It is hardly a secret that urbanism has run its
course both in polemics and practice.
The political diversity, cultural differences, and
creative nuances we entrusted to make cities unique
have betrayed us. On one hand, the grand cities we are
building are ill-performing − from Shenzhen to Dubai,
Beijing to Los Angeles, Shanghai to Jakarta. On the
other hand, grandiose ideas we have intellectualized
remain largely irrelevant. We simply have no tools for
city-making!
Today, the pervasive sense of crisis comes
with a welcome waft of opportunity. What we have
detected is that the crisis is a consequence of the
uncoordinated realms of finance (development) and
energy (conservation) − a disjuncture that necessitates
unprecedented attempts to bring the two into accord.
It is through the physical environment that the
coordination of the two can be achieved. Since finance
and energy have always been key determinants of
cities and simultaneously the forces that alienated
and endangered architects and planners, a reentry to
this danger zone, the tiger’s belly, may well bring the
chance to rediscover our lost vitality, the baby tiger.  brought the School into a more ready position, where
Armed with great developments in computational
capability and information technology, reentry is
possible! Now is the moment for architects to reclaim
cities as a realm that informs and performs.
The ability to congregate a flow of optimism
bears the first light of revitalizing the lost battle
of urbanism. The School has shown tremendous
engagement in creating confluences in the parametric
mode of urbanism: in the classroom, with sponsored
research studios for a new urban development zone
in Shenzhen, with a December forum that brought
digital thinkers together to formulate the possibilities
of a new urbanism moving away from form logics to
informed logics, and with research grant applications
for PODS (Parametrically Optimized Design Systems,
led by Greg Otto) and PAUM (Parametric Adaptation
Urban Model, led by David Gerber).
These efforts collectively underlay the
fall semester’s lecturers who search for new urban
agents: The Chinese Poles, Yung Ho Chang and Pei
Zhu, with their deeply rooted cultural strategies both
in linguistic and tectonic traditions, play opposite
to those of Paris Mousequetaires − François Roche,
Marc Fornes, Stephan Heinrich − and their robotic
romanticism. On the other axis lies the urban
landscape: Gerdo Aquino expresses the newly
invigorated landscape agenda
at USC.
And finally, a few words on the USC American
Academy in China (USC/AAC), which, through China
as a laboratory, juxtaposes intellectual speculation
and social metamorphosis. In its second year, AAC
new pedagogical methods and urban paradigms for
urbanism could be tested.
It is the year of the tiger, a sign for strength,
intelligence, and timely action!
Qingyun Ma
Dean
Della & Harry MacDonald Chair
USC School of Architecture
 This issue is dedicated 
to the memory of

Dolores Blurock

Our friend and

dedicated supporter
of the students of the 
USC School of Architecture

2 IDEA NEWS
“GUILD” – A FORMAL ASSOCIATION OF PEOPLE WITH SIMILAR INTERESTS;
AN ASSOCIATION OF CRAFTSMAN IN A PARTICULAR TRADE.
Architecture is our passion and defines who we are as individuals and what we do as professionals. The
Students, the Faculty, and members of the profession are an association of individuals who have come
together to form the USC Architectural Guild. For over 50 years, the Guild has been driven by a passion for
creativity and a desire to perfect our craft. The Guild is raising the bar and moving forward with its sights
set on the next 50 years.
As President of the USC Architectural Guild, I have carried that passion for the School of Architecture
at USC since my first day sitting in Harris 101 in September 1980. As a graduate of the Class of 1985, my
professional career started as a result of a Guild initiative: the “Internship Scholarship Program.” I was a
recipient of the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) Internship Scholarship and now am a Design Principal
with AECOM Design where I have worked with a group of very talented individuals and partners for 25
years, ever since the SOM days. My path would not have taken me to where I am today if it were not for the
USC School of Architecture, the USC Architectural Guild, and the opportunities that both afforded me. I
encourage each and every one of you to find out what the Guild is and what it can do to help you define your
next step.
The Guild is comprised of a number of Southern California’s leading design, engineering, and
construction professionals who have assembled to create a support mechanism for you, the Students and
Faculty who make up the USC School of Architecture. The Board of the USC Architectural Guild has been
hard at work moving the Mission of the Guild forward with a number of provocative initiatives. Working
with Dean Ma, his support group, and the Faculty, we have made great strides in advancing the Mission
of the School by strengthening the Guild’s connection to Students and Faculty. We will also begin moving
beyond our traditional circle of professionals and will look to other creative professions to help us define
our Mission: the entertainment industry, artist communities, and designers whose palettes are not
necessarily made up of concrete and steel.
Over the last several months, the Guild has held a number of meetings and “roundtable” discussions
focused on strengthening communications with the Faculty and Students to see how the Guild can raise
the bar on supporting initiatives that are vital to advancing education. In the spirit of collaboration, the
Guild and the School are moving forward with a Faculty Research Program that will enable the Faculty to
partner with various Southern California firms to take on joint research projects that will not only advance
education at the School of Architecture but will also engage the profession with academia, ultimately
benefiting the Student Body. The Guild will also begin working with a number of the Student Groups and
Student Organizations on campus to find ways in which the Guild can partner with the student body to
make professional connections on your behalf and support you as you transition from academia into your
professional career.
Critical to the success of the Guild is our ability to connect with the Students; this connection is not
mandatory but is one that we will focus on because we care about the future generations of architects
and those who will contribute to our environment and our children’s environment. To that end, we will be
moving forward with two (2) important programs: the “Mentoring Program” and the “Internship Scholarship
Program.” The “Mentoring Program” is a partnership between a Student and a professional with the intent
of building a future relationship. The “Internship Scholarship Program” is a partnering between a Student
and a firm with the intent of supporting a future career. Additionally, we will continue with programs such
as the Firm Fair and the Resume + Portfolio Workshop, but we are looking into new programs such as
Guild-sponsored exhibitions and lectures, a Student Awards Event and a Student Competition.
The Board and the Executive Board of the USC Architectural Guild have been hard at work to make
what it is that the Guild does for the school more relevant to Students and the Faculty. I am proud of all of
those individuals who have had the vision and passion to make our Guild the foremost support organization
of any collegiate School of Architecture in the country. Indeed, the Guild is a model for a number of schools
who ask us: “What is it that you do for the students?,” “Who makes up the Guild?,” and “Why do you do
it?” We will continue to push forward and make others envious of our accomplishments, but it is also
important to remember that the Guild is not only comprised of the Board and the Executive Board: We are
supported by our members who number over 800 strong – and that number is growing. Our Members are
comprised of individuals, groups, and organizations responsible for envisioning, developing, and creating
our environment, and they represent nearly every facet of the built realm.
Thank you. We look forward to seeing and hearing from each of you. Please contact Zelda Wong
(zwong@usc.edu), the Director of the USC Architectural Guild, and she will help you take that next step.

Cory Ticktin, AIA, LEEDAP

President
USC Architectural Guild
October, 2009

FALL 2009 3
 A.C. Martin Visiting Professor in Architectural
François Roche Anna Neimark 
Design François Roche is A founder and principal
of R&Sie(n), based in Paris. He co-taught, with
Marc Fornes and Stephan Heinrich, a graduate
design topic studio in the Fall.
Lecturer Anna Neimark instructed a first-year
undergraduate design studio in the Fall.
FR: You asked if I had an image to go with the interview, but I cannot
give you what you want. For fifteen years now, I have not used my
own photograph. Instead, to represent R&Sie(n), we use the portrait
of the Avatar. This digital portrait is not only a kind of fantasy, but a
coquetry, where we refuse to appear.
AN: Is the avatar a kind of simulacrum?
FR: Yes. The avatar de-personifies the architect. It allows us to talk
from somewhere else, not directly from “me.” The identity of this
character has allowed us to be as we want. I can lead my daily life
without being a representation of what I am expected to be. It’s a way
for us at R&Sie(n) to detach ourselves from the fragile egotism of the
architect.
AN: Do you see the avatar as a construction of a character, as in
fiction?
FR: In a way. The character allows us to construct a schizophrenic
identity that constantly changes its personality. There is an American
movie from the 70s, Sybil, about a girl with sixteen different
personalities that offer her the possibility of being multiplied many
times over. Schizophrenia is a strategy of resistance. Resistance is a
term that I am borrowing from the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.
The tactic of using the multiple identity disorder allows one to speak
from somewhere unpredictable using a language that is unpredictable
and with an appearance that is unpredictable.
AN: So do you use this separation of the architect from his public
representation as a way to create architectural narratives that escape
DIALOGUE
one singular interpretation?
FR: Architecture is a tool for articulating narrative. It’s not a final
static product. In Hybrid Muscle we designed a little building in
Thailand’s countryside and we added an animal to animate the
project. The albino buffalo labored in lieu of an engine to generate
electricity that powered light bulbs and laptops. We were interested
in designing the animal into the architecture. So what was in reality
a staged performance seemed traditional in this countryside setting.
It looked like a ritual that blurred the boundary between the modern
hygienic building and the animal that made it dirty. So the animal was
constantly shitting and stinking, but it was also producing electricity.
We could have put a photovoltaic cell in place of the animal, but it
was more interesting to create this uncomfortable relationship. And
in the end, the juxtaposition of the animal and the building did not
appear exotic; the ceremony seemed to be totally normal in the local
situation.
AN: I’d like to segue from the narratives in your projects that you
call “scenarios” or, in this case, a “ritual,” to digital scripts that
also structure many of your architectural decisions. Could you talk
about these algorithms and whether you see them as parallel or
contradictory to the narrative-based scenarios?
R&Sie(n) Avatar
4 DIALOGUE
FR: Any algorithm has a fundamentally linguistic dimension. For
instance: How could I ask to my mother for enough money to buy
two baguettes and a little bit of candy without revealing to her the
purchase of the candy and thereby concealing the real price of the
baguettes? This child problem is an algorithm, but with a non-
deterministic approach, with a fuzzy logic. This is not so far from the
French philosopher Alain Badiou’s rewriting of the tale of Bluebeard
through mathematics. Badiou uses algorithms to develop a strategy
that articulates subjectivities and fuzzy logic through the theory of
belonging. Bluebeard and his five wives constitute a global system
that cannot be reduced to the addition of any particular relation
between the monster and its five victims. The assembly of each
element in this closed system is greater than the whole. The addition
of indeterminacy to the choice of the next victim cannot be described
by a probabilistic approach that considers the sum of its parts. In
other words, ΣFx<∩Fx, if Fx is the relational function between the
monster and each wife.
AN: So are you treating the digital script as a verbal act of
communication?
FR: Not quite. We do not say “if, then, therefore” all the time; we
mostly settle for “maybe” or for “perhaps.” But it is difficult to
integrate “maybe” and “perhaps” into computational language.
AN: The “maybe” and the “perhaps” are conditionals that can
destabilize a script. Can you invite unpredictability, the “maybe” or the
“perhaps,” into your digital inputs?
FR: It all depends on the input that drives the machine. Is it purely
an input of trajectories which are totally predictable, totally
computational? Or can we integrate a strategy of conflict into the
script, a strategy of disruption into the linear process? For example,
in the 1920s, Maurice Maeterlinck conducted research on the
morphology of the termite mound. He discovered that termites, which
are blind, need to construct and deconstruct their mound in order to
constantly regulate the temperature in the queen’s chamber, to keep
it at equilibrium, thereby ensuring the reproduction and the survival
of the termite community. So the termites constantly close the door
or open it to bring in fresh air or to isolate the chamber according
to the outside temperature. Depending on the position of the sun,
day after day, they modify the position of the chamber using a kind
of pheromonal GPS. They smell themselves; they smell their own
trajectories and redefine their position or the conditions in which
they are working. And because they are opening and closing the door
all the time, the direction of the wind inside the mound is constantly
changing. Of course, their pheromones are incredibly sensitive to the
wind, and so the termites constantly struggle to redefine the zero
point of their GPS, to regulate their own position. They construct
something that modifies the way they position themselves. This
conflict produces incredible structures constantly reorganizing the
shape of the termite mound because its construction can never be
stabilized by a predictive design. It’s always a work in progress.
AN: So, in a sense, you would need to collaborate with a termite to
destabilize your own inputs! Your proposal is that machines can be
imbued with intelligence. Could you describe what you mean by the
skyzoid machine, a term that appears in the title of your lecture here
at USC?
FR: Our concept of the skyzoid machine is based on Marcel Duchamp’s
Bachelor Machine. It’s a machine which is not cybernetic. In other
words, it’s a machine that does not define itself solely through its
efficient mode of production. The skyzoid machine pretends to do
something while doing something else, thus creating a confusion
about the degree of its functionality, the extent by which it belongs to
science. Immediately, it questions the limits of the technology and its
place in production. So the machine actually participates in creating
a blurriness.
AN: Do you mean that even the machine participates in the production
of culture?
FR: Yes, the machine’s role is not to simply produce something in the
phantasm of efficiency. The machine is both a freak and an operating
system at the same time. We try to introduce an unpredictable
behavior, or a fuzzy logic, to explicate the confusion between what
“they” pretend to do and what “they” are actually doing. In other
words, the skyzoid machine completely changes your relationship
IDEA NEWS
Terra Incognita, with Pierre Huyghe,
Tate Modern, London, 2006
Hybrid Muscle, ChIang Mai,
Thailand, 2003
aluminum structure in the Tate Modern and the MAM Paris. This
island reacted to its environmental conditions; it appeared and
disappeared responding to the evaporation of water in the space
of the museum. The project modeled a dynamic process, not only
to promote a fight against global warming, but also to visualize its
transformative effects.

AN: Your architecture is always in dialogue with nature, primitive and

wild, or hybrid and industrial. Can you elaborate on how you see the
role of nature in your work?

FR: Yes. There is a big debate about what kind of nature we want
to reality, leading to paranoia. Because all paranoia produces a to preserve – do we want to preserve the nature we create, our
parallel reality in your mind, filtering perception, you can perceive it industrial nature, or do we want to preserve the very rare and
and describe it through fiction. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
operates on an immediate level when he introduces illogic through
pure logic, what in French one would call le malentendu. Malentendu
– the wrongly heard or misunderstood – is a tool of linguistic
exchange; it is a kind of stutter. We need misunderstanding or
stuttering in order to communicate.

AN: The stutter defines a moment of misunderstanding between

the physiology of the brain and the structure of language, where
something misfires. The machine breaks down. It’s a kind of mental or
biological sabotage. For the project Terra Incognita that you worked
on with Pierre Huyghe, you created an automaton, an albino penguin,
a machine with intelligence or with emotion, whose operational
functions seem to have broken or rusted over. Do you see this as a
contemporary version of the 18th century Digesting Duck automaton
by Jacques de Vaucanson?
FR: Yes! It’s not so far from Vaucanson! You know when he presented
the Digesting Duck there was a huge debate about the mechanism
inside. Everyone asked: Is it possible to mechanically model the
fantastic process of digestion? But after he revealed that there was no
mechanism inside, that the duck automaton held two disconnected
chambers for food and shit, that no chemical reaction took place, he
was right away rejected by the scientific community. Immediately,
he was denounced as a charlatan. It’s quite an interesting story.
Before, he was a genius! Before, he was a prophet! But at the instant
of disclosure, he went from prophet to impostor. Where is the real: in
the trick, in the mechanism of the trick, in the illusion to create life
as Rabbi Loew did with the Golem, or in the morale of the bourgeoisie
which disqualified Vaucanson for his misleading?
AN: Then wouldn’t you say that Vaucanson was both rejected and
thereby elevated in his new role as a con artist? By lowering the
significance of a purely technological explanation, he went from a
scientist to a cultural producer. I am curious to hear about the roles
that science and culture play in your penguin odyssey.
FR: When you decide to go on an odyssey, you need to prepare. The
preparation of the odyssey can become even more important than the
objective of the odyssey itself. So the preparation became an odyssey
all its own. In the first part of our preparation, we needed to come up
with a story to justify our trip to the South Pole, which would not be
the real story of why we were actually going there. It’s very similar
to scientific practice. In science, you come up with a hypothetic or
fake objective and you continue to broadcast this fake objective
of the experiment until you discover the character of the artifact
produced by the actual experiment. So we decided to do research on
the “albino penguin” and to come back with the proof that an albino
penguin existed. In order to guarantee that we would come back from
the Antarctic with the penguin, we had to bring the penguin to the
Antarctic.
Shitting Duck Automaton,
Jacques De Vaucanson, 1739
confrontational primitive nature, the risky nature, the wild? There
is a beautiful movie called Charisma by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The plot
revolves around a grove of trees from the dinosaur period. The trees
seem very weak and fragile and the community wants to preserve
them as a testament to its history and the distant past. But at some
point the trees begin to produce a toxin and they completely intoxicate
the ground and begin to kill the forest all around them. Of course,
the community decides to burn the trees, to burn the dinosaur, to
burn Jurassic Park. The inhabitants wage war against the nature that
is not domesticated, that endangers their industrial environment.
But we want to ask the question, can we de-domesticate nature
through architecture? In the project I’mlostinParis, we constructed
a house in the middle of Paris with glass beakers in which we grew
Rhizobium, a bacterium that boosts the production of nitrogen. This
chemical hydroponic wall elaborates a relationship between Eros
and Thanatos, between the moralism of green architecture and the
fear stemming from the manipulation of bacteria as an alchemical
process. Nature is wild and heterotopic, not exactly the dream of
Disney with its ideal domesticated nature.
AN: Is your goal then to introduce risk and danger into our otherwise
tame, domestic life?
FR: Our aim is to articulate antagonistic forces and to make visible
their intrinsic nature, both on their own and in the way that they
conflict with one another. We are pushed and pulled in many
directions. We are both hostage to and dominated by the multiplicity
and the arrogance of disorder. We can neither reduce the noise in a
fake reductive strategy nor increase it by cynicism. R&Sie(n) is a tool
of permanent negotiation between Faust and Mephisto; it is a tool of
the illusion of power.

AN: So you built the penguin before you went?

FR: I don’t remember…We came to the South Pole to film something

that we built at home and brought with us on the boat. But I’m not
sure it was the penguin…like Vaucanson’s duck, he was not a perfect
machine. But on this schizoid odyssey we found evidence of how
global warming was and still is transforming the topography of the
South Pole. We documented evidence of new mountains appearing
out from under the melting snow. We were perhaps the first humans
to walk on some of these new cliffs. They had never been naked like
that before; they had always been hidden under meters of snow and
ice. So as ethnologists we came back to Europe with the report of this
I’mlostinParis, Paris, France, 2008
transformation. We developed a new island through a honeycomb

FALL 2009 DIALOGUE 5

 Yung Ho Chang is Professor and Head of the
Department of Architecture at MIT, as well
Yung Ho Chang Alice Kimm
as the founding principal of Atelier FCJZ in
Beijing, China.
Visiting Associate Professor Alice Kimm
CO-COORDINATED THE FIRST-YEAR +2 GRADUATE
DESIGN STUDIOS AND TAUGHT two seminars in
the Fall. She is a principal of John Friedman
Alice Kimm Architects.
AK: What was your motivation to take the position at MIT? Have
your expectations been met or exceeded, or have they perhaps been
supplanted by others?
YHC: Since I was not looking for a teaching position in the US, I had to
rationalize why I wanted to accept the MIT architecture department
headship. I came up with three justifications:
1. To create a distance from the overly intense practice in China,
which did not materialize. It only meant I now work from Boston attitude towards control of a project, of authorship, in particular of
with my office in Beijing every night.
2. To be exposed to the latest developments in technology.
3. To take part in the next round of revolution in architectural
education in the U.S., as MIT was ready for change.
The past four and a half years have confirmed the last two of
my expectations. Meanwhile, my practice has undergone a
transformation. With a broadened vision acquired at MIT, our office,
FCJZ, is increasingly targeting environmental issues and we base
design solutions upon technological innovations.
AK: Would you put your smaller explorations – the innovative
installations that experiment with materials and technologies – into
DIALOGUE
the category of this “broadened vision?” It is interesting that most
offices attempt to jump scale, but you appear to have taken on more
small-scale works as a means of trying out big ideas – which I assume
you hope then to apply to large-scale projects in the future. This real-
scale experimentation is fascinating. As a result of them, have you
indeed found the opportunity to take on much larger-scale building
projects that further expand upon the small experimental projects?
YHC: It is correct to say that at FCJZ the smaller scale works often
become the opportunities to explore new materials or technologies.
We do, however, simultaneously, take on large scale commissions,
from urban design to skyscraper. Although some of the more
radical experiments may not be directly translated into the bigger
architectural projects, some aren’t too far away from broader
applications. For instance, our investigation into plastics has taken us
to design the 5,000 square-meter Shanghai Corporate Pavilion for the
World Expo in Shanghai with polycarbonate tubes as exterior material.
Another example: after building a temporary structure with raw-cut
bamboo for the China Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2005, we are
now constructing a 2,500 square-meter restaurant in Hangzhou using
more sophisticated engineered bamboo. The macro would from time
to time inform the micro too. I like to think we walk with two feet.
AK: Often, in an established practice, the smaller and more
experimental projects such as the ones you mention become a means
for younger designers in the office to stretch their wings – have you
Ufida R&D Center, Beijing
6 DIALOGUE
Piao Dinner Set
found yourself mentoring more through this process – and does the
academic life influence you in this way? Or put another way: Has your
the formmaking, changed because you do now, indeed, walk with two,
or perhaps even four, feet?
YHC: Architecture is now out of the vulgarity of the Postmodernism
but caught right in the boredom of aesthetic conformism. The
present-day choices of architectural languages are limited to either
minimal or blobby. I’m not sure authorship of form is worth anything
today. Discovery is infinitely more exciting than control or signature.
At FCJZ, we don’t differentiate major and minor projects and work
as teams for designs of all scales. We don’t do S&D, where someone
does a Sketch and others Develop it. We do R&D: Research and
Development. We do it together. It’s been like this for years.
AK: I would agree somewhat with your assessment of form. But what
of the current role of technology, which is very important to you,
and its role in formgiving? Can you discuss that briefly in the light of
some of your recent R&D projects? One of the reasons (aside from
considerations of the economy) I think it is great to be a student of
architecture right now is that the application of technology (especially
as it is deployed in service to sustainability and environmental
or systems issues) is the generator of much of our design
decisionmaking. But this has its drawbacks too, yes?
YHC: Obviously, technology is THE opportunity for us to really re-think
architecture today. At FCJZ, we are working with new materials –
plastics in particular, digital fabrication, solar devices, etc. We need
them to address social, urban, and environmental issues. These
technologies are giving and will give architecture new forms in ways
we can’t dictate; however, my problem is that many architects’
interests in technology seem rather narrow. I’m actually amazed by
the consistency of forms generated by the computer. They are all
the same. How could the computer be so boring? Or the architects in
front of the computers are not very imaginative or just not very open-
minded?
AK: Certainly there is a certain consistency to the forms, but there
are also some great exceptions out there. Would it be somewhat
true to say that you are skeptical of parametric design? Do you see
value in it? And if so, could you give some examples of where you
see it being applied in a positive, generative way, and do you utilize
parametrics in your own work? I think it’s not really that technology
is giving architecture new forms in ways we can’t control, but that
many architects are forgetting about the whole picture and so are
not taking control of the technology and utilizing it to architecturally
innovate new performance-based paradigms as well as forms. We
certainly see that in the school; the students don’t (because they
really can’t) take charge of the myriad factors that go into generating
architecture – there is so much talk about the performative and
how that becomes translated, but they’re not in control of either the
technology or the form.
YHC: I am not at all skeptical of parametric design. Quite the contrary,
I think it’s gonna change the way we practice: We could now start a
project from construction documents, for example. Last semester, in
order to learn more about parametric design, I co-taught a studio with
Dennis Shelden, the Chief Technology Officer of Gehry Technologies,
IDEA NEWS
who is doing cutting edge work in that area. What I don’t understand
is why the outcome of computation in architecture is so narrow
right now. The computer can process an immense amount of data
and work on extremely large and complex problems, such as the
City. Geometry should not be the only issue. As I mentioned before,
computation shouldn’t have a style, let alone a fixed one. At FCJZ, we
use parametric design to address an array of issues (you have an idea
if you remember the plastic folding screen we made) and expect to do
more of it.
AK: Can you tell us about the largest project you are working on now?
Are you working on any cities? I would like to hear a bit more about the
strategies and techniques you are using in the design of your largest,
as opposed to smallest, project.
YHC: Last night or this morning, since it was 3:30 AM in Boston when
the meeting finished, I presented via the Internet the design of a 200-
meter tall, 47-stories, 93,670-square-meters building area above
ground, skyscraper to the client. This is one of the largest projects in
the office right now. The tower is in Shenzhen for SZTV. Similar to our
other more recent work, we wanted to make the building low-carbon.
Specifically we asked what are the differences between a southern
and a northern high-rise? In response, we developed a building
envelope that combines several BIPV technologies and sun-shading
devices to cut down heat gain and to generate electricity at the same
time. As a result, the green design attempt also gives the building a
Tang Palace, Shanghai
FALL 2009
sculpted surface formally. Another big project is on the urban level:
We have been working on the China Ad Base in Jiading, Shanghai, with
250,000 square meters of land in use and a 1.2 FAR. In this case, we
have aimed to turn the office park into a livable town and focused on
issues of density, scale, integrated use, integrated circulation, etc.
The master plan primarily consists of 41.2m by 41.2m basic urban
blocks and 10-meter and 20-meter wide streets. Buildings are low-
rise, typically with four stories, and programmed to have commercial
and public spaces on the street level and residential units on top.
There are other layers of urban design that deal with water, traffic,
and so on. We are going head-on against the trend of mega blocks
and super (wide) streets in new Chinese cities. The China Ad Base
master plan and the schematic design of the first buildings have been
approved by the city and the client. We are in the design development
stage for both the Shenzhen and Shanghai projects. Other on-going
large-scale projects at FCJZ include Qianmen old city regeneration in
Beijing and a housing and shopping district in Yantai, Shangdong, etc.
AK: Can you name a building or commission type that you would like to
receive in the near future? In other words, what have you not designed
that you would like very much to design?
YHC: I have designed two kindergartens and an elementary school.
While working on the school, the principal and I even talked about
having an architecture class for the children. Unfortunately, none of
the projects got built. I would love to do something for kids.
DIALOGUE 7
 Shane Coen is principal of Coen + Partners,
Shane Coen John Dutton  
based in Minneapolis and New York City.

