2.0

Spring/Summer 2012

Questions, comments, and donations can be directed to:

Rice School of Architecture

PLAT Journal

MS-50

Houston, Texas 77004

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Joseph Scherer, Eileen Witte

MANAGING EDITOR

Erin Baer

PUBLISHING DIRECTOR

Sean Billy Kizy

GRANT DIRECTOR

Kelly Barlow

DISTRIBUTION DIRECTORS

Sam Biroscak, Sheila Mednick

WEB DESIGNER

Chris Duffel

COPY EDITORS

Seanna Walsh, Lauren Ajamie, He Yutian, Courtney Benzon,

Sheila Mednick, Yunzhu Deng, Sam Biroscak, Will Crothers,

Cliff Ingram

GRAPHIC EDITORS

Ian Searcy, Melissa McDonnell

STAFF

Alex Tehranian, Louie Weiss, Matthew Austin, Tracy Bremer,

Jessica Cronstein, Andrew Daley, Sarah Hieb, Marti Gottsch,

Jessica Tankard, Nicholas Weiss, Timmie Chan, Chimaobi

Izeogu, Sue Biolsi, Alex Gregor

PLAT is a student-directed journal published out of the Rice School of Architecture.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The production and publication of PLAT would not have been

possible without the talents and generosity of:

Sarah Whiting, Dean, Rice School of Architecture

Lars Lerup, Dean Emeritus, Rice School of Architecture

Farès el-Dahdah, Associate Professor, Director of Graduate

Studies, Rice School of Architecture

Scott Colman, Senior Lecturer, Rice School of Architecture

Neeraj Bhatia, Wortham Fellow, Rice School of Architecture

Nana Last, Associate Professor, University of Virgina School

of Architecture

Rice School of Architecture, Faculty and Staff

The Architecture Society at Rice

Rice University Graduate Students Association

Rice University

Lynn Stekas and John Daley

James and Molly Crownover

Nonya Grenader

JDMiner Systems LLC

Raymond Brochstein

Joujou Zebdaoui

Lonnie Hoogemboom

The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc.

Architecture Center of Houston Foundation

The Rice Design Alliance

SPECIAL THANKS TO

Renee Reder, Amanda Crawley, Reto Geiser, David Dewane

India Mittag, Director of Development, Rice School of

Architecture

Linda L. Sylvan, Executive Director, Rice Design Alliance

Raj Mankad, Editor of Cite, Rice Design Alliance

PRINTER

The Prolific Group | Printed in Canada

PLATjournal.com

editor@PLATjournal.com

ISSN 2162-4305

PLAT2.0

Joseph Scherer, EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION 05 Eileen Witte

Jonathan Massey TEMPLE KABBALAH MADONNA 06

James Witherspoon LOOKING THROUGH YOU 18

Robert Yuen LANGUAGE OF THE INSTANT 26

Jeongsun Oh THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE 28

Michael Banman RE-VISIONING: ACTIVATING THE PICTURE PLANE 34

David Dewane VIKTOR TIMOFEEV IN CONVERSATION WITH DAVID DEWANE 40

Jansen Aui HOUSE FOR ROTHKO 50

Jessica Rossi-Mastracci LANDSCAPE ATMOSPHERES 58

Dimitri Kim FUTURE PROOF 66

Charlie Morris YOU ARE SEEN... PARTLY 72

Braden Engel NEBULOUS TERRAIN 78

Jack Murphy COMMAND R: THOUGHTS ON DIGITAL RENDERING 98

Jonathan Crisman READING JULIUS SHULMAN 106

Alex Tehranian MEGASTRUCTRE IN MANHATTAN 114

Jessica Cronstein OUR FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 122

Andreas Kalpakci, SPACE, CRIME, AND ARCHITECTURE 130 David Rinehart, Jimmy Stamp

Noam Shoked THE URBAN AS PROJECTION OF DESIRE 140

Marcin Kedzior SERIES URBANISM 148

Carolyn Sponza CARTOON URBANISM 152

Allison Newmeyer, P.L.O.T.S 156 Stewart Hickes

Thomas Hillier THE EMPEROR’S CASTLE 160

TABLE OF CONTENTS

IN CONVERSATION WITH ANTOINE PICON 14

IN CONVERSATION WITH JOHN MAY 16

IN CONVERSATION WITH ANTOINE PICON 60

IN CONVERSATION WITH JOHN MAY 62

IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL MALTZAN 38

IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL MALTZAN 74

IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL MALTZAN 126

IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL MALTZAN 94

DRAWING: Eléna English 56

DRAWING: Ian Searcy 76

DRAWING: Sam Jacobson 128

DRAWING: Eunike 96

PLAT2.0

Already in 2004, long before proposing in its pages the September 17, 2011 occupation of Wall Street that

