good evening and welcome everyone to
this last lecture of the church series
my name is Avigail Sacs I am the chair
of the Graduate architecture program and
I'm here representing Jason Young who
unfortunately had a family commitment
that he had to honor we all have to
balance between life and work but I'm
actually very glad for myself it gives
me the opportunity to introduce today's
speaker Jennifer Akerman and to put to
spend a few moments giving you a bit of
context into which to understand or at
least to begin to understand Jennifer's
work so I was reading something this
morning a editorial that was written in
1936 and it listed all the ways in which
professional practice was changing and
how we should it's time to be listening
to the students and listening to people
who have new ideas and I think it's very
easy to see the parallels and to see the
ways in which in the beginning of the
21st century though it's not really the
beginning anymore just the early we're
facing a lot of similar challenges I
just mention a few environmental
challenges ongoing social questions that
have not been resolved and especially
new labor relations which have been
brought up by the internet and by other
ways of doing business and the list can
go on and on and I think that like as in
the editorial I was reading the point is
to listen to new voices not to give up
on the commitment to architectural
practice or give up on the commitment to
the importance of design but at the same
time to challenge it to think about it
and to look at it critically and that is
exactly what Jennifer Akerman does
she's a 2002 now in 19 to 2021
utk James Johnson Dudley faculty scholar
and she explores these questions through
the idea of living architecture which
frames buildings as part of a larger
ecosystem including urban agriculture
induced bio habitation and crafted micro
climates I think that if you take the
idea of living architecture to its
logical end you realize that one of the
big challenges is to the authority and
to the control that we have as
architects and I think that will come
out in Jennifer's work in as an
important part of it Jennifer brings a
lot of expertise to
through the role of James Johnson Dudley
faculty scholar she has a degree from
Princeton University a Master of
Architecture which she received in 2002
where she worked with a range of
theoreticians and practitioners Liz
Diller Peter Eisenman van ben van Berkel
her and Caroline must be some Caroline
boss she also studied at the University
of Virginia where she received a
Bachelor of Science in architecture in
1998 and was commended for by the School
of Architecture there by the faculty for
her design work in addition she brings a
lot of architectural experience she
progressed from being an intern to an
architect to a designer and then to an
associate at sari inter an architect to
designer to associate apologies at
Hillier architecture in Princeton New
Jersey which is now called studio
Hillary and our mjm and one of the
projects that she worked on the Becton
Dickinson Campus Center won the
excellence award from AIA Pennsylvania
in 2014 she was also a project
architecture and a design coordinator
here in Knoxville at corkle design and
planning now known as red chair
architects and there I noticed that
three schools that she was in charge of
one honor and merit awards from the AIA
East Tennessee the all good in our
mentary School the Morrison Elementary
School in the Prem Scott elementary and
middle school Jennifer brings all of
this work together into teaching
architectural studio and other courses
that explore materiality constructions
and special topics of professional
practice especially the critical
practice and central to all of this has
been the Beardsley Community Farm
design-build project about which I'm
sure we're going to hear more because
it's right up here in the image and I
think that this is a very admirable
example of someone bridging between one
practice the practice of work of
practicing of working of marshaling
resources and bringing about the
construction of the building and the
critical evaluation of the process and
the sharing of the work which as I
pointed out at the beginning is at the
heart of what Jennifer does just to
illustrate how this project bridges
between the
- in 2017 it won the award of excellence
from the AIA tennessee state awards
program the gold award from the brick in
architectural national awards program
and importantly in my opinion the
collaborative practice award from the
association of collegiate school of
architecture but it was also the topic
of publications especially crafting
production design-build as an
alternative practice which Jennifer
published in the Journal of
architectural education again in 2017
and a year later it was followed by the
engaged project representation dissent
and the architecture of public space
this in the plan Journal of in fall 2018
outside of Knoxville jennifer has
visited many schools as a reviewer I'll
just list a few Virginia Kentucky
Michigan and Berkeley I had to finish
there and finally if you allow me a
final a personal note Jennifer is such a
generous teacher and such a generous
colleague and I think that we are all
very lucky here to have you here in the
College I was reading this morning about
current psychological research
highlighting the importance of humility
as a basis for openness and for
conversation and for discussion and I
think you exemplify this Thank You
Jennifer
gosh Thank You Avigail for such a lovely
introduction and thank you all for being
here this is my pleasure to have the
opportunity to talk with you all tonight
about my work as part of the church
lecture lecture series I'm happy to
begin tonight by recognizing and
thanking people who have supported my
work here as an assistant professor Dean
Poole thank you very much for the
opportunity to teach here and for your
support of my work I am so grateful to
the School of Architecture director
Jason Young for his guidance on how to
perform well as a faculty member and for
his continual efforts to elevate what
what I do what we all do in the spirit
of advancing the culture of design
Tricia stew thank you for serving
diligently as my mentor throughout this
whole process which has been incredibly
helpful as well as thank you to all of
the people who have served as informal
mentors over the years I'd love to thank
all the faculty have had the pleasure to
teach with to serve with on committees
and to have as allies in elevating the
discourse of design quickly thanks as
well to the full administrative team of
the college for ensuring that things get
