@sciarc

”This thesis proposes an architecture that takes on performance based operations found in the art and tectonic practices of repairing and reusing broken and derelict ceramic parts: at the scale of a vessel (such as in Kintsugi); and at the scale of a building (such as in Spolia). These processes were folded into scenographic performances undertaken by myself in two ways: 1/ molding and casting; 2/ 3D scanning and imaging. These performances are a series of visual and material experiments; a method for recycling, and re-identifying existing ruins on a chosen site in Coso Valley. Although the site is off limits to the public, documentary scenes of the hot springs (archival film, 1930, Somewhere on the Edge of Nowhere, 2005, Talking Stone, Rock Art of the Cosos, 2014) were collected and interpolated as forensic data and topographical evidence. By extracting and compositing archival postcards, documentary sequences, USGS Lidar scans, the resulting scenography is a superimposition of history with materiality; an extraction of an atmospheric yet tactile terrain. Graduate Thesis presentation by Sam Kaufman @saufman one this year’s recipients of the SCI-Arc Merit Graduate Thesis Awards (Advisor: @zeinakoreitem)

“What are the implications the bounding box has in architectural practice at all scales – the home, the road, the city? The society we live in is built around parcel restrictions, old city codes, and systemic oppression through zoning practices. These conditions create the bounding box today. Compton’s bounding boxes are being adjusted, built upon, and corrected. This gives opportunity for a Zealot to assist in Compton’s long-term development. A Zealot is not a singular act. It is a series of upgrades that develop with its evolving boundaries. This results in forms that are fanatically uncompromising in their pursuit of the construction of space. The Zealot is the catalyst, Compton is its activator.“ Graduate Thesis project by Irvin Shaifa @irvinshaifa one of five recipients of this year’s SCI-Arc Gehry Prize for the best graduate thesis of the year, reflecting SCI-Arc’s core mission to test the limits of architecture. (Advisor: @conescubes)

‘Where Turtles Fly’ is a third-person indie game by SCI-Arc EDGE graduate Andre Zakhya (Fiction and Entertainment ‘20), capturing the story of a young refugee boy who has fallen over the side of a boat. He washes up on the shore of a city that doesn’t want him, and with just a phone, his only connection to his loved ones, he begins a journey to find a new home. Created from 3D scans of Beirut, a city with the highest rate of refugees in the world relative to its population, the young boy travels between fantasy and reality, traversing a surreal urban landscape of surveillance drones, watch towers, and monsters of trash. @andrezakhya is a recipient of this year’s Hsinming Fung and Craig Hodgetts Postgraduate Thesis Prize for the best postgraduate project of the year. (Advisor: @liam_y & @alexey.marfin)

“A line has the ability to convey character and personality. This is often lost in an architectural drawing where lines are only used as instruments for representing a building. In these drawings, line types and line weights mainly define technical alignments as well as an architectural element’s relative position in space, but not necessarily its quality or character. This thesis explores the character of lines and their performance by transforming different line types and line weights as a technique to explore new spatial possibilities. In this project, lines from the as-built drawings of the Battersea Power Station have selectively been redrawn and reinterpreted into three-dimensional volumes by scaling and extruding them around its centerline axis. New spatial opportunities arise when these new volumes intersect and merge with each other. The project breaks the vernacular rigidness of the site and defines a new office typology for the new Apple Campus.” Undergraduate Thesis project by B.Arch student by Sally Lwin @sallylwin_arch recipient of this years Merit Undergraduate Thesis Award. (Advisor: @lace_jennywu)

“This thesis is interested in a new ontological process of re-seeing through rereading and packaging architectural regimes of James Stirling and Mies van der Rohe—specifically No 1 Poultry and Mansion House Square in London—into graphic representations (two slabs and two towers). The site is in Stuttgart, Germany and is a large urban-planning project. We organized the site as a courtyard with a built-up perimeter using two typologies: The Slab and the Tower. We tackled the design by unrolling the site composition and read into the graphics as an index to work between 2D and 3D. The Slab graphics served as the organizational system towards the division of housing units and space while the Tower graphics worked as an indication between the transparent and opaque. Through these techniques, we developed new ontology of interpretation that combines modernism and post-modernism.” Undergraduate Thesis project by B.Arch students Nicholas Y. Wu @nicholasywu and Sicheng Dex Hu @dexhu, recipients of this years Merit Undergraduate Thesis Award. (Advisor: @peter_testa)

The Blythe and Thom Mayne Undergraduate Thesis Prize is awarded each year for the best Undergraduate Thesis project, reflecting SCI-Arc’s core mission to test the limits of architecture. This year’s recipients are B.Arch students Abel Maqueira @abelmaq and Phoebe Ou-Yang @feeblyy for their project ‘STADIUM +’ (Advisor: @conescubes & @peter_testa) “Our thesis engages one of architecture’s foundational dichotomies: the building as an autonomous object versus the building as part of an urban configuration. To navigate through this dichotomy, our stadium tests the idea of a new urban morphologyby shifting its role as the new urban generator to facilitate the growth of the city.”

