109th Annual Meeting

In 1978, mathematician Robert Connelly discovered a unique eighteen-sided closed, hinged polyhedron that, remarkably, wiggled, overturning centuries of mathematical discourse linking polyhedra with rigidity.  What is even more remarkable is that this polyhedron, along with future variations, was shown by Idzhad Sabitov (1998) to have its enclosed volume remain unchanged as it flexes, making it particularly relevant to architecture. This new category of polyhedra is the source of an ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration between architecture and discrete geometry. The flexible polyhedron serves as a generative design tool to develop a new approach to structure and a new relationship of the body in space, as well as an analytical lens through which to understand and challenge the history of architecture’s close association with upright rigidity. The Steffen Polyhedron, a simplified variation of the original Connelly form, looks like a deformed trapezoid with acute angles extending from two sides and back-to-back inverted pyramids. On the interior, the peaks nearly touch, forming an implied hinge point around which the two sides twist until the surface intersects with itself. The form is flexible between two positions of absolute rigidity. From the outside, it appears to slouch, as if adopting a contrapposto stance. Like James Dean, it exhibits a kind of transgression against upright posture by which nearly every other form abides.  Nineteenth-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer characterized architecture as the resolution of gravity and rigidity, a seemingly unremarkable statement. After all, what is a building that has not suspended the force of gravity through rigid form but a pile of rubble on the ground. The Vitruvian Man illustrates the fundamental synonymy between architecture and rigid uprightness. Two thousand years later, the Architecture Principe Group (Paul Virilio and Claude Parent), argued against propriety and restraint with a theory of the body that challenged upright posture. The “oblique function” replaced a system of rigid proportions of a universal body at rest in Euclidean space with the figure of the dancer put in motion by the forces of gravity on the oblique. However, Virilio laments their non-orthogonal system of continuous folded planes became “all blobs, blobs, blobs.”  Taking topological thinking from Leibniz, filtered through Deleuze, Greg Lynn – as part of a new post-deconstructivist generation – harnessed emerging computer technology to produce infinite variations of doubly-curved, amorphous spheres. The seamless smoothness of “animate form”, however, ensured mathematical rigidity, a result of which Lynn is undoubtedly aware as he employs new robotic technologies to re-animate his forms, most recently in RV House (2012).  In this context, flexible polyhedra are both incredibly simple geometric forms in a world of complex-curved topological spheres; and much more complex, capable of flexibility without abandoning geometry or rigidity and without cutting-edge technologies. To borrow a phrase, the flexible polyhedron is both square and groovy. This ongoing interdisciplinary project reveals the false distinction between geometry and topology as interpreted by the architectural discipline, and explores the architectural ramifications of this new world of flexible polyhedra while using material/spatial practice to further understand and represent topology.

In Italy, ‘the Years of Lead’ (gli’Anni di Piombo) signifies the period of social and political turmoil between the late 1960s and the late ‘80s, an era framed by a sustained wave of terrorist acts from both extremes of the political spectrum. A corresponding surge in criminal trials, unprecedented in their scope and complexity, prompted the construction of a series of maximum-security facilities, dubbed ‘bunker courtrooms’ (aula bunker) by the Italian press. Among these, the aula bunker del Foro Italico in Rome is most vividly remembered in Italy, owing to its connection to Aldo Moro, the former Prime Minister whose kidnapping and murder in 1978 marked the tragic apex of the Anni di Piombo. This paper provides a synopsis of the Moro Affair, and the legal proceedings that began in earnest at the Foro Italico courthouse in 1982. Playing out over more than a dozen years, no other event has held a stronger grip on the public imagination in Italy. But our chief interest here is the courthouse itself, for unlike the hastily assembled pre-fab structures that characterized ‘bunker courtrooms’ elsewhere in Italy, the aula bunker del Foro Italico embodied a unique architectural distinction: it was one and the same as the Casa delle Armi, Luigi Moretti’s 1933 masterwork. Relying on extensive archival research, this paper describes the extensive modifications made to Moretti’s project for its use as a maximum-security courthouse. The author also provides an account of the Casa delle Armi’s origins: also known as the Accademia di Scherma (Fencing Academy), Moretti’s project was a showcase of the Opera Nazionale Ballila, the youth movement of Italian Fascism. Mussolini himself inaugurated the building in 1936 as the ceremonial gateway to his Foro Mussolini, the vast sports complex master-planned by Moretti. (Renamed Foro Italico after the fall of Fascism, it ultimately served as the readymade venue for the 1960 Summer Olympics). In addition to documenting the physical alterations wrought by the building’s conversion to a courthouse, the author will trace connections between Italian Fascism’s doctrine of political violence as a source of social rejuvenation, and the strikingly similar rhetoric espoused by both ends of the political spectrum in postwar Italy, particularly the revolutionary ideology of the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades), the group responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro. The paper will also describe the current ‘post-bunker’ condition of Moretti’s project, and advocate for the restoration and preservation of the building as an extraordinary work of twentieth century architecture, as well as an iconic site in the social and political history of Italy.