led to today’s still-powerful popular campaign against the inequities of global wealth, the anti-consumerism

magazine Adbusters was advocating that the media was not necessarily a public pacifier, but instead a

potential public catalyst:

Know the media. Change the media. Be the media.

Adbusters’ promotion of culture jamming as a strategy of popular political activism dates as far back as the

organization’s founding in 1989, but it’s this three-part slogan that best captures the contemporary relation-

ship between the public sphere and the visual. Countering the lament that visual culture is controlled by

capitalist empires and has reduced attention spans, intellectual depth, and political acuity, Adbusters offered

the possibility that the media could be co-opted tofoster its own audiences and ends.

Architecture culture has long been aware of the impact of representation: Beatriz Colomina’s 1994 book,

Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (notably the most frequently cited reference

across this issue of PLAT) compellingly illustrated that the manipulation of visual media is part and parcel

of architectural representation (and has been, throughout architecture’s history). This issue of PLAT helps to

extend this now-familiar refrain of manipulation (whether that of capital or that of the author) to engage new

topics engendered by representation. As the editors note, PLAT 1.5 focused on new techniques of represen-

tation, whereas this subsequent issue turns its attentions to the effects of those techniques in creating new

interfaces between architecture and the public.

Technique is, of course, still very much at play in this issue (techniques of anamorphic projection, techniques

for “incorporating the intangible,” techniques taken from the commercial and the comic, techniques for exhi-

bitions…), but framing the issue in terms of the public effects of these techniques is extremely provocative.

No singular effect or overarching redefinition of the public emerges from the collection; instead, the reader

has to form his or her own thesis about representation after reading through this potent combination of inno-

vative representational strategies (hand-drawing that avoids nostalgia, sculpture that allies with photography,

media that embraces without dumbing down the masses…) and topics (forging a “language of the instant,”

the potency of the scale figure, the risk of reconstructing Rudolph…). Like the still inchoate, but clearly

potent effects of the collective strategies underlying the Occupy movement, representation is in the midst of a

not-yet-defined paradigm shift that not only engages, but forms an entirely new collective audience, and this

issue does a terrific job of capturing this flux without prematurely fixing it in place.

FOREWORDSarah Whiting

PLAT2.0

5

In the late 1970s, Dr. Harold “Andy” Hildebrand invented the world’s first stand-alone seismic data interpre-

tation workstation. With carefully placed charges, he sent sound waves into the earth’s crust, recording their

reflections as images. He used his device to map oil trapped deep below the surface – much to the delight of

his employer, Exxon Mobil.

He’s better known for ruining music.

After realizing that the same technology for collecting seismic data could be used to detect, analyze, and

modify pitch, Dr. Andy created his second major invention: Auto-Tune. Unfortunately for our prolific inventor,

this breakthrough proved to be more controversial within its target industry, as evidenced by Jay-Z’s song

“D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune).” Its “artful” calibration of pitch was widely perceived as cheating.

But what is “cheating” exactly? To a third grader, it’s not cheating if you aren’t caught. To an inventor, it’s

not cheating, per se, but rather innovating. Auto-Tune is part of a long legacy of technological develop-

ments that augment vocal performance. Its capacity to invisibly adjust wayward pitch effectively removes

“good-pitch” from the talent equation, allowing other aspects of vocal performance – timbre, emotion,

range – to be foregrounded.

It’s one thing to use technology to conceal flaws; it’s another to use it visibly toward new ends. Beyond its

intended use, Auto-Tune can convert held notes into trademark vibratos or news reports into stylized oper-

ettas. Similarly, technological and social changes prompt architects to find ways of leveraging representa-

tion to react to – and design with – these developments.

