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SWEET DESIGN
An article via Rhode Island Monthly about Kevin Cunningham (BArch 05):
Honeycomb is the secret to the next great surfboard.
It’s never made sense that surfboards, used in a sport all about connecting with the environment, are built with earth-unfriendly materials. Which is why Providence architect and surfer Kevin Cunningham wanted to create his own version of the hollow wood surfboard, a board that’s become increasingly popular for its green construction and superior performance. For inspiration, he turned to nature. “Honeycomb is an incredible natural structure — its strength to weight ratio is amazing,” Cunningham says. “I am able to use very thin wood veneers so the boards are lightweight — finished, they’re under ten pounds.” In addition to being long-enduring and biodegradable, wood also makes for a better ride. “Foam doesn’t flex the same way wood does,” he says. “Wood springs back.”
Cunningham shapes his balsa and paulownia wood boards entirely by hand, a process that takes up to thirty hours. His finished boards, often inlaid with abalone shell, are so beautiful (he’s a RISD grad, after all) that they’ve been displayed in local galleries and earned him a design fellowship from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts last year. Still, any good surfer keeps his humility. “Whenever I finish shaping a board, I take it down to Dave Levy at LSD Surfboards in Narragansett,” he says. “He tells me how I can make it better and if it looks okay.”
We know nothing about making surfboards, but the clean lines, sleek wood inlays and artful abalone designs? Yeah, it looks okay. See Cunningham’s work and find more info at spiraresurfboards.com
Congratulations to Barbara Nadel BArch ‘78, who was presented with the American Institute of Architects’ 2009 Edward C. Kemper Award at last week’s AIA National Convention in San Francisco. Named in honor of the AIA’s first executive director, the award is the organization’s highest honor for service.
“Barbara is a proven leader, a dedicated mentor to emerging professionals, and an advocate for the AIA and the issues that are critical to the future of our profession,” AIA President George Miller noted in presenting the award. A two-term member of the AIA Board who served as a regional director from New York and a national vice president, she runs Barbara Nadel Architect in New York, specializing in such especially timely needs as security consulting, health-care design and special-needs designs for secure environments.
SPACEBOOK ≠ FACEBOOK
From an FB message (apparently a RISD graduate is behind MyArchN):
“Hello RISD Architecture, thanks for the add. Is really great to connect with peers of the Bayard Ewing Bldg! I’m 1986 Risd Graduate from Architecture and founder of MyarchN, an online social network dedicated to Architecture and Related Arts. (…)
MyarchN, the premier online social network devoted exclusively to architecture and related arts, believes in promoting the discussion and expanding it to the various related disciplines and the general public. The network offers a platform for this purpose, providing the communities broadest segment the opportunity to share, discuss and act on issues related to Architecture.
Thanks,
Rafael Marxuach - Architect”
“Brian Briggs, Architect
On the future of architecture: “It used to be that when you were working with an architect like Frank Lloyd Wright or Philip Johnson, it was all about that architect. But I think it’s starting to encompass both the architect and whomever they work with. Artists, painters, anyone — it’s as much about whom you work with and how you do it as it is about your specific design.”
Two-button wool jacket ($2,535), cotton shirt ($855), and wool trousers ($1,185) by Louis Vuitton; leather shoes ($1,695) by John Lobb.”
Full article, click here.
(Brian Briggs, B.Arch 2008)
SOUND BUILDING (RIBA Submission by Robert Highsmith, B.Arch 2008):
Silence is an invention of the modern world; it must be measured from a stream of noise. Our senses adapt to inform us of our place, as sound creates a landscape that changes over time. Equilibrium is lost and gained, forcing us to reconcile our place; the body in the mind.
Acoustic research has necessitated the development of chambers to study the extremes of the sonic spectrum. Anechoic and echoic chambers exist that test the limits of our senses. The quality produced in these chambers modifies not only our perception, but affects the inner calibration of balance and utility.
A room, building, city, and ecology have a boundary condition that is static, yet activate a sonic quality. This quality can be profound, enough to affect our degree of consciousness. Geometry provokes a response to conditions; the flow of water and air, the movement of light, and the treatment of noise.
