Treehugger | exhibition

[photo credit]


The students of Jason Turnidge's Operative Detailing class with be presenting Treehugger, an inflatable and interactive event space in the shape of a giant torus, tomorrow evening from 5 - 7pm. For more information, please visit the event page on Facebook.

CAED Names New Dean

Yesterday, the university announced via Flashline,

"'Douglas L. Steidl, FAIA, of Peninsula, Ohio, will become dean of Kent State University’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design, effective July 1,' announced Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Robert G. Frank. Steidl replaces James Dalton, who will return to a faculty position following the completion of a two-year appointment as dean of the college."

Read the full announcment at the university website here.

Spring Design Lecture Series

The Kent State University College of Architecture and Environmental Design presents the 2010 Spring Design Lecture Series.

All lectures are free and open to the public.

Download the poster here.
View the entire series here.

Get on your soapbox.

Call for submissions.



Here’s the experiment:


If you were given the chance to say, make, or draw anything you wanted, what would it be? How would you choose to express yourself? What if there were no limits, but the outline of a square and a blank sheet of paper? Would you be offensive? secretive? philosophical? simple?































Use this space to create anything you want. (think PostSecret) We want you to compositionally stay inside this box, but urge you to think outside of it.

Hand in submissions to Carolyn Isaacson, Julie Whyte, or Micah McKelvey (Florence), or email scanned submissions to tracekent@gmail.com.

Where did all the third-years go?

Wondering where all the third-year architecture and interior design students went? T r a c e has asked students to share their personal web logs to provide an intimate look into the CAED Florence Program as well as help prepare future students for the upcoming experience.

Check out their personal blogs below (and send them care packages while you're at it.)


Erin
Gabe
Amber
Micah

Computer Lab Conundrum

by julie whyte, 4th year b.s. architecture


Disbelief. Anger. Determination. This can’t be happening. How could they do this to us? What can we do? These were my initial reactions upon hearing the dreaded news that the May 4th Initiative would be taking over the first floor Architecture/ Interior Design computer lab.


This reaction may seem extreme to some, but we as Architecture and Interior Design students know how imperative the computer lab is to our education. AutoCAD, Revit Architecture, Revit MEP, Autodesk Maya, Virtual Environment, Photoshop CS3, Ecotect- these are just a handful of computer programs that the computer lab provides for students that allow them to complete class work. Although some students may have these programs on their own computers, many students cannot afford to equip their computers with all these expensive programs. Many students’ computers have trouble running the new version of Revit (Revit Architecture 2010). To top it off, my computer can barely open Internet Explorer. As a result, running Revit and Photoshop is clearly out of the question. While the computer lab may be just a lab to some, we as students know that it is so much more.


The Kent Stater recently ran an article conveying the facts about the whole ordeal. Laura Davis, ex-associate provost of Kent State, is spear-heading this project. After e-mailing her several times in the attempt to yield some answers (and most likely ensuring the placement of my name on a blacklist somewhere), I was assured that arrangements would me made well in advance to move our computer lab to a different location.


This was of some comfort, but this “solution” is still not addressing the fundamental problem. The College of Architecture is already distributed between three different buildings. The adjacency of the computer lab, digital commons, and the graduate studio creates one of the few scenarios where the space encourages social interactions. Aren’t we taught that communication and collaboration are essential to our careers as designers? Yet, the 4th years are isolated in Tri-Towers, 3rd years and I.D. students confined to the Gym Annex, and 1st and 2nd years sectioned off in Taylor Hall. The computer lab and digital commons area present a rare situation where students of different years can interact with one another. In addition to the social benefits, the digital commons contains the printers and scanners that are necessary to be in adjacency with the computer lab for the sake of efficiency. If the computer lab is eliminated from this conglomeration, the digital commons becomes utterly obsolete.


I realize there is no easy solution here. Mike Turk, 4th year Architecture major and the College of Architecture’s Senator for the Undergraduate Student Senate, has worked towards finding an alternate solution. He came up with the idea of utilizing the office space in Taylor Hall facing the hill rather than digging the Visitor’s Center deeper into the core of Taylor Hall and knocking out the computer lab. The May 4th Task Force was responsive to this design alternative, but the May 4th Initiative (the organization that has the power in this scenario) was not. But, since a lack of funds is stalling project’s implementation, we are given a window of opportunity. One of my initial questions is still pertinent. What can we do? We are designers, after all. Isn’t it our task to be problem-solvers? How can we stop one of the best amenities in our College from being inextricably torn away from us? And, if we can’t stop this demolition of our space, what collaborative measures are going to be taken by the College of Architecture and the May 4th Initiative to ensure that we still have access to the facilities that we need?

