METROPOLIS MAGAZINE

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Urbanism from Within receives special mention in Metropolis Magazine!

Urbanism from Within, a joint project lead by CCAs Urban Works Agency in collaboration with the San Francisco Planning Department and SPUR receives a special mention in Metropolis Magazines review of the Designing Affordability Exhibition, currently on display at the Center for Architecture in New York.

“But the most innovative project is Urbanism from Within, by California College of the Arts, which studies a number of strategies for reformatting the interiors of existing Victorian houses in San Francisco to create in-law units. Some of these include retrofitting garages to create high-ceilinged ground-floor apartments, maximizing the usage of gable spaces, and adding new street access to upper stories. These schemes are effective in spite of San Franciscos almost impossibly restrictive zoning and development regulations. Working from the inside out seems like one of the most commonsense and least disruptive approaches for achieving a greater number of affordable housing units without destroying and replacing swatches of a well-loved urban fabric, particularly in dense neighborhoods. A.J.P. Artemel

Read the whole article here

Designing Affordability will be on display until January 2016

DESIGNING AFFORDABILITY

Urbanism from Within, a design-research project lead by the Urban Works Agency, will be on display at the Center for Architecture in New York from October 1, 2015 – January 16, 2016. Selected as part of the Designing Affordability Exhibition curated by Marc Norman, the project examines a diffused form of interiors as an alternative model for growth in San Francisco. Work featured developed from Interior Urbanism, a seminar conducted by Neeraj Bhatia in the Fall of 2014, and includes projects by students: Christopher Baile, Jared Clifton, Tyler Jones-Powell, Bianca Koch, Bella Mang, and Blake Stevenson.

Designing Affordability: Quicker, Smarter, More Efficient Housing Now presents 23 case studies that address ways of reducing costs without compromising design quality. Affordable housing typically refers to policy initiatives that ensure that residents at a certain income can qualify for housing units, but affordability is a broader concept. The exhibition examines how architects, engineers, planners, policy makers, tenants, and homeowners are crafting innovative ways to reduce the cost of housing by rethinking how we build, maintain, and occupy structures.
The strategies include reimagining public housing, leveraging land, building simply, deploying technology, rethinking home life, constructing modularly, and building incrementally.

Details:
Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place, NY, NY 10012
October 1, 2015a��January 16, 2016
More info: http://cfa.aiany.org/index.php?section=upcoming&expid=304

BHATIA JOINS CADSF BOARD

Neeraj Bhatia joins the Board of Directors for the Center for Architecture + Design, SF.

The Center for Architecture + Design enhances public appreciation for architecture and design, both locally and internationally, through exhibitions, lectures, tours, films, and other programs that reveal the richness of the design arts. Founded in 2005, the Center for Architecture + Design is a collaborative environment where design organizations and affiliates share not only space, but ideas.

For more information, visit: http://www.cadsf.org

URBANISM FROM WITHIN

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URBANISM FROM WITHIN

In recent years, San Francisco has become emblematic of the difficulties of managing rapid urban growth in a culture entrenched in NIMBYism. The influx of jobs, primarily in the tech sector, and associated wealth from these industries, has caused rents and housing prices to soar to the highest in the country, widespread gentrification, and socio-economic homogenization as the lower and middle class continue to flee the city. One of the challenges in providing new density to the city is that the image of the city, which is associated with its civic identity and tourism industry, is closely linked to a romantic vision of Victorian housing. One of the inadvertent outcomes of the housing crisis is the widespread creation of secondary (in-law) units smaller units embedded within or located upon ones property. Currently, the city estimates that over 50,000 illegal secondary units exist within the interior; hidden in garages, attics, or the rear of homes. Because of their illegal status, these units are not regulated to comply with building, health, or fire codes. Recently, in March 2014, The Planning Commission of San Francisco gave unanimous support to legislation that would allow property owners in the Castro District to legally build secondary units. Viewed as a pilot program, the legalization of secondary units is a large part of the puzzle to address the current housing shortage in the city in a diffused manner. Operating in an anonymous and subversive manner, the secondary unit has the potential to create a new paradigm for density and affordability in cities.

The legitimization of secondary units within the interior of the domestic fabric will require micro-transformations to the architecture of the city small artifacts that mediate from the interior to the urban environment. As the domestic fabric continues to re-organize and parse its interior, its aim is to increase the number of housing units, thereby decreasing the cost of housing and ultimately allow for larger amounts of socio-economic diversity. This design-research exhibition explores the typology of the secondary unit and its interaction with the larger systems of a city to test how a diffused form of individual interiors creates new connections, power structures, cross-pollinization of public and private realms, and formal architectural mutations, in an attempt to understand the feedback systems between the individual unit of the interior and the collective framework of the city in essence, how the interior can reformat urbanism from within.

