ithaca NEW YORK and ann arbor MICHIGAN

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.
Michael JEFFERSON: The seminar and studio look beyond conventional readings of type confined to either programmatic affiliation or dominant formal characteristics to be imitated.

Type in the field of architecture engenders many readings. At once it may be abstract or literal; it may suggest that which is common, a model to follow, or an ideal. Oscillating between these associations, Typo foregrounds the method and study of type as an operative procedure for formal invention. The seminar and studio look beyond conventional readings of type confined to either programmatic affiliation or dominant formal characteristics to be imitated. Instead, the course research introduces error, misreading, and sampling as triggers to generate a catalog of typological misfits: formal explorations that articulate a bias beyond the generic and typical. Students are introduced to an expanded concept of typology that articulates the possibility of type to produce specificity, difference, and response - in short, to exhibit behavior. Typo provokes alternative programmatic relationships and hierarchies and introduces investigations of formal traits that embrace seriality and deformation. To encourage invention, strategies of misreading promote the intentional production of error, engaging techniques of appropriation, recombination, and superimposition through rigorous iteration.

Check out more at: Cornell or University of Michigan