The history of aluminum production in the United States is a reflection upon tangible materials, shifting power plays for ecological resources in the context of rapidly-expanding consumerism, and the focus of this paper, the perceived revolutionary properties of aluminum.1 Aluminum producers believed that the material possessed an extraordinary ability to solve spatial problems, represent beauty, and ultimately bring prosperity. Within this context, producers and manufacturers competing in the architectural products market left an indelible mark on the built environment with a wide range of components. Cladding, however, is the most visible mark. This paper follows the process of aluminum cladding production from Bauxite mine to the installation of aluminum panels on two high rise towers in the mid-twentieth century: the Alcoa Tower, Pittsburgh, 1953, and Republic National Bank, Dallas, 1954. Increased scrutiny of this process reveals an underlying philosophy of materialism similar to contemporary philosophies of “New Materialisms” which advocate the abilities of materials outside of the human domain.2 The producers’ materialist beliefs helped substantiate their drive to extract raw materials at great expense and with much exhaustion of natural resources, which continues today. The process of twentieth-century aluminum production involved damming the world’s largest rivers for power, claiming resources on domestic and colonial lands, and the employment of human capital.3 Boosted significantly by war production, in which producers manufactured aluminum aircraft parts, gun turrets and munitions, the postwar result was often a clean, lightweight and shiny aluminum panel, contrasting sharply with the gritty production process of mining, processing and manufacturing. Yet, this contrast is precisely a manifestation of the producers’ materialist philosophy, which maintained the properties of aluminum, liberated from the earth, could help bring about a prosperous future. Such a future was a leading marketing message of producers, promoted in so-called “homes of the future” and cities of aluminum, but also made in promises that aluminum could bring about prosperity. A tall, gleaming corporate tower of aluminum symbolized the producers’ claims about the agency of aluminum. Examining the archives of Alcoa and Reynolds – the two largest domestic aluminum producers of the twentieth century, this paper explains how producers’ beliefs about material agency underpinned the vast expansion of aluminum into the building products market. Aluminum spread widely from the mid-twentieth century onward, growing in use today on a global scale. Furthermore, this paper invites a deeper look at the ways in which the beliefs about the inherent abilities of materials motivated other material producers in their contribution to architectural modernism.

The standard acoustical panel ceiling (APC) developed in the late 1950s and is still installed widely today. Since its inception, there has been a significant shift in architectural discourse on the APC, from being seen as a revolutionary system that was an instrument of modernity and progress to a common signifier of soul-sucking office environments less than 50 years later. This paper will chronicle the rise and fall of the APC over the second half of the 20th century within office spaces. At its introduction into the market, the APC was a key technological development aiming to integrate building systems, support flexibility, and humanize the interior. Better yet, the APC promised to do all of this cheaply, quickly, simply, and beautifully, while requiring little maintenance. The use of the APC accelerated due to its easy adaptability over the next few decades. By the late 1990s, the APC appears to have failed to humanize the interior, with the office environments they graced seen as alienating and the ceiling system itself seen as “symbols of bland conformity.” In 1999, there was a particular resonance and alignment between popular culture and architectural discourse with the release of three popular films—Office Space, American Beauty, and Fight Club—that marked the nadir of the APC. Each film featured a protagonist who overcomes the monotony of their soul-sucking office environment and the APC played a key role in setting this context. This telling of the APC’s story demonstrated the interplay between culture and architectural discourse and the ways that attitudes toward elements of architecture are constantly shifting.

A decade ago, the architecture department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst partnered with the Yestermorrow Design Build School to envision and create a study-away design/build semester experience. This program has flourished since then, and the tenth anniversary year provides a logical moment for celebration and reflection. This presentation showcases the work of the past decade, and highlights the ways in which novel goals and aspirations underpin this particular collaboration. Since its inception in 2011, the Semester Program has been envisioned as an opportunity for architecture students from professional programs to collaborate with non-designers from liberal arts programs on the design and fabrication of a tiny house. In one semester, students quickly learn how to design, represent their ideas, work with tools and building materials, and construct a small but complex building from start to finish. This intensive experience exists in partnership with expert instructors at a seasoned design/build institution on a campus in rural Vermont, where design/build is the central ethos (Ramos 2016).  While the immersion study-away model for design/build education is not new, the Yestermorrow-UMass partnership embodies several novel characteristics that serve to highlight and expand the chief attributes of each institution (Stonorov 2017). Because the program was designed just a decade ago, it was able to opportunistically adopt characteristics from other national programs and strategically build upon the expertise of each partner organization. Programs such as the Remote Studio, the Rural Studio, the Tulane City Center and the University of Washington were models for the design of this program; site visits at each campus enabled the inaugural team to better understand the pieces that were worth emulating. In addition to these existing models, the team produced a host of new physical, economic, legal, curricular, and logistical operations for the program, in ways that served to bolster both partner institutions.

University-based design-build programs have greatly expanded over the past two decades1. While there are diverse pedagogical motivations, most center on design-build as an opportunity to expose architectural students to construction and to help them “realize what is involved in taking architecture from a drawing to a building.”2 With the ever-increasing reliance on digital tools and the related dissociation between the tools of architectural production and the physical act of building, construction experience becomes even more critical in contemporary architectural education. The converse is also true. If there is educational value in exposing architecture students to construction, then there is complementary value in exposing construction management students to the design process. This is an underappreciated opportunity within the pedagogical discourse on university-based design-build programs. Design-build, properly conceived, can be a model for interdisciplinary collaboration – between architects, builders, construction managers, and building science experts – that prepares students for future leadership in professional practice. In addition to emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration during the design process, design-build programs can also highlight the value of an integrative approach to design, particularly when this process involves both architects and builders. This kind of approach is especially valuable for teaching zero-energy and low-carbon design, which benefit from an integrated design process and close collaboration between building professionals. In this way, design-build offers an alternative model that challenges both the hierarchy between architectural studio design courses and technical coursework typically found in architecture programs and the implicit hierarchy between architects and other professionals and trades in professional practice.   In the spring of 2020, our university piloted a new model for an interdisciplinary design-build program. Run through the Building and Construction Technology Program (BCT), the course brought together four advanced students from the BCT program and four advanced students from the Department of Architecture to design and build a net-zero energy and low-carbon tiny house. The instructor team was led by the owner of a local construction firm that is a recognized regional leader in high-performance, energy-efficient residential construction, along with support from one faculty member from the BCT program and one faculty member from the Department of Architecture. In the full project submission, we discuss the motivations for this pilot program, situate it within the larger design-build discourse, outline the pedagogical approach to collaborative problem seeking and the collaborative, integrative design process, and present the outcomes of the project itself.