Lecturer John Dutton taught second-year

undergraduate design studio in the Fall.
He is principal of Dutton Architects.

JD: You have worked in quite varied site conditions and scales – from
open agricultural fields to urban spaces to suburban residential lots.
What does “context” mean to you? How does scale come into play in
responding to these different contexts? What role do site and context
play in your work?  

SC: Context, to me, is comprehensive. It includes the physical

surroundings, the cultural surroundings, and all layers of history
associated with a particular place. Scale is incredibly important
because the juxtaposition of scale and the abstraction of elements
at different scales is one of the best tools landscape architects have
at their disposal. If you take something, be it an event or an element
which is generally perceived as benign, and then exacerbate it in some
way, such as expand its presence, a link is created between existing
and new which focuses new thought and energy on both existing and
fabricated. Therefore both context and site are incredibly important.
Much of what we design is about recasting the site and representing
landscape as the mediator between existing and new, especially when
architecture is involved.
 
JD: This idea of landscape as a recasting of the site is extremely
interesting. What you’re saying is that landscape mediates between
old and new, architecture and site. That seems to be a more nuanced
view of landscape than a foregrounded design in its own right. It
reminds me of 18th century picturesque theory of “gardens” with
DIALOGUE

designers like Humphrey Repton and William Kent where great

amounts of effort and expense were put into making the land seem
more “natural” – a notion one could argue they fetishized.
 
SC: The difference is I do not believe you can recreate nature, and I
WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, MINNEAPOLIS, MN
never attempt to do so. I study nature (the land), and listen to what
it is telling me. The land will ultimately tell you what to do, what to
manipulate, what to leave alone, where to place a road, a structure, JD: You have talked about the beauty of repetition in landscape, and
a line. All of our work after the analysis is really about recalling the the inspiration you draw from the scale of agricultural plantings. You
context through the use of materials, patterns and forms, but we also are now beginning to get more urban projects. What is the difference
very deliberately contrast nature so it is extremely clear what was in your approach to the role of landscape in rural areas vs. urban
created and what was not.  areas? Are you as interested in the design of figural spaces of the
  city – parks, streets, etc., as you are in the patterns of fields in rural
JD: Can you elaborate on your idea of “landscape” vs. “natural”?   design? 

SC: Both “landscape” and “natural” are such charged terms,
but landscape less so than natural. Landscape is incredibly
comprehensive and to me it covers everything from rural land to the
most dense urban fabrics, to the ocean’s surface. Natural, however,
is a term that doesn’t really apply to too much anymore. We have
so altered the world we live in that the term natural has lost all
meaning. The term “wilderness” is much more interesting to me.
It conveys, I think, a more accurate idea of what most people may
construe as “natural.” These are untouched places not just in space
but in time: they only exist in our past and in our memory, where
human intervention is non-existent.
 
JD: Yes it is hard to imagine anything natural anymore in a world
of genetically modified agriculture, botoxed faces and humanly
destroyed ecosystems. Your work seems to be aware of that when you
talk about evoking memories of what is lost. Do you think landscape is
better suited to evoke memory than architecture perhaps?
 
SC: No, I think both are equal in their ability to make people feel. Our
work is architectural, it is simply outdoors.
JD: You have described the process of work, of design, as one of
“subtraction.” Can you elaborate?  
SC: When we first start working with a client we try to develop
incredibly simple frameworks which can be adapted to a variety
of materials and budgets. By looking at the site, the context, and
the architecture, we generally discover a set of important lines
and moves. Over time the intent is to refine these lines to as few as
possible so the inherent geometry within a site is showcased.
SC: Repetition in rural landscape is only one form of abstraction, or
design principle, which happens to be the most dominant one in some
of the rural areas where we work. Within urban sites, there are often
multiple factors at work and we draw from them equally. Contrast,
line, and scale shifts are often more present, yet offer much of the
same opportunity as the concept of repetition does in the rural
landscape. So the approach is often very similar – trying to find the
essence of a site and present it in a new and bold way. I’m incredibly
interested in designing all types of spaces within cities. I think
cities need more bold powerful outdoor spaces, but they also need
more whimsy, they need more green, and they need to implement
“landscape” in ways that confound the mind and bring joy to people’s
daily lives.
 
JD: The photographs of your work are quite beautiful, and seem to
be not only a significant way of representing your work, but artistic
endeavors in and of themselves. This reminds me of land art in the
60’s, with large scale artworks by people like Robert Smithson and
Michael Heizer, where it was the photographs, not the artwork itself,
which were shown back in the galleries of New York and became not
just representations but actually the currency of the artists’ work. Can
you comment on the role of photography in representing your work? 
SC: My wife is an incredible documentary photographer; she was the
first to teach me the power of this art. Photography is vitally important
in all things visual. To me it is important that project photography
capture the essence of a project, to communicate the design in an
evocative way. As most people will never have the opportunity to
visit the spaces Coen + Partners designs, it is important that the
photography capture this essence and document the key design

8 DIALOGUE IDEA NEWS

decisions and moves. When this happens, the photography tends to
develop a life of its own. Peter Kersey has shot the majority of our
projects, and is extremely talented. Peter has a very straightforward
but powerful technique. Recently we have also been using Paul Crosby.
 
JD: You have worked at the large scale of communities, of settlement
patterns. In doing so you are challenging the monolithic model
of suburbanism, or at least of suburban sprawl. What role might
landscape architects have in designing settlement patterns? Is this
a challenge to the civil engineers and developers who have singularly
controlled the majority of space in which America now lives? What
is this challenge – how do you propose to address these issues of
sprawl?   of the site, yet our understanding of architecture, our detailing, and
SC: Landscape architects are so well equipped to introduce a better,
more visual, more sustainable model of suburbanism. Everything
we practice, from looking at land from the perspective of what to
save to planning for aging in a place, is so well suited to creating
new models of living which embrace both land and community. Our
work is certainly a challenge to the standard practices of developers
and engineers, but also to communities themselves. So many
communities have codes in place which physically do not allow for
progressive models of living. It is incredibly important that the greater
design community including landscape architects and architects
present neighborhoods and cities with alternative models of living
that embrace sustainability and good design even if it violates
ordinances within the cities where we work.
 
JD: I fully agree. In many ways suburban form is all about landscape
– it forms the streets, front lawns, and backyards as well as the
interstitial spaces. Olmsted certainly conceived the original American
suburbs this way, but probably would never recognize the repetitive,
empty, sterile product of today’s suburban landscape. I think
the suburb is probably the most important contemporary site for
LAVIN BERNICK CENTER, TULANE UNIV., NEW ORLEANS, LA
FALL 2009
architects and landscape architects, and I feel it requires both in
collaboration with each other to successfully create new models. You
often stress collaboration as a significant part of your work. What
is the essential relationship in your work between architects and
landscape architects? How does your work address the connection of
architecture to landscape architecture?
SC: Collaboration is at the heart of what we do within the office
and between our offices and the architects we work with. Our
work often straddles the line between architecture and landscape
architecture. We have the scale vocabulary and understanding to
effectively communicate and implement design concepts at the scale
attention to proportion and materiality allow us to communicate with
architects incredibly well. I, and all of my staff, respect architecture,
read about architecture all of the time and are inspired by much
of the material and form advances in contemporary architectural
practice. Our goal is to translate those ideas in a way that highlights
structure while also presenting the site as a quiet but equal player in
the design dialogue. 
JD: Since Modernism, disciplines such as architecture, landscape
architecture, civil engineering, transportation engineering – all the
disciplines that have an impact on the places we live – have been
treated as separate specialties, each working to maximize its own
product in relative isolation from the others. Could your idea about
collaboration between architects and landscape architects be
stretched even further to other disciplines and could this be a new
and fruitful model of working?
 
SC: Yes of course. Collaboration is simply the sharing, debate and
exchange of ideas. The more we find partners who inspire us, and
who we inspire, the more successful our work will be. This is true in so
many professions that you mention. Collaboration is the future.
DIALOGUE 9
 Marc Simmons teaches at Princeton University
and is a founding partner of Front, Inc.
Marc Simmons Andrew Atwood
Lecturer Andrew Atwood is principal of ATWOOD.
In the Fall he co-taught an undergraduate
topic studio and provided instruction on digital
techniques and processes to the first-year +2
graduate design studioS.
AA: What is your attitude towards the trend of increased technological
specialization in architecture? As one of these specialists, could you
describe your thoughts on specialists originating in the “middle” of
the process and slowly branching out?
MS: Pragmatic. An individual or group is only able to know and achieve
so much. Companies either grow to integrate multiple specialties and
capabilities (which is the norm) – and they collaborate with whichever
groups bring the requisite missing experience. Team building relative
to precise specific needs of the project is essential, almost an art
form for some clients and their representatives. Large integrated
groups such as AECOM, AEDAS, Gensler, and Arup integrate
thousands, if not tens of thousands of staff in various technical and
design groups, expanding as opportunity presents itself through
organic growth or through acquisition.
  At the smaller scale, many new practices are finding a way to
define themselves according to their key interests and capabilities.
Some do design and construction management, others do fabrication,
some engage in forms of automation to produce appropriate
documents, some are doing lighting, energy, facade, structure,
media, etc. It depends if they are capable and if they can secure and
perform the work. And the measure of capability is the individual. A
self-evident truth – it’s all about the talent and how people organize
themselves to work together for some meaningful, effective result.
  So for us, our core knowledge is architectural and facade
system design. We are built on an excellent first-rate structural
team, complemented by people with energy/daylighting experience,
deepened by mechanical assembly design engineers, computer
engineers, product designers and people with workshop / cnc /
automation experience, and to round this out people with strong
contract management, business administration and construction
DIALOGUE
management experience.
So, starting with facades as our core work product, but with
the spirit of designers, engineers and builders, it’s natural that we
would start to take on our own design work such as the Louis Vuitton
work (won by invited competition), to start engineering elements
beyond facades including long-span structures and small complete
building structures, to becoming fabricators and then eventually
specialist facade contractors assuming turnkey responsibility for
design, engineering, documentation, fabrication, assembly and
installation. We do not do all that ourselves, we have separate
companies taking on the key responsibility and sub-contracting
various elements accordingly. The design is sub-contracted to Front
and other engineers as appropriate to get the work done. We did
not create a business plan to this effect. It has evolved to meet the
needs of certain opportunities. All of our work is by referral including
design and supply work and it has been evolving in non-linear and
unexpected ways. What we enjoy most is that each of the individuals
in the group is able to deploy their expertise in significant ways
and our collective experience is growing stronger and more quickly
than we expected. The team is now mature and confident. The level
of accountability is very high, but it is precisely by stepping into
that space that one gains control over the work, and we have been
finding that the best way to mitigate risk is to dilute it with your more
comprehensive responsibilities. The consequences of your own errors
SANAA, Toledo Art Museum
10 DIALOGUE
Steven Holl, Linked Hybrid
(which are many) become less significant as they begin to impact
fewer external groups. While the complete project remains in the
hands of the construction manager, other sub-contractors, designers
and consultants, at least our portion of the work becomes more
holistic. In addition, working on the supply side has made for a much
more effective consulting team where we understand the needs of
the contracting side very well and we can better navigate and mediate
divergent interests to achieve common goals.
AA: Yes, you have recently begun to take on your own design projects,
controlling the projects and process from beginning to end.  Beyond
the obvious, were there any unexpected consequences (both good
and bad)? Is this the ultimate goal? Or one branch of a larger business
model that will always include consulting? Consulting beyond facade
systems? 
 
MS: See above. Bad = stress and financial risk. Good = everything
else. But we have learned to embrace, reconcile and live with this.
Our goal is to establish a separate but brand-related architectural
practice in order to operate in a normative fashion for certain
projects as required. We intend to continue developing design,
consulting, engineering, fabrication and supply/install aspects of
our work. We have made a significant investment in capturing the
knowledge embodied in our system designs and processes and we
are working towards harnessing this to accelerate and enhance
all aspects of the group’s work. We have recently initiated a small
residential pavilion project, a glass house in an open field, near
a lake. The project is an investment property for rent, will be a
100% glass panel perimeter, and our goal is to achieve a net-zero
energy project utilizing geo-thermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic,
passive shading, radiant systems to regulate heating, cooling,
water, etc. While we are the developers and operators, we are also
designing, engineering, modeling, producing fabrication drawings
for all components, and will be doing the construction management.
It is research for us. Construction has started and we expect to be
complete by fall 2010. While small, this project represents a role
expansion into development, construction management and property
management. We will see what we learn, what we like, whether it is a
success or not, and then decide how to integrate these lessons into
the larger practice.  
AA: Could you please describe landmark projects for your
company? Seattle Public Library and the Toledo Art Museum
are often referenced.  Are there others that were important or of
particular interest to you?  
 
MS: For built work, there are many (including the ones you mention).
For current work we are doing the National Opera and Library in
Athens with RPBW, the Lincoln Square Synagogue with Cetra Ruddy in
New York, the MahaNakhon tower in Bangkok with OMA, the World
Trade Center Memorial Pavilion with Snohetta, the addition to the
Kimbell with RPBW, the Miami Art Museum with HdM, and the
Highline 23 building with Neil Denari.
I think that while it is true that certain projects may be more
interesting or challenging at times, we see the work as a continuum
where we promote a fluid and organic evolution of ideas, materials,
techniques and processes from one project to the next, and they
definitely inform each other in profound ways. We are now doing
lower cost affordable housing where the challenge is do something
interesting, meaningful, responsible, practical with construction
systems that are in themselves proven and conventional. This is
IDEA NEWS
what most practices deal with everyday. Our normative experience at
Front, we acknowledge, is atypical within the industry. There is a lot of
diversity in the priorities of our clients and the array of teams that we
work with.
AA: On a more conceptual level, how “deep” do you imagine your
services extending into the building?   commitment and skill from all sides.
MS: Deep. However, we collaborate where we are needed and where
we can add value. We are not interested in being responsible for more
than is needed by a particular project or client, and if it is clear we are
not adding value, it’s no big deal to recuse ourselves. Nobody wants to
be at a party where they’re not welcome – that’s no fun.
AA: If we only looked at competitions and student projects we might
believe that everything is happening on the exterior surfaces of
buildings these days.  Building envelopes that express and embed
all the performative functions of the building (structure, mechanical
systems, landscape, circulation, etc...) all accounted for in one (very
thick) facade system – is this the end goal...the end game of a facade
consultant?  What is your stance/attitude on the building skin that
“does it all”? 
 
MS: Yes – it’s a problem. I teach a facade seminar at Princeton and it
follows a business school case study structure. We’re more interested
in talking about how the project was financed, how the team was
selected, how the project evolved, and realities like post-completion
arbitration/litigation. You could mistake it for a professional
practice course, except that we do focus intensively on the logic of
systems, materials, detail, performance, safety, cost, testing, etc
and essentially try to demonstrate to Architecture students, who
will not be able to know everything, how they must work as leaders
and catalysts in a process they can never fully control to achieve a
great building. It is from a non-ideological, non-formal position that
we approach the study of facades; it is very much engaged in the
political-economy of the envelope and its broader relationship to all
other building systems. In the end the facade is perhaps dealt with as
is the Trojan Horse to participate in a more holistic discussion about
the complete building and all its constituent systems and narratives.
The conclusions are typically elusive and indeterminate.
The seamless, monolithic facade is a fiction. Even a CMU wall
with paint is layered. A stressed-skin is layered. The more evolved
discourse on this integrated facade issue achieves a multiplicity of
architectural resultants that are often as much about aesthetic and
formal goals as they are about environmental or phenomenological
ones. The challenge is that one does need a comprehensive
understanding of performance requirements, building physics, cost
and constructability to have control of formal, environmental or
phenomenological intentions in order to manipulate the elements
of construction to achieve a synthetic result. Generally, younger
architects have neither the technical knowledge, the constructional
knowledge, the economic knowledge nor the compositional skill to
integrate this. So one must parse it out and study aspects of the
problem. The goal is to promote incisive, analytical, creative, first-
principles thinking, allowing a student to take on their first (second,
third...) real projects and engage the presented constraints relative to
ambition as they come. This is what we are trying to do at Princeton in
the seminar, and we are also planning with Dean Stan Allen to develop
a Front studio that embraces these challenges. But we need to be
realistic about what can be and should be achieved.
“value-engineering” have become an expression for this general
frustration by designers. Personally, I generally find that “value-
engineering” most often results in a better building, but then I’m
an optimist. The reality is that re-thinking a building to achieve
more efficiency while delivering a better building, a more synthetic
and seamless architecture, is not easy and requires significant
AA: At what point is Front typically brought into a project?
 
MS: Ideally, concept design and sometimes as early as Architect
selection. More and more we are part of the team when it is first
appointed – particularly with US-based institutional projects where
the facade engineer is now considered as standard as the structural
and MEP engineers. And much of the selection is in part who the
broader team is. Some criteria include an understanding of which
specific projects that this specific team has done together before.
This criteria has served us reasonably well. We don’t like getting in
after 50% DD.
AA: Could you describe the typical process for a Front, Inc. project?   
 
MS: Ideally it is more or less linear. Concept, schematic, design
development, cd’s, bid, shop drawings, testing, mock-up, fabrication,
assembly, delivery, installation, commissioning. Often it is spiral.
I think you intuit what that implies. CD’s often don’t happen. Bid is
often during DD or early CD. Facades are almost always long lead-
time items.
 
AA: So do you have your own fabrication facility, the capacity to
produce mock ups or even final production?
MS: Yes. We have a small workshop in Brooklyn with our own CNC
machining tools and conventional tools. We use this to prototype
systems but we also do small scale production for some of our supply
projects. This enables the entire office to have firsthand experience in
going from hand sketch, to CATIA to feature CAM to making the actual
artifact in project materials. We sort of skipped the conventional
model shop. The facility is useful but still quite limited. Most of
actual production happens by friends around the world. Some things
are made close by here in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and
Connecticut – some in Canada, Mexico – some in China and Thailand
– some in Europe.  
 
AA: So what software/tools do you use or work with? 
 
MS: Anything that is required to do the job. 

AA: So from your view what is the state of the contemporary curtain
wall?
 
MS: In reasonably good shape – very diverse – an explosion
of innovation. However, there is a utopian vision of intelligent,
adaptable, efficient, beautiful, responsible, synthetic, authentic
facades, where the knowledge base globally is inadequate to deliver
this on any consistent basis. Achieving this vision requires bashing
your head against a concrete wall for several years (often our day at
work). We have learned through experience how to navigate the local/
global scene and are able to assess whether requisite key ingredients
(will, vision, capital, skill, and resources on both fabrication and
contracting) are present and available to push through a project that
can achieve a good-enough incarnation of what architecture aspires
to be. Some projects just don’t have a chance. What I see is a world-
wide embrace of the complexities to deliver, but there is very diverse
fragmentation in the industry given the myriad of stake-holders
REX, Wyly TheatRE
and participants, that creates significant head-winds. Words like

FALL 2009 DIALOGUE 11

 Dr. Andrew “Zoz” Brooks is an engineer, artist, and
graduate of the MIT Media Laboratory’s Robotic
Andrew “Zoz” Brooks Mario Cipresso
Life group. He co-hosts and produces segments
for TV shows Prototype This! and Time Warp on the
Discovery Channel.

Lecturer Mario Cipresso taught second-year

undergraduate design studio in the fall. He is
principal of Studio Shift.

MC: Many of us may be familiar with your work through your recent
involvement on the television shows Time Warp and Prototype
This! You’ve mentioned that your desire to participate in these shows
stems largely from an idealistic position on education and a personal
desire to positively influence young people, to ignite their interests in
science. How has your work on those shows furthered those goals?
How has working with those shows affected your work? Has it led you
in new directions or has something investigated during production
been integrated into your academic work?

ZB: Yes, last year I wrote a kind of gonzo piece for Technology Review
that touched on why I decided to do Prototype This! right when I
graduated, and it was actually a tough decision for me. I wasn’t
sure it was the most productive use of my time, frankly, but what
eventually sold me on it was the idea that it would give me a way to
effectively reach into over a million households and show kids like I
was once – nerds, if you like! – that it’s OK to be a nerd, what we do is
fun, it’s rewarding in a lot of ways, and we really need you to keep it
up and nurture that passion for finding things out and building better
things and not get discouraged by the social stigma or the hard math
or the worry that you’ll be stuck in an underpaid cubicle somewhere.
We need that as a society, as a country, as a world – and they need
that as a way to indulge their intellect and stay excited and get that
fulfilment that comes from doing what you love and what you’re really
interested in instead of chasing some rat race Wall Street paycheck
Get-up-and-go
or whatever – or worse, getting discouraged with school and chasing
a much smaller future. It’s hard to know how the educational mission
of those shows have succeeded, but I think it is important to try, to the personal art projects and the projects for Prototype This!. What are
do this outreach. Both of my parents are educators, and I actually your interests related to t he notion of your work as performance art?
did a graduate diploma in education before coming to the US for
graduate school, because I had a little time in between the Australian ZB: In my talks, like the one at USC, I like to quip that the Waterslide
and US academic calendar synchronization, and thought it might Simulator from Prototype This! may have been billed as a futuristic
come in handy at some point, so it’s always been in my blood to some amusement park ride, but it’s really a 3-story high piece of kinetic
extent. From time to time people come up to me on the street – it sculpture that we snuck on TV by telling the network it was a big toy!
actually happened today outside Discovery! – and tell me their 12 Even though that’s somewhat tongue in cheek, it has a lot of truth to
year old saw me on PT and now wants to build robots, or their 4 year it – the visual look and impression of the machine was very important
old saw me on Time Warp and now already wants to use the drill press to me in particular, and one of the main reasons we selected the
DIALOGUE

in the basement. That’s always a thrill and lets me know I’m reaching
some of the target audience.
In some ways working on the shows limits the progress of my own
individual work, because there are only so many hours in the day, but
it has led to some opportunities to be exposed to new things and that
always leads me in new directions.
MC: Your work has an experimental technological character that
comes across in its articulation and I believe it’s clear where that
originates from. What is interesting is the performance aspect of both
beautiful spokeless wheel design was the eyecatching aesthetics of
that particular arrangement – you look at it rotating and you get that
feeling of it being a portal like in Contact or Stargate or something
like that – you are going to be transported somewhere even if
you’re actually sitting in the same place, which is the case with the
waterslide simulation. So it has those characters you mention, and of
course the performance and show aspects are crucial too as it’s on TV.
But one thing that’s always been important in many of these projects,
even the ones for TV, is getting people involved and invested in the
work during “normal” usage. Having a crowd at the “reveal” scene for
the Waterslide Simulator was very important, and equally important
was actually putting people in it and having them experience what
it was really like, becoming engaged with the work in a participatory
sense. Even when the cameras had stopped rolling, I stayed that night
until everyone who came to see it, and wanted a chance to ride it,
had their chance to do so. By the end I felt like some kind of carnival
performer – “roll up, roll up, and try the fabulous waterslide simulator!”
– but I suppose that’s all part of the performance!
Perhaps some of my research interests in human interfaces and
interaction design is what’s driving a lot of this at some level.  It’s
undeniably the case with War Face, which was a direct extension
of some of the research work I was doing at the time, and requires
two people to participate.  Not everything I make requires the
performance aspect, but it’s certainly something that seems to come
up a lot.

MC: How has your work connected in some way to what might
generally be considered architecture?  Your Get-up-and-Go project is
an excellent example.  It is spatial, occupiable, designed, functional
Funkenschnorkel
and programmed.

