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 ]
Aaron BETSKY, Cincinnati Art Museum, criticism, Fresh Punches, NAi, Netherlands Architecture Institute, suckerPUNCH, University of Michigan, writing
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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. . . .
[EXCERPTED FROM FRESH PUNCHES ]
*image: Bryant SUH, “Kinetic Tower.” Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Volkan ALKANOGLU, instructor.
Fresh Punches, georgia tech, Georgia Tech College of Architecture, jennifer BONNER, pavilion, rendering, SCI-arc, taxonomy, VOLKAN ALKANOGLU, woodbury university, writing
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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.
[EXCERPTED FROM FRESH PUNCHES ]
casey REHM, complex adaptive systems, complexity, diagram, Fresh Punches, methodology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, RPI, simulation, Studio Kinch, writing
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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.
2013
The influential Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935–1994) invoked the productive possibilities of crisis, writing that history is a “project of crisis” (progetto di crisi). In this entry in the Writing Architecture series, Marco Biraghi explores Tafuri’s multifaceted and often knotty oeuvre, using the historian’s concept of a project of crisis as a lens through which to examine his historical construction of contemporary architecture.
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Anycorp, cynthia DAVIDSON, history, manfredo TAFURI, Marco BIRAGHI, ONtheRADAR, theory, writing
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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.
[EXCERPTED FROM FRESH PUNCHES ]
cooper union, Fresh Punches, michael YOUNG, princeton SOA, representation, technologies of mediation, writing, yale school of architecture, Young & Ayata
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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.
[EXCERPTED FROM FRESH PUNCHES ]
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ferda KOLATAN, Fresh Punches, Iain Hamilton GRANT, pedagogy, PennDesign, Pratt, su11, timothy MORTON, UPenn, urban design, writing
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san francisco CALIFORNIA
“Before the term spline came to refer to a mathematical function producing smoothness (and subsequently, in design software, to a smooth curve with control points) it was once an actual physical drafting tool, a flexible metal or wood strip with weights used to hold the spline in place. This tool developed out of necessity to design smooth, aerodynamic forms and leveraged specific material properties . . .”
*All images courtesy the author. PATH, “(re)STOCK.” Intersecting hand and machine, digital and analog. (Physical, hand craft) Welding joints provides a strong and permanent assembly. Oxides from the welding process leave a rich coloration and evidence of the manual TIG welding process (joints are welded on the backside with ERCuSi-A Silicon Bronze filler rod).
[EXCERPTED FROM FRESH PUNCHES ]
California College of the Arts, CCA, digital fabrication, Fresh Punches, geometry, matt HUTCHINSON, path, spline, writing
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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. . . .”
[EXCERPTED FROM FRESH PUNCHES ]
academia, design research, Fresh Punches, jenny SABIN, pedagogy, writing
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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. . . .
