I believe, Architecture School is the best place to learn how to think about architecture, rather than to learning how to build architecture. The process of building buildings is much better taught in the ‘real’ world, but learning how to think, how to develop an opinion and how to research evidence for you position is best learned and taught in the inspiring environment of school.
that said, thinking has a lot to do with making and for most of us, the genius idea does not emerge out of hours, days or weeks of pondering over one single sketch, but is developed through a rigorous process of making and re-making, building models that collapse, drawing drawings that make no sense at the beginning and exposing those artifacts to our peers and their opinion.

The images show three projects, all of which were done once I left school, but continue this process of research and thinking through making. Research for me, allows me to take ownership of my projects in the most literal sense. Research allows me to create my own brief, my own client.

January 16, 2010 – April 11, 2010

Deane Residence, Great Neck, Waterfront façade. 1970-74.
Photograph.
Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC_DIG-ppmsca-22007.

Arcadia/Suburbia: Architecture on Long Island, 1930 – 2010 brings to light the impressive architectural history of Long Island over the past 80 years and underscores the role that Long Island has played in the broader development of Modernism and Post-Modernism in the US. This exhibition charts the region’s development from a largely agrarian society with a significant role as a leisure destination to a “mature” suburban culture through an examination of residential architecture ranging from the experimental and economic prototypes of the 1930s and 1940s to highly refined expressions of the Modernist esthetic in the 1950s and 1960s, ending with the more diverse buildings that were designed and built as the Modernist movement fractured in the subsequent decades. The architects included form a pantheon of Modernism and Post-Modernism: Albert Frey and A. Lawrence Kocher, Frank Lloyd Wright, Percival Goodman, Wallace Harrison, Edward Durrell Stone, Marcel Breuer, Jose Lluis Sert, Philip Johnson, John Hejduk, Paul Rudolph, Charles Moore, Robert Venturi, and Res4, among others.

This exhibition is curated by architectural historian Dr. Erik Neil and is supported with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), a state agency. A major publication that includes essays relating to Modernism in both architecture and the fine arts, the latter the subject of the Heckscher’s preceding show, Long Island Moderns: Artists on the North Shore from Edward Steichen to Cindy Sherman, accompanies the exhibition. The Long Island Moderns: Art and Architecture on the North Shore and Beyond catalogue is available for purchase – Members $25, Non-Members $30. Visit the Museum or call 631.351.3250 for your copy.

Today, physical inactivity and unhealthy diet are second only to tobacco as the main causes of premature death in the United States. A growing body of research suggests that evidence-based architectural and urban design strategies can increase regular physical activity and healthy eating. The Active Design Guidelines provide architects and urban designers with a manual of strategies for creating healthier buildings, streets, and urban spaces, based on the latest academic research and best practices in the field.

The Guidelines include:
Urban design strategies for creating neighborhoods, streets, and outdoor spaces that encourage walking, bicycling, and active transportation and recreation.
Building design strategies for promoting active living where we work and live—for example, through the placement and design of stairs, elevators, and indoor and outdoor spaces.
Discussion of Synergies between active design and sustainable design initiatives such as LEED and PlaNYC.

RiveraThesisBoard

This research by Julia Molloy and Taka Surei is “subjective, composed from informal interviews, photographs, sketches and observations. The document is not An unbiased fact, but a spatialized map of the objects stored in our collective memory. This research is not a manifesto, but Rather an inquisition to further question the process of documentation. Architects regard a document as a conclusive fact, based on intensive research. However, a document is a result of a more intimate exchange between the observer and the observed.

Through the insertion of the observer into the document, the document can potentially become a heightened record. As research-tourists, our travel to the burmese refugee camp, mae la, magnifies the role of documenting through the documentation Of the observer. Since 1984, there have been 460,000 people seeking refuge in Thailand from Myanmar. Among them, over a 150,000 karen ethnic minority Citizens of Myanmar, under siege from myanmar’s junta military (spda), have resettled within 8 refugee camps scattered Along the Thailand/Burma border. The thai government provides the land for the refugee camps, but the majority of the economic And material resources are delivered from foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations. Beginning in 1999 The united nations instituted a resettlement program hosted by 11 countries including U.S., Canada, australia. The complex network Of exchange between cultures and objects, power and money, and land and occupation is a difficult story to tell Through traditional forms of media. This maps attempts to represent the situation in a multivalent manner; to illustrate the international Agency and collaboration that is required to establish and sustain a temporary occupation of refuge.”

document-refuge is currently exhibit at Columbia University in Avery at the 100 level.

A pattern language by Christopher Alexander

An important aspect of design patterns is to identify and document the key ideas that make a good system different from a poor system (which may be a house, a computer program or an object of daily use), and to assist in the design of future systems. The idea expressed in a pattern should be general enough to be applied in very different systems within its context, but still specific enough to give constructive guidance.

The range of situations in which the problems and solutions addressed in a pattern apply is called its context. An important part in each pattern is to describe this context. Examples can further illustrate how the pattern applies to very different situation.

For instance, Alexander’s pattern “A PLACE TO WAIT” addresses bus stops in the same way as waiting rooms in a surgery, while still proposing helpful and constructive solutions. The “Gang-of-Four” book by Gamma et al. proposes solutions that are independent of the programming language, and the program’s application domain.

Still, the problems and solutions described in a pattern can vary in their level of abstraction and generality on the one side, and specificity on the other side. In the end this depends on the author’s preferences. However, even a very abstract pattern will usually contain examples that are, by nature, absolutely concrete and specific.

Patterns can also vary in how far they are proven in the real world. Alexander gives each pattern a rating by zero, one or two stars, indicating how well they are proven in real-world examples. It is generally claimed that all patterns need at least some existing real-world examples. It is, however, conceivable to document yet unimplemented ideas in a pattern-like format.

The patterns in Alexander’s book also vary in their level of scale – some describing how to build a town or neighbourhood, others dealing with individual buildings and the interior of rooms. Alexander sees the low-scale artifacts as constructive elements of the large-scale world, so they can be connected to a hierarchic network.