# Sofia Krimizi's first year studio at Pratt /// Khilna Shah & Inti Rojanasopondist

Since September, my friend Sofia Krimizi has been teaching a studio in the first year of the Pratt Institute's undergraduate program. The assignment consisted in a series of three projects related to each other which was exploring both the notion of mass/void and the notion of joint. Several projects can be said to have been successful but the two following ones reached a level of intelligence that is rare in this early stage of the studies.

The first one has been designed by Khilna Shah. She managed to create a model working only in tension and which allow enough elasticity in order to carry a variable amount of weights that would modify the structure's morphology.

The second project, created by Inti Rojanasopondist is divided into two clear different phases. The first one is a sort of clothe assembled by wooden pieces in friction that give to the model a acupuntural masochism dimension. The second phase is a monumental labyrinth which paths are visible from everywhere but only accessible by certain points.

# New Works by Yojiro Imasaka

Yojiro Imasaka is currently achieving his Master in Fine Arts in Pratt Institute and his New Works has been exhibited this year at the Steuben Gallery in New York. Those photographs explore the interstitial voids between high buildings, thus creating some ambiguous corridors driven by a gradient light.

# Stadium Tower in Detroit by Kendra James

Last May, I published two of the three projects (Another Dance Macabre and Underground City) from Thomas Leeser's studio in Pratt Institute that I wanted to show; here is the third one.
Stadium Tower in Detroit is a project narrated by Kendra James who proposes a monument to Detroit's status of "ruin-city" by erecting a frenzied building hosting a bunch of various sizes stadium and a car-park race track.
This project is the expression of the non-thaumaturge power of architecture and thus an invitation to sublimate problems rather than trying to solve them.

# Spatiology by Vittorio Giorgini

Spatiology is a book written (and drawn) by Vittorio Giorgini, former teacher at the Pratt Institute who exposes among other fields, his interest for the geometrical and physical construction of topological thin shell structures.
The book is rich of various drawings illustrating the geometrical processes applied to simple surfaces in order to achieve topological characteristics. This research matches with Giorgini's obsession for the minimal impact of a building on the ground. We can observe this obsession through the Casa Saldarini (Italy 1962) and the Liberty Center (done with Pratt's students in New York 1976) but also in other projects designed by the Italian architect which are using a more "industrial" architectural vocabulary.

A video is available on youtube showing Giorgini in the garden of the Casa Saldarini talking (in Italian) about his small scales shells but also about the house itself (starting after the 5th minute)

Casa Saldarini

Liberty Center

# 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.

# 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.

# 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.