit-camp prison- new method from the site and the place. construction and distribution of program, and ers lost their lives at the former Belgrade it adapts well to way-finding, infrastructural fairgrounds until July 1944, when the camp Deborah Berke entities, and so on. The diagram is a way to was finally dismantled. What consequences “This Time and That Place” bring it into the process, whereby we don’t to the story of the new city does this history February 22 sketch but rather experiment with how bring? New Belgrade is a war child; it was It is not an era of manifesto writing. Pity. unexpected aspects might come out of the brought into the postwar world as a city of There is an optimism to even contemplating instrumentalization of the diagram. We don’t the republic, which was politically initiated in writing a manifesto. Of course, I’m not a use these diagrams as a reductive design 1943, in Bosnia, on democratic and federal writer either, but if I were writing one it would technique; we don’t believe you have to principles as a state union of equal rights Gwendolyn Wright say, “Make no buildings that cannot be simplify the principle of the diagram and build by the antifascist Council for the National forever anchored to the place on which they the diagram. What we believe is that you Liberation of Yugoslavia. The site, or rather sit. They can be made of anything you wish need to unfold the diagram and put imagina- the zone of distinction between the city and and in any way you wish but once they are tion into it to see the proliferation of what can the no-city’s land, provided ground for the complete, you are gone, and they must be come out of it. notion of a capital of a new republic to be more of the place and less of you. This does distinctly separated from historical Serbia not mean that they cannot be totally recog- and Belgrade. To paraphrase Agamben, this nizably yours, it just means that they would Modernisms threshold alone, which is neither a simple not be whole if they were anywhere else.” Charles Jencks natural site nor a site of urban life but rather This position of sitedness emphasizes “Critical Modernism” that of a camp, is always a present and the importance of place-specificity and April 16 operative presupposition of the city. denies interchangeability. Interchange- This lecture is about the “S” in Modernisms, Ljiljana Blagojevic able means so often a dumbing-down, a and the idea that we live in a modern culture one-size-fits-all approach. If something can under modernity, faced by hypercapitalism —Completed with the assistance of Marc work everywhere/anywhere, this is because and all the rest of it, including globalization. Guberman (’08), Zachery Heineman (’09), and it has reduced all those places to their most I want to start from the largest spectrum Alek Bierig (Yale College ’07). common elements, inevitability eliminating possible in speculating about it. I want to their unique ones. . . . My desire for build- get out of architecture and look at the global ings to be of a place is not so that they can situation, because I think it is modernization be quaint, old-fashioned, or nostalgic, but that is the engine of Modernism. It is impor- so they can be anchored. This quality is the tant to see that first before other things. antidote to too many places being place- My argument is that alle ist modern. less, interchangeable, and unrecognizable, Everybody is a Modernist: Prince Charles is a though seeming completely familiar. 22 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 ADVANCED STUDIOS

A snapshot of the Spring 2007 advanced studios Advanced Studios at Yale. Spring 2007

Seung Hwan Namgoong, Roger Madelin and Demetri Porphyrios Advanced Studio, spring 2007.

Weston Walker, Deborah Sallie Hambright, Greg Berke Advanced Studio, Lynn Advanced Studio, spring 2007. spring 2007.

Dana Getman and Michael Powers, Zaha Hadid Advanced Studio, spring 2007.

Jeff McBride and Julia Suh, Diana Balmori and Joel Sanders Advanced Studio, spring 2007.

Rusam Mehta and Thom Moran, Keller Easterling Advanced Studio, spring 2007.

Zaha Hadid into a series of vital mixed-use districts. the project provided a combination of design Pearson, Patrik Schumacher, and Kivi As the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor, Some students employed strategies such as studios, manufacturing assembly lines, Sotamaa. Zaha Hadid, with Patrik Schumacher and cantilevered building corners, urban street driving arena and a test track, with a visitors her assistants DaeWha Kang (’02), Simon arcades, skewed building orientation, and center, show room, and supporting spaces Keller Easterling Kim, and Simon Koumjian III, challenged curtain-wall sequences to direct the fl ow of for the Tesla Center. Keller Easterling’s studio, “High-Speed Rail,” students to design cultural and performing- pedestrian and vehicular movement; others focused on the interdependence between arts centers on Saadiyat Island, in Abu Dhabi. integrated infrastructure, viaducts and grade After visiting Tesla’s design studios, the the interests of high-speed rail lines, oil-rich The master plan designed by Gensler and changes to develop new terrains. In pairs, students focused on a program and brand- economies, and multinational corporations. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, includes an students presented to a fi nal review jury of ing concepts that incorporated visual and In pairs, the students designed two scales urban grid with culture buildings along the Thomas Beeby (’65), Patrick Bellew, Peter spatial effects. Some students designed of projects on unlikely sites of rail innova- waterfront site and fi fteen event pavilions in Bishop, Ben Bolgar, Paul Finch, Richard large open spaces from modular and cellular tion in the United States, China, and Saudi a strong fi gure-ground contrast. Instead the Henley, Graham Morrison, Alan Plattus, and components with sustainable aspirations Arabia. Shifts in a student project’s develop- students designed both the master plan and Jaquelin T. Robertson (’61). creating a holistic form. Other projects were ment, from a detail to a regional landscape, cultural buildings to investigate the fi eld- iconic, infl uenced by shapes in nature such were transformed by political or economic fi gure dialectic using parametric modeling Deborah Berke Studio as rock formations, volcanoes, or golden scenarios and incorporated both facts and to build symbiotic relationships between the Deborah Berke, assisted by Noah Biklen (’02), lightning bolts as they incorporated the student inventions. First the studio went to icon and the urban fabric. assigned students the design for Reykjavik public showroom adjacent to the production Japan, where they visited Hitachi, the train Center for Contemporary Music in Iceland, spaces within a structure that could serve as manufacturer, and learned how the company After a trip to Dubai and the site in Abu a 40,000-square-foot complex dedicated