Architecture

In his book Cube, David Morrow Guthrie discusses the role of abstraction or representation as the typical means of generating design in an architectural studio. For him, these constructs remove the maker from the immediacy and intimacy of the built architectural work. In addition, when these representations are made primarily by using Building Information Modeling or Computer Aided Drafting software, students have a tendency to have a constrained process in developing their design projects because of the limited ways in which they interact with the software. These projects often have narrow scope and conceptual basis and, at worst, are only designed as the software or the student’s understanding of the software will allow. To combat this trend, the studio environment needs to be re-invigorated through the implementation of alternate strategies that allow the students to engage in the design process more intimately. As a response to these thoughts, one strategy for stimulating the architectural studio is the introduction of full-scale building materials as a primary medium for the generation of conceptual design. This approach forces the student to engage in the more intimate process of ‘critical making’ and provides a disconnect from digital representation and a focus on the realities of the built world. A study of select studio work from a recent course reflects the integration of these practices and their impact on the design process of the participating students.

Schwartz, Chad. "Crafting Intimacy: Sculpting the Design Process of the Architecture Student." The International Journal of Design Education 6, no. 3 (2013): 63-75.

In “Being and Time,” Martin Heidegger states that the nearest kind of association one can have is not merely through perceptual cognition, but rather by handling, using, and taking care of things. As he noted, “we do not come to know a hammer by staring at it, but by grabbing hold of it and using it.” Undergraduate students in any school of architecture, especially those in their first and second years in the program, are inundated with countless new learning experiences and avenues of thought. Frequently missing from those experiences, however, are moments in the curriculum that allow the student to connect their generated abstractions to the actual built environment through critical acts of making. In an age of increasing focus on digital technologies and virtual architecture, these developing students also need to be introduced first hand to the physical consequences of the lines they draw on paper. By introducing acts of making into the curriculum alongside their digital counterparts, students are given the capacity to achieve a deeper understanding of their projects and of the architecture they will come to design in the future. This research paper presents one strategy for teaching introductory building construction that allows the developing architecture student to begin to cultivate understanding between the sketch, the drawing, and construction throughout the design process. Working at multiple scales, this strategy encourages these students to have a more intimate relationship with the materials of design and construction both from a technical view of construction and a poetic understanding of architecture as an assembly. Haptic connections with actual construction materials provide a tangible basis of knowledge that has the potential to inject the unseasoned architecture student with a valuable, but often forgotten, connection to materiality and the sensory potential of our built world.

Schwartz, Chad. "Constructing Understanding: A Developing Strategy for Teaching Introductory Construction Courses." The International Journal of the Constructed Environment 3, no. 1 (2013): 15-24.

In his book The Thinking Hand, Juhani Pallasmaa states that, “[w]hile drawing, a mature designer and architect is not focused on the lines of the drawing, as he is envisioning the object itself, and in his mind holding the object in his hand or occupying the space being designed.”  How then does the beginning design student gain the insight necessary to interpret these representations, these lines on paper?  In the field of architectural education, we take on the responsibility of helping these students begin to develop a process of translating the lines they draw into a conscious projection of the resultant construction.  This research paper presents a project developed for an introductory building technology course which aims to help second year architecture and interior design students start to make these connections.  Through a series of translations, nine groups of students transformed a simple schematic wall section drawing into a fully built construct and, in the process, made intimate and lasting connections between the virtual and the real in the design and construction of a simple architectural work. 

Schwartz, Chad. "Drawing Conclusions: A Student's Introduction to the Realities of Their Designs." Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal - Annual Review 7 (2013): 19-28.

In his essay The Tell-the-Tale Detail, Marco Frascari discusses the potential role of the detail as the generator of design.  For him, within the architectural detail are both the “techne of logos” and the “logos of techne” and it is here that the construing (the making of understanding) and the construction (the understanding of making) of architecture coalesce.  Within the context of architectural education, how can we introduce often forgotten architectural issues such as the detail, building materials, and the process of assembly as meaningful generators of conceptual design?  These elements, along with others, frequently escape significant investigation by the architecture student due to the typical studio construct of starting at the macro scale and working as far down to the micro scale as possible before the last precious seconds of the semester tick away.  Detail and materiality rarely come under real scrutiny in the design studio and are typically explored solely as technical exercises in those courses focused on materials and methods; yet detail and materiality both command prominent roles in our understanding of the essence and substance of the architecture we inhabit. 

In a series of recent courses, I have encouraged students working in the second and third years of their design education to explore these frequently overlooked topics by engaging in critical processes of making for their introductory projects.  Matt Ratto, in his article Critical Making, defines critical making as a theoretical and pragmatic connection between two modes of engagement that are traditionally held apart:  the conceptually based practice of critical thinking and the traditionally goal-based material work of making.  For Ratto, the key to critical making is that it does not focus on the product or designed object, but instead on the processes involved in the act of making and the knowledge these processes can generate.  As the students generate full-scale constructions in these exercises, they are confronted with the task of fully resolving the details of the piece.  This exploration of material and detail force the students to engage with the problem in ways very much outside of their comfort zone, sparking new ideas and habits of thinking that can be used to conceive future projects; it is a process of alternate perspectives.  This paper compares three projects focused on the critical making of conceptual generators and the role each played in helping these novice students better understand the qualities and character of architecture.

