Martin Summers
Mr. Summers was promoted to Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Kentucky College of Design in 2019. As part of his research exploring the edges between academia and practice, he founded PLUS-SUM Studio in September 2012. He has over two decades of experience in a variety of project types and scales, from small interior renovations to large-scale master planning. His first project for PLUS-SUM Studio was recognized the following year (2013) by the National AIA and displayed in Washington, D.C. as part of the Emerging Professionals Exhibition. In early 2015, PLUS-SUM Studio was recognized by the International Design Awards ( www.idesignawards.com ) with 5 total awards from three projects including the top prize in the professional category, “Architectural Design of the Year ’14.” His work has been exhibited internationally in Seoul Korea, the NAI in the Netherlands, Santiago Chile, and the Venice Biennale Sessions. His pedagogical research has been exhibited in Cincinnati, Ohio, and St. Louis, Missouri. In 2017 he tested his multi-scalar approach in two simultaneous projects that blurred the lines between academia and practice. In one he led a design-build studio with David Biagi as part of the inaugural Exhibit Columbus, University Installations in Columbus, Indiana. In the other, he led a master-planning project with Tobias Armborst of Interboro Partners for the Malaysia Biennial (ultimately exhibited at the Venice Biennale Sessions 2018).
Mr. Summers is committed to education and to pursuing conditions that allow for an open and engaging dialogue around contemporary practice and processes. This is reflected in the ethos of PLUS-SUM Studio, where he uses an intensive, iterative, problem seeking design process to discover opportunities latent within a given problem to evolve multiple, possible solutions. This process seamlessly moves from design practice to academia, testing opportunities within each realm and progress both forward. Mr. Summers has taught courses from first-year through graduate studies where he focuses on design pedagogy through iterative digital processes, performative form, and multi-scalar solutions. Additionally, his research explores error as opportunity, camouflage and glitch, and adaptive methods to address increasingly complex problems. He also teaches electives in Advanced Digital Techniques and High-Performance Building Envelopes.
Previously Mr. Summers spent 10 years at Morphosis Architects in Santa Monica, where he served as senior project designer on projects across all scales and rose to lead the office’s façade design and construction. Prior to working at Morphosis, Mr. Summers participated in a diverse range of projects from residential and worship spaces to sound stages for clients such as Warner Bros., Sony, and DreamWorks SKG. He received his Master of Architecture degree from UCLA, and his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Kentucky College of Architecture, now the College of Design.
Address: Lexington, Kentucky, United States
Mr. Summers is committed to education and to pursuing conditions that allow for an open and engaging dialogue around contemporary practice and processes. This is reflected in the ethos of PLUS-SUM Studio, where he uses an intensive, iterative, problem seeking design process to discover opportunities latent within a given problem to evolve multiple, possible solutions. This process seamlessly moves from design practice to academia, testing opportunities within each realm and progress both forward. Mr. Summers has taught courses from first-year through graduate studies where he focuses on design pedagogy through iterative digital processes, performative form, and multi-scalar solutions. Additionally, his research explores error as opportunity, camouflage and glitch, and adaptive methods to address increasingly complex problems. He also teaches electives in Advanced Digital Techniques and High-Performance Building Envelopes.
Previously Mr. Summers spent 10 years at Morphosis Architects in Santa Monica, where he served as senior project designer on projects across all scales and rose to lead the office’s façade design and construction. Prior to working at Morphosis, Mr. Summers participated in a diverse range of projects from residential and worship spaces to sound stages for clients such as Warner Bros., Sony, and DreamWorks SKG. He received his Master of Architecture degree from UCLA, and his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Kentucky College of Architecture, now the College of Design.
Address: Lexington, Kentucky, United States
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Papers by Martin Summers
A re-alignment is already taking place. The academic environment leverages manufacturing processes daily, while in practice, the digital model is beginning to drive constructed reality. Many students graduate discovering they have immediate but specialized value, experts in advanced tools. As both environments evolve, the academy has a responsibility to prepare students for critical practice beyond tools. They must be taught to leverage technology to rapidly iterate, evaluate, and synthesize solutions; adapting them within a fluid feedback-loop of making and discovery.
Tools are commonly taught in ways that reinforce perceived divisions between formal innovation (academy) and integrated modeling (practice). Semester constraints and limited resources add friction, while content delivery and curricular integration are also implicated. I address these issues in my studios via an exercise titled “Disruptive Continuity,” forming the foundation of each studio’s project. It encourages students to develop abstract formal/spatial intelligence and an open-ended process to resolve increasingly complex problems. It’s a process tested reflexively in my own award-winning practice. 3D printing is introduced, requiring students to see the design model as constructed reality, shifting production from purely representation to address material constraints, tolerance, and poché as performative territory. Form is consequential, understood as conceptual and precise. The shape of matter and the ability to control its construction lead to new spatial possibilities and geometrically embedded intelligence within the model that drives it. One of multiple manifold issues in a complex web of interactions - parametric thinking before parametric tools.
