los angeles CALIFORNIA

Heather ROBERGE speaks on her recent studios and seminars, topology’s role in challenging Platonic solids, the status of precedent and history in architectural education, extradisciplinary case studies as a route to new architectural knowledge, and much more.

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*Image courtesy the author. Physical model, “Reimagining L.A.’s Union Station.” Research Studio, UCLA A.UD. Assistant Professor Heather Roberge, instructor. Students: Kim, Lee, & Nabi.

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los angeles CALIFORNIA

Erick CÁRCAMO discusses the similarities and differences between the East Coast, West Coast, and Vienna; the role of workshops in architectural education today; the effects of the Web on studio culture; and more.

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*Image by Vaso PLAVOU and courtesy the author. Erick CÁRCAMO, instructor.

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ithaca NEW YORK

“What is design research in architecture? This pressing question dominates discussions amongst leading academics and heads of administration in our architecture schools today. From building performance to novel material systems, to complex structures, to contemporary manufacturing, the practice of design research in architecture schools is extremely relevant to the future of our built environment and to the shaping of our academic institutions. . . .”

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philadelphia PENNSYLVANIA

“What does it mean to occupy an object? Through embodying, imagining, or trying on an agency that is outside of one’s own subjectivity, one may begin to see something that does not stand in clear relief at the outset. This method of search belies an anthropocentric position and looks for fissures, openings, and dissonances. An embrace of the indeterminate, however, is not simply a form of romanticized vagueness. Rather, it is a tacit acknowledgment that, as Antonio Negri suggests, ‘Nothing is ever completely occupied, full, without holes, without cracks.'”

*Photo: Design Futures Lab exhibition, “Projects: 12/13,” Leonard Pearlstein Galley, URBN Annex. July 2013. Katie McHUGH, “[SIT] Sculpted Interactive Terrain” (foreground).

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new haven CONNECTICUT

Mark GAGE speaks on the innate facility with technology of present-day students, so-called “Twitter” architecture, the crumbling of disciplinary boundaries into “super-disciplinarity,” and much more.

*Image by and courtesy Greg GUNDERSON, Yale School of Architecture. Mark GAGE, instructor.

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los angeles CALIFORNIA

In the evolution of image culture from Marshall McLuhan’s claims of medium supplanting message to the mid-’90s paperless studios’ fetishization of computer rendering, the rise of suckerPUNCH has added a new visceral dimension. . . Projects published on suckerPUNCH . . . are elevated beyond the ordinary and contribute to a new kind of nuanced visual discourse uniquely enabled by the Web. The underlying visual logic of this discussion is the “field,” a now default technique for describing environment and indexing parametric process. Sensorial, geometric, and spatial, the field conveniently conflates the three into a rich digital milieu. . . .

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chicago ILLINOIS

Sean LALLY speaks on architectural pedagogy in the ’90s and early ’00s versus today, employing speculation to overcome preconceptions, the productive swerve away from precedent (both architectural and not), material energies, and much more.

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melbourne AUSTRALIA & philadelphia PENNSYLVANIA

The emergence of complexity theory has shifted the conceptualization of form from the macro scale to a concern for the operation of the complex systems that underlie formation. It is from the microscale local interactions of complex systems that behavioral strategies for the generation of composite materials have emerged—strategies where architectural form, structure, and ornament emerge from the design of composite material behavior. . . .

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princeton NEW JERSEY

Algorithmic design techniques have proliferated in recent years, invading architecture studios at institutions around the world like a swarm of bees taking up residence inside the walls of an old house. Specifically, a number of practitioners and their students have begun exploring the potential of agent-based models to derive a plethora of complex forms, patterns, and organizations that were previously inaccessible with the use of conventional modeling tools. In addition to their capacity for producing architectural effects, the ability to work with, understand, and control these systems has opened up a vast new territory of knowledge . . .

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los angeles CALIFORNIA

41. Nothing is built on stone, everything on sand, but our duty is to build as if sand were stone . . .
— Jorge Luis Borges, “Fragments from an Apocryphal Gospel.”

Never has the practice of architecture been less dependent on the traditional means of drawing architecture than today. Compared with software that fully integrates all aspects of construction into a single digital model, drawings that were once used to convey information to builders are no doubt less expeditious. However . . .

*Images by and courtesy First Office (Andrew Atwood & Anna Neimark).

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