Professor Kathryn Strand

The Graduate Design Foundations Studio will investigate the making and cultivation of multiples, replicas, types, and copies. Moving from exact replica to complete disembodiment, reciprocal analogue and digital experiments in making uncover the potential to disrupt and play with traditional notions of function and type. Accepting no single outcome as a definitive solution, the production of each successive copy is a device for tuning previous iterations – allowing them to resonate and evoke new spatial effects. The project exists in the overlay of and transition between the accumulations of repetitive experiments in drawing and making.

Architectural theorist Silvia Lavin considers the incidental exhibition of ubiquitous domestic artifacts - elements and conditions often discounted as supplemental, practical, or mundane – as starters for architectural special effects. For Lavin, “The curator is not a person or a subject but a function and practice that stages contemporaneity through reactivating the effects that architecture inevitably produces but rarely confirms.”

Beyond architecture’s obsession with the ideal, a singular viewpoint is surrendered to flexibly coded derivative behaviors. It is through sustained cultivation, not curation, of these behaviors that a copy continually grows new meaning.

In contrast to Mies van der Rohe’s hierarchy of value related to use, the studio will begin with the collection and curation of (similar but not the same) everyday objects valued as much for their function as for their ability to take on qualities and character of exquisite dysfunction or to “become whatever they want to become."

Gabriel Firestone

Geometric Efflorescence

This project seeks to explore the exquisite characteristics of a group of corn holders through an iterative digital process informed by Louis Sullivan's algorithmic method for developing ornamentation, Alvin Lucier's performative study of generational loss, and Sol LeWitt's rule-based practice in which interpretation allows for variable output within a typological range. Contours of the original set are treated as analogous structures to the Platonic armatures from Sullivan's germ-seed theory, along which organic geometric germination occurs through Boolean operations. Using perspective as a tool to manipulate viewership, new contours of the exfoliated forms are taken from second-generation seeds before repeating the experiment in a self-interrupting feedback loop. The final seed structures are encased in shell-like veils defined by the intersected extrusions of each form’s originating silhouetted contour. Finally, external expression of the interior seed is achieved through an iterative series of isometric projections, by which affected seed contours become armature for ornamental exoskeletons.

Jada Crittendon

Variation Through Standardization

Standardization by definition is “the process of making something conform to a standard.” It does not necessarily mean direct replication, but instead, the term serves as a guide to the production of similar products that are grouped based on similar principles and characteristics. Standardization is seen as a rule deemed by the functional similarity that enables aesthetic and ornamental variation. The project draws inspiration from Water Towers, a photographic collection by Bernd and Hilla Becher, which is a typological study that categorizes based on function while celebrating the aesthetic and ornamental differences of water towers. Replacing water towers with a typological study of drill bits, I was not making something conform to a standard, but instead creating a standard in which a process or principle is repeated. Standardization is seen as a rule determined by the functional similarity that enables formal, spatial, and functional variation.

Andrew Thompson

Veiled / Seamed Copies

This project is a snapshot of two digital and analog explorations into the characteristics of the primary object of interest. This first study examines the object as a veil. In placing the object within the context of a light source(s), the surface effects presented through its geometry are fully articulated. 

The final study explores the deconstruction and reconstruction of the fundamental logic present in the object's formal expression. The system is parametrically coded and reconstructed through a multitude of iterations. In doing so, the simple parameters can be carefully modified to develop and reshape the new object’s formal character and resultant effects. The line drawings presented represent the inputs provided (inner radius, outer radius, and shape).

Professor Thom Stauffer

Ryan Bertrand

Neo-Mat

Sawyer Gross

Neo-Mat

Shayne Hanz

Neo-Mat

Professor Jonathan Kurtz

The studio project was to design an urban vessel for flexible occupancy. Exploring the possibility that multiple programs might be accommodated in either common or distinct forms. Mining the atmospheric topics of ritual, cultivation, stewardship, materiality, and history; of a site, a building, its occupants, to develop a charged but responsive and adaptable architecture.

Ezra Bard, Joel Dalzell, Jeremy Ellis

The Park

With the Park Synagogue as our site, we were intrigued by its interiority and ecology. Our goal was to enhance those aspects through thinking of nature and people as performers acting out ecological rituals. Breaking up the site into three defined zones; wetlands, woodlands, and grasslands. We were able to create a unified project to strengthen the existing masterpiece and effectively utilize the site.

Professor Ivan Bernal

Chuanlin Lin

Caleb O’Bryon