done well and finally thank you to our
students without whom none of this would
be possible or relevant and I know I
can't thank everyone by name right now
but I'm greatly appreciative of
collaborating with you all thank you for
being here so to get started let me
second one number three is this is the
stark enough or should I go darker let's
do it here all right great
awesome all right great well tonight's
talk will focus on a few lines of
architectural inquiry pulling from
creative work from design its research
from scholarship and from teaching all
of which are intertwined for me the talk
will necessarily be incomplete
representing just some of what I have
tried to contribute to the school the
college and the discourse of
architecture
well sorry
okay
all of my work is grounded in a field
that I call critical practice I define
critical practice as tactics of the
engaged architectural project and it
includes any work in the built
environment driven by a critical agenda
I expect works of architecture to have a
thesis a line of inquiry that expands
architectures capacity to be meaningful
through my research of design practice I
advocate for an everyday critical
practice which I define is work that
cares for cultural issues that is
intentional in its design methods and
that embeds a critical agenda wherever
possible even in modest works of
architecture buildings can function more
resiliently in concert with their
environments and intertwine ecologies
mitigating negative impacts on their
climate watershed independent flora and
fauna they can resonate with cultural
histories and become agents of social
justice by giving shelter and venue to
people who have been habitually excluded
from design architecture can
provocatively engage complex social
questions and catalyze recognition and
response from the people who encounter
it those of us who care about
architecture in the world should insist
on criticality in contemporary practice
my commitment to this position was first
inspired by the work of my professors
including as Abigail mentioned Liz
Diller Peter Eisenman Paul Lewis and
others rather than treating theory as
something reserved for the seminar these
architects also bring theoretical
insights and challenges to the status
quo into the design studio and they find
ways of being fundamentally critical in
their professional practices my
scholarship creative work and teaching
examine why in almost any US market
clients rarely understands the capacity
for architecture to do more
why do architects rarely succeed and in
defending the idea that our buildings
can do more the exceptions works of
critical architecture are usually
produced by curious and passionate
architects working with the most elite
clients in large cities
extraordinary budgets sympathetic
consultants and brilliant designers but
what about places like Tennessee what is
the capacity for architecture to operate
critically even with limited budgets and
with clients who may be unaware of
inspiring precedents how can we make
every day criticality something of clear
value to everyone to position myself
relative to these issues I'm someone who
looks at critical practice both as an
academic and a practitioner I've worked
in various types of architectural
offices for nine years before I started
teaching full-time I'm a licensed
architect I'm a LEED AP I'm an AIA
member I've worked on high-end
residential institutional commercial
projects in and around Boston and New
York I've worked on extremely low budget
projects public projects such as this
one in Middle Tennessee if we fail to
pursue solutions for providing every day
criticality engaged architecture will
remain the exception a luxury commodity
only available to the elite and
architecture will further devalue in the
eyes of the public I work with brilliant
students and I strive to instill a
fascination with criticality in each of
them such that when they are ready they
will act critically whenever they decide
to practice and whatever form that word
takes
I see the call for every day critical
practice as an opportunity for emerging
designers to transform practice
sometimes that means pursuing
alternative modes of practice in order
to build a public desire for more
critical work architect William young
visited our College about three years
ago to lecture and to introduce a pretty
amazing exhibition of his films in the
UN gallery he claims that he can have a
greater impact on the field of
architecture by making films exploring
the complex complexity of the near
future and it's speculative architecture
than he could by designing physical
buildings by speculating on engaged
critical practice I strive to make
meaningful design something people
everywhere have a desire for and an
opportunity to experience so in three
themes examples of which I will share
tonight I've explored the potential for
everyday critical practice in my work
conducted while teaching at UT
the first is the potential for
design-build project delivery to bring
high aspirations and a high level of
craft to Architecture at a lower cost
the second involves expanding on the
definition of a work of architecture in
order to increase the designers capacity
to act critically and the third is in my
own industrial practice of the of
engaged craft which explores how
emerging tools of digital fabrication
could position designers as fabricators
able to produce work directly through
alternative workflows and inverted power
structures to start I'm going to tell
the story of the Beardsley community
farm design-build project this project
was led by our students and faculty
through a series of design studios and
seminars that I co-taught and and ran in
collaborations with other faculty and
research assistants beginning in 2014
and I hope many of you here tonight are
familiar with Beardsley farm this
project has really been a pretty
tremendous effort that has enrolled the
help from many many people many of whom
I'm sure here with us this evening
the project for Beardsley Beardsley is a
non-profit sustainable farm in the
Knoxville's Mechanicsville community
they've been operating with very limited
resources for almost twenty years what
we ultimately produced was a new
building that serves as their home base
and front door it's an iconic entry
point that grounds a complex sites where
they manage about four acres of
productive farmland located in an urban
park programmatically the building
includes a multi-purpose classroom
administrative offices bathrooms and a
series of support spaces and it's
actually really ambitious for this type
