1 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 Constructs Yale Architecture

Fall 2011

Contents “Permanent Change” symposium review by Brennan Buck 2 David Chipperfield in Conversation Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry 4 Grafton Architecture: Shelley McNamara exhibition review by Alicia Imperiale and Yvonne Farrell in Conversation New Users Group at Yale by David 6 Agents of Change: Geoff Shearcroft and Sadighian and Daniel Bozhkov Daisy Froud in Conversation Machu Picchu Artifacts 7 Kevin Roche: Architecture as 18 Book Reviews: Environment exhibition review by No More Play review by Andrew Lyon Nicholas Adams Architecture in Uniform review by 8 “Thinking Big” symposium review by Jennifer Leung Jacob Reidel Neo-avant-garde and Postmodern 10 “Middle Ground/Middle East: Religious review by Enrique Ramirez Sites in Urban Contexts” symposium Pride in Modesty review by Britt Eversole review by Erene Rafik Morcos 20 Spring 2011 Lectures 11 Commentaries by Karla Britton and 22 Spring 2011 Advanced Studios Michael J. Crosbie 23 Yale School of Architecture Books 12 Yale’s MED Symposium and Fab Lab 24 Faculty News 13 Fall 2011 Exhibitions: Yale Urban Ecology and Design Lab Ceci n’est pas une reverie: In Praise of the Obsolete by Olympia Kazi The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman 26 Alumni News Gwathmey Siegel: Inspiration and New York Dozen review by John Hill Transformation See Yourself Sensing by Madeline 16 In The Field: Schwartzman Jugaad Urbanism exhibition review by Tributes to Douglas Garofalo by Stanley Cynthia Barton Tigerman and Ed Mitchell 2 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 David Chipperfield

David Chipperfield Architects, Neues Museum, façade, Berlin, Germany 1997–2009. David Chipperfield Photograph by Ute Zscharnt. Architects, Neues Museum, staircase hall, Berlin, Germany, 1997–2009. Photograph by Ute Zscharnt.

David Chipperfield is the Lord Norman Foster Professor in Architecture at Yale for the fall term. Nina Rappaport interviewed him in his London office in the spring. He will give a lecture on November 3 at Yale.

Nina Rappaport You have often said that architects don’t need to study math or science but rather anthropology, philosophy, and sociology. How do you bring other disci- plines to your approach to architecture? David Chipperfield I start by being highly suspicious of design. Architecture has suffered from being self-referential, and schools have suffered from talking to themselves. The shock of being in a big commercial world is that when you leave school you can’t see the connection. I’m slightly old-fashioned in a sense. I was brought up with the idea that architecture is as much about problem solving as it is about making a statement. Architecture today is very much about making a statement, but David Chipperfield it’s more about the architect than it is about Architects, Neues Museum, the architecture. I’m of the school that says, staircase hall, Berlin, Germany 1997–2009. “If you don’t need to do something, don’t Photograph do it.” I think there is a part of design that © Joerg von Bruchhausen is about elaboration—making more out of something—so there is a certain contra- diction that relates to care, thought, and consideration about the task that you have of quality of construction and attitude fifteenth-century church, because repair- volume and the identity need to be modified already identified. There is the danger that toward building? ing, stabilizing, and minimizing damage are slightly depending on where the insertion or architecture becomes a separate thing, just DC It is not that you can’t get good completely understood notions. However, intervention is built. If it’s a big, autonomous a decoration. Therefore, it is the architects construction in the U.K. We developed our establishing criteria for what should be done piece, it can be done in one way, but if it’s a striving to show how clever they are by habits in another culture, so when we come with a more modern building or construction small gap, then maybe it has got to be done achieving what no one else can. Do we all to the U.K. we get impatient. In Germany, isn’t so straightforward. another way. need to fit with them? No, we don’t. I start what would be like falling out of bed requires There were lots of opportunities NR How does your strategy for the with a highly cautious and skeptical idea persuading a British or American contractor for us to rebuild this structure as it was. Like Neues Museum, which is like a mini-city, about the power of architecture, and then to do, and it is a pretty easy way of frighten- many postwar buildings, it was built and relate to your contextual urban work and I’m happily surprised by how highly effective ing a commercial client. rebuilt, which is more the norm than what we approach in general? What did you struggle architecture can be. NR A significant example of your did. First of all, why not make the building with in terms of historical exactitude and the NR What are some of your methods approach both in design and construction is look like it used to? And, second, we had to basic preservation issue of which date to to materialize your ideas? the adaptation and preservation of the Neues be sensitive to the fact that it was a war ruin, restore the building to? DC How you materialize and give Museum, in Berlin, which has received much which centered the discussion on whether DC We set the task for ourselves physical presence to ideas is an intuitive deserved attention both in the architecture or not the design transforms the building the way we did because it coincided with the process. We are building at a time when and preservation communities. It is fascinat- into a memorial of a darker side of twentieth- way we work: taking the ruin as context both the construction industry is resistant to the ing that your design insertions establish a century German history. The question was historically and geologically. It was part of a traditional qualities of construction. Buildings dialogue between new and old. By preserv- the validity of the existing material and spectrum of options that ranged from total go up as quickly as possible. And therefore ing the former museum you also reveal the whether, in terms of the war, we were moving reconstruction to leaving it as a total ruin. So notions of permanence and solidity sound building as an archaeology while creating from memory to history. Fifty years later, we considered the history of the building, obsolete. However, I don’t think as individu- something new that works. What was your it had become more of a secular ruin than what the building was originally, its original als we have necessarily adjusted ourselves approach and philosophy for the twelve- something with a profound meaning. plans, interventions, and concepts, especial- completely. Maybe it’s up to architects to year-long project? NR What was your strategy in ly in terms of museology. say, “We are in a modern world, and every- DC The philosophy was to keep terms of new insertions? How did you decide But there was also the desire to thing is different.” But the truth is that most everything that existed. In archaeology, that’s what to maintain, what to excavate, and respond to it as a geological context distinct of us are working in layered cities, and a well-understood notion—no one would try what to build while also giving identity to the from its personal history, like a Piranesian contemporary architecture is just one more to repair a Greek sculpture by throwing exist- new elements? concoction of rubble. The damage had layer. You are thus quite aware of architec- ing elements away and making new ones, DC We basically decided to maintain created an unintended physical dimension tural history. We have gotten used to tasting claiming they are better than the old ones. So everything. For the new insertions, we had that wasn’t a part of its planned history but the fruit, which has modified our palette and as you would in archaeological excavation, to build the bits that weren’t there. There was part of an accidental one. Therefore, emotions. The architect is in a very strange you keep and elevate the existing pieces, the have been restoration approaches where the responding to the physicality of the project place, trying to use technology and the habits critical treasure. In architecture, that’s not historic fabric is stabilized and repaired, and was just as important, if not more so, than of the construction industry in the Anglo- so easy, but it has been done in the restora- the new parts are in high contrast. We were responding to its historical context. If we had Saxon world. We have surrendered most of tion of fifteenth-century Italian churches. concerned with not making a project with too just taken an academic approach, we might the territory to the construction industry, and Before, no one would think of repairing such much contrast between old and new. At the have ended up with something that didn’t the architect’s independent voice has been a structure by returning it to exactly what it same time, we wanted to make a new build- quite work. It had to have strong physical substantially eroded. Working in Switzerland looked like before. But how can you take that ing out of the old one. Therefore, it had to be elements. We had to be concerned with what or Germany is very different from working approach with a bombed-out nineteenth- an expressive idea. it looked like, and we had to make decisions. in America or the U.K. century building? In that sense, the project NR A palimpsest? There are moments where you realize that NR How is it different specifically, raised different issues. The approach is DC Exactly. You have to listen to the right decision isn’t the one that looks and how does it affect your work in terms clearer for an archaeological object or a the building. You have to understand that the best. We were required to take an ideological 3 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011

David Chipperfield Architects, Turner Contem- porary Museum, Margate, Kent, U.K., 2006–11. Photograph by Richard Bryant.

David Chipperfield Architects, Am Kupfer- graben, Gallery 3, Berlin, Germany, 2003–07. Photograph by Iwan Baan.

way to integrate a single institution with a monolithic center in the city structure. We broke the building down into smaller pieces and separated those that could have public David Chipperfield walkways. So it is a way to cheat by taking an Architects, Hepworth Wakefield Gallery, view institution that is fairly impenetrable because from River Calder, of security and giving it the atmosphere of a Wakefield, U.K., more permeable public building. 2006–11. Photograph by Richard Bryant. NR You use natural light as a signifi- cant design element, which is evident in the Kupfergraben Gallery, in Berlin. How has light become an essential ingredient in architec- ture for you? DC Daylight and views are things that confirm an architect’s potential to put you in a nice place. I think architecture is, in a way, the most humanist of all the arts, and it should be about the individual. Architecture cradles, mediates, and puts you in a comfort- able place. I don’t think it has to keep remind- ing you of how clever it is; I think it should be comfortable, so that after a while you think, “Actually, this is a very nice place to be in.” But I don’t think it has to hit you in the face the first time. I think our built world is a substitute for the natural one. I grew up on a farm and still remember all of the physical places, and I would like architecture to be like that. When you are looking for a place path, but we found ourselves wanting to approach that became a standard solution NR In terms of collaboration, how to picnic you say, “Well, let’s stop here.” You deviate. It was an issue of context, and in for Modern Italian architecture and spawned do you work with consulting structural and choose that place for the view and the light, that sense we turned the Neues Museum into a whole generation of bad projects. environmental engineers? and you have a wonderful picnic. Architects a contextual project beyond the academic NR How has the Neues Museum DC We never set big tasks for make things where you go, “Wow!” And there one of poring over historical drawings. The project affected your work in the architectural structural engineers. I think they’re very are some moments, such as cathedrals, ruin was a starting point; and because it had world and your attitude toward architecture disappointed with us, because in conven- where you need to do that, but the world isn’t stood that way for sixty years, it had nearly in general? tional projects structure is not the lead. only cathedrals. stabilized itself. It was comfortable with itself DC My experience with it is However, that doesn’t mean the integration NR There a visceral feeling that as a ruin, and it was quite beautiful. We would ongoing and has put me in a very privileged of engineering and architecture shouldn’t be results from your spaces. If for you, light is have destroyed all of that had we taken a position, but what I’ve enjoyed most about well negotiated. We have a very collabora- that evocative material, how are you are not straightforward, academic approach. I think the experience is working in a culture in tive process, as much with cost consultants focused on the idea of creating a dramatic there was a motive for us to engage the less which the notion of things meaning some- as engineers. Collaborating on costs is just effect? tangible and more emotive qualities of what thing is completely understood: your actions as important as design: if you don’t control DC I think light humanizes and we found. It was an important part and made mean something. Architecture means costs, you don’t control design, and then you keeps you in touch with what’s going on. It’s the project successful because people could something, and while we’ve had a period fall into the trap that the construction industry something we work on very hard, not just relate to it on all sorts of levels. In that sense, of very fascinating architecture, we’ve also sets for architects. Basically, the judgment technically but also regarding its meaning. it fits into our work better than I thought it had a period of terrible urbanism and needs to endure that the architect doesn’t go If you start with modest ambitions for archi- was going to. uncontrolled development. I think there is a over budget. This is the great construction tecture, you can be slightly more precise NR How did you work with the old to universal crisis now —and not just in the conspiracy since it suits them to be respon- about what each thing you do means. I am establish a new formal language? quality of autonomous individual buildings. sible for costs, and our profession has given conscious of how, in some ways, our work DC What was surprising about the There are plenty of architects who are good up leadership in this respect, which means is a bit boring, which I think is just a conse- Neues Museum was that the easiest rooms at doing that. How can we have a bigger giving up leadership all around. quence of being cautious and skeptical to deal with were those with more archi- influence on our environment, what our cities NR How do you work with the about the meaning of each outcome. I am not tectural form. The ones that had vaults and look like and what they mean? Those are existing city context, and where have you doing it just for effect. Michelangelo used to domes were easy to bring back. Their quali- things we’ve nearly given up on. We’ve given been challenged in creating urban or public say that the measure of a good sculpture is to ties were so embedded in their form that they up on social housing and public infrastruc- space? For example, how did you incorpo- roll it down a mountain and see what’s left at didn’t need decoration. It reminded me in ture; we build office buildings and luxury rate public space into the Ciutat de la Justícia the bottom. I feel the same way. some ways of the poverty of Modernism and condos. But does it improve our cities or (City of Justice) in Barcelona for example? NR Can you picture your buildings the richness of architectural form and figure quality of living? You could argue that those DC The Anglo-Saxon planning as ruins, the way Joseph Gandy depicted in space. things bring big benefits to their inhabitants, system is done building by building, and John Soane’s work? NR And would Carlo Scarpa’s but as we saw two years ago when the there’s very little coordination. Our free- DC There’s a long tradition of approach relate to the project? The issue of economy disappeared overnight, there’s a market mentality says, “You have that site, that. What we’re trying to do is to shape appropriateness comes into play here, as his sort of Houdini act—like, where the hell and you negotiate as hard as you can to build something. I ask my students to imagine the insertions are more autonomous than in a did it all go? A beautiful building or painting whatever you can.” It’s very unusual to be in wind blowing hard and all the bits that aren’t strict preservation project. is here for life—they are things that never a situation where you can do more than an interesting getting blown off. What’s left is a DC Of course I’ve been through a lose their value overnight, like stocks. We’re object. We strive to make public space all project that will survive, and, for me, that is Scarpa phase. But indeed, for this project, told all the time that architects and paint- the time. And of course most of the work has architecture. My worry is that architecture we went the other way. We didn’t want gaps; ers are dreamers, and that the real people been on a small scale, so it often operates in has tended to put lots of stuff on top so that we didn’t want things to be autonomous or are businesspeople, but it seems like we’re a context where you can do something. when you roll it down the mountain, you’re pronounced. With Scarpa’s interventions, dealing with reality, and they’re dealing For Barcelona, we created an left kind of disappointed. you could nearly unbolt them. It’s a very clear with fantasy. urban scale. It was the issue of finding a 4 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 Grafton Architecture

Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, of where a shaft of sunlight penetrates deep Grafton Architecture, are the Louis I. Kahn into the inner chamber exactly at winter Visiting Professors for fall 2011. They will solstice. We are interested in this type of give the lecture “Architecture as the New conscious connection and how buildings are Geography” on September 8 at Yale. made. Buildings can enable us to become hyperaware of each particular point on the Nina Rappaport How did you come together globe, giving us a sense of the movement to start a practice in Dublin, and what does of the sun and a connection to the things the firm’s name refer to? around us, visually and culturally. It’s not just Yvonne Farrell Shelley and I were at topography for its own sake, but so that, as University College, Dublin from 1969 to 1974 an individual, as you stand at a particular and started our practice in 1978 with three point on a staircase or at your desk and other colleagues as a cooperative on Grafton become aware of that sense of “placed- Street, the main pedestrian street in the heart ness,” that particular point on the earth and of Dublin. We’ve been working, building, and it’s unique effect on you. It’s that vision and teaching since then. that distance. Sometimes it will be possible NR As Irish artists and architects, to see the Pyrenees in the distance from how do you identify with Ireland, a place with one of the terraces we are proposing in the strong building and cultural traditions, and Toulouse project. Our intention is to make as a global practice? How would you define you feel the place. contemporary Irish architecture—is there a NR How does this idea apply to the cohesion with subtle influences of modern Department of Finance project in Dublin? architects, or is it about an architecture SM Yvonne recently told me that Grafton Architects, Luigi Bocconi University, view from Grafton Architects, Luigi Bocconi University, sketch, grounded in place? she likes it that people walk by every day and Viale Bligny, Milan, 2008. Milan, 2008. YF We see ourselves as Irish, part of hardly notice it. But when you go inside, your Irish culture and contributing to it and it influ- awareness of the city becomes heightened encing us. Architecture is part of the bigger because you move on the edge while the picture, so as architects we see each new offices are in the middle. There is a rhythm of place as a part of a continuous culture. wall and window that works with the pace of Shelley McNamara Modern and walking; every time you come to a window, the contemporary architecture didn’t have a city is framed. It is just a way of making walls strong presence in Ireland. Within the last and windows that have a grain and rhythm four generations of architects, contemporary that you see in eighteen-century Dublin. trends have become quite strong through the NR It is an approach to design that schools. In teaching, we have been having re-creates the fabric, texture, and grain of the a conversation about contemporary archi- city, which Kevin Lynch also identifies as a tecture for the last twenty-five years, and a place-making character. cohesive architecture movement has devel- YF There are two things relating oped that’s been good to be a part of. to this idea of grain. One is that we’re trying SM There are different strains in to change the use of the word elevation, Ireland, such as the practice of Scott Tallon which comes from constructing, elevat- Walker, which is influenced by America and ing something from the ground up. But the Mies van der Rohe; there are practices, for perception we want to heighten is “walking example, whose architects studied in the passedness,” which refers to how much time USA and are influenced by Louis Kahn. Our it takes to walk past a building to appreciate generation is influenced by Le Corbusier, and its dimension—passing by a building as it the next by James Stirling and Leon Krier. touches the ground and understanding its It has been kind of a mixed bag, but I think, sense of materiality. In Toulouse, we will build over time, there has been a set of values with a traditional brick; in a previous Dublin Grafton Architects, Luigi Bocconi University, foyer space at five meters, Milan, 2008. Photograph by having to do with an interest in culture, place, project, it was limestone, which is often used Federico Brunetti. craft, and continuity that is more a way of for public buildings. thinking than a style. NR How did you approach Milan’s YF What is amazing, is that although Bocconi University in terms of tectonics and we are on an island, our connections to materiality while maintaining design integrity Europe are very strong. and the pubic’s interest in a new place? NR Do you think your work has SM That was probably the most evolved more from influences of the natural difficult thing, and there were a number of or urban landscape? challenges. It was a big project, about ten KM It’s a very interesting question. times bigger than anything we had ever done. The landscape is an unconscious presence, We came to Milan with a strategy that related but our active world, possibly because of to our interest in the relationship between accident or opportunity, has had to do with the university and the city, the relationship the landscape of the city. Peter Carl, who between infrastructure and the city, and used to teach at Cambridge University using grain and rhythm to relate to the scale and is now teaching at the London Metro- of Milan. Then there was a blockage because politan School of Architecture, talks about we really didn’t know how to make the build- James Joyce’s Ulysses as the most relevant ing or represent it. We struggled for weeks contemporary description of city in terms of trying to see what we could do to make describing its layers and richness. We are something that felt like it belonged. And more of that context. then we felt caught in between, although not YF There’s another ingredient. We consciously at the time, the heroic, rationalist often say architecture is the new geography. tradition of Giuseppe Pagano and Giovanni Since 2008, more people live in cities than in Muzio, who had already built some of the the country, and our responsibility as archi- campus, and Luigi Moretti, who designed tects is to embed the pleasures of landscape an expressive, elemental building nearby. In within built form. In the Luigi Bocconi School the end we found we had to let the section of Economics, in Milan, and in the current and the topography of the project become project for the School of Economics, in the form. Toulouse, we are actually carving into the We only realized that when we took earth. In Milan, we excavated nine meters away the “façade-ism” and the wall and let into the ground and brought light down in a the thing out of the box. But it also came primitive way. We don’t generally come from through when we put an expressive element that earth-carving mentality. We live in cities; on the main corner, which was a contradic- our point of view is not from a hedgerow in tory thing to do—to put a space that needed the middle of the countryside. silence on the busiest corner. And then we NR What’s interesting is that your won the competition. A couple of weeks buildings are a topography made by very later the client asked us, “What stone are strong sections. You make landscapes within you going to use?” And we said we saw a them by excavating. In your Toulouse project, beautiful stone down on the corner— that we there is a strong sense of making space and had never seen anything like before— and place, not just putting a building on top: you the client got out a book to identify it. He are embedding it in the cityscape. said, “Well, that stone is really cheap. Do YF It is something else, too. New you realize that you’re in Italy, and we’ve got Grafton Architects, Luigi Bocconi University View of the “nave” and of the main staircase Grange, here in Ireland, is a megalithic marble and all sorts of things?” We selected to the office levels, Milan, 2008. burial complex with an inner burial chamber it because it felt like it belonged in Milan. 5 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011

NR How are you working with the confluences of different geometries. It was a client and adjusting the program? very particular kind of challenge. YF It’s about making the ordinary Returning to your question about extraordinary. In Milan, the client needed Irish culture, the way we were educated and offices for a thousand professors, an aula the way we have been teaching and making magna: an auditorium for a thousand people small projects in Dublin allows us to read and five seminar rooms for two hundred to a place that is as much subject as object. three hundred people—an enormous project, You find things to use that move you. For equivalent in size to a small hill town. You example, in Toulouse, we loved the big brick mentioned the importance of section: the buttresses and cloisters, so we tried to make sketch that describes the Milan project thesis a collage of all those elements, which leads shows two layers: the professors’ offices to a language. become a suspended matrix, held between YF There are two other parallels the sky and the ground, through which light between Milan and Toulouse. In Milan, pours in. There’s the client’s requirement, the construction allowed us to make the and then there’s structural capacity. We refer diagram real. Placing the structure on the to the infrastructural capacity as a matrix in roof and hanging the offices allowed a which things can happen. As non-compo- blurred line between the city and campus. sitional space, it is a matrix in which life However, in Toulouse, it is also about working happens. Architecture is a silent language; with the known to make an unknown, as it is an experiential phenomenon. The most well as the socialization in the buildings. It’s important place for us to stand in the Milan about looking at the sections and finding building is under the twenty-two-meter the places where people will bump into one cantilever of the aula magna, which hangs another. The clients requested that sense over a space dug five meters into the ground. of overlap, and that’s something we tried It is a kind of primal space where you can hard to capture. Grafton Architects, Toulouse University of Economics, rendering of night view from Saint feel all that weight above you while the city is One of the big questions in educa- Pierre Square, Toulouse, France, to begin construction in 2012. pouring down into this space below. It is that tion now is, why bother going to an institu- relationship between pressure, cantilever, tion when you could stay home with your force, and void. The space is a consequence laptop and talk via Skype? The role of archi- of other decisions, especially that space tecture is more as a social vessel, and our below ground. role as architects is to heighten that sense of NR A consequence or simply overlap. If you’re going to make a research unexpected? building—or any building—you have to ask SM It has a primal quality that we what’s the pleasure? I think we’re interested didn’t really anticipate. Its force and the in the pleasure component. diagonal relationship with the space above NR Returning to the issue of and below, which are threaded by light. place, how do you teach a sense of place to The way the city enters in is much stronger students who are absorbed with computer than we imagined: it’s like a big mouth that and engage them with the site? opens up. YF Shelley uses the term detective YF The issue of the unexpected for when you scrutinize a place for physical is important. You can anticipate and make realities. To do that, you actually have to go models and know what space will be there. and stand in places. But the feeling of the space and its strength SM I suppose it’s also about has to be actual. There’s something about it: teaching students to trust and develop their people dance there— it has a force. It’s like senses, to know how to look at something, Peter Zumthor’s Vals Therme. Some of those how to see it, how to scavenge it, steal it, beautiful baths with floating rose petals make and use it. It’s like teaching someone how to you want to sing. recognize that something is amazing. But it NR It is a visceral space that has is no good unless you use it. It is a combina- to be experienced, not just imagined. I’m tion of personal observation and an ability interested too in how you make it a piece of to look, see, record, and find things. When the city. The building is both, what you have you actually find something, your focus called, “anchor and animation”; it’s solid becomes heightened as you interpret and but so animated that it is a piece of design apply it. integrated into the city. Is that something YF As humans, we are part of a you’re doing with other projects now? collective. As a discipline, a huge part of SM Yes, we believe in the continu- architecture is about continuity, but architec- ity of public space—the space between ture is also personalized. Simple things such threshold and interior where the city comes as sketching and drawing and having a few in with you. The most successful public things to respond to help to connect us. We Grafton Architects, Toulouse University of Economics, rendering of view from the gallery towards the entrance, Toulouse, France, to begin construction in 2012. spaces, even if they are residential, are those often ask students to make very spontane- that are ventilated by the feeling of the city ous drawings and then ask them to describe outside, even if they are secure. In Milan we from their memory places that maybe can started with the idea of the floor of the city affect what they are designing. It’s amazing being made of stone, and bringing that plate what’s inside an individual person’s memory of stone into the university made it feel like and experience. We have to remember not to a piece of the city. As a marketplace, the drown a human being within the huge body university inspired a landscape continuing of architecture. into the city. It’s a funny contradiction: it is a NR Why do you teach, and what do very solid building without a front door on the you hope to impart to your students? main street; instead, you round a corner and YF Architecture is a creative act. enter into the middle. In a sense it’s like lock We need to actually get outside and experi- gates in a canal: it holds the solidity of the ence life— we need to get our boots muddy! streets, and the city comes in at street level, The clinical separation of the computer can and then the cracks and aperture of the walls make an antiseptic kind of world. We teach give you views out. It’s an internalized world from belief. As a student, you might not hovering above the city. know exactly how to do it, so let’s go on a NR How does the School of journey together to try and find the answers. Economics at Toulouse—the same program When we talk about cultural inspirations or in a smaller complex—compare to the references, we are not talking about giving a Milan building in terms of connecting with contemporary surgeon a timber utensil from the city fabric? medieval times to use in an operation—that’s SM Toulouse is a different kind of crazy! It’s about finding the modern equiva- city. It is more picturesque, so one wants to lent of continuity. be visually connected. The city has a gravi- KM Last semester, a student told tational pull that invites links at every level, us that we had made him dreamy about whereas in Milan, it happens more on the architecture. ground and at lower levels. It is that intense YF He’s Portuguese and has such a beehive of the research world feeding the lovely way of using language. public sphere of the building. Toulouse was NR I hope you can make the Yalies Grafton Architects, 7–9 Merrion Row + The Billets, Department of Finance Offices, stone façade to an extraordinarily difficult project because we dreamy, too. Huguenot Cemetery, Dublin, 2008. Photograph by Dennis Gilbert. were breaching a five-meter-high medieval brick wall, in which there were a number of 6 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 Agents of Change

