Section Models

Askew Taylor has been out of 1/8" cardboard since last Monday, and there is not a stick of basswood left in the entire state of North Carolina...if you're a graduate of NC State's Architecture Program, you know this can only mean one thing - SECTION MODELS.  Below is a peak into the process of building the behemoth models- 2am on Thursday night, a cardboard massacre in the box, and various reviews.  Luckily I didn't capture any panic attacks or existential crises, but I did catch a verrrry tired AGSA president...

(photo courtesy of Nick Purdy)

ARC 405 Review

For their review a few weeks ago, the students in Wayne Place and Tim Martin's Design Fundamentals: Building Technology built the biggest site model I've ever seen (granted I wasn't around to see Matt Griffith's final project model, which was supposedly "ginormous".  Heresay, I say).  Below are pictures from the review.

Thanks for the pictures, Katy.

Professor Interview: Dr. Paul Tesar!

This week we're excited to feature an interview with Dr. Paul Tesar, one of our school's most well-loved and esteemed professors.  Thank you, Dr. Tesar for spending the morning with us answering our questions.

Q: Where did you grow up? What was your favorite part of growing up there?

I grew up in Vienna, the capital of Austria.  In retrospect being there made it apparent that growing up in a city with so many historical layers that are manifested in so many ideologies - political, social, psychological - made me aware of the complexity of the world.  I didn’t grow up in a one-dimensional environment.  The fact that we have traces of Roman times, Romanesque, the period of the middle ages, the Baroque, the 10^th century, layered on top of one another produced a totally different world view.

Q: How have your architectural priorities changed from when you were fresh in the field to now?

Well, I started architect school in 1960 it was the height of the modernist, functionalist thinking.  I accepted that premise more or less without question; it made sense, form follows function, who could argue with that?  As I developed and grew older, I started questioning that; realizing it’s a bit more complicated.  One thing that started creeping in was the notion of how culture influences architecture. It’s not just about program, construction, economics.

Q: If you could take your students to see one work of historical architecture, what would it be?  What about one work of modern architecture?

One building that totally overwhelms me is the cathedral in Sienna, Tuscany.  As a spatial experience, the light, materiality, spirituality of the space was palpable and overwhelming.  Off the top of my head, that’s the one, although there are a half dozen others I could mention in the same breath.

The interior space of the Berlin Philharmonic, by Hans Scharoun.  From the outside it’s this awkward, bulky looking building that looks like a stranded whale.  But when you enter, it’s this incredible space designed for music.  Musical space.   You walk in and its one of the few modernist spaces that made me weak in my knees, start tearing up.  Walking in, I thought “Oh my god”.

Q: How do you take your coffee? 

Right here black, without anything.  In Europe one of my favorite places is Nannini, in Sienna.  It’s a coffee bar close to the Piazza del Campo, and they have an espresso machine that seems to be 15 ft long.  The whole places smells like cappuccinos and lattes.  There I get a cappuccino with some pan forte, the sort of local fruit cake, which is much better than American fruit cake.

Q: Is there some lesson that you learned at one point in your career that you’ve returned to many times since?

It may be self defeating, but sometimes I feel what architects take as very important and spend a lot of time and effort on doesn’t seem to matter all that much in life, in a more general perspective.  I feel we are sometimes racking our brains about things that matter very little to most other people.

Another one is that particularly in dwelling the notion of comfort its more important than we generally give it credit.  Comfort over image.  Right now it’s the other way around, may things we admire I feel I wouldn’t want to live there.

Q: From what do you draw daily inspiration?

In general I have to say from animals.  I love animals, I love to watch animals, their directness, their innocence, their sweetness.  I always feel that they have qualities that I wish human beings have but most often don’t.  Interactions with animals makes us more human, and the reverse can also be true.

Q: If you could host your studio in one city (without the interference of the study abroad office), what would it be?  Why?

I would have to say so many cities in India have impressed me, particularly Ahmedabad.  I was impressed with the vivacity of the urban life there. When I’ve been there I’ve had a feeling of a spiritual experience amidst the buzz of ordinary life, of children on motorbikes, and donkeys and camels and cows and people and vendors. Rather than being spiritually inspired by cathedrals, I felt this experience in the middle of the Indian street.  Call it spirituality form below rather than above.  It rose in my body from the sensuality of the place rather than from intellectual and religions feelings. 

Q: What is your favorite non-architecture book?

One book that I keep coming back to is wonderful book by the author Martin Buber called I and Thou.  Ich und Du.  Not a book about religion but rather about how we relate to the world, how we relate to each other.  About the basic philosophy of relation and says we can enter two kinds of experience; an “I-You” relationship, or an “I-It” relationship.  Fascinating.


Thank you for contributing to our interview series, Dr. Tesar!

CONGRATULATIONS TO DR. ERDIM!!!!