of design-build effort when I use the
term design-build
I mean efforts where students enrolled
in coursework are able to design and
build architecture in the world usually
working closely with a user group or
clients and we have a rich history of
such projects in our college such as the
examples I'm showing here which I hope
many of you have been able to be a part
of design-build is situated in an
interesting scene between architectures
professional practice architecture is an
educational learning experience
and architecture is discourse innovation
created through these collaborations has
the potential to change how we teach how
we practice and how we think about
architecture this project represents
multiple lines of ideas for architecture
it has multiple critical agendas the
architecture explores issues of Food
Network's architecture in an expanded
familiar meaning thinking of the project
as being more than a building but rather
as a system of relationships
design-build education alternative forms
of practice public work engaged craft
social justice and sustainability and we
could also consider it as a building it
works on that level too but for now I'll
claim that the main goal was to explore
architectures capacity to enhance
community engagement we strove to
develop an architecture that could help
the farmers engage the community they
seek to serve making the farm more
present more visible more permanent but
also creating places for community and
dialogue and enhancing public space one
claim I'm making is that this type of
design-build work constitutes a new form
of architectural practice when where
students emerge as leaders using
analytic tools to identify significant
problems and opportunities and then
designing to engage those issues we
achieved a very high level of design for
a simple public building pushing the
opportunity to design for more people
projects based on community engagement
and socially responsive design can help
students to develop a deep sense of
agency and responsibility as leaders in
the profession these qualities are
fundamentally important to both the
education of an architect and to the
future of architecture so these were
some of our intellectual allies in the
field of engagement focused work peggy
Deemer john kerry south san McVie among
others a common theme among this set is
the desire to serve communities that
normative professional practice
overlooks and under serves and practices
who rethink how architecture might be
delivered
we took this central idea of the rural
studio to heart architecture more than
any art farm any other art form is a
social art and must rest on the social
and cultural base of its time and place
for those of us who design and build we
must do so with an awareness of a more
socially responsive architecture and
William carpenter talks about the
relationship of thinking and making
claiming the construction studio as the
key moment for quote thoughtful making
students who experience design-build
education develop a deep embedded
understanding of the connection between
idea implementation and outcome there's
a fundamental difference obviously
between learning about a construction
process in a book or from a lecture
course versus learning how to build
structural masonry walls in the field
from a master craftsman and not to take
anything away from either approach but
these direct experiences absolutely help
students conceptualize design
differently
our collaboration process was complex
led by the academic team of students and
faculty but depending on so many others
as I think this diagram perfectly
captures these relationships were
constantly in flux but the inherently
horizontal structure is part of what
helped us exceed bureaucratic and
budgetary limits that often present
prevent high quality public architecture
from being possible I went to
acknowledge and thank everyone who is
part of this team and I'm also going to
refrain from reading you the content of
the diagram and instead reflect on the
value of it which to me really speaks
about flexibility and leadership that we
learned that if we could prove our value
to the key deciders by being insightful
and dependable we could step forward as
the agents able to make fast decisions
and to provide on-the-ground leadership
needed to get things done our curricular
structure was flexible and opportunistic
because it had to be our continued
involvement was always contingent
totally depending on good working
relationships as well as meeting budget
and being able to meet or stretch the
city's schedule we could have been asked
to leave at any point this timeline
diagram shows and
tell the arc of our effort and I'll
mention about 50 students contributed
through enrolled coursework with two of
those students but Archer and Bailey
agree
becoming critical research assistants
post graduation and I also want to
recognize professor Bob French who was a
COPI I with me co-teaching many of these
courses and was of course a tremendous
inspiration for all of us
outside of coursework more than 50
additional students and faculty
contributed as volunteers so this had a
structure that allowed people to plug in
and and be part of it
throughout all right so to introduce the
Beardsley um we had a wonderful client
the Beardsley team inspired us to give
all that we could for the project they
came to us with a pragmatic set of needs
which was to provide accessible toilets
on the site and maybe a little office
space we attempted to do a lot more than
that by reframing it as a project of
engagement and they embraced that
direction wholeheartedly virtually farm
promotes food security and sustainable
agriculture through education and
community outreach they have a very
small staff but with the help of
hundreds of volunteers they generate ten
thousand pounds of food annually it's
not a community garden this is all a
managed farm meaning everything that's
grown here is distributed to people in
need through other nonprofits like
mobile meals homeless shelters halfway
houses and pantries they also host
hundreds of K through 12 students
through field trips teaching about
sustainability and farming so there's a
very strong outreach mission great
intentions great effort and these images
show you some of the incredible
condition of having a productive farm in
a public urban park so the sort of
condition of just crops growing
alongside the park space but even then
it was not a rosy perfect scenario when
the farm was founded the area was a food
desert now it's not largely due to
Beardsley's work even so at times their
attentions between the farm and the
