Lauren’s project, entitled Building Community Around A Modern Hearth, was centered in the Druid Heights neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland. It focused on redeveloping and redefining the framework of the neighborhood, where one block alone had at least twelve of its twenty-two historic row homes condemned by the city – a stereotype of many Baltimore neighborhoods. She questioned how an architect could repair the housing market, jumpstart a grassroots movement, rebuild personal equity and house a nation all at once. Continue reading Kossman Review: Lauren Wandel
Category Archives: Reflection Notes
Meghan Tierney Kossman Thesis
Meghan’s thesis project centered around using architectural design/master planning as a solution to obesity. At first I believed this to be way too lofty of a goal but as she broke down her study it became more and more achievable. Her main idea was to integrate food production and exercise together into everyday life through design. Continue reading Meghan Tierney Kossman Thesis
Kossman Review: Mike Z.
Mike’s thesis for Kossman focused on the idea of aquaponics in San Francisco. He organized these 6-10 ft aquaponic for both public and private use scattered across San Francisco on sidewalks as well as introducing the systems along unused building facades. By integrating these green towers into buildings he was able to structure them without having to deal with zoning laws. These are affordable and adaptive structures that reduce food miles with their scattered placement throughout the city.
One critique during Mike’s review was that of the scattering method of the green towers rather than having one centralized location. Missing from his presentation was a figure ground map that would located where these green towers would lie and indicate the need for specificity. Mike placed several of his green towers in locations that were abandoned and did not have a future goal in place as well on the side of streets. Because these green towers were not overwhelming tall they fit the nature of the street without sticking out like a sore thumb. However the jurors felt that the “towers” were placed in a similar fashion to that of furniture. They wanted to see that the towers somehow connected to the city’s character and that they had some sort of specificity to their location. The aquaponics serve a noble purpose and would greatly help the hunger problems that San Francisco currently faces.
Lecture Reflection: Gina Narracci
Accomplished architect Gina Narracci returned to her alma mater to present a few projects she’s worked on as project architect at Pelli Clarke Pelli in New Haven. Continue reading Lecture Reflection: Gina Narracci
Lecture Notes: Gina Narracci
A&A Alumni Talks 2015
Gina Narracci, a 1995 graduate of Penn State’s architecture program, was awarded this year’s Alumni Award that honors both the academic and professional careers of alumni. Narracci is now a project architect at Pelli Clarke Pelli in New Haven, Connecticut, where she mainly focuses in theater design. The firm, founded on the ideals of collaboration, primarily takes projects through the final design phase and then hands the work off to another firm/contractor for the construction phase. The majority of Narracci’s lecture focused on theaters (both built and in construction) that she had had a hand in designing. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the images and stories that she presented about the design process and conceptual intentions, I found myself wanting her to make a singular point to summarize her opinions on theater design, or at least a piece of advice for the designers in the audience. Consequently, I spent much of the lecture trying to pinpoint her main intention with her presentation; after some deliberation, I propose that her lecture discuss this question: how do we make a unique object when the process of making is so dependent on existing conditions, code and institutional constraints, functional demands, clients’ egos, designers’ egos, budgets, and more? Continue reading Lecture Notes: Gina Narracci