atlanta GEORGIA

Driving cross-country from Los Angeles to Atlanta, Jennifer Bonner and Volkan Alkanoglu start a conversation about taxonomies, renderings, pavilions, and hip-hop somewhere between Flagstaff and Little Rock. . . .

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*image: Bryant SUH, “Kinetic Tower.” Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Volkan ALKANOGLU, instructor.

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troy NEW YORK

“As do all reductive processes, the diagram entails an act of violence on at least a portion of the population it governs. Through generalization, translation, abstraction, and striation the diagram orders its constituents at times in conflict to their local necessity, whether they are tectonic or otherwise. While this conflict has been productive as a tool for innovation within the discipline of architecture, its tendency to reduce the relationship between the internal and external concerns of architecture to adversarial, or at best hierarchical, is limiting. This limitation becomes even more apparent given the contemporary global context . . .”

*image courtesy the author.

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troy NEW YORK

“Architects typically produce drawings and other artifacts—words, inscriptions, models, full-scale mock-ups, and so on—that allow buildings to be realized by others, at a distance from their authors. This has not always been the case. Gothic building, for example, was a constructive practice of geometric rules and traditions where master craftsmen operated to some extent as architect and builder simultaneously. In this situation, drawings were not the primary mediator between design and construction; discussions regarding the final form of a building continued throughout the construction process. . . .”

*Fig. 1: Robin Evans, “Projection and its analogues: The Arrested Image,” 1995.

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los angeles CALIFORNIA

Dwayne OYLER on his recent studios at SCI-Arc, the benefits of a hands-on approach, the expanded role of academia today, the role of (professional) practice in architecture education, and much more.

[EXCERPTED FROM FRESH PUNCHES ]

*image: Jie YANG, concept model. Fourth-year Undergraduate studio, Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Dwayne OYLER, instructor.

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new york NEW YORK

“For the purposes of this short discussion, let us use the term ‘technologies of mediation’ in place of ‘representation.’ The problem with the latter term is that the re- of representation always lowers the discussion to a secondary status subservient to the content conveyed. The drawings, models, notations, texts, and calculations that the architect produces are not secondary to the building, but constitute the primary acts of architectural design as mediations translating between conceptual ideas, interpretive parties, and aesthetic articulation. . . .”

*image courtesy the author.

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philadelphia PENNSYLVANIA

Technically, chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change. — Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in Breaking Bad

While ever more sophisticated digital techniques have become the norm in many advanced design-research studios, the application of the digital in urban design is still somewhat untested ground. “Parametric” concepts, of course, have been postulated in large correlative networks, where all things matter to all other things and where behavioral input is both traceable from and dependent on this abstract and invisible scaffold.

*image: Daniela MERCADO. Material studies investigating synthetic landscaping and geo-forming. Pratt Institute GAUD. Ferda KOLATAN, instructor.

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college station TEXAS

“The purpose of this essay is to frame the inclusion of the piece ‘Bi-Polar,’ developed by students at Texas A&M University College of Architecture in 2011, as part of ‘Fresh Punches.’ . . . The problem of contemporary architecture can be posed in relation to certain anthropological concerns about the subject of representation, which is as much about itself as it is about the radical other. . . .”

*image by and courtesy Adrian CORTEZ, Aubrie DAMRON, Dale FENTON, Matt MILLER, & Emau VEGA, “Bi-Polar.” Texas A&M University College of Architecture. Gabriel ESQUIVEL, instructor. Photo: Emau VEGA.

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cambridge MASSACHUSETTS

Nader TEHRANI speaks on developing a discursive academic culture at MIT, the democratization of education and disappearance of master-student hierarchies enabled by new technologies, being mindful of architecture’s “domain of expertise,” and much more.

[CLICK FOR NADER TEHRANI INTERVIEW]

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philadelphia PENNSYLVANIA

“The desire to have a technologically empowered environment—one where change is both appreciable and responsive as to elicit human reaction—has produced architectural design production that is wide-ranging. And it is not a new desire. Sometimes the impulse results in schemes impossible to fashion with present technologies. However, the state of architectural design education is a less exuberant one, for reasons necessarily defensible and frequently eclipsed. This is the basis on which education has witnessed a break in its many trajectories—of autonomy, geometry, typology, and technology—to the succession of technology above all else. . . .”

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los angeles CALIFORNIA

Joe DAY on his recent teaching, precedent as pretext, “entropy” as opiate, the cross-pollination of academia and practice, and much more.

[EXCERPTED FROM FRESH PUNCHES ]

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