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Fall 2024

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN III (UG3) – COURSE BRIEF

COURSE ARCH 432

You might not think about the U.S. Post Office all that much. Maybe you haven’t visited in a while. Or maybe you’ve never been. Perhaps your prevailing associations with the Postal Service are limited to junk mail, long lines, cheap construction, and disgruntled employees. It’s true that the Postal Service as an American institution is hurting, and has been for some time. By the end of this studio, though, you'll gain a deeper appreciation for the USPS as a cornerstone of the nation's development, and, hopefully, feel a renewed commitment to its resurgence as a crucial element of civic infrastructure.

Historically, the United States Postal Service has been a cornerstone in the development of the United States, responsible for creating a communications network that linked diverse communities across the nation. It promoted literacy, education, commerce, and civic discourse by providing an affordable and reliable means for communication. In contemporary America, the USPS remains the most widespread government agency, with the largest fleet of vehicles and the most physical locations in both urban and rural areas of any government or commercial entity. Despite this reach, the USPS continues to face significant challenges, grappling with cultural, social, and technological changes that have led to a decline in use of their services.

Post Office + as a studio addresses this decline head-on, challenging students to propose a new model for a post office in the city of Ypsilanti, Michigan. The imperative for the USPS to adapt or face obsolescence calls for creative solutions that not only address current issues but also reimagine the post office as a vital civic center for years to come.

What’s your Post Office +?

Jacob Comerci
comerci@umich.edu

Mon,Wed,Fri
1pm - 6pm

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN III (UG3) – COURSE BRIEF

COURSE ARCH 432

Postal Pop Up invites students to explore imaginary scenarios that exist in a speculative future following the full implementation of US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s “Delivering for America” Plan. The ambitious and controversial plan attempts to address the institution’s continued decline. With a focus on network optimization, one of the plan’s key components combines investment into sustainable vehicles with the consolidation of existing local postal routes into Sorting and Delivery Centers. Although this approach offers a streamlined alternative to cumbersome existing infrastructure, it also leaves many local post offices with surplus space and an uncertain future. This hypothetical future, one in which local post offices are empty and obsolete, is where the studio resides.

This studio proposes utilizing temporary “pop up” strategies as an alternative framework to the traditional post office building. Here, "pop up" refers to structures and spatial configurations that can appear and disappear; potential scenarios are tested and alternative uses are considered through research into materials and technologies for what a post office might offer.

These types of structures have played a role in development throughout the US Postal Service’s history, from inhabitable vehicles like highway buses, rail, boat and air mail services to pop-ups during high-demand periods and disaster events. Building upon this past of innovation, the studio will explore transient strategies that may offer new ways to maintain, expand, and embed post offices within the communities they serve.

The studio will begin by examining vehicles used for mail transportation throughout history, uncovering how the post office has adapted to connect people regardless of circumstance. We will also analyze case studies of temporary architecture, emphasizing assemblies, activities, and sequences. By reconfiguring the findings from these investigations, the studio will reimagine the evolving needs of future post offices as testing grounds for material, programmatic, and temporal explorations.

Olaia Chivite Amigo
olaia@umich.edu

Mon,Wed,Fri
1pm - 6pm

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN III (UG3) – COURSE BRIEF

COURSE ARCH 432

In 2014, the curators of the Venice Biennale, provided a critical refl ection, of the previous century, on contem porary architecture, emphasizing the importance of considering histories, material culture, political environments, and architectural elements from around the globe. This perspective will serve as a launching point for our studio's exploration, which aims to bridge the past with speculative futures.

This studio will engage with the evolving state of architecture and project forward to the year 2114. Our focus will be on designing a civic institution dedicated to mail drop-off , delivery, and sorting. This institution will not only refl ect the current needs of our society but also anticipate and shape future requirements for public exchange.

We will examine the evolution of long-distance communication, tracing its development from ancient methods to contemporary practices. This historical perspective will inform our design, ensuring that it acknowledges and integrates past innovations while addressing future needs.

By investigating the interplay between material culture and political environments, we aim to develop a design that is resilient and adaptable. This will involve a thorough analysis of how materials have been used historically and how political changes have infl uenced architectural practices.

The studio will produce a forward-thinking design that addresses both the legacy and future of civic mail services, positioning the institution as a pivotal component of public infrastructure for the 21st century and beyond.

Dawn Gilpin
dgilpin@umich.edu

Mon,Wed,Fri
1pm - 6pm

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN III (UG3) – COURSE BRIEF

COURSE ARCH 432

This studio will focus upon the themes of distance, measure and the “materiality of abstraction.” Beginning with a series of 3 preliminary exercises, students will explore the interplay among different sizes and scales, and research a variety of spatial typolgoies in which the terms and coordinates of one geographical location are imported into the setting of another - such as embassies, world fair pavilions, and gardens.

