PROJECT #2

Thanks again to all of the students for their fabulous stool projects. Congratulations to the official winners of this year's UNDERSTANDING ARCHITECTURE Project #2. Though these awards are completely meaningless (to your grade, that is)... they are still fun! From left to Right:

Most Aesthetically Interesting: Seungyeol Ryou
Most Structurally Efficient: Anton Volovsek
Best Craft or Assembly: Elly Ngoh
Best Joint or Detail: Conrad Diao
Most Structural Strength: Nina Barraco

VIDEO PRESHOW #8 - Ennis House, Los Angeles, CA FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

The Ennis House has been featured in many forms of popular culture since it's construction in 1924 including 3(!!!) music videos. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and is the largest of the four textile block houses in the Los Angeles area. For some reason, this house inspires dark videos about break-ups and unrequited love.

MORE CARDBOARD INSPIRATIONS

Not all of these examples would fit the criteria for PROJECT #2, but... they could be worked out to do so.

CARDBOARD INSPIRATIONS - FRANK GEHRY

(from Guggenheim:)

CARDBOARD FURNITURE DESIGNS of FRANK GEHRY
1969–82

Gehry's furniture designs are a "quick fix" of his architectural practice: their realization is relatively immediate and low cost, and they provide a satisfying smaller forum in which various design concerns, including ones relating to his buildings, may be explored. They also demonstrate his fundamental concern with manipulating basic materials in unconventional ways to produce objects that are functional yet also visually striking. For his first designs, Easy Edges (1969–73), Gehry favored the simplicity of corrugated cardboard, a material frequently employed in his architectural models. After discovering that single sheets of cardboard gained exponential strength when layered, he began to manipulate the simple material into graceful, curvilinear chairs and tables. With hardboard facing applied to the flat surfaces, the furniture is immensely durable.

Easy Edges

Experimental Edges (1979–82) is a bulkier series of cardboard pieces, featuring rough, shaggy edges and an improvisational appearance. Gehry used thick corrugated cardboard with a pronounced texture to create this furniture's larger volumes , manipulating their density by combining sheets of varying widths within a single form. Some sheets were intentionally misaligned within the stacks, creating an undulating line and slight ripples. 

VIDEO PRESHOW #7 - Loblolly House, Taylor's Island, MD, KIERAN TIMBERLAKE ARCHITECTS

https://vimeo.com/46306076

This project, the Loblolly House, is made of completely demountable components.

VIDEO PRESHOW #6 - Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois, LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE

This is the video I showed on Monday. It features the Farnsworth House (1951) a house designed for Dr. Farnsworth as a weekend retreat from her busy Chicago practice. The architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was one of the twentieth century's most prominent architects.

Peter Eisenman Lecture Tonight

LECTURE TONIGHT

PETER EISENMAN

“Architecture and the Loss of Authority”

6PM, Art + Architecture Building, Lecture Hall (Room 2104)

Mr. Eisenman is an internationally recognized architect and educator. The principal of Eisenman Architects, he has designed large-scale housing and urban design projects, innovative facilities for educational institutions, and a series of inventive private houses. His current projects include the six-building City of Culture of Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and a large condominium housing block in Milan, Italy. Mr. Eisenman has taught at Cambridge University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Ohio State University, and The Cooper Union. His many books include Eisenman: Inside Out, Selected Writings 1963–1988; Written into the Void, Selected Writings 1990–2004; Tracing Eisenman; and Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques. From 1967 to 1982 he was the director of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City, which he founded.

GOLDEN DONUT FILM FESTIVAL, 2015

YOU'RE INVITED

MASON HALL, ROOM 2306

MONDAY, 2 NOVEMBER 2015

9AM

iMovie Resources

For those of you who have never used video editing software, I recommend iMovie by Apple (available for Mac and Windows machines.) It is very intuitive and will give you many excellent tools to assemble your video projects.

A very good book on the iMovie software features is David Pogue's iMovie:The Missing Manual. This book is available online (and in hardcopy) through our library system. (click on book title above to get to the Mirlyn listing)

For those of you who do not have iMovie (or other editing software packages) on your computers you can (1) use the software on the university computers or (2) access software on your own computers through the university's Virtual Sites. You will need to download a small piece of software that is a portal to the many programs available for UM affiliates.

WORKSHOP AND PUBLIC LECTURE: Francois Roche and Camille Lacadee

Francois Roche Workshop

"I'm gonna shake my hand" 

Topic/ 
Several days where you will question the “robotic handling, fondling, fiddling, caressing, slapping…” with a 3 fingers articulated Arduino servo puppet.

Output/ 
A movie of one minute and p.r.o.p.s (simple robotic artefact)


Schedule/ 
October 10 10a-12p / 2p-6p
October 11 10a-12p / 2p-6p
October 12 Work Day / Lecture 5p
October 13 Final Work Day
October 14 Final Critique 12p-2p
Workshop attendance is limited, email denizmc@umich.edu to request a spot.

PUBLIC LECTURE 10/09: Distinguished Alumna Lecture, Kristina Ford

Date: October 9, 2015 - 6:00pm

Building:  Art + Architecture Building

Room: Auditorium (room 2104)

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Kristina Ford’s thoughtful, well-informed and articulate assessments – heard on CNN, BBC and National Public Radio – became the first, public voice of reason to mediate the great storm’s human and civic consequences to America and beyond.  Starting in 1992 Ford was Director of City Planning in New Orleans; in 2000 she won the Award for Distinguished Leadership from Louisiana’s Chapter of the American Planning Association.  Ms. Ford is a frequent speaker on urban affairs, and has appeared on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times and in Planning magazine.  Prior to publishing The Trouble with City Planning, she wrote Planning Small Town America.

VIDEO PRESHOW #5 - Videos featuring buildings from World Expos

There are very few buildings that remain from the World Fairs and Expos of the past. There are even fewer that are important to architects. This week's video preshows featured two such buildings.

On Monday we saw Moshe Safdie's Habitat '67 in Leonard Cohen's video called "In My Secret Life."

You will recall that Moshe Safdie designed this building as a thesis project while he was still a student at McGill University in Montreal. To learn more about it check out these links:
Arch Daily Classics: Habitat '67
Great Buildings Online: Really good drawings, pix, and VIDEOS of the apartments
Dwell Magazine: A renovated flat

Another building remaining from the 1967 World Expo in Montreal is the United States Pavilion designed by Buckminster Fuller.

To learn more about "Bucky" Fuller and his career's work, start here.

We also saw two videos that contained the Eiffel Tower.  The Eiffel Tower was designed in 1889 for the the Paris World Fair by Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, two engineers who worked for the Compagnie des Établissements Eiffel. It continues to be the tallest structure in France

 ...and one of the most mythologized objects in the world.

Here's the video by Kendrick Lamar featuring the tower. (Thank you Jason Levin)

...and here's another slightly less explicit one by the Bloodhound Gang.