the company’s identity. Security combined collaborates with the government and Dhabi they returned to design schemes both to production, performance, and musical with a desire for visibility became an issue corporations. rectilinear and undulating that fl owed from education. The project proposed to advance as students created an architecture that ground plane to building forms. In some the spatial organization of contemporary represented, and thus served as a brand for Some projects deployed large-scale projects icons emerged as objects from music venues to be in synch with today’s the high-tech machine. The fi nal review jury interventions of railroads following the holistic forms that became entwined with the technology and deterritorialization of music included Thomas Auer, Lise Anne Couture infrastructural operations of warehouses, urban situation, while others unifi ed surfaces culture, since music can now be manipulated (’86), Hernan Diaz-Alonso, Zaha Hadid, shipping mechanisms, and big-box stores. with material and structure. Experimenting and exchanged by both author and audience, Graham Morrison, Ricardo Scofi dio, and One team designed modular structures with effects of pleating from the parametric thus recharging live performances. The Brett Steele. linking major western border towns where modulations, or pushing the parameters of students traveled to Reykjavik and then new casino cities could develop under a the potential for a fi gure to emerge from a designed projects that explored the haptic Ali Rahim fl exible roof. Other projects forecasted how fi eld, students conceived of new typologies experience of performance spaces through Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor, Ali companies such as Virgin Group, Wal-Mart, in contrast to traditional gridded urban plans. atmosphere, texture, and materials. Rahim, asked students to design a mixed-use and hospitals could operate railways, using They presented their projects in teams to high-rise building for Sheikh Zayed Road, design to generate profi t, while other projects the fi nal review jury of Alisa Andrasek, Peter Some students created innovative which connects Dubai to Abu Dhabi, and employed technical details of sustainability Eisenman, Mark Gage (’01), Sulan Kolatan, ambiences where sounds could play-off examine the effects that exceed the sum of over vast building sites to create an identity Greg Lynn, Bill MacDonald, Ali Rahim, Brett the building surfaces into a constructed individual parts using digital techniques and as well as a functional system. In the fi nal Steele, and George Stiny. landscape with a fi eld of objects: speakers, generative algorithms to design patterns in presentations to a jury of Andrew Benner lights, and mechanical systems. Structural architecture, making it scaleless. A trip to (’03), Arican Duta, Jeffrey Inaba, Keith Roger Madelin and Demetri Porphyrios form infl uenced the design of other projects, Dubai permitted the students to experience Krumweide, Arian Lourie, Chris Marcinko- Roger Madelin, the Edward P. Bass Distin- from habitable and fl exible honeycomb the intensity of the current development and ski (’04), Reinhold Martin, Detlef Mertins, guished Visiting Fellow, taught a studio with cells, to fl oating bars of technology, iconic building climate, and learn about the complex Pietra Moriza, Michael Osman (’01), Joel Demetri Porphyrios, Davenport Visiting tower cubes with a double skins, or concrete relationships between two prominent local Sanders, and Mark Wasuda, the student Professor, and critic George Knight III (’95) bookends with trusses to support perform- developers (Emaar and Nakheel). design concepts demonstrated the multina- for London’s King’s Cross Central (KXC), a ance and studio spaces. Others proposed tional corporations’s planning and design of 54-acre site with former industrial buildings atmospheric effects underground or with Students combined digital modeling tech- territories. that is currently undergoing a major redevel- fl uctuating surfaces that respond to the wind, niques to produce intricate, stereolithography opment with Madelin’s fi rm, Argent LPC. After and media projections on geothermal steam sculptural models for high-rise schemes, Diana Balmori and Joel Sanders a trip to London and meetings with Argent, vapors. The architectural projects, represent- some based on natural occurences such as Diana Balmori and Associate Professor Joel the students designed individual buildings ing in their physical form, new musical experi- magmatic fl ow and lava solidifi cation, iron Sanders’s studio focused on the remediation in dialogue with four contiguous districts mentation, were presented to jurors, Thomas oxidation for a cubic lattice of tiling modules, of a capped landfi ll and garbage transfer within the actual master-plan designed by Auer, Taymoore Balbaa, Diana Balmori, or layers of subsystems with variation. station, located off Route I-95, in New Haven, Porphyrios Associates in collaboration with Marlon Blackwell, Roger Duffy, Jeanne Gang, Many projects were drawn to Arab culture where Mayor DeStefano has expressed Allies and Morrison. The studio engaged in Margrét Haroardottir, David Hays, Kyna Leski, of pattern-making, which could lead to new interest in the potential for ecological a conversation between the developer and Frank Lupo (’83), Joel Sanders, and David production techniques while others looked revitalization. Architecture students worked in architect addressing the adequacy of the Turnbull. at fi eld conditions broken by regular rhythms parallel with students of the new joint-degree master-planner’s framework to establish in intricate sections, with a honeycomb program of the School of Forestry & Environ- a place, and whether the character of the Greg Lynn typology that responded to external climate mental Studies, and took a joint seminar. They architecture and the public spaces can defi ne Davenport Visiting Professor Greg Lynn, with conditions. The students’ fi nal proposals, conducted research together for three weeks the identity of a new urban quarter. Associate Professor Mark Gage (’01), tested demonstrating a fi nesse with architectural on water, soil, fl ora, fauna, and potential new the student’s skill in the design of manufac- effects, were presented to the fi nal jury of energy sources for the site. Then separately As students planned streetscapes, public turing facilities for the lightweight, energy- Lise Anne Couture (’86), Hernan Diaz-Alonso, the architecture students traveled to Japan spaces, and buildings within the four districts, effi cient, high-performance Tesla electric car. Evan Douglis, David Erdman, Mark Gage to visit integrated landscapes, such as the they transformed the former industrial area Located on a 50-acre site in Silicon Valley, (’01), Hina Jamelle, Bill MacDonald, Cliff Kyoto Gardens, Tadao Ando’s Benesse Art 23 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 SIR COLIN ST. JOHN WILSON