Belief in the City

carolyn isaacson, 1st year b.s. architecture


















In the morning the glass walls gleam and reflect the pink sunrise. Seamless steel beams reach up and up, looking like the arms of eager school children squealing to answer the question first. Each rooftop holds up the sky with broad shoulders or piercing spires. These are towers of inspiration and evidence of the sheer imagination that is born in nature but only successfully recreated on the streets of a versatile city. City streets hold an immensity that is as all-consuming as the relief of cold fresh air. The infinite amount of movement is invigorating. People begin to ready themselves for the day ahead; boarding trains and buses, mounting bikes and walking along sidewalks, getting to the places they need to be. The order of this transfer of people from vehicle to building is awe-inspiring, everything running so smoothly. All the while connections are made between every one of these moving persons. Between the businessman and the Starbucks barista. Between the concierge and the hotel guest. Even between the train motorman and the CTA rider. These are the links that make my belief in the city unbreakably strong. People are meant to be close to one another. The city is proof of that. Without these ties between every person in a city, no fresh ideas are created. Ideas are the product of deep thinking culminated by groups of people, the likes of which can be easily found in cities. An urban setting is a haven for innovation. Cities are saturated with new buildings, technologies, policies, and people. The constant need for these new things is a reflection of the survival tactics that are fundamental to urban dwellers. Open-mindedness is the key to the versatility unique to the city. When people live and breathe in such close proximity to one another, each person must adapt a sense of tolerance and receptiveness to the thoughts and beliefs of those with whom they make even the slightest connection. The city draws people to interact with one another as a means to build a solid and original future. Nothing can parallel the masses of glass, steel, and concrete that encompass the city and define humanity's most successful step in creating indivisible connections.

Volume 4 / Issue 1

The first issue of Volume 4 is out now! Find it posted around the college, on your studio desk, and here.


Get ready for round two of t r a c e at the beginning of next semester! To contribute, email us! tracekent@gmail.com

Guess Where Kent?

Announcing a competition for the break! The first student to email us a description of the location pictured in the photograph below will be awarded a gracious gift from the t r a c e team. Precision counts.





























Send your entry to tracekent@gmail.com with your mailing address and phone number.

Dreamscapes

micah mckelvey, editor, 3rd year b.s. architecture



I was running and out of breath.

Looking behind me, I expected to see something. Nothing was there except for a city street; bland in its globalised urbanity, busily occupied with the outcomes of capitalism, but completely devoid of people. It was as if I had been deposited into an already unfolding event or even one that had just concluded, woken up from a coma that my body did not share. The how, the why, and the where, I did not know. Suddenly I felt the need to stop. I looked down at gum smashed on the pavement by a million hurried shoes, evidence of a city bustle that currently did not exist.

That's when I noticed it. Powerful, cold, and imposing; a presence of terrible subtlety, like the sting after a backhand slap to the face. I slowly raised my head to peer at the mass before me. There were no shadows, the sky was overcast, but had there been, its shadow would have cast me in a dark blanket long ago. The facade was unapologetically brutal in its windowless concrete surface, tiered upward like a Japanese pagoda that extended infinitely toward the horizon in both directions. It was clear it didn't belong, strong but concurrently vague. And while pondering who could have built this imposing complex I thought I saw the faintest flicker. Then the realization struck me. Was I running away from some unknown thing, or being drawn to this unusual interruption in the city fabric?

Noticing two strangely typical doors just to my left, I proceeded to enter this fortress not knowing what to expect inside but having an alien desire to find out what existed beyond. I approached without inhibitions. Passing through the exterior barrier revealed a vast room obstructed by a labyrinth of planes; surfaces that made up walls and floors as if here gravity wasn't a force worth acknowledging. It was dark, but a mysterious glow from an unseen source provided sufficient light for seeing. As I passed further into the structure's depths I could not help but think the walls were rearranging themselves based on my position, somehow guiding me through the labyrinth. Yet it couldn't have been so; there was nothing mechanical about it. Instead the space seemed much more organic, as if the planes were grown there; stretching out like ivy, adopting and adapting to their surroundings. Here I suddenly looked behind me without provocation and found a wall blocking where I had just come from, cutting me off from the city outside. What is this place? Someone, or something was watching my every move. I felt it. The eyes of unknown origin evaluating and picking apart my actions caused me to proceed slowly, cautiously.

I then found myself in what seemed as the heart of the building. It was darker still, but I found myself in a room whose ceiling was beyond sight, concrete walls straining upward until they vanished in a dark abyss. It seemed the building was alive and I was exploring its arteries, infiltrating it not like a virus, but like a medicinal treatment. Somehow it needed me. As I thought this I felt something in turn infiltrate me, overtaking me, putting visions and strange knowledge in my head. The building was coming alive and presenting itself as a being, a creature both living and breathing. I began to panic and attempted to fight it off. As I snapped around in a rage, in the distance I saw a silhouette in the likeness of a man. Too far to properly perceive, but too close for comfort.

I ran.

Any direction that I could to get out of this place. To be back in the city and away from this thing that was drawing me in. I was a lab rat in a large experiment and I needed to get out. Before the walls seemed in a perpetual state of flux, almost transparent. Now they were cold and fixed and as solid as the concrete facade outside. Dashing through the labyrinth, I noticed an increasing amount of light. The way out must be close. I felt the building coming off me, with each passing plane I gained more and more control and was closer and closer to freedom. Finally, beautiful daylight. I kept running across the empty street, on to the littered sidewalk beyond. Returned to the vacant city I took a deep breath and felt a sense of relief.

I turned around to look again at the terrifying fortress, but nothing was there except the city, as one would expect.