Unbelievabubble! Inflatable Mania Overcomes USC Students
Students examine "Sheer Pressure" from inside and out. (Pouya Goshayeshi)
In the interest of getting students to build physical things, three years ago, USC introduced Top Fuel, a week-long design-build workshop accompanied by lectures, exhibitions, and panels. This year’s workshop, “Filters Funnels Flows,” wrapped up earlier this week. It focused on pneumatic (aka inflatable) structures, teaching students about the “inseparable relation between form and performance of pneumatic systems.” Indeed, produce the wrong form here (or material, or structure) and the piece doesn’t inflate. Students also explored lighting, temperature, and other environmental issues.
Disco Inferno At UCLA Creates Amorphous Oddities
(Gustavo Martinez)
In a city obsessed with spectacle, it seems only fitting that graduate architecture students at UCLA would investigate the subject in one of its most literal forms. The students (including the author of this blog post) have designed objects, known collectively as Space Oddities, or Variations on the Disco Ball, for a 10-week technology and construction seminar led by professor Jasson Payne. The pieces, morphed from their disco ball origins, are now neither spherical nor symmetrical. Hung in a darkened gallery, they cast a dizzying array of reflections, shapes, shadows, and forms across the room.
ONE Lab: Summer Session on Future Cities 2012
The Future Brooklyn Navy Yards Home of ONE Lab. (Courtesy Terraform ONE)
ONE Lab, New York School for Design + Science is a non-profit research and education collaborative that plans to begin year-round programming when the historic renovation of Building 128 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard is complete in 2014. This innovative, interdisciplinary school currently operates out of the Metropolitan Exchange, a professional cooperative at 33 Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, NY. The co-chairs, Maria Aiolova and Mitchell Joachim of urban ecology thinktank Terreform ONE, seek to promote “research and education at the intersection of design and science.”
Princeton Zeroes in on Zaero-Polo as Next Dean (Updated)
Alejandro Zaera-Polo in front of his Yokohama Terminal project in Japan. (Wikipedia and Naoya Fujii/Flickr)
It is now confirmed that the next dean at Princeton University School of Architecture will be Alejandro Zaera-Polo. The last lap of the race to take Stan Allen’s position as dean had narrowed down to three with odds on one of the several female contenders including Sylvia Lavin and Keller Easterling. But when the London-based, Spanish-born architect was called in London on March 18 and asked to fly to Princeton, where he is currently a visiting lecturer, the die seemed cast. And now Dean Allen confirms.
What Is NY-LON? Mark Wigley and Brett Steele On the New York-London Axis
Brett Steele, Enrique Walker, and Mark Wigley at "What Is NY-LON?" (Lindsay Kunz, Columbia University GSAPP)
“NY-LON” is an annual series of discussions at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) about the transfer of ideas along the New York-London axis. In this particular conversation, Brett Steele, director of London’s Architectural Association (AA), and Mark Wigley, dean of New York’s GSAPP, talked about the threads that connect the two cities, what that means for architectural discourse, and how the connection has evolved over time.
Pictorial> eVolo 2012 Skyscraper Competition Winners Announced
Himalaya Water Tower: Zhi Zheng, Hongchuan Zhao, Dongbai Song
The winners of the eVolo 2012 Skyscraper Competition have been announced; get ready for an afternoon of browsing some pretty spectacular renderings. Entries offer innovative (and sometimes outlandish) solutions in an attempt to address the social, historical, urban, and environmental responsibilities of the 21st century mega-structure.
IESNYC Student Lighting Competition
2012 IES Student Competition. (Naomi Castillo)
The 12th annual IESNYC Student Lighting Competition, “Fraction/Refraction”, was held Wednesday night at the appropriately well-lit Helen Mills Event Space in Chelsea. The competition was open to all interested students in New York City and included entries from designers at Pratt Institute, Parsons/New School, Fashion Institute of Technology, Fordham, and New York School of Interior Design. Over 100 entries created a luminous one-night exhibition of over 100 light-sourced objects, each with a different take on this year’s theme of “how light plays with textures, flows through materials and creates layers of contrast.”
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Pratt Student Awarded Gensler Brinkmann Scholarship
Tina Uznanski's concept for a flexible library. (Courtesy Gensler)
While most design students are starting the scramble for plum summer internships, Tina Uznanski can rest easy, knowing a desk with her name on it will be waiting at Gensler’s London office. Uzanski, an interior design student at the Pratt Institute, has received Gensler’s annual Brinkmann Scholarship, winning a paid summer internship at the Gensler office of her choice and a cash prize to be put toward her final year of study at Pratt. The award was established in 1999 as a memorial to interior designer and former Gensler partner Donald G. Brinkmann.
Uznanski won the competition with her clever concept for a renovation of her neighborhood library in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, that creates a flexible room through “shifting stacks.” images after the jump
Is Drawing Dead? Yale Searches for an Answer
Panelists Greg Lynn, Preston Scott Cohen, and Marion Weiss. (Erik Herrmann)
Is drawing dead? That was the burning question (and title) of last weekend’s symposium at the Yale School of Architecture, which assessed the contemporary state of drawing through three days of lectures and panels, with pen-and-paper proponents from across the architectural spectrum. This convergence of many great drawers past and present coincided with the recently opened exhibition Massimo Scolari: The Representation of Architecture, a largely drawing-based show on view through May 4 in the School of Architecture Gallery.
Deborah Berke’s Yale Studio Exploring Urban Manufacturing (and Bourbon)
A stack of whiskey barrels. (Project 404 / Flickr)
American manufacturing may be on the rocks, but Deborah Berke, principal at Deborah Berke & Partners, believes that by adding a little bourbon, one Kentucky city can make an industrial comeback. Berke is leading a graduate studio at Yale exploring the future of boutique manufacturing in the United States and using an urban distillery in Louisville as a case study.
Cooper Union’s Toys for the Blind
A construction by Ling-Li Tseng. (Courtesy of Tamar Zinguer)
“How can a construction toy be ‘playful’?” This is the problem that Tamar Zinguer asked her Cooper Union students in a recent seminar focused on the architecture of play. For this session, Zinguer, who has taught the course before, decided to eliminate the visual aspect, a sensory aspect of toy design highly relied upon in previous seminars’ constructions. Focusing less on color and more on the experience of the object, the result is a set of innovative and wonderfully textured toys, from blocks to shells, that encourage play for the visually impaired.
Clothing Becomes A Canopy at SCI-Arc
Friday's review of the two new structures (courtesy Chung Ming Lam)
For the last several years, SCI-Arc’s Studio 1A has given new students the chance to literally make their mark by producing projects that become permanent fixtures at the school. On Friday, this year’s class revealed a project that started as a piece of clothing, then became a wire model, then became a mockup, and finally ended as a new undulating and faceted canopy and wall. Made of a recycled carbon fiber called Nyloboard, the project’s more than 2,000 pieces were all hand cut and, somehow, none are exactly alike. They’re attached with Gorilla Glue, nails, and screws. “It’s something that exists at the scale of the world, which can take years for an architect,” said Nathan Bishop, who along with Jackilin Hah Bloom and Jenny Wu led the studio.
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