research, teaching, and student works
selected works from university of Idaho Architecture, 2018 to present
ESSAY: DRAWING FORM FROM FICTION
“Drawing Form from Fiction” presents student drawings from an architecture seminar on spatial form in literary fiction. Students develop allegorical architectures based on their analyses of spatial attributes within a literary text: ‘physical’ settings, such as architectures, cities, and landscapes; relational structures of character and plot; compositional arrangements of time and movement; and the architectonic form of the texts themselves.
Published in the journal of the Design Communication Association, Representation, [Forgetting/Remembering] 2023-20024, Images from the essay, student works by Mason Miles and Kaitlyn Beyrouty, were selected for the journal cover.
STUDENT WORK
Treefort Music Festival/University of Idaho Architecture 2024, installation, one of three towers with seating. A recurring UI-Boise Design/Build course in collaboration with the annual Treefort Music Festival.
ESSAY: PRECEDENT AND INFLUENCE
“Precedent and Influence” presents a graduate studio investigating the uses and limits of precedent in architecture and urban design. Setting aside issues of originality, historical and contemporary precedents are utilized as direct source material for student works. Combining overtly appropriated precedents with collage techniques such as cut-up, sampling, and remix, students explored alternative design methods toward the development of a heterogeneous and inclusive urbanism.
Image: Arch 554 Architectural Design Vertical Studio : The Ecstasy of Influence. District plan. Samantha Jesser, 2020
STUDENT WORK
Andrew Shearman, The Crying of Lot 49, Topological Section. Arch 504 Architecture and Spatial Form in Modern Literature, Spring 2023; Design Communication Association 2024 Drawing Exhibition, Award of Distinction
STUDENT WORK
Arch 554 Architectural Design 2020 was a design/build architectural installation for the Treefort Music Festival, an annual 4-day event drawing more than 20,000 people and 10 million dollars to downtown Boise’s economy.
The studio advanced student abilities by providing services for the design and construction of a re-useable gateway/pavilion for the Treefort Music Festival. The studio facilitated the development of research and analytical skills related to program, context, public space, and event. It also developed student abilities in client presentations, material selection, assembly, and methods of de-mountable construction. Installed for the first time in September 2021, it has subsequently been re-installed for the March 2022 and 2023 festivals.
STUDENT WORK
Kelsey Ramsey, Graduate Project, Absolute Uncertainty: An Inductive Approach to Material Tectonics, Spring 2022. Building Technology Educators’ Society (BTES) Edward Allen Student Award + American Institute of Architects (AIA) Henry Adams Medal Award, 2022.
ESSAY: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL EPOCHÉ FOR BEGINNING DESIGN
Within the context of first year undergraduate design and drawing coursework, a series of phenomenologically driven assignments disrupts and enriches the traditional curriculum of orthogonal conceptions and projections of space. Automatic drawing techniques are combined with empirical analysis via drawing and modeling. The essay linked below argues that while ‘rational,’ Cartesian spatial language, thoroughly embedded in the theories and practices of art and architecture, is a necessary and productive convention, it is nonetheless imperative that the beginning student also discover space as a profoundly subjective encounter with the larger, intersubjective world.
Image: Arch 154 Introduction to Architectural Graphics, Ezra Carson, 2018
link to essay: A Phenomenological Epoché for Beginning Design
STUDENT WORK
Samantha Jesser, Graduate Project, Ecological Tectonics, Spring 2021. Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC) King Medal Award + American Institute of Architects (AIA) Northwest and Pacific Region Award of Merit, 2021.
ESSAY: A TECTONICS OF ONTOGENETIC MATERIALISM
The effects of human activity at global scale are largely absent from architectonic discourse. Our habit of evaluating buildings as artifacts, as autonomous objects, ‘articulations’ of assembly, ‘expressive details,’ or ‘transparencies’ of program or assembly too often limits building to representation, to mere signifiers of ecological, cultural, and political realities. Our collective focus on building systems ‘performance’ can also limit our understanding and responsibilities relative to larger systems, for example, the fuel of said systems, the impacts of material extraction, production, distribution, assembly, disassembly and waste. Furthermore, our human entanglement with dynamic, complex planetary systems is at odds with our dominate hylomorphic model of thinking, an ontology of separation: between human and non-human, organic and inorganic, matter and form, thing and idea.
Presenting three recent student architectural thesis projects alongside concepts from ‘new materialist’ scholars, the essay argues that reframing our epochal perspective from that of the Holocene to the Anthropocene productively alters our ontological biases. Repositioning our inextricable and complex relations with terrestrial systems is crucial to a truly engaged practice of architecture. The paper speculates on the potential of the design strategies and materialist concepts found within recent student works that potentially shift and expand our seemingly limited tectonic conceptions.