This past weekend found Professor Burak Erdim up at University of Virginia defending his dissertation, titled "Middle East Technical University and Revolution: Development Planning and ARchitectural Education during the Cold War, 1950-62".  The weekend was a success, and we now have another Doctorate-decorated professor in our College!  

The following professors made up Dr. Erdim's dissertation committee.
-Professor Sheila Crane (Art and Architectural History), UVA (director of dissertation)
-Professor Richard Guy Wilson (Architectural History), UVA
-Professor Dell Upton (Architectural History) UCLA
-Professor Gülsüm Baydar (Architecture), Yaşar University, Izmir, Turkey
-Professor David Waldner (Political Science), UVA (reader from Arts + Sciences) 

We asked Dr. Erdim to sum up the defense experience - his description is below.

"The defense was actually very enjoyable and productive. I made a 12-minute introduction that summed up the objectives and the methodologies of the project. The committee was impressed with the clarity of this introduction and, I think, this piece was responsible for getting everything started on the right path. I am so thankful that I was able to put that together before the defense. Professor Sheila Crane then opened the floor for questions allowing Professor Upton to begin since I had begun this project under his supervision in 2005. Generally speaking, my committee members were pleased and impressed with the work, pointing out certain problems with the current organization and asking me questions about how I might address those issues in the future of this study. In the process, many key ideas emerged in terms of how I could frame the content of the dissertation in future publications. I was very pleased with the discussion since this is essentially how you want a dissertation defense to go where the committee is spending their time and energy on the future of the work. The committee did not require any major revisions, although they did point out that I had close six-hundred pages in the main body of the text and only four pages as the conclusion to the dissertation. So, they asked me to write a more substantial conclusion. Following the dissertation, I also got the chance to speak with Professor Crane at length about the comments and the defense. This was also very helpful since everything was fresh in our minds. 
I am very thankful to Professor Sheila Crane and to all the members of my committee for their great support and guidance in this work. It is not possible to do a work a like this without the support of outstanding scholars, mentors, and teachers, but also institutions. I understand that more than ever at this point in my career and I hope to continue that circle of scholarship through my teaching at NC State."

Congratulations, Dr. Burak Erdim!  Now you have the time to go on those long runs you've been missing out on!


See the abstract below written by Dr. Erdim for a more detailed look at his impressive work. 

"Through the analysis of the inception and development of the Middle East Technical University (METU), my dissertation examines the relationship among diverging ideologies of development within the political context of the Cold War. METU was established initially as a School of Architecture and Community planning through an unlikely partnership between the United Nations Housing and Town and Country Planning agency (UN-HTCP), the University of Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts, and the Turkish Republic in the relatively new Turkish capital, Ankara in 1956. The study shows how the idea of architectural training and education emerged as a new strategy of development and as a common ground among these multiple agents. It also examines how prevalent ideas in development, architectural education and planning were contested, transformed, and implemented within this dynamic as it examines the making of the School's innovative curriculum and the planning of its campus. As a result, the study shows that METU, as a case study of postwar projects of social and economic development and cooperation, was not a product of a singular program, agency, or an ideology. Instead, the project reveals that METU emerged as a product of contentious relationships among multiple political and professional groups. In this way, the dissertation does not only problematize current definitions of the Cold War, but it also identifies how professional groups, such as architects, planners, lawyers, and state officials of multiple disciplines, participated in this dynamic."

Haunted House this Friday!

Good Luck at SouthQuad, AIAS!!

ARC 403 City + Precinct Reviews

Monday found the first years pinned up in the Rotunda presenting their city + precinct Charleston models.  I for one was blown away by their level of research and exploration and their beautifully crafted models.  Way to blow it out of the water, ARC 403!

Shawna Hammon takes Woven to Shanghai

As many of you already know, last semester Shawna Hammon's project Woven was selected as one of five finalists (out of 357!) in the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat's (CTBUH) International Student Tall Building Design Competition (whew that was a mouthful, I'm exhausted).   Developed as a studio project for Wayne Place's skyscraper studio, Shawna's scheme was predicated on the notion of challenging the public's perception of wood as a feasible structural material for skyscrapers.

Shawna travelled to Shanghai in September along with the other finalists for the final presentations.  A link to the article, with further details about final standings, can be found here.

Congrats on this huge honor, Shawna, and thanks for representing NCState so well on the global stage!

Midterm Reviews hit the COD

This week leading up to Fall Break has been chock-full of midterm studio reviews, kicking off on Monday with Jay Smith's Comprehensive Studio and Paul Teasar's Architecture and Cultural Sustainability: Contemporary Interventions in Traditional Urban Environments.  With a panel of reviewers dressed all in black, the critiques were pointed and hard-hitting, reminding us students that maybe we don't actually have everything figured out at midterm, and giving us that extra push going into Fall Break to refine and develop our projects.  At least that's what happened in the Comprehensive review!

Architecture and Cultural Sustainability: Contemporary Interventions in Traditional Urban Environments

Comprehensive Studio