Geoff Shearcroft, Daisy Froud, Tom Coward, strategies with non-professionals while and Vincent Lacovara, of Agents of Change getting them to think of how to create (AOC), are the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant non-monetary forms of value from creatively Professors for fall 2011. Nina Rappaport met tweaking the existing infrastructure. with Shearcroft and Froud at their office, near NR Often architects don’t even Brick Lane in London, to discuss their work. know their constituents or how to engage a community in meaningful and constructive Nina Rappaport How did all of you get ways as an aspect of design. together as a firm, and what are your DF Or it gets reduced to being Agents of Change, The Architecture Foundation, London, competition backgrounds? what happens when you have your full set of Geoff Shearcroft All of us except designs, and you put them up and ask, “What for Daisy are architects who studied at the do you think?” Royal College of Art (RCA). Daisy completed GS Historically, there’s been a master’s degree in cultural memory, having quite a disjunction between architects who previously read languages at Cambridge. are interested in engaging people and those We started to work together on competitions who are interested primarily in form. We’re while teaching at Nottingham University, interested in putting the two together. I think the Welsh School, Cardiff, the Architectural Polyopoly allowed us to create a visually Association, the Bartlett, and then at London strong object that allowed a participative Metropolitan University, where we’ve taught process to happen. for the past six years. NR But the design component is Daisy Froud Before setting up not just a game. I saw it exhibited at the 2008 AOC I worked in community-led regenera- Venice Biennale, in the “Experimental Archi- tion, to help people make plans and raise tecture” section of the Italian Pavilion, where I funds to change their neighborhoods, and picked up some of the Monopoly cards. I became increasingly frustrated with the GS We explored the notion of inter- way architects dealt with the information we action in an exhibition format. People could gave them. Because of our interest in how visit the first six stops along the board and one engages the narratives of everyday life, were encouraged to propose various futures we set up what we called a “loose group” for Venice. to explore how to make better connections DF In 2005, We did a competition Agents of Change, Spa School, London, 2009–present. between architectural practice and those for London’s Architectural Foundation. It was narratives. to be the first freestanding cultural building NR So often in Europe there are to be built in the city for a while, so we really opportunities for young architects to start went to town with it. Zaha Hadid won that and the materiality of architecture is where but not prescribe. We don’t want people to small with competitions and then build a firm. competition, and we came in third, but there we’re really trying to go. But I guess this design things themselves or to be picking It’s a way to figure out if you are like-minded was so much press surrounding it that we goes back to the tension in Post-Modernism colors and shapes as if they are inseparable and can work together. used it as an opportunity to form something. between surface and materiality and trying to from the building or place as a whole. But GS There was a turning point at the These early projects have in get them to come together. we do want to make very good briefs with RCA when Tom, Vincent and I had an intense common the desire to create spaces of NR Do you ever regret that you’ve people and then work with them to ensure review without any tutors, and realized the possibility, physical and notional “sugges- made your work too much fun? As young we’re making the right decisions and having potential for a richer conversation when tive spaces.” So the game was about using architects, don’t you have to present a more appropriate discussions. Ultimately, there’s a there is an absence of hierarchy and a strong the board as a fertile space wherein different somber front to be taken seriously? level of aesthetic knowledge that you provide sense of trust. We then became committed to encounters could happen. For the Archi- DF Well, yes and no. With regard to about what will work. In other words, why are the idea that a collective effort would be a lot tectural Foundation, we wanted to create competitions, we believe in having a good they paying you if you don’t use those skills? better than an individual one. a building that suggests various uses and brief and that, ultimately, the process is about NR What types of public-realm NR How does brainstorming makes possible multiple spatial encounters selling an idea with clarity. We know that one projects are you working on, and how you do become a collective design process? between different users—a public house of our weaknesses has been producing the use ideas about civic engagement and partic- GS We’ve explored different ways about architecture. immediate winning image. We always put ipation when designing the public sphere? of designing together, but it works best when GS We played off the fact that the an awful lot into the context and cultures, DF Southwark Council demolished it’s difficult to tell who did what. The desire competition happened just before Christmas the brand, and what the building might need a decayed 1960s housing estate; it suffered to lose individual authorship is an important and made our presentation board in the form to be. But it seems crazy to fix a form to it from crime and violence and poor levels of part of our design process. If the hand of the of a fully functional Advent calendar. before you actually work with the client and occupancy and maintenance. We were asked designer is too evident in the finished build- NR This narrative aspect of your those involved, and that’s been problematic. to design a master plan that would double ing, it can be too claustrophobic. work is especially potent in presentations. GS The seriousness thing is inter- the capacity to address the housing short- We are quite into James Joyce’s idea How did you begin that? It’s a very pop Post- esting—how can we overcome perceptions age. The project also had to be mixed tenure, of using style—as in Ulysses, where every Modern attitude that engages the public. of it? One way is to be involved in things developed in partnership with the private chapter uses a different but appropriate style GS A reason we established an outside of our practice. Vincent, for example, sector and a registered social landlord. We to support the narrative. This can be carried architectural practice with an interpreter as a also works within a planning department in argued that if the project was to be accepted through into architecture by developing a founder was because we hoped to improve one of London’s boroughs, commissioning by both current and future residents, we process to identify an appropriate style. the relationship between the written brief projects, developing planning policy, working needed to talk to the local community early We always try to work with an open, partici- and the realized building. Drawings are a key on master plans, and negotiating schemes on to see how the project would fit in as a patory process that will allow a number of tool for interpretation, but the drawing must with major developers. new piece of city before development agree- people to contribute. be appropriate to the individuals involved. DF And I used to organize design ments were substantially defined. NR Would you say this is how your We sample drawing techniques from artists, training for local politicians through the With a public-relations firm, we did Post-Modernist concepts develop, in terms illustrators, directors, architects—whatever charity Open House. It is important to council a hands-on exhibition in which we explained of cultural identity? seems to work best for communicating with members to think about what good design in diagrams and simple language why, DF We definitely evolved from a the intended viewers. For many projects, we is before they joined things like planning financially, we needed to double the density Post-Modern consciousness of the world. develop a spatial constitution, a drawn brief, committees. It was about giving people the and why the existing tenants couldn’t have For me, it comes from literary theory and and an assemblage of ready-mades that skills to argue for design and to combat the little bungalows they were all dreaming philosophy—thinking about personal and provides a stepping stone between the user’s mediocrity. of. Then the visitors were taken through a collective identities, and the relationships needs and the our architectural designs. GS As we begin to build buildings set of decisions by comparing the different between self, language and the world. NR Did this method ever create of an increasing scale and complexity, I think options for density and street character, with Concepts like the death of the author are problems when presenting your ideas to people will realize the serious intent behind an emphasis on public amenity space. They obviously very radical, but in literary studies, the architecture and design community, our apparent play. We will soon complete commented on the pros and cons of each. it was just the status quo. So in architecture, especially because of the emphasis on narra- Spa School, a new building for children with When you do this with people, they take it it becomes more important how buildings tive rather than architecture with a capital A? autistic spectrum disorders. It continues seriously, and as an aside, they went for the are read, perceived, and used, so that people Maybe that is part of your critique, along with our exploration of the relationship between option that supported the more radical devel- take ownership, rather than the architect. the work of firms such as FAT or MUF. iconography and weightiness, of image and opment options now being taken forward. We had many conversations early on about GS Much of our work has been experience, of critique and construction, but GS Our exhibit was full of bright the minimum an architect can do and dismissed by other architects as “collage- more fundamentally it is on budget, on time 1960s colors and large timber models, and what strategic elements need to be there, like,” but we have been attempting to create and exceeds the users expectations. the audience really enjoyed it. People enjoy especially in process, to allow space and buildings that translate the looseness of our NR How do you engage the client an open and generous conversation. People human life to continue and activate. collages into realized buildings. Our Janet or community in the design process? Do enjoy playfulness backed up with rigor, and NR What were the first projects that Summers Early Years Centre is a collage you worry about a project not following your as a firm we’re incredibly attracted to archi- established your thinking as a firm? of found elements, adapted ready-mades, design aesthetic when you leave it to the tects who can pull that off. DF The first competition we entered coded surfaces and new materials that client to fill in the blanks? NR People also care more about was not an architectural project. The brief seems to invite the same level of interaction DF We strongly believe that the something if they’re a part of the process asked us to think of a way to intervene in and misuse by the users that our drawings spaces that give you the most freedom as rather than having something imposed shrinking cities. Rather than panic over how and models do. a user are not those that give you the big upon them. to immediately transform unused territory NR How and why are graphics white box but the ones that leave you little DF We learned that drawing on the creatively, we developed Polyopoly, game important in your work? things to respond to. That’s the challenge of community was not a matter of being naïve that functioned like the inverse of Monop- GS The relationship between the our projects. We have to figure out how to young optimists—people really engage and oly. It allowed us to explore regeneration graphic, which can be associated with Pop, get enough things in the space to suggest provide well-reasoned responses. 7 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment

All images: Kevin Roche: The exhibition Kevin Roche: Architecture Architecture as Environment, curated by associate as Environ- professor Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, was on ment, display at the School of Architecture Gallery exhibition in the Yale from February 7 to May 6, 2011. School of Architecture Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment is Gallery, the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated 2011. to the Hamden, Connecticut, architectural firm. Responsible for completing the work of Eero Saarinen following the architect’s death in 1961, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates (KRJDA) has a list of prominent building credits from the 1960s and 1970s (Knights of Columbus, the Oakland Museum of Art, the Ford Foundation); a group of significant commissions in the 1970s and 1980s (Union Carbide, General Foods, Conoco Petroleum, J. P. Morgan); and a large selection of buildings from the 1990s to the present, many built abroad that have not generally found their way into the architectur- al press. All together the exhibition includes about one hundred projects and completed buildings. Based on the firm’s project numbers, that is roughly ten percent of its output. Take it on board: they are remarkably productive. are unbuilt projects, some of which receive exhibition: the wall labels recount the main works “appear obsessed, not so much by Exhibiting the work of an active considerable wall space. There is still room outlines of the history of the commission and the nature of the figures they suggest, but by architectural firm with a half-century of for a more extensive presentation of a few leave the response to you. the possibility of obtaining instant effects.” work—even one guided largely by a single buildings that bring us even closer to under- If at first I was surprised by this Roche’s list of honors tells us that we wanted vision—is a challenge. Should we efface standing the balance Roche strikes between stance, longing for some red meat––a poetic instant effects, too. chronology and link building types across freedom and control. flight or a stinging quotation––I soon came In writing the history of Skidmore, time? Or present the work chronologically, Freedom emerges in the intertwined to appreciate it. This is a gracious exhibi- Owings & Merrill, I was often met with skepti- exposing the ups and downs of a career? Or Cor-Ten steel trees in the IBM Pavilion for the tion, but not an indifferent one. It argues, for cism: why work on a firm so enmeshed in would it be better to frame the work within New York World’s Fair (1964–65). The models example, that Roche is significant for his corporate culture? From my perspective our own containers? What do we do with and drawings present a playful series of recognition of the negative consequences of there is little that is more important. This is the isolated undertakings? (In the case of Roche, alternatives: some more or less Gorgon-like, Modern architecture as well as for his incor- world we created, either by active involve- for example, there is but one private house others more like an unruly tree by sculptor porating landscape into architecture. The ment or by disdain or indifference. Even our in the exhibition.) All ask a great deal of the Harry Bertoia. Roche speaks of exhausting great landscaped, semi-public atria —from taste for brand-name products and conve- visitor; all require diplomacy on the part of the formal possibilities, though the vocabu- the Ford Foundation to your local mall— nience contributed something. I thought a lot the curators. The curators may well have lary is already relatively slim. Alternative seem banal today but were a surprise forty about Chuck Bassett (1922–1999) as I walked good hypotheses about issues of change designs for One United Nations Plaza (1969– years ago. For these, Roche can claim some through the exhibition. Like Roche, he was an and significance, but those should not seem 75) suggest the importance of having control credit. The exhibition also presents Roche alumnus of Saarinen’s office, he was deeply tendentious or overdetermined in evaluating over the systems he developed that could as one of the first to address the needs of a concerned with the nature of the work experi- a career still under way. Too little guidance, facilitate design. The building was “a beauti- mass audience in museums, with examples ence inside the new rural corporate office, on the other hand, might leave the visitor ful monster created by monstrous econom- from his four decades working on New York and his client profile was comparable. Build- puzzled as to why there is an exhibition at all. ics,” according to Ada Louise Huxtable, and City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. ings such as the Weyerhaeuser Headquarters, Any interpretative frame may be troublesome the adjustments to the plan are a fascinating Some positions only fully emerge in Tacoma, Washington (completed 1971), are to the exhibition’s subject, the architect. How study in what Roche saw as possible. In both as one traverses the exhibition. In the area the products of similar studies of workplace many critics have launched an interpreta- instances, we seem to stand close to what titled “Context and Community” are the habits and needs. However, Bassett’s plans tive gambit to an architect only to be met by the curator, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, brilliantly Wesleyan University Center for the Arts developed from another place, out of the stony incomprehension, or worse? A good defines as Roche’s “unrelenting analytical (1965–73), still a stirring space; the (near architect’s inspired interpretation of site rather exhibition of a living architect must keep its pragmatism.” When I first read this state- invisible) renovation to the Jewish Museum, than the product of systems analysis. He left options open. “It’s too soon to tell” may seem ment I thought it oxymoronic, but the more in New York City (1985–93); and the Knights Saarinen after being told his renderings were like a temporizing response to the problem–– I looked—and most especially, the more I of Columbus Headquarters and the Veterans too important to the firm for him to be allowed and it is––but in these situations prudence is listened to Roche speak about his architec- Memorial Coliseum (1965–72), both in New to design, so he moved to the firm that most the better part of valor. ture—the more sense it made. Haven. Community? It is true that iconic and prided itself on modern research methods. He Prudence may even be the hallmark Contemporary films that feature monumental buildings bordering on excess contributed his artistic vision to their corpo- of this exhibition. Ask not, as was posed Roche discussing or illustrating projects can create urban identity, and the plans for rate works for another thirty years. (Wouldn’t at the time of its construction, whether the provide the glue that holds the exhibition the coliseum foresaw a degree of community an exhibition of Saarinen’s disciples tell us a Knights of Columbus Building (1965–69) is together. There are a number of original slide engagement never properly realized under lot?) I wonder too how much Saarinen would inhumane, oppressive, or unapproachable; presentations, some with spoken commen- its great Cor-Ten frame. But it would be hard have burnished his reputation with another ask how it relates to the community. Ask tary, others simply a series of changing to argue that the surrounding environment twenty years of practice. Could he have not, as was done at the time, whether the images. Roche has a compelling modesty it creates represents either an effective sustained his sensibility in light of the new shift toward a historicizing Post-Modernism that makes it easy to see how he gets the critique or comes to terms with the negative forms of corporate patronage and the cost at General Foods (1977–82) was a canny job. In the 1976 film made for the employees consequences of Modernism. In their noted cutting of value engineers? strategy or, as Roche reported, just “the of Union Carbide in Danbury, Connecticut 1973 interview with Roche, John W. Cook It is not clear the assembled obvious and logical solution to this particu- (1976–82), Roche starts with a paean to the and Heinrich Klotz called the dour profile of works of KRJDA provide a clear answer: lar problem.” Ask not about the negative beauty of the surrounding countryside; his the Knights of Columbus “inhumane,” and Roche lacks the poetic gene that makes judgments regarding the Ford Foundation building site demonstrates his respect for the Roche was at the time largely indifferent to Saarinen so special. Perhaps as a result— (1963–68), such as Vincent Scully’s descrip- topography. He illustrates how offices have their charge. Perhaps they missed the point. though it is no easy matter—comprehending tion of its “military scale.” If we arrive with our been planned to take full advantage of the The exhibition keeps its own Roche’s prodigious career is all the more minds made up, or if the exhibit tells us what site for the benefit of the workers, construct- counsel. And why not? These are the spaces important. For those willing to take the time to think, we might as well stay home. ing the argument through shifting geome- of our world and our time, after all. Even if I to make the connections and to draw on The exhibition divides KRJDA’s tries. It all seems thoroughly reasonable— have not visited the neo-Baroque headquar- their own experience, this is a powerful and work by five loose descriptive zones with as if somehow one could painlessly hide a ters of the Bouygues Corporation, in Saint- convincing exhibition. spacious, relaxed-fit labels: “Spaces for “sprawling metallic beast” (as Paul Goldberg- Quentin-en-Yvelines (1982–87), I know––or Display and Spectacle,” “Workspace and er called the building), Union Carbide’s 3,000 think I know––comparable grand corporate —Nicholas Adams Workflow,” “Greenhouse and Garden,” employees, and their cars without any cost campuses, squeaky-clean buildings in wide- Adams is a professor of art history at Vassar “Context and Community,” and “Big.” to the environment whatsoever. The disso- open spaces. The polished mirrored surfaces College and the author of Skidmore, Owings Panels hanging from the ceiling or attached nance between the “seductive” explanation (a favorite of Roche’s) in the Union Carbide & Merrill: SOM Since 1936 (Phaidon, 2007). to the walls present photographs, plans, of the architect (with background music that lobby have so completely filtered into today’s and some drawings and publicity materials seems to come from the NFL film archives— corporate vernacular that we hardly notice related to the projects. The models gener- alternatively heroic and bouncy —contrasts, them. But do we think to search for their ally show a completed building or a site. at least in my mind, with the reality of the origins? There is clearly a moment when, as In addition to completed buildings there building. But that is not the direction of the Francesco Dal Co observed in 1987, Roche’s 8 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 Thinking Big

KRJDA Conoco Petroleum Headquarters, Houston, Texas, aerial view, KRJDA, Union Carbide Corporation World Headquarters, Danbury, KRJDA, New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum, 1965–72. 1979–84. Connecticut, aerial view, 1976–82.

The symposium “Thinking Big: Diagrams, the symposium presenters referred to them represents, in form at least, one of the few Mies had developed and more willing from Mediascapes, and Megastructures,” the first again and again. megastructures actually built during this an early stage in his career to experiment 2011 J. Irwin Miller Symposium, was held For Pelkonen, these projects— period. While Roche’s rational approach with classical motifs—in this particular case, on February 17–19, 2011. It was organized designed and executed during a period of to design was emphasized in Pelkonen’s the I-beams in the façade, which resemble by Eeva Liisa Pelkonen in conjunction with social and political turmoil—demonstrate a introductory address, Rohan made a case a dentil frieze with a projecting cornice. the exhibition, Kevin Roche: Architecture design approach that “realized the impor- for the dramatic and sublime aspects of Concluding with a quotation from Philip as Environment. tance of taking the external forces that these early KRJDA projects, which aimed, he Drew’s Third Generation, Neumann suggest- shaped the object into consideration—be argued, to stimulate the emotions of entire ed, “Mies provided a focus for Roche’s stylis- What are the stakes for architecture it the client’s needs and opinions, financial communities. Contrasting Roche’s “engaged tic evolution, which served as a counterfoil today? At the conclusion of her Thursday constraints, or building regulations. In this and excited” attitude from this period with to Saarinen’s dynamic imagery. Somewhere evening address initiating the J. Irwin Miller model, creativity had less to do with inventing the ascendant “ironic, detached” attitude between the attractions of these two expres- symposium “Thinking Big: Diagrams, new forms than with the ability to let these exemplified by Robert Venturi, Rohan sive polarities, Roche was able to define his Mediascapes, and Megastructures,” associ- constraints spark typological, structural, and concluded that the demise of these biggest sovereign interests.” ate professor Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen (Yale formal innovation.” As she suggested, it is of projects was inevitable as the sensibilities In “Almost Anything,” Kazys University) suggested that we ask ourselves this tendency to view architecture as deriving that produced them grew increasingly out Varnelis (Columbia University) discussed this question while examining architect from external factors and environments— of fashion. Nevertheless, Rohan went on to Roche’s work relative to late Modernism Kevin Roche’s fifty-year body of work. Kevin both man-made and natural—that situates propose that while the 2007 demolition of the and capitalism. He illustrated the overriding Roche: Architecture as Environment, the Roche and Dinkeloo firmly within Modern New Haven Coliseum seemed to mark the importance of iconicity and immediate exhibition and catalog Pelkonen and her architecture’s so-called Third Generation ultimate collapse of (American) Bigness, the legibility for KRJDA’s early clients, a desire collaborators have produced, will undoubt- (along with James Stirling, Robert Venturi, recent construction of OMA/Rem Koolhaas’s for the “overstated,” an easily read external edly help introduce the work of Kevin Roche and others). CCTV Building in Beijing suggests that the building image made possible by advances John Dinkeloo Associates (KRJDA) to both a Whether striving for new forms idea may still be alive. in building technologies that divorced form new generation of architects and the general or not, these early projects are doubtless Offering a different reading of from function. The resulting architecture— public. Nevertheless, at the conclusion formally bold. However, the remarkable and Roche’s work in “Lost in Space: Kevin a departure from high Modernism—could of the three-day symposium, Pelkonen’s meticulously constructed slide presentations Roche’s Interiors,” Jeffrey Inaba (Columbia look like nearly anything. In contrast to other challenging initial question remained through which Roche explained the projects University) argued against associating symposium participants, Varnelis examined largely unanswered. In fact, two significant both to clients and the public cast even Roche with Koolhaas’s Bigness, but, rather some of KRJDA’s later, historically referential omissions from the conversation—John the most extreme architectural gestures as aligned him with subtlety, calibration, and projects, such as the 1989 J. P. Morgan Dinkeloo and KRJDA’s body of work after the logical and seemingly inevitable responses refinement in interior space. He noted that, tower, noting that, regardless of aesthetic early 1980s—suggest that most of “Thinking to the particular constraints and challenges for Koolhaas, the challenge of Bigness was language, Roche continued to apply a similar Big” may not have been about thinking (or at hand. Perhaps, Pelkonen suggested, how to compose and animate a building tactic, producing overscale, immediately building) big after all. Roche’s approach to architecture as a hyper- in the range of one to two million square comprehensible designs. But he acknowl- rational “matter of organizing” (to quote feet. Koolhaas proposes that architects edged another strand of Roche’s work— “Architecture as Environment” from a 1969 Roche interview with John W. strategically relieve themselves of the need illustrated by projects such as Union Carbide The symposium began with the introduc- Cook and Heinrich Klotz) led him to incor- to control design at every scale to conserve and Richardson-Vicks—that emphasized tory lecture “Architecture as Environment,” porate systems analysis into his design their energies and have maximum impact on interior relationships and infrastructure. by organizer Pelkonen, followed on Friday process, an approach widespread through- a social or urban level. According to Inaba, Representing a form of “anti-architecture,” by a public conversation between Kevin out the think tanks, military agencies, and this is not the approach Roche takes since according to Varnelis, this category of KRJDA Roche and Los Angeles Times architecture other large-scale organizations of the period. KRJDA’s simple, large-scale forms should projects could be understood as “a step critic Christopher Hawthorne. In her talk, As Pelkonen concluded, it is no surprise be seen as an attempt to maintain control along the way to a network culture, to a Pelkonen described Roche as “a man of two that by the late 1970s, Roche had become at every level. He cited Roche’s eclectic re-envisioning of architecture as media and overlapping careers,” having first been Eero corporate America’s architect of choice. The yet highly specific, calibrated, and detailed electronic technology.” Saarinen’s “right-hand man” as design direc- firm went on to execute projects for Conoco, interiors as evidence of this imperative to Felicity Scott and Reinhold Martin tor of the highly successful and acclaimed Merck, General Foods, J. P. Morgan, and control. In “Maintenance Architecture,” (both Columbia University) each attempted to office until Saarinen’s sudden death, in Union Carbide, among others. David Gissen (’96/California College of Art) frame Roche’s work relative to global forces. 1961. Roche explained that, after Saarinen lent support to this argument, exploring how In “Environments of Global Governance,” died, Dinkeloo—the firm’s technical director “New Environments” / Roche used state-of-the-art HVAC systems Scott sought to examine the Ford Founda- and head of execution—pulled the office “Diagramming the World” to control massive interior spaces—such tion and U.N. Plaza projects and “read these together, convincing Roche and the others The final day was organized loosely around as the Ford Foundation interior garden—to two buildings and their critical reception to join him in carrying on. While completing two general themes: “New Environments” “rebuild nature” in the late modern city. as symptomatic of Modern architecture’s a number of Saarinen’s unfinished commis- and “Diagramming the World.” The morning’s Beatriz Colomina (Princeton University), in relation to forces of globalization.” Echoing sions—including the CBS Building (1964) and speakers focused on issues of scale, image, “Eames + Roche: Mediascapes,” further Pelkonen and Rohan, Scott argued that, in the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial control, and ambition in Roche’s work. challenged the reading of KRJDA’s work as designing both, Roche was “thinking big,” (1968), in St. Louis—Roche and Dinkeloo Opinions diverged about how to situate this an architecture of sublime bigness. In her as these projects illustrate “architecture not began to earn and execute notable commis- work relative to scale. In his talk “Bigness,” view, projects such as the IBM Pavilion at only operating in the service of clientele with sions of their own. They launched their own Timothy Rohan (University of Massachusetts the New York World’s Fair and the National a global reach . . . but also, in effect, as a practice in Hamden, Connecticut, in 1966; at Amherst) discussed four projects from Fisheries Center and Aquarium, in Washing- tool of territorial management and security.” thus began the second, much longer chapter the 1960s to 1970s—the Fine Arts Center at ton, D.C., demonstrated the dominance of In “World Systems,” Martin continued this of two overlapping careers. the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; the Eameses’ mediascape—consisting of global/political reading of Roche’s work. He Pelkonen largely focused on the the Fine Arts Center at Wesleyan University; elaborate multimedia displays, presentation suggested that while KRJDA’s buildings are first ten years of KRJDA’s work, specifically the Knights of Columbus Tower; and the films, and more—over architecture. often monumental, a comparative formal mentioning projects such as the IBM Pavilion New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum— The second half of Saturday analysis that approaches College Life Insur- at the New York World’s Fair (1964), the Ford describing them as “products of a society was dedicated to exploring broad global ance and General Food as “systems-based Foundation Headquarters (1968), the Metro- that equated size with progress.” Citing issues related to Roche’s work under the and relational rather than object-oriented” politan Museum of Art Master Plan (1967– Kevin Lynch’s notion of “imageability”—that heading “Diagramming the World,” although reveals that “both types of architectural 71), the Knights of Columbus Headquarters buildings had to present immediately legible the actual connection between the work systems belong to a ‘symbolic form’ organiz- (1969) and New Haven Veterans Memorial images if they were to stand out against the and these larger issues was tenuous at ing the work.” This, Martin notes, describes a Coliseum (1972), One United Nations Plaza chaos and sprawl of the postwar era—Rohan times. In “Beaux-Arts, Mies, and the Third “world system” that relates the core state to a Hotel and Office Building (1975), the Union connected Roche’s earlier work to the 1960s Generation,” Dietrich Neumann (Brown dependent periphery. Carbide Corporation World Headquarters “megastructure” movement. Despite the University) explored Roche’s relationship Peter Eisenman (Yale University) (1982), and the General Foods Headquar- fact that none of Roche’s projects were to his former teacher, Mies van der Rohe. noted in his closing comments that “what ters (1982). Clearly, something about this included in Reyner Banham’s well-known The Cummins Engine Factory (1965), in was uniquely missing today was the idea of particular handful of KRJDA projects must 1976 book Megastructure, a project like the Darlington, England, demonstrated how the diagram” and analyzed Saarinen’s 1957 appeal to contemporary tastes since most of New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum Roche was both less respectful of the logic Irwin Miller House, in Columbus, Indiana, 9 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011

KRJDA, Knights of Columbus Headquarters, drawing of one of the office floors and columnar structure, New Haven, Connecticut, 1965–69.