In the modern landscape, articulate sound is lost in a sea of noise. Yet this can lead to sublime experience. Meaning is constructed through the mental projection of sound into 3 dimensions in a world that is increasingly disembodied. Listening gives spatial awareness; the sonic world must be constructed and reconstructed.
The composer holds the privileged situation of listening and making. He sits at the task, in between looking and observing, hearing and listening; the latent and the dynamic. Instruments have historically replicated the human voice. They now replicate the modern condition. The chamber that he occupies should be both document and hope.
I set out not only to map the presence of sound, but to study the effect of sound on materials, and materials on sound. What I discovered was the aspect ratio of three-dimensional geometry; the infinite divisibility of material. I am currently translating these studies into a more defined set of orthographic drawings.
(also, see RH - archinect archive)
Thesis Advisor: Kyna Leski
Berlin - New York Dialogues
Lynnette Widder, Department Head, served as one of sereval curators; Anthony Acciavatti, Elizabeth Snow, Anna Vallye (B.Arch 2004, B.Arch 2009, B.Arch ____) were research assistants for this project)
Two of the world’s most dynamic urban centers, Berlin and New York, are making radical transformations in their streets and skylines. “Berlin – New York Dialogues: Building in Context” investigates the changes in these two cities by looking at the contemporary built environment (featured projects) and mechanisms of urban regeneration – the social, political, economic, and cultural processes that affect building.
As the exhibition delineates, the sustainability of these cities’ urban neighborhoods is increasingly dependent on a critical mixture of identity, urban diversification, and functional infrastructure.
Against a background of urban data “Berlin – New York Dialogues: Building in Context” brackets three areas of each city. Both high-end projects and informal initiatives are featured, with respect to a set of overriding topics: Culture as Catalyst, Community Activism, Gentrification, Open Space, and Legislative Intervention. Focus is given to the stories and forces behind the projects – the urban context.
In Berlin the featured areas are all in the immediate center of the city, where different stages of re-development have been occurring since the city and countries’ reunification in 1990: Spandauer Vorstadt (in Berlin Mitte)- where the radical transformation of the historic city center encompasses far more than just restoration work, The Spree Area on the former border between East and West Berlin where big industries are now claiming the spaces that cultural initiatives and temporary urban party zones have occupied along the river, and Chaussee- & Invalidenstrasse – Development is eminent in this area, with the opening of the central train station and the construction of the massive BND (Federal Intelligence Service) complex in progress.
The three areas of New York City, however, stretch from Manhattan into the outer boroughs: Chelsea – where luxurious Manhattan living is developing at an alarming rate alongside new visions for how industrial sites can be transformed into public space, Red Hook in Brooklyn where the introduction of Big Box retail has brought speculation about its future while efforts to maintain the artisan community remain strong, and Hunts Point + Mott Haven in the South Bronx where industrial zones are being reinvented into areas suitable for parks and schools.
Though fundamental differences exist in the way Berlin and New York operate, the hope of the exhibition is not to position one city against the other. It is rather to foster learning among each city’s citizens and support a consciousness of the driving forces behind the architectural realities of these two cities, suggesting that ultimately, things can be different.
In New York “Berlin - New York Dialogues” was presented in partnership with Carnegie Hall as part of “Berlin in Lights”, a festival taken place November 2-18, 2007. For additional information, click here.
Preston Scott Cohen-RISD B.ARCH 1983
“Widely recognized for his groundbreaking work on the relationship between architecture and geometry, Preston Scott Cohen is a professor and director of the Master in Architecture program at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he earned his MArch. His projects include the winning competition design for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Montague House and Torus House (Progressive Architecture Award winners) and the competition proposal for the Eyebeam Museum of Art and Technology in New York. Cohen’s work has been exhibited and published internationally and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, SF MoMA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard.”
PSC’s website can be found here. His book (Connected Symmetries and Other Predicaments in Architecture) can be purchased through RISD here.