“I got into architecture because I loved to draw.  But now, I spend all day writing.”  This statement, spoken by an architect in the twilight of his career, encapsulates the experience of many architects, whose careers often evolve from design, drawing, and detailing to project management, office management, and client relations, which require the composition of countless emails, letters, and other forms of written communication.  Technical writing is a critical but underappreciated component of architectural practice, and—correspondingly—it is an undervalued part of architectural education. Gerald Grow argued in “The Writing Problems of Visual Thinkers” that architects think—and therefore write—differently than the general population.  If Grow is correct, should we not develop a unique pedagogical approach to teaching architects how to communicate through technical writing?  And if so, which pedagogical approach is the correct approach? In The Reflective Practitioner and Educating the Reflective Practitioner, Donald Schön investigated the way that architects and other professionals work through a problem through a process of testing potential solutions, what Schön called “knowing-in-action,” “reflection-in-action,” and “reflecting on reflection-in-action” (his term for meta-thinking).  Because the writing process mirrors the design process in many ways, Schön’s ideas for educating the reflective practitioner should be appropriate for teaching architecture students to write more effectively. This paper documents the second step in a planned investigation of the efficacy of applying Schön’s theory of the “reflective practitioner” to the discipline of technical writing.  The first step involved two components:  1) a literature review that examined writing manuals created for architects and other design professionals, identifying the way they apply (or do not apply) techniques compatible with Schön’s theories, and 2) a review of writing programs at several architecture schools.  Building on the literature review and examination of writing programs, this paper analyzes the preliminary introduction of Writing-in-Action during the 2019-20 academic year.  The analysis includes three components:  1) an examination of papers produced using the Writing-in-Action method in a senior-level “bookend” sustainability seminar, 2) an examination of specific Writing-in-Action interventions in a freshman-level introduction to sustainability course, and 3) anecdotal feedback from the aforementioned Writing-in-Action sessions.  This paper concludes with a next steps section that outlines a long-term research project built around the Writing-in-Action concept. [Please note, this abstract borrows some material from my paper “Writing-in-Action:  Teaching Technical Writing through the Lens of the Reflective Practitioner,” which was presented at the 2019 BTES Conference.]

This paper discusses the effectiveness of engaging students with a “design challenge” to bridge the two common sectors of lecture-based courses and design studios in architecture curriculum. This study is set out to describe the planning and implementation of a typical design challenge and critically review its capacity in conveying as-needed technical knowledge to students through both analytical and experimental approaches. Furthermore, the paper provides empirical evidence through an explanation of a 90-day experience with a team of undergraduate students who participated in a university-wide CleanTech Challenge. Finally, the recent experience of implementing a design challenge is synthesized into three sets of considerations, including the instructor’s role, the students’ engagement, and space-supplies requirements, and some substantial considerations are suggested for better conducting a hybrid learning environment.

Times of rapid environmental and cultural change impelled by disasters, pandemics, and social unrests deem essential a broadened awareness and vocabulary of resilient urbanism with protean tenacities to act in post-traumatic modes. Public spaces in various shades are vital, even more than before, in binding city/town fabrics together and helping them heal. As overarching theme, this paper explores new problematics and prospects at rise in ranges of semipublic-to-public spaces, tapering the focus on rethinking a familiar space layout: contemporary cul-de-sac. Reexaminations concentrate on questioning the current morphology, seeking ways to stretch architectural and urban design opportunities, and recreating this familiar environment to be experienced in enhanced, possibly unfamiliar, ways. Better cities offer better public spaces/places at all and multiple scales, including in the middle. In addition to desirable individual buildings and sites in micro scales as well as effective urban infrastructures and schemes at macro scales, successful cities distinguish through vigorous middle scales. That includes what lies within their public space ranges in their boroughs, districts, and neighborhoods. Typical neighborhood units are important components where cul-de-sacs belong. While middle scales are worked out to best fit for human-scale and user-experience in some, those are typically taken for granted, remaining not at focal attention in average cities. This study takes a “recipe” approach to reclaim and revive middle/neighborhood spaces, a not-one-size-fit-all approach, in this paper, taking on cul-de-sac reimagining to be enriched as protean public spaces via mixing ingredients.    The Cul-De-Sac Experiment: Contemporary cul-de-sacs are diverging, looped or circular no-through street patterns within (sub)urban sprawls, chunking out superblocks’ built-up fabrics into isolated components with introverted pathway networks. Cul-de-sacs are widely studied and debated from multiple standpoints (Hochschild 2015; Charmes 2010; Morrow‐Jones, Irwin, and Roe 2004; Cozens and Hillier 2008; Southworth and Ben-Joseph 2004). This study’s background research revisits broader concepts/methods of street and public realm studies (Gehl and Svarre 2013; Gehl 2011; Appleyard and Lintell 1972), sociological theories (Gibson 1977; Klinenberg 2018), and summary understandings of typological history. The paper contributes knowledge, expanding and complicating the archetypical morphology, asking: what historic/global equals have been, how patterns came to be, what are likes or dislikes, and how it could be readjusted in path forwards for public space reimagining. Conclusions present loose-fit adaptable design speculations discursively, diagrammatically, and contextually, appending to cul-de-sacs more flexibility and protean qualities. The methodology records analyses and syntheses of ten randomly selected, existing cul-de-sac case studies from throughout a mid-size, Midwestern American city. Cases vary in terms of permeability, neighborhood socio-economics and use characteristics (completely or partly residential, university campus, etc.). The sample is explored in a design studio, factoring in accessibility, connectivity, movement, sociability and desirability. The research process engages eye-level observations, user-counting, tracking, mapping, and tracing, naming a few. Results are curated in form of infographics that are charted on a greater city plot. Outcomes contribute illustrations to ways of public space reimagining by ways of entrenching flexibility and protean qualities on the way to middle-scale, neighborhood resiliency.