Co-presented by California College of the Arts, The Urban Works Agency, the San Francisco Planning Department and OpenScope Studio

Opening Party: February 20th, 2015
Diffuse Density: Making Housing Affordable Symposium: March 12th, 2015
Exhibition: February 20th May 1st, 2015

Location
SPUR
654 Mission Street,
San Francisco, CA
94105-4015

More Information:
The Urban Works Agency
SPUR

Team

Organizer and Research Lead:
California College of the Arts The Urban Works Agency
Neeraj Bhatia & Christopher Roach

Practice and Code Lead:
OpenScope Studio
Principals Ian Dunn and Mark Hogan

Policy and Planning Lead:
San Francisco Planning Department
Kearstin Dischinger
Kimia Haddadan

Exhibition Coordination and Lead:
SPUR
Noah Christman

Exhibition Curator:
Neeraj Bhatia

Exhibition Catalogue:
Neeraj Bhatia, Editor
Shawn Komlos, Assistant Editor and Graphic Design
Jeffrey Maeshiro, Graphic Design
Graphic Assistance: Jared Clifton, Bella Mang, Kelvin Thengono, Osma Dossani

Exhibition Design and Fabrication:
Project Leads: Neeraj Bhatia, Christopher Roach, Shawn Komlos, Blake Stevenson, Tyler Jones-Powell
Research Drawings: Jeffrey Maeshiro, Cesar Lopez, Bella Mang
Fabrication: Blake Stevenson, Tyler Jones-Powell, Marci Ann

Institutional Framework:
California College of the Arts
Course: Interior Urbanism, Fall 2014
Instructor: Neeraj Bhatia
Critic: Christopher Roach

Student Research / Design Team:
Christopher Baile, Evan Bowman, Jared Clifton, Lisette Devore, Jaiyu Fu, Tyler Jones-Powell, Enrique Justicia, Bianca Koch, Bella Mang, Ryan Montgomery, Adithi Satish,
Blake Stevenson, Kelvin Thengono

Exhibition Install Team:
Noah Christman, Tori Winters, Erin McAuliff

Acknowledgements:
Jeremy Bamberger, Seth Boor, Amy Campos, Karen Chapple, Melanie Corn, Nataly Gattegno, Jonathan Massey, Randolph Ruiz, Jen Sikora, Ronald Tom, Scott Wiener, Cindy Wu

Supported by:
San Francisco Planning Department
SPUR
The Urban Works Agency
California College of the Arts, Curriculum Development Grant

NEERAJ BHATIA LECTURE 09/15/2014

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Event: Neeraj Bhatia Lecture 09/15/2014
Date: Monday, September 15, 7:00 - 9:00 pm at Timken Lecture Hall, San Francisco Campus
Free and open to the public
Info: 415.703.9562 or architecture@cca.edu

Neeraj Bhatia is an architect and urban designer from Toronto. His work resides at the intersection of politics, infrastructure, and urbanism. Bhatia is a codirector of InfraNet Lab, a nonprofit research collective probing the spatial byproducts of contemporary resource logistics, and the founder of The Open Workshop, a design office examining the project of plurality. Further, he is the research director of The Petropolis of Tomorrow, which explores the relationship between urbanism and resource extraction. He has worked for Eisenman Architects, Coop Himmelblau, Bruce Mau Design, OMA, Lateral Office, and ORG. Bhatia has previously taught at Cornell University, Rice University, The University of Toronto, The University of Waterloo, and Ohio State University. His research has been published in Volume/Archis, Thresholds, Footprint, Domus, Onsite Review, Field Journal, and Yale Perspecta. He is coeditor of The Petropolis of Tomorrow (with Mary Casper, Actar, 2013); Bracket [Goes Soft] (with Lola Sheppard, Actar, 2013);Arium: Weather + Architecture (with JA?rgen Mayer H., Hatje Cantz Publishing, 2009); and coauthor of Pamphlet Architecture 30: Coupling — Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism (with InfraNet Lab, Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). Bhatia has received Graham Foundation grants, The Lawrence B. Anderson Award, Shell Center for Sustainability Grant, Odebrecht first-prize award for sustainability, ACSA Faculty Design Award, and the Thesis Prize (MIT, 2007; University of Waterloo, 2005). Bhatia received his master’s degree in architecture and urban design from MIT, where he was studying on a Fulbright Fellowship. Prior to that, he attended the University of Waterloo, where he earned his bachelor of environmental studies and his bachelor of architecture. He is an NCARB-registered licensed architect and is a CCA Architecture faculty member.

Generous support for CCA public programs in San Francisco has been provided by Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.

