JONATHAN FOOTE

Virginia Tech Design-Build :: Build-Design

Since the early 1990s, the design-build program at Virginia Tech’s Washington-AlexandriaArchitecture Center (WAAC) has introduced the idea of prudence into architecture students’education. The primary vehicle for this undertaking has been the WAAC building itself, a load-bearingbrick and timber structure built in the early 20th century in Alexandria, Virginia. Here, design-buildprojects are all, in some way, permanent modifications to the building or its immediate landscape.

We begin at the end: Thomas Hobbes’s 17thcentury declaration of the end of prudence as avalid mode of political action. Defining it as‘‘nothing else but Conjecture from Experience’’,Hobbes paved the way for a host of Enlightenmentphilosophers who demoted, rejected, anddisparaged the centuries-old virtue of prudentia,favoring instead a priori categorizations ofknowledge as the conduit toward certain andrightful action.1 In contemporary architecturalpractice, prudence is a virtue about which little isspoken. Instead, practice instrumentalizesknowledge, which has led to a pointed separationbetween design and construction, and theory andpractice. Yet prudence offers an alternative mode ofthinking – one that has the capacity to evokepowerful questions regarding practice.

Aristotle placed prudence, or phronesis, at thecenter of his ethics, describing it as a ‘practicalphilosophy’ that guided appropriate action in therealm of material, particular situations. Unlikeuniversal knowledge (episteme) or knowledge ofthe arts (techne), phronesis could not be taught,only demonstrated or performed within the sphereof the active life. Involving discernment,interpretation, and persuasion, phronesis operatedbetween the realm of universal reasoning andparticular, concrete situations.2 To act prudently, asthe iconography of Prudentia suggests, is to lookforward and backward at the same time, invokingan acute situational awareness which gains depthfrom direct experience in a wide range ofundertakings (Figure 1).

The Washington-Alexandria Architecture Centerat Virginia Tech is the urban extension of VirginiaTech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies.Architecture students in the design-build programat the WAAC create a continuous flow of ideas,talents, and desires which merge with the everchanging state of the building and grounds toconstruct a school, both in the figural sense as wellas in its reality as a building. It is, in a certain way, aperpetual construction site, open to initiatives bystudents seeking to define their own place oflearning. As most projects span over the course ofseveral academic terms, the typical correspondencebetween the end of the project and the end of theacademic term is absent (Figures 2–6). As a result,the WAAC design-build program offers analternative possibility for ‘‘practicing’’ practice,subverting the professional model of design-buildon which many academic programs are patterned,where design-build students diligently work fromschematic design through construction documentsand acting, in the end, as the builders themselves.From a pedagogical point of view, once the notionof completion is removed from its customary tieswith the end of a project, the typical linearity fromidea to execution is thrown open for chiasmicrevisions and reconsiderations as is dictated by thecontinuously evolving project. In this way, thecompleted work presented biannually at design-build exhibitions is understood as the continuouspunctuation of the work in progress, and it does notnecessarily signify the end or finality of a givenproject.

To expand on this point, one only needs torecall Michelangelo’s full size wall drawings at SanLorenzo, Adolf Loos’ discoveries with the blue-aproned craftsmen, or Carlo Scarpa’s sketches onthe construction site at Castelvecchio. Here,architecture as a projective activity undermines the

1. Cesare Ripa, Prudenza, Iconologia (Rome, 1611.)

Journal of Architectural Education, Design-Build :: Build-Design 52pp. 52–58 ª 2012 ACSA

modern notion of design as a ‘‘de-signation’’, whichassumes that the entirety of the project may bedetermined before construction begins. To think of awork of architecture as a projection, rather than acomplete prescription, allows adequate space forthe architect (or student) to simultaneously advancethe work while keeping it open for future discovery.Design approaches which accommodate futureinterpretations as more knowledge becomesavailable are favored over those that prematurelydetermine or close the development of the work topossible shifts in direction. In this way, we solicitmaterial experimentation and prototyping early onin the process, often without having a clear visionfor the overall design. Students learn how to evolvethe project both digitally and through moretraditional means of fabrication, without having toburden future generations of students withbecoming mere executants of previous designs. Thismode of thinking requires a release, or at leastsubversion, from formal modes of design practicethat mandate the separation of a project intodistinct phases of design and build. Once accepted,the beginning and end of a design project may be

effectively reversed, because ‘‘design’’ and‘‘build’’ work in a dialectic rather than as a linearprocess beginning with design and ending withexecution.

