ann arbor MICHIGAN

University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
critic: Adam FURE.

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Nathan WALKER: This thesis explores the proposition put forth by philosopher Graham Harman that aesthetics is the tension between objects and their sensible qualities.

[MORE]

ann arbor MICHIGAN

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Clark THENHAUS / Endemic: This work is a portion of a larger body of work completed during a fellowship at Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning. The overall project considers repurposing post-military landscapes of pastoral America and is collectively titled Secret Landscapes and Non-Urban Objects.

[MORE]

ann arbor MICHIGAN

University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
critic: Clark THENHAUS.

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Grant HERRON, Tyler SMITH, & Dan TISH: This set of explorations looked to find new ways of translating analog, materialistic drawings into novel architectural forms or surfaces.

[MORE]

ann arbor MICHIGAN

University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
critics: Adam FURE

POLEMIC
In architecture today, the discourse surrounding materiality is problematically unimaginative. . . .

[MORE]

cincinnati OHIO

“Are we at the dawn of a new organic age? We are if you are to believe what you see on suckerPUNCH. Buildings bloom rather than rise, luxuriate and grow like rhizomes. . . .”

[EXCERPTED FROM FRESH PUNCHES ]

[MORE]

ann arbor MICHIGAN

University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
critics: Ellie ABRONS & Ben SMITH

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Scott CLAASSEN: Totally Useless Totems develops a series of architectural totems and their configurations, free of prescribed function or meaning in order to create spaces defined by subjective relationships. These totems are objects that have figure, but shape the space around them primarily through experiential, tactile, or narrative relationships. In this way they embody both the graphic characteristics of images as well as the spatial potential of objects occupying territory.

[MORE]

ann arbor MICHIGAN

University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

advisors: Ellie ABRONS & Ben SMITH

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Dorimar del RÍO VÉLEZ: FLATend challenges preconceptions of the architectural volume and its representation through the use of graphics applied and manipulated at different scales. Graphics—defined here as the flat composition of shapes and forms that construct figures and patterns— formally detached from architectural conventions but based upon cultural constructs of meaning and form through legibility.

[MORE]

ann arbor MICHIGAN

University of Michigan, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
advisor: Ellie ABRONS

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Nick SAFLEY: Animal House proposes a series of above ground tornado shelters placed within suburban homes and figured as architectural characters. Normally these exist as generic steel or reinforced concrete boxes hidden within the wall cavity and possessing extreme material durability to resist extreme weather that might destroy the structure around it. Taking the suburban single-family house as site these hyper-durable cores are freed and given personas and postures that enrich the interior with implied subjectivity and vitality.

[MORE]

ann arbor MICHIGAN

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Anca TRANDAFIRESCU & Glenn WILCOX (area.architecture): LUMANOTUS is comprised of 3 large scale inflatable/inhabitable structures: a Tower, a double torus, and a pod. From November 13–17, 2012 they were installed in Winston Square Park, Winston Salem, NC. The installation, created in collaboration with lighting design students from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, under the direction of Norman Coates, Director of the Lighting Program, comprised the annual Winston Salem Lighting Project. The structures were illuminated by both projected and animated lighting media. Throughout each evening 4 separate computer controlled lighting sequences animated the pieces transforming the space of the park.

[MORE]

ann arbor MICHIGAN

“To discuss one’s teaching seems a straightforward affair, yet comes with the challenge of predicting one’s audience. It is one thing to speak to those on opposite sides of the issues and another to like minds. In the former, differences surface fast, while in the latter, broad overlaps often obscure meaningful discrepancies. Imagining that the Fresh Punches editors have gathered contributors who can speak to the exhibition’s technical virtuosity, I expect this volume will contain essays from experts in everything digital (assuring a case of the latter). If so, critical content will not come in the form of bold proclamations; we all believe too much in the profound productivity of technology to make it polemical. . . .”

[EXCERPTED FROM FRESH PUNCHES ]

[MORE]