This is a Modular Green School Building

A HEALTHY INDOOR ENVIRONMENT is provided by carefully selecting materials, equipment and construction methods. Air quality is maintained with non-toxic construction materials, finish surfaces and paints containing low levels or no volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Factory construction in a weather-protected facility avoided exposure of materials and systems to rain and mildew during the construction process, minimizing the long-term potential for mildew or indoor air-quality degeneration. Natural ventilation is provided with monitored fresh air intake in the mechanical system and with operable windows for fresh air in nice weather, while high insulation values, quality windows and careful weatherization eliminate drafts and minimize mechanical conditioning in hot or cold weather. Generous windows and solar tube skylights provide daylight in all rooms. To optimize day light levels, the windows are shaded from direct sun with exterior aluminum sunshade louvers and solar tubes are fitted with operable shades. Acoustical dampening is essential to interior experience, and children’s ability to learn and distinguish spoken language is especially affected by background sound levels and surface echo. This building has advanced mechanical systems that have been tested as 20 to 35 times quieter than traditional systems. Floor, wall and ceiling systems are designed to limit sound transfer from the exterior and between rooms and to significantly dampen sound reverberation within rooms. Surfaces, materials and colors throughout the space are selected not only for health, sustainability, functionality and hygienic ease of maintenance, but also to provide vibrancy, fun and creative inspiration.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY has been a major focus of design and construction for this building. First of all, factory built modular buildings are not only equal to or superior to traditional buildings in quality, but the controlled manufacturing process greatly minimizes energy and material waste typical to site construction. Modularity of the construction system allows relocation and future re-use of the building without typical demolition and disposal waste of materials and embedded energy. High quality windows, high-performance GreenGuard insulation and high-grade sealants reduce heat loss, which reduces energy waste, pollution and release of greenhouse gasses.  A high-quality white rubber roof and solar-shaded, low-emissivity glazing reflect solar heat gain away from the building to keep it comfortable in hot weather, reduce air conditioning loads inside the building, and reduce heat-island warming of adjacent buildings and outdoor spaces. The high-efficiency Bard heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) mechanical systems use sensors and electronic controls to minimize energy use while optimizing temperature and fresh outside air as the number of people and activity increase in a room. These carbon dioxide monitors and other occupancy sensors “learn” patterns of activity and optimize air conditioning settings to conserve energy and maintain comfortable levels appropriate to daily cycles of use. Coordinated sensors and electronic control of the lighting system turn off lights when there is no activity in a room. The electronic control system is designed for future implementation of light dimmers controlled by actual daylight levels in the room, so that when the sun brightens, lights will automatically dim. Planning for increased future affordability of on-site power generation, the building is also designed and structured to accommodate a future rooftop photovoltaic (PV) array capable of fully powering the building with zero energy from the power grid.

SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION SYSTEMS are employed throughout the building. Wherever possible, high-recycled content materials are used, including gypsum wallboard, cabinet systems, acoustical ceiling tile, and linoleum floor tile; and carpet tile made from recycled plastics and designed for return to its factory for 100% future recycling. Wood structural and finish components are either engineered composite wood from rapidly renewable sources, or Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified products grown in sustainable forests. Microstrand Wheat Board, a material that contains no toxins and is made from agricultural waste products left over from the harvesting of edible grains is used as a special wall-surfacing panel. Finally, factory-built modular, re-locatable construction, with its inherently low waste and reduced embodied energy, is itself a major contribution to sustainable building practice. This green, modular school building was built sustainably and economically to serve its current Harvard users well, and in the future, this will be relocated to another site with minimal transfer waste, to be enjoyed again by future users. Re-Use, Reduce, Recycle.

Autodesk Gallery at One Market, San Francisco

A media-intensive, 16,000 square foot exhibition space for digital design and fabrication, this project was delivered under a fast track, design-build, Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) contract. The design and construction process took place entirely using collaborative Building Information Modeling (BIM). The project consists of exhibition galleries, artist-in-residence digital design studios, conference and education spaces, with advanced multimedia audio-visual, information technology, and digital fabrication systems integrated into the spatial design of the architecture.

