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Hidden Gem by Lauren Brown @laurrren.b (B.S. Arch 2021) Undergraduate Foundation Studio IV with Karen Van Lengen Spring 2020 "Diversity is not about how we differ. Diversity is about embracing one another's uniqueness." - Ola Joseph Nested in the Historic arboretum behind the International Residential College, Hidden Gem seeks to be a cross cultural hub focused on international botany and foods as well as a space for "invisible students to feel visible" through the means of dispersed cultural learning centers. The key architectural move in the project is an overall ADA compliant slope where the building meets the historic arboretum and becomes one with the landscape. The L-shape of the building frames the arboretum around the permanent tree plantings on the site, creating an outdoor courtyard and garden for IRC residents + visitors to inhabit. An activation pathway is created between Hidden Gem and the site's faculty house at Historic Morea to enable a living learning environment between existing IRC Principle and the potential occupiers of the site. The building is supported by a concrete structure with a green sedum roof. In an effort to be in conversation with the site, the outdoor patios, walls and building cores are constructed with red clay brick, and the facade is an interplay of glass and wood paneling in honor of the historic arboretum. .

Alternative Institutions by Omer Gorashi @gorashiarch (B.S. Arch 2021) New York Undergraduate Foundation Studio with Seth McDowell @a.seth_mcdowell Fall 2019 This project is an alternative institute of sorts, in which people are not shunned away for trying to stay out of the rain or rest on a park bench. The institution was created as a photography guild where street photographers throughout the city can assemble and have a physical space to engage one another. The institution offers spaces for photographers to shoot, teach and learn, publish and curate their work for the public. Members of this guild also have spaces to then teach displaced populations this medium of such clear-cut representation and art, so that they too can use photography to be their voice in a conversation that they for so long have been prevented from joining in on. The guild is meant to welcome all members of the city, even those who are just visiting, providing hygenic (bath house), nutritional (community kitchen) and medical (clinic) amenities to all. .

Baltimore Off Ramp by Mary Wright @marywright_ (B.S. Arch 2019) Addictive Things Domino Sugar Advanced Research Studio with Shiqiao Li @li_shiqiao Fall 2018 I began the research on sugar addiction by looking at the metabolic and neurological processes behind our addiction. Much of this has to do with the cycles of dopamine in the brain, whether it has to do with sugar addiction or drug abuse. This project aims to be the production of a more healthy and beneficial dopamine high through intensive and adrenaline filled exercise coupled with the regeneration of a healthy body and mind. Above, it is an intensive active landscape and below, a space for purification filled with steam and sensory experiences. The project strives for recuperation, regeneration and re-framing of the mind and body against the backdrop of century old sugar production. Located adjacent to the Domino Sugar factory in Baltimore Maryland, it cuts out into the water to reframe the consumerist inner harbor. It looks both to the traditions of the Roman Bathhouse and the processes of sugar purification to create a new public space for Baltimore and create this new high. .

Community Networks Site Analysis by Alex Hall @alex_hall.psd (M. Arch 2022) Sierra Brown (M. Arch 2022) and Lauren Downing (M. Arch 2022) New York Graduate Architecture Foundation Studio with Mona El Khafif (coordinator), Ali Fard, Matthew Jull, and Esther Lorenz . After major events, communities respond. This reveals networks of people and organizations as they come together for a common cause and ultimately results in community resilience. We saw this in the organizations that came together to build up New York after 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy. We are seeing this today during the global pandemic: churches offering space as testing locations, organizations coordinating virtual senior social engagements, etc. In Manhattanville, people develop community throughout the everyday; on a street corner, at a barbeque, a concert, or a protest. It is these settings that lay groundwork for pervasive community Networks. One network was revealed in response to the Columbia University Expansion, a controversial event that led to numerous evictions and small business closures. Community members and organizations banded together in numerous protests and marches to have their voices heard. Mapping these events reveals the intersection and difference between public space use for a cause versus public space use for daily social life. West 125th Street exists as a setting for both everyday life as well as catalystic events. .

