TheFar

Side

UBC SALA | Arch 501/520/540, Section 013 | SP 2019 | The Far Side | Overview | Thena Jean-hee Tak | ttak@sala.ubc.ca

ON ANIMALS: The relationship between humans and animals has consistently exhibited notions of power and control. Most often, the organizations of human space are imposed upon those of animals. Any exceptions to this are typically manifested as fixed orderings where human-animal interaction can be clearly delineated and

managed – think farms, aquariums, slaughterhouses, etc. When nonhuman ordering does prevail, like the field of dandelions in your front yard or the swarm of fruit

flies in your kitchen, it is considered ‘out of place’, a weed or a pest if you like.

MORE ON ANIMALS: The Far Side1 foregrounds nonhuman ordering and

asks students to engage other modes of being through the design of a ‘zoo’. The zoo and its many variations – menageries, vivariums, etc. – have origins deeply set in the discovery of new worlds and colonialism. Such collections

of animals symbolized an empire’s power, prominence, and reach: around 4500 BC in what is present day Iraq, pigeons were held in captivity for exhibition; the Egyptians around 2500 BC collected a variety of animals ranging from lions to antelope to baboons for royal enjoyment; the Chinese Emperor, Wen Wang, around 1000 BC built the Garden of Intelligence on 1,500 acres of land to house rare animals. The lineage of zoos has been and continues to be both a reflection and a participant of dominating cultural values. And while contemporary associations may suggest that the objective of zoos today has shifted toward education and conservation, the instruments of power and

control continue to be embedded in the formation and experience of these spaces.

LESS ON ANIMALS: How may we turn nonhuman ordering into a cause of thinking? How can other modes of being be made intelligible, accessible, visible? How have our specific cultural perceptions of animals influenced our treatment of them? These questions will percolate throughout the term as students develop their own position on what alternative realities the ‘zoo’ may present. A process-driven studio, The Far Side will begin with intensive research on animals and animal-housing precedents. In between and following, students can expect a sprinkling of design vignettes. The final project will then ask students to propose an alternative ‘zoo’ that builds off previous research, observations, and design exercises. Students will be expected to engage both landscape and architecture equally, and final proposals will need to address accessibility requirements.

ON STRUCTURE: - First and some second: intensive research on selected animals and associated infrastructure precedents, 3 weeks- Second and some first: short design vignettes that enact previous research (focus will be on thresholds and prosthetics), 2 weeks- Third: students will make a final proposal for an alternative ‘zoo’ that builds off project one and two, 6 weeks.

- Field Trips: the studio will take a trip to Seattle, Washington in mid February and possibly a night on the town at Dark Table (but TBD).

1 The Far Side is a series of single-panel comics created by Gary Larson. The studio borrows the title and its connotations as a way to rethink things that are seemingly known and familiar to us.

Arch 501/20/40/011 Instructor Inge Roecker

Vertical / Social / Zero Experimentation and Everyday Life Student family housing at UBC

Transolar , Stuttgart Germany

This studio explores a series of academic design investigations that focus on innovations in sustain-able building practices and socially responsible design interventions.

If we eliminate from our hearts and minds all dead concepts in regards of the houses and look at the question from a critical and objective point of view, we shall arrive at the “house machine”, the mass production house, healthy (and morally) so too) and beautiful in the same way that the working tools and instruments which accompany our existence are beautiful.” Le Corbusier, towards a New Architecture”, 1931

While our expectations for housing have moved beyond notions of the white box machine for living, interestingly enough the lasting legacy of modernism is the Social Project. Today the digital era has pushed buildings once more into machines for living, environmental concerns lead us to rethink construction methods and more and more the operation of the building during its lifespan. In Vancouver 56% of all GHG emissions are from buildings of which 82% are of residential nature more than transportation and waste together. This fact brought on new building codes and regulations with a goal to build only NZER constructed buildings by 2030. This new regulatory system looks and measures primary energy consumption but what other opportunities are there to reduce our ecological footprint? New technologies are operating in all areas of our lives. How will those new technologies influence how we build NZER communities? What potential lies in shared resources such as space and services and how does it change the building typology? It is the studio’s hypothesis that the architect is poised at the threshold of new technological means and capabilities to address this new challenges but specifically housing is also influenced by a deep array of financial and political infrastructure. Our discipline is guided by the mission to effect change in the built environment, and social responsibility is one is another framework through which spatial design practices intervene in the world. And, it is within this world, within its technological composition, material, political economic and social that designers must find means for adaptation and response. In the past looking at physical networks and connectivity has been a measure of social success but it is now infused with processes of connection that are more likely to be based in digital communication but again have an impact on the physical environment.