The design process and design concept work together to emphasize four integrated points reinforcing the owner’s intended message: Parametric modeling in support of integrated practice, sustainability and design innovation. With these goals in mind—and the intention to draw upon the unique site and to distinguish a multi-industry software maker’s creative project from more static exhibitions of physical products—the architects introduced the intention to design a space of “creative immersion in an ever-refreshing, media-saturated, special-for-me experience blossom floating within San Francisco clouds.”

To accomplish these goals, the physical space consists of a very simple, rectilinear background structure of translucent fabric boxes suspended above a polished concrete floor. The palette of materials is limited to white drywall and steel, polished concrete, and translucent white fabric hung within the exposed brick and concrete frame of the existing historic building, the large round-topped windows of which open out onto the fog-shrouded downtown waterfront. The primary spatial experience of the project is not the physical structure, but is instead the image content projected onto the system of taut white fabric boxes flowing fog-like throughout the space, defining individual galleries and meeting spaces, yet tying the space together as a single experiential thread of immersion within floating film imagery. Utilizing a complex grid of 84 projectors and hundreds of focused speakers, a coordinated film can wander through the entire space of the project—perhaps tracking a swarm of butterflies floating above a field of time-lapse blossoming flowers, or tracing the flow of blood through an animated digital heart.

The projection screen boxes are themselves the lowest-hanging components of a field of similar fabric boxes suspended from the ceiling. Together this single background field of cloud-like, undulating rectilinear space serves as projection screens, space dividers, acoustical dampeners, and support enclosure for the dense array of projectors, speakers, computer boxes, mechanical equipment and lighting systems that would otherwise form the predominant and overwhelming image of the space. Within this undulating white cloud, the spatial experience focuses on the software exhibition of human creativity and technological results, rather than on the hardware experience of technological support. Local reclaimed Redwood millwork, Sierra granite, and black recycled steel complete the physical exhibition and furnishing support closest to the body.

As part of a larger, integrated office, conference and gallery complex of 35,000 square feet, the overall project was managed under an equal IPD partnership of two architecture firms (Anderson Anderson Architecture and HOK, designer of the adjacent office spaces); builder (DPR Construction); and owner (Autodesk). This new IPD contract method aligns the interests of all parties and equally incentivizes cost-savings, project speed, quality and design innovation. Together, the project team has delivered a LEED Platinum sustainable project, the highest rating for green construction. The project was delivered in an extremely tight design and construction timeframe, meeting target budget and time schedules, with substantial additional program added into the project during the course of construction, thanks to under-budget savings and the nimble and collaborative contract structure. With its design partner, McCall Design Group, Anderson Anderson Architecture subcontracted and managed a diverse team of engineers, consultants, and technology design collaborators. The project achieved a top, 100% quality and innovation rating in the IPD contract incentive evaluation provided by an independent peer review.

Project Team:

Anderson Anderson Architecture/McCall Design Group
Design Principals: Mark Anderson, Peter Anderson
Project Manager: Ken Moy
Design Team: Kioni Cho, Christopher Campbell, Dan Holbrook, Marc Holbrook, Ben Johnson, Michael McCall, Yevgeniy Ossipov, Julien Schimmel, Jeff Shiozaki, Matthias Steppuhn, Brent Sumida, Johnson Tang, Karl Vavrek

IPD Contract Partners: Autodesk, HOK, DPR
Audiovisual Design: Joey d’Angelo, Charles Salter Associates
Exhibition Design: Downstream Media
Lighting Design: Auerbach French
Structural Engineer: Tipping Mar
General Contractor: DPR Construction
Principal Fabricator: Monster Route

