Archinect - Miss Misc.

2018 Year End Show!

2018-05-02T09:20:22-04:00

The UIC School of Architecture Year End Show is next Friday, May 11. This is undoubtedly my favorite night of the school year! We will celebrate the best design work from both graduate and undergraduate levels from the 2017–2018 academic year. All galleries are open to the public at 5pm. A jury presentation will begin at 6pm in Gallery 3100, with the granting of student awards to follow.

The Year End Show celebrates both the department of Architecture and the department of Design, including Graphic Design and Industrial Design. The entire building will be open and full of work.

Monday Evening Lecture!

2018-02-18T18:26:18-05:00

UIC Monday Evening Lecture: Stan Allen

Monday, February 19, 5:30 pm

Stan Allen is an architect, theorist, and former Dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton University, where he currently serves as the George Dutton ’27 Professor of Architecture.

845 W. Harrison St.
Rm 1100 A+D Studios

All lectures are open to the public.

Now + Then @ UIC

2018-01-27T13:05:20-05:00

UIC School of Architecture's programming for 2017–2018 continues with the first edition of the spring semester's Now + Then. Now + Then pairs a past UIC faculty member with current UIC faculty. On Monday hear from ex-UIC faculty member Ben Nicholson (now, associate professor at SAIC) with UIC's Ania Jaworska, moderated by Thomas Kelley.

Coming Attractions — New Programming at UIC!

2017-12-01T10:54:36-05:00

COMING ATTRACTIONS

Starting this Friday, Dec. 1, the School of Architecture is adding a movie series to our regular programming. Continuing in the spring semester (and hopefully beyond!), we will be showing a movie on the third Friday of every month. The first film will be selected by the event organizers, Julia Di Castri and Francesco Marullo, but from then on, the series will be self-generating: before each screening, three faculty members will introduce a film with a short clip and an explanation about the significance of the film to their work, architecture in general, architectural education, etc. Following these “trailers” the audience will vote on the movie they want to see at the next screening.

"Trailers" at this screening will be presented by Sarah Blankenbaker, Fosco Lucarelli, and Bob Somol. Popcorn and drinks will be provided. Other food available for purchase from participating student groups.

Orwell's Why I Write

2017-12-01T10:50:38-05:00

"It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, or in some perverse mood: but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write."

George Orwell "Why I Write"

Interstates and Rebstock

2017-02-01T23:54:20-05:00

In my theory course our research project is on an architectural typology that has been disrupted / effected by American capitalism. The typology I have chosen is Motels / Hotels, and my first instinct is to research the shift in lodging from traveling the American Highway to the bigger, badder Interstate. Inevitably, the days of stopping to the side of Route 66 for a nights rest at Joe Schmoe's Motel were steamrolled by the comforts of the "Exit" sign to give you a list of chain hotel companies to so effortlessly choose from. So, I found this great photo from first days of construction on the very first interstate, which was in Missouri in 1956.

In studio news, our project is heavily rooted in Eisenman's Frankfurt Rebstock Competition project of "the Fold." That's all I am going to say about that—but I attached an in-progress drawing I created this week.

Ciao!

Mysteries of the Mall

2017-01-14T22:02:50-05:00

Witold Rybczynski writes of visiting the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago:

"The atmosphere was different from that in other public buildings. Unlike a museum, it had no price of admission, and the security guards were unobtrusive; the stacks were open, and the books were there to be picked up and leafed through. There was also a more mixed crowd than one finds in a museum or a concert hall: groups of teenagers, elderly men and women, college students, street people. In a period where even art museums are beginning to resemble shopping malls, this library stands apart. It didn’t make me feel like a consumer, or a spectator, or an onlooker; it made me feel like a citizen.

Most striking of all, the library makes not the slightest effort to entertain the people who use it. Too many of our public places (shopping malls, airports) are either selling us something or attempting to keep us amused. The Chicago library takes itself, and its users, seriously, and through an architectu...

Episode 14: Don’t Go to Architecture School to Design a 7-Eleven (with Michael Rock)

2017-01-04T18:35:00-05:00

Episode 14: Don’t Go to Architecture School to Design a 7-Eleven (with Michael Rock)

Through Process is a podcast about how we become designers. Your co-hosts are Joshua Namdev Hardisty and Mitch Goldstein.

Posted on 22 August 2014
Mitch and Namdev are joined by designer, author and educator Michael Rock. They discuss design as metaphor, being present in your work, writing as form, why you are your most important audience, and what students should be taught in design school. Michael also gives Mitch and Namdev an on-air design assignment to help explain graphic design.

