Archinect - Change the Narrative

"No Splash" for Architecture

2021-05-03T03:13:44-04:00

A Bigger Splash, David Hockney, 1967

For the majority of my time studying architecture, I believed architecture was a pristine, stylized David Hockney painting. Architecture curriculum is firm in its Eurocentric “ideals.” It revolves specifically around a select few architecture and design figures. This version of architecture is deeply 2-dimensional, as is David Hockey’s representation of Los Angeles. To reduce architecture to a select few or to reduce Los Angeles to a Beverly Hills home is ignorant.

NAAB curriculum has remained mostly unchanged. I am essentially receiving the same education as my predecessors, and their predecessors, and so on. However, there is a continuous pattern that rewrites the narrative of history in favor of these few Eurocentric men. NAAB curriculum carves out figures that do not support the same narrative.

A Ramiro Gomez Architecture

No Splash, Ramiro Gomez, 2014

Ramiro Gomez points out the hypocrisy of David Hockney’s work. Los Angeles is perceived as a...

Disrupt Your World

2021-04-12T00:49:26-04:00

Representation in any field is crucial to the success of marginalized groups. Being a woman of color in architecture means being doubted, ignored, and discredited. It is our duty to stand together and to find figures who have paved the path for STEM women to succeed.

In NAAB curriculum, BIPOC and LGBTQ architects and designers are completely obliterated from history. As the narrative architecture history revolves around straight white men, ASTERISK aims to highlight these forgotten figures, some of whom have been wronged or discredited by these architecture "gods". Along with 3 other passionate students, I founded this initiative in Woodbury University. To challenge the norm is to disrupt the curriculum as it stands. In our bi-weekly student-led lectures and discussions, we highlight a historical or current architect, artist, or designer who is otherwise ignored. We aim to give a space to those who never had the chance in the spotlight.

Norma Merrick Sklarek was one of the first bl...

Upcycling as a Result of a Pandemic

2021-03-14T21:26:14-04:00

A pandemic forced architecture students inside and away from their physical makerspace. Upcycling can be revisited from the academic and professional realm of architecture.

Model making as an art form includes an array of materials including wood, chipboard, museum board, PLA, ceramic, PVC, fabric, metal, and many more. Architecture students are expected to purchase sheets of expensive material and pay to use machines. The pandemic removed this option of model making and forced students to rethink the material available in their homes. Cereal boxes, yarn, and bobby pins soon became the medium to express architectural ideas and spaces. Upcycling products from around the house provides a different perspective on how we think about objects.

“Lying around”

Landfills of shipping containers continue to grow in the United States. It is sometimes cheaper to create a new shipping container than it is to reuse the existing containers. The cost of shipping containers back to another country ca...

Means to an End

2021-02-21T19:56:19-05:00

Immanuel Kant’s deontological ethical theory revolves around 2 categorical imperatives. The second of these moral rules states: “so act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an end and never as a mere means.” Kant first acknowledges that a human is an end in-and-of themselves. Tools and inanimate objects are used as a means: a screwdriver is a means to tighten a screw and does not have inherent value outside of its use. Humans have an inherent value as sentient beings and ought to be treated as such.

Overpopulation contributes to trash buildup, deforestation, pollution, and ultimately climate change. As we try to navigate a planet of rising sea levels, species extinction, and islands of plastic, all solutions must come to the forefront. Everyone ought to apply Kant’s second categorical imperative so as to treat the planet as an end in-and-of itself and never as a mere means. Our planet is not a means to accommodate trash nor carry 8 billion carbon...