selected projects / archive / info
# architecture / ecology / media / teaching / all
2023. Chicago Architecture Biennial Reading Room: BOOKSCAPES //// exhibition, programming [chicago]
commissioned by CAB5 This is a Rehearsal, Floating Museum location: chicago
project type: exhibition, programming
concept by: Marya Demetra Kanakis in collaboration with David Walzcyk
exhibition team: Maria Fernanda Alcantara, Tobi Fagbule, Devin Gora, Kamil Krol, Logan Plaisted
BOOKSCAPES is a reading room installation and platform for exchanging ideas on the relationship between books and the built environment. Presented are case studies of thoughtful books, industry stakeholders, and imaginative manifestos which explore the book through the lens of ecological design practices and experimental media. This archive of curated readings compares content with output; representations of the meta-book (Virgil Abloh, 2019) and origins of the eco-book (Charles-Michelle Villette, 1786).
Against the backdrop of environmentalism’s rise in the sixties, publications proliferated (from (typical standard mass market copies: such as Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, or Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring). Just as architecture was being reimagined, some figures such as David Greene and Richard Brautigan were pushing the boundaries of what constitutes a ‘book’ or ‘magazine’ and incorporating seed packets, a gesture of returning the book to nature. In the nineties, a paper factory in Italy sought an opportunity in the Venice lagoon when local factories contributed to the proliferation of invasive algae, they decided to make a paper from it to remediate its effect in the aquatic ecosystem. Recent artists’ books use the medium of the book to mirror its content on inextricable links between mankind and the environments we inhabit. If we borrow methods of ecological consciousness from contemporary architecture, such as tracing material flows and resource extraction, what can we learn about the book as a designed object and inherent political artifact? Can books be LEED? What new models of publishing houses emerge from this landscape of books?
lecture series includes:
press: [1] [2] [3] [4]
2023. Towards Biohybrid Design: Future Hospitals, Landscapes of Care, + Community Health //// teaching [chicago]
Illinois Institute of Technology, College of Architecture
students: Rutuja Sandav, Xuru Liang, Hanah Narine, Zachary Clark, Erk Solmaz, Priscilla Thomas, Logan Plaisted, Courtney Lyttle, Persefoni Stamatis, Aishwarya Bagwe, Femas Patel
teaching team: Henry Heligas + Joel Putnam
semesters: fall 2023 - spring 2024
This is not a traditional hospital design studio, rather an exploration into the relationship between health, urbanism and populations. The well-being of local populations is directly and indirectly influenced by both the built environment – encompassing residences, schools, urgent health facilities, and transportation – and the natural environment, including community gardens, waterfronts, and parks. The built environment plays a pivotal role in shaping our exposure to pollution, impacting health-related behaviors, and ultimately influencing the risk of diseases. Health outcomes with significant implications for morbidity and mortality, both in the US and globally, can be influenced by the interplay of the built and natural environment. How can urban planning, informed by climate change risk factors such as urban heat island effect, distribute healthy spaces around Bronzeville? In 1995, before our awareness of climate change had grown to its centrality in architectural discourse, Chicago suffered from the deadliest heat wave in history, and deadliest climate disaster in U.S. history. 739 victims succumbed to unbearable heat and humidity. Attributed to lack of proper ventilation, nonexistent tree canopies - data shows that most victims were elderly and poor. In the age of anthropocene, the relationship between the scientific technics of architecture, the scale of the human body, and environment are more intertwined than ever - our recent history during Covid has proven such. Additionally, the enduring decisions made in designing these environments can disproportionately affect the health of individuals across diverse ages, abilities, races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses. Bronzeville has historically been the site of synthesis between health and communities. Established in 1881, Michael Reese Hospital (known for Walter Gropius’ designed Singer Pavilion) was a prominent research and teaching hospital, also serving as one of the oldest and largest of Chicago’s hospitals. How can the architecture of health extend beyond a hospital’s campus and into the neighborhood?