“The proposed Smithsonian Women’s History Museum is a suggestion that there is “history” and then there is “women’s history”. In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir theorized that men are posited as the Subject, and women as the necessary Other to affirm men's Subjecthood. This has gendered and hierarchical parallels to the relationship between architecture and interior design. My interest was to try to critique this hierarchy by thinking about the building and its interior as two components of one system, and in doing so through the lens and technique of women’s craft and fabric work.” Graduate Thesis Project by Merit Graduate Thesis Award and Henry Adams Medal recipient Christina Griggs @christina_griggs_ (M.Arch 2) Advisor: @sciarc_manferdini

“This thesis rethinks how a design typically would come about and in specific terms, how we understand “materials” in a digital space. The way that we've reconsidered this is that we presume we need some digital material before we need the shape, or at least we need them at the same time. By inverteing the conventional process - With the available materials, and then we apply shape. This inversion has now opened up a whole other way of thinking about a computation kind of digital foundry , and another way of thinking about compositions that doesn't start first with shape.” Graduate Thesis Project by Merit Graduate Thesis Award recipients Linzi Ai @linzi.ai + Jui-Cheng Hung @juicheng_ (M.Arch 2) Advisor: @devynweiser

Congratulations to SCI-Arc B.Arch student Nancy Ai, this year's Alpha Rho Chi Medal winner, Henry Adams Medal winner (for top GPA), and Graduation with Distinction 👀 👏 Her Undergraduate Thesis 'MAMA MAT': "This project uses the hospital typology as a pretext for reverse dressing through a wrapping of spatial clusters. It uses the mat building as a field for spatial and material experimentation with a strange biochemistry at play. In this thesis surfaces are not only programmatic but also act as a continuous stage that produce qualities of space." - @ai_nan_cy (Advisor: Peter Testa)

Join us this evening at 6:30pm PDT for the NOMA Student Symposium: “Voices for Action: Change at Colleges and Universities.” @SoCalNOMA and present a student-led symposium to explore how schools can move beyond this moment in history and take meaningful action. We will hear the voices of students across several SoCal institutions who will lead the conversation and share their experiences. This symposium will help in developing an awareness of the issues that lead to a lack of diversity in systems of architectural education. It will give students a chance to voice their concerns, make suggestions, and demand change. A Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Challenge for Colleges and Universities will be unveiled outlining actions that will help the architecture education industry become more equitable. Join us at the link in bio.

SCI-Arc is proud to continue its commitment to maintaining a robust platform for interdisciplinary speakers with its fall 2020 series of lectures. SCI-Arc’s fall 2020 public programs will feature virtual presentations from a wide range of cultural practitioners.  Tonight's lecture is with Ruha Benjamin @ruha9, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of 'People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier' (Stanford University Press). Full lineup below:  - 23 Ruha Benjamin Lecture - 30 Charles L. Davis II: American Architecture is a Settler Colonial Project: Locating the Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style - ‪October 12 Selected Thesis Exhibition‬ - 14 Andrés Jaque: Superpowers of Scale - 21 Frida Escobedo Lecture - 28 Graham Harman + Sylvia Lavin in Conversation - ‪November 4 Jack Halberstam Lecture‬ - 11 Trevor McFedries Lecture - 18 Dominic Leong and Christopher Leong Lecture - ‪December 2 Yinka Ilori Lecture‬ - ‪December 4-5 A Queer Query Symposium‬ Admission and access to SCI-Arc-hosted public events and exhibitions are always free and open to the public. Be sure to check our website for livestream links. (link in bio)

”Somewhere Over the Overlay". Last week, the new students entering M.Arch 2 and SCI-Arc EDGE programs completed their Introduction to Digital Design (IDD) prerequisite workshop. This year the course focused on digital modeling, simulation, and the combination of multiple formal and representational styles with an emphasis on the effects of overlay and layering. Instructors: @theblondecadio and @rachaelmccall. TAs: @di.liang_orisecs @james_piccone @miss_melooo @devangikansagra