New tools and workflows are layered into the exercise where students learn to operate strategically within an ambiguous set of requirements - analyzing their own initial production within broader conceptual, organizational and aesthetic goals. Issues are now understood within a field of relationships where the architect controls specificity at both macro- and micro-interactions, primed to seek out novel combinations to manifest win-win solutions. Here, the student’s individual design decisions are focused on maximizing the problem seeking/solving opportunities, increasing their overall design coherence while revealing horizons beyond form. Students incorporate potentials as they are serendipitously discovered, maximizing each individual’s ability to see errors, glitches, and miscalculations as opportunities for investigation. Informed by knowledge gained via iterative feedback loops, intuition is valued and foregrounded, engendering more reasoned and nuanced solutions as the project develops. All these issues facilitate an introduction to a scalable, strategic, design pedagogy that maintains a productive gap from day-to-day constraints while increasing the student’s ability to become nimble, strategic thought-leaders in practice.
Seeking collaborative research opportunities across the University of Kentucky campus, our team formed to focus on local issues with broader impact. The College of Design School of Architecture, the Center for Applied Energy Research, and the Office of Sustainability coalesced around an idea - explore sustainable issues through the design of a single solar-powered transit shelter. However, a single shelter seemed like a missed opportunity; this was our Point of Departure.
We needed to reimagine our urban campus through a strategic acupuncture-a series of interactive, networked, didactic, and iconic structures. Transit shelters are ideally located along major public thoroughfares at the edge of campus, maximizing their outward visibility, engagement, and potential impact. A typical shelter has a singular function: a place to wait for buses. They are designed for this purpose with no regard to context. A soulless kit of parts whose banal design regresses from the environment and amplifies what can be a poor transit experience. To add value to this experience we must change the user's perception by jolting them out of everyday rituals, making one present and consciously aware of their context. Once users are immersed, the shelter becomes a gateway to an educational experience about how small things can make a big difference.
Conference Presentations by Martin Summers
A re-alignment is already taking place. The academic environment leverages manufacturing processes daily, while in practice, the digital model is beginning to drive constructed reality. Many students graduate discovering they have immediate but specialized value, experts in advanced tools. As both environments evolve, the academy has a responsibility to prepare students for critical practice beyond tools. They must be taught to leverage technology to rapidly iterate, evaluate, and synthesize solutions; adapting them within a fluid feedback-loop of making and discovery.
Tools are commonly taught in ways that reinforce perceived divisions between formal innovation (academy) and integrated modeling (practice). Semester constraints and limited resources add friction, while content delivery and curricular integration are also implicated. I address these issues in my studios via an exercise titled “Disruptive Continuity,” forming the foundation of each studio’s project. It encourages students to develop abstract formal/spatial intelligence and an open-ended process to resolve increasingly complex problems. It’s a process tested reflexively in my own award-winning practice. 3D printing is introduced, requiring students to see the design model as constructed reality, shifting production from purely representation to address material constraints, tolerance, and poché as performative territory. Form is consequential, understood as conceptual and precise. The shape of matter and the ability to control its construction lead to new spatial possibilities and geometrically embedded intelligence within the model that drives it. One of multiple manifold issues in a complex web of interactions - parametric thinking before parametric tools.
New tools and workflows are layered into the exercise where students learn to operate strategically within an ambiguous set of requirements - analyzing their own initial production within broader conceptual, organizational and aesthetic goals. Issues are now understood within a field of relationships where the architect controls specificity at both macro- and micro-interactions, primed to seek out novel combinations to manifest win-win solutions. Here, the student’s individual design decisions are focused on maximizing the problem seeking/solving opportunities, increasing their overall design coherence while revealing horizons beyond form. Students incorporate potentials as they are serendipitously discovered, maximizing each individual’s ability to see errors, glitches, and miscalculations as opportunities for investigation. Informed by knowledge gained via iterative feedback loops, intuition is valued and foregrounded, engendering more reasoned and nuanced solutions as the project develops. All these issues facilitate an introduction to a scalable, strategic, design pedagogy that maintains a productive gap from day-to-day constraints while increasing the student’s ability to become nimble, strategic thought-leaders in practice.
Seeking collaborative research opportunities across the University of Kentucky campus, our team formed to focus on local issues with broader impact. The College of Design School of Architecture, the Center for Applied Energy Research, and the Office of Sustainability coalesced around an idea - explore sustainable issues through the design of a single solar-powered transit shelter. However, a single shelter seemed like a missed opportunity; this was our Point of Departure.
We needed to reimagine our urban campus through a strategic acupuncture-a series of interactive, networked, didactic, and iconic structures. Transit shelters are ideally located along major public thoroughfares at the edge of campus, maximizing their outward visibility, engagement, and potential impact. A typical shelter has a singular function: a place to wait for buses. They are designed for this purpose with no regard to context. A soulless kit of parts whose banal design regresses from the environment and amplifies what can be a poor transit experience. To add value to this experience we must change the user's perception by jolting them out of everyday rituals, making one present and consciously aware of their context. Once users are immersed, the shelter becomes a gateway to an educational experience about how small things can make a big difference.