KRJDA, Knights of Columbus Headquarters, façade detail, New Haven, Connecticut, KRJDA College Life Insurance Company Headquarters, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1967–71. 1965–69. KRJDA, Cummins Engine Company Components Plant, Darlington, England, 1963–66.

for which Roche played a leading design still under development when the Dal Co boldness, civic-mindedness, programmatic Perhaps the fact that the firm’s role. Identifying this project as one of the monograph was published, the comparison ambition, and the like. Implied in these state- later work goes ignored has less to do with earliest shifts away from International Style of imagery combined with the built results ments is the notion that KRJDA’s later work, the commonly professed post-economic architecture in America, Eisenman credited suggests the increasing dominance of pure and indeed architecture today, is somehow crash interest in thinking big, programmatic Roche with influencing a generation of form over tectonics in KRJDA’s work over less ambitious, less socially progressive, innovation, civic engagement, and the role younger architects, such as John Hejduk, time, the result in many cases being buildings and, in short, fails to think big. Nicolai of the architect in society, and a great deal Robert Venturi, and Eisenman himself, who and images that remain somewhat icono- Ouroussoff—repeating a variation on what more to do with the simple fact that “vintage” each went on to explore the possibilities graphic from afar, but which become less has become his recurrent theme—reflected Roche appeals to current prevailing archi- of the nine-square grid inspired by what compelling up close at the scale of human this view when concluding in his New York tectural aesthetic sensibilities, while the later was one of the earliest—and smallest—of experience. It seems unlikely to be mere Times review of Architecture as Environ- work—especially the more historical and Roche’s designs. coincidence that this shift corresponded with ment, “The work Mr. Roche created in this contextual projects—does not. The attrac- the departure of KRJDA’s renowned head of period also reflected the end of something. tive power novelty wields over contemporary “What are we really thinking about?” technical design. . . . Seen from the perspective of today, with architects and the equally repellent power Together the talks were surprisingly similar Of course, it could be argued that the country’s infrastructure crumbling and no of historical reference cannot be underes- in two respects: they largely left Roche’s this shift in the firm’s work was the result of a one, it seems, able to muster the energy to timated (and nearly all of the speakers at partner, John Dinkeloo, out of the story, and changing construction industry in the United do anything about it, Mr. Roche’s optimism the symposium were architects by training). they focused overwhelmingly on KRJDA’s States. As Roche explained in the 2006 seems like something worth revisiting.” And, indeed, vintage KRJDA does look good earlier work, from the 1960s to 1970s, interview that I conducted for Perspecta 40, As Pelkonen and Varnelis noted when judged by contemporary standards of despite the fact that the firm continues to “In the Sixties, when we were working on during the symposium, KRJDA’s client base architectural taste, which hold in such high produce significant large-scale projects General Motors at Saarinen’s office, virtu- began to change toward the end of the esteem the similar aesthetic of the firms to this day. While, early in the conference, ally everything was invented . . .That is quite 1970s, transitioning from public and institu- OMA, MVRDV, REX, BIG, and the like. The Roche graciously acknowledged his former different now. A curtain wall, for instance, tional to increasingly private and corporate. similarity in appearance between vintage partner, and Pelkonen states in the catalog is really an off-the-shelf element . . . what Furthermore, as Roche explains today, the KRJDA and a certain strand of contem- that “Roche’s ability to realize even his is lost is the individual inventive aspect.” position of the American architect relative to porary practice—one that is probably not wildest architectural ideas owes greatly to his While that may be true, one cannot help but the building industry, the client, and society in coincidental if stories of Koolhaas’s interest late partner, John Dinkeloo,” the remaining wonder how an architect with Dinkeloo’s general began to transform during the 1980s. in KRJDA going back to the early 1970s eleven speakers spoke nothing of Dinkeloo interests and skills would have addressed Not only did his access as an architect to are true—makes sense given how so much or his contributions to the firm’s work. the challenge. Clearly, he had large-scale the ultimate decision makers surrounding a architecture today, especially commissions Meanwhile, the overwhelming emphasis on ambitions relative to the construction project—the mayors, CEOs, and board presi- won through the public design competition KRJDA’s earlier work was such that, at the industry, as shown in an address he deliv- dents—begin to disappear with the ascen- process, is consumed via images. As vintage conclusion of the symposium, Roche rose ered at the 1967 AIA Convention (quoted in dance of full-time client project managers KRJDA used strong and quickly legible forms from the audience and, after thanking every- Pelkonen’s essay in the catalog), in which throughout the 1980s, but—to quote Roche to claim “imageability” in an environment one in attendance, stated with the barest hint he described a future that “would no longer again from the Perspecta 40 interview—the viewed from behind the wheel of a speeding of a smile, “You know, I did not die in 1980.” have thousands of manufacturers, subcon- architect’s role in society became curtailed: car, much of today’s architecture uses the The omission of Dinkeloo may tractors, and general contractors but proba- same tools in the pursuit of the same goal. relate to an observation Neumann made bly a few very large organizations, such as There was once a time when an architect Only now buildings are viewed even more during the concluding panel discussion, the automotive industry, and it would disrupt had a position in society and in the briefly while scrolling through architecture saying, “The white elephant in the room is a the entire manufacturing and building setup culture, where people recognized that blogs and design-competition Web sites. lack of access to the process and complex- completely.” Dinkeloo continued, “The the architect had a right to make deci- Ultimately though, the omission ity of architectural practice. We just don’t architect has to find ways of creating teams sions and could be relied on to produce from “Thinking Big” of Dinkeloo, who seems know what led to a lot of the decisions in the of engineers, manufacturers, or research a significant work of art. Nowadays you, to have been a critical factor in building office.” Roche has certainly been the man potential on a large scale that includes all as an architect, get pushed around by compellingly in America at large scales, and out front throughout KRJDA’s history, leaving facets of the industry.” Now here is an archi- the client—very severely—as if you were KRJDA’s later work, which seems to have historians, critics, and commentators likely tect thinking big. a draftsperson and didn’t really have been ignored largely on aesthetic grounds, to omit Dinkeloo and later partners Philip Thus it seems reasonable to at any particular skills. begs a question: as architects affiliated with Kinsella and James Owens from the narra- least suggest that the architectural quality academia, do we really care about thinking tive. This is unfortunate because the projects of KRJDA’s earlier work owes a great deal— While the narrative repeated by Roche, big? If the answer is yes, individual archi- discussed during the symposium suggest more than was certainly acknowledged Ouroussoff, Pelkonen, and Rohan—that tects who make building big possible (e.g., there must be something particularly compel- over the course of “Thinking Big”—to the there was a time when the American public Dinkeloo) must be acknowledged and their ling about KRJDA’s work up until Dinkeloo’s interest and expertise in building that the and its leaders thought big, architects could contributions to the work more carefully sudden death, in 1981. For example, the firm possessed, and that John Dinkeloo think big, and the work was consequently examined. Aesthetic preferences and tectonics—the detailing, material selec- must have been a critical influence in this more compelling than what seems possible prejudices should be suppressed, and there tion, and structural solutions—were notable regard. This expertise in tectonics and the today—is on the verge of becoming a truism, should probably be more symposia dedicat- and occasionally highly innovative. After technical aspects of architecture helped I doubt it accounts for why “Thinking Big” ed to those practices (e.g., AECOM) that are Dinkeloo, the tectonic aspect of KRJDA’s give KRJDA the control over the work across omitted the vast majority of KRJDA’s later operating and designing at the most massive work begins to fade, as even a cursory multiple scales, which Inaba described in oeuvre. Roche himself has always remained scales today. If, however, the answer is no, comparison of the Knights of Columbus and his paper. The fact that the work suffered remarkably consistent in his stated ambitions then we should admit what we’re really inter- the J. P. Morgan Towers demonstrate. with Dinkeloo’s passing (and when control and design approach. A comparison of ested in—even if this includes uncomfortable In fact, on this point it is worth was apparently diminished) should serve as interviews from the 1970s and the 2000s illus- topics such as architectural fashion and the contrasting the presentation of these two both an example and warning because the trates this, as does Varnelis’s demonstration way things look—so that a real conversa- projects in Francesco Dal Co’s 1985 Kevin architect’s control over building—especially that, despite an evolving client base, KRJDA tion can take place. As demonstrated by Roche monograph. The Knights of Columbus relative to the construction industry in the continues to produce large-scale iconograph- the shortcomings of “Thinking Big,” only by Headquarters (1965–69) is explained through United States—is very much at stake today. ic forms, ranging from the pure geometries coming clean can we begin to have a chance a detailed axonometric drawing and section But how to account for the sympo- of College Life to the historical and columnar at addressing what the stakes really are for perspective that celebrate the various sium’s omission of the firm’s later work? references of J. P. Morgan. Furthermore, architecture today. systems working in concert across multiple While Dinkeloo’s unexplored influence may it would be difficult to argue that KRJDA’s scales to produce the tower’s distinctive be indirectly related to the participants’ focus projects have become programmatically less —Jacob Reidel form. The Morgan Bank Headquarters on KRJDA’s earlier work, few if any contem- complex over time or that they have become Reidel (’08) works with Ennead Architects (1983–89), on the other hand, is explained porary commentators and critics (with the smaller (as the 1990 Merck Headquarters in New York City. He was a co-editor of with a series of line-drawing perspectives possible exception of Rohan) have made an or currently in-progress Santandar Central Perspecta 40 “Monster” and CLOG, and his from an imaginary distant and unobstructed explicit tectonic or aesthetic argument for Hispano campus demonstrate). Based upon writings have appeared in Abitare, 306090, viewpoint, celebrating the overall form of the value of the firm’s work from the 1960s to Roche’s statements, the symposium, and the The New York Times, and THE BI BLOG. the tower against the downtown Manhattan the 1970s. Many, in fact, have only praised work itself, it seems doubtful the architect or skyline. While J.P. Morgan was admittedly the projects from this period as examples of his clients have stopped “thinking big.” 10 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 Middle Ground/ Middle East: Religious Sites in Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi, 2007. Photograph by Dinj Gao, Urban Contexts Wikimedia Commons.

The symposium “Middle Ground/Middle East: Religious Sites in Urban Contexts” was organized by Karla Britton on January 21 and 22, 2011.

“Middle Ground/Middle East,” a symposium Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster, competition rendering of redesign of Mecca, 2009. Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil, Corniche Mosque, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. 1989. held on January 25–26 organized by lecturer Karla Britton and hosted by the Yale School of Architecture, the Yale Divinity School, and the Yale Center for Middle East Studies gathered scholars, architects, critics, and conservators to discuss religious and contested sites in the contemporary Middle East. Panel discussions inquired into the region as an exemplary middle ground—an intersection between past and present, destruction and spectacle, the three Abraha- mic religions, and the East and West. Set in the post-secular wake of elevated interfaith tension and a resurgence of religious identi- ties, the symposium positioned the region’s holy precincts as anchors for urban structure and the lens through which their inhabitants have understood themselves. The sympo- sium sought a common ground for an issue that generally divides society. The path to a middle ground is fraught with obstacles, and in his Friday Mohammed al-Amin, Hariri Mosque, Beirut, Lebanon, 2002–07. Massimiliano Fuksas, Peres Peace House, Jaffa, Israel, 2008. keynote address, Nasser Rabbat (MIT), provided an overarching structure to the political and social issues at hand by first establishing the loss of relevancy of the term appropriating territory as a place of religious world of the early 1980s and 1990s, when where Perseus freed Andromeda from the Middle East—a colonially derived Eurocentric significance. The enclosed but permeable architects committed themselves to address- dragon—Shimon Peres commissioned a name denoting a postcolonial outcome with urban synagogue was replaced by the ing the dichotomy between the trend of peace center to foster dialogue between the boundaries, drawn on napkins by imperial conquest of the West Bank’s expansive open modernization and a religion deeply rooted diverse local populations. Fuksas alternated powers, enclosing what are now weak states. frontier; its occupation expresses an enact- in the past. Despite minimalized ornamenta- layers of concrete and glass symbolizing Rabbat’s speech encapsulated the obstacles ment of piety. tion, simplified masses, and abbreviated time and patience to enclose the public many speakers would augment, attempt to Religious detachment continues extremities, architects expressed both an space. It situated the notion of peace as the refute, and try to resolve: that the “middle- along the lines of heritage, segregating identity and the vernacular. This approach is spiritual condition, inviting its faithful to take ness” of the Middle East has eroded. the rich cultural past from the present. As in contrast to current practice, as mosques part in rituals of coexistence. Although the In “The Fundamentalist City: Howayda Al-Harithy (American University are surprisingly devoid of character. Inspired optimistic endeavor was designed to effect Medieval Modernity,” Nezar AlSayyad (UC in Beirut), illuminated in her presentation, to position themselves in the global current change through architecture, pragmatic Berkeley), discussed today’s harsh reality, “Religious Sites and Heritage Construc- of “starchitecture,” current architects are critics detected notes of naïveté and underscoring religion itself as the funda- tion,” contemporary enterprises that seek designing mosques that are neither architec- questioned the project’s unilateral approach: mental impediment to the realization of a to contextualize antiquity’s religious relics turally expressive nor contemplative. Largely a significant voice was clearly absent in its middle ground. Focusing on urban dynamics, in the modern urban fabric through conser- absent from the portfolios of practicing archi- conception. From the autonomous patron he argued that in regions where religious vation projects are problematic because tects, the mosque is approached as a neutral to the unapprised architect, the initiative groups fulfill societal needs left unattended they rarely cater to local inhabitants. The visual form. romanticized the site and dwelled on legend- by state bureaucracies, exclusionary spatial process itself is a negotiation of heritage, a This state of affairs is surprising, ary antiquity instead of acknowledging the practices obscure what is otherwise a strict scripting of an identity undertaken by considering the prominent roles that religion painful reality of a displaced populace and a clear relationship to the city. Often initi- those favoring one part of an identity over often plays in defining society, culture, and thorny urban context. ated as peripheral tumors, fundamental others. These monuments, once centers of politics. Hashim Sarkis (Harvard GSD), Throughout the symposium, most religious movements infiltrate urban areas activity and interaction, are disengaged from expanded on this position in “No Faith in speakers enumerated the obstacles in and ultimately fragment urban citizenship, their contexts when access and worship Architecture: The Case of Beirut.” Known for the path of a middle ground, but several causing a de facto secession existing are restricted. The end result is a prepack- its religious pluralism and numerous rebuild- attempted to harmoniously find a new direc- outside the state rule. The creation of the aged tourist experience sold to transient ing initiatives, the city is fascinating for its tion for architecture and re-establish the “fundamentalist city” questions the inevita- populations that no longer translates to its transitional turf for religious structures. As architect’s role as the mediator between bility of progress in the search for a middle environment. Makram El-Kadi of Yale joked, it is a place ideological aspirations and their tangible ground, warning against the threat posed Al-Harithy argues that, when where “religion is a national sport.” In the fulfillment. In “Background to the Middle by a combination of an ineffectual state and dealing with the past, one must accept current rebuilding of Beirut, Sarkis argued Ground: Spirituality as a Redeeming religion’s exclusive nature. cities as living entities. Freezing a religious that mosques and churches are beginning to Paradigm in Early Modern Architecture, Religion as a vehicle of appropria- monument in time, stripping it of its educa- disappear in an otherwise highly articulated 1913–27,” Kenneth Frampton, Ware Profes- tion and subsequent withdrawal from the tional and societal roles, and experiencing building environment. Religious pluralism, sor of Architecture at Columbia University, urban context was addressed by Rafi Segal it in restricted fashion prohibits urban Sarkis contends, manifests itself only in directed the conversation to the role of the (Harvard GSD), in his talk “From Building to regeneration. Conservation must be sympa- rituals, not in space. He attributed this to modern architect as a practicing spiritualist, Outpost: Religious Sites of Israeli Architec- thetic to a city’s historical sedimentation speculation in Beirut’s real estate market. In shifting the discussion from religious archi- ture.” Throughout the Jewish diaspora, the and aspire to maintain a transparent and the current reconstruction, amplification is tecture to architecture as religion. Frampton synagogue’s form reflected its surrounding interdisciplinary process. emphasized and continuity is discouraged. reconsidered the history of architectural context, adapting local forms in an attempt Nasser Rabbat described a contem- Along with diminishing public space, the spirituality beginning with the Middle Ages, to assimilate and disclose its Jewish identity porary Middle East that injects religious building code encourages sameness rather when religious structure integrated organi- through sparse symbols. With the institution identity into all aspects of daily life so that than the differences that religious pluralism cally into the urban fabric. He then moved of the state of Israel and the empowerment religious architecture has become a weapon would normally assert. to Modern architecture, where new middle of the Israeli right wing in the late 1970s and in a cultural tug-of-war. Architect and histo- In addressing pluralism, Italian grounds were expressed tectonically and 1980s came a call for a singular expres- rian Mohammad Al-Asad, in “Retreating into architect Massimiliano Fuksas offered came to embody a new spirituality. sion marking a major transformation of the the Background: Mosque Architecture in a new approach to the sacred site in his In terms of practicing architects, synagogue to a national project that called the Early Twenty-First Century,” saw things presentation of the Peres Peace House in Frampton commented on Al-Asad’s presen- for a return to a biblical setting. Settle- somewhat differently when he compared Jaffa. Located in the oldest harbor in the tation on using architecture to redefine ments rose up outside of urban contexts, present-day mosques with those in the Arab world—the site fabled to be the very one notions of the sacred. He noted that the 11 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011

Nezar AlSayyed Howayda Al-Harthy Sallama Shaker Dean Robert A.M. Stern Fathi Saleh

Mohammed Al-Asad Vasileios Marinis Peter Eisenman Hashim Sarkis Makram el Kadi

Lamin Sanneh Marcia Inhorn Kishwar Rizvi Rafi Segal Massimiliano Fuksas Mosque and State A Response

What role should the mosque, church, or the temple, or any religious structure play in the modern state? For Nasser Rabbat, Islamic architecture scholar and director of the Aga Kenneth Frampton Brigitte Shim Nasser Rabbat Abel-Wahed El-Wakli and Karla Britton Paul Goldberger Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the answer is unequivocal: for the sake of the state, for the sake of religion, and for the sake of architecture, there should be no connec- contemporary problem rests in the current state condensed to one leader-dictator. and be an “intellectual, activist, and politi- tion between religion and the state. sectarian paradigm, which prevents religion While leaders claim that these monuments cian” to better serve the needs of a reborn In his keynote address at the Yale’s from being shaped by architecture but magnify the people, the unprecedented transnational region. conference “Middle Ground/Middle East” allows the contrary. The middle ground is size and superlative ornamentation of the Rabbat recounted the history of the Middle not a reconciliation of religion with the urban spaces become new thrones for the rulers. —Erene Rafik Morcos East, which for many years was a cosmopoli- context, but rather the evolving form of space Such structures emphasize a reverence for Morcos (’09), is a curatorial assistant in the tan middle ground of different cultures and as made sacred by and for the architect. tradition that doubles as a political message Department of Manuscripts at the J. Paul religions. In the past sixty years, in Rabbat’s Attempting to connect the idea asserting the legitimacy of a government. Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. view, that particular function of the region of heritage to the present, Fathi Saleh The only subjects in this journey for redemp- has eroded, and it has become a collection of addressed the subject of the past in “An tion are the leaders, while the metaphorical nation-states encompassing the respective Interpretation of Historic Cairo.” Saleh, audience has the power only to watch. El-Wakil at Yale cultural and religious identities. Though, as Director of the Center for Documentation of The pursuit of a middle ground is Rabbat notes, many of these states choose Cultural and Natural Heritage, presented the encumbered by the fact that iconic religious Egyptian architect Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil, to build mosques as the manifestation of Center's work, which documents Egypt’s monuments serve only one man and his the 2009 recipient of the Driehaus Prize for national identity. heritage to educate both foreign and native image, and many of the religious edifices Architecture, is a powerful proponent of Rabbat cited several recent state- people. Treating every aspect of culture and shown throughout the symposium confirmed Islamic architecture whose work has been sponsored mosque projects in the Middle heritage as significant, it records bygone this act of urban appropriation. Moreover, shaped by refined beauty and traditional East, each one more dazzling and lavish than monuments as well as “living heritage.” The exclusionary spatial practices are evident forms for some forty years. the last, built to portray the national identity. Center recognizes the multifaceted nature of in the lack of discussion about gender. In a As the concluding event of the Many of them are named for their benefac- the Coptic, Islamic, and Pharaonic influences region where the most orthodox iterations of symposium, El-Wakil participated in a tors, such as the Mosque of Hassan II, that have shaped the state and disseminates the three Abrahamic religions exist, a strin- conversation with Paul Goldberger, archi- which overlooks the Atlantic in Casablanca, its information with the latest interactive gent segregated usage of religious space is tecture critic for The New Yorker. An impres- Morocco. Named for the former ruler of technologies. Saleh’s approach initiated a enforced in which women are excluded from sive image display illustrated the variety of the country, it accommodates more than dialogue with the past and celebrated the the central framework. Here, little can be El-Wakil’s architecture, including more than 105,000 worshippers and is the fifth-largest vibrant present in order to form a potential done architecturally without an ideological fifteen mosques constructed largely in the mosque in the world. Designed by French middle ground. change that addresses this issue. Middle East, such as the Quba Mosque and architect Michel Pinseau, the building is In “Parsifal and the Staging of The symposium coincided with the Miqat Mosque, both in Medina, and the strongly influenced by traditional Moroc- Contemporary Christianity,” Peter Eisen- incidents of sectarian conflict: the burqa ban King Saud Mosque, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. can architecture. According to Rabbat, man (Yale) uncovered a modified allegori- in France and the controversy surrounding Vincent Scully has noted that, whereas for many large, state-built mosque are built in cal middle ground in a new interpretation the Park 51 Muslim community center in New Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn the sacred is a conservative architectural style because of Wagner’s opera by Stefan Herheim. York City. While the topics centered on the based in the darkness of the cavern and in the tradition is seen as part of the nation’s Stripping away most of the overt Christian pulse of the region and its current religious savage sacrifice, “El-Wakil embodies a more identity. Thus, the benefactors of these new ideals, a new staging in Bayreuth (Wagner’s atmosphere, many of the participants gentle primitivism, something bright and mosques are connected to the leaders of the acoustic altar) strove to expunge anti- expressed pessimism about the practicality clear.” El-Wakil cites the considerable impact distant past, though timeless materials and Semitic overtones and seek redemption of the proposed solutions, particularly those of Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, a mentor craftsmanship. from its association with the Nazi movement. requiring profound ideological shifts. Liter- who drew him out of a preoccupation with For Rabbat, state support of Eisenman illuminated an experience that ally days after the symposium, however, the Modern architecture to address the power mosque architecture contradicts the modern was substantially removed from its sacred pessimistic were pleasantly surprised as of vernacular architecture and the realities of idea that nations and religious institutions religious context. While quite secular, the the world bore witness to revolution in the the poor. should be distinct and that architectural performance was transformational. The Middle East: the people of Tunisia and Egypt Dressed as the nomadic wanderer quality is compromised if they are not. He resonating impression was that while Parsi- launched an attack on the legitimacy of their that he is, El-Wakil employed a forceful pointed out that many state-sponsored fal involved ideas about religion, it was in leaders and the relevancy of the colonial manner and adamant gestures in elaborat- mosques have been designed by Western fact a secular and not a religious shift that urban fabric. Therefore, it came as no surprise ing his background and methods. He was architects whose ignorance of Islamic archi- provoked a situation within a palpable sacred when Makram el Kadi asked in closing particularly animated as he discussed the tecture is “astounding,” characterizing such context. The deconstruction of Christianity whether the issues were about religion at all power of the logical principles in sacred designs as “cut-and-paste” architecture. was the mechanism by which the staging and speculated as to whether architecture geometry. This expression of personal However, does state support of reaffirmed notions of redemption. The sacred could come up with a post-religious menu. submission and passionate commitment to religious buildings always result in bad transformation was marked when ritual was Many considered the capacity of public an ancient system of architectural ordering design? Is the separation of religion and discarded in favor of psychoanalysis: the space to fill in the void, which would call to entailed a new and dislocating language for the state likely to result in good architec- performance terminates as a giant reflective mind the importance of Tahrir Square. many of his listeners. Some found El-Wakil’s ture? State-supported religions throughout disk, the symbolic eye of Cyclops, confronts Together with autocratic leader- musings to be idiosyncratic distractions from such modern nation-states as Germany, the audience as performers. ship and colonial nomenclature, religious the constructional subtlety that makes the Denmark, and Great Britain suggest that As Rabbat described in his keynote, monuments that allude to bygone eras work most interesting. Yet there is an engag- state-sponsored religious building can the problematic middle ground is lost in a and restrict dialogue to the quotidian are ing, self-imposed discipline to the architect’s result in fine, sometimes great, architecture. labyrinth of heads of state flaunting their no longer relevant. As Kishwar Rizvi (Yale) sensibility in which mathematics, spirituality, The Congregational meetinghouses built religions as national traits and expressions of noted in her response, there is an expecta- and material form are inextricably linked. by English emigrants to North America power. He emphasized the fruitless struggle tion for architecture to elevate and to heal. El-Wakil’s stance might also be read as are examples of state-sponsored religious to accommodate the dual identity of the The Middle East needs spaces that insert betraying an exemplary philosophical dignity architecture that are held in high esteem as national and ecumenical, expressing hope themselves in the present discourse where closely allied with the work itself—something temples of the spirit. Indeed, there must be that this paradigm would be challenged. This all people can participate in the construction quietly and heroically subversive in an another, more fundamental reason for poor presented a two fold criticism of contem- of their own beliefs, eliminating the roles of extraordinary relationship with both the craft design in state-sponsored religious buildings: porary religious architecture in the Middle arbitrary borders, oblivious despots, and the and expressive power of architecture. bad architects. East. First, leaders patronize these buildings past as the sole powers of determination. to make pronounced assertions of Islam Future tectonic articulations of the sacred —Karla Britton —Michael J. Crosbie and patriotism, a union that Rabbat and necessitate engaging notions of reaction and Britton is a lecturer at the School of Architec- Crosbie is chairman and associate professor many other speakers vehemently opposed. use. The architect is expected, therefore, to ture and editor of the book Constructing the of architecture at the University of Hartford Moreover, the monuments personified a strive beyond the role of “a mere sculptor” Ineffable (Yale School of Architecture, 2010). and editor of Faith & Form magazine. 1228a: Disheveled Geometries Toward a New Rustication in Architecture Mark Foster Gage, Fall 2010

From the Latin rusticationem, and originally defining an unsophisticated rural mentality, the term rustication is used to describe architecture’s most extreme category of surface textures. If, historically, architectural rustication was seen as a less refined manner of shaping material that subsequently retained a rough tex- ture, then the twenty-first-century condition would be the exact reverse. Rustica- tion now takes more effort rather than less, and skill is measured in moving away from architectural smoothness instead of toward it. With the ability to parametri- cally, algorithmically, and fractally manage matter at increasingly small scales of resolution, this seminar revisits the topic of rustication, where architects design unapologetically contemporary textures that might act in the service of everything from wind dispersal, shading, insulation, water shedding, grip, power generation, physical defense, or pure aesthetic effect. Students study methods of rustication throughout history and use this research as a foundation to design and produce large-scale prototypes. This seminar is supported by the Mudbox division of Au- todesk, and students work intensely with this software program and others. Stu- dents are expected to produce original work that operates at the forefront of the profession. To assist in this endeavor, each student is allocated a substantial budget to cover material research, fabrication costs, and outsourcing.