2 x 4
Essays by Michael Rock
“Multiple Signatures” by Michael Rock
Lost cat posters by Mitch and Namdev
“The Trouble With Kerning” by Mitch Goldstein
Piet Zwart NKF Cableworks Catalog on Google Images
“Walking” by Anne Jordan and Mitch Goldstein
“Professors, We Need You!” by Nicholas Kristof

To the New Year!

2016-12-31T15:07:55-05:00

from Brain Pickings:

Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind. Cultivate that capacity for “negative capability.” We live in a culture where one of the greatest social disgraces is not having an opinion, so we often form our “opinions” based on superficial impressions or the borrowed ideas of others, without investing the time and thought that cultivating true conviction necessitates. We then go around asserting these donned opinions and clinging to them as anchors to our own reality. It’s enormously disorienting to simply say, “I don’t know.” But it’s infinitely more rewarding to understand than to be right — even if that means changing your mind about a topic, an ideology, or, above all, yourself.
Do nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone. As Paul Graham observed, “prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.” Those extrinsic moti...

Yale School of Architecture students respond to AIA's comments in support of President-elect Donald Trump

2016-11-15T19:52:52-05:00

I'd like to re-post / share the open letter from the Yale University School of Architecture students as they respond to the AIA in support of Trump + administration. Original post via Architect here.

On November 9, 2016, the American Institute of Architects resigned itself to a cowardly position of economic and political subservience with its support of President-elect Trump. The AIA’s refusal to take a principled stance on an incoming administration that galvanized support through hatred, divisiveness, and fear constitutes an abdication of its self-proclaimed responsibility to speak on behalf of architects and a contradiction of its own stated beliefs.

We, the undersigned students of the Yale School of Architecture, unequivocally denounce the AIA’s endorsement of the new status quo. For too long, our profession has been complicit in giving form to landscapes of inequality and discrimination, and has itself been plagued by a history of racial and gender inequity. The AIA’s immediate ...

10.25 — UIC Lecture Series, Wiel Arets

2016-10-25T15:44:04-04:00

Join us this evening for the second lecture of the Fall 2016 Lecture Series as Wiel Arets ventures north to UIC. Arets is the Principle of Wiel Arets Architects & Dean of IIT College of Architecture. Prior to the lecture I will be interviewing Wiel with fellow Fresh Meat Journal members for possible future content in the FM Conversations series.

For a full listing of this fall's invited lecturers please visit http://arch.uic.edu/lecture-series.

10.21 – Flat Out Launch Party

2016-10-21T00:57:40-04:00

My current studio and Spring 2016 theory professor Penelope Dean has released a publication, Flat Out, that UIC will be hosting a Launch Party for. You can purchase a copy via website: http://www.flatoutmag.org/

10.17.16 UIC Lecture Series — Jackie Koo

2016-10-17T10:29:53-04:00

Jackie Koo will kick-off the Fall 2016 UIC School of Architecture Lecture Series this evening from 5:30pm–7:00pm at the School of Architecture, 1100.

Tigerman is in the house!

2016-09-28T00:42:36-04:00

09.28.16 Wednesday Episode @ UIC School of Architecture

Summer Re-Cap & Semester Intro

2016-09-27T00:28:23-04:00

Good evening, Archinect—

We are in to Week 6 of the Fall 2016 semester. To date, I have been through two studio reviews, one cold, and zero papers.

Here is a brief re-cap of my unruly and unstoppable summer (see photos for proof!):

May

I began driving for Lyft! All in all—few sketchy stories, mostly wonderful passengers.
I really started my summer in NYC with my best friend Jayne over Memorial Day weekend. We left Brooklyn once (for the Whitney), I slept a total of about sixteen hours in four days, and spent too much money in Uber rides. We napped in parks, and bought handmade dresses from our fabulous and talented friend from undergrad.

June

I began my summer internship at Gensler Chicago the day returning from NYC. I was a part of the Lifestyle 3 studio, which is home to the “catch-alls” of the office. We’re comprised of branding, strategy, research, and consulting. Within the first week I was already playing softball, and attended the black-tie DIFFA Gala with the office’s managing...

FM VIII Call for Submissions

2016-03-29T22:43:28-04:00

FM VIII IS CONCERNED WITH THE MEANING OF ARCHITECTURE AND THE CITY.

The dinosaurs of capitalism have become the senescence of urbanism. If the modernist project of carte blanche is over, how do we engage the city’s filthy state without a clean slate?

Contemporary architectural discourse has sidelined the master plan. What if instead of a master-planning master architect, we assume the role of a jester-planning joker architect?

