Onkar G on July 9, 2021 No Comments
A project that explores how architects are ‘storytellers for the environment’ and prefabricated housing systems designed for future mobility are included in Dezeen’s latest school show by students from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Also included is a project that addresses fire resilience in California and one that focuses on the role that cultural identity plays in architecture today.
University of California, Los Angeles
University: University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture
Course: Master of Architecture (M.Arch), Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design (M.S.AUD), Bachelor of Art in Architectural Studies (B.A.)
Tutors: Kutan Ayata, Neil Denari, Georgina Huljich, Mariana Ibañez, Jeffrey Inaba, David Jimenez Iniesta, Jimenez Lai, Jason Payne, Heather Roberge, Natasha Sandmeier, Mohamed Sharif and Nathan Su
Statement:
“UCLA Architecture and Urban Design is a champion of ideas and their articulate expression. Our exceptional faculty teach students to engage the world around them, see ideas as productive forms of response, and leverage design and writing to express newly curated perspectives.
“Through rigorous inquiry, we interrogate contemporary architectural and urban issues and propose possible futures with equal measures of expertise, optimism and vision. These ideas are grounded in a critical engagement with the history and theory of architecture and the future contingencies of contemporary culture.
“Rumble is our end-of-year exhibition. It is an opportunity to discuss individual projects within a larger context of contemporary ideas and discourses, revealing how the questions and projects that motivate us have matured and developed under the direction of our talented students and the collective stewardship of faculty. Below is a snapshot of student work from Rumble 2021. Visit our website to learn more.”
Saline Dreams 4*: Ecoinfrastructural Architecture by Nate Waddell
“This project involves the engineered ecology and resultant aesthetic implications of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Dust Mitigation Project at Owens Lake – a large site in eastern California of significant environmental, historical, political, and infrastructural significance.
“Until recently the largest single source of dust pollution in the US, the studio examines control methods developed by LADWP to manage this complex landscape: a complex synthesis of fields, pools, plants, animals, microorganisms, chemicals, minerals, roads, berms, dams, plumbing, power lines, grading, gravel, roads, sensors, and salt that is only partially visible to the human eye. The effects of these reworkings of the landscape are striking, inevitably aesthetic in their expression.”
Student: Nate Waddell
Course: M.Arch.
Tutor: Jason Payne
Digging and Flying by Lauren Mitchell
“Let’s start at the first principles: architecture as the mediation between earth and sky. To build, one must – generally, but not continuously – excavate a substructure, then erect a superstructure. In this total act of construction, managing forces through engineering allow us to make decisions (design process) on how we engage with geo-kinetics like gravity and rotation.
“I believe that architecture is always about digging and flying. This studio dramatises that relationship and has developed a community garden and food hall located on Devonwood Park in the San Fernando Valley.”
Student: Lauren Mitchell
Course: M.Arch.
Tutor: Neil Denari
Stranger Than Fiction Two: Earthrise by Maira Yasir and Yuxin Tian
“Blending technological innovation with visual storytelling and worldbuilding, this studio gives rise to worlds and stories that ask fundamental questions about how our lives weave between myth and machine, fact and folklore, between ecology and allegory.
“Architects have always been storytellers for the environment, and this past year of global transformation proves that there is no better time than now to champion the futures we want and to advocate, through the story, a world of possibility and hope. Wander by Maira Yasir and Yuxin Tian takes us on a journey through the landscapes of memory in search of a shared childhood experience.”
Student: Maira Yasir and Yuxin Tian
Course: M.S.AUD
Tutor: Natasha Sandmeier and Nathan Su
Climate Caravan: Mobility is Resilience by Misty (Yufei) Liang and Monica (Yixuan) Zhang
“Housing production is encumbered financially and environmentally by the private land to which it is tied. To decouple home and land from its associated notions of permanence, this studio proposes prefabricated housing systems designed for future mobility and new community organisations afforded by unit aggregation.
“Migration scenarios articulate critical stances regarding how and where we might live, the relationships between units, the adaptability and aesthetics of this future housing, and its relationship to existing infrastructure. Accepting the inevitability of migration as a form of climate adaptation and resilience, this studio imagines our future climate caravans.”
Student: Misty (Yufei) Liang and Monica (Yixuan) Zhang
Course: M.Arch.
courtesy -dezeen
