Archinect - Features

Exploring Architecture’s Uncertain Nature With Schidlowski Fellow François Sabourin

2023-04-17T17:28:00-04:00

Academic fellowships provide unique opportunities for designers and researchers to explore specific topics of interest while teaching. Archinect's Fellow Fellows series showcases individuals who are currently in or have recently finished an architecture fellowship.

For our latest interview, we're featuring François Sabourin, the 2021–22 Schidlowski Emerging Faculty Fellow at Kent State University. Sabourin discusses his fellowship experience as he explored "architecture's relationship with uncertainty." Themes from the works of Georgios Eftaxiopoulos, Douglas Spencer, and Axel Kilian inspired Sabourin to develop "To be determined," an exhibition consisting of robotic walls that "interact in scripted yet unpredictable ways with visitors." As an emerging faculty fellow, Sabourin reflected on his pathway as an educator and how this fellowship helped expand his perspectives as an instructor.

Fellow Fellows: Jennifer Meakins Interrogates Power Imbalances Within Architectural Pedagogy

2021-08-23T13:37:00-04:00

Fellowships can help spark critical career-changing moves for designers and academics looking to establish their research and design perspectives through teaching. However, besides the teaching experience, research exploration, and funding, what else can an architecture fellowship provide young professionals? In Jennifer Meakins' case, she received much support as the 2020—2021 Schidlowski Emerging Faculty Fellow at Kent State University College of Architecture and Environmental Design.

For this iteration of Archinect's Fellow Fellows series, we unpacked Meakins' research and studio she taught. While her research primarily focused on "architecture's role in upholding and furthering systems of inequity and injustice," we also dove into the current state of fellowships and how they impact the careers of design professionals. In addition, Meakins provided insight into why she pursued a fellowship versus a full-time position at a firm and her thoughts on fellowships as a vehicle or con...

Fellow Fellows: Jonathan Rieke

2020-08-14T12:31:00-04:00

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. They also, by definition, 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 the otherwise maddening pace of academia, while also presenting a broad view of the exceptional and breakthrough work being done by people navigating the early parts of their careers.

This week, we Archinect connected with Jonathan Rieke, M.Arch graduate of Harvard GSD and the recipient of the 2018-2019 Schidlowski Emerging Faculty Fellow a...

This is a Start-I Really Want Your Opinion Before I Continue...

2019-03-16T10:42:00-04:00

In this installment of Cross-Talk #9 — The Architecture Play, Ivan Bernal presents a personal account on how Play could be understood as a way to jump-start the discipline.

The role of Archinect’s series Cross-Talk is to bring forward the positive aspects of the polemic and allow for the resulting conflict to bring to life an otherwise still and comfortable climate of creativity—if there can be one. Cross-Talk attempts—if to only say that it did—to allow text the freedom that the image has accepted and embraced. Cross-Talk attempts to force the no, to contradict itself, to anger, to please and then anger again, if only to force a stance, to pull out the position of the self, of the discipline and of the hour as a means to begin and maintain conversations moving forward.

As New Director of Kent State's Architecture School, Ivan Bernal Looks to Expand its Role in the Mid-West and Beyond

2018-10-25T10:26:00-04:00

Kent State University recently completed a dazzling new $43 million building for its College of Architecture and Environmental Design, a welcome addition to the campus and a big boon for architecture in Ohio. An award-winning LEED Platinum building, the facility marks a new era for the school looking to push a national and international profile. It's also ushered in a series of changes for the Ohio school, which started out the 2018-2019 school year with Ivan Bernal as the program's new director.