T3XTURE No.1
Edited by Craig Purcell, Randy Sovich, and Lynda Burke
Contributions by:
Sou Fujimoto, Maureen Zell, UWM Marcus Prize Studio;
Alexandra Singer-Bieder and Sofia Bennani;
Emmy Mikelson; and
photograph by Sanket Mhatre.
INFORMATION:
6" x 9" (15.24 x 22.86 cm)
Full Color Bleed on White paper
76 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1502772855
Christopher Tyler is the Director of the
Smith-Kettlewell Brain Imaging Center
at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research
Institute in San Francisco. His scientific
interests are in visual perception and neuroscience. He has studied form, symmetry,
flicker, motion, color, and stereoscopic
depth perception, and has developed tests
for the diagnosis of eye diseases. Tyler
has also studied vision in such species as
butterflies and fish. Tyler’s current work
concerns theoretical, psychophysical and
functional MRI studies of the structure of
global visual processes.
Excerpt of Interview
T3X: Why is understanding texture discrimination important to you?
CWT: I would frame it in the larger sense of texture perception in general. I see texture as one of the primary qualities of the visual world, parallel to form, motion and color. It is thus inherently interesting to study the range and dimensionality of the world of visual textures. For example, it is well established that color vision is three-dimensional (including the brightness dimension), at least in humans, due to the retina having three types of color photoreceptors. (Some butterflies are now known to have up to nine types of photoreceptors, so they may live in a
riot of colors invisible to us!)
Ground Fragments
Excerpt
A Vocabulary of Textures
In large parts of Greece the undulated geomorphology results in disorderly mosaics of agrarian uses. Land-folds, ravines and streams impose a fragmentary, discontinuous and irregular development of arable fields…. which in turn established societies with their own fragile cohesion and fabric.
Editor’s note: the images accompanying the full article are ballpoint pen on paper drawings of Greek agrarian landscape patterns. With so much attention paid to digital fabrication and computer-generated graphics, we are pleased to see this commitment to hand drawing.
Kostas Manolidis is an associate
professor at the University of Thessaly,
Greece. He received his M Arch degree
from Southern California Institute of Architecture. Manolidis is co-editor of the books Beautiful, Awful
and Austere Landscape: Readings and Perspectives on the Landscape in Greece (2003); Representation as a Vehicle of Architectural Thought (2006); and The Claim of the Outdoors (2009). Manolidis’s work has been presented in such publications as Paisea, Architectones, Geographies, 2000x Landscape Architecture, and numerous books and conference catalogs.
POROCITY
Editor: The impetus for this design project is the University of Auckland’s (UoA) replacement of two outer-suburb campuses with the construction of a new campus in Newmarket, neighboring the two existing campuses in downtown Auckland. Milojevic designed a Gateway to link the three campuses, their diverse disciplines and scholars, and the life of the city just outside the University’s boundaries.
Excerpt:
Out of a geologic whole are excavated academic courts, large assembly and common places, numerous pedestrian alleys, bus and rail stations, parking, offices, exhibition spaces, student centers, stores, technical workshops, cafes, roof gardens, et al. Voids are excavated to provide daylight to large and small spaces and rooms while conveying a wholeness, continuity, and overall inter- connectedness of both knowledge and the city.
Alexander [Sacha] Milojevic is a recent graduate of the UoA School of Architecture. In addition to winning the recent NZIA Award for his Newmarket Campus project, Milojevic’s design for the Takapuna Military Museum received the 2012 Auckland Architecture Association’s Unbuilt Architecture Awards’ top prize.
Texture Theory
Excerpt:
The “pursuit of flatness” has been the critical animating force in painting in the post-Impressionist era as artists sought to privilege, rather than to ignore or overcome, the unique two-dimensionality of painting. While Texture Theory recognizes the plane as a core attribute of the art form, … it suggests that the actual texture of the media, the media’s interaction with -- and relationship to -- each other and the ground plane may very well be as important as the deconstruction of flatness in the creation and understanding of painting.
Architecture, sculpture, city design, and music also arise from the [same] core artistic energy as pictorial art. [It is this] that Texture Theory seeks to illuminate.
An architect with over 35 years of experience, Craig Purcell is devoted to the study of the architecture and physical organization of cities. He earned his B Arch at the University of Virginia. Purcell is the Director of Urban Design at the firm of Brown Craig Turner in Baltimore.
SILVERSCREEN FLIRTATIONS
This +FARM project was initiated by two farmers who wanted to enhance artistic opportunities in their community by hosting musical performances in an outdoor setting.
Excerpt:
The farm is 300 acres of soft glacial landform mechanically groomed to sustain feed for the grass-fed sheep and cattle. The fields are a choreographed performance of unrelenting evolution and compassionate cultivation honed by the craft of farmers. The temporary and volatile climate features wind gusts upwards of 70 mph in winter. Considering these qualities we conceived of a structure that could negotiate the flirtatious relationship between land and man.