Wuhan Blue Sky Prototype seeks to provide a highly rationalized steel construction system that is cost effective; appropriate to the current site, program, and project partner production facilities; and readily adaptable to future diverse sites, programs and environmental conditions. With Living Steel’s coordination, the Blue Sky Prototype architects have met with representatives of Bao Steel and SBS Engineering Construction Company, and have visited the project site, neighboring SBS construction sites, and the SBS fabrication facilities in Wuhan where portions of the project will be prefabricated. As the primary engineering and construction collaborators with whom the next stages of the project will be developed, the Blue Sky Protoptype has been designed for practical application of the current research interests and production capabilities of SBS. The architects have pursued further housing and building code research with local architects and engineers and have developed the construction system, site and building design in coordination with both current codes and with some expansions of current code objectives based on local industry explanations of new national initiatives for housing innovation, land conservation, and affordability. Based on these national objectives, the Blue Sky Prototype challenges a number of current residential building norms and pushes certain code prescriptions based on the proposal of alternative approaches that will meet or exceed current safety, health and life quality code objectives; further meet new national objectives for affordability, increased density and land conservation; and further create a much higher level of life quality and long term sustainability. The design makes only minor deviations from fundamental building codes with clear offsetting rationale. For example, as a demonstration project innovation, the proposed 12 story building configuration achieves greater life-safety and circulation convenience than is provided in code-category maximum 11 story buildings; and achieves increased dwelling density, improved sunlight orientation, increased public and private open space and ventilation; and still reduces total land coverage and distance between buildings without shading adjacent dwellings. However, the design will function equally well with the removal of the twelfth story for this prototype if that is required. The primary quality of the Blue Sky proposal is not so much in the precise form and space of its configuration for this site, but instead in the broad adaptability that this system provides for efficient design modification for this and future projects without altering the fundamental building components or detail engineering which can be continuously developed and refined in parallel with larger scale planning and program changes.

The fundamental building block of this system is a modular moment frame box assembly that can be easily stacked at full building height without temporary bracing or scaffolding, before in-fill beams are placed and floor slabs are cast. This construction sequence allows for extremely rapid, precise erection, with immediate working floor space providing safety and efficiency at each step in the building process. Each of these modules is designed to be prefabricated offsite for optimum efficiency and quality assurance, and is sized to match the international standard high cube shipping container dimensions. This regularity is central to the concept of factory quality; seamless transportation options within standardized truck, rail and overseas shipping systems; and the inventory and job site advantages of just-in time manufacture, uniform production scheduling and the ability to serve distant as well as local markets in order to maintain production line efficiency and sustainable job stability for the factory workers. This basic module is designed to incorporate all of the more complex building systems that will be most effectively produced in a controlled factory environment. For example, the moment frame module contains all critical structural welds. In-fill beams spanning between the modular moment frame towers require only bolted connections with no field welding. There is substantially improved cost and schedule efficiency as well as increased quality assurance just within this innovative modular framing system, using only the existing SBS production facilities. This efficiency can be greatly expanded for this or for future buildings if the factory production is expanded to include additional prefabrication bundled into this core module. All plumbing, mechanical systems, electrical sub-panels and dwelling unit stairs are designed to occur within the basic moment frame modules. This affords the opportunity for factory fabricating most of the complex building tasks and minimizing on site work, resulting in very rapid construction at greatly reduced costs, and introducing a highly competitive, easily transportable construction product capitalizing on local excess capacity for steel production and fabrication.

The basic moment frame module is adaptable for a range of conditions within efficient production limits, but unlike most modular systems, this core component does not require standardization or system limitation on the larger bulk of the building infill, which can be developed with great design flexibility, since the most complex construction issues are efficiently contained in the base module. In addition to the base module that defines the bulk of the building volume for both residential and ground level commercial and public space, the Blue Sky Prototype system provides an additional kit of parts that delivers specialized green technology capabilities along with a distinctive and inspiring thread of spatial experiences within the public and community circulation and social spaces. This secondary kit of parts is based on spherical geometric volumes framed with rolled hollow tube steel structure in-filled with a calligraphic steel rod screen of varying densities created by overlapped windings of steel rod efficiently produced using standard cad-cam rebar bending and spot-welding machinery. This distinctive thread of lacy spatial definition serves multiple purposes as it weaves through the public spaces of the buildings. Its primary function is as a fine-grain modulator of light, wind velocity and privacy as a seemingly light and fluttering screen wall embedded across the deep ventilation corridors of the south façade. While the overall form of the building does most of the solar screening and wind channeling, the screen wall is an essential tool for optimizing the varied shading and wind screening needs that analytical software identifies at each point and elevation in the building. This varied porosity of the steel rod

All aspects of the project design are intended to facilitate a healthy, sustainable and joyful open-air life of “streets” and public gardens in the sky. The “streets” occur at every other floor in the building, providing great efficiency and facilitating social interaction. The building is highly porous and is designed to provide abundant air and light at all sides of each dwelling unit, and to make for pleasant travel and accommodation throughout the building. The residential tower is integrated with the surrounding site with strong spatial, environmental, and social connections that work to weave the building into the life of the surrounding community.

