A model of a space, a dance floor, a stage, The Haçienda, Factory Records, an object, shadow, color

The FJM memorial mourns fallen journalists, while inspiring future journalistic pursuits of truth. It is a public space with a large marble surface softly undulating like a piece of paper suspended in air, appearing either falling or rising. The empty page signifies words unspoken and unwritten, documentation never made—our freedom of speech yet to come. It serves as a reminder of words left unsaid and documents left unseen. This monumental embodiment of our first amendment rights, mourns our loss, while serving as an uplifting and open democratic space where all people feel comfortable and welcomed, encouraging future journalistic expression.

The memorial educates firstly through its physical presence—its literal expression—and with the act of pressing words onto paper by rubbing, is an invocation of the printing press that allows visitors to transfer the words of another. Secondly, the memorial educates through the non-physical interface of video projection and augmented reality, depicting examples of brave journalism that reported historic events onto the plaza. Curated by the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation, this would digitally transform the memorial’s surface into a platform for other information. In this regard, the memorial allows for continual change and the integration of new media.

Fabric Object is a small show on the early career of Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, of Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects. There are seven projects, mostly unbuilt, all related to ideas of urbanism, presented through things made by hand. Drawings. Writings. What seemed important was to show an intimacy to their work, while also showing how impersonal it is. It may sound contradictory, but Agrest and Gandelsonas have always played with oppositional binaries. Individual-Collective. Building-City. Memory-Amnesia. Fabric-Object. Like the flip-flop reversibility of their axonometric drawings (think El Lissitsky Proun,) architecture appears as something and an inversion of that thing. They love design. They love non-design. Architecture is autonomous. Architecture relies upon the city. And so on. Maybe this is because there are two of them. With two, and is inevitable. Or perhaps their work is simply a product of its time, a collection of 1968 Pre-Post-Structuralist desires (think Barthes, Saussure, Kristeva, Lacan, etc..) brought into Architecture, ideas like Language as a Model (and Speech as a Model and Text as a Model,) Dialectical Opposition, Semiotics, Typology, Rejection of Authorship/Individualism, and so on. If you read their descriptions of their own work, they will tell you what everything means. This as That. That as This. They construct complex thoughts and arguments with their work, but they will also tell you that it can never mean any one thing, there is always and.

With and in mind, the exhibition includes multiple perspectives and thoughts on their work by Princeton School of Architecture faculty.

Playing with video game physics again, mass, gravity, friction, and so on.  Real. Not Real. Color. Virtual velcro. Stuff we did at the beginning of the office. A subjectivity. A style. Our reaction against idealized form, geometry, the maniacal control of the Parametric. Letting things happen. Chance. A different complexity. Learning not to be so neurotic. Unlearning what we were taught. Architects only see the mistakes. We look for perfection. We see problems everywhere. Misalignments. It’s an occupational pathology. We always think we can make it better. This is looking for something else, casual, informal, joy, not sure.  We’re still trying to be okay with joy. It doesn’t come easily nowadays. An exercise to see differently. Totemic figures, stacks, shapes, sticky amalgamated objects. A kind of beauty.

1 lot. 2 row houses. Adaptable to multiple lots. A lot. A larger lot. Another lot. Modular Construction. Ceramic panels on a lightweight structural frame. Everything arrives on trucks. Stacked. The roof collects rainwater and solar. Terraces, front and back. Ventilation. Light. The ground floor can provide additional revenue, a small store, an architecture office, a studio, a coffee shop, or another apartment. The second floor is the apartment, living, kitchen, bathroom, a small office. The third and fourth floors have bedrooms, shared spaces, a media room, a ping pong table or a library, or karaoke, or an indoor garden. They can have 2 bedrooms. or 6. 2 in 1 addresses housing through incremental development, variable mixed use, middle scale, low-rise high density that is economical and flexible.