The question of housing in America’s growing urban centers has gravitated towards extremes in recent years: efforts at densification have sparked developments of multi-story apartment blocks, on the other hand the free standing single family house remains to date the unchallenged ideal of many Americans. This trend has led to both spatial and social disparities. While multi-unit structures have accelerated the urbanization of a few neighborhoods and corridors and cater to a transient population of young professionals, rising property values have made the “house” an increasingly unattainable dream for many middle class families. This lack of a middle ground has been aptly identified within the discourse of New Urbanism as the “Missing Middle,” referring to the density range between the apartment block and the single family house as much as alluding to the vanishing “middle class”. The Missing Middle promotes a medium density range to sustain local amenities and businesses without sacrificing (too many of) the comforts of the single family home. Quickly gaining ground throughout planning departments across North America, the idea has increasingly come to be reflected in the rewriting of zoning codes and ordinances.   With the groundwork being laid, one might come to expect a prolific design discourse around medium density housing. Yet, all too often the ambitions of the Missing Middle seem stuck in the new Urbanist echo chamber, characterized by “re”-verbs and the desire to return to – at least in form – an idealized version of the pre-modern city. All but absent from this discourse is the rich legacy of modernist experimental housing practices that explored the medium density range – often merging European avant-garde innovation with the urban conditions of a post-war U.S. Sometimes already conceived as counter models to CIAM’s functionalist city, these projects from the 1960’s and 70’s devised a range of attitudes regarding the scale of the domestic and of the city.[1] What can we learn from these projects today when addressing the question of the Missing Middle? Which concepts are still pertinent, and how have the preconditions changed? These are some of the questions guiding an ongoing series of advanced design studios taught by the author since 2018 that are taking on the medium density housing scale in various contemporary contexts. Looking simultaneously ahead and back, these studios aim to encourage design speculation into the ways we live, how our dwellings form units, clusters, and cities, while establishing discursive links to the postwar legacy so often “forgotten” by the current Missing Middle debate. Identifying shared bodies of ideas between the design work and postwar discourse, this paper will discuss trajectories that have emerged from this research and attempt to give the Missing Middle a disciplinary foundation outside the New Urbanism.

Transportation systems have historically been designed to move the greatest number of vehicles as efficiently as possible across a city from point to point.  However, streets also represent roughly a third of cities’ public open spaces.  In addition to being conduits, streets act as an important amateur on which an array of public services can be built.  Streets can be designed to provide multiple benefits across multiple modes of transit for aggregate network impact.  The streets of Tucson, Arizona have historically served the dual purpose of channeling stormwater flows from the urban core to peripheral washes.  There was no underground stormwater infrastructure installed during the majority of the city’s construction.  As the city expanded and land cover became less permeable, chronic stormwater flooding has challenged neighborhoods.  Tucson has the highest yearly extreme storm count across Western US Metropolitan Statistical Areas and averages $9.5 million in property losses and multiple deaths each year from flooding where stormwater infrastructure was historically not installed.   The U.S. Department of Transportation defines the term Complete Streets as streets that enable “safe use and support mobility for all users (USDOT 2020).”  Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) is defined by the Environmental Protection Agency as “reducing and treating stormwater at its source while delivering environmental, social, and economic benefits (EPA 2020).”  This paper integrates these two nationally recognized concepts across the Tucson case study for “Complete Green Streets” designs that reduced flooding for increased safety and equitable access while providing an array of community assets.   This paper examines this Tucson case study where a public-academic partnership was formed between neighborhood associations, Tucson Department of Transportation planners, County Flood Control District hydrologists, and the University of Arizona (UA).  Led through an UA upper-level design studio, the partnership used spatial mapping, quantitative analysis, hydrological modeling, and design inquiry to create a six-mile bicycle boulevard that is slated to be constructed from the northern to southern city limits, passing through the largest municipal park.  The project designed the bicycle boulevard with context-specific GSI to provide localized and network benefits including flood reduction, shaded pedestrian and bicycle protected paths, increased safety measures and traffic calming, and neighborhood place-specific social areas.  Then, extrapolating from this boulevard design, a set of prototypical interventions were categorized across a variety of conditions to retrofit the City’s multimodal transportation system into a network of “Complete Green Streets”.   This paper argues that by working across disciplines and departments, new typologies for place-specific, multi-benefit street designs can be created and implemented.  Additionally, based on the hydrological modeling of the designs, the greatest potential impacts for flood reduction were in locations with the largest existing right-of-way and moderate flooding levels.  This paper presents a replicable model for architectural academia to join with local communities and government staffs to provide practical solutions to urban transportation and water challenges through a “Complete Green Streets” design approach.  Because of this successful partnership, student interns are working for the City to develop the designs into construction-ready documents.