Part 1 Exercises

X1 Photo Narrative: The Materiality of Abstraction A series of photographs that explore the intersection of abstraction and materiality in the built environment.

X2 Elements: Building Elements as Signs Using Rem Koolhaas’s Elements research (in which he presents brief histories of various building components, such as windows, doors, roofs, floors, and walls), students will consider the literal and abstract dynamics inherent to familiar building components. For instance- windows frame “views” and doors provide “thresholds.”

X3 Three-Dimensional Map: The Thingness of Maps A conceptual model that merges ideas from the first two exercises.

Part 2

Building Design The second part of the semester will be organized around the design of a post office with additional uses that provide sites of public encounters as determined by each student.

Projects will be sited in Ann Arbor.

Keith Mitnick
kmitnick@umich.edu

Mon,Wed,Fri
1pm - 6pm

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN VII (2G3/3G6) – COURSE BRIEF

COURSE ARCH 672

This studio is an introduction to urban simulation as a design tool. The course will be both technical and theoretical, connecting notions of programming and simulation with the nature of computer modeling and ecological perspectives towards non-human agents. The studio will provide a series of technical tutorials for developing simulations within the Unity3D game engine environment, inviting students to collaborate to develop an interactive urban simulation game.

The study of complex adaptive systems in architecture has been characterized through a shift toward formalism, in which simulations of flocks and swarms become techniques for complex geometrical modeling. Such approaches fail to harness the opportunity of developing an ecological awareness around the possible interactions between systems within a design domain. The simulation of ecologies relies on key concepts such as feedback loops and interdependence between actors. Such actors can be identified as both humans and non-humans. An object-oriented framework enables each actor to establish interactions with other actors without a hierarchy.

The simulation of an ecosystem requires defining agents as species and their interactions within an environment. As a design class, this course will expand the notion of species to include the built environment. By modeling interactions between digital entities, it is possible to give rise to emergent phenomena: intelligence as collective behaviors that might be considered unexpected from the behavior of an individual agent but arise once certain informational thresholds are crossed.

This class will provide the theoretical foundations to understand complex phenomena by modeling networks of interactions inviting students to design models that operate as ecologies.

In this course, students will explore the development of urban simulations through a hands-on approach that begins with the creation of physical prototypes in the form of board games. These prototypes serve as a foundational tool for understanding the complexities of urban transactions and interactions between various constituencies. By simulating these dynamics in a tangible, analog format, students will gain insights into the mechanics and challenges of urban design. The course will then guide students through the iterative process of translating these prototypes into digital formats, ultimately developing multiplayer video game simulations using Unity 3D. This methodology emphasizes the importance of both physical and digital modeling in capturing the complexities of urban environments, preparing students to create interactive experiences that reflect on urban trade-offs between different constituencies.

KEYWORDS: Simulation, Programming, Ecologies, Object-oriented thinking, Interdependence, Simulation, Models, Emergence, Complex Adaptive Systems, Interactive Systems, Boardgames, Video games

Jose Sanchez
jomasan@umich.edu

Mon,Wed,Fri
1pm - 6pm

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN VII (2G3/3G6) – COURSE BRIEF

COURSE ARCH 672

The role of architectural detailing today is often one of concealment. Have you ever noticed that we try to hide a lot of things within a wall? We don’t seem to like the messiness of all the active-systems technology that makes our buildings inhabitable. All of this hiding allows for a slight of hand, to draw your attention away from what is really happening. Instead of being a driver of the project, detailing is often an afterthought. However, given architects choose what to express and what to hide, detailing is highly political.

As a setting for this course, we will use the fictional (and climate fluid) American town of Westerchester as a backdrop to explore many issues linked to the embodiment of the American dream. In this context, the mis-direction detailing affords is often co-opted as a structural and political technique that underpins many of the challenges facing the US today: increasing inequality, systemic racism, climate change, housing unaffordability, among others. We design cities that cannot function without a car, buildings that would mold and rot without constant energy use, and homes that are designed for an ideal that most people can’t meet, let alone afford. While architects are not in a position to offer policy solutions to these many issues, the act of detailing can be an effective political tool for a broader public engagement.

One of the biggest instigators of this noted architectural shift toward details of concealment is the widespread adoption of the rainscreen as the dominant construction method in the US and Northern Europe. The rainscreen requires that the aesthetics of an exterior cladding layer mask the internalized functional performance of the wall. It also has the effect of rendering its exterior homogenous, or disconnected. That is, climate can be instrumentalized as a representational ideal of performance, not necessarily responsive to context, let alone the current existential crisis. This shift to a representational materiality of architecture (and of climate), establishes a purposeful misreading, leaving an unresolved tension between these actors.

