Contextualized Metrics + Narrating Binaries: Defining Place and Processing Indigenous North America

This paper introduces four cultural catalysts in Indigenous architecture: language, place, kinship and transformation. Inspired by the interrelationship of physical, sociocultural and spiritual factors- the measurable and immeasurable – we investigate a number of concepts related to Indigenous thinking and ways of knowing. We contrast these notions with non-Indigenous writers including Pallasmaa, Ricoeurand Doshi, in the hopes of initiating a dialogue, and assisting the two-way knowledge transfer, between architecture and Indigenous theory.

Outside In/Inside Out: Extimacy and Public Space

As the public sphere has intruded the privacy of the home, the semiotics of the domestic have migrated to workplaces and public squares. The entropic mixture of private and public environments is gradually altering the physiognomy of the city.

Architecture as a System: Urban Catalysts for Lynchburg, Virginia

This paper proposes a critical analysis of “ARCH 2010 Introduction to Urban Architecture” at the School of architecture of the University of Virginia. The studiois part of an overall strategy that tries to subvert the traditional method of teaching in architectural design. In a conventional linear process, students start withthe design of a small-scale architectural object and continue to design buildings in progressively larger scales. Provided with a strong urban context, the 2010 Studio follows a sinusoidal transition of scale, moving from small to large and back again. The ultimate goal of the studio is to put forward/produce an urban architectural project by linking the architectural object with the urban landscape as catalysts for the change within the city. The architectural proposals should be a strategic and thoughtful response to previous research on existing urban systems, and should support the revitalization of public life in their immediate environment and in the whole city. The course was divided in four parts: Elements and infrastructures of the urban environment, developed at Charlottesville Down Town Mall, Urban systems and networks, strategic development plan for 9th street, and design of a mixed-use building and public space (The last 3 parts took place in Lynchburg, Virginia). To connect these four main “problems” there were “transitional exercises” inserted in between them. With the same critical attention, this paper will analyze the final results, the various stages of the course as well as the areas of overlap between different phases, specially designed to ensure the student’s awareness of the consistency of the complete process.

Empowered Mobility: Supply Chain Thinking for Youth in Foster Care

The application of global container logistics to high mobility children, such as those in foster care, asks designers to consider an empathic, human-centered approach to an institutionalized system of involuntary mobility, which can result in as many as 3-4 family “placements” per year for some children. In spite of grim statistics for youth in foster care related to graduation, teen pregnancy, drug use and imprisonment, these children develop many positive resiliencies around adaptability, emotional intelligence, empathy and efficiency. Working with a non-profit serving youth in foster care in Watts, Los Angeles, called Peace4Kids, whose motto is “community as family,” the concept of a “mobile village” was born. Following their lead, paired with a deep understanding of consumer culture’s collective intelligence around moving goods through cities, an innovative strategy was used to create a literal delivery platform for educational programming, in partnership with other non-profits, around food equity, social justice and eventually other vocational skills such as apparel arts, machine arts, fine arts and early education.

The Internet of Things: Making Cities — AndThe Way They Use Technology — Smarter

Minerva Tantoco was named New York City’s first chief technology officer last year, charged with developing a coordinated citywide strategy on technology and innovation. We’re likely to see more of that as cities around the country, and around the world, consider how best to use innovation and technology to operate as “smart cities.”The work has major implications for energy use and sustainability, as cities take advantage of available, real-time data – from ‘smart’ phones, computers, traffic monitoring, and even weather patterns — to shift the way in which heating and cooling systems, landscaping, flow of people through cities, and other pieces of urban life are controlled. But harnessing Open Innovation and the Internet of Things can promote sustainability on a much broader and deeper scale. The question is, how do you use all the available data to create a more environmentally sound future? The term “Internet of Things” was coined in 1999 by Kevin Ashton, who at the time was a brand manager trying to find a better way to track inventory. His idea? Put a microchip on the packaging to let stores know what was on the shelves.

We Are the Stories We Tell

The argument outlined in this paper is simple: understanding what actually happened in the Americas before 1492 CE enlightens our understanding of the present. I hope to contribute to the broad academic discourse about global issues by addressing false assumptions that do not serve to illuminate real places, people, and practices. Perhaps one of the concerns mentioned in the conference call for papers, an“increased contemporary need to develop strategies to cope with future stresses,” should be addressed, in part, by rethinking the stories we tell about how we got to the current human condition.

(re)Weave: Adapting Urban Obsolescence in Syracuse

It has been over fifty years since the beginning of the decline of the American industrial city. After World War II, urban life in the United States began to fracture along social, economic, and demographic lines. The rise of the interstate highway system facilitated the simultaneous collapse of downtown retail districts; advancing urban decay stood in marked contrast to a thriving, homogeneous, trans-continental suburban culture. Today, widespread obsolescence has catalyzed and accelerated to embody the future of shrinking cities in the RustBelt.

