# Two lectures at Columbia upcoming

Columbia will soon hosts two interesting lectures:
- The first one is organized by the Department of Science in Advanced Architecture Design which will allow five formers students to present their works (including our friend Sofia Krimizi whose work has been published here before), the whole being moderated by Enrique Walker.
This lecture will occur this Friday 17th September at 6:30PM
- The second one will be given by Francois Roche (R&Sie(n)) on Wednesday 22nd September at 6:30PM. It is entitled Ecosophical Apparatuses and Schizoid Machines.

# Miracle Boxes /// Exhibition on Le Corbusier at Pratt

Professor Ivan Shumkov and his crew of courageous Pratt students are opening this Monday at 6:00PM an exhibition on Le Corbusier's work entitled Miracle Boxes. Pratt being one school that claims itself as fully part of the avant garde, it is quite refreshing to see that this claim still allows an exhibition on one of the most important modernist architect.

Here is the text related to the exhibition and the associated lectures:

Pratt Institute School of Architecture and the Pratt Library will present "Le Corbusier - Miracle Boxes", a multidisciplinary, three-part exhibition on the work of renowned Swiss-French architect, urbanist, designer, writer, and painter Le Corbusier (born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris), who is considered by many to be the most important architect of the 20th century, starting August 30, 2010. "Miracle Boxes," the first New York exhibition dedicated entirely to the work of Le Corbusier, is curated by Ivan R. Shumkov, Ph.D., adjunct associate professor of architecture at Pratt Institute. Shumkov will deliver an opening lecture that will be followed by a reception on September 13, 2010 at 6 p.m in Higgins Hall Auditorium located at 61 St. James Place in Brooklyn. The exhibition, opening lecture, reception, and an upcoming related symposium will be free and open to the public.

On view through October 15, 2010 in the atrium and in The Hazel and Robert Siegel Gallery of Higgins Hall, the exhibition's architectural portion will provide an in-depth look at more than 50 of Le Corbusier's public buildings, including all his exhibition pavilions, museums, theaters, cultural centers, monuments, and temples. Original editions of such seminal works as Vers un Architecture, Precisions, Le Modulor, and Le Corbusier Oeuvre Complete will be on display in the Pratt Library through November 20, 2010. In addition, a timeline of the projects displayed in Higgins Hall will accompany the book display, providing exhibition attendees with a comprehensive view of Le Corbusier's work over time.

To give Pratt students, faculty, and visitors an opportunity to experience one of Le Corbusier's visions first-hand, the exhibition will also include the Miracle Box: a full-scale construction based on Le Corbusier's smallest architectural project, or a "working cell" that was originally located inside his Atelier in Paris. The exterior façades will feature a selection of the symbols published in Le Corbusier's books, which, while not part of the original design, further represent Le Corbusier's work. The project is currently on view outside the Pratt Library, and will be installed in the lobby of the Library as part of its permanent collection following the exhibition.

Pratt Institute School of Architecture will also host the symposium "Voyage through Le Corbusier" on Monday, October 11 from 6 to 9 p.m. in conjunction with the "Le Corbusier - Miracle Boxes" exhibition. It will include presentations by scholars Kenneth Frampton, Mary McLeod, Jose Oubrerie, Stanislaus von Moos, Deborah Gans, and Ivan Shumkov who will speak about their research on the work of Le Corbusier and his legacy - which goes far beyond the fields of architecture and art in suggesting a plan for radical social change. After the individual presentations, the symposium participants will gather for a round table discussion and public question-and-answer session.

For more information on the exhibition, lecture, and symposium surrounding "Le Corbusier- Miracle Boxes," please visit http://www.miracleboxes.com.

The exhibition and symposium are made possible in part with generous support from Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown.

# Eco Commune by Richard Hardy (Weareom)

Eco Commune is a beautiful short movie by Richard Hardy for Nic Clear's (see previous posts 1 and 2 and his manifesto for boiteaoutils) studio at the Bartlett. This film introduces a 2050 post-apocalyptic London gained by vegetation and wild animals. The city is eventually re-appropriated by humans but only in a way that consider those hybrids of ruins and nature as the new fabric of their environment.

See also his Transcendent City and its Miyazaki-like graphics.

THE ECO-COMMUNE from Richard Hardy on Vimeo.

# Pratt first year student's work by Roberto Godinez

Let's start this new Academic Year with a refreshing first year's student work. Roberto Godinez was in Enrique Limon's studio at Pratt Institute last semester and following the rule of the assignment (aggregation of a standard element composing a landscape, then appropriation of this landscape by a wooden architecture), he created this beautiful space of meditation under the rocks (or concrete blocks) he first set.

# Dense Rhythm by Zifan Liu & Shengping Lin

Zifan Liu recently sent me the project he just designed with Shengping Lin for Marcelo Spina's Sci Arc studio. The tower they designed for Tokyo is mostly characterized by a beautiful structural facade that is composed by a jungle more or less dense of branches. Their density is directly related to the needs in structure and in transparency of the building.
Here is their text linked to the project:

This design is an research and study of having a project of lines instead of a project of surfaces. The super dense refers to the city context, the contrast between the building and the surrounding, the program and the challenge of how to create a space built by lines. Beyond the boundary of the structure, membranes or envelopes, this design merges them together while providing an efficient space in the dense of tokyo. The thickens of the strings wall create an buffer space from the outside, it also support itself as well as the lateral force of the building and provide a column-free space for the museum. its not a surface, but it create a strong felling of surface by having a super dense pattern and hierarchies.