neighborhood wanting to affect change
through food security and community
outreach is not as easy as just building
a farm and saying problem solved we
found that we had a lot to learn about
the physical social and cultural context
of the project a few design issues were
clear when
first visited there was no entry point
percent of arrived sense of arrival to
the farm which originally the
demonstration farm was behind a fence at
the top of the hill so topographically
separated and physically separated by
fences we learned that acts of vandalism
were committed against the farm somewhat
regularly meaning damage to the barn or
to plants or knocking over beehives and
that led to fences and signs and
heightened tensions and a loss of
productivity our first and sight the
farmers were actually harvesting unripe
tomatoes and then driving them a mile
off campus to store them in an office
building so that they wouldn't be stolen
from the field or damaged our students
were key and insisting that we could use
design to address this complex social
and spatial reality and I'll mention one
of my journal articles goes into this
idea in more depth but vandalism is an
interesting tactic of engaging the built
environment it can be a signal a signal
of bigger issues we learned that
vandalism doesn't typically happen at
the mobile meals building or for other
neighbors so vandalism can be a tool for
expression and dissent especially when
it gives voice to people who may be
typically excluded from the power
structures that tend to govern how
architecture happens our mission was to
shape the park for everyone farmer and
residents alike and part of the critical
practice at work here is the claim that
architecture can reflect complex
situations and make space for bigger
conversations why are the tomatoes and
bees behind fences why are there signs
asking us to think about the people who
will benefit from the food but also why
isn't the city providing bathrooms and
water fountains for the kids using the
basketball court and what is the impact
of barriers rear real or inferred in the
park so the site plan illustrates some
of that context in Mechanicsville which
is a historic neighborhood just
northwest of downtown and UT when it was
developed in the 1860s this area was
home to skilled laborers including many
african-americans and immigrants green
in this park represents the the extents
of the Malcolm Martin Park which is
named Graham Malcolm X and Martin Luther
King there's a Greenway running through
the park connecting
the residential areas of Beaumont and
Mechanicsville Beaumont Lonsdale down to
the south along Western Avenue the Food
City and pilot are here we're probably
down here right now relative to this
it's about a mile away but a mile north
of us within the park we have athletic
fields basketball a public pool but we
also have a really interesting
connection to other nonprofits such as
mobile meals Beardsley's demonstration
farm is here the the fenced area but
they also grow in about four additional
acres throughout the park our addition
is this yellow figure right there
we're adjacent to public housing complex
we're very close by to a community
center with a branch library adjacent to
the large canceller Learning Center
which has daycare and aftercare a
significant church and such so it's a
really really fascinating context and
we're also immediately adjacent to
Knoxville College at the campus of
Knoxville College which is a historic
historically black college with enormous
cultural and historic value but whose
future is currently uncertain and influx
the Beardsley Junior High School had
also been on this site and that's that's
where Beardsley farm adopts its name
that school was closed during the
restructuring of Knoxville City and Knox
County Schools in the 1980s and it was
demolished and replaced with the mobile
meals building that sits here now so you
know the loss of the Beardsley school
and the radical transformation of
Knoxville College have contributed to a
destabilization in this neighborhood
today the median income in
Mechanicsville is nine thousand dollars
a year and food security is common when
our students volunteered at the farm
during design and when we were on site
during throughout construction informal
discussions with people in the park
helped us understand some of those
issues better it also helped us to
understand some of the farms needs and
some of the site constraints and
opportunities this embeddedness was
essential to our programming process and
informed the fundamental design approach
design integration studio students
worked collaboratively to arrive at a
unified approach converging 12
independent ideas into one design
refinement of that idea continued from
there on out even through construction
some key questions for us included why
aren't there more good public buildings
especially in low-income areas how isn't
appropriate architectural what is the
appropriate architectural expression of
an urban farm how might we take project
limits as an opportunity to do more
using less how can design foster social
interaction and engagement and how can
spatial definition foster a sense of
belonging and placemaking we wanted the
design to be as open and inviting to
possible as possible and to reflect that
it's a farm for everyone so again for
context this is the outline of the
existing demonstration farm they had an
existing plastic hoop house and an
existing barn
but no others permanent structures the
Greenway in the park is here the
basketball court right here the daycare
center is immediately next to us so the
new building hugs in the edge of the
demonstration farm and makes a new
iconic presence for the farm trying to
explicitly connect the education farm
with the basketball court and the park
we created a very open outdoor classroom
as the new front door to Beardsley as
well
we called the party rock and tree that
by consolidating the condition
footprints to the smallest area possible
here and here making a masonry core we
could then expand the project through
the big roof canopy defining outdoor
sheltered rooms and integrating the
campus the screen wall wraps the new
entry threshold as well as the existing
barn here
defining a mini campus and we also
address the topographic separation by
creating a very simple earth and
amphitheater to engage the green work
engage the Greenway making space for the
public as much it is is for the farm
while connecting the farm to the park
and a wonderful thing happened at our
final design review when the students
were presenting this proposal in the
fall semester roughly in this form and
