digital aptitudes - Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture

ACSA 100th Annual Meeting 

DIGITAL APTITUDES 

+ other openings 

Mark Goulthorpe + Amy Murphy, Editors 

ABSTRACT BOOK

Copyright © 2012 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 

Inc., except where otherwise restricted. All rights reserved. 

No material may be reproduced without permission of the Association 

of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. 

Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture 

1735 New York Ave., NW 

Washington, DC 20006 

www.acsa-arch.org

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

ACSA wishes to thank the conference co-chairs, Mark Goulthorpe, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Amy 

Murphy, University of Southern California, as well as the topic chairs, reviewers, and authors for their hard work in 

organizing the Annual Meeting. 

EDITORS/ANNUAL MEETING CO-CHAIRS 

Mark Goulthorpe, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

Amy Murphy, University of Southern California 

TOPIC AND SESSION CHAIRS 

1912: Progress, Technology, and Nature 

Fran Leadon, City College of New York 

1988–1997: Ambitions and Apprehensions of a 

“Digital Revolution” 

John Stuart, Florida International University 

Sunil Bald, Yale University 

4D Architecture 

Keith Green, Clemson University 

Advanced Composite Fabrication Technologies for 

Architecture 

Michael Silver, Mike Silver Architects 

The Agency of Drawing and the Digital Process 

Andrew Atwood, University of Southern California 

Automatism, or, Post-Medium Architecture and Post- 

War Art 

Sean Keller, Illinois Institute of Technology 

Becoming Computational: Restructuring/ 

Reconsidering Pedagogy Towards a (More) 

Computational Discipline 

Chris Beorkrem, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 

Nicholas Senske, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 

Beyond Digital: Speculations on Analog Convergence 

Brian Lonsway, Syracuse University 

Design Computation: Parametrics, Performance, 

Pedagogy and Praxis 

Karen Kensek, University of Southern California 

Digital Details 

Matt Burgermaster, New Jersey Institute of Technology 

Digital Nouveau and the New Materiality 

Armando Montilla, Clemson University 

Emerging Materials, Renewable Energy, and 

Ecological Design 

Franca Trubiano, University of Pennsylvania 

Integration, Not Segregation: Interdisciplinary Design 

Pedagogy for the Second 100 Years 

James Doerfler, California Polytechnic State University 

Kevin Dong, California Polytechnic State University 

Open: Community 

Tom Fisher, University of Minnesota 

Open: Disaster Recovery 

Charles Setchell, USAID Office of US Foreign Disaster 

Assistance 

Open: Diversity 

Brian Kelly, University of Maryland 

Open: History/Theory 

Vittoria Di Palma, Columbia University 

Open: Sustainable Design 

Adrian Parr, University of Cincinnati 

Open: Urbanism 

Tim Love, Northeastern University 

Post-Parametric Environments 

Jennifer Leung, Yale University 

Registration and Projection: The Mediations of Urban 

Imaging Technologies 

McLain Clutter, University of Michigan 

Situated Technologies 

Jordan Geiger, University at Buffalo, SUNY 

Omar Khan, University at Buffalo, SUNY 

Mark Shepard, University at Buffalo, SUNY 

Teaching History in the Digital Age 

Carla Keyvanian, Auburn University 

Theoretical Implications of BIM: Performance and 

Interpretation 

John Folan, Carnegie Mellon University 

Ute Poerschke, Pennsylvania State University 

Digital Apptitutes + Other Openings - Boston, MA - 3

CONTENTS 

Thursday, March 1, 2012 

12:00PM - 1:30PM 

5 Design Computation: 

Parametrics, Performance, 


6 Open: Community (1) 

7 Open: History/Theory 


2:00PM - 3:30PM 

8 Open: Sustainable Design 

9 Registration and Projection: 

The Mediations of Urban 


10 The Agency of Drawing and 

the Digital Process 


4:00PM - 5:30PM 

11 1912: Progress, Technology, 

and Nature 

12 Advanced Composite 

Fabrication Technologies for 


13 Becoming Computational: 

Restructuring/ Reconsidering 

Pedagogy Towards a (More) 

Computational Discipline 

Friday, March 2, 2012 

11:00AM - 12:30 PM 

14 Automatism, or, Post-Medium 

Architecture and Post-War Art 

15 Open: Disaster Recovery 

17 Open: Urbanism 

18 Open: Diversity 


2:00PM - 3:30PM 

19 Beyond Digital: Speculations 

on Analog Convergence 

21 Emerging Materials, 

Renewable Energy, and 

Ecological Design (1) 

23 Open: Community (2) 

4 - ACSA 100th Annual Meeting 


4:00PM - 5:30PM 

24 1988–1997: Ambitions and 

Apprehensions of a “Digital 

Revolution” 

25 Digital Nouveau and the New 

Materiality 

27 Emerging Materials, 

Renewable Energy, and 

Ecological Design (2) 

Saturday, March 3, 2012 

10:30AM - 12:00PM 

28 4D Architecture 

29 Digital Details 

30 Integration, Not Segregation: 

Interdisciplinary Design 

Pedagogy for the Second 100 

Years 


2:00PM - 3:30PM 

31 Post-Parametric Environments 

32 Situated Technologies 


4:00PM - 5:30PM 

33 Teaching History in the Digital 

Age 

34 Theoretical Implications of 

BIM: Performance and 

Interpretation 

Project presentations 


12:30PM - 2:00PM 

35 Architecture 

42 Design 

45 Disaster 

46 Ecology 

47 Landscape 

48 Open 

52 Society 

54 Technology

THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012 - 12:00PM - 1:30PM 

Design Computation: Parametrics, Performance, 


Karen Kensek, University of Southern California 

Folded Sun-Shades: From Origami to Architecture 

Nancy Yen-wen Cheng, University of Oregon 

Abraham Rodriguez, University of Oregon 

Ashley Koger, University of Oregon 

This paper describes a hybrid digital+physical process for designing 

decorative and functional sun-shading screens that flex to meet 

changing diurnal and seasonal lighting requirements. A range of 

techniques was used to optimize the visual effects created from a 

single sheet. Experiments in cutting and folding were combined 

with photography and solar testing using a heliodon and artificial 

sky. Material characteristics discovered through physical manipulation 

and direct observation shaped the geometric transformation 

and parametric modeling of lasercut patterns. The paper illustrates 

how each technique shaped the design development in a delicate 

balance of directed study and serendipitous discovery. 

Beyond demonstrating possibilities and limitations of cut and folded 

contiguous sheets as lighting modulators, the project shows 

how a material study can be targeted towards architectural applications. 

Defining a specific architectural problem is crucial for 

focusing the work towards building performance. The context 

limits the design exploration and sharpens the defining questions. 

For the digital+physical design process to trigger different modes 

of thinking, design education and the studio environment need to 

support agile shifts between design methods. Bringing together individuals 

with complementary skills and backgrounds enriches how 

a project can take advantage of these multiple modes. 

Performance-Based Generative Design. An 

Investigation of the Parametric Nature of 


Ming Tang, University of Cincinnati 

This paper investigates a collaborative research and teaching project 

between the University of Cincinnati, Perkins+Will’s Tech Lab 

and nD group, and the University of North Carolina Greensboro. The 

primary investigation focuses on the design and fabrication of building 

components, derived from performance-based parameters. The 

project examines various approaches including theoretical investigations 

and proprietary software tools for parametric design. 

The paper first gives a short historical and philosophical background 

to performance-based design, then describes the technical and algorithmic 

requirements, and concludes with the examples of implementation. 

With two design courses taught in 2011, the authors discuss 

the “shared body plan” as an essential element for applying 

generative form-seeking methods in architectural design. Design 

methodologies, such as use of building performance simulation 

tools, genetic morphing, and fitness evaluations are discussed as 

new paradigms in generative, performance-based design. 

This paper also investigates how the large quantity of iterations can 

be filtered and selected based on the feasibility of fabrication and 

materialization processes. Using several student projects, the paper 

demonstrates the methods of mass customization and parametric 

iteration through physical prototyping.. The parameters related with 

fabrication have been implemented to generate a large quantity of 

creative solutions, whereas genetic algorithm functions are introduced 

as optimizers. 

As a conclusion, this paper summarizes the formation process that 

nature permits in order to sustain a generative system. The paper analyzes 

several design and prototyping procedures, and illustrates how 

these performance-driven design approaches can be used for innovative 

forms, utilizing benefits of performance-based influences in architecture 

beyond formal assumption and aesthetic experimentation. 

Material in Performance-driven Architectural 

Geometry 

Sevil Yazici, Istanbul Technical University 

Leyla Tanacan, Istanbul Technical University 

Advanced Computer Aided Design Techniques liberated non-Euclidian 

geometries such as freeform surfaces. In today’s architectural 

practice, there is a necessity to subdivide complex geometries 

into smaller components for realization of buildings because of the 

current limitations in Computer Aided Manufacturing Techniques. 

Architectural geometry is an emerging field of research focusing 

on rationalization of freeform surfaces. This field of research is investigated 

with panelization tools. However, these tools are not 

able to accommodate requirements related to the material properties 

and building performance. Today, computational tools associated 

with performance analysis, evaluation and optimization are 

undertaken during a later stage of the design process, following 

the form generation. This paper aims to discuss how material can 

be integrated into a parametric model in which architectural geometry, 

material and building performance are interdependent for 

increasing efficiency in the design process. A parametrically defined 

architectural surface is generated, analyzed and evaluated as 

a case study where parametric modeling, panelization tools and 

series of analysis tools including Finite Element Method Analysis 

are used with the intent of mapping critical procedures towards 

building a complex architectural surface. Different types of materials 

are tested for the surface within imposed boundary conditions 

to assess and compare their structural performance. Future lines of 

research are indicated in the paper. 

Signature Architecture Franchising: Improving 

Average Architecture Using BIM 

Ehsan Barekati, Texas A&M University 

James Haliburton, Prairie View A&M University 

Mark Clayton, Texas A&M University 

Ozan Ozener, Texas A&M University 

Building Information Modeling provides capabilities to aid architectural 

design that are so revolutionary as to enable new forms 

of practice. Signature architecture franchising is a design process 

and workflow that makes use of a “seed” BIM that a designer can 

modify rapidly to create a custom design. The design can be constrained 

to conform to characteristics of a signature architectural 

style through use of constraints, components and standard assemblies 

or families. The design can also be subjected to rigorous analysis 

for performance in domains such as energy consumption, construction 

cost and construction schedule. Experiments that have 

been conducted to explore and test the idea indicate that signature 

architecture franchising appears feasible. It may enable designers 

to expand market share and increase quality significantly, perhaps 

enabling substantial reductions in energy consumption in average 

buildings in the future. 



Open: Community (1) 


A Small House Nation: Making Our Stuff Fit 

James O’Brien, Miami University 

Our homes inform the way we live. We spend years of our lives 

working to pay mortgages, electricity bills, cooling, heating, and 

plumbing repair services. As Americans, we have had no reason to 

scale down. In 1973, the average single family home in the United 

States measured 1400 square feet while today the average single 

family home is just over 2,200 square feet. The phrase bigger is 

better has informed our spending and building habits as a nation 

and our Achilles heel may lie in the more than three and a half million 

square miles of land within U.S. borders. We’ve built not out of 

necessity but because land is both available and cheap. Following 

a brief history of the small house movement, this article addresses 

the essential functions of the house paying close attention to anthropometry 

and the ergonomics of space. Through a comparative 

analysis of three homes under 600 square feet and one cottage 

development, I’ll argue the case for small housing as a viable solution 

for sustainable domestic living, not only for individuals but for 

communities. 

Bricks and Bones: Discovering Atlanta’s Forgotten 

Spaces of Neo-Slavery 

Richard Becherer, Southern Polytechnic State University 

Over the past two years, my students and I have been fascinated 

with a rundown site on the Chattahoochee River, Atlanta’s western 

boundary: the Chattahoochee Brick Company, home to the first 

and largest of Atlanta’s brick factories. Local War hero Captain 

James English built it in 1878, and he and his family managed it for 

almost a century. Our research revealed that English had a private 

prison on the site, and that he used convicts as forced labor under 

the most abject conditions. A 1907 Sanborn map gives us an inking 

of the housing: three convict “tenements” beside the front gate. 

Furthermore, we learned what became of some of them at least. 

In two construction drawings taken from the hundreds that we 

salvaged from the site, we discovered a pair of graveyards. Even 

more surprising is the fact that both spots remain quite evident 

today on the site. Out of this work, my students came to realize 

that any urban site having such a long work history (like this one’s) 

must be haunted with stories worth knowing, stories that expose 

the human costs behind even the most mundane of materialities. 

They also learned that such stories are potentially generative of 

form. But their discoveries also left them in a quandary: In light of 

such terrible histories as Chattahoochee Brick’s, how is it to intervene, 

how is it to design? When confronted by sites and histories 

like these can ours ever be business as usual? 


Four Transit Villages for Nashville: A Case Study in 

University Research and Livable Communities 

Thomas Davis, II, University of Tennessee 

With the broad support of both public and private sectors, Greater 

Nashville is rapidly laying the groundwork for an extension of its 

mass transit network out into its region. 

In conjunction with these efforts, T. K. Davis’ University of Tennessee 

urban design students in Spring 2010 worked on team projects 

for four potential or existing transit station stops in Greater 

Nashville. The Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization 

(MPO) sponsored the studio in the amount of $11,000, in cooperation 

with the Nashville Civic Design Center. This is an example of 

teaching, creative design and service as a form of applied research, 

in which design proposals apply current urban design theories and 

best practices related to Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) and 

Livable Communities. 

MPO identified four sites for “Transit Villages” in the generally suburban 

area surrounding Nashville. One site has an existing commuter 

rail transit stop, which could serve as a catalyst for economic 

development. At the three other sites, however, the ultimate mode 

of mass transit was yet to be determined. In these cases, design 

proposals were requested that would be capable of accommodating 

all three of the potential mass transit options: commuter rail, 

light rail transit (LRT) or bus rapid transit (BRT). 

A unique aspect of this studio involved the formation of interdisciplinary 

teams of the University of Tennessee undergraduate architecture 

students paired with graduate students from the Vanderbilt 

University Owen School of Management. Under the direction of 

faculty member Thomas McDaniel, a case study of regional transit 

villages was the Capstone Project for the Real Estate Development 

MBA Program. 

This studio sought to balance three equally important agendas: 

first, to present a very intense learning opportunity in urban design 

for the students; second, to engage the students in the thinking 

and priorities of developers, on the principle that this knowledge 

can significantly empower the designer to be proactive, and not 

reactive, by adding value both in project design and economics; 

and third, to structure the studio as a public advocacy of TOD as a 

way to build “Livable Communities.” 

Could this collaboration between two university programs, and disciplines, 

be a model component for in-depth consideration of TOD 

in other metropolitan areas? This paper will discuss the challenges 

and opportunities of a “creative work as applied research” teaching 

model. It will also disclose design and development outcomes as a 

case study, and suggest where Nashville goes from here.


Open: History/Theory 

Vittoria Di Palma, Columbia University 

Blow-Up: Architecture and the Technology of 

Contemporary Art 

Nora Wendl, Portland State University 

Isabelle Wallace, University of Georgia 

The contemporary architectural reading of technology as instrumental 

is far removed from the Greek origins of the word, techne, 

knowledge related to making. The danger—and the opportunity— 

of such instrumental thinking is that it reduces architectural practice 

to a series of specialized strategies or operations that can be 

done by anyone, opening it up to appropriation. Appropriating the 

strategies and operations of architecture has been, for artists from 

the 1960s forward, the most direct method of institutional critique, 

a radical turn on the historical relationship between art and architecture 

through which art has often been the necessary vehicle, the 

technology, by which the perception, representation and the making 

of architecture is transformed. 

Over the last twenty-five years, art has become more than a technique 

to embellish or advance architectural form, it has become a 

site for architecture’s analysis. For, although architecture has always 

been a motif within the visual arts, in increasing numbers, and as 

if in response to architecture’s own willingness to picture itself—a 

willingness that begins in the Postmodern era— architecture is now 

the explicit subject of much visual art across media. Consequently, 

and as this paper will examine, a certain faction of contemporary art 

can be viewed as a silent compliment to the acknowledged history 

of the built environment—a non-verbal form of architectural history, 

a legitimate site of interpretation, criticism, and analysis—and, as this 

paper will argue, a technology through which architecture is experienced, 

theorized, historicized and disseminated. 

Digital Ecstasy: Architecture in the Post-Fordist era 

Elie Haddad, Lebanese American University 

Nadir Lahiji, Pennsylvania State University 

For three decades, academia and professional architectural establishments 

have euphorically embraced exactly what this ACSA conference, 

in celebration of its hundredth anniversary, has termed as 

“digital aptitude.” Without a doubt, the imperatives of the postmodern 

culture have brought to the fore a gifted generation with an incomparable 

skill and talent to manipulate new digital technologies 

for design practices. But, significantly, the same gifted generation 

has demonstrated a parallel talent corollary with the first, which we 

shall call “political inaptitude.” We claim that this political inaptitude 

is the dialectical opposite, or the negative obverse, of the same digital 

aptitude underlying postmodern design practices. In this paper 

we will attempt to critique this new design approach, which simultaneously 

displays both sides of this dialectic. We begin by posing this 

question: should the digital aptitude be necessarily accompanied 

by a separation from the ‘political’, a separation that is one of the 

symptoms of our society of the spectacle? Our initial answer to this 

question is an emphatic No! We will argue against this inauspicious 

separation and examine some of its theoretical causes. 

Leftovers: Residual and Risk in “Our Digital Present” 

Jasmine Benyamin, Texas A&M University 

Despite the so called ‘post-critical’ moment of our digital present, 

those of us who are more involved in thinking about buildings than 

in their making may find opportunities for critical inquiry after all, 

thereby avoiding the risk of disciplinary extinction. In this essay I 

propose possible avenues for a critical re-engagement with current 

practice, through the lens of residual and risk. Further, I argue that 

how we write and talk about buildings needs to undergo a paradigmatic 

shift, since the way buildings are made has fundamentally 

altered. In fact, given the current emphasis on process over 

representation, we have a renewed responsibility to inquire about 

the changing paradigms of authorship in current practice, but also 

in our thinking about practice. What are the implications of collaborative 

process-based practice on (singular) authorial subject? 

Does the notion of process itself so central to emergent technologies 

risk the loss of the author? Can authorship be re-defined and 

re-inscribed in process if not in outmoded notions of intent? This, 

after all, must not kill that. 



Open: Sustainable Design 

Adrian Parr, University of Cincinnati 

The Ontological Performance of Sustainable Design 

Michael Harpster, University of Nebraska-Lincoln 

In recent years, conversations concerning sustainable design have 

focused almost exclusively on questions of resource conservation 

and energy efficiency within the built environment. As a result, many 

assume sustainable design methodologies lead to an improvement 

in the quantitative energy performance of a building – nothing more. 

While such understandings of sustainable design are not inaccurate, 

I do believe they present an incomplete account of the impact sustainable 

design has (or might have) on our lives. It is my goal to 

explore the non-quantitative impacts sustainable design has on our 

lives and to thereby provide a fuller and perhaps more meaningful 

understanding of sustainable design. Ultimately, I hope to shift the 

discussion away from quantitative or technological performance and 

toward what I refer to as the ontological performance of sustainable 

design solutions. In speaking of ontological performance, I refer to 

a structure’s ability to reveal the fundamental characteristics of human 

being or existence. More specifically, I intend to examine the 

potential that sustainable design material strategies and active solar 

technologies have to reveal our basic relation to and place within the 

natural world, our situation both in and across time, and our basic 

human mortality. Finally, while this discussion represents merely a 

brief introduction to the idea of the ontological performance of sustainable 

design, a number of additional issues are outlined in hopes 

of promoting and providing direction for further consideration of 

sustainable design’s ability to shape the way in which we understand 

what it is to exist in the world. 

Uneasy Green: The Value of a Semi-Autonomous, 

Productively Critical Green Architecture 

Doug Jackson, California Polytechnic State University 

The architectural discipline’s current attempts to address the environmental 

crisis are problematically marked by either an attempt to 

deploy architecture’s unrivalled formal expertise to produce monolithic 

works that appeal to culture’s unquenchable thirst for novelty, 

or else a foregrounding of architecture’s technical and organizational 

prowess in order to meet culture’s ever-present appreciation 

of performance and pragmatism. The trivial and unremarkable work 

that results from these two approaches, however, undermines the 

status of the architectural discipline relative to the larger culture. 

In sharp contrast, the projects presented in this paper demonstrate 

a more appropriate way for architecture to respond to the environmental 

crisis. These projects are not intended as models for green 

or sustainable building, since their value lies not in their ability to 

be absorbed by the mainstream but rather in their unique ability to 

stand productively outside of it—providing critically alternative experiences 

that have the ability to beneficially affect the course of the 

mainstream. Accordingly, they act as agents for changing the way 

that individuals view their relationship to the natural environment 

and to the larger, abstract entities that alter, exploit, and transform 

the environment on their behalf. 


Consequently, these examples demonstrate how the discipline’s 

expectation to speak to the culture at large can finally be redeemed 

through its unique ability to productively engage broad-reaching 

and significant issues—issues that are crucial to the rectification of 

humanity’s seemingly unrelenting environmental degradation, and 

which are far from answered by architecture’s recent short-sighted, 

unremarkable, and post-critical performance-driven efforts. 

Yes, They Do Walk in Suburbia: Multifamily Housing 

and Trips to Strips 

Nico Larco, University of Oregon 

Marc Schlossberg, University of Oregon 

Suburbia is often considered antithetical to the idea of walking and 

biking to local shops and restaurants because of its lack of density 

and destinations, long distances to travel, and auto-oriented design. 

While this may be the case for some parts of suburbia, the 

suburban commercial strip and the multifamily housing that typically 

surrounds it stand as widespread exceptions to this notion. 

These overlooked areas of density and mixed use actually foster 

significant walking and biking by residents. This paper presents recent 

research that found that not only is there already a significant 

amount of walking and biking in these areas, but that the design 

and connectivity of the multifamily housing and its surroundings 

is critical to increasing that amount of walking and biking. These 

findings points to a significant opportunity to recast our understanding 

of suburbia and the potential it might hold to create more 

sustainable models that are centered around walkable, active development.


Registration and Projection: The Mediations of Urban 


McLain Clutter, University of Michigan 

Aerial Vision-Based Model of Urbanism 

El Hadi Jazairy, University of Michigan 

Google Earth and airplanes give access to map-scale top-down 

views of cities. As a result, observers have a perspective allowing 

them to view cities as a whole in a towering position as if they controlled 

it from outside. This position empowers policy-makers and 

city users giving them a sense of control over the visualized object 

thereby making it submissive to their desires. This paper is an attempt 

to relate the meaning and agency of aerial vision with the 

emergence of a ‘new geography from above’ in the Gulf. 

Modeling Spatial Activity Distributions in Complex 

Urban Conditions: The Markov Chain Model for 

Weighting Spaces with Attractors 

Ipek Rohloff, Mount Holyoke College 

Kurt Rohloff, Raytheon/BBN Technologies 

This paper presents first insights from an ongoing investigation into 

how to predict movement distributions influenced by factors other 

than street networks. In current spatial analysis models, the ability 

to predict the effect of attractors other than street network properties 

on movement distributions has been limited. This paper introduces 

an analysis approach that incorporates normalized weightings 

on spaces with attractors along with network properties in order to 

provide finer grain analysis explaining movement distributions within 

urban complexity beyond the street network. This analysis approach 

is based on Markov chain models which have been widely used in 

other domains to model complex systems. We use the Markov chain 

modeling approach to represent network properties and attractor effects 

with normalized weightings to estimate probabilistic movement 

distributions in a computationally tractable manner. We argue that urban 

environments with business districts in segregated locations and 

green open spaces integrated with the urban fabric are cases of urban 

complexity where movement distribution cannot be explained merely 

by street networks but with attractors incorporating programmatic 

and environmental content. Our conclusion is that a comprehensive 

model utilizing Markov chains can be useful to detect the effects of 

building density and environmental content on movement, yet further 

research is required to establish weighting criteria. 

Representing Information: Envisioning the City 

through Data 

Karen Lewis, Ohio State University 

The constructed world is replete with information that governs and 

controls its organization. From railroads to highways, building codes 

to zoning regulations, the design and development of the contemporary 

environment is managed by strategies of physical and visual 

organization. Architects’ interest in this globally networked environment 

is reflective of an increasing awareness and attention to the 

multi-variant world, one invested in infrastructural systems that support 

productivity in lieu of pictures and is reflective of a new global 

and electronic economy based on intangibles – ideas, information and 

relationships. The effects of these systems, once only theorized and 

simulated through abstract models, is given attention via the measurement, 

collection and processing of their effects. 

As emerging technologies have enabled new ways of measuring fluvial 

global, urban and regional networks, new representation techniques 

have enabled design practice to occupy and design with 

information, rather than merely represent its influence. Through 

techniques of clarification, simulation, augmentation and revelation, 

architecture mobilizes data visualization into architecture praxis. 

Spectacle of the Hyper-Real: Environmental 

Simulation, Cybernetic Subjects, and Urban Design 

Anthony Raynsford, San Jose State University 

Like Renaissance perspective before it, contemporary environmental 

simulation in urban design is an exceedingly codified and artificial 

visual construction whose success, likewise, lies in its reassurance 

of a certain scientific precision and point-by-point correspondence. 

Using a few key examples, I would like to suggest that current, hyper-realistic 

simulations, such as the Glasgow Urban Model, have a 

three-part history, dating back to the 1950s when experiments at 

MIT first connected cybernetic models of experience to the formal 

aesthetics of film. At this stage, simulations remained highly diagrammatic, 

translating dynamic urban sequences into an array of visual 

media, each of which was meant to capture some aspect of the 

totality of the visual experience of the city. This phase was followed 

by an intermediate stage in the 1970s, in which computer technology 

became embedded within specific techniques of Hollywood 

special effects in order to simulate a more-or-less total environmental 

experience, with extraordinary levels of detail and precision. This 

embedding of special effects technology coincided with a populist 

suspicion of urban design expertise that had begun in the late 1960s 

and that demanded ever-wider accessibility and transparency of 

urbanistic representations. Realism now entailed both close, optical 

replications of urban experience and a type of cinematic immediacy 

that would be familiar to, and hence legible for a broad audience of 

perceivers. The final stage emerged with the adoption of CAD modeling 

and animation systems that gradually became spliced into and 

ultimately supplanted traditional film, without, however, displacing 

the filmic visual codes and their subjective viewpoints. Where Renaissance 

perspective projected a static, often universalized viewer, 

centered within an abstract spatial grid, contemporary digital simulations 

tended later to project a variable and mobile ‘consumer’ of 

urban space, a cybernetic subject of endless feedback rather than a 

Platonic knower of ideals. The demand for realism, also, became an 

appetite for the spectacular results of simulation per se. Simulated 

cities became sites for a new kind of hyper-reality, both in the sense 

of their intensely detailed duplication of the physical and in terms of 

their acting as increasingly autonomous substitutes for the real. The 

replacement of physical models and film by digitally scanned environments 

and digital renderings have further widened the scope for 

hyper-realistic spectacle, whether in the form of animated films that 

are choreographed in order to produce particular effects of motion, 

or interactive spaces controlled, in the manner of games, through a 

set of rules by which users move through the space. Although potentially 

neutral banks of visual and spatial information, the models, 

in practice, need to be organized in particular ways in order to simulate 

the effects of the real and reach a general audience, where they 

can be consumed as digital, cinematic media. 



The Agency of Drawing and the Digital Process 

Andrew Atwood, University of Southern California 

(Mis)Behaviors of Drawing 

Kelly Bair, University of Illinois at Chicago 

(Mis)Behaviors of Drawing outlines a series of statements that reposition 

analog drawing methodologies as a necessary accomplice 

to the ubiquitous digital methodologies that exist within contemporary 

practice and academia. While some of the statements challenge 

the conventional role of analog drawing, they do so not by 

dismissing the technique of production itself, but by questioning 

the agency of the artifact that is ultimately produced. The statements 

suggest that analog drawing paired with digital techniques 

challenge established drawing conventions in an effort to produce 

a new language for architectural representation. The intentional 

misuse of architectural conventions in analog and digital hybrids 

such as view, orientation, projective geometries, and line weight, 

suggests variable perceptions of the work, liberating drawing from 

a contracted or representational document intended for building. 

Instead, drawing becomes a generative design tool, a conceptual 

narrative device, and in some cases, more closely calibrated to a 

3-dimensional physical construct than a 2-dimensional sheet. Collectively, 

the statements summarize a catalog of selected analog 

and digital methodologies from both academics and practitioners 

who replace novelty of technique in favor of familiar processes 

of production that when unconventionally choreographed yield 

unique drawing agendas within the discipline of architecture. 

Drawing the Line; or Surrender, Surrender, but Don’t 

Give Yourself Away... 

Dora Epstein Jones, Southern California Institute of Architecture 

“Drawing the Line” explores the basic critical settings that still guide 

our thinking about drawing despite the advent and acceptance of 

the computer and other tools used in exploratory and generative 

architectural work. Thinking beyond long-held dichotomies of tool 

to outcome, and how to what, this essay recognizes the work of 

current architects who draw as architecture itself. Describing them 

as “somewhats” and “somehows,” to evoke an emerging and unnamed 

sensibility, this essay emphasizes and asserts the primacy 

of exploratory drawing in architecture’s discipline – not as a strategy 

for moving away from authorship but as fundamental, central 

and ever-lasting. 


