The University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning presents..."Fellow Fellows", the Architecture Fellows Presentation and Exhibition Opening.

The exhibition of projects of the 2015-2016 Architecture Fellows opens on Wednesday, March 23 and runs through the end of the Winter term (May 2). The Fellows will present their projects to the college at 6:00 p.m. in the Auditorium. The projects present their ongoing research during their yearlong fellowship. A reception will follow the presentations, with exhibition on view in the college gallery.


Cyrus Peñarroyo - William Muschenheim Fellow

BLDG_DRWG
BLDG_DRWG recoups handwrought drawing effects and rearranges drawing conventions at the building scale in order to reorient the ways in which architecture is produced and consumed. Oscillating between analog methods (ink, paint, tape) and digital processes (scanning, photoshop filtering, milling), this project intensifies attributes of drawing otherwise lost in translation. A series of 1:1 investigations harnesses the potency of these effects and uses them to emphasize, deemphasize, or reconstitute existing architectural conditions. The results of these studies are reassembled in the gallery as a room––one fragment of an unfinished building––that speaks to the instability of its own representation.

Team members: Andrew Barkhouse, Peter Watkins
With assistance from: Chris Campbell, Samantha Eng, Matt Culver, Asa Peller, Tafhim Rahman


Ashley Bigham - Walter B. Sanders Fellow

Safety Not Guaranteed
Architecture is inseparable from defense. From its most primitive and revered “origins,” architecture was rehearsed in environments of conflict. As an alternative to the term defense architecture, a category which typically refers to forms and types (fortresses, citadels, bastions, urban walls), this project proposes the idea of an architecture of defense. An architecture of defense sees all of architecture as a reaction to some measure of paranoia and studies the built environment to recognize measures and methods used to subdue these fears. Safety Not Guaranteed explores the architecture of paranoia through a series of design manipulations and exaggerations. Its setting is the network of suburbia and everyday domestic scenes—spaces most commonly associated with privacy, safety, and security and where fortification occurs on the scale of the front door, the home, the cul-de-sac, and the neighborhood.

Team Members: Connor Brindza, James Howe, Neall Oliver, Sasha Pfeiffer, Mark Boynton, Kamsy Anyachebelu


David Eskenazi - Willard A. Oberdick Fellow

For the Trees
At first I noticed how naked the papers were, since they didn’t seem to be acting like something else. I guess they were supposed to be models, it was an architecture exhibit after all, but they were missing all those things that point elsewhere: no doors, no windows, nothing that particularly looks like anything but itself. They were formed, sure, but that’s not really enough to point outwards. Or is it? Before you answer, there was one more thing: some of the papers were near an enlarged duplicate. Actually, maybe they were shrunken copies. It was a lot like that moment at the top of Runyon Canyon when you turn around and realize there’s an entire other, slightly smaller Los Angeles behind you. Were you just looking at the original, or the copy? I think the most interesting part is right afterwards when your focus shifts around you to the ground, the dirt, the trees.. all that stuff that frames what you’re looking at, like the base of a model or scale figures or model trees. Come to think of it, the papers did look like trees. But the resemblance is fleeting, and now I’m certain the papers were in fact models pointing around at each other. Or were they in the background, acting like a frame for something else, something that wasn’t there?


About University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning:

The Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan is a leader in interdisciplinary education and research with a focus on creating a more beautiful, inclusive and better built environment. The college and its alumni are committed to pushing the boundaries of architectural practice, advancing global engagement, and significantly enhancing diversity in the profession. The college offers the following degrees: Bachelor of Science in Architecture, Master of Architecture (currently ranked #6 nationally; ranked #1 in 2010 by Design Intelligence Report), Master of Science in Architecture, Master of Urban Planning, Master of Urban Design, and PhD programs.