Architecture as Catalyst: Almanac of Projection

This Catalyst studio explored the topic of territories and networks through the lens of the Corn Belt. Students diagrammed the processes, methods and fluvial economies related to growing, harvesting, producing and transporting corn and corn products, recognizing Minneapolis's unique role in both the history and future of the commodity. By diagramming the historic and current methods of corn production, the studio then invented new designs that challenge the current agricultural system, infrastructures and territories, speculating on a new vision for the future of the Corn Belt. The students formatted their information designs into an "Almanac of Projection," a book that formats their research of existing systems and projects how to integrate, augment or recombine them to position new futures. Information was presented at three different scales: as a book, as maps, and as an exhibition.

Architecture as Catalyst: MAXIMUM POWER DESIGN

This Catalyst studio proposes an architectural agenda for energy.

Such an agenda is distinguished from the engineering agenda for energy that dominates architecture today. Of the many architectural and ecological shortcomings of this borrowed agenda is the thermodynamically impossible notion of energy efficiency. Energy cannot be made more or less efficient. Energy is always transferred at 100% efficiency. The reductionist and mechanistic preoccupation of energy efficiency, optimization, minimization and neutrality in architecture today thus engenders inaccurate ideas, misguided means, and perplexing products that neither serves architecture nor ecology well. If fact, these concepts run counter to the behavior of energy systems and thus occlude great ecological and architectural potential.

In contrast to this errant paradigm, architecture needs a far more exacting and ambitious agenda for energy today. It needs an agenda for energy that is at once thermodynamically accurate and ecologically exuberant. Importantly, it must achieve those ends with means that amplify the purposes and potential of architecture itself. Thus this Catalyst studio tables theories, techniques, and technologies of an architectural agenda for energy: maximum power design.

I/O HABITAT: Hacking the grid

In the wake of an unprecedented recession, how can architecture help stabilize and improve the fabric of communities impacted by the recent housing crisis? This project proposes rehabilitating both vacant housing and vacant infrastructure as a means to designing an alternative future development model.
This project -- a conceit, speculation, alternative future -- explores ways of breaking traditional suburban development by hacking "virus-infected" systems which promote degradation and community instability. Hacking allows a new stream of code to supplant and ward off the virus -- an architectural antidote which can provide a framework to build community.

Frame and Matter: Six Floors of God Knows What at the California Building

CONDITION:
This is a place of production. The art and artifacts being produced behind gypsum walls are tested against all surfaces from within the corridor. Hung from ceilings, mounted on walls and positioned along the floor like furniture, this art commands little more attention than the communal piano or sofa. This is not gallery. It is overflow storage mixed with purposeful display for the one day per month in which the public is encouraged to engage the "six floors of God knows what" at the California Building in Northeast Minneapolis.

INTERVENTION:
Perhaps influenced by the ad-hoc existing conditions of the California Building's internal corridors, the programmatic strategy for a new architecture focuses on an interface of a new public circulation space with new and old programs. Circulation is cinema. An increasing trend of the production and showing of independent film in the North East Arts District calls for the introduction of cinema space into, out of and adjacent to the California Building.

Work of Urban Design Studio Students (Fall 2011)

Each year the M. Arch Graduate Urban Design Studio (Arch 8255) selects a complex, and often controversial, urban site within the Twin Cities region as a topic to analyze and redesign. The site chosen during Fall 2011 - the St. Anthony Main District - lies within the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood and is considered the birthplace of the city of Minneapolis. The site borders the Mississippi River and combines issues pertaining to development, preservation of historic buildings linking the community to the waterfront, and competing approaches for infill development - all of which makes for a perfect urban design studio topic. The work of several students participating in this Urban Design Studio appears below.

1st + 1st Produce/Exchange

The 1st + 1st Produce/Exchange is a renovation of the former Jeune Lune Theater located at 1st St. and 1st Ave. in Minneapolis's historic warehouse district. Originally a produce exchange consisting of two adjacent masonry buildings, Cass Gilbert was hired in 1895 to design an additional concrete frame structure and consolidate the three independent buildings into a single warehouse facility by wrapping them in an imposing facade. In 1992 a portion of the complex was converted into a performing arts space for the now defunct Theatre de la Jeune Lune, leaving an historically rich but exceptionally introverted building without an adequate program for 21st century. My proposal relies on a strategy of vertical incisions to expose this exceedingly anti-public building to daylight, public circulation, and updated mechanical equipment which together will allow it to be resuscitated with a contemporary program appropriate to the current neighborhood revitalization. By combining its most recent performing arts program with its original market function, the new 1st+1st Produce/Exchange brings together the productive, consumptive, educational, and social components of the culinary and performing arts while simultaneously allowing for a greater understanding of the building's intrinsic volumetric, structural, and material characteristics.

1st and 1st: Weight, Space, and Light

The 1st and 1st Arts Center project is a renovation to the old Jeune Theater building in the North Loop Warehouse District in Minneapolis. The building, which originally functioned as a warehouse, grew overtime and was later wrapped in a Cass Gilbert facade which is to be preserved. The context is defined by a collection of old warehouse buildings, which are massive masonry containers with a minimal amount of ornamentation. This project takes that existing typology and heightens people's ability to perceive and appreciate it. Most of the existing floors are hollowed out and the load bearing masonry walls are kept creating large volumes of space. Visitors then begin to perceive the weight of these massive walls, the large volumes which they create, and the light which reveals these volumes. As the visitor leaves the building their perception of the neighborhood will have dramatically changed. In revealing the unique characteristics of the building the project hopes to provide a background and inspiration for the arts which is unique to this particular place.