our client said that he loved the design
because he we made this metaphor of the
big door a reality
this is a public farm it's yours and
it's ours when the door is open the farm
is open which was really powerful I
think for our students to present the
work and to hear the client articulate
it back so cleanly was really nice and
this is it this is the project completed
and in use really quickly one of the
major minor victories of the project
isn't how we engaged which this image
also shows fences couldn't just go away
completely but the city was at times
inclined to wrap chain-link fence all
the way around this parking lot around
the entire complex and so by advocating
instead for the solution where the fence
is layered onto the front facade
securing an open storage space and the
main outdoor classroom but then lining
it with bamboo to help it read as a
screen and to link the new architecture
back to the existing structures in this
floor plan I only want to orient you to
the the big door the entry space mudroom
and assembly space here as well in an
emphasize that it was very compact we
understood that the farm needed
flexibility to accommodate large groups
of volunteers and having a mudroom and
outdoor work areas passively conditioned
by the architecture extends the ability
to work in this site year-round which we
also understood and appreciated
firsthand as builders working in the
harsh summer and through the extremely
cold winter our students were
responsible for everything you see here
a significant amount of the masonry the
concrete lintels and sills custom entry
doors signage
casework and other details and these
images show our team at work on the
project during construction
this was our classroom which was really
amazing we had time on-site to observe
how the volumes of the building would
play out
we could make adjustments and refine
details
we were embedded with the farmers and
their volunteers which was continually
instructive the main core of the
building is structural triple wide brick
with an innovative inside-out
construction technique we sought to
express the bricks performance by using
Flemish bond and by articulating the
precast lintels here you see we had the
opportunity to have progress reviews
like on site which was pretty amazing as
well as some this is showing the process
of installing the fiber cement siding at
the mud room details of the steel column
basis which we fabricated at the Fablab
button much of this was fabricated at
the fab lab I should say poplar entry
doors plywood casework the bamboo
process of harvesting and installing the
screen wall and throughout all of this
our students were incredibly
good-natured and professional students
in a digital fabrication seminar also
designed strategies for housing beehives
of Beardsley honey is the only product
made at the farm that sold the public
the bees are also important workers on
the farm of course pollinating all the
crops these folded steel wrappers are
intended to be didactic functional
shrouds that would protect the bees from
vandalism while educating people in the
park about these ultimately we installed
an observation beehive in the main
classroom which required drilling a
2-inch diameter hole through the 16 inch
brick assembly
we built a modest earthen amphitheater
using gabion baskets and bricks
reclaimed from our construction waste
and from a demolished building on the
Knoxville College campus this
amphitheater was completed in May of
2019 and you get a sense of it in these
images showing the integration of the
new farm center with the rest of the
park we designed for sustainability
comprehensively caring for how
architecture affects environmental
cultural and social health the project
is pursuing LEED Silver certification
and we also address guidelines from the
AIAS Committee on the environment and
the Living Building Challenge finding it
would be possible to achieve petal
certification this is also a tour plan
that we proposed understanding that the
farmers give a pretty comprehensive tour
to any new visitor explaining how the
farm works so we were locating moments
where they might augment that tour by
pointing out the architecture
sustainable features those include
designing for natural daylight and views
facilitating education harvesting
rainwater for irrigation and for
groundwater recharge as well as
carefully shaping exterior microclimates
to extend the program of the project a
material read reclamation and reuse
these images showed the finished
building and I think speak to the
question what should a modern urban farm
be like spatially rich Spartan and
honest in its materiality perhaps
appropriating materials from greenhouses
such as the polycarbonate clerestories
this project helps me value hybridised
program it matters that this is an urban
farm in a park the flows of agrarian
life overlaid within the demands of
running a non-profit and hosting
hundreds of volunteer visitors the flows
of recreational life of the neighborhood
overlaid with the daycare and mobile
meals it's a really nuanced condition
I'm really pleased with the space making
and the level of finish we were able to
achieve we approached it like designing
a ship every surface does some work
every space is multi-purpose
hmm
Sam Mockbee spoke of the role educators
hold to remind the student of
architecture architecture that theory
and practice are not only interwove in
with one's culture but with the
responsibility of shaping the
environment of breaking up social
complacency and of challenging the power
of the status quo pedagogically the
project helps us instill an ethical
sensitivity into our students to
consider the consequences of how they
choose to work the fact that the project
exists signals of failure in
conventional delivery methods we were
only invited to be here because
traditional paths could not deliver a
high level of design at the city's
budget john kerry writes quote community
humanitarian and pro bono design indeed
the Public Interest design movement as a
whole evolved in response to the failure
of the mainstream architectural
profession to serve a much larger
percentage of people than it has
historically because of the academic
teams leadership the city went further
than they would have in backing a
project that foregrounds engagement and
design excellence but pressure within
the collaborating team to fulfill
differing goals quality versus budget
versus schedule limited what could be
achieved tensions between the farm and
neighbors remain evidenced by sporadic
vandalism that still occurs but now when
the farm is open basketball players