This course delves into the complex relationships between humans, pathogens, structures, landscapes, and governing policies, with a specific focus on health considerations. By using Bronzeville as a case study, students will explore the territory around the Chicago White-Sox Park, such as examining renowned hospital designs in Chicago, analyzing healing landscapes by practitioners such as Felipe Correa, evaluating hospitals that merge natural healing with advanced technology, or envisioning future hospitals as choreographed spaces of automated machinery. Through extensive research and lectures, students will delve into (1) architectural design mechanisms that enhance indoor air quality, decrease exposure to harmful substances, optimize visual and thermal comfort, and curtail the transmission of infectious diseases, (2) the impact of landscape architecture on community well-being and urban design strategies that promote healthy lifestyles, and (3) the exploration of governance policies enacted in Chicago both during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
research themes: #environmental history #healthcare design #landscape design #urban design #sustainability #healthcare practices #non-western medicine #universal healthcare #climatic disasters #capitalist healthcare #speleotherapy #clinics and protest #military hospitals #gerontotopia #ecological networks
reading list:
2022. M. Murphy. The Architecture of Health: Hospital Design and the Construction of Dignity.
2022. B. Bergdoll. Emilio Ambasz: Curating a New Nature.
2022. P. Meuser. Hospitals and Medical Facilities: Construction + Design Manual.
2020. E. Zuckerman. What is Digital Public Infrastructure? An essay, in the form of an FAQ, about the possibility of digital social spaces built with taxpayer dollars
2018. K. Dovey. Mapping Urbanities: Morphologies, Flows, Possibilities.
2017. D. Ansell. The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills.
2014. T. Stevermer. Thresholds 42: Human.
2013. N. Lister + C. Reed. Projective Ecologies: Ecology, Research, + Design in the Climate Change.
2012. G. Borasi + M. Zardini. Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture.
2009. D. Gissen. Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments
2015. K. Moe. HDM 40: Well, Well, Well. Iatrogenic Architecture: Unreliable Narratives of Sustainability.
2015. B. Holmes. HDM 40: Well, Well, Well. Out-of-Body Experiences: The Polis in Sickness and in Health.
1987. R. Dubos. Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change.
1979. B. Latour. Laboratory Life.
teaching team: Henry Heligas + Joel Putnam
semesters: fall 2023 - spring 2024
This is not a traditional hospital design studio, rather an exploration into the relationship between health, urbanism and populations. The well-being of local populations is directly and indirectly influenced by both the built environment – encompassing residences, schools, urgent health facilities, and transportation – and the natural environment, including community gardens, waterfronts, and parks. The built environment plays a pivotal role in shaping our exposure to pollution, impacting health-related behaviors, and ultimately influencing the risk of diseases. Health outcomes with significant implications for morbidity and mortality, both in the US and globally, can be influenced by the interplay of the built and natural environment. How can urban planning, informed by climate change risk factors such as urban heat island effect, distribute healthy spaces around Bronzeville? In 1995, before our awareness of climate change had grown to its centrality in architectural discourse, Chicago suffered from the deadliest heat wave in history, and deadliest climate disaster in U.S. history. 739 victims succumbed to unbearable heat and humidity. Attributed to lack of proper ventilation, nonexistent tree canopies - data shows that most victims were elderly and poor. In the age of anthropocene, the relationship between the scientific technics of architecture, the scale of the human body, and environment are more intertwined than ever - our recent history during Covid has proven such. Additionally, the enduring decisions made in designing these environments can disproportionately affect the health of individuals across diverse ages, abilities, races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses. Bronzeville has historically been the site of synthesis between health and communities. Established in 1881, Michael Reese Hospital (known for Walter Gropius’ designed Singer Pavilion) was a prominent research and teaching hospital, also serving as one of the oldest and largest of Chicago’s hospitals. How can the architecture of health extend beyond a hospital’s campus and into the neighborhood?
This course delves into the complex relationships between humans, pathogens, structures, landscapes, and governing policies, with a specific focus on health considerations. By using Bronzeville as a case study, students will explore the territory around the Chicago White-Sox Park, such as examining renowned hospital designs in Chicago, analyzing healing landscapes by practitioners such as Felipe Correa, evaluating hospitals that merge natural healing with advanced technology, or envisioning future hospitals as choreographed spaces of automated machinery. Through extensive research and lectures, students will delve into (1) architectural design mechanisms that enhance indoor air quality, decrease exposure to harmful substances, optimize visual and thermal comfort, and curtail the transmission of infectious diseases, (2) the impact of landscape architecture on community well-being and urban design strategies that promote healthy lifestyles, and (3) the exploration of governance policies enacted in Chicago both during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
research themes: #environmental history #healthcare design #landscape design #urban design #sustainability #healthcare practices #non-western medicine #universal healthcare #climatic disasters #capitalist healthcare #speleotherapy #clinics and protest #military hospitals #gerontotopia #ecological networks
reading list:
2022. M. Murphy. The Architecture of Health: Hospital Design and the Construction of Dignity.
2022. B. Bergdoll. Emilio Ambasz: Curating a New Nature.
2022. P. Meuser. Hospitals and Medical Facilities: Construction + Design Manual.
2020. E. Zuckerman. What is Digital Public Infrastructure? An essay, in the form of an FAQ, about the possibility of digital social spaces built with taxpayer dollars
2018. K. Dovey. Mapping Urbanities: Morphologies, Flows, Possibilities.
2017. D. Ansell. The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills.
2014. T. Stevermer. Thresholds 42: Human.
2013. N. Lister + C. Reed. Projective Ecologies: Ecology, Research, + Design in the Climate Change.
2012. G. Borasi + M. Zardini. Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture.
2009. D. Gissen. Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments
2015. K. Moe. HDM 40: Well, Well, Well. Iatrogenic Architecture: Unreliable Narratives of Sustainability.
2015. B. Holmes. HDM 40: Well, Well, Well. Out-of-Body Experiences: The Polis in Sickness and in Health.
1987. R. Dubos. Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change.
1979. B. Latour. Laboratory Life.
2023. Grafted Natures: The Ecology of a Blurred Species //// publication [various]
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
thesis advisor: John May
faculty from coursework: Danielle Choi, Daniel Carranza, Sheila Jasanoff, Pablo Perez Ramos, Chris Reed, Matthias Risse
semesters: fall 2021 - spring 2023
faculty from coursework: Danielle Choi, Daniel Carranza, Sheila Jasanoff, Pablo Perez Ramos, Chris Reed, Matthias Risse
semesters: fall 2021 - spring 2023
Grafted Natures: The Ecology of Blurred Species is a proposal for repositioning authorship in the anthropocene. The history of mankind as told through a history of grafting (botanical, medical and cross-species) reveals centuries of man’s authorship in reconstructing nature and how technology has only accelerated this process. Once upon a time, we would have been able to draw the boundary between rootstock and scion or what is ‘natural’ however modernity is characterized by blurred ecological boundaries and new grafted natures - from interspecies gourd plant grafts, to pig hearts transplanted in humans, to genetic grafting of CRISPR-Cas9 twins. The conceptual origins of modern gene-editing in human and non-human subjects can be derived from this ancient practice of grafting. Contemporary biotechnologies continue to weave a mesh of mechanical invention, and reinvention, by pushing the boundaries of an organism’s genomic makeup at a microscopic scale rather than that of a grafted lemon tree. Broken into three chapters: Past, Present and Future, this book is a collection of essays and artifacts that reevaluates the interconnectedness of society, technology and nature - as well as its limits at given points in time. How can a book (both in terms of medium and content) reflect concepts of speed, blurriness and grafting?
Contemporary architectural discourse has always alluded to grafting for its operative spatial logic, a metaphor applied to urban scales. German architect, O.M. Ungers famously illustrated a series of urban maps juxtaposed against images of flora and fauna - grafting nature with the city in an editorial manner. Figures such as Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio have championed the identity of their practice and its relation to the human body as a design research subject. In their 1994 publication, Flesh: Architectural Probes, Georges Teyssot writes extensively on human-machine imaginaries, building-body metaphors and anatomical grafting. Tracing Violet Le Duc to Le Corbusier, Teyssot systematically references the likeness between body organs and parts of a building. He established how grafting two bodily subjects together results in a “hybrid, almost monstrous species” and how on the other hand, “transplant surgery introduces a caesura [a break] between organ and body.” Teyssot’s own writing references Deleuze and Guattari’s formulation on organ-without-body. In Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari claim, “we live in the age of partial objects… we no longer believe in original totality, nor in the totality of their final destination.” Teyssot leaves his provocations unanswered by asking readers how to contextualize the concept of grafting within the realm of architecture. A decade later and grafting resurfaces into the discourse. In 2014, the title of Catalonia’s pavilion for the Venice Biennale was “Grafting Architecture.”