Within the UVA School of Architecture Fall lecture series, the Department of Architecture is hosting four conversations on "An Architecture of Confluence" which looks at a body of work that exemplifies architecture's capacity to build a common ground across multiple, often competing stakeholders. Today's first conversation is joined by @interboropartners. Their work bridges architecture, urban planning and governance, showing how design can be a critical mediator bringing spatial synthesis to the diverse forces which shape the built environment. Please join us at 5:00pm for Interboro's lecture "Table of Contents" and stay tuned for more within this series in the coming weeks. .

Super Block Chain by Sean Kois @wheres_sean (MLA / M. Arch 2021) Landscape Architecture Foundation Studio II with Zaneta Hong, Emma Mendel, and Matthew Seibert Spring 2019. The future of urban agriculture is robotic. Whether it's automated, underwater kelp farms or vertical indoor vegetable gardens, the technologies of tomorrow will help localize and urbanize food production. With the addition of developments in block chain technology, supply chain automation and management will be more practical than ever before, connecting neighborhood growers and regional bulk crop farmers to urban markets around the city. These connections will be achieved and new relationships established in Oakland's new "green superblock" system which can be deployed widely, as needed, based on identified typologies and specific site conditions. The circuit of superblocks will act as a locus of green, community space within specific neighborhoods, as well as encourage a network of local investments and relationships. The emphasis of each individual superblock will be to: 1) create green, multi-functional community spaces 2) localize and diversify food production and availability 3) ease traffic and reduce traffic related casualties This project comes about as a lean towards the ideals of community connection, the reduction of traffic and carbon emissions, and the need for open green space in the urban environment. Superblocks achieve this, as a more traditional approach to landscape architecture, by opening unused urban land for green space and restricting vehicular movement throughout, thereby encouraging pedestrian interaction with the space. .

Angles of Incidence by Austin Edwards @_austi_gram_ (M. Arch 2018) Hong Kong Film Archive Advanced Research Studio with Esther Lorenz Fall 2017 . The Kuleshov Effect is a phenomenon which explains the tendency of an audience to derive meaning from sequential shots in film beyond the explicit content they show. It is often used when a series of shots is not chronologically or geographically ordered, or when large in time or travel must be conveyed in a story. The effect, in its simplist terms, allows filmmakers to imply information through montage. This type of montage allows the filmmaker control, as those implications can intentionally mislead the audience, subverting their expectation for the sake of narrative development. The question arises, can this be accomplished in architecture? This project, which relocates and expands the capabilities of the Hong Kong Film archive to the existing Central Market building, aims to give the architect the same level of control: the ability to craft moments through misdirection, disorientation and reorientation. The architect becomes the screenwriter, director, and cinematographer of urban experience. The building's materiality causes mirrored glass to emerge from it's invisible but ubiquitous state in the fabric of Hong Kong, alerting the public to uncurated narratives throughout the city they otherwise ignore. By using reflection to enhance space, the archive amplifies and unmasks those already created at the city, building and person scale. The result is not only the establishment of a relationship between architectural theory, film theory, and urban experience, but an argument for reflection as a key to an architectural Kuleshov Effect. .

Transform-Gathering by Yiwen Xing (M. Arch 2018) Design Development Foundation Studio with Phoebe Crisman Spring 2018 . Inspired by Bernardo Bellotto's painting of 'Castello Sforzesco di Milano' in 1744 which depicts castle Sforzesco as a strong symbol dividing the space inside with surrounding landscape, this project aims to reflect the castle as nowadays Milan's dominant urban context. Meanwhile it proposes to break the enclosed sense with which a diplomacy architecture might be and create gathering spaces for those employed as well as for publics engaging with the building and existing preserved villa. .