With: Cody Davis and Elijah Porter Work by: Keith Johns, Vincent Calabro, JohnTaylor Bachman

udbox Research Log | Yale School of Architecture | Mark Foster Gage

12 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011

1016b: Fabrication and Assembly

John Eberhart, Ben Pell, Spring 2011 Spring Events This course provides an introduction to the key relationships that exist among methods of drawing, physical materials, technologies of construc- tion, and three-dimensional form making. The material and formal sensibili- ties developed in 1015a, Visualization II, are mined to explore drawing as a tool leading to full-scale fabrication. The generation of form through both manual and digital methods is tested through materials and technologies of fabrication. Additive and subtractive processes, repetition and mass produc- tion, and building information modeling (BIM) are introduced as tools for as- sembly. “Assembly” is framed as both full-scale object and “three-dimen- sional” analog. Exercises and workshops provide students the opportunity Tetrahedral Screen Linear Aggregation Component Assembly

Visualization III: Additive Components to work physically with a wide variety of tools and materials as well as digi- Teo Quintana Ollie Nieuwland-Zlotnicki tally with emerging computer-driven technologies. In this course conceived Aggregation in Plan as a supplement to 1013b, Building Project, students integrate drawing and model-making to develop and propose a construction that can be experi- enced at the human scale and be understood as an integrated architectural element. Three Orientations Interlocking Units Tight Packing

Aggregation in Section

Milling Top Side Detail: Aggregation Work by: Christopher Connock, Brian Butterfield, Kipp Edick, Alexandra Rotational AAggregationggregation

Tailor, Melissa Bauld, Francis Edelman, Mark Talbot, Detail: Fin Linear Formation Mass Formation Loose Packing Project from John Eberhart and Ben Pell’s Fabrication and Assembly course by Brian Hong ('13).

1062a: Computation and Fabrication

John Eberhart, Fall 2010

This course investigates and applies emerging computational theories and technologies through the design and fabrication of a full-scale building com- ponent and/or assembly. This investigation includes various static, paramet- ric, and scripted modeling paradigms, computational-based structural and sustainability analysis, and digital fabrication technologies. Students work in pairs to design, analyze, and fabricate a full-scale constructed piece.

Light produced in John RusticationEberhart’s and Texture Prototype # 1 Production and Preparation Final Reviewcourse 10.21.10 by Erik 45 Autodesk MudboxHerrmann Research Log | Yale School of Architecture | Mark Foster Gage Fabrication and production processes for MarkMark FosterGage’s Gage | Yale School Fall of Architecture 2010 | Autodesk Mudbox Research Log 46 Work by: Katsunori Shigemi, Lis Cena, Patrick Delahoy, Gregory Gunder- MED symposium poster (’12). son, Amir Sharokhi, FranciscoDisheveled Waltersdorfer, GeometriesDanh Thai, Artem Melikyan course.

Fugitive Geographies “Geopolitical Strategies.” The first examined nature of confinement in times of war. Nisa Yale’s Fab (ulous) Lab literary representations of the spaces that the described the prison camps constructed MED Symposium Spring 2011 Exhibition Spring 2011 fugitive often inhabits, opening with a paper by American forces during the Korean War by Gabrielle Guise, a Ph.D. student in Yale’s and in Guantánamo, Cuba, to dissect the It is a truism repeated by any number of American Studies Program, titled “Herman logic of circulation and control that attempts Yale’s Digital Media and Fabrication Lab is detectives, police officers, sheriffs, and Melville’s Benito Cereno as True Crime to impose order on the chaos of war. He a machine in itself, constantly evolving and forensic scientists: the perpetrator always Fiction.” Guise took as the subject of her noted that, in an age in which conflicts like adapting along with the rapid development returns to the scene of the crime. The site analysis the writer’s novella in which a ship those in Iraq and Afghanistan have made it of new digital production technologies. It is is cordoned off with the notorious yellow piloted by New England merchant Amaso increasingly difficult to distinguish friend from no surprise that the Fab Lab, as it is known, tape as the coroner wheels away the body Delano happens upon a Spanish vessel foe, detaining and capturing the enemy has also commands an increasing presence and evidence is carefully collected in small carrying slaves from Africa who had mutinied become much more complicated too, with in the School of Architecture. It was there- Mylar bags. So what is it about the crime and murdered the crew, sparing only the portable devices employed, for example, by fore fitting that the spring 2011 exhibit at scene? Criminal activity is often a matter of captain, Benito Cereno. The ship in Melville’s American troops in Afghanistan to capture the school, titled “Exploring the Beauty,” negotiating space: think of the bank robber novel is thus transformed into a crime scene, the biometrics of friends and allies alike. The showcased student work from three courses planning the quickest path to the exit from with clues provided throughout the story. result is a massive information database that that partnered with the lab over the past the vault, or the dark alleyway where the Guise examined the fluidity of spaces in orders the space of war through data rather two years, revealing the investigative nature informant sets up the sting. Of course, these which the crimes occur as the ship becomes than physicality. of the coursework while summing up an are all clichés from any number of detective crime scene, getaway vehicle, safe house, The symposium was also an impressive range of student talent. movies and prime-time television dramas. and finally the courtroom in which justice is opportunity to collaborate with students in The exhibit focused on design Beyond serving as the mere backdrop for administered. the school’s new Ph.D. program by round- developed at building scale. In John criminal activity, as so often happens, space Where Guise focused on the slave ing out each of the sessions with responses Eberhart’s course “Computation and Fabri- and architecture become accomplices in ship’s ability to switch seamlessly among a by Kyle Dugdale (Ph.D. ’16) and Eduardo cation,” for example, students were taught criminal acts. Unlike murderers, thieves, and number of roles as both criminal accomplice Vivanco (Ph.D. ’16). Dugdale’s response, static, parametric, and scripted modeling con artists, architectural partners in crime or administer of justice, the next session, “Murder, Architecture, History,” was a power- paradigms to produce full-scale constructed cannot be brought to justice in the back of “Borders,” examined what happens when ful reminder of the long standing relationship pieces, such as a flower-shaped lamp or the police car or testify before a jury. The the ambiguous space of the fugitive is between architecture and the space of the a curvilinear retaining wall. “Fabrication issue of architecture and its relation to crime indicative of a larger political and ideological fugitive. He pointed out that the earliest and Assembly,” the third of four visualiza- was the subject of “Fugitive Geographies,” struggle. In “Intolerance: Standards, Codes, descriptions of space and crime in Western tion courses, taught by Ben Pell and John a graduate symposium that featured papers and Access,” Adam Bandler, a student at literature are in the Book of Genesis, in which Eberhart, pushed real-world application delivered by students from eight universities. Columbia University’s Critical, Curatorial, the Garden of Eden is transformed into a even further: conceived as supplement to It was organized by Jimmy Stamp (MED ’11), and Conceptual Practices in Architecture crime scene as Adam and Eve become Yale’s Building Project, the course focused David Rinehart (MED ’11), Andreas Kalpacki program, examined the evolution of the Berlin fugitives from the laws of God. Dugdale on the design, fabrication, and assembly (MED ’11), and Eero Puurunen (MED ’11). Wall as a space of ideological ambiguity argued that the very origins of architecture of component-based projects, culminating The symposium grew out of the through which fugitives passed from commu- grow from the couple’s expulsion from with full-scale prototypes assembled in situ MED Colloquium of Contemporary Archi- nist East Germany to the capitalist West. The paradise, marking a consciousness of both throughout Rudolph Hall. tectural Discourse on the theme “Space, arrangement of the 1961 construction, with clothing and space. In becoming aware of Often, the most eye-catching Crime, and Architecture,” satirizing Siegfried a makeshift barrier of wooden posts and their position outside the Garden of Eden, work alters patterns that we see in the Giedion’s book title. The class was organized concertina wire, proved to be highly ineffec- Adam and Eve seek to build a shelter for natural world. In Mark Gage’s course, around an alternative to time as a criticism of tive, as even guards from the communist East themselves, thus bringing forth architecture “Disheleved Geometries: Towards a New architecture. Ornament, as a manifestation of abandoned their posts to run for freedom to aid them as fugitives. Rustication,” the student work evoked a nostalgia for the past, was a crime in the eyes in the West. Bandler’s paper was especially Crimes and the fugitives they pseudo-naturalism in the form of wavelike of Adolf Loos. But in today’s post-ideological interesting for the way in which he described produce persist. And the presenters at honeycombs and reptilian skins. In addition and liquid modernity, in which history blends the intensification of the wall’s increased the conference all addressed the ever to its formal innovation, the far-reaching with heterotopic stories, the passing of time density and height, first with a collage of more complicated nature of crime and the nature of Yale’s fabrication classes extend to can’t help in understanding the multiplicity of rubble formed into slabs and later with steel- increasingly ambiguous act of fleeing one the Massimo Scolari studio, in which each a globalized society, neither as norm nor as reinforced concrete. He pointed out that, space in favor of another. More importantly, student designs and fabricates a chair, many crime. Today’s ultimate crime occurs when at the same time that the West’s barriers the conference called into question the of which have been featured as part of the architects transgress the law, when they liter- were becoming increasingly dematerialized, very nature of what a fugitive is and where International Contemporary Furniture Fair in ally commit a crime or enable it as accom- crossings such as Checkpoint Charlie came fugitives can be found, an issue raised by New York City. plices. Therefore, the class investigated the to represent official Western acknowledg- Thomas Levin, a professor at Princeton However, unlike many exhibits relationship between architecture and use, ment of the East-West barrier, using a wall of University, who delivered the symposium’s of student work, “Exploring the Beauty” studying the techniques and dynamics that signs and loudspeakers that advertised the keynote address, “Typographies of Elusion.” represents more than simply beautifully allow crime to happen in a particular place. wealth and abundance of the capitalist West. A specialist in surveillance technologies, executed designs. On display were a host of This notion served as a background to the The result was an interesting predicament Levin described round-the-clock camera operational techniques and material effects MED symposium. in which the fugitive fleeing the Communist surveillance programs in places such as describing the wide range of possibilities The forum’s greatest strength was East fled across the dense materiality of the Manhattan, a city transformed into a kind brought on by the coupling of digital design its focus on the liminal nature of spaces Berlin Wall to seek protection in the virtually of crime scene in which everyday acts are and fabrication. From scalelike and reptilian occupied by fugitives and those on the run invisible barrier set up by the West. subject to the same scrutiny as criminal to honeycombed or crystalline, the work from the law, with several papers address- The ambiguity of walls as both activity. And far from the stock characters of draws attention to the relationship between ing the spatial ambiguity that is often part of protection and confinement continued police dramas and detective novels who hide design intent and physical reality, and life on the lam. In following the symposium’s into the next session, “Geopolitical Strate- in shacks and alleyways, the fugitive is really demonstrates that these worlds are becom- directive to understand architecture and gies,” with a paper by Richard Nisa, a a more surprising and complex character ing increasingly intertwined with one another the built environment from the perspec- doctoral candidate in geography at Rutgers who begs us to ask of ourselves, What are and throughout the culture of the school. tive of an individual attempting to escape University. His paper extended the fluid and we running from? or allude capture, the conference was ambiguous nature of the space inhabited —Jamie Chan (’08) organized thematically into three sections: by fugitives to a global scale by focus- —Matthew Gin (MED ’12) “Textual Manifestations,” “Borders,” and ing on prison camps and the changing 13 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 Fall 2011 Exhibitions Two exhibitions of renowned Yale architecture graduates on display in the Fall.

Ceci n’est pas une rêverie: the Commonwealth Edison Energy Museum, in Zion, Illinois (1987–90); the Park Lane The Architecture of Hotel, in Kyoto (1990, unbuilt); apartment Stanley Tigerman buildings for Belgrade (1990) and Fukuoka (1988–89); tableware for Swid Powell, designs for Cannon Fieldcrest and Alessi, The exhibition Ceci n’est pas une rêverie: and jewelry for ACME and Cleto Munari. In The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman will be addition, there are oil paintings from Tiger- on display at the Yale Architecture Gallery man’s “I Pledge Allegiance” series of the Stanley Tigerman, Master’s Thesis project model Yale School of Architecture, 1961 from August 25 to November 4, 2011, and mid-1960s; “Architoons” and travel sketches then it will travel to the Graham Founda- beginning in the 1970s. Completed projects tion’s Madlener House, in Chicago, in 2012. —such as the Berlin Wall (1988) and the Curated by associate professor Emmanuel recently inaugurated Holocaust Memorial Petit with the assistance of David Rinehart Foundation of Illinois (2000–09), among many Stanley Tigerman with Instant City model, (MED ’11) and designed by exhibitions direc- others—are included with drawings and photograph by Balthazar Korab, 1966. tor Dean Sakamoto, the show comprises models. Historical video footage of Tiger- over 190 original drawings, paintings, sketch- man’s lectures and interviews—along with a es, and cartoons, as well as thirty models and new interview with the architect and others, other objects designed by Tigerman (B.Arch produced by Karen Carter Lynch —will ’60 and M.Arch ’61) over five decades of his animate the exhibition gallery. career in Chicago, from 1960 to today. The exhibition celebrates the trans- The exhibition is organized themati- fer of Tigerman’s drawing archive to Yale cally, grouping projects according to a series University’s Manuscripts and Archives in of conceptual motifs, including “Utopia,” 2012 and coincides with the publication “Allegory,” “Death,” “Humor,” and “Division,” of the book Schlepping Through Ambiva- beginning with Tigerman’s bachelor’s (’60) lence: Essays on an American Architectural and master’s (’61) theses developed under Condition (Yale University Press), a collec- Paul Rudolph at Yale. Also represented are tion of his writings from 1964–2011, edited other projects, both built and unbuilt, such and with an introduction by Emmanuel as the Five Polytechnic Institutes, in Bangla- Petit. Tigerman’s autobiography, Designing Stanley Tigerman, Stanley Tigerman, “Little House in desh (1966–75); the Urban Matrix proposal, Bridges to Burn: Architectural Memoirs by the Clouds,” model, painted, flocked formed plastic, on Lake Michigan (1967–68, unbuilt); the Stanley Tigerman (ORO Editions), will also be 24 x 24 x 5", 1976. humorous Daisy House (1975–78) and released at the show’s opening. Dante’s Bathroom Addition (1980, proposal); Stanley Tigerman, Formica Showroom, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, Illinois, axonometric, ink on vellum, 22 x 22", 1986

1 Ceci n’est pas une rêverie: The Architecture of Stanley Tigerman

2 Gwathmey Siegel: Inspiration and Transformation

Residence, East Hampton, New York (1983); Charles Gwathmey Siegel: Gwathmey the Bechtler Residence, Zumikon, Switzer- and Robert Inspiration and land (1993); Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland Siegel in (2006); and the Yale School of Architecture their New Transformation renovation/restoration and Loria Center York office. addition (2008). The first museum exhibition of the work of The restoration and renovation Gwathmey Siegel and Associates Architects, of Whig Hall, Princeton University (1973); Gwathmey Siegel: Inspiration and Transfor- the Guggenheim Museum renovation and mation, was initiated by the Cameron Art addition, New York City (1992); and the Museum, in Wilmington, North Carolina, addition to the Fogg Museum, Harvard where it was on view this spring. Curated University (1991) demonstrate the architects’ and designed by Douglas Sprunt, it will be reckoning with the history of architecture displayed at Yale from November 14, 2011 and their mentors’ masterworks. The art through January 27, 2012. The show concen- associated with these projects is exhibited trates on the close relationship between art to demonstrate the broader cultural currents and architecture emphasizing transitional in American modern art and architecture, examples selected from the firm’s more than as well as the more specific inspiration and forty-five years of practice. meaning of the art incorporated in each Charles Gwathmey was the only commission. child of noted Social Realist painter Robert The exhibition consists of original Gwathmey and Rosalie Hook Gwathmey, a architectural drawings, sketchbooks, repro- respected photographer and member of the duced drawings, models, and photographs. Photo League. The architect met his future Artifacts and documents from the personal partner, Robert Siegel, at the High School of collections of Gwathmey and Siegel, includ- Music and Art, in New York City. Gwathmey ing Gwathmey’s scrapbook from his family’s studied architecture for a year under Louis tour of Europe in 1949 –50 and his Fulbright Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania and Grant notebook from 1962–63, provide Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, Zumikon residence, Charles Gwathmey, Pisa page from European Tour then went on to study and work under Paul additional first-hand material. Switzerland,1993. Scrapbook, 1949–50. Rudolph at the Yale School of Art and Archi- An illustrated catalog accompanies tecture, where he was awarded, after gradu- the exhibition, with an essay by architectural ation in 1961, a Fulbright grant to research historian Stephen Fox of the Rice University the work of Le Corbusier in Europe. Siegel School of Architecture as well as interviews studied architecture at the Pratt Institute and with the architects and selected clients by received a master’s degree from the Harvard Sprunt, that address the architects’ design Graduate School of Design. The two recon- philosophy and process, their professional nected while working in the office of Edward practice and relationships with clients, and Larrabee Barnes, in New York City, before contextual information about time and place. founding their own practice, based on the success of the house and studio Gwathmey designed for his parents in Amagansett, New York (1965–67). The exhibition focuses on projects in which art is an integral part of the program, whether it creates art in the spaces or Gwathmey Siegel & Associ- ates, Gwathmey Residence displays it. These include the Gwath- and Studio, Amagansett, mey House and Studio and the de Menil New York, 1967. 14 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011

“Johnstown to Southhampton,” ink on bond paper, 8 x 12", 1985.

“Exile VII,” ink on bond paper, 12 x 8.5", 1985. 15 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011

“Versus,” ink on bond paper, 11 x 8.5", 1982.

“Exile VI,” ink on bond paper, 12 x 8.5", 1985. 16 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 In the Field

Bloom House Mold preparation for Bloom House Lantern Lantern, designed by Greg Lynn Form. Kreysler and Greg Lynn Associates used CNC milled foam molds Form, Jugaad Urbanism at the Center for Architecture, New York, 2011. as a form. installed.

side by side with research projects funded by conference, the material stood in for both these large molecules becomes the funda- Jugaad Urbanism Shell Oil and Argonne National Lab. everything and nothing: evocative of any mental design tool of biology. Performance is Often, shows focusing on design number of contradictory qualities (natural a direct result of the hierarchical architectures Jugaad Urbanism: Resourceful Strategies for solutions to humanitarian crises present and artificial, futuristic and nostalgic) and yet at each scale. Effects such as the physical Indian Cities (on view at the Center for Archi- projects of questionable longevity. However, without inherent form or structure. color produced by butterfly wings are the tecture in New York City, from February 10 Jugaad Urbanism is careful to highlight well- Plastic names the very quality of direct result of the geometry of the polymers, to May 21, 2011) culls a sampling of projects tested projects, such as the Modular Solar being malleable, without fixed form. Its ever- which interfere with light waves passing from the streets of some of India’s most Energy System from SELCO, a sustainable expanding use in the building industry might around and through them. Jeronimidis populous cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, financial model that has provided power for suggest a dissolution of the link between suggested that these structures are formed Kolkatha, and Pune, to name a few. Jugaad over 100,000 families since 1995. There is material and form, but in fact, plastic was at a scale closer to that of material fabrication translates from Hindi roughly as “creative” also a jugaad approach to historic preserva- presented as such a meta-material, that than microscopic chemistry. As the precision or “resourceful,” and curator Kanu Agrawal tion, shown in the restoration of a 700-year- it was hard not to see it as a stand-in for and customization of plastic and composite (MED ’04) selects a spectrum of work that old stepwell and water canal in Delhi that architectural form itself. In this sense, the manufacturing increases, fabrication using evokes this type of approach to design at all will again provide clean water to the people debate between those who saw plastic as plastic materials is becoming indecipherable scales. The show’s premise is that crowded around it and allow them to lease the flori- amorphous and unlimited in form or scale, from the making of the material itself, allow- and impoverished cities call most for jugaad culture beds that are designed to manage and others who saw is as a discreet molecu- ing architects to exert finer and finer control. approaches, and that, with a projected 590 storm-water overflow. lar or woven assembly with specific formal Johan Bettum, who began a million people living in India’s cities by 2030, The curator is also careful to remind qualities is an extension of the long-standing Ph.D. on carbon fiber over a decade ago, such thinking is both urgent and essential. us that jugaad cannot always triumph over discourse on tectonics, this time within the also argued that composite materials have Winding through the spaces of the constraints that beget it. The Cybermo- context of material science. blurred the boundary between architecture the Center for Architecture, the exhibit tightly halla Hub, a community center shown in a The first speaker to raise a connec- and material structure. Pointing out that groups projects around spheres where towering plywood model, was meant to be a tion between plastic and architectural form materials like geotextile and carbon fiber jugaad interventions are most necessary reparation from the government to a popula- was keynote speaker Greg Lynn, who, have a weave large enough to see and feel, —water, energy, transportation, and land— tion that it had twice uprooted. The land recently co-edited Composites, Surfaces, Bettum described composite materials with models, drawings, and videos popping designated for the center and ownership by and Software: High Performance Architec- as emblematic of difference rather than up to display the breadth of ingenuity within the displaced was ultimately rescinded, and ture (Yale School of Architecture, 2011). monolithic sameness. The weaving of fibers each category. The projects stem from the uprooted citizens had no recourse but Lynn suggested that composite materials held in place by resin maintains distinctions necessity; they combine and repurpose avail- to again settle somewhere provisionally. The now hold implications for his work similar between multiple materials. This difference is able resources to meet basic needs in a part investments the government does make are to those calculus-based digital form have described geometrically: the alignments and of the world where the scale of the need often frustrating failures, such as the pedes- held in the past. Lynn’s composite projects patterns of fibers are an index of the paths of is staggering. For instance, the show tells us trian skywalks that are meant to provide safe extend his ideas on topological surfaces, structural load across the surface. If tectonic that roughly 400 million people in India do passage between transit hubs in Mumbai irreducible forms that incorporate complex- expression is primarily a form of communi- not have access to electricity, ninety million that but are not accessible to popula- ity through continuous change rather than cation about the way structure works, it is more than the entire population of the tions that stand to benefit most from being distinguishing each structural element inherent to composite materials. Permanent United States. separated from street traffic, such as the individually. Composites like carbon fiber can Change suggested that as plastic materials Jugaad design always delivers a elderly and the disabled. Often beginning be manufactured to accommodate varied seep into nearly every aspect of construc- whole greater than the sum of its parts, and as a small-scale local solution, jugaad is an load-bearing functions without multiple tion, we may be forced to reconsider the we see this in devices like the E-Charka inexhaustible resource for addressing the components. Variations in material thick- potential of tectonic expression, not as a set machine, which powers a radio and a lamp problems that come with megacities. ness, fiber orientation, and the ratio of fiber of diagrammatic dichotomies, but as a logic with the energy produced by spinning yarn. to resin can be designed to account for load of incorporated complexity better suited to a The Incremental Housing Strategy in Pune —Cynthia Barton paths within the material itself. This allows discipline ever more reliant on material and proposes a residential prototype that meets Barton (’02) is Post-disaster Housing Recov- smooth transitions between vertical and digital technologies. basic needs while keeping social networks ery Program Manager for the Regional horizontal or multi-directional and linear The dueling plastics conferences intact. Likewise, a community toilet designed Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program spans. When joints are necessary, they take mark a confluence of material technology, by architects Pankaj Gupta (’97) and Chris- for the City of New York. the form of laminated and filleted connec- aesthetic culture, and the evolution of tine Mueller with the residents of Shahpur tions, producing seamless material changes computational software. The aesthetic Jat Village, proposes a series of compost- and flush transitions rather than mechanically tendency among architects and designers ing toilets contained within a building that expressed junctures. toward intricate figural pattern is wide- uses rain and sun to drive the filtration What Plastic Wants As seamless materials that can take spread and codependent with the growing process. The structure’s artful composition Columbia’s Spring 2011 Conference on nearly any form, plastics and composites accessibility of computational software. of salvaged bricks and bamboo, along with a throw into question the traditional formal Computation treats multiple objects or parts roof made from flattened oil cans, would be “If you ask plastic what it wants to be, it will logics that stem from material limitations. like the fibers of a composite surface, as a elegant in any context; here, it would provide say nothing. Or maybe it will say everything” Rather than distinguishing components and series of variable spacings and orientations privacy and hygiene for an area of New Delhi —quipped architect Michael Meredith of materials, plastic adheres, melts and merges that are articulated individually, but bound where 30,000 people live with no sanitation MOS, alluding to Louis Kahn’s relationship them together. Alternately hard and soft, stiff by consistent relationships across the entire infrastructure. with a famously expressive brick. Spoken at and malleable, plastics share a viscous conti- assembly. Surprisingly, by both absorbing Jugaad Urbanism is also a study in the end of Columbia GSAPP’s conference nuity with digital form. and articulating the complexity of structural the interdependency of the various agents on plastics, it was a concise summation of Yet a number of speakers found load, plastics, together with computation, of invention. One of the most interesting “Permanent Change: Plastics in Architecture formal specificity and articulation in remove the essential and reductive qualities aspects of the show is the collection of and Engineering.” Plastics were the subject polymer molecules and composite materi- of tectonic expression, making tectonics jugaadus that are credited for each of the of nearly simultaneous bi-coastal confer- als. Polymers are simply large, complex more relevant for contemporary architecture projects. Designers, non-profits, citizens’ ences (the other was held at Sci-Arch the molecules, which occur both naturally and rather than less. alliances, municipal governments, technol- week previously) on polymer and composite artificially. The material scientist George ogy companies, and multinational corpora- materials this spring and Permanent Change Jeronimidis described the evolution of —Brennan Buck tions all bear some responsibility for the both reflected their ubiquity while also polymers as an initial scaling-up of structure Buck is a critic in architecture at Yale and projects. Indian-based micro-enterprise maintaining that architects have a blind spot at the molecular level. As they interlock to heads the practice FreelandBuck based in ventures that benefit local entrepreneurs sit for plastic materials. Throughout the two-day create proteins and sugars, the geometry of New York and Los Angeles. 17 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011