The Stylus Vector 

Michael Young, The Cooper Union 

The following paper explores the changing conditions in the mediation 

of architectural representation between manual and digital 

techniques, explicitly drawing and the conditions of the line. The 

paper discusses three key differences between the two systems 

with a specific focus of the investigation on the relations between 

geometry and aesthetics. The three issues are measure, scale, and 

visualization. These three conditions are pursued in both their 

traditional understanding in architectural representation and the 

changes that occur in a digital environment. This discussion includes 

a brief look into the nature of NURBS curvature, the design 

practices that developed early surface modeling software, and the 

differences in the goals of these practices in relation to architecture. 

Included in the paper is also a set of digital drawings produced 

by the author. These are seen as part of an experiment in the 

potentials of aesthetic questions raised by digital representation. 

If the techniques of developing and manipulating a representation 

have radically changed, what conceptual and aesthetic ties do we 

still have back into the traditions of art and architecture, and what 

novel potentials might be opened through digital mediation.


1912: Progress, Technology, and Nature 

Fran Leadon, City College of New York 

Utopias/Dystopias: From the Progressive Era to a 

Sustainable Future 

Marie-Alice L’Heureux, University of Kansas 

This paper characterizes the decades of the progressive era (1890- 

1920), their challenges, optimisms, and investments in infrastructure. 

From a succinct discussion of utopian and dystopian novels 

and their relevance to late 19th century cities, I then explore their 

relevance to the early progressive era from the 1893 Columbian 

exposition in Chicago to the 1901 Pan-American exposition in Buffalo, 

New York. I characterize the challenges for architects in this 

era when the focus was on urban-scaled engineering projects and 

architects were engaged in the expressive aspects of the urban environment 

that underscored their limitations in the rapidly changing 

technological realm. At the turn of the 21st century, architects 

again find themselves as a similar junction. Urbanized countries 

consume more energy and produce more greenhouse gases than 

un-urbanized ones, but within urbanized countries, dense urban 

centers consume as much as 30% less energy than the suburbs or 

rural areas. Cities are struggling to invest wisely in their urban infrastructure 

and are trying to re-create themselves as denser, more 

efficient centers of innovation and creativity. To engage in this discussion, 

architects and planners need to understand the deep historic 

roots associated with these challenges and to prioritize the 

intersection of the human aspects of design with the more familiar 

aesthetic and technological issues of design. 

From Orthographic to Eccentric: Tall Architecture of 

Extremes 

Terri Boake, University of Waterloo 

Height has long served as a benchmark for progress as it relates to 

the built manifestation of advancements in engineering and architectural 

technology. The past 100 years are marked by major advances 

in the construction of tall buildings. This paper will look at 

the architectural ramifications of changes in the structural form of 

tall buildings. Building references will span early framing systems 

such as those used in the Woolworth Building to more eccentric 

diagrid systems. The impact of the destruction of the World Trade 

Towers will be examined for its impact on current practices in the 

design of SuperTall buildings. The material nature of the structural 

system, the emergence of wind engineering and questions of redundancy 

in design will also be included. 

The On-Again Off-Again Romance Between Nature 

and Technology in Healthcare Settings 

Mardelle Shepley, Texas A&M University 

The purpose of this paper is to describe the relative influence and 

dominance of technology and nature in the development of healthcare 

facilities in recent history. The history of healthcare design 

over the last 100 years can be segmented into four eras that are 

characterized by different attitudes towards technology and nature: 

the progressive era, the modernist era, the era of scientific 

humanism, and the era of evidence-based design. The Progressive 

era began in the mid-1850s and is associated with the Nightingale 

prototype. Among the design objectives of the period were the 

pervasiveness of natural light and ventilation. Hospitals of the Modernist 

era were often rendered in the International Style. These 

hospitals evolved into large, block buildings with minimal daylight 

in the central areas due to the deep floor plate. The era of Scientific 

Humanism was a reaction to the technological emphasis of the previous 

epoch. Designers during this period attempted to produce 

environments that were softer, and more residential in character. 

Our current hospital epoch, the Evidence-based Design era, uses 

science to inform the architecture of healing environments and describe 

the impact of nature. Although many hospitals in the United 

States still reflect the modernist vernacular of deep floor plates 

and long, double-loaded corridors, most new hospitals have been 

significantly influenced by Evidence-based Design. 

If nature and technology are the primary predictors of the future of 

health care design, their on-again, off-again relationship in healthcare 

settings may be self-resolving. Our simultaneous desire for 

the most advanced technology and the most untainted nature are 

intensifying. This approach is currently expressed in the form of 

technological sustainability and biophilic healing, concepts that 

will likely be the hallmark of healthcare design in developed countries 

for the next half century. 

Evaluating Progressivism: A Critique of Biomimetic 


Wynn Buzzell, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 

The following discourse considers biomimicry as a progressive 

trend, and aims to examine its validity and relevance, particularly 

as it relates to architecture. Establishment of validity is accomplished 

through examination of its historical context, definition of 

its typologies and methodologies, taxonomic categorization of its 

terminology, a discussion of its contemporary portrayal, and provision 

of a series of illustrative examples to augment the observations 

offered. These observations, characterizations, and conclusions, 

will be discussed through conceptual consideration of how 

“second nature” and humanities innate biophilic tendencies have 

given rise to biomimetic architectural methodologies. Particular 

attention is given to the concept of “second nature” and related 

ideas which deal with mankind’s perception of its connectedness 

to nature. This connectedness is discussed as it relates to the ways 

humankind imitates nature. Conclusions aim to define and clarify 

the semantics, typologies and methodologies of biomimicry. 



Advanced Composite Fabrication Technologies for 


Michael Silver, Mike Silver Architects 

In-situ Processing of Thermoplastic Composites for 

Large-Scale Structure 

Anne Roberts, Automated Dynamics 

Robert Langone, Automated Dynamics 

Around for many, many years, composite materials have been on a 

long and interesting evolution. Although rarely recognized, the origin 

of man-made (or engineered) composites actually has its roots 

in architecture. From Egyptian times, straw has been used as an 

additive to the clay brick-making process providing both strength 

(resistance to cracking) as well as the ability to speed drying of the 

clay and reduce the occurrence of loss during the firing process. 

By the mid twentieth century, aggressive investment and development 

of fiber reinforced plastics for the emerging aerospace industry 

marked a period of tremendous progress for these materials – 

particularly marked by impressive gains in performance. The use 

of composite materials has been steadily growing ever since as the 

various benefits of these materials (most notably their high-strength 

and light-weight) have been utilized in many industries. The materials 

are now synonymous with aerospace, where weight savings 

are critical. Here today, advanced manufacturing technologies are 

being used to build composite structures for high performance applications 

such as Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II (The Joint 

Strike Fighter) and Boeing Commercial Aircraft’s 787. Here, composites 

are being used to replace aluminum and steel due to their 

high strength-to-weight ratio. 

Laminar Folds: Fabric Structure Molds to Jigs 

David Hill, North Carolina State University 

Laura Garofalo, University at Buffalo, SUNY 

By illustrating the design and assembly process of a glass-fiber composite 

pavilion, this paper considers various production strategies 

and constraints, and offers alternatives to conventional static molding 

processes for producing textile composite panels. The pavilion 

is designed to register environmental conditions along the Erie Canal, 

and it is a demonstration project that intertwines handcraft and 

digital fabrication methods in order to test textile composites’ ability 

to act simultaneously as structure and enclosure. The research compares 

traditional carved molds and vacuum-bagging techniques to 

versatile wire-strung jigs that can be reconfigured to create variation 

in panel form. The text explains both compressive and tensile 

stringing methods used to shape the supple woven fabrics. 

Focusing on the molding process, the project examines the potentials 

and shortcomings of textile composites as an architectural 

material, and it offers an unconventional approach to panel fabrication. 

Textile composite materials offer promising possibilities for 

architecture, particularly in mass-produced, panelized applications. 

Lightweight and rigid, textile composites exhibit high strength-toweight 

ratios that exceed more common structural materials such 

as steel, concrete, and wood. But, several factors—such as high material 

costs, lack of standardized performance characteristics, and 

specialized production methods—have contributed to composites’ 

limited use. However, these same characteristics make this an ideal 

material for a process and form that are not defined or dependent 

on standardization such as that explored in the Flow Pavilion. 

12 - ACSA 100th Annual Meeting


Becoming Computational: Restructuring/ Reconsidering 

Pedagogy Towards a (More) Computational Discipline 

Chris Beorkrem, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 

Nicholas Senske, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 

Bootstrapping a Computational Discourse 

Maya Przybylski, University of Waterloo 

This paper discusses work from System Stalker Lab, a third year 

undergraduate design studio taught at the University of Waterloo. 

System Stalker Lab is an introductory exploration of design computing, 

aiming to instill awareness of the key structures and processes 

inherent in a design practice inclusive of computational strategies 

and techniques. The studio also seeks to seed a computationally 

oriented design culture within the school by clarifying and speculating 

on the opportunities existing within computing in relationship to 

architectural design. Such a practice requires that designers expand 

their notion of digital methodologies to include the fundamental 

paradigms of computer science. The focus of the paper is on the first 

phase of work carried out in the studio, which is committed to building 

a workable foundation in algorithmic thinking, representation, 

programming and design – core skills required for working within 

a computational context. The described process exposes students 

to the skills necessary for the conceptualization, design, and execution 

of a project operating within a computational discourse. Having 

completed the first, highly structured phase of the studio, students 

are enabled to continue to learn independently and to employ computational 

design in more open design projects. 

Computation as an Ideological Practice 

Nathaniel Zuelzke, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne 

Trevor Patt, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne 

Jeffrey Huang, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne 

For computation to become an integral part of architectural design, 

it must be recognized as an ideological practice. Insofar as it requires 

explicit, precise formalizations of the factors which shape any given 

project, computation is a strong assertion of an author’s ability to 

solve a problem. Becoming computational involves acknowledging 

this agency and the ways in which it differs from conventional paradigms 

of authorship, and assessing its impact in the design process. 

This paper presents computation within the framework of a yearlong 

Masters-level design studio offered at École Polytechnique Fédérale 

de Lausanne, Switzerland. The studio brief and assumptions 

are explained and the notion of a “computational engine” is introduced 

as an evolving document which clarifies its authors’ intents. 

Within the studio, the creation of an engine begins with a parametric 

site analysis or dynamic mapping of the existing context to construct 

an understanding of the site which possesses a strong authorial 

agenda. The temporal, multi-scalar, and diagrammatic nature of 

the engine are discussed. 

By considering solution space, computational workflows are contrasted 

with conventional ones. Whereas conventional solution 

space is largely unstructured and underexplored, the relational, 

combinatorial nature of computational solution space makes it both 

unknowable in advance yet efficient to explore. The integration of 

evaluation metrics and feedback systems into the computational engine 

further increases this efficiency without diminishing authorial 

will. Finally, some pitfalls are considered, the responsibilities of an 

author are discussed, and the mechanisms that computation has to 

mediate these concerns are recapitulated. 

Ultimately, computation should not be viewed as an end in itself, 

but rather as an ideological practice which engenders criticality 

and promotes innovation. 

Computational Design Methods 

David Lee, Clemson University 

The ACSA Digital Aptitudes Conference celebrates 100 years of 

architectural discourse. Of parallel importance to the theme of 

this session, the event will also mark the 50th anniversary of the 

internet’s conception. Indeed, Licklider’s concept of the ‘Galactic 

Network’ marked a revolutionary shift in thinking about how data 

sets could be managed and was followed by a series of influential 

publications that collectively laid the groundwork for the Age of 

Information. 

While computation is not inherently about digital tools, the advent 

of the Information Age – spawned by the internet and fueled 

by technology such as, mobile computing, social networking, and 

GPS – is largely responsible for the current necessity for computational 

thought in design. Computational thinking being compulsory 

to the various disciplines that employ information processing, it 

is critical that architecture schools adopt an attitude that computational 

thinking be compulsory to the education of the architect. 

Moreover, it must be engrained in every aspect of a design education, 

from beginning to advanced design as well as in practice. This 

paper presents a series of concepts regarding the role of computation 

in design, specifically architectural, education. Accompanying 

these concepts are a series of examples of how they have been 

carried out in courses I have delivered at all levels of an architectural 

curriculum. 

Integrated BIM and Parametric Modeling: Course Samples 

with Multiple Methods and Multiple Phases 

Wei Yan, Texas A&M University 

This paper presents well designed modeling samples for teaching 

integrated BIM and Parametric Modeling in a graduate course. 

The samples range from parametric curves, recursive solid models, 

to parametric Building Information Models. Implicit and explicit 

parametric modeling methods are introduced to the class. Multiple 

phases of one sample are also exercised. Computer programming 

is studied as a powerful method for modeling. The objective of integrating 

the two powerful modeling methods is to foster critical design 

thinking, which is enhanced by the understanding of the major 

advantages of BIM and parametric modeling: Creativity, Constructability, 

and Computability (3C’s). The paper describes the samples 

and methods in detail and compares the different learning focuses 

and limitations of the multiple methods. 


FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012 - 11:00AM - 12:30PM 

Automatism, or, Post-Medium Architecture and Post-War 

Art 

Sean Keller, Illinois Institute of Technology 

Software: Jack Burnham and the Medium as System 

Charissa Terranova, University of Texas at Dallas 

This essay focuses on Jack Burnham’s 1970-exhibition Software, 

the influence of Gestalt psychology under the leadership of György 

Kepes at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, and 

the advent of a technologically generated post-medium condition 

parallel to Stanley Cavell’s “automatism.” Set in this light, Cavell’s 

idea of automatism resonates strongly with media and new media 

theories, in particular Burnham’s “systems esthetics” and Marshall 

McLuhan’s idea of the technological “extension.” Through the concept 

of the “haptic unconscious,” I argue that Burnham’s medium 

defying systems aesthetics bears greater political resonances than 

Cavell’s automatism. In conclusion, I look to The Architecture Machine 

Group, MIT’s “Seek,” a work of art in Software involving a 

computer, robotic arm, an ersatz city in flux, and gerbils, which 

played out the strictures of an earlier stage of global biopolitical 

order. 

The Death of Film in Architecture 

James Macgillivray, University of Michigan 

Within architectural practice, the lopsided relationship between 

cinema and architecture has prompted an evasion as response. 

The notion of translation, of making a “cinematic” architecture, has 

displaced the possibility of confrontation and replaced it with the 

pursuit of mimesis. Unlike the modern painters who responded to 

the photograph with an open abnegation of the realism it entailed, 

architects in the age of film have consistently sought inspiration in 

the greater synthetic powers of their cinematic rival. From Le Corbusier’s 

promenade architectural, to Bernard Tschumi’s Manhattan 

Transcripts, and recently Steven Holl’s Linked Hybrid, the persistence 

of the cinematic analogy in architecture is to a certain extent 

more important than its success or failure as a premise. Whether 

or not the moving camera can in a satisfactory way be equated to 

an ambulatory sequence through a building, or if an elevator’s trip 

through disparate programs in section could be likened to a “jump 

cut” is immaterial when faced with the resulting building. The persistence 

of this cinematic metaphor in architecture constitutes the 

basis for this paper. That the base of the metaphor, the medium of 

film, is in the last throes of a transmutation into video complicates 

and at the same time transforms the architectural product. By looking 

at two recent cinemas that conceptually straddle the “death 

of film” this paper will clarify how the metaphor works and outline 

how cinematic buildings make their case. [On Steven Holl’s Linked 

Hybrid Cinematèque and Thomas Leeser’s Museum of the Moving 

Image.] 


The Solaris Mirror 

Luke Ogrydziak, Ogrydziak Prillinger Architects 

Design is a mirror. This is a fundamental theme of Stanislaw Lem’s 

1961 science fiction classic Solaris, in which he explores three distinct 

‘automatic’ form generation paradigms: (1) abstraction, (2) 

mimicry, and (3) the unconscious. Lem’s paradigms remain relevant 

today, as allegorical models for a range of approaches to the 

open question of automatism in computational design practices. In 

particular, his final category, the unconscious, evokes a new frontier 

for automatic design – one which our current digital tools are 

only beginning to explore.


Open: Disaster Recovery 

Charles Setchell, USAID Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance 

Digital and Analog Aptitudes in Emergency Shelter 

Design and Fabrication 

Bruce Johnson, University of Kansas 

The Article discusses the flux between the Digital and Analog 

realms in the design, fabrication and outcome of a Prototype Emergency 

Shelter as conceived in a third year “hands-on” architectural 

design studio. The article examines the studio design process with 

relationship to both the physical needs of victims and refugees 

and with regard to fabrication and design development within the 

architectural studio itself. Currently and in the recent past there 

has been much emphasis on Crisis Architecture as it pertains to 

the need for large quantities of housing for victims and refuges of 

Hurricanes, Floods, War, Tsunamis, Earthquakes, etc. and humanmade 

disasters, this article illustrates the need for such housing 

projects to examine the cultural requirements of privacy, family 

function, and enclave or neighborhood development in temporary 

housing communities such as to facilitate a sense of ownership and 

personal/family pride. For both Professionals and Students, Crisis 

architecture requires the study of not only the specific needs for 

family and community housing during a Crisis, but also of the ability 

of various government agencies, volunteers, and even victims, 

to be able to organize, construct, and to maintain society during 

conditions that often manifest power outages and a complete lack 

of communication interface. Increasingly Professionals and Design 

students flaunt advanced Digital interfaces for the study and 

manufacture of buildings, components and models – the article illustrates 

that design is a hybrid of whatever means are available 

and that Crisis architecture must adapt in the field in order to best 

serve society in a time of need. 

Bruce A. Johnson is an Assistant Professor at the University of 

Kansas. He graduated with honors from Kansas State University 

in 1991 where he was awarded the American Institute of Architects 

Certificate of Merit. In 1995 he received a scholarship to attend 

Columbia University where he was a recipient of the Lowenfisch 

Memorial Prize for best thesis (The Split-Level Sod House). He has 

practiced in Kansas City for firms such as Populous, Shaughnessy, 

Fickel and Scott, PGAV, and International Architects Atelier, and 

in Chicago for Stanley Tigerman and Margaret McCurry. In 1991 he 

was awarded the prestigious Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Bachelor 

of Architecture Traveling Fellowship, which afforded research and 

travel to study sacred architecture in the Middle East, North Africa 

and Europe. His current research interests include Alternate Architectural 

Practice and Direct Fabrication as it pertains to the radical 

integration of Structure, Systems and Emergent Materials. 

Haitian Rebuilding Initiative: Technological Solutions 

That Hinge on Empowerment 

Juintow Lin, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona 

Michael Fox, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona 

This paper outlines a series of studios and seminars focused on 

permanent housing solutions in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake 

in Haiti. The project hinges on enabling Haitians through 

a housing project that that is built entirely with local labor and a 

minimum of imported materials. An entire house is constructed 

almost solely with a unique resin-coated corrugated paper core 

sandwiched between magnesium board panels which are manufactured 

locally. The combination of local initiative and a uniquetechnology 

applied to the construction process enables the house 

to be constructed within a very short time and at a very low cost. 

The work has resulted in an initial prototype section of a house 

constructed at the University campus in the United States and 

the first full house completed in Haiti. From a project standpoint, 

students learned to design schematic buildings within real material 

and budgetary constraints. They also were asked understand 

real strategies for fabrication, delivery and assembly related to the 

unique construction details that they developed. Students also had 

to reconcile the global and ethical impacts of their design decisions 

and confront real world political situations related to disaster relief 

housing. In addition, students learned to apply their discipline-specific 

construction and materials skills to an interdisciplinary problem 

where cost and simplicity are primary constraints. 

Learning from Disaster: Lessons from Community- 

Based Design in Haiti 

John Comazzi, University of Minnesota 

Jim Lutz, University of Minnesota 

This paper will chronicle a unique disaster assistance/learning 

abroad program developed in the wake of the catastrophic 2010 

earthquake in Haiti, and the pedagogical lessons gleaned from this 

extraordinary community-based design experience. 

The program began in the early spring of 2010 with two “factfinding” 

visits to Haiti by five faculty members from the School of 

Architecture at the University of Minnesota in collaboration with 

two international NGOs providing relief services there. Following 

these site visits, a group of faculty, administrators, and research 

fellows worked to develop a coordinated, long-term plan for a new 

curricular model focused on public interest design associated with 

post-disaster reconstruction efforts. 

LEARNING in the CLASSROOM 

Recognizing the complex circumstances of working in a community 

recovering from disaster, we used the first half of the spring 

2011 term to pilot a seven-week, graduate-level seminar organized 

to build capacity among a group of students and faculty preparing 

for the program abroad. The first portion of the seminar was spent 

contextualizing the larger historical, cultural, social, and natural 

systems in Haiti through the creation of a Research Manual and 

course website that became an online repository for the research 

and analysis created by the students. Following the production 

of the Research Manual, the focus of the seminar shifted to the 

production of a 277-page Field Guide that concentrated more directly 

on the information and data most important for supporting 

the community-based design work by those students and faculty 

traveling to Haiti. 



Open Disaster Recovery Continued 

LEARNING in the FIELD 

The on-site portion of the program consisted of a seven-week studio 

and seminar operated out of space provided by Architecture 

for Humanity (AFH) in Port-au-Prince. Two major projects were 

identified by AFH with students working both individually and in 

teams depending on the complexity and schedule associated with 

each task. The first was collaborative work on the development of 

a master plan for Santo, a new community for 500 families (currently 

under construction) located near Léogâne, the epicenter 

of the quake. The second was LaConcorde, an orphanage school 

in the Carrefour area of Port-au-Prince. Other work included the 

mapping of economic corridors, a model and O&M manual for a 

large composting toilet building planned for a school in Cité du 

Soleil, and classroom and sustainability “menus” used for fundraising 

by AFH. 

By conceiving of this community-based, learning abroad experience 

as a comprehensive program we, as faculty, were forced to 

rethink and rework the traditional models of design pedagogy and 

curriculum. Upon reflection, the experience has provided numerous 

lessons, architectural and otherwise, about the future of design 

education which places a greater emphasis on participatory, community-engaged 

scholarship. This paper will delve more deeply 

into the specific projects completed by the students in Haiti as well 

as the major lessons learned regarding the future of architecture 

education in the context of public interest design. 

reCOVER: Transitional Disaster Recovery Housing 

Anselmo Canfora, University of Virginia 

Project reCOVER brings together academic, civic, and professional 

organizations in a collaborative enterprise to study and build disaster 

recovery housing for marginalized communities. An essential 

part of a multi-sectorial approach, partnerships with non-governmental 

organizations and humanitarian professionals with experience 

in assisting marginalized communities rebuild after natural 

disasters are an essential part of this research project. While assisting 

communities improve their built environment and helping 

advance building technologies, architecture and engineering 

students are directly involved in applied research and real world 

experiences as an important part of their education and engaged 

scholarship. New applications in the area of building design and 

construction emerging out of this research underscores the importance 

of translational research in the architecture academy. 



Open: Urbanism 

Tim Love, Northeastern University 

From the Park to Parking: The Evolution of Suburban 

Mobility 

Ian Baldwin 

Suburbanization began with mid-nineteenth century developments 

such as Llewellyn Park, New Jersey and Riverside, Illinois, exclusive 

oases of romantic landscape that would pleasantly contrast with 

the bustle, noise and pollution of the city. In the early twentieth 

century, streetcar suburbs democratized the concept, providing 

middle-class families with closely-spaced detached homes on gridded 

plots. From the 1920s to the 1970s, Garden City ideals underlay 

the development of model (though by no means typical) suburbs 

like Radburn, New Jersey and Columbia, Maryland. Central to their 

designs were superblocks of common green space, extensive pedestrian 

pathways and -- in the designers’ minds, at least-- a subservient 

role for the auto. 

Thus the spatial practices we refer to with the inadequate word 

“suburban” continue to evolve after 160 years. We would do well 

to examine the modern suburb and exurb not as a placeless anticity 

but simply the most expedient and affordable version of urbanism 

in an era of unquestioned auto reliance. 

We know that the modern suburb is defined by capacious asphalt 

roadways and sidewalks that are narrow and exposed when they 

exist at all. But we know little about how that practice become a 

defining standard. 

Automobility and suburbanization enjoy a mutually supportive legend 

that has obscured and oversimplified the origins of the physical 

patterns that dominate 21st century America. This paper attempts 

a first step toward excavating those origins by addressing 

the relationship between suburbs and cars at their meeting point: 

the street. 

Laid Bare: Debating an Expanded Role for 

Instrastructure at the World Trade Center 

Robert Arens, California Polytechnic State University 

One result of the tragic circumstances of the World Trade Center’s 

demise was the possibility to rethink the site, not from the 

ground up, but from 70 feet below ground level to the depth of 

Lower Manhattan’s bedrock. After months of debris removal, a 

space of tremendous potential emerged from beneath the rubble: 

an enormous sixteen-acre void made possible by a unique foundation 

system. This powerful space, which came to be known as “the 

bathtub”, was a realm made sacred by the tragedy that played out 

on its surface. The fact that the void was laced with infrastructure 

in the form of subway and commuter rail lines made it even more 

resonant. Recent remembrance ceremonies marking the tenth anniversary 

of the attacks, the opening of the September 11 Memorial, 

and the near topping-out of the tallest tower on the site are reasons 

to reassess the rebuilding effort at the WTC. This paper focuses 

on the project’s potential to involve the unique subterranean 

and infrastructural aspects of the site in its approach to urbanism. 

This paper examines how the subterranean world of the WTC site 

(and, by extension, Lower Manhattan), once laid bare, became the 

inspiration for framing not only the memory of 9/11, but all major 

land use decisions at Ground Zero. Discussed are redevelopment 

proposals from 2001 that explored the resultant void for its potential 

to lend conceptual and physical form to the site and in doing 

so reveal the subterranean world and its infrastructure, aspects of 

life so vital to the city of New York yet so invisible on its surface. 

These proposals, emotional and quixotic, inspired stakeholders, the 

public, the master planner, and the memorial designer to give serious 

consideration to the role of infrastructural elements such as 

tower footprints, slurry walls, bathtubs, bedrock, rail lines and subway 

lines in future plans for the site. Also discussed are the forces 

that ultimately led to a diminished role for infrastructure in the final 

master plan. 

Although unique conditions at the WTC site make it difficult to 

fully generalize the project’s lessons, the engagement of the spatial 

and programmatic opportunities below Lower Manhattan’s streets 

have certainly contributed to broader discussions about infrastructure 

and urbanism. Discussed are projects such as New York’s High 

Line and Low Line (Delancey Underground) that engage infrastructure 

in the creation of urban space and expand the spatial section 

of public realm to include the area both above and below the 

street. These projects, the author suggests, have been nudged into 

existence by the debate for an expanded role for infrastructure at 

the World Trade Center. 

Other Urbanisms: A Scalar Approach Towards Pervious 

Design 

Jen Maigret, University of Michigan 

Maria Arquero de Alarcon, University of Michigan 

This paper fosters the imaginative capacity of visions for Detroit’s 

future urbanism by understanding the city through the lens of water. 

This is a distinctly different approach to the pervasive discussions 

of shrinking cities, centered around the “demise” of the 

Motor City and wistful reminiscence of Motown’s heyday. Whereas 

current debate is mired in circular reasoning—the solution to Detroit’s 

overwhelming vacancy is less vacancy—our work positions 

the consideration of urban storm water management as a key tool 

for generative design strategies that encourage nested, scalar approaches 

and interdisciplinary collaboration. 



Open: Diversity 

Brian Kelly, University of Maryland 

Opportunities & Challenges: Learning Experience from 

International Architectural Students in the US 

Xiao Hu, University of Idaho 

During the past two decades, the number of architectural students 

from foreign countries in American universities has significantly increased. 

There are more students from Asia and South America 

who are working on undergraduate and graduate architectural 

degrees. Also, many educational exchange programs in different 

institutions bring more foreign students to architectural studios 

during a particular period of time ranging from three months to 

one year. 

The increasing participation of international students in American’s 

architectural studios has presented new challenges for the 

architectural curricula in each school. For example, most schools’ 

curricula tend to be homogenized because of the NAAB accreditation 

requirements with special emphases on studio trainings 

with the application of history, technology, structures, theory, and 

other technical and academic topics deemed necessary for an understanding 

of architecture and its role in society. However, most 

international students, who come from developing countries with 

high school diplomas or college degrees, are normally trained in a 

top-down teacher-centered model promoting introspective learning, 

which is different from the bottom-up student-centered model 

of knowledge transmission promoting extroverted learning used in 

American schools. 

In addition, the different social-cultural settings and language barrier 

add more difficulties for international students. In fact, there 

are wide disparities in the expectations in different nations with 

regard to what their architectural students are supposed to accomplish. 

These disparities include different curricular objectives, 

assessment criteria, and student behavior of conductions. When 

arriving at schools in the US, international students are often thrust 

into studios where they are expected to complete academic tasks 

that they may be completely unaware of. This can be very difficult 

for international students, especially if their confidence with the 

use of the English language in academic communication is still not 

strong. Problems with international students’ learning process in 

studios can wreak havoc on their academic performance, even if 

they actually have insightful ideas to express. 

