I like to write.
I am an admitted avid and voracious reader. My love for architectural theory, as well as my daily upkeep with stories of architectural history, theory and criticism is something I actively enjoy as a daily experience. The act of reading, as Bachelard once noted,
"Appears to be the reflection of the joy of writing."
— Gaston Bachelard
In this respect I feel that it is through my love of reading that I have acquired joy in the practice of writing. The works displayed here reflect my desire to think critically about the profession of architecture, design, and planning; its practices, yet to do so engaging with my subject matter as an act of productive criticism; underlining my desire and lived-ethic of continual refinement through practice but also reflection.
Architectural Writing /
History, Theory, Criticism, Thoughts & Ideas …
Chaos, Order, and Cabinetry
Expressions of an Orderly Utopia by Early Female Architects in the Dutch Golden Age
Submission to / Log - 50 - ‘Model Behavior’ - 2020 /
Prompt / Model Behavior : From the miniature scenario to the instructional model, from the ideal to the abstract concept given form through modeling, how we see and act in the world is shaped by models /
Responding to the call for examinations of ‘Modeled Behavior’ in the built practice, this essay turns it’s purposefully narrow focus on the idiosyncratic domestic cabinets made by women of the Dutch Golden Age as source and site of agency and resistance within a society prided for its progressiveness, yet stymied by patriarchy.
#ModelBehavior #Miniature #Kunstkammer #Order #Utopia #FirstFemaleArchitects #Design #Agency
Welfare by Design
Transitioning from Capital to Kapital, an open letter from New York to Copenhagen
Submission to / 2020 Copenhagen Architecture Festival /
Prompt / Observations, Visions, and Considerations on the Impact of the Corona-Crisis on the Built Environment, in Both Danish and International Contexts /
Composed as an open letter from New York to Copenhagen, this (30 minute) article examines the lineages of social housing (Almen Bolig), in Danish and American contexts, and the future of the “Welfare City”. Refocusing on the 2020 Copenhagen Architecture Festival’s initial examination of the contemporary state of the Danish welfare city through ‘Critical City’ (2019), an edited anthology of essays collected by Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss; the letter connects these initial intellectual threads with the call for a disciplinary response examining the future of cities in a post-corona-virus world. Plotting past urban planning failures, and critiques of “top-down”, or “tabula-rasa” planning schemes, this letter is a passionate appeal to the disciplinary urban planners, architects, designers, or otherwise advocates of density, to craft new guidelines for safe and healthy cities; seeing private capital not as the only leaders in this global health crisis impacting the structure, function, and future of our cities.
#Covid-19 #Coronavirus #AlmenBolig #SocialHousing #Architecture #UrbanPlanning #Design #Agency
Architecture at the Edge
An Examination of Recent Shifts in the Field of Architecture
Submissions to / 2014 Boston Architectural College ‘In Practice’ Magazine / Situationist-Local Studio Zine
Published / Spring 2014
Written as a critical send-up of recent shifts in the way architects both produce work, and value their time, this essay draws connections from recent practices driven in part by the financial sector, the growing illusion of the architectural competition as a means for sponsoring young architects, and the undervaluing of the architects work through the growing need to devalue the architect or designers time to participate in free, largely marketing driven competition; further exploring how old models of apprenticeship have been co-opted to use the unpaid internship as a means for production on these fee-less endeavors.
#Internship #Competition #Architecture #Ethics #Labor #Architectural Ethics #ArchitecturalIdeals #ArchitecturalAgency #PamphletArchitecture #Zine
A Humanist Resistance
The Aaltos and the Architectural Detail
Submission to / BAC Student Magazine / 'Praxis
Published / Fall 2014
This long-form, citation heavy research essay uses a Marxist lens to examine the works of Alvar Aalto, and his wives Aino, and Elissa, two designers and architects who had often been written out of the contemporary histories. While the essay problematizes Aalto’s work from a histriological perspective, an acknowledgement that all written histories are indeed an evolution of both writers and readers, the crux of the argument examines how from a humanist perspective this architectural workshop both participated in mechanical production, while also using architecture as a means for protest through the act of architectural detailing.
#Humanism #AlvarAalto #ElissaAalto #AinoAalto #Architecture #Ethics #Labor #Architectural Ethics #ArchitecturalIdeals #ArchitecturalAgency #DesignCritique #ArchitecturalDetailing
Dismantling Cartesian Modernism
Nancy Holt’s Missoula Ranch Locators
Submission to / BAC Student Magazine / 'Praxis
Published / Spring 2013
Focusing on the work of the artist Nancy Holt, this essay examines the broader theoretical framework in which her work positions itself against an ocular-centric, primarily vision biased culture, and examines the power structures inherent in engineering, cartography, philosophy, which her work is intended to undermine. Using the 1973 work, ‘Missoula Ranch Locators’ as a case-study, this essay explores how her work has come to question such inherent constructs as ‘North’, ‘South’, etc, but also examines the larger and more problematic cultural manifestations of an increasingly fetishized aesthetic visual culture and the Cartesian framework which perpetuates such a vision-centered experience of Modernity. Holt’s work, much as this essay, will utilize the theories of phenomenology in philosophy, and architecture to establish Holt’s work as the antithesis of such Cartesian sensibilities, and to suggest her work as providing an experiential/sensory based alternative in modern ontology.
#NancyHolt #LandArt #Place #OccularCentrism #ArtEthics #Cartesian #Modernism #Critique #Sculpture
Word & Image in Architectural Representation
A Critique of Architectural Practices
Submission to / Architectural Adjacencies Studio Zine
Published / Fall 2013
This short essay examines the ways in which both images and language can be co-opted and abused if not used properly and with tactical agency. Produced as a zine and performative art-object, the essay was written on paper by laser cutting to produce words which were an absence on the page. This produces the effect where in order to read the viewer must hold up the page, revealing the context of their place behind them; alluding to the subtext, or the areas which are typically cropped out of an image or a piece of writing.
#Words #Image #Architecture #Aesthetics #Propaganda #Binary #ProductiveAdjacencies #Architectural Ethics #ArchitecturalIdeals #ArchitecturalAgency #PamphletArchitecture #Zine
Architecture Boston
Response to David Giancarli's 'Generation Why Not'
Submission to / Architecture Boston Magazine
Prompt / Generation Why Not, by David Giancarli
Published / Winter 2013 (Volume 16, N4)
This op-ed piece was written as a response to an article originally published in Architecture Boston Magazine, which called for emerging generations to use architecture to solve all of societies ills. Using Boston itself as a case-study, this critique expresses concern for blind and unquestioning use of architecture as the ONLY solution, and instead ask the question, is architecture always the right tool?
#Architecture #UrbanPlanning #Boston #WestEnd #ArchitecturalHumility #OpenSourceArchitecture #Generation #Future #ArchitecturalIdeals