The 2014-15 Architecture Lecture Series is funded by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP; Jensen Architects; Kava Massih Architects; Levy Design Partners, Inc.; Pfau Long Architecture; BraytonHughes Design Studios; Jim Jennings Architecture; Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects; Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects Inc.; Anderson Anderson Architecture; Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture; ARCH Drafting Supply; Blasen Landscape Architecture; Gregory Andreas & Judith Rosenberg; TANNERHECHT Architecture; Tucker and Marks, Inc.; the Consulate General of Mexico in San Francisco; and Aeromexico.

AIA SF RESIDENTIAL DESIGN REVIEW WORKING GROUP

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We are happy to announce that Neal J. Z. Schwartz has been named chair of the AIA SF Residential Design Review Working Group.

The Board of Directors has approved the establishment of a Working Group to facilitate discussions with the San Francisco Planning Department to promote changes in the current policies and procedures related to their review of permits for residential renovation and additions. We hope to work with the Planning Department to streamline procedures and clarify design guidelines. Please contact Neal Schwartz for further information.

THE URBANIST

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THE URBANIST
URBANISM FROM WITHIN FEATURED IN THE URBANIST, ISSUE 541

The Urban Works Agencys exhibition Urbanism from Within is featured on the cover and within the Issue 541 of The Urbanist.
The issue explores the potential of Accessory Dwelling Units as a new form of adding density to the city.
For more information, click here.

ILOUNGE PROJECT

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Project: iLOUNGEinstant/ interim/ interactive
Designers: Mona El Khafif (CCA URBANlab): California College of the Arts, San Francisco & Marcella Del Signore (X-Topia): Tulane School of Architecture, New Orleans
Fabrication Team: Matthew DeCotiis, Amir Afifi, Kevin Taylor, Cesar Lopez, Zachary Moore, Jian Leong, Mona El Khafif, Marcella Del Signore;Media Team and Communication: David Gastaneta, Mark Campos, Cesar Lopez, Anesta Iwan, Mona El Khafif, Marcella Del Signore; Design Research Team: Christopher Cox, Noah Conlay, Matthew DeCotiis, Jill Godfrey, Daniel Kautz, Michael Keller, Will Rosenthal, David Merlin, Mona El Khafif, Marcella Del Signore;
Artists in Residence ZERO1: David Gastaneta, Pia Jacqlyn, Cesar Lopez, Kevin Taylor, Mona El Khafif, Marcella Del Signore;Visiting Media
Artists ZERO1: Mark Campos, David Gastaneta;

Commissioned by ZERO1 and Northern Spark, with additional support from: Tulane School of Architecture Deans Funds for Excellence, Matarozzi & Pelsinger, Emerging Artist Network ZERO1, and Regione Umbria.

Public social space is all around us and permanently changing. iLOUNGE a design built intervention in public space for Northern Spark in Minneapolis and for the ZERO1 San Jose Biennial in 2012 offers an instant social stage to create a temporary community for a minute, an hour or an evening. iLOUNGE operates as a social catalyst for place-making by creating new connections with the existing city while engaging information technology to augment or alter social interactions in public space.

As defined by spatial sociologist Martina Loew (Spacing, Raumsoziologie, 2001) the user is an active part of the spatial production. iLOUNGE has the ambition of being an urban space that interacts with its inhabitants: a space that adapts to the needs of the citizens but also a space that stimulates citizens to look, listen, exchange, reflect, and to relax. iLOUNGE is instant, interim and interactive and predominately refers to Ia am.

The design suggests a dynamic and adaptive carpet, a topography that embraces and stimulates exchange as well as interaction. The configuration is intended to change the speed and the direction of its inhabitants, to get them to interact, slow down, look in different directions, and generate informal interactions to promote different types of urban life. The architectural modules offer a surface that supports the occupation of the human body in multiple ways: lounging, standing, resting, socializing, exchanging, playing, observing, and being observed. These programs are supported by the application of different materials: fur, wood, and foam all monochromatic in order to clearly identify the interim implementation. The inhabitable sculpture motivates the creation of a temporary community in flux. Analog and Digitally mediated narratives that trigger interaction and are embedded in the spatial construct provide a new context for social and physical exchange; they create a new set of potential for the social and sensorial relations, as well as space atmospheres. iLOUNGE is a public furniture, but more so we consider it as living, behavioral matter. They encourage the creation of interim communities that coexist in the physical and digital space.

iLOUNGE performed in June 2012 in Minneapolis during Northern Spark and will be presented at the ZERO1 Biennial opening weekend from the 14th to the 16th of September. For this event iLOUNGE will operate as a public stage programmed with media art events that conceptualize the interactivity of iLOUNGE. Among those Fast Map_A Portable Digital Mapping Tool by Mark Campos (CCA BArch 2012) showing the fastest way to extract usable cartographic information from a permanently changing space in the city. And QRspace_A Real Time Interactive Environment by David Gastaneta (CCA BArch 2013) acting as a responsive virtual environment that allows visitors from the iLOUNGE to apply material surfaces to the topography of the public space via QRcode applications and activations. A third artist will be selected via an open call this current August.