This course will use the detail as a site of investigation to intersect the expression of techno-performative issues of climate and building science with the formal agendas of popular culture vernaculars and futurisms.

The town of Westerchester will serve as a stage set as we play out our detailing investigation in four acts:

ACT I - HOT TAKES: as an initial investigation, it will confront prevailing design ideologies through sports-take debate as a means to identify our own positions on detailing and material expression. Students will derive a representative kit of detail parts relating to both technology and cultural considerations (active systems, passive systems, popular vernaculars, popular futurisms) and use them to populate a generic digital model of Westerchester’s town center.

ACT II - COLD CUTS: as an introductory tutorial, it will utilize emerging technology workflows to establish both representational and fabrication based methods for designing new architectural materials

ACT III - DRY RUN: as a group fabrication exercise where students will construct a detail enclosure to interact with a designed climate machine. Effectively as an architized version of a typical highschool chemistry experiment, students will use art practice techniques to compose scenes of engagement between artifact and environment.

ACT IV - WET DETAILS: as a final design exercise, students will develop an expanded “wet” detail, which embraces the messy reality of intersecting contextual forces. These slippery details will inform the selection of a climate expanded program to be placed within the cultural fabric of Westerchester. Details, Plans, and Visualizations will be formatted into a catalog house advertisement type hybrid drawing.

Ryan Ball
ballra@umich.edu

Mon,Thu
1pm - 6pm

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN VII (2G3/3G6) – COURSE BRIEF

COURSE ARCH 672

Nurtured by the perennial waters of the Tamiraparani River, the Tirunelveli District is a well-known migratory bird corridor and a nesting colony for local aquatic birds. The mature Banyan, Marudhu, and Neem trees and the many forests and wetlands punctuating the region provide a thriving habitat. Every year, the bountiful monsoon redraws the fertile Tamiraparani riverbanks, with the temples and the sacred rituals as the memory markers of a landscape always in shift. This riverine ecosystem is also the home to an endless constellation of small towns and villages that have historically cultivated and worshiped land and water and the many forms of life they sustain. The Tamiraparani, "river of red leaves," was considered holy in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata Sanskrit books, and well known for its pearl, fishery, shell, and other trades.

Recognizing the distinctive socio-ecological values of these natural and cultural landscapes, the Thiruppudaimarudur Bird Conservation Reserve (TBCR) was created in 2005, the first of its kind in India. The bird habitat is located within the confines of the temple of Naarambunathar of Lord Shiva and Goddess Gomathi and the adjoining village. Overseeing the confluence with the Gadananathi River, the village comprises 430 households whose primary occupation is agriculture. Villagers coexist with a rich mosaic of habitats within a primarily riparian landscape rich in species of birds, amphibians, fishes, smaller mammals, trees, and grasses. Testimony of the archeological importance of the site, the 14th-century-old Naarambunathar-Gomathiammal temple contains scripts and inscriptions, pictures of birds carved in stone, and wall murals marking a site of historical importance that Kings traveled for rituals and war.

Working toward the conservation of biodiversity, the protection of historical heritage, and the prosperity of the local communities, the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) is currently developing a study on the concept of eco-tourism as part of conservation and awareness strategy for TBCR. Based at the Agasthyamalai Community Conservation Centre (ACCC) in Manimutharu, the team is conducting community-based research and environmental education activities. The study contemplates (1) Water management, (2) Conservation Initiatives that engage local communities, and (3) Socio-economic activities supporting local livelihood.

This MArch + MUD interdisciplinary research studio will work collaboratively with ATREE to study and document the landscape values of the Tamiraparani River in the Thiruppudaimarudur Bird Conservation Reserve and the surrounding region. Our investigations will inform a design framework for an interpretation center supporting the regional eco-tourism initiative. The semester will require a sustained commitment to collaborative work and co-design methods.

This studio section will engage in fieldwork in the second week of October, around Fall Break. We will stay at the ACCC (map it!) and participate in a series of site visits and activities led by our community partner, ATREE. While not required, participating in the trip is highly encouraged. This studio section has a lab fee of $600 and the Architecture Program has preliminarily approved a travel stipend of $1,500 per student. We will be frugal and travel modestly to stay on that budget.

Maria Arquero
marquero@umich.edu

Mon,Thu
1pm - 6pm

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN VII (2G3/3G6) – COURSE BRIEF

COURSE ARCH 672

Michigan has garnered media attention as a potential "climate haven," a refuge for those seeking respite from the intensifying impacts of climate change within the United States. Yet, the Upper Peninsula—representing 30% of the land area and home to only 3% of the state’s population—remains largely absent from these discussions. With its humid continental climate, rocky terrain with rolling hills, expanses of contiguous forestland, and redeveloping infrastructure, the Upper Peninsula poses unique challenges and opportunities that have yet to be fully explored. This studio offers a chance to re-imagine the Upper Peninsula, not just as a destination for domestic climate migrants, but as a region where design can thoughtfully respond the necessities of a changing world while integrating the needs of diverse species, infrastructures, and cultural practices.