But Auto-Tune hasn’t just changed vocal performance, it has changed the way we judge performance.

Whether you call it cheating or inventing, the development and exploitation of technology initiates new

public understandings and interpretations. In this issue, we consider the visible and invisible effects of

new representational interfaces between architecture and the public.

The recalibration of the components of architectural representation creates new emphases and legibilities.

Relinquishing their traditional performances, representational techniques find new, ulterior motives. Analysis

of the utopic, heterotopic, and dystopic lifestyles portrayed by representation reveals narratives, both intend-

ed and unintended. The composition of affect and atmosphere through techniques of abstraction can create

immediacy or add depth. New ways of curating existing forms of representation illuminate the conceptual

and process-driven aspects of architecture for new audiences. Engaging extradisciplinary interpretations and

mediatizations of architecture suggests alternative strategies for operating in familiar territory.

We might never win by cheating, but by making up our own rules we’re putting an entirely new game

on the table.

REPRESENTATION VOL. 2: IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHINGJoseph Scherer and Eileen Witte

Spring/Summer 2012

July 8, 2007

david dewane: This drawing is just one from a torrent

of drawings you produced in a short time. Could you

tell me something about this piece and that period

in your life?

viktor timofeev:These drawings were done at a time

when I was doing a drawing a day, each one build-

ing on top of the last one. There was never time for

stopping to look back, just going forward at that

pace for a whole year. This one in particular came

during my second month in Venice. I was work-

ing there as an intern in the Peggy Guggenheim

museum, and was getting up super early to draw the

streets and buildings around town, before they were

overrun with tourists.

The Peggy Guggenheim collection is really strong in

early twentieth-century painting. Since one of our

duties was guarding, I ended up spending a lot of

time with Malevich, El Lissitzky, Kandinsky, Van-

tongerloo. It was a really strange experience being

with these works on a daily basis in such a dead

city. They look forward in time and are still brimming

with futurity, but are kept in a place where nothing

new has actually been built in a very long time.

Viktor Timofeev is an artist living and working in Berlin, Germany. Despite

having never formally studied architecture, Viktor’s work confronts the basics

of architectural drawing, renegotiating its techniques in the invention of

symbol-laden or gratify-defying spaces. In the following conversation, former

RSA student David Dewane asks Viktor about eight works, discovering the

motivations and considerations behind the synthesis of abstraction and

representation inherent to his fantastical landscapes.

40

started pulling out forms from some of these works

into the old city outside. So you get giant Architekton

shapes floating in the sky, casting shadows onto

these really old buildings with gothic windows and

onion domes. In this particular drawing, Venice

is reduced to a square block and turned into an

inverted piazza, where the buildings are clustered

together, surrounded by a void. The cluster is made

from of all the Venetian archetypes I was looking at:

the piles, the arcade, the gothic arches, and even a

reductive version of Palladio’s Redentore church.

August 18, 2007

dewane: What about the image with the ink blot over

the line drawing? In this series, there were a number

of two-dimensional plans and three-dimensional

solid extrusions. How were these constructed?

timofeev: The blobs came first, and I don’t even

remember how they exactly happened. Basically, I

ended up with a bunch of stains on my papers, and

I thought I should work with them, incorporate them

somehow – map a city around them to give them a

context or give them a house, a shadow, or imply

some kind of movement.

VIKTOR TIMOFEEV IN CONVERSATION WITH DAVID DEWANE

PLAT2.0

August 18, 2007

July 8, 2007

41

Spring/Summer 2012

I was still in Venice, so I was pulling from the same

archetypal forms, but this time I made them wire-

frame. I think there is something really interesting

about viewing an old city through such a contem-

porary device. One would be able to pull back the

layers of history and see that the city was not pre-

planned, but rather just accrued over centuries of

living. So I tried to mimic those layers when housing

these forms.

dewane: I am surprised to know that the ink came

first and the lines came after. I always assumed the

underlined drawing came first. There is something

interesting about the reverse reading. If you look

at this from the perspective of someone trained in

architecture, you recognize and relate to the digital

wire frame. However, when you start a digital model,

you typically start with a completely clean space.