12 DIALOGUE IDEA NEWS

ZB: Get-Up-And-Go was a fun project that also makes us think about
how we use our space and what kinds of activities could be pipelined
or put into dual-use spaces! There are a couple of other places
architecture and I have intersected. When I first arrived at MIT as a
new graduate student I went to a lab at RLE (the Research Lab of
Electronics) that focused on sensory communications and they had
a big virtual environment program, so the first big project I worked
on was building virtual reality models of real-world architectural
spaces in order to determine whether people could be trained to
have equivalent (or better) spatial knowledge of these real spaces by
training them in the VE, rather than the real world. The VE has a lot of
detriments compared to the real world, in terms of sensory fidelity and
so on, but it also has advantages, like not being bound by the laws of
physics, being able to fly and walk through walls and so forth. So we
wanted to know if it could be a substitute for real-world training, and
what kinds of tools were necessary and useful towards that end. (This)
definitely had an effect on me in both the way I looked at space and on
my increasing interest in hardware and interfaces.
MC: At what point in your career did you transition or develop interests
beyond the scientific and computational and shift into the artistic
world?
ZB: This is a question that recently caused a small family argument,
because I trace my own thinking of myself as an artist to the
encouragement I received from the director of the Office of the Arts
at MIT, Michele Oshima, who surprised me one day by asking about
my art – at that point I had already self-published and done graphic
design for two magazines, two humor periodicals and a book, built
a number of invention/sculptures, designed a whole series of bottle
labels for a home brewery I operated in Australia, and so on – I
guess if anything I had previously thought of myself as a designer or
engineer or tinkerer rather than an artist, these were just things I did
as a compulsion, because it was personally interesting and fun, not
to sell or to exhibit. But her point of view was convincing! Especially
when I stepped back and realized that much of this stuff didn’t fit
squarely into the science and engineering category (if there is such a
thing) – it was an expression, and not a purely practical or knowledge-
seeking progression. Anyway, I was explaining this at one point in the
presence of my parents, and chose my words poorly, saying that I had
not had any involvement in the arts until coming to MIT. My mother,
an art historian and indefatigable patron of the arts, took umbrage at
my apparent marginalization of her constant exposing of me to the
arts (much of which was performance art) from my early childhood
onwards. And indeed I think I do owe a great deal (don’t we all!) to
those efforts. I think I have had interests in the arts for as long as I can
remember – particularly film and literature – but whether through lack
of formal training or lack of confidence, I didn’t count myself among
the ranks of the creative artists themselves until someone confronted
me with it!
way and is there anywhere else in the world you feel can offer a
comparable experience?
ZB: I can say without hesitation that MIT did have a pretty unique
influence on me; it’s perhaps getting a little close to the nature/nurture
debate to try and specify precisely what the effect was, I think it helped
to awaken and nurture a lot of tendencies that were already there,
but it’s unquestionable that without the structure and support that I
received there I certainly wouldn’t have had an opportunity to do and
be involved in all the things I have been since coming here.  Whether
anywhere else in the world has a similar environment, I haven’t the
experience to say one way or the other – people tend to be a little
too insular, especially at a place like MIT where they are pushing the
envelope in a lot of ways, and we can lose sight of the fact that other
people are doing exciting stuff too.  I think I’m lucky to have been able
to spend time both as a student and a teacher at a few other places
and see what their strengths and weaknesses are in comparison.  Of
course, I applied to MIT for a reason, because it had this well deserved
reputation! But when some of my undergrad students at MIT asked my
advice about staying at MIT for grad school or going somewhere else,
I would always put forward the benefits of spending time somewhere
else to get a fresh perspective. I think that exposure to different
environments and approaches is very important both for scientists and
educators.
MC: What is your academic work focused on today and what do you
envision you’ll be researching/developing in 10 or 20 years?
ZB: At the moment I’ve just got my appointment as an Adjunct
Professor at KAIST, in their Civil & Environmental Engineering
department, and I’m also talking to their Industrial Design department
about potential collaborations which I’m pretty excited about. I’m
percolating a lot of ideas related to cross-pollinating the industrial
design and electronics aspects of what I was doing at the Media Lab
– sensor integration, human interface design – with civil engineering
and heavy infrastructure. Particularly with an eye to energy efficiency
and improving the transition to increased use of a smart(er) grid. I
am also still very interested in computer controlled manufacturing,
particularly bespoke manufacturing which I think is coming to a
massive resurgence driven by a number of efficiencies which are
currently being realized.

MC: How would you describe the experience of being a part of MIT’s
Media Lab and how is it conducive to leading-edge research? What
synergies exist between specialized groups within the Media Lab and
how did (or does) that enable you to conduct meaningful explorations?

ZB: Going to the Media Lab really was a renaissance for me in a lot
of ways, some of which were an extension of what I was already
feeling from MIT in general – the access to fabrication facilities and
immersion in so many cross-disciplinary events and discussions – and
some which were quite novel even for that institution. Not coming from
a mechanical engineering background, I hadn’t really had access to
machine tools before coming to MIT, and I soon found myself spending
a lot of time in the student machine shop. But when I joined the Media
Lab that ability to make tangible things was kicked up a huge notch by
Neil Gershenfeld’s Fab Lab rapid prototyping equipment that we could
all get access to. Similarly, there’s a difference between being around
MIT, where it’s great to always have so many interesting talks to go
to and people doing fascinating research that you get to hear about
from time to time, and being crammed into a building that’s very open
inside, almost literally rubbing shoulders with people that are doing
very open-ended, multidisciplinary work that’s almost guaranteed to
have some sort of overlap with what you are interested in. It’s what
Walter Bender calls the “studio environment”, where you’re always
encouraged to show off your work and get critiques and suggestions
and cross-pollination from the people around you, and I think it’s a
success and it’s working increasingly well at the Media Lab.

Waterslide Simulator
MC: Do you feel that your experience at MIT shaped you in a unique

FALL 2009 DIALOGUE 13

 Patrick Tighe is principal of Tighe Architecture.
Patrick Tighe Gail Peter Borden
Assistant Professor Gail Peter Borden is
principal of Borden Partnership. He taught a
materials seminar and an undergraduate topic
studio in the Fall.

GB: You were raised and initially educated on the east coast, and then
came to LA for grad school. What brought you here and what is your
view on the relationship of east coast vs. west coast architecture and
discourse?

PT: Los Angeles possesses a certain kind of freedom that does not
exist elsewhere; this is also evident in the architecture. It was clear to
me as an undergrad that the work being produced on the west coast
was dynamic, multi-layered and rich. I came to LA to be part of that. I
suppose this stems from the entertainment industry, the weather, or
perhaps the attitude of Angelenos. Nicolai Ouroussoff recently wrote
about the east coast / west coast dialectic in the NY Times. He noted
that the West Coast currently has the leg up. Ultimately, I think good
architects make good architecture and it is not necessarily dependent
on where the office is located. The context for the work, however, is
critical and I think that the LA ethos does play a role. In any event, it
is a very exciting time to be in Los Angeles practicing architecture,
Tigertail
even in these tough economic times. In our work we always try to
take risks and this city is conducive to that. One gets the feeling that,
architecturally, anything is possible here, and that is very appealing
to me.
 
GB: Coming out of Morphosis’ office, what was your agenda and
attitude? Their work has a very strong graphic and formal agenda –
how did you, or have you – evolve[d] from this position?

PT: I came out of Morphosis knowing that I wanted to build. Someone

said to me once that no one is going to take you seriously until you get
4 projects built, so I built 4 projects and then built 4 more and then
4 more, and then people started to notice. During the time I was in
Thom’s office, I was exposed to so much. The experience is very much
part of me and provided me the knowledge and confidence to go out
DIALOGUE

and do it on my own.

GB: There seems to be an obsession with the discrete and disjunctive

nature of your geometries, materials, and formal compositions. What
LA Loft Installation
is the role of the component in your work and how does this vary from,
say, the fetishized assemblies of Morphosis?
 
PT: The part to whole relationship is evident. Initially (in the earlier
work), I think we had to focus on pieces because there wasn’t the
means (budget) to take on the entire scope. The strategy was to fully
realize moments as a way to raise the bar of the architecture. The
parts were representative of the idealized whole. This evolved into
developing the parts as integral components. It is important to me
that the work must work on all scales, from the urban, to local, down
to the details. As I grow as an architect I am much more interested
in the subtleties in architecture, the nuances of the formal and the
experiential aspects. In order for this to be achieved the parts are
equally as important as the whole.

GB: How does order and disorder factor in your work?

PT: A lot of our work investigates counterpoints: By contrasting

opposing systems, ideas, materials, etc. a tension exists that allows
certain conditions to emerge. As architects we have control over
certain aspects of the work. We can quantify, record and document
what we know we want to achieve. The disorder lies in all the things
that surface along the way, the external forces that challenge
the preconceived notions. It is our job as architects to reign in the
distractions, to stay true to the vision and ultimately produce an
architecture indicative of this.

GB: The (N)odular System (and perhaps Rome? or time at SCI-ARC?)

seems to be a turning point in your work. They introduced a new
amorphic formalism. You also established a national presence
with your PA Award. Is this project to be seen as the first step in an
evolution from the fragmented geometries of your earlier work (and
perhaps their relationship to simpler computational technologies,
Sierra Bonita Mixed-Use Affordable Housing
and fabrication techniques) to a new agenda of more organicisim (the

14 DIALOGUE IDEA NEWS

Collins Gallery
house in Morocco)? Is this a conscious move or just more refinement
of a previous method?
PT: I have not been doing this long enough to say that the work is
about any one thing. I think as architects we must be open to any
and all possibilities. The process by which some of the newer work
is produced is the same, but the context and the inquiry is evolving,
perhaps becoming more sophisticated. The Nodular house was
created while in Rome; the Italian references are obvious and the
technology used to create the projects is a bit more advanced.
Another project, The Moving Picture Company, (a recently completed
2009 post production facility) also makes extensive use of technology
as a means to design, document, produce and fabricate the
architecture. In this case, the technology is representative of the
client’s goals and is used to tell the story of the Company.
 
GB: Can you tell me more about the Rome Prize? Why did you go after
this? What was your agenda? What was its impact?
PT: I was fortunate to have had this valuable experience. Unbeknownst
to me, I was recommended to the Academy and I was then asked to
FALL 2009
apply. I did and ended up getting the Rome Prize. This time away from
the office forced me to see things in a new light and to operate in a
different manner. During this time, I was one step removed from the
practice and I actually grew a lot as an architect.
GB: What is next?
PT: We are busy working on several affordable housing projects – a
building type that is very important to me. We are just completing a
42-unit mixed use building for the City of West Hollywood. The project
serves as a piece of infrastructure within the city. The project is a
highly sustainable building and it will serve a resident population of
people living with HIV-AIDS. These are all very important issues to
me and I am thrilled to be able to address them in this project. The
need for affordable housing in this country is dire and well-designed
affordable housing is very limited. It is our hope to raise awareness
and to continue to advance the building type.
In general, I want to continue to produce meaningful work and in
doing so, through the architecture, ultimately contribute to society in
positive ways on a larger scale.
DIALOGUE 15
 Assistant Professor Rachel Berney teaches design
studios and seminars in the Graduate Landscape
Rachel Berney Annie Chu
Architecture program.

Lecturer Annie Chu taught A fifth-year

undergraduate seminar as well as A first-year
+2 graduate design studio in the Fall. She is A
principal of Chu + Gooding Architects.

AC: What is your vision for educating students in landscape design

at USC?

RB: My vision for the Landscape Architecture Program (LAP) at

USC is that our students and our faculty will strive for and achieve
sublime design solutions within a careful examination of the complex
ecological, social, political, and cultural factors that shape our design
problems in the cities of the 21st century.

AC: What are your personal wishes for the different fields / capacities
in which our graduates can make contributions?

RB: My wishes include that our students leave school with a honed
sense of visual perception, analysis, and thought. I would like to see
our students succeed in all fields where creative problem solving is a
must; I think they would be uniquely well qualified.

AC: In your observation of USC students, what background or skills

would you encourage an applicant to the program(s) to develop prior
to USC?

RB: The ability to draw well and the ability to think critically – or at
least the desire to develop both skills.
 
DIALOGUE

AC: What are some key character traits that fit well with a life path /
career in landscape design in the broadest sense?

RB: An interest in people and their well-being; a mindfulness of how

the many aspects of our lives (social, political, cultural, ecological)
shape our abilities and our outlook; a profound interest in the living
world – in plants, seasons, tides, rivers, etc.; an appreciation for the
sacred and the common in our landscapes; and most importantly,
finding joy in your natural surroundings!
 
AC: Can you contrast your teaching experience in the Bay Area with
that of Southern California? Does the local landscape change certain
attitudes or emphases in your teaching?
RB: The “meta” issues are no different in these two places; however,
the set of ecologies in which the issues reside are different.
 
AC: Have you always drawn throughout your life? Are drawings an
analytical / design / synthetic tool for you? Can you perhaps speak a
little bit about the role of drawing in your design process?
RB: First, I can’t design without drawing. I draw as a part of my
design process, as analysis, and to communicate. In this manner, I
think of drawing as a synthetic medium. I drew informally in much
of my early life. I also created drawing projects for myself, but these
freehand sketch, Rome
were illustration based. And I longed to have certain elementary
school teachers because of the art projects they assigned. I didn’t
draw formally or rigorously until undergraduate when I started in
a BFA program in graphic design. From that point on I continued to
draw, and there have been a few special times when I could really
concentrate, such as during my global studies program in Italy as
an undergraduate, where I was really pushed to develop my drawing
skills.
 
AC: What is (are) a design project(s) your USC studio is working on this
term?
RB: My current studio students (our Program’s first class of three-
year MLA students) are working on the redesign of Hoover Park and
Recreation Center. Hoover Park is a three-acre urban neighborhood
park located one mile north of campus. The students are designing
alternative features for this extremely well-used public space. They
are challenged by competing uses, worn down infrastructure, and
neighborhood versus district desires. Each student is creating his or
her version of a 21st century urban sustainable neighborhood park.
Drawing on precedents from around the world, students are working
on projects that range from an urban forest and farm to an aerial
playscape, to an educational place zoned for different California
climates.
AC: If there were three things you could change about the physical
environment in and around USC, what would they be?

RB: One, to create an actual pedestrian realm. Two, to take down the
barrier fencing around the outside of the campus. Three, to plant
more native plant and tree species.
  
AC: What are three books you would recommend as must-reads for
any students working on our physical environment?
RB: Randy Hester’s Design for Ecological Democracy (for the future);
Setha Low and Neil Smith’s The Politics of Public Space (for the
Campo Boario, Rome, Adaptive Re-use of Rome’s historic stockyard
present); and Nan Ellin’s Post-Modern Urbanism (for the past).

16 DIALOGUE IDEA NEWS

AC: And on a personal and non-academic note, what are three reads
you currently have (or wish you had) on your bedside table?
RB: Last Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, The Book of Lost Things by
John Connolly, and Richard K. Morgan’s Market Forces.
AC: How about three favorite places in LA so far?
RB: A guilty pleasure is The Grove and Farmer’s Market. I also like the
canyons in the Hollywood Hills and the small beaches along the PCH
in Malibu. One more...I drive through or past downtown nearly every
day and I always mark my commute by looking at that skyline.
AC: What do you think were your formative experiences or influences
as a child, a young student etc., that led you to pursuing your life path
interests?
RB: Certainly it was my parents. They were both teachers. My father
taught me plant recognition and generally, a respect and appreciation
for the natural world. My mom’s artistic abilities encouraged me to
draw. I think both of my folks think visually and I’m glad they pushed
me to try new projects.
AC: In a perfect world with no prior established categorization, how
Visual documentation of social and cultural forces acting
upon the BYA/Strawberry Creek Neighborhood in Berkeley, CA
FALL 2009
would you have separated the related disciplines of architecture,
landscape architecture, urban design, community planning etc.?
RB: I think I would still follow a categorization similar to what we have
because the disciplines have evolved out of growing bodies of theory,
technical knowledge, and professional practice. What I would change,
however, is to have more schools housing architecture, landscape
architecture, urban design, and planning programs within the same
building. And then I would encourage dual degrees, independent
tracks, and lots of crossover classes.
AC: Being an affiliated faculty of the USC Center for Sustainable
Cities, what do you see are some of the most urgent needs for
architects and designers to address currently and in the next decade?
And how should the academic curriculum shift to best prepare the
students to address those urgent needs? In addition, what should be
taught in a progressive and integrated design curriculum?
RB: How to respect the land, how to leave everything better than how
you found it, how to create sustainable cities – namely, cities with the
flexibility to accommodate different lifestyles, ones that are resilient
in the face of economic or “natural” disasters, ones that make doing
things like recycling and trip chaining really easy, and ones that help
people feel happy.
DIALOGUE 17
 Visiting Professor Sarah Graham is A principal

© Eric Staudenmaier
of agps architecture, based in los angeles
Sarah Graham & Tim Macfarland Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter
and zurich.

Tim Macfarlane is Design Partner of Dewhurst

Macfarlane and Partners, based in Great Britain.

Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter is Director of

Undergraduate Studies at Woodbury University and
A principal of wroad, as well as a consultant to
Dewhurst Macfarlane and Partners.

IWR: According to Neil Leach and the contributors to his book Digital
Tectonics (2005), there has traditionally been a fundamental rift in the
construction of buildings between the architect’s aesthetics and the
engineer’s physics. The point of the digital tectonics movement, Leach
argues, is to find ways, through computer technology, to bring these
two together. “New dialogues are beginning to emerge, as these two
professions...are coming together within a culture of mutual respect.
This may lead to...a new hybrid practitioner – a kind of architect-
engineer of the digital age.” Do you agree that this is where our
disciplines are headed?

SG: Well, to begin, I completely disagree with Neil about the base
condition of a fundamental rift between architects and engineers. Our
best work is a collaboration with progressive engineers in response to
the same physics which Neil puts exclusively in the engineers’ camp.
The theoretical and fundamental questions I pose as an architect
are inclusive of structural, environmental, and aesthetic issues, and
my dialogue with engineers are equally inclusive. In other words, the
digital world makes contributions to ways in which we work, but I don’t
think that digital tectonics performs the role of bringing together that
which is not estranged.
A culture of mutual respect is essential to the making of good
architecture, but I don’t think this is new or that it constitutes a
new hybrid formation. I ask why any digitally based architect would
come to believe she / he automatically understands principles of
engineering physics simply because of a specific drawing / fabrication
methodology. I am completely excited by new hybrid formations, but I
look for these in new proposals of social interaction, programmatics,
material research, etc. – what our work contributes rather than how
we communicate with our collaborators.
For the Portland Aerial Tram, we worked with great structural
engineers who played with us in an intensive problem-solving
investigation to resolve a condition that was essentially impossible.
We connected transportation infrastructure directly into the ninth
floor of a hospital on a 45-degree slope, in a seismic location, on a tiny
footprint, surrounded by hospital buildings. A million pounds of lateral
force were internally pulling our station downhill, and we could not
even transfer vibrations into the adjacent hospital, as they perform
work such as open-heart surgery. There were no precedents for our
project anywhere, so we had to invent. Digital tectonics would not
have helped.
This example speaks of a close working relationship between the
architect and the engineer in designing buildings, but we do not morph
into each other. In my experience, the digital guys speak of a new
world order in which there are insiders and outsiders, but these same
spokesmen can (become so) self-absorbed in the singularity of the
digital that they are less informed about the rest of the picture than
their architectural predecessors.
TM: I agree with Sarah that the technology for communicating ideas
and knowledge is not the most interesting aspect of the creative and
respectful relationship between architect and engineer. What is most
critical is that there is an environment in which this creative work can
be carried out. Over the last twenty years I have seen a gradual erosion
of the role of the architect and there is a danger that with a reduced
level of responsibility there will be less scope for innovation. It would
be significant if the digitally powered generation can help reverse that
trend.   producers are keen to streamline their process and giving them more
Many of the engineers I have worked alongside have expressed
DIALOGUE
agps, Portland Aerial Tram
engineers rather than architects and engineers. Architects, as Sarah
points out, have to be aware of aesthetics and building physics and
most of the ones I have worked with are aware to a greater or lesser
extent. The engineer on the other hand does not need to be aware of
the architect’s aesthetics to make a successful contribution but it
invariably helps if he is.
As long as architecture remains rooted in the tradition from
which it has sprung I can’t see the need for a new type of professional
to supplant the architect at this point in time. I know many architects
who are also qualified as engineers and vice versa but I don’t know
many who practice as both or as a hybrid. I am more optimistic that
an architect could produce a work of architecture without the help of
an engineer than the other way around, but the best architecture is
likely to happen where the architect is given the resources to chose a
synergetic team of consultants to develop the design solution.  
I think the biggest challenge architects and engineers face is in
retaining sufficient control over the design process to successfully
implement innovation. At the end of the 20th Century we designed a
semicircular glass wall for the Kimmell Centre in Philadelphia. The
architect, Rafael Vinoly, was keen to achieve maximum transparency
and together we developed a solution using ¾-inch diameter vertical
cables supporting panels of laminated glass. Although we had
introduced potential bidders to the scheme before bidding the project
they all came back with radically different schemes which ignored
the design intent and cost considerably more than the budget. We
were unable to realize the project with these contractors because
they were unwilling to take design responsibility and were only willing
to provide something they had a complete understanding of. The
situation was finally resolved by rebidding the job as a build-only
project where we retained design responsibility.
The point of this example is that design innovation takes time
and there is a much better chance of it being realized if responsibility
for the design is retained by the author. On the other hand industrial
responsibility will naturally result in less choice and less design

little interest in architecture but have enjoyed designing challenging innovation.

building structures or environmental systems. I am not sure an
architect would so easily be able to say they have little interest in
structure or environment; (most) hope to design an integrated work
of architecture. I think the aesthetics / physics divide put forward
by Neil Leach would be fine if he applied the division to artists and
IWR: Tim, you state that you are seeing a gradual erosion of the role
of the architect and therefore less scope for innovation. What do you
perceive to be the origin of this erosion and how can this be reversed
by the next generation?

