VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 | The Plan Journal

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Issue's articles

 Subscribers only
SUSTAINABILITY
Article

Cut|Fill: Technofossil Waste Narratives of Brick and Dredged Sediments

by: Catherine De Almeida VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 163 - 196 published: 2021-05-11

Today’s waste landscapes derive from nineteenth-twentieth century materials extraction, processing, and disposal practices by which certain landscapes are sacrificed for the construction of others. Long term impacts of material byproducts from these industries may be understood as technofossils—new materials shaped into artifacts that will likely be preserved as geological deposits. This article explores shifts in cultural attitudes and approaches towards waste materials and landscapes by focusing on two types of extraction-based industries that create technofossils: brick, in which desired materials such as sands and clays are extracted and manipulated, and dredged sediment, in which undesirable materials, such as sands, clays, and soils, are extracted from shipping channels and stored in landfills of land. The tension between these industries reveals opportunities for rethinking linear models of materials extraction, processing, and disposal as cyclical and integrative. Historiographic, archival, and case study research are used to investigate these industries. Speculative mapping and a design research studio explore these material legacies, and their potential ecological, socio-economic, and cultural values.

 Open Access
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
Article

Architecture and Soft Kinetics: Scale and Performance

by: Vera Parlac VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 69 - 86 published: 2021-06-14

Traditionally buildings are not designed to adapt to the dynamics of fluctuating environmental conditions or changing user needs. Even though today’s technical capabilities for kinetics have advanced significantly, the integration of stable and kinetic elements still presents challenges. The project described in this article integrates “soft” and “hard” elements to produce a dynamic material system that is self-supporting, pliable, and kinetic. It explores a kinetic and formal potential of integrating custom-made soft robotic muscles into a component-based surface. The developed prototype is a light modular construct, with components and patterns of aggregation that work in unison with the silicone muscles to produce a dynamic structure. The proposed material system can be used to construct a kinetic and “programmable” architectural skin that can be integrated with existing or new façade systems. The project is informed by 

a history of pneumatic structures, the technology of soft robotics, and a kit-of-parts design strategy. 

 Open Access
Editorial

In This Issue [1/2021]

by: Maurizio Sabini VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 5 - 6 published: 2021-06-21
 Open Access
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY STUDIES
Opinion

Baukultur in a Cybernetic Age: A Conversation

by: Michael A. Arbib , Meredith Banasiak , Bob Condia , Colin Ellard , Jonathan Enns , Melissa Farling , Robert Lamb Hart , Richard Hassell , Eduardo Macagno , Harry Mallgrave , Fred Marks , Juhani Pallasmaa , Sarah Robinson VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 7 - 28 published: 2021-05-14

We received and we gladly publish this conversation among distinguished theorists and scholars on an important topic, also aligned with the cross-disciplinary mission of our journal. [MS]

 

ABSTRACT - The article offers a multi-author conversation charting the future of architecture in light of the apparent tension between Baukultur, which combines the culture of building and the building of this culture, and the rapid changes brought about by digital technology, embracing cybernetics and artificial intelligence. The article builds on a discussion of Baukultur to debate in what sense buildings are “machines for living in,” then examines neuromorphic architecture wherein cybernetic mechanisms help buildings sense the needs of their occupants. It closes with an example of a building complex, Kampung Admiralty, that combines cybernetic opportunities with a pioneering approach to building “community and biophilia” into our cities. This article interleaves an abridged version of Michael Arbib’s (2019) article “Baukultur in a Cybernetic Age,” 1 with extensive comments by the co-authors.

 Open Access
REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
Project

Levitas

by: Ian Ritchie , Marco Imperadori , Marco Clozza VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 29 - 46 published: 2021-05-10

We received and we gladly publish this contribution by distinguished designer and theorist Ian Ritchie, as an example of that bridging research and practice which our journal intends to promote and disseminate. [MS]

 

ABSTRACT - The design and engineering development of two apex connected square woven flat surfaces, each constrained at ground level by three anchors and lifted to form a 3D gridshell whose theoretical geometry is modified by the small sectional profile of the rectangular members made of wood. The warp and weft of the weave are of identical section and made from Italian red oak. The process of artistic investigation is explained and then taken into theoretical designs, computed, and is then tested iteratively through choice of wood, a 33% physical model which is laser surveyed and fed back into the computer model and FEM (Finite Element Method) analysis, and finally followed by a partial full scale mock up, before realising the sculpture at the Arte Sella environmental art park.