The Politics of Memory: Constructing Heritage and Globalization in Havana, Cuba

Since granted world heritage status by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1982, Old Havana has been the site of contested heritage practices. Critics consider UNESCO’s definition of the 143 hectare walled city center a discriminatory delineation strategy that primes the colonial core for tourist consumption at the expense of other parts of the city. To neatly bound Havana’s collective memory/history within its “old” core, they say, is to museumize the city as ”frozen in time,” sharply distinguishing the “historic” from the “vernacular.”While many consider heritage practices to resist globalization, in Havana they embody a complex entanglement of global and local forces. The Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 triggered a crippling recession during what Fidel Castro called a“Special Period in a Time of Peace.” In response, Castro redeveloped international tourism—long demonized by the Revolution as associated with capitalist “evils”—in order to capture the foreign currency needed to maintain the state’s centralized economy. Paradoxically, the re-emergence of international tourism in socialist Cuba triggered similar inequalities found in pre-Revolutionary Havana: a dual-currency economy, government-owned retail (capturing U.S. dollars at the expense of Cuban Pesos), and zoning mechanisms to “protect” Cubanos from the “evils” of the tourism, hospitality, and leisure industries. Using the tropes of “heritage”and “identity,” preservation practices fueled tourism while allocating the proceeds toward urban development, using capitalism to sustain socialism. This paper briefly traces the geopolitics of 20th century development in Havana, particularly in relation to tourism. It then analyzes tourism in relation to preservation / restoration practices in Old Havana using the Plaza Vieja (Old Square)—Old Havana’ssecond oldest and most restored urban space—as a case study. In doing so, it exposes preservation/ restoration as a dynamic and politically complex practice that operates across scales and ideologies, institutionalizing history and memory as an urban design and identity construction strategy. The paper ends with a discussion on the implications of such practices for a rapidly changing Cuba.

Lina Bo Bardi: Evolution of Cultural Displacement

In recent years much has been written and exhibited regarding Lina Bo Bardi, the Italian/Brazilian architect (1914-1992). This paper aims to look at the phenomenon of cultural displacement and the dissemination of her design thinking as a major female figure in a male dominated profession. This investigation is distinguished from others in that it addresses the importance of regional and cultural influences that formed Lina’s design philosophy in her early years in Italy. Cultural displacement has long played a significant role in the creative process for artists. Often major innovators in literature are immigrants as elements of strangeness, distance, and alienation all contribute to their creativity. The premise is that critical distance is paramount for reflection as a change of context unfolds unforeseen possibilities. Displacement was a consistent element throughout the trajectory of Lina’s architectural career as she moved from Rome to Milan, from Milan to Sao Paolo from Sao Paolo to Bahia and back to Sao Paolo. Viewing this form of detachment and dislocation permits insight into her career and body of work as displacement mediates the paradoxical relationship between time and space. The paper will examine three distinct periods in her career. The first period is set in Rome, where she assimilated the city, showed artistic aptitude and spent her university years studying under Piacentiniand Giovannoni. The second period is set in Milan, where she developed impressive editorial and layout skills in publications work with Gio Ponti and BrunoZevi. and was influenced by Antonio Gramsci’s writings. The third is set in Brazil, where she builds and evolves as an architect via what she absorbed in Rome, wrote in Milan, and finally realized in Brazil. After Italy’s collapse in WWII Lina writes, draws, edits, critiques the plight of the Italians in need of better housing and circumstances. She leaves Milan with her new husband, PM Bardi (a prominent journalist, art critic) for Brazil. In Sao Paolo she absorbs the optimism and positive direction of Brazil. Her early design work in Brazil echoes European modernism, but when she travels to Bahia and becomes aware of the social conditions, she draws from her Italian experiences of and ideas of transforming lives through craft. Her architectural projects become directly responsive to the culture of Bahia and the politics of poverty. Lina’s design thinking evolves and parallels George Kubler’s study, The Shape of Time, and the history of man-made objects by bridging the divide between art and material culture.

Great Salt Lake Exploration Platform

The Great Salt Lake Exploration Platform is a creative machine built to foster visual and performative research within the vastly under explored situated locale of the Great Salt Lake. GLSEP is a modular, flexibly deployable craft for a small group of people to remain upon the lake for limited durations of time, make work, and not die. Given the remote severity of this landscape the qualifier is significant. Storms appear quickly and can generate ten to twelve foot waves in tight oscillation. Coupled with the water’schemical density the lake is known to literally tear boats apart. Rather than being built and powered as a boat, with need of a marina to launch and a geometry to accommodate overland travel, the GSLEP is a deployable assembly providing necessary life support and research infrastructure (shade, fresh water, food and waste storage, solar power, communications,and evacuation provisions) to researchers operating on the Great Salt Lake, akin to off planet missions with immanent dangers and very limited rescue opportunities.