18 DIALOGUE IDEA NEWS

TM: In order to start thinking about how the design team can regain
some of the influence they have lost over the last 30 years it is worth
reflecting on what has happened during this period.
Sometime in the latter part of the 20th Century deregulation
outlawed the concept of fixed fees for members of the design team.
Time of course is money and when fee competition became the norm
something had to give. We found when we opened our NY office that
engineering fees in the US were somewhat less than in Europe. We
also found that there was less willingness to move much outside
conventional solutions because innovation often needs time and time
is money. Currently in the UK there is a massive shift towards design-
build solutions in the education and healthcare sectors and the teams
are led by contractors. The contractor’s focus is different from the
design team’s focus and it is clear who will suffer in this emerging
situation. What can we do to reverse this trend?
Standard computer equipment allows rapid access of
information and vastly superior means of representation and
communication of ideas and it is not hard to imagine that if structured
in a particular way it could offer rapid solution-building between
design team members. This idea of course already exists with BIM
and other similar systems but can it be configured to serve a more
ambitious goal? I imagine a consolidation of design team effort with
a willingness to be highly specific rather than delegating design
responsibility to various subcontractors. The ability to rapidly
evaluate the cost and performance of a proposal would be a very
useful tool if the design team were fully knowledgeable about the
construction process.
I would like to see the design team use the power of digital tools
to reconstruct the relationship between the design process and bricks
and mortar. For me this is a more pressing problem than the division
between architects and engineers.
IWR: Do you agree that there has been, as Tim says, a gradual erosion
of the role of the architect and therefore less scope for innovation?
And if so, what do you perceive to be the origin of this erosion and how
can this be reversed by the next generation?
SG: Yes, the architect’s role in the US has gradually eroded, but
that is our own doing. Most likely this is due to the fear of litigation.
While I am not any more fond of lawyers than the next person, I think
we are shooting ourselves, for when something goes wrong during
construction, everyone is involved in any case. I believe in being
pro-active, trying for the best possible work from all parties. Less
responsibility means less quality control, so what’s the point if we are
in this to better the built environment?
I know young architects who work for firms who do not make
technical drawings. This means we have large practices where
the skills to produce the technical documents and to oversee the
realization of those documents on the construction site do not exist.
With this direction, architecture is dead. Per Victor Hugo, “This will kill
that.”
If the next generation is interested in reversing this, they will need
to buck the overall movement within their generation toward working
Perkins Eastman Architects
TKTS, Times Square, New York CITY
FALL 2009
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Architects
Apple Computer Flagship Store, Osaka, Japan
less and taking more for themselves. Young doctors, for example,
coming out of med school now want to work 9-5 without night calls.
Older doctors don’t get it, as the Hippocratic Oath is based on a much
bigger vision of what it means to practice medicine. Similarly, our
architecture students now are certainly not working harder, showing
better skills or demonstrating a higher level of production than they
did just 10 years ago. If they want to reverse the kind of professional
erosion you refer to, it starts during their education and continues
through their internships into their own practice.
IWR: In an earlier comment, Tim, you seem to be setting up a dialectic
between innovation and the limitations of industrial production. I
would like to ask you a question regarding materials. Louis Kahn said,
“Ask the brick what it wants to be.” At the other end of this spectrum
is artist Enzo Cucchi’s statement that “Matter is a whore.” In your
pioneering work exploring the structural potentials of glass, Tim, you
work with architects who are often allowing the seductive beauty
of the material, in effect, to drive certain design intentions of the
project. You must, of course, respect the nature of the material,
but your work is also constantly pushing the limits of what is
conventionally considered appropriate applications for the material.
As another example, in the Portland Aerial Tramway project designed
by agps and on which your company was the façade consultant, a
significant portion of our time was spent researching the expanded
aluminum cladding material and all of its parameters including
strength, wind performance, size, tolerances, connecting details,
finish, and so forth, in an application for which this material was never
intended and had never before been used. Does material innovation
require asking the material what it wants to be or does innovation
arise when we ask the material to, as it were, prostitute itself?
TM: Sarah’s experience is entirely my experience and I agree with her
that fear of litigation has driven the profession into adopting a hands-
off approach leading to a false sense of security. The twist you have
added in your question describes the dilemma in other terms. The
cladding for the Portland light railway was chosen after a research
process in which the image of the project, invested with a real sense
of what it could be, was investigated in detail before the contract was
let. This was a good example of the architect answering the question
of what the wall should be, followed by a thorough interrogation of
what it wanted to be, which involved intense design research and the
invaluable participation of Tripyramid, a specialist metal fabricator.
As in most walks of life, understanding and respecting who and
what in a material sense we work with will lead to a relationship that
transcends the mundane or inert. To that degree I think Enzo Cuchi
may be adopting the posture of a pimp.
To reinforce Sarah’s point we have never had a failure or a
claim on our insurance for the innovative glass work we have been
responsible for in the last twenty-five years.
Unfortunately for the profession it’s put up or shut up time and I
can bear witness to the fact that it’s much more fun to put up. So for
any young professionals reading this who haven’t already done so, roll
up your sleeves and dive in.
DIALOGUE 19
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR Anders Carlson, Ph.D.,
Anders Carlson Kara Bartelt 
teaches structural design & analysis and is a
practicing structural engineer with Simpson
Gumpertz & Heger. 
Assistant Professor Kara Bartelt instructed an
undergraduate topic studio in the Fall. She is a
principal of Lettuce.
AC: On teaching: I am a practitioner of structural “design” and
hope to enlighten the students to incorporate it into their design
methodologies so that it will influence their concepts in lieu of being
considered a constraint to their creations. Rather than making
structural engineers obsolete or educating master builders, the intent
is to have architecture students enter the workforce with more tools
to get the most benefit from the structures they are designing and the
engineers they work with.
On research: I am also an engineer and analyst, so there is a level
of pragmatism that I cannot escape. This influences my research
into Design Methods, Materials, Construction, and Life Cycles.
However, the marriage of creative and analytical thinking leads to
new approaches to old problems, new uses for old materials, and new
tools to apply to new concepts (I refuse to say new paradigms; I am an
engineer, not an architect!). I look forward to encouraging this marriage
within our school and across the university in multidisciplinary
approaches to the entire life cycle of our built environment.
KB: We’re very happy to have you joining the Building Science program.
You’ve been solely a practicing engineer for several years and have
been outside of academia. Why did you choose to return to academia,
why architecture vs. engineering, and what about the program at USC
did you find was a good fit?
AC: My career trajectory is a slow roller coaster. I worked for five
years, then returned to school to get a Ph.D. at Caltech. I worked ten
years after that and have now joined the USC School of Architecture.
DIALOGUE
While I have been away from academia for a decade, every firm I
have worked for has been multi-disciplinary. One of my favorite
parts of professional practice is working with other disciplines to
take advantage of a holistic approach to achieve design objectives
and efficiency. My other favorite aspect of practice is mentoring less
experienced staff and helping others to grow and think nonlinearly
(and that can be interpreted literally for structural engineers!). So, I
like working with architects and I like mentoring. It seemed like a slam
dunk to me to come here. Teaching in an engineering school would
remove me from the integrated design I enjoy and I feel that I can make
a bigger impact by helping architecture students gain some structural
sense that will result in better projects, happier engineers working with
them, and satisfied clients. I have taught at Woodbury and been a juror
and critic at SCI-Arc and UCLA over the past decade. I hate to admit
it, but the first time I set foot in the architecture school here was the
day of my interview. After just one day, though, it felt like home. I saw
several former colleagues giving crits and several faculty I had worked
with before during my day-long visit. Most importantly, it seemed like
a community where faculty and students were happy and proud to be.
KB: What classes are you currently teaching and are there any courses
you’d like to develop over the next few semesters?
AC: I am co-teaching Building Structures and Seismic Design with
Goetz Schierle, advising some of the MBS students, and sitting
on reviews and giving desk crits to design studio classes. The BIM
integrated studio I mentioned before would combine a design studio
with building science and practice in which the integrated designs
actually get tested for structural, thermal, lighting, acoustic, and other
performance metrics. I would also like to develop a course of case
studies that highlights where the synergy of structure and design has
worked and where it has not.
KB: I am intrigued by your desire to integrate structural design into the
methodologies of the design studio. As a structural engineer who has
worked internationally with renowned architects, how do you see this
being accomplished at the University level?
AC: Many of the well-known design firms I have worked with win a
lot of work through open or invited competitions. Even at this initial
stage they are incorporating structural design principles to keep
20 DIALOGUE
OMA, Seattle Central Library
their proposal realistic and to minimize changes to cost and overall
concept if they win the project. They work in a multi-disciplinary studio
environment to put together the best design and I can see this same
model being used in the school’s design studios. It is likely that first-
year students will mostly be given general advice to incorporate (“Don’t
expect the building to stand if the model can’t!”), but my goal is that by
the time they are in their final studio the advice will be more focused
and collaborative because the students will have developed more
sophisticated engineering judgment.
KB: The A&E industry has typically been slow to integrate new
materials into construction because of established and tested
standards, building codes, etc. Do you think the adoption of new
composites and building components can be a large growth area for
the industry?
AC: Yes, I am optimistic that many new composites and components
will be adopted into accepted codes and standards and see
widespread use in the near future. One of the main obstacles
to acceptance of new materials is the exorbitant cost of testing
required to gain approval. There are changes in the industry that
are making new materials desirable and that provide the incentive
to outlay that cost now. With sustainability becoming mandated in
many municipalities, code adoption of performance based design
approaches, and BIM-driven design popularity, creators and
manufacturers of new products have a three-pronged approach to get
their products approved. If they can show its benefits in sustainable
design, show potential owners that they are paying more but getting
better performance, or show contractors through 4D modeling that
their new product is going to reduce construction costs, then they can
offset that upfront cost of approval testing.
KB: You’re also interested in new approaches to old problems and have
applied this to materials. What would be an example of this and what
did you learn in the process?
AC: One example relates to the last question. I was working on a
20’x40’ tapestry frame for the lobby of a high-rise. The lobby wall is
granite and we determined that the best way to hang the frame would
be with toggle bolts. It turns out that there are no toggle bolts with
an approved Los Angeles Research Report. I spoke to one company
representative, and he said, “Why should I bother spending the money
on testing when you can buy my bolts in every hardware store in Los
Angeles?” Because of the total weight of the frame and tapestry, it
was required to be engineered and Los Angeles will only let you use
approved products. To get around the cost and lead time of testing,
we used code-approved analysis techniques to show that the bolt
and toggle plate would not exceed code stress limits. With a one-day
sophisticated finite element analysis, we were able to gain the first
approval of toggle bolts for structural use in the city. Another example
is the diamond grid façade of the Seattle Central Library. We were
investigating many different alternatives in a short time frame, and
our sophisticated nonlinear buckling analysis program took too long to
investigate all the options. I realized that a simpler program intended
to perform pushover analysis for performance-based design could
perform this analysis in one-tenth the time, which allowed engineers
in London and Los Angeles to work around the clock to check all the
alternatives leading to the cost-effective design that was built. For
both examples, I strongly believe that creative use of analysis aided
the design process. I also believe that a multidisciplinary approach
IDEA NEWS
led to problem-solving that could not be discovered by the individual
disciplines. I look forward to like collaborations across the university.

KB: You’ve been working with BIM systems for almost two decades.
Have you been encouraged by their integration into the workplace
and industry? Do you feel integration of BIM into the design studio is
necessary?

AC: As an engineer and someone who has worked at several

multidisciplinary firms early in my career, I am actually disappointed
by the course BIM has taken. The level of sophistication of the object-
oriented databases I was using at SOM in 1989 showed great promise,
but it has taken decades to have something better for engineers.
The driving force of BIM is its use during construction. If it can shave
percentage points off the cost, then it can save the client more than
the structural engineer’s entire fee. On large projects, I wholeheartedly
recommend it because changes are easier to make and the impact
of those changes, financial or otherwise, are more readily apparent.
But on small or complicated projects, BIM is still often a hindrance.
We have found that 50% or more of our fee can be eaten up by the
modeling costs and many interdisciplinary packages cannot handle
the special cases that one-of-a-kind projects require.
So: Bringing BIM into the design studio is not necessarily a good
thing. If the designs are complex, use of BIM to incorporate structure,
energy, daylighting and other disciplines takes up so much time
that it detracts from the design process. Architects are ultimately
responsible for the entire design team and a studio that would utilize
BIM to teach the students the importance of this coordination from
concept to construction would be a great addition to the program.

KB: I’m curious about your championing of non-traditional structural

systems as an element of sustainability for architecture. Can
you explain this further and what do you see as the benefits and
possibilities in this area?

AC: Structural use of materials and structures not originally designed

as such is one approach to sustainability, with the use of shipping
containers as housing being one clear example. Shipping containers
are being used as emergency low-cost habitats as well as high-end
designer homes. My interests lie in developing new lateral force
resisting systems for seismic regions. Typical codes require that
buildings provide life safety in the event of a prescriptive earthquake
excitation. The code intent does not assume that the building will still
be functional or reparable – it just wants to prevent collapse or other
damage that would risk life. How can you call a building sustainable
if you have to tear it down after an earthquake or to a lesser degree
replace all the windows or all the cracked drywall? Developing lateral
systems and components that act as fuses to minimize damage to
the traditional components of buildings will prevent large economic
loss and keep the buildings more sustainable. There are lateral
systems already being used and others in development in which the
fuse absorbs most of the earthquake energy and can be replaced if
required with minimal disruption to the building use.

KB: Prefab has long been an area of research in the architecture and
construction industry but its benefits and feasibility have yet to prove
themselves. Your recent work with LivingHomes has successfully
combined your interests in new construction methods, BIM integration
and working towards a more sustainable building product. Have you
been encouraged enough by the process to believe we might be at a
tipping point of integrating prefabrication in the building industry at a
grander scale?

AC: Yes, I am encouraged by the synergy of BIM, sustainability, and

prefabrication. As more municipalities encourage, or even require,
certain levels of sustainable performance, there will be more demand
for prefabricated design. Since most of the fabrication occurs in the
shop, there is less waste of materials or energy. It is not surprising that
the first Platinum LEED rating for a residence was LivingHomes’ first
project. The current economy has definitely slowed the pace of high-
end factory-built homes by several well-known prefab companies,
but as the need for housing grows again they are in a good position to
truly claim a “factory” built scale of production. On one of the projects
I worked on with LivingHomes, BIM helped in that our structural
drawings doubled as shop drawings, reducing costs and the length of
the design process. Further parametric modeling in BIM will enable
the design process to be reduced to a kit of parts that facilitates
fabrication while still providing for numerous combinations so that the
Series: Kieran TImberlake, LivingHomes prefab housing
final designs preserve uniqueness.

FALL 2009 DIALOGUE 21

 Assistant Professor Greg Otto is a founding
principal of Buro Happold Los Angeles.
Greg Otto Eric Haas
Lecturer Eric Haas is a principal of DSH. He taught
third-year undergraduate housing design studio
in the Fall.
EH: “Parametrics” excites some in the design professions while
making others reach for their revolvers. From your perspective, why
does this mode of thinking engender such controversy? Can you set
the record straight?
GO: Parametric modeling is a methodology for design used to
understand/exploit complex relationships. My interest in parametric
modeling is rooted principally in the development of performative
systems. Parametric models provide valuable feedback and hence a
framework for design assessment and refinement. The “controversy”
that you allude to has much to do with the misappropriation of the
methodology. Far too often the methodology is employed whimsically
in the sole pursuit of visual novelty. This fetish results in complex
three-dimensional forms that are “justified” by the computer process.
This approach negates “learning” and “design evolution” within a
feedback framework and hence no design intelligence is gained.
EH: What about the positioning of the feedback loop not just in
the design process, but post-facto – post-construction: Can such
DIALOGUE
methodologies promote “case study” learning that tests assumptions
and grows intelligence?
GO: Absolutely. Availability of operation data can provide valuable
feedback for future learning and design evolution in a way not before
available. My interest in datacentric processes is partially motivated
by the desire to extend beyond design to operation to develop
performance-based systems. Availability of real-time data and the
possibility to incorporate user input suggests that a true interactive
environment might be possible which, through feedback, could be
made performative.
EH: This newsletter issue is loosely dedicated to the urban. Do you see
a position on what this means emerging from your work or research?
I could think specifically about the British Museum and Smithsonian
projects, which produce some intriguing “urban” conditions.
GO: The projects you note are principally structural projects in
which “fancy” roofs were used within significant architectural
renovations to create grand public space. The British Museum was
before my time at Buro Happold – but nevertheless, it is significant
in my career. It is truly a special project. Mike Cook, a Buro Happold
partner, used a walkthrough of the place to recruit me and it in turn
provided inspiration for my advancement within Buro Happold.
The Smithsonian – another fantastic urban space – in all honesty
was simply more of the British Museum with respect to structural
engineering. However, it did in a significant way advance the use
of digital methods to design and manufacture and the contractual
arrangement to undertake this type of working – all cutting-edge at
the time and in most ways now, still cutting-edge.
Returning specifically to structural engineering: I am going to
be bold and predict its death. Before I get mobbed and thrown under
Behnisch Architekten,
Harvard Allston Science Complex
22 DIALOGUE
a bus, I need to clarify: Structural engineering is going the way of
commodity in which anyone that has some basic engineering training
can go buy a box of structural analysis software, load it on a computer
and overnight become an adequate structural engineer. Art fades to
craft, and the impact is diminished. Clients want more value, better
solutions. And if we are all serious – just look at our built environment
– we are desperate for real solutions. Discipline silos – structural
engineering being overly hardened – are not going to cut it.
I am intending to rewrite the lines of engagement where building
structure is a subset of building fabric – the skin and bones of a
building – wherein a better integrated, performative solution results.
The revision radicalizes the proposition to say a system can serve a
multitude of functions: the structure is the façade and the façade
modulates the indoor environment. It addresses constructability,
coordination, and performance in ways not commonly considered yet
commonly identified as critical deficiencies in our building stock. My
studio at Buro Happold is using digital methods, collaborative working
and multi-disciplinary thinking to overcome industry barriers and it
is my view that this is the only way forward if the aim is to produce
better buildings. To make this abundantly clear, I am not talking about
high dollar, architectural novelty as the target. I am talking about
architecture that seriously considers humanity and its needs, now
and for future generations.
Connecting the Urban with the two projects you mention, I am
most prideful – as an owner of Buro Happold – of these projects
for their urban contributions. On any given day, you can go to these
spaces and you will find them packed with people. Of course there
are those who are there to visit the museums as was intended but
the greater portion are those who have assigned their own agenda
to the space – a parasitic operation – to have lunch, meet a friend,
write some notes, or read a book. History provides the evidence that
the urban piazza is a critical element of the city. These spaces are
modern equivalents that provide opportunity for much needed human
engagement. Our cities need more of these spaces.
EH: Is there a potential role for innovation in “High Structures”
research to become distributed and widely applied to building
production? Might there be a social project at work?
GO: I presume by “High Structures” you are applying a “High Art”
moniker. I think there will always be opportunity in structural
engineering for expressive structures and that these will remain
integral as a subset of the larger domain of “High Art” architecture.
The fixation on “parametrics” in architecture has in fact increased
the opportunity for structural engineering within contemporary
architectural discussions. In hindsight it makes perfect sense; the
computer provided the perfect linking infrastructure to efficiently
converge three-dimensional geometry with structural logic. However,
I think this body of work – geometrically complex structures – will
always remain relatively small due to cost issues and the looming
need to better focus our money on more performative aspects of
buildings: facades, environmental systems and human controls.
Where “High Structures” research will have impact is in the
domain of digital methods. My belief is that the digital methods used
to develop geometrically complex structures can be abstracted and
applied to influence a wider body of work. Fragmentation within
the AEC industry – further compounded by higher education within
a negative reinforcing feedback loop – has been a real, significant
hindrance to the design and production of high quality, performative
buildings. Communication between disciplines and trades – or rightly
speaking, the failures – sits prominently in the discussion. Computer
methods that support data sharing enable cross-disciplinary
collaboration. Pushing digital data from one software platform to
another while maintaining fidelity, currency and accuracy has been
operational in the field of “High Structures” for some time. It has
enabled architects to “talk” to structural engineers and structural
engineers to “talk” to architects; high level collaboration results.
My view is that these methods can be brought to the larger fields
of engineering, construction and architecture to enable cross-
disciplinary communication and to foster high level collaboration
EH: Are physical models ever part of your conceptualization process,
like Gaudi’s famous hanging-chain models?
GO: Physical models are in fact integral to my working method. I can
remember in New York not so long ago working with an architect on a
project. I had just been to the local drug store to pick up some model
supplies in addition to some necessary household items. My girlfriend
opened the bag to see a half-dozen packages of women’s pantyhose.
IDEA NEWS
It took me nearly an hour to convince her that I was building a tensile
model with the architect and that these were to form the base
building material.
Physical modeling has remained an integral aspect of our process
in structural engineering. The confluence of increased computer
usage and the tendency of people to naively accept computer output
as fact demands that we add sanity checks. I am reminded of a quote
a mentor of mine frequently used: “Gravity is relentless!” If you can
not build a physical model – no matter the amount of glue – it is not
very likely you will have any better chance making it a reality at a
larger scale.
EH: “Optimization” in engineering often presumes a certain goal,
or goals, in terms of both form and performance – that is, pre-
determining the value of what one is optimizing for, whether that be
efficiency, cost, speed, etc., or a mix of any such factors. Can this
situation be shifted from one of “tuning” architecture to one of form-
finding through optimization itself?
GO: The short answer is yes but I am not sure we will like the results.
The work of Frei Otto and others in tensile structures immediately
comes to mind. These are design problems in which the boundary
conditions are defined and which through optimization – form-finding
– the least energy surface is found. Each set of boundary conditions
has its own specific formal result: there is no formal control. I will
leave it to others to establish the merits of this working method
but for me personally, the notion of a black box with a magic red
button producing optimized architecture scares me! My preference
is for simulation feedback within an analog process in which both
strategies can be supported.
EH: How has your initial training as an architect influenced the way
you approach projects? Collaborations?
GO: I started my career for a brief moment as an architect but
found myself along with many others in the midst of an economic
downturn. I went back to school and found my second profession as
a structural engineer. My career has evolved from structural engineer
to technology enthusiast (technologist), spanning a broad number of
technical fields. To be certain, I am no expert in most of these fields – I
know enough to be dangerous – and collaboration is the only viable
means for me to gain meaningful access to specialist knowledge and
apply it within architecture. My view is that the greatest potential for
“game changing” development – innovation – is found in the moments
where discipline fragmentation is eliminated and cross-disciplinary
thinking supported. In short, I really enjoy working with others and
find greatest joy in the process – not the product.
EH: Building Information Modeling (BIM) practices, currently changing
the discourse of the profession, would ultimately seek a condition of
100% accuracy and completeness of information. I’m reminded of
Borges’ famous 1:1 map of the world, the absurdity of which seeds its
own destruction. Is there a conceptual limit to how much information
we should have about our buildings?
GO: BIM needs to die as presently understood by the architectural
profession and be correctly re-framed. The visual fetish of
architecture has prevented the profession from moving past a
position of visual representation to something more. I can think of no
more than five firms in the world that use BIM correctly. Everyone else
has gone out, purchased Autodesk Revit or equivalent and proceeded
to produce “dumb” 3D CAD. In short they are drafting 3D in place of
Foster & Partners, Smithsonian Institutution
FALL 2009
Behnisch Architekten, Genzyme Headquarters
2D, greatly increasing the work input and collapsing their productivity.
They have not improved their workflow, are not producing a better
product and certainly not imparting more value to their proposals.
Employed correctly, BIM is an object-based classification system
that allows a database to store a virtual description of a project to
include more than just geometric data (X, Y, and Z). The paradigm
shift is the resulting datacentric workflow. Imagine the extrusion
of form from an excel file – having never drawn it – and the ability
to “push” the data between software (tools) to perform specific
operations and analyses on the data: this is the shift. The data file
can be used to prototype the design and ultimately linked to other
workflows: fabrication and operation being the most noteworthy.
My own interest in BIM is specifically centered on the data-
centric workflow and the linkages that it enables. The potential
to propose, design and operate a building – via the linkage of the
virtual to the physical – restructures our relationship with the built
environment, allowing us to now manage it strategically as a true
asset. In many places, the GIS (Geographic Information System)
data already is available to place discrete buildings within a larger
environment. While this is an extreme position, if you think about it, it
is the only position. We are approaching the limits of our planet and
every step going forward will need to be managed strategically.
Returning to your questions, Google has made a business of data.
They continue to evolve based upon a rapid expanse of data. I think it
can be agreed that they are doing just fine.
EH: Rem Koolhaas has called the structural work of Cecil Balmond
emotional and mystical. Is there room in your own work for fancy?
GO: I hate questions like this...Most who know me would say I hardly
fit the engineer persona. Had I been born wealthy, I would have been a
sculptor most likely.
My career as engineer I would categorize as anything but the
norm. In keeping with the art theme, I would draw parallels between
my engineering career and Marcel Duchamp’s in art. Duchamp
took mass produced objects and images of the industrial age and
reappointed them to be art. I am a technology enthusiast and my work
tends to be primarily the creative adaptation of technology for new
purposes within the domain of architecture.
Growing up, my grandfather spent most of his time in his garage
tinkering on things including his favorite car, his Studebaker. Inside
the garage were all sorts of things he picked up at garage sales,
on discount at the hardware store and things given him by folks
who thought maybe he could make these objects useful. In reality,
it was a junkyard but every so often he would roll something out
that remarkably was incredibly useful...granted you had to dispel
the disbelief created by the amount of duct tape required to hold it
together.
I suppose enthusiast tinkering is in my blood. Every once in a
while something useful comes out of the garage.
DIALOGUE 23
 Professor of Practice in Architecture Stefano de
Stefano de Martino Andrew Liang 
Martino taught a landscape architecture graduate
design studio as well as an undergraduate degree
seminar in the Fall. He is a partner of Lorma Marti,
based in Los Angeles and Berlin, and chair of the
Institute of Design AT THE University of Innsbruck.

Adjunct Assistant Professor Andrew Liang

coordinated the second-year undergraduate
design studios in the Fall. He is principal of
Studio 010.

AL: Having been educated at the AA during what could be quantified

as the “heyday” of the institution and arguably the seminal period
of it’s influence on architectural education and academic discourse
under the direction of Alvin Boyarsky, how do you see architectural
Lorma Marti, Ideal Homes, 2002-3
education today? What’s changed? Is it time for a total rethinking of
how we educate students of architecture?
SdM: Working closely with Rem Koolhaas, with Alex Wall and Kees
SdM: Architectural education is at risk of becoming completely Christiaanse, with Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis was an
irrelevant. Alvin’s AA thrived on the vitality inherent in applying education in itself. It gave the sense to what I had learned. Our work
multiple inquiries to illuminate a discussion on architecture. It was at the time (Boompjes, Koch/Friedrichstrasse, La Villette, Paris Expo)
a prismatic conception that encouraged debate, controversy and sharpened my awareness that architecture, landscape and the city
alliances in equal measures. The juxtaposition and diversity of ideas are only legitimated when seen in a broader manifestation of culture.
accelerated a shift that has highlighted facets of our environment
omitted in decades of formal pastiche. The AA was in a sense totally AL: Can you describe your academic
non-academic and yet the only university. activities and your professional
The global bender inaugurated by the rise of Thatcherism and its pursuits? How do they fertilize each
mutations has sidelined quite effectively the notion that what we are other?
involved with, in architecture, is to provide, anticipate and articulate
our social, cultural and private spaces. Not many schools were ever SdM: I have been teaching since
such dynamic, intense, independent sites of research as the AA. 1983 when Alvin Boyarsky asked
So altogether very little has changed. That is to say, many schools Alex Wall and myself to join the AA. I
are limited, pedantic, pseudo-professional establishments only see both teaching and practicing as
interested in providing fodder for those practices that have become a form of research. The difference
the arbiters of education by virtue of their commercial success. The is possibly that in an academic
discussion has shrunk to a matter of techniques – basically the ability context the field is narrowed down
to use a range of software applications to produce formal effects: here and there, The Hague (by the prescriptions of curricula)
novelty visuals, draped over the bulks of property speculation. while I have always enjoyed
In an age described as “material,” fragile models of ridiculous practicing for opening it up (needless to say, it has never been my
intricacy are made by seriously expensive machines out of unspecified ambition to run a commercial enterprise). Both warrant the definition
powders: any sense of substance and form, of tectonics and space of a critical framework of reference.
DIALOGUE

is lost to a mindless production of “rapid prototypes,” an invitation to
stop reflecting, observing, testing and learning.
And in a culture of visual communication, the improbable “fly-
through” replaces all other forms of representation.
Yes, we should probably stop educating students in architecture,
until we have a clearer idea of what we understand as architecture.
AL: Having collaborated with OMA in its incubation period of ‘practice’
through the manufacturing of architectural and urban intelligence,
how has it influenced your view of architecture, its role in the city and
in the urban?
Architecture is a very slow medium, I don’t think it can make
any point that retains actuality. It is usually overtaken by events, it
produces stage sets or archaeologies. The enjoyment of its effects
is entirely contingent on circumstance, on situations that constantly
re-invent it.
I understand architecture as a system of relations more than a
question of objects. The development of an understanding of social,
cultural and physical environments and their interrelation requires
media other than architecture. The work we produce as Lorma Marti,
the collaboration with Karen Lohrmann initiated in 2002, addresses

