Archinect - Columbia University GSAPP (Jill)

New Gazprom Tower in St. Petersburg to be Europe's tallest and greenest building?

2008-02-28T13:42:15-05:00

The historic city of St. Petersburg in Russia will soon be home to the tallest and supposedly 'greenest' tower in Europe. The UK-based architectural firm RMJM was given a go by the Russian gas giant to build the new Gazprom Neft headquarters in the former Russian capital. Inhabitat

Interview with Mark Wigley, Dean of Columbia

2007-11-22T13:53:09-05:00

Buildings account for almost half (48%) of all greenhouse-gas emissions annually.
This oft-repeated statistic highlights what many architects and designers have long realized: The building industry has a profound impact on the state of our environment. But is environmental awareness really making enough inroads into the curriculum of design schools, in the places where it could potentially have the most impact on the future of the industry? As a graduate student in Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), I am both concerned and optimistic about the changes I see taking place in architecture academia. While environmental design isn’t nearly as entrenched as it should be into the core curriculums of design schools, students seem to be clamoring to learn more about this topic and are demanding new classes and are shaping their own academic paths. Recently I sat down with Mark Wigley, dean of Columbia’s GSAPP, to talk about the chang...

VIDEO: Mitchell Joachim on living treehouses

2007-11-21T15:48:53-05:00

I just published this article over on Inhabitat recently, and thought I would re-post it here, since Mitchell Joachim is currently teaching at Columbia's GSAPP.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a big fan of treehouses and am enamored with eco-architect Mitchell Joachim's visionary ideas about how to grow living treehouses from ficus molded around frame structures.

Joachim spoke this past summer at the Postopolis event in NYC, and I recorded video of his presentation. I have finally got around to editing the hour long presentation down to some digestible clips, and here is the first one. Joachim is a brilliant architect and a fascinating speaker, so if you have any interest in living treehouses (and we know you do), check out the video above.

And if you enjoy this 5-minute video and want to see more, check out the full-length video of Terreform's many cool projects.

+ Terreform Video (45 Minutes)

+ Terreform

+ Terreform's Living Treehouse: Fab Tree Hab

+ Terreform's Soft Car

STOP THE ARCHITORTURE!

2007-09-06T20:26:12-04:00

(yes, this is an image from a film - but i thought the pic was very appropriate)

"Sustainability" is increasingly a concern for designers, and as architecture students, many of us spend a lot of time thinking about how to make our designs more energy efficient, more healthy and more environmentally sustainable. But amidst all this talk about sustainable design – one thing that doesn't often get mentioned is the sustainability of life in architecture school.

Do any of you out there recognize this picture: students routinely spending 10-15 hours per day sitting in one place, glued to flickering computer screens in painfully cramped desks while toxic chemicals are handled all around them? I’ve often found myself in this exact position: eyes straining, back sore, trying to finish a project at 4am, under flickering fluorescent lights, while someone next to me melts acrylic with a cancer-causing solvent, the person on the other side of me hacking up toxic blue foam with a saw, and the...

COLUMBIA GSAPP - Fall 2007 Lecture Calendar

2007-08-26T20:08:30-04:00

POLITICS, PUBLICS + DESIGN
Monday, September 10, 6:30 pm-9:30 pm
Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture, GSAPP; Adi Shamir, Executive Director, Van Alen Institute; Rene Spitz, Chairman, International Design Forum (IFG), Ulm

THE POSSIBILITY OF (AN) ARCHITECTURE
Wednesday, September 12, 6:30 pm-8:30 pm

ENGINEERED TRANSPARENCY CONFERENCE: Keynote Lecture: Kazuyo Sejima, SANAA, Tokyo
Wednesday, September 26, 6:30 pm-8:30 pm
Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
Registration required (www.arch.columbia.edu/engineeredtransparency)
Seating is limited - Simulcast provided

Conference Day 1 - Engineered Transparency: Glass in Architecture and Structural Engineering
Thursday, September 27, 9:30 am-6:00 pm
Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
Registration required (www.arch.columbia.edu/engineeredtransparency)
Seating is limited - Simulcast provided

Confrence Day 2 - Engineered Transparency: Glass in Architecture and Structural Engineering
Friday, September 28, 9:30 ...

INTERVIEW OF COLUMBIA'S DEAN WIGLEY

2007-04-14T18:44:01-04:00

My friend Geoff Manaugh (who is the editor of BLDGBLOG as well as a contributor to Archinect), recently published this fascinating interview of my / Columbia's dean Mark Wigley on BLDGBLOG. Anyone who is interested in Columbia's GSAPP program or who is interested in how sustainable design is addressed in academia should check it out >

Below is a snippet of the section on sustainable design - the rest of the interview can be found on BLDGBLOG >

BLDGBLOG: On an educational level, what role does sustainability play at Columbia?

Wigley: What’s happening is sustainability now plays a huge role in the school at every level, because that’s where the students and the teachers are leaning. But what’s interesting – and this is where my own thoughts come in – is that nobody’s really interested in that word sustainability. That sounds like not ambitious enough. We do a lot of work that could be described as a search for more sustainable options – but, really, what it is is a search for a mo...

GLOBAL WARMING FLOODS LONDON.... In Second Life

2007-04-09T16:53:44-04:00

This has very little to do with school but I love it. Good procrastination fodder....