The studio will take a multifaceted approach to envisioning the future of the region, exploring design interventions at multiple scales and through various lenses. From the redefinition of traditional homes and residential units to the design of ritual sites connected to afterworlds, from the re-imagining of transportation infrastructures to the creation of spaces for companion species, and from the revitalization of resource-rich areas like copper mines to innovative agricultural practices—we will engage in a comprehensive rethinking of what it means to design for a changing climate in the Upper Peninsula.

We will select one site out of a set of identified places within Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The initial task is to conduct an in-depth study of the chosen site, focusing on its physical characteristics, ecological systems, historical and cultural significance, and existing infrastructure. We will then propose an issue/position/strategy that reimagines the site through one or more of the following lenses:

• Home: Residential environments in response to climate adaptation
• Afterworlds: Spaces honoring life, death, memory and indigenous ritual practices • Resources: Agricultural and mining landscapes for responsible climate futures
• Companion Species: Spaces fostering connections between humans and non-humans
• Infrastructure: Transportation networks and pathways for climate-adaptive futures

Building on the initial framing, we will identify and address a specific climate change-related issue impacting our site. This could range from rising water levels, shifts in biodiversity, to challenges in resource management, among other potential climate impacts. We will conduct a thorough analysis of how this issue influences our site, examining both immediate and long-term effects. As a last step, we will propose collectively a comprehensive and interconnected vision, out of site-specific interventions, that address evolving climate challenges while setting the groundwork for long-term environmental systems across the Upper Peninsula.

El Hadi Jazairy
ejazairy@umich.edu

Mon,Thu
1pm - 6pm

URBAN DESIGN STUDIO I – COURSE BRIEF

COURSE UD 712

This studio is concerned with imagining and articulating how urban design, as a discipline, practice, and material reality, can help uphold the Rights of Nature. Exploring the emerging paradigm of “exist, flourish, and evolve,” the studio will produce concrete manifestations of reciprocity embodied in more-than-human rights. Our multifaceted subject will be the sixty watersheds of ‘Michigan’, whose ecological communities and dynamics will figure as protagonists in our studio. We will seek to reinforce indigenous cultures and grapple with environmental institutions, such as real property and conservation law. Acknowledging that Rights of Nature are, for the moment, written aspirations, our goal will be to develop the spatial dimensions that could support them. In late September 2024, the studio will travel to sites across the region at the front of decolonial climate action.

From their mills, muck farms, canals, factories, and town sites, settler-pioneers oversaw the exposure of ‘Michigan’ to the expedient glow of frontier capitalism. Using the rivers and tributaries, they ushered the region’s forests and wetlands through a process of industrial sublimation. Settler infrastructures and commodities emerged through a drastic recasting of ecological and social relations. In ‘Michigan’ and elsewhere, the imperative of growth and settlement enabled the simplification of complex environments to a matter of “resources.” Yet, two centuries of industrial productivity and urbanization have caused such ecosystemic shifts that the notion of stability—and that of nature and culture–are now challenged.

The fallout of colonial-capitalist territoriality in ‘Michigan’ urges designers to consider new approaches that account for the agency of more-than-human entities. The concept of the Rights of Nature may offer a useful framework for this purpose. The Rights of Nature recognize the entitlement of landscapes, ecosystems, and more-than-human entities to—according to the legal phrasing—“exist, flourish, and evolve.” This reflects Native and vernacular practices, and tribes and governments in the region increasingly recognize these rights through legislation. For example, in April 2024, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe adopted The Rights of More than Human Relatives, establishing the rights of its “first family” to “thrive,” and nearby, in January 2019, White Earth Nation legislated The Rights of Manoomin, establishing the rights of wild rice to “exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve.” Such initiatives demand that designers register earthly agencies, indigenous land practices, and contemporary legal-spatial theory. How might urban design thus contribute to the imagining and implementation of reciprocal environmental values and practices?

Gabriel Cuellar
gcuellar@umich.edu

Mon,Thu
1pm - 6pm

Winter 2024

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN IV (UG4)

COURSE ARCH 442 | WALLENBERG

Coming soon.

Zain Abuseir
zaina@umich.edu

Mon,Wed,Fri
1pm - 6pm

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN IV (UG4)

COURSE ARCH 442 | WALLENBERG

Coming soon.

Neal Robinson
rbneal@umich.edu

Mon,Wed,Fri
1pm - 6pm

THESIS STUDIO (2G4/3G7)