Pedagogically speaking, WAAC design ⁄ buildrecognizes what Umberto Eco called, a ‘‘work inmovement’’, where a project may be deliberatelyleft open to invite future interpretation anddevelopment.3 In the construction of a new coffeebar for an underutilized space, for example,students left undetermined certain details regardinghow the bar would join with the existing buildingstructure (Figure 7). These connections, while notworked out, were projected into the overall designby specifying a material change and locationwherever the bar would join with the existingbuilding. Although the material type and connectiondetails were not determined at the time offabrication, they remained ‘open’ to the imaginationof future cohorts by inviting such a joint to becomean expressive part of the installation (Figures 8 and9). A similar procedure occurred in the installationof a 12-foot pivoting door, where the making of thepivot hinge was interpreted across several

generations of students (Figure 10). Here, thefertility of the detail as an open work isdemonstrated through the multiple hands andfactures present in the prototype drawings andmockups (Figures 11 and 12). As in Aristotle’sphronesis, sustaining key questions in thedevelopment of the work across several generationsof students cultivates a realm of reasoning which

4. Detail of spiral stair, first prototype [machined aluminum, cast class]

(Photograph by author.)

2. Spiral stair and railing [stacked plywood, machined aluminum, cast glass balustrades], WAAC library. As the

longest continuously running project in the school, the construction of the spiral stair and railing has become a

symbol of the prudent, open project. (Photograph by author.)

3. Full size mockups of spiral stair railing [chipboard, threaded rod]. The existing building is taken as a

construction site for a new generation of students. Full size, in-situ models are frequently consulted in the

design process. (Photograph by author.)

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serves both the design of the building as well as thebuilding of the design.

Curiously, prudent thinking often causes agreat rupture in most contemporary approaches todigitally driven fabrication projects, which oftendepend on the pointed separation of design andbuild into formal categories. In this manner, thehigh variability enabled by computational processesrarely tolerates alterations, modifications, orrethinking once the fabrication process has actuallybegun. Students’ role may easily become that ofexecutants or assemblers of the pieces emergingfrom fabrication machines with little possibility forreimagining alternatives or improvements as thework takes material form. In an ongoing WAACdesign-build project for a parametrically designedmetal screen wall, prudence threw open the typicalprogression from CPU to CNC, facilitating atectonic depth often missing from projects overlyfocused on formal outcomes (Figure 13). Here,concurrently with the development of theconceptual and computational design, studentspursued details and construction methods noteasily considered in the abstract databased design

7. Students construct a 14 foot long coffee bar, to be installed in a student common area. The rhythm of darker wood (in MDF) invites future

consideration in the connection of the bar to the existing building. (Photograph by author.)

6. Railing working drawing for spiral stair railing. From the prototype, another group of students spearheads the effort to develop a process for its

reproduction. Around 25 students have worked across 4 generations to design and fabricate the 17 spiral stair balustrades. (Drawing by John Foley.)

5. Railing shop drawing for spiral stair railing. Bridging into another

cohort of students, the development of the full size cardboard model

into an actual prototype becomes a new stage in the project. (Drawing

by Shaheen Namvary, Byron Knowlson, and Dennis Bree.)

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environment. These included a sustained materiallydriven exploration into the means of constructionas a source of invention, as well as full sizemockups and drawings studying the difficult jointbetween new and existing construction(Figures 14–16). Viewed in the shifting context ofphronesis, students engaged in digital fabricationexperiments as one part of a larger exchangebetween design and build, liberated from pre-determined processes or tools.