visit to seek shade get water and use
the restroom suggesting the architecture
is eroding boundaries and facilitating
dialogue between the farm and the
community it seeks to serve this project
of course has a enormous team that I
mean it's a really really remarkable
collaborative effort and would not have
been possible without everyone's time
and and volunteerism
the Beardsley project asks us to think
of architecture as more than the
building and to consider how the
construct performs as part of the
metabolism of its extended environment
that's a good transition for talking
about a condition I call living
architecture which is the focus of my
current research work in this field
explores productive exchanges between
architecture and living agents this
framework positions architecture is a
living construct always situated within
a greater environment and where the
building itself is a hybrid of artifact
and animating agents rather than framing
the architectural object as singular
heroic and a static creation living
architecture is characterized by flux
the building itself and one's experience
of it continually change in ways the far
exceed what architects typically
consider I explore architectures role
within an active ecosystem of people
living organisms environmental phenomena
as well as in relation to infrastructure
alerts of water food energy
transportation and information these
agents animate the built project in ways
that are unpredictable surprising and
elusive some of the intellectual allies
in the field of living architecture
include Dave Adkisson
in his book sub nature Shaun lolis
practice weathers Francois Roche in many
projects donna haraway is a cyborg
manifesto kate wharf and david benjamin
i would position my own graduate thesis
work here to living architecture
includes many subfields and of those I'm
most interested in exploring food
networks soft boundaries expanded
milliard
biodiversity and cohabitation engaged
craft and the tactics of indeterminacy
my interest in food networks extends
into using architecture and its
byproducts such as waste water process
heat or solar exposure to cultivate and
distribute food and though I largely
spoke with the Beardsley project as a
design-build teaching and learning
experience I also see it as a living
construct that's true both in how the
farm produces food
and shares it with others but also in
how it built on existing relationships
between a nonprofit agency and the
thousands of people that are affected by
their labor
I've taught several upper-level design
studios exploring architectures capacity
to be the site and catalyst for urban
agricultural production understanding
farms and buildings as ecosystems of
nested loops imagining vertical farms as
public space in urban settings in
exploring hybrid civic programs and
these explorations predated but also
informed the Beardsley project I would
say living architecture sees the
architectural project as a hybrid built
artifact built artifacts that are
animated by dynamic agents including
plants animals weather and other
phenomena caring for the expanded miliar
takes the form of designing structures
for both human and non-human occupants
and the hopes of broadening biodiversity
rather than limiting it as is too often
the result of architectural action I ask
students to rethink the role of
enclosure and to explores the walls
capacity to selectively admit light
breeze view water and other
environmental agents the field of living
architecture also engages methods of
fabrication and material systems with
inherent instability or unpredictability
cladding materials that change with the
weather or degrade over time casting
concrete into unstable formwork or
engaging chance practices material
research based on indeterminacy and
chaos is the basis of several beginning
design studios I've taught and also
inform a book chapter I've written for
an upcoming edited volume on design
pedagogy students used full-scale
concrete maquettes
to study indeterminacy caused by systems
that they designed including the
continual degradation of plastic inserts
voids created by dissolving sugar cubes
and voids created by melting ice
enrolling chance practices or random
outcomes also has a rich history in
contemporary art and poses a fascinating
challenge to the nature of architectural
specification by exposing the limits of
a design teams control that's a preview
of the initial framework and the topic
of living architecture is the basis of
my ongoing research project as the James
Johnson and Dudley faculty scholar which
I hope will produce a symposium and
publication Architects are unusually
good at conveying confidence in
providing answers in solving problems
designers need confidence to act when
making any creative work and within the
discipline of architecture certainty is
valorized as a necessary condition the
prerequisite for designing in the built
environment I'm saying this is an
illusion we have positioned architecture
is a constant and bedrock letting
buildings become symbols of cultural
values that are assumed to endure many
forms of architectural work are
predicated on control and conformance to
anticipated outcomes yet through
strategic introduction of
unpredictability architecture can become
far more nimble adaptable and
interesting than false certitude allows
giving the increasing instability and
uncertainty of many aspects of life
political frameworks climate change
global economics the illusion of control
implied an architectural discourse and
practice is right for reevaluation I
will conduct further research and
scholarship exploring methods of
animating the design and fabrication
process to produce architectures that
are radically engaged with their
constituent and resultant atmospheres
this seeks to defy the architectural
project by examining its embeddedness
within complex systems
I see architecture as enrolling the
buildings method of production its value
to the people affected its potential as
habitat for non-human agents and its
capacity to contribute to networked
ecosystems both close and far away this
ongoing project is a strategic pivot
linking ideas found in the Beardsley
farm project into further research
exploring everyday critical practice
through living architecture work that
could significantly inform how educators
practice
and the public think about architecture
in addition to the specific examples of
engaged craft shared previously I
explore engaged craft at the scale of
product design through my industrial
design practice acre works well I won't
go into much detail tonight our works
specialize in making tools for hand