ACSA DIVERSITY ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 2014-2015

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We are happy to announce that Neal J. Z. Schwartz has been awarded the 2014-2015 ACSA Diversity Achievement Award for his work in the Architecture Q-Arc Initiative at the California College of the Arts. This award recognizes the work of faculty, administrators, or students in creating effective methods and models to achieve greater diversity in curricula, school personnel, and student bodies, specifically to incorporate the participation and contributions of historically under-represented groups or contexts.

California College of the Arts (CCA) Q-Arc Initiative
Faculty Coordinator, Neal J. Z. Schwartz

Abstract:
The Architecture Q-Arc Initiative at CCA is part of a broader effort to expand diversity college-wide through the discussion of LGBTQ issues. The multi-pronged effort expanded on an ongoing collaboration between San Franciscoas Queer Cultural Center (QCC) and CCA to foster a series of Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts (QCCA) in the Bay Area. I initiated and led the architecture specific efforts including the development of a Masters level housing studio curriculum focusing on the needs of LGBTQ seniors, a public exhibition of the student work at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center entitled Alternative Futures, a lecture by Aaron Betsky revisiting his seminal book Queer Space after 20 years, and a screening and forum with the director of the documentary film The Grove, which dealt with the establishment and challenges for the future of the National AIDS Memorial in San Franciscoas Golden Gate Park.

At times in San Francisco LGBTQ issues can seem so ingrained in the fabric of the city that the need to call them out specifically can be questioned. Yet, taken together over the course of the school year, this multi-pronged initiative helped to change the culture of the institution by creating forums in which the issues of diversity for these historically under-represented groups could find voice. By addressing the issue through a variety of formats and activities, I attempted to provide multiple venues for engagement while being sensitive to the broad range of interests and comfort levels within our student audience. I was extremely cognizant that attempts to address issues of diversity within an architectural education can at times backfire with our students if the discussions seem forced, top-down, or perfunctory.

CARTOGRAPHY GEOMIXER

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Event:cARTography GeoMixer
Date:June 19 5:30 PM @ the California College of the Arts

What makes a map so universally interesting? Is there something hidden, something special, lurking behind those points and polygons? When does a map become art – and how does art influence cartography? We invite you to explore the various intersections between cartography and art at the GIS Education Center’s cARTography GeoMixer. Guest speakers include artists keen on maps and cartographers keen on aesthetics. There will be storytellers, D3 creators, artists and designers – mapmakers who explore the dynamic designs of maps which balance both utility and artistry. Each map/art piece and mapmaker/artist has a story to tell. Share in their stories, and add yours to the mix!

In addition to our special guests, you will have time to browse a map & art gallery and meet and mingle with representatives of Bay Area organizations, users groups and Meetups, all while enjoying a light dinner and beverages.

GeoMixers are a production of the non-profit GIS Education Center. The cARTography GeoMixer is hosted by the Urban Works Agency of California College of the Arts and is sponsored in part by GrowShapes LLC, an expert in emerging 3D printing and scanning technologies. Sustenance by Guerrilla Catering & Barbary Coast Beverage Catering.

Meet the GISEC’s special guests who will be presenting or have their art exhibited at the cARTography GeoMixer on 6/19/2014 Hope to see you then….

Ruth Askevold: Finding clues on the map: stories about forgotten landscapes.

Ruth skevold is a Senior Project Manager at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, where she manages the Resilient Landscapes Program. She is experienced in using historical maps and photographs to assist in visualizing the past, and currently directs and designs Resilient Landscapes publications and educational material at SFEI. In 2013, she collaborated with the Oakland Museum of California in a major exhibition about the Bay. She received her master’s degree from San Francisco State University in Geography and Human Environmental Studies, where she specialized in geographic information systems and historical geography. She has over twenty years of experience in geographic information systems, remote sensing, and cartography.

Chris Henrick: The narrative capabilities of web and experimental cartography.

Chris Henrick currently lives in Brooklyn, NY and is a graduate student pursuing an MFA in Design and Technology at Parsons, The New School For Design in New York City. Recently he began assisting CartoDB with improving their open-source web-mapping and GIS cloud based platform. Prior to attending Parsons he worked as a Cartographer and GIS specialist at Avalon Travel Publishing in Berkeley, CA and as a GIS intern at GreenInfo Network in San Francisco, CA. Additionally Chris has performed consultant work for the Oakland Museum of California, as well as for independent and self-published authors. His undergraduate degree is in Geography and Urban Studies, from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. At Parsons Chris is broadening his technical skills in web-development and web-design with a focus on user experience and education relating to open-source web-mapping. Chris also helps organize and facilitate Maptime NYC, a local chapter of a nation wide group that is dedicated to educating non-experts about GIS, cartography and interactive web-mapping.