 Subscribers only
REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
Project

Tarkeeb Gate House and Garden

by: William Sarnecky , Michael Hughes VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 47 - 67 published: 2021-05-21

The “Tarkeeb Gate House and Garden” is part of an ongoing series of design-build explorations focused on enhancing the lives of under-served people through small projects located in oft-overlooked places. Through the revision of a leftover and ill-conceived workspace the new security booth augments and enhances existing campus infrastructure with new architecture that provides pragmatic functions, promotes community equality, and exhibits a social and environmental conscience. Located in a region where service personnel endure long shifts under challenging circumstances, the project seeks to elevate basic human comforts while simultaneously imparting exuberant delight from small-scale design opportunities.

 Subscribers only
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY STUDIES
Article

Interplanetary Architecture

by: María Asunción Salgado de la Rosa , Belén Butragueño Díaz-Guerra , Javier Francisco Raposo Grau VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 87 - 110 published: 2021-06-11

Since man first walked on the Moon, humanity has imagined inhabiting other planets, a dream fueled by fiction, architecture and folk art. Currently, there is a real commitment to begin exploring Mars in the next decade. In creating these expectations, the contributions of writers, architects and film directors have been necessary, all of whom have imagined these new cities beyond our planet. We will review the germinal proposals that have contributed to the construction of current space ideology, comparing them with recent proposals. The objective is to analyze these architectures in modern context, recognizing their contribution in the development of new ideas.

 Open Access
SUSTAINABILITY
Article

Food Hubs and Rebuilding Missing Middle Market Structure in Agriculture: The Social in Supply Chain Development

by: Stephen Luoni VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 111 - 142 published: 2021-05-07

Tens of millions of Americans became food insecure during the COVID-19 pandemic as independent farmers dumped millions of tons of food due to economic lockdowns. Yet contract growers looped into vertically integrated monopoly supply chains escaped system breakdowns. Food provisioning is often seen as polarized between local scale and continental/global market scale. Food supply and consumption are functions more of market structure than scale. Farmers reliant on direct sales to local restaurants, schools, universities, and hospitals saw their markets evaporate overnight. This Food Away from Home market constitutes 54 percent of food consumed nationally yet is vulnerable since direct-to-consumer sales lack supply chain structure. Urban food hubs dotting American cities before their eclipse by agrifood monopolies could have maintained supply. The food hub was a resilient public supply channel (a food commons) organizing a plurality of local and global providers alike. To address food insecurity our food planning effort for the State of Hawaii is premised on building similar missing middle market structure featuring a food hub, a food innovation center, and farm base yard processing facilities.

 Subscribers only
SUSTAINABILITY
Article

Sea-Level Rise and South Florida: Envisioning Public Space as a Function of a Changing Natural Environment

by: John Sandell VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 143 - 162 published: 2021-05-21

Sea-level rise and its effects on low-lying territory posit a rethinking of urban environments. Drawing on green infrastructure concepts and resiliency principles in urban design, this study examines how these urban environments could evolve. The study describes the challenges that coastal cities face and advances a cross-disciplinary research approach to a specific coastal site. The site location is Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The study adopts a transformational strategy that directs the development of an urban design inclusive of hydro-patterns, vegetation, building mass, and its orientation. The strategy foregrounds nature’s role in the conceptualization of changing conditions and the built morphologies at the scale of territory and neighborhood. By exploring these relationships, the project highlights the dynamics of the natural environment as a frame for reconfiguring public space as permeable and adaptive networks, enabling an open and indeterminant understanding of urban commons.

 Open Access
LANDSCAPE URBANISM
Article

Ecologies of Leisure: Reimagined Architectures and Landscapes of Leisure and Infrastructure

by: Carla Aramouny VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 197 - 218 published: 2021-06-14

The research detailed in this paper revolves around an ecological and spatial exploration for a derelict coastal area in Lebanon. It frames the possibility for an agile ecological approach to design, one that builds upon the latent derelict aspects and persisting disconnections in this specific area and that reimagines a potential new reality intermeshing the natural with the human and the infrastructural with the architectural. Within the format of a research undergraduate studio, the approach and work discussed here present possible synthetic scenarios for coastal developments in Lebanon, and suggest alternative production, programmatic, and ecological strategies. 