Installa- tion view, Institute of Contem- porary Art, Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry, University of Pennsyl- vania, 2011. manifest in its use? What kinds of choices are Photograph available to the users of constructed spaces by Aaron and objects? What are the circumstances Igler/ that call for people to resist and interrupt the Greenhouse Media. New Users Group installation at the Sculpture Gallery, 2010. functions assigned to them by design? What are the possibilities to reverse-engineer them and set alternative relationships that are not anticipated in their production? The New Users Group has an open membership and will continue to expand its Icosahe- dron with scope of activities. A catalog documenting its nested activities and discussions will be published cube, in fall 2011. www.newusersgroup.com Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry, —David Sadighian (BA ’07, MED ’10) and Dining Daniel Bozhkov Room, Madlener House, Chicago, 2011 Machu Picchu Artifacts © Graham Foundation. Return Home Photograph by James The year 2011 marks the centenary of the Prinz. Machu Picchu installation in Cuzco, Peru, 2011. Photograph by rediscovery of Machu Picchu by American Elizabeth Morgan. explorer Hiram Bingham III (Yale College, 1898), a Yale history lecturer. Ann Marshall and Yale School of Architecture graduate In 1965, Tyng was awarded a Graham Elizabeth Morgan (’07), of Kuhn Riddle Archi- Anne Tyng: Foundation grant to develop the Penn exhibi- New Users Group at Yale tects, arrived in Cuzco, Peru, on July 24 to Inhabiting Geometry tion research into a finished manuscript, with oversee the installationa permanent exhibit of drawings and photographs, titled Anatomy New Users Group, an interdisciplinary artifacts collected by Bingham, titled, Machu The exhibition Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geome- of Form. She was a lecturer in architecture at research collaborative, comprises graduate Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas. try—shown in two parts: at ICA at the Univer- Penn starting in 1968, earned a Ph.D. in archi- students and faculty from the architecture, Originally created in 2002 by sity of Pennsylvania, January 13–March 20, tecture there in 1975, and taught at Penn art history, and art departments at Yale Marshall and Michael Hanke, of Design 2011, and at Chicago’s Graham Foundation, until she retired in 1995. University. As when the School of Architec- Division, a Massachusetts-based exhibit April 15–June 18, 2011—presented a long- The installation at the Graham ture once shared the A&A Building and more design firm, the display uses short films, overdue focus on visionary architect and Foundation, in Chicago, was significant on actively engaged with MFA students, New interactive maps, and scale models of Incan theorist Anne Tyng (b. 1920), best known various levels. Director Sarah Herda and Users Group’s interdepartmental discussions architecture to examine the progress of for her collaboration with Louis I. Kahn in Detlef Mertins, former chairman of the Penn and workshops aim to explore the relation- Bingham’s archeological expeditions and the 1950s (when Kahn taught at Yale)—in Design Architecture Department, initiated ship of subjectivity to designed objects and the evidence he gathered about Incan life particular, her research behind the habitable ideas for an exhibition on Tyng based on both architectural environments by examining the and culture. In addition, hundreds of metal, space-frame architecture for the seminal the Anatomy of Form manuscript and the use and reception of buildings. fabric, stone, ceramic, and bone artifacts City Tower (1952–57). Indeed, the exhibi- archives. (Sadly, Mertins died on January 13, Initiated in fall 2009 as a dialogue provide insight into both the life and death of tion highlighted Tyng’s lifelong research into 2011, the day of the exhibition opening between graduate students Peter Harkawik Machu Picchu. geometry, displayed at various scales, from at the ICA.) This exhibition brought to light (MFA ’11) and Nathan Azhderian (MFA ’10) After debuting in 2003 at the the design of a small house (Walworth Tyng the extraordinary manuscript, which is the with faculty advisor Daniel Bozhkov—all from Peabody Museum, the exhibit toured the House, 1950–53) to large-scale urban plans key to understanding the complexity of the sculpture and painting departments— United States for two years, including the (Urban Hierarchy, 1969–71). Tyng’s notion of dynamic symmetry and participation soon expanded to about thirty Field Museum, in Chicago, and the Carnegie Fundamental to Tyng’s work is a evolving geometric structures. These pages students. The group’s first project took as Museum of Natural History, in Pittsburgh. study of the five Platonic solids—the tetra- were framed and placed around the perim- a case study the Sculpture Building for the Upon its return to Yale, a portion of the hedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron, and eter of the lower-level galleries, the Music Yale University School of Art. The build- exhibition was on display at the Peabody. dodecahedron—and the dynamic relation- Room and the Living Room. Models float- ing, located at 36 Edgewood Avenue, was In November 2010, Yale University ships between them. In summer 2010, she ing on pedestals and drawings for specific completed in 2007 by architects KieranTim- and the government of Peru negotiated an worked with curators Ingrid Schaffner (ICA projects were displayed in the various berlake and initially served as a swing space agreement to repatriate the vast majority senior curator), William Whitaker (curator and second-floor galleries. for the School of Architecture during the of the thousands of artifacts collected by collections manager, Architectural Archives, The most exciting aspect of the 2007-08 academic year. Here, in December Bingham. As part of this accord, in February University of Pennsylvania), and Srdjan installation was the placement of the Platonic 2009, New Users Group hosted an exhibi- of this year, Yale and the National University Jovanović Weiss (assistant professor, Tyler solids in each room of the Graham Founda- tion of photographs depicting the building’s of San Antonio Abad in Cuzco agreed to School of Art, Temple University) in a week- tion’s Madlener House. The sculptures habitation by its newfound users, the MFA establish an international center for the study long charrette at the Architectural Archives resonated within these pleasingly propor- sculpture department, and their ad hoc inter- of Machu Picchu and Incan Culture, where to develop the overall exhibition. Weiss, who tioned spaces, in which a corresponding ventions. The exhibition was accompanied the collection will continue to be studied designed the show, worked with Tyng to palette of natural wood with areas painted by a panel discussion, entitled “Building and preserved. produce the Platonic solids as human-scale white created an interplay that made the Sculpture Building,” on workspace design Yale co-curators Richard Burger geometric figures in natural plywood, painted sculptures shimmer, thus reinforcing Tyng’s and utilitarian aesthetics, with presentations and Lucy Salazar asked Marshall, Hanke, white on the interior surface. Tyng intended ideas of the dynamic nature of geometry. by Azhderian, Bozhkov and project architect and Morgan to adapt their exhibit design the figures to be inhabited, although the Cube (2010), the simplest of all, was Johann Mordhorst, an associate at Kieran- for its final location in Cuzco. In addition to forms are really only suitable for someone of placed in the garden. The others, such as Timberlake. Mordhorst presented the formal coordinating a team of American and Peruvi- diminutive stature, and the five solids would “Octahedron with Nested Cube,” were more and functional concepts behind his design an architects, lighting designers, audiovisual have been dwarfed by the high ceilings complex, and their placement in simple and then fielded questions from the audience engineers and graphic designers, the great- of the ICA gallery if not for the installation rectangular volumes caused a second, —all of whom were sitting in a modular struc- est challenge was spatial. The architects had of a soaring, rotating spiral of lightweight similar geometric event. Just as we are to ture built by the New Users Group. to reconfigure elements of the original exhibi- plywood fretwork. The display of Tyng’s look at the negative space between the Later, the group also collaborated tion to respond to the particular properties of exquisite drawings and beautifully crafted cube and the octahedron as a powerful and with Mercedes Vicente, curator of contem- the historic venue. The first floor of the former models was arranged on two semicircular geometrically precise shape, for example, so porary art at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Inca palace Casa Concha, where the new tables, a larger version, as Weiss explained, we can read the space between the sculp- in New Plymouth, New Zealand, on Darcy study center is to be housed, is composed of the table Tyng uses at her home studio. ture and the surfaces of the room. The most Lange: Work Studies, an exhibition on of three-foot-thick stone walls surrounding a A display case contained more powerful was the “Icosahedron with Nested the New Zealand artist that occupied the central courtyard. The compound was later drawings, maquettes, and publications, Cube,” set in the Dining Room, activated Edgewood Sculpture Gallery from Decem- expanded by the Spanish conquerors into a including an original copy of the Italian by framed views of the street, the luminous ber 7, 2009, to January 31, 2010. Lange colonial palace. journal Zodiac (No. 19, 1969), in which Tyng parquet flooring, the wood-paneled walls, employed photography, film, and video In the original exhibit,displays were staked her claim by articulating the radical and the intricately carved, coffered wood to record people at work and produced encountered sequentially, within a singu- potential of Classical geometry with the ceiling. Here, matter met geometry to breath- stunning re-creations of work sites in what lar space, at Casa Concha, the elements illustrated essay “Geometric Extensions of taking effect. John Du Carne called “situation retrieval.” had to be redistributed among twelve Consciousness.” Up until this exhibition and Lange recorded diverse occupations, such non-continuous rooms on two levels. And its catalog, the article remained the most —Alicia Imperiale as farmer, teacher, factory laborer, and artist, so the exhibit was reconceived as a series of extensive account of Tyng’s work. Imperiale is an associate professor at the exploring the idiosyncratic notion of “work” experiences—like beads along a string—with Also featured were images of Tyler School of Design. as a thread binding them together. Members spatial coherence achieved through color, Tyng’s The Divine Proportion in the Platonic of the New Users Group moderated a panel lighting, and wayfinding devices. The richly Solids (1964), an exhibition of her research, discussion with Vicente on Lange’s oeuvre. layered Incan and colonial architecture including a full-scale space-frame ceiling As the group continues to evolve, its provides an evocative backdrop to the story structure, displayed at the Graduate School focus remains: the role of the designed object of Machu Picchu’s construction, dissolution, of Fine Arts, and then at Penn’s Hayden Hall, in creating and altering social relationships and rediscovery. and supported partly by an AIA Brunner and interactions. In what way do the ideologi- Grant to research three-dimensional form. cal structures that produce a specific object —Elizabeth Morgan (’07) 18 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 Book Reviews

toy empires, Signal Hill creates private wealth, divergent as the fluidity or opportunism of No More Play: and resource management takes us all the Le Corbusier’s “environmental thinking” in Conversations on Urban way back to the city’s claim on the water replacing the hygiene argument of his 1925 of the Colorado River. Coolidge provides a Plan Voisin with that of defense against Speculation in Los Angeles unique and complex reworking of the Los aerial attack in his 1930 Moscow Plan, to the and Beyond Angeles region that redefines it in terms of its marginalization or anonymity of the architect national and global reach. in the fortification of the Atlantic Wall and By Michael Maltzan and edited by Soja describes what many Maginot Line—at the time Europe’s largest Jessica Varner Angelenos could not imagine: the politi- construction sites. The former puts work like Hatje Cantz, 2011, 240 pp. cal organization of transit riders to change Beatriz Colomina’s Domesticity at War, Peter the public-transit system. In relaying the Galison’s War on the Center, and Samuel I was wasted / I was a hippie / I was a burnout story of the Bus Riders Union, he takes a Weber’s Targets of Opportunity in context as / I was a dropout / you know I was out of my city known for its preference for private movements that return from defense back head / I was a surfer / I had a skateboard / I transportation and offers a new vision of one to hygiene, from front line to home front, was so heavy man / I lived on the strand with a radical and active public ridership. from enemy to self. The second prefigures —“Wasted” by the Circle Jerks band Conversely, Soja describes the Commu- disciplinary questions about architecture’s nity Benefit Agreements as a strategically role in contemporary cultures of ubiquitous The book No More Play: Conversations optimistic private enhancement of the public “product design.” on Urban Speculation in Los Angeles and realm. He espouses a kind of private-public Ultimately what sets Cohen’s efforts Beyond is a series of conversations about community-centered deal, a reversal of the apart is his insistence on the profession Los Angeles as a city undergoing dramatic public-private Reaganite agenda, allow- itself as the test subject or probe by which to change. Supported by the University of ing organized communities to benefit by clarify certain assumptions about the wartime Southern California School of Architecture sidestepping the complex political system. mobilized environment. Whether architects and edited by Los Angeles-based Michael No More Play describes Los were conscripted or interred, marginalized Maltzan and Jessica Varner (’08) with Angeles as a laboratory, and Maltzan and or bureaucratized, whether they became students in a seminar and studio, this book Varner go to great lengths for a call-and- specialists in the new (megastructures and is refined through conversations about L.A. response that builds on this framework. continuous interiors) or literal defenders of between Maltzan and artists and architects Today, the city is vibrant, its downtown the old, field strategists or aberrant illusion- including Catherine Opie, Sarah Whiting, bustling with crowds during the weekly ists (camoufleurs), in Cohen’s telling the Charles Waldheim, Matthew Coolidge, Thursday Art Walk. Boyle Heights is home war years did not so much produce Modern Geoff Manaugh, Edward Soja, James Flani- to young design studios, artists, taquerias, architecture as a set of critical, formal, gan, Mirko Zardini, Charles Jencks, and and an established Latino population. The aesthetic, or ideological precepts but served Quingyun Ma. rail-expansion transit-oriented develop- to modernize the profession as the organiza- What could have been a series of ments have created densities similar to that tion of labor, material, and sensory thresholds non-sequiturs has become a cohesive vision. of Wilshire Boulevard from Long Beach to under strategically produced conditions of Michael Maltzan’s thoughtfully composed Pasadena and out to Burbank. Reflecting on scarcity and lack. questions articulate a view of L.A. as an open the book’s positioning of Los Angeles as a In the second case, the diversifica- framework for exploration. The conversants laboratory for the future brings me back to tion of the architect’s worldly endeavors further Maltzan and Varner’s development of the Circle Jerks lyrics, which, for me, present during the war years was not only duty-bound Los Angeles’ inner workings as a city labora- the clearest description of the city of my or part of the larger redirection of civilian tory for economics, urbanism, and architec- birth. It has been given many labels, but each production, but also an a priori being-in-the- ture. They also portray L.A. as a city that has one is wasted as soon as it’s uttered. Los world that served as the rehearsal for various reached psychological, if not physical, limits. Angeles is a moving target, so take aim and forms of counterpractice. Cohen emphasizes The forum describes communities, public see it anew for yourself. that “architecture was put to the test” in the gatherings, and new neighborhoods that are literal alignment with dominant protocols of becoming denser rather than more diffused. —Andrew Lyon (’06) applied science and the scenario-based futur- The argument is delivered through a palimp- Lyon works in the New York City office of ology of the military-industrial complex. From sest of images and discussions designed Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners. that point on research and design, simulation, beautifully by Julie Cho. fieldwork, optimization, and other experiment- Catherine Opie discusses based criteria of evaluation would be implicit documenting the radical outcomes of gentri- Architecture in Uniform: to practice. However, Cohen’s is not an fication in Korea Town. Matthew Coolidge argument for the diffusion of the architect’s considers the delicate use of resources, Designing and Building for agency by submission to scientific rationaliza- and Edward Soja surveys the recent political the Second World War tion or technological prostheses; but neither is landscape of the city. Iwan Baan delivers it a lament for a loss of disciplinary autonomy. an overall visual essay of the faces, colors, By Jean-Louis Cohen, co-published by In fact the exhibition catalog self- and complexity of the changing landscape. the Canadian Centre for Architecture consciously leaves open the door to further All of these short dialogues explore how and Éditions Hazan, distributed in the scholarship by reference to historical exhibi- Los Angeles has experimented in urbaniza- US by Yale University Press (the catalog tion, forms of architectural media, pedagogy, tion, outsourced resources, and generated accompanies the exhibition presented at and provocation of the titular “uniform” global links. the CCA, April 13–September 18, 2011), —an overdetermined term that opens onto Opie’s is the most personal inter- 448 pp. questions of surface technologies, form, view as her photographs expose tears in mass production, standardization, heraldry, the fabric of the city. She describes living in The twentieth century comes into relief both and camouflage. Faced with Cohen’s an urban fabric of subcultures and subdivi- for its incommensurable achievement in the ambitious and densely cross-referenced sions, saying, “I’m afraid of fragmentation arts and for what Peter Sloterdijk notes as undertaking, it also seems natural to complete of the public space, that public space will three singular and incomparable features his methodology of the cross-section by no longer be able to hold a public” (p. 55). that constitute the originality of the era: the reflecting on certain foundational disciplinary Opie describes empty freeways as spaces practice of terrorism, the concept of product questions: namely scale, ground, and classi- that are for the individual and the collec- design, and environmental thinking: fication. The previously unseen scales of tive (p. 51). Her photograph “Untitled #41” “With the first, enemy interaction total industrialization and gas warfare, as depicts the empty 105-405 interchange and was established on a post-militaristic basis; well as unspeakable categories of “obscene compares freeways with pyramids, reminding with the second, functionalism was enabled and unimaginable numbers,” challenged the us that these ruins of inhabitation are devoid to re-connect to the world of perception; and profession to exceed the physical scale where of any public. Opie’s newest work depicts with the third, phenomena of life and knowl- matter and energy remain separate, and the formal gatherings in informal public spaces. edge became more profoundly linked than political scale between bodies and worlds. In them, the juxtaposition of a political voice ever before.” (Terror from the Air, trans. Amy The precedents of bunker and demountable in the open fabric of Los Angeles seems at Patton and Steve Corcoran, Los Angeles: installation—each in unitized or monumental first glance optimistic in terms of the possi- Semiotext(e), 2009, p. 9.) forms—fissure the dependent stereotomic- bilities of activism, but ultimately one is From this contemporary vantage point, it tectonic conception of ground into discrete left to reflect on the range of forces pulling is easy to see Jean-Louis Cohen’s book that typological lines, which are perhaps communities apart or pushing them into accompanies the exhibition Architecture in themselves rendered forever moot by the new, conflicting territories. Uniform, with its relatively novel periodiza- transformation of ground to dust in the atomic In the section “Land Use,” Coolidge tion of the war years 1939–1945, and broad cloud. Lastly, the question of classification describes his first experience in Los Angeles, presentation of themes that compare simul- can be brought to bear on Cohen’s intellectual noting after the 1992 riots, “Whoa, I didn’t taneous national mobilizations, as not only an project from the perspectives of both form know American cities were capable of this archival companion to the wealth of scholar- and content. But perhaps most interestingly, anymore” (p. 94). He describes the direct ship regarding postwar architecture but also this publication collects and enters into the redistribution of wealth between the classes, a retroactive manifesto. public domain architectures that at one point the poor simply taking the things they can’t In the first case, Cohen begins to or another were classified as top secret. afford. This “economic correction” (p. 94) articulate a topology of the near and far, of defines Coolidge’s way of seeing Los Angeles peace and wartime architectural efforts that —Jennifer W. Leung as a political economy of redistribution and privileges the architecture of war as opposed Leung is a critic in architecture at Yale and conflicted wealth: immigrants develop cheap to that of reconstruction. Citations are as practices architecture in New York. 19 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011

Other essays build upon this distantiates history herself. Like George Neo-avant-garde and and offer both new and revealing narratives Pride in Modesty: Kubler’s historical model in The Shape of Postmodern: as well as major reinterpretations of known Modernist Architecture Time (1962) in which change is progressive topics. One of the best examples is and serial rather than cyclical or event- Postwar Architecture in Martino Stierli’s piece about Denise Scott and the Vernacular based, there are no ruptures or returns of the Britain and Beyond Brown’s time in London during the early Tradition in Italy repressed, only the longue durée of continu- 1950s; it uses photographs she took while a ity. Whereas this method yields a provoca- “Studies in British Art 21” student at the Architectural Association By Michelangelo Sabatino tively and polemically monocular history, it Edited by Mark Crinson and to lend new insight into her becoming one University of Toronto Press, 2010, also leads Sabatino to discover vernacular Claire Zimmerman of architecture’s most outspoken pop 341 pp. patrimony everywhere, from kissing cousins Yale University Press, 2010, 432 pp. ideologues. Although Stierli considers his in the projects of Michelucci and Adalberto topic using normative methods of archival Recently awarded the American Association Libera to resemblances only a parent could It is hard to think of any labels for architecture research and formal analysis, other essays of Italian Studies first prize, Michelangelo see in Enrico Prampolini’s Futurist Pavilion. that have inspired as much critical caterwaul- begin to claim new territories and demon- Sabatino’s Pride in Modesty: Modernist But as the book’s title suggests, Sabatino’s ing as the distinction between neo-avant- strate how the writing of architecture history Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in interest is comportment toward history; garde and postmodern. These labels are elucidates contemporary conditions. Italy is a fascinating genealogy of vernacular hence, he implicitly indicts historians’ biases convenient devices that only entrench Zimmerman argues for the beginnings of a practices within and against Italian Modern for novelty and named architects, which and ossify existing positions. Consider, for transatlantic exchange in which Modernism architecture. Sabatino challenges common colored false narratives of history’s “regres- example, K. Michael Hays’s Architecture’s “returned” back to Europe from the United narratives that reduce twentieth-century Italy sive” return and dismissed the significance of Desire: Reading the Late Avant-Garde (2009) States in the form of images published in to a Classicism-versus-Modernism dialectic anonymous builders’ informal techniques. and Reinhold Martin’s Utopia’s Ghost: Archi- important American publications. She or leap from Futurism and rationalism to In the final pages, as Sabatino tecture and Postmodernism, Again (2010), focuses on how images of Mies van der the neo-avant-garde while condemning, abandons his objective voice to endorse two books that use the terms avant-garde Rohe’s Chemical and Metallurgy Building, as Reyner Banham did, postwar traditional recent traditional paradigms against and postmodern to offer contesting claims at the Illinois Institute of Technology (1945– paradigms as “regressions.” Instead, the “pompous formalism,” this methodological about architecture’s disciplinary status. 46), were important points of reference book surveys, from around 1910 to the critique becomes moralistic and his focused Readers who think that the most for the Smithsons’ career-defining 1970s, the continuity and rediscoveries approach loses its clarity. Neither technol- recent entry to this literature, art historians Hunstanton School (1949–54), a first of what he calls “marginal” practices that ogy nor mass culture deflowers Sabatino’s Mark Crinson and Claire Zimmerman’s edited instance of a now familiar condition in which coexisted with Classical idioms and flowered vernacular, whose durability props up the volume Neo-avant-garde and Postmodern, international image-based networks are during the midcentury. truncated final chapter on domestic and is an exception will be disappointed. Instead important for the mediation and creation of The opening chapter breaks new international postwar revalorizations of of clarification, one finds complication. This architecture. In other examples, a philosophi- ground by paralleling the vernacular’s vernacular practices. Because it tapers off ambitious tome features sixteen essays cal or critical-historiographic point of view significance to the turn-of-the-century rise with Aldo Rossi’s “architectural modernity of demonstrating how familiar distinctions takes center stage. Here, the real standout of ethnography and problems of national resistance” via the “ordinary things of the city between pre- and postwar, modernity is Michael Osman’s (’00) study of Reyner identity. Subsequent chapters chart dialects and countryside,” one expects the epilogue and postmodernity, Modernism and Post- Banham’s concept of “ecology,” an urgent, within picturesque traditions that were to conclude the book. Instead, Sabatino Modernism, and even modernity and late inspired piece that asks us to reconsider often dismissed by Modernists as tasteless surveys recent American appropriations of modernity, have been too facile. The placing the scale and range of Banham’s histori- eclecticism—Stile Floreale architects and Italian historical and traditional allusions as of complicated aesthetic trends and practic- cal writings while confronting the work of those associated with classicist undertones, counter-models to Modernism’s apparently es into discrete periods blurs our historical contemporary theorists such as Bruno such as Marcello Piacentini, are cast in a pejorative formalist legacy. As his argument sensibilities. Crinson and Zimmerman claim Latour and Peter Sloterdijk. new light. Sabatino goes on to reveal the shifts to contemporary critique, omitting criti- in their introduction that the collected essays As satisfying as it is, Neo-avant- vernacular’s genetic code within the Italian cism of building standardization’s effects on offer a timely reconsideration of postwar garde and Postmodern is by no means avant-garde and throughout Modernism’s traditional architectural languages (codified architects, artists, critics, and historians such perfect. Though Crinson and Zimmerman interwar years, showing common influences during Italy’s neo-realist experiences), as Alison and Peter Smithson, Robert Venturi have brilliantly mapped out a new set of between the nomad Bernard Rudofsky and American Post-Modernism’s simulation and Denise Scott Brown, Eduardo Paolozzi, contours for architecture in postwar England, architects such as Giovanni Michelucci of the vernacular and the consumerism of James Stirling, Reyner Banham, and others. one wonders if their methods could be and Giuseppe Pagano, who are better known tradition-as-commodity seem problematic. The end result is what the editors label “a applied to countries such as the United as Modernists. Further, instead of maintaining his method better explanatory contraption” for under- States, Germany, France, or Japan. This is Emphasizing cultural organizations, and presupposition of the vernacular’s standing postwar architecture’s theoretical only a minor quibble, however. The fact state policy, legislation, and exhibitions—for resistance, Sabatino might have come to a and historical domains. that figures such as the Smithsons and example, Pagano’s 1936 Triennale installa- more modest conclusion by questioning the As the book’s title indicates, Crinson Stirling appear and reappear as éminences tion Architettura Rurale Italiana—Sabatino vernacular’s contemporary instrumentality, and Zimmerman’s “contraption” is regional- grises throughout the volume is a more recalls how institutions and politics condi- whether its “subversive” potential is still alive ist in scope and execution. The essays look immediate cause for concern, only because tioned the reception of architectural tradi- and how our polemics differ from those of to 1950s Britain as a proving ground for a they may eclipse the brief significance of tions and how the vernacular empowered prewar Europe’s. thesis that asks, generally, whether British contemporary (and momentary) develop- polemics outside the heroic camps struggling All architecture is instrumental to postwar art and architecture practices ments such as Hubert de Cronin Hastings for Fascism’s approval. He continues this other ends, but what about history? Sabatino represented a new, troubling relationship and Nikolaus Pevsner’s resuscitation of trajectory beyond World War II, summarizing argues that while architects often distort the with prewar avant-garde practices such as English Romanticism as a new foundation the complex debates over the vernacular’s vernacular, “historians and folklorists tend collage, montage, and assemblage, or was it for urban design in Britain. However, the inspirational sway, from democratic aspira- to be more inclusive and less self-serving.” a cultural response rooted in ideological and questions the editors have begun to ask in tions during neo-realism to the rise of Post- At odds with his conclusion in which he political resistance to the past? this volume quickly transcend such small Modernism. Sabatino also demonstrates insinuates his history into the design commu- The editors have organized the complaints. Though Hays and Martin have the Italian vernacular’s international cachet: nity’s battles to declare the vernacular’s essays into thematic chapters that hint at demonstrated the importance of mapping cross-pollinations with America and Scandi- contemporary subversive potential against an intellectual, but not exclusively historical, out postwar architecture developments navia show that traditional idioms are essen- vanguard elitism, how, precisely, historians trajectory. The first, titled “New Brutalism in their books, the question remains as to tial for understanding Italy’s contribution to, of the everyday are de facto immune from the and Pop,” starts with essays devoted to what the discipline will do with this knowl- not its withdrawal from, global culture. operative impulse to use history to indicate practices recognized as signature “first” edge. As Crinson and Zimmerman have Exemplified in his deft parsing of future tendencies is left unclear. But it is the moments of emerging art and architecture shown, history is valuable not only because the vernacular’s terminological spectrum, methodological implications for historical practices in postwar England. Alex Potts’s it reveals or clarifies what was previously including the primitive, archaic, rural, and practices raised by Sabatino’s longue durée examination of the seminal exhibition This unknown, but also because it reminds us Mediterranean, rather than overemphasiz- that brings up questions. Is methodological Is Tomorrow, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery of how architecture once grew out of its ing architectonic languages, Sabatino’s clarity sufficient for ensuring the historian’s in 1956, and Ben Highmore’s study of the institutional garments, transcending its history celebrates the vicissitudes of words objectivity toward his or her subject? Smithsons’ development of their “streets disciplinary boundaries to take on a more and struggles over the changing meanings Conversely, can one construct a method in the air” approach to building circulation prominent role in society. Yet this stability of tradition and history. As such, he under- that works objectively and operatively—that in Robin Hood Gardens form the chapter’s is illusory, succumbing to shifts and attitudes scores the vernacular’s permanence and is, are objectivity and operativity always at core. These are followed by the first revision- that the historian must detect, interpret, instrumentality—that is, how architects, odds? Can today’s historian be genuinely ist piece: Stephen Kite’s study of Colin St. and communicate. intellectuals, and politicians appropriated modest or are we now all operative critics? John Wilson’s historicisms, a piece that everyday narratives to position themselves in Michelangelo Sabatino’s Pride in Modesty, reprises the author’s earlier research from —Enrique Ramirez (MED ’07) regard to the present. like its subject, will undoubtedly endure. books such as An Architecture of Invention: One of Pride in Modesty’s strengths Still, it seems proper to ask the author a Colin St. John Wilson (with Sarah Menin, is the force of Sabatino’s historical method, question raised by his writing: How are histo- 2005) and introduces readers to little-known which the author highlights in his introduc- rians instrumentalizing history to position aspects of Wilson’s work. These essays tion, crediting historian Manfredo Tafuri’s themselves and to what ends? Paraphrasing establish the intellectual bedrock support- influence but writing, “I do not fully subscribe the interwar critic Raffaello Giolli, it is danger- ing the rest of the book. The authors revisit to his approach.” Rejecting Tafuri’s deter- ous to believe the problems of architecture familiar tropes and mine them for histori- ministic, counter-enlightenment analysis are separate from the problems of archi- cal complexities. Pop’s negotiations with from a working-class viewpoint, Sabatino tects. Likewise, can we really separate the popular culture and advertising media and instead innovatively assumes the vernacu- problems of history from the problems of New Brutalism’s use of materials and its lar’s viewpoint. Recasting it as a living history historians? volumetric earnestness become more subject to its own dynamic self-transfor- than styles or moods. They are thus present- mation, Sabatino’s approach elevates the —Britt Eversole (M. Arch ’04 and MED ’07) ed as instances wherein art and architec- vernacular’s perspective from inside history’s ture appear as highly articulated modes of flow as opposed to historical methods in social engagement. which modernity’s predisposition for novelty 20 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 Spring 2011 Lectures