Schwartz, Chad. "Generative Making: Devising New Uses for Making in the Architectural Studio." Paper presented at the 30th National Conference on the Beginning Design Student: Materiality, Essence + Substance, Chicago, Illinois, Illinois Institute of Technology, 2014.

The pedagogy of design/build can be deployed in a wide variety of ways in an architectural curriculum.  Despite common goals of breaking education free of the classroom, the exploration of architecture through experiential learning, and instilling within the students a more complete understanding of the practice of architecture (amongst other objectives), the different forms that design/build can take have a significant impact on course learning objectives and student outcomes.  A primary issue with design/build, as with most curricular constructs, then becomes balancing these objectives to optimize the learning experience for the students. 

For the past several years, design/build has become an integral part of the second year introductory building technology course at Southern Illinois University.  We have experimented with two distinctly different styles of design/build within the construct of this course.  The first involved the building of residential wall sections in the courtyard of the School of Architecture; the second was a more traditional community-based design/build centered on the construction of an amphitheater for an outdoor learning and event space located on university property.  Both design/build strategies carried with them opportunities for student engagement and learning.  However, a close examination of the response to the course learning objectives reveals significant advantages for the courtyard build over its more widely recognized community-based counterpart.  This paper presents a comparison of the two project types, outlines the experiences each offered the students, and concludes with the position that despite its popularity, community-based design/build may, in some situations, not be the best choice for delivering experiential building content in an architectural curriculum.

Schwartz, Chad. "Constructing Experience: Exploring Design|Build Strategies within a Technology Course." Paper presented at the Working Out | Thinking While Building: 2014 ACSA Fall Conference, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2014.

Systemic thinking is the process of understanding how systems or components influence one another within a whole.  The study of architectural tectonics is a systemic endeavor.  From Kenneth Frampton’s statement that tectonics is “the formal amplification of the structural presence in relation to the assembly of which it is a part;”  to Gottfried Semper’s claim that the origin of architecture is not construction, but the visible representation of closed space originating from human dress;  to Karl Botticher’s theory of the ontological kernform (work form) and its cladding of the representational kunstform (art form);  the view of architecture through a tectonic lens depicts the poetic integration of assembly, materiality, representation, space, and environment.  Architectural education does not always provide such an integrative philosophy.  The traditional bifurcation of architectural education into design and technical courses is, in many ways, a significant deterrent to the examination of architecture systemically.  This deterrent is especially prevalent in lower level courses, which tend to have more focused learning objectives and a far less comprehensive character than most upper division coursework. 

Though the potential for studying architecture as a series of systems exists in any curricular construct, without strategies in place to discuss the dialogue between the systems, systemic thinking cannot truly occur.  Tectonics provides an opportunity to create links between systems that may otherwise be held separate for a novice architecture student.  It is the study of the poetics of construction and resides at the intersection of many of the primary aspects of the built environment.  In a recent architecture studio, a group of students were asked to approach design from a tectonic point of view.  This strategy was positioned as a series of linked studio exercises, reinforced with critical readings.  The exercises began with a thorough analysis of one of a set of small chapels, each tectonically provocative and rooted in its local context.  This case study provided the foundation for the semester and the successive problems drew from the tectonic makeup of the chapels, inspiring a place to rest, a new spiritual center, and a critical investigation of detail.  Through these exercises, this group of architecture students was given the opportunity to explore connections between integral systems in the development of an architectural design.  For these individuals, tectonics provided a catalyst for new avenues of insight into the design and construction of the built environment.

Schwartz, Chad. "Spiritual Tectonics." Paper presented at the 30th National Conference on the Beginning Design Student: Materiality, Essence + Substance, Chicago, Illinois, Illinois Institute of Technology, 2014.

The pedagogy of design/build can be deployed in a wide variety of ways in an architectural curriculum.  Despite common goals - breaking free of the classroom, exploring through experiential learning, and imparting a well-rounded understanding of the practice of architecture - the particular construct of design/build utilized can significantly impact the overall quality of the educational experience for the students. As with most curricular constructs, the challenge is configuring projects to optimize student experience with the wide variety of constraints that come with the practice of building in an academic environment.

This paper explores the introduction of design/build into a foundation level technology course. For the past three years, architecture and interior design students have actively engaged their education through participation in two different styles of design/build projects. The first involved the building of residential wall sections in an on-campus outdoor lab; the second was the design/build of an amphitheater for a regional environmental education center. After three years of building, this paper is a reflection on the successes and failures of the projects undertaken. The study is concerned with determining the best means of delivering this type of content and learning experience to architecture and interior design students within the construct of a technology course. Although only preliminary, the initial findings suggest that, despite its popularity, community-based design/build may, in some situations, not be the best choice for delivering experiential building content in architectural courses.