Olivia Jackson: Maps that move.

Olivia Jackson is an artist and programmer based out of Oakland, CA. She has created interactive maps for the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, Oakland Museum of California, and Stanford’s Spatial History Lab. She graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in Product Design and a minor in Computer Science.

Darin Jensen, Introduction

Darin Jensen is the staff cartographer and cartography and GIS instructor in the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley. Jensen’s cartographic practice and pedagogy is rooted in the concept of the map as a narrative device; fusing traditional cartography, infographics, poster art, and journalistic text blocking, every map tells a story. He employs methods of experiential learning and engaged scholarship to guide his students toward insightful and salient representations of place. Mission Possible: A Neighborhood Atlas exemplifies these ideas (missionpossiblesf.org). He is currently working with students to map a variety of cultural, environmental, and temporal aspects of International Boulevard in Oakland. He has experimented with crowd sourcing data and maps, and crowd funding for publishing with his latest work, Food: An Atlas (guerrillacartography.net).

Scott Murray: What Happens When Maps Become Software.

Scott Murray is a code artist who writes software to create data visualizations and other interactive phenomena. His work incorporates elements of interaction design, systems design, and generative art. Scott is an Assistant Professor of Design at the University of San Francisco, a contributor to Processing, and author of Interactive Data Visualization for the Web: An Introduction to Designing with D3.Scott earned an A.B. from Vassar College and an M.F.A. from the Dynamic Media Institute at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His work can be seen at alignedleft.com.

Lordy Rodriguez: Maps as Muse.

Lordy Rodriguez was born in 1976 in the Philippines, raised in Louisiana and Texas, and currently lives in Hayward, CA. He obtained his B.F.A. degree in 1999 from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and his MFA degree from Stanford University in 2008. For almost two decades he has been working on a series of hand-made ink drawings that uses cartography as a major point of appropriation to examine the structure of visual languages in relation to culture, history, and identity. His recent exhibitions include Code Switcha, Hosfelt gallery San Francisco, CA (2013), “The Map is Not the Territory”, Hosfelt gallery New York, New York (2011), Surface Depths, Nevada Art Museum (2009), States of America, Austin Museum of Art (2009), Optimism in the Age of Global War, 10th Annual Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey, (2007), The California Bienniala, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California (2006), Dessins et des autres, Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris, France (2004).

Urban Works Agency – Neeraj Bhatia & Christopher Roach: Creating design-agency.

Neeraj Bhatia is an Urban Designer and Licensed Architect whose work resides at the intersection of politics, infrastructure and urbanism. He is a co-director of the non-profit research collective, InfraNet Lab, founder of the design practice, The Open Workshop, and Assistant Professor of Architecture at The California College of the Arts where he is co-coordinator of the The Urban Works Agency. Prior to joining CCA he was a visiting professor at Cornell University, Wortham Fellow at Rice University as well as a lecturer at The University of Toronto and University of Waterloo. He is co-editor of The Petropolis ofTomorrow, Bracket [Goes Soft], Arium: Weather + Architecture and co-author of Pamphlet Architecture 30: Coupling – Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism

Christopher A. Roach is a San Francisco based architect and urbanist with over 15 years of experience in the profession and a deep commitment to both the craft and the intellectual ambition of architecture. He is founder and principal of Studio VARA, a San Francisco-based practice working at the intersection of architecture and urbanism, and has engaged with a wide range of projects types, from custom residences and affordable housing to commercial offices and academic institutions. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture with Honors from the University of Texas at Austin, and Master of Architecture in Urban Design with distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Christopher received several awards for his work at Harvard, including the Urban Design Thesis Prize and the Gerald M. McCue Medal. In addition to his forthcoming bookEdutopias: The Utopian Geography of Education, Christopher co-authored The Networked Practice with Jarrad Morgan and RioOlympics with Victor Mu oz Sanz, and has written for several publications including On Site and the ASLA blog Dirt. He is a long-time member of SPUR and an adjunct professor of architecture at CCA, where he teaches studios and seminars in the MArch and BArch programs. Christopher is co-coordinator of the URBANlab with Neeraj Bhatia.