A small project has started for RISD Architecture alumni (current students, too!). To have your link posted, or to host a personal website, check out risdarchitecture.net, or e-mail beb@risdarchitecture.net with any queries. Thanks to Andrew Liebchen (MArch 2009) for the start.
RISD Architecture is engaging the discipline in new ways while staying true to its central values. Join Jim Barnes ‘69 ARCH. long-time and well-loved Professor of RISD’s Architecture Department for an intimate look at the department today - it’s a great way to reconnect with the RISD campus and student experience.
RISD ALUMNI RECEPTION AT THE AIA CONVENTION 2009
April 29, 2009 6-8 pm. Rayko Photo Center, 428 Third Street, San Francisco.
Map and Parking
RSVP to Patricia Brown at 401.454.6343 or pbrown@risd.edu by April 22.
Event generously supported by the Kogod family.
Stack to Fold was on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
from 8 November 2008 to 8 February 2009 as part of the show The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now. By Lauren Crahan (B Arch 96) and John
Hartmann (adjunct professor) partners and Brian Briggs (B Arch 08)
from Freecell.
NECESSITY OF RUINS (RIBA Submission by Jesse Honsa, B.Arch 2008):
The ruin has always had the dual pleasure of being both a monument and an incomplete architecture. This thesis imagines a school of art as this enduring ruin reinhabited: mediating between an institution as eternal terra firma, and an unbounded, adaptive space for invention. Sited in a radically transforming Eastern European capital, the ruin is considered an extension of the “geologic” medieval town of subterranean passages.
The school is organized around three scales of activity: the civic scale of congress and movement, a topography of in-situ concrete; the hermetic, vessel-like classroom for intimate study, constructed momentarily in the ruin; and the studio, the liminal space between worlds, a space of extreme elasticity for production, critique, and exhibition. As a school of art, a place for the exchange of ideas, the ruin is considered a stratified “campus” of atria, arcades, and terraces. Taking inspiration from etchings by Giovanni Piranesi, the ruin “erodes” in its upper levels, forming cantilevering arcades that ring a central courtyard. Piranesi also informs a play of scales, as this ruin takes on a magnitude of great proportions.
The façade exemplifies the diversity within the school of art: framed by monumentally large apertures in the concrete ruin, classroom facilities are built from a variety of wood species, a corporeal, impermanent material. The process of design also sought a diversity of techniques to gain understanding, from collage to working model to orthographic projection.
Thesis Advisor: Peter Tagiuri
ARCHITECTURES OF NONCHALANCE, IN FIVE PARTS (RIBA Submission by Evita Yumul, B.Arch 2008):
“Louisiana is a surrogate for, a twin of the Philippines, by virtue of a rumor (they suppose that Filipinos jumped ship from Spanish galleons and settled there) . This continuity is a body apart, an echo of elusive authenticity.
Sea levels insinuate correlations for the life and inhabitation of the five, architectural horizons draw contours of community between that which is over the levee, on the bayou, or lost at sea. This affinity for otherness, in a scale of anomalous inhabitation, is a literal figure
ground for the fabrication of a location: where most is water, land in sight. The appearance of shapes and colors start to draw a constellation, an after-image, of a necessary fiction.
You wanted to suggest architectures to which one might glance without the slightest pause, which might be missed or lost entirely; which might be, if even quietly and only for a time, a hold in that seeming endless fall in immobility which has come to characterize the culture to which you belong. You wanted to suggest that a culture, a community or the missive, is simply a co-appearance: we navigate between a fictioned there and a constructing here, perhaps toward a self-disclosure.”
(See additional footnotes to this text here).
Thesis Advisor: Lynnette Widder
Architecture Students Awarded Fulbright Grants
Amy Kwok and Frances Nelson, both graduating Master of Architecture (both M.ARCH 2007) candidates at RISD, have been named to the elite roster of 2007-08 Fulbright grant recipients for graduate study abroad. Kwok will travel to China to investigate the adaptive use of ceramics in architecture and design; Nelson’s research into issues of sustainability in urban housing will take her to Japan. RISD graduates and faculty have been selected frequently for Fulbright awards since the program’s inception in 1946.
(via RISD news; more on AK via her blog)