This project takes on the effort to synthesize disparate narratives of blurred species by transcending disciplinary boundaries of medicine and ecology. Grafting reveals a history of borrowed methodologies and practices between the two fields, further blurring their distinction. With ‘speed’ as the determining structural element, texts are organized into chapters by time. Part ‘I: Past’ informs readers with the foundational histories of grafting - from origins of its botanical practice, its jump to medicine, and how scholars have approached epistemological framings of nature over time. This chapter also describes the operational spatial logic required to execute a graft as well as different types of authorship. Ending on the phenomenological evaluation of a graft, one can begin to understand expected behaviors and outcomes of a new blurred species. The next section, part ‘II: Present’, outlines existing conditions and sociopolitical understandings of grafted natures in relation to the archive of blurred species. If the speed at which biotechnologies and grafting is accelerating, how do we stop to evaluate it? Legal mechanisms, such as ‘moratoria’ allow policy makers to pause this trajectory of ‘speed’ and reflect on technological progress in an age of uncertainty. The final part, ‘III: Future’, raises provocations on how grafted natures have the potential to reorganize the contexts in which they were constructed.
2023. The Book in the Age of... //// publication, exhibition [cambridge]
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
faculty: Phillip Denny, Rem Koolhaas, Irma Boom
“Since the invention of the codex in antiquity, to the emergence of today’s global publishing industry, transformations of the book are entangled with evolutions of modernity. Following the argument of Marshall McLuhan, Gutenberg’s movable-type printing press yielded not only a Bible, but also created a “Gutenberg Galaxy”: a “global village” populated by a “typographic” human and connected by media—at first printed books, and then later radio, television, and the Internet. While technological innovations have since rendered some media obsolete, the book—in its many forms—remains a prominent instrument of global culture.
Today, the book is a commonplace. An arsenal of modern production technologies have made books cheaper and more widely available than ever before. At the same time, the contemporary significance of the book is not widely understood. Although pundits regularly proclaim the imminent death of print and the waning of literary culture, in fact, more books are printed and sold now than at any point in history. Approximately one hundred titles were published in 1450; today, more than one hundred are published every hour in the U.S. alone. If the illuminated manuscript was a product of the medieval world, what new form of book might correspond to the technologies and politics of our era? Or, to put the question more bluntly, what is the book in the age of globalization? The Book in the Age of … presents the outcomes of an intensive research seminar on the history and future of the book co-taught by Irma Boom, Phillip Denny, and Rem Koolhaas at Harvard GSD. In the course of the spring 2023 semester, the seminar assembled a collective history of the book and developed a dozen original conjectures for its future evolution.”
excerpt from Harvard GSD Bookmaking Exhibit announcement
link: to request classwork book from Widener Library
course: spring 2023
exhibition: Frances Loeb Library, fall 2023
exhibition: Frances Loeb Library, fall 2023
“Since the invention of the codex in antiquity, to the emergence of today’s global publishing industry, transformations of the book are entangled with evolutions of modernity. Following the argument of Marshall McLuhan, Gutenberg’s movable-type printing press yielded not only a Bible, but also created a “Gutenberg Galaxy”: a “global village” populated by a “typographic” human and connected by media—at first printed books, and then later radio, television, and the Internet. While technological innovations have since rendered some media obsolete, the book—in its many forms—remains a prominent instrument of global culture.
Today, the book is a commonplace. An arsenal of modern production technologies have made books cheaper and more widely available than ever before. At the same time, the contemporary significance of the book is not widely understood. Although pundits regularly proclaim the imminent death of print and the waning of literary culture, in fact, more books are printed and sold now than at any point in history. Approximately one hundred titles were published in 1450; today, more than one hundred are published every hour in the U.S. alone. If the illuminated manuscript was a product of the medieval world, what new form of book might correspond to the technologies and politics of our era? Or, to put the question more bluntly, what is the book in the age of globalization? The Book in the Age of … presents the outcomes of an intensive research seminar on the history and future of the book co-taught by Irma Boom, Phillip Denny, and Rem Koolhaas at Harvard GSD. In the course of the spring 2023 semester, the seminar assembled a collective history of the book and developed a dozen original conjectures for its future evolution.”