A temporary flood sent avatars scrambling for the rooftops in several virtual places, including London, the Netherlands, and Ibiza. David de Rothschild, founder of Adventure Ecology, staged the global warming related flood in the popular virtual world Second Life. Read the National Geographic account for the full story. Apparently avatars were calm, some pub going avatars just climbed into boats and continued on with their pints while the conversation shifted to global warming.

p.s. New Yorkers, don't forget to sign up for Sea of People, and you cannot send your avatar for this one!

Via fiftyRX3

SPRING 2007 Semester

2007-03-21T12:03:25-04:00

Happy first day of Spring! Spring has just sprung, and while I should have posted my spring semester classes a month ago, now seems like an appropriate time to share with the world what I have been engaging in:

JILL SPRING SEMESTER 2007:

History of Japanese Architecture
Kudo Kunio

Digital Fabrication
Philip Anzalone

Building Systems 1
Tony Webster

STUDIO: Fabrication Studio with Scott Marble (Marble Fairbanks)
Our program is to design innovative prefab classrooms - I am personally working on mobile, green, pop-up classrooms that can be easily transported and swapped between schools depending on fluctuation of student population. The studio is great so far and I look forward to getting more hands-on, and working more 1:1 with materials and scale.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF GLOBAL WARMING

2007-02-19T18:46:06-05:00

Calling all architects and design students!Buildings consume 40% of the world's energy every year and generate almost half of the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. Immediate action in the building industry is essential if we are to avoid hazardous change to our climate.

This coming Tuesday, Feb 20th, 2007 (TOMORROW), a critical event is taking place in downtown Manhattan to discuss architecture's impact on climate change:

The 2010 Imperative Global Emergency Teach-In is a free interactive web-cast broadcast live from New York, reaching more than 500,000 students, faculty, deans and practicing professionals in the architecture, planning and design communities in both North and South America. All design schools, professional design firms and governmental entities (planning departments, city officials, etc.) are being asked to substitute the Teach-in for classes/work on February 20th, 2007, from Noon to 3:30pm EST. Many schools and offices are even planning day-lon...

GREENING THE IVORY TOWER?

2006-12-28T22:00:04-05:00

Buildings consume 40% of the world’s energy every year.

Buildings generate almost half of the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.

40% of landfill currently comes from construction waste.

Clearly, the building industry has a huge impact on the state of our environment. Because of this influence, architects have a moral and social responsibility to learn about and concern themselves with issues of energy and environmentally sustainable building. After all, architecture is supposed to serve the greater good of society… isn’t it?

Green building has been getting increasing amounts of media attention recently, as well as a lot of hype from developers and even real-estate agents. Environmentally focused government and corporate organizations are becoming more commonplace, from the USGBC and Sustainable Building Coalition, to the LEED program and even an Eco-broker certification program. With this increasing presence in business and real estate, what is academia do...

STUDIO STEREOTYPES

2006-10-09T00:01:28-04:00

Philip Nobel over at Metropolis Magazine has written a hilariously scathing critique of the typical characters you will find in any architecture student's review. From the Automaton to the Leaker the stereotypes are so spot-on, any current student of architecture is guaranteed to get a kick out of this article.

Some of the stand-outs:

The Automaton. Students come to architecture with a variety of academic backgrounds. Most bring fresh perspectives and an understanding of the complexities of the world, using them in the studio to, er, “inform” their designs. Not this guy. For him (invariably him) it's all architecture, all the time. Having never studied anything else””having never had an interest in anything else””he is not nagged by the doubt that erudition brings. He draws like a machine””and beautifully. But our poor critics will hunt in vain for an idea: Um, why did you do any of this? Warning. Warning. Does not compute.

The Fashion Victim. The well-meaning intelligent student w...

COLUMBIA CURRICULUM

2006-10-08T23:37:06-04:00

My second year is already looking a lot brighter than my first, which was filled with the expected first-year requirements like Structures 101 & Intro to Architectural History. This semester I'm looking at:

Environments & Enclosures 2
(I love this course - must be the secret engineer in me)

Fundamentals of Digital Design
a requirement towards Columbia blobitude

Modern Housing, with Gwendolyn Wright

Housing Studio with Lot-ek

I really lucked out with this one and got my first choice of critics this semester - which seems especially lucky considering that our studio lottery went slightly awry and many students ended up with their 3rd or 4th choice of critic. I've been a big fan of Lot-ek for quite awhile and am very excited to work with them. We've got three different Lot-ekians (Ada, Giuseppe & Thomas) tag-team teaching together which is creating an interesting dynamic in our studio. My experience so far is that we getting a wealth of different opinions, advice and feedback at e...

Hello world

2006-10-07T01:14:24-04:00

Welcome to my very first school blog entry. I'm a bit late to the party - I see that all the other GSAPP bloggers have been going at it fast and furiously since September, so I feel like a bit of a slacker. (And it's true, I am sort of a slacker - I just don't have the stamina for the intense no-sleep architecture lifestyle). Nevertheless, I hope my thoughts and comments on the GSAPP will be interesting, if maybe not as prolific as some of the other bloggers.

So you'll forgive me for not posting more often, I want to explain that I run my own design blog (Inhabitat.com), and that takes up most of my non-school free time. Nevertheless, I've never actually had any experience with a personal blog before - so this will be a new thing for me. (I feel strange using the pronoun "I"). Bear with me as I get my personal blogging legs...

Through Inhabitat, I have gotten so many requests to give advice on architecture and design schools, that I figured it was better, and probably a lot e...