FIVE FELLOWS: FULL SCALE University of Michigan Architecture Fellows Exhibit

FIVE FELLOWS: FULL SCALE is the culmination of the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning's 2009-2010 Architecture Fellows design and research work. In the fall of 2009 the fellows purchased a house in Detroit for their individual design research. An exhibit showing will take place on April 24, 2010, at the Five Fellows House. To RSVP and for more information: www.taubmancollege.umich.edu/5fellows Ellie Abrons, A. Alfred Taubman Fellow Project Title: Tingle Room Project Abstract: Predominately governed by efficiency, maximization, and building standards, the architectural liner (floor, ceiling, and wall) is most often built as a thin, taught surface. Its standardization produces a blankness which is then adorned with window dressings, paint colors, and personal artifacts. This project challenges this thin surface by transforming it into a deep volume, unlocking a space within the thickness of the wall, and ultimately moving architecture from blank backdrop to active participant. Each layer in this new material mixture is pulled from the palette of standard building materials and exploited for its latent textural qualities. Materials are carved, painted, smothered or otherwise manipulated in order to extend their possible qualitative effects. The excessive layering of exaggerated textures provokes engagement, but this engagement cannot be perceived instantaneously – it unfolds in time, as multiple patterns fade in and out of focus y ielding an experience that vacillates between the realms of the haptic, the visual, and the conceptual. Meredith Miller, A. Alfred Taubman Fellow Project Title: R.O. Project Abstract: The alteration to a single-family house inserts a third space between its private and public domains by reformatting access. The nested perimeters of the single-family house – property lines, windows and entrances, wall assemblies, infrastructural connections, security systems – form migrating boundaries that are both materially defined and programmatically activated. Amplified by the proliferation of unwanted properties in Detroit, the negotiated status of these boundaries provides an opportunity for architectural intervention. At the back façde of the house, an operable piece moves between two positions to secure the interior and to create an entry from the exterior. Each position forms new relationships within this evolving residential landscape, such that its movement tracks the (sometimes competing) desires of openness and security, privacy and access. Thomas Moran, William Muschenheim Fellow Project Title: Tables and Chairs About this Project: This project intends to provide the house with its missing staircase. The bleacher-like quality of the stair makes it a space to move through but also a place to linger. Something between a shelf and a ladder, the form of the stair can serve as permanent home for plants or a temporary place for a book or a drink. The stair is designed to be realized with minimal means. Not the "capital M" minimalism of art history, but the more immediate minimalism of survivalists, home depot and the typical apartment dweller's toolbox. Inspired by Enzo Mari's Autoprogettazione (roughly translated, it means "self-made" or "self-designed"), the stair is constructed with only cheap 1x2 boards and nails. It is something anyone can make with a saw, hammer and nails. This frankness and simplicity in making, initially a response to the lack of infrastructure (like electricity) in many Detroit homes, is more about practicality than polemics. Rather than offering a critique of con temporary techniques of making, the "lo-fi" quality of this project explores the opportunities of the primitive as an optimistic act. Catie Newell, Willard A. Oberdick Fellow Project Title: Weatherizing About the Project: As a material study and electrical experimentation, this project mutates and activates the barrier between the atmospheres of the interior, and the greater surroundings on the exterior. As a replacement of the common flat-pane windows, the project utilizes the typical mediator of glass in an unusual configuration allowing for an altered understanding of volume and exchange. Comprised of nearly one thousand glass tubes, the project spatializes and amplifies light conditions, both natural and artificial, and the flow of air. Varying in length and bends, the aggregation of the glass tubes works as a material substrate upon which energy is captured in the form of a glow and passes through a collection of hollow channels conduits for air and precipitation. Mysterious and moody, reliant on the immediate qualities of the atmosphere, the luminosity becomes an eerie registration of the seemingly intangible surrounds and a foil to the once apathetic barrier. Rosalyne Shieh, A. Alfred Taubman Fellow Project Title: Room Addition About this Project: This project is a room that cuts diagonally across the house, with a window onto the southern sky. The room cuts a path for light, bringing a spot of brightness into the northern easement corridor during the day, and illuminating a volume between the house and its neighbor at night. This new cross-axis anticipates the removal of the adjacent, fire-damaged property, readying the house to turn away from the street and face down a more distant neighbor across an open lot. The construction of contrast in light and aspect between the house and its immediate surroundings invests in a transformation of the entire block.