In 2006 Fast-uk and folly partnered to present the exhibition, 'Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders' which explored the possibilities afforded to artists, architects, designers, and others for the creation of new types of objects,... more
In 2006 Fast-uk and folly partnered to present the exhibition, 'Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders' which explored the possibilities afforded to artists, architects, designers, and others for the creation of new types of objects, buildings, and products stemming from the increasing use of and integration between digital technologies for design and fabrication.
A distinctive hallmark of the Stamps MDes program is its emphasis on collaborative, systematic thinking with stakeholders prior to the conceptualization processes - a methodology uniquely suited to the Stamps School's position within a... more
A distinctive hallmark of the Stamps MDes program is its emphasis on collaborative, systematic thinking with stakeholders prior to the conceptualization processes - a methodology uniquely suited to the Stamps School's position within a top-tier research university. This methodology was put into practice on December 4, 2015, when the MDes cohort hosted a design charette in the Integrative Design Studio to explore improved healthcare delivery in Ann Arbor's VA Healthcare System.
The Stamps Master of Design (MDes) in Integrative Design emphasizes a dynamic mix of cross-disciplinary collaboration and problem-based inquiry, aligning graduate education with the best in emerging professional practice.
Abstracting the specific forms of the traditional French washhouse, the installation is about the perfect horizontality of the water’s surface as a reflective plane and the way it meets vertical architectural elements.
It occurred to us that a “rereading of cities” could include challenging the longstanding authority of the city as the singular arena for the framing and legitimization of all cultural production. An effective rereading may have as much... more
It occurred to us that a “rereading of cities” could include challenging the longstanding authority of the city as the singular arena for the framing and legitimization of all cultural production. An effective rereading may have as much to do with the recalibration of centers and peripheries (including the myths and beliefs intrinsic to the desire for centers), and experimentation with other sources of orientation.
Drawing from Benjamin’s Convolutes, ‘The Semiopathic City’ captions a dialogue between two divergent photographic reports on the signs that bedizen Parisian streets. The first honours what the French call a résistant – one who fought... more
Drawing from Benjamin’s Convolutes, ‘The Semiopathic City’ captions a dialogue between two divergent photographic reports on the signs that bedizen Parisian streets. The first honours what the French call a résistant – one who fought against a national threat or occupation. The second set of photographs features the logos of multinational corporations that punctuate Paris’s iconic boulevards. Rather than enforce their contradiction, the text expounds on their similarities to the architectural vocabulary of Haussmann’s façades – variations of similar strategies in the top-down markings of state or capital empire onto the cityscape.
As intellectual practice, architecture embodies unique ways of knowing. We use many terms to describe the creation of new architectural knowledge, among them research, scholarship and creative practice. Sometimes these terms are used... more
As intellectual practice, architecture embodies unique ways of knowing. We use many terms to describe the creation of new architectural knowledge, among them research, scholarship and creative practice. Sometimes these terms are used interchangeably and without precision. As we confront real world crises, and changing expectations for research production within universities, it is important to ask more precisely: what are the unique shapes of the new knowledges that are particular to architecture?
Through various narrative voices this essay weaves together the experience of Paris and the experience of the representations that have mediated our perception of it. A first storyline is a first- person travelogue through urban texts on... more
Through various narrative voices this essay weaves together the experience of Paris and the experience of the representations that have mediated our perception of it. A first storyline is a first- person travelogue through urban texts on the metropolis written by flâneurs of all kinds, and the influence this literature has had on the narrator’s experience of contemporary Paris, in the footsteps and through the gaze of those who previously wrote and photographed it. It makes tangible the imprint onto the urban landscape of a literature that has conditioned the narrator’s perception and sense of orientation. Tensions emerge when the constructed identification with the points of view of these male authors collides with the realities of women’s lived experiences. A second storyline operates as a conversation between multiple archetypes of urban walkers.
The essay is structured according to a three-part progression that begins with the idea of “reading” both the book and city, followed by the notion of “copying,” and ends with the act of “writing” or “re-writing” the scripts that have been heavily rehearsed onto the scenes of the public sphere. It posits that the act of representation is one of appropriation, contending that those who immortalize the streets uphold their ownership of it. It also underscores its corollary: belonging is a product of narrative wars.
This is the third installment in a narrative survey of educators around the globe on the challenges of the massive move to online teaching. Some challenges are practical and logistical; others are more conceptual, political, and even... more
This is the third installment in a narrative survey of educators around the globe on the challenges of the massive move to online teaching. Some challenges are practical and logistical; others are more conceptual, political, and even philosophical, involving the importance of campus community, the role of schools in providing for the wellbeing of students, and passionate convictions about the nature of learning and the transmission of knowledge. How will the current adaptations inflect our understandings of studio and seminar instruction, in which the tools might be digital but the teaching is individualized and immersive, grounded in time and place, rooted in embodied encounters that allow for serendipitous discovery?
https://www.annales.org/re/2023/resumes/juillet/03-re-resum-FR-AN-juillet-2023.html#03FR Complex system studies have shown that, under a sufficient flow of energy, dissipative structures appear and self-organize into periodic oscillations characteristic not only of Carnot cycles, but also of biological and economic cycles. We have also seen that the emergence of such cycles is the outcome of a common thermodynamic process known as the principle of maximum entropy production (Roddier, 2012). What happens when the flow of energy, which the system has structured itself to dissipate most efficiently, significantly decreases? Here we argue that this unsolicited shortage might be salutary to our interconnected ecosystems if we learn to couple our centrifugal phases of innovation and production with antagonistic centripetal phases of restauration and maintenance. Otherwise, whether we continue to exponentially consume energy from unforeseen new sources, or too abruptly cease all energy consumption without a process of adaptation, our globally interconnected ecosystems may prove too fragile to recover.
https://www.annales.org/re/2023/resumes/juillet/03-re-resum-FR-AN-juillet-2023.html#03FR Complex system studies have shown that, under a sufficient flow of energy, dissipative structures appear and self-organize into periodic oscillations characteristic not only of Carnot cycles, but also of biological and economic cycles. We have also seen that the emergence of such cycles is the outcome of a common thermodynamic process known as the principle of maximum entropy production (Roddier, 2012). What happens when the flow of energy, which the system has structured itself to dissipate most efficiently, significantly decreases? Here we argue that this unsolicited shortage might be salutary to our interconnected ecosystems if we learn to couple our centrifugal phases of innovation and production with antagonistic centripetal phases of restauration and maintenance. Otherwise, whether we continue to exponentially consume energy from unforeseen new sources, or too abruptly cease all energy consumption without a process of adaptation, our globally interconnected ecosystems may prove too fragile to recover.