crafts such as knitting and spinning we
also make musical instruments and
occasionally we make toys we use
computational design and fabrication to
produce heirloom quality beautiful
functional objects careful consideration
of fabrication processes reinforce an
embodied understanding of craft and
supports the architects role as
designing for specific cultural needs
while re-examining ideas we may
otherwise take for granted the last set
of ideas I want to share tonight is
about my teaching the field of
architecture is complex and continually
changing architecture sits between the
sciences and the humanities we care for
craft engineering construction
techniques material behavior as well as
art cultural studies ethics and a
psychology of space we teach students
the fundamentals of how and why one
builds within our obligation to protect
health welfare and safety but beyond
that I argue that the main instructional
responsibility is to produce agents who
care about pushing the field of
architecture further and who will
discover new ways of practicing
architecture tomorrow's architects will
determine how the field of architecture
evolved
as a teacher I feel we should not expect
students to solve problems so much as we
should help them explore problematic
conditions and use their insights to
generate innovative design and
architectural thought I approach this in
my teaching by exposing students to many
ideas and approaches counting on their
curiosity to drive them further
I think architectural teaching and
architectural practice should be more
critical and expansive seeking to open
up more questions than are answered the
goal of architectural education should
be to cultivate designers who when ready
will act critically and whatever they do
I reflect on my teaching specifically
and on design pedagogy broadly using
conferences and journals as
opportunities to expand themes from
teaching into forms of scholarship I
teach design studio in both the
undergrad and graduate architecture
programs I've taught in all in all
levels actually though in recent years I
primarily taught beginnings and endings
as I talk right now I will show some
work from the first-year undergraduates
to give a sense of the range of work and
the kind of experimentation I accessed I
asked them to conduct its model heavy
the direct haptic experience of making
physical artifacts to explore an idea
allow students to make discoveries that
far surpassed their intentions for the
study we also draw quite a lot
sketching diagrams digitally drafting
and modeling and developing
representations of the design proposal
my approach to criticality is very
similar whether teaching beginning
students or students or soon-to-be
graduating students which is that I
welcome and foster their curiosity about
issues that they genuinely care about
I've directed the fifth year
self-directed project for the past few
years letting me strategically apply my
expertise and critical practice to help
students develop their own thesis work I
push for each thesis to be thoughtful to
thoughtfully explore complex issues that
are truly significant to each students
and also to society at large hmm I frame
the thesis experience as research
through design making and it requires an
argument or position from each student
students should support that argument by
finding intellectual allies whether
through literature review or analyzing
precedents the thesis must must be
situated each student should produce
spatial and material responses to test
their position the thesis must be
rigorous and its thinking and making
culminating in a final exhibit of
exceptional representations that are as
complex and rich as the issues being
examined and I have been really
fortunate to co-teach thesis with
professor Marshall Prado last spring and
informally with Julie Beckman last fall
many other faculty contribute to this
effort throughout design reviews and
such so I want to represent I provide a
certain amount of leadership but I think
the students are operating on a set of
ideas they've been working on and
learning on four for ten semesters I
will be really brief talking about a few
examples here but superb and Ari's
thesis titled identity crisis explores
architecture as a political tool
her project responds to issues of
identity as formed by borders conflict
and displacement along multiple sites in
the Pakistan India border the project
operates at the scale of infrastructure
landscape and network systems the
project reimagines the territory defined
by the border zone pushing and pulling
it animating it with a series of
productive landscapes transportation
systems and strategically developed
buildings
Oh Bree Andrews thesis titled time
operated space explores architectures
relationship to knowledge in light of
contemporary information flows inherent
to the catalog and database the project
imagines the library s city and embraces
themes of fluidity flux memory and
exchange our methodology included
building artifacts that retain a memory
of how they were made especially working
with phase change materials Sam sells
thesis titled pollinating architecture
explores architecture capacity to build
worlds based on narrative in the lineage
of John Hajduk and Timescape lab and the
work is part science fiction part love
story part speculative architecture her
project embraces themes of flux
architecture landscape entanglement
object-oriented relationships and the
power of drawing Maggie houses project a
race of agencies explores informal
architecture in draw spaces of Knoxville
as a tool for building agency within
larger systems of control the project
questions politics erasure capitalism in
excess and it relies on tactics of the
parasite camouflage propaganda and
performative domesticity
Olivia post ins veces titled grits or in
praise of palimpsest explores
architecture and preservation looking at
architecture as a centuries-long
project and it proposes a metabolism for
transferring material and labor across
sites of everyday programs and places
Kyle Johannes project recalculating
conceives of the city as a living
metabolism of fulfilment exploring
emerging technologies of micro mobility
instant delivery and home sharing Adam
Smith's project called borderlands
explores architecture as a political
tool situating architectural
interventions to occupy subvert or
camouflage events of everyday life along
the us-mexico border these speculations
and inhabit the border territories of
airspace River and shadow
Briona Reiner's thesis explores
architectures capacity to promote social
justice and agency through tactics of