In current architectural research, studies have mainly focused on 

general views of architectural pedagogical methods and the majority 

of mainstream architectural students. Some have discussed 

gender, racial and age influences. But the needs of internationals 

students gain limited attention, especially in terms of their perception 

and experience. 

Calling for more diverse engagement in architectural teaching and 

learning, this paper investigate the learning style preferences of international 

students majored in architecture and their perceptions 

of American curricular model through interviews with individual 

international students from three public universities in the US. The 


purpose of this paper is to investigate cognitive and environmental 

dimensions of international students’ learning experience and how 

the content and form of American architectural curricula influence 

their learning experience. 

This paper is a preliminary report of an on-going research project. 

Initial findings show that the most common challenges for international 

students in design studios are: language, acculturation, 

communication and socialization with American students, interpretation 

of the role of faculty, and passive learning attitude. The 

research findings also suggest that students from different ethnic 

groups demonstrate different perceptions and visions for the 

American curricula and thus indicate different learning outcomes. 

The Predicament of Diversity through the 

Architectural Pedagogy of Beginning 

Shima Mohajeri, Texas A&M University 

Abstract—The architectural discourse on diversity suggests the inclusion 

of “other” for the sake of new social, cultural and typological 

constructs. The assimilation and repetition of exemplary structures 

derived from a multiplicity of historical and geographical 

sources may nevertheless be reduced to an expression of banality 

and inauthenticity in architectural design. However, this negativity 

could be the beginning of a productive opening only if architecture 

builds upon the idea of difference in its original depth and leaves 

diversity at its surface. 

Through the analysis of one example of the architectural 

space of difference found in Steven Holl’s works, this paper theorizes 

difference not as a generator of diverse forms and types in 

design but as an originator of ideas. The critical thinker Gilles Deleuze 

has discerned in difference the dynamic force to seize upon 

newness through the “asymmetrical” repetition of ideas in their 

“perpetual displacement.” A similar translation of difference into 

architectural design in its state of beginning might bring originality 

and authenticity to the work of architecture. 

This paper aims to contribute a new pedagogical strategy for the 

actualization of difference in design by studying the works of Holl 

as he creatively repeats the patterns of modern aesthetic language 

in rapport with Japanese and Persian representations of time and 

space. 

The paper concludes that architectural difference does not arise 

from a tabula rasa but from the internal transformation of heterogeneous 

ideas in their fragmentary synthesis, which is more in resonance 

with the condition of globalization in architecture.

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012 - 2:00PM - 3:30PM 

Beyond Digital: Speculations on Analog Convergence 

Brian Lonsway, Syracuse University 

From Digital Materials To Self-Assembly 

Skylar Tibbits, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

A new paradigm is upon us, one that challenges our notions of assembly 

by looking to transfer digital and computational information 

from our design software and machine control through our physical 

methodologies of construction. The construction industry has 

traditionally been plagued by analogue processes inherited from 

the industrial revolution where raw materials are sent through machines 

and assembly sequences fighting tolerance, machine errors 

and efficiency. On the contrary, information can now flow through 

materials and embody adaptability and material computation, offering 

a new vision for construction where materials literally build 

themselves. This is a new paradigm for designing and making, one 

that offers the ability for self-assembling, self-repairing and replicating 

structures. This vision challenges our notions of the digital, 

converting analogue processes into digital information transfer by 

“computing-through-construction” and pointing towards new opportunities 

for manufacturing, construction and design tools. 

Parallel Tracks: Digital | Analog Dialogue in Toy 

Development 

Jennifer Akerman, University of Tennessee-Knoxville 

Designers and fabricators have long understood their work to 

be related, but distinct. Boundaries, some intuited, others legally 

proscribed, dictate that designers establish the intent for a given 

outcome, while fabricators generate the actual work or product. 

That understanding is an action-based view, focusing on tasks performed 

by specific people or entities. We could shift our consideration 

towards the nature of work itself and state that there have 

traditionally been two fields, interrelated but distinct: design and 

craft. How are we to understand the changes to both of these fields 

necessitated by the ways emerging methods, practices, and technologies 

are merging the two? This essay will discuss the digital 

| analog convergence in design and fabrication as illustrated by 

examples from a line of toys developed through the collaboration 

of an architect and mechanical engineer. Our work considers questions 

of craft and fabrication, relying extensively on both digital and 

tangible techniques in continual iterative dialogue. Also at hand is 

a parallel consideration of the digital | analog convergence in the 

realm of toy design, considering toys as objects designed for interaction 

and play. Our continued engagement in the convergence 

of technology, material, and culture in the interest of design and 

fabrication is a catalyst for speculations of what may come next. 

Émission 

Jordan Geiger, SUNY at Buffalo 

More than its physical matter, architecture’s conditions - its determinants, 

performance, milieu, and multiple stakeholders - grow 

ever more ethereal. The “ether” condition can be named as such 

because of its entropic, expanding and hazy mixture of physical 

and computational and other characteristics; and possibly for a resulting 

delirium in its movement past any paradigm in which any 

of these parameters can lay dominant claim to its formation. Answering 

to an ever-expanding set of contemporary exigencies from 

market crashes and shifting climates to globalized sources of building 

materials and the evolving influence of ubiquitous computing, 

the built environment provokes speculation on its possible futures 

that must lie far outside of typological or even scalar parameters. It 

needs critical fictions as a means for planning tactically past choices 

of utopic or dystopic scenarios, embracing instead a messy tangle 

of new and future influences and a sober acceptance that analog 

convergence recasts architects more like steampunk novelists or 

design noir authors (to borrow here a term from Anthony Dunne). 

These influences resemble the categories found in a building code 

or current teaching curriculum, but in name only: cultural, technological, 

legal, material, to name a few. Upon further examination, 

the nature of each has already so fundamentally transformed as to 

demand speculation far past existing models of architect-consultant 

relationships or any mere new upskilling for young designers. 

We need new methods now to participate in speculating on the 

built environment’s future. 

A Materiality of Agency//Speculations on the Impact of 

Biological Computation on Materiality and Space 

Nicole Koltick, Drexel University 

Architects have traditionally viewed space as a static entity that is 

defined, shaped, and enhanced through the use of material objects 

that give form, structure and order to our daily existence. There 

have been clear boundaries between inside and outside, delineation 

between distinct building materials, the program and the 

project. But looking forward, is it possible that human interactions 

with objects and environments might be drastically re-envisioned, 

encompassing a more malleable and adaptive view of space and 

materiality? In this paper, I will explore how potential human interactions 

with space, objects and information may be transformed 

in the future through analyzing recent developments in biological 

computing, synthetic biology and object-oriented philosophy. To 

start, I propose an expanded definition of agency with respect to 

materials and objects. How can we begin to formulate conceptions 

of agency as they relate to objects or new categories such as 

object-beings1? Recent writings from object oriented philosophers 

may offer a way forward through a novel reframing of the conventional 

pattern of interactions between humanity, materials and 

environments. Object oriented ontology allows for a total reconsideration 

of the relationships between ourselves, object-beings, and 

object-object associations. Humans are highly complex “machines” 



Beyond Digital Continued 

operating within a dense network of dynamic experiences, yet currently 

our spatial organizations are highly static, rigid and inefficient. 

The capacity of materials, networks and objects to possess 

emergent capabilities and behaviors requires our acknowledgement 

of this agency, and new relationships with space will likely 

be defined not by static physical boundaries, but rather by a series 

of negotiations, signals and exchanges. Space may well take on 

a more active role that transcends utility, function and normative 

or fashion-driven aesthetics in favor of a shifting, responsive condition 

rich with varying emotions, perceptions, temporalities and 

interactions. 

In complex systems, extremely sophisticated forms of higher-level 

order at the global scale can emerge from relatively simple, local 

interactions among individual agents. This ordering is a phenomenon 

seen across many systems and scales in biology, from the 

macroscopic to the cellular level. Engaging in the practice of design 

at these newly accessible scales might allow for a variety of information 

and intelligence to be configured into the materials and 

objects that we interact with. Towards these ends, biologically-inspired 

mechanisms of scaling, information reception and signaling 

can help us understand what makes a system resilient, complex 

and able to evolve. Such a shift towards a non-human centered 

understanding of systems and their interrelationships will become 

increasingly important as our environments and materiality expand 

their agency. 



Emerging Materials, Renewable Energy, and Ecological 

Design (1) 


Drawing Energy Abu Dhabi: Critical Reflections 

Lisa Moffitt, University of Edinburgh 

Energy is central to sustainable discourse and yet it is often taught 

in a static, quantitative manner that denies it a more productive 

role in design thinking. As a design tool, energy’s behavioral abstraction 

and invisibility overwhelms, leading to conceptual inaccessibility. 

But it is only by engaging with energy as a spatial entity 

with organizational consequences and physiological impacts 

that it can take on agency in design thinking. In Autumn 2010, I 

taught Drawing Energy Abu Dhabi, a third year design studio that 

explored energy’s spatial and organizational consequences using 

the act of drawing energetic exchanges as a design generator. 

This paper is not an exploration of the aims and ambitions of the 

studio but a critical reflection of the gaps and misfires that occurred 

within the course. A reflection of these gaps reflects larger gaps in 

energetic thinking within the discipline. After generally introducing 

the Drawing Energy studio structure, the paper explores how contemporary 

educators and practitioners engage with the topic of 

energy as a “spatial project” (Ghosn 2009). More specifically, the 

paper provides an expanded platform for discussing the behavior 

of energy, its scale and extents of operation, the taxonomic limitations 

that constrain thinking about it, and the representational 

opportunities that have the potential to deepen and enrich its role 

in design. The paper explores energy/matter exchanges at a foundational 

level in order to help build a shared understanding of more 

subtle ways in which energy informs the built environment. 

Biographical Statement: Lisa Moffitt is a Lecturer in Architectural 

Design at the University of Edinburgh. Lisa studied, practiced 

and taught in the US and Canada before moving to Edinburgh. In 

addition to teaching, she currently runs an independent practice, 

Studio Moffitt, which recently completed a design/build off grid 

house in rural Canada. She is also completing a PhD in Design on 

Drawing Energy, which looks to establish a disciplinary vocabulary, 

tools and techniques for discussing and designing spaces that foreground 

thermodynamic principles. 

EcoArchitectural Machines 

Brook Muller, University of Oregon 

Ecological imperatives provide impetus to develop new materials, 

ones that are efficient, that adapt to environmental stimuli, minimize 

negative impacts on human and ecosystem health, etc. Yet 

it is not simply a matter of what assemblies we might devise and 

evaluate: a deeply ecological architecture calls for new forms of 

‘accountability,’ new modes of describing materials, assemblies 

and their co-dependencies. Such an approach would emphasize 

projects as open experiments in the ‘arrangements’ of the living 

and nonliving. This essay considers how conceptual predispositions 

affect our ability to describe ecological materials and environments. 

It provides a speculative basis for aligning heterogeneous, 

event-laden ecologies and dynamic architectures of the city. It asks 

how urban interventions as hybrids of architectural fabrication and 

ecological regeneration might support a trajectory of enhanced 

human and biological diversity. Lastly it considers a proposal for 

an eco-architectural machine, a modest intervention that could be 

replicated throughout urban public spaces and that collapses architecture 

and ecology, establishes correspondences at vastly different 

scales, and aligns multi-sensory awareness, sociability and 

dramatically enhanced biological performance. 

Photosynthetic Energy and Ecological Recycling: The 

Architectural Potential of Algae Cultivation 

Gundula Proksch, University of Washington 

Designers are expanding the definition of Ecological Design by incorporating 

biological processes and systems directly in their design. 

Systems like green roofs and living machines have proved 

themselves invaluable for reducing a design’s overall environmental 

footprint. Algae-based energy is almost 30 times less expensive 

per unit than energy generated by photovoltaic technology, and 

algae biodiesel can already be produced at market-competitive 

prices. With its efficient energy production and potential for improving 

the health of the surrounding air and water, algae cultivation 

is the next photosynthetically driven system primed for architectural 

integration. 

This paper examines the various methods of algae farming, its opportunities 

to support cyclical systems, its design implications, and 

its integration into urban space. The paper will support its findings 

with examples from built and speculative projects that centrally 

feature algae farming: The WPA 2.0 Competition winner, Carbon 

T.A.P.; Metropolitan Magazine’s 2011 Design Competition winner, 

Process-Zero: Retrofit Resolution; the Blenheim Municipal Wastewater 

Plant in New Zealand; a Algae Photo-Bioreactor in Klötze, 

Germany; and the Green Power House in Columbia Falls, MT. 

Cultivation methods range from low-tech open ponds to computer-automated 

bioreactors. Each method varies the balance of 

yields, land, water, and energy usage, susceptibility to contamination, 

initial costs, and operating costs. Each system has very different 

design implications. Algae can effectively sequester carbon dioxide 

and treat wastewater while increasing its growth efficiency. 

These properties give it great potential for integration with other 

intrastructural systems like wastewater systems. These synergies 

can be developed into closed-loop systems within the built environment, 

resulting in lower CO2 emissions, nutrient reuse and efficient 

energy generation. 

These multi-layered benefits of algae cultivation initiate a rethinking 

of the relationships between sunlight, alternative energy and 

material recycling. This paper argues these new relationships have 

strong potential for future development of algae-integrated systems. 

Possibilities include integration into urban landscapes, existing 

building stock and power generation on the neighborhood 

scale. Challenges include economically down-scaling algal systems, 

onsite harvesting and the logistics of combining new infrastructures. 

To conclude, algae’s high ecological performance generates a 

multi-fold contribution towards improving the health of the environment. 

With its combination of carbon neutral/negative energy 

production and ecological recycling of environmental pollutants, 

the integration of algae cultivation in the built environment opens 

a new dimension to ecological design. 



Emerging Materials (1) Continued 

REIs: Renewable Energy Infrastructures 

Chris Ford, University of Nebraska-Lincoln 

If the architectural discipline is to reclaim its influence on the built 

environment, then it must conceive of research-led and performance-based 

solutions that address issues beyond aesthetic finishes 

and the market-serving provision of habitable space. Furthermore, 

as issues and problems relating to the built environment 

become ever more layered and complex, architect-led interdisciplinary 

teams will become necessary to address them. 

One such opportunity for leadership is infrastructure design, although 

it is historically shaped by the engineering discipline. However, 

if we share Buckminster Fuller’s observation that “society operates 

on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not 

realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking,” 

then as the discipline of Engineering requires higher modes of specialized 

thinking, architects remain in an advantageous position to 

continue to act comprehensively, and engage both technological 

and infrastructural innovation in a critical way. The challenge for 

architects first lies in the recognition of their own comprehensive 

propensities, and then the deliberate engagement with true issues 

of infrastructural performance and associative yields. 

While the discipline of engineering continues to generate re-productive 

and mono-functional infrastructural solutions, then architects, 

qualified by their comprehensive propensities, are positioned 

as “impact players” for conceiving of multi-functional infrastructural 

solutions to address the demonstrated needs of society. The 

design of new infrastructure typologies, especially those with hybridized 

qualities, drastically changes the position, contribution, 

and responsibility of the professional disciplines involved in their 

creation. To this end, architects should no longer wait for an invitation 

to produce viable infrastructure solutions. 

The opportunity must be claimed. 

Our university-based design / research team has identified and focused 

on a problem that is defined by renewable energy production, 

electrical transmission, and urban land use policy. We believe 

a Renewable Energy Infrastructure (REI) addresses this problem in 

an effective way and ultimately surpasses the prevailing practices 

of each of these three identified areas. 

An REI seeks to generate renewable energy megawatts (MW) at 

an industrial scale through the simultaneous harnessing of wind, 

solar, and geothermal resources, but within an integrated, holistic, 

and free-standing facility positioned in an urban environment. An 

REI is not a retrofit of a pre-existing architectural condition, but 

rather is conceived as a new infrastructure typology to be owned 

and operated by an electrical utility for purposes of servicing users 

in high-population areas. 

Infrastructure cannot be fully realized in ideological form alone. 

If we are truly interested in affecting either incremental improvements 

to existing infrastructures, or the prognostication of a fundamentally 

new infrastructure type, then we must proceed with a 

heightened seriousness in our design intelligence, a dire sense of 

urgency in the timeliness that we work, and focused clarity upon 

the effect that we want to induce, just as the technological innovators 

Brunelleschi, Wright, and Saarinen have done before us. 



Open: Community (2) 


Activating Agency: Assessing Impacts of Global 

Collaborative Practices 

Michael Zaretsky, University of Cincinnati 

The question that anyone engaging global collaborative practice 

faces is whether the impacts of their work are more positive than 

negative. At one presentation I gave early in the process of developing 

a health center in rural Tanzania, a Brazilian woman asked 

me if I spoke the local language. I stated that I did not and she proclaimed 

that I had no right to design something for a community if 

I didn’t speak their language. 

Following three years of extensive research in the US and in Africa, 

I have come to realize that unquestionable contradictions are 

inevitable when an educated American in a Midwestern university 

is leading the design of a health center in rural Tanzania – a region 

with fundamentally different cultural practices, languages, climate, 

construction and context. But, I have also come to accept that if 

we recognize this challenge and assume that we are going to make 

mistakes along the way, we can still create something that is going 

to have positive impacts for communities around the world. 

The greatest realization is that while the communities with 

whom we are working are gaining benefits, our students, colleagues, 

consultants and many others throughout our communities 

are benefiting in profound ways for this process. People 

are becoming engaged and active within in collaborative practices 

within their own communities and communities abroad. 

Architecture for the Public Good, A Problematic 

Development Process 

David Kratzer, Philadelphia University 

Given public need, architecture can provide for social needs, effect 

behavior and support social change. Often referred to as architecture 

for the “pubic good,” public service architecture can be defined 

as work built for public need without the incentive of financial 

profit. Sandy Hirshen, past Chair of Berkeley Architecture program, 

often referred to public service work as “a battle for an appropriate 

architecture and for social equity.” He spoke of a “democratization 

of design” condition where “a paying client and middlemen are interposed 

between the user and the designer” resulting in a severed 

relationship between the architect and the users of their buildings. 

Most students of architecture share an altruistic optimism about 

social architecture. The process for bringing public service architecture 

into being, though, is extremely complex and controlled by 

Hirshen’s political “middlemen.” Without an understanding of the 

developmental processes and their effects on design, the architect 

will be at a distinct disadvantage to better the world of public service 

architecture. This paper explores this underlying context in 

chronicling the work of a homeless assistant center design project 

completed by students at Philadelphia University. 

Millennials and Design Education 

Richard Sweeney, New Jersey Institute of Technology 

Darius Sollohub, New Jersey Institute of Technology 

All schools of design - including architecture, planning, industrial 

design and other allied disciplines - are communities made of faculty, 

staff and students. Of these groups, students are by far the 

largest and most dynamic constituents. Entering the second decade 

of a new century, design academies find themselves shepherding 

a new and unique group through studios and classes, the 

so-called Millennials. This generation is the first to have matured 

with both the computer and the internet. They are distinct, in command, 

and leading the digital revolution around us. The authors of 

this document come from different backgrounds and together they 

ground this paper in both recent literature focused on both Millennials 

and design education, combined with surveys, focus groups 

and other outreach. The authors organize this paper in response 

to generalized findings on both the behavior characteristics and 

personality traits of Millennials, dividing those into two categories: 

those supporting design pedagogy and those challenging it. And 

while other research has examined common behaviors and traits 

that distinguish Millennials from previous generations at the same 

age in different environments, this paper selects and discuses the 

largely unexamined performance of Millennials within the context 

of design education. 



1988–1997: Ambitions and Apprehensions of a “Digital Revolution” 

John Stuart, Florida International University 

Sunil Bald, Yale University 

Eulogy to Paperless Studios: The Kernel for Pulsation 

in Architecture 

Eric Goldemberg, Florida International University 

This presentation is both a eulogy to the paperless era, and a proposal 

for a new critical reception of digital design through a lens 

of rhythmic perception; a hopeful look at the possibility for digital 

design to move beyond mere instrumentality and engage with core 

aspects of the discipline. 

Paperless studios flourished during the early ‘90s propelled from 

the digital hub of Columbia University and quickly expanded 

throughout academia, infecting and inflecting the profession as 

well as benefitting from the feedback process activated by pioneering 

practices such as Greg Lynn, Jesse Reiser, Hani Rashid, 

and others. These architects overlapped design research practices 

with studio pedagogy favored by the pervasive culture of digital 

experimentation, and coupled by a fast culture of publications 

leading to cycles of excess and consumption. New generations of 

designers grew and multiplied the novel techniques afforded by 

computational literacy, basking in the glory of a new found faith in 

“technique based studios” whereby projects pushed a new craft, an 

expertise in handling ever more complex geometrical calculations 

and astounding effects. The decade was marked by the boundless 

pursuit of new spatial sensations, freed from the constraints of Euclidean 

geometry and tired notions of typology. As a consequence 

of such exuberant and often times overindulgent experimentation, 

the conceptual breadth of digital design grew thinner and it has 

been difficult ever since to develop new objectives for such work 

beyond the physical pleasures of digital fabrication. The death of 

paperless studios engendered the discourse of rhythmic affect. 

Extreme Makeover; or How the F-Word Shaped 

Contemporary Architecture 

Dora Epstein Jones, Southern California Institute of Architecture 

“Extreme Makeover” is a speculative essay connecting the basic 

tenets of contemporary architectural exploration to the philosophical 

mandates established by second-wave feminism. Beginning 

with the discourses iniatiated by Irigaray, Kristeva, Haraway and 

Grosz, both formative and embedded in post-structuralism, this 

essay traces a direct line from the stated interests in differenceas-difference, 

minor literatures, cyborg bodies, repressed emotions 

and technologized desiring to the ethos of software-driven formfinding 

permeating architectural academics over the last ten years. 

Like the television show it is named for, “Extreme Makeover” celebrates 

these developments; and in doing so, reminds us of the 

fundamental female root source. 


The Autonomous Nature of Creativity in Juxtaposition 

to the New Structuralism 

Hollee Becker, Catholic University of America 

Creativity is independent of technology; it lies in the mind of the 

designer and may be either augmented or hindered by the capabilities 

and limitations of digital software. For the purpose of argument, 

this paper will limit itself to the creation of complex form. 

Fifty years ago complex forms involving double curvatures were 

accomplished without the use of digital technology and through 

the same basic strategies used today. The only difference is, since 

the digital revolution of the 1990s, software allows the designer to 

create form through the application of rules or parameters rather 

than conceiving form wholly through inspiration, tradition and the 

vernacular. 

If creativity is autonomous, then digital technology is merely a tool 

and not a driver of design. If not, creativity may be directed or 

dictated by the limits of software. The term New Structuralism 

implies a return to rules, a process- driven design methodology 

fully entwined with research of project parameters and materiality. 

Rivka Oxman states, “The New Structuralism presents a body of 

novel representational and process models in which form, structure 

and material are integrated as one entity in a single model of design”16. 

The disposition of creative autonomy with regard to form, 

structure, and material is assessed by comparison of complex form 

design in pre- and post-digital design. The case studies then address 

concerns about the effect of digital tools on creative design.


Digital Nouveau and the New Materiality 

Armando Montilla, Clemson University 

Digital Plecnik : Vienna Years 

Magdalena Garmaz, Auburn University 

This paper proposes that by looking at the work of the architects of 

the Wagner School, Joze Plecnik in particular, one can identify a series 

of connective threads with the digital technologies of the present 

day. Digital technologies have enabled production of myriad 

of wall panel and cladding systems, with a focus on predetermined 

architectural form and materiality. It is important to state that the 

basic premise behind his architectural production remains true to 

Gottfried Semper’s Bekleidung theory, which provided the theoretical 

grounding to Plecnik’s work. Semper’s theory remains, even 

after a century and a half, as inspiring and fresh, as it was when it 

was first introduced to the architectural audience. In other words, 

Plecnik’s work embodies the same principles that were/are championed 

not only by Otto Wagner, but also by our contemporaries. 

Semper’s attention to the surface, or skin, rather than the structure 

of the wall, in relation to the space (making), found its early testing 

in Plecnik’s Vienna work. That same “Semperian cloth” richly 

adorned with architectural ornament, can be observed in the work 

of Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, who, with the help of digital 

technology, create buildings that give an even more complex 

interpretation of the relationship between the surface and space. 

Material Postproduction 

Adam Fure, University of Michigan 

Material postproduction is an approach to working with architectural 

materials based on principles of manipulation, multiplication, 

and mixing. It draws from art theory, most notably Nicolas Bourriard’s 

text Postproduction and the writings of Simon O’Sullivan. 

Both writers articulate a model of art practice based on principles 

of connectivity, where establishing links between disparate objects, 

people, and practices is more important than creating original or 

autonomous art. Following these accounts, material postproduction 

advances a design approach that combines diverse materials, 

varied logics of application, and superficial alterations to create 

works of architecture that embody a broad range of cultural and 

disciplinary associations and experiential effects. 

Material postproduction is technological in nature but not founded 

on distinct technologies. Rather, new technology is used to expand 

architecture’s access to diverse types of matter. Material postproduction 

uses digital patterning to organize and interlace disparate 

materials producing heterogeneous aggregates. Superficial treatments 

are deployed to amplify visual and tactile depth and/or undercut 

the typical associations of common materials. In this way, 

both materials’ ability to transfer meaning and its physical status as 

raw matter are exaggerated and contaminated to produce diverse 

sets of associations and material qualities, yielding an experience 

that vacillates between the realms of the haptic, the visual, and the 

conceptual. 

Finally, material postproduction is opportunistically positioned in 

relation to architectural history. Past theories of architectural materiality 

are mined for latent relevance in contemporary contexts. 

Through the combination of seemingly oppositional strategies, 

material postproduction sets up relational approaches to design 

underwritten by a diverse set of concepts and material tactics. In 

doing so, material postproduction reactivates dormant disciplinary 

attitudes, imbuing vitality through insertion into new speculative 

domains. 

Nouveau Pulsation - 100 Years of Craft Evolution: 

From Art Nouveau to Digital Pulsation 

Eric Goldemberg, Florida International University 

This paper collapses 100 years between the intense deployment 

of ornament during the Art Nouveau period and the contemporary 

flourishing of ornamental, rhythmic production through digital 

design and fabrication, speculating on the renewed potential 

for modulation systems to generate novel architectural tectonics 

and spatial effects. There is a complex and historical interrelation 

between ornament and techniques of architectural design and 

production that connects the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. 

Ornament is considered here as the ultimate product of rhythmic 

perception, a locus for fecund architectural exploration. 

Pulsation generates ornamental effects that are not ad hoc, they 

are inherent to the rhythmic forces that activate dynamic changes 

in space, reflecting mutations and transition which get indexed on 

the tectonic connections within the range of topological geometry. 

Ornament, rhythmic awareness and new modes of craft triggered 

the concept of “Nouveau Pulsation”, a continuum of rhythmic geometries 

that brings together design sensibilities of two different, 

but intricately connected eras. The focus of Digital Nouveau is to 

highlight the shifting terrain of craft and ornament, as it has evolved 

from the 1900s until the present time. The comparison seeks a critical 

analysis and integration of a continuum of design production 

of 2 intense periods of approximately 15 years each, both of which 

articulated important transitions spanning 100 years, connecting 

the early 20th century with the early 21st century and the future. 

Contemporary digital practices and Art Nouveau share an interest 

in the spatial and aesthetic capacities of rhythmic affect coupled 

with ornamental form. 



Digital Nouveau and the New Materiality Continued 

Tactile Values: A Political Economy of Smooth Surfaces 

Ann Marie Brennan, University of Melbourne 

Not unlike the age of the Italian Futurists, digital design can be 

understood as the result of the merging between man and machine. 

Today the computer is understood as prosthesis; not quite 

an ergonomic one, nor what the Futurists referred to as metallization 

of humans with machines, but nevertheless trending toward 

that direction. We can begin to understand this relationship by 

re-examining historical moments within Modern architectural history 

such as streamlined design and Italian Futurism, and looking 

at how these moments were tied to methods of manufacture and, 

more importantly, fluid methods of valuation. With these examples 

in mind we can begin to contemplate how to assess the values and 

meanings of the multiple configurations of digital design. 

No doubt, the emergence of digital technologies changed the manner 

in which architects design today. In addition to the introduction 

of this new mode of production, the results of these novel methods 

of parametric processes create a specific formal aesthetic, one 

which has been described as smooth surfaces of forms consisting 

of some homogeneous plastic or liquid metallic, mercury-like 

material, initially referred to within the architectural discipline as 

“blobs.” And while these forms are striking in their appearance as 

buildings, the formal games employed to bring about these creations 

seem at best shallow, or even arbitrary. A significant factor 

that leads to their similar appearance is that these surfaces seem to 

be without qualities other than smoothness, and therefore appear 

bereft of any significant meaning. One way to infuse these new 

forms with meaning may be to compare them with other moments 

within the history and appreciation of forms. Inspiration for such a 

process can be found within the discipline of art history, which by 

definition perhaps contains the tradition of looking at forms and 

smooth surfaces in a more rigorous and analytical way than architects. 

This paper re-examines some historical moments in industrial 

design and art history that emphasized the characteristics 

of smooth surfaces. These historical cases may offer some insight 

into analyzing and assessing current digitally-designed forms and 

reframe the way in which we, as architects, assign both aesthetic 

and economic values to these seemingly non-descript, digitally designed 

surfaces. 