Parkerson Mill Creek (PMC), an integral part of the local environment, provides a green corridor with valuable native ecologies. Rapid urbanization, extra loads of surface runoff, climate change, and pollution have changed the creek’s biodiversity. Between 1965-1973, Auburn’s city culverted the part of Parkerson mill creek near RBD library, which made a considerable change in headwaters’ flow. Lots of parking lots are creating a point source of pollution that contaminates the stormwater. The area is creating a straight edge between AU green space and Auburn’s city’s green walkways.  Moreover, the city itself has few green spaces left compared to the green space of Auburn University. Both spaces co-exist without creating any connection. The site in the front of the RBD library demonstrates the potentiality of modifying and bringing back the past ( PMC) by reconnecting all the city’s green fabric.  This research goals focus on creating a transitional space of interaction while providing stormwater management strategies by daylighting Parkerson Mill Creek near the RBD Library. Moreover, It emphasizes the green connection of Auburn University and the city of Auburn to ensure transitional ecological spaces. This research additionally proposes education, participation, stormwater collection and purification areas, the use of more permeable surfaces, reuse of existing structures, and harvest rainwater. It engages design by examining sketches, scale models, sections, and repeated drawing investigation of the site. Also, the research accomplishes goals by creating an experiential social space of interaction in front of the RBD, daylighting Parkerson Mill creek, making Roosevelt Avenue a concourse; connect it with neighborhood street to Pinehill cemetery, and extend it to Town creek, thus creating a connection of Parkersopn mill creek with Town creek in the urban fabric. The design results reflect a new resilient social space that provides green connecting ecosystems and water quality. The final design amplifies the native ecosystem by connecting green corridors and water movement, providing community space, and creating awareness by slowing down people to rethink Parkerson Mill creek.

This paper uncovers an alternative postwar architectural project on the city—British town centres of the 1960’s, and an accompanying overlooked architectural discourse. A new examination of this lost typology works to recuperate the town centre, including its specific history and projects, into a broader architectural discourse related to the city.  In the late 1940’s, English towns and cities were dotted with urban voids created by an assortment of causes: from planned urban razing, post-war economic hardship, and most notably a result of World War II bombing raids. These voids had once been a rich fabric of diverse urban programs including and assortment of storefront shopping, offices spaces, schools, restaurants, cafes, and housing. Town centre projects in the 1960’s provided a new architectural typology that was packed with these programs, perfect for refilling these devastated voids. They were built within a perfect storm of conditions: a shift in land-use policy away from early postwar rebuilding efforts focused on schools and housing and towards commercial development; the availability of newly acquired disposable incomes in a domestic postwar economy; and an economic boom that involved relationships between developers and architects, both eager to invest in speculative projects that experimented with new methods for rebuilding these city centres.  Town centres were characterized by their scale—larger than a single building but smaller than a city—making them distinctly different than masterplans, megastructures, and urban plans. In terms of form and program, town centres could be described as miniature cities, comprised of a mixture of uses housed in aggregated yet unified forms. Given their programmatic characteristics and their scale, town centres were distinctly contextual and were always inserted into these existing city voids. The goal of these projects was to supplement, never supplant, existing economic, cultural, and morphological urban systems, while many times fitting nicely within single urban blocks.  This paper will feature case studies by the most prolific town centre builder of England from the 1960’s, Owen Luder, will explore how he subverted mainstream discourse on the city from this time period, and in turn, provide new design methodologies for the 21st century city. It will also relate him to a legacy of town centre projects in England, and insert this typology within 20th century architectural discourse on the city.

For pressing and complex spatial or social urban agendas, understanding and interpreting place has always been an important issue. In-depth and close explorative reading of a site—in which drawing, modeling and writing (the basic tools of architecture) become instruments to open up new perspectives—is vital for imagining site-specific architectural possibilities. We thus see creative imagination, related to and emerging from place, as a crucial source of innovation. As educators, therefore, we need to examine how to guide students explore their imaginative faculties. Our pedagogical approach is founded upon the philosophical thought of phenomenology, theory on place, findings from neuroscience, and examination of architectural precedents. Based on these underpinnings we developed a course that focused on enhancing students’ spatial imagination and challenged them to think how the tools of architectural analysis and design can offer new imaginative ways to approach the local, social and historical aspects of a place. The paper illustrates how this framework is brought into architectural education by engaging the example of “Methods of Analysis and Imagination,” a master level elective course we taught in 2019. It presents the course’s overarching structure, as it unfolded over three intensive workshops on drawing, modeling and writing respectively. Investigating a selected site—through readings, conversations, exercises, hands-on and in situ assignments—the three workshops explored the way imagination can help us look at a place, and discover new and unique spatial or architectural relationships lurking in the banal and the ordinary. Through selected students’ work the paper concludes situating the course in an educational context that cares to expand spatial and architectural imagination, trusting imagination to be the productive and valuable answer to the many critical contemporary conditions we face as architects.