— Jejon Yeung, Ali Rahim Advanced Studio, spring 2007. Sir Colin St. John Wilson

A Eulogy Colin St. John Wilson, as Yale Bishop Visiting Professor, 2000. Photograph by The most scholarly and thoughtful British Nina Rappaport. architect of the late twentieth century, Sandy Wilson (March 14, 1922–May 14, 2007) will be fondly remembered and deeply mourned not only in England, where he was a cherished mentor to the British art and architectural community, but at Yale Univer- sity. A visiting critic in 1960, 1964, 1983, and 1985, he shared the William Henry Bishop Visiting Professorship in 2000 with MJ Long (’65), a prominent teacher at the School of Architecture and his personal and profes- sional partner.

Already in the 1960s Wilson challenged the assumptions of orthodox Modernism, championing then-unfashionable northern Europeans, especially Alvar Aalto, who offered a more organic and nuanced view Colin St. John Wilson, than establishment figures such as Gropius Pallant House Gallery, and Mies, whose abstract formalism often 2007. Photograph by PeterDurant / arcblu. eclipsed the sensual, representational, and emotive possibilities that architecture can embody. Toward the protean Le Corbusier, Wilson was less critical; his early housing for — Colin St. John Wilson, William West, Thomas Beeby Advanced Studio, the London County Council was, like that Architect, British Library, spring 2007. of most of his contemporaries, influenced London, 2000. Photograph by Corb’s ideals—and he even employed courtesy of the British Library. the Modulor. Nevertheless, in a land at that time besotted with Corb (think New Brutal- Center, and Isamu Noguchi’s Mure park, on ism), Wilson stood out by practicing an the island of Shikoku. architecture more caring of user and context, Some words the ever-generous Wilson could not have foreseen. Nor was I ever reintroducing traditional materials in tune penned about James Stirling’s posthumous able to properly acknowledge his crucial Ambitions to take on more than the local with Britain’s physical and psychological No. 1 Poultry are perhaps more appropriately role either in person or in writing; hence this brownfi eld site inspired students to use the climate. In addition to the example of Scandi- applied to his own work: “Forms steeped in short note. project as an opportunity to rethink green navia, the heritage of English figures like memory, kindled to life by wit, imaginatively building, designing a sustainable interface Soane, Pugin, Ruskin, Waterhouse, Lutyens, interpreting the nature of the site”—and one Over the years Sandy and I saw each other between landscape and architecture. Jurors and Adrian Stokes shaped not only Wilson’s may add, living in their place and our minds occasionally, but we essentially drifted apart. Patrick Bellew, Deborah Berke, Claude work but his revelatory insights, enunciated for the longue durée. His untimely death has spurred me to write Cormier, Lise Anne Couture (’86), Winka in lectures and published as Architectural this brief note of belated thanks. During those Dubbeldam, Keller Easterling, Mickey Fried- Reflections (1992) and The Other Tradition of —Helen Searing, Ph.D. years at Cambridge, Sandy came to embody man, David Hayes, Peter Reed, Bill Ryall, Ada Modern Architecture (1995). Searing is emeritus professor of art history at what it meant to be an architect. That alone Tolla, Charles Waldheim, and Marion Weiss Smith College. says everything. (’84) offered their critique of the projects Two buildings, contrasting in size but similar and site strategies. Projects varied as some in spirit, must stand for Wilson’s career in —Peter Eisenman students foregrounded ecological programs this brief notice. The British Library, the Eisenman is the Louis I. Kahn Visiting by using recycled materials, infl uenced by largest commission realized in London since A Reminiscence Professor at Yale. Japanese gardens, and others envisioned 1775, occupied him for thirty-six years. And new typologies such as a naturalistic while its first phase, completed in 1997, Much has been written about Colin St. John cemetery beneath landscaped terraces, a was a triumph for his careful and sensitive “Sandy” Wilson and his recent passing. truck stop with a nature park, or big-box retail approach, its long gestation meant regret- What more can one add at this distance but Teaching Fund Honor’s topped with landscaped grasses. Interest tably fewer executed works. Still the library to recount a personal memoir. It concerns in weaving two systems of landscape and is complex, including many buildings in my arrival at Cambridge, England, in early King-Lui Wu infrastructure together was seen in perforated one serving myriad public functions; further September 1960. It must have been only two roof treatments, and layered undulating expansion is under construction. Comprising days before Sandy was to go, as he put it, King-Lui Wu’s son, Loli Wu ( Yale College pathways. luminous reading rooms, generous exhibition “out to America” (as if on some Wild West ’89), and his wife, Vivian Kuan (Yale MFA, and conference spaces, intimate rooms for stagecoach), when in reality he was going to ’62) have established an endowment at the Thomas Beeby special collections, a roof terrace, an exterior Yale to be a visiting critic—pre-Davenport, as Yale School of Architecture, the Professor Thomas Beeby’s studio addressed current plaza, an inviting entrance, multilevel cafés, Jim Stirling had been the year before. I would King-Lui Wu Teaching Fund, in his memory. modernization challenges in federal and an exquisite reliquary housing George not be who I am today if it were not for the One of the school’s most distinguished and courthouse design to incorporate security, III’s gift of volumes that established the circumstances surrounding Sandy Wilson beloved faculty members for more than forty sustainability, existing historic buildings, original institution, the library offers an array and this visit to Yale. years, Professor Wu inspired many students larger courts, and new offi ces for judges. of somatic and visual experiences that are with such memorable courses as “The Art This particular program was the proposed constantly varied and renewable. At the time Sandy was first-year master at of Chinese Gardens” and “Daylight and expansion of the Chicago Federal Center Cambridge, and on my arrival, only weeks Architecture.” designed by Mies van der Rohe (1959–74), as Its miniature counterpart is the extension before Michelmas, or the fall term, was to well as a way for the city to make a profi t with to the Pallant House Gallery, in Chichester begin, they still had not found a replacement Once announced, the Wu Teaching Fund new retail and commercial space. (2006), designed in association with the for him. Enter the “noble savage” (as the attracted a group of his former students, firm Long & Kentish and winner of several other Colin—Rowe—would refer to me), who colleagues, and friends who also contributed After visiting Chicago and meeting with the awards. Both buildings are primarily brick never had any idea to teach. As happens their own gifts, more than doubling the General Services Administration (GSA), some on the exterior, to complement their respec- in life, I became the first-year master, and original principal of the endowment. This students designed individualized skyscraper tive settings. Characteristically, neither Sandy could leave for Yale comforted by the tremendous response is a wonderful testa- icons while some sought to contextualize is limited to a single exhaustible image fact that his students (numbering among ment to the Yale community’s respect for this new construction within the existing hybrid but resembles a palimpsest appreciated them Richard MacCormac, Barry Maitland, great teacher and human being. streetscape, adding a mix of residential and primarily in movement and over time. At and Anthony Vidler) would be energetically commercial buildings for the local district Pallant House the sequence of serene and cared for by the American. The intention of the fund, the fi rst of its kind, along with public amenities. Some students knowingly lit galleries displays the contents is to maintain Professor Wu’s spirit and focused on Chicago’s tradition of structural to stunning advantage, particularly felicitous Fast-forward to December of that year. Upon commitment to the school by recognizing innovation; others embraced the diverse and since Wilson and Long donated part of the his return, Sandy generously gave me a and encouraging outstanding teaching. messy streetscape, and still others incorpo- collection. An admitted peintre manqué, book as a token of his appreciation for my Each year the school will select one or more rated a classical vocabulary that contrasted Wilson satisfied his passion by collecting last-minute pinch-hitting. That book, which outstanding teachers. Dean Robert A. M. with the Miesian universal fl exible space. an impressive group of paintings, sculp- was to begin my compulsive book-collecting, Stern (’65) has initiated a process through The work was presented to fi nal review jury ture, and preparatory sketches, many by was a mint-condition original copy of Alberto which graduating students are invited to of Peter Bishop, Kent Bloomer, Ben Bolgar, personal friends whose studios he and Long Sartoris’s Introduzione alla Architettura nominate a faculty member for this honor. At Turner Brooks (’70), Peter de Bretteville (’68), designed. Tellingly, in view of the nature of Moderna, published in 1944. There for the this year’s commencement ceremony in May, Judy DiMaio, Peter Gluck (’65), Richard Wilson’s architecture, the works are predomi- first time I saw Terragni’s Casa del Fascio, it was announced that professor Thomas H. Henley, George Knight (’95), Jonathan Levi nantly figurative rather than nonobjective and Asilo Infantile, and Giuliani-Frigero, as well Beeby (’65), former dean of the School, was (’81), Dietrich Neumann, and Robert Theel, constitute a unique and precious survey of as Cesare Cattaneo’s Casa d’Affitto, in selected as the fi rst faculty member to receive (of GSA). twentieth-century British art. Cernobbio. The rest is a history that Sandy the award. 24 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 FACULTY NEWS Faculty News