The studio will be asked to design a NET ZERO multigenerational-housing project for 130 Students and their families. The site is located at UBC Westbrook place. The students will investigate through form and materials, techniques and performances, as well as communication (universal, accessible, procedural, and affected) There are 4 Loops structured as follows:Loop 1: Housing Research, 2 weeks (15%) Loop 2: Site and environment, 1.5 weeks (15 %) Loop 3: Programme development 2.5 weeks (20%) Loop 4: Development of housing Multigenerational Housing project

(Social /Material and Assembly Research /Energy) 6 WEEKS (40%) Loop 5: Final publication (10%)

UBC SALA ARCH 501/520/540 SPRING 2019 - THE NORMAL STUDIO2 - SATTERFIELD

WHO is normal, abnormal, exceptional, or typical? Howard Schatz’s composite image of Olympic and professional athletes (above) shows bodies that are perfected, but not perfect. Each body in his famous photograph is in fact atypical due to genetics and hyper-optimization. Each athlete was selected and refined to excel at a very specific activity. As a result, each falls neatly outside what is considered “normal” for the human form. These athletes are universally celebrated, yet many equally accomplished individuals are not. Paralympic athletes (for example) are as physically gifted as their Olympic counterparts, yet often struggle for equivalent recognition and are considered by many to be inadequate, despite their accomplishments. What if we altered our perspective? What if the experiences of those labeled disabled were seen as normal? What if the accommodation of all bodies was seen as an opportunity to generate better form, assembly, flow, and experience? The (new) Normal Studio begins with the premise that any global “normalcy” is a fiction, that the concept of “normal” is more a personal construct than a static measure or metric, and that those who aren’t considered typical might offer something incredible to designers. In The New Normal Studio we reject preconceptions about limited types of so-called normative bodies. Instead we embrace a position that seeks to find and celebrate the exceptional qualities and experiences of all alternative “normal” humans. Who (as the occupants of architecture) is truly normal? How should we (as the designers of architecture) decide? Should we?

2

WHAT is normal, abnormal, exceptional, or typical? Architectural design is increasingly consumed by and as image. Social media platforms, news aggregators, and web-based architecture blogs conspire to deprive buildings of context, materiality, mass, and often meaning. The gravity of architecture, assessed in terms of both physics and philosophy, is hard to attain when viewed through a 3.5-inch window on a mobile device. What happens to buildings when they are flippantly presented alongside #foodporn, travel selfies, and LOLCats? Architecture is (usually) time-consuming. It is (usually) slow. It is (usually) physical. It (usually) generates effect. In the not-to-distant past, books were seen as too convenient surrogates for “real” architecture and no substitute for experiencing buildings. This is still true, yet print seems almost authentic thanks to their relative slowness, especially when judged against the flash-in-the-pan disposability of the images we are fed on a daily basis through social media. Have these changes in “media diet” changed architecture, or has the mediator changed our perception of it? Is architecture still normal? The (new) Normal studio is interested in what causes architecture to appear the way it does. What architectural approaches, forms, and logics can claim normalcy in a world designed to broadcast even the most mundane as exceptional? The (new) Normal Studio will grapple with issues of normalcy: Normalcy in body, access, and movement. Normalcy in typology, assembly, and system. Normalcy in how accommodating the former influences the latter. We will work between hylomorphic, immanent, and emergent conditions of architecture in our projects.

rules) of accessibility as a catalyst for exceptional design. We will be developing a training/competition centre for Murder Ball, or a studio/theatre for dancers with disabilities. Our project will be situated on an urban lot near the Vancouver city core.

Site Visits – Seattle - New Normal People will take a short trip to Seattle to visit the Olympic Sculpture Park, the Seattle Public Library, the Pike Place Market, and more.

