Fellow Fellows is a series that focuses on the current eruption of fellowships in academia today. Within this realm, these positions produce a fantastic blend of practice, research, and design influence, traditionally done within a tight time-frame. Fellow Fellows sits down with these fellows and attempts to understand what these positions offer to both the participants and the discipline at large. It is about bringing attention and inquiry to the otherwise maddening pace of revolving academics while giving a broad view of the breakthrough work being done by those who exist in-between the newly minted graduate and the licensed associate. 

This week, we are talking to Hans Tursack. Hans was the Willard A. Oberdick Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning for the 2016-17 academic year.

1. The conversation around, focus on and applications to fellowships in general has exploded over the past decade. They have become a go-to means of exposure and legitimization within the academy and, in some respects, the HOV lane of historically PhD owned territories of research and publication. What are your views on the current standing of fellowships as a vehicle of conceptual exploration?

As I understand it, fellowships are mostly for two types of (usually younger, emerging) academics. The first type is more design-oriented and they produce a self directed, experimental project; something like a thesis (disciplinary, self-contained, with an obligation to address a contemporary issue). The second type of fellow is more research-oriented and might be a PhD candidate or someone whose work would be at home in that setting. Fellowship projects in this mode are historical/theoretical but are not held to the rigors of historical research. I would assume that the methods required for proper doctoral research can become oppressive at times.

Fellowships kick-start academic careers and give you time, money, and a venue for one of your first post-M.Arch projects. Most of the schools that offer fellowships look at candidates with little to no teaching experience. In that sense, they’re also training

programs for young instructors and help us begin building portfolios and CVs that will make us competitive candidates for tenure-track positions or PhD programs down the line.

2. What fellowship were you in and what brought you to that fellowship?

I was the Willard A. Oberdick Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning for the 2016-17 academic year. I applied to several fellowships and was very lucky to land at Michigan. Taubman’s program takes three fellows each year and a large percentage of the full-time faculty are former fellows. I wanted to be part of a community of like-minded younger instructors and I was looking for a program that would allow me to continue teaching after my Fellowship contract. Fellowships can be amazing opportunities, but they’re often short. I’ve appreciated the opportunity to stay on to develop my personal work, design new courses, and pursue longer term collaborations with other faculty.

3. What was the focus of the fellowship research?

I studied painting, printmaking and sculpture as an undergrad, so most of my architectural interests fall under the umbrella of visual studies and materials research. My Fellowship work and my teaching activities since have been sited at intersections along the art-architecture axis. My fascination with Minimal and Post-Minimal sculpture, hard edge abstraction and formalist painting as an undergrad still colors much of my research. My Fellowship project was all about an architectural interpretation of graphic structures cribbed from geometric painting. Recently, however, I have started to look more at the use of graphics in industrial design, automotive design, and digital painting processes that come from the animation industry.

4. What did you produce? Teach? And or exhibit during that time?

My Fellowship project was an attempt to update post-war conversations around the collapse of painting and architecture. Graphic and image-based envelope projects are very much in the air at the moment. I’m plugging into that line of design-thought, but my angle comes from a more historical perspective. My favorite essay to reference last year was Yve-Alain Bois’ The De Stijl Idea. Two other anchor-points for me were Neil Denari and Michael Bell’s early work. I was looking at Denari for his interest in British Hi-Tech, PoMo supergraphics, and the graphic strategies of Swiss figures like Joseph Müller-Brockmann. Michael Bell’s work was important to me because he’s written about the elevational theories of Colin Rowe, Robert Slutzky, and Peter Eisenman but through more materialistic and urbanistic lenses. Both figures have offered ways through and beyond the Perspecta Transparency articles and Eisenman’s early work on Terragni (maybe hackneyed references in studio culture at this point) by talking about the elevation as a datum for more complex, layered, graphic/painterly/printerly problems.

I think all fellowships should be a minimum of two years and should require the fellow to teach only one studio or seminar per semester. With that model the fellow could be freed up to pursue more publishing opportunities and be a little more experimental with the design/research project (time to prototype, conduct materials research, or look into archives for example).

For my Fellowship project, I designed a house and built an installation with lightboxes, elevation studies, printed matter and furniture. It was something like a mashup of 80s Neo-Geo painting/sculpture and New York Five formalism. I was looking at the Neo-Geos quite a bit, especially Peter Halley, Ashley Bickerton, and Haim Steinbach. There’s also this interest in plan-based compositional logics that comes from looking at people like Barry le Va (a Stan Allen reference), video-game environments, and contemporary installation art (Alex Da Corte for example).