Lorma Marti, Blend Out (Rest), 2006 Social Club, Jamaica

24 DIALOGUE IDEA NEWS

these issues through studies, documentaries, films and site-specific
installations. It is a means to address a public larger than the typical
developer or house owner, and topics more fluid than what can be
poured into concrete.–
AL: How do you see Los Angeles as a city? Let me frame my question
by saying that I see Los Angeles as a patient on life support system,
being kept alive by infusion of life (urban) matters. To that effect, it is
an artificial city – alive but never quite functioning or productive.
SdM: It is not one, but many, and you never get there. The beauty
of Manhattan is that it is an island, it evokes an instant sense of
recognition. Los Angeles is a whole archipelago (at one point, the
perfect twin city to Berlin). Its seduction is in coasting its shoals,
between fictions and realities, a kind of Riddle in the Sands. It is more
software than hardware, more pretense, more Potemkin, wannabe,
stand-in and body double.
Cities are artificial: Here perhaps we have the more natural
variation in the sense that Los Angeles is a city by default, it
happened and is still happening by the relentless addition of
implausible propositions, dream developments, speculative
campaigns, by a carpet bombing of dingbats and phantoms of cities,
Universal, Century, Panorama, Storage or Arcadia...at some point
this mass of buildings was denser than most cities, more productive
and more clogged than most cities, looked like a city, so it must
have been a city. But maybe it can skip this phase altogether. As a
The West Arc, Thessaloniki
capital of a globalized world it is atomized, fluid and light. It is made
of conversations more than communities, of exchanges more than
plazas, of data and topographies.
AL: I believe you have an interest in the social framework of
architecture as a conceptual device. Can architecture fulfill a social
role outside of its ‘program’ implications and narratives?
SdM: If architecture can have such disastrous effects as we have
witnessed throughout the 20 Century, it must also be capable of some
good. Program is a decoy, a red herring: No matter what has been
planned, it will keep changing. Re-programming, retrofitting, gutting,
extending and converting are the most usual building operations. That
other verbal crutch, strategy, is equally prone to lose all credibility
at the merest twitch of the markets, to collapse and evaporate at
Lorma Marti, Limiti, 2004
FALL 2009
Deutsche Post HQ, Bonn
a change in government, weather or mood. I think we should revise
the language, often aggressive, associated with the production of
architecture, and realize that we should fulfill a social role rather than
leave that to bricks, concrete and two by fours.
AL: Using Cities of Childhood as a springboard into this broad-stroked
question. In the book, you wrote, “...The redefinition of the program
focused on sports, recreation and the ceremonies of state and
church, fostering the physical and spiritual development of children
in anticipation of ‘civil life in the context of the collectivity.’ With
this role, the relationship between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ began to
assume a new significance.” I believe you are referring to an early
form of ‘cross programmed’ narrative as a means of leveraging a
social framework in the colonies and, I gather, also a conceptual
framework for architecture that goes beyond mere typology. Can you
elaborate on how you are defining ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ and what
this “new significance” is that you speak of?
SdM: If you imagine a Tyrrhenian coast of barren sand, hills
abandoned since Strabo’s days rather than the mega-sprawl of free-
range construction you see today, that is what I mean by “natural.” It
is of course not so much a question of the use or abuse of a land, but
the relationship we establish with it.
The “artificial” is the morass of prescriptive and normative
systems that constantly redraw this relationship: systems of
meanings and representation in the service of institutional bodies
rather than a community or society.
While older buildings (just like a spate of recent ones) had to
fulfill a representational role, somehow be an expression of power
structures and hierarchies, in a few examples of 1930’s children’s
colonies we see a mutation: rather than celebrating the good and
righteous systems, they sought to highlight experience.
What is significant is that the inert formality of previous models
is overturned by spatial inventions that manage to be physical
challenges, social provocations, tremendous intensities, by an active
engagement of the landscape.
Federal Environment Agency, Dessau
DIALOGUE 25
 Visiting Associate Professor Victor Jones taught
a Topic Studio and an undergraduate seminar in
Victor Jones Lee Olvera
the Fall. HE IS A PRINCIPAL OF FIEVRE JONES.
assistant professor of practice in architecture
Lee Olvera coordinated the first-year
undergraduate design studioS and instructed
an undergraduate seminar in the Fall.
LO: To begin the conversation, let’s confront the tenet of your
practice: ‘a distinct interest in traditional and contemporary
techniques of making.’ The statement clearly directs attention
to procedure and method, but can you elaborate on the
descriptive ‘traditional and contemporary’? Are you addressing
the purely technological or something more? Context, value and
appropriateness come to mind.
VJ: I cannot answer this question directly but when my partner
and I lived in Paris we stayed one summer in Adolf Loos’ Tristan
Tzara house. Even though it has been close to ten years, we are
still processing our experience there. The project is driven by
juxtaposition, contrast and contradiction whether it is in terms of
the intricate arrangement of interior spaces contrasted by the stoic
quality of the street façade mimicking the slight curvature of Avenue
Junot or the use of commonplace Parisian industrial detailing and
construction in the lower floors with the rubble stone base contrasted
by the stark monolithic square of white plaster above. The house is in
constant oscillation between high and low, new and old.
LO: Moving through the 2005 UCLA Accreditation faculty exhibition, I
DIALOGUE
came upon an intriguing component of the exhibit, a wall-graphic Q+A
array. To the question ‘what is your favorite material’ you answered
‘paint’ – unapologetically direct compared with others’ answers
appearing on the wall. Would you answer the same today?
VJ: Yes, even more so now. Paint is perhaps the most accessible
and affordable material that architects have in their possession.
Its enormous potency to define space as well as alter space is
tremendous.
LO: Fievre Jones’ 2006 Holly Spot exemplifies the potential of paint as
a two-dimensional material, simultaneous decorator of surface and
manipulator of space. The project clearly seeks to depart from the
banality of parking garage signage systems. Can you elaborate on the
concepts that move the project beyond a straightforward graphics
way-finding exercise?
VJ: We have always been interested in patterns particularly with
regard to OP art and the kind of dimensional manipulation of
something super-flat rendering extreme depth. Yve-Alain Bois’
Painting as Model also strikes at the core of our interests in the
suggestive dimensionality of painting and its spatial implications in
architecture.
LO: You have accomplished a large amount of built work, particularly
at the domestic scale. A review of Fievre Jones project images reveals
a series of precise formal and spatial insertions, most intimately
scaled. Can you talk about the conceptual thread of ‘making’ found
throughout the work?
VJ: I would have to say we operate in the spirit of ideological
promiscuity. We are interested in working with a loose framework
where fluidity, ambiguity and contradiction are central to our way
of thinking. We are equally fascinated by handcrafts as we are with
digital fabrication and as quick to imitate the built context as look
elsewhere.
LO: Knowing that digital fabrication technologies are an interest of
26 DIALOGUE
© FIevreJones, Inc.
Urban Skate Park, New Orleans
yours, can you talk about how they specifically influence your work,
from design process to finished product?
VJ: Unlike many contemporary practices where the virtual
environment structures the design logic, our approach is instigated
by a shifty dialogue between physical matter and the virtual
environment. This way of working I guess is mostly the consequence
of my academic research. For the past three years at Tulane
University, I taught an advanced fabrication seminar entitled, “SOFT
SUPPLE SILKY SHEETS, Manufacturing Affect” which explores the
interchanges and precarious relationships between the virtual and
material universes.
LO: The 2006 Arbor project looks like a direct result of the
implementation of digital fabrication technologies. How, what and
why did your firm decide to pursue the project by those means? It’s a
sophisticated formal and material exercise applied to a very simple
structure, highly sculptural.
VJ: First, the project was designed and fabricated when I joined
the faculty at UCLA back in 2002. I was definitely influenced by the
intensity of the place and Sylvia Lavin’s reshaping of the program. The
experience was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying as an amazing
set of colleagues including Jason Payne, Marcelyn Gow, Greg Lynn,
Mark Lee and Bob Somol challenged my thinking about architecture.
What came out of that highly charged environment was a curiosity
about the atmospheric potential these technologies could produce. In
the end what was most important to us with the arbor project was the
patterning and variations in light and shadow shaped by the surface
geometry of the individual arbor profiles and their aggregation logic.
LO: Your firm describes itself as a collaborative practice. Has
your embracing of digital fabrication technologies expanded or
contracted your collaborative efforts? A healthy amount of continual
learning is required to maintain a critical level of knowledge about
the possibilities and use of these technologies. Does Fievre Jones
find itself bringing others along in the process – teaching them as
the project progresses? How have artists and material fabricators
engaged the technologies you use?
VJ: Yes, on one hand it has expanded our collaborative efforts as we
work with tech-savvy individuals on a per project basis to perform
specific tasks. Simultaneously and perhaps more importantly is
that it has changed our approach, privileging alternative building
methods, materials and how we, as designers, construct our
relationships with consultants, manufacturers and fabricators. As a
result, our past practice of adhering to the traditional collaborations
between builder and conceptual author has been completely
refigured. For the arbor we worked with a new cast of fabricators,
finishers and installers that included Richard Craig from Performance
Composites who made the fabricating possible, Jimmy Vincent of Pro
Paint Works, Harley Davidson’s go-to person for custom paint jobs
and the multi-talented Tomas Osinski who, with a team of two others,
installed the arbor.
© FIevreJones, Inc.
Hollyspot
IDEA NEWS