Wool is handwoven into 25cm strips. These are woven again. It is twice-woven. They appear woven from a distance. They appear woven close-up. The loose weave gives its physical character, like something that was enlarged, an oversized detail of a flattened basket. Some historians think cities and buildings began with textiles. Our textile work began a few years ago, in a city. In Rome. We cut strips of paper and wove them together. We made models and drawings. We made different arrangements. We studied them. We made some small ones that we carried around with us in our notebooks. We made some larger ones that we pinned on the wall of our studio. We made some even larger, to sit on. We tried different colors. We tried patterns. We wanted it to look casual, informal. It took time.

A lot of contemporary architecture looks like greenhouses. Some non-contemporary architecture too. Glass. Polycarbonate. Lightweight frames, with structure on display. Plants. A collection of small objects. Things floating within structural frames. Difference and variation, maybe for its own sake, maybe towards a multitude of beauty, maybe towards a diverse garden of architecture, maybe towards nothing in particular. 428 pieces, bolted together. Various species of aluminum parts.  About 380,000 plant species are known to us. We are surrounded and outnumbered. Community Gardens provided a place of retreat, of protest and consternation, of victory gardens, of  seed bombs, of non-western medicine and  self-care clinics and homeopathy, of collective responsibility and action, DIY green guerillas, and so on. Community greenhouses are a sort of urban infrastructure of small structures. Places to bring things and people together, to plant seeds and cultivate. This community greenhouse has a vented roof, workspaces on both the north and south sides and a mezzanine for more plants.

At least one version of Modernism began with a public greenhouse, a so-called crystal palace with steel painted sky blue. This is aluminum. No paint, although possibly someday. Lighter. Recyclable. Reflective in the right lighting. Easier to carry and put together. Made from a kit of parts. Imbued with Gothic clarity, maybe. Crystalline-ish. Crystal Lite. 290 pieces, bolted connections. Manufactured in a factory. Assembled on site within a week. An instant bubble. An atmosphere. An environment. A totalizing experience. Ol factory. Designed to move, to travel almost anywhere. And plants can visit from anywhere. An instant garden. An instant community. A community greenhouse. An exotic display of difference. A collective. A place for people to visit to restore themselves and unwind and work and meditate and rest. An allotment to grow food, outside of the marketplace, outside of work. An alternate economy. A place to cultivate care. The possibility of something better.

The site is an informal settlement along a canal in central Asuncion, a 15 minute walk from the Government Palace of the President of Paraguay. Each unit of new housing replaces an existing dwelling and is for an existing resident. A spreadsheet was given. The residents’ ages, genders, family ties, disabilities, and illnesses like depression, high blood pressure, hypertension, bad hips, and so on were written. Extended families were listed, and kept together. Spatial requirements were listed, for instance, if someone needs to be on the ground floor, or next to someone else, or in a specific location. Empathy via excel. No unit is exactly the same, because each site is unique and each resident is unique. Some single adults, a family of 10, everything in-between. Up to 5 generations. Not-nuclear. Sometimes nuclear. Some residents live in the 38 towers (a 3.5m x 3.5m plan with 4 stories, terraces and roof access) located on 12 unique sites, each with direct access to a public pedestrian street. Some live in the base level, which contains courtyard houses for individuals and small families with 79 total units, again with direct access to a public street. Commercial spaces were provided for businesses that were there before, and small pockets of shared public space. Topography, neighbors, and infrastructure define the limits of the building. The base plans are irregular and specific to their situation. A field of repetitive towers, resting on a field of irregular gardens. Light and air everywhere. A pedestrian city. Passive systems, sustainable, low energy, spaces for food production, not typical contemporary social housing. There were periodic meetings with residents and the Paraguay Ministry of Housing.

With contributions from Sebastián Adamo & Marcelo Faiden, Yussef Agbo-Ola, Sir David Adjaye, Xavi Laida Aguirre, Stan Allen, Benjamin Aranda, Assemble, Tatiana Bilbao, Bureau Spectacular, Marlon Blackwell, Galo Canizares & Stephanie Sang Delgado, Sean Canty, Jan De Vylder, Ambra Fabi & Kersten Geers, fala, First Office, Antón García-Abril & Débora Mesa, Go Hasegawa, Steven Holl & Dimitra Tsachrelia, Wonne Ickx/PRODUCTORA, Florian Idenburg & Jing Liu, Sam Jacob, Andrés Jacque, Johnston Marklee, Ladi’Sasha Jones, l’AUC, LEFT Architects, Toshiko Mori, Catherine Mosbach, Umberto Napolitano, Daniel Norell & Einar Rodhe, Lütjens, Pezo von Ellrichshausen, Mónica Ponce de León, Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Bolle Tham & Martin Videgård, UrbanLab, Welcome Projects, WORKac with Ayah Wood.