It’s incredible to imagine modeling space around an

amorphous form, especially something this aggres-

sive. Have you ever worked with three-dimensional

modeling programs?

timofeev: I did a long time ago, but it was, like, Corel-

DRAW. [Laughs]

dewane: But none of the contemporary programs?

timofeev: No. I made a decision not to do that. I

really wanted to have an original trajectory to push

off of. It might look like a rendering program, but it

is just super rational space. You don’t really get any-

where mimicking software, you don’t really learn –

you actually make yourself more dependent. This is

a conscious mimicking of the wire frame technique,

which itself becomes part of the content of the work.

RED/BLACK

dewane: In the Red/Black pieces, you move from the

purely abstract to inserting recognizable references.

What was the concept behind this series?

timofeev: It came on the heels of a year-long drawing

project, which taught me the basics of how to craft

space on paper. Red/Black began with just four

pictures that set up a very simple binary of form and

content – a system of containment and a system

of existence within that containment. As a starting

point, I was looking at El Lissitzky’s Of Two Squares,

though I tried to remove it somewhat from its

original Socialist agenda. The book is a tale of two

squares flying through space, attacking this chaotic

world, and the red constructing on top of the black.

The narrative grows out of weird parameters, almost

a kind of narrative abstraction. So I made my own

narrative, which consisted of starting simply and jug-

gling more and more variables as I went.

There is a linear growth happening to the black

system of containment – the walls slowly multiply

and the whole thing slowly grows in complexity.

I guess they’re permutations, though I can’t say

they’re exactly rational. It makes its way down to

the Terragni building, which I think is the only real

building referenced in there. There is a box on piloti,

but that’s really just a combination of Corbusian

elements that doesn’t really exist. Anyway, complex-

ity grows around existence, and then it reverses,

implying an infinite loop.

192.128.1.2. [RTVLD444]

dewane: What does this image mean in terms of how

our generation looks at or responds to the city?

timofeev: Or experiences the city. There is a two-year

difference between this drawing and the previous

one, so a lot changed in my approach to representa-

tion. At the very beginning, I was doing direct obser-

vation and then redrafting the built environment,

meditating on what’s already out there. This Rietveld

drawing, on the other hand, is about entering a

world that is totally invented. It takes some lessons

from what is on the street, but it is ultimately a

fantasy world where I invent the rules and the archi-

tecture involved.

The two garbage containers that are jutting together

started out as paper models, which I forced together

and set up on this kind of stage/table thing I have

in my studio. I basically decorated this house in the

drawing with my own objects, some of which clash

from different stages of history, and other things

42

PLAT2.0

RED/BLACK

43

Spring/Summer 2012

which I am simply attached to – maybe things you’d

find on the street, and some symbols that might

belong to some distinct community, real or fictional.

It becomes a portrait of an invented village that

generates a narrative out of these combinations.

dewane: What is the narrative in this image?

timofeev: Well, the protagonists here are the Z chairs.

I populated the landscape with four of them: inside,

outside, and in various orientations. They exist in

this desolate space that looks a little post-apocalyp-

tic and thrown together, but it’s also pretty luxurious.

The wallpaper is pretty decadent, and there is a spi-

ral staircase. So the Z chairs are kind of just hanging

out there, talking to each other.

dewane: It does seem like there are decadent ele-

ments, but it also seems like things are in a state

of decay rather than a state of flourishing. There is

an interesting juxtaposition between the modernist

artifacts and the elements of the street (dumpsters,

telephone poles, wires). How is this influenced by

the skateboarding culture?

timofeev: Skateboarding has been central to me for

over half of my life. It’s something that I incorporate

without even thinking about consciously...I mean,

it’s in my blood at this point! So it is there whether

I want it to be or not. I have an extensive collection

in my studio of photographs I take from the street.

