"The Great Lakes Architectural Expedition" by Galen Pardee - 2019-2020 (now 2021) LeFevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow at The Ohio State University. Image © Steven Takacs

In this latest installment of Fellow Fellows we connect with Galen Pardee, M.Arch graduate of Columbia University, where he received the Alpha Rho Chi Medal. Pardee chats with Archinect about his work and latest exhibition, "The Great Lakes Architectural Expedition." While academia transitions and shifts to better address and adhere towards fighting social and racial injustice with architecture, Pardee shares what he's learned in the process as 2019-2020 (now 2021) LeFevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow at The Ohio State University.

Fellow Fellows is a series that focuses on the role fellowships play in architecture academia today. These prestigious academic positions can bring forth a fantastic blend of practice, research, and pedagogical cross-pollination, often within a tight time frame. By definition, they also represent temporary, open-ended, and ultimately precarious employment for aspiring young designers and academics. Fellow Fellows aims to understand what these positions offer for both the fellows themselves and the discipline at large by presenting their work and experiences through an in-depth interview. Fellow Fellows is about bringing attention and inquiry to academia's otherwise maddening pace while also offering a broad view of the exceptional and breakthrough work being done by people navigating the early parts of their careers. 

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

I am the 2019-2020 (now 2021) LeFevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow at The Ohio State University. Before the fellowship, I was living in New York, pursuing architectural research projects at the Columbia GSAPP Incubator at New INC and practicing as an associate with Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects. I had been teaching at Columbia GSAPP with Laurie Hawkinson, and the LeFevre Fellowship appealed to me because it would allow me the freedom and (literal) space to continue pushing my research while teaching at a renowned architecture program. 

My focus at OSU was exploring the ways in which architecture can anticipate conditions of material stewardship and climate change to re-configure practice towards public service. 

What was the focus of the fellowship research?

My focus at OSU was exploring the ways in which architecture can anticipate conditions of material stewardship and climate change to re-configure practice towards public service. While my earlier work on these topics explored more forensic approaches using mapping and drawing machines, at Ohio State I wanted to focus on what a public architect’s office might make and how it would operate. To that end, I created The Great Lakes Architectural Expedition, a fictional architectural entity with the Great Lakes as a client, and used the Expedition as a lens to showcase the office’s interventions in the legal, infrastructural, and ecological fabric of the Great Lakes watershed. The Expedition allowed me to explore current issues facing Lake Erie and the watershed, as well as historical models of collective architectural practices.

I created The Great Lakes Architectural Expedition, a fictional architectural entity with the Great Lakes as a client, and used the Expedition as a lens to showcase the office’s interventions in the legal, infrastructural, and ecological fabric of the Great Lakes watershed.

What did you produce? Teach?

The primary outputs of my research were three interlinked projects: The Parliament for a Material World, the Maumee Basin Phosphorus Coop, and the Last Impervious Surface in Portage County Ohio. These projects were exhibited in Ohio State’s Banvard Gallery, as an exhibition of the Great Lakes Architectural Expedition’s archives. In addition, I taught two studios over 2019-2020, with the spring research studio (The Public Water Studio) acting as an extension of the Expedition’s work in Toledo, Ohio; each student’s project book was also displayed in the Gallery. Each of the projects focuses on different aspects of expanded practice, embracing various non-building outputs and collective, sometimes non-human clients, while exaggerating and distorting typical architectural media formats towards argument, narrative, and action.

I think the larger reckoning facing architecture after this summer put the exhibition in perspective. The pandemic and protests around Black Lives Matter exposed much larger blind spots in architecture and in academia, and it was my place to listen and learn: I’m still listening and learning today...

Congratulations on your recent exhibition! How was that experience and working around pandemic?

It was a challenge, to say the least; while in a very narrow sense the extra time did allow me some opportunities to re-think construction details and re-organize parts of what would have otherwise been a very chaotic process, I think the larger reckoning facing architecture after this summer put the exhibition in perspective. The pandemic and protests around Black Lives Matter exposed much larger blind spots in architecture and in academia, and it was my place to listen and learn: I’m still listening and learning today, and I am grateful to friends and colleagues of color for putting their experiences into public view. The issue of working remotely to complete the exhibition was inconvenient at times, but ultimately solvable; questions of privilege and institutionalized racism are obviously much more difficult to confront, and it’s probably a good thing for the discipline that those questions remain open and conversations continue!

The Fellowship model definitely brings a platform with it, and I think that alone has been helpful for reaching out to other architects and designers, as well as making research conversations happen within Ohio State and elsewhere. 

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

It’s still quite early to judge; however I will say the Fellowship was an amazing opportunity to stretch out and push my work into mediums that were impossible in New York City, and towards outputs I couldn’t have conceived of when I arrived in Columbus. I’ve also been extremely fortunate to find an incredibly supportive and generous set of colleagues (and friends) at Knowlton who have been a fantastic network over the past year. The Fellowship model definitely brings a platform with it, and I think that alone has been helpful for reaching out to other architects and designers, as well as making research conversations happen within Ohio State and elsewhere. 

What was your next step after the fellowship? What are you working on now, and how is it tied to the work done during the fellowship?

OSU was kind enough to extend my position another year, so I’m looking forward to spending that time continuing to build on the Great Lakes Architectural Expedition and returning to some of my earlier research projects. After the fellowship ends for real next spring, who knows! It’s a strange time for architecture and it’s at once a blessing and a curse to be involved in it these days because the future is both wide open and precarious. Anyone who claims to know for certain what the academic or professional setting is going to look like a year from now is lying.

Any advice for future fellows?

Don’t be afraid to put your ideas out there and apply if you are interested in these kinds of positions—and don’t be afraid to push your work as far as you can if you get one of these fellowships either! They’re really valuable opportunities to grow into a serious research project and make connections with people in the field who may be working on similar topics. In the LeFevre’s case the exhibition was a great way for me to work out some ideas I’d had floating around since graduate school - both in terms of content and exhibition design itself. 

Where do you see the future of academia headed? What do you hope to see as schools begin to address today’s issues? Where are areas where institutions can improve?

Academia is in a tough position: I’m struck by the privileges that academic institutions wield and their ability (if they choose) to push issues forward and generate meaningful discourse in the discipline. In the end I’ve been most encouraged by the energy of student groups at OSU and elsewhere this summer—its imperative that faculty and staff at universities take calls for progress and change seriously, and not just for the short term. Students only stay on campuses for a short time; faculty have to accept their obligations to continue supporting equitable changes in their institutions after our current cohort of leaders graduate. Most critically, in the absence of a truly activist government making grants and supporting community development, Universities have an incredible opportunity to engage with under-served populations outside their students, staff, and faculty, and I hope they take up the challenge.