The following are excerpts from the spring was invested in that city —everything else you how brilliantly I support the architect. 2011 lecture series. Drawings by Victor was gone. It is very difficult to take out the Our practice started in 1996, during the last Vincent Lo Agran, critic in architecture at Yale. beast. It is the mundane beast, the fairly recession, and we have chosen to focus on pleasant beast, the beast that only breaks in quality and innovative products. Nothing Vincent Lo little pieces. But then there are also examples else has really mattered to us. Edward P. Bass Distinguished of seduction—ideas or projects like the As an architect, you’re confronted Visiting Architecture Fellow Dutch dykes—where it’s hard to say what with all sorts of things. It takes ten years to “Superblock/Supertall Developments the beast is. Is the beast the dynamics of the judge an engineer because it takes that long in China and Hong Kong” ocean environment? Is the beast the struc- to make sure things stand up. Architects can January 6 ture of the dykes? There’s a little bit of a blur write a book and do nothing else. Although I One of my dreams has always been to come there. It might be both. am not great at theorizing engineering except to the East Coast to lecture, and I’ve been as a way to articulate our story, my practice waiting for your invitation for a long time. Makram el Kadi produced a book and exhibition after ten What I want to try to do today is examine why Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor years of work. The new things we’re having China is urbanizing in such a big way and “Potentially Dangerous Space” to engage as design engineers—ubiquity, some of the solutions to this boom. China January 13 banality, distressed sites, packing—we can has a need to urbanize. But why? What’s The interest we have as a practice in dealing all blame on the Lehman Brothers, but I think happening? If you look at the figures, it’s primarily with contentious areas comes from there’s a bigger issue related to the split mind-boggling: 36 percent of China’s popula- the fact that both my partner, Ziad Jamaled- between design education and construc- tion lived in urbanized areas in the year 2000, dine, and I grew up in Lebanon, where we did tion, for which our financial market is often which is 459 million people. But this year, our undergraduate degrees in architecture. blamed wrongly. it’s already 635 million people, or 47 percent But it’s also part of our interest in viewing One of the things that my practice of the entire country. That’s an increase of architecture with a more socially conscious has focused on is taking away the pain from Kristina Hill roughly fifteen million people a year. activist role. In that sense, we see our the architect. However, it’s not that simple: Unfortunately, China has a lack of practice, L.E.FT, as being both historicist and we take the pain for you, but we let you feel land. The amount of buildable landmass contextual. The way we understand histori- it a little. Early on, I studied how architects in China is about the same as it is in the cism is in a twofold proposition. The first think. Zaha used to say that doing things like United States. With this shortage of land, one is a more passive one in which certain that just makes it difficult, but it was a way of urbanization is going to create a lot of differ- practices in architecture use contemporary understanding what happens in the head of ent problems. That is why we need very materials, construction techniques, or new an architect so that we can understand what dense development. A traditional city block software to create a new passive relationship we’re doing. in Shanghai is walkable and mixed usage, between architecture and culture. Our way and there is a lot of history and culture there. of understanding our practice is proactive in Nasser Rabbat But it cannot meet the needs of today. There terms of the relationship between architec- Brendan Gill Lecture is very low efficiency, and the buildings are ture and culture. We actively seek to create “Architecture Between Religion basically obsolete. the operational usage of architecture to and Politics” Our solution in Shanghai was the imbue our projects with a certain distinct and Delivered as the keynote for the sympo- Xintiandi development. Before we started productive relationship between the two. sium “Middle East/Middle Ground” our development, it was dilapidated, old We also see ourselves as contex- January 21 stone-gate housing, an architecture style tual, but not in the normal sense of the word. The Middle East is an exemplary middle unique to Shanghai. In 1996 I engaged We understand the importance of having ground, located between Europe and Asia Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill to do a master architecture that pushes the envelope and Africa, between Christianity and Islam, plan and participated very heavily in the from a stylistic or formal perspective, but and between history as destiny and history planning process. I knew that Shanghai had we also want to understand the context in as dialectical process. It is the place where Makram el Kadi very high aspirations to become a thriv- which we build from an economic, social, civilizations intersected since at least the ing international center, so we designed and, ultimately, a political perspective. In time of Alexander the Great. These junctures Xintiandi to respond to that need around the our projects, we try to go back to notions of left their indelible marks on its topography existing urban fabric. architecture that have been discredited since and architecture as well as the compositions the Modern movement, such as typology, and cultures of its populations. Kristina Hill program, and function, and redefine them in The middle-ground position, Timothy Egan Lenahan Memorial more contemporary ways. Instead of looking however, has been noticeably eroding in the Lecture at architecture only in its proportion and last sixty years. A general mood of religiously “Beauty or the Beast: Design and form or in its more independent aspects, we inclined monoculturalism has recently infil- Infrastructure” try to militarize it in a way that would give it trated the region with pockets of ferociously January 10 another dimension, one that is more danger- protective communities brandishing their With infrastructure, we make decisions about ous. We understand the political act occurs religious, ethnic, or linguistic differences as dynamics in space. It is always about flow, at a number of different levels—state, city, national traits. Religious architecture has and then we behave around and naturalize it. and building—but we approach politics in a consequently become a weapon of choice I often refer to infrastructure with my students way that relates to three different scales of in this tug of cultural war between hardened as “the beast” because I’m always interested architecture: there is the detail level, which religious identities and equally unyielding in how it asks us, “What kind of commit- we call the “body politic”; there is the build- but weak political regimes trying to cover ments have we made?” and “What’s in our ing level, which we call the “spatial politic”; up their weakness by playing the religion basement?” Take the drain lines under the and there is the scale of the urban, which we game. The regimes have been sponsoring streets of every city: there are the main lines, call the “geopolitical.” monumental state mosques both as markers Hanif Kara the laterals, and the homeowner’s big-ticket of their religiously sustained authority (even item, the side sewer. If it breaks, you have to Hanif Kara if they politically teeter between religion and pay for it, but taxes pay for everything else. Gordon H. Smith Lecture pseudo-secularism) and as appeasement for This is the beast, and no one is going to take “Within Architecture: the growing popular piety, expressed through it out and start over again. It’s a latent beast. Design Engineering” various channels of public behavior and It isn’t something that we’re just going to take January 20 political engagement. out and adjust. It needs to feed. Maintenance I see engineering as a very young disci- The religious architecture in the dollars rain on the beast constantly. And pline. We never did building calculations modern and contemporary Middle East (but the question always is, how we can use that for thousands and thousands of years; also in other places around the world) has money to do something more innovative? architects let us be born about two hundred been struggling with a duality of identity, That’s the big budget that feeds the beast, years ago, and then we started complicating national and ecumenical, imposed on it by and the beast is not going away. things for you. From here on, I’m going to politics. Designers and patrons have been I remember a professor at Harvard be full of contradictions and talk about the trying, somewhat whimsically and hardly ever in the 1980s who had been a Fulbright strange combination of passion, business with any real design flair, to accommodate scholar in Stuttgart the first five years or savvy, self-improvement, language, passive those conflicting domains of signification. so after World War II. He said the people construction engineering, and dramatic The real challenge in the current wave of there were thinking about how the city was structures. Most of these are side effects. mosque building is rather ideological: how to ninety percent destroyed and that they could My contribution is to understand the separate the political from the religious and re-organize the street layout. Finally, they redefinition of the architect in each of these recognize their mutual autonomy. To allow realized it didn’t make sense to re-organize cases, and my work is a side effect of all the political and the religious to intermingle the streets because the one thing they had that the architect does. I’m not here to tell and overlap as state mosques by the very Nasser Rabbat left was the beast. It was latent capital that you how brilliant my work is; I’m here to tell nature of their contradictory composite 21 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011

names and aims inevitably results in a unbuilt project for the Royal Bank of Canada Thomas Y. Levin double-pronged impoverishment, architec- exemplify how architecture becomes a kind of David W. Roth and Robert H. Symonds Thomas de Monchaux turally and civicly. all-encompassing state of mind. Memorial Lecture However, looking at Roche’s archi- “Topographies of Elusion” Thomas de Monchaux tectural output during the past fifty years, we Presented as keynote address to the Myriam Bellazoug Memorial Lecture should ask, what are the stakes for architec- symposium “Fugitive Geographies” “Seven Architectural Embarrassments” ture today? Roche would probably be the March 24 February 10 first to admit that big ideas and big buildings The compelling question I want to raise is, Embarrassment is different from its come with a certain risk. Yet while some what is exactly is the relationship between colleagues, shame, and humiliation. Shame of his buildings certainly make us wonder fugitive geography as a thematic concern— primarily connotes an awareness of ethical whether utopia was ever meant to be real, i.e. films about people on the run—and the failure, the direct point of index from which they still manage to evoke a sense of awe tendency of such films towards what one virtue arises. Humiliation, as opposed to and nostalgia for a time when architects still could call hetero-generic, multimedial, poly- humility, which is the virtue of sidestepping aspired to progress and change. morphous hybridity? What would it mean hierarchy altogether, connotes extreme to think of topographies of illusions as an differences in power between its partici- Peter Eisenman image, in which space itself is on the run? pants. It may be that all humiliation is shame- Charles Gwathmey Professor in Practice Perhaps then what is being killed in Natural ful, or it should be, but embarrassment is “Wither Architecture? The Time of Born Killers is in fact a certain kind of narra- distinct from both. Although it is potentially the Site” tive space, a certain spatial regime of the rich in ethical and powerful content, its April 7 image. This implies that what we need to etymology is remarkably spatial and porno- What I have presented here is neither a justi- think when we think about topographies of graphic and, therefore, architectural. The fication nor an apology for what I do. It is a illusion are new forms of image practices, in borrowing of the word is the same that we fact that our time is a late moment. I do not, which what is on the run is nothing less than Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen find in bar, barrier, embargo, and last but not however, believe we are at the end of ideol- the cinematic image as such. For example, least, baroque, that which hampers, hinders, ogy, as many people think. On the contrary, data mashing appears as mass cultural or ultimately establishes thresholds of I believe architecture is still ideological and idiom on our cultural landscape at a time of organizational legitimacies. Through a paral- very much political and, therefore, quite great anxiety about the digital image. This is lel development, we also have the embar- relevant. Indeed, one could argue that an anxiety fueled by the unreadability of the rassment in the sense of excess, meaning architecture is an important discipline today digital, in practices such as synthetic videos the indulgence of luxury, which comes to because its relevance lies somewhere other produced at the MIT Media Lab, where one’s us through an inflection of the word toward than what it does in law or business. It is a speech can be synthetically generated out complexity and confusion, indecision and way of explaining—metaphorically, in space of a pre-recorded phonetic catalog. The inaction. The embarrassment of riches—and and time —the many crises we face. But in specter, having video of people saying things embarrassment in general—is not the way order to do so, to act politically and criti- they never said, in languages they don’t one encounters it, but just because one does cally, an architect must first have an idea, speak, gives the foreground in pixel bleeding not know what to do with embarrassment or, in other words, an architectural project of the data mashing video an almost reassur- doesn’t mean embarrassment doesn’t know as opposed to a mere design. The temporal ing quality. Simultaneously, the aesthetics what to do with us. concept of the site is as a project concerned of the compression pack, is also effectively with architectural ideas, which in themselves engaged in an important retooling of our Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen are inherently critical and ideological. sensorium, producing new perceptual litera- “Kevin Roche: Architecture as Unfortunately, political discussions cies and articulating new spatio-temporal Environment” in architecture today only seem to be about logics that are what is most important, excit- February 17 sustainability, LEED certificates, parametrics, ing, and urgent about new media. In many ways, Kevin Roche can be and so on. But I often wonder whether they Peter Eisenman considered a quintessential architect of argued about sustainability when Borromini John Patkau the constant instability of “postindustrial did San Carlino or Sant’Ivo, for example. I Lord Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor society,” which Daniel Bell, writing in the don’t think so. Clearly those are “sustainable” in Architecture 1960s, considered characteristic of the new projects in that they are still here today, but “Buildings/Projects/Competitions socioeconomic condition of the late twenti- their importance to architecture lies in their 2009–2011” eth and early twenty-first centuries. Indeed critical differences and not in their relation- April 14 when embarking on independent practice ship to some marketable current trend. This In my last lecture at Yale, I made the during that decade, his work started to reflect is not an argument against sustainability, but argument for architecture as form-finding the economic and cultural shifts that still sustainability is not what animates an archi- and something shaped by circumstance. I characterize our era and have continued to tectural idea. described how at the outset of our practice, do so today. Conceiving architecture as part I was recently reminded of some- my partner, Patricia, and I often initiated of a larger environment is emblematic of the thing Daniel Burnham said: “Make no little a project by searching for what we called desire to engage these dynamic conditions. plans; they have no magic to stir men’s “profound retention:” those aspects of site, The ceiling of the lobby at the General Food blood.” Today it would seem that many of climate, building context, program, or local Headquarters building, completed in Rye, our politicians have very little desire to stir culture that would facilitate the development New York, in 1982, captures the sense of how anybody’s blood. But architecture does have of an architectural form that was evocative everything at the time was constantly chang- that capacity. Architecture can stir reaction of circumstance. The result of this approach ing and shifting, and how as a consequence and movement. So what I am doing tonight was that individual projects often took on it became harder and harder to separate the is trying to give you a little insight into why distinct identities in response to circum- real from the effect. I am optimistic about the future of archi- stance. Consequently, the corporeal relation- Thomas Levin As we have seen, many of Roche’s tecture. I hope this brief presentation will in ship between our projects was loose at best. buildings demonstrate that understanding some way clarify what it can mean to be an To us, this was an appropriate expression architecture as part of such a dynamic field architect, and, in particular someone like you of the diversity within which we work. This questions the very status of the architec- today, entering school in what is a moment year, my Yale studio takes as its operational tural object. At one end of the spectrum, of lateness and also a period of economic assumption the somewhat more completely architecture often gets reduced to its basic downturn. I was not unlike you; after all, I expressed notion that architecture arises components, to the bare minimum, to almost was born in the Depression, lived through the from the synthesis of circumstantial consid- nothing, as in the case of the Wesleyan downturns of 1972 and of 1982, and started erations through the act of imagination. This University Arts Center, a series of limestone my practice at the moment of an economic act of imagination can take many forms. walls forming spaces and courtyards. The downturn. Remember, economic downturns For Patricia and me, this imagination can IBM Pavilion at the 1964–65 New York World’s don’t last forever. But if you don’t have an be personal and idiosyncratic. However, it Fair might represent the most extreme case: education and if you don’t continue to believe is more commonly an expression of cultural the building consists mainly of a 1.6-acre in the future as the present, then you will meaning and purpose, formal analogy, or an canopy carried by tree-shaped steel columns. always be in an economic downturn. Archi- expression of an environmental response Here, the architectural goal was to provide tecture matters. Don’t squander that legacy. in construction and technology. The more the minimum setting for human interaction inclusive the imagination is to the diversity and activity by simulating the atmosphere of circumstances, the closer the imagination of a forest. At the other end of the spectrum, relates to the creation of architecture. architecture envelops all aspects of our lives by becoming so big that we hardly notice Excerpts compiled by Matthew Gin (MED ’12) it’s there. The immersive interiors of the John Patkau Ford Foundation, Union Carbide, and the 22 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 Advanced Studios

Project of Daniel Markiewicz and Ryan Spring 2011 Welch, Peggy Deamer spring 2011 Vincent Lo studio The seventh Bass Fellowship studio—led by Project of Kate Lenehan,

Demetri Porphyrios Spring Spa Detail developer Vincent Lo, of Hong Kong–based Scale 1:100m Shui On Land, and Saarinen Visiting Profes- 2011 studio sors Paul Katz, Jamie von Klemperer, and Forth Bagley (’05), of New York City–based Kohn Pedersen Fox, along with critic in architecture, Andrei Harwell (’06)—examined dense, vertically oriented urban architecture in China’s expanding western region to design mixed-use buildings combined with Chongqing’s central rail station. The studio responded to the prediction that, in the next twenty years, China’s urban growth will increase as 350 million people move from the countryside to cities. The students visited China to see Project of Vivian Hsu, Thomas Beeby spring 2011 studio Vincent Lo’s 2001 mixed-use development Xintiandi, in Shanghai—a shopping, restau- rant, and art-gallery complex housed in and Project of William Gridley, Vincent Lo and KPF Project of Erin Dwyer, Makram el Kadi spring 2011 studio around traditional Chinese buildings—and spring 2011 studio high-rise projects that have informed his and KPF’s work. After rigorous precedent studies, the students worked individually to multiply the programmatic building blocks of Xintiandi, creating buildings that maximized density and reconciled the desire for leasable area with the need for public and private spaces to enhance the area’s identity and foster sustainable lifestyles. Project of The studio challenged the students Alexandra to identify alternative models for density with Tailer and Kipp Edick, projects that wove together skyscrapers, a Emmanuel multilevel podium connection, sky bridges, Petit spring atria, and rooftop or sunken gardens. Many Project of Mark Gettys, Greg Lynn spring 2011 studio Project of Jacqueline Ho, John Patkau spring 2011 studio 2011 studio mitigated the vast size and scope of the project by creating clear transit infrastruc- ture networks, fluid circulation routes, and Greg Lynn academic setting and learn best with hands- economic viability and a local, space-specific multiple architectural solutions that broke Greg Lynn, Davenport Visiting Professor, on problem-solving. situation. They also learned to establish the down the large scale and rebuked assump- and Brennan Buck asked their students Patkau asked the students to difference between a utopian approach and tions about the potential for single mixed- to design a hypostyle high-speed-train consider the site’s architectural and industrial good planning, determining the virtue of use blocks. At the final review, the projects station along the proposed San Diego–Los history, the current condition, and the cultural one over the other in light of Chandigarh’s sparked intense discussion from a jury Angeles–San Francisco–Sacramento rail and programmatic objectives of the museum sustainable future. composed of John Alshuler, Albert Chan, network. After studying various precedents and workshop. Using a variety of media, Among the various ways in which Larry Ng (’84), Patricia Patkau (’78), William and visiting cities along the proposed rail students investigated topography, building the students developed their schemes— Pedersen, Alan Plattus, Demetri Porphyrios, line, the students selected their project envelope, and structural and environmental whether government-building expansions, Alex Twining (’77), and Qiu Shuje and Ma Hu sites with the goal of developing porous systems at a variety of scales. They also were technical parks, follies, sustainable integra- Chongqing city officials. indoor and outdoor spaces and dense inspired by significant works of architecture, tion of building and land, elimination of civic space, redefining figure-ground in a which they visited during the travel week in cars—the feedback from the jury of George Makram el Kadi contemporary manner. Barcelona, including the work of Gaudì, Enric Baird, Kadambari Baxi, Deborah Gans, The Louis I. Kahn Assistant Visiting Profes- Since columns characterize Miralles, and Enric Ruiz-Gueli. John Patkau, Vikram Prankash, Vyayanathi sor, Makram El Kadi with Ziad Jamaleddin hypostyle halls, the students first designed Some student designs incorpo- Rao, Moshe Safdie, Michael Sorkin, and led a studio focused on the changing role of a column that could be occupied, for either rated studio spaces, theaters, offices, and Stanislaus von Moos indicated that either the mosque as both a religious and secular program or circulation, enclose energy and workshops in scattered buildings; others utopianism was a red herring in terms of a space. Conducted in parallel to Yale’s “Middle building systems, and express structure created “mixing chambers” with natural future Chandigarh or that Chandigarh was a Ground/Middle East” spring symposium, through a “composite” rather than “tectonic” light and ventilation via light-wells or rolling red herring for thinking through a contempo- the studio addressed the new potential for sensibility. The hypostyle halls incorporated roofs. One student constructed an elevated rary utopia. a hybrid community program that aims to requirements of the future transportation bar-shaped building across the river. Another redefine the mosque beyond its current litur- grid, a multimodal electric charging station, employed cellular hexagons for individual Demetri Porphyrios gical and prayer functions by considering the and a power plant for the high-speed- programs, and others integrated the building Demetri Porphyrios, Louis I. Kahn Visiting relationship between its physical space and train network. with the landscape of riparian rings and public Professor, and George Knight (’95) led a the social realm of Islam. Though domes and Students proposed widely differing paths that engaged the ecological system. studio focused on designing a large-scale, minarets are typological elements that identify solutions: some situated their main public The diverse projects were presented high-end resort along a restored lakefront mosques, they are not stylistically inherent to spaces in the bays between columns; several to the review critics: George Baird, Tom on the outskirts of Jaipur, the first planned the archetype. So the students investigated enlarged the columns to contain a central Coward, Cynthia Davidson, Anthony Field- city in India and the cultural capital of Rajas- different typologies, definitions, and catego- hall; others shredded the column grid, allow- man, Kenneth Frampton, Vincent James, than. Students informed their designs for rizations, placing the mosque’s history in ing the main hall to flow through both the Joeb Moore (’91), Patricia Patkau (’78), new programs by studying local building relation to contemporary Islamic discourse. column bays and the columns themselves, in Raymund Ryan (’87), and Adam Yarinsky. precedents, such as the palace, the fort, and Challenged to combine programs section. Designs explored anthropomorphic the haveli—a traditional building type derived that could be added to the building’s function, forms with smooth surfaces, which jurors Peggy Deamer from the private mansion. the students were asked to propose mosque thought were reminiscent of Saarinen’s Peggy Deamer’s studio, “Chandigarh: In the third week, the studio group designs for a site that was part of Tripoli’s TWA Terminal, as well as thickened skins on A Contemporary Utopia,” with Christopher went on an intensive study trip to Delhi Permanent International Fair, originally columnar structures that allowed for experi- Starkey (’09) challenged the students to and sites such as the Jaipur City Palace, designed but not completed by Brazilian mentation with moving circulation systems investigate the viability of utopian planning Jal Mahal, Deeg Water Palace, Amber architect Oscar Niemeyer, in 1962. Program- that worked from the inside out, revealing the in the context of contemporary economics, Fort, the Taj Mahal, several step-wells, the matically, some projects explored a social layers of the train station. material exchange, and politics to determine mosque and palace quarters of the Mogul approach to mosque design that risked a A discussion of infrastructure as which aspects of Le Corbusier’s utopian city Fahtephur Sikri, and their studio site in banalization of the “sacred” nature of the dynamic space in a new typology for transit plan for the Punjab capital can be sustained Jaipur. The group also visited several haveli project, in turning students toward the “every- engaged the jury, which included Thomas today. Students chose the site, program, in which schools, shops, homes, police day” but thereby making religion more acces- Beeby (’65), Aine Brazil, Mark Gage (’01), and scale of their intervention after visiting stations, temples, workshops, and offices are sible. The conflation of mosque and housing Keith Krumwiede, Joel Sanders, Raffie Chandigarh and learning about contempo- now housed. created a new typology of social housing Samach, Galia Solomonoff, Enric Ruiz Geli, rary urban issues. The midterm presentation of the wherein religion could be performed from and Richard Schulman. Most of the students chose to precedent studies was a parallèle of large the comfort of a domestic space. Pursued address ways to manage Chandigarh’s posters that followed a common scale in a variety of projects, this method led to a John Patkau growth, given that the aim of its original and graphic format to foster comparison. gradual integration of the mosque with the John Patkau, Norman Foster Visiting Profes- planners to limit its size and preserve its Students dissected each building’s history cultural, commercial, and leisure life of the sor and Timothy Newton (’07) asked students boundaries by a greenbelt has long since and speculated on the future adaptability of city, ultimately juxtaposing the mosque with to design the Whitney Academy, a “school for been violated. A few took on the issue of the the traditional typologies according to the the transportation network of the city. The inventors,” as part of the Whitney Museum virtually dysfunctional capital complex; some preliminary master plans. During the second projects were presented to a jury of Michelle and Workshop, in Hamden, Connecticut. confronted the issue of “boundary” as a half of the semester, each student selected Addington, Tom Coward, Alishan Demirtas, Located at the edge of a dam, the academy more generic condition of both Chandigarh a specific building or complex within their Teman Evans, Jennifer Leung, Emmanuel responds to the unaddressed educational and utopianism. In all cases, the students master plan to design using the program Petit, Nassar Rabbat, Michelangelo Sabatino, needs of gifted 15- to 18-year-old students had to deal with the tension between a requirements of hotel, food services, enter- and Beth Stryker. who cannot thrive in a conventional systems approach to environmental and tainment amenities, and retail spaces. 23 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011