Notable Points:

An experiment in pro bono service to a public institution, integrating the services of architects and Bay Area manufacturers and fabricators who both donated services and included student volunteers as an educational process allowing real-world, full-scale design and building experience in a manufacturing environment.

An experiment in cad/cam fabrication technologies not typical in everyday building construction, with the parallel intention of making solar technology interesting to designers

Statement of Criteria and Design Solution:
Budget $15,000 in private donations, plus donated services

Contact:        Mark Anderson, AIA
(415)  243-9500
Relationship to Project:        Architect, design team leader

Project Information:      White Hot Orange
Wurster Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Size:        24’ diameter, 10’ height(closed), 452 square feet
Cost:        $13,000 total

Project Team:        Mark Anderson, AIA
Peter Anderson, AIA
Yuki Bowman
Grant Chang
Neil Dau
Bill Glauch
Emily Behoar Gosack
Christine Chang
Lamia Bensouda
Myrto Milliou
Chris May
Margaret Sledge
Joe Jacoby
Amy Van Nostrand
Kevin Markarian
Claudio Martonffy
Danny Lee
Cari Rosner
Nash Hurley
Ed Rendle
Natalie Kittner
Tzu-Tsen Kuo
Reiko Matsuo
Goran Wang
Toben Wyndahl
Byron Chang
New World Manufacturing

Architect:      Mark Anderson, AIA
Peter Anderson, AIA
Anderson Anderson Architecture
90 Tehama Street
San Francisco, CA  94105
office   (415)  243-9500
fax        (415)  243-9503
aaa@andersonanderson.com

Owners:      University Of California, Berkeley

Engineering consultant:      Terry Nettles, P.E.
7777   92nd Street
Gig Harbor, WA  98332
office   (253)  858-7777

General Contractor:    University of California, Berkeley

Photographer:    Anthony Vizzari
Photostruct
2131 N. Damen Avenue, Flr. #2
Chicago, IL  60647
office   (773)  806-9196

Wurster Hall
College of Environmental Design
University of California
Berkeley, California

Commissioned to serve as both an experimental production facility and as a showcase for new material applications and computer-controlled fabrication technologies, this building addition, interior renovation, and courtyard landscape ramp focuses on the minimal definition of large flexible spaces in order to allow for a wide range of activities and continual updating of the design equipment processes. Reflecting the simple, cellular functionality of the Esherick-designed original building, the new addition follows the structural geometry of the existing building frames, but employs new translucent materials and computer-controlled cutting processes to produce a simple enclosure with a functionally complex structural skin. The primary work area is enclosed within a ventilating roof and wall system that holds out the rain while allowing hot air and fumes to exhaust through a continuous matrix of large roof apertures. The double skin of prefabricated polycarbonate panels forms a dense field of thick translucent roof volumes-serving as gutters and ventilator shafts-hovering within a deceptively simple box following outward from the structural bays of the existing building, and acting as a lantern-like pavilion within the large building courtyard. The courtyard will gain a new multi-purpose functionality as an experimental construction space, and informal amphitheater for outdoor lectures and performances. A broad concrete-supported ramp rises upward as a rectangular lawn to gain the full sunlight otherwise escaping the shaded courtyard, and symbolically draws the campus ground through the two story lobby space and into the landscape architecture studios on the building’s fourth floor. With these additions to the courtyard, this previously underutilized outdoor space will become an activated work area for design-build construction activities that integrate students from both the architecture and landscape architecture programs.

Working with Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture in Seattle, we designed four primary structures as interpretive centers and visitor facilities at various strategic points within the master plan for a new arboretum of native Northwest forestland. The nearby presence of a major highway, factory, and warehouse buildings caused us to suggest a revised theme to the arboretum’s educational mission and development plans. Although initially asked to create a space as natural and removed from human intervention as possible, we proposed to instead focus our design concept on the relationship between the built and natural environments, taking advantage of the positive aspect of the site’s easy access and visibility from the most highly traveled highway leading in and out of Seattle from the east. Rather than routing the arboretum entrance away from existing development and further encroaching on the forest, we repurposed the parking and other infrastructure of a defunct adjoining factory as a launching point at the edge of the forest from which to enter into an exploration of more appropriate examples of the interface between buildings and the natural environment. Wishing to demonstrate multiple strategies for buildings to relate sensitively to their sites, we designed all of the new structures, to be introduced into the forest itself, around a CNC-milled timber-frame system but deployed it in a different way for each interpretive center to create varying experiences: being underground with the roots of the trees, on the forest floor to focus on this habitat, and raised high on stilts up into the forest canopy itself. Instead of having a sharp contrast between the building and the surrounding landscape, the design concept is to provide a stepped progression of experience that is also a model and metaphor for the relationship between human intervention and the natural landscape.

