AUTOMATIC is Luke Stern and Jesse Colin Jackson the 2008-2009 Howarth-Wright Graduate Fellows
While the constructional elements of a building are typically considered to be components in service of a greater architectural endeavor, they can also be considered as design problems in themselves. By expanding the scope of architectural inquiry in this way, the accepted form, function and materiality of these elements is opened up to interrogation, and their role is elevated from that of passive vehicles for architectural expression to active contributors to the development of an architectural idea. The desired qualities of a complete building - firmitas, utilitatis, and venustatis - are the same as those desired in a constructional element, suggesting that these elements warrant evaluation beyond merely for their ability to be creatively organized: the architecture of the element is itself architecture.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian Automatic project represents a large body of early explorations into the element as a parallel design exercise. Wright pioneered a construction process that incorporated his formal and social aspirations directly into the constructional elements. Faced with rising labour costs in the 1950s which rendered his original Usonian design for a moderate-cost home too expensive to construct, Wright sought an inexpensive material from which constructional components could be fabricated and assembled by the client with minimal assistance from a contractor. "The Usonian Automatic house therefore is built of shells made up of pre-cast concrete blocks about 1'0" x 2'0" or larger and so designed that, grooved as they are on their edges, they can be made and also set up with small steel horizontal and vertical reinforcing rods in the joints, by the owners themselves, each course being grouted (poured) as it is laid upon the one beneath; the rods meantime projecting above for the next course." These elements directly respond to the homes' design parti: the blocks can be seen as miniature manifestations of the buildings they create, each with a sense of mass and texture that is evident in the assembled whole.
The photographs, analytical drawings and full-scale procedural replication presented in AUTOMATIC demonstrate Wright's endeavor, a pivotal example of a design process that prioritized the direct consideration of the elements of building construction.
Established in 2000, the Howarth-Wright Graduate Fellowship is awarded every other year to a student in the Master of Architecture program after her or his second or third year on the basis of high academic achievement, interest in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, research skills in architectural history, and the overall strength of the research proposal.
1 comment:
looks great jesse!
wish i could attend the opening...i'll try to visit the gallery sometime this week.
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