representation and reappropriation
acting against historically exclusionary
policies limiting ownership and
membership and finally James Halliwell's
thesis titled procedural everything was
incredibly expansive and involved
producing hundreds of artifacts his work
explores conditions of hybridity and
indeterminacy using procedural
generation in many forms to challenge
the entangled relationships of
architecture and landscape and of nature
and culture
I think these projects offer many
examples of how you can take a concern
for an issue study it diligently using
the tools and mindset of an architect
though these happen to be wildly
speculative projects each explores a
contemporary idea grounded in a
situation that has scale materiality a
connection to place and they are each
animated by the circumstances of their
use so the talk tonight is focused on
three main themes all of which are
explorations on the potential for an
everyday critical practice this was
explored through a complex design-build
effort at Beardsley its explored a
little more theoretically through the
ideas of living architecture and it
explored through my teaching approach by
challenging the norms of conventional
practice and the politics that support
it my work seeks to help others consider
architecture as something of value for
everyone and it seeks to accomplish this
in large part by encouraging students to
insist on a critical agenda embedded in
their work at all scales
thank you so much we have a bit of time
for questions
so you'll be official Jennifer I'm
curious to know where the interest in
and like theme of food came from in your
work and especially working with like
less fortunate
portions of the person of the I think
there's emerged in two separate moments
my graduate thesis was actually about
food and thinking about food in the city
and and how it systems of production and
where it comes from and that kind of
like recognition that I'm sure we've all
had is like oh my gosh if California
leaves we're in trouble right that so
much food is produced actually far far
away and so I think to me food is one of
those kind of amazing cultural subjects
that draws together ritual environment
place landscape architecture you know it
kind of captures all of those beams
Beardsley happens to also just be a kind
of fascinating you know subject I mean I
think to me the kind of thinking about
the ways who does architecture serve
right like you know who is architecture
for and the broad idea that architecture
is a representation of our values and so
if it is not available to a large group
of people what does that what does that
say right so I think that those two
things they're kind of like different
strands that have gotten to overlap at
certain moments
yeah it's kind of both right it's trying
to be looking for the potential to act
critically which can can take any
project wherever it is like trying to
kind of meet a project on whatever terms
are there which I think can be like
trying to valorize everyday rituals in
certain ways but I think also really
pushing for how to kind of make that
spectacular you know to the extent that
one can so so yeah I mean I think those
are it's kind of both ends of a spectrum
perhaps but I think that that's
intentional like trying to have both of
those threads presence
um I think I mean I most specifically
thought of it relative to all of that
kind of non-human agents and what they
use and how they are kind of how urban
environments are or any kind of active
architecture is going to affect an
ecology whether we thought of it or or
didn't
so habitats I think I'm often thinking
of that from a kind of nonhuman
standpoint but that might also be that I
you know have not done much residential
thinking lately I mean I think it could
be interesting to kind of apply that
also in a more human focused level
Jennifer is really interesting to see
the thesis work and the relevancy of the
social and political topics are explored
do you find that something that the
students just naturally kind of are
going towards or is that a topic a
conversation that you engage with at the
beginning of every project I've shown
the set of issues are coming from the
students and a kind of optimism and yet
concern for wicked problems great social
problems that you know like a lot of
dealing with you know racism and climate
change and you know the end of the world
and such and which is like but but but
approaching it in a very kind of
optimistic sort of way
so I I'm not sure what that accounts for
I think that might be kind of a moment
that we're in right now that the
students are thinking in such broad
terms and feel empowered to try to use
architecture to address
yeah
take Jennifer that was really great I
just want to echo Avigail earlier just
say thanks for being such a great
colleague everyone knows you to be just
a really critically engaged person and a
thoughtful person
I just wanted to take a take stock of
the whole thing and say that there I
think there's you're posing a linkage
let's say between critical criticality
and indeterminacy maybe so I think that
somehow embedded in your disposition as
a person like just as okay I don't think
there's a simple answer to this thing
and yet I know there's a critical answer
to this thing so I just wonder like if
you could I don't know hope this is not
too difficult but if you could reflect
on I don't know the discipline or the
school at large and just say you know
what you hope students are up to these
days yeah I mean I I'm optimistic I
think that I mean part of it is born
part of my interest in criticality is
born out of perhaps frustration with
practice or feeling like feeling genuine
concern for our students and hoping that
they don't get lost right that that when
they when they graduate in some ways
they will be perhaps they might it's
easy to fear that they would be
intellectually overqualified for the
work that might be ready to receive them
but that I think that because there are
so many different ways one can practice
and so many ways to be nimble and to
kind of use your skills to turn the
system upside down and to reform how
practice can be that there will be more
and more opportunities for critical work
to exist and to be to be precedents so
that people are more familiar with it
and say oh we could do this in a
different way and so like I think the
students energy and optimism is really
exciting and linking that with the tools
that they have access to now
it's pretty amazing time to be thinking
about architecture at lots of different
levels Jennifer thank you very much
again we'll let you rest now