It’s a whole atlas of things that I’ve found that are

curious. I photograph them, print them out, and put

them all around my studio. That goes together with

things that are out of books or magazines or video

games. I wouldn’t say that my work is influenced by

skateboard culture, because it can seem contrived or

exploitative, but, like a skater, I am always scanning

the street looking for new spots – interesting things

that I can use and make my own. I’ve caught myself

doing this even when I was injured for a few months

– it’s not something you can just stop doing. I don’t

know if this form quest led me to making my own

worlds in the studio. Maybe it has something to do

with it, but I’m hesitant to say that’s exactly where it

comes from.

dewane: Does it have to do with a different sensibility

toward possession?

timofeev: It’s more about re-functioning. Basically, it’s

a different way of looking at the city and figuring out

how to have fun with it. It really works to reduce all

architecture to a hedonistic activity where you don’t

care what’s in a building; you just care what the out-

side surfaces are like. Iain Borden writes about this

in Skateboarding, Space and the City. Any Mies van

der Rohe building – like the marble outside the Sea-

gram building, or the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin

– is a dream spot. You obviously don’t intellectualize

it while you are doing it though; it’s more primal

than that. And I’d hate to see it any other way.

192.128.7.1 [OST_LAN]

timofeev: This is one of my favorite drawings from

this series.

dewane: Why is that?

timofeev: There were a few ideas I had in my head

that I put off for a long time because I didn’t know

what to do with them. The previous drawing is the

second of a series of line drawings of communities

that I constructed on my desk out of solids and

then decorated with various things. The landscape

actually could exist in this way – it was still relying

on a good amount of gravity, for example. There is

no transparency or hovering. It’s fragile, but it holds.

I broke away by the sixth or seventh one, where I

started to get deep into pattern and started to focus

on inhabiting the pattern itself and less on decora-

tions. It developed in a linear way from one to the

next. This drawing is much weirder, less resolved,

and more irrational.

dewane: It feels more atmospheric. The pattern adds

a level of abstraction that frees your mind up to

think about the forms in different ways.

timofeev: You are hovering over the landscape and

you don’t actually know if you want to land because

you might fall into the pattern. It gives you less to

hold onto. It is an embrace of the irrational and the

44

PLAT2.0

192.128.1.2. [RTVLD444]

192.128.7.1 [OST_LAN]

45

Spring/Summer 2012

comfort of the flat picture plane. The pattern has no

perspectival distortion, and you have a triangular

grid over that with deep voids. If you were to flip it

upside down it’s the Yale Art Library ceiling by Louis

Kahn, which is where I got the idea for this drawing.

Maybe all you have to hold onto is the triangular

beams, or the upside down rope and trees, to

prevent you from collapsing into the deep void. Or

maybe it would be nice to fall into the void, who

knows?

192.128.13.14 [WEAVER_OF_DREAMS_84]

dewane: Could you tell me about texture in

this image?

timofeev: The larger idea in the piece is that you

are surrounded by this cavernous space made from

triangulated surfaces. Each facet is textured and

“points” in a different direction, going from light to

dark without any real rationality. My strategy here

was to make no attempt at rational space.

In the distance there are these other mountains that

are also crystalline surfaces textured in the same

way. You get the feeling that you are existing in a

landscape where patterns rule. Once you start to

get into it, you see the patterns are actually eating

other parts of the composition. They are attacking

the garage dumpster and feeding on its insides. In

the immediate foreground they are reaching out with

claw-like fingers. So the whole thing becomes this

anthropomorphization of texture. I was also into

the idea of inventing my own vegetation that has

hexagonal leaves and grows in these really weird

and twisted lines.

dewane: The vegetation seems very impotent. It feels

like weeds that grow up through concrete or trees

that grow through a chain link fence.

timofeev: Yeah, the vegetation is kind of pathetic. It’s

certainly not a heroic depiction of nature – it feels

like it’s failing and weak, but then again it’s my own

invented vegetation.

LPZG_84

timofeev: There is a housing project in Berlin, in

Lichtenberg, which is an East German neighborhood

where there is a lot of block housing. I guess after

the wall came down they tried to make some of

these buildings less depressing by painting rainbows

on them, right across the façade. But the rainbows

were four colors: the primaries plus green. What

was weird was that the rainbows actually made the

building more depressing. The first time I visited

it was in November and the sky was grey and

everything was dead and the trees had no leaves. So

everything, even the architecture, was completely

desolate… but then you have these rainbows. It was

totally insane.