Schwartz, Chad. "Debating the Merits of Design/Build: Assessing Pedagogical Strategies in an Architectural Technology Course." Journal of Applied Sciences and Arts 1, no. 1 (2015): 8-21.

The blank page can be intimidating for an architecture student. When starting a project, there are multiple devices that can be employed to alleviate the novice student of this anxiety.  One such tool is precedent analysis. The study of precedents provides key lessons - relationships between components, systems of order, means of connection, and conceptual partis, to name just a few - that can be used as building blocks to form new work; the precedent becomes a spark of inspiration, a conveyor of information, and a foundation for growth. As Simon Unwin states, “Both evolutionary development and contradictory revolution depend on understanding what has gone before.” This presentation introduces a new publication that utilizes precedent studies to convey theoretical information to architecture students. Twenty contemporary projects are analyzed to excavate lessons on the application of architectural tectonics in design practice. In this study, the precedents help to ground the theoretical notions of Semper, Bötticher, and others in contemporary building practice to which the students can relate. The integration of this publication into the design studio will assist architecture students in making connections between design, construction, and theory that, hopefully, will engage them for a lifetime.

Schwartz, Chad. "Investigating the Tectonic: Grounding Theory in the Study of Precedents ". The International Journal of Architectonic, Spatial, and Environmental Design 10, no. 1 (2015): 1-15.

The practice of architecture is the practice of making representations. As such, there is a need to help the developing architecture student learn how to make critical connections between their created representations and the real product that would be generated from them. In the current technology driven environment, these connections frequently involve translations from a virtual environment to the real world. This paper outlines two projects undertaken with students in their second and third year of their undergraduate education. The first project is a building technology exercise that asks students to transform a drawn wall section into a built element through the creation of a series of virtual constructions (virtual to real). The second project is positioned contrary to the first; it is a studio exercise that asks students to translate a series of full-scale built constructions into representations leading to a project design strategy (real to virtual). These opposing ways of working, situated within this environment of representation, have the potential to not only provide balance for the students, but also to help fulfill the diverse learning objectives required for their study of architecture.

Schwartz, Chad. "Exercises in Translation: Moving from the Virtual to the Real and Back Again." The International Journal of the Constructed Environment 6, no. 4 (2015): 45-55.

The use of pen and paper may appear at first blush to be a simple medium to explore. The pen makes the marks, the paper receives the marks-simple. However, what if the paper is laid upon the bed of a Computer Controlled Numeric (CNC) device and a computer drives the pen? Can a CNC device execute the kind of care and craft we have traditionally seen in the hands of a master artisan?

Chronic graft-vs-host disease (GvHD) is a common, severe complication of bone marrow transplantation that often results in sclerodermoid skin changes with chronic and recurrent skin ulceration. We describe a case of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma presenting as an ulcer on the sole of a 20-year-old woman with chronic GvHD. Although such an association has not been previously described, we discuss why features of chronic GvHD could be expected to place affected patients at increased risk for cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma.

After his preauricular basal cell carcinoma had been excised by Mohs micrographic surgery, a patient took daily photographs of his 6 x 3-cm full-thickness wound as it healed by second intention over the next 44 days. Wound contraction produced a linear decrease in wound area between postoperative days 3 and 40 that accounted for 57% of the area of the original wound. The remainder of the wound was resurfaced by new epithelium, beginning on day 16. Few comparable reports address the contributions of contraction and re-epithelialization in large full-thickness human wounds.

In this paper, the architectural and daylighting designs of Phoenix Central Library are explored in terms of a tripartite construct introduced by Professor Gary Coates, entitled Deep Beauty. The studied library is designed by the Architect William Bruder in Phoenix, Arizona, and was completed in 1995.

The Deep Beauty construct is made to investigate architectural designs and landscapes functionally, typologically, and archetypally for the hope of creating sustainable and life enhancing buildings and landscapes in response to the crisis of sustainability. The construct is used in the same way with the focus on investigating daylight and searching for beauty in the library.

Sustainable buildings are beautiful if they succeed in connecting human-made structures to the heart of the living world. As we all love nature, sustaining it will enhance its beauty, “because only that which is loved is beautiful.” – Professor Gary Coates

In Chicago, the historic courtyard buildings dating back to the time period roughly from the Columbian Exposition to the Great Depression display distinctly identifiable characteristics in terms of planning, design and construction dictated largely by regulations as well as market conditions. Of all different types of multi-unit housing buildings, Courtyard Type presents extremely favorable options for creating a high density, socially integrated and economically stable housing alternatives. Even though many massing and configuration features of the courtyard apartment buildings of this particular time period were prescribed in great detail through regulations, still, a wide array of type variations were allowed and hence developed.