The building is a completely foreign object within the natural landscape, but it is rendered in forms or materials taken from that landscape, successfully blending into a harmonious whole. This is juxtaposed with secondary “built” objects—trees planted in unnatural, buildinglike formations, showing human intervention in nature from another perspective.

CNC Timber Framing
Timber framing is a building system that has been used for thousands of years and is most often associated with the temple architecture of Japan, China, and Korea, as well as Northern European structures evolving from the building traditions of the Middle Ages. Traditional timber-framing techniques center around the intricate and often beautiful joinery work that connects the structural members, but these techniques are typically considered too labor-intensive and too weak for modern construction. With the advent of Computer Numeric Control (CNC) milling machines, however, much of the hand labor can be reduced, and exposed or concealed steel connectors can be used to make rigid connections. A resurgence of interest in timber-framing systems has contributed to a revival of historical forms, particularly in residential construction, but there has been relatively little use of this technology
in modern design.

Traditional timber framing is most often used as a post-and-beam structural system, where loads are transferred through a building on linear paths through massive timber elements. With the wall enclosure systems independent of the structure, there are many opportunities to develop dramatically open spaces with large openings of windows and interior or exterior walls that remain separate from the structure. Timber framing is compatible with other prefabricated building systems, such as panelized stud walls or SIPs panel systems, which can be used to form the non-load-bearing portions of a building.

Log buildings are a particular kind of prefabricated timber-framed system, typically incorporating load-bearing solid wood wall sections with more purely post-and-beam systems for their roof structures. The log home industry has introduced significant technological advances in log construction in recent years, and the production capability of working with these processes has progressed more quickly than has any design evolution to take advantage of it. Although working with logs is still a niche area of the construction industry, there are many interesting opportunities for expanding their use into more building types and directions.

As more and more timber-frame manufacturers invest in this new generation of CAD/CAM machinery, there exist a growing number of sources for this technology in all regions, although the factories tend to be most often located in the timber-producing regions of the United States and Canada, and in Northern Europe. It is interesting to note that the majority of the CAD/CAM milling machinery used in the North American timber-frame industry is designed and built in Germany.

1999
Detroit, MI
In collaboration with Andrew Zago
Recipient of the 48th Annual P/A Awards

DETROIT DENSE SPACE

CONTEXT
During the first half of the twentieth century, Detroit was among the fastest growing urban centers in America. Many of the city’s leading residents felt threatened by the rapidly increasing density of life and construction, and by the loss of open space, trees, and community gathering places. In response to this threat, community organizations developed to preserve open space, to plant trees, and to counter the developing density of urban construction. Since World War II, an entirely new condition has developed in the city. Massive shifts in the U.S. industrial economy have moved jobs and manufacturing facilities out of Detroit. The process of increasing density has radically reversed, with people and buildings apparently vaporizing into empty space. Unprogrammed open space-full of gradually enveloping plants and trees-has appeared like a cancer throughout the city. Civic groups which had previously focused on planting trees and creating parks and vegetated breathing space have failed to recognize that an entirely new spatial condition needs to be confronted from an entirely new point of view.

This design proposal for a modest community gathering space in an inner city neighborhood of rapidly receding density confronts the issues of density, open space, and community gathering in a type of post-density spatial condition that similarly confronts many other industrial age cities. The project is designed as a community gathering place for an area of typical blocks in Detroit’s inner east-side residential neighborhoods. A common pattern of disappearing buildings and uncontrolled vegetation has emerged in many of these blocks. A greatly reduced number of large single-family homes, small apartment blocks, and detached stores or small-scale fabrication shops remain scattered along blocks filled with vaguely defined lot-line divisions and evidence of past construction, yet currently left open with low grasses, stray trees and wild vegetation. Frequently there are recently burned, gutted, yet still intact buildings.