Architecture used to be an instrument, something between here and there. Tall mounds formed, altars constructed, temples built, pyramids, domes, and observatories. This is a circular canopy. A shelter from rain and the sun, allowing for different events. This is an architectural instrument. The canopy is a platter that collects ready-made architectural elements: A Chimney, Deck, Roof, Dome, Stairs, Elevator, Sign, and so on. The canopy is a flattened Cenotaph of Newton with stuff stuck on it. The canopy is a radiant surface. We partnered with Dr. Forrest Meggers to provide radiant heating and cooling.

A small arts campus, that including offices, teaching workshops and the renovation of a church into a multi-functional arts space.

4 walls. Approximately 5.5 meters tall. Approximately 58 meters long. Almost north-south. 10 almost squares per wall. 40 almost squares total. The repetitive rhythm of structural piers. The soft irregular landscape. 3000 square meters built underground, filling an existing valley. The walls step up the hillside, looking like remnants of a dam of some long-dried-up river, overgrown. Something like the archaeological site of a Roman aqueduct or a forgotten James Wines project or a buried factory. It is where the natural world and the landscape surpasses any architecture. Orienting everyone who comes there to the ground around them, the vineyards and the mountains beyond. El Plato: 60km NW. Tupungato 80km SW.

Also, there were many studies for additional pavilions and furniture.

The house is built into the ground, with 1 story of collective, domestic spaces above ground, and 1 of individual, more private spaces below. Everything is connected by and revolves around the sunken courtyard. It is an object. It is a space. It cools and animates the house, filling the 2 stories with light and air and nature. Its rotation aligns with the cardinal directions. 9 skylights/solar chimneys dot the roof, bringing in light while passively cooling the interior. The house is focused inwardly. Everything is set in motion by patterns and shapes and what is above.

A small house with a large eave. The exterior space under the eave is the primary space of the house. This space under the eave could be a porch, a bbq grill pit with picnic tables, a bike repair shop, a makeshift podiatrist office, a photo studio, a late-night smoking lounge, a yoga retreat, a place to store partially used items that don’t fit anywhere else, a local ceramic workshop that specializes in custom mugs, a kombucha startup, a karaoke parlor, a dog’s play area, a summer camp fingerpainting venue, a temporary dance club and mosh pit, a stable for livestock, a flea market, homeopathic garden, and a garage. The attic space within the eave is the bedroom. The bathroom and kitchen are on the ground floor. It didn’t require a large budget. It is for 2 artists to spend time in nature, and to occasionally think about birds.

It began as a house for two families, and ended as a house for one. There was a pandemic happening. It was a process. We tried to do what they asked. The site is amazing. Remote. Wooded. Stone walls. They wanted something beautiful. Something that didn’t cost a lot. A place to raise children. Everyone wants architects to promise what it will cost. We don’t deal with this enough in school. We are asked to do the impossible. Something spectacular and responsible. Uniquely beautiful and affordable. Unlike anything we’ve done before, and similar. Something larger than legally possible. We looked through old sketchbooks, unearthed previous deadends. A curve was introduced.

Built into a slope. Half of an A frame. Oversized steps. It has a single large sloped roof supported by a grid of beams. Exposed structure underneath. A waffle. A cap to something. A lid. A coin. A funny beret. A satellite dish. A sign that fell over. Almost a circle. All the spaces sit under the large roof, shifting horizontally and vertically to create the living space, the kitchen and bedrooms. The bedrooms have triangle shaped clerestories. Maybe we will add a lower window. We like the space focused on the slope, on being on a slope. Light flows around and underneath. Maybe there will be a skylight. Maybe not, we’re afraid of leaks. Maybe there will be solar panels. Maybe not. There will be guards to stop snow sliding into the entry. The entry pad will be heated, no need to shovel. The earth provides thermal mass and insulation. It will feel warm. A hobbit hut. A place to hide. The North is protected. The South is accessible. The whole house is lined with windows on either end. It is entered from the top or the bottom of the slope. There are 2 entrances. In/Out. On/Off. Up/Down. In-between. Maybe.