Arbor 2, Arbor from living room
LO: A tangential question but an obvious one, considering the
nature of many of the projects: You’ve undoubtedly confronted the
topic of preservation in the work. What’s your stance on the issue
of preservation, historic and otherwise? The firm favors the term
extension as opposed to addition. Seems purposeful. Your reasons?
VJ: Since most of the projects in the office have not been from ground
up, we have had to adapt a position about how we respond to existing
circumstances. Continuity has been our mantra where the design
solution incites a dialog with what is already there. While there is still
a level of criticality and scrutiny, the end game for us is more about a
signature piece with a small “s” rather than dominating the situation
with alpha architecture.
LO: Los Angeles and New Orleans, the principal arenas of your
practice, offer compelling sets of urban circumstance that transcend
their potent physical contexts. How does this duality present itself
to your office, and how does it manifest itself in your day-to-day
practice?
VJ: The kind of work we have done thus far in each city and the way
we go about it is utterly different. The impetus to teach and work
in New Orleans began with a general frustration about the work we
do in Los Angeles, which so far has a limited agenda. It is mostly
residential and commercial tenant improvement work with little
social or cultural implication. It is the completely opposite in New
Orleans. We are currently working on two projects in New Orleans,
one a community center for art and culture in the Lower Ninth Ward,
the other a public skateboard park in New Orleans’ City Park. Both of
these projects are extremely exciting because they engage a larger
constituency.
LO: Both cities have multi-cultural, layered histories. New Orleans
seems to value the old and the traditional; Los Angeles, the new – the
contemporary instead of the old. What is your perspective on the
cultural and physical history each city presents?
VJ: Sure, one is newer, richer, better positioned to face future
challenges, but I am constantly reacting against the clichés that are
associated with both cities: New Orleans as being driven by tradition
and its past versus Los Angeles as being propelled by progress and
the future. I would suggest that similarities between the two cities
outweigh their differences. The housing stock of both cities suffers
from a romanticism of the past with Los Angeles’ colonial Spanish
obsession and New Orleans’ preoccupation with the shotgun. They
are both horizontal cities. Both have a significant relationship with
FALL 2009
© Eric Staudenmaier
water: One gets too much and the other not enough.
LO: Your 2009 (Sub)Urban Skate Park for New Orleans City Park
addresses skater culture, a context not necessarily commonplace
for New Orleans but familiar to Los Angeles. The project must have
presented a unique opportunity to merge your cultural knowledge
sets for each of the cities. Can you describe the development of the
project program? Did your office participate in the overall Master Plan
for the Park? Is the need for the skate park based on skaters being
banned from the City Park proper and other open spaces of the city
– Audubon, Jackson Square, the Quarter for example? Was the site
for the project a by-product of the Master Plan or were several sites
within the park considered?
VJ: During the initial research phases for the project I came across a
blog interview with Tony Hawk which was emphatic about how much
he loved concrete and hated grass. My immediate reaction was:
Great, we are going to design a skate park with grass and concrete,
a sort of swirl of mineral and vegetal. This was perhaps the first and
most important point that shaped the conceptual reasoning of the
project. The job grew out of an ongoing partnership between the
Tulane City Center (TCC) and City Park New Orleans. The nature of
their partnership is to bring design resources to projects that are
part of City Park’s recovery efforts. Specifically, they have targeted
projects that are conceptually strong but have few – if any – current
resources available for development. In each case the TCC works to
support a ‘pre-design’ type research phase and produce schematic
design proposals that City Park then uses to develop resources they
need to bring projects to fruition. The developed proposal turns a
site considered ‘ugly’ and ‘undesirable’ by park users into a major
recreational resource and destination. The way this project identifies
the damaged edge conditions of major transportation infrastructure
and turns it into a series of opportunities represents a fabulous
opportunity not only for this project, but also for other areas in the
park that are bisected by the interstate highway/freight rail condition.
Beyond the physical components of the design proposal, this
project and the work behind it represents so much more. New Orleans
is not a city known for the provision of quality public space and even
less known as a city that has succeeded in bridging class and race
boundaries in the public sphere. This project has a great opportunity
to capitalize on the cultural dimensions of the skateboarding
community, that is, a mixed race/class/gender community, setting a
much-needed public example in the city. The end game for us is the
potential for the skateboard park to push us to think more about the
opportunities we have all around us to develop small but catalytic
projects in the discarded spaces of our cities.
DIALOGUE 27
 Adjunct Associate Professor Olivier Touraine is
a principal of Touraine Richmond Architects, and
Olivier Touraine Warren Techentin
was named a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in 2005.
He instructed a third-year undergraduate housing
design studio in the Fall.
Adjunct Associate Professor Warren Techentin is
A principal of Techentin Buckingham Architects.
He coordinated the third-year undergraduate
housing design studioS in the Fall.
WT: Our discussion for IDNWS unfortunately falls on the days you are
away from our third year housing studio, off in France presenting to
President Sarkozy at an architectural event. I hope you will be able
to answer some questions during this time. The event sounds very
exciting. What is the event and what is it looking at?
OT: I was invited to go to Avignon in France by a nonprofit association
called the Forum of Avignon. The topic is about globalization and
culture. 400 guests were invited from all over the world; it is a kind
of Davos of culture. My main focus is about the development of the
“Grand Paris” – a plan introduced by President Sarkozy – to redevelop
all the relationships between Paris and its suburbs. The first part was
actually voted upon yesterday by the French Parliament to authorize
$30B to develop new automated tram systems around Paris, to avoid
the crossing of Paris when you go from east to west suburbs. Many
cities are interested in what is going on since they seem to have the
same problem. The problem is as well on the political level since
there are many cities with much political diversity trying to deal with
common problems.
WT: I still find it amazing that the President of France would be
directly interested in the proposals and mechanisms by which the
“greening” of Paris would occur. French Presidents have typically
produced large projects of one form or another for Paris, and I am
thinking most recently of Mitterand who sponsored the Grands
Projets during his Presidency. So perhaps this is not far-fetched.
But I really admire the tradition in France which sees its cities and
infrastructure as national assets and as part of cycles of ongoing
modification and repair. Of course, I attribute this to the political
system in France, but as an American, I am still amazed that a sitting
President would take direct interest in the physicality of a city...in
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its actual spatial manifestation...and how it looks, even. Could you
describe Sarkozy’s role? How many architects are participating in
what looks to be a very large and inclusive process?
OT: This idea of a “Grand Paris” ­­­– Paris meaning the city but as
well the word “gamble or bet” in French – has been in the air for a
few years. It became obvious that not that much would be possible
unless it goes to the top of the government system. So almost
two years ago they organized an international competition with
ten selected architects, five French and five foreigners: Nouvel,
Portzamparc, Castro, Rogers, to name a few. Ten different, sometimes
utopian, projects came out. There is no real winner in terms of a
Haussmannian master plan, but all the ideas are scrutinized by all
Museum of Polish History
Warsaw, Poland
Competition 2009
28 DIALOGUE
political entities, the cities, the region and the central state. But the
result, as I mentioned, is that the Parliament voted to give $30B to
do the “Great 8” – an automated transportation system. Yes, there
has been a strange tradition in France for architectural legacy; it
started with the kings, but went ahead under Napoleon and then
the 2nd Republic, Napoleon the 3rd and Haussmann and the train
station system. Some were not as passionate about that: De Gaulle
was notoriously uninterested in architecture and signed his time
with infrastructures: airports, La Defense, freeway systems. Giscard
d’Estaing was more post-modern: a lot of work given to Ricardo Boffil.
Mitterand, aka The Sphinx, definitely created a powerful signature
with the “Grands Projets” (have you noted that everything has to be
“Grand” in France?). Chirac ended his time with the first art museum
on quai Branli. Maybe Sarkozy would rather move to infrastructure
than conventional architectural work.
WT: You are French, of course, but have lived and practiced in Los
Angeles for quite some time now with your wife and partner, Debbie
Richmond. As a French citizen, you are still eligible to compete in
the Concours system by which most projects in France are awarded,
right? And this is how you are involved with the “Grands Paris” project.
How easy is it to participate from Los Angeles?
OT: I am a US citizen as well now. As a minor effect I don’t believe
in nationalism so we all have double citizenship. Yes, technically I
qualify for entering French competitions but I don’t do that often
because architecture is a local thing, and it works much better if you
are embedded in a local system. Sometime we are partnering with
local emerging firms. We enter sometimes the large competitions. The
system in France requires every public project to go for a competition
process as soon as the construction cost is over $800K. Three to five
teams are selected and their entries paid for. Architectural quality is
as important a parameter as cost is. Very well known architects are
part of the jury, not only developers. That is something that does not
exist in the US, but is absolutely normal in Europe and Japan. Let’s
say a small school extension project in France has to be cheap. It
still has to be architecturally as elegant as possible. As has probably
happened to you here in L.A., I had a public client telling me that
the project should almost look rough or ugly as a proof of economic
concern, as an obvious physical materialization that public money
was not wasted. It is a bit surreal. Consequently average architectural
quality in L.A. is really poor. The metropolis offers few iconic
monuments (Disney Hall, etc.), but mostly incredibly banal buildings
where the role of the architect becomes one of a code and cost
constraints enforcer, but with no design. So in L.A., with the system as
it is, there are a lot of buildings but very little architecture.
WT: As you have raised the issue about the failure of Los Angeles to
produce architecture, you were involved in what would have been a
very interesting project if it had been built, called the “Green Blade.”
It was a collaboration between you and your former employer, Jean
Nouvel, and it was for a very slender, super-tall apartment building
in Century City that would have been entirely covered in plants. The
project is dead now, correct? What happened there?
OT: The project is not totally dead but it is difficult to believe that it
will restart anytime soon. The client was partnering with Lehman
Brothers, and I guess that is in itself a sufficient explanation. But to
come back to the first part of your question, we established a system
in our practice where our activity is divided into 3 parts: academia, our
own architectural projects, and projects in partnership with big name
offices (mostly all Pritzker prize winners who we previously worked
with in Europe). That is how I worked with Nouvel on the LACMA,
Suncal, and Broad Foundation competitions. Debbie worked with
OMA on the LACMA competition with more success. How does work
on these projects go from consulting to partners? I have to say that it
is so far the only way we had access to large scale and design driven
projects in L.A. So developing this part of our practice also helps us
to get our own projects; for example that is how we have come to
work with LACMA on a regular basis for the last 5 years. They met us
through Nouvel and Koolhaas.
WT: Koolhaas and Nouvel in particular seem to have practices that
work with former employees quite a bit on their international projects.
But they are by no means the only ones doing this. It seems as if
these types of multinational collaborative structures are prototypes
of the future architectural office, where the combination of existing
interpersonal relationships + easy communication + online project
management + cheap travel can now create better and more
IDEA NEWS
 CREDIT: Benny Chan / FOTOWORKS
One Window House, Venice, CA
situationally aware project teams. From your vantage point can you
describe the network of relationships that some of these projects
have developed and offer any parables for the office of the (near)
future that the students of USC can learn from as they plan their
internships after they graduate?
OT: Undeniably it all starts with the first professional experiences.
So to me, for a young student it is stressful to realize that the
first professional experience will impact your life in a positive or a
negative way. It is so important to be very accurate in where you want
to work, with or for whom. It was easy when I graduated in Europe in
the 80’s. There was work, architecture was at the center of cultural
life, and I had no student loan to pay back. So it gave me all the
possible freedom to apply for a job just where I wanted. The situation
is not like that today as we unfortunately know. But I truly believe
that the first sacrifice that you do just after graduation, to go to work
for this (or these) architect(s), is still a very important choice.
WT: How has housing played into your practice? You have designed a
number of very compelling projects that have tried to challenge the
assumed conventions of multifamily housing and domesticity (and
there are mind-numbingly many conventions in housing). You have
also started here at USC teaching in the third year housing studio. Is
there something in the uniqueness of the housing typology that you
are attracted to – such as the rule systems, modularity, repetition,
etc? Or is your production more a response to the zeitgeist as a young
designer – practicing during a housing boom both here in Los Angeles
(until recently) and abroad?
OT: In Europe housing is a key element of first, the academic
programs and second, architectural practices. So when I came to
the US, I came with this background and was surprised to see that
creative design is not so much or not enough involved in the housing
field. I believe that the future of housing will be a more mixed use
strategy. We saw for decades the failure of quarantining housing
from any other social or commercial spaces. I always enjoy teaching
housing; it was an important part of my decision to teach at Columbia
University. Not too many or not enough schools offer a housing
FALL 2009
Credit: Karen Melvin
Plug and Play House, Minneapolis, MN
program in the undergraduate or the graduate program. I think it is
a perfect tool to develop skills of symmetry, repetition, modularity.
Even though the time is not so favorable at the moment, housing will
still increase its field. Our cities, especially emerging countries, are
expanding and the world demography is all the while expanding. So I
cannot be pessimistic about housing here in L.A. or in any metropolis.
WT: You are right, population is expected to increase to 10 billion
people worldwide by 2050, virtually assuring the ongoing need for
housing. Given this, why do you suppose housing, as a core studio
problem, is offered in so few schools? In every school of architecture,
it seems that there is pre-occupation with surface and topology –
architectural strategies which often do not marry easily with housing
for a number of reasons. Digital tools have undoubtedly fueled this
fascination, but they could equally be used to explore new territories
and dimensions in housing too. What role do you think housing and
digital tools will have in the future of architecture curricula?
OT: I guess housing is offered in so few schools because it is difficult
and tedious. As soon as it is not mandatory in a curriculum, students
take what is easy and are more seduced by effects and aspects
rather than by substance and matter. But I believe that this is
changing. When I was teaching at Columbia the housing program was
suddenly the center of intense discussion about how to make it more
intellectually intense. As well, opposed to Japan or Europe, the whole
process of housing construction in the US is market driven: small
budget, small fees for the architect and therefore poor results. In the
US, developers are in a mode of building and selling their projects
ASAP; take the cash and run. In Europe developers have to wait for
years before being able to sell for tax reasons. Therefore they are
more careful to attend to the fact that the building needs to operate
at a high level three or five years after it is completed. Digital tools
are great, but they are tools, meaning that it is up to us to understand
how to use them. There is a lot of repetition, alignment in housing
and therefore the use of promising software such as Revit is opening
a lot of perspectives and providing a much better interface with
construction companies that specialize in housing and with architects
specializing in housing as well.
DIALOGUE 29
 Adjunct Associate Professor of Landscape
Gerdo Aquino Chris Warren 
Architecture Gerdo Aquino was RECENTLY named
president of the SWA group WORLDWIDE. he runs
swa los angeles. He taught a graduate Landscape
Architecture design studio in the Fall.
lecturer Chris Warren is President of Warren
Office of Research and Design (WORD). He taught
second-year design studio in the Fall.
CW: You graduated from Harvard’s GSD, where you were also a
founding member of the AsiaGSD Student Group. What did you
experience there that has influenced your approach to teaching?
GA: I and four other classmates representing the distinct graduate
degree programs (MArch, MLA, MAUD, MDes, MUP) got together and
formed the organization, the first of its kind at the GSD. It felt like
the right thing to do considering the rise of multiple Asian economies
(circa 1994). The experience has shaped how I communicate and
distribute knowledge amongst students within an academic setting.
I was particularly interested in identifying with the distinct voices of
over 30 Asian cultures – a sort of cataloguing of ideas, strategies and
manifestos for the future of the Asian city from multiple perspectives.
The international context of Harvard seemed to me to be the perfect
venue in which to magnify and make transparent these perspectives.
As an aside, AsiaGSD has helped nurture related organizations such
as LatinGSD, KoreaGSD and ChinaGSD.
CW: Now that you’re an instructor in the graduate program at USC,
what are the most important aspects of your pedagogy, or to put it
simply, what do you feel is your obligation to your students?
GA: My teaching pedagogy is aimed at giving students the ability to
identify landscape systems within any context and at any scale. I also
give them the tools with which to carry out this exercise. The ability to
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comprehend why something must be done is conjoined with the how
– a kind of critical juxtaposition where the end result is an insightful,
sober realization that posits design education directly in the center of
current issues and trends in the built environment.
CW: How does teaching affect your personal growth as a landscape
architect?
GA: Teaching allows me to explore topics in landscape architecture
that may not be fully supported by my professional endeavors – even
beyond competitions. Topical research, theoretical investigations
and my interaction with students from around the world heightens
my awareness of even the most subtle shifts in attitudes towards
architecture, landscape and planning. The rigor of academia will
always be a constant source of ideas and inspiration for me and the
work that is played out in my studio at SWA L.A.
CW: You initiated and now manage SWA Group’s Los Angeles office.
As a new offshoot of a very well-established firm, do you feel you have
to operate under the standard that SWA’s reputation has set forth,
and is there an inherent freedom in the new work?
SWA, Zobon City Sculpture Garden
30 DIALOGUE
GA: I feel very fortunate to be associated with some of the brightest
talent in the profession at SWA. The collective knowledge, experience
and wisdom within the firm are extraordinary. So yes, I do feel
compelled to meet the standards that have been established
throughout the firm’s 50 year history; however, it’s also important
to me and to the principals of the firm to push the work in new
directions and to seek new strategies in planning and design. The
Los Angeles studio of SWA is led by me and Ying-Yu Hung (who also
teaches at USC). We see ourselves as ‘ideas leaders’ in a studio where
collaboration is embedded in everything we do. In this sense, we feel
that the Los Angeles studio of SWA has a strong sense of autonomy
that nurtures a unique point of view.
CW: What role does ‘sustainability’ play in your work?
GA: A broad one, one that doesn’t contain any preconceptions. To
me ‘sustainability’ refers to the carrying capacity of land to support
a variety of functions and programs. Natural systems tend to be
‘mitigated’ in order to support developmental growth of a city or
region. Our work seeks to define the balance by which natural
systems can be fully integrated into the built environment as we
believe sustainability is as much about culture as it is about nature.
CW: As a landscape architect, you are often involved in projects where
intense cross-disciplinary coordination and design are required. At
times this collaboration occurs with a world-renowned architect
such as Thom Mayne. What are some of the positive and/or negative
aspects of such collaborations?
GA: Collaboration is the essence of invention and ideas. Without it,
our design process wouldn’t be as responsive to the natural, cultural
and socio-economic conditions that frame our work. Over the years,
SWA has had the unique opportunity to collaborate with thought
leaders such as Thom Mayne, Rafael Vinoly, Renzo Piano, Shigeru
Ban and a host of talented environmental scientists, ecologists and
engineers. Collectively, these experiences have shaped the way we
(at SWA) approach the development of an idea at all scales. It has
taught us the invaluable skills of debate and argument – and how
to fight the battles that need to be fought. Likewise, it has taught
us to remain humble and open to possibilities. Having said this, not
all collaborations meet expectations nor can all offer the kind of
surprise that might trigger a visceral response to a staid thought. It
is this latter sentiment that is most common and which is the most
cumbersome to resolve in real time.
CW: You also quite often collaborate with young practitioners. How do
these collaborations differ?
GA: The fundamental difference relates more to the use and
application of 3D software technology in their design process. The
generation of architects graduating today are highly skilled in the art
and application of 3D software such as 3D Max, Rhino, Sketch-Up and
Revit. These platforms are universal and provide a kind of flexibility
never imagined just five years ago. One benefit in collaborating with
tech-savvy practitioners is that we can test alternative futures of a
proposal quickly, accurately and at various scales of resolution.
CW: Much of your work takes place in foreign territories, mostly in
Asia and China in particular. The current situation there is quite
fascinating in terms of the potential for design and construction, yet
many people view the development there to be overly fast-paced,
characterized as “anything goes“ and miscalculated. Do you feel that
there is truth in this?
GA: I’ve been actively working in China for over six years. In that
time I have seen China develop in phenomenal and fantastic ways
– physically, socially, culturally and politically. The recent global
economic slowdown has mitigated the level of speculation in China
and the market seems to have stabilized. Having said that, I have
had my share of the “anything goes” approach to development in
China. My feeling on this is neither one of anger or fear, but one of
reconciliation. Believe or not, I believe the growth there is measured
and thoughtful – it just all happens to be occurring simultaneously
and it is supported by a government that structures its own rules on
development. As a result, development that would typically occur over
a period of fifty years is being realized in ten. This, combined with a
redefined sense of entitlement (lifestyle), a spirited democratic kind
of entrepreneurship and the industrialization of China offers us, as
foreigners, a view on everyday spectacles – both good and bad.
IDEA NEWS
SWA, Chongming Island, Birdseye VIew
CW: How do you react to clients who you may feel are being
irresponsible with their decisions or intentions?
GA: Most of them have the best intentions in mind but are sometimes
too focused on their ROI (return on investment) to assess their
long-term obligations to the public or to the environment. The
impact of rapid development on the natural environment has many
negative consequences. Every day we hear about land subsidence,
flooding, loss of wildlife, heat-island effect. To address these issues,
large-scale developments must take a phased approach to the
implementation and seek to be more inclusive. I constantly remind
public and private entities that the development pattern must extend
beyond the “limit of work” boundaries and look systematically at the
infrastructure that supports it. Big picture stuff.
CW: You mentioned the corrective qualities that the economic
slowdown has had on speculative projects. How has the instability
of the global economy affected the work that now comes out of your
office? Do you foresee any long-term ramifications that will change
your field’s approach to design?
GA: The global recession has allowed our design studio to slow
down the pace, take a deep breath, ask the tough questions and get
back to the fundamentals of good design – research, analysis and
innovation. I believe many offices have used this time to reset their
methodology and approach to projects. Almost everyone I know in
design is taking a closer look at the issues and getting more involved
– a kind of grassroots movement that seeks to understand the
basic underpinnings of how our cities work and why it’s important to
recognize that every parcel of land has its carrying capacity. I strongly
believe that this broader interpretation of our world will reconcile the
differences in the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture,
urban design and graphic design and put them in closer alignment
with each other.
CW: Much of your work is focused on leading large master-planning
efforts. In your mind, what are the factors that lead a client to select a
landscape architect for the job, rather than a planner or architect?
GA: The selection criteria varies widely from project to project, country
to country. SWA is often competing against some of the world’s
most prestigious architecture and planning firms and sometimes
the decision simply comes down to how you respond to a single
question (from a client) structured to gauge your intuitive approach
to a problem – real or hypothetical. I had an interview in Shenyang,
China a year ago for the urban design of a high-profile waterfront
project. The client interviewed 3 firms, pulling from an identical list
of questions. One question that stood out to me was: “What is the
most important factor to evaluate when considering the proposed
project?” My answer was related to tidal action and flooding. Our two
FALL 2009
competitors responded with answers related to FAR and density. In
the end, the Client chose us and pointed out that it was our response
to this question that won us the commission.
CW: What issues are you most critical of concerning the state of
landscape architecture today?
GA: Education and critical discourse on the role of the landscape
architect from multiple points of view.
CW: What are some of the stimuli (people, projects, culture, theory)
affecting your current work?
GA: I would say 80% of my stimuli comes from living and working in
Los Angeles, and one half of that comes from commuting between
Silver Lake and Downtown Los Angeles via Sunset Boulevard every
day. From the Kogi Taco truck phenom parked along a section of
Sunset in Echo Park, to the high frequency of strip malls on every
block, to the late night grills spotted along this corridor — love them
or hate them, they all provide Angelenos with a kind of infrastructure
that few can appreciate. I find these sorts of random occurrences
to be quite fascinating and compelling footnotes on L.A.’s cultural
development.
CW: Please tell us about some of the current research happening in
your LA office. What ideas are you interested in developing?
GA: Most of our current research is focused on works of landscape
infrastructure – e.g. hydrology and its influence on shaping urban
patterns. Related to water, we’re particularly interested in levee
technology and its derivatives – e.g. sluice gates and dams (fixed and
flexible). We currently have a few projects that actively engage the
edges of native and artificial water systems. Programs such as biking,
walking, running, concerts, festivals and recreational sports are vying
with residential and commercial uses for prime waterfront space.
We feel it isn’t enough to just say that open space should be on the
waterfront. “Open space” is competing with buildings for millions (and
sometimes billions) of dollars in potential developer revenue/profit,
so the best approach (in support of open space) is to argue from the
engineering aspects – i.e. viable levee and pier technology that will
integrate varied programs in a more dynamic, unconventional way and
afford people access down to water level. This can be done without
compromising safety, while also increasing the interactive potential
for visitors and tourists. In the end, a comprehensive strategy might
be achieved.
CW: Finally, what can we expect from your office over the next couple
of years?
GA: You’ll have to wait and see.
DIALOGUE 31
 A SUM OF POSSIBILITIES
by Stefano de Martino
In the 80’s an architect’s greatest ambition was to design a house.
Having exhausted the psychopathology of domesticity, attention
in the 90’s focused on museums, the large building of choice, as
the vehicle that would lend a fitting measure of prestige, increased
profile and personal fulfillment to a totally self-conscious profession.
The 00’s find the architect designing cities across the globe, three
hundred thousand people here, two million there, riding the fortunes
of the Greenspan era like a surfer, all the way to the last marketable
corner of the globe.
We could ask ourselves if the World is a commodity and
architecture its merchandising: “In retail commerce, visual display
merchandising means maximizing merchandise sales using product
design, selection, packaging, pricing, and display that stimulates
consumers to spend more. This includes disciplines in pricing and
discounting, physical presentation of products and displays, and
the decisions about which products should be presented to which
customers at what time.” 1
Put another way, the question is whether cities can be “designed”
as objects, as commodities.
Since the 80’s, more has been built across the globe than in the
whole history of mankind. But has this rash of urbanization resulted
in any “cities”?
The evidence hovers between the recreational (Celebration FLA,
the Palms in Dubai), the commercial (Santa Fe in Mexico City) or
technological (Bangalore, Shenzhen) – even suggesting the possibility
of some kind of super-zoning at a global scale.
What these developments have in common is the ceaseless
pursuit of a recognizable difference. The programs, the uses, are
the litany of “five star hotel with serviced apartments, retail units, a
main plaza and sunken gardens” or the developers’ Tequila Sunrise
of purple, yellow, blue, red and green in the Powerpoint presentation
(read commercial, residential, office, hotel, entertainment...).2 The
formulaic inanity of these Ponzi schemes leaves only the surface, the
skin, the envelope to be designed, which for many is a great relief.
This, now, has to be carbon-neutral and super-engineered,
eco-friendly and rapid-prototyped, but mainly, as the last real-estate
for architectural determinism, the repository of any intellectual,
scientific and cultural ambition. Today’s cities are therefore more
than ever metaphors, from mountain ranges to domestic kitchen
appliances (ubiquitously, by software default): metaphors for the
illusion that there must be some place, behind gates, off-shore, or
likely in outer space (just check the city in “V”’s mothership, hovering
over Manhattan like Fuseli’s “Nightmare”), where the photoshoppers,
the advertising-resource-libraries people, will be blessed.
There is a distinct difference between planning and designing a city.
The first implies setting in motion processes that will inform
the development of a city, the second is the formalization and
objectification of a city.
The vastness of the demand for cities has legitimized overnight
the figure of the city-designer, aided by stunningly fast tools that can
generate unimaginable, fabrication-ready complexities based on hard
facts (wiki), sustainability and a cocktail of philosophical, scientific
and fiscal accounting, depending on the audience.
The building block of the new city is the gated community, the
model of choice for urban living as an indulgence in paranoia.
Meanwhile, most of the world still lives in favelas townships
slums squats tent-cities and projects.
Superstudio’s “12 Cautionary Tales” anticipate all the
prototypical junkyards scripted in the latest parametric efforts:
except that Superstudio’s projects were meant as allegories. If the
ceaseless ambition to design cities like cars or mobile phones or
spoons for that matter, as objects, is taken to its logical conclusion,
we should face the consequences so lucidly formulated in their
“Continuous Monument” – all architecture and no city, a design to end
all designs.3
What happens when there is going to be a change in the weather?
Architecture is prone to shifts in mood and trends, favoring in turn
social engineering, historical pastiche, intellectual pretensions,
technological “Vorsprung,” environmental concerns, commercial
32 ARTICLE
adventures. In other words, the factors (or parameters) that inform
architectural production vary widely over time.
A great city is one that can accommodate these shifts and still
maintain its vitality, diversity and openness. It is never finished.
Also great architecture is capable of absorbing these changes: it
has always been informed by a profound understanding of climatic,
material, cultural factors, developed over millennia. This correlation
has been brusquely ignored by a stylization of geometries, a fashion
of discourses, the vanities of superegos.
And great architecture, in contrast with the normative standards
that have been a blueprint for abject misery across the globe, can
also adapt to changes in use and program, the only certainty we can
count on.
While architects have been busy debating the pros and cons of
more or less like the number of angels that can dance on the point of
a needle, the extremes of minimalism have been tested in real time by
every newcomer to the fringes of Mexico DF or Mumbai. And those of
crassness by their counterparts at the Atlantis, the Stone Towers, and
Zira Island Azerbaijan.
Contingency
Cedric Price’s “Potteries Thinkbelt” demonstrates how a process can
be activated to effect a transformation over time across a region.4
The main point here is not the definition of a design aesthetic as
much as an aesthetic of dynamic processes. Cedric Price understood
better than anyone since Piranesi the difference between place and
space: we would have to wait for de Certeau to provide an unequivocal
distinction. Meanwhile the readjustment of priorities exemplified in
his work, the shaking-up of tired formal values in favor of a dynamic
of relations and effects, set the premise for a reevaluation of
architecture and planning as practice.5
His collaboration on this project with Gordon Pask, the
cyberguru of the Architectural Association, was geared to exploring
organizational models, patterns of aggregation and distribution,
networks. This logic pervades the project from the regional scale
down to its tiniest details, the specification of an emergent
architecture made of possible combinations, optional materials,
adaptable scenarios. It is an architecture that results from external
environmental factors as much as individual choice.It is a contingent
architecture.
By breaking down the full range of building typologies into
a set of industrial-neoclassic elements, Durand effectively put
into question the notion of typology itself.6 Price’s components, at
different scales, can be reconfigured, reassembled, transported. They
are performative (fast, distributive, aggregative, solid, transparent,
malleable, filtering, blocking, etc.) rather than compositional. He
expands both the infrastructural and the tectonic project initiated
by Vladimir Sukhov across Russia with his railway lines, radio masts,
sheds, water towers that organize the territory at one scale, and
redefine the substance (theoretical and physical) of constructions at
another.
The 1811 Commissioners’ Plan for New York City laid down
Manhattan’s DNA, its fundamental organization, as surely as setting
out a field anticipates what might grow on it. “Advocated by its authors
as facilitating the ‘buying, selling and improving of real estate’, this
‘Apotheosis of the gridiron...with its simple appeal to unsophisticated
minds’...is, a hundred and fifty years after its superimposition on the
island, still a negative symbol of the shortsightedness of commercial
interests. In fact, it is the most courageous act of prediction in
Western civilization: the land it divides, unoccupied; the population
in describes, conjectural; the buildings it locates, phantoms; the
activities it frames, non-existent.” 7
One hundred years later, the zoning laws introduced in 1916
set the parameters for regulating that growth: formulas of pure
potentiality, the implications of which would be interpreted and
extrapolated by Hugh Ferriss with his prefigurations of a city yet to be
imagined. The remarkable quality of Ferriss’s work lies not so much
in giving shape to the abstractions of the new laws, but in probing the
notion of that city, in trying to figure out its soul. 8
“Cities within the city,” the proposals by the Sommer Akademie
for Berlin (1977), maintains its status as one of the most profound
declarations on urbanism, anticipating both predicaments that are
totally contemporary (a varied, multi-centered urban landscape that
manifests itself everywhere) and approaches or strategies that are
only now being understood (the interaction of different logics, the
space or freedoms that develop between these logics). “The pluralistic
project for a city within a city is in this respect in antithesis to the
current planning theory which stems from a definition of the city as
IDEA NEWS
Potteries Thinkbelt, Canadian Center for Architecture Archives
a single whole. This corresponds to the contemporary structure of
society which is developed more as a society of individuality with
different demands, desires and conceptions. The project also involves
an individualization of the city and therefore a moving away from
typification and standardization.” 9
The eleven theses describe Berlin as a network of identifiable
urban fragments and situations. A critical evaluation of their
respective qualities prompts the formulation of different approaches
to highlight specific contents and potentials, while landscape acts as
infrastructure, as the link in this “green archipelago.”
OMA’s project for the Parc de la Villette (1982) brings together
elements of the “Potteries Thinkbelt” (as a system of unstable
processes) and of the “Cities within the city” (as the addition of
distinct tactics). The (infinite) details of the design program are
superseded by a new set of categories that operate on abstract
criteria: densities, frequencies, scales, time.
“The proposed project is not for a definitive park, but for a
method that – combining programmatic instability with architectural
specificity – will eventually generate a park.”10 In contrast to design
practices that tendentially homogenize and fix an image, the
approach developed for the Parc de la Villette provides continuous
variables, differentiation and coincidences, within systems that are
unified in themselves.
The city has developed in a chimerical chase of the perfect
location, the ideal spot, the optimal equation; it has been planned
to strict economic canons, to systematic functionalism, to complete
‘lifestyles’: reductive strategies of total visions. The city has also
fallen prey to stylization. “The new beauty can only be a beauty of
situation...a sum of possibilities.”11
“Space describes a field of action – city – qualified by
FALL 2009
programmatic elements – architecture. These elements are attendant
upon the action, the event. They define a potential. The project lies in
seeing and articulating this potential: a road, a screen, a forest and a
phone box – they are all architecture, between them lies the city.”12
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchandising
2. Zaha Hadid’s Cairo Stone Towers, BD 29 May, 2009
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3141643#ixzz0WWXM2qUW
3. Ambasz, Emilio. Italy: The New Domestic Landscape Achievements and
Problems of Italian Design. New York: MOMA, 1972.
4. Mathews, Stanley. From Agit-prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric
Price. London, Black Dog Publishing, 2007.
5. de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven F.
Rendall. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984.
“Space occurs as the effect produced by the operations that orient it, situate it,
temporalize it, and make it function in a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs
of contractual proximities...In short, space is a practiced place.”
6. Durand, Jean-Louis-Nicholas. Précis des leçons d’architecture données à
l’École royale polytechnique. Paris, 1809.
7. Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York. London, Thames and Hudson,1978.
8. Ferriss, Hugh. The Metropolis of Tomorrow, with essay by Carol Willis.
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1986. Reprint of 1929 edition.
9. Ungers, O. M. et al. “Cities within the City” in Lotus International 19.
Milano: Electa SpA, 1978, pp. 82-97.
10. OMA, Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, “Congestion without matter”
in S,M,L,XL. New York: The Monacelli Press Inc., 1995.
11. Debord, Guy. Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography.1955.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/urbgeog.htm
12. de Martino, Stefano. “Architecture and the City”. Lecture transcript,
New York, 1993.
ARTICLE 33
 GENERATIVE URBANISM:
pARAMETRIC uRBANISM
BEFORE PARAMETRIC URBANISM
by Eui-Sung Yi
The complexity of 20th century urban design can be crudely divided
into two critical positions of thought – one that approached urban
design as architecture, a singular construct that neatly integrated
every system into a seamless whole; and the other that approached
urbanism as a beautiful mess, born of daily, monthly negotiations
between people and systems, culture and politics, where unexpected
collisions became opportunities for inventive solutions. Seen in
opposition, these two positions, colloquially known as “top-down” and
“bottom up,” spawned sub-discourses in subsequent generations –
each a reaction to the era it proceeded. The intent of this brief article
is to locate the discourse of parametric urbanism as a strand that
evolved from a generative urbanism that advocated for tactic over
strategy, for heterogeneity over homogeneity, and fought for cellular
growth as a foundation of intelligent city-making rather than a
comprehensive cohesion of the familiar and predictable.
This discourse resisted the cultural sterilization that highlights
and haunts the aspirations of Le Corbusier, Congrès International
d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), and their Athens Charter. One may
begin the argument with Le Corbusier’s complex urbanism. Though
he sought to eradicate the polluted slums of late 19th century cities
that were decayed by age, burdened by the Industrial Revolution,
and unprepared for the inevitable infrastructural invasion of the city,
his Plan Voisin demanded a complete erasure where negotiations
only existed between the collaged edges of his city and the old
Parisian fabric. The boldness and clarity of his initiatives spoke
clearly to the emancipation of modern man from his polluted past,
but only to then place him into a sterile and functionalist grid of
services rendering him a mere occupant of the programs rather than
a participant and author of his own urban environment. Clearly the
role of CIAM’s Athens Charter’s categories of Living, Recreation, Work
and Circulation was to deconstruct and re-assemble the old world
order which was a chaotic and indiscriminate layering and knotting
of 19th century systems. This knot had to be untangled, separated,
and cleansed before being re-constituted. Inevitably, the artificiality
and functionalism of such methodologies would provoke younger
generations to look for alternative modes of organizations. At the
tenth meeting of CIAM, a young group calling itself TEAM 10 emerged
who shifted CIAM’s categories of program types to categories of
scale. With the appearance of TEAM 10, oscillations between the two
camps of modern urbanism became apparent. TEAM 10’s categories
of scale absolved typological limitations that encumbered the Athens
Charter and allowed associative organizations to become a priority in
urbanism.
The diversity of TEAM 10 can be divided into two groups. One
group led by the Smithsons held to some latent elements of CIAM
functionalism, while a second group led by Aldo van Eyck and
Candilis-Josic-Woods obsessed over the potential of North and
Central African housing and village organizations as a biological and
generative model and developed the typology known as a mat building
– examples of which include the Free University of Berlin as well as Le
Corbusier’s unbuilt Venice Hospital.
This second group also became the crucial influence for three
principal thinkers listed below whose collective discourse contributed
to a scientific and theoretical zeitgiest during the mid 1960s to the
1970s known as Generative Theory. Generative Theory encompassed
investigations and research into chaos and fractal theory,
comprising non-linear organizational systems and biologically-
based morphologies that would affect computer science, linguistics,
artificial intelligence and urbanism.
FUMIHIKO MAKI (1928 – )
The Japanese Metabolists emerged from the early 1960s as the
appropriate stewards and healers of their war-torn country. After a
decade of rebuilding the country following their defeat in WWII, Japan
was ready to stand again. The Metabolists would be connected with
the final chapters of CIAM and Le Corbusier and parallel in time,
theory, and scope of work the English group Archigram. As with TEAM
10, the Metabolists fielded two oppositional teams. One was driven
and highlighted by a group that advocated megastructures – large
34 ARTICLE
tectonic beasts that became allegories of the technical liberation of
Japan and showcases of efficiency mandated by the legendary limited
real estate of Japan. The Megastructures integrated everything
except existing or historical fabric and became the exemplary
typology that integrated modern infrastructure and high density
programming. This group was led by Kenzo Tange, and his theories
are exemplified by his Tokyo Bay Plan and several built projects. The
other leader was Fumihiko Maki, whose seminal paper “Investigations
into Collective Form” outlined a heterogeneous methodology that
relied on tactical relationships between emerging components. For
Maki, both in scale and time the growth of the city relies on its internal
reactive intelligence rather than on external prescriptive structures.
Maki, “Investigations in Collective Form”
Excerpt from Fumihiko Maki’s earlier “Toward Group Form” in
Metabolism, 1960:
“In the past, man has tried to discover the secret of natural
phenomena and the substance of the universe. In the latter half
of the twentieth century, however, in the fields of both science and
the humanities, we are more concerned with grasping the total
picture and the underlying relations among phenomena rather the
study of individual phenomena.
We now limit our discussion to the problem of structure in
our urban society. Compared with ancient and medieval cities,
modern cities are characterized by: i) The coexistence and conflict
of amazingly heterogeneous institutions and individuals. ii)
Unpredictably rapid and extensive transformations in society. It is
questionable, however, whether in urban design we have the visual
language with which we can create the space that responds to and
comprehends such characteristics of our urban society. Most of
our cities fall either into utter confusion or monotonous patterns
built by a few dogmatic architects. Such cities lack individuality
not only in the elements that perform their complex functions, but
also an overall unifying character. They also lack elasticity and
flexibility in adjusting to social and economic change. We again lack
an adequate visual language to cope with the super human scale of
modern highway systems and with views from airplanes.
The idea of group form which we suggest here begins with
solving such problems. Our idea of group form stands firmly
against the image we have had in architecture for thousands of
years: that is, the image of a single structure, complete in itself,
for example, the Pyramids, the Parthenon...Our idea stands also
against the other image of making an exquisite static composition,
using several buildings as its elements, for instance, the Horyu-ji,
the Piazza San Marco...In short, we are trying to surpass these
approaches.”
Excerpt from Fumihiko Maki’s “Investigations in Collective Form”,
1964:
“Forms in group form have their own built-in link, whether
expressed or latent, so that they may grow in a system. They define
basic environmental space that also partakes of the quality of
systematic linkage. Group Form and its space are indeed proto-
type elements, and they are prototypes because of implied system
and linkage. The element and the growth pattern are reciprocal
– both in design and in operation. The element suggests a manner
of growth, and that, in turn, demands further development of the
elements, in a kind of feedback process.”
JANE JACOBS (1916 – 2006)
The great citizen activist-urbanist: Jane Jacobs was the iconic
American grassroots activist and a source of great quotations for all
champions defending an environment of diversity, heterogeneity and
timely, adaptive growth. Her expansive views begin with the rights of
the individual and are fortified by the principle that urban experience
is a rich tapestry of everyone’s collective individualism. This quixotic
argument ironically became an inspiration for both the left and right
IDEA NEWS
of society. The left championed the fight against the oppressive
and draconian tactics of then New York mayor Edwin Moses and
the New York Planning Bureau; the right equally championed the
notion of less government, and would later politicize the aesthetic
that is mythologized in Jacob’s Greenwich village, a small urban
petri dish that would hold every possible urban narrative and a few
problematics.
Her famous series of observations from her home redefined the
vernacular as a critical lens for qualifying the policy of the city and the
means for evaluating any future urban initiatives. Her observations
would become research and, through her elevation of the vernacular
from a passive territory of urban backgrounds to the forefront of
policy change, modernism’s vulnerable underpinnings became
increasingly weaker.
Excerpt from Jane Jacobs’ Life and Death of Great American Cities:
Chapter 12, Some Myths about Diversity:
“Intricate mingling of different uses in cities are not a form of chaos.
On the contrary, they represent a complex and highly developed
form of order. Everything in this book so far has been directed
toward showing how this complex order of mingled uses works.
Nevertheless even though intricate mixtures of buildings,
uses and scenes are necessary for successful city districts, does
diversity carry, too, the disadvantages of ugliness, warring uses
and congestion that are conventionally attributed to it by planning
lore and literature?
Flourishing city diversity, of the kind that is catalyzed by the
combination of mixed primary uses, frequent streets, mixture of
building ages and overheads, and dense concentration of users,
does not carry with it the disadvantages of diversity conventionally
assumed by planning pseudoscience.
...Genuine differences in the city architectural scene express, as
Raskin says so excellently, ‘...the interweaving of human patterns.
They are full of people doing different things, with different reasons
and different ends in view, and the architecture reflects and
expresses this difference – which is one of content rather than
form alone...In architecture as in literature and the drama, it is