The plan of Fahtephur Sikri, for example, inspired a project that incorporated a series of discrete, private residential courts. The ancient Indian typology of the step-well influenced the design of a project organized Yale SoA Books around a central atrium descending toward

the lakefront. The design of a multi-cellular Greg Lynn & Mark Foster Gage, editors Featuring Greg Lynn & courtyard hotel, sitedChris amid Bangle a series of urban Mark Foster Gage editors Founder of Chris Bangle blocks and a waterfront Associates promenade, SRL was Lise Anne Couture influenced by the haveli Architect residential and founding partner typology. of Asymptote Architecture Students presentedGreg Foley the final Of Visionaire, V Magazine, and Thank You Bear. Illustrator, projects with their precedent designer, and creator schemes and Mark Foster Gage Architecture High Performance and Software: Composites, Surfaces, 3-D digital fabricated modelsPrincipal of Gage/ of the historic Composites, Clemenceau Architects buildings to a jury includingFrank O. Gehry Ben Bolgar, Surfaces, and Architect and founding partner Albert Chan, Paul Katz, of Frank Barbara O. Gehry & Associates Littenberg, Software: High Bill Kreysler Performance Founder of Kreysler & Associates Steve Mouzon, Larry Ng(K&A), a custom(’84), molder of fiber Alan Plattus, reinforced products Architecture Jaquelin Robertson Greg(’61), Lynn Michelangelo Architect and principal of Sabatino, and Jamie VonGreg Lynn FORMKlemperer. Adriana Monk Founder and Design Director of amDESIGN

Tom Beeby William Pearson Yale School of Architecture Technical Director at North Sail’s ISBN 978–0–393–73333–4 3DL® manufacturing plant in Minden, Nevada Tom Beeby (’65), Bishop visiting professor,

Published by Yale School of Architecture asked the students to www.architecture.yale.edudesign a prototype Distributed by W.W. Norton & company infill house for inner-city www.wwnorton.com neighborhoodsPrinted in in Canada $45.00 US Yale School of Architecture

Chicago, where theComposites_cover_Final.indd number 1 vacant lots has 1/20/11 11:21 AM been rising due to foreclosures resulting from L YALE OF ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL tax delinquencies. EAR YALE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE ARCHITECTURE ng nI ng EDWARD P. BASS DISTIngUISHED VISITIng Since schools are often the focus of EDWARD P. BASS DISTIngUISHED VISITIng ARCHITECTURE FELLOWSHIP

LEARnIng In LAS VEgAS I ARCHITECTURE FELLOWSHIP n L AS V CHUCk ATWOOD / DAVID M. SCHWARz LEARnIng In LAS VEgAS CHUCk ATWOOD / urban neighborhoods, and all Chicago city The Human City, the third book in a series documenting the Edward P. Bass Visiting Fellowship in DAVID M. SCHWARz

Architecture, records the collaboration of Bass Fellow Roger Madelin of Argent Group PLC, developer of Eg King’s Cross, London with Bishop Visiting Professor Demetri Porphyrios of Porphyrios Associates, employees are required to live within the city AS London, co-master planner for the site, assisted by George Knight of the Yale faculty, who in Spring 2007 worked with a studio of eight Yale students charged with the task of giving specific architectural form to limits, Beeby proposed that the municipality design mixed-use projects for sites in the King’s Cross Central master plan. Students created a new part of the city while dealing with the established context of infrastructure and architecture, integrating the new with the old. David Partridge and Robert Evans, of Argent and Robert Allies and Graham Morrison of ConstruC ting the i neffable underwrite the financing for housing near Allies & Morrison, co-planners of King’s Cross Central, along with Peter Bishop of London City Planning, Contemporary SaC red a r C hiteC ture Ben Bolgar of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment. karla cavarra britton, editor schools in the interest of rebuilding a desir- Published by Yale School of Architecture, www.architecture.yale.edu Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, www.wwnorton.com yale school of architecture Printed in Canada able urban structure that would allay crime $30.00 USA / $45.50 CAN. (paperback) while stabilizing the tax base. The students immediately attacked the architectural problem through code analysis and trial designs, adding a self- imposed sustainability requirement. A tour of Chicago’s neighborhoods gave them a good 05 05 sense of the urban context. Many students put to use the knowledge they gained in the Vlock Building Project as first-year students. Some designed elongated houses that filled the site with roof gardens and terraces, providing additional private outdoor space; Composites, Surfaces, and Software: Urban Intersections: São Paulo landscape. In all the essays, the excitement others created minimal Modernist concrete High-Performance Architecture Katherine Farley, Edward P. Bass Visiting of exploring the implications of BIM while designs focused on a flexible modular Architecture Fellow, and Deborah Berke examining the tensions it introduces to system. The emphasis on circulation, privacy, Composites, Surfaces, and Software: Edited by Nina Rappaport, Noah Biklen conventional education (and production) is and shade led to numerous variations of High-Performance Architecture, edited by (’03), and Eliza Higgins (’10), the book is palpable. Check www.architecture.yale.edu carving out a box to fit a standard urban lot. Greg Lynn and Mark Foster Gage (’01), with designed by MGMT Design and distrib- for ordering information. At each phase of the design, the Stephen Nielson (’09) and Nina Rappaport uted by W. W. Norton, 2011. students were asked to enlarge their models, showcases the intersection between technol- from 1/8" = 1' – 0" to 1/2" = 1' – 0", in order ogy, aesthetics, and function and offers a The sixth in a series, Urban Intersections: Recently released to display structural competency as well as multidisciplinary approach to cutting-edge, São Paulo documents the collaboration of interior finishes at ever-increasing detail. performative technology explored in a Yale Katherine Farley, senior managing director Learning in Las Vegas Many of the final physical models included studio with essays by Frank Gehry, Lise of the international real estate developer Charles Atwood, Edward P. Bass Visiting furniture and landscaping. The projects Anne Couture, Chris Bangle. The book was Tishman-Speyer, with architect Deborah Professor, and David M. Schwarz were presented to a jury of Deborah Berke, designed by Jeff Ramsey and distributed by Berke, assisted by Noah Biklen, at the Yale Edited by Nina Rappaport, Brook Peter Bohlin, Judy DiMaio, Peter Gluck (’65), W. W. Norton in 2011. School of Architecture. Farley and Berke Denison (’07), and Nicholas Hanna (’09), Dolores Hayden, Stephen Kieran, Greg Lynn, The July 2011 issue of Architectural guided a group of Yale students in spring designed by MGMT Design, and distrib- and Jonathan Levi (’81). Record features a review, and in June, the 2010 to explore potential design and devel- uted by W. W. Norton, 2010. book was presented at the Center for Archi- opment ideas for a mixed-use community Emmanuel Petit tecture as part of the “Oculus Book Talk” in São Paulo, Brazil. The book features their This book documents student projects for Students in associate professor Emmanuel series hosted by the New York Chapter of the ideas for this rapidly growing global city, with a pedestrian-friendly urban design of Las Petit’s studio formulated a position in relation AIA. On October 17, an event will be held to all its attendant vitality and contradictions. Vegas featuring a studio led by developer to Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of “liquid celebrate the publication. Watch for details Featured projects consider a diverse range Charles Atwood and Washington, D.C.– modernity,” which postulates that institutions at www.architecture.yale.edu. of approaches for combining residential, based architect David M. Schwarz (’74). today are more fluid and unstable compared cultural, and commercial programs located Using the framework of the original 1968 to the solidity and certainty of modernity. The on an abandoned urban site between the Yale Las Vegas studio, Atwood and Schwarz specific program was for an urban commer- Just released: Fall 2011 center and periphery of São Paulo. The work asked students combat Las Vegas’s lack of cial incubator, including hotels, a conference engages the development issues of sched- street-oriented urbanism by using what they center, shopping, and a clinic for medical Turbulence ule, phasing, risk, sustainability, value, and learned from other cities. Assisted by Brook tourism on one of two sites in Rio de Janeiro, Ali Rahim, William Sharples, Christopher density, along with the architectural issues Denison (’07) and Darin Cook (’89), students Brazil—the Centro Cruise Ship Terminal or Sharples, Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant of scale, formal clarity, envelope articulation, created master plans for hundreds of acres the Santos Dumont City Airport—to find a Professors. Edited by Nina Rappaport use of color and texture, and the relationship extending from the intersection of Las Vegas synthesis between the city’s infrastructure and Leo Stevens (’08), the book is of building to landscape. This book includes Boulevard and Flamingo Road. The book and superstructure. designed by MGMT Design and distrib- an interview with Farley and Berke, an essay includes essays on Las Vegas and original After a visit to Rio, students began uted by W. W. Norton, 2011. on urban growth in the city, and discussions photographs by Robert Venturi and Denise to understand the site as belonging to the about the projects from the jurors. Scott Brown: and it narrates the process of city and simultaneously being detached Turbulence is the third School of Architec- research, analysis, and design in the world’s from it. Students worked in teams of two. ture book featuring the work of the Louis BIM in Academia premiere themed playground. One team conceived of the project as an I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professorship, Edited by Peggy Deamer and Phillip G. outgrowth of a major Rio street system and an endowed chairmanship to bring young Bernstein (’83), designed by Kloepfer– Constructing the Ineffable: looped the infrastructure through the airport innovators in architectural design to the Yale Ramsey, and published and distributed Contemporary Sacred Architecture to contain a conference center, located out School of Architecture. This book includes by the Yale School of Architecture, this Edited by Karla Cavarra Britton, in a bay hovering over the water, to allow the the advanced studio research of Ali Rahim book will be available as the school’s designed by Think Studio, the book is visitor a view of the skyline in the distance. of Contemporary Architecture Practice in first digital book. Check the schools Web published by the Yale School of Archi- Another project used a triumphal arch as “Migrating Coastlines: Emergent Transfor- site in October. tecture and distributed by Yale Univer- a point of relief and as a monument in the mations for Dubai,” Christopher Sharples sity Press, 2010. urban landscape, extending the infrastruc- of SHoP Architects in “New Formations: This book compliments Building in the ture across the city to the water’s edge at Airport City,” and William Sharples of SHoP Future, published in 2010 and distributed by This book features a series of essays which the cruise-ship terminal site. Another team in “Beyond Experience: Spaceport Earth.” Princeton Architectural Press. It features a analysize sacred buildings by their architects, designed a huge, cantilevered truss system It features student projects, interviews with collection of essays by educators and practi- such as Peter Eisenman, Moshe Safdie, over the water, under which boats would the architects about the work of their profes- tioners on how Building Information Model- Stanley Tigerman, placing them in dialogue dock. Other students echoed the logic of sional offices, and essays on the themes of ing (BIM) should be taught in architecture with essays by scholars from the fields of the cloverleaf highway by experimenting their studios. schools in the United States. The essays are theology, philosophy, and history, such as with negative spaces at the airport site. A release event will be held at divided between those that look at the larger Kenneth Frampton, Vincent Scully, Miroslav The detailed and expressive work inspired 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 7, pedagogical issues raised by teaching BIM Volf, and Jaime Lara, to raise issues on a discussion about diagramming and the at the Trespa Design Centre at 62 Greene (is it an advanced technique layered on top the nature and role of sacred space today. potential for new paradigms with a jury, Street in New York City. Please RSVP to of the traditional education? Or is it a funda- Essays call attention to Modern architec- composed of Forth Bagley (’05), Gabriel [email protected]. mental game-change, introduced at the early ture’s history of engagement and experi- Duarte, Arindam Dutta, Makram El Kadi, stages of design education?) and those that mentation with religious space and address Peter Eisenman, Terman Evans, Mark provide examples of BIM-centered courses, expressions of sacred space in landscapes, Gage (’01), Sean Keller, Ariane Lourie Harri- some within traditional M.Arch programs memorials, and museums. This book was son, Ralitza Petit, Ingeborg Rocker, and and others in cross-disciplinary programs reviewed in Architect in June 2011 and in Stanislaus von Moos. that combine architecture with construc- Architects Newspaper in September 2011. tion management and/or engineering and 24 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011 Faculty News

Sunil Bald with Studio SUMO, Turner Brooks, The Cushing Center, Yale School of Medicine, 2010. Mizuta Museum of Art, exterior view, Saitama Prefecture, Japan, 2011.

Michelle Addington, Hines Professor of Sustainable Architectural Design, was a member of the research team that received a gift of $25 million from Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin (Yale College ’78) to establish the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage on Yale’s West Campus. Anibal Belliomio with Pelli, Addington will be using her portion of the Clarke, Pelli Architects, The Landmark competition grant to build and staff an architectural proposal, Abu Dhabi, 2011. EPISTEME, rendering for a house in Luxembourg, 2011. research lab to investigate discrete thermal micro-environments and solid-state lighting. Addington’s other major research project, directed toward developing a new interna- renovation of the 99-year-old former Metro- over the summer. Finio's office is currently Dolores Hayden, professor, gave the tional building metric, is entering its second pole Hotel, recently listed on the National collaborating with artist Jenny Holzer on a keynote for a March conference at Connecti- phase; she and her collaborators in engineer- Register of Historic Places. The firm is piece for a house in Amagansett, New York. cut College, “Smart Growth: Social and ing and economics have installed a prototype collaborating with Pittsburgh-based Perfido Finio was an invited juror at the 2011 AIA Environmental Implications,” and lectured at wireless sensing system in Rosenkranz Hall Weiskopf Wagstaff + Goettel, which is noted Chicago Design Excellence Awards. MIT on her book Building Suburbia. She has and are evaluating the resulting data. for its experience in historic-preservation Alexander Garvin (BA ’62 and articles forthcoming in the Journal of Urban In February, Addington served projects, one of whose principals is Leonard M. Arch ’67), adjunct professor, recently History and the Yale Review and an exhibi- on the jury for Metropolis magazine’s Perfido (’62). published Public Parks: The Key to Livable tion review in the Journal of the Society of “Next Generation” awards and delivered Turner Brooks (’70), adjunct profes- Communities (W. W. Norton, 2011). The book Architectural Historians. Hayden organized a “manifesto” on sustainable design in the sor, continues work on the Cushing Collec- draws on his background in urban planning a panel on “Poets’ Landscapes and Sense “Manifesto Series 3: Eco-Redux,” held tion museum, archive, and seminar room, at and real estate development to trace the of Place” and delivered the paper “The Poet, at New York City’s Storefront for Art and the Yale Medical School Library, which has history, preservation, and future of parks in Scale, and Spatial Imagination,” at the June Architecture. She also gave a public lecture been featured in a number of periodicals, American cities. conference “Exploring Form and Narra- at Florida International University in Miami including the Architect’s Newspaper. Steven Harris, adjunct professor, tive,” at West Chester University. She has and delivered a presentation at “Material Brennan Buck, critic in architec- recently completed a duplex penthouse given readings from her newest collection of Beyond Materials: A Composite Tectonics ture, with his office, FreelandBuck, received overlooking Central Park and a new town poems, Nymph, Dun, and Spinner at several Conference on Advanced Materials and the Arch Is Prize together with the firm house on the Upper East Side, in New York Connecticut public libraries and the Rutgers Digital Manufacturing,” a symposium held at PATTERNS from the AIA Los Angeles. His City. His firm’s work was recently published MFA conference. SCI-Arc, in Los Angeles. At Yale, Addington work was featured in two exhibitions this in Elle Décor, AD France, AD Spain, and Keith Krumwiede, associate gave lectures on sustainable design in three spring—at the Superfront Gallery and the World of Interiors; cover features included professor, published the essay “[A]Typical workshops organized for Women Leaders Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery, in a Horatio Street town house in January’s Plan[s],” a reconsideration by redaction and of China, visiting Chinese mayors, and Los Angeles—and in the Architect’s Newspa- Interior Design and a Croatian residence in reconstruction of Rem Koolhaas’s “Typical members of India’s Parliament. In June, she per and design magazine Bob. Buck gave August’s Ville & Casali. Harris also hosted Plan” essay, in Perspecta 43 “Taboo”. It served on the national committee to select a lecture in the Sliver Lecture Series at the a segment on NBC’s Open House about was also presented at the “Flip Your Field” the recipient of the Building Technology University of Applied Arts, Vienna. a West Village town house the firm designed conference in Chicago last October. He also Teaching Award for Emerging Faculty. Peggy Deamer, professor, published for a Brazilian client. presented the lecture “Home of the Brave” Sunil Bald, critic in architecture, “Practicing Practice” in Perspecta 44; and Ariane Lourie Harrison, critic at the University of Hartford in October 2010; gave the talk “Capture of the Floating World” “The Changing Nature of Architectural Work” in architecture, with her firm, Harrison “The Bauhaus Tweets,” an imagined twitter at an international symposium for the study in Harvard Design Magazine 33: Design Atelier (HAt), had the design for the perfor- war between Max Bill and Asger Jorn, was of Ukiyo-e (Japanese woodcuts) in Tokyo. Practices Now Vol. II. She co-edited the Yale mance Anchises featured in Architecture published in Log 22: The Absurd in June The design for an important Ukiyo-e collec- book BIM in Academia, with Phil Bernstein (January 2011) and “The Perfect Incorpora- 2011. “Freedomland,” a (satirical) ideal- tion at the Mizuta Museum of Art, in Saitama (see page 23). Her ongoing architectural tion,” in A+A China (January 2011), following city project was published this summer in prefecture, Japan, will be completed in work includes a ranch-house renovation in the studio’s selection by The New York Times 306090: Making a Case. He also completed December by his office, Studio SUMO. Petaluma, California, and a house addition in and New York as among the top ten events the design for a renovation of an historic row The Journal of Transnational American Yonkers, New York, both to be completed by of 2010. She co-authored two articles with house in Brooklyn. Studies (Stanford University) republished January 2012. partner Seth Harrison: “Designing a New Edward Mitchell, adjunct assis- Bald’s 2001 essay “Memories, Ghosts, and Alexander Felson, assistant Anchises,” in Speciale Z (summer 2011) tant professor, will publish the essay “Pits Scars: Architecture and Trauma in New professor in the School of Environmental and “Performance Design and the Ecology and Piles,” on his work in Luzerne County, York and Hiroshima” with a new postscript & Forestry with a joint appointment at the of Aging,” in the book New Aging, Chang- Pennsylvania, in the book After Urbanism by the author; his review of Design on the School of Architecture, is part of the 2012 ing Aging Through Architecture, edited by (Syracuse University Press, 2012). Project Edge was published in ArcCa (AIA Califor- exhibit “Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Matthias Hollwich (Actar, 2011). The firm’s work from his office is also featured in Fast nia chapter). In March SUMO, the design Dream” with Zago Architecture organized by current work in performance design includes Forward Urbanism (Princeton Architectural architect on a team led by Ralph Appelbaum the Museum of Modern Art and Columbia’s a set for the new piece Plasticity, with chore- Press, 2011). This fall, Mitchell is advisor Associates, was awarded the commission Buell Center for American Architecture. He ographer Catherine Miller. The piece builds and judge for Shift Boston’s competition for exhibition design at the Smithsonian was awarded a grant from the NYC Depart- on the shorter Pharmacophores, shown “Why Stop,” focused on the South Coast National Museum of African American ment of Environmental Protection to develop in December 2010 at the Storefront for Art rail lines, the subject of his studios at Yale. History and Culture, on the Mall, Washington, a green roof research station at 42nd Street and Architecture, in New York City. Ongoing He will also be a peer reviewer and panelist D.C. Other recent SUMO projects include an and Third Avenue with the Durst Organiza- architectural projects include the Environ- for the Association of Collegiate Schools invited competition for a new-media school tion. He is constructing bioswales as collec- mental Education Center at Talisman, Fire of Architecture conference on urbanism at and fossil museum in central Tokyo, three tive stormwater applications in Seaside Island, New York which has been integrated MIT. Mitchell’s office is currently completing vacation homes in Campinas, Brazil, and a Village Bridgeport, Connecticut, funded into the National Parks Service General residential projects in New Haven. roller-skating rink for an elementary school through the Hixon Center. With professor Management Plan Alternatives. Joeb Moore (’91), critic in architec- outside of New Delhi. Jim Axley, he submitted a preliminary patent Andrei Harwell (’06), critic in archi- ture, with his firm, Joeb Moore + Partners Anibal Bellomio, lecturer, designed through Yale for a constructed wetland tecture, presented the paper “The Jordan Architects, has been selected by Residential the competition proposal for the Landmark, systems that functions as an engineered River Peace Park: An Infrastructure for Architect as one of the fifty top residential at the intersection of Corniche Road and “geothermal wetland.” He is also working Shared Regional Heritage” in May at the inter- architects in the United States. His firm’s Khaled Bin Al Waleed Street, in Abu Dhabi. with YCEI and with the Nature Conservancy national conference “Why Does the Past project PL 44 is included in the Taschen A building project awarded in 2004, the on local land-use planning and the develop- Matter?” hosted by the University of Massa- book Architecture Now! Houses 2 (2011). 72-story, mixed-use tower comprises of 32 ment of land-use scenarios based on the chusetts Center for Heritage and Society. An article on the firm’s work in sustainable floors of office space, 26 floors of residential TNC new coastal resilience interface for In October, he gave the lecture “Churaevka: architecture appeared in Barnard Magazine units, and a restaurant on the top two floors. Connecticut. Experimenting with Community in Russia (spring 2011). In addition, PL44, Spiral The plan’s geometry is rooted in the complex Martin Finio, critic in architecture, Abroad” for the annual Perry House Founda- House, and Bridge House were featured in Islamic patterns of the dodecagon. with his New York-based firm, Christoff:Finio tion lecture series, in Stratford, Connecticut. Archdaily earlier this year. Moore traveled Deborah Berke, adjunct professor, Architecture, is featured in the new book New As project manager of the Yale Urban Design to Cyprus in the spring as a member of with her New York City–based firm, Deborah York Dozen, by Michael J. Crosbie, launched Workshop, Harwell recently concluded a the academic advisory committee for the Berke & Partners Architects, is currently in June at the Center for Architecture, in New year-long sustainable planning study for University of Nicosia. designing two 21c Museum Hotels. A York City (see page 26). The firm recently Seaside Village, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a Ben Pell, critic in architecture, gave 100,000-square-foot new hotel for business completed a competition entry for the Beton World War I-era emergency wartime housing a talk in April at the Harvard Graduate School travelers and art enthusiasts, will open Hala Waterfront Center, in Belgrade. A development. Currently, he is collaborating on of Design. His New York City practice, in fall 2012 in Bentonville, Arkansas. The 20,000-square-foot renovation of the Brook- the design and construction of experimental PellOverton, has recently started construc- 21c Museum Hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio, is a lyn Supreme Court building was completed green public infrastructure at Seaside Village. tion on a house on the eastern shore of 25 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE FALL 2011