So I had an idea of making something with the rain-

bow. I used standard worker housing units stacked

to form a pyramid with the Rietveld open corner

window, which is kind of luxurious. That is my

contribution to worker housing. Here is a monumen-

tal arch made of weird, gravity-defying architecture

that I guess could exist if you forced it to work,

but they can’t do it naturally without falling down.

Each container has a segment of the rainbow in a

slightly different way, so you get a sense of identity

preserved through the modules of worker hous-

ing, like the Lithuanian flag becomes a Rastafarian

flag downstairs. And then I used a Malevich textile

pattern as the wallpaper in the foreground trailer.

Everything is rendered very crisply and, in a way,

imitates a cheap rendering.

dewane: What are the advantages of working with

paint versus working with pen?

timofeev: Painting gives you the advantage of color,

texture, and surface. It allows you to access a

completely different level of reality. For example, the

wood surfaces in this piece are made to look simu-

lated, like textures on a mid-90s three-dimensional

model or like computer games from that period. It

tries to imitate something, fails, and in the process

creates something completely new and better. It’s a

hybrid reality that both imitates and creates.

46

PLAT2.0

192.128.13.14 [WEAVER_OF_DREAMS_84]

LPZG_84

47

Spring/Summer 2012

Rothko in his East Hampton Studio, 1964

dewane: There are a lot of clear 20th-century refer-

ences in your work as a whole, but this was piece

was totally unique. What is it?

timofeev: This is apparently a really famous picture of

Rothko in his studio staring into his painted voids. I

got to thinking that maybe we don’t see these paint-

ings in the same way now. I can’t help but feel that

the logic of the screen has changed something in the

collective perception of space. So in this drawing,

his biomorphic voids transform into authoritative

spaces – these tunneling grid holes that point to a

space outside of themselves. I’ve always seen his

soft rectangles as portals into hidden dimensions, so

maybe this was my way of trying to tap into them or

rationalize them. On the other hand, it’s also about

my own attempts at appropriating those spaces,

that extra-dimensional platform that his paintings

can channel. It kind of gets to the heart of morality

in painting – the issue of flatness versus illusion. I

think that the two can unquestionably coexist at this

point, and maybe that speaks to an image-saturated

world. But for me, crafting with perspective is both

about the medium’s history as an illusionistic win-

dow into another world, and its relationship to the

infinite space of a computer monitor. It’s funny actu-

ally, because I often feel like Rothko’s paintings have

a ton of perspective in them. Maybe this actually

doesn’t make sense, but I feel like they completely

transcend the definition of flatness.

My paintings have to have real voids painted in. It

speaks to how I see things changing and what the

definition of a void is fifty years later. This draw-

ing was a simple move and also kind of funny. In

the photo, he’s just sitting there looking at these

rectangles, these portals. We are conditioned to look

for so much more because of how intense things are

with the general information overflow of modern life.

I’m curious if Rothko would have painted the same

way in the 21st century.

dewane: Rothko is also from Latvia, as are you?

timofeev: Yes, I believe he was a Latvian-born Jew

who immigrated when he was very young. I just got

back from Latvia, actually. I just had a show there

at Riga Art Space, which was my first show in my

hometown of Riga. I moved away from there when

I was thirteen and immigrated with my parents to

New York. Since moving to Germany, I found myself

reconnecting to the Latvian community here in

Berlin and reconnecting with my identity. I was really

happy to do the show because I feel like I was finally

able to tap into the Latvian art community a bit, not

as an outsider, but as a Latvian artist.

48

PLAT2.0

Rothko in his East Hampton Studio, 1964

49

Spring/Summer 2012

174

Jansen Aui is an architectural designer located in Mel-

bourne, Australia. He graduated from Victoria University

of Wellington, New Zealand with a Master of Architecture

degree, having completed his studies there and at the Uni-

versity of California, Berkeley. He is currently working in

practice at the design office Elenberg Fraser.

Michael Banman is currently an Associate at Stantec

Architecture, in Winnipeg, where his work explores the role

drawing conventions play in developing architecture, the re-

lationship between drawing systems and material assemblies,

traditional construction practices and emerging technology,

and the local economy. Also interrogated by his work is the

embodied productive role inherent in architectural presenta-

tion over the symbolic and often reductive show of architec-

tural representation.