By drawing an analogy between precedent analysis in architecture and close reading in literary studies, this paper advocates for the potentially radical pedagogical consequences of incorporating close reading into architectural education and practice. Precedent analysis is presented as a textual strategy in a predominantly visual field that affords architects the opportunity to parse the vast amount of knowledge and intricate decision-making that comprises the architectural process. The enduring relevance and disciplinary importance of close reading in the field of literary studies is showcased as a useful precedent for the field of architecture, which has struggled to maintain a dialogue between long-standing disciplinary debates on autonomy and the role of theory in architecture and contemporary narratives that see architecture as a socially embedded practice. While precedent analysis has obvious limitations as a vehicle for the study of architecture, it does have the potential to transcend its traditionally formalist reputation by revealing the insidious ways power structures infiltrate spatial language.

Introducing the concept of site has always been an essential, but tricky facet of beginning design education. The myriad intricacies and externalities that a discussion of site presents creates the challenge as to where to begin and how to introduce the involved layers. Education philosopher Maxine Greene, however, noted that “when [students] care about what they are doing, they are likely to go in search of meanings, to begin learning to learn.”1  How then ought we enfold student interest in the concept of site in a way that expands preconceived notions of architectural agency?  This paper explores a curricular experiment and presents the unfolding of an introductory architectural design studio which for the majority of the course decenters architectural design.2 Instead, the course establishes a foundation of extended urban, societal, and ecological investigations. As a part of a broader school-wide mission-statement, this approach seeks to infuse broader notions of architectural agency and students’ investigation within foundational education. Kicking off a three project structure, is an assignment which introduces topography and the challenge of authoring representation at the scale of a region. (Figure 1) Incorporated in this exercise are digital skill tutorials in order to give students the ability to model and explore complex surfaces. Then in small groups students examine relationships between select cities and the Mississippi River and discover how intractably cities are related to the river, the surrounding landscape, and how the river shaped societal patterns within the cities. (Figure 2) The project concludes with a group exhibition and discussion with invited critics. (Figure 3) Before they receive the culminating project, field excursions and student-initiated trips provide students with opportunities to travel to and within climate-vulnerable regions in instinctual and unrestricted ways. (Figures 4 and 5)  These opportunities give students personal experiences engaged with the ground reality of their surroundings which can later be applied to macro and meso scale questions as architectural designers.3  Building on the lessons completed thus far in the course, students are tasked with the design of a firehouse for a small river city. Students apply the learning objectives and lived experiences from earlier exercises and excursions and begin making observations about the city, the local constituency, and the site’s relationship to the river and surrounding area. Despite complications due to the COVID-19 pandemic, their site analysis and their design responses demonstrate an evolving ability to meaningfully interlace observations they have been developing over the term into proposals that acknowledge and address social and ecological challenges. Students learn to understand architectural design in an expanding field of constituencies and variables. Through a set of exercises which allowed them to build an understanding forged through experience, we found students to be affected, motivated, and deeply involved. Students were keen to explore how their design of the built world could proffer holistic approaches to address complex contemporary challenges, many of which drew them to the discipline in the first place.

Project Green Light is a network of video cameras at 700 sites throughout Detroit, Michigan. Project Green Light (PGL) locations pay setup costs as well as a monthly service fee to be monitored remotely by the Detroit Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center. Once enrolled, a flashing green light and official signage are added to signify that it is a PGL location. Through this project I argue that PGL has to be understood as an aggregation of intentional and unintentional urban design elements, one which draws together material, immaterial, technological and social factors. I also argue that ideas of safety and of infrastructure are interrelated, but in ways that stretch beyond the limited framings of crime, safety, and policing which typically dominate conversations surrounding its impact. I position the project in conversation with the scholarly discourse surrounding surveillance (in particular, that found in Surveillance Studies and Science, Technology and Society Studies), but from a specifically architectural / urbanist approach; one which utilizes a range of analytical, documentary, and speculative representational methods. In understanding the significance of PGL in Detroit, a city that is 80% Black, this project refers to the work of Ruha Benjamin and Simone Browne, both of whom theorize that biometric surveillance is fundamentally racialized technology. Browne builds upon existing theoretical frameworks of sousveillance and surveillance to argue for the continued spatial implications of technologies first developed for the control of bodies and spaces during slavery [1]. In so doing, she evolves a lineage of frameworks which use spatial analogies for power relations. Ruha Benjamin argues that race, itself, should be understood as a form of technology; one that is simultaneously glitchy, imprecise, and binding [2]. Benjamin, too, suggests spatial implications of her framing, by equating the classification and sorting of people through biometric tracking with segregationist practices during Jim Crow. This project utilizes the frameworks of Benjamin and Browne as a starting point to understand the spatialized flows of power which occur through the surveillant assemblage, but extends them to also consider theorizations of digital subjectivity across a range of social identities [3]. Additionally relevant is Louise Amoore’s concept of “algorithmic doubt”[4], which is used here to explore the spatial distribution of varying zones of legibility, or degrees of precision, throughout the spaces and subjects encompassed by the PGL system.