+FARM was established in 2011 by
William Haskas, and operates in Brooklyn and Perrysburg, NY. Each January the open studios are announced on the studio’s website and the team and team leaders are selected based on specific project demands. The Silver Screen Flirtations eleven-student project team come from universities all over North America.
The Project Team:
Brittany Piscopo, Chitra Mamidela,
Christin Hu, Jonathan Yates, Julia Lu,
LIda Chrysanthou, Lorraine Kung,
Loyra Nunez, Nick Bozza, Omar Ferwati,
Pablo Morelo, Solomon Oh, Yi He.
Team Leaders:
Lavender Tessmer, Joseph Vidich, and
William Haskas. Technical expertise was
provided by Tim Brewster, and material
knowledge by Rigidized Metals.
Excerpt:
The faBRICK pavilion, [a temporary public installation]
was conceived as homage to Milwaukee’s rich tradition of masonry construction. Through free-ranging material explorations, we developed a novel method of
linking bricks into billowing arches without
using mortar, giving this heavy material
material a feeling of lightness and playfulness.
The installation arches combine to form
a rippling brick carpet that invites human
interaction and exploration while critiquing
the definition of ‘pavilion’. As a result,
faBRICK transforms the defining
perception of a brick structure as hard
into one that appears soft.
Sou Fujimoto is founder and principal of
Sou Fujimoto Architects. In addition to
winning the 2013 UWM Marcus Prize, Fujimoto has received many other international awards, among them: the Japanese Institute of Architecture Grand Prize; and the grand prize in the Private House Division/World Architectural Festival. Fujimoto is the youngest architect to be selected to design the Serpentine Gallery Summer Pavilion
in London. He has just been named WSJ Magazine 2014 Architecture Innovator of the Year.
Maureen Zell is associate professor of architecture, and associate dean at the University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee SARUP. She is cofounding
principal of bauenstudio, a design
and research firm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Zell received her M Arch from Yale University,
School of Architecture and her BS Arch
from the University of Virginia, School of
Architecture.
From Rows to Dots
Excerpt:
One might look at the houses as a material resource, for example, their bricks and wood timbers… harvested right in the neighborhood and converted into new housing[.] This project proposes a new type of urban infill: housing that integrates parts of the rubbish … from Baltimore’s vacant housing stock with energy efficient, environmentally friendly building systems in a new social structure.
Randy Sovich holds a B Arch from
Carnegie-Mellon, and for the past 20 years
has practiced as principal/founder of RM
Sovich Architecture in Baltimore. His firm’s
work has been recognized with awards for
innovative housing, healthcare, adaptive reuse,
and design for aging. His project “New
Urban Housing” received a Progressive Architecture Award.
Straw-K
Excerpt:
Manual, Industrial, and Digital Crafting
In our first trial we fabricated dozens of handcrafted prototypes with different forms, lengths, diameters, and colors of plastic tubes […] traditional craftsman controlling
the design and fabrication process at the same time.
Today’s digital machines restore [the craftsman’s control.] Modeling software allows faster and more precise creative
expression, [ …] strong control of the virtual objects, and sensitive feedback on even the haptic/tactile effect of
changing parameters.
Alexandra Singer-Bieder received her M
Arch from the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture
in Paris. She currently works with the firm
Light Architecture in London. Finalists in
Tex Fab’s Plasticity Competion, Singer-Bieder’s
and teammate Bennani’s project was
exhibited at the 2014 ACADIA Conference
in Los Angeles.
Sofia Bennani received her M Arch from
Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris and
is now working in Paris for the Kilo Architecture
fi rm. H er p roject w ith S inger-Bieder was exhibited at the 2014 ACADIA Conference in Los Angeles.
Purple Violet
Excerpt:
Purple Violet introduces the contemporary vernacular to a backwoods, off-the-grid cabin located in the forests of rural Canada. The project is a reimagining of the wigwam of the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet people, creating a spatial interpretation of the traditional, locally sourced materials.
Jason Orbe-Smith, architect and designer,
received his M Arch from the Southern
California Institute of Architecture. His Infill
Aquifer design is honorably mentioned
in the eVolo 2014 Skyscraper Competition.
He received a 3rd place award for his entry
to the MUD House Design Competition
for Ghana. Orbe-Smith is currently engaged in architectural practice and independent
design research in Los Angeles.
Dark Reading is a primal, intuitive journey - for both writer and reader - out of the light and into the realm of pure texture.
Excerpt:
...It is not useful to stand upright in the dark – the peril of never knowing what hangs above. The ground is infinitely knowable. Staying close to the ground, bellies become callous and ticklish....
Emmy Mikelson is an artist and curator
residing in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has
been exhibited internationally, and also
published in the architecture journals Nova
Organa, KTISMA, and Ampersand. Mikelson
has been an invited speaker at such institutions
as Parsons The New School for
Design, and the City University of New
York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Mickelson
currently teaches at Baruch College,
CUNY, and is the senior associate at The
Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at
The Cooper Union.