Mark M. Garrett, Featured Artist

The scope of my work has morphed over a period of some 30 years from drawing to painting, from collage to assemblage and back again. I draw inspiration from a variety of sources that seem to find me more than I seek them out. In early 2011 I began to fold paper and ‘draw’ with scissors… particularly maps from Atlas’ culled from the flea market and garage sales. I incorporate watercolor as a extension of the color palette printed on the maps. More recently I’ve begun using similar cutting techniques, but with illustrated anatomy texts from the 1950’s. I’m also intrigued by the variability of water and mirrored surfaces as a metaphorical and literal tool for reflection in both my drawings and assembled constructions. I completed a BFA in 1985 @ Memphis Academy of Art, & have been making work progressively over the decades. I’ve intensified this journey in the last five years.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Urban Works Agency is an advanced research lab at the California College of the Arts that focuses on contemporary issues at the intersection of urbanism, landscape, and architecture. Co-directed by Neeraj Bhatia and Christopher Roach, The Urban Works Agency is the successor to the URBANlab, which was initiated at CCA in 2008 by Mona El Khafif. Over five years of directing the lab, El Khafif oversaw urban studios and seminars. She initiated a series of research projects, panel discussions, and workshops dedicated to digital cartographies and launched the City 1:1 initiative. This series of design-build projects and exhibitions include 10×10 Cities in cooperation with the AIA, OPspace, iLounge, The 10 Mile Garden, and InstantPlayground. These projects had been presented at the San Jose Biennial and the Urban Prototyping event in San Francisco.

While it is a great loss to have El Khafif move on to another institution, we are excited to see the design-research projects she is undertaking at The University of Waterloos DATAlab, co-directed by Maya Przybylski and Mona El Khafif.

The Urban Works Agency builds on this legacy of work while re-centering focus to issues of design agency in urbanism. This shift aligns with a recently launched MAAD Urban Works Degree a Master of Advanced Architectural Design post-professional degree with a concentration in urbanism and landscape architecture at CCA. The Urban Works post-professional program draws upon the entrepreneurial spirit of San Francisco and the Bay Area to engage students as active agents in forming a product that has a direct or indirect effect on the city. 

Current projects by the Urban Works Agency include:

The Agent: A semi-annual interview series publication
The Petropolis of Tomorrow: A research platform examining the relationship between urbanism and resource extraction
Urbanism from Within: A study on strategies for diffuse density for domestic space.

For more information The Urban Works Agency: urbanworks.cca.edu

For more information on MAAD Urban Works: https://www.cca.edu/academics/graduate/maad/urbanism

For more information on DATAlab: http://datalab.uwaterloo.ca/

ENGAGING INDUSTRY

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Design Agency by Engaging Industry

Neeraj Bhatia will be chairing a panel on a Design Agency by Engaging Industry in the 103rd ACSA Annual Meeting, The Expanding Periphery and the Migrating Center hosted in Toronto.

About the session:

In recent years, it has been well documented that Architecture is migrating towards an expanded practice to address the complex systems ecological, economic, social, political, amongst others which architecture must exist within and ideally contribute towards. At the core of this expansion is the search for architecture relevance to critically, precisely, and innovatively engage issues outside of the building footprint, through that very same footprint. To move from institution to implementation, it has become increasingly necessary for the academy to collaborate with private industries that have specialized knowledge in these expanded fields. While working with consultants is not new to the discipline, as the range of consultants has increased, it has foregrounded the delicate balance required between specific knowledge within peripheral disciplines and general knowledge across peripheral disciplines for designers to have maximum agency to act on these systems.

This panel will be focused on what has been termed the structure of design-research a lateral expansion across the flange of the T, with focused depth, or the stem of the T, in areas where architecture has agency over its expanded field. Investigating how the generalist nature of the architectural discipline interfaces with specific private industries, the panel will examine how private industries can productively interface with our institutions and students. Papers in this session should examine the intellectual interface between industry and the institution and /or the balance between specific and general knowledge in the face of these challenges. How can private industry enter the institution without interfering with the academic integrity? How can the generalist nature of the discipline manifest specific proposals across the expanded field and the industries which will implement these proposals? How do institutions engage in real world conversations while also moving forward a disciplinary dialogue? What are the ideal proportions of the T to retain the core of the discipline and its tools, while acting across several divergent and often conflicting spheres? How does the institution foster a space for experimentation and exploration while also engaging in real world implementation? How do we effectively use research as a tool for agency in design?

As the discipline grapples with requiring a breadth and depth of knowledge, the T framework coupled with a relationship to private industry is critical to producing designers who are able to theoretically and conceptually frame their work while also understanding how to implement and interface with private industry. Introducing the framework to interact with private industries into the institution allows for an architectural education that can have direct agency over the expanded spheres with the disciplinary criticality that naturally transpires within the academy.

