Podcasts
Teaching
A practitioner and instructor’s responsibility is not only to assess a culture by perpetuating its values, but also to foster its renewal and regeneration.
Both my teaching and my practice are at the crossroads of theory and application. While research permeates content, the result offers practical resolution integrating cultural needs and encourages explorations, which create potential for concrete and specific realization. I consider architecture a tool for change (social, cultural and environmental). Case studies developed in my current studio investigate new resolutions relevant to a historical phenomenon (cultural sub-urbanization) in which current attitudes and political practices are responsible for the present conditions, and will perpetuate its aggravation. Teaching allows focusing on problem solving, as Mies van der Rohe justly said, “in architecture one is confronted with problems for which one must find solutions. The best architecture is the clearest and most direct solution to the problem”. I develop problem solving as an empowering educational tool and endeavor to find “the most direct solution” to the most complex quandary which my studios are mainly researching.
Last Spring semester has been challenging during the development of:
1) A homeless unit for mass production with A. Zahner Co., Murray-Co. for Metropolitan Lutheran Ministry. Two years ago students design built an earlier prototype. (Real project)
2) A rooftop prototype providing energy to the host building for cities to become sustainable. This project is being developed for of the Nicholson group downtown KC. (Real project)
3) Developing solutions for Aquabat Jaber Refugee Camps for UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). (Real project)
4) A Home Hospice House for VNA Hospice Group in Lawrence, KS. (Real project)
5) Transformation of I-29; I-35 interstate corridor as “infrastructure architecture”. Proposal for the MARC (Mid America Regional Council) for Kansas City, MO.
6) AIDS Community Center for CTC , Maai Mahiu, Kenya, (Real project)
My studio endeavors to investigate crucial issues and search for functional, social, ecological and economical resolutions; which bring an unforeseen formal aspect challenging construction processes which could potentially if not practically be implemented. Student work has been displayed in national and international exhibitions (San Francisco, St Louis, Chicago, Rotterdam, London…etc.), published in magazines and on TV (local and CNN). In 2001 the studio received the American Architecture Award for a roof top prototype in Chicago.
Research Interests
Research is inspired by what is lacking; this investigation helps to articulate meaning and comprehension for teaching. It addresses two levels, the general, more theoretical (origin, myths, definition, subject, identity, truth, norm, reason) and the specific, more particular (social (homelessness), structural, architectonical, contextual, regional, political (refugee camps)). Investigation of basic definitions of architecture creates a flux flowing and informing from one research to the other. The specific confronts particular issues. For example, it is projected that in 2020 Topeka, Lawrence, Saint Joseph and Kansas City will be one huge suburban conurbation. This radicalization of sprawling poses ethical, cultural and environmental issues that are addressed by an investigation on Suburban sprawl and its challenge within its paradoxical resolution within Parkurbia (Suburbia as a National Park).
- Expansion as spatial production (Suburbia as politico economical system).
- Infrastructure Architecture (Research on Interstate Highway implications and Architecture)
- Post-Urban City (Research of Mid size Mid America towns (Kansas City))
- Arch. as the Practice of the Self (Arch. as the space of intimacy and privacy)
- From "Interdiction" to Permissiveness", (Taboo and TRansgression in Arch.)
- The Other in Architectural History/Theory (A Recent Paradigm Shift From the Other to Otherness)
- Flesh in Architecture (Carnality Architectural).
- ParkUrbia: Suburbia as a Nat. Park (Sprawls and the Recovery of Landscape).
- Form and Function: The Old Dream of Symmetry.
- Myth and Denials in Architecture's Origins (From Vitruvius, to Filarete's “Original Sin” and to Laugier's “Primitive Hut”).
Print Page