the richness of human variation that gives vitality and color to the
human setting.’”
CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER (1936 – )
A prolific counter-modernist theorist and architect, Christopher
Alexander tirelessly pursued and investigated the theory that the
basis for the timeless integrity of the built environment throughout
history and culture lies in fundamental relationships or patterns
between systems and elements. He shifted the relationship between
elements from the elements as a-priori to the relationship as the
qualifier of each element’s identity. He argues for the performance
of the relationships to be evaluated on its adaptive and reactive
characteristics and on its dependence on the valuation and identity
of the systems themselves. This closely parallels the associative
relativism embedded within Claude Levi-Strauss’s Structuralism
and studies in semiotics by Noam Chomsky. By understanding
the formation of these critical patterns as they evolved over time,
the elements for exhuming the meaning and hidden relationships
between space, form and behavior developed into a groundbreaking
treatise on pattern language and its potential in a generative set of
relationships.
ALEXANDER,
A PATTERN LANGUAGE
FALL 2009
ALEXANDER, A PATTERN LANGUAGE
Excerpt from Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language:
“During the early years of the formulation of the pattern language
we had a very peculiar problem. We had both things and “patterns”
which were connecting those things. This seemed like a very
inelegant formulation. In discussing this with mathematicians
it was intuitively clear to them it would be better if there were
“patterns of patterns” rather than “patterns of things.” In 1967 this
seemed like a beautiful idea but it did not seem to have any reality.
It seemed too abstract. It finally became clear that it was much
more lucid to say that there were just patterns.
With the onset of computers, for the first time it has actually
been possible to study the effect of certain interacting rules.
Suppose you take the shape of a wave breaking, for example. You
can ask, ‘Do I understand what is happening?’ So you write a set
of rules – an algorithm – which is supposed to depict the history
of a wave. Then you can run these rules through the computer and
generate a pattern of dots on a cathode ray tube [CRT monitor]...
(I)f you keep going through those rules, over and over again, in
different combinations of sequences, and you are successful, you
will actually see this pattern of dots forming a breaking wave.
...In the case of an organism, there are about fifty thousand
genes responsible for an incredible number of interactive rules. In
the case of environments, there are hundreds. And indeed, it is only
by studying the process which consists of the interaction of the set
of rules that you can begin to generate that kind of complexity.
Now once we get into linguistic systems, and pattern languages
specifically, you not only have these very complex rules that
generate things but you also have the power of choice – so that
you are free to make something that has not been made before by
allowing the system of rules in your mind to do it. This is another
step which goes further than saying that, indeed, nature is
produced by interacting rules...And the same structure ultimately
resides in the finished product, although you have still made it
and have created a thing never before created in that specific
framework.”
PARAMETRIC URBANISM NOW
The current spotlight enjoyed by Parametric Urbanism owes much
of its initiations to these competing theories, clashing manifestos,
and conjectures that have defined the past 50 years of modern
urbanism. Parametric urbanism, in essence, is an evolution of
generative urbanism but conjoins these two historical rivals within
the urban discourse and renders both political positions possible.
It integrates the singularity of the author – in this case, the urban
planner – with a very intelligent and sophisticated tool; that is, with
the plurality of offering multiple urban visions differentiated through
their own adaptive, unpredictable, organic intelligence. The benefit
of the singular author (the planning bureau) lies in establishing a
holistic background (zoning, land use, setbacks, FARs, conditional
uses, etc.) that permits the free patterning that will emerge in several
years. Its ability to constantly shift and adapt to new challenges,
needs, problems and opportunities advances the aspirations of GIS
systems from a static two-dimensional array of data “snapshots”
to a dynamic 3D interplay and forecasting of these data. It is not
about architectural formalism. Instead, its ability to create new
organizational and typological urban systems from a set of societal
and environmental values forwards the aspirations of the modern
pioneers outlined above.
ARTICLE 35
 FROM THE CARTOGRAPHIC
TO THE PARAMETRIC
by Warren Techentin
An IDNWS issue focusing on the burgeoning idea of a Parametric
Urbanism is timely as USC just hosted a conference about the
topic and has been involved in an ongoing conversation about
digital practice and its place in schools, architecture, and the city.
Emerging out of discussions about parametric design over the
past few years has been the notion of a Parametric Urbanism: an
urban design discipline that potentially offers radical new ways
to plan, design, make, organize, and service our cities. Much like
other recently-emerged urban design theories such as Everyday
Urbanism, Landscape Urbanism, and to a certain extent even New
Urbanism, Parametric Urbanism seeks to define ways in which urban
design, urban theory, and urban planning can come together again
to operate a set of shared discursive mechanisms in conjunction
with each other and in consideration of each others’ limits. The
arguments for unifying the exceptionally fractionalized discipline of
urbanism have been well traversed by many critics. But the methods
by which parametric urbanism seeks to do this are fundamentally
different than those of other urban design strategies and co-opt
newly available technologies of high-performance computational
modeling. These technologies, unavailable to the discipline of
urbanism until recently, stand to supplant the cartographic
strategies of representation that urbanism has traditionally relied
on. That the concept of a Parametric Urbanism is seeping out of
the walls of academia and into practice is evidenced in a number
of recently published urban design proposals as well as in the
increased commercial acceptance of Building Information Modeling
(BIM) software. It is therefore worth asking at this point how the
salient features of parametric design – as applied to urbanism –
will help advance the causes of Urbanism and the City in general.
If Parametric Urbanism is to move beyond a mere fascination with
new digital tools and the trappings of style, as Patrik Schumacher of
Zaha Hadid’s office has cast the movement, it will need to address
the question of what guiding principles it will offer the City. In the
short space of this essay, I would like to propose that we transform
the idea of Parametric Urbanism from a system singularly enabling
the generation of a zoo of aesthetic novelties to one that can open up
a participatory process of engagement with the City – a process that
will help us visualize modification and change as well as choreograph
flows, events, program, architecture, circulation, and ultimately life
in the City.
There is no doubt that in the design, production, and
construction of cities parametric modeling is now a necessity.
The effective coordination, installation, and interaction between
increasingly vast three-dimensional networks of systems that
proliferate and comprise our cities today gives unprecedented
power to designers for quicker visualization, analysis, design
generation, and implementation with fewer mistakes and greater
flexibility. Layers of guesswork can be eliminated and the hundreds
of contractors and subcontractors participating in the construction
of projects are able to access the same virtual construction model
and update and amend it directly, allowing for the simultaneous
visualization of their work alongside everyone else’s. Practically,
this provides an opportunity for conflict resolution early in the
process, eliminating cost overruns due to the inevitabilities and
contingencies of typically-managed construction projects. Likewise,
large tolerances and just-in-case space allotments for services
can be drastically reduced to allow for tighter installations and the
compaction of systems runs into shared, bundled networks. Large
urban projects in the Middle East and China are now being built with
parametric design software, though the models remain relatively
rudimentary due to computational size limitations of today’s
hardware. In theory, as computational speed and volume processing
increases (and the ongoing construction of a (hopefully) public,
digital “para-cloud” progresses), a more complete, totalized, and
parameterized project model will be possible, thereby encompassing
in one location the entirety of data about a project and it’s
relationship to the city as part of a conurbation of systems.
The power of parametric modeling and its enormous potential
with respect to urban design and urbanism is that it ascribes
performativity to the geometry of the parametric model itself. The
graphic elements of a model are not merely symbolic, cartographic
36 ARTICLE
lines inscribed on a sheet, but instead are “smart” – encoded with
value, capacity, and performativity. The model understands the city
as a vast and ever-changing set of relationships. Each element of
a parametric model is composed of “agents” and can effectively
represent real-world analogues: as elements endowed with specific
qualities such as size, weight, material, durability, reflectance, etc.
An agent can be literally anything with a numeric geometric quality:
lines, objects, modules, assemblies, parts of assemblies, or as
one of the early systems thinkers, Christopher Alexander, would
describe in 1965: “collections of material elements such as people,
blades of grass, cars, molecules, houses, gardens, water pipes, the
water molecules in them, etc.”1 Agents in essence are the billions of
elements that compose our world. Unable to devise a system which
could in fact encompass the entirety of elements that contained in
the world, parametric models given adequate computational volume
can organize all of these agents into datasets with performative
qualities ascribed by the relationships between them. It allows for
instance the development of standardized street modules able to
adapt to a number of geometric conditions (hills, grids, curvature)
that are defined by numerous properties nested within the street
geometry (widths, cambers, surface, perviousness, etc.) that in turn
can host and organize a variety of third-party agents (such as light
standards, sewer lines, street trees, etc.) – each in turn defined by
the agents which compose them. This information could be linked
with traffic and kilowatt data to determine material lifespans, or
for example the number of Liquid Amber Trees needed to produce a
certain volume of oxygen or potential heat mitigation through shade.
These datasets also form relationships with other datasets that,
when considered together, form a system. In a parametric model,
all of these hierarchies are designated in data sets and describe
how agents relate to the whole, often through the use of scripts or
rule-based programs. The conceptual beauty of a parametric system
is that it allows for even the smallest piece of the system to exert
influence upon the overall: the model is simultaneously top-down
and bottom-up allowing datasets, and even agents, the ability for
emergence from within the totalizing system.
Parametric design often references aspects of the virtual model
as a system or series of systems composed of bundled datasets
in scripted information “trees” – and I concede here that “tree”
references are problematic as they imply a hierarchical structure.
These “trees” however can be seen as analogous to “if-then”
statements, composed simultaneously of branching hierarchies
of informational order but also open and flexible enough to allow
for the possibility of randomization or other means of forming new
relationships between agents: able to operate as a tree or as a
lattice, a mixture of vertical and horizontal systems of information.
The concept of systems thinking has been around for some time in
architecture and urban design as has its enduring relationship to the
word “ecosystem.” Reyner Banham in his canonic study Los Angeles:
Architecture of the Four Ecologies admitted to an almost quixotic
search for some form of order as applicable to urban form in Los
Angeles and in doing so appealed to the analogous environmental
sciences. Banham infers that if one examines Los Angeles not
as a city (because of the baggage we impose on such a term) but
instead as an ecosystem, one begins to understand the logic of
relationships between all agents of the city and can also understand
how Los Angeles emerged as a city. The word ecosystem certainly
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describes hierarchical ordering patterns in terms of food chains, but
also how agents in the environment situationally respond to their
environments – changing colors, adaptations in breeding, etc. The
web of relationships within the ecosystem is both hierarchical and
open to horizontal change. Banham made the conceptual leap of
connecting Los Angeles and its sprawling urban pattern to what is
merely a natural response to the land, climate, densification, desire,
and the emergence of new technologies and systems. In his study,
the equation for the emergence of a city such as Los Angeles can
be quantified simply as the multiple and simultaneous imposition
of transportation and other infrastructural systems (most notably
the car) + the excellent climate of Southern California = total
circumvention of traditional means of urban development. The
optimism then for a parametric urbanism is that one could begin to
model the web of relationships of all of the actors and agents of an
ecosystem, or a city, into a virtual ecosystem – including agents as
small as a car or even the H1N1 virus and ones as massive as the
freeway – embedded with their real-world performativities within a
digital landscape in order to better see and understand them – not
with any vain hope of predicting behavioral determinacy, but rather
to open the city to the scrutiny and sheer transparency of the totality
of relationships within the city. Parametric Urbanism can enable this
openness through visual and participatory engagement with a virtual
model, coded with the performativity of real-world space that allows
interactivity and feedback, enabling participants access to vast
amounts of information directly tied to the space around them. More
importantly the model – unbounded by hierarchies of socialization
– can help people with common interests come together, and can
create the possibility of forming new ideas about how to change
their city precisely because of the model and because of its network
connectivity.
Sceptics liken the parameterization of a city to the labyrinthine
infinitude of a Borgesian story or to the Tower of Babel, an impossible
labor to complete and a structuralist fantasy seeking to render
the deep structures of human settlement where in fact there may
be none. Cities and urbanism, after all, unlike architecture are
messy enterprises and prone to chaos, formlessness, unexpected
events, a multitude of independent actions, chance occurrences,
eruptions of human vanity, and social injustice. Unfortunately,
there is not enough room in this article to re-traverse debates
between structuralists and post-structuralists over the hubris of
the “knowability” of the world. But parametric urbanism, perhaps
more than any other recent urbanism, can account for and represent
the post-structuralist critique of structuralism: that cities are more
often the result of history, cultural tradition, negotiation, or merely
individual hubris than any quantifiable, deep human organizational
pattern. Any expectation for the construction of a parametric model
that could accurately account for the entirety of relationships
between the agents of the city – both existing and potential – is
of course impossible. A parametric model is entirely limited to the
information that is plugged into it, yet because of the participatory
environment of parametric urbanism, in theory everyone has a place
in the process.
One can worry about the reduction of the city to mere bits of data
– geometric, technical, and statistical – arranged neatly in datasets.
But arguably urban design has already moved to this model. Zoning
rules and other highly prescriptive over-arching building codes are
routinely imposed and enforced on the development of cities “for the
greater good” as are the numerous particulars of building envelope
restrictions, infrastructural requirements, newly emergent ecological
requirements, ADA requirements, geologic data restrictions, building
and safety provisions, and even reconciliation of social systems
through a variety of productive options to address urban inequities.
Urban design has relied on this kind of dry analysis and filtering of
FALL 2009
large varieties of data to make arguments for design. But this is
already known: Urban design, public policy, and statistical research
have been in collusion since the ability to quantify capacities came
into being. And the side-effect of this appeal to data and inevitable
foundation upon functionality is that it often eliminates any system
or design construed as enigmatic, subjective, vague, or ultimately
indefensible – such as perspectival systems of arrangement or
non-orthogonal parcelization – because the forms are incapable
of proving their own performativity. Urban practices such as OMA
and MVRDV have routinely appealed to the “realism” offered within
these mountains of statistical data produced to describe the city
and the pressures placed on a site to inform their design, but they
underscore the fact that data is being manipulated by re-sorting
it in unexpected ways. In a sense, OMA’s proposal for the Parc de
la Villette is a precursor to the oft-discussed parametric datasets
and systems of today through the creation of geometrically inter-
related sets of relationships based on performance. An example of
this is the array of “confetti” in the Parc de la Villette project of 1983
which included the entire set of required small urban elements:
kiosks, playgrounds, refreshment bars, picnic areas, and even trash
cans. This is not a simple array across a surface, but one based
on relationships: “their distribution, in the form of different point
grids across the site, is established mathematically on the basis of
their desirable frequency. The frequency calculation was relative to
the available area (Zone A), the total area per service asked for, an
assessment of the optimum number of points required across the
site, and the need for distribution across the whole...Since the Park
as a whole is divided in bands, it follows that the elements on the
point grids occur each time in different zones, thereby acquiring and
influencing the character of the “host” zone, i.e. a kiosk in zone x is
different than a kiosk in zone y , even if they are of the same design.”2
One sees in la Villette an effort at developing a rational, rule-based,
prescriptive system that allows for variation and even randomness
itself based on a nesting constellation of objects and program
relationships between each without specifically changing the agents
deployed. It also allows the “emergence” of the deployed objects and
the capacity to influence the overall.
What makes designing with parametric urbanism interesting
when proposing revisions to existing cities is the opportunity to
test the design with all of the forces of the city to understand
how the building performs through “feedback.” Interactivity and
transparency greatly inform the urban process – making it less
insular, less enigmatic, and perhaps less byzantine. A parametric
model also allows one to see numerous iterations relatively quickly.
One could see the direct result of a variety of forces at different
amplitudes imposed on the project and study how better results
could be achieved with more adaptive forms. Concerns about zoning
codes could be debated situationally, potentially allowing a city to
move away from generalized zoning mandates written to assure
conformance based on generalized models of performativity as
opposed to actual contexts. Projects could be designed to optimize
integration within the context – in terms of what a project provides
and what it draws from the system instead of a summation of
responses to restrictions. Planners, developers, and architects could
work iteratively together in a parametric model to physically see the
impacts of a project on density, infrastructure, income distribution,
etc. instead of policing codes. More importantly, parametric
urbanism marries the idea of geometry alongside other types of
information in the same model, ensuring that design decisions
about the city are not abstracted in sociological or political debates
but rather are required to embrace the physicality of the space,
geometry, and form as a pre-condition of discussion.
Parametric urbanism, then, enables urban design, geography,
and urban planning to come together alongside the power of user-
generated, smart information to study a host of new possibilities for
the city; to develop a dialogue with the city based not on restrictions
but instead on use, performance, and affect; not merely to spatially
locate intelligence, but to parameterize it into form.
1. Alexander, Christopher. “The City is not a Tree” in Architectural Forum, Vol.
122 No. 1, April 1965, pp. 58-62.
2. Lucan, Jacques. OMA – Rem Koolhaas: Architecture 1970-1990. Princeton
Architectural Press. New York, NY, 1991, p. 87.
ARTICLE 37
 THE OTHER ’56
by Charles Waldheim
Charles Waldheim is Chair of the Department of
Landscape Architecture at Harvard University
as well as principal of Urban Agency, based in
Cambridge, MA.
(Note: This article was first written for the anthology Urban Design,
edited by Alex Krieger and William Saunders and published in 2009 by
the University of Minnesota Press.  It is reprinted here with permission
of the author.)
Landscape urbanism has emerged over the past decade as a critique
of the disciplinary and professional commitments of traditional urban
design and an alternative to “New Urbanism.” The critique launched
by landscape urbanism has much to do with urban design’s perceived
inability to come to terms with the rapid pace of urban change and the
essentially horizontal character of contemporary automobile-based
urbanization across North America and much of Western Europe.
It equally has to do with the inability of traditional urban design
strategies to cope with the environmental conditions left in the wake
of deindustrialization, increased calls for an ecologically informed
urbanism, and the ongoing ascendancy of design culture as an aspect
of urban development. The emerging discourse of landscape urbanism
as chronicled in this book and other venues sheds interesting light
on the ultimately abandoned proposal that urban design might have
originally been housed in landscape architecture at Harvard. One
reading of José Luis Sert’s original formulation for urban design
at Harvard is that he wanted to provide a transdisciplinary space
within the academy. But urban design has yet to fulfill its potential
as an intersection of the design disciplines engaging with the built
environment. In the wake of that unfulfilled potential, landscape
urbanism has proposed a critical and historically informed rereading
of the environmental and social aspirations of Modernist planning and
its most successful models. This essay offers one potential counter-
history as a narrative to illuminate the present predicament of urban
design. In so doing, it proposes a potential recuperation of at least one
strand of Modernist planning, the one in which landscape offered the
medium of urban, economic, and social order.
The essays here offer a significant and largely substantive
contribution to our knowledge of the design disciplines, their histories,
and futures. Among the many noteworthy contributions on the origins
of urban design, Eric Mumford’s location of urban design in the wake
of CIAM is due particular mention, since it extends knowledge on
that topic of international significance for architects, urbanists, and
academics across disciplines. Mumford’s history provides useful
background for several of the more contemporary accounts, including
Alex Krieger’s thorough overview of the field as a contemporary
professional concern. Krieger’s essay recounts Sert’s multiple motives
in formulating the field and reminds readers of the innumerable
questions raised at the Harvard conferences on the potential
relationships within and between the various design disciplines with
respect to the city. Among those questions was the contentious one
about the appropriate role for landscape within urban design, a topic
of no small import today and of central significance to the origins of
urban design as articulated at Harvard in 1956.
1956 was also the year that one of North America’s most
successful Modernist planning projects was commissioned: Detroit’s
Lafayette Park urban renewal, the results of the “Detroit Plan.” That
plan, and the project it promulgated, offers an alternative history of
city-making at mid-century, one emerging from an understanding of
urban form as shaped by landscape. Lafayette Park did not benefit
from the efflorescence of academic attention that would come to
be known as urban design. Rather it accrued from the site-specific
application of long-standing theories of city planning as formulated
by Ludwig Hilberseimer. Hilberseimer and his colleagues Mies van der
Rohe and Alfred Caldwell conspired with Chicago developer Herbert
Greenwald to produce a model of economic, ecological, and social
sustainability in the context of Detroit’s long-planned obsolescence
and ultimate entropic decay. Hilberseimer’s planning project for
Lafayette Park offers an example of physical planning still concerned
with the spatial and formal aspects of city-making, one not yet in
need of the nascent supra-disciplinary formation called urban design.
The project’s spatial organization was based on Hilberseimer’s
proto-ecological planning constructs in The New Regional Pattern.
38 ARTICLE
This publication articulated a new spatial order commensurate with
the economic, ecological, and social conditions of North American
urbanism.
Hilberseimer’s proposal called for an ecologically progressive,
socially engaged, yet culturally leavened practice of city building
in which landscape afforded the medium of urban order for the
coming decentralization of United States cities. Lafayette Park
represents Hilberseimer’s only built planning project and illustrates
an alternative history in which landscape emerges as the primary
determinate of urban order. Hilberseimer’s plan and its explicit vision
of a mixed-race, mixed-class future for the American city replaced the
plan previously executed by a team including Hideo Sasaki and Victor
Gruen, two participants in the Harvard urban design conferences.
The concurrent historical alignment of these two contrasting
events affords a potential alternative history for what came to be
urban design. This is true even if we do not recall that Mies was
approached about the leadership of architecture at Harvard prior to
the appointment of Gropius. The history of urban design as recounted
here would be a very different one had Mies and Hilberseimer chosen
to spend their academic exile in Cambridge instead of on the south
side of Chicago...but I digress.
Of course all these histories – the authorized one published here,
my brief counter-history, and all the potential unwritten alternatives
– have everything to do with positioning urban design in the current
debates. The histories collected in this book and the contemporary
positions they imply are, in and of themselves, sufficient evidence
of urban design’s persistent and enduring relevance. This is equally
attested to in the production of such a robust and well capitalized
festschrift for the field on the occasion of its semi-centennial. A
careful reading of the various contributions here would suggest at a
minimum that the discourse around urban design at fifty conflates at
least three potentially distinct subject matters.
First are those accounts and arguments describing the city as an
object of empirical observation and historical inquiry. This includes
the construction of contemporary accounts of urbanization as well
as various urban histories. Here Peter Rowe’s approach to urban
design – grounded in the empirical observation of urbanization
and its various epi-phenomena, augmented by serious historical
scholarship – is particularly relevant. Other essays take as their point
of departure the professional practice of urban design and the gamut
of instrumentalized practices evidenced by a range of professionals
from planners and policymakers through the design disciplines. This
subject matter affords the normative ground for most of the material.
Also present are a few contributions focused on urban design as an
academic discipline or pedagogical subject.
The roundtable discussion moderated by Harvard Design
Magazine editor William Saunders provides an overview to a
shorthand subset of the various positions available for urban design
within architectural education and design culture but necessarily
conflates discussions of urban design across a broad spectrum of
issues and agendas. Perhaps this conflation (and the occasional
confusion it affords) is inevitable, yet my suspicion is that it is a
format inherited from the origins of the field and the 1956 conference
itself.
One particularly enduring aspect of urban design’s formation
evident here is the ongoing investment within its discourse to
traditional definitions of well defended disciplinary boundaries. This
is particularly revealing for contemporary readers, since it contrasts
markedly with recent tendencies toward a cross-disciplinarity within
design education and professional practice in North America. Several
design schools have recently dissolved departmental distinctions
between architecture and landscape architecture, while others
have launched specifically combined degree offerings or mixed
enrollment course offerings.1 This shift toward shared knowledge and
collaborative educational experience has come partly in response
to the increasingly complex inter- and multi-disciplinary context of
professional practice. And those practices have undoubtedly been
shaped in response to the challenges and opportunities attendant on
the contemporary metropolitan condition.
From this perspective, these proceedings and the recent
discourse around urban design’s histories and futures reads as
ambivalent toward the project of disciplinary despecialization
found in so many leading schools of design. Cities and the academic
subjects they sponsor rarely respect traditional disciplinary
boundaries. In this respect, the design disciplines should not expect
to be an exception, and many leading designers have called recently
for a renewed transdisciplinarity between the design disciplines.2 On
this topic Farshid Moussavi’s call for greater interdisciplinarity and
fluidity of identity within and between the design disciplines is timely
IDEA NEWS
LAFAYETTE PARK, DETROIT, MICHGAN
and intelligent.
Another conclusion available from the material assembled here
concerns the tendency within discussions of urban design to invoke
an explicitly ethical or moral position, often to bolster support or
claim a broad mandate for a specific point of view. Since architecture
and landscape architecture have come to be increasingly driven by
celebrity culture, the cultural capital it trades in, and the fetishized
commodities it produces, urban design seems to have internalized
a host of responsibilities and concerns historically housed within
the professional practices themselves. The role of urban design
as a conscience for the design disciplines is a perhaps predictable
outcome, but it has the effect of charging many of the discussions
surrounding urban design with multiple moral imperatives.
Most often these considerations are invoked around social and
environmental subjects, asserting the responsibility of the design
professional to consider and care for an increasingly hard-to-define
set of publics. In the context of sustainability, these publics have been
extended to include future generations of mobile global consumers,
and the effect has been to render urban design as a moral high-
ground within an increasingly instrumentalized and bottom-line-
driven global economy of and for design. Thus one available reading of
urban design today is that rather than offering the super-disciplinary
platform for “urban-minded” architects and landscape architects
envisioned by Sert, it affords a space for disciplinary subjects
marginalized in the mainstream discourse of those fields. This
recommends a reading of urban design as a super-disciplinary super-
ego for subjects otherwise sublimated within the design professions.
Another more optimistic reading of the assembled material is
available based on a point of general consensus. Urban design as an
ongoing concern continues to enjoy a privileged academic authority
and access to the empirical description of the built environment as
a formal, cultural, or historical construct. This is no small strategic
asset and should not be confused with planning’s longstanding
commitment to the description of policy, procedure, and public
opinion. Rather, the historically literate empirical description of urban
conditions and the best exemplars of built form are among the firmest
foundations for the reconsideration of urban design as an ongoing
concern. This admittedly modest circumference for the field could
comfortably encompass Rodolfo Machado’s reasoned and articulate
call for “received wisdom” within the specific knowledge base of
various design disciplines while equally accommodating Margaret
Crawford’s call for “everyday urbanism” and its implicit expectations
of social justice through equitable description of urban community,
identity, and lived experience.
Unfortunately, far too much of urban design’s relatively modest
resources and attention have been directed in recent years toward
arguably marginal concerns that read as increasingly vulnerable in
contemporary urban culture. Among these, I will focus on three of the
clearest and most vulnerable.
FALL 2009
First, by far the most problematic aspect of urban design in
recent years has been its tendency to be accommodating to the
reactionary cultural politics and nostalgic sentiment of “New
Uurbanism.” While leading design schools have tacked smartly in
recent years to put some distance between themselves and the worst
of this 19th-century pattern-making, far too much of urban design
practice apologizes for it by blessing its urban tenants at the expense
of its architectonic aspirations. This most often comes in the form of
overstating the environmental and social benefits of urban density
while acknowledging the relative autonomy of architectural form. I
would argue that urban design ought to concentrate less attention on
mythic images of a lost golden age of density and more attention on
the urban conditions where most of us live and work.
Second, far too much of the main body of mainstream urban
design practice has been concerned with the crafting of “look and
feel” of environments for destination consumption by the wealthy.
About the ongoing consolidation of Manhattan as an enclave of
wealth and privilege (largely facilitated through the best recent
examples of urban design), New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
recently referred in a policy speech to New York as “a high-end
product, maybe even a luxury product.”3 I would second Michael
Sorkin’s call for urban design to move beyond its implicit bias in favor
of Manhattanism and its predisposition toward density and elitist
enclaves explicitly understood as furnishings for luxury lifestyle.
Finally, urban design’s historic role of interlocutor between the design
disciplines and planning has been too invested in public policy and
process as a surrogate for the social. While the recent recuperation
of urban planning within schools of design has been an important
and long overdue correction, it has the potential to overcompensate.
The danger here is not that design will be swamped with literate
and topical scholarship on cities, but that planning programs and
their faculties run the risk of reconstructing themselves as insular
enterprises concerned with public policy and urban jurisprudence to
the exclusion of design and contemporary culture.
The most immediate and problematic dimension of this historical
overcorrection has been an antagonism between design culture
and public process as a surrogate for the construction of a more
legitimately social position within urban planning or the design fields.
In lieu of endless public consultation as a form of postmodern urban
therapy, I would argue for a reconsideration of the broad middle-
class mandate of mid-century Modernism. While a recuperation
of Hilberseimer or other protagonists in Modernist urbanism is not
without its challenges, the potential benefit is a precedent for an
ecologically informed and socially activist practice reconcilable
with high status design culture. The very fact that Hilberseimer
built precisely one planning project in his career is testament to the
difficulty of this model, but equally points to its viability and efficacy.
As we have collectively abandoned Modernist urbanism, we have lost
(continued on page 38)
ARTICLE 39
 (continued from page 37)
access to the only brief moment in American history in which socially
progressive, ecologically informed planning practice was available.
This brings me back to Lafayette Park and that other ’56, the
year which evidenced the best laid plans of the New Deal and the
American welfare state. Among the successes of Lafayette Park was
that it could imagine a mixed-class, mixed-race future for American
cities precisely at the moment that most Americans were beginning to
leave the city in favor of the suburbs. Ultimately, this is the promise,
as yet unfulfilled, of urban design as described in 1956. If it were
to recommit its resources to the historically informed, empirical
description of urban form and its epi-phenomena, urban design would
find ample evidence in the way that most Americans live and work.
Much of what constitutes urban design culture is produced in
a thin band of urban density between Philadelphia and Cambridge,
while most Americans live in suburban settings of decreasing
density across fly-over country. The centrality of this dilemma for
contemporary reconsideration of urban design is attested to by the
no less than three competing and occasionally contradictory book
reviews of Robert Bruegmann’s controversial Sprawl: A Compact
History that appear in the same HDM issue (although on-line only)
where these essays first appeared. The relative lack of consensus
on the value of Bruegmann’s empirical analysis for urban design and
the implicit threat that it represents to the urban design discourse as
presently constructed are evident in the reception of Bruegmann’s
work in HDM and available for all to interpret.
Among those threats is the increasingly clear sense that urban
design as described in these pages has largely abandoned its original
aspiration to articulate urban order for the places where most North
Americans live and work. Given the fact that many European cities
are increasingly emulating the economic and spatial characteristics
of North American cities, this is an issue of no small relevance to
discussions of urban design internationally, particularly since so
much of the history of urban design as written here has been focused
on the importation of European models of urbanity into North
American cities.
It is in the contexts of urban design’s as yet unrealized promise
and potential that landscape urbanism has emerged in the past
decade. Landscape urbanism has come to stand for an alternative
within the broad base of urban design historically defined.
Incorporating continuity with the aspirations of an ecologically
informed planning practice, landscape urbanism has been equally
informed by high design culture, contemporary modes of urban
development, and the complexity of public-private partnerships.
Julia Czerniak’s account of landscape architecture’s recent shift
of concerns “from appearance to performance” says much about
this potential. Equally, her invocation in these pages of Sebastian
Marot’s work is equally deserving of mention. Marot has recently
formulated a coherent theoretical framework to correlate landscape
urbanism with contemporary architectural culture.4 Marot’s paired
theories of “suburbanism” and “superurbanism” promise a potential
reconciliation of urban design’s historical estrangement from
architectural culture.
Marot formulated superurbanism to account for contemporary
architectural culture’s interest in hyper-programmed architectural
interventions as a substitute or surrogate for the traditional mix and
diversity of urban milieus. He articulated suburbanism to describe
an essentially landscape urbanist practice of design in the context
of decreasing density. In between the sub- and the super-, everyday
urbanism persists as an irreducible (and ultimately undesignable)
subtext of lived experience. Similarly, landscape urbanists have
argued that the economic and ecological contexts in which most
North Americans live ought to inform our models and methods of
urban design and have developed a menu of modes suitable for
working in suburban, exurban, and rapidly urbanizing contexts.
It would certainly be fair to say, as Rodolfo Machado does in
these pages, that “the form produced by landscape urbanism has
not yet fully arrived.” It would be equally fair to say that landscape
urbanism remains the most promising alternative available to urban
design’s formation for the coming decades. This is in no small part
due to the fact that landscape urbanism offers a culturally leavened,
ecologically literate, and economically viable model for contemporary
urbanization as an alternative to urban design’s ongoing nostalgia
for traditional urban forms. The clearest evidence of this is the
fact the number of internationally prominent landscape architects
are retained as lead designers of large scale urban development
proposals in which landscape offers ecological function, cultural
authority, and brand identity. Among these examples of landscape
urbanists one could site the practices of James Corner/Field
40 ARTICLE / NEWS
Operations and Adriaan Geuze/West 8 as exemplary. Field Operation’s
projects for the redevelopment of the Delaware River Waterfront in
Philadelphia and Eastern Darling Harbor in Sydney are indicative
of this line of work, as are West 8’s projects for the Inner Harbor in
Amsterdam and their recent projects for Toronto’s Central Waterfront.
It is no coincidence that landscape urbanism has emerged as
the most robust and fully formed critique of urban design precisely at
the moment when European models of urban density, centrality, and
legibility of urban form appear increasingly remote and when most
of us live and work in environments more suburban than urban, more
vegetal than architectonic, more infrastructural than enclosed. In
these contexts, landscape urbanism offers both model and medium
for the renewal of urban design as a relevant concern over the coming
half century and in advance of the next ’56.
NOTES
1. Many design schools in North America have recently revised their disciplinary
structures or launched new programs to effectively house programs in
landscape architecture without departmental distinctions between the
disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Among
these are the University of Virginia, the University of Toronto, and the University
of Texas at Austin.
2. Over the past decade a number of design schools have articulated explicitly
multi-disciplinary degree streams, concurrent degree programs, certificate
programs, or inter-disciplinary coursework within and between architecture,
landscape architecture, and urban design. Among these are the University of
Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and the University of Toronto.
3. Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, economic policy speech, January
2003.
4. Sebastien Marot, Suburbanism and the Art of Memory (London: The
Architectural Association, 2003).
FACULTY NEWS
In Landscape Architecture, Adjunct Associate Professor Gerdo Aquino
and Visiting Assistant Professor Ying-Yu Hung presented keynote
addresses at the 2009 Chinese Landscape Architecture Education
Conference & Landscape Architects Congress on Landscape
Urbanism, held on October 31 and November 1 at Peking University in
Beijing, China.
Standard, the firm of Lecturer Jeffrey Allsbrook and Silvia Kuhle,
received an Honorable Mention in June 2009 in the sustainable
housing design competition “Re:Vision Dallas.” The firm’s proposal
for a sustainable, zero carbon-footprint, zero wastewater, urban
community named “Co-op Canyon” was designed in collaboration
with IBE, Atelier 10, and Coen Partners. Also in June 2009, Standard’s
Hidden House project was featured on the dwell on Design Home Tour.
Landscape Architecture Studies Assistant Professor Rachel Berney
presented a paper titled “Pedagogical Urbanism: Creating New Citizen
Spaces in Bogota, Colombia” at the Fall 2009 ACSP Conference. This
paper will also be published in an upcoming special issue of the
journal Planning Theory.
Assistant Professor Gail Peter Borden spent three months in France
on the Albert and Elaine Borchard Fellowship, studying the work of
Claude Nicholas Ledoux. He will serve as Topic Chair in Materials
at the 2010 ACSA National Conference in New Orleans; his “Loop
House” was launched on the Hometta website in October 2009; his
book Material Precedent: The Typology of Modern Tectonics will
be in bookstores in January 2010; and he has commenced work on
a second book titled Matter: Material Processes in Architectural
Production. Professor Borden’s solo exhibition of his new work, “F BO
Fluence,” will be on display at the Galerie Urbane in Dallas, TX through
Spring 2010.
Lecturer Mina Chow, AIA, in collaboration with Associate Professor
Norman Hollyn of USC’s Cinema School, created a webcast for the
American Institute of Architects highlighting the positive aspects
of architecture as a career path. The webcast featured USC School
of Architecture faculty and students. Click on http://info.aia.org/
aiarchitect/thisweek09/0821/0821rc_behappy.cfm. In addition, Chow
collaborated with USC Annenberg Fellow and NPR reporter Edward
Lifson on a documentary about the American Academy in China.
Chu_Gooding Architects, the firm of Lecturer Annie Chu, AIA, is
creating the interiors for portions of the new USC Campus Center
IDEA NEWS
designed by AC Martin Partners. In addition, the firm is designing LA
Plaza de Cultura y Artes with Rios Clementi Hale Studios, as well as
a major renovation for photographer James White. Its UC Riverside
Culver Center of the Arts project (with Harley Ellis Devereaux,
Executive Architect) is under construction.
Lecturer John Dutton of Dutton Architects was awarded a Westside
Prize in June 2009 by the Westside Urban Forum for his “LA
Greenway” project in which he reclaims the future ruins of Los
Angeles freeways and transforms them into greenways of light rail,
bike paths, open recreational space, community gardens, and vertical
farms. In addition, he completed the restoration of the Zimmer
Residence in Santa Monica. This historical landmark, built in 1924,
was one of the first adobe houses designed by John Byers on the
historic La Mesa Drive. Dutton Architects designed a modern addition,
pool, pool house, and gardens.
Griffin Enright Architects,
St. Thomas the Apostle School
Assistant Professor John Enright, AIA received an Advancing
Scholarship in the Humanities Social Sciences Grant for his
research topic “Connection Points: The Work of Konrad Wachsmann
Reconsidered, Retooled, and RE-represented.” Professor Enright
will be a Topic Chair at the 2010 ACSA Conference in New Orleans.
He recently lectured as part of the Westfield Corporation lecture
series and was a juror for the AIA OC Student Design Competition.
His firm, Griffin Enright Architects, was featured in over a dozen
publications this year, including The Monacelli Press’ Living West
– New Residential Architecture in Southern California. The firm’s
work was recently exhibited at the Van Alen Institute in New York, NY,
as well as at the Enadii Mexico Exhibit in Mexico City, Mexico. The
firm’s largest project to date, St. Thomas the Apostle School, is under
construction and will be completed in Spring 2010.
Teaching Assistant Professor Liz Falletta, who holds a dual
appointment in the USC School of Architecture and USC School
of Policy, Planning and Development, presented a paper titled
“Eschewing the Everyday: Teaching Design Skills to Planners and
Real Estate Developers” at the 2009 Southwest Regional Conference
of the ACSA. Her talk was included in a panel exploring our “everyday
landscape.”
DSH, the firm of Lecturer Eric Haas, AIA, received a 2009 Design
Honor Award from the AIA Los Angeles Chapter for the rehabilitation
of R.M. Schindler’s Bubeshko Apartments.
DSH, Schindler’s Bubeshko Apartments
FALL 2009
Assistant Professor Karen Kensek, with Assistant Professor Burcin
Becerik Gerber of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, organized
BIM FAB! CON: The Third Annual USC Symposium on Building
Information Modeling + Construction and Fabrication.
In June 2009, John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects, the firm of
Visiting Associate Professor Alice Kimm, AIA, was awarded a 2009
Westside Prize by the Westside Urban Forum as well as a Los Angeles
Architectural Award by the Los Angeles Business Council for its
Green Dot Charter High Schools project. More recently, the firm was
awarded three 2009 Design Awards by the AIA Pasadena Foothill
Chapter, two 2009 Design Awards by Architect‘s Annual Design
Review, a Western Home Award by Sunset, and an AIA/LA Presidential
Honor Award. Among other publications, the firm’s Graduate
Aerospace Labs project for Caltech was featured in the September
2009 issue of Architectural Record, and its King House is featured in
The Monacelli Press’ Living West – New Residential Architecture in
Southern California.
Lecturer Rebecca Lowry was named one of six 2010 recipients of the
Visions from the New California Award. This award, sponsored by
the Alliance of Artists Communities and funded by the James Irvine
Foundation, supports California visual artists who represent the new
California demographic. Lowry will take up residency at the Montalvo
Arts Center in Saratoga and will participate in a group exhibition at
the close of the program.
Lecturer Rudabeh Pakravan of Concept Lab, with colleague Sarah
Manning, presented a paper called “Dubai:Instant City” at the Politics
of Space and Place conference at the University of Brighton, United
Kingdom, in September 2009. The paper envisions various scenarios
for Dubai’s future in the wake of the economic crisis.
Landscape Architecture Lecturer Alexander Robinson was
awarded SWA Group’s Patrick Curran Research Fellowship to study
contemporary urban climatology research and measures. His study
is titled “Hot & Dirty: Applying Contemporary Urban Climatology
Research & Countermeasures to Landscape Design Practices.” In
addition, Robinson’s research on urban climatology will be published
as an essay in an upcoming book by Birkhauser, and forms part of a
larger focus on the subject of the “parametric landscape,” an effort
to identify links between the physical design of cultural landscape
conditions and significant ecological improvements.
Doris Sung, thermobimetal prototype
Adjunct Associate Professor Doris Sung received an AIA Knowledge
Grant to complete a prototype of a thermobimetal skin system.
Designed using parametric digital software, this prototype tests
a thermobimetal as a potential smart material for self-ventilating
skins.  The temperature-sensitive individual tiles curl when heated
and flatten when cooled, automatically regulating the opening and
closing of the surface pores.
Adjunct Associate Professor Edwin Woll, AIA of Tomko Woll Group
Architects, in association with Ena Dubnoff Architects (B.Arch.
1960) and FV Studio (all operating under the umbrella name of DWV
Architects), received an AIA/LA 2009 Design Citation Award for their
design of the Planned Parenthood Headquarters and Medical
Training Clinic.
NEWS 41
 ALUMNI AND GUILD NEWS
WWCOT Senior Associate Michael Ellars, AIA CASp LEEDAP (B.Arch.
2000) became a Certified Access Specialist (CASp-111). He is
teaching ARE preparation seminars at the AIA/LA Chapter Offices, on
the topic of Site Planning and Building Technology.
WWCOT, led by Design Partner Andrea Gehring, FAIA LEEDAP (B.Arch.
1985), recently completed the Pierce College Student Services
Building, which opened on October 21, 2009. The firm’s Edward R.
Roybal Learning Center was recognized in 2009 with the following:
Council of Education Facility Planners International (CEFPI) Monarch
Award of Merit; Associated General Contractors of America (AGC)
Marvin M. Black Excellence in Partnering Award; Construction
Owners Association of America (COAA) Project Leadership Special
Award; and the California Construction Magazine Best of 2009
Award for Southern California K-12 facilities. The firm’s Harbor
College Library Learning Resource Center received a Los Angeles
Architectural Award from the Los Angeles Business Council in June
2009.
Laureen Vivian (B.Arch. 1989, M.A. 1985, B.A. 1982) was awarded
a grant by the Community Redevelopment Agency to restore
and renovate her gallery/office – DeKor Gallery – in San Pedro.
Additionally, she completed several private residences in Southern
California in 2009, and will break ground on a private museum in
Mistra, Greece, at the end of 2009. She is a Board Member of the
North West San Pedro Neighborhood Council, and recently procured
$682,000 in Quimby funds for the restoration of the historic Averill
Park in San Pedro.
NEWS NOTES
4th year undergraduate student Andrew Kim received a 2009 AIA
Pasadena & Foothill Chapter Student Citation Design Award for his
project titled “Boyle Heights Civic Center.” This was a third year design
studio project completed last spring with Professor John Enright.