Data is becoming as impactful on the way we configure cities as water and electricity were 100 years ago. The high-speed, low-latency internet of Smart Cities allows our built environment to respond to our needs in exciting ways. The connectivity of sensors, devices, and our urban environments through the Internet of Things require a re-examination of the role architects, urban designers and planners can play in data-driven cities. This urban design project will illustrate the team’s design submittal to the 2019 Sydney Alternative Housing Ideas Challenge and the process utilized to develop the scheme through workshops. Named one of seven finalists, “Smart Home Sydney” introduces innovative, affordable and sustainable housing and neighborhood models. The design proposes an investment corridor through Sydney’s downtown that utilizes data collection systems to deploy population health initiatives. Housing unit designs that incorporate smart home technology as well as proposals for financing and policy to deploy such technology are also discussed. Buildings embedded with synchronized technologies are made feasible and scalable through advanced manufacturing techniques and prefabrication. Lifelong neighborhoods are evolved that allow one to thrive at all stages of life. They incorporate parks, schools, access to multi-modal transit, jobs, cultural districts, and all the amenities needed in later life. Walkable districts are designed with health and wellness in mind. Buildings are organized to support vibrant streets that hold individual car use as secondary and focus attention on walkable, bikeable neighborhoods. Housing units are designed to collect activity and biometric data and transmit this information to an on-site clinic or Living Lab. These environments are able to collect human vital signs, physical activity, environmental conditions, and pharmaceutical regiments. This data can be collected and analyzed by different apps to deploy Population Health strategies to deliver health care more affordably, effectively, and sometimes before we know we need it. The technological capability provided by the clinic allows the housing operator to leverage institutional resources by leasing space to university centers or medical research entities. The rental rate far exceeds comparable rates for similar commercial facilities thus subsidizing the housing costs, technology upgrades, and even net zero energy construction. During wide spread pandemics, the integration of the built environment with data collection technologies will more than ever evolve cities, change social interactions and provide people with health care systems. During the 2020 coronavirus pandemic Steven Holl writes “Architecture should embrace our codependence. Buildings can make us more aware of the ways in which we are globally connected.” 1 This project will not only describe the housing prototype, but will also outline the innovative competition process. Unlike many solution-based housing competitions, the seven finalist teams were invited to participate in a series of workshops to engage with one another, the Sydney government, and the community to develop their ideas into implementable solutions for Sustainable Sydney 2030 Master Plan.

Challenge An interdisciplinary urban design studio at (redacted) focused on a complex urban site condition in Seattle’s Interbay industrial/manufacturing center. The complexities include a misalignment between city land use legislation and regional transit investment, competing interests between the city and state and the prospect of seismically induced soil liquefaction and sea level rise impacting the site and surrounding area. These conditions exist within a long standing political debate regarding competing social equity goals on industrial lands. Pedagogically, the student experience transcended issues typically addressed in an urban design studio by revealing design’s role within a complex and controversial socio-political context in which the resilience of the city and region is at stake. The studio worked with city and state elected officials and staff to envision alternative futures for the site while providing a politically safe forum within which the officials could convene. 24 graduate and undergraduate students in architecture, landscape architecture and planning worked in six interdisciplinary teams for ten weeks conducting research and developing urban design proposals for the site and surrounding areas. Structural and transportation engineering students advised the teams regarding the site’s soil liquefaction concerns and emerging trends in freight mobility.  Context The new regional light rail line from West Seattle to north Seattle will travel primarily through the city’s industrial land base and will include stations entirely within or adjacent to industrial uses.  This is not the result of well-considered planning.  Rather, the level terrain that industry seeks is also the most cost effective route for light rail construction.  Thus, the region’s social equity mandate to leverage its $60B light rail investment by building desperately needed housing at light rail stations is in direct conflict with the city’s social equity commitment to protecting high paying industrial jobs that do not require a college degree.  The Interbay industrial/manufacturing center, northwest of downtown Seattle, is home to the Washington State National Guard Armory, a state owned 25 acre parcel immediately north of a proposed light rail station. North of the Armory is a 35 acre city-owned park currently used as a golf course. The state plans to relocate the National Guard and re-develop the site yet the city controls its land use. Response All six student design proposals transcended the “either/or” debate of industrial uses versus housing by proposing “both/and” scenarios including light industrial, office, retail, affordable and market rate housing and public amenities configured to minimize conflicting uses and maximize synergies between them. The proximity of city and state owned property was leveraged by exchanging land between the parties to address sea level rise and promote long term resilience by restoring portions of the site to their pre-development conditions. The final review was a well-attended public outreach event that convened, for the first time, Seattle’s planning director and the officials overseeing the state’s efforts including former Washington State Governor and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke. The event was well covered by the media* and students continue to present the work publicly to advance this critical dialogue.

Prominent urbanizing centres across the globe like Delhi, Dhaka or Manila have exhibited that development often faces a challenge in bridging the gap among the top-down collective requirements of the city and the bottom-up individual aspirations of the ever-diversifying population (Elefante, 2018). When this exclusion is intertwined with rapid urbanization and diversifying urban demography: unplanned sprawl, poor planning and low-density development emerge as automated responses. In parallel, new ideas and methods of densification and public participation are being widely adopted as sustainable alternatives for the future of urban development (Sassen, 2013). This research advocates a collaborative design method for future development: one that allows rapid application with its prototypical nature and an inclusive approach with mediation between the ‘user’ and the ‘urban’, purely with the use of empirical tools. Building upon principles of ‘open-sourcing’ in design, the research establishes a context-responsive ‘open source development framework’ that can be used for on-ground applications. In its process, the research has referred to the Sarojini Nagar large-scale redevelopment in the core of New Delhi as a field experiment – a case that encompasses extreme physical, demographic and economic diversity. This framework is used for a simulated model development at five prevalent scales in design: master planning, urban design, architecture, tectonics and modularity, in a chronological manner. At each of these scales, the possible approaches for open-sourcing are identified and validated, through hit-&-trial, and subsequently recorded. Over the five-step framework, a two-part subsidiary process is also suggested after each cycle of application, for continued appraisal and refinement. The research is an exploration – of the possibilities for an architect – to re-calibrate the architectural design process and make it more responsive and people-centric, to assume the role of a creator for a dynamic and responsive development framework. KEYWORDS: Open Source, Public Participation, Urbanization, Urban Development