A holder of toilet paper.

Long and narrow. Based upon a 10’ sheet of plywood. Bends slightly. Following the site’s ridge. Perched, looking out. Surrounded with tall trees. 3 chimneys, 1 attic and 1 light well as volumes on the roof. It doesn’t look like a house, maybe something you’d find in a trailer park designed by William Morris, maybe Villa Le Lac. It looks like a wall, or a line. It is a straw sucking up space. It is a zipper stitching things together and holding them apart. It is a bent telescope. 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a kitchen and living space that opens on to large decks overlooking the abundance of trees. There are wood burning stoves throughout to heat the spaces. There are passive ventilation chimneys. We like chimneys, too much. We can’t quit them. Bedrooms are on both ends. The central long space has some large and some small windows. Platforms and views radiate. A minty green spiral stair takes you to a small studio and the roof. A studio to draw and read and design very precise furniture. On the roof you can see the stars.

A corner lot. A nondescript concrete building. Bush hammered. Terrazzo. An unsurprising urban rectangular volume. Squarish. Parking below ground, open space on the roof. 2 apartments side by side. An architecture office in the base. Some prerequisites. 46 square openings. 34 Windows. Composed Non-Composed. 1 slipped. Stable Unstable. An entry. 2 cylinders. 2 spiral staircases at the building’s center. Ascending in opposite directions. Serving opposite sides. Rotational symmetry. Between 2 thick “walls.” Services and storage inside. Open space beyond. Bare. Flexible. Empty. Versatile. For work. For life. Lots of concrete. Collaborating, discussing possibilities. Waiting for the contractor’s approvals. The specifics were to be left up to the occupants. Use. Rent. Subdivide. Airbnb. Whatever. We all know how quickly things can change.

An apartment with a large skylight. The top floor of an old artist’s loft. Plywood. Custom Furniture. Bar Stools. Stools. Table. Chairs. Daybed. Towel Bars. Hooks. Floor Light. Bits of Color. Generous. Space. Warm. Light. Wonderful client. Thoughtful. Kind. Not always easy during construction. Started with a pandemic, ended with a vaccine.

A long house collective art studio sunken into the ground.  Cabins for artists in residence scattered within a beautiful site. Overgrown. Art in the landscape. Serial. One after another. A series of small cabins. Some alone, some paired. Large thick living roof. T shape. Wild. 4 elements. A stove, slightly off-center. A roof, square and overhanging. An enclosure, in folded weathering steel, or maybe aluminum. A retreat. Square windows. A mound, on the roof. Or smaller mounds. Landscaped like the surroundings. Deep shelves as structural braces. Plywood interior. Material. Folded steel outside and above. Weathering Steel. Some horizontal, some vertical. Some filled with tapered insulation. Everything based on a 2’ grid. Think of architecture in terms of sheet material. As long as standard sheets will allow. We imagined building things ourselves. We do not want to build it, but do what we have to. We began with everything in metal and foam. We thought about the least labor. The least amount of processing of material. Large. Lightweight. Things started, stopped, started, stopped, and started again. Stopped for now.

A circle folded on one side. A pattern of holes that allow it to attach in different ways. A stool. A bench. A chair. A low table.

A studio with a flat roof. A studio for making things. Art or anything or almost anything. It is an assembly of 120 foam blocks and more than 600 pieces of bent aluminum. The foam is scaled for infrastructure, for highways and roads, the metal is more like a mail-order shed. A piece of furniture. Or an old tin toy. Still trying to convince someone to make a foam building. Things look simple, direct. Maybe cold. All this sits atop a thick slab, floating amidst a field of trees. A low res aircraft carrier. A lot of insulation. An overweight lightweight Wright. Like rock beanbags. The present configuration arranged 3 identical volumes. Stepping. But needs might grow, and volumes may be added. 3 might become 5, or 7. If it’s too expensive it might become 2 or 1 or nothing. Or everything might be moved to another site, another field. All services and storage are held to the studio’s center, alongside a spiral stair to the roof. The flat roof can become a flatbed surface of things, a stage, a backyard, a basement, a combine, a personal junkyard. The roof is a yard. A place to relax and for everything in progress, forgotten, imagined, referenced, bought, sold. A place for things you don’t know what to do with yet.