 Subscribers only
CRITICISM
Article

Bauhäusler and the Second Chicago School of Architecture: Enduring Student Exercises

by: Kristin Jones , Zaida Garcia-Requejo VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 219 - 241 published: 2021-06-09

On March 28, 2019, on the occasion of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s 133rd birthday, the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Mies van der Rohe Society displayed an exhibition at S. R. Crown Hall entitled “Stories from the Archives” as part of the larger event theme of “Bauhaus Descendants” in the year of its centenary. The exhibition proposed connections between the Bauhaus and IIT’s school of architecture through a display of archival materials related to the work of the former Bauhäusler Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig Hilberseimer, and Walter Peterhans who founded the modernist school at IIT. This paper provides a deeper investigation of the exhibit’s proposed connections and the relationship between the Bauhaus and IIT’s architecture school through the lens of three enduring student exercises: the court house problem, the planning sequence, and visual training exercises. Considering these three exercises in relation to the curriculum that was developed at IIT shines light on a philosophy of architectural education which started in Europe, matured in Chicago and continues to evolve into the future. 

 Subscribers only
THEORY
Article

The Contested Nature of Modernity: “Type and Individuality” in the Deutscher Werkbund

by: Bilgen Dündar VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 243 - 262 published: 2021-06-08

The purpose of this paper is to contribute an inclusive insight into the debate of type (Typisierung) and individuality in the Deutscher Werkbund. The debate is widely discussed on the dichotomy between art and industry in the historiography of modern architecture. This paper aims to show that both camps of the debate wanted to constitute the synthesis of art and industry, but the methods that they used were different. This paper considers the debate as a referent of the contested nature of modernity. Modernity oscillates between the desire to give the modern world new modes of structure, order, regulation and to accept modernity with all complexities. This article claims that while the notion of type represents the former one, the notion of individuality represents the later one in the realm of architecture. This article unveiled the control mechanisms in the discourses of defenders of Typisierung. It found the concepts norm, organization, system, standardization, which were the reflections of the Enlightenment. On the other hand, it pointed out the reactions of the individualists against these discourses.

 Open Access
SUSTAINABILITY
Book Review

Modern Architecture and Climate

by: Brian Ford VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 265 - 270 published: 2021-05-07

 

Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning

By Daniel A. Barber

Princeton University Press, 2020

8 in. x 10.5 in. [203 mm x 267 mm]

76 color + 196 b/w illustrations

336 pages

$60.00 / £50.00 (hardcover) 

ISBN: 978-0-691-17003-9

 

 Open Access
CRITICISM
Book Review

Reframing Chicago’s Residential Architecture

by: Robert Weddle VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 271 - 276 published: 2021-05-07

 

Modern in the Middle: Chicago Houses 1929-1975 

By Susan S. Benjamin and Michelangelo Sabatino

New York: The Monacelli Press, 2020

279 mm x 203 mm

325 illustrations

296 pages

$ 60 hardcover

September, 2020

ISBN: 978-1580935265

 

 Open Access
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY STUDIES
Book Review

On Race and Modern Architecture

by: Diane Ghirardo VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 277 - 284 published: 2021-06-04

 


 

Race and Modern Architecture.

A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present

By Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis II, and Mabel O. Wilson, eds Pittsburgh PA, USA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020

7 x 10 in. [17,8 x 25,4 cm]

96 b&w illustrations

424 pages

 $45 paperback

July, 2020

ISBN: 978-082 296 6593

 

 

Building Character. The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style

By Charles L. Davis II

Pittsburg PA, USA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019

7 x 10 in. [17,8 x 25,4 cm] 

89 b&w illustrations, 12 color plates

320 pages

$55 hardcover

December, 2019

ISBN: 978-0822945550

 

 Open Access
CRITICISM
Exhibition Review

Carlo Aymonino: The Critical Curiosity of a Visionary Architect

by: Maurizio Sabini VOLUME 6/2021 - Issue 1 , Pages: 285 - 293 published: 2021-06-15

Board