Emerging Materials, Renewable Energy, and Ecological 

Design (2) 


Aluminet: A Study In Technology Transfer and Radiant 

Barriers Post-Sputnik 

Ryan Salvas, Auburn University 

The 1950’s were a time of architectural optimism and innovation, a byproduct 

of an industry-wide digestion and re-contextualization of the 

previous decade’s focused war effort. One such product was radiant 

barriers, which developed through technology transfer and collaboration 

between building scientists and NASA researchers. Since then, 

architecture has failed to amass a synergy between disparate technological 

worlds. Architecture is now a commodity industry, and research 

has devolved into coupling and splitting from other fields. This 

paper describes a return to that integrated transfer model through 

the development of an interdisciplinary experiment that tests the architectural 

applicability of a high performance material (Aluminet) as 

a new type of radiant barrier. This process is illustrated through a joint 

venture between Auburn University’s Architecture Department and 

the Kinesiology Department. The result is a proof of concept supporting 

the future engineering of a new type of dynamic radiant barrier for 

use in diverse climates. 

Beyond Arrows: Natural Ventilation in a High-rise 

Building with Double Skin Façade 

Mona Azarbayjani, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 

There is an unexploited opportunity to employ either fully naturally 

ventilated, or partially, when mixed with mechanical ventilation in 

large office buildings in Chicago climate. This type of ventilation in 

those buildings are more desirable than the mechanically ventilated 

counterpart because of the potential to reduce the high air-conditioning 

energy demands, yet provide a comfortable and healthy indoor 

environment. The biggest factor to take into consideration when deciding 

upon a high-rise ventilation is that the building’s velocity profile 

increases with height. The conventional way to solve this issue has 

been to seal the facade and put a mechanical- ventilation plant into 

it. However, double facades are built to allow natural ventilation in 

high-rise buildings which represents an undeniable advantage for the 

buildings with great height. 

The possibility of exploiting natural ventilation due to complexity 

of physical phenomena that is non-linearity, chaotic behavior of air 

movement, demands a major tool “Computational Fluid Dynamics” 

(CFD) for design analyses. Fluent was used to study the airflow and 

temperature distribution in the occupied spaces evaluating different 

possibiity of exploiting natural ventilation for different outside conditions. 

In this study two driving forces-wind and stack effect (buoyancy forces)- 

are investigated to study the possibility of providing comfort in 

the building. The results document the indoor climate, the boundary 

conditions for further planning and the possibilities for high-rise buildings 

with the new innovative enclosure. 

Simulating Visual Comfort and Energy Performance of 

Organic Energy Harvesting Electrochromic Windows 

(EH-ECWs) in Mid-size Commercial Office Buildings 

Amanda Bruot, University of Washington 

Christopher Meek, University of Washington 

An interdisciplinary research group including faculty from the College 

of Engineering and the College of Built Environments at the University 

of Washington (UW) in Seattle is developing a new generation of organic 

energy harvesting electrochromic windows (EH-ECWs) based 

on recently developed organic conjugated polymers and switchable 

dye technology. EH-ECWs offer the potential for substantial energy 

saving and increased visual comfort in buildings. This paper describes 

work undertaken by the Department of Architecture to simulate the 

potential performance of EH-ECWs and to begin to develop optimum 

deployment strategies of EH-ECWs in existing and new commercial 

office buildings. This includes simulation using a code compliant Department 

of Energy (DOE) reference model and “high-performance” 

building model with EH-ECW window technology in four climate 

zones, across the following parameters: net site energy consumption, 

thermal performance, and the on-site power generation potential of 

energy-harvesting organic photovoltaics. A pilot assessment of visual 

comfort using a contemporary net-zero commercial office building 

design as a test case was also conducted. 


SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2012 - 10:30AM - 12:00PM 

4D Architecture 

Keith Green, Clemson University 

4D Environments and Design: Prototyping Interactive 


Kihong Ku, Philadelphia University 

Jonathan Grinham, Studio27 

This paper describes the prototyping efforts of an interdisciplinary 

design approach that explores interactive environments and 

design innovation. 4D environments relate to the proliferation of 

interactive appliances and the possibility of interconnecting people 

and objects, and the paper presents key concepts of 4D environments 

and its relation to design. Designing 4D environments 

extends beyond developing interactive phones, games, reading 

devices which confine their interactivity to surfaces of screens. 4D 

environments require an understanding of the complex physical 

interactions facilitated by embedded computation and physical 

kinetic counterparts and the application of such knowledge to design 

and production. 

The authors build on previous work conducted in the field of interactive, 

responsive and kinetic architecture and describe in detail 

one of the exploratory projects that evolved into further outreach 

endeavors and design studio workshops. The creative opportunities 

of off -the-shelf sensors, actuators, and microcontrollers were 

examined through the design development of responsive architectural 

systems which were investigated through the technical 

integration of interactivity, physical computing and virtual simulations. 

The initial design research involved collaborations with faculty 

and students from architecture, computer science, mechanical 

engineering, electrical engineering, leading practitioners, and 

open source online communities. A series of architectural scenarios 

of kinetic shading partitions were explored and prototyped using 

digital manufacturing tools and processes. Concentrating on developing 

new tectonics through 4D environments, the theoretical 

and experimental explorations of this research expand the understanding 

of emerging digital technologies and question the impact 

on architecture: Can architecture actively and dynamically 

change physical environments in real time while becoming a social 

medium? Can architecture connect the virtual and the physical? 

Can architecture become an interface to connect what were once 

thought to be disparate ideas and worlds? 

Self-organizing Strategy: An Adaptable Growth Model 

for Architecture 

Taro Narahara, New Jersey Institute of Technology 

The paper explores a possible future direction of computational 

design strategy through a new conceptual method for a city design 

tool. The method uses interactions and feedback among its own 

components, agents and environment, and produces new instances 

of spatial layout of paths and buildings from primary inputs of 

a given landform and environmental conditions. Agents’ behaviors 

are updated accordingly as new paths and buildings are generated. 

This co-evolutionary process between agents and environments is 

known to exist in many self-organizing systems. 


Reflections on Kinetic Reticulated Frameworks 

Bernhard Sill, Clemson University 

This contribution is reflecting on kinetic reticulated frameworks, 

structures composed of linear elements, that adapt to different 

climatic conditions or reconfiguring to various functions. Kinetic 

systems are devised to adapt and change in shape, therefore their 

assessment shifts from static behavior to dynamic performance. 

The aesthetics and technology are linked to movement and variability, 

revealing ephemeral aptitudes. 

The goal is to explore a new vocabulary for kinetic architecture, 

expanding the established range of static buildings with adaptive, 

convertible and kinetic architectural systems. 

The novelty of the approach is the identification and exposure of 

a comprehensive survey of loadbearing principles in architecture 

structures and to develop for each of the fundamental structural 

behaviors a measure to convert a static structure into a kinetic 

mechanism. On this basis several new basic kinetic loadbearing 

systems could be developed. More complex systems can be synthesized 

through combination and hybridization. 

Cloud Code: Public Space in 4 Dimensions 

Andrew Vrana, University of Houston 

Joseph Meppelink, University of Houston 

Travis McCarra, Metalab 

“Cloud Code” in the City of Houston Permitting Center is a conduit 

and real-time display of the occupancy, activity, and air quality 

in the building. The interaction of occupants within the physical 

space of the public areas is measured and displayed as civic art.


Digital Details 

Matt Burgermaster, New Jersey Institute of Technology 

Optimization Takes Command: Miscalculations in 

Performative Design 

Doris Kim Sung, University of Southern California 

As the natural in nature gradually disappears, research’s obsession 

with simulating, replicating, deviating, and mutating nature as 

means to control the extinction of that same organic world around 

us, ironically increases the realm of artificiality and, ultimately, the 

dependency on math, sciences and technology. Design research is 

no exception, where the notions of optimization are derived from 

the self-perpetrating obsessions with math and science, reliance on 

algebraic or logarithmic equations for geometry generation, and 

the dependence on the logic of the physics of nature for identification 

of the lowest energy states. This same pursuit of optimization 

has profoundly influenced decision-making in the design process. 

In many cases, efficient use of materials, effective selection of design/construction 

strategies, lower energy use and minimal waste 

have affected the choices that are made from schematic design 

to construction, and add to the traditional pressures of cost effectiveness 

and densification of planametric space. Engineers have 

become integral players of schematic design teams, playing larger 

roles in the integration of structural and M/E/P systems in order 

to prevent unnecessary redundancy throughout. Additionally, 

newly available and powerful computer software makes the realization 

of optimization of complex shapes, fluid parameterization, 

unimaginable forms and material feasible. Never before have we 

been able to make, test and fabricate parts of architecture as we 

can today. As a result, projects have become more ambitious, resulting 

in forms and tectonics that are complex, multi-faceted and 

comprehensive with a definitive effect on the aesthetic outcome 

of a project and an indelible change on the new landscape of man. 

These projects have historically been limited to static systems. 

Now, add dynamic input systems into this equation. Because realistically 

architecture must respond and mediate between multiple 

non-stationary variables, it is clear that the response of the 

architecture must also be dynamic and fluid from the large scale 

(programmatically) to the very small (nanomaterials). But, to understand 

the meaning of optimization vis-a-vis performance criteria 

in dynamic models, holistic understanding of the input, output 

and deviations must be considered. This paper will present projects 

completed by the author made of thermobimetals, where the 

consequences of sheer science resolution and idiosyncratic inconsistencies 

from logic, lead to an aesthetic of optimization, responsiveness 

and performance of dynamic systems, namely in the use 

or misuse of incomplete digital tools (scripting, programs, etc.), 

true understanding of fabrication tools and assembly limitations, 

irregular insertion of overlapping mobile components (material behavior), 

and wavering definition of criteria in structural systems. 

Although “form, structure, and material act upon each other, and 

this behavior of all three cannot be predicted by analysis of any 

one of them separately” (Weinstock, 2010), for purpose of discussion, 

each will be identified in its own section, but, by no means, 

should be considered in isolation from its intertwined context. 

Tending to the Detail 

Patrick Doan, Virginia Tech 

In an ‘age of digital ubiquity’ it is important to not lose sight of the 

architectural details potency within the practice of architecture. 

The detail is not passive, disposable, a production drawing buried 

within the pages of a construction document set, or the product 

of a specific tool. Rather, it is the embodiment of the architect’s 

knowledge, skill, understanding, and sensitivity to how materials 

and spaces are thoughtfully formed and brought together. Born 

of the architect’s imagination, the detail is complex and multi-dimensional; 

operating simultaneously at multiple scales addressing 

constructive, formal, and spatial questions of joining. Tending to 

the detail is to turn our attention back to the role the architectural 

detail plays in the making and crafting of works of architecture. 



Integration, Not Segregation: Interdisciplinary Design 

Pedagogy for the Second 100 Years 

James Doerfler, California Polytechnic State University 

Kevin Dong, California Polytechnic State University 

A 21st Century Approach to Trans-disciplinary 

Sustainable Design Education 

Robert Fleming, Philadelphia University 

Sustainability is a powerful force that is fundamentally reshaping humanity’s 

relationship to the natural world ushering in the 21st Century 

and the Age of Ecology. From inefficient unhealthy buildings to carbon 

neutral living buildings; from paved lifeless landscapes to ecologically 

integrated environments; from stark and sterile interiors to daylit 

and effusive indoor environments, architects, designers, landscape architects 

and planners have begun to show life, to begin to illicit visions 

of a grand and green future. While practicing design professionals 

benefit from plentiful continuing education opportunities, the upcoming 

generation of built environment professionals must rely on the 

academies to deliver the kind of holistic interdisciplinary educational 

experience that is so needed in the 21st century. At the foundation of 

such an approach lies the ethical framework of the Triple Bottom Line. 

Now released from their traditional dialectic relationship, social/environmental 

progress on the one hand and economic progress on the 

other can now comfortably coexist to form a more integrated version 

of sustainability. However, the now culturally accepted Triple Bottom 

Line while useful in explaining the philosophic goal of integral sustainability, 

leaves few, if any clues as to how to attack such integration in 

a design education setting. As a response, this paper will explore a 

framework of five intentions for trans-disciplinary sustainable design 

education: Design Consciousness (why are we designing?); Inclusiveness 

(Who is designing?); Cooperation (How do we collaborate?); Realignment 

(What order should information be communicated?); and 

lastly Integration (What is the goal of sustainable design education?). 

But design educators must move from the comforting realm of intention 

into the more painful and impactful process of making interdisciplinary 

pedagogy operational. Therefore, this paper will also explore 

important aspects of each intention in the proposed framework with 

a specific focus on how interdisciplinary work forms the centerpiece 

of a trans-disciplinary M.S. in Sustainable Design at Philadelphia University. 

The Program, now in its fifth year, has existed long enough to 

provide some useful insight into the various educational techniques, 

strategies and methodologies needed to achieve an authentic sustainability 

experience for students seeking to participate in a sustainable 

21st century. 

A New Regional Platform for Computational Fabrication 

Brad Bell, University of Texas at Arlington 

Kevin McClellan, University of Texas at San Antonio 

Andrew Vrana, University of Houston 

Will Laufs, Buro Happold 

TEX-FAB is a non-profit organization founded between three universities 

in Texas with the primary function of connecting design professionals, 

academics, and manufacturers interested in digital fabrication. 

The three co-directors established TEX-FAB as a collective action, 

one that endeavors to combine divergent interests and capabilities, 

for the purpose of strengthening the regional discourse around digital 

fabrication and parametric design. The three primary avenues for accomplishing 

this goal are set out as Theoria (Lectures / Exhibitions), 

Poiesis (Workshops) and Praxis (Competitions / Commissions). We 

see this type of effort as a new paradigm focused on providing a 

network of affiliated digital fabrication resources, and a platform for 

education and exchange on issues of parametric modeling. It is our 

position that TEX-FAB engages the new and growing awareness of a 

regional and global hybridization. We seek to leverage the burgeoning 

global knowledge base to produce a more specific and contextual 

dialogue within the region we operate, teach, and practice. We assert 

that TEX-FAB presents a new model for collaborative engagement 

through the framework of our organization. Specifically, we will use 

the international competition REPEAT our organization recently hosted 

to illustrate how collaboration is a vital tenet to the success of executing 

a complex full-scale installation entitled Minimal Complexity. 


In Support of Pre-Professional Relations: Guidelines for 

Effective Educational Collaborations between 

Architecture and Engineering 

Clare Olsen, California Polytechnic State University 

Sinead Namara, Syracuse University 

Despite the increasing reliance on architecture-engineering collaborations 

in the professional world, in the United States, students from 

the disciplines generally have few opportunities for interdisciplinary 

learning. Recognizing the potential for architecture and engineering 

course collaborations to (1) integrate creativity in engineering 

education, (2) encourage architecture students to strive for greater 

technical resolution, and to (3) align pedagogy with practice, the 

Syracuse University Schools of Engineering and Architecture applied 

and were granted a three year National Science Foundation Innovations 

in Engineering Education grant. Amongst other initiatives, the 

grant supported the development of an interdisciplinary course, and 

in the first two iterations, the authors co-taught a design elective 

focused on Shell Structures. Teaching a diverse group of students 

posed interesting challenges. By recognizing and building upon the 

differences amongst the students’ understanding, we sought to establish 

a common ground for communication and design through a 

shared vocabulary and skill set. Analyses of the courses’ successes 

and failures were evaluated through NSF-supported assessments 

conducted by the Office of Professional Research and Development 

in the School of Education at Syracuse University. As a result of 

these evaluations and our teaching experiences, we have created a 

number of guidelines for future engineering and architecture course 

collaborations. We hope these guidelines will support and enhance 

future interdisciplinary collaborations, which we see as crucial to the 

curricula of professional degree programs. 

Reaching for Sustainability Using Technology and 

Teamwork: Teaching Integrated Project Delivery in 

Multi-Disciplinary Studios 

Kathrina Simonen, University of Washington 

Carrie Dossick, University of Washington 

Robert Pena, University of Washington 

Designers and builders are under increasing pressure to innovate 

and adapt to rapid changes in economic, social and environmental 

conditions. As educators we must be flexible enough to adopt new 

teaching methods and creative enough to teach to an uncertain 

future. Over the past three years an evolving Integrated Practice/ 

Design Build Studio has been taught at the University of Washington. 

The Integrated studio is a project-based senior undergraduate 

construction management/architecture studio where students 

from the two disciplines as well as civil engineering and landscape 

architecture worked in a collaborative environment to deliver a 

design proposal, conceptual estimate, schedule and construc-tion 

plan for a building project with challenging sustainable goals such 

as net-zero energy consumption. All studio projects have focused 

on reaching towards sustainability and demonstrating the possibilities 

for making market-ready, high-performance, low environmental 

impact buildings. The pedagogical model uses technology and 

teamwork, building on the processes of Integrated Project Delivery 

(IPD), a design approach that integrates people, systems, business 

structures and practices for harnessing the talents and insights of 

all participants in order to optimize project results, increase value 

to the owner, reduce waste, and maximize efficiency through all 

phases of design, fabrication and construction. In this paper we 

will report the faculty perspective of the challenge of interdisciplinary 

education that brings together students from departments that 

have very different expectations, histories, disciplines and cultures 

in the context of a sustainable project supported by BIM technologies 

and the opportunities that this teaching model presents for 

education and practice alike.

SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2012 - 2:00PM - 3:30PM 

Post-Parametric Environments 

Jennifer Leung, Yale University 

Biochemical Injections - Architecture as a Biotechnical 

Interface in a Post-parametric Environment. 

Mina Yaney 

Biochemical Injections is examining the potential of a creative, heterogeneous 

and perpetually variable interface between architecture, 

bio-technologies, postmodern philosophy as well as political 

theory. The intersecting point between these four fields is identified 

as the organic body, taken to mean all kinds of different bodies, 

be they biological, chemical, physical or geological. What all 

embodied entities share, is that one can clearly conceive of them as 

an irreducible, corporeal, informational field which displays the relation 

and performs the negotiation between different forces. This 

difference of forces can be variably re-modulated and interfaced 

through different biotechnologies. Since biotechnological practice 

is circling around harnessing, manipulating and managing the 

manufacturing, differentiating, propagating and fusing capacities 

of tissues, cells, proteins and molecules, the notion of the organic 

body is, hence, rendered as intrinsically open for re-modulation. 

The biotechnological re-modulatability of the organic body opens 

up a vast ethico-aesthetical paradigm on a molecular level and 

clearly implies a re-modulation of the political, philosophical and 

architectural as well. Hence, architectural design can be rethought 

as inducing organic form from within - through modulation - rather 

than mechanically imposing form from the outside. Can we specify 

architectural approaches in which biotechnics may amplify, augment, 

recombine and interface different life forces, forms of vitality, 

and transformative productivity, governing the emergence of 

environmental bodies of habitation? 

Communication Theory as an Anti-environment for 

Understanding the Effects of Technological Environments 

upon Cultural Change 

Isaac Lerner, Eastern Mediterranean University 

Abstract: In order to deal with the bias of the ‘environment’ shaping 

cultural and social prejudices in architecture and urbanism in 

the information age, Marshall McLuhan’s communication theory 

of cultural change provides a meaningful analysis of the effects of 

technological environments, as a means of heightened perception. 

In the current age, where the digital infrastructural environment 

of cyberspace envelopes and transforms all pre-existing cultural 

and natural habitats, the scale and pace of this transformation and 

its psychological, sociological as well as material effects escapes 

perception. McLuhan’s prose-poetic style and his mosaic form of 

discourse satirize, or as he says “puts-on”, the reader in order to attune 

perception so that understanding media effects is facilitated. 

The interplay of cultures and the possibility for global cooperation 

depends on harmonizing spatial biases as determined by the media 

ecology (i.e. operational technological environments) and its effects 

on group behavior. In terms of modern evolutionary theory, 

such as the work of evolutionist David Sloan Wilson, at the group 

level, altruistic or cooperative traits versus competitive or selfish 

traits are selected for which sustains the survival of the group. In 

this way, evolution occurs if there is another layer to the process 

of natural selection which is the layer of group selection. This is the 

layer, in terms of McLuhan’s work, whereby, by shaping our tools 

we shape ourselves as a culture. By complementing modern evolutionary 

group theory with McLuhan’s communication theory of 

cultural change this enhances insight, and consequently provides 

a means of anticipatory design, for architects and urban planners. 

Risky Business: From Digital Fabrication to the Abstract 

Workshop 

Mark Cabrinha, California Polytechnic State University 

The legal boundary separating architects’ conception from execution 

is broached through a new genre of workshop practices enabled 

by digital fabrication. The challenges and opportunities of 

these workshop practices and their reflection on contemporary design 

culture are made visible through a series of interviews I conducted 

between 2005 and 2008. These interviews help to position 

the pedagogical place of digital fabrication not as argument for the 

design-build process, but rather in the formation of the image of 

practice as an abstract workshop enabled through parametric design 

tools. Abstractions develop from real world objects and experiences 

becoming generalized, as abstractions, to apply to multiple 

scenarios and situations, taking the general from the concrete. The 

concept of the abstract workshop is grounded by material systems 

but not fixed within one particular domain or application, and in so 

doing, can leverage scale in the way direct fabrication never could. 

The Parameters of the Posthuman 

Ariane Lourie Harrison, Yale University 

This paper recruits another “post”—the posthuman—to reflect on 

the slippery status of the “post-parametic” environment, marking 

our changing relationship to nature and registering what we term 

an emerging architectural imagination of posthuman hybridity. 

The posthuman interpretation of longstanding ecological concepts 

of “hybridity” and “assemblage” allows us to explore the heterogeneous 

urban environments produced in two realized works by 

R&Sie (n) and The Living. The paper proposes that these examples 

of contemporary architecture modify conventional understandings 

of subject/object relations and instead address the posthuman “hybrid 

subject”. Featuring animal subjects and vegetal cyborgs, these 

works visualize the presence of human and non-human subjects as 

assemblages which do not perform according to the “optimizing” 

filters of parameterized behavior. Instead, A posthuman approach 

to architecture expands the architectural subject beyond the human 

user, extends the architectural building material to include 

assemblages of inorganic and organic, and invokes the architectural 

assemblage as a multi-scale territory. The post-parametic (or 

posthuman) imagination suggests that what was formerly known 

as nature is an environment bristling with hybrid subjects. 



Situated Technologies 

Jordan Geiger, University at Buffalo, SUNY 

Omar Khan, University at Buffalo, SUNY 

Mark Shepard, University at Buffalo, SUNY 

A Cybernetic House Between 

Duncan Patterson, University of Waterloo 

This paper outlines a strategy for the design of a cybernetic house 

so as to successfully navigate what the author perceives as the 

‘Faustian bargains’ of the technologization of flesh and field. The 

cybernetic house is conceived of us an extended technological 

flesh layered between social micro-ecologies and the larger networks 

within which they are situated. The cybernetic house is designed, 

following an intention to be under-specified, so that information 

is spatialized, communal, and interactive. 

Appropriateness in the Design of Ubiquitous 

Computing Environments 

Nasir Barday, TandemSeven, Inc. 

The standards for ubiquitous computing technologies are much 

higher than those for traditional computing. These high standards 

are compounded when considering ubiquitous technologies embedded 

in the built environment. In the past, the ubiquitous computing 

community has focused on the technology and infrastructure 

to support novel applications, leaving largely unexplored the 

thinking about using embedded computation to humanize the built 

environment and enable it for interactions with information and 

other people. The designer must consider the appropriateness of 

the intended functions and interactions of an intelligent environment 

before proceeding with a design. 

This paper explores the appropriateness of design for ubiquitous 

computing environments brought about through collaborations 

between interaction designers and architects. When considering 

the appropriateness of a new design, designers can break the study 

into the attributes of function, engagement, calmness, and robustness. 

While in most cases the designer should strive for these attributes, 

she may decide that a core characteristic of her design is 

to ignore one or more of these categories. If this is the case, the 

decision should be a deliberate element of the design. 

Informing Material Specification 

Ayelet Karmon, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design 

Mette Thomsen, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts 

Architecture is entering a radical rethinking of its material practice. 

Advancements in material science and more complex models of material 

simulation as well as the interfaces between design and fabrication 

are fundamentally changing the way we conceive and design 

our built environment. This new technological platform allows an unprecedented 

control over the material. Creating direct links between 

the space of design and the space of fabrication, the idea of the 

hyper specified material developed in direct response to defined design 

criteria calls upon a new material practice in which designers of 

artifacts are also designers of materials. In this practice materials are 

seen as bespoke composites, differentiated and graded, and whose 

particular detailing is a central part of a projects overall solution. 


The development of this new material practice is central to emergence 

of a new more sensitive approach to design. As we enter 

an era of design thinking that seeks to respond to the increasing 

social, environmental and sustainable demands of building practice 

we need to develop new models by which we can realize our architecture. 

To engage directly with material design and to partake in 

the development of new material systems is to be part of an inventive 

culture of material engineering. From the very small to the very 

large, the imagination of performative materials that are created 

in response to highly defined design criteria are challenging the 

traditional boundaries of design and representation. Performative 

materials can be structurally differentiated designed in response 

to a variegated load, materially graded responding to change in 

program or property or computationally steered incorporating 

actuated materials designed for state change and environmental 

response. Hyper specified and designed, what they have in common 

is that they are developed in response to particular criteria 

by which the strength, structure, elasticity or density of a material 

can be devised. 

This paper will present a dual investigation into material design as 

an architectural practice. Taking point of departure in two cross 

disciplinary workshop investigations, we explore ways in which 

materially embedded sensing can lead to the making of new strategies 

for material design. Both investigations use textiles as a model 

for material thinking. Developing bespoke interfaces between 

programmable architectural design tools and advanced computer 

numerically controlled (CNC) knitting machines we understand the 

practice of textile design as a particular class of material design that 

enables variegation across both material and structure. Our aim for 

the experiments is firstly: the design of active materials that use integrated 

sensing as a means for triggering actuation and secondly: 

the design of graded materials that use integrated sensing as a 

means for specification. In the following we will discuss how these 

two practices can be interlinked, what are the shared concepts and 

technologies and can these be advantageously merged. 

Intelligent Infrastructure: Mobile Networks as Tactical 

Transportation 

Therese Tierney, University of Illinois Urbana Chamapign 

Ben Feldmann, Mia Lehrer Landscape Architecture 

Katherine Handy, Field Paoli Architects 

Tyron Marshall, Perkins+Wills 

Gerry Tierney, 510 Collective 

Dinesh Perrera, Format Design 

This paper focuses on one key concept related to intelligent infrastructure: 

new modes of transportation enabled by mobile technologies 

and wireless networks. Los Angeles_REDCAR, a prototype 

project, is described in detail. The project is positioned within an 

ongoing discussion of the Resiliant City and “internet of things.” 

As cities look to new infrastructural solutions, this research explores 

the evolving relation between people, networks, and artifacts 

– and how this connection between people and “things” is 

altering the way we occupy, navigate, and inhabit the city.


Teaching History in the Digital Age 

Carla Keyvanian, Auburn University 

Building Socialistic Architectural Schools: The 

Transformation of China’s Architectural Education 

from American Beaux-Arts Model into the Soviet Model 

Xiao Hu, University of Idaho 

The professional education is a vital component of the architectural 

profession. It not only offers special training to obtain the required 

basis of architectural knowledge and skills needed for the 

professional practice of design, but also ensures the stable development 

of the profession by excluding other competitors through 

a monopoly of knowledge and skills. The required formal training 

of architecture provides a cultural and social legitimation for architects’ 

responsibility and importance. 

The formation of the modern architectural profession in China was 

the product of political and social change – the falling of China’s 

imperial system and the rising of Western capitalism in the end 

of 19th Century. The introduction of modern Western capitalist 

forces of production had undermined and transformed much of 

China’s traditional economic order, and the onslaught of the Western 

model disintegrated China’s traditional architectural practices. 

However, the architectural profession in China was not refashioned 

in the image of the Western professional world. Although Chinese 

architects shared the similar, if not the same, professional criteria 

and social distinction with those practitioners in the West, the 

changeable ideological structures, repeated foreign interventions, 

and constant revolutions significantly changed the nature of the architectural 

practice in China. In the 1950s, China’s architectural education 

underwent a significant transformation under political and 

ideological orders. Within a few years, the American Beaux-Arts 

model was wiped off and was replaced by the model borrowed 

from the Soviet Union. This paper focuses on how the Chinese 

Communist Party effectively implemented its plans and policies 

step by step to complete this transformation. 

On the Use Value of History 

Amir Ameri, University of Colorado 

The digital information revolution and the economic globalization 

it has greatly facilitated have brought diverse cultures into unprecedented 

proximity and a precarious dialogue in both actual and 

virtual space and time. This cohabitation is transforming world cultures 

at a scale and a rate that is impressive, if not unprecedented. 