Jonathan Crisman is the editor of Thresholds, the

Journal of the MIT Department of Architecture. He is also

the executive director of 58-12 Design Lab and can be found

at jonathancrisman.com.

Jessica Cronstein is a designer and writer interested

in the point where the social, cultural, and physical growth of

a city intersect. She is currently a project associate at Urban

Omnibus, an online project of the Architectural League of

New York. She lives and works in New York City.

David Dewane is currently a design architect at

Gensler, in Houston. As Founder and Executive Director of

Libraries Across Africa, his current research focuses on how

anticipatory design can be applied in a developing world. He

also enjoys ecology, prisons, and Charlie Rose.

Braden R. Engel is Senior Lecturer in Architectural

History and Theory at the California College of the Arts, San

Francisco, and Lecturer in Architectural History at the Uni-

versity of California, Berkeley.

Stewart Hickes is Co-founder of Design With Company

(www.designwith.co) and teaches architecture at the Univer-

sity of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Design With Company

practices “Slipstream Architecture,” which reveals latent con-

ditions of reality through design narratives and fictions.

Thomas Hillier is a trained architect who practices in

London and teaches undergraduate architecture at London

Metropolitan University. His interests go beyond the built

environment, with a particular interest in how literature can

be translated into urban and architectural space. He attempts

to look at architecture from a different perspective, using

unorthodox narratives and programs to create original and

surreal observations.

Andreas Kalpakci is a Swiss architect living in New

Haven, Connecticut. He is currently completing his studies

at the Yale School of Architecture as a Master of Environ-

mental Design, class of 2012. In his research, Andreas ex-

plores the project for a World Capital between 1899 and 1914,

focusing on the role played by Paul Otlet, Belgian forefather

of information science. Andreas can be found on twitter @

dotcitizen.

Marcin Kedzior teaches Interior Design in the Bach-

elor of Applied Arts Program at Humber College. He cur-

rently lives and works in Toronto and is a founding editor of

the critical journal Scapegoat: Architecture, Landscape and

Political Economy.

Dimitri Kim is a founding member and principal of

xmanifold applied research design laboratory (LA, NY, HI),

a cross-disciplinary design and research outfit dedicated to

critical understanding of emerging issues in architecture,

urbanism, and media. Prior to creating xmanifold, Dimitri

worked for Testa/Weiser and LAR/Fernando Romero, and

has worked with Eric Owen Moss, Elena Manferdini, and

Greg Lynn in Los Angeles. Dimitri Kim received a Master

of Architecture from Southern California Institute of Archi-

tecture and a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural

Design from Columbia University.

Michael Maltzan is an AIA Fellow and principal of

Michael Maltzan Architecture in Los Angeles. Building on

his background in the arts, he is committed to creating ar-

chitecture that is a catalyst for new experiences and an agent

for change in our cities. This work has been recognized with

numerous accolades, including five Progressive Architecture

awards, 23 citations from the American Institute of Archi-

tects, the Rudy Bruner Foundation’s Gold Medal for Urban

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

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Excellence, and as a finalist for the Smithsonian/Cooper-

Hewitt Museum’s National Design Award. His designs have

been profiled in over 100 national and international publica-

tions and featured in exhibitions worldwide. He is the author

of No More Play: Conversations on Urban Speculation in Los

Angeles and Beyond, published in 2011. He lectures inter-

nationally and often serves as a design instructor, lecturer,

and critic at prestigious architectural schools, including Rice

University, where he was the Visiting Cullinan Professor dur-

ing the spring 2011 semester.

Jonathan Massey is Associate Professor in the School

of Architecture at Syracuse University, where he has chaired

the Bachelor of Architecture Program and the University Sen-

ate and co-founded the Transdisciplinary Media Studio. His

research addressing topics from ornament and modernism

to sustainability and risk management has appeared in many

journals and essay collections, including the books Crystal and

Arabesque (2009) and Governing by Design (2012).