Possible Sight Visit 2 – Dark Table - Dinner at Dark Table restaurant. www.darktable.ca

SATTERFIELD (Section 010) E: bsatterfield@sala.ubc.ca P: 604-822-3740 O: 309B

Studio Operations EX1 - The studio will begin with the construction of highly accurate section models of select architectural precedents with noteworthy circulation sequences. (2Wk)

EX2 - Next we will develop drawing strategies to test the forces that inform form. And reciprocally, we will seek to understand and analyze the effects our forms generate. We will draw on constructed surfaces. (1WK)

EX3 - Students will next be asked to design a prosthetic for their precedent model. The focus of these modifications will be given in class. (1-2WK)

EX4 - The semester will culminate with an architectural proposal. You will design a facility that uses the idea (and

UBC SALA.ENVELOPES STUDIO. SECTION 012. ARCH 501/520/540 SYLLABUS. PECHET.JANUARY 2019

ENVELOPES 2019

SYLLABUS AND SCHEDULE

INTRODUCTION – IT'S A MATERIAL WORLD This design studio will examine the nature of building envelopes in architecture; exploring the word as both subject and action (envelop). One could say that the description of the liminal surface which negotiates the boundary between inside and outside, is the primary act of building as it produces space, shelter and sets a critical frame by which we position ourselves in the environment. While this membrane accomplishes this in physical terms, it is also a cultural construct, defining and representing a set of values about our perceived position in the social and cosmological ecologies of the world. The intent of the studio is to foster conversations about these topics, within an open and creative paradigm of experimentation, discovery and application. The spirit of the studio will be held in the tradition of making things at SALA, where material studies are conduits to understanding the physicality of experience and phenomena. Whereas the studio will encourage students to become familiar with building materials and assemblies, the parlance of the class will be equally imbedded in using words like ‘transparent, opaque, fractured, whole, skin, deep, thin, pillowy, porous, repellent, soft, fluffy, resolute, crinkly, gooey, seductive’…. It's a studio that will be swimming in adjectives. The exercises will encourage you to experiment with ways that the visceral conditions of space, light and materials can be generators for your design ideas. You will be encouraged to marry your previous experience in varied disciplines to the act of design in order to understand that every act of spatial production, and its defining membranes, is directly linked to a complex network of function, form, association and meaning. The studio will prioritize the role that the senses play in the conceptualization of the built environment; searching for ways that design can engage the haptic attributes of the world. REPRESENTATIONS This studio will focus on the detailing and representation of space, true to its material nature. The concentration on the development of skills in 2D and 3D modeling will be used as a way to make conjecture as a way to think during the design process, not only to depict final projects. And that will be our focus for the term… escalating scales of material explorations; from the very specific and measured study of the body and its personal space to the development of a more complex environment lodged within a site and city. This is meant to allow you to experiment with materials of construction at these entwined scales.

UBC SALA.ENVELOPES STUDIO. SECTION 012. ARCH 501/520/540 SYLLABUS. PECHET.JANUARY 2019

MATERIAL FLOWS IN THE 21ST C The studio will work within awareness that the earth has limited resources. As the architect is a complicit player in the deployment of building components, (s)he/they is/are (a) participant(s) in the flow of materials as they travel from their point of origin to the site of manufacturing, and then onwards to the building project. Therefore, a parallel concern of the studio will be that of the application of material choice within one’s work is understood not as an end-product, but seen as a moment in a sequence of energy and manufacturing flows. In recognition of that concern, this understanding will influence how things will be ‘put together’ conceptually and physically. ACCESSIBILITY The studio will also examine the role of accessibility within the design process in order to arm you with an awareness that spaces we design are for multiple peoples, with varying physical and perceptual specificities. This topic will be embedded into all of the studios this term and so we will share common resources such as lectures and hand-outs amongst all. A TRIP! All studios will take a trip to Seattle to visit places (landscapes, building, public plazas and more) that will expand the relative discourses within all our studio(s). The date is set at Friday/Saturday, February 8/9. We hope you like clams. 3 PROJECTS Each project is conceptualized to give you opportunities to work with a variety of material, structural and spatial operations to explore the physical, social, aesthetic, psychological and legislative forces that define the construction of space.

1. 4 week project -set within a condition of density and overlook, this project will be the creation of an intimate space that negotiates between the territory of a body and layers of private to public exposure 2. 7.5 week project -will involve the inheritance of an existing structure located within a charged and epic location as a site to be enveloped, embellished and even upholstered…the project will involve reconciling layers of access, materials and space that range from a large-scale public interface down to private and interior sub-spaces of convivial and consumable pleasures 3. final 1 week project -will be a distillation of the second project into a tiny souvenir, re-connecting to the interface of a body

CONTACT bpechet@sala.ubc.ca