The question and challenge this change poses architectural education 

is how to educate the next generation of architects to meet 

the unique demands of a plurality of cultures in a state of flux and 

change? To meet this challenge architectural education has to instil 

a heightened understanding of the complex dialogue between 

architecture and culture, along with a spirit of critical exploration, 

experimentation, creative thought, and innovation. The history of 

Architecture will have an indispensable role to play in any curriculum 

that seeks to meet these challenges. Yet, to play a pivotal role 

in fostering the requisite spirit of critical exploration and innovation, 

architectural history has to engage and exert a critical impact 

on studio pedagogy. Since secular institutional building-types are 

the core focus of design studio instruction, architectural history 

has to more directly engage the history of their cultural and institutional 

development. Such genealogical studies can establish a direct 

link between history and design pedagogy as complimentary 

practices. To demonstrate, I focus on the history of the library and 

point out how a critical re-evaluation of its ideological underpinnings 

can form the parameters of a new context for design, within 

which the link between the formal/architectural properties of the 

building type and its institutional/cultural presuppositions could 

neither be restated nor discarded. This new context will require 

students to not only think analytically and critically, but also to wilfully 

manipulate the language of architecture as opposed to faithfully 

re-produce its various speech acts. 

Transparency: Literal, Phenomenal, Digtial 

Newton D’souza, University of Missouri-Columbia 

Bimal Balakrishnan, University of Missouri-Columbia 

James Dicker, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 

Our proposal consists of a reframing of digital tools that moves 

away from its current usage as ‘tools for design’ to ‘tools of design.’ 

Using a prominent historic example in the architectural discourse, 

namely phenomenal transparency (Rowe and Slutzky 1963; 1971), 

we will demonstrate how this reframing might be possible, and illustrate 

the affordances of digital tools in the pedagogy of history 

and design. 

We recognize that the current digital tools were born in disciplines 

outside architecture and thereby divorced from its intellectual core. 

We believe that intellectual core consists of moving away from the 

practice of architecture as an expressive content (fabrication and 

manufacturing), and moving toward the practice of intrinsic content 

(visual vocabularies, ‘what-if’ design scenarios, and a corpus 

of mutually dependent representative network). Digital tools can 

be reframed to facilitate such an intellectual core because of their 

affordance of a shared, holistic, structured and replicable environment. 

This has implications to the pedagogy of history and design and 

more importantly to strengthen the history-design studio axis. It 

will comprise of an approach that conceptualizes history as a problem-solving 

domain, and one which becomes available for a shared 

scrutiny. Rather than a mere accumulation of explicit knowledge, 

this approach allows for dissecting the process in varied ways, facilitating 

cross-comparison, learning how recurring problems were 

solved in the past, and revealing hitherto hidden elements. These 

historic lessons can then be extended to design studios through 

exploratory exercises that allow designers to launch with conviction 

creative and intellectually stimulating design scenarios. 



Theoretical Implications of BIM: Performance and Interpretation 

John Folan, Carnegie Mellon University 

Ute Poerschke, Pennsylvania State University 

Beauty+ the BIM 

Danelle Briscoe, University of Texas at Austin 

The assumption that Building Information Modeling (BIM) solely 

develops efficient data schedules or coordinates Integrated Design 

Process (IDP) collaborators misses opportunities to utilize information 

as a source of visual creation. This paper examines the role of 

beauty within design-based aspects of information modeling and 

fabrication strategies. For the development of design culture within 

a BIM practice to be viable, it will take more than ecologically 

regenerative designs or virtual collaboration among consultants. 

What becomes additionally indispensable is to nurture a design 

process and theory with responsiveness to the visual environment 

alongside manners for its production. This requires considering 

the role of aesthetic experiences, such as beauty, in re-centering 

design consciousness where the architect takes on an authoritative 

role in the collaborative setting offered by BIM. 

A seminar course entitled “Beauty + the BIM” provides a setting 

in which overlapping historical conditions of “sensation” and the 

current condition of “reason” in architecture can creatively engage 

one another while ultimately situating these activities in the context 

of a new theory of practice through representation. The course is 

divided into three brief but intensive projects of corresponding disparate 

theories of beauty. Each respective theory represents a specific 

resultant CAD/CAM and drawing production: the sublime as 

understood through Edmund Burke, the grotesque by way of John 

Ruskin, and wabi-sabi from thoughts by Leonard Koren. The trajectory 

proposes a deeper understanding of sensuous empiricism and 

its definition, a potential venue for concept and production in relation 

to the emerging and imperative BIM technology. 

Integrating BIM into the Comprehensive Design Studio 

Jerry L Stivers, Oklahoma State University 

This paper discusses the successes and failures of integrating 

Building Information Modeling (BIM) into the Comprehensive Design 

Studio (CDS). As a 25-year practitioner turned full time educator, 

my motivation for discussion is rooted in a deep concern for 

the “pedagogical value of BIM as holistic design tool in architectural 

education and to prepare students of architecture for the inevitable 

use of BIM in practice.”(1) That being said, it is important to 

look at this issue from the different perspectives of those involved 

in the CDS experience: educators, practitioners and those who find 

themselves in the middle, the students. 

BIM offers many benefits to practice and is fast becoming the standard 

for the design collaboration and delivery of professional services 

within the AEC industry. From my observation, benefits for 

practice, however, do not always translate into benefits for education. 

If the purpose of CDS is to create a bridge for today’s student 

to cross over to tomorrow’s profession, and BIM is becoming 

standard practice, it is not a question of “if”, but rather “how” BIM 

should be integrated into a CDS. 

At first glance, the request to integrate BIM into CDS seems plausible; 

new tools have been integrated in the past (CAD, pin-bar 

overlay drafting, etc), however, from studio observations, this is 

different. BIM not only affects students design communication, but 

also their design process. The integration of new tools and processes 

comes at what and who’s educational expense? 


The thesis of this paper suggests that, without strategic control, adequate 

software support, new teaching methods, and a more collaborative 

team-based studio experience; BIM has the ability to overwhelm 

and limit the individual students’ creativity as well as change 

the overall learning experience within the CDS from a semester 

about comprehensive design, materials assemblies, and systems integration 

to a frustrating semester of software manipulation. 

Parametric BIM as a Generative Design Tool 

Andrzej Zarzycki, New Jersey Institute of Techology 

This paper discusses the adoption of building information modeling 

(BIM) tools as an opportunity for design generation, validation, and 

implementation. It specifically focuses on parametric modeling in 

discussing construction details, assemblies, and generative explorations 

considering digital materiality with physical forces. The introduction 

of parametric thinking into architectural design allows for 

understanding the interdependencies between various elements of 

a building assembly as well as for an alternative design process with 

possible bidirectional interoperabilities. It also opens doors for “What 

if…” speculative exploration that allow for broader questioning of design 

intent and possibilities. This second aspect of parametric thinking 

encourages students to bridge technical knowledge with creativity. 

Following this approach, architecture returns to the realm of making, 

rather than conceptualizing. However, the process of making or 

the consideration of material characteristics is no longer exclusively 

associated with handmade processes; rather, designers are experimenting 

with digital exploration into physically based characteristics 

of architecture. These could include lighting, material properties, 

and design behavior responding to physical performance criteria. 

Topological Future: Generative BIM 

Alfredo Andia, Florida International University 

We can no longer think about the future of digital technologies in 

architecture without rethinking the future of the profession of architecture. 

But what is the profession of architecture? Architectural 

design operates in the sphere of every thing that occurs before the 

buildings are built. Drawings, models, contracts, diagrams are all mediums 

to administer a very complex dominion that involves many 

actors and many divergent professional specialties. Traditionally, an 

exhaustive search for an optimal solution is impractical or unattainable 

in the Architectural domain. In order to manage this very complex 

dominion Architects use experienced based techniques named 

heuristics, which are rules of thumbs, educated guesses, and strategies 

to synthesize the themes that arise during design. 

Professional practice and architectural academia have developed 

two diverging stories about the present and future of the computerization 

in design. Architectural practice is using computer 

technology to “modernize” the profession more than truly revolutionize” 

it. In academia an increasing number of schools of architecture 

are presenting a broader critique, in which the architectural 

discipline can be rethought in relation to generative form-finding, 

population thinking, and automated topological structures. 

In this paper we argue that a plausible merging of the ideas from 

main stream practice and pioneering academia can yield one of the 

most novel themes for the future of architecture: Generative and 

parametric modelers that contain specific topological intelligence 

could be fused to a worldwide network of procurement of products 

and services in the construction industry.



Facade : Building Envelope : Skin 

Awilda Rodriguez, Oklahoma State University 

In the United States, buildings produce 40% of the total energy 

consumption and greenhouse emissions release into the atmosphere 

(Lawrence 2009). Most major cities around the USA have 

a high population of aging buildings, but the U.S. is not alone in 

this dilemma. These buildings are not only aging, but they are remarkably 

inefficient. Many older structures lack proper insulation, 

poorly retain heat during winter and are in urgent need of updated 

technologies that make newer buildings not only more energy efficient 

but also more attractive to tenants. No doubt that retrofitting 

inefficient buildings is a costly enterprise, but the outcome will well 

supersede the financial investments. 

Among the solutions contemplated by the design community on 

how to re-energize aging buildings is the idea of re-skinning. Reskinning 

our aging buildings will largely reduce our communal environmental 

footprint. There are ways to improve the building performance 

through the redesign of the existing building envelope. 

These new skins can provide ventilation systems to dissipate heat, 

collect solar or water, and integrate smart technology that can 

sense environmental conditions and make the proper adjustments. 

At the end of the nineteenth century, architects began to question 

the architectural envelope. New materials and technologies were 

developing and began to have a physical impact on the façade. 

Today, we have similar discourse where the notion of façade is being 

replace with the idea of a skin. This new notion of the building 

envelope fosters systems where the skin is an active and informed 

membrane that is capable of understanding external and internal 

conditions and reacts to them. 

Today, skin systems are one of the most innovative and exciting 

fields in architecture. It is the place to explore the visual culture of 

patterns, transparency and permeability of the building. Students 

at Oklahoma State University’s Introduction to Building information 

modeling (BIM) seminar not only learn the software, but are 

also charged with redesigning the skin of an old structure. Through 

the discourse of parametric computation this seminar’s final exercise 

explores how crafting physical models can inform computational 

modeling and vice versa. The exercise proposes that a set 

of different sensibilities emerged from operating within these alternate 

modes. From working on the physical model the students 

are able to quickly grasp a sense of scale while on the virtual allows 

them to quickly explore changes. 

Students were asked to explore the articulation of tectonics 

through computational modulation of a physically and virtually 

constructed component that created a formal continuity or a pattern. 

Using this basic geometric component, the skins explored 

patterns’ openings that filter light, create shadows and through 

smart technology control air and light flow. In addition, students 

were required to research new materials and technologies that 

supported their design proposals. Through the process, they discovered 

high-tech materials such as nanotubes surfaces, which are 

water phobic and materials such as high strength polymers that 

demonstrated exceptional three dimensional formability properties 

using thermoforming techniques. Lastly, having the students 

work on alternate processes complemented the shortcomings of 

each medium. 

Humus House 

Daniel Norell, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg 

Erik Hökby, Erik Hökby 

Humus House is a speculative housing prototype developed for two 

NGO organizations providing housing in Haiti. The project is designed 

to combine material dynamics and digital design processes 

with infrastructures and building technologies that are locally available 

in Haiti in order to create an architecture that addresses sensory 

qualities as well as local ecologies. The materialist approach of the 

project makes it distinct from a lightweight kit-of-parts approach, as 

epitomized by historical projects like Jean Prouvé’s Maison Tropicale 

or a traditionalist approach where local materials are used to 

signify authenticity. 

Deriving its name from humus, a highly fertile soil layer composed of 

organic matter, the project features housing units of approximately 

100 sq.m. indoor space. Each pair of units is enveloped in an outer 

wall constructed on site from soil-filled earthbags made from geotextile. 

This outer wrapping cools and humidifies air in and around 

the house by storing thermal energy and moist. Over time, its plentiful 

outcroppings and cavities will collect and retain organic matter, 

ultimately accumulating a layer of soil that can support growth of a 

variety of plant species. This will turn the exterior of the house into a 

green and lush oasis in an otherwise arid Haitian landscape suffering 

from deforestation and erosion. 

Behind the protecting outer wall, each housing unit works according 

to a cellular logic where rooms are conceived as framed boxes 

that can be freely grouped and recombined around a central courtyard, 

with smaller spaces forming a network of indoor and outdoor 

spaces. Constructed from bamboo, locally available from several 

programs that are planting bamboo in order to restore some forest, 

these boxes are capped off by lightweight tensile roof-pillow 

constructed from tensioned bamboo and translucent fabric. The air 

trapped inside these pillows heats up when exposed to sunlight, creating 

an upward thrust and suction that will propel a supply of cool 

air through the foundations of the house. The translucent fabric allows 

for indirect light to enter the interior dwellings. Together, these 

elements form a variety of communal and individual social spaces 

with open as well as shaded courtyards and gardens. 

The structural performance of Humus House is built around dynamic 

systems that respond elastically to lateral movement and vibrations 

caused by earthquakes. While most heavy construction systems like 

brick and concrete tend to crumble if shaken, earthbags are held 

together and retained by friction and barbwire alone, making them 

semi-rigid but not stiff. The bamboo boxes and tensile roofs are constructed 

using flexible tied joints and are equally flexible. 

The project seeks to provide an alternative to existing approaches 

to housing in developing countries by considering the house as being 

part of local flows of synthetic and organic matter. Humus House 

combines the pragmatics of construction on Haiti and the program 

of housing with a set of architectural qualities such as massive, undulating 

earthbag walls with integrated vegetation and floating, 

translucent tensile roofs. 



Architecture Continued 

Living Light 

Edgar Stach, University of Tennessee-Knoxville 

The Living Light house incorporates the knowledge of the region’s 

past and present to create a sustainable, comfortable home to meet 

the needs of today. The Living Light home organizes the daily routines 

of life into two cores pushed to the extents of a large loft-like 

space. The north and south glass façades become the stage upon 

which the building comes to life, enclosing the main living space 

while incorporating lighting, privacy, views, and ventilation. Air harvested 

within the double façade system will be directed to an energy 

recovery ventilator, supplying the home with passively warmed 

or cooled fresh air. Technical systems, such as the trellis-like solar 

array that provides both shade and power, are integrated into the 

architecture of the home and find their own unique aesthetic expression. 

MISSION STATEMENT 

Our team created the Living Light house to maximize opportunities 

for interdisciplinary collaboration, public outreach, and research related 

to energy efficiency, and sustainable design. 

Interdisciplinary Education: This project demonstrates how cooperation 

among disciplines results in culturally and environmentally 

responsive designs, which significantly reduce energy consumption 

and improve the quality of life for the residents. 

Public Outreach: The Living Light house becomes a platform to 

demonstrate sustainability, energy-efficiency, clean power generation, 

and emerging technologies to homeowners, students, and industry 

professional throughout the state and region. 

Research: Upon completion of the competition, our team and its collaborators 

will begin to make use of the fully-sensored house as a 

laboratory for collecting and analyzing energy efficiency, and testing 

new applications of emerging technologies, which will benefit 

the university, regional manufacturers, and research partners 

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY 

The Living Light team based its design on the following four tenets: 

•Apply global technologies to local contexts: Although the 

forms and spaces of the Living Light home were inspired by the cantilever 

barns of southern Appalachia, the systems of the dynamic façade 

and integrated roof array are scalable and tunable to a diverse 

range of climates and applications. 

•Use passive systems where appropriate and active systems 

where necessary: Three tiers of increasing complexity define 

our team’s strategy for energy efficiency. First, create a tight, highly 

insulated envelope. Second, employ passive strategies for shading, 

heating, cooling, and lighting. Third, augment the passive systems 

with active components as conditions require. 

•Fully integrate technical and architectural systems: A primary 

goal for our team was to integrate multiple complex systems 

into a few architectural elements and to find the most refined aesthetic 

expression of these emerging technologies. For the Living 

Light home, the trellis that shades the façade is the photovoltaic array 

and the expansive window walls are the passive heating system. 

•Maximize opportunities for education, outreach, and technology 

transfer: As a team-based multidisciplinary student project, 

the Living Light home creates an environment where a wide range 

of subjects can be explored. As an entirely mobile exhibit, the home 

allows for dissemination of knowledge to the people of Tennessee 

and beyond. The use of off-the-shelf technologies in innovative 

ways generates partnerships with regional industry and catalyzes 

research and product development 


Making Machines: Analog Inspiations from 

Computational Systems 

Robert Trempe, Jr., Temple University 

The “Making Machines” project is a study in emergent use of procedural 

modeling tools and software pipelines as method for investigating, 

visualizing and outputting design constructions. “Making Machines” 

mission is to denote how designers today have more control over 

software to embed aesthetic, tectonic and process-based tendencies 

throughout the design cycle via the acquisition, translation and design 

of data systems, and that the resulting information visualization can 

be used to inform construction technique. In this way, the designer’s 

process becomes holistic, with their mark embedded throughout the 

entire design process by crafting the very nature of the design pipeline. 

Resulting constructions reflect every aspect of the design process, 

from the crafting of the procedural network all the way through to the 

techniques of construction. The resulting work wears the very process 

used in its generation. 

The “Proof-of-Concept” phase of this project (Phase 03) is the next in a 

series of steps designed to display the feasibility of this design process, 

using analog construction methods as a metric and testing bed. Earlier 

phases tested the ability to make connections between data and spatial 

constructions within a virtual procedurally-generated environment 

(Phase 01) and tested the methods by which the procedural model 

can be (hypothetically) connected to a construction system, outputting 

building designs and proposed construction methods that reflected 

all of the design aesthetics and processes undertaken (Phase 02). 

Essentially, data in the form of survey questions was output to twodimensional 

mappings via the design of a complex three-dimensional 

procedural model. The emergent gradient patterns from this mapping 

can then be reintroduced into the procedural model, driving the z-axis 

coordinates of curves, outputting sets of architectural surfaces at the 

scale of a building. Without a physical and tangible result, however, 

the system would still be a hypothesis inhabiting a virtual environment. 

Due to the complexity, scale and costs of blindly transitioning towards 

the physical articulation of a construction at the scale of a building, a 

“Proof-of-Concept” test is required to explore analog connections at a 

tangible scale. Three guidelines have shaped the development of the 

“Phase 03 PoC” design: 

1) The ability to work with physical materials at a 1:1 scale. 

2) The desire to continue testing the flexibility and adaptability of the 

existing procedural network. 

3) The need to employ off-the-shelf parts and construction techniques 

as method for establishing a delta. 

The procedural network employed in Phase 01 was modified to use its 

own graphical outputs (mappings) towards the production of a lamp 

shade casting bed, allowing for the usage of real-world materials while 

testing the flexibility of the procedural network. The tradition amongst 

architects (especially when testing new ideas in a computational environment) 

to build domestic objects and artifacts with the same techniques 

as those of their proposed architectural environments has been 

copied in Phase 03 to facilitate quick and precise analysis of the connections 

between the computational network and resultant analog surfaces. 

Minimum Maximized 

Jae Cha, Judson University 

These 4 projects entails architecture for Christian humanitarian missions, 

and all the challenges that go into designing and building minimal structures 

with low-budget and low-tech constraints in difficult landscapes in 

developing communities, particularly in the developing world. The buildings 

are not ornate, complex, or high-tech, and simple means of construction 

are used. Three structures in Latin America have been completed 

almost entirely by volunteers—they are dual purpose, at once churches 

and community centers—and a medical clinic in West Africa (phase 1).



A discussion between the functional and the spiritual defines the 

concepts of these projects and hence the approach to work. The 

functional requires maximizing materials, energy, labor, and construction 

time. To create a natural and healthy physical environment, 

off-the-shelf products, sunlight, and passive ventilation techniques 

are used. The second, more theoretical discussion is engaged 

through words from the New Testament: “Where the Spirit of the 

Lord is, there is freedom.” This verse informs design decisions on 

every level of the project, from overall form to the design details. 

The Biblical story in the Garden of Eden intended that humanity 

dwell in naked presence with God in perfect unity, enjoying freedom 

and “light-ness”, free of shame or guilt. In contrast to the often 

heavy, dark structures that have dominated church design, these 

buildings attempt to recreate this original condition of the openness 

and love embodied in the Trinity—a place to catch a glimpse of God. 

However, the projects acknowledge the difficulties in achieving this 

“light-ness” due to restrictions of local building codes, climate, and 

resources imposed on the structures. 

The goal of these projects is to consider design strategies applicable 

for future building projects that can be adapted to multiple global 

sites in the developing world, so that minimal resources can be 

maximized for substantial impact for building projects in developing 

communities. 

NOLA-Machiya: A multi-use housing prototype for 

New Orleans 

Kentaro Tsubaki, Tulane University 

The reality of the demographic shift combined with the opportunity 

to address pre-Katrina urban issues through rebuilding makes the 

time ripe for rethinking housing as a connective tissue to “mend” 

the urban fabric of New Orleans. This project aspires to develop a 

new housing prototype for post-Katrina New Orleans. It is based on 

the comparative research of vernacular housing types found in two 

unique urban contexts: New Orleans and Kyoto, Japan, the shotgun 

house and the Kyo-machiya. The striking contextual, cultural and 

technological parallels and contrasts found in the two cities are the 

potent source of inquiry and knowledge informing the design. 

The main objective is to develop a mixed-use, multi-unit housing 

prototype appropriate for standard 30‘x120’ lot, creatively addressing 

the post Katrina social-cultural and performative issues in the 

hot, humid climate. The central hypothesis is that the design principles 

and features found in Kyo-machiya can effectively be translated 

into a housing design strategy in New Orleans. The project promotes 

a holistic approach to the sustainable housing design contrary to the 

current trend where a product oriented, techno-centric approach is 

the norm. 

Similar to the shotgun house, the basic physical characteristic of 

Machi-ya is defined in terms of a very narrow and long urban lot it 

occupies. However, it employes several distinctive spatial strategies, 

such as Tori-niwa (a covered interstitial side yard), Tsuboniwa 

(a small courtyard garden for light and air), En-gawa (a circulation 

porch), etc. to accommodate and take advantage of the 

limited lot configuration. Combined with the tectonic characteristics 

of timber framing and removable screens panels, these features 

foster impromptu community interactions, alleviate hot and 

humid conditions and cerebrate the seasonal transitions, merging 

the spatial efficiency and climactic performance with dramatic visual 

esthetics for urban dwelling. 

According to the The New Orleans Index by the Brookings Institution, 

the post-storm population of New Orleans is skewed towards well educated 

young professionals and creative types, singles and couples with 

no children. The study also indicates the relative success of Road Home 

and other rebuilding programs in the hardest hit areas. However, these 

programs are not intended to address pre-Katrina racial segregation 

and poverty. The city suffers with disproportionate numbers of unoccupied 

homes, yet, average rent in the city is still unaffordable for the 

workers in the key service sectors. Nola-machiya addresses these issues 

through unique programing and siting within the city. It is intended 

to foster economic development beyond its initial investment value, 

facilitating the mending of the existing urban fabric. 

The Nola-machiya is a hybrid of Kyo-machiya and a shotgun house, an 

attempt to transpose, negotiate, and integrate the architectural considerations 

and features arising out of the two distinctive vernacular 

cultures, while addressing issues of context and time. The project demonstrate 

the NEXT iteration of the performative design thinking for urban 

dwellings in the dynamic global context. 

Parametric Zoning - Wringing Jouissance from the 

Regulation Grid 

Skender Luarasi, University of Massachusetts 

This is a client-commissioned midrise project in Tirana, Albania. The 

program calls for a commercial zone in the first three floors, housing 

in the upper floors and a two level underground parking. The project 

occupies a tightly situated corner at the intersection of two busy 

downtown urban streets, populated with dense midrise adjacencies. 

This urban configuration calls for a strict application of zoning codes, 

setbacks and distances from the adjacent structures. The premise of 

the project is to address this tight programmatic and urban complexity 

by strategically deploying computational intelligence. 

The design uses a computationally controlled curvature in order to negotiate 

between the regulation grid, zoning codes and the building program 

and its urban expression. Marching Cubes Algorithm is used to process 

the contextual constraints and affect the generic zoning envelope. The 

Marching Cubes is an algorithm developed by Lorensen and Cline on 1987. 

Its applications are mainly concerned with medical visualizations such as 

CT and MRI scan data images, and special effects or 3-D modeling with 

what is usually called metaballs or other metasurfaces. Marching Cubes 

Algorithm extracts/visualizes a polygonal mesh of an isosurface from a 

three-dimensional scalar field, sometimes called voxels. An extracted isosurface 

satisfies a particular topological relation or condition: 

f(x, y, z) = c where c is the voxels’ numerical/scalar value. 

The algorithm visualizes an isosurface through numerical values by 

“marching” through the voxels and selecting only those whose values 

are below a certain user input threshold. A series of isosurfaces 

can be generated from different input qualities according to different 

thresholds. (For architectural applications of Marching Cubes (Voxel) 

Algorithm see the MArch Thesis works of Styliano Dritsas and Sawako 

Kijima). In this particular project the algorithm is modified so that the 

numerical value of the distributed voxels plastically morphs the zoning 

envelope of the site, which in turn is indexed as the voxel bounding box 

in the algorithm. Specific conditions are then selected from the variability 

output of the algorithm, according to specific design predicaments 

and objectives. The algorithm suggests a design process that is not 

based on geometrical procedure, but on information processing, where 

a particular geometry is an instantiation or actualization of a particular 

“slice” of information (see poster). 




The building itself performs as a geography of n-dimensional curvatures that 

respond to the very contextual constraints that produced them in the first 

place. These constraints become in fact the very stuff and material of design. 

The final effect is one of jouissance, a sublimation of spatial and material desire 

that is generated as a result of a negative drive, a joyful reaction towards 

the external limit, which is usually considered to be against desire as such. 

The building elegantly oscillates as a result of a multiplicity of local zoning 

codes and forces and programmatic constraints. The building is wrapped 

with a very thin skin that consists of fixed and operable screens. The screen 

responds to the geography of the building itself, its habitation units, HVAC 

infrastructure, programmatic heterogeneity and the life of the street. 

Project GRAFT: Focus on the Future 

Jennifer Akerman, University of Tennessee-Knoxville 

Architectural education is uniquely positioned to imagine and create the 

future by critically investigating complex conditions of the present and 

past. As designers, we examine how to craft space, light, and material in 

the best interest of cultural exchange. The designed world—ranging from 

micro to macro, from handheld device to global infrastructural systems— 

shapes the way people live and share ideas. Design is transformative, 

in ways that can be positive or negative. The underlying goal of Project 

GRAFT is to consider what strategies might minimize negative environmental 

impacts stemming from the design, construction, and ongoing operation 

of buildings, using ecological systems as a model. Through a critical 

exploration of existing and recent patterns in consumption, agricultural 

practices, and architectural, urban, and infrastructural activities, we seek to 

project a possible future that is wholly sustainable and culturally enriching. 

We do this by grafting eco-logics onto design logics. 

This design studio is an ongoing investigation into the potential for a hybridized 

architecture of food production to help revitalize urban centers 

spatially, economically, and culturally. A number of influences, ranging 

from regulatory to grass-roots, are leading to a resurgence of urban agriculture 

as communities recognize the benefits of returning food production 

and distribution to city centers. Simultaneously, technological 

advances have enabled new possibilities for architects and designers. 

We see an opportunity for critical investigation to suggest specific approaches 

rooted in a deeper context. We analyze the underlying systems 

of sustainable food production models as a means of synthesizing a new 

approach in urban design. 

We specifically analyze permaculture as a potential model for both food 

production and architectural design and realization. In the agricultural context, 

permaculture refers to stacked and interlinked ecological operations. 

Optimally, the outputs of one process become inputs to another process, 

embodying McDonough’s “waste equals food.” The goal is to limit outside 

inputs (fertilizer, water, food, petroleum) and to limit waste (pollutants/ 

carbon, wastewater, packaging), replacing them with continual, mutually 

beneficial, ecological systems. 

Key principles of permaculture are applied to a full architectural, landscape, 

and interior design project addressing a specific program and site. We 

seek to extrapolate and apply strategies of nested and sequential loops as 

an alternative to the many disparate inputs and outputs typically associated 

with buildings. Each team develops a hypothesis explored through 

a design proposal that creatively and elegantly connects input and output 

of various, possibly incongruous, processes. This work interconnects 

design across many scales (from human, to building, to city), and across 

processes (from ecosystem to conditioned architectural space). The final 

sites and programs propose a grafted architecture and landscape intervention 

in a city in the southeastern United States. The program specifically 

relates to food production and consumption—conflating grocery, 

restaurant, and farm. 


The approach of Project GRAFT enables shifting agriculture from rural 

to urban, from horizontal to vertical, from exterior to interior. Grafting 

blurs distinctions between previously dialectical conditions. The resultant 

hybrid posits spatial and experiential qualities that can transform 

what it means to live in the city while promoting environmentally-positive 

structures. 

Roofless Gallery for [con]temporary Art 

Bryan Shields, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 

Jennifer Shields, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 

The contemporary city is littered with derelict sites: once active commercial 

or industrial zones, now void of human occupation, contain 

architectural remains left to atrophy. These ruins often exhibit a rich 

palimpsest of cultural and material history, ripe with latent potentialities 

to be revealed. How can these wastelands, remnants of the technological 

landscape, be reactivated, transforming artifacts of industrial 

obsolescence into cultural catalysts through minimal intervention? 

In service of attempting to answer this question, the Roofless Gallery 

for [Con]temporary Art is a design/build project undertaken to 

reinhabit a specific abandoned artifact. A dry-cleaning facility lies in 

a state of ruin along a heavily traveled spine in Charlotte, the seam between 

two underserved urban neighborhoods. The roofless character 

of the building, a space defined only by walls as a result of neglect and 

weathering, creates an unintended but fortuitous Terrellian skyspace. 