Jessica Rossi-Mastracci is a landscape and ur-

ban designer located in Philadelphia. She graduated from

Washington University in St. Louis with a Bachelor of Arts

in Architecture degree, and is currently enrolled in the

Master of Landscape Architecture program at University

of Pennsylvania. Through her work, she gravitates towards

infrastructural, remnant, and other weird landscapes, where

site-specific qualities can be engaged as urban landscape

organizations.

John J. May is Assistant Professor in the John H. Dan-

iels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the

University of Toronto, and founding partner in FirstOffice, a

Los Angeles-based design practice.

Charlie Morris is a visual artist currently residing in

Houston, Texas. After receiving his Master of Fine Arts de-

gree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana,

he has actively shown his artwork in the United States,

Mexico, Iceland, Spain, and Scotland. He is currently an

Adjunct Professor at the University of Houston School of

Art. More information on his works can be found at char-

liemorrisart.com.

Jack Murphy is currently an architectural designer with

Dyal and Partners in Austin, Texas. He received his Bachelor

of Science in Architectural Design from MIT, where he com-

pleted a semester on exchange at TU-Delft.

Allison Newmeyer is Co-founder of Design With

Company (www.designwith.co) and teaches architecture at

the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Design With

Company practices “Slipstream Architecture,” which reveals

latent conditions of reality through design narratives and

fictions.

Jeongsun Oh is a freelance designer based in the Unit-

ed States. She graduated from the Southern California Insti-

tute of Architecture with a Master of Architecture degree in

2010. Her graduate thesis was The Production of Space. She

has previously worked at design offices such as Asymptote

Architecture.

Antoine Picon is the G. Ware Travelstead Professor

of the History of Architecture and Technology at the Har-

vard Graduate School of Design, where he also co-chairs

the doctoral programs. He holds simultaneously a research

position at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées. He

has published numerous books and articles, mostly deal-

ing with the complementary histories of architecture and

technology, including French Architects and Engineers in

the Age of Enlightenment, Claude Perrault (1613-1688) ou la

curiosité d’un classique, L’Invention de L’ingénieur moderne,

L’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées 1747-1851, La ville territoire

des cyborgs, and Les Saint-Simoniens: Raison, Imaginaire, et

Utopie. Published in 2010, Picon’s most recent book, Digital

Culture in Architecture, proposes a comprehensive interpre-

tation of the changes brought by the computer to the design

professions.

Noam Shoked is an architect based in New York. Noam

studied architecture in Israel and holds both a Masters de-

gree in architecture from The Cooper Union and a Masters

degree in architectural history from McGill University.

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176

Carolyn Sponza, AIA, LEED BD+C, is a practicing

architect and urbanist in the Washington, D.C. office of

Gensler.

Jimmy Stamp is a writer living in New Haven, Con-

necticut. He graduated in 2011 from the Yale School of

Architecture with a Master of Environmental Design and is

currently working with Robert A.M. Stern on a book about

the history and influence of Yale’s architecture program.

Jimmy also writes the architecture blog Life Without Build-

ings (lifewithoutbuildings.net) and can be found on twitter @

lifesansbldgs

Alex Tehranian is pursuing a Master of Architecture at

Rice University. He has interned most recently at Thomas

Phifer & Partners in New York. Prior, he worked with Rawl-

ings architects pc on the curation of the exhibition and led

the model reconstruction of Paul Rudolph’s Lower Manhat-

tan Expressway in collaboration with Cooper Union and

hosted by The Drawing Center.

James Witherspoon is a designer at Hamilton

Anderson Associates in downtown Detroit. He received an

Americorp Award for a collaborative program he developed

with Young Detroit Builders to design and build sustainable

homes in Detroit. His work was selected for the AIA Des-

cours 2010 Exhibition in New Orleans, and he is currently

designing a high school for the Recovery School District and

Orleans Parish School Board school construction program.

James lives and works in Detroit.

Robert Yuen is an architectural designer located in Ann

Arbor, Michigan. He graduated from the University of Illi-

nois at Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Stud-

ies, a Master of Architecture from the University of Michi-

gan, and is currently enrolled in the University of Michigan

inaugural class of the Master of Science program with a

concentration in Digital Technologies at Taubman College of

Architecture and Urban Planning. He has previously worked

at design offices such as HolaBird & Root, Wilkinson Blender

Architecture, and PLY Architecture.