A chair made from 1 part. Rearrangeable. Many different chairs possible. Designs we can’t think of yet. Maybe a stool. Enzo Mari in aluminum, sort of. Something like a 2 x 4, but different. The number of parts can change depending on use. Extra pieces can be used for ornament. Or to pile. It’s clunky. It depends on your mood.

A small exhibition, for a contemporary monk, a follower of the religion known as Design.

A co-living row house in Harlem. 6 stories tall. Efficient, whatever that means. Theoretically cheap to build, which might not mean anything. Theoretical cheap is an oxymoron. We ran some numbers. We think it’d be a nice place to live. Not sure if you agree. It’s nearly impossible to convince someone of beauty, if they don’t see it or are not open to it. 5 balconies look out onto the street. 5 balconies look out onto a backyard. The front and back of the building are separated by a collective core. Circulation. Utilities. Bathrooms. Stacked. The elevator clearance pops up. It’s polished stainless steel. Maybe there are solar panels. The roof is a garden. The ground is a garden. There is a shared garden next to the shared kitchen and dining. Collective spaces above and below. Places to gather, to find privacy, to read, to eat, to take a nap, to talk, to meet, to negotiate with others on how we should live.

An ongoing series of baskets and weaving experiments using aluminum.

Surrounded by 10 trees. 1 + 2 + 3 + 4. Beautiful Live Oak trees are on site. Never met a tree we didn’t like. Three trees long, two trees wide. Low-res. Like an 8-bit character. Windows and doors are interchangeable. A single, square entry. Slightly off. A blank elevation. The other sides open to the exterior. Clad in oversized polished aluminum siding. Another option had vertical folded panels. Shiny. Reflective. We assumed standard sheet sizes, folded, lapped. Economy. Economical. We have become experts in metal fabrication. Cheap without being cheap. Straightforward organization. Efficient. Services, circulation, and storage split the house in two. Kitchen/Living. Terrace/Bedrooms/Bedroom/Terrace. Roof Terrace. Blank, flexible spaces throughout. We looked at interiors in stone and plaster. Or concrete and wood. Things were left undecided.

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+P, again, and again a few times. Drag ↑. Drag ↑. Drag ↓. Random yet specific. Flat sheets slide over each other. Adjust to taste. Legs are added for structure.

A proposal for a glass pavilion. A large column with a flat roof. A Nintendo mushroom. A Bernd and Hilla Becher photograph. An aluminum structure, built up of parts. Something like a kiosk, or a temporary café, or a water tower, or tree. It is both monumental and singular. Vaguely familiar. The base is clad in glass shingles. A wannabe Bruno Taut. A standard object with a new technique. The base can be large or small. A room or a pole depending on the circumstance. The canopy is circular. Perforated. A dot in Google Earth. It is covered in glass. Stripes. Polkadots. Something like a flattened disco ball. A glass spot. A place to gather. The structure is metal. Pieces are joined together with bolts. Perforations double as loose-fitting holes. It’s easy. It can be flat-packed, installed, demounted, and reinstalled anywhere. Its genericness makes it open and versatile. Its vagueness gives it meaning.