The inherent boundaries of its urban context offer solace solely in the 

vertical dimension, providing the opportunity to transcend physical 

and societal limitations and reconnect with the boundless firmament. 

This artifact has the potential to reactivate the urban corridor: interventions 

into the structure will provide a means of reinhabiting the site 

and engaging in a dialogue with the community. 

Seen as a dualistic membrane, the building enclosure thus becomes 

paradoxical, alternately acting as a limit that separates and indicates 

the distance between two spaces - between here and there, my world 

and your world, private and public, and also acting as the very mechanism 

by which those same worlds communicate and passage occurs 

between them. 

- Henry Plummer “Realm of the Landing: Reciprocal Form and Spatial 

Dialectics at the Threshold” 

This roofless structure has been envisioned as a temporary arts space 

that would encourage interaction between local artists and residents. 

The architectural intent is to provide partially protected but unconditioned 

space for episodic arts and music events, including lighting, 

display mechanisms, and weather protection for the artwork. Recognizing 

the rich spatial and haptic experience of the space as a result of 

the ambiguity between exterior and interior, students have explored 

ways to construct a canopy, or integument, of found materials that 

preserves the roofless nature of the building. This integument is kinetic: 

in its horizontal position, it offers mounting surfaces for artwork, 

lighting, and weather protection, while providing exterior lighting of 

event signage on the existing building shell. In its vertical position, the 

integument creates an illuminated fin, calling attention to passers-by 

as it proclaims its role in the new life of the building. The project culminates 

in post-installation testing through an arts and music event, 

bringing together students, artists, and neighbors – the reactivation of 

a vestigal urban site through minimal architectural intervention.



Small House 

Donna Kacmar, University of Houston 

This 544 sq. ft. house was placed at the back of a large lot to allow 

for future development if desired while also sized to allow for 

house to be moved if property was sold for land value only. The 

house sits next to a large carport/porch and looks out to a large 

Ipe deck and the lawn beyond. The house is efficiently designed for 

a couple who spend much of their time away but required a place 

near work and family. The house is wrapped in low maintenance 

metal siding on the exterior and simple materials are used inside. 

The bathroom and closet are clad in vintage white oak siding that 

matches the kitchen cabinetry and refers to the cabin like quality 

of this very modest home. 

Structural Scents 

Glenn Nowak, University of Nevada, Las Vegas 

Erik Swendseid, Univeristy of Nevada, Las Vegas 

The Structure of Scent 

An examination of past developments between design and human 

interaction will generate the NEXT pedagogical intersection between 

architecture and society; the next point in which designers 

educate and inform society of the experiential qualities of a fulfilling 

built environment. 

Throughout the last 100 years, society’s vastly changed perception 

of color, light, scale, sound, movement, and technology in design 

and architecture has forever altered the way we live in and 

judge our built environment. This heightened sense of awareness 

has either redefined or given each element a new role as a layer 

in the designer’s thought process. Their combined syntheses with 

all other elements of design have led to groundbreaking creativity 

and innovation in architecture. We now see buildings that are 

covered with light that dance to music. Information technology has 

made possible a whole new level of complexity and human interaction 

with architecture. Advances in engineering and the science of 

materials have allowed architects to design bigger and taller, while 

keeping users safer. Architectural visualizations and architectural 

acoustics have made tremendous strides over the last one hundred 

years. With such advances happening in the way architecture engages 

our emotions and physical environment, we can argue the 

thought that the olfactory sense will, in the next 100 years, mimic 

these advancements and employ a much more critical role in our 

sensory experience. 

Given its potential cognitive capacity, a heightened sense of olfactory 

awareness will enable us to do more than merely enjoy a 

pleasant amenity, but instead will provide us with a tool for living. 

Educating ourselves of this potential, learning the “language” of 

scent, and taking advantage of its benefits will deliver only richer 

experiences in design. Today, the way we perceive scent and 

translate its meaning often leaves us describing it in very elementary 

terms such as “good“ or “offensive“. With such an effort in 

society to cover one scent with another scent, we often fail to 

recognize the many subtleties in between an under whelmed and 

overwhelmed environment. Being able to express and recognize 

gradations in scent will allow designers to use scent as a tool for 

design, to communicate specific goals to the end user, and will 

allow the olfactory sense to become a more functional piece of 

everyday life, as opposed to something with which we currently 

use to simply recognize decoration. With advances in perfuming 

science, scientists can not only create new smells that have never 

been recognized before in nature, but they can pinpoint the exact 

molecular structure for these and all other scents in order to arrive 

at a specific purpose for design. 

As designers, we need to seize the opportunity and potential of all 

senses in design, while taking into account the complexity of the 

human mind and its multidimensional and multisensory comforts 

to insure that they do not become dormant in an unchallenging 

society. “The architecture of tomorrow will call for an architect that 

can embed new kinds of rules and design behaviors together with 

design ingenuity.” Maria Lorena Lehman 

The Fibrous Structure Machine: a Generative Process 

Towards Form-Finding 

Emmanouil Vermisso, Florida Atlantic University 

The project discussed here was developed during a six week research 

& design seminar on biologically inspired prototyping 

(the project itself lasting four weeks). Based on the observation 

that nature produces infinite structural and formal configurations 

through re-cycling of only one material (fibers), a ‘machine’ was 

designed that would fabricate complex shapes using a variety of 

thread types and a simple actuator such as a Lego® motor. The 

project is regarded as an attempt to learn from the efficiency of 

biological systems; in the long-term, the authors would like to extract 

a series of ‘rules’ from the properties of the three fiber types 

that exist in the human body. We are interested in this line of study 

because it operates on both formal (aesthetic) and performative 

(functional) levels. The nature of the work involved requires input 

from other disciplines like Engineering to perform analysis on the 

resulting prototypes which is something that we are encouraging 

as a working methodology. From an Architectural standpoint, the 

next generations of this machine can provide a good platform for 

developing some sort of structural response to form. The precedence 

for this investigation seems to be assuming an ever-growing 

importance within the context of integration in Architecture and 

the authors believe that such premises will constitute a large portion 

of future Design -related research. 

Thick-It 


Global climate change and the imperative of sustainability have 

placed immense pressure on the discipline to consider innovation in 

new terms. Technological progress is no longer measured solely by 

advancements in structural engineering, responsive skins, and new 

composite materials but also by the responsible recycling, renewal, 

and reuse of that which already exists. Until now advancements 

in computation and digital fabrication have been predominately 

in service of the former while material scientists and a handful of 

resourceful architects have propelled the latter. Thick-It expands 

the role of computation in sustainable material practice by mixing 

high-tech digital protocols with low-tech material realities. 




Thick-It is the result of research conducted in partnership with a local 

hardwood mill to consider novel ways to utilize the byproducts 

of their manufacturing process. Thick-It focuses on the use of linear 

wood cut-offs generated by the standard lengthwise cutting (ripping) 

of non-standard boards. This wood is high-grade hardwood 

but it lacks dimensional consistency that renders it useless in standard 

wood construction. Thick-It develops its potential as a viable 

architectural material. 

The project activates an alternative life for this material as a thick, 

woody, interior. The first act in the design process is one of optimism—the 

flipping of a perceived limitation into an opportunity. 

Despite having little to offer as a standardized building element 

the wood edges do offer up a unique quality: mass… and lots of it. 

The mill produces these pieces faster than it can grind them up and 

burn the chips. This affords an opportunity to rethink the models of 

economy that are associated with most building systems, including 

wood, which tend toward optimization as minimum thickness and 

maximum performance. 

Thick-It flips this model upside down, conceiving of an extreme 

thickness from which space is carved. Instead of lining the shell, 

the wood is oriented perpendicular to it—hanging from the ceiling 

and projecting up from the ground. Scripted patterns govern 

the orientation and length of each piece, aligning them with virtual 

ordering systems that create gradual swells of volume that envelop 

the body. The natural textures of the wood and various marks 

of its manufacturing history beckon the touch of those who pass 

through. 

Ultimately, this kind of work has the potential to shape the world 

from the inside-out. Innovation and integration are defined by the 

strategic insertion of foreign (i.e., digital) codes into existing streams 

of production. This approach forgoes the ambition to restructure 

entire manufacturing processes in favor of a more targeted strategy 

of cleaving space for design within established protocols. In the 

end, Thick-It’s story offers up a new narrative of architectural production—one 

where architectural agents configure guerilla scripts 

to reshape the detritus of global mass-production. Such an agent 

may be more akin to a DJ than a scientist, constantly composing 

new aesthetic mixtures from the matter at her fingertips. 

Tingle Room 


Ellie Abrons 

Predominately governed by efficiency, maximization, and building 

standards, the architectural liner (i.e., floor, ceiling, and wall) is 

most often built as a thin, taught surface. Its standardization produces 

a blankness that is then adorned with window dressings, colored 

paint, and personal artifacts. Tingle Room challenges this thin 

surface by transforming it into a deep volume, unlocking a space 

within the thickness of the wall, and ultimately moving architecture 

from blank backdrop to active participant. 

The project employs a tension between multiple material states: 

those that resonate with the existing structure—a repurposed, single-family 

home in Detroit—and those that are foreign; materials 

that are highly worked and finished and those that are rough or 

raw; materials that play more than one role in the structure, de- 


tailing, and finishing of the space and those that are extraneous 

or ornamental. To do this, the standard functions of materials are 

redefined, distorted, or multiplied in order to exploit latent qualities 

that contribute to the rich experience of the space. Avoiding a fundamentalist 

attitude towards the use of particular materials, they 

are burnt, painted, smothered or otherwise manipulated in order to 

extend their possible qualitative effects. There are no material essences 

to be found, only evocative textures, colors, and forms that 

offer up new associations and sensations. 

Formally, the project creates a space within a space—a room within 

a room—coating the existing floor, ceiling, and walls with a new architectural 

surface comprised of plywood panels, insulation foam, 

and steel cable. The thickening of the architectural liner allows 

formal ruptures to cleave space between multiple interior surfaces. 

As the plywood breaks apart it reveals foam insulation that is 

thickened, carved, and poked into a coarse surface that is painted 

in rich, vibrant colors. The suspension cables, typically positioned 

sparsely on a taught grid, are multiplied and extended beyond their 

requisite length to create a cloud of thin tendrils. 

The layering of formal variation, material texture, and vivid color 

obscures an instantaneous or complete “reading” of the space; 

instead propelling the participant to perceive and sense multiple 

dimensions that unfold over time as they move through it. In other 

words, each material creates its own pattern, but none is visible as 

a whole at any one point. More akin to a manifold than a veneer, 

each pattern fades in and out of focus, yielding an experience that 

vacillates between the realms of the haptic, the visual, and the conceptual.





Design 

[Dada]rchitecture 

Javier Gomez, Texas Tech University 

The “Dada” Manifesto was a rejection to War, a rejection to prevailing 

standards, and the creation of “anti-art”. 

The cultural movement that began in Zurich in reaction to war included 

visual arts, literature, poetry, art manifestoes and art theory. 

It reached its peak in the 1920s and became a breaking ground for 

the contemporary arts. “Dada is the groundwork to abstract art 

and sound poetry, a starting point for performance art, a prelude 

to postmodernism, an influence on pop art, a celebration of anti-art 

to be later embraced for anarcho-political uses in the 1960s and the 

movement that lay the foundation for Surrealism” 1 . 

Dadaism began as an anarchist reactionary movement; it was nihilistic 

and representational of the opposite. It rejected the traditional 

culture and aesthetics in search of new meanings that were intentionally 

meaning-less. 

During the late1950’s Dada became influential in the surge of the 

Situationist International, the anarchist movement that taught psycho-geography 

as a means to understanding the environment’s, 

“unitary urbanism”. 

By introducing [Dada]rchitecture my intentions are not to develop 

nihilism or anarchism with political implications in the studio. My 

goals strive in challenging the students with unexpected scenarios 

in order to achieve better creative outcomes. Through philosophical 

studies and contemporary arts my pedagogy focuses on observation 

and critical thinking as tools for creativity. Teach how to observe, 

to find that magic moment on a trash container, a neglected 

alley… an art piece. 

Following the premises of the artistic and philosophical movement 

of the beginning of the twentieth century, I encourage students to 

use the right side of the brain by reading opposites, understanding 

that the creation of an architectural apparatus could be found in 

banal everyday objects: in dreams, in the unconscious, in the unexpected, 

in the contradiction, in the accident. 

Beginning with assignments including a series of surrealist photocollages, 

I teach the students, with an analytical-cubist perception, 

the nature of the environment and the value of the objects contained 

within the space. Using semiotic codes, in a “ready made”, 

the object not just is defined as a meaningful element of our daily 

life, but also defines the meaning of the opposite. By diagramming 

motion, and the unconscious human interaction with space and objects, 

students develop a program. Finally, through diagrams and 

a supporting narrative the project for a basic building is created. 

The Design Studio is divided in four main topics: 

+dweller/user: A first stage will include an investigation of the user 

(physical and meta-physical) and the creation of a narrative by understanding 

the dweller’s beliefs and activities. 

+context=site: Mapping site, context, and objects. 

++spatial sequences/movement: Space and motion are extruded 

and diagrammed. 

+program=narrative: Interaction between the space and the dweller, 

space and context, space and object, and in consequence the 

development of a program (trans-program, cross-program or disprogram). 

+building: Development of a project, by integrating previous phases 

of design through ordering systems. 

1 Marc Lowenthal, translator’s introduction to Francis Picabia’s I Am a Beautiful 

Monster: Poetry, Prose, And Provocation, 


Baltimore Calling 

Gregory Marinic, Universidad de Monterrey 

This proposal for the Baltimore MTA systems suggest a flexible 

approach to embedding landscape into urbanism and providing a 

‘third way’ adapted to various conditions, continual change, and 

unpredictability. The concept, Baltimore Calling, offers an insertable 

light infrastructure that mitigates the adverse effects of MTA 

Red Line construction from the inside, thus allowing the system as a 

whole to maintain balance. 

origins 

In the 21st century, methods and means of communication have undergone 

rapid transformation. A dying icon, the public telephone 

was once a symbol of modernity and communication. Typically located 

at a busy downtown street corner or adjacent to bus stops, 

the telephone booth offered a simple, direct, and affordable way to 

connect and share information. Baltimore Calling recalls the fading 

memory of this mid-20th century communication device by reinterpreting 

its form, function, and performance. The project offers a 

way to simultaneously connect people with information, culture, and 

nature. Here, the physical dimensions of the classic telephone booth 

(4’ x 4’ x 8’), as well as informal geometries of stacked cast-off construction 

pallets, simultaneously informed the design of site-specific 

performative architectural installations for Baltimore. Constructs 

may be temporarily installed at various locations impacted by construction 

activity throughout the MTA system. 

opportunities 

Built from unfinished spruce, Baltimore Calling has been designed to 

flexibly adapt to interstitial spaces found within MTA construction 

zones, rights-of-way, and existing stations. The ‘telephone booth’ 

houses a classic telephone, and acts as a ‘call center’ both literally 

and figuratively by providing a refuge and year-round nesting habitat 

for migratory birds. Seasonally changing and hosting additional 

native plant material, each installation will continually adapt to and 

merge with its site over time. As individual installations wear into 

their sites, these new habitats will collect native vines, tall grasses, 

mosses, and lichens. Attracting migratory birds, butterflies, and 

plantlife, the installations will become unexpected amenities for 

citizens. Baltimore Calling has been designed to effortlessly transform 

over time with zero maintenance. Materially, installations will 

continually weather from gold-to-amber-to gray, while the habitats 

themselves will grow into a network of micro-environments that 

change from season-to-season and year-to-year. Birdhouse, informal 

telecommunications outpost, or morning glory trellis--such roles 

suggest only three potentialities for the installations. As a source of 

both curiosity and delight, Baltimore Calling proposes a time-relevant 

construct that activates, supports, and responds to its immediate 

environment. The concept offers the potential to make Baltimore 

a more environmentally-connected place that actively carves 

out space for natural systems to merge with the city. 

connections 

Baltimore Calling will connect the natural world and humans within 

an urban context. Just pick up the phone and receive up-to-date 

information regarding MTA construction delays and transit information, 

as well as details on area attractions and cultural events. 

Each phone will offer a touch-tone directory of resources including 

arts, historical data, neighborhood details, and special events 

specific to the location of each installation.


Design Continued 

Ornate Screens 

Daniel Baerlecken, Georgia Institute of Technology 

The project “Ornate Screens” investigates ornamentation of 3-dimensional 

surfaces through digital tools, which allow the re-introduction 

of variation. Ornament has been abolished by the avant-garde in the 

first half of the twentieth century and ornamentation has been replaced 

by material aesthetic. With this project we will argue that ornament 

is not a parergon, an unnecessary accessory, but that the parergon, 

the ornament, actually becomes the ergon, the main element. 

In that sense ornament becomes performative in two ways. Firstly, 

ornament performs in a perceptual way. With Ernst Gombrich we argue 

that aesthetic enjoyment is guided by the “sense of order” “as an 

active agent reaching out toward the environment, not blindly and at 

random”, but structured. Ornamentation allows “Einfuehlung” - empathy, 

the identification with an object. 

Secondly, we argue that ornament can perform on the level of the 

ergon as structural system. 

The project has two design foci: the first focus is the design of a series 

of lights, which are fabricated through STL and SLS technologies. The 

objects are brought to life primarily as single objects without joints or 

seams as ‘additive fabrication’. By that, the objects can be produced 

directly from digital information as unique pieces. Each light can be 

different from the other, but still belong to the same family. Changing 

variables in the original script allows creating a different light, which 

still can feed back to a greater family. Mass production is replaced 

with mass customization. One can create unique objects by manipulating 

the parameters. 

The second project is an installation, a CNC fabricated wood construction 

that demonstrates how a pattern based geometry can be 

optimized structurally through a set of iterations. The tessellationbased 

project is adapted in order to achieve a maximum of structural 

strength. The structural calculation model contains not only geometry 

but also loads resulting from various sources. 

The design of a series of lights demonstrates the potential of CAAD 

and CAAM tools for a design object and shows how these tools allow 

us to re-think the relationship of author and user: Through parametric 

tools each user can design its own light within certain constrains. The 

second project shows how parametric tools can be used to optimize 

geometry to achieve a structural performance. 

Ornament can be re-introduced as ergon that allows strengthening 

empathy between subject and object and that allows solving problems 

of performance. Ornament becomes necessary again. 

the NEXT curtain 

Virginia San Fratello, San Jose State University 

The inherent nature of 3D printing opens new possibilities for shaping 

materials and it’s my belief that this process will reshape the way we 

design and fabricate architectural and interior building components. 

Digital materiality, a term coined by Italian and Swiss architects Fabio 

Gramazio and Matthias Kohler, describes materiality increasingly enriched 

with digital characteristics where data, material, programming 

and construction are interwoven (Gramazio and Kohler, 2008). The 

designs for these two curtains were created as an exploration into the 

rapid manufacture of interior building components that are not only 

made through the process of 3D printing, but are all also responsive 

to the environment. 

Unique, one of a kind building components, generated quickly and 

economically, from advanced 3 dimensional modeling software were 

explored. These 3D printed curtains were studied in conjunction with 

solar conditions throughout the day and year and offer an alternative 

to traditional curtains and blinds, one that is responsive to weather, to 

views and to interior programming. 

Exploration #1: The WAVE curtain is a passive solar curtain that is 

designed to admit the low winter sun into the building interior and restrict 

the direct, intense summer sun in order to help keep the interior 

cool. The curtain does this through the use of cylindrical tubes that 

vary in width and depth along the length of the window. Because the 

cylindrical tubes are hollow one always has access to exterior views 

-even when the sun is being blocked - unlike a typical shade or curtain. 

The curtain is 3D printed of white poly lactic acid from renewable 

resources such as corn starch. 

Exploration #2: The HEX curtain is designed to open and close automatically 

in response to natural day lighting conditions. Each row of 

the HEX curtain is composed of hexagonal shaped apertures that are 

covered by 2 operable shields. The 2 shields have the ability to pivot 

open and closed. The shields are hinged at the bottom and threaded 

at the top. The top thread connects each shield to the one next to 

it. At the end of each row a rotary motor pulls the thread and slowly 

opens or closes the shields in tandem. The rotary motor is driven by 

an arduino microcontroller connected to a solar sensor so on a sunny 

summer day the shields remain closed and on a sunny winter day the 

shields are automatically opened to allow sun to enter the interior and 

warm the space. 

The HEX curtain is constructed of laser sintered nylon and is 3D printed 

in 27” x 22” panels. 

The Next Generative Infrastructure for Detroit 

Constance Bodurow, Lawrence Technological University 

Detroit has a wealth of empty space, though little intelligence or understanding 

of it. There is a global, morbid fascination with Detroit’s 

emptiness. The media and design disciplines have mythologized it 

in imagery and obsessively mapped and quantified it (the reported 

yet disputed 40,000 parcels). Vacancy perpetuates entrenched 

social, economic and environmental disparities and inequities, but, 

in the midst of formal ‘right sizing’ and informal urban agricultural 

initiatives, a constructive civic dialogue about the role of vacancy in 

the future of the city has yet to begin. 

Our transdisciplinary design research lab wishes to prompt the dialogue. 

We believe that a new urban geography and ecosystem are 

required to balance the benefits and impacts of both shrinking and 

rapid urbanization and leverage the assets and complex combinations 

of forces of the city-scape. We look at vacancy as a new infrastructure 

for the city. We see vacancy, as it manifests: in land, 

buildings and infrastructure, as generative. Vacancy provides an 

armature for collective dialogue, design intervention and policy. We 

recommend a variety of productive, temporal uses for vacancy, to 

generate the next urban form of the city. In the same manner that 

the grid and infrastructure become a generator of urban form and 

use (Smithsons, Varnelis, Belanger, et al), vacancy can guide future 

urban form in Detroit. 



Design Continued 

We define infrastructure networks as the systemic and complex 

overlay required to support a city and its associated urbanized region. 

Infrastructure exists in service to an urbanized region, is a 

key determinant of future urban form, and plays a significant role 

in establishing a more desirable and sustainable condition for urban 

growth and change. We have created a Systemic Overlay to 

understand the profound connections between neighborhoods, 

city, and regional and international context. These connections occur 

largely through blue, green, gray and white infrastructure networks 

that span geographic, ecological and political boundaries. 

Vacancy emerges as the ubiquitous infrastructure in each of these 

typologies. 

This poster describes aspects of our current project to create a net 

zero energy community, and the central role which vacancy plays 

in achieving that goal. In one neighborhood of Detroit, we have 

identified approximately 1,500 acres (635 hectares) of vacancy, 

in three categories: Vacant (V); Vacant w/abandoned structures 

(A); and Vacant w/occupied structures (O). This new armature, 

in close proximity to infrastructure systems, supports our recommendations 

for generative uses for vacant and decommissioned 

land, buildings and infrastructure. These interventions include hybrid 

alternative (renewable) energy, targeted density, water cycle 

management, and reforestation. Our recommendations focus on 

Detroit’s most iconic examples of vacancy (e.g. Michigan Central 

Station), those juxtaposed to economic stability providing opportunities 

to engage partners and remaining residents in joint ownership, 

training and management (e.g., Condon Neighborhood), and 

proposed regional/international infrastructure investment (e.g., 

DIFT). Each envisions an alternative, equitable, and sustainable 

ecosystem for the city. 

While Detroit serves as the context for our first design intervention, 

we believe that our design methodology is scalable and replicable 

to prompt dialogue and guide the future form of urbanized regions 

across the globe. 



Disaster 

School for Darfurian Refugees: Building as a Teaching Tool 

Jeanine Centuori, Woodbury University 

Artur Nesterenko, Woodbury University 

This project began with a study of material and human resources. 

Through an examination of indigenous building practices of Sub- 

Saharan Africa, a material palette was created. This included a 

family of earth construction techniques such as compressed mud 

bricks, rammed earth, thatch roofing, recycled metals, and minimal 

amounts of concrete, and steel work. 

The process of developing a design that would be transmitted to 

a local population on the ground in Chad involved the alternating 

process of full scale materials testing with designing through scalar 

models and drawings. A sequence of brick and rammed earth 

studies informed the design of the school. A non-verbal pictorial 

construction manual complemented the drawings as a communication 

tool. 

Building as a Teaching Tool 

The Vocational Academy Building Project serves as a classroom 

space and a learning tool for matriculating students. In addition to 

housing classrooms for teaching reading and writing subjects, its 

construction is meant to serve as a practicum in sustainable building 

practices. Students enrolled in the program will participate on 

building teams to erect portions of the structure. 

It is a building that combines indigenous building practices with 

state-of-the-art sustainable ethics. A simple rectangular open floor 

plan accommodates approximately 80 students (40 male and 40 

female students). It employs a double roof structure with a thatch 

pyramidal roof that is covered with a second metal roof. The large 

metal roof canopy acts as a shade device to protect the interior 

from the intense heat. 

The main structure is made of compressed mud bricks using a 

compression machine with a hand lever. There is a minimal amount 

of concrete and steel rebars needed for beam construction. The 

infill walls between the columns are non-structural rammed earth 

that is made of soil, and a small amount of cement. These walls are 

ventilated with fiber cement cylindrical tiles that may be made by 

the students on the site. 

This single volume building is designed as one classroom space, 

and is intended to accommodate one gender. It is anticipated that 

two volumes will be built, along with smaller open-air canopies that 

serve as shade devices, lunch areas, and prayer spaces. Additionally, 

composting toilet structures will be built on the site. 

This building acts as a tool by which students will learn sustainable 

building practices. This is a prototype structure that may be 

duplicated and adapted to many other sites in the Darfur region 

as repatriation takes place. Student/builders of the school will 

acquire skills such as brick making, rammed earth construction, 

thatch and metal roofing, installing composting toilets, and water 

management and conservation. These skills will be the foundation 

to entrepreneurial ventures as resettlements begin to take place. 

SunShower SSIP House 

Tiffany Lin, Tulane University 

Judith Kinnard, Tulane University 

The SunShower SSIP House was the winning entry in an invited 

sustainable design competition sponsored by OceanSafe. The program 

called for a disaster relief house that uses Steel Structural 

Insulated Panels (SSIPs) and prescribed a highly specific kit of materials 

and equipment that could be transported in a standard shipping 

container. 

The design of this house is a modest single-level home that uses 

its roof forms to serve seemingly opposing roles, providing shelter 

from the elements while collecting solar energy and water. The 

higher “sun-roof” is angled to the South to maximize efficiency for 

solar collection while a lower sloping “shower roof” channels water 

into a catch basin and cistern. The house is divided into public and 

private zones and designates areas for wet (utility) and dry (leisure) 

living. Lightweight SSIPs can be assembled without special 

equipment and the house is weather tight before any finishes are 

applied. Innovative use of SSIPs in this project offers sliding panels 

that extend the living space on to a shaded deck. Shaped cut-outs 

in exterior panels allow for a moment for individual expression at 

the entry of this prototype. Solar panels and a wind turbine provide 

the necessary renewable energy and enables the house to operate 

off-grid when electrical service is interrupted. 

A prototype of the SunShower SSIP House is currently under construction 

in the Lakeview area of New Orleans, slated for completion 

in the Fall of 2011. 



Ecology 

Global Benchmarking for Low Carbon Urban Design 

Perry Yang, Georgia Institute of Technology 

The project was produced by the ecological urbanism studio, a performance-based 

urban design studio conducted in Spring of 2011 for both 

School of City and Regional Planning and School of Architecture at the 

Georgia Institute of Technology. It is a model of studio teaching that connects 

urban design and energy-related carbon and solar analyses. Seven 

global cities and their central urban districts were chosen for mapping the 

urban physical structure, energy- carbon footprints and solar availability. 

Design strategies for carbon reduction were then tested by proposing alternative 

scenarios of density and ecological urban block design. 

Based on selected downtown or midtown urban settings from North 

American and East Asian cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Macau, Manhattan, 

Shanghai, Tokyo and Vancouver, the analyses involve the mapping 

of density, diversity, urban block structure as well as the performance 

measures of urban visibility, solar availability and energy-related carbon 

footprints from large (L), medium (M) to small (S) scales. 

We began the investigation of sustainable urban form by gathering basic 

statistics for each city—such as land use, land cover, population density, 

and per capita consumption rates. Next, to better understand each city’s 

greater context, we mapped each city’s urban spatial structure, landscape 

patterns, and transportation network within each large [L] 10 km x 10 km 

study area. At this level of analysis, city-level patterns of use and density 

begin to emerge. 

For each city, the studio chose medium [M] 1 km x 1 km study areas that 

are representative of the urban form of individual city’s central district. For 

those cities with several distinct character areas or districts, we analyzed 

multiple [M] scale study areas. For each 1 km x 1 km site, we did a comparative 

study of each city’s existing urban framework and mapped building 

density, mix of land uses, spatial configurations, transportation connectivity, 

green space, and building typologies. 

At the small [S] scale, we completed a typological study of building types 

for each city. Building archetypes were sorted and classified based on 

building height, area, and shape. Ultimately, 60 building typologies were 

established and categorized based on height and massing. We then compared 

these typologies based on characteristics such as height, massing, 

surface-volume ratio, floor area ratio, carbon emissions, total solar availability, 

and carbon offset potential. 