Michelle Addington, associate professor, was exhibited at the Bridge Gallery in Manhattan, Andrea Kahn, critic in architecture, founded and Partners, received the Encompassing featured in the May 20, 2007, Web issue of May 10 to June 29. The fi rm’s work was also DesignCONTENT, a consulting practice offer- Art Merit Award from the AIA Connecticut the New York Times Magazine, and interviews included in the exhibition Figuration at the ing strategic presentation and communica- chapter for the design of the Engleman Hall with her appeared recently in the books Open Art Institute of Chicago. In the spring Gage tion expertise to design professionals. Kahn Sundial, at Southern Connecticut State House and Women in Green, written by Lance participated in the conference “Azul Rey,” at co-edited Constellations: Constructing Urban University. Hosey (’90). She also contributed chapters the University Tecnologico de Monterrey, in Design Practice with Charlie Cannon, Phu to two recent books: Soft Space and the Mexico City. He lectured at the Häfele Gallery, Duong, and Els Verbakel (Columbia University Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen (MED ’94), assistant ACSA architectural education publication The the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the GSAPP, May 2007). Grounded in more than professor, was on sabbatical during the Green Braid (Routledge, April 2007). Pratt Institute, and the Congress of Interna- ten years of design-based research by the spring 2007 semester. In February she tional Modern Architects and participated MSAUD (Masters Science in Architecture presented a paper titled “Alvar Aalto’s Archi- James Axley, professor, will publish the paper in the roundtable discussion “Six Firms/Six and Urban Design), the book argues that tectural ‘Humanism’ and Finland’s Geopo- “Embedded Detail: Microscopic Models of Positions” at the Center for Architecture in to effectively shape cities, urban design- litical Dilemma During the Cold War” at the Rooms within Macroscopic Models of Whole spring 2007. ers must engage a broad array of physical annual conference of the College Art Associa- Building Systems” (co-authored with D. H. forms, development models, infrastructural tion, in New York. In March she lectured Chung, ’06) in the 2007 International Journal Deborah Gans, critic in architecture, with her networks, and social agents. on Eero Saarinen at the “Late Modern of Ventilation. Axley was a sustainability New York fi rm, completed a restaurant for Architecture” symposium organized by the consultant for two urban-design projects, one Varietal, in New York. The project includes Museum of Norwegian Architecture and the for the East 125th Street Harlem Competition a handmade chandelier using wine glasses art history department of Oslo University in with the Urban Design Workshop (UDW), and was featured in Architects Newspaper in conjunction with the traveling exhibition on which included faculty members Alan Plattus, February 2007. Gans and Jelacic is currently the architect’s work. In April she spoke on Ed Mitchell, Keith Krumwiede, and managing designing a master plan for the Graham “Alvar Aalto and the Cold War” in a sympo- director Andrei Harwell (’06), for a mixed-use School, founded by Mrs. Alexander Hamilton sium, in Berlin, organized to commemorate perimeter-block development surrounding an as the fi rst orphanage in the United States, in the fi ftieth anniversary of the Hansaviertel. A ecopark with underground parking. He is also Hastings-on-Hudson. With James Dart Archi- book Pelkonen co-edited with Esa Laakso- working on design strategies for a sustain- tect, Gans’s offi ce is building 150 housing nen, Architecture + Art: New Visions. New able master plan, in Aktau, Kazakhstan, for units in New Orleans on adjudicated proper- Strategies, was published in January 2007 by half a million residents, in collaboration with ties for nonprofi t developer Acorn Housing. the Alvar Aalto Academy. Koetter, Kim & Associates. The plan will Gans spoke at the Slought Foundation and mitigate environmental hazards while provid- Penn School of Design’s Evasions of Power Ben Pell, critic in architecture, with his ing site-appropriate landscaping strategies, conference on March 31 and at the Shrinking practice Pell Overton, was one of six archi- microclimatic modifi cation, and renewable Cities exhibit, at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, tects invited to participate in the redesign of energy production. Axley is cochairing, with on January 30. Her essay “Unbearable the Urban Assembly Academy for Design Professor Stephen Kellert of the Yale School Lightness” will be published in the fall in Good and Construction, a New York City public of Forestry and Environmental Studies, a Deeds Good Design 2, edited by Bryan Bell high school. Construction of their project for search for junior faculty to be shared with the (’88) (Princeton Architectural Press, 2007). a Science Lab began in June, and will open Yale School of Architecture. in September. Pell Overton is also working on Dolores Hayden, professor, was a fellow in a penthouse and loft renovation in Tribeca, a Turner Brooks (’70), adjunct professor, 2007 at the Center for Advanced Study in the salon and spa in Brooklyn, and commercial is designing housing and educational Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and residential projects in Manhattan. The facilities for autistic children at the Center for where she gave the talk “Reading Everyday fi rm’s recently completed “Valley” spa in Discovery, in Harris, New York. The project, American Landscapes.” She also lectured on Manhattan was featured in the February issue which consists of nine residences and three landmarks of labor history, women’s history, of Metropolis magazine. The student research classroom buildings, began construction in and ethnic history and gave a poetry reading and design work produced in Pell’s Yale the summer. Undergraduate student work from a book in progress. Hayden’s lecture seminar “Ornament and Technology” was based on the project, from Brooks and Adam “Where Poplar Crosses Cotton: Interpreting exhibited at the Urban Center in New York. Hopfner’s (’99) studio, will be presented at the Urban Landscape in Macon, Georgia” a conference on autism and design in fall was published as a monograph by the Nina Rappaport, publications director, has 2007. Brooks also has a few projects under Urban Studies and Planning Program at the Koetter Kim & Associates, rendering of New Aktau City, written the book Support and Resist: Struc- construction, including a small residence on University of Maryland. “Broadwater: Floating Kazakhstan, 2007. tural Engineers and Design Innovation, which the Delaware River, in Easton, Pennsylvania; Folly,” her opinion piece on the liquid natural- focuses on issues of design and collabora- the renovation of a historic Victorian barn into gas fl oating-storage and regasifi cation Fred Koetter, adjunct professor, with his tions of structural engineers. The book will be an arts facility, in downtown Hamden; the unit proposed for the middle of Long Island fi rm Koetter Kim & Associates (KKA), has published by the Monacelli Press in the fall. conversion of a barn into a study and guest- Sound, appeared in the Hartford Courant in developed a new master plan for the expan- For her research she received grants from house (an outbuilding to Charles Moore’s February 2007. Hayden’s forthcoming work sion of New Aktau City, located along the the Graham Foundation and the New York Stern House), in Woodbridge; a project for the includes essays in Architecture West and Caspian Sea, in Kazakhstan. Driven by its oil State Council on the Arts. She gave a talk, Yale School of Forestry in the Myers Forest, several books on urbanism. Her poems have and natural gas industry as well as its central “The Structure of Nature,” at the symposium, of northeast Connecticut, that includes the appeared or are forthcoming in Palimpsest, location, New Aktau City will be transformed “Life and Poetry in Technological Structures: expansion of seasonal bunk-room buildings, Mezzo Cammin, and the Yale Review. from desert into a place of convergence in The Contribution of Santiago Calatrava,” a new open-air classroom building, as well as Central Asia. Michael Grogan (’06), Namil at the Fu School of Engineering, Columbia a master plan and design for expansions to Byun (’06), as well as professor James Axley, University, in March. Rappaport was a the Cold Spring School, in Fair Haven. are working on the Aktau project. KKA won panelist at “Simple, Protean, and Spontane- an International Design Competition for the ous: A Symposium on the Legacy of Yona Patrick Bellew, lecturer, with his environmen- ChunCheon G5 Project, in Korea. Covering Friedman,” sponsored by the Drawing Center, tal engineering fi rm Atelier Ten, is working on 560 acres including the United States Army in New York, on February 18. Her article “The a sustainable resort community at Bozbuk, Camp Page site and the adjacent waterfront Engineers Moment” appeared in Architectural Turkey, with Robert A. M. Stern Architects and island for a mixed-use, environmen- Record in August. Her project Long Island and on a new town on the Cape Verde Island tally appropriate expansion of the city that City: Connecting the Arts will be a topic of a of São Vicente with Lab Architecture Studio. maximizes the potential of the lake and panel discussion in the fall, in Pittsburgh. In the United Kingdom the fi rm is working on islands to create a cultural, ecological tourist/ new high-performance residential build- leisure complex. In 2006 KKA established ings with developer Nick Johnson of Urban specifi c building confi gurations, heights, nArchitects, model of medical campus, Buffalo, New York, Splash, who is the Bass Visiting Fellow in fall 2007. massing, and setbacks for the mixed-use 2007, and on a new University of the Arts for development of Block 118 at the northern London with Yale’s spring 2007 Bass Fellow, Mimi Hoang, critic in architecture, with her end of the Martyrs Square Corridor, in Beirut, Roger Madelin and his Argent Group. Bellew offi ce nArchitects, received an AIA New York Lebanon. is on the founding board of the UK Green 2007 Design Honor Award in architecture for Building Council and has been appointed the project Windshape, in Lacoste, France. Ed Mitchell, assistant professor, with his strategic sustainability adviser to the Crown The fi rm was selected as one of twenty-four fi rm Edward Mitchell Architects, is complet- Estate, Regent Street quarter, in London, prequalifi ed by New York City’s Department ing construction of residences in western and to the University of Oxford for the new of Design and Construction to work on small Connecticut and working on large-scale Radcliffe Infi rmary Project (with Rafael Viñoly projects (under $10 million) as part of the planning projects in New York and Connecti- Joel Sanders, Yale Art Gallery Media Lounge, New Haven, 2007. Architects). Design Excellence Program. Hoang and her cut, as well as building proposals in New York fi rm were invited to participate as fi nalists in City and Bucharest. Mitchell participated Joel Sanders, associate professor, and his Mark Foster Gage (’01), assistant professor, the Living Steel International Competition in the Harvard University Graduate School fi rm Joel Sanders Architects (JSA), collabo- with his fi rm Gage/Clemenceau Architects, for Sustainable Housing, in Wuhuan, China, of Design symposium “Studioscope” on rated on the Mix House with Ben Rubin (Ear is working on a multinational collaborative and are designing a streetscape and public April 13 and the UCLA CityLAB symposium Studio) and Karen Van Lengen (KVL) for the competition for Les Halles in Paris, residential spaces for a 100-acre medical campus, “Fast Forward: Toward a Design and Politics Vitra Design Museum exhibition Open House: projects, and a restaurant in Manhattan. in Buffalo, New York. The fi rm’s work was for Metroburbia” on May 18. In addition, he Architecture and Technology for Intelligent His offi ce’s MoMA/PS1 Young Architects exhibited in the Architectural League’s New lectured on his work at the Knowlton School Living, on display at the Art Center College of Program proposal was exhibited as a fi nalist New York: Fast Forward show, from March 31 of Architecture at Ohio State on April 18. Design, in Los Angeles, from April 14 to July at MoMA’s Louise Reinhardt Smith Gallery to May 5, and the AIA Design Honor Award 1. JSA is working on a project for Campbell from June 27 to September 8. The fi rm’s exhibition at the Center for Architecture, from Herbert S. Newman (’59), critic in architec- Hall at the University of Virginia School of project “Biological Resplendence” was April 9 to July 7. ture, with his fi rm Herbert S. Newman Architecture. The fi rm’s Yale Art Gallery Media 25 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 FACULTY NEWS Studio Mumbai Architects, rendering of Hope House Kolkata, India, 2007. rendering Studio Mumbai Architects,