In today’s culture of quick architecturalinstallations and complex design-build partnershipsbetween industry, non-profit organizations, anduniversities, an open design-build project thatpurposely expands the time of construction seemsproblematic. However, an over emphasis onarbitrary completion in the validation of the workmay have unintended consequences for education,as well as for the work itself. While there is oftengreat satisfaction for students and faculty on a ‘jobwell-done’, it is not entirely clear whether this is apositive pedagogical outcome. Rather thanunderstanding the production of architecture as acontinuous process of revision, rethinking, andreconsideration, students come to learn that suchthinking may quickly interrupt the goal at hand,which is the completion of the project, oftendictated by arbitrarily set dates.

The interruption of the linearity of beginning toend, however, should be one of the primary tenets

8. Coffee bar, as installed. (Photograph by author.)

9. Coffee bar, detail of connection between new and existing [machined

aluminum, maple hardwood], WAAC design ⁄ build seeks the generative

potential in the building detail, thus keeping the predetermined formal

questions from dominating the development of the project. Advancing

the work becomes performative rather than algorithmic, where students

must engage in a continuous flux of action and reaction with materials,

techniques, and the work itself. (Photograph by author.)

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10. Pivoting door [plywood, hardwood, machined steel pin-hinge]

(Photograph by author.)

11. Detail of steel pin-hinge, pivoting door. As the fresco painter first draws on the wall a ‘cartoon’, or an apparition of the work seeking itself, the

prudent metalworker consumes the drawing to project future work at the very moment of its realization. (Drawing by multiple WAAC students.)

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of education. Design-build, with its directengagement with all aspects of a project, seemsuniquely situated to act as an intensification of thisexperience. The premise of the WAAC design-buildprogram is that the practical considerationsembedded in the work on the school buildingreflect an architect’s practice on an actual buildingsite and that both are the result of prudentthinking. These deliberations are neither purely

speculative nor blindly utilitarian. One type ofthinking does not ‘‘inform’’ the other, as in amodern, instrumental notion of theory that informs

practice, or vice-versa. Rather, such decisions arethe result of reasoned inquiry into proper actionwithin the varied and shifting circumstances of

12. Steel components in fabrication, pivoting door. (Photograph by author.)

13. Screen wall and guardrail [CNC-cut folded stainless steel sheet

metal, machined steel and aluminum], in progress. This parametrically

derived topography responds to the spiral movement of body as it

ascends the adjacent library stair. WAAC design-build seeks the potential

of digital ⁄ parametric design and fabrication to work within the spirit of

the open project. (Image by Gui Talarico, Ivan O’Garro, Joseph Iwaskiw,

and Ben Samson.)

14. Model of metal folding process, screen wall [laser-cut chipboard]

(Photograph by Joseph Iwaskiw.)

15. Full size model, screen wall [water-jet cut sheet metal]. It is

possible to open up the linearity of the parametric process through the

tools which are as old as architecture itself, such as prototypes,

mockups, and full-size assemblies. In this way, CNC tools are inclusive

rather than conclusive, participating in the process rather than

determining it. (Photograph by Javier Navarro Puig.)

16. Full size model of connection between new and existing, screen

wall [steel, machined aluminum, existing brick wall]. (Photograph by

author.)

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architectural practice, requiring the ability to bothproject forward through fore-sight and reflectbackwards through the mirror of experience. In theopen work of design-build at WAAC, collaborationbetween students occurs in relation to thecontinuously evolving project, conceived and

constructed by a perpetual stream of past andfuture students, most of whom will never meet. The‘edification’ of the building thus becomes a mirrorfor the edification of the students themselves,engaged in memorable experiences of ‘practicing’practice.

Notes1. Thomas Hobbes, ‘‘Human Nature: or the Fundamental Elements of

Policy’’, in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesburg,

Vol. 4 (London, 1811), p. 18.

2. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI.viii.9.

3. Umberto Eco, The Open Work (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1989), p. 86.

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