Speakers:

Matt Burgermaster, NJIT
Curt Gambetta, Princeton University
Rob Holmes, University of Florida
Karen Lewis, Ohio State University

 

Session Chair and Moderator:

Neeraj Bhatia, CCA

 

More info on the event:A�http://www.acsa-arch.org/programs-events/conferences/annual-meeting/103rd-annual-meeting

CITYLAB 2014

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Event: CityLab 2014
Date: September 28-30th, Los Angeles, CA

The Urban Works Agency participated at the CityLab 2014 conference in LA September 28-30th. Presented by the Aspen Institute, The Atlantic, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, the second annual CityLab: Global Solutions to Urban Challenges will bring together 300 global city leaders mayors, plus urban theorists, city planners, scholars, architects, and artists for a series of conversations about urban ideas that are shaping the world’s metro centers. The summit will further develop conversations started at last years CityLab on economic development; the environment and sustainability; cultural investment; big data; and the intersection of public safety, privacy, and technology; as well as smaller breakout sessions exploring topics like redevelopment, urban infrastructure, transportation, urban expansion, and the creation of the next tech city.

CITY AS A VISION

Event: The Petropolis of Tomorrow in “City as a Vision” exhibition @ the FRAC Centre
Date: September 19, 2014 February 22, 2015
Venue: FRAC Centre, 88 rue du Colombier (Entrd Rocheplatte) 45000 Orlans

A series of projects from The Petropolis of Tomorrow have been selected to be part of the exhibition City as a Visiona at the FRAC Centre.

After World War II, architects refused to follow the diktats of functionalist architecture and engaged in a radical redefinition of the city. By carrying out a precise analysis of the sociological mutations of their times, they created urban systems capable of globally organising and anticipating new Western lifestyles. Yona Friedman was one of the first to theorize the principles of spatial urban planning on a global scale. His studies on mobility, which he presented at the International Congress of Modern Architecture in 1956, considerably influenced the development of the futurologist movement, which spanned the 1960s and of which Michel Ragon became an advocate.Through publications in magazines and as a member of the GIAP (International Group for Prospective Architecture), he shared the many researches carried out on this form of prospective urban planning: the towns imagined were plastic or organic, aerial or underground, helicoidal or oblique, shaped as arches, hills, or bridges cities of the future that stretched out into gigantic above-ground infrastructures, thus encouraging a free and continuous circulation of people and information.

Through six thematic sections, along with a hundred scale models, drawings, and photomontages, the exhibition focuses on giving an overview of this search for new territories and urban configurations capable of welcoming future city-dwellers. It illustrates how, for this generation of visionaries, experimentation and patenting innovative technical solutions always came hand in hand with the assertion of imagery as a field for creation and anticipation.

The projects presented all answer the necessity to rethink new uses for cities, to generate resources and connect the micro- scale of the individual with the macro-scale of the expanding urban territory. What logics can architects develop to generate or regenerate the contemporary city between local and global scales?

Historical section Prospective section
Archigram- Peter cook, Architecture Principe (Claude Parent Paul Virilio) Archizoom, Chanc, Constant, Justus Dahinden, Domenig + Huth, GA?nther Feuerstein, Yona Friedman, Klaus Gartler & Helmut Rieder, Vittorio Giorgini, James Guitet, GA?nter GA?nschel, Bernhard Hafner, Angela Hareiter, Haus-RA?cker-Co, Pascal Husermann, Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Jozef Jankovic, Paul Maymont, MIASTO, Manfredi Nicoletti, Luigi Pellegrin, Charles P-Lahaille, Aldo Loris Rossi, Guy Rottier, Jacques Rougerie, Nicolas Schffer, Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz, Paolo Soleri,Alina Slesinska et Eustachy Kossakowski, Superstudio, Pierre Szkely, Iannis Xenakis, Znd up

Prospective Section
Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Asymptote Architecture (Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture), BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), BNKR Arquitectura, Delhi 2050, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, DOMAIN Office + KAAN Architecten, Dominique Perrault Architecture, Foster + Partners, Sou Fujimoto Architects, Future Cape Town, GRAU, Heatherwick Studio, MAD Architects, NL, OMA, Oppenheim Architecture + Design, The Petropolis of Tomorrow, SL Rasch GmbH Special & Lightweight Structures, SNA?HETTA, Urban Think Tank, WOHA

Info:
FRAC Centre
88 rue du Colombier (Entre bd Rocheplatte) 45000 Orlans
September 19, 2014 February 22, 2015
Wednesday to Sunday: 12pm-7pm Late night opening until 8pm every first Thursday of the month
Exceptional Closure: 25th December, 1st January and 1st May

Curators: Marie-Ange Brayer, Emmanuelle Chiapponne-Piriou, Aurlien Vernant

PECHAKUCHA VOL. 57

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Event: Neeraj Bhatia and Christopher Roach lecture @ PechaKucha San Francisco, vol. 57 – Architecture and the City
Date: Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Venue: San Francisco, CA – Public Works: 161 Erie St

Join the Architecture and the City festival and PechaKucha SF for a specially designed evening featuring architects, designers, planners and developers presenting work related to the 2014 Architecture and the City festival theme, Home: My San Francisco. PechaKucha 2020 is a presentation format that shows 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically as speakers provide commentary. For this event, speakers explore the Home: My San Franciscoa theme.