Hope House Kolkata Fabrication, On Display Roche Donates Archives to Yale Lounge was featured in Architect’s Newspa- In Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India, more The exhibition, Fabrication, On Display at the per and The New York Times (December than seven thousand women and girls Architectural League of New York, from The architect Kevin Roche, who won the 2006), Artforum (February 2007), and Archi- work as prostitutes in the red-light district. May 15 to July 28, 2007, with a grant from Pritzker Prize in 1983, has generously agreed tect (April 2007). Sanders has participated in Together with Ross Kauffman, Zana Briski Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, featured the work to donate the archives of Kevin Roche John several conferences, including the Museum went to live among them and document their Ben Pell’s Yale seminar. Using a range of Dinkeloo (KRJD) Associates, of Hamden, of the City of New York’s “Home Design in harsh lives. To empower the children, Briski digital fabrication technologies, the assign- Connecticut, to the Yale Manuscripts and New York” and the Museum of Modern Art’s instructed them in photography so they ment led to seven installations by students Archives. The gift follows his donation of “Home Delivery,” both in April. could document their own world. The result- Sean Bailey (’07) and Audrey Voung (’07), Eero Saarinen and Associates’ archives to ing film, Born into Brothels, won an Oscar Todd Fenton (’08), Aaron Taylor (’08), Ben Yale in 2002. Robert A. M. Stern (’65), dean, and his fi rm and an Emmy. Smoot (’08) and Stephen Nielson (’08), Robert A. M. Stern Architects, completed the Isaiah King (’09) and Patrick Lun (’09), Minna Both Roche and Dinkeloo worked for Rafael Díaz-Balart Hall, the new home of the This project continues through the nonprofit Colakis (’08) and Sheri Meshkinpour (’08), Saarinen and were charged with the respon- Florida International University College of organization Kids with Cameras, which sends and Wes Walker (’07) and Greg Heasley sibility of completing some of the firm’s Law, in Miami, Florida, in the spring of 2007. artists to teach photography to children in (’07)—many of which were a contemporary major work after his untimely death in 1961. The fi rm announced designs for the Museum marginalized communities around the globe, take on decoration. The idea of display Roche was in charge of design and Dinkeloo for African Art on Museum Mile, in New York encouraging them to find beauty in their lives, became merely a jumping-off point for many of production, until they founded their own City, the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs discover their voices, and recognize their of the projects, which also served to display firm in 1966. KRJD came into its own when at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and worth. Kids with Cameras called upon Studio themselves. Roche and Dinkeloo convinced the city of started work on the Jonathan Nelson Fitness Mumbai Architects, established in 2005 by Oakland, California, not to drop the firm from Center at Brown University, in Providence, Bijoy Jain and Tom Zook (’95), to envision a The works ranged from Walker and Heasley’s an art museum competition after Saarinen’s Rhode Island. Dean Stern received honors school and home called Hope House, where pink laser-cut Plexiglas picture-frame array death, resulting in their first commission. including the Connecticut Governor’s Award 150 children from Kolkata’s red-light district that interlocked as it spread across a wall From the late 1960s KRJD has worked for for Excellence in Culture and Tourism in the could live, learn, and grow in a stimulating to King and Lu’s folded rubber system that many similar types of clients as Saarinen Field of History, the Board of Directors’ Medal environment. These children will receive a grasped items softly in the place of rigid had: corporations, the U.S. government, and from the Institute of Classical Architecture & free, first-rate education through high school, shelves. Games of representation and refer- universities. Some of the firm’s best-known Classical America, the Athena Award from the provided by the Buntain Foundation, which ence—the picture frames use a computer- works include the recently demolished Congress for the New Urbanism, at its annual owns and operates eighty schools in India. mouse motif to decorative effect—add to the Veterans Memorial Coliseum (1965–72) and meeting, in Philadelphia, on May 17, where diverse materials and intelligent commentary the Knights of Columbus Building (1965–69), he gave the keynote address. He has also On a suburban site thirty miles from the that emerges throughout the different pieces. both in New Haven; the Ford Foundation, in been elected as to fellowship in the American center of Kolkata, the proposed design This seems to have come from the focus New York (1963–68); the Creative Art Center Academy of Arts & Sciences. attempts to address some of the social of the class lectures and discussions: in for Wesleyan University, in Middletown, issues associated with orphanages in India. addition to analyzing historic precedent, the Connecticut (1965–73); One United Nations By visiting orphanage schools and speaking group studied industrial design, art, decora- Plaza Hotel and Office Building, in New York with adults who were raised in them, the tion, and ornament as well as architecture. (1969–75), and the master plan and exten- architects found some very simple ideas sion of Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New that might change the way children live in The projects in Fabrication, On Display York (1967–2007). institutional settings. Envisioning a project employed what Pell describes as “a variety that reflects neither the chaos of the brothels of spatial maneuvers (e.g., hanging, bending, Assistant Professor Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen nor the sterile organization of the typical enveloping)” and are proof that an architect’s (M.E.D. ’94) will lead a multiyear project boarding school, Studio Mumbai created work can infiltrate that of industrial and toward an exhibition and publication a place where all the classrooms and living interior designers in creating decoration. I assessing Roche’s work from the mid-1960s spaces communicate visually across a wonder, however, if future projects might through the mid-1980s. She will teach central tree-filled space. Circulation among begin to more actively engage architecture in a seminar on the subject in spring 2007, different school activities overlaps on a way particular to the architect? What would during which students will start conducting south-facing verandas, which give optimum it mean for these works to leave the walls research in the Roche Dinkeloo archive at shading and cross-ventilation to the interior. upon which they are dependant or carve Yale Manuscripts and Archives. Sleeping rooms open directly onto commu- them out or redefine them? The students nal activity areas to foster the irregular and investigated techniques of fabrication and personalized atmosphere of traditional Indian display to consider not only how architects communities. can produce effective contemporary decora- tion (and ornament), but also how they—as Though families visit and remain connected people engaged in the making of space— with their children who live there, the school should affect decoration. Barry Svigals, ornamental aluminum frieze at the Beecher School, New Haven, 2007. requires tight security to prevent parental break-ins. But instead of the requisite The exhibit is also notable for what is missing Barry Svigals (’76), lecturer, has been made barbwire fence, an impossible-to-climb living from it: the desire to overbuild, overthink, a fellow of the AIA for his contribution to the landscape wall cants outward to afford the and “overarchitecturalize” what is essentially profession, specifi cally for reawakening the interior topography a privileged position a decorative problem—this is exactly what tradition of handmade sculpture integrated above the surrounding streets. distinguishes it from the typical work of archi- into his fi rm’s architecture. In April Svigals tecture students. The restraint mixed with received the Mayor’s Green Award from The design for Hope House was unveiled wit, aesthetic awareness, and technologically 07. New Haven and the 2007 Connecticut at a benefit dinner at Tabla restaurant, in slick execution in many of the installations Building Congress Project Team Award for New York, on February 11, 2007. The event made it a delightful show. I heard a remark at successfully completing two LEED-certifi ed helped raise more than $300,000 toward the opening that a few of these works were laboratories at Yale. The design by his fi rm, the purchase of land and construction of the commercial-ready, and I would agree. Svigals + Partners, for the Beecher School, in home. Studio Mumbai Architects contributed New Haven, opened on April 23. It includes a all efforts pro bono, and project completion is —Emily Abruzzo 500-foot-long ornamental aluminium frieze expected by fall 2008. Abruzzo is an architect and an editor of the of dancing children, which has been featured architectural journal 306090.