We aim to derive a set of principles of low carbon urban design through 

the mapping of global urban settings to benchmark their performance 

measure and criteria. The global cities benchmarking provides a basis 

for proposing a hypothetical framework of designing a new ecologically 

sensitive urban district. In the case of Chicago Loop, we propose a future 

urban block design that would reduce 69.2% carbon of the existing 

operation based on those low carbon design principles by reconfiguring 

the current block structure to have better energy-carbon efficiency and 

greater solar availability over the solar-powered urban surface and building 

envelop. Each hypothetical proposal includes both design and its corresponding 

performance measure based on L, M and S levels of spatial 

analyses and visualization techniques. 



Landscape 

Balmart: Reclaiming Public Space 

Mo Zell, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 

Marc Roehrle, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 

This design proposal combines three distinct network conditions: 1) 

softball league network, 2) road infrastructure network and 3) bigbox 

retail recast from the capitalist catalyst to public space network, 

all in an effort to reframe development opportunities in big-box retail 

parking lots using landscape as the method for redevelopment. 

The big-box retail parking lot provides opportunities for new types of 

public/private partnerships that use landscape as the creative venue 

for crafting public space. This proposal capitalizes on the quantity 

and consistency of big-box retail parking lots within Wisconsin and 

proposes to create a series of public softball fields that support district, 

regional and state games. The public/private partnership calls 

for the redevelopment of about 100 parking spaces (roughly an 

acre of land for games and spectators) into a pervious surface that 

doubles as parking during the offseason. The partnership provides 

a new location for the public, capitalizing on the number of citizens 

visiting big-box retail, ample parking, and an overabundance of 

empty space within the development area. As a result of the softball 

games, more activity takes place, previously underutilized portions 

of the parking lot are occupied during non-peak times, sustainable 

land strategies are deployed using public space, safety is increased 

with “more eyes on the street [parking lot]”, and a major reduction 

in driving (reduced number of errands since play and shopping are 

in the same place). This fluid framework anticipates and welcomes 

new development patterns in the future. 

Details: The field is marked by poles that double as lighting for the 

parking lot and supports for a series of flexible yet taut nets that are 

dismantled during the offseason. The backstop and benches remain 

in place during all seasons as their position on the edge of the parking 

lot would not interfere with daily parking usage. The grass of 

the softball field, as well as native prairie grasses lining the outfield, 

provide filtration to minimize the quantity and increase the quality 

of water runoff from the adjacent parking lot. 

Chicago REDOX: Reduction/Oxidation 

Mo Zell, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 

Marc Roehrle, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 

The consequence of positioning single program mega-structures 

into urban centers in the 1970’s has resulted in a glut of large-scale 

underutilized buildings scattered amongst vast parking areas. In the 

past, responses to these mega-structures have included demolition, 

inserting new program or adaptive reuse. We propose a radical reformation 

of the existing building components to create new public 

space. 

REDOX: reuse. Our design reconsiders the embodied energy (intellectual, 

cultural, material, economic) of Gene Summers’ McCormick 

Place (1971), optimally situated on Chicago’s lakefront. Given the 

public position of McCormick Place (the base situated 40’ off Chicago’s 

lakefront), we propose a spatial manifestation of the biological 

process redox (the portmanteau of reduction-oxidation). By subdividing 

the site laterally, two new surfaces for outdoor public space 

capitalize on the existing building’s embodied energy. We propose 

removing, launching, and floating the roof super-structure into Lake 

Michigan, creating a new destination for Chicagoans, the ISLAND. 

What remains becomes the INLAND, a mat-form flexible program 

below an expansive new surface that hosts seasonal public amenities. 

This proposal expands 800,000 SF of under-utilized megastructure 

into 1.6 million SF of public space. 

(RED)OX: reduction 

The 800,000 SF plinth becomes the INLAND, a large, flexible open 

space with 270-degree views (not found anywhere else on Chicago’s 

waterfront at this scale). The southern portion, a labyrinth of 

bioreactors, offers maximum solar exposure to enhance algae production 

as well as filtered light to the laboratory below. The maze 

of ramps penetrating the INLAND mat allow for multiple entrances 

to this laboratory, and to the open-air amphitheater (preserving 

the footprint of the 1958 Arie Crown theater). A grand staircase 

slices the mat building connecting lakefront (and Museum Campus 

amenities) to city center. The eastern edge, a ‘water zone’, boasts 

public swimming pools and new linear aquarium (highlighting 

specimen from the Shedd Aquarium) that activates the existing 

promenade along the lakefront. 

As a flexible surface/skin, the INLAND hosts active and passive 

activities including several soccer matches, or softball games, or 

20,000 picnickers or 40,000 spectators watching fireworks. The 

raised platform provides a ‘privileged position’ along the waterfront 

for the public. Commercial activities and water-based think 

tank slide underneath the skin without compromising the public 

virtues of the site, its edges, or views. A new “ceiling,” created by 

stringing lights and shading devices from the remaining columns, 

reemphasizes the spatial and scalar parameters of the original volume 

without the omnipresent roof. 

RED(OX): oxidation 

This destination barge (the ISLAND), created by floating the existing 

roof into Lake Michigan, adds 18 acres of new waterfront to the 

city, while the submerged web of structural steel transforms into a 

freshwater reef. An algae farm of shallow rink-like ponds increases 

the quality of declining algae species native to Lake Michigan while 

a recreational platform to the north provides lake-style swimming, 

diving, and beaches in the summer with ice-skating, ice fishing, and 

curling in the winter all with unique views of the metropolitan skyline. 

A dock and boat slip along the west alleviates boat congestion 

in Burnham Park Harbor. 

Diasporic Landscapes 


Greater Houston is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United 

States. Over the last 30 years, the region has witnessed an unprecedented 

expansion. Dramatic growth and demographic shifts 

have transformed the city into a thoroughly international place. 

With over 90 languages are spoken, Houston is undeniably a multicultural 

region and home to an estimated 1.1 million foreign-born 

residents. Offering two international airports and a major seaport, 

the city provides a natural base for the nation’s third-largest concentration 

of consular offices representing 86 countries. 

Houston’s unzoned land use policy promotes inherently fluid occupancies. 

Accordingly, cultural shifts register considerably faster in 

Houston than in cities governed by more conventional regulation. 

With demographic diversity and free market commercialism as a 

filter, it may be argued that a singularly Western perspective has 

become increasingly irrelevant. If architecture and landscape reflect 

culture, how can contemporary architects engage influences 

that more accurately convey recent flows and influences on the 

region? How might we engage the cultural, territorial, and temporal 

memory of the ‘new’ Houstonians? How might we appropriate 

aspects of their experience into the built and natural landscapes 

of the city? 

This visual presentation conveys individual student interpretations 

of diasporic architectural influences embedded into the Houston 

landscape/mindscape. 



Open 

Biomimetic Explorations 

Susannah Dickinson, University of Arizona 

“The waves of the sea, the little ripple on the shore, the sweeping 

curve of the sandy bay between the headlands, the outline of the 

hills, the shape of the clouds, all these are so many riddles of form, 

so many problems of morphology, and all of them the physicist can 

more or less easily read and adequately solve.” 

D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson 

On Growth and Form 

This submission focuses on a ‘Biomimetics’ Seminar Class held in 

the spring of 2011.Biomimetics is the study and application of biological 

principles as essential design parameters. This study needs 

to go beyond a metaphor; it is not about mimicry, but about understanding 

the nature of the material itself, looking at our environment 

and its interconnections as a way to move forward. Negotiating 

design and performance with engineering and fabrication is 

one of the central topics of architectural discourse; driving this is a 

growing awareness of ecology and sustainability which this course 

intended to address. 

The main areas of focus were: 

i. Understanding the concepts of nature and technology and their 

connection. 

ii. The study of generative design strategies for complex geometry; 

parametric design, emergence, self-organization, swarm intelligence, 

data integration and agent-based design. 

iii. Research in the area of how architecture can perform more ecologically; 

integrating performative tools and simulation into the design 

process to ensure more appropriate environmental adaptivity. 

iv. ‘Material is an active participant in the genesis of form’ (Manuel 

De Landa) - studying options of how materiality becomes one of 

the design parameters. 

Linkages between digital technology, biomimetics and sustainability 

were made as all stem from the same aspiration in the study 

of systems. This was fundamental in the use of parametric modeling 

tools where students began to think in terms of relationships 

verses single objects. Ecological, inter-connected systems in the 

natural world have no separation of form, structure and material: 

they all act on one another and cannot be predicted by the 

analysis of any one separately or in a different context. Isn’t this 

how architecture should be; critically sensitive to its region and 

holistic? The goal of the course was to focus on process, recursive 

design and experimentation; technologically and environmentally, 

looking at ways to ‘find form’ rather than ‘make form’ and create 

valid feedback loops. The course became a research lab, initially 

studying precedent work and processes in this field, but culminating 

in two group projects which created original, collective fabricated 

work. Of the fifteen students most were third and fourth 

year undergraduates, with two Master of Science students. One 

group created ‘Data Scape’; a biomimetic surface installation, while 

the other group created ‘Performative Porosity’; a research project, 

designing an evaporative cooling wall for an arid climate with 

ceramic foam. 


Entrepreneurship in Architecture 

Nathan Richardson, Oklahoma State University 

Architects often frame their professional identity with almost exclusive 

respect to the buildings they design. In reality, few architects 

have ventured far from a common conception of practice in 

which they provide design services to a client who intends to build. 

However, the changing nature of society and the issues it confronts 

should compel more architects to reconsider their expertise and the 

manner in which it is deployed. Given the current economic distress, 

environmental strain, and geopolitical unrest, there is growing pressure 

on societies to find creative solutions to vast, complex, and 

acute issues that transcend the design of the built environment itself. 

Clearly, the built environment and those that shape it are critically 

important, but it isn’t the only venue for architects and designers 

to make meaningful contributions to society. One key to exploring 

enhanced productivity for architects may reside in the profession’s 

self-conception and its relationship to entrepreneurship. 1 Consider 

the following. “Entrepreneurship is a process by which individuals… 

pursue opportunities without regard to the resources they currently 

control.” 2 While this definition was conceived in a business oriented 

body of research, it bears a striking resemblance to the activities of 

an architect. In other words, architects are adept at pursuing opportunities 

to shape the built environment without much deference 

to their relatively limited control of the capital resources employed 

in building. 

Another commonly cited definition of entrepreneurship frames it as 

the process of creating value by bringing together a unique combination 

of resources to exploit an opportunity. 3 This statement can 

likewise be understood in the context of architectural practice; architects 

are no doubt skilled in leveraging opportunities by bringing 

together a diverse combination of resources to create value through 

architecture. Even though architecture can be understood as an entrepreneurial 

endeavor, entrepreneurship isn’t often an explicit part 

of architectural practice or education. As such, architects rarely view 

themselves as active entrepreneurs or leverage their entrepreneurial 

potential in any venue other than architectural practice. 

This poster explores cases of entrepreneurship in architecture and 

corollary industries. Not only does an expanded understanding of 

architecture and entrepreneurship promise to make architects more 

effective within standard modes of practice, but it also represents latent 

opportunities for architects to pursue unconventional methods 

of practice to address an expanding array of societal, economic, and 

disciplinary challenges. 

1. Robert Gutman argues a related point in an essay included in: Dana Cuff and 

John Wriedt eds., Architecture from the Outside in: Selected essays by Robert 

Gutman, “Architecture: The Entrepreneurial Profession,” (New York: Princeton 

Architectural Press, 2010), 32-42. 

2. H.H. Stevenson and J.C. Jarillo, “A Paradigm for Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurial 

Management,” Strategic Management Journal, no. 11 (1990): 17-27. 

Quoted in, Vesa P. Taatila, “Learning Entrepreneurship in Higher Education,” 

Education + Training, 52 (1), 48-61. and Heiko Haase & Arndt Lautenschläger, 

“The ‘Teachability Dilemma’ of Entrepreneurship,” International Entrepreneurship 

and Management Journal, 7 (2), 145-162. 

3. H.H. Stevenson and David E. Gumpert. “The heart of entrepreneurship,” Harvard 

Business Review 63, no. 2 (March 1985): 85-94. Retrieved from EBSCO 

host (accessed September 6, 2011).


Open Continued 

NYC 2 LV: Shifting Pedagogies Between Park and 

Playground 

Glenn Nowak, University of Nevada, Las Vegas 

Andrea Limpede, University of Nevada Las Vegas 

To get at something provocative requires us to take a carefully 

scrutinized projection of the near future and extrapolate it far 

beyond its initially intended scope. PlanNYC 2030 was created 

(by Mayor Bloomberg and 25 City agencies) to improve the infrastructure 

of New York City as well as enhance the daily lives of its 

residents. It is estimated that by 2030, NYC will accommodate an 

additional 1 million people, yet by 2111 there will be an additional 

12 million in NYC. Recognizing that daily living in the Big Apple is 

enhanced by the park system and, most notably, Central Park; this 

poster questions the toll population growth and land value metrics 

will have on such spaces of the built environment. While analysis 

suggests that parks will not disappear, an architectural ebb and 

flow may see development encroach on such real estate. Displaced 

park space may then be re-appropriated or constituted in 

fashions that address evolving definitions of hospitality, proximity, 

and priority. 

As cities evolve (and in many cases cycle through extended periods 

of growth and decay) other cities across the country or around 

the world may adapt to take advantage of shifting markets or 

mode of making. Though the poster presents this notion through 

the specific example of park space (structures supersede Central 

Park, and Las Vegas capitalizes on yet another icon), the idea may 

be extended to any archetype, urban fabric, or design discipline. 

Projections 

Rami el Samahy, Carnegie Mellon University 

Adam Himes, Carnegie Mellon University 

Question 

If all design can be read as attempts to predict and shape the future, 

then no specialization looks further into the future than urban 

design. The timeframes common to the field are often so long—up 

to a hundred years or more—that they can at best provide a robust 

framework for future decisions. So how are projections made this 

far into the future? 

The material here represents the initial stages of a research and 

design project to gather as many sources as possible pertaining to 

predictions of the future. Cataloguing, cross-referencing and visualizing 

this archive has allowed us to speculate with regard to the 

future and our relationship to it. 

In making sense of these competing visions of tomorrow and how 

they relate to cities, we have posed a series of questions: 

What are the likely parameters of ecological, technological and social 

changes to come? 

What can past conjectures tell us about our present? 

Where will future design opportunities lie? 

Method 

The project not only looks to the future of urban design and architecture, 

but also examines how recent technologies can be used to 

drive design research through an interrelated process with multiple 

feedback loops whereby several efforts are used to move the project 

forward. 

It intelligently utilizes an everyday tool—the blog—to organize research 

so that it reveals trends and potential avenues for further 

investigation. 

Similarly, the open source tool of Processing literally makes visible 

some of the trends uncovered through research, temporally 

positioning each to make apparent the visions for and fears of the 

future as they developed through successive eras. 

The blog creates an opportunity for open-source research via an 

undergraduate college seminar that allows students to build upon 

existing avenues of research in potentially new directions. 

The course also acts as a first pass at applying the themes developed 

via the blog to architectural and urban design projects, thus 

leading the way to the eventual generation of design parameters 

based on a number of projected criteria that could be applied in 

the development of future cities. 

Preliminary Findings 

Technological changes will have a profound effect on the way we 

will live, from the growing ubiquity of information technology, to 

the increased reliance on automated processes (robotics), to the 

remarkable potentials of nanotechnology. 

But will the cities of the future look like the ones we live in today, 

except more connected to a greater number of people, or will 

these technological changes necessitate a more substantial morphological 

and programmatic evolution? 

It’s also evident that the future promises significant environmental 

and sociological change. While the extent of either’s impact remains 

unclear, it’s impossible to deny that significant transformations 

will occur in both areas. There is no shortage of design opportunities 

as a response to either outcome, whether the goal is 

to mitigate a worst-case eventuality or to adapt to a soon-to-be 

situation. 

ROPE Pavilion 

Kevin Erickson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 

In Winnipeg, the Assiniboine River Trail is the worlds longest naturally 

frozen skating rink, beginning in the city center it stretches 

nearly 10km west. With an estimated 450,000 visitors annually, 

the trail provides an alternate route to access downtown by foot, 

skates, and skis, while events such as hockey, curling, and sledding 

take place on the river and along it’s banks. Each year the City of 

Winnipeg sponsors a competition to design and build a series of 

warming huts, located every kilometer along the trail, ROPE pavilion 

was selected for construction in January 2012. 

Through the combination of simple materials, ROPE pavilion, creates 

a highly articulated form and space while nestling itself into 

the Assiniboine River Trail’s landscape. Its relationship of skin – manila 

rope and structure – birch frame, merge to form a warming hut 

whose dense shell blocks winter winds while still being perforated 

for light and views. The wood interior creates a sense of warmth 

through color and texture and it’s multilayered rope exterior collects 

snow, further embedding it within the site. The hut’s domelike 

form is optimized for heat retention, bifurcating only for an 

entry threshold and oculus to the sky above. 




The structural system consists of vertical ribs and horizontal hoops. 

The ribs act as beam-columns to provide primary support for the 

pavilion. They are curved in elevation to define the rope’s surface 

geometry and span to a continuous compression ring at the top of 

the pavilion. At the base, floor beams act as horizontal ties, bracing 

the ribs at the bottom while allowing the structure to internally resist 

horizontal thrust forces from gravity loads. The vertical ribs are 

laterally braced by horizontal hoop members. The hoop members 

restrain out-of-plane movement resulting from bending in the ribs. 

An arch frames the entrance and supports a vertical rib above the 

opening. The arch further contributes to the stability by transferring 

horizontal loads in the interrupted hoops through triangulation 

to the base. This triangulation acts in conjunction with the vertical 

and horizontal members to resist lateral loads due to wind and 

other applied forces, while providing a load path to the structural 

base at the floor diaphragm. 

Each layer of rope is attached at alternating vertical ribs, through 

CNC milled notches, creating additional horizontal striation. In all, 

there is over 6,000 linear feet of inch rope used for the exterior 

cladding. On the interior a series of rope stools – created from 

3-inch rope fold into a continuous loop and bound with a steel belt 

– provide seating. Overall, the thesis behind ROPE pavilion is to 

create simple, yet highly refined artifact that provides an enhanced 

visual and tactile experience to those traveling down the Assiniboine 

River Trail. 

The Sustainable Cities Initiative: Universities as 

Catalysts for Sustainability 

Nico Larco, University of Oregon 

Many communities and cities are desperately interested in moving 

toward a sustainability and livability context. Simultaneously, there 

is a tremendous amount of energy and know how about such issues 

embedded within Universities, from faculty research to courses 

across disciplines that address some aspect of the built environment. 

Thus, there is great potential to match the community need 

with University resources, and even though there are many applied 

courses and other engaged applications, the connections between 

town and gown are often quite weak and isolated by discipline. 

The Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI) is an effort to radically alter 

the function of the public university to serve the public good by 

catalyzing community change specifically related to the emerging 

livability and sustainability agenda. SCI is cross-disciplinary, 

bringing together students and faculty in architecture, landscape 

architecture, urban design, planning, public policy, business, law, 

and journalism, to work together and to work directly with communities 

to help accelerate changes toward livability that the nation 

so desperately needs. This work is carried out through a variety of 

efforts, including: 

•Sustainable City Year (SCY): This is a program that asked 

a simple question: “what would happen if existing courses across 

a University that had some connection to livability and the built 

environment all worked with the same city over an entire academic 

year?” The result of the SCY 2010-2011 program was that 27+ professors 

from ten disciplines dedicated 30+ courses to work with the 

City on a variety of urban design, architecture, transportation and 

other livability projects. In all, it is estimated that nearly 80,000 


hours of student and faculty time were given to this city, which 

has been significantly impacted through the diversity and depth of 

work and ideas. Projects ranged in topics from streetscape design, 

light rail and public transit planning, urban ecology, and economic 

development. 

•Policy Engagement: SCI has been directly engaged in national 

policy issues, reviewing legislation for key members of Congress, 

submitting White Papers to federal transportation agencies, 

and meeting directly with Congress members and staff about key 

upcoming legislation focused on livability. 

•Research: SCI faculty enjoys a national reputation as experts 

on urban design, transportation and livability. A recent White 

Paper on “Transit Livability” prepared for the FTA has recently 

been turned into funded research with the goal to provide a series 

of performance metrics for assessing how well the nation’s transit 

systems serve the livability needs of their communities. This research 

bridges urban design, planning, and transportation design. 

In short, the Sustainable Cities Initiative is a cross-disciplinary effort 

integrating research, education, service, and public outreach 

around issues of sustainable city design. 

SCI represents an original and fairly radical re-conceptualization 

of the research university as catalyst for sustainable community 

change. The truly multi-disciplinary, applied learning, and engaged 

community orientation makes SCI a potential model for Universities 

interested in collaborative, multidisciplinary, and applied service 

learning as a key component of their curriculum. 

Towards [gu] Growing Urbanism 

Gundula Proksch, University of Washington 

Josh Brevoort, zeroplus 

Lisa Chun, zeroplus 

[gu] Growing Urbanism is the future of our cities. It is a new paradigm 

for cities that blurs the boundaries between nature and our 

built environment. [gu] a vision for Seattle in 2036 that embraces 

the re-emergence of natural systems in a symbiotic relationship 

with human developments on multiple scales throughout the city. 

Based on their geological, ecological, and social history, three different 

city zones - ‘water’, ‘tidal’ and ‘dense’ cities - are defined 

and developed to function in reciprocal exchange encouraging and 

harnessing their inherent characteristics for maximum benefit to 

the greater whole. Within these three city zones, micro-infrastructures 

including a natural, closed-loop water system, an ecological 

permaculture food system and an alternative, smart energy network 

are propagated to thrive as one biological organism. These 

micro infrastructures of [gu] are made possible by the emerging 

datascape of information, gathered through sensors and users 

augmenting our intelligence so that we may fully understand the 

complexities of the symbiotic relationships we are proposing each 

piece slowly growing together. 

On its smallest scale, [gu] is a hybrid, biological building system 

and flexible envelope controlling enclosure and microclimate 

through adaptive sensing mechanisms as well as providing water, 

energy, light and food. Ultimately [gu] is a self-generating and selfsustaining 

synthetic biology that will change the definition of nature 

and what we build. 

[gu] rethinks developments and trends of the current sustainability 

debate and takes them further towards a more integrated, holistic 

symbiosis between the natural and built environment.



TWICC:Two-Way Insulating Composite Cladding 

Jefferson Ellinger, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 

Two-Way Insulating Composite Cladding is a customizable tile system 

that provides insulation to a facade with both the tile’s foam 

filled eco-resin fiberglass shell and an exterior layer of stagnant air 

generated by the surface geometry. 

Critical to the secondary insulate performance of the system is 

both the shape of the tile itself and the layout of a field of differentiated 

tiles. Careful articulations of both the tile and the field 

pattern are designed to create a rippled or textured surfaces. In 

this test case, a designed depth of 4 inches was used to generate a 

layer of stagnant air along the facade. This layer of stagnant air is in 

addition to the typical air film layer on the exterior surface of a wall 

and will act as another layer of insulation, much like the airspace 

in a wall cavity, retarding the thermal flows between interior and 

exterior. Testing is currently underway to determine the equivalent 

R-value; however, the initial C.F.D. (Computational Fluid Dynamic) 

analysis results verify the existence of a substantial stagnant air 

layer generated by the geometry at the building surface in both the 

2-D and 3-D simulations. This has been verified across a large range 

of air flow velocities and directions. We expect the value to be substantially 

greater than the R-value of 0.17 for an exterior air film and 

the air layer generated should achieve an R-value near 1.0. The primary 

insulation property is, of course, generated by the composite 

material assembly and has been calculated to achieve an R-value 

of approximately 7.0 yielding a combined R-value of nearly 8.0 

for the cladding system. When used in combination with a proper 

drainage plane, this substantially adds to the insulation capacity 

of the wall assembly at the most desirable position; the outermost 

level. A full scale mock up of the system has undergone weather 

testing and maintained positive water shedding under hurricane 

force conditions. The current iteration of the system shown here 

has recently been installed on a small structure for further field 

testing and verification. 

Equally as important to the insulation performance is the architectural 

effect and visual performance that is generated. In this installation, 

the designed pattern is constrained to using only six different 

tiles to expedite manufacturing, but this was clearly enough 

variation to generate a gradient visual pattern and dynamic play 

across the facade. The interplay between light and shadow give an 

unexpected depth to the wall surface, adding a substantial visual 

dynamic to the system at a very personal scale. The pigmentation 

is integral to the casting process. It is extremely durable and UV 

resistant allowing the project to maintain this look with minimal 

effort. The project shown represents a fine tuning of the system as 

a response to the local wind conditions balanced against maximizing 

the visual effects. Effects that reflect and re-contextualize the 

local landscapes through the seasons; summer and winter, buttes 

and moguls. 



Society 

[Fab]ricating Habitat: From Digital Design 2 

Fabrication // a Habitat for Humanity Prototype 

Alexis Gregory, Mississippi State University 

Jonathon Anderson, University of North Carolina, Greensboro 

Digital fabrication has become more and more influential in the architecture 

and construction industry and so must be explored to 

better understand the benefits for the future of the field. The goal of 

this project was the investigation of digital fabrication as a detailing 

tool to better understand the benefits of high tech manufacturing 

processes. There is a unique opportunity with digital fabrication to 

facilitate an ease of construction that lends itself to projects such 

as those required by organizations like Habitat for Humanity. The 

cost limitations experienced by Habitat for Humanity necessitates 

volunteers to help with construction that have either limited or no 

construction skills and experience. The ability of digital fabrication 

to detail and establish a “kit-of-parts” that can be put together by 

every skill level gives architects and contractors the capacity to 

push the limits of design past the boundaries of currently available 

volunteer construction techniques. Three building sections were 

constructed by the students instead of an actual house due to the 

cost and space limitations of the institution and client. However, 

the full-scale sections gave viewers an understanding of what the 

space would feel like through a view of the materials utilized both 

inside and outside of the building envelope, and how the building 

would be constructed using Computer Numeric Controlled mills 

that generated the parts needed for assembly. 

Social media has proliferated among today’s millennial students as 

an important communication tool and therefore is important to be 

explored as a communication tool in an educational setting. On his 

blog site, Andy Carvin of the Digital Divide Network, explains how 

“social networking in education opens doors to an unprecedented 

array of learning opportunities in an environment where educators 

often feel freer to express themselves, share their ideas and be a 

catalysts for change” (2006). The use of social media and other 

digital tools as a major source of communication in an architecture 

design studio is an important issue to discuss and develop as current 

students and the students entering our programs already use 

these tools and will only gain from the implementation within their 

curriculum. This exploration of digital tools for both architecture 

and architectural communication is important for architects, contractors 

and especially organizations like Habitat for Humanity so 

that they can see how current and developing technologies like 

digital fabrication can not only help generate good design through 

detailing, but how it can also save money, be volunteer friendly and 

therefore help establish a home. 

Mi Casa es Su Casa 

Javier Gomez, Texas Tech University 

Open House: “Architecture and Technology for Intelligent Living 

envisions the house of the future as a place for new spatial experiences, 

new systems of sustainability and new sensory enhancements” 

1 . 

The cookie cutter house is an emblematic ‘status quo’ symbol, for 

the twenty-first century middle class in America. The post-war 

American Dream House no longer represents family patrimony, nor 

financial security. Neither the nest where the family remains united 

with all their moral and behavioral values. It is an iconic representation 

of success. “I own an MTV Crib, therefore I exist”. To have 


some validity, the iconic palace of post-modernity should look as a 

romanticized French Villa full of toys and gadgets… granite counter 

tops in the kitchen, a sparkling hut tub, and as many flat screens as 

possible. The scenographic Venturian mask from glittering Vegas 

mutates via HGTV inside the most intimate living spaces. Culture 

and class have been replaced by mediatic iconic symbols. Being 

tacky is fashionable. Rather than looking like Prince William, better 

looking like Jay-Z. There are new definitions for the culture of 

“bad taste”, everything is valid, and no one accepts the criticism for 

lacking good taste. 

After researching on different typographies of suburban singlefamily 

dwellings, students made critical art-design-projects of two 

or three bedroom houses to be located in Lubbock Texas. Intended 

to be “case study houses”, prototypes were intended to be critical 

and transcendental. The outcome encompassed a multifaceted 

research initiative. 

By understanding and manipulating ordering systems extruded 

from existing case study houses, students created a series of progressive 

architectural apparatuses by combining both languages 

‘rational’ versus ‘expressionist’. 

Precision drawings, sectional diagrams, computer animations, and 

a series of models were required. A process that went from analog 

to digital, and “vice versa”. 

1 Catalogue: Art Center Open House exhibition, Pasadena CA, 

2006. 

Reappropriation: Abandonment Adapted 


This project for the Mercado La Victoria (Victoria Market) in central 

Monterrey reprograms an abandoned lumber mill as a public 

marketplace serving residents in the urban core of Mexico’s second 

largest metropolitan area. Rather than considering the market as a 

self-contained environment, this proposal transforms a neglected 

building into a fluid extension of a central city landscape. 