Collected Ground by Yin-Yu Fong @yinyufong (M. Arch 2019), Anna Morrison @anna_caledonia (M. Arch 2019), and Zazu Swistel @zazuswistel (M. Arch 2019) New York Graduate Foundation Studio at Broadway Junction with Seth McDowell @a.seth_mcdowell Spring 2018 . This project responds to the tension at Broadway Junction between the livelihood of its activity and the disorganization of its material presence. It traces an ecology of the neighborhood and seeks to expose, curate, and clarify the relationships that exist. By introducing the HRA program to the neighborhood, the project forms a public hub, drawing employees and other publics to the site. A park and a museum exhibition and collection program extend the public resources and qualities of the site -- it's spontaneous vegetation and the material production of the industrial zone. The building is almost entirely sunken underground to maximize open space and highlight the elevated train infrastructure above, suggesting a new agenda for development alongside aging infrastructure. .

Professors Katie Stranix and JT Bachman @officeofthings are engaged in a research project sponsored by Google Inc. focusing on the spatial implications of the changing nature of work. In the Fall of 2019, Stranix taught the research seminar titled "Workspace Evolutions", which aimed to document and catalogue the morphological evolution of the office typology in response to technological advances in both working methods and building materials and systems. Students examined over 50 key precedents, both pre- and post- war, and analyzed the spaces according to a series of metrics by which to evaluate their performance and track spatial trends over time. The seminar taught by JT Bachman this fall, "Workplace Generations", seeks to build on the work from the previous seminar and to challenge the spatial relationships that drive and embody contemporary workspace. The global pandemic has applied unprecedented pressures on the notion of where and how we work - forcing both individuals and corporations to question the spatial principles and constraints that define a shared workspace. The students will take a user-oriented approach, beginning with precedent case studies and analysis of both individual and collective office space. Students will ultimately design new spatial configurations for the future of work, leveraging parametric and generative tools to create workspace systems that are driven by factors such as flexibility, wellness, collaboration, and connection to nature rather than density and efficiency. Katie and JT have been assisted in their research by SRAs Lauren Brown, Sam Feldman, Audrey Liu, Meghann McMahon, and Chris Murphy. Student work by Audrey Liu, Meghann McMahon, Wanyun Zhang, Sicheng Zhou, Trenton Rhodes, Jessica Auer, Tian Wang and Jolie Magenheimer. .

We are pleased to announce the second month of our Fall 2020 series of public events. Our public virtual lectures, panel discussions and talks this semester focus on a range of contemporary voices and perspectives on the relationships between race and the built environment, social equity and activism, environmental justice and inclusive practices. This semester, we will share our programs one month at a time. Stay tuned for an announcement of November's events soon. UVA School of Architecture virtual public programs and events are free and open to the public (special events by invitation are noted). To get all dates and details, please visit arch.virginia.edu/events .

City Fragments, Building Transitions: Stitching Hong Kong's Urban Fabric Through Film by Phil Chang (M. Arch 2018) Hong Kong Film Archive Advanced Research Studio with Esther Lorenz Fall 2017 . As a city of extreme density, Hong Kong has developed a unique urban and spatial condition through which the city is experienced and understood. The fact that most traveling within the city is done so through public transportation or pedestrian movement suggests that Hong Kong itself is a cinematic city. As such, the easiest and most immersive way to experience the city is through a "kinesthetic montage" - the exploration through the walking body and documentation through film and cinematography. The aim of this studio was to develop a proposal for a new Film Archive in Hong Kong, located at the site of the historic Central Market building on Hong Kong island. The project's conceptual framework is grounded upon the interpretation of Hong Kong as a "fragmented city". Although the components of the city are close in proximity, in most cases, buildings exist in isolation with little mutual relation to neighboring infrastructures. Rather than a building that exists merely as an object in itself with conceptual ties to the city, the project builds upon it's existing physical integration within the city's pedestrian network system. The project restructures the role of what a public Film Archive can be in it's context - a transitional space to learn about Hong Kong's rich cinematic history and simultaneously, the city's very own urban living room. .