in several publications, as well as an 18-foot- —Tom Zook (’95) Roche Dinkeloo’s One high sculptural steel caryatid that supports Zook is a critic in the undergraduate program United Nations Plaza Hotel the main entrance. of the School of Architecture. and Offi ce Building, New York, 1969–1975. Courtesy of Yale Manuscripts and Archives. 26 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 ALUMNI NEWS

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

1950s to the Tower Hill Botanic Garden, in Worces- square-foot building received a Columbia Alisa Dworsky’s (’92) graphic prints were Russell Johnson (’51) and his fi rm, Artec ter, Massachusetts; and a new Varsity House Choice Design Award. featured in the exhibit Between the Lines, at Consultants Inc., which specializes in design and reconfi guration of Memorial Stadium, at Two Rivers Printmaking Studio, in White River and planning services for performing arts Dartmouth College. Alexander Gorlin (’80), of New York, was Junction, Vermont, April 6 to May 1, 2007. facilities, completed modifi cations to the quoted in the April 2007 issue of Architectural This was her fi rst of four shows in 2007; her 1917 Salle Pleyel Concert Hall, in Paris. The Jeremy Scott Wood (’70), of Elkus Manfredi Record concerning the size of offi ces in installations commissioned by the Fleming interiors feature two levels of new side balco- Architects, in Boston, is designing the relationship to architectural quality and the Museum at University of Vermont and the nies, improvements to the concert platform Emerson College Paramount Center struggle to maintain a high level of design Brattleboro Museum will open in the fall. area, and a new near-horizontal ceiling. In Project that will transform the historic within a large offi ce and on projects of Dworsky and her husband, Danny Sagan 2006 three new concert halls with more than Paramount Theater and the Bijou into an increased scale. (’92), lectured and attended fi nal reviews at two thousand seats opened, including the innovative student center on Washington the Glasgow School of Art’s Architecture Segerstrom, in Costa Mesa, California, and Street, in Boston. Jonathan Levi (’81), with his Boston-based Program MAC, in May 2007. Sagan is current- the Knight Concert Hall and Ziff Ballet Opera fi rm, received the top prize in the fi rst stage ly assistant professor at Norwich University House, in Miami, Florida. Pelli Clarke Pelli was of the 21st Century Project competition of School of Architecture and Art. the architect on these projects. the Association of College and University Housing Offi cials International for the design Robert Kliment (’59), with his partner, of a residential facility. Levi’s scheme features Frances Halsband, recently completed a a media wall, movable storage units, and number of education buildings and two Murphy beds. In the summer, second stage federal courthouses, in Brooklyn, New York, competition entrants will build upon the fi rst and in Gulfport, Mississippi. Under construc- stage to design at the building scale. In the tion are an apartment building bordering the third and fi nal phase of the competition a site close of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, will be identifi ed. in New York City, and a new high school on the Monroe High School campus, in the Charles G. Loring House, Pride’s Crossing, David Chen (’82) was made principal at Pelli Bronx. Projects currently in design include Massachusetts. Clarke Pelli Architects (PCPA) in 2006. He further work on the Sterling Divinity Quadran- is currently the design team leader on two gle at Yale, the renovation of Gilman Hall Stephen R. Holt (’72) acquired initial funding projects under construction in China. The Lu at Johns Hopkins University, the New to purchase and preserve the General Jia Zui X2 Development, in Pudong, Shang- Academic Building at SUNY, Old Westbury, Charles G. Loring House, (c. 1883), in Pride’s hai, is a six million-square-foot mixed-use Hester Street Collaborative, Ground Up, New York, 2007. and a new arts and performance building for Crossing, Massachusetts, designed by project that includes two towers, two fi ve-star the Zen Mountain Monastery in Ulster County, William Ralph Emerson. Vincent Scully fi rst hotels, and a retail podium to be completed Morgan Hare (’92) and Marc Turkel (’92), New York. published some of E. Eldon Deane’s drawings in 2010. The other is the International Finance cofounders of the New York-based archi- of the house in his book, The Shingle Style. Center, in Beijing, which is 2.4 million square tecture fi rm Leroy Street Studio and the 1960s Holt is currently seeking additional funds to feet and consists of two mid-rise towers with not-for-profi t Hester Street Collaborative, Tai Soo Kim (’62), with his fi rm Tai Soo Kim commence preserving the house and creat- a large winter garden to be completed next created the design-build education program Associates, received a 2006 Design Merit ing the Vincent J. Scully Jr. Center on Shingle year. Chen’s work on the 80,000-square-foot Ground Up in 2004, bringing together local Award for the design of a middle school, in Style Architecture. Information on the history Grinnell College Athletics Center will be artists, activists, public school students, West Hartford, Connecticut. of the Loring House as well as photographs completed in 2010. He is currently working on and teachers to work directly with architects taken by Steve Rosenthal (Yale College, ’62) the design of a tall multi-use tower in Osaka, on campus- and community-improvement Theoharis David (’64) focused his spring can be found at www.loringhouse.org. Japan, in collaboration with PCPA Japan/ projects. On April 28, 2007, Ground Up held 2007 graduate studio at Pratt Institute on Jun Mitsui (’84) Associates and the Takenaka its fi rst annual outdoor classroom garden new visions for a new community center in Buzz Yudell (’73), with his fi rm Moore Ruble Corporation. day, where volunteers from the community Nicosia, the capital of the republic of Cyprus. Yudell, received the 2006 American Institute contributed to improving public spaces. The fi nal projects were exhibited in May at of Architects Firm Award, the highest recogni- Bruce Becker (’84), of Becker and Becker in Through the program, Hester Street Collabo- Cyprus House, the Consulate of the republic tion the National AIA can bestow upon a fi rm. New Canaan, is designing the largest green rative is transforming a derelict community of Cyprus, in New York. building in downtown New Haven at 745 garden at PS134, in the Lower East Side on Gavin Macrae-Gibson’s (’79) design for a Chapel Street. East Broadway and Grand Street, into an house on a lake in Quebec was featured in outdoor classroom for hands-on learning. Architectural Digest (September 2006). The Andrew Berman (’88), with his fi rm Andrew fi rm’s A Taste of Art Gallery, in Tribeca, New Berman Architect (ABA), has been awarded Louise Harpman (’93) and Scott Specht York, won the 2006 SARANY Design Awards three public projects through New York City’s (’93) were named “Tastemakers of 2007” in Award of Excellence. The fi rm’s entry for recently established Design Excellence House & Garden magazine’s annual design an addition to Asplund’s Stockholm Public Program: a fi re station in Long Island City for review (June 2007). Specht Harpman won Library International Architecture Competi- the FDNY, which started construction this a Texas Society of Architects design award tion was awarded a Chicago Athenaeum summer; a New York Public Library branch, for zeroHouse, a completely self-suffi cient, 2007 International Architectural Award for in Staten Island, and an entry building for off-the-grid, housing prototype. zeroHouse Best New Global Design. Its renovation the PS1 museum, in Long Island City, are was featured in the Wall Street Journal of public spaces at 11 West 19th Street in design development. ABA will design throughout the past year as part of DuPont’s in Manhattan has begun construction. In children’s reading rooms for two New York campaign to support materials innovation. addition, Macrae-Gibson Architects was City Public Library branches under a privately The fi rm maintains offi ces in New York City Peter L. Gluck & Partners Architects, Little Ajax Affordable awarded a two-year contract with the New funded program. Other commissions include and Austin, Texas, where Harpman is associ- Housing, Aspen, Colorado, 2007. York City School Construction Authority a writing studio and library on Long Island, a ate dean for undergraduate programs at the for construction of new schools and has rooftop addition and gardens in Manhattan, University of Texas. Peter L. Gluck (’65), with his New York fi rm completed ten school renovation projects in and reconfi guration of a house overlooking Peter L. Gluck & Partners Architects, received 2006 totaling $37 million, including the new the Hudson River. Berman was recognized Charles Lazor (’93) and his FlatPak House a 2007 Architecture Merit Award from the swimming pool at PS70, in the Bronx. as a “2007 Tastemaker” in House & Garden’s were featured for the second time in the AIA New York chapter for work on Little Ajax April issue. National Design Triennial, in Design Life Affordable Housing, in Aspen, Colorado. John Yuan (’79) is design director in Now, at the Cooper-Hewitt, National The project was developed, designed, and Beijing of Canadian fi rm Roggeo Design Erik Maran (’89), and his fi rm Smith Maran Design Museum, in New York, December 8, constructed for the city of Aspen by Peter Associates Inc. Architecture & Interiors (SMAI), completed 2006–July 29, 2007. His fi rm’s 20-foot-by-24 L. Gluck & Partners Architects and ARCS illustrations for John Wiley & Sons’ eleventh -foot Pocket FlatPak House, sponsored by Architectural Construction Services. 1980s edition of Architectural Graphic Standards Interface Flor in 2004, was exhibited at the Jacob Albert (’80), James Righter (’70), and and the fi rst publication of Landscape Archi- Pacifi c Design Center for the Los Angeles 1970s John Tittmann (’86), with their Boston-based tectural Graphic Standards, producing more Museum of Contemporary Art (February William H. Grover (’69), Jefferson B. Riley fi rm Albert, Righter & Tittmann, received a than 4,000 drawings. SMAI was the winner 28–May 20, 2007) in the continued travels (’72), Mark Simon (’72), and Chad Floyd Palladio Award honoring architectural excel- of Artcity’s 2006 Peepshow International of the Some Assembly Required exhibition, (’73), partners at Centerbrook Architects lence in traditional design for work on a house Pavilion Design Competition, in Calgary, which was on display at Yale in fall 2006. and Planners, in Connecticut, are all heading in Northeast Harbor, Maine, also published Canada. The fi rm’s entry, MASt, is a mobile up projects around the country. Grover on in Period Homes (summer 2007). The fi rm’s audio stage that serves as a platform for art. David Gissen (’96), a recently appointed a Upper Campus for Cold Spring Harbor design of a house on Cape Cod received a assistant professor in the department of Laboratory, on Long Island; Riley on the 2007 Architectural Design Award from Cape 1990s architecture at the California College of the design for the School of Public Health at the Cod Magazine and was featured in its April Garrett Finney (’90), of Faro Studio, was Arts in San Francisco, is working on his University of Michigan, the TD Bank North 2007 issue. A farmhouse outside Boston featured in House & Garden in June 2007 for Ph.D. at University College London. He Sports Center, and the Student Center at designed by the fi rm was published in Kitchen his work on a 1,900-square-foot guesthouse, recently published essays including “Exhaust Quinnipiac University; Simon on a new Trends (October 2006), and its lakeside in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as his design and Territorialization at the Washington Campus of History for the James Buchanan guesthouse was published in Trends Home & collaborations with NASA as a senior archi- Bridge Apartments” for the Journal of Foundation and the Lancaster County Living (June 2006). tect at the Habitability Design Center of the Architecture, “Drawing Air: Bio-politics and Historical Society, in Pennsylvania; and Floyd Johnson Space Center, in Houston, where he Visual Culture” in Models to Drawings: On on the expansion of the Addison Gallery of Turan Duda (’80), with his fi rm Duda/Paine works on designs for the Habitation Module Representation in Architecture (Routledge, American Art at Phillips Academy, in Andover, Architects, completed the design of the First of the International Space Station. Finney is 2007), edited by Marco Frascari and Jonath- Massachusetts, new academic buildings for Citizens Bank Headquarters, in Columbia, currently working on schematic designs for an Hale, and “Technology, Interiors and the St. Mark’s School, in Dallas, Texas; additions South Carolina, in 2006. The 175,000- lunar living quarters. Production of Nature” in Design Ecologies 27 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2007 ALUMNI NEWS

(Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), edited Goil Amornvivat (’00) and Thomas Morbitzer The Public Role of Centers At New York’s Center for Architecture this by Lisa Tilder. (’00) established TUG Studio in Brooklyn, role is especially important, in light of the New York, in 2007. Amornvivat, who was for Architecture new construction in Lower Manhattan. New recently featured on Bravo Network’s Top York New Visions, a coalition of planning and Design, has been selected by the Royal design organizations, including AIA NY, came Thai Ministry of Commerce to participate together following 9/11. The group focuses in a conference featuring Thai designers on issues surrounding the rebuilding process with international practices. TUG Studio and provides consensual recommendations designed the exhibition Making a Home: to state and city leaders. Over the past six Japanese Artists in New York, which opens years, hundreds of local architects have at the Japan Society on September 28, 2007. been involved with the effort, and the center Both Amornvivat and Morbitzer have taught has served as a meeting place, a forum for studios in architectural interior design at debates, and an exhibition space. Parsons School of Design since 2004. All of this is a far cry from what many AIA Ben Bischoff (’00), Oliver Freundlich (’00), and chapters used to be: a bastion for self-serving Super-interesting LLC Architecture & Design, concept Brian Papa (’00), with their Brooklyn-based clubby architects who gave themselves rendering for In(out)side House, 2007. fi rm MADE, were featured in the March-April awards. The San Francisco chapter of the issue of Men’s Vogue. AIA, which opened its Center for Architecture Kian Goh (’99) is partner with fi lmmaker and + Design in October 2006—probably the designer John Bruce in a multidisciplinary Don Johnson (’00) is living in Pittsburgh and newest architectural storefront—connects practice, Super-interesting LLC Architecture teaching architecture at Carnegie Mellon. its young members with social events and & Design, which is based in Dumbo, Brooklyn, opportunities for community service. There and focuses on site and program frequently Hannah Purdy (’02), of hhpurdy design, in are also lectures and a fi lm series. As a result, involving issues of pop culture, history, collaboration with Green Street Consulting the new center crackles with energy and new and behavior. The fi rm’s recent projects and Construction, completed the renovation Kids building models at a center for architecture, in ideas. Each September the center is home include renovations for three residential of a brownstone on 128th Street in New York. Chicago. to “Architecture and the City,” a month-long dorm buildings at Barnard College; a green The project, known as the Harlem House, celebration that honors San Francisco’s roof project in Brooklyn; a country house was featured in Dwell magazine’s fi rst Web One evening this spring the New York City design community with tours, fi lms, exhibi- near Woodstock, New York; and ongoing series, “Building Green in Harlem,” in which Center for Architecture sponsored a well- tions, and design lectures. interior-design and graphics/marketing work a tour of the process discusses how to make attended talk about Barcelona’s dramatic with Kidfresh, a children’s food store on New green choices on a budget. The house will be post-Franco transformation as part of the For New York’s center, involving related York’s Upper West Side, featured in GDR published in Nest and Dwell in fall 2007. Barcelona in Progress exhibition in its public design and industry organizations means Creative Intelligence’s “Global Innovation mezzanine gallery. more participation and broader resources. It Report.” Goh is also working on planning Todd Reisz (’03) is working at OMA-AMO has now become home not just to the AIA but the new headquarters for the Audre Lorde in Rotterdam and recently contributed Meanwhile, upstairs in the library, a group to Architecture for Humanity, the Illuminating Project, a center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, essays in the book Al Manakh, edited by of approximately forty sixth-graders were Engineering Society, the American Society and transgender people of color. Her Rem Koolhaas, Mitra Khoubrou, and Ole having their own, less formal talk about of Landscape Architects, and the Structural research project, “The New Nature of Afford- Bouman and published by Archis. The book Barcelona. After touring the architectural Engineers Association, as well as the Center able Housing,” involves case studies, new documents development Gulf coast from models, renderings, and photographs in for Architecture Foundation, which focuses concepts and materials, and new housing Kuwait to the United Arab Emirates and is the gallery, the group debated whether their on education. models. The fi rm’s project for a single-family based on, “The Gulf” exhibited in the 10th version of the city, which they were creating house on an urban Atlanta site, called the Architecture Biennale in Venice. with paper and pencils, should have an opera We all know that architecture is a collabora- In(out)side House, was published as part of house. Where should they put the power tive effort. Without engineers, contractors, Business Week online feature on the “Open Peter Arbour (’04) is working as a façade plant? And who’d want to live in Gaudí’s suppliers, manufacturers, vendors, consult- Architecture Network.” architect for RFR Consulting Engineers, in “weird” buildings anyway? ants, and developers, all the architect has Paris, France. His current projects include is a good idea and a handful of drawings. the Grand Museum of Egypt, in Cairo, with The center not only serves its members but Only when these allied professionals come Heneghan Peng Architects, and La Tour extends its reach to the city—to children, the together is architecture relevant and acces- Phare at La Défense, in Paris, with Morphosis public, local politicians, and related trade sible, making these new storefronts places of Architects. He is a guest critic for Columbia organizations. Similar storefronts are popping public education about the built environment. University’s Paris/New York program as well up around the country, creating a new model as at the Versailles School of Architecture, for what local chapters of the AIA as well —Walter Hunt where he will give a public lecture on the as the architectural community as a whole Hunt (Yale College’62 and YSoA ’67) is vice integration of architecture and engineering. should do: take architecture to the streets and chairman of Gensler. He was president of the engage the public. board of directors of New York’s Center for Jessica Niles DeHoff (’04) is living in Tokyo Architecture in 2004–05, and served on its and freelance writing about design in the For example, the Chicago Architecture board for fi ve years. Pacifi c Rim region. Foundation holds tours to support itself, with more than ninety different walking, biking, Dana Gulling (’03) is teaching at the Universi- and bus tours year-round. The organization ty of New Mexico and running an architecture also teaches young people about architec- Constructs To form by putting together parts; build; frame; Lettuce, Buffer House, West Los Angeles, 2007. practice, T+G Studio in Albuquerque with her ture, using a hefty portion of its $7 million devise. A complex image or idea resulting from synthesis husband, Sean Tobin (Yale College’96). budget for school fi eld trips. They are also by the mind. Kara Bartelt (’99) and Michael Chung (’01), of writing a high-school textbook that focuses Volume 10, Number 1 the fi rm Lettuce, were featured in LA Weekly’s Noah Shepherd (’05) is working in the New on architectural literacy, guiding teachers ISBN: 978-0-9790733-3-2 annual “People Issue,” in May 2007. Their York branch of the Offi ce for Metropolitan about how to teach design using the built Fall 2007 residence, the Buffer House, in West Los Architecture on the design of 111 First Street, environmental as a learning resource through © Copyright 2007, Yale School of Architecture Angeles, was recognized with a Spark Design a 1.2 million-square-foot development, in workshops and a 500-page curriculum PO Box 208242, New Haven, Connecticut 06520 Award. Jersey City, New Jersey, which will include manual, Schoolyards to Skylines. apartments, a hotel, artist live/work studios, Telephone 203 432 2296 Raphael Sperry (’99) received the AIA San a gallery, and retail spaces. Construction is “We’re not trying to make architects out of Web site www. architecture.yale.edu Francisco Chapter’s fi rst Young Architect expected to begin in spring 2008. everyone,” says Jean Linsner, vice president Cost $5.00 award in recognition of his projects under- of youth education for the Chicago Archi- Constructs is published twice a year by the Dean’s Offi ce taken through Architects Designers Planners Travel Reports tecture Foundation. “But these children will of the Yale School of Architecture. for Social Responsibility to have architects become adults who recognize that the built boycott prison design and through San The Architectural League of New York environment is a part of us, of who we are.” We would like to acknowledge the support of the Francisco Planning and Urban Research published a boxed book, Travel Reports, They will also become tomorrow’s planners, Rutherford Trowbridge Memorial Publication Fund; the Paul Rudolph Publication Fund, established by Claire (SPUR) to make green building and solar of the projects funded by the Deborah J. journalists, government offi cials, and politi- and Maurits Edersheim; the Robert A. M. Stern Fund, power more widespread in San Francisco. Norden Fund from 1995–2005. Each young cians, which leads to another service that established by Judy and Walter Hunt; and the Nitkin architect awarded a grant used it for travel to centers for architecture can provide: a place Family Dean’s Discretionary Fund in Architecture. 2000s see architecture as part of extensive research for neutral debate and exploration of the Dean, Robert A. M. Stern Ghiora Aharoni (’00), of Ghiora Aharoni projects. Included in the “book box” are three various issues that shape our cities. Associate Dean, John Jacobson Design in New York, was featured in The New Yale graduates: Ameet Hiremath (’02), who Assistant Dean, Keith Krumwiede York Times Magazine (April 15, 2007) for the traveled to technology parks in South India; The Boston Society of Architects sponsors Editor, Nina Rappaport design of his own 550-square-foot apartment Ruth Gyuse (’05), who traveled to Kainji Dam, civic forums and public-design and planning Graphic design, Jeff Ramsey in the West Village, highlighting removable Nigeria; and Abigail Ransmeier (’06), who discussions that produce visible results. In Copy editors, Cathryn Drake and David Delp swinging doors, integrative fl ooring, and a studied slums in Mumbai, India. 1994 a design charrette called Boston Harbor dropped ceiling for storage. In the bathroom Visions engaged the public in planning for Student assistant, Marc Guberman (’08) Aharoni installed a narrow stainless-steel accessibility to the harbor and its islands. Event photographs by John Jacobson, Tom Bosschoert sink, the result of a class assignment at the The result is the newly constructed Boston (’08) and Adrienne Swiatocha (’07) Yale School of Architecture. Harbor Walk, which connects the public to Cover images Behnisch Architekten, Therme Bad Aibling, the restored harbor. Germany, 2007. Non Profit Org. US Postage PAID Constructs New Haven, CT Yale University Permit No. 526 School of Architecture PO Box 208242 New Haven, CT 06520–8242