The strings system describes how the pattern transfer from the facade into the building and depart the space. Also it shows a serial of variations in terms of scripting to generate different patterns. We used different methods to control it ranges from density, orientation, thickness or color. We could control the density or the thickness in order to create a pattern of more or less transparency or even a solid facade to response the environmental interaction. We designed the way that the strings were generated and build the bounding box as a volume to contain the strings. The unpredictability of the scripting create variations of density in certain area and some part of it just fade out and become the access between different spaces. More particular for this project, it is more important to research how to apply the technique scripting-wield onto the integrated building rather than explore how the strings could operate architecturally.

# Excursions on Volume.by Shawn Sims & Erik Martinez (Part 2)

A bit more than six months ago, I published Shawn Sims & Erik Martinez's Thesis Research for Michael Chen and Jason Lee's undergrad thesis studio [CRISIS FRONTS] at Pratt Institute. This article is about the project that came out of this research.
Excursions on Volume is a study about freight and its participation to counterfeit market. Shawn and Erik thus created their own "counterfeit" freight production by designing a harbor that creates its own terrain thanks to the containers' weight. In fact, the containers are sitting on a mechanism that dredges the ooze in the bottom of the Hudson River and thus transforms a deep muddy material into a physical more or less solid reclaiming land. The heaviest the container is, the most effective the process of solidification which produces an interesting contradiction with capitalism's eternal wish of profitability. In fact, the most effective container is the one that did not succeed to make itself cheap (i.e. light). One can even think of some "counterfeit" containers filled with concrete, extremely expensive to freight but tremendously effective in the production of land...

Here is a small text related to the project:

Historically the process of standardization has spawned from the need for new structures of efficiency. The performance requirements of this process create unbiased arteries that are susceptible to forms of exploitation. This entails that at a global logistical scale, the network is blind with regard to the status of the goods; being licit or illicit. As globalization generates new organizational models for distribution, the intelligence of the counterfeit network is understood to be its ability to uncover and anticipate opportunities embedded within these structures of efficiency.
The modern shipping container is analogous with these standardized practices, both physical and protocological, and in an effort to increase globalization, this mechanism generates an opportunity for the insertion of a hack. Perhaps with an excursion into understanding the ability for weight and volume to be an operable energy, the container field of a port becomes an untapped resource able to generate new land.
Currently the dredged materials form the Hudson River are carried out into the ocean and dumped because of their toxic attributes. However the toxicity levels are dropping and for the first time since an industrialized New York, the sediment collected from dredging operations has the potential to remain in the city and be utilized in this land forming process.
The use of weight as a latent energy, and of dregde as a material are combined to reconsider the arrival of infrastructure to a once industrialized Hudson river. The fluctuating weight of container traffic is utilized to rigidify dregde to create a pixelated landscape which emerges from the existing water level. The commercial materials utilized within this infrastructure provide an emerging architecture with the products necessary to begin a series of retail and market spaces. A porous pixelated landscape rigidified by a membrane is stretched vertically to enclose space and change continuously as the market fluctuates in size.

# Braille Education Ball by Danielle Pecora

My friend Danielle Pecora just won the Design 21's Game Changers Competition (in partnership with UNESCO) which was proposing to elaborate a game or a toy that questions an issue. Danielle who did her undergrad in Parson school of design and grad school in Pratt Institute's school of architecture, designed the Braille Education Ball that proposes to blind and sighted kids to learn braille while playing with a beautiful toy.

Here is another article about it on FastCompany

# Circus, spectacle edge by Guillermo Bernal

Circus, spectacle edge; nomadic architecture as a creative aid a performative distribution

This beautiful project has been created by Guillermo Bernal in 2009 and 2010 for his undergrad thesis at Pratt Institute. Guillermo was then part of the brilliant studio tutored by Yael Erel and Christoph Kumpusch which attempts to approach the thesis project by producing a lot of hand drawings and physical models or objects as you can see below.

This project is magnifying the deployment of the circus by developing a beautiful poetry of mechanics that can be read in Guillermo's objects/models. Rather than inventing a swiss knife system of folding/unfolding as we already saw in a lot of projects, he insisted on the performance of the cables, mechanical arms and fabrics and the potential unplanned events of their deployment.

I am not sure it was one of Guillermo's reference but this architectonic circus entertains a very interesting dialogue with Alexander Calder's circus which insisted more on the sculptural aspect of the human and animal performance. (see the video here)

Here is the text related to the project:

Originating in the ancient world, the Circus has a history of a ritualistic performance -mostly of a nomadic nature- and functioned as a proto-theater where the distance between human and animal nature was under examination. Since the performances were held in the open, its architectural typology remained open-ended. The circus is a thing that strongly resists definition. Since the very depths of its etymological roots, it has been a signifier for an abstract animate vitality, later to incorporate “frenetic public activity” under its umbrellic term. The this space, suitable for the interweaving movements of man and animal was the birthmark of its etymological significance.
A creative aid and distribution platform, the nomadic equipment can be positioned as “momentary anchoring ”, Their goal is both to situate themselves on the exterior in order to open new trails, and to weave, or even to repair certain links. to put holes in the public space using the invasive, nomadic presence of the war machine, or any other technique of sudden appearance invades and overcomes everyday life. Located primarily in a decaying city. The Circus on the edge makes do with what it finds, enveloping and adapting found structures, resources and technologies to infiltrate, innovate and construct space for community, as well as community itself, in unusual and provisional ways.
It also intends to confront creation with the public, in all of its diversity and contradictions, as well as its occasional tensions, and to confront it with the public space, as well as its
complexity and richness. The Circus on the Edge is not one complete city, but a constantly moving and fleeting fragment. Acting as an agent for change, it provides an instant dynamic system for the production of new urban and cultural space, seemingly disintegrating and connecting the local and global, and the real and not so real. The reciprocal relationship between Circus and everyday life becomes a state where society can negotiate its own future.