excerpt from Harvard GSD Bookmaking Exhibit announcement
link: to request classwork book from Widener Library
2023. OffCUT(s) //// teaching [virtual]
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
faculty: Marya Demetra Kanakis and CoCo Tin
OffCUT(s) is a provocation in designing with forgotten remnants of the construction industry. By bringing new life to offcuts, students will metamorphose these remnants into objects, intervening prior to their imminent fate of ending up in landfills. Internationally, the built environment generates nearly 50% of annual global emissions, and interior finishes can account for up to 50% of a building’s carbon footprint. The course borrows frameworks of circular economies from fashion [see Marrine Serre Autumn/Winter ‘18] and product design [see NikeLab Chicago Re-Creation Center c/o Virgil Abloh] and applies them to architecture.
Building off recent discourses at Harvard Graduate School of Design, this J-term focuses on the scale of an object as a rapid case study. Together we will establish more responsible models of practice in this age of ecological sensitivity and networks of material systems.
This course is separated into three parts: [Part I_Background] Students will be introduced to a range of material reuse endeavors spanning disciplines from history to fashion and product design. Instructors will coordinate lectures among invited guest speakers. Details to be shared here as guests confirm. [Part II_Ecological Evaluation] Collectively, we will discuss and agree upon a carbon metric for evaluation and investigate the product’s relationship to design and the environment. [Part III_Metamorphosis] Instructors will have pre-selected and 3D-scanned a collection of building material offcuts [see Appendix B]. Each student will choose a one piece of ‘material’ and design an object within the carbon metric [see Part II]. Output will be digital for the J-Term duration. During the Spring semester, students will have the opportunity to physically construct the piece and potentially showcase it in a group show at Kirkland Gallery.
duration: winter 2023
OffCUT(s) is a provocation in designing with forgotten remnants of the construction industry. By bringing new life to offcuts, students will metamorphose these remnants into objects, intervening prior to their imminent fate of ending up in landfills. Internationally, the built environment generates nearly 50% of annual global emissions, and interior finishes can account for up to 50% of a building’s carbon footprint. The course borrows frameworks of circular economies from fashion [see Marrine Serre Autumn/Winter ‘18] and product design [see NikeLab Chicago Re-Creation Center c/o Virgil Abloh] and applies them to architecture.
Building off recent discourses at Harvard Graduate School of Design, this J-term focuses on the scale of an object as a rapid case study. Together we will establish more responsible models of practice in this age of ecological sensitivity and networks of material systems.
This course is separated into three parts: [Part I_Background] Students will be introduced to a range of material reuse endeavors spanning disciplines from history to fashion and product design. Instructors will coordinate lectures among invited guest speakers. Details to be shared here as guests confirm. [Part II_Ecological Evaluation] Collectively, we will discuss and agree upon a carbon metric for evaluation and investigate the product’s relationship to design and the environment. [Part III_Metamorphosis] Instructors will have pre-selected and 3D-scanned a collection of building material offcuts [see Appendix B]. Each student will choose a one piece of ‘material’ and design an object within the carbon metric [see Part II]. Output will be digital for the J-Term duration. During the Spring semester, students will have the opportunity to physically construct the piece and potentially showcase it in a group show at Kirkland Gallery.
2023. Harvard Radcliffe Institute: Botanical Geographies //// conference [various]
Harvard Radclifffe Institute for Advanced Study
conference: Pale Blue Dot under Pressure: Climate Change, Justice, and Resilience in Our Rapidly Warming World
team: Marya Demetra Kanakis and Sofia Castell
duration: October 1, 2022
The Mike and Nina Patterson Science Symposium explored interconnected ecological issues through sessions investigating global climate systems and climate disasters, public policy, health, climate justice and activism, and methods of adaptation and remediation.