Covered in grass, there are stacks of brick, burned timber, and scattered building materials. Neat rectangles of empty basement foundations define the pattern of past occupation. There are broad, open vistas across the flat, building-dotted landscape, with the slightly faded towers of downtown Detroit visible in the near distance. Aside from the strangely looming towers, and the frequent small fires and pillars of smoke down the block, large sections of this area of inner Detroit feel almost (unsettlingly) rural.

CLIENT
It is possibly this rural image that has inspired some of the most interesting community responses to this new condition of burgeoning emptiness. Some of these blocks are being farmed. The farmers are urban activists ingeniously exploiting new ambiguities in the physical and legal landscape of these blocks. Maverick tractors-and even cows, pigs and chickens-are hidden away in abandoned houses and boarded-up grocery stores reoccupied as clandestine barns. Behind the trees and tall grass, fields of corn are being grown. Schools, learning gardens, ad hoc community museums, self-help institutions and radical social innovations are emerging. None of this is apparent to the casual observer, and none of it follows the expected patterns of land use and legal land ownership.

The main line civic organizations have themselves largely fled the city for the safety of the suburbs, and are frequently run by the very citizens who are involved in directing the flow of industrial production away from problematically organized northern labor centers such as Detroit to the fresh fields of newly industrial cities to the south. Turning a blind eye to the underlying forces of change, these groups have largely failed to recognize and engage with this new urban condition of physical and social density withering toward emptiness.

Alternative social forces have emerged, leading intriguing initiatives within the new emptiness. In collaboration with some of these social pioneers in the resettlement of Detroit’s empty space, this community meeting place is proposed as a practical seed project to help generate a new social and physical approach to city building in Detroit’s inner emptiness.

PROGRAM
In most blocks there is evidence of impromptu neighborhood gathering. It is not unusual to see an informal ring of bright orange plastic chairs ringed around the protective mass and spatial particularity of a stray shade tree on an otherwise empty and abandoned city block. These impromptu community centers facilitate a continued life in the unbuildinged but still populated community. Presumably, these natural tendencies toward the recondensation of clustered people may engender new ideas for the recondensation of an appropriate new architecture.

The program for this project is very simple. Following the concept of a massing of orange plastic chairs, a radically dense massing of material will be constructed as a natural gathering place in an otherwise frightening emptiness of urban space. Drawn to the density as to a campfire in the night, people will bring their chairs here, they will talk, and they will invent the new space that has been abandoned to them and they will invent a new way to inhabit it.

CONSTRUCTION
The pavilion is constructed from the scattered debris immediately available on the site. Although much material has been violently burned and vaporized as noxious gases floated off across the suburbs and onto the great plains, the burned and gutted previous construction of the site, and that of its immediate past neighbors, provide a mass of charred and sooty timbers and bricks, and twisted pastel yellow, pink, blue and white vinyl siding. The project is to gather this scattered material into a radical recondensation of constructed mass-a defiant density of material memory standing guard against the continued evaporation of a community.

The construction will follow this procedure: An existing concrete basement rectangle will be swept out and brushed clean. In successive 12″ deep lifts, a mat of dense material will be carefully laid out on the concrete floor. Bricks; concrete curbs; steel lolly columns; lead, steel and copper pipe; heavy blackened timbers; blistered noodles of vinyl siding-all will be carefully laid in orderly, parallel rows regularly spaced with several inches between major materials. A gap of 12″ will be left on all sides between the vertical concrete basement walls and the rising mat of material. After the first mat of parallel rows of stuff is completed, a second layer of material will be carefuly placed in rows perpendicular to the mat below. Successive mats are laid up in perpendicular levels, back and forth, until the first 12″ depth is achieved.

A concrete mixer truck will then back up to the foundation wall, and the first 12″ lift of an especially wet slump concrete will be directed into the center of the porous mat of material, oozing through and around the stacked materials, flowing towards but not quite reaching the edges of the mats.

This process of laying up orderly mats of heavy, odd-ball material cast into soupy lifts of concrete will be successively repeated until the heavy mass achieves a height equal to the top of the basement wall and the surrounding flat space of the site. The 12″ gap between the mass and the foundation wall will be carefully retained all the way up to preserve a visual record of the construction method employed to create this carefully ordered, rectangular yet softly fuzzy and pastel-flecked mass of identifiable matter.

