Archinect - Taking Shape

Programmatic Invention Through Gradients

2016-02-03T12:10:00-05:00

In a recent studio assignment, the second year spring graduate studio (taught by Sarah Dunn and Sean Lally) looked at using gradients between various extremes (public/private, inside/outside, water, health, etc…) as a way of organizing and even generating program. For me, this exercise prompted a reconsideration of architecture’s ability to influence a project.

Some see the three Vitruvian principles of architecture as referring to three separate roles: engineer (firmitas), client (utilitas), and architect (venustas). Many architects make engineering considerations a primary aspect of their designs, or even blur the two roles, but fewer make program (the domain of the client, normally) a major focus. The most notable exception here, of course, would be Bernard Tschumi. While he was a proponent of unusual programmatic intersections, however, much of his work was motivated only by form or typology. For example, he suggested pole-vaulting in a church, because the shape of the latter acc...

A New Year, A New Entrance

2015-07-24T18:39:43-04:00

In excellent keeping with the forthcoming issue of Fresh Meat (UIC's student-run architecture magazine) that will focus on the use of collage in architecture, the UIC School of Architecture has performed a physical act of decollage on its own building. The second storey walkway to, well, nowhere that previously shaded the entrance to the school has been removed. Though everyone I know, myself included, used to think its lack of destination was due to the insufficient funds that scuppered plans for a larger architecture building at the time of construction, the walkway was actually the last remaining remnant of a second storey system of walkways that used to link, and was a central feature of the original design of, the whole campus. While to many the walkway became just a 3-D billboard, or perhaps an intersection of architecture and graphic design, it was also the last vestige of a large part of Netsch's vision. It seems fitting that the architecture school was the last resting plac...