2022. Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae: A Living Herbarium of Wheat //// video [cambridge, athens]
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
faculty: Francesca Benedetto
course: fall 2022
wheat: [chicago] x [ancient greece]
triticum aestivum
One of the oldest cultivated grains, wheat, has been around since at least 9,600 B.C.E.1 Originating in the Fertile Crescent, the narrative of ‘wheat’ as a plant is a metaphor for the fusion of my identities - symbolizing the technological progress of a metropolis that never stops growing (Chicago) and an intimate relationship between cycles of the earth, fertility and the capture of Persephone (Ancient Greece). Often used in ancient rituals as a symbol of death, wheat was presented during the Ancient Athenian festival of Thesmophoria - the festival held in honor of Persephone’s release from Hades in the Underworld to rejoice with her mother, Demeter, on terrestrial earth during the autumn harvest. Bowls of wheat, seeds and pomegranate were offered to celebrate the earth, harvests, and death. Thousands of years later, Eastern Orthodox churches continue an adaptation of this exact dish, called ‘Koliva’, which is required during the religious rituals such as funerals, memorial services (‘mnemosyno’ / μνημόσυνον), and Saturday of the Souls (‘psychosavvato’ / Ψυχοσάββατο). While the ritual of Koliva predates Christianity, wheat symbolizes the cycles of agricultural regeneration and transferred rituals from Ancient Greek polytheism, paganism, to Byzantium.
“…unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit."2
In 1857, Jean Francois Millet painted three figures harvesting a landscape of wheat3, subverting the typical subject of paintings from elite portraiture and themes to the working class- through the narrative of the plant itself. The relationship between ‘anthropos’ (mankind) and ‘gaia’ (the earth) was pushed to its limits when cities such as Chicago commodified wheat in the 1800’s. Titled ‘stacker of wheat’ in Carl Sandburg’s famous poems4, Chicago became the epicenter of commerce for agricultural commodities such as grains. The Chicago Board of Trade famously bought and sold shares of wheat, expanding the plant's presence well beyond its origin in the Fertile Crescent as populations increased within America. In terms of spatial implications, 545 million acres of land are currently dedicated to wheat. After thousands of years of human/wheat interactions, geoengineering is redefining the characteristics of wheat - the life cycle of wheat is now manipulated. In the 1940’s, agronomist Norman Borlaug conducted research with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico. Much of the common wheat harvested today comes from Borlaug’s research - semi-dwarf, high-yielding and disease-repellant variations. How can we reimagine these rituals that depend on wheat, when the variety of wheat transcends natural life-cycles?
1. book. Shewry, Peter R (2009), "Wheat", Journal of Experimental Botany, 60 (6): 1537–53
2. bible verse. John 12:24
3. painting. The Gleaners by Jean-François Millet (1857)
4. poems. ‘Chicago Poems’, by Carl Sandburg featured in Poetry Magazine of Verse, Vol. III, No. VI. 1914
2022. Disenchanted City: Chicago + Milan //// teaching [cambridge]
2022. The Ecological Footprint of 75 Years of Italian Cinema //// essay [various]
2022. Fashioning a Well Tempered Environment //// essay [venice]
2022. Technological Progress in the Age of Uncertainty: Global Environmental Moratoria //// essay [various]
2022. Archigram 10: A Uniform + Botanical Guide for the Citizen of the Future //// book [various]
2022. ESG Analysis + Report for 135 LaSalle //// architecture [chicago]
2022. The Artificial Image of the City //// video [los angeles]
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
faculty: Charles Waldheim
course: spring 2022
When Ed Ruscha began documenting Sunset Boulevard, little attention was paid to imagining how future generations would document cities (and of course, how far technology has come since 35mm cameras). Reading the archives through the filter of what infrastructure is required to produce an image, we can see how the items required to sustain invisible networks, such as the internet, have grown. Using AI, we can imagine new streetscapes and growing grids of infrastructural elements. While AI cannot replicate the movement of a body through space or mimic the gaze of a human, we can question how machine learning and style-gan can synthesize time periods into a timeless projection of a future streetscape.