A tent. It is without a signal. It is without a noise. This might mean nothing to you. Inside your phone does not work. You cannot call your friends. You cannot email your boss. You cannot post your selfie. You cannot search. You cannot like anything. You cannot. If you want to know what the weather will be or send your location to someone do not bother. If you stay too long, you will get bored. Even quiet is exhausting after a while. This tent is like many and unlike many. It has a circular, O-shaped bench at its base and an X-shaped structure at its top. It is a hug and a kiss. It is closed and open. It is not a primitive. It is not a “primitive” primitive hut. Isn’t it odd how Technology and Nature have become inseparable? But maybe they always were. This structure is lightweight, made of aluminum parts that can be easily packed up and moved from place to place. Assembled it looks something like an antenna. And something like a tepee. It is not a beginning for architecture. It is not an origin. Origins are relative. Regardless, it makes a place to sit or take a nap or retreat or doodle or write this text you’re reading or plan a revolution. The fabric offers some shelter. The fabric is CNC knitted, stitching together electromagnetic field-shielding yarns. The fabric pattern was iteratively developed through homemade, handcrafted software that produces a field of noisy particles, like a landscape or T.V. static. The pattern does not repeat. The tent is neither high-tech nor low-tech. For the time being, it is temporary.

3 deep beams support a long roof. It hovers. Disconnected. Floating. It isn’t. The sky is visible through cutouts in the patio overhang and eaves. We looked at different options. Different cut outs. Holes. The roof extends 24 feet past the front and back door. It is symmetrical. Maybe a little too long. A car is usually parked underneath. 4 evenly spaced square windows on the side. A larger window on its short side looks toward the lake. The top floor is for the parents. Everything they need on 1 level. They prefer to avoid stairs. Aging in place. The lower level is for visiting children. Everyone has their own space. And each looks out to the lake. The exterior cladding is made of corrugated cement panel with aggregate. We did some tests. We made some drawings. They wanted it cheap and fast. They make decisions as a family. We convinced some of them, but could not convince all of them.

Volumes. Brick. Volumes of brick. Stacked blocks of brick. Heavy. Sometimes symmetrical. Other times slipped, off-center, askew. Movement. Proportions. Surfaces of bonds and joints define volumes. They make things less stable. Small and squat. On one side, to an open garden. On the other, to private walled gardens. A house within a garden. And gardens within a house. Originally we had another walled patio garden for the living room that they removed. Maybe for the better. All living spaces on 1 level. A place to age in place. Things repeat. Pairs. Doubling. 2 identical bedrooms. 2 bathrooms. 2 closets. 2 private gardens. 2 chimneys, also symmetrical. These are familiar. Contextual, even. Someone called them ears when they were taller. Now they are shorter. 1 chimney is full of fireplaces and flues. 1 empty. A void over a shower, lit from above. It feels larger on the inside.

A house. A room. A chimney. A cistern. A roof. Made of weathered steel, rust colored like the clay ground and everything else around it. 3 windows, 1 door, 2 skylights, 1 chimney, and 1 fire pit. An assembly of parts. The outdoor firepit is covered by an extra-large folded circle that doubles as a roof. The roof rests adjacent to the house, touching down lightly. Slightly askew, allowing water to drain. We’re told the 2 holes in the roof look like eyes. Especially at night, when illuminated by a fire. There is only 300 square feet of interior space. It was cheap, but not cheap enough. It was rejected. Eventually, we proposed it as a pop-up café. That was rejected, too.

This book contains 44 houses by 44 architecture offices:

6a, Adamo-Faiden, Angela Deuber Architect, Atelier Barda, Atelier Bow-Wow, Besler & Sons, Brandlhuber+, Bruther, Bureau Spectacular, architecten de vylder vinck taillieu in collaboration with Joris Van Huychem, Edition Office, Ensamble Studio, Fake Industries Architectural Agonism in collaboration with Aixopluc, fala atelier, First Office, GAFPA in collaboration with Stabico Ingenieurs, OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Go Hasegawa and Associates, Hans Tursack, HHF and Ai Weiwei, Independent Architecture, Johannes Norlander Arkitektur, Johnston Marklee, The LADG, Lütjens Padmanabhan Architekten, MAIO, Monadnock, MPdL Studio, MOS, New Affiliates, OFF-OFF, Outpost Office, PARA Project, Pascal Flammer, Paul Preissner Architects, Pezo von Ellrichshausen, Point Supreme, PRODUCTORA, Stan Allen Architect, Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, Tato Architects, T+E+A+M, Tham & Videgård Arkitekter, and WORKac.