In Praise of the Obsolete

Pirie, Turlington Architects, restored Fred Olsen Jr. House, 2010–11. Photograph by Vertical Urban Factory exhibition curated by Nina Rappaport, installed at the Skyscraper We’ve seen it happen again and again: Paul Butkus. Museum, New York from January through July 2011. Photograph by Christopher Hall. economies change and technologies evolve; things that seemed science-fictional yester- day become the new norm. The search, almost a fetish, for the new and improved seems to drive everything and everyone. Rarely do we stop and wonder what such relentless seeking leaves behind: the no- longer new is immediately, unmercifully consigned to the dustbin of history. Van Alen Books is an experiment Van Alen that consciously—and perhaps unconscio- Books on nably—heads in the wrong direction. At 22nd Street precisely the moment when digital readers in New York such as Kindle, Nook, and iPad are racing designed by Yale Urban Ecology and Design Lab designed by Gray Organschi Architects, 2011. LoTek. one another to become the next gizmo of choice, online booksellers are poised to take over the book market, and physical bookstores have become a thing of the past. Virginia and is designing offices and a chapel Sanders Architect, is designing three Laura P. Turlington (’89), lecturer, We at The Van Alen Institute decided to open for Unity of New York, in Manhattan. academic projects scheduled for comple- with her office, Pirie Turlington Architects, an architecture bookstore—a very real one, Emmanuel Petit, associate profes- tion this year: the renovation of Julian Street had the restoration and addition of the not a digital one. The bookstore, everyone sor, curated the traveling exhibition Ceci n’est Library, at Princeton University; the new Tony Smith House in Guilford, Connecticut, tells us, is obsolete; new technologies have pas une rêverie: The Architecture of Stanley Academic Resource Center at NYU; and the featured in the book Tomorrow’s Houses: made it so. We believe that reports of the Tigerman, on display at Yale in the fall and Franklin Field Student Study Lounge, at the New England Modernism, co-authored by bookstore’s death are greatly exaggerated. then at the Graham Foundation, in Chicago. University of Pennsylvania. Alex Gorlin (’80) with photographer Geoffrey We wager that bookstores, “traditional” He also edited the book Schlepping Through Dean Robert A.M. Stern (’65) was Gross (Rizzoli International, 2011). physical spaces in the city, still matter. Ambivalence: Essays on an American Archi- elected to membership in the American Located at Van Alen Institute’s tectural Condition, a collection of Tigerman’s Academy of Arts and Letters in May 2011. headquarters at 30 West 22nd Street in writings from the 1960s to the present, to be It was celebrated with a month-long exhibi- Manhattan’s Flatiron District and opened in published later this year. Petit gave a lecture tion of his work at the Academy’s galleries Yale Urban Ecology and April 2011 with seed funding from Further- at the Société Française des Architectes and at Audubon Terrace in New York. His firm Design LAB more: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the CNRS’s conference “Théorie et Projet,” Robert A.M. Stern Architects has several new this storefront space is New York City’s in Paris, in May, and presented a paper at commissions, including an office building at A spring party to celebrate the opening of the only book emporium and gathering place the Tate Britain conference “Reassessing Five Crescent Drive at the Philadelphia Navy Urban Ecology and Design LAB (UEDLAB) devoted solely to architecture and design Jim Stirling,” in London, in June. His text Yard, which will serve as headquarters for the for faculty from the Yale School of Architec- publications. Designed by LOT-EK, the “Irony and Postmodern Architecture” will North American operations of pharmaceuti- ture (YSOA) and the School of Forestry and store features a 14-foot-tall seating platform appear in the exhibition catalog for the show cal company GlaxoSmithKline, for developer Environmental Studies (F&ES) provided a crafted from a stack of recycled doors, which at the Victoria & Albert Museum in the fall. Liberty Property Trust; a new home for the glimpse of the future at the cross-disciplinary step up to create an amphitheater overlook- Petit also received a grant from the Graham LeBow College of Business at Drexel Univer- program’s headquarters. The UEDLAB, ing 22nd Street through glazed storefront Foundation for his forthcoming book Irony, sity in Philadelphia; student residences on designed by Lisa Gray (’87) and Alan windows. The triangular installation evokes Or, the Self-Critical Opacity of Postmodern Chestnut Street, also at Drexel, for developer Organschi (’88), was built through generous the steps of Times Square’s TKTS booth, an Architecture. With their architectural practice American Campus Communities; and a new support from F&ES, is a center of exchange iconic project originated through Van Alen EPISTEME, Emmanuel and Ralitza Petit are Chapel for the Ages at Virginia Theological for integrating basic and applied ecologi- Institute’s 1999 design competition. working on the design of a house with a pool Seminary in Arlington. The Clarendon, a cal research with urban design, planning, In creating Van Alen Books, we’ve in Luxembourg City. residential tower in Boston, and new build- landscape, and infrastructure projects to been guided by two principles: first, the Nina Rappaport, publications ings for the Santa Monica—UCLA Medical be conducted with YSOA and led by Alex wish to ensure that in the future there will director, curated the exhibition Vertical Urban Center and Orthopaedic Hospital were Felson, who teaches in both schools. Coinci- be possibilities for accidental, physical Factory first displayed at the Skyscraper completed. The film “Robert A. M. Stern: dently, the UEDLAB also occupies a Paul encounters with books. The sanitized experi- Museum in New York from January through 15 Central Park West and the History of the Rudolph building, Greeley Memorial Labora- ence of perusing an Amazon preview or an July 17. The show was designed by Michael New York Apartment House” will premiere at tory (1959). online aggregator cannot substitute for the Tower (’00) and Sarah Gephart (Yale MFA ’00) a benefit for the Sir John Soane’s Museum The UEDLAB hosts a wet labora- old-fashioned analog experience of brows- and included models fabricated by Yale Foundation and the Checkerboard Film tory for urban ecological research, including ing around a bookstore. Van Alen Books graduates, Patrick Delahoy (’11), Nicholas Foundation on September 20 at the Union vegetative and soil analysis capabilities does not compete with online booksellers Gilliland (’10), and Kurt Evans (’10). The Club in New York; the film will have its festival associated with the Million Trees NYC but offers readers something the internet exhibition was reviewed in the New York premiere at the Architecture and Design Film Project, for which Felson is a principal cannot do: the promise of discovering books Times, Architects Newspaper, Metropolis, Festival, also in New York, on October 22. investigator, as well as for research on by chance, of stumbling on books and Architecture Review, Daily Dose, and The WTTW-Chicago documentary “Robert amphibians, the focus of his dissertation. magazines you didn’t know about. Our other Architect among other publications. It will A.M. Stern: Presence of the Past” will air It also functions as a design studio and guiding idea was to re-imagine the bookstore travel in the spring to the National Building nationally on PBS on October 9. decision theater, with extensive multimedia as a public space. At once an experimental Museum. As part of the project she organized Paul Stoller (’98), lecturer and capabilities for working meetings. Open to installation and a reading room, Van Alen public programs, including a series of panel principal at Atelier Ten Environmental those interested in studying and reshaping Books encourages people to come in and discussions, tours, and curator talks. Rappa- Designers, recently spoke at the Building human settlements and urbanization patterns read, ask questions, and discuss architecture port’s articles on the vertical urban factory and Construction Authority’s “Leader- through research, design, and stewardship, and design. We want our bookstore to be and urban manufacturing appeared Urban ship in Green Building” lecture series, in the UEDLAB emphasizes scales of projects a sort of parlor (another obsolete space) in Omnibus.org (May 2011), and Slum Lab Singapore, as well as at Autodesk’s “Green that relate to property owners, parks, neigh- which you may engage in debates on archi- (September 2011). She published a piece Building Design and Strategies” seminar, borhoods, transportation hubs, and infra- tecture, whether by listening to architects in Pin-Up on Buckminster Fuller’s vertical in Kuala Lumpur. His talks focused on the structure. Through group-based work and present their work and books or by sharing, cotton mill (Spring 2011). She was inter- challenges and opportunities of designing interdisciplinary teams, it tackles a variety say, your latest zine, a quirky object, or a viewed on WNET about the project. She also toward carbon-neutral sustainable develop- of urban ecological research and design handmade notebook for the next passerby received an exploration grant at the Hagley ment, such as his work targeting net-zero projects that engage city dwellers by enhanc- to discover. Museum and Library for fall 2011. Rappaport energy for the Kohler Environmental Center, ing ecosystem functions and the quality of As a space in which architecture is part of Natalie Jeremijenko’s team for Choate Rosemary School in Connecticut, public spaces. books are read, sold, discovered, and the Civic Action project and exhibition to designed by Robert A. M. Stern Architects. Located at 370 Prospect Street, discussed, Van Alen Books is ultimately a be on display at the Noguchi Museum and Construction will finish this year on the new between the old Winchester factory and the project in public architecture. A city without Socrates Sculpture Park, from October 5, Law School Student Center at Harvard Leitner Observatory, the grounds include bookstores—and especially without public 2011 through March 2012. University, another collaboration with Stern, the Marsh Botanical Garden, a historic spaces for discovery and encounter—is Joel Sanders, adjunct associate which is targeting LEED Gold certification. landscape designed by Beatrix Ferrend and an impoverished city. If this is an obsolete professor, traveled to London to serve as the Stoller is also working on the newest build- faculty, including George Nichols, garden idea, so be it: the bookstore is dead, long live keynote speaker for “FLOW,” a conference ing at the NYU Langone Medical Center, director and botany professor. The combined the bookstore. hosted by Kingston University. He delivered the LEED Gold–targeted Kimmel Pavilion, aesthetic is still evident; hopefully the a lecture on architecture, landscape, and and on the new Vietnam Veteran Memorial UEDLAB will spawn more interdisciplinary —Olympia Kazi interiors. This fall, he will give the keynote Visitor Center, in Washington, D.C., both discourse between students and faculty of Kazi is the executive director of the address at an AIA Colorado conference with Ennead architects. He is leading the the two schools. Van Alen Institute. about professional practices pursuing sustainable-design effort for the Business larger-scale international projects. Sanders School at Sydney University, designed by —Alexander Felson Van Alen Books, located at 30 W. 22nd St, is also co-editor, with Diana Balmori, of the Woods Bagot; the U.S. headquarters for LG Felson is joint faculty School of Forestry New York, NY, is open Tuesday through book Groundwork: Between Landscape and Electronics, with HOK; and the framework and Environmental Studies and School of Saturday, from 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Architecture, to be published by Monacelli for sustainability guidelines at Washington Architecture. Call (212) 924–7000 for more information, Press this fall. Currently, his office, Joel University, in St. Louis. and visit www.vanalen.org. 26 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2010 Alumni News Ennead Architects, National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadel- phia, 2010. Photograph ©Jeff Goldberg/ Esto for Ennead Architects (formerly Polshek Partnership) Davies Tang & Toewes, Bathouse Pavilion, Cupsuptic Campground, Leroy Street Studio, Bay House, Long Island, New York, 2011. Oquossoc, Maine, 2011. Photograph by Scott Frances.

Hodgetts + Fung, Holly- wood Bowl replica by Gardener Elementary School, Los Angeles, 2011. Photograph by Hodgetts C+C Architecture, restaurant, Jersey City, New Jersey, 2011. + Fung.

Alumni News features reports on recent Grey Group, a marketing agency based in Shenkar College of Engineering and Design projects by graduates of the school. If you New York City. The project challenged the and is designing residential interiors and an New York Dozen: are an alumnus, please send your current firm to develop a new configuration for the addition to a multi family residential building. Gen-X Architects news to: Constructs, 180 York Street, office that called for a 90:10 ratio of open to In Singapore, David was an associate princi- New Haven, Connecticut 06511 or to closed space. It has also been highlighted for pal for Moshe Safdie Architects & Planners, By Michael J. Crosbie, [email protected]. the way it addresses acoustical concerns in a leading the design and construction of the Images Publishing, 2011, 224 pp. large, open, loft-like space. ArtScience Museum, Crystal Pavilions, and 1960s Marina Promenade at the recently completed A June 2011 report by the Center for an David Childs (’67) was featured in “The 1990s Marina Bay Sands. Urban Future (Giles, David. “Growth by Best Architecture in 2011,” in the Guardian Louise Harpman (’93), a clinical associate Trattie Davies (Yale College ’94, Design”, 2011) on the impact of architecture (January 3, 2011), for his design for One professor at New York University’s Gallatin M. Arch ’04), Frederick Tang (Yale College ’99, and design on New York City’s economy World Trade Center, whose topping-off school, and principal of Specht Harpman M. Arch ’03), and Jonathan Toews (Yale asserts that the city has “the largest collec- ceremony is planned for fall 2011. Architects, organized a symposium at NYU College ’98, M. Arch ’03) have formed Davies tion of architecture firms of any city in the Craig Hodgetts (’67) and his Los this spring, titled “Global Design: Elsewhere Tang & Toews, a design partnership based U.S.,” with over eight percent of the nation’s Angeles–based firm, Hodgetts + Fung, Envision,” which focused on reconciling in Dumbo, Brooklyn. They have been working architects and more than 1,300 architecture helped honor Gardener Elementary School’s global and local environmental and infra- with the PARC Foundation/David Deutsch firms: moreover, the number of designers one hundredth anniversary by working with structural concerns. Speakers included on a Bathhouse Pavilion at the Cupsuptic working in the city has almost doubled in students to build a replica of the Holly- Sanford Kwinter, Bjarke Ingels, and Daniel Campground, in Oquossoc, Maine; the past decade. This density and diversity wood Bowl. The firm, which completed the Barber (MED ’05). “TENTSTOP: An Urban Camping Proposal,” of talent makes singling out particular archi- renovation of the famed outdoor concert Robert Young (’94) is the design exhibited at the New Museum Festival of tects a difficult task, but Michael J. Crosbie, venue in 2003, built the miniaturized version director for Perkins + Will’s Washington, D.C. Ideas for the New City in May; and the design chair of the Department of Architecture at out of PVC pipe and polystyrene. The office and is working on the master plan for of a Linear Park, in Hudson, New York. the University of Hartford, has taken it upon structure was completed on the school’s the re-use of the Walter Reed campus in the Davies is also a critic in architecture at Yale himself to highlight a dozen young offices playground and will serve as a museum district, as well as critical-care hospitals, School of Architecture. that are emblematic of their generation in the to display historic photographs during the and a small gallery for the Newseum, which Elizabeth Morgan (’07) won the 2010 early days of the twenty-first century. school’s anniversary celebration. was one of his last projects before leaving Honor Award of Western Massachusetts AIA Inspired by the popular 1972 book Polshek Partnership (now Ennead Archi- for a modern vernacular residential project Five Architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwath- 1970s tects). His last project with Polshek Partner- designed in collaboration with her Kuhn mey, Hejduk, Meier—nominated the “New Stephen Glassman (’75) was appointed ship, the National Museum of American Riddle Architects colleague Ann Marshall. York Five” by then New York Times archi- president and CEO of the Community Jewish History, in Philadelphia, opened in Morgan is an adjunct faculty member at the tecture critic Paul Goldberger—Crosbie’s Design Center of Pittsburgh (CDCP) in May November 2010. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where “New York Dozen” includes Andre Kikoski 2011. The appointment comes after many Alex Barrett (’97) and his firm, she designed a 15,000-square-foot building Architect, Architecture in Formation, Arts years spent in both private practice and the Barrett Design and Development, completed for the Minuteman Marching Band, to be Corporation, Christoff:Finio Architecture, non-profit sector. For the past twenty-five and sold all units at 25 Carroll Street, a 17-loft completed in spring 2012. Della Valle Bernheimer, Leroy Street Studio, years, Glassman has headed Art and Archi- residential project, which he designed and Jessica Varner (’08), who works at LEVENBETTS, MOS, nARCHITECTS, tectural Design, a firm based in Pennsylvania developed, in Brooklyn, New York. The build- Michael Maltzan Architects, co-edited No Studio SUMO, Work Architecture Company and Maryland, while also serving as chairman ing is the former manufacturing facility of the More Play: Conversations on Urban Specula- (WORKac), and WXY Architecture. Many of of the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commis- Brooklyn Macaroni Company, and the firm tion in Los Angeles and Beyond, by Michael these firms have Yale connections as either sion. At CDCP, he will develop designs and incorporated the original raw masonry and Maltzan, Hantje Cantz, 2011 (see page 18). graduates of or teachers at the school. planning strategies to aid the economic and timber in the design. Crosbie was also inspired, in a different environmental growth of communities. Edgar Papazian (’99) appeared 2010s way, by another former Times critic, Nicolai David Waggonner (’75) was in the June 2011 edition of ReadyMade Nicholas Gilliland (’10) formed a Paris-based Ouroussoff, who asserted—in an article on highlighted in the June 2011 edition of Archi- magazine, which documented the process of partnership with Gaston Tolila. The practice, August 23, 2009, marking Charles Gwath- tectural Record for “The Dutch Dialogues,” renovating his home in Portland, Oregon. T+G Architecture Urbanisme Design, is mey’s death—that in the decades since a series of conversations he initiated about renovating Le Temps des Olivides, a restau- the “New York Five,” the country’s creative using natural flood-mitigation systems 2000s rant in Paris. energy shifted to Los Angeles, nurturing a rather than artificial barriers in New Orleans. Frederick P.H. Cooke (’00) has a New Jersey- Bradley Baer (’11) started Zoko, a younger generation of architects without Waggonner’s project recently received 2 based practice with his father Caswell social networking program that forms “dinner equal in New York City. (The next day, million dollars in funding from the Louisiana Cooke (’67) that is working on the designs co-ops” wherein people within various Andrew Bernheimer, one of the “New York Office of Community Development’s Disaster for an organic supermarket, a live-work groups take turns hosting a meal. Zoko was Dozen,” penned an open letter to Ourous- Relief Recovery Unit and the U.S. Depart- artist residence in Jersey City, a school for recently selected by Betaspring, a start-up soff, in the Design Observer, challenging ment of Housing and Urban Development. the developmentally disabled in Ghana, accelerator company, as one of ten projects the critic’s assertion.) This collection of Audrey Matlock (’79) will be a a community theater, and a streetscape the company will invest in. fifty projects by twelve firms clearly shows speaker in New York City at Architec- improvement project in Newark. Frederick that some of the best architecture of this tural Record’s November 2011 “Innovation” has been teaching studios for the past five Digest Trifecta generation is being created in New York conference, which will focus on the theme years at New Jersey Institute of Technology’s The August 2011 issue of Architectural City, be it installations, interiors, houses, “Crossing Borders/Disciplines.” Along with College of Art & Design. Digest features articles on the last house apartment buildings, or ambitious unbuilt panelist Thom Mayne, of Morphosis, she will Shirly Glat Robins (’00) and her designed by Charles Gwathmey (’62) before projects of various types. Like any list, discuss how American architects can work in husband, David S. Robins (Yale College ’89, his death in 2009; as well as the Bay House Crosbie’s is definitely open to debate, but foreign countries. M.Arch ’94), lived in Singapore the past two designed by Morgan Hare (’92), Marc Turkel his semi-objective methods (referencing years. Shirly taught at the National University (’92), and Shawn Watts (’92) of Leroy Street MoMA PS1’s Young Architects Program and 1980s of Singapore (NUS) Department of Architec- Studios; and a pool house designed by Gil AIANY’s Oculus journal, in particular) have Charles Dillworth (’83), principal of the San ture and owned SGR Courses, an architec- Shafer III (’88). yielded a diverse yet representative crop Francisco–based firm STUDIOS Architecture, ture education company for students in both of architects who embrace collaboration, won a 2010 AIA New York State Award of local and international schools. She recently social and environmental responsibility, and Merit for its work on a new headquarters for returned to Israel, where she teaches at the experimentation. 27 CONSTRUCTS YALE ARCHITECTURE SPRING 2010

Doug Garofalo August 1, 1958–July 31, 2011

Chicago’s cutting-edge architect Doug Garofalo died peacefully at his home the day before his 53rd birthday.

A fellow of the American Institute of Archi- tects, he received the AIA Chicago Young Architect Award in 1995. He received his bachelor’s of architecture degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1981 and acquired his master’s degree from Yale Douglas Garofalo Doug Garofalo Davenport Visiting Professor at Yale in 2001. University in 1987. Doug was a tenured Photograph by Stella Papadopolos (’01). professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, serving as acting director from 2001–03, and he also assisted in the co-founding of ARCHEWORKS, an alterna- tive design school focused on social cause. Shortly after receiving the Young Architect Award, he was published in Metropolis for an innovative project in the Chicago suburbs. I had always been enamored with Doug’s approach and was quoted saying, “He’s at once practical and theoretically charged, and [these traits] feed each other. Doug doesn’t compromise, but he’s able to use the crappy materials young architects get stuck with and make them look as if they were bearing fruit

from the rich theoretical materials of his mind. Doug Garofalo Architect, House in Spring Prairie, Wisconsin. Photograph by Nathan Kerman, 2003. Doug doesn’t come from a lot of money or pretention—he listens, he’s not dogmatic, he’s not attitude-laden . . . with a little luck, In the introduction, Crosbie calls in ten years, he’ll be one of the architects to of ideas. I knew, at the time, that Doug was Five Architects “the first self-promotional contend with.” Doug Garofalo: A Tribute overextending himself beyond what was publication to appear in the new age of media Doug was a lightning rod for young prudent, but selfishly I knew his boyish attention to architecture.” Self-promotion in emerging talent. Among his built projects For those who knew him, his long list of enthusiasm needed to be conveyed to a architecture is at an apparent saturation point are the award-winning Korean Presbyterian accomplishments and contributions to many younger group of future architects, who I today, with print and online media encom- Church of New York, in collaboration with outstanding institutions—Yale, the University hoped, could benefit from his passion and passing monographs, contemporary collec- Greg Lynn and Michael McInturf, a project of Illinois Chicago Circle, Archeworks—aptly his belief. tions (of which New York Dozen is a part), that gained international notoriety as the defines him as a significant figure in the archi- Doug Garafalo was a prince. He magazines, blogs, and architects’ own web first building truly conceived and executed tectural community. His life and career as a will be sadly missed but most of all fondly pages. In essence, Crosbie’s book resembles with digital media and because it represents designer ended much too early, cheating us remembered. He gave us much to learn the latter in the way it collects photographs, an alternative solution to adaptive reuse; out of what would likely have continued to be about architecture and, most of all, about drawings, and the architects’ own words. the Hyde Park Arts Center, and numerous a unique and often brilliant voice, just begin- being human. Concise statements by members of the residential projects. His unbuilt designs ning the transition from quirky and joyous dozen on their values, philosophies, and include a gateway in Visionary Chicago private design commissions to larger-scaled —Ed Mitchell practices are helpful lead-ins to the projects, Architecture, published in 2005; housing for public work. Mitchell is an assistant adjunct professor at but the content could have been pushed Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid; and an urban For Doug’s peers, he was a guiding the School of Architecture. even further beyond what can be found design for Roscoe Village, in collaboration light, always a step ahead in wrestling online. Of course, in the current print-to- with Xavier Vendrell, in a forthcoming book with the physical travails and triumphs of digital content shift, that is becoming harder and exhibition titled Designs on the Edge: establishing a practice, finding unexpected every day. Chicago Architects Reimagine Neighbor- discoveries and new challenges in built hoods sponsored by the Chicago Architec- work. For all of us, especially for many —John Hill ture Foundation. younger architects who came under his Hill, author of the forthcoming Guide to Doug’s recent professional honors mentorship, he was generous with advice, Contemporary Architecture of New York include the “Emerging Voices” program enthusiastic, and full of humility. As Ben (W.W. Norton, 2011), is editor of at the Architectural League of New York in Nicholson once said to me, “I want to work www.American-Architects.com and writes 2001; a one-person exhibition at the Art for Doug so that I can learn how to be a real the DailyDose Architecture Web site. Institute of Chicago in 2006; a Chicago AIA architect.” He paved his way to success Distinguished Building Award and Driehaus with no outside influence of money or power

Foundation Award for Architectural Excel- but rather by retaining his individual vision, Constructs Dean See Yourself Sensing lence in Community Design for his Hyde Park generously bringing clients, builders, and To form by putting together Robert A. M. Stern Arts Center in 2007; being awarded a United his fellow Chicagoans along for the parade. parts; build; frame; devise. See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human States Artists Fellowship in 2008 and named With Doug there was only his special talent, A complex image or idea Associate Dean resulting from synthesis by John Jacobson Perception, by Madeline Schwartzman (’86), a University Scholar for 2009–12 by Univer- a great belief in the power of architecture the mind. associate professor at Parsons School of sity of Illinois at Chicago to make a positive influence on people’s Assistant Deans Design and adjunct professor at Barnard Bob Somol, director of the School lives, and a tireless drive to be better without Volume 14, Number 1 Bimal Mendis ISBN: 978-0-9826385-7-6 Keith Krumwiede College, is an explosive and timely survey of Architecture at the UIC, is quoted, saying, intellectual malice, selfishness, or ego. Fall 2011 that explores the relationship between “In addition to his professional accomplish- For his friends, and there are many, Cost $5.00 Editor design, the body, technology, and the ments and teaching excellence, Garofalo is the loss is even more profound. Doug and Nina Rappaport senses. Recently published by Black Dog tireless in his service to the university and Chris—his immensely talented and heroic © Copyright 2011 Yale School of Architecture Graphic Design Books, it embraces cyborgs, post-humans, larger architectural community . . . along wife and fellow artist—made Chicago a P.O. Box 208242 Kloepfer–Ramsey mediated reality, and cutting-edge sensory with his increasing national and international special little corner of the endless Midwest- New Haven, CT 06520 interventions that allow one to see with the acclaim, [Garofalo] continues to be one of ern grid. It has always been a treat to visit Copy editors Telephone Cathryn Drake tongue or plug the nervous system directly the most generous and dedicated members their laboratory of experiments, a menagerie (203) 432-2296 David Delp into a computer. The book features experi- of the unversity and school community.” of plausible fictions made up of Chris’s Jamie Chan (’08) ments with interaction design, cybernetics, Zurich Esposito, executive director of the subaquatic creatures, Doug’s playful models Email neuroscience, art, and architecture, illustrat- Chicago Chapter of the AIA, added that, and furniture prototypes, their library of [email protected] Student editorial assistant ing how humans see and sense and how “Doug was a shooting star and always literary specimens, and their collection of Web site Matthew Gin (MED ’12) artistic interpretation can undermine our ahead of most. We are only just now starting strange and beautiful new life forms which www.architecture.yale.edu/ fundamental perception of the world and to understand everything he was moving we all desperately wanted to be part of. They constructs School photographs John Jacobson ourselves. Schwartzman includes the work forward in design. His recent absence from opened the doors of their wondrous world of Constructs is published Erik Herrmann (’13) of key innovators in this field, from Haus- the practice was palpable. His death is a imagination and made us, an equally quirky twice a year by the Yang Guang (’11) Rucker-Co.’s mind-bending headgear and huge loss for our community.” collection of oddities, at least for a short Dean’s Office of the Yale Rebecca Horn’s mythical wearable structures He is survived by his wife, the time, feel right at home, drifting on the prairie School of Architecture. Cover Back issues are available David Chipperfield Archi- to Stelarc’s robotic body extensions, and artist Chris Garofalo; his parents, Armand fantasy of Chicago we all maintain in our online: www.architecture. tects, Am Kupfergraben Carsten Höller’s neurally interactive installa- and Carol Garofalo, of Clifton Park, New waking dreams. yale.edu/constructs Gallery, View from the tions, as well as the work of contemporary York; his brother, Brian Garofalo, of Washing- A few years ago, when Doug was Eiserne Bruecke, Berlin, We would like to acknowl- 2003–07. Photograph by artists including Daito Manabe, Hyungkoo ton Crosssing, Pennsylvania; his sisters in the midst of his battle with illness, he edge the support of the Ioana Marinescu. Lee, and Michael Burton. One can almost Karen Hassett, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania took me and fifteen students on a four-hour Rutherford Trowbridge imagine wearing solar-powered contact and Janice Baldyga, of Clifton Park; his tour of the Loop, giving us his personal Memorial Publication Fund; lenses that augment reality, LED eyelashes, nieces, Amy Garofalo and Kiri Hassett; and interpretation of an “organic” architecture the Paul Rudolph Publica- tion Fund, established and goggles that allow one to communicate his nephews, Ryan Garofalo, Max, and that included the best of Root, Sullivan, by Claire and Maurits with electric fish—all featured in the book and Teddy Baldyga. Wright, and Mies but also a manhole that Edersheim; the Robert A.M. created with the purpose of transforming and saved the city from a flood that would have Stern Fund, established by Judy and Walter Hunt; provoking the wearer’s sensory experience. —Stanley Tigerman (B. Arch ’60, M. Arch ’61) engulfed the hidden labyrinth connecting and the Nitkin Family (Watch for a full book review in the next issue Tigerman is principal of Chicago-based most of the downtown. Doug was success- Dean’s Discretionary Fund of Constructs.) Tigerman McCurry Architects. fully projecting himself into that universe in Architecture. Non Profit Org. Lectures 3 November Gwathmey Siegel: US Postage Yale School OPEN HOUSE Inspiration and Constructs PAID Unless otherwise David Chipperfield, Transformation New Haven, CT noted, lectures Lord Norman Foster November 14, 2011– Yale University Permit No. 526 of Architecture begin at 6:30 p.m. Visiting Professor January 27, 2012 in Hastings Hall in Architecture Constructs Fall2011 (basement floor) of “David Chipperfield School of Paul Rudolph Hall, Architects: Ceci n’est pas 180 York Street Recent Work ” une rêverie: Doors open to the The Architecture of Architecture Fall 2011 Events general public at 4–5 November Stanley Tigerman 6:15 p.m. Symposium: is supported by the Calendar “Catastrophe and Graham Foundation PO Box 208242 25 August Its Consequences: for Advanced Studies Stanley Tigerman The Campaign for in Fines Arts, Elise “Displacement” Safe Building” Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown New Haven, CT This symposium is and the School’s 29 August sponsored by the Exhibition Program 06520–8242 Agents of Change, Shelley and Donald is supported in (Geoffrey Shearcroft, Rubin Foundation. part by the James Daisy Froud, Tom Wilder Green Dean’s Coward, Vincent 10 November Resource Fund, the Lacovara), Louis I. Keith Krumwiede, Kibel Foundation Kahn Visiting Assis- Assistant Professor Fund, the Nitkin tant Professors and Assistant Dean, Family Dean’s “Sampling and Yale School of Discretionary Fund in Synthesizing” Architecture Architecture, the Paul “Freedomland” Rudolph Publication 1 September Fund, the Robert Emmanuel Petit, 17 November A.M. Stern Fund, Associate Professor, Kenneth Frampton, and the Rutherford Yale School of Brendan Gill Lecture Trowbridge Memorial Architecture “Gwathmey Publication Fund. “Scaffolds of Heaven: Siegel: Form and On Tigerman” Counterform” www.architecture.yale.edu/constructs 8 September Grafton Architects: Exhibitions Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, Exhibition hours: Louis I. Kahn Visiting Monday–Friday, Professors 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. “Architecture as the Saturdays, New Geography” 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. The Architecture 20 October Gallery is located on Joel Kotkin, the second floor of Brendan Gill Lecture Paul Rudolph Hall, “The American 180 York Street, Landscape in 2050” New Haven.

27 October Ceci n’est pas Film Screening, une rêverie: “The Last Dymaxion” The Architecture of Noel Murphy Stanley Tigerman Productions August 25– November 4, 2011