Operating under this axiom, Mercado La Victoria draws pedestrian 

activity and the urban fabric itself into the structure, and thus 

creates a densified node within a characteristically decentralized 

downtown. Examining sprawl urbanism and resulting outward 

economic flows over time, potential was revealed for the systematic 

expansion of central city retail. Further study informed the 

development of a market providing regionally grown organic produce 

and handcrafted dry goods. The program organizes these 

functions within the two-level existing building. New architecture 

and landscape, inserted into the Art Deco context, activates the 

space both formally and performatively. The new public market 

provides enhanced amenities for downtown residents, while drawing 

increased flows from suburban districts. An underused and forgotten 

district of the central core is reappropriated as social space 

for future generations, while the memory of its abandoned state 

remains incorporated into the design itself.


Society Continued 

Spatial ConTXTs 

Anda French, Syracuse University 

Sibylline TXT (SP2009), What If… (SP2010) and SyrAsks (SP2011) 

are three text message based urban installations that explore how 

an emerging form of mobile communication and its attendant social 

models have and can shape the use and understanding of “public” 

space. 

These research projects identify a rapidly changing social-spatial 

landscape, which is only visible, comprehensible and accessible 

through direct experimentation. The work examines spatial practice 

which encourages public interaction. Speculation about the possibility 

to heighten, augment or reinforce this practice through the integration 

of digital communications is best served by testing in the public 

realm, using the devices directly. 

Part 1: Sibylline TXT, my own research project, began the sequence. 

This project dispersed a fictional story through 60 separate text messages, 

dispersed through 26 urban sites, over 30 days. The project is 

named for the Cumaean Sibyl at the Oracle of Cumae (seen in Virgil’s 

Aeneid). The Sibyl inhabits a cave with one hundred openings, and 

reveals her prophesies on a series of oak leaves within the cave. When 

a wind blows the oak leaves are scattered, thus re-sequencing the 

prophesy and creating potential through mis- and reinterpretation. 

The project explores the potential of digital communication to operate 

as a modern oracular mode of narrative grafted on to physical 

spaces in the city. 

Part 2: This “Spatial ConTXTs” course sequence was funded by an 

Imagining America Grant, meant to support courses pairing scholarly 

work with community engagement. These courses focused on the 

production of installation work that engages mobile communication 

technologies. The student installations, What If… and SyrAsks, both 

claim that a public can be gathered and encouraged to inhabit the 

city through urban “conversations.” These conversations were facilitated 

through the dispersal of physical installations within the city 

that act as collectors and markers of the discourse. What If… worked 

with vacant storefronts in the city as sites to ask citizens to send texts 

speculating on the possibilities for the city. SyrAsks created sculptural 

pieces fastened to existing infrastructure to pose questions, created 

through our workshops with 7th and 8th graders in one’s of the city’s 

schools and answered through text message. Both projects culminated 

in final projection events that invited all contributors to read the 

city’s responses, furthering the recursive nature of the work. 

As a forward-looking pedagogical model, for students these projects 

of spatial inquiry with minimal construction, enhanced by their digital 

elements, can provide an opportunity for making the most immediate 

effect on the environment. This is work that is both theoretically speculative, 

and real and engaging as physical practice. These projects 

necessitate immediate engagement for students with the community 

and with urban conditions. 

The work combines the reality of the urban field with design techniques 

that rely on quick, fluid work to get on the ground as soon as 

possible. It is the experimentation and mobilization of theory, a powerful 

pedagogical tool, an important future model for the integration 

of studio teaching and field research within an increasingly complex 

set of urban conditions. 



Technology 

“Soft” Kinetic Network (SKiN) 

Vera Parlac, University of Calgary 

Richard Cotter, University of Calgary 

Todd Freeborn, University of Calgary 

Adam Onulov, University of Calgary 

The SKiN project consists of small scale prototypes of an adaptive 

kinetic surface capable of spatial modulation and response to 

environmental stimuli. The emphasis is on the nature of material 

systems in the built environment and their capacity for change and 

adaptation. Elements, structure, surface and performance of the 

developed networked kinetic material system are designed as integrated 

layers that make up a “tissue” capable of accommodating 

dynamic nature of human occupation. 

The “Soft” Kinetic Network (SKiN) surface is organized around 

the network of embedded “muscle” wires that change shape under 

electric current. The network of wires provides for a range of 

motions and facilitates surface transformations through soft and 

muscle like movement. The material system developed around the 

wire network is variable and changes its thickness, stiffness, or permeability 

within its continuous composite structure. The variability 

in the material system enables it to behave differently within surface 

regions; to vary the speed and degree of movement; to vary 

surface transparency; to enable other levels of performance such 

as capture of heat produced by the muscle wire and distribution 

of heat within the surface regions. The main idea is that variability 

of the material system can bring us closer to the seamless material 

integration found in biological organisms. 

Our focus on seamless material integration and capturing of emitted 

energy hints at our broader goal that architectural intervention 

should find a more productive place within larger ecologies. 

We are very much interested in suspending a challenge of finding 

a non-permeable and clearly defined boundary between inside 

and outside in exchange for a surface that fosters constant flow 

of information, matter and energy. One possible application of the 

SKiN is to provide a heated surface/street furniture/structure that 

is capable of mediating environment in cold climates in order to 

make outdoor public spaces active year-round. The Skin Surface 

has capacity to register weather conditions as well as number of 

people around the structure and to adjust accordingly. Energy that 

structure uses to adjust its shape to the climatic conditions is captured 

and transferred into heat that in return mediates temperature 

around/on/below the surface. 

The developed SKiN prototypes are part of an ongoing research 

project in responsive systems in architecture. It is driven by an interest 

in adaptive systems in nature and a desire to explore the 

capacity of built spaces to respond dynamically and adapt to 

changes in the external and internal environment. “Smart” systems 

(sensors, actuators, and controllers) and kinetic parts (movable 

architectural components) are embedded into surfaces to enable 

spaces we inhabit (homes, workplaces, streets) to sense, respond 

and interact with us. The goal is to develop technologies and designs 

that are capable of transforming static building components 

into active responsive surfaces that produce added functionalities 

in architectural spaces. Buildings that could sense and respond to 

environmental changes and interact with their users can operate 

more synergistically within larger ecologies and therefore move us 

closer towards more sustainable future. 


Biomanufactured Brick 

Ginger Dosier, American University of Sharjah 

“People used to say that just as the 20th century had been the 

century of physics, the 21st 

century would be the century of biology... This would, inevitably, 

involve new technique, new vision, new models of thought, and 

new models of action.“ 

Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order 

What if we could grow architectural materials with microorganisms? 

The built environment is constructed using a limited palette of 

traditional materials: concrete, glass, steel, and wood. These traditional 

materials contain a high-embodied energy, with components 

of concrete and steel mined from non-renewable resources. 

Forty-percent of global carbon dioxide is linked to the construction 

industry, primarily due to material production and disposal. 

Traditional brick manufacturing requires the use of energy intensive 

processes for vitrifying clay particles into hardened materials. 

It is estimated brick production alone emits over 800 million tons 

of carbon dioxide each year. 

Simple organisms create hard mineral composites in ambient temperatures, 

such as coral and calcium carbonate shell structures. 

Sporosarcina Pasteurii, a nonpathogenic common soil bacterium 

and naturally found in wetlands, has the ability to create a biocement 

material that can fuse loose grains of sand. A hardened 

material is formed in a naturally occurring process known as microbial 

induced calcite precipitation [MICP]. The material is made 

by mixing specific quantities of bacteria, urea and calcium chloride 

in a matrix of aggregate, and allowing the biological and chemical 

reactions to take place. The resulting material exhibits a composition 

and physical properties similar to natural sandstone, and takes 

a few days to complete. The manufacturing process is similar to 

hydroponic gardens, whereby bricks are grown similar to farming 

practices Current structural tests exhibit equal compressive 

strengths of clay fired brick. 

The bioengineering method for growing architectural materials is 

pollution free, with a low embodied energy, and can occur in a range 

of temperatures: 10-50 C. As traditional brick construction is heavily 

dependent on burning natural resources such as coal and wood, this 

reliance results in increased carbon dioxide emissions and a greater 

dependency on limited energy sources. The process of manufacturing 

biological building units is economical as the large portion of the 

raw materials are found on site. Experiments have been conducted 

using a variety of aggregate matrixes with large success; these include: 

sand, soil, recycled glass, fly ash and plastics. 

Biological brick manufacturing can be achieved utilizing traditional 

casting methods, or articulated by digital tooling to fabricate layered 

units with a programmed material composition.. The use of 3D printing 

technologies is economically driven as it generates little waste, accommodates 

a variety of potential materials, provides a high degree 

of accuracy, and allows for infinite variation. Digital brick models can 

be designed to specifically and precisely locate mineral templates for 

growth and different sizes of aggregate for structure. 

Employing bacteria to naturally induce mineral precipitation, combined 

with local aggregate and rapid manufacturing methods, this 

research seeks to define and commercialize a local, ecological, and 

economic building material for use throughout the global construction 

industry.


Technology Continued 

CFS - Cross Fabricated Scales 

Wendy Fok, University of Houston 

Sue Biolsi, WE-DESIGNS.ORG 

Cross-Fabricated Scaled is an investigative prototype of experimental 

cross-fabrications between geometry and materials research, serving 

as a crossover between architecture and art—with a high concentration 

on the developmental nature of experimentation and details, relating 

to the scalability of a singular, yet repeated, patterning unit. 

The emphasis of this piece is the seamless transition between scales 

of a composite geometry, which is an evolution of topologies, exploring 

the physical properties intrinsic within the technique of digital and 

analog design experimentations. In fostering the synthesis of repetition 

and variation within a scalable logic, Cross-Fabricated Scaled 

anchors its design experimentation in exploring the challenges of 

producing a continuous surface condition through a composite unit 

which has the ability to seamlessly scale up through the minimized 

connection of parts. 

The form-finding investigation and evaluation included active lab 

testing of physical models, in conjunction with computer simulation 

and optimization processes through a CNC (3D) milled prototype of 

each individual module, which attaches to a framing system. In addition, 

the fragility of the forms and differentiated materials were conceptually 

assessed through experimentation during the design development 

research process. 

The final [whole] wall is constructed of modular self-supporting aggregates 

that seamlessly unite through a minimal connection of parts, 

creating a gradient of tessellation across scales. The collective units 

could possibly scale ad infinitum, yet the perception of its parts is 

diffused through its design that expresses a maximum variation for a 

minimum amount of parts, which also allows for ease of transportation 

and construction. In order to fully express the effect of the scalar 

transition, the repeated units are best viewed as a formalized wall partition 

system, which can divide or constructed within a taciturn space. 

Climate Changes: Thermal Response Verification of 

a Building Envelope Using Transient Heat Transfer 

Analysis 

Kyoung-Hee Kim, University of North Carolina at Charlotte 

The rapid expansion of the world’s economies demands enormous 

consumption of fossil fuel and construction materials. According to 

2011 Energy Information Administration Data, world marketed energy 

consumption grows by 53 percent from 2008 to 2035. The rapid 

growth and increasing emissions of greenhouse gas are expected to 

accelerate global climate change. Scientists expect that the average 

global surface temperature could raise an additional 1 to 4.5° F within 

the next 50 years which are attributed by both human and natural 

causes. 

The environmental impacts of a building are alarming and it is important 

to understand how global warming in future is going to 

affect the energy performance of a building. Certainly, there are 

many building systems that can play a role in implementing sustainable 

concepts and mitigating impacts from climate changes. 

Among various building systems, a building envelope system - an 

immediate mediator between outdoor and indoor climate conditions 

– requires through understanding of its response to climate 

changes. The primary purpose of the presentation is therefore to 

address the impact of climate changes on the energy performance 

of building envelopes and further on the built environment. As a 

pilot study, a transient heat transfer analysis using finite element 

modeling was used to simulate the thermal response of a building 

envelope based on hourly recorded weather data in Charlotte. 

Further, the presentation also will discuss about challenges and opportunities 

using transient heat transfer analysis method in class or 

seminar environments as an efficient learning tool to visualize the 

dynamic nature of the built environment. Detailed analysis results 

will be presented in the conference meeting. 

Electropolymeric Dynamic Daylighting System: 

DisPlay Technology for Bio-responsive Mediated 

Building Envelopes 

Bess Krietemeyer, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 

Increased awareness of the negative effects that limited natural 

light exposure has on the human circadian rhythm has drawn attention 

to the role of daylight in buildings. Human health and energy 

problems associated with the lack of control of natural light 

in contemporary buildings have further necessitated research into 

dynamic windows for energy efficient buildings. Existing dynamic 

window technologies have made moderate progress towards 

greater energy performance for curtain wall systems but remain 

limited in their performative response to dynamic solar conditions 

and variable user requirements for thermal and visual comfort. In 

contrast to existing façade technologies, emerging display technologies 

could actively reconfigure their basic patterns to respond 

to fluctuating bioclimatic flows while simultaneously adjusting to 

the changing visual desires of its occupants. Recent breakthroughs 

in the field of information display provide opportunities to transfer 

emerging display technologies to building envelopes that can 

achieve high levels of variety and control over the passage of solar 

radiation with immediate switchability. Electroactive polymers are 

one such emerging technology that, when deployed within insulated 

glazing units (IGUs), could significantly increase the range 

of solar heat gain coefficient, U-value and visible transmittance for 

windows. Integrating electroactive polymers within the surfaces 

of an insulated glazing unit (IGU) could dramatically improve the 

energy performance of windows while enabling user empowerment 

through the control of the visual quality of this micro-material 

assembly. The Electropolymeric Dynamic Daylighting System 

(EDDS) is a dynamic glazing technology that could respond to 




variations of sunlight and temperature while allowing for view and 

varying degrees of user control. The EDDS is currently being developed 

by an interdisciplinary research team and tested with labscale 

prototypes to evaluate the energy performance according to 

dynamic environmental conditions, fluctuating building demands, 

and multiple user types. If electropolymeric shutters are applied 

in multiple layers of a pixilized array within the surfaces of an IGU, 

then this layered pixilation creates a geometric and spectrally selective 

two-axis tracking system that responds to both diurnal and 

seasonal fluctuations. Another significant benefit that the EDDS 

could provide is the modulation of heat gain through the building 

envelope in order to mitigate heating, cooling, and lighting loads. 

Through the switching of these surfaces and interception of direct 

solar rays, the EDDS is anticipated to have substantial energy savings 

over the course of the year in comparison to existing fixed 

layer systems. The EDDS also offers the benefits of individual control 

to its building occupants and surrounding participants for the 

manipulation of visual effects along the IGU surface. The flexibility, 

immediate responsiveness, and remote switchability of electropoly 

meric display technology make individual choice over one’s shading 

density, privacy, views, and dynamic visual effects entirely 

achievable. Introducing design variability and individual selection 

over the visual quality of architectural envelopes and interior surfaces 

has the potential to satisfy the diverse needs of building occupants 

while reducing the energy consumption in buildings, responding 

simultaneously to bioclimatic, biological, psychological, 

and socio-economic needs and desires. 

Firefly: Propositions of Future Illumination 

Rashida Ng, Temple University 

Firefly, a winner of an international design-build competition invites 

the public to treasure the natural processes of the Earth while 

educating them in more sustainable ways to live in harmony with 

the environment. In addition to its use of well-established environmentally 

responsible principles such as design for deconstruction, 

use of reclaimed materials, and passive-design strategies, Firefly 

excites more provocative theories of integrated forms of illumination. 

The sun shelter utilizes a variable pattern of phosphorescent 

to provide shading during the day while emitting a passive emerald 

glow by night. As such, Firefly aspires towards the production of 

light that replicates the efficiency, complexity, and beauty of the 

natural world. 

Firefly was designed to maximize off-site fabrication, minimize 

material waste, and to allow for the reuse of its materials in the 

future. The triangulated design of the structure provided material 

efficiency by reducing the number of columns, while also providing 

lateral support to the shelter. Individual components were bolted 

together utilizing steel plates, which also provided additional reinforcing 

to the curved beam extensions. The joints were developed 

to facilitate the on-site assembly and disassembly of the components 

to allow the site to be easily returned to its natural state at 

the end of the project. 


As one moves into the shelter, multiple curvilinear surfaces encourage 

visitors to inhabit the floor as it slowly rises and falls. The undulation 

of the interior decking is created by subtle manipulations 

of each floor beam and their bowed extensions. The rhythm of the 

decking and its contoured surfaces provide a variety of places for 

children of all ages to comfortably rest. Converging in both plan 

and section, the interior space of Firefly is minimally defined and 

suggestive of infinite space. Blurring the lines between inside and 

outside, floor and wall, ceiling and sky, Firefly tempts its inhabitants 

to take pleasure in the sights, sounds, and smells of its surrounding 

context. From within the space, guests are encouraged 

to relax and enjoy the tranquility of the site’s scenic hillsides. 

The fabric roof panels utilize a patterned layer of phosphorescent 

minerals printed onto cuben fiber, a semitransparent non-woven 

fabric, to produce a passive source of illumination within this elevated 

sun shelter. Phosphorescent minerals produce light through 

the slow re-radiation of previously absorbed luminous energy. 

Similar to the bioluminescence of fireflies, phosphorescent materials 

provide an energy-efficient and cool source of illumination. As 

such, Firefly transcends customary environmental design strategies 

in its proposition of a dematerialized manifestation of responsive 

light. Reactive to the setting sun, the pattern of minerals on 

each panel produces a glow each night for up to twelve hours. This 

moderately simple installation of phosphorescent minerals proposes 

extensive possibilities for future amalgamated illumination 

assemblies. The phosphorescent materials utilized in Firefly can 

be considered a proxy for alternative forms of solid-state lighting 

that will soon be available, such as organic light emitting diodes 

[OLEDs] and electroluminescent [EL] materials. As such, it suggests 

a future of light that is at once thin, flexible, touchable, translucent, 

passive, and responsive. 

GLS - Kitchen Tent 

Glenn Wilcox, University of Michigan 

Anca Trandafirescu, University of Michigan 

The GLS Kitchen Tent is a project that is situated on a rural site in 

south eastern Michigan. The design employs both high and lowtech 

methods in its development and subsequent fabrication. 

Structurally the project benefits from the traditional form of the 

arch and vault. Yet these forms are manipulated through parametric 

and scripted systems to allow for variation in the overall form 

in response to aesthetic and pragmatic conditions. The project will 

ultimately utilize CNC tube bending technologies in conjunction 

with 5-axis laser cutting to resolve the complex tube geometry, in 

combination with CNC fabric cutters and sail making technology to 

facilitate the construction of the projects skin. 

The projects form is in part a response to the program - the creation 

of a multi-purpose meeting, dining and food prep space, but 

is also shaped in response to particular views, negotiating mature



surrounding trees, and creating ‘rooms’ with existing site features. 

The design of a computer based ‘system’ allows for continuous 

tweaking of the complex geometry throughout the design process 

- without having to remodel the form, for subsequent iterations. 

The overall form of the project can be manipulated through the development 

of a parametric system in the software program Grasshopper. 

This allows variables such as the shape of the foot print, 

height of arches, and dimension and orientation of the oculi to be 

changed continuously throughout the design process. 

Once a parametric solution is selected - a series of control lines are 

output for each vault form. Following, a computer script - is run on 

the control lines, generating a triangulated frame based on a second 

series of variables including density of triangulation and pipe 

dimension. Also from these control lines the skin of the structure - a 

series of developable surfaces are produced. 

A physical model is used in conjunction with the computer model 

and software to explore different patterning techniques of the 

structures skin - which will eventually be fabricated out of nylon 

sailcloth. A wire-frame armature of one of the vaults is constructed 

and used as a type of dress form. Variations of the covering are 

patterned sewn and fitted to the model. 

Molecular City 

Roberto Bottazzi, Royal College of Art 

Description: 

Molecular City is an installation presented at the 2010 Future Places 

Festival in Porto, Portugal. By taking advantage of Augmented 

Reality technology, it challenges the tenets of contemporary planning 

by collapsing real and virtual experience. 

Concept: 

As technology increases in computational power and user-friendliness, 

portable devices will be completely tuned in people’s needs 

and desires to their environment. The future of augmented reality 

technology [AR] will be urban. However, if fields as diverse as music 

or the military have already capitalised on such radical advancements, 

architecture and urbanism are still largely unaffected by this 

revolution. Architects still see themselves as the solitary creators 

of static physical objects seeking to single-handedly control urban 

experience. 

Molecular City challenges this outdated vision by speculating alternative 

modes of planning and experiencing the twenty-first century 

city. 

Similar to how simple molecules can be aggregated to form complex 

organic compounds such as proteins, Molecular City imagines 

a condition in which the overall complexity and richness of the urban 

experience is the result of a multitude of diverse narratives and 

singular gestures. The construction of such environment emphasises 

contingency and discontinuity over exactness and stability. 

By taking advantage of AR technology, Molecular City allows the 

public to create their collective hybrid city by superimposing 

virtual architectures onto the existing city of Porto via computer 

projection. The physical space of Porto becomes a canvas constantly 

connected to the endless possibilities provided by virtual 

space. The role of the architect recedes to the background; the 

city transforms into a gameboard where cultural desires and needs 

can be seamlessly projected and negotiated. Conflations of place, 

scale, emotion and history overlay to give rise to a hybrid (half real, 

half virtual) urban condition. A library of digital architectural models 

to play with will be provided via either ADS1 student models or 

free downlodable models from the Internet. 

Banking on the ongoing four-year research on the relation between 

digital technologies and urban environments, Roberto Bottazzi has 

a long experience in creative academic work that hybridise virtual 

and actual domains. Our most recent exhibition – at the Royal College 

of Art in February 2010 – utilised AR to invite the visitors to 

play with students’ work to compose their own landscape of projects. 

Performance-Based Generative Design 

Ming Tang, University of Cincinnati 

This project investigated a collaborative research and teaching 

project between the University of Cincinnati, Perkins+Will’s Tech 

Lab and nD group, and the University of North Carolina Greensboro. 

The primary investigation focuses on the design and fabrication 

of building components, derived from performance-based 

parameters. The project examines various approaches including 

theoretical investigations and proprietary software tools for parametric 

design. 

The project first gives a short historical and philosophical background 

to performance-based design, then describes the technical 

and algorithmic requirements, and concludes with the examples of 

implementation. With two design courses taught in 2011, the authors 

discuss the “shared body plan” as an essential element for 

applying generative form-seeking methods in architectural design. 

Design methodologies, such as use of building performance simulation 

tools, genetic morphing, and fitness evaluations are discussed 

as new paradigms in generative, performance-based design. 

This project also investigates how the large quantity of iterations 

can be filtered and selected based on the feasibility of fabrication 

and materialization processes. Using several student projects in the 

poster, the authors intend to demonstrate the methods of mass 

customization and parametric iteration through physical prototyping. 

The parameters related with fabrication have been implemented 

to generate a large quantity of creative solutions, whereas 

genetic algorithm functions are introduced as optimizers. 

As a conclusion, this poster illustrated the formation process that 

nature permits in order to sustain a generative system. The project 

analyzes several design and prototyping procedures, and illustrates 

how these performance-driven design approaches can be 

used for innovative forms, utilizing benefits of performance-based 

influences in architecture beyond formal assumption and aesthetic 

experimentation. 




Points + Clouds: Tactical Hermeneutics: 

Robert Yuen, University of Michigan 

“We hold to the idea that architecture is not simply reducible to 

the container and the contained but that there exists a dynamic exchange 

between the life of matter and the matter of our lives.” 

Reiser + Umemoto 

Device: an instrument or tool designed for a specific task or set of 

tasks. 

Abstraction: the act, idea or concept that filters or extracts, manipulates, 

and distorts specific elements from the whole. 

Tooling: the process of engaging the tool itself within the design 

process. 

Apparatus: the collection or family of instruments, devices and tools 

designed for a particular purpose. 

Atmospheric: have an emotional quality that resembles that of air, 

wind, and cloud. 

Research-through-Tooling as an explicit vehicle, provokes interrogations 

and explorations of environments. It consistently reiterates 

the condition that minds the gap, situated between spatial representation 

and the built environment, informed through a series of 

hermeneutic devices. The devices create the occurrence of mistruth, 

errors, holes, and mistakes that formulate poetic spatial possibilities. 

The potency of the unfamiliar and the unseen that lurks within the 

atmospheric construct is exploited. It is simultaneously ambiguous 

and specific to the slippage between spaces and realms. Defined 

tactics expand the traditional thinking of spaces and volumes as dualities 

of surfaces and solids to a notion of points and clouds: the 

atmospheric. 

Heremeutic Series 

Interpretation of spaces, and designing around techniques but not 

reliant on them to design transmissible, navigational properties of 

space. Conceptualizing space between the dualities of surfaces and 

solids to a notion of points and clouds: the atmospheric, draws on 

the questions of authenticity and the infidelities. Producing a body 

of work that explores interpretation through representation of reality 

that is full of errors, distortions, gaps, and residue. The drawings 

act as markers for the next projective moments of this work. 

“Space becomes a background for interaction rather than a co-producer 

of interaction. But what takes place is, in fact, a double movement: 

the user’s interaction with other people co-produces space 

which in turn is a co-producer of interaction. Through focusing on 

our agency in this critical exchange, it is possible to bring our spatial 

responsibility to the fore.” Eliasson, Olafur 


The research project exams and unveil this condition of space 

through the use of digital technology to map and project alternate 

realties that co-exist within. It draws a spatial condition in a different 

light prior to traditional techniques of 2D representation of 

solid and void within the discipline of architecture. The project is 

a protagonist within the movement of spatializing conditions as 

atmospheric representations. 

It is ambiguity and specific. 

It is relational. 

It is real. 

It is meaningless but meaningful. 

It operates through modes of vehicles. 

It crosses technological bearings. 

It is a paradigm shift. 

It is within the discourse of spatial understanding and perception. 

Spider Cow: Design/Build Project for a Moveable 

Interior Partition System 

Craig Griffen, Philadelphia University 

This project was the main component of a 3-credit Design/ Build 

course offered to 4th and 5th year architecture students. A newly 

renovated building on our campus had flexible lobby space that 

was planned to be open for exhibits and events but also needed 

to be partially closed off to accommodate drawing courses. So 

the university asked the students to design and build a partition 

system that would provide visual privacy, be easily moved for spatial 

flexibility and be durable. An additional concern was the need 

to reduce the reflected noise created by many hard surfaces in 

a shared space so an acoustic dampening role was added to the 

program. 

For the main project each student created an individual design 

from which similar ideas were combined to form 4 groups of 3 students. 

These groups designed 4 unique partition systems and the 

winning entry was selected by faculty and studio vote for construction. 

The winner was selected in part because it had the greatest 

chance of success but also the greatest chance of failure, guaranteeing 

a challenge for the students. 

The idea behind the wall is a steel skeleton of welded rods and tubes 

that suspend acoustic foam panels to absorb sound with a translucent 

fabric cover stretched across the fame to protect the panels. 

A spider web-like grid of rods suspends 8 tubes in each 4 foot long 

rolling panel. The tubes extend beyond the face of the frame to 

keep the fabric in tension and prevent wrinkles. Initially the ends 

of the tubes were to be open to allow light to penetrate but connecting 

the fabric to the tubes ends would have resulted in a sloppy 

detail. Therefore natural light was substituted with artificial by using 

round LED lights (originally intended for customized automobile 

headlights) activated by a motion sensor when someone walks by.



As only one student had welded before, the rest acquired a great 

education in the technique and the jigs they created to hold the 

steel in position while welding were as interesting as the finished 

product. The acoustic panels are constructed like a sandwich with 

upholstery foam on both sides of an inner core of quarter inch plywood 

to provide stiffness and a connection point for the hardware 

to the frame. 

The spider web-like steel rods were painted black to stand out and 

the tubes painted white to “disappear”(hence the moniker of Spider 

Cow). While there was concern the fabric cover was too delicate 

and would be ripped or stained quickly, it has held up very 

well over several months. Even so, it is designed to be easily replaced 

as needed. 

Even though our school lacks computer aided machinery, I think 

our students demonstrated how it is still possible to create beautiful, 

complex forms out of unfamiliar materials with the use of a little 

ingenuity. 

tetra | N 

Glenn Wilcox, University of Michigan 

Anca Trandafirescu, University of Michigan 

tetra | N project is driven by the impetus to design a generative 

self-supporting structure capable of variable form – through utilizing 

a single robust detail – one which could be fabricated out of 

flat stock material. tetra | n project accomplishes this through two 

means. First is the development of part geometry based on a tetrahedron 

(see diagram) – structured in this way – the generation 

of more complex geometry through simple base geometry always 

produces well - formed planar objects. Additionally, coincident 

faces of adjacent tetrahedrons always produce continuous forms 

– joints always meet correctly – regardless of the position or scale 

of the next part. Secondly - through the utilization of Rhinoscript 

– highly complex variable formed structures of n tetrahedrons are 

possible. The script is simply ‘run’ on an assembled tetrahedral 

base structure – part generation, connective element generation, 

labeling, drill holes, and part flattening are integral functions of the 

script. 

tetra | N is formed as a single unified tower structure with an occupiable 

base that supports itself simply by standing on the ground. 

Depth and redundancy in the form develop not only a robust structure 

– but a level of complexity and intricacy found only in organic 

forms. The visual effect is of a structure that is, on the one hand, 

highly ordered, rigorous and geometric, and on the other degenerates 

into near chaos, simulates organic growth, and confounds 

clear distinctions between foreground and background.

Abstracts from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture 

100th Annual Meeting in Boston, MA 

Address 1735 New York Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20006 

Tel 202.785.2324 

Fax 202.628.0448 

Web www.acsa-arch.org

digital aptitudes - Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture

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