The paper presents a preliminary result of a research project aiming to develop, test, and validate a data-driven approach using virtual reality (VR) and neurotechnology (EEG, etc.) for assessing the effect of sustainable building design features on occupants’ emotional and cognitive functions – proxies for mental health and wellbeing. The project will provide technology-enabled, repeatable measures for quantifying the “soft” benefits of sustainable building design features, thus providing an economically viable and repeatable assessment model, pre-build.  Given that Americans spend about 87% of their time inside buildings, the quality and design of buildings are important contributors to human wellbeing. The trend in “sustainable building” (SB) models, catalyzed by the founding of the Green Building Council in 1993, offers a unique opportunity to leverage not just beneficial environmental effects but also occupancy wellbeing effects in the design and construction of new buildings.  SB models typically adhere to a rating system that evaluates energy consumption, water consumption, use of natural resources, indoor environmental air quality and locality. In order to maximize energy efficiency, these buildings prioritize design features to enhance daylighting levels. These design elements also often increase access to outdoor views and interior spatial qualities. Case studies have consistently demonstrated the potential for sustainable buildings to increase “soft” benefits of improved wellbeing and productivity via self-reported assessments.  However, self-assessments are unreliable measures, as they are marred by participant biases and confounding variables.  Current building impact evaluation tools that measure occupants’ wellbeing and cognitive functions are user response surveys such as the health and work performance questionnaire (HPQ) and various building wellness surveys. Surveys have two main weaknesses. First, as there are many variables affecting an occupant’s response to the built environment, such as familiarity with the space, time of day when the survey is conducted, and the ambient condition of the environment (temperature, smell, noise, etc.), confounding, non-design factors can be hard to disentangle, to control for and difficult to interpret. Second, the survey response is an indirect measure of the environment, reliant on the user’s opinions (perceived likes and dislikes) and cannot provide objective data about particular environments and features. What is needed are consistent, reliable, and physiologically based, measures of mental health effects that capture human response to discrete architectural elements – especially in the pre-build, design phase. This experimental research project offers a methodology to fill this gap. Conventional buildings (CB) – those that meet basic building and energy codes but do not prioritize sustainable design elements – provide an excellent control from which to expand research on the co-benefits of SBs to improve occupant physical and mental health beyond the current limited focus on indoor air quality harm reduction.. For systemic change to occur, occupancy wellbeing must be added into the SB base rating system.  This research provides a method for quantifying occupant wellbeing, thereby offering the potential to leverage change in mainstream design practices.

The current pandemic, with its associated need for physical distancing and the accompanying transformation of the built environment, generates the pressing need for built environment researchers to refocus their research and respond to the current public health crisis. An interdisciplinary team from the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington (UW) with backgrounds in economics, urban planning, and architecture raised the following question: How do the physical design and service models of essential services and businesses improve or worsen the prospect of business continuity, economic success, and social welfare in the COVID-19 pandemic?  The team successfully participated in two calls for COVID-19 Research by the UW Population Health Initiative in March and May 2020, funding a comprehensive project of data collection and analysis in Seattle. It is designed as empirical, mixed-methods research, surveying for patterns of facility designs, service models and modifications, and economic outcomes for providers, before and during the pandemic. The project is laid out in three steps: (1) spatial typology and business closure data collection, (2) semi-structured interviews regarding service delivery modifications and financial outcomes (3) and analysis of the economic effects of physical design and service choices. The data collection was set up in conjunction with the state’s safe reopening efforts, under COVID-19 physical distancing guidelines. The material changes are used to infer types of responses to keep the businesses operating during the stay-at-home order. The fieldwork is followed by interviews of companies on their experience and critical business continuity data. The project concludes with a spatial and economic analysis of the data. This paper reports on the research design, data collection process, and first findings of this ongoing research project with a focus on food retail and restaurants.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 800,000 people suffer from strokes each year in the United States. In the coming decades, the projected increase in morbidity will inevitably pressure the healthcare system, including skilled nursing facilities and inpatient rehabilitation facilities for stroke care. Moreover, patients recovering from stroke often have long-term conditions, requiring care and attention long after discharge. Although the built environment may play a role in a patient’s stroke rehabilitation process, its impacts are not well understood. This study reviews the literature related to the correlation between the built environment and stroke rehabilitation. The rehabilitation period of the review covers both in the hospital for acute care and at home for long-term care. First, we analyze the approaches to improve the rehabilitation by using the intervention factors of the built environment. Next, we summarize and compare the data of the intervention factor from the built environment and rehabilitation progress collected from actual surveys and experiments. Finally, we provide the future research direction on how to use key intervention components of built environmental design to improve patient rehabilitation progress.