5. How has the fellowship advanced or become a platform for your academic and professional career?

It’s difficult to imagine writing papers, building installations, making drawings and learning new design processes in my downtime as a professional in New York, where I was working after school. I have friends from graduate school who have found ways to make that work for them, but I could never carve out enough time for my personal work when I was working in offices. Now I teach. I love teaching as a job, and my students are outstanding. That said, I also teach so that I have a flexible schedule, and access to resources like Taubman’s FabLab and UMich’s libraries that facilitate a hybrid design-art-theory practice.

6. Where do you see the role of the fellowship becoming in the future and how does it fit within the current discipline of architecture?

That’s hard to say. I do wonder if the fellowship phenomenon will merge with some of the other, post-M.Arch graduate degrees cropping up. Both offer introductions to teaching and access to resources for beginning a career as an academic-architect. I think all fellowships should be a minimum of two years and should require the fellow to teach only one studio or seminar per semester. With that model the fellow could be freed up to pursue more publishing opportunities and be a little more experimental with the design/research project (time to prototype, conduct materials research, or look into archives for example). The pressure to produce a brilliant project, learn to teach, publish and generate high-level, innovative, student work can be a tall order.

7. There is some criticism that a fellowship is a cost effective way for institutions to appropriate potent ideas while leaving the fellow with little compensation besides the year of residence and no guarantee of a permanent position? What is your position on this?

This is a difficult question that many of us fellows, former fellows, and lecturers are workshopping in real time at Michigan and elsewhere. On the one hand, most schools offering fellowships are taking a huge risk by handing a full teaching load to a younger instructor with minimal experience. There is real generosity in that offer. On the other hand, fellowships are usually lecturer-positions with short-term appointments and no assurance of reappointment. Fellows often move to schools in other cities where they’ve been offered an appointment, take on a 12 month lease, and work with 9 month contracts. I think it’s also fair to say that the field is pretty saturated at the moment, and that it’s not easy to be a young academic; especially if you’re trying to balance your coursework with an experimental design practice. That said, I’m also optimistic about groups like the Architecture Lobby that are growing and organizing young faculty and students around the country and abroad to speak openly about labor in architecture/architectural education. Our recently appointed dean, Jonathan Massey, has also been very open about making student and faculty labor practices a serious, ongoing conversation at the school. I believe he’s working to make Taubman a model program that teaches students and instructors how to strategically advocate for our rights in the field.

8. What support, and or resources does a fellowship supply that would be hard to come by in any other position? Why would you pursue a fellowship instead of a full time position?

Short-term appointments mean fellows are usually given a lot of room to experiment with their design work and with our classes. The “Fellow” title gives you license to try out ideas. My thesis students have been looking at contemporary art practices and graphic technologies from the automotive industry to design architectural envelopes and skins. Two of my graduate students are using physics engines and animation software in an independent study to make an exhibition of 3D prints on a machine the University just set up. Many fellowships also have mentorship infrastructures built in (formally and informally). John McMorrough was and continues to be one of those figures for the fellows at Michigan.

Short-term appointments mean fellows are usually given a lot of room to experiment with their design work and with our classes. The “Fellow” title gives you license to try out ideas.

9. What was your next step after the fellowship?

I did a bit of research/writing the summer after my fellowship and also worked in Stan Allen’s office in New York on the SAA contribution to the Chicago Biennial. I’m currently teaching at Taubman as a lecturer. I’ve been leading a graduate thesis design studio/seminar and courses in representation. This has been an exciting year at Taubman and I feel privileged to be a part of everything that’s happening. We have a new dean, a new building designed by Preston Scott Cohen, and host of conferences and workshops including the Becoming Digital series organized by Ellie Abrons and Adam Fure.

10. What are you working on now and how is it tied to the work done during the fellowship?

Right now I’m working on a piece of design-theory. I’m interested in contemporary practices that use stereotomic geometric logics to generate forms. Viola Ago (my fellow Fellow 2016-17) and I are collaborating a few different projects together. We just opened a large, sculptural installation at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles that we’re very excited about, and we’re also working on a piece of writing together that explores the role of physics engines and simulation in contemporary compositional theory.

11. What advice would you have for prospective fellowship applicants?

Fellowships are amazing. Go for it. Applying and interviewing are great learning experiences. You learn a lot about your own practice when you have to explain it to a variety of audiences. Talk to students at the schools where you’re applying. Ask them what they look for in a fellow.