Archinect - News

The tuition to income ratio is very concerning for all, and terrifying for the Black community

2020-10-09T13:46:00-04:00

Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski of WAI Think Tank have released some very troubling new data as part of their ongoing work studying structural racism in architecture. Part of their research has tracked the cost of tuition, along with other related typical expenses with student living, with the median household income in a number of cities across the US.

In Manhattan, for example, the annual tuition at Columbia GSAPP, in the M.Arch program, costs over $61k, with additional related expenses adding up to nearly $100k. Meanwhile, the median white household income is around $86k and the median Black household income is only $28k.

Archinect Sessions #158: A Conversation with Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia of WAI Architecture Think Tank

The "Anti-Liberation Paywall", part of their larger Manual of Anti-Racist Architectural Pedagogy, describes this problem in detail, and discusses the role of academic institutions as instruments of settler-colonial legacies, displacing infrastruct...

Archinect Sessions #158: A Conversation with Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia of WAI Architecture Think Tank

2020-07-28T08:30:00-04:00

On today’s show Donna and I are joined by Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski of WAI Architecture Think Tank.

The last time we had Cruz and Nathalie on the podcast was for our Next Up series at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. We’ve since also had Cruz on the podcast to discuss the unfortunate changes at Taliesin’s School of Architecture, where Cruz and Nathalie were both visiting teaching fellows. On each of these instances we had a limited time with them to discuss highly specific aspects of their work, so we wanted to have them back on to learn more about their backgrounds, how they met, and what drives their work.

Paul in conversation with Cruz and Nathalie at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, in 2015

If you’ve been following them, you’ll know that they recently published a book on their work entitled Narrative Architecture. They’ve also published a powerful anti-racist manifesto on un-making architecture, as the fight for equality pushes forward, propelled by the ...

What happened at The School of Architecture at Taliesin??? A conversation with Benjamin Aranda, Cruz Garcia and Ryan Scavnicky

2020-01-31T18:17:00-05:00

On this special (and very spontaneous) episode of Archinect Sessions we are joined with three members of the Taliesin community to help shed some light on the mysterious and disturbing sudden announcement of the closure of The School of Architecture at Taliesin. With us are Benjamin Aranda, partner at Aranda\Lasch with Chris Lasch, the Dean at The School of Architecture at Taliesin; Cruz Garcia co-director at WAI Architecture Think Tank and a previous visiting teaching fellow at The School of Architecture at Taliesin; and Ryan Scavnicky of Extra Office, and former visiting teaching fellow at The School of Architecture at Taliesin.

Our conversation shares our guest's experiences at the school, with insight into the questionable relationship between the foundation and the school. We talk about what happened this week, how these events conflict with Frank Lloyd Wright's wishes, as outlined in his will, about the direction of the foundation as an institution for learning, and the troub...

Drawing Architecture - Conversation with Perry Kulper

2012-08-05T11:50:00-04:00

If “action painting” is produced by the dynamics of dripping, smearing, and sweeping brushstrokes of paint to reveal the complex character of abstract art, then “action drawing” would be something like juxtaposing lines, planes, volumes, typographical elements, photographs, and paper cutouts on a drawing that aims to uncover the intricate universe of architectural ideas.

Each of Perry Kulper’s architectural drawings is a cosmos of information and possibilities that resist the banal and simplistic reductionism so typical of contemporary architectural representation. Series after series, his drawings display objects as background, and background as object in a constant visual journey of an architecture that doesn't settle and always evolves: an architecture of ideas.

WAI Architecture Think Tank discussed with Perry Kulper the concept, intention, and potential of drawing architecture.

WAI: There was a moment in our academic experience in which we became very interested in the potential...