This event is a part of AIA San Francisco and the Center for Architecture + Design Architecture and the City festival, which celebrates architecture and design each September.

Learn more at www.archandcity.org.

TOWARDS A NEW INDUSTRY

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Event: Hydroscapes exhibited at Center for Architecture New York
Date: September 2 – September 14, 2014
Venue: The Center for Architecture New YorkUrban

Be sure to check out a Hydroscapesa by Blake Stevenson and Lujac Desautel at The Center for Architecture New York. Hydroscapes was produced in the Rewiring Territories studio conducted at the California College of the Arts with The Urban Works Agency. The exhibition is entitled, Towards a New Industry. For more information click here.

“Each year, AECOM holds an annual student competition, Urban SOS, which is open to currently enrolled students in design, architecture, landscape, planning, engineering, and environmental studies. Students are called to answer a specific brief around urban sites in distress.

This year’s theme focuses on the topic of New Industry, addressing issues that relate to and improve the relationship between industry and urban development worldwide.This year’s competition attracted student teams representing over 123 universities in over 40 countries. Three finalist teams have been selected after a series of internal judging sessions involving AECOM designers, planners, and engineers around the world.

The accompanying exhibition, Towards a New Industry, explores the ambient possibilities of new industries, tensegrity systems, and new media with three custom fabricated tenesegrity structures showcasing projects from AECOM 2014 student competition Urban SOS: Towards a New Industry.

Designed by AECOM and Atelier Architecture 64 with Columbia University GSAPP Laboratory for Applied Building Science and Mio Guberinic, the self-supporting nature of the tensegrity system introduced a unique design and fabrication challenge which required the use of complex computational analysis and fabrication technology. The formal quality of the structures along with an intelligent use of materials required the collaboration and expertise of various designers and disciplines this integrated design approach is one that defines the success and spirit of the Urban SOS program”

SAP / PROJECTS IN PROGRESS

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Event: South America Project / Projects in Progress at Buenos Aires Biennale, Exhibition and Symposium.
Date: September 25, 26, 27 2013, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenis Aires, Argentina
Venue: Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina

The South American Project (SAP) is a trans-continental applied research network that proactively endorses the role of design within rapidly transforming geographies of the South American Continent. SAP specifically focuses on how a spatial synthesis best afforded by design can provide alternative physical and experiential identities to the current spatial transformations reshaping the South American Hinterland. SAP brings together over 131 participants from the Americas and across the globe, who are leading 23 collaborative projects in 11 countries, under the auspices of 43 public and private sponsors.By drawing together individuals who work in different disciplines from across the Americas, SAP combines diverse design methodologies that can create alternative models to not only visualize and evaluate the effects of fast-paced urbanization, but also to propose specific pilot projects for alternative models of urbanization in the region. Ranging from small, highly calibrated interventions to larger territorial visions, this collection of multiple individual projects diverse in ambition, scale, and scope unite these otherwise dispersed proposals within a single organization, and articulate the methodological and instrumental diversity that design can to the regions current culture of development.

Hosted by the Buenos Aires Architecture Biennale and Revista PLOT, SAP / Projects in Process exhibits an interim overview of the networks applied research and design projects. In addition to the exhibition, the symposium will as platform for deliberation and action, providing clear directives for future development of this collective work.

Felipe Correa;
Associate Professor, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Co-founder, The South America Project

Ana MarA�a Duran; Professor, Pontificia Universidad CatA?lica del Ecuador
Co-founder, The South America Project

Florencia RodrA�guez; Editorial Director, Revista Plot
Loeb Fellow a�?14

EXHIBITION AND SYMPOSIUM PARTICIPANTS:

Maria Arquero, Anita Berrizbeitia, Neeraj Bhatia, Alejandra Bosch, Angelo Bucci, Tomas Cervilla, McLain Clutter, Martin Cobas, Alejandro Cohen, Felipe Correa, Jean Pierre Crousse, Marcelo Danza, Ana MarDurn, Marcos Favero, Alberto Foyo, Alexandre Delijaicov, Gabriel Duarte, Eugenio Garcs, Pablo Gerson, Santiago del Hierro, Flavio Janches, Ashley Scott Kelly, Pierre Martin, Rahul Mehrotra, Felipe Mesa, Rodrigo Prez de Arce, Camilo Restrepo, Christopher Roach, Florencia Rodrguez, Mars Sandor, Graciela Silvestri, Roger Sherman, Laurent Troost, Sandra Vivanco
Leonardo Zylberberg
SYMPOSIUM / EXHIBITION CREDITS:

Symposium Coordination: Victor Muoz Sanz
Exhibition Design: Ryley Poblete

Buenos Aires Team:

Florencia Medina
Dolores Oliver
Javier Rojas
Pedro Videla

http://www.sap-network.org/