Image: Arch 556 Architecture Graduate Project, Absolute Uncertainty: An Inductive Approach to Material Tectonics, Kelsey Ramsey, 2022.
link to essay: A Tectonics of Ontogenetic Materialism: Three Projects
STUDENT WORK
Treefort Music Festival/University of Idaho Architecture, 2021 installation, fourteen structures.
STUDENT WORK
Simon Scott, American Society of Architectural Illustrators - Architecture in Perspective 38 Competition (ASAI) 2024, Best in Show, Student Category + Design Communication Association (DCA) 2024 Drawing Exhibition, Best Category Award, Design Undergraduate Upper Division.
STUDENT WORK
Reggie Mace, Architecture 553: Integrated Design Studio: Black Box Theater, Fall 2022. Building Technology Educators’ Society (BTES) Edward Allen Student Award, 2023.
STUDENT WORK
Kolbie Jones, Graduate Project, Reimagining the Void, Spring 2022
STUDENT WORK
Jacee Hammons, AIA Spokane 2024, Student Design Award + Building Technology Educators Society (BTES) 2024 Edward Allen Award.
Branden Sahagun, Graduate Project, Notations: Three Musical Translations, 2022
THE PAUL G. WINDLEY FACULTY EXCELLENCE AND DEVELOPMENT AWARD
As the discourse and practice of public infrastructure in the United States expands to include ecological systems, social justice, and new conceptions of public space, municipalities seeking public works improvements are leveraging arts and cultural programs to execute the next generation of infrastructure projects. Percent-for-art programs and ordinances, designating a percentage of public-funded project budgets to include public art, are significant and effective tools for municipalities to integrate art and design professionals into public infrastructure improvement projects. The integration of architects, landscape architects, urban designers and artists with city engineers and managers into interdisciplinary project design teams has arguably become one of the most effective uses of percent-for-art funds within municipal public works and a catalyst for design innovations in infrastructure addressing sustainability, ecosystem health, and social equity.
Research on these new infrastructure models led to the co-authorship of The Boise Public Works Arts Master Plan, a 10-year arts and culture planning document commissioned by Boise Public Works and Boise Arts and History. The document identifies strategic opportunities within future public infrastructure projects in the City of Boise to integrate art and design professionals into design and construction teams, addressing each of the public works department programs: air quality, storm and wastewater renewal, material conservation, reuse, recycling and upcycling, and a unique geothermal water system.
This award funded a presentation of The Boise Public Works Arts Plan at EDRA 53, the annual Environmental Design Research Association conference. The award also contributed to continuing research surveying key public infrastructure and percent-for-arts collaborations, projects that establish interdisciplinary design teams, critically engage their communities, develop new public space typologies, and expand social, cultural, and educational programming.
link to: The Paul G. Windley Faculty Excellence and Development Award
Student Awards and Recognition
Best in Show, Student Category, Simon Scott, American Society of Architectural Illustrators - Architecture in Perspective 38 Competition 2024
Juror’s Rendering Award, Student Category, Jacee Hammons, American Society of Architectural Illustrators - Architecture in Perspective 38 Competition 2024
Award of Distinction, Student Category, Brannon Jordan, American Society of Architectural Illustrators - Architecture in Perspective 38 Competition 2024
Best in Category, Design Undergraduate Upper Division, Simon Scott, Design Communication Association, 2024
Juror Award, Jacee Hammons, Design Communication Association, 2024
Award of Distinction, Benardo Bautista, Design Communication Association, 2024
Award of Distinction, Andrew Shearman, Design Communication Association, 2024
Student Design Award, Jacee Hammons, AIA Spokane 2024
T-Space Architecture Residency 2024, Mason Miles
Edward Allen Student Award 2024, Jacee Hammons, Building Technology Educator’s Society
Featured Cover Illustrations for Representation 2023-2024, Journal of the Design Communication Association, ISSN 2374-5150, 2024, Mason Miles and Kaitlyn Beyrouty
University of Idaho Alumni Award for Excellence 2024, Jacee Hammons
Edward Allen Student Award 2023, Reggie Mace, Building Technology Educator’s Society
Awards of Distinction (3), Mason Miles, Design Communication Association, 2022
Award of Distinction, Kaitlyn Beyrouty, Design Communication Association, 2022
AIA Henry Adams Medal, Kelsey Ramsey, 2022
Edward Allen Student Award 2022, Kelsey Ramsey, Building Technology Educator’s Society
T-Space Architecture Residency 2021, Reggie Mace
AIA – Northwest Region Student Awards, Award of Merit, Samantha Jesser, 2021
University of Idaho Alumni Award for Excellence, Kelsey Ramsey, 2021
AIA Henry Adams Medal, Samantha Jesser, 2021
ARCC King Student Medal, Samantha Jesser, 2021
Lombard Conrad Architects Best Thesis Project Award, Lyndsay Watkins, 2021
Boise StartUp Week, Hacking for Homebuilders Competition, 1st place, Kelsey Ramsey, Lyndsay Watkins, Reggie Mace, 2020