Vacancy inevitably alters physical boundaries unexpectedly; how can this effect demanding forces to encode spaces? What ways can sudden intelligence infiltrate the city against the prevailing myths of urbanism?

The street is a potential space for urban transformation and radical change in a city—reversing figure and ground, subtracting built matter, and stratifying the city into bands of interaction. Dense urban context presents the challenge of how to deal with existing “masterpieces.”

More than a matter of unit distribution, the problem of housing is uniquely u...

Brick by Brick : LEGO 601

2016-03-15T01:31:00-04:00

At the beginning of February, I was approached by two fellow studiomates to join their team in producing a submission on behalf of UIC for Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry's Brick by Brick exhibition. Our task at hand was to imagine the building to deal with challenges that face our futures cities. As stated by MSI, "it's this very spirit of "imagine it, then make it." As a whole, Brick by Brick is to be about play as a gateway to build great things. Filling nearly 7,000 square feet of exhibition space, the show will include LEGO structures such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Roman Colosseum and the International Space Station constructed by Adam Reed Tucker, a Certified Lego Professional. You will also find Cinderella's Castle and a LEGO version of the Museum of Science and Industry building, originally built for Chicago's Worlds Fair in 1893. Another selection of the exhibition will feature custom designed LEGO models from select firms and universities. According to MSI, "thes...

The Sense of Style

2016-02-29T23:54:00-05:00

As an imminent MAD Crit student at UIC, I have a desire to learn more about and experiment in writing (aka this blog!). I have never considered myself a "writer," as writing was simply an early education fundamental that I was better at than math. However, what I deem beautiful writing I first recognize in my love for music. A musician that crafts perceptive and elegant lyrics affirms my belief that writing is a form of art. A Musician turns Artist. A favorite musician of mine that I believe is far more than his banjo is Sufjan Stevens. He is of two things: a man, and a man of religion. Aside from being a lady and not religious, his writing is still relatable and situates me with this pensive mentality that I am "okay" with confiding in. Perhaps using music and Sufjan Stevens to writing is a boorish analogy, but for me is a simple observation to example where the art of writing begins. Music—something that I fall asleep to at night and the first decision I make in the morning.

Maybe...

Sneak Peak!

2016-02-09T22:50:37-05:00

A sneak peak of what I am working on in Studio w/ instructor Stewart Hicks — Concrete form w/ gold costume.

02.09 — Tuesday Episode

2016-02-01T14:40:30-05:00

What is Architecture? with Sarah Dunn
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
2–3pm, 1100 A+DS

Wednesday Episode, 01.20 — Portfolio Voting

2016-01-18T21:30:24-05:00

Portfolio Day Student Voting
Wednesday, January 20
2–3pm, 3100 Studio Gallery, A+DS

Students review and cast their vote for the 2016 Portfolio Day Student Choice Award.

Control: Learning X, Y, Z

2016-01-18T12:50:00-05:00

Fall Graduate 1 Studio Synopsis

Geometry has an ambiguous reputation, associated as much with idiocy as with cleverness. -The Projective Cast: Architecture and its Three Geometries (Introduction). Robin Evans

From the syllabus: Historically, architecture has been heavily invested in the spatial and descriptive principles of geometry. In Robin Evan’s text “The Projective Cast”, Evans ties the advancement of the discipline directly to the representational techniques of the time. Today, architecture is often divided between two mathematical camps: Euclidean (planar points/lines that are easily located within the 3-dimensional space of a Cartesian grid system) and Non-Euclidean (non-planar points/lines that are difficult to locate in the 3-dimensional space of a Cartesian grid system). This introductory studio situates itself at the intersection of these two types and seeks to unpack their historical and future potential in the form of projective geometry (drawing) and advanced computatio...

Who, What, When, Where, How & Why—

2016-01-18T01:03:06-05:00

As personal as it gets:

My name is Jamie Evelyn Goldsborough and I am currently a first year graduate student pursuing a Dual Master of Architecture and Master of Arts in Design Criticism at University of Illinois at Chicago. I graduated from Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, Indiana in May of 2013, and moved to Chicago to begin working as an Environmental Graphic Designer at Selbert Perkins Design. I will be writing to provide perspectives, rememberings and thoughts on being a student at UIC’s School of Architecture and Chicago design life.

I became interested in the thought of pursuing a graduate degree in architecture during my undergraduate senior year. While studying abroad in Italy for an art history course, exhibition design as a field became an immediate interest of mine as a way to pursue graphic design and my developed love for academia. When I returned, I began tailoring my education to fit those desires and interests. I declared a Minor in Art History and a ...