2021. Contaminated Ecologies: From Radioactivity to the Salvation of Sunflowers //// publication, urbanism [various]
2021. TikTok Urbanism: Recursive Digital Landscape Formation //// essay [various]
2021. Deepfakes + War: Spatial Effects of Aspatial Media //// essay [various]
2021. Strelka KB: Mass Housing + Climate Change //// workshop [berlin]
2020. IIT Master of Science Program Concept //// teaching [chicago]
2020. YEEZY Architecture + Construction //// architecture [cody, atlanta, chicago, dominican republic]
2020. Future Tempos: Conversations on Architecture Across Time + Media (ACTAR Press) //// book
IITAC + ACTAR Press
main author: Lluis Ortega
contributors: Maite Borjabad, Isabel Concheiro, Penelope Dean, Ricardo Devesa, Albert Ferré, Fabrizio Gallanti, Moisés Puente, Pier Paolo Tamburelli
size: 17.8 x 11.5 cm
pages: 96
cover: soft cover
publication date: May 2020
ISBN: english 9781948765534
In the continuous effort to make architecture public, technology plays a fundamental role. While in pre-typographical times authors limited the publication of their work to autographed documents, with the appearance of the printing press publications became the main vehicle for disseminating the practice and associated discourses. However, in recent times, with the emergence of the digital era, these original channels have multiplied. The recent proliferation of architecture biennials and prizes, architecture exhibitions, the exhaustive and continuous publication of material online, the reshaping of traditional publishing houses specializing in architecture, and new online forums for discussing and circulating ideas all reveal a radical shift in how architecture becomes public. This new scenario is rife with opportunities, but it also poses important challenges. Traditional notions of singular authorship, canons of credibility and the legitimacy of knowledge, patterns of visibility and readability, the identification of categories of quality and originality are all topics that require reflection and, in some cases, the reformulation of traditional standards.
link to purchase
2019. Architectures of the Invisible: Primitives of a Systemic Art //// teaching [chicago]
2019. Mechanical Oblique: Choreographies of Humans + Machines //// urbanism [barcelona]
Illinois Institute of Technology
faculty: Lluis Ortega
course: fall 2018
The contemporary ecology of cities derives from a coexistence of humans and machines and their subjectivity to time. Architecture therefore becomes the mediator of spatial relationships where negotiations of space are not made on a human-to-human basis rather human-to-machine. Evident as early as Cedric Price’s & Joan Littlewood’s Fun Palace proposal in 1961, a symbiosis of people and mechanisms existed within one architecture. Anthropic agents and mechanical operations establish an organisational logic for proliferating structures. Conceptually driven, the tectonic complexity of this movement was limited to one dimension. When studied in parallel with Claude Parent’s and Paul Virilio’s Oblique Function and the Architecture Principe, modern technologies and the workspaces they encompass create an ‘oblique mechanic’ urban order. Evaluated through its input-based performance, ranges of architectural conditions within the system result in a metastasis of altering playscapes within Barcelona’s Plaça Catalunya. The ‘oblique mechanic’ is a tactic to exhibit cities constrained by mass tourism. The potential of this existence is ephemeral in nature, and each procession in time results in a constant metastasis with altering urban interiorities. In this study, degrees of time conflict against eachother as do the agents which inhabit and traverse the architecture. Walls, panels, and floors all become objects which either require external action from a user (the general public or buildling facilitators) or automated machines. Components of each study mechanism identify solutions to architectural or social concerns. When applied at an urban scale, cities such as Barcelona are reimagined that negotiate mechanisms with human activity.
2019. Towards a New Geology: a Pavilion for the Post-Anthropocene //// architecture [rijeka]
Illinois Institute of Technology
faculty: Vedran Mimica
course: spring 2019
team: Marya Demetra Kanakis, Marcus Malesh, + Isabel Fitzpatrick-Meyers
team: Marya Demetra Kanakis, Marcus Malesh, + Isabel Fitzpatrick-Meyers
For centuries nature was viewed through two ideologies, subjective idealism and aestheticism. Nature was represented in the form of paintings, such as those of Friedrich, throughout the Romanticist works of the 18th century. Artists responded against the scientific rationalization of nature during the Enlightenment. Architecture was absent, or if at all present, was represented in the form of ruins hidden in the background. German philosophers introduced interpretations of nature that would reverberate through the sciences, and particularly the biology of the next century. Over the years, forests and gardens have ‘housed’ activity similar to what architecture was capable of. But what does ‘nature’ means to us today?