Calendar Fall 2007 Lectures, Symposia, and Exhibitions “Writing on Architecture” Moderator John Donatich, Director, Yale Symposium Exhibitions For 2007–2008, while the A+A Building is University Press Friday–Saturday, October 26–27, 2007 Exhibition hours are Monday through undergoing renovation, the Yale School of Luis Fernandez-Galiano, Franke Visiting Constructing the Ineffable: Contemporary Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m to Architecture is located at 32-36 Edgewood Fellow, Whitney Humanities Center Sacred Architecture 5 p.m. The Architecture Gallery is located Avenue (between Howe and Park Streets), Kurt Forster, Vincent Scully Visiting Art Gallery, McNeil Lecture Hall (enter on at 32 Edgewood Avenue. New Haven, Connecticut Professor High Street) Peter Eisenman, Louis I. Kahn Visiting A Field Guide to Sprawl Professor This symposium, jointly sponsored by the August 31–October 19, 2007 Lectures Robert A. M. Stern, Dean Yale School of Architecture, the Yale Insti- Lectures begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Art Monday, October 8 tute of Sacred Music, and the Yale Divinity Ecology.Design.Synergy Gallery’s McNeil Lecture Hall (enter on High Presented in conjunction with Whitney School, seeks to explore ways of widening Behnisch Architekten + Transsolar Climate Street) unless otherwise noted. Doors open Humanities Center the circle of discussion about the nature of Engineering to the general public at 6:15 p.m. the sacred in relation to architectural and October 29, 2007–February 1, 2008 Reinhold Martin urban space. The intention is to open a Nick Johnson Myriam Bellazoug Memorial Lecture discourse between architects, sociologists, Exhibition publications produced by the Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Monday, October 22 philosophers, and theologians by engaging School are supported in part by the Kibel Architecture Fellow “Islands and Worlds: Postmodernism After an international and interfaith audience in Foundation Fund, the Nitkin Family Dean’s Thursday, August 30 Globalization” the consideration of the powerful infl uence Discretionary Fund in Architecture, the “Profi t and the Planet: religion has come to exert in contemporary Paul Rudolph Publication Fund, the Robert Placemaking for People” Luis Fernandez-Galiano, Franke Visiting civic life, and the concretization of that role A. M. Stern Fund, and the Rutherford Fellow, Whitney Humanities Center in the design and construction of prominent Trowbridge Memorial Publication Fund. Tom Wolfe Wednesday, October 24, 4:30 p.m. religious buildings. The symposium will be Peter Eisenman, Louis I. Kahn Visiting “Thinking with Images” held in conjunction with the Yale Institute of Professor Presented by Whitney Humanities Center, Sacred Music conference “Sacred Space,” Monday, September 10 53 Wall Street Thursday–Friday, October 25–26, 2007. “From Bauhaus to Our House: www.yale.edu/ism/events/ A Conversation” Joshua Prince-Ramus and Erez Ella sacredspacesconference.html Eero Saarinen Visiting Professors Dolores Hayden Monday, October 29 Friday, October 26, 2 p.m. Thursday, September 20 “It’s Not All About You” Karla Britton, Peter Eisenman, Karsten “A Field Guide to Sprawl” Harries, Moshe Safdie, Mark Taylor, Stanley Linsley-Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street, Stefan Behnisch Tigerman, Miroslav Volf Room 102 Thomas Auer Thursday, November 1 Friday, October 26, 6:30 p.m. “Contesting Expectations” Keynote Address Panel Discussion Vincent Scully “Photography and the Built Environment” Kate Orff Bartholomew F. Bland, Curator Timothy Egan Lenahan Memorial Lecture Saturday, October 27, 9:30 a.m. Dolores Hayden Monday, November 5 Thomas Beeby, Diana Eck, Kenneth Jock Reynolds, Director, “On the Ground” Frampton, Paul Goldberger, Steven Holl, Yale University Art Gallery Jaime Lara, Richard Meier, Rafael Moneo, Martha Sandweiss, Professor, Homa Farjadi Robert Nelson, Kishwar Rizvi, Fariborz Amherst College Monday, November 12 Sahba, Emilie Townes Jim Wark, Photographer “Contingent Localities” Moderator Laura Wexler, Professor, The Yale School of Architecture is a Yale University The fall lecture series is supported in part Registered Provider with the American Friday, September 21, 10:00 a.m. to noon by Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, the Myriam Institute of Architects Continuing Educa- British Art Center Auditorium, Bellazoug Memorial Fund, the Brendan Gill tion System. Credit earned by attending 1080 Chapel Street Lectureship Fund, and the Timothy Egan “Constructing the Ineffable: Contemporary Cosponsored by the Yale American Lenahan Memorial Fund. Sacred Architecture” will be reported to Studies Program CES Records for AIA members. Certifi - cates of Completion for non-AIA members Pier Vittorio Aureli are available upon request. Brendan Gill Lecture Monday, October 1 “The Project of Autonomy”

Santiago Calatrava Tanner Lectures on Human Values Wednesday, October 3, 4:30 p.m. “A Collection of Pearls” and Thursday, October 4, 4:30 p.m. “Wings and a Prayer” Presented by Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street