Dekker/Perich/Sabatini was awarded a Best of 2009 New Mexico

Award by Southwest Contractor for its Mariposa Community Center.
The Project Architect was Gail Granot (B.Arch. 1992). The project was
also a Finalist in the Residential/Amenity category for the NAIOP
Awards of Excellence program.

The Jerde Partnership, founded by Jon Jerde (B.Arch. 1964), received

a ULI 2009 Award of Excellence in the Asia Pacific category for its
Namba Parks. Namba is a benchmark example of Green Transit-
Oriented Development which merges economic performance and
quality green design. It opened in 2003. The firm’s 5250 Lankershim
Plaza, an office building at NoHo Commons, is anticipating LEED- Boyle Heights Civic Center project
Gold certification from the USGBC. Andrew Kim
Arch 302b / Instructor: John Enright

KAA Design Group, headed by Grant Kirkpatrick (B.Arch. 1986) and

Michael Eserts (B.Arch. 1987), announces the publication of the
firm’s first monograph. Lifestyles of Southern California: Personal
Sanctuaries by KAA Design Group is available internationally and
features portraits of eleven SoCal lifestyles. The firm’s sustainable
product line, HOM Escape in Style, has launched a new collection of
indoor/outdoor furniture with designer/manufacturer Cisco Brothers.
HOM Escape in Style by Cisco Brothers manufactures its collections
with local resources, materials, and labor. The line will be available at
Cisco Home’s three retail showrooms, ABC Home Furnishings in New
York City, and the L.A. Design Center.
Johnny Lu, AIA LEEDAP (B.Arch. 2001, M.B.S. 2003), design principal
of TAG, was awarded an Honorable Mention for his firm’s entry into
an international design competition to design the Taiwan Center for
Disease Control Complex, sponsored by the Taiwanese government.
David Meckel, FAIA (B.S. 1975) recently served as the professional
competition advisor for the Rising Tides Design Competition, an
international competition held to generate ideas for rising sea levels
in San Francisco Bay and beyond. He continues to serve as Director of
Research and Planning at California College of the Arts (CCA), where
he was the founding dean of the school of architecture. He is Vice
Chair of the non-profit organization Public Architecture, and Chair of
SFMOMA’s Architecture and Design Accessions Committee.
The Master of Landscape Architecture program, directed by Professor
Emeritus Robert Harris, FAIA DPACSA, has been selected to host the
2011 meeting of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture
(CELA). “Urban Nature” will be the theme, and will provide a focus
on urban life and place, which require understandings of culture
and ecology to lead to consequential landscape planning and
design. The challenge as put forth is to push the boundaries of
new and evermore hybrid investigations, which examine evolving
bio-physical and cultural ecologies that have the promise to form
dynamic platforms for understanding the land and its habitation. The
questions raised will include: What can be the future of urbanity?
How can we understand “our nature” within larger natures? How is
caring for life on the land both an amazing heritage and an astounding
responsibility?
Two teams from the Landscape Architecture program were named
finalists in the international design competition WPA 2.0, sponsored
by UCLA’s cityLAB. Each presented its work at a symposium in
Washington, D.C. on November 16. The first team included Gary
Garcia, Marc Yeber, Iris Tsai, and Xiaoye Zhang. Their project was
entitled “Fluctuating Freeway Ecologies.” The second, one-person
team of Meng Yang presented a project entitled “Topographic
Infrastructure: Hollywood Freeway Central Park.”

R204DESIGN, founded in 1999 by four USC alumni – Harvey Miller

(B.Arch. 1999), Sidhartha Sabikhi (B.Arch. 1997), Daisuke Tanigaki
(B.Arch. 1997), and Juan Villalta (B.Arch. 1997) – recently opened a
branch office in Bahrain. The firm has ongoing projects all over the
Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Kuwait. In addition,
R204DESIGN is working on an Environmental Awareness Center
near the Tone Channel in Nagareyama, on the outskirts of Tokyo,
Japan; and construction is near complete on two shopping centers:
Metropolis Mall, located in Gurgaon, India, and Vinowa Kyoto, located
in the heart of Kyoto, Japan.

Madhu Thangavelu (M.B.S. 1989) conducts the ASTE 527 Graduate

Space Exploration Architecture Concept Synthesis Studio in the
Astronautics Engineering Department within USC’s Viterbi School of
Engineering. His Fall 2008 team project was presented at the AIAA
Space 2009 Conference held in Pasadena in September 2009. He WPA 2.0 Competition Entry - Finalist
is a graduate thesis adviser and has taught the Arch 599 Extreme Fluctuating Freeway Ecologies
Garcia, Yeber, Tsai, Zhang
Environment Design Seminar at USC’s School of Architecture.

42 NEWS IDEA NEWS

 On December 12, USC’s School of Architecture hosted “Intensive
Fields: New Parametric Techniques for Urbanism.” This one-
day symposium, organized by Professors Neil Leach and Roland
Wahlroos-Ritter, featured four panels on: Parametric Techniques,
Parametric Urbanism, Machinic Processes, and Theorizing
the Parametric. The Keynote Address was delivered by Patrik
Schumacher, Partner at Zaha Hadid Architects and a faculty member
of the Architectural Association in London. Other key speakers
included Manuel DeLanda, François Roche, Roland Snooks, and
Casey Reas. The upcoming SP10 IDNWS, to be published in May 2010,
will contain a more detailed review of “Intensive Fields.” Stay tuned.

Intensive Fields: New Parametric

Techniques for Urbanism SYMPOSIUM
De MARTINO, ZELLNER, OTTO, SCHUMACHER

Meguila Wemple, alumnus of the USC Thornton School of Music and widow of legendary
landscape architect and USC faculty member Emmet Wemple, passed away on December 31st.
Meg was a former staff member at the School of Architecture and a great friend of the students
and the Architectural Guild throughout her life. She and Emmet established the Emmet L.
Wemple Endowment in Landscape Architecture.

IDNWS03 / SPRING 2009

US $5.00

Qingyun Ma 2009-10
Dean Publications Committee 
USC School of Architecture John Enright
and Della and Harry MacDonald Jane Ilger
Dean’s Chair in Architecture Alice Kimm
Amy Murphy
Amy Murphy Anna Neimark
Vice Dean Jennifer Park
USC School of Architecture Adam Smith
James Steele
Alice Kimm Paul Tang
Editor Selwyn Ting

Kay Chang Special Thanks

Assistant Editor Suellen Martensson
Marie Tran
Design Liz Romero
Andy Goldman Alexandra Hypolite
Funds for this publication were generously
IDNWS is published biannually by the Office of the Dean provided by the William E. Blurock Family
of the USC School of Architecture. Comments and queries
can be sent to arch-pubs@usc.edu Endowment for Publication.

FALL 2009 NEWS 43

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