Modern readings of nature differ greatly from the previous respected or romanticised ideologies of our elders. Younger generations define nature as a commodity, serving as backdrops to scenes from daily life. The conditions we currently inhabit in cities exhibit a nature in contained environments. Whether this type of nature comes in the form of display (greenhouses, garden balconies) or appropriation (byproducts of urbanism), each reflect how the human race has radically altered the earth’s terrestrial biome. The relationship between nature and architecture shifted from architecture making appearances in nature to nature making subtle appearances within architecture. At a larger scale, the anthropocene summarizes the extent to what we define as nature or rather, what’s left of it. Many contemporary biennales, triennales and events often point out this phenomena but few offer an architectural solution. Specific to this narrative, Rijeka’s composition offers a range of anthrome typologies, with industrial manufactured landscapes contrasting the purity of the Dinaric Alps. The form of our pavilion is derived from extracting a pixel from the mountains and grafting it on the beach adjacent to the ExportDRVO. This allows visitors of Rijeka 2020 and locals to read the pavilion form dialectically. The progression from artificial- to pseudo- to true- nature is read vertically, as the scenography comes to an end upon arriving at the last platform, which punctures the roof of topography. This reveals a walkable roofscape which frames the nature surrounding it. Through this pavilion, we are proposing a new geology that curates methods of architectural and natural tectonics that exist symbiotically. Standing as a metaphysical volume, our pavilion exists as a monument to Rijeka’s conditions and as an urban strategy for design in the post-anthropocene era where nature and architecture coincide into a language of ‘new geology’ allowed through technologies.
2019. Mies Heretique: a Pavilion for the Mies Society //// exhibition [chicago]
2018. The Museum of Urban Planning //// architecture [chicago]
2018. Constructed Dimensions //// video [chicago]
2018. ‘Mall’falcone //// architecture [monfalcone]
2018. Acqua Alta + Acqua Bassa: Water Defense Masterplan //// urbanism [nyc, venice]
2018. SOM Project Earth //// urbanism [chicago]
2018. Autonomous Chicago: SOM + UI Labs + Metropolis Magazine //// video [chicago]
2023. Chicago Architecture Biennial Reading Room: BOOKSCAPES //// exhibition, programming [chicago]
2023. Towards Biohybrid Design: Future Hospitals, Landscapes of Care, + Community Health //// teaching [chicago]
coming soon...
2023. Grafted Natures: The Ecology of a Blurred Species //// publication [various]
2023. The Book in the Age of... //// publication, exhibition [cambridge]
image by Marya Demetra Kanakis + Han Na Kim
image copyright Nick Knight.
The (AUTO)Biography, (ANTI)Biography, (ECTO)Biography, (ENDO)Biography, (PALIN)Biography of Alice B. Toklas
by Marya Demetra Kanakis, Han Na Kim, + Michael Kurt Mayer with (A.I. (Gertrude Stein (Alice B. Toklas)))
2023. OffCUT(s) //// teaching [virtual]
courtesy of Marya Demetra Kanakis + CoCo Tin
courtesy of Marya Demetra Kanakis + CoCo Tin
2023. Harvard Radcliffe Institute: Botanical Geographies //// conference [various]
2022. Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae: A Living Herbarium of Wheat //// video [cambridge, athens]
collage by Marya Demetra Kanakis
video by Marya Demetra Kanakis
2022. Disenchanted City: Chicago + Milan //// teaching [cambridge]
2022. Archigram 10: A Uniform + Botanical Guide for the Citizen of the Future //// book [various]
2022. ESG Analysis + Report for 135 LaSalle //// architecture [chicago]
coming soon...
2022. The Artificial Image of the City //// video [los angeles]
2021. Contaminated Ecologies: From Radioactivity to the Salvation of Sunflowers //// publication, urbanism [various]
2020. YEEZY Architecture + Construction //// architecture [cody, atlanta, chicago, dominican republic]
2020. Future Tempos: Conversations on Architecture Across Time + Media (ACTAR Press) //// book [virtual]
2019. Mechanical Oblique: Choreographies of Humans + Machines //// urbanism [barcelona]
2019. Towards a New Geology: a Pavilion for the Post-Anthropocene //// architecture [rijeka]
2019. Harmony of the Spheres: a Pavilion for Burning Man 2020 //// architecture [black rock city]
2019. Mies Heretique: a Pavilion for the Mies Society //// exhibition [chicago]
2018. The Museum of Urban Planning //// architecture [chicago]
2018. Constructed Dimensions //// video [chicago]
2018. ‘Mall’falcone //// architecture [monfalcone]
2018. Acqua Alta + Acqua Bassa: Water Defense Masterplan //// urbanism [nyc, venice]
2018. Autonomous Chicago: SOM + UI Labs + Metropolis Magazine //// video [chicago]