"Air Oasis" by Laure Michelon. Advisors: Marcelo Spina + Casey Rehm. Image courtesy of Katherine Guimapang

For SCI-Arc’s 2019 academic year, each of the school’s four postgraduate programs engaged with a different design phenomenon or technological paradigm. The culmination of the year-long postgraduate degree cycle was marked by a celebration of student work, the EDGE Symposium. Now in its third installment, the symposium was orchestrated in collaboration with the A+D Museum and presented an exhibition of collected graduate work entitled Speculations at the Edge. The two-day symposium consisted of presentations, reviews, project screenings, and a closing celebration at the A+D Museum. 

Archinect connected with a few students to learn more about their year-long program experience. Below are thesis projects and comments from Laure Michelon, Pedro Ferrazini, Potsung Huang, Marine Lemarié, Juan Rincon, and Jeremy Kamal.

"Cruising Taxes" by Marine Lemarié. Advisors: David Ruy and Ferda Kolatan. Image © Marine Lemarié

Exploring Alternative Concepts for a City

During the symposium, students could be seen anxiously waiting their turn as jurors and guests would gather for their presentations. Studios from each program were tasked with researching, prototyping, and exploring areas of architecture, design theory, entertainment, and technology. Tools like machine learning and augmented reality were integrated with urban landscapes to help students conceptualize new possibilities for change and adaptation.

For those unfamiliar with SCI-Arc and its thesis review format, the presentation and expectations of student work is heavily emphasized. The culmination of a year-long program has allows each student to present their findings and techniques for tackling various research trends. Kicking off the symposium were presentations from the Design of Cities program. Students were tasked with exploring concepts for a contemporary city by exploring “extraterritorial urban phenomena.” Student Marine Lemarié focused her thesis “Cruising Taxes” as a “response to urgent sea level rise, this proposal questions the modern policy of national space.” She continues, “where a country’s identity can disappear rapidly due to natural causes, it is important to start questioning the future of displaced population.”

Innovation in the Air

Students participating in the Architectural Technologies program spent the year experimenting with AI, advanced computation, and the varying realms of augmented reality. Pedro Ferranzini and Potsung Huang of the Architectural Technologies program focused on using “generative adversarial neural network algorithms to map and study land and public space subdivision patterns” in the Flower Markets of Mexico City. When asked what their biggest take away from completing the program was, Ferranzini replied: “My biggest take away was to understand the ethics and philosophical background of those tools. I believe the institution is leading the involvement of technology into architecture but specifically in the cultural landscape.”

Channeling architecture’s response to climate change Laure Michelon from the Architectural Technologies program positioned her project “Air Oasis” as a way to “confront the frontlines of air quality, carbon capture, and high density apartments by intersecting large scale technological climate infrastructure with human-scale, community-based architecture.” When asked how the the program aided in her research, she explains, "A.I., Machine learning, intelligent agents helped me realize my project. The infrastructure and technologies that I implemented came with a set of logic and engineering principles that I could manipulate and organize using these tools."

Challenging Fiction and Entertainment

A program unique to SCI-Arc is the Fiction and Entertainment program coordinated by Liam Young. With a program constantly evolving and building from previous year’s research and findings, students explored design concepts through virtual and augmented reality techniques. Through the use of various gaming platforms to help deliver new forms of architectural narrative, students like Jeremy Kamal focused his thesis project on potential “fictional landscapes based on a world where land is shaped by the values of black culture and automation.” His thesis project, titled Mojo, “is a demonstration of how culture, technology, and ecology intersect in one landscape. Hands that once worked the land and shaped the earth through their labor now re-imagine the fields as a space for music.”

When asked what his biggest take away from the program was Kamal shares a relatable response that design professionals deal with everday: managing a project from start to finish. Kamal writes, “It was a real plunge into concept building and production that required a lot of self discipline and organization. I learned how to see tools as tools for a greater purpose rather than obsessing over a particular software.”KamalKamal

Questioning Pedagogy and the Design Theory

The symposium closed with students presenting their works from the Design Theory and Pedagogy program. Lead by Coordinator Marcelyn Gow, students were tasked with questioning how an architectural career should be defined. Students collaborated with other institutions like ESADI in Monterrey, Mexico to understand and redefining architecture’s flexibility.

Students like Juan Rincon used the program as an opportunity to explore architectural approaches and methodologies through cultural experiences. For his project SWEET HARMONY Rave Today, Rincon delivered “a curatorial exhibition about the rave movement at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Rincon shares with SCI-Arc, “This show celebrates not only rave culture, but architecture itself from the role that the post-industrial landscape has played as the main cultural incubator of the past 50 years something that architectural academia has unfortunately ignored, but thankfully subcultures haven’t.”

Many students who participated in SCI-Arc’s EDGE programing have come equipped with experience from other design backgrounds and architectural experiences. For students like Rincon the experience of completing the program provided more than just opportunity. “I taught for five years at Penn Design, but never really had time to make a pause and have some time to really design my academic practice.” Marine Lemarié shares with Archinect, “Before, all of my projects were centered around the design but none of them paid so much attention to a concept non-adjacent to architecture. Now, I think that having a solid, well-researched idea is much more interesting to talk about than a beautiful, almost meaningless project.”