During this foundation mass phase, after the second 12″ lift, a regular, closely spaced grid of vertical columns will be set into the mass, and built around. (The first two lifts of concrete and material will distribute the load and prevent the many legs from piercing through the basement floor once the full weight of the upper mass is stacked into the forest of legs. The legs themselves are built-up columns made from the collected 2×6 rafters of the previous buildings. These planks will be nailed up-with widely staggered laps and closely set 12d common nails-into 6×8 vertical columns, increasing in height as the project proceeds upward out of the basement hole and into the empty air of the community.

Once the foundation mass is even with the ground (this top level of material carefully laid as a milky terazzo of building matter and carefully troweled concrete bristling with a forest of thin black legs) a pavilion floor will have been achieved and construction on the dense mass above will begin.

The legs will continue to be lapped and nailed upward to the full anticipated height of the upper mass. Seven feet above the pavilion floor, the first row of double cross beams of charred timbers-parallel to the short ends and built-up studs of the pavilion-will be through-bolted onto the legs, the first row appearing to create a series of H-shaped football goal posts. Into this rack of beams, a new mass of charred studs, and thinner sticks of blackened wood will be carefully laid in closely set rows parallel with the long sides of the foundation. A gap of approximately 4″ will be left between each stick of material. After the first mat of sticks is laid in place, a more widely spaced mat of 4×4 timbers is set on top and perpendicular. Several alternating mats are built up to a height of two feet. At that point, another set of cross-beams is bolted onto the legs-to distribute the increasing vertical weight back onto the column grid-and the process of stacking up the alternating mats of airily massive black densities continues. The process of stacking studs and bolting cross-beams, lapping and extending legs, is continued until the mass of blackened sticks achieves a height just less than double the depth of the foundation hole, roughly equal in mass to the former house.

Having begun as a shaky forest of skinny legs, the massive weight and internal friction of the material stacked within the bolted frames creates a stiff, shear-resistant volume hovering weightily above the yet greater foundation mass set neatly into the ground. The pavilion will be neat, regular and orderly in its repetitive construction process, yet slight variations in the repetitive hand labor and roughly abused material will render the volume slightly hazy in its appearance. The massive black volume of charred sticks will absorb all light when viewed from certain angles, but, viewed from other angles, light will stream directly through the porous construction, like unexpected rays of light piercing through a thundercloud.

ARCHITECTURE OF RESISTANCE
For more than a century, American cities have been used as the raw material for ideological agendas. Cities have been molded to represent a single social philosophy, or to serve a single industry, or to perform a single dominant function. This overlay has suppressed the role of cities as venues for social and political freedom, and has collided with the intrinsically multifarious nature of urban life and construction. Schisms have formed in which wealthy urban enclaves exist in tandem with zones of large-scale calculated abandonment.

Architects have often served the bureaucrat-capitalist agents of urban crisis, helping to conceive and implement the projects that have destroyed vital cities. As a result of this misalliance, art and architecture have forfeited their constructive civic role, and the public has been denied the emancipating potential of urban space. Now architects must forge a new role for themselves. By enmeshing art and architecture into the political and social life of cities, by creating works in concert with the imagination and aspirations of communities, and by working against the deceptive logic of monolithic plans, they can create a new architecture of resistance.

An architecture of resistance works at the root of cities, within the varied and viable strands of existing communities. An architecture of resistance views cities as an ecosystem rather than a machine-an orchestration of a fluid and organic infrastructure. In this view, new projects are seen as catalysts rather than as ends in themselves. Art and architecture function as conduits for public imagination, allowing communities to create their own social and public space. An architecture of resistance promotes an urbanism that is liberating. It returns the maintenance and advancement of democracy to where it began: in the city.

Detroit demonstrates the terminal stages of twentieth century urbanism. Here, the city became factory, its workers brought in and housed like parts for the automobiles they assembled. Then, like a factory, Detroit became obsolete and was discarded in the perpetual and illusory American search for unsullied land and an unsullied work force. While Detroit starkly prefigures other cities now enjoying the fruits of economic expansion, it also potentially holds the future hope of urbanism. Detroit-a city whose scale of urban abandonment is unparalleled, a city which serves as a poster child for the legacy of slash and burn industrial production-is the city in which an architecture of resistance may logically emerge.