Log 49 (Summer 2020)
Observations on Tour Totem
Published in Log 49 (2020)
Miserable architects are minor, but recurring, characters in the novels of controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq. This brief observation considers the narrator and antihero of Houellebecq’s latest work, Serotonin (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: 2019), and his criticism of Tour Totem, a Seventies-era Parisian high-rise designed by Andrault & Parat (ANPAR).
Log 46 (Summer 2019)
Observations on No. 3 Hans Crescent
Published in Log 46 (2019)
In London’s Knightsbridge district stands a red brick apartment block from the 1890s whose first floor flats now house diplomatic functions, including the Embassy of Ecuador where Julian Assange, controversial publisher and founder of WikiLeaks, resided for nearly seven years. On the occasion of his eviction in April 2019, this short essay traces a blurry line between private and political life inside the embassy.
Log 44 (Fall 2018)
Observations on Masterpiece Cakeshop
Published in Log 44 (2018)
Masterpiece Cakeshop, in suburban Denver, is no masterpiece of a cake shop; yet it’s architecture is expressive. Written in response to the US Supreme Court Case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), which debated First Amendment speech protection for creative professions, this short observation on the bakery calls into question what its namesake court case was really all about.
Log 39 (Winter 2017)
Redefining Wall
Published in Log 39 (2017)
Written in response to the 2016 presidential election and first events of the Trump presidency, "Redefining Wall," coauthored with Mark Talbot, looks at the campaign's border wall proposal through a lens of retreat and exclusion. Though written only days into the Trump presidency, we speculate on the role of federalism in defending universal ideals, and urbanism in fostering sites of inclusion.
Project, Issue 5 (Spring 2016)
Projecting a Regionalist Parametrics
Published in Project, Issue 5 (2016)
This research into an alternative cultural agency for parametric design, coauthored with Mark Talbot, builds a conceptual bridge between digital design technology and vernacular building practices. Regionalist parametrics suggests a digital orientation toward the site specific, shifting architecture’s discursive arena from the representational, stylistic, and virtual to the sensory, tectonic, and performative.
ArchDaily, 20 September 2013
Masoro Village Project / GA Collaborative
Published by ArchDaily (2013)
A review of GA Collaborative's earthbag house prototype considers the role of participatory design, appropriate technology, and unskilled labor in the delivery of rural Rwandan affordable housing.
Horizonte 08 (Fall 2013)
Biological Borderlands: Ant Farm's Zoopolitics
Published in Horizonte 08 (2013), and Archinect
This research considers of the animal motifs of the Sixties-era group Ant Farm, and in particular their project the Dolphin Embassy. Conceived in 1973, the embassy is a speculative project that challenges architecture's geographic limitations, via seafaring mobility, and transgresses traditional biological thresholds through an "aquaterrestrial" habitat for both humans and dolphins. Intentionally humorous and subtly polemical, Ant Farm's aim was nothing less the transcendence of human political constraints.