lunch8: Futures For Sites Unknown [Available for sale NOW on Amazon]

The seventh volume of Lunch took a large step in engaging the design field outside the walls of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. It included a series of conversations with practitioners who visited the school, including Eduardo Arroyo, Levi Bryant, Teresa Gali, Rafael Moneo, and Camilo Restrepo. The effort to foster an evolving dialogue with the profession at large has been expanded in Lunch 8: Futures for Sites Unknown by breaking from tradition: no longer does Lunch only include articles submitted from the UVA community. A call for submissions was made, and the answer came from across the world.

Lunch 8: Futures for Sites Unknown tackles the uncharted waters and unsteady ground facing designers. Boundaries are being redrawn due to rising sea levels. The large modern infrastructural projects of the mid-twentieth century are now our antiquity and new technologies respond to craft, climate, and waste. Ever expanding and decentralizing patterns of urbanization are providing vacancies and urban wilds ripe for investment. Site is not only geographic, but a concatenation of the social, cultural, economic, ecological, and metaphysical. It is at once bounded and boundless. It is territory, which is implicitly contested — it is a claimed sphere of influence and therefore defines a sphere of action.

This is an incredibly exciting time to be a designer. In this moment of uncertainty, we must ask ourselves: How do we address the problems on the horizon when we are only starting to have a glimpse of what they will be? The projects within these pages explore the emerging conditions of our time and beyond, presenting Futures for Sites Uknown.

Danielle Alexander, Nicholas Knodt, Clayton Williams

May 7, 2013

Contents:

THE END(S) OF CIVILIZATION
Daniel Daou, Harvard University, DDes 2014

IT TOOK DOMINION EVERYWHERE: JUHANI PALLASMAA AND THE ANECDOTE OF THE JAR
Sara Arfaian, Cornell University, B. Arch 2008

GLOBAL CULTURE AND SITES OUT OF MIND: THE CASE FOR THE INDIA INITIATIVE
Phoebe Crisman, University of Virginia, Associate Professor of Architecture

HEDONISTIC ECOLOGIES: THE LATENT PLEASURES OF SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS
Katherine Treppendahl, University of Virginia, M.Arch 2012

PARADOX-CITY SWAMP THING + SMART GRID: SMARTER WATER MANAGEMENT IN NEW ORLEANS, LA
Isaac Cohen, University of Virginia, MLA 2013
Kate Hayes, University of Virginia, MLA 2013

ADAPTABLE, HETEROGENOUS SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURES
Maj Plemenitas, LINKSCALE, Founder and Principal

BALTIMORE PUBLIC WATER: URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE AS PUBLIC LANDSCAPE GENERATOR
Kurt Marsh, University of Virginia, M.Arch, MLA 2012

BALTIMORE: URBAN ESTUARY
Colin Curley, University of Virginia, B.S.Arch 2011
Sara Harper, University of Virginia, B.S.Arch 2011

FROM LANDSCAPING TO INFRASTRUCTURE: THE SCOPE AND AGENCY OF MAINTENANCE
Michael Geffel, University of Virginia, MLA 2013

EIGHTH APPROXIMATION: URBAN SOIL IN THE ANTHROPOCENE
Seth Denizen, University of Virginia, MLA 2012

INCREMENTAL ALLEYWAYS: CONSIDERING GREY INFRASTRUCTURE AS PUBLIC SPACE
Jacob Ross Fox, University of Virginia, MLA 2013
Gwendolyn McGinn, University of Virginia, MLA 2014

SAMBO RECONFIGURED: BETWEEN THE ARCHAIC AND THE AVANT GARDE
Mara Marcu, University of Virginia, Virginia Teaching Fellow
Contributors: Eric Kuhn, Patrick Schoonover,
Taylor Scott, Tyler Whitney, Annie Locke Scherer

[RE]CONSTRUCTION: MATERIAL AND TECTONIC
STRATEGIES FOR THE ADAPTATION OF BUILDINGS OVER TIME
Catharine Killien, University of Virginia, M.Arch 2013

DECONSTRUCTING DANVILLE:
A PROTOTYPE OF RUST-BELT REINVENTION
Andrew Brown, University of Virginia, M.Arch 2013
Liz Kneller, University of Virginia, M.Arch 2013
Megan Suau, University of Virginia, M.Arch 2013
Parker Sutton, University of Virginia, M.Arch 2013

THE BLUEPRINT FOR SURVIVAL: A FUTURE NOT (YET) REALIZED
Jason Rebillot, Harvard University, DDes (ABD), Instructor

AMERICAN ELDER
Joseph Chapman, University of Virginia, MFA 2008

HOW TO UNDERSTAND AN ERA
Joe Raffin, University of Detroit Mercy, B.s.Arch 2011

INDIA: WORK IN PROGRESS
Harsh Vardhan Jain, University of Virginia, M.Arch 2013

LOCOMOTIVE: URBAN TRANSFER
Justin Hui, Cornell University, B.Arch 2011

OPPORTUNISTIC URBANISM:
EXPLORATION OF CHALLENGED URBAN IDENTITY
Tamrat Gebremichael, University of Virginia, B.Arch 2012
Weishun Xu, University of Virginia, B.Arch 2012

DISEMBODIED
Din Blankenship, University of Michigan, M.Arch 2012

LIGHT AS COMMODITY
David Sasaki, Architect
Contributors: Timothy Sasaki, Son Van Huynh,
Christopher Mudiappahpillai

ISLAND HABITATIONS: BUILDING A PINK PLASTIC UTOPIA
Manar Moursi, Princeton University, M.Arch 2008

RECLALIMED: DREDGE DIALECTICS IN THE VENETIAN LAGOON
Nate Burgess, University of Virginia, MLA 2013
Rachel Stevens, University of Virginia, MLA 2013

POLYTROPISM
Newsha Ghaeli, McGill University, M.Arch 2013
Caileigh Mackellar, McGill University, M.Arch 2012

EXTRATERRITORIAL ACTIVATION: HARNESSING POTENTIAL FROM THE INDETERMINANCY OF CLOSED MILITARY ZONES
Suzanne Harris-Brandts, University of Waterloo, M.Arch 2012

ARCTIC ATLAS: NORTHWEST PASSAGE
Leena Cho, University of Virginia, Visiting Lecturer
Matthew Jull, University of Virginia, Assistant Professor