re-centering
Don’t limit students to your own learning. They were born in another time. Enter their world and augment it.

convergence
There was a time when we survived as experts, no longer, survival now requires multi-hyphenated talents.

skins
Clothes are our second skin. Architecture is our third skin. Technology is our fourth skin. Culture is our fifth.

play
Play is the portal and the prompt for curiosity and a catalyst for speculative learning.

anticipation
Uncertainty may need to be our new comfort zone.

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Abstract
We will work with a science fiction artist and body architect to create a Live-Work-Research Complex and business incubator that fosters cross-disciplinary Innovation. It will be located in Los Angeles.
The artist and project will be a model that prompts you into conceptualizing your own near-future career
goals. As you create an Incubator for the Artist, you will be laying the strategic groundwork for your own.
The most important project you will ever design is your own life. Why not start NOW?
Why wait? We also think this may be one way to upcycle education.
This will be a studio (M-W) with an embedded seminar (F), for which you will get extra units.
Our Artist-Client and co-Teacher (seminar) will be Lucy McRae.

Introduction
As creative individuals in the 21st C, a time of extraordinary change and uncertainty, our existential purpose may be to take on the responsibility for being the architects of our own lives and education. Our objective is to grow an architectural mind with the adaptive insight to be a Visionary, a Teacher, a Healer, and a Warrior, who can adapt and innovate to the uncertainties that challenge us in unexpected ways.

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In order to survive and thrive in a world that constantly changes and shifts with increasing speed, there is a diminishing possibility of anticipating ‘what’s next’. This may be more difficult for prior generations, but not yours. After all, you have the advantage of youth, energy, and resilience, openness to new experiences, lower

risk aversion, longer time horizons, and the insights that come from technological fluency.

You are a generation of gamers who have experientially learned the dynamics of interactional adaptation in real time, enhancing your capacity to negotiate unexpected challenges through heightened improvisation, a risk-tolerant mindset, intuitive assessments, and ultra-fast reaction time.

That is quite an amazing tool chest.
Now, what do we do with these skill sets?

What if we redefine uncertainty as a powerful catalyst for creativity, encouraging exploration, open-ended problem solving, lateral and forward thinking, and resilience? This occurred in the 15th C. during the Renaissance, a period marked by profound societal, scientific, and cultural transformations, much of it driven by the uncertainties of established norms and beliefs. These ambiguities provided Renaissance Inventor-Artists fertile ground for innovation and creative breakthroughs for embracing the unknown with their creative expressions across disciplines.

Then and now have many corresponding similarities. Today, we are also living in an era of rapid change, marked by profound uncertainties across social, scientific, technological, and biological domains. All institutional structures are being challenged and re-imagined, including education. We are now questioning the relationship between education and schooling, especially as technology has been leveraged as a tool, a link, and a medium for self-directed and collaborative learning, bringing into question existing structures and formats. This studio will take up that questioning.

My generation inherited the belief that expertise and single-minded mastery (one field) was essential for long-term success. We questioned this, as our interests and passions compelled us to move across disciplinary boundaries to increase our literacies and skill sets as we enriched our works. Architecture was a portal into wonderland. Mastery was important, but not expertise. It was limiting. We wanted more flexibility to adapt to a broader range of projects, challenges, and problems at multiple scales. We grew an architectural mind and applied it to Architecture. This no longer fits your generation. You want to grow an architectural mind and take it wherever your interests and ideas lead you.

You are a multi-hyphenated generation, open to embracing multiple identities and careers simultaneously.
Multi-hyphenated individuals are better equipped to adapt and respond to a changing and uncertain world.

So, we hear you asking the provocation.

What if an Architect was a artist, designer, filmmaker, scientist, technologist, farmer, poet, monk, and chef?

Why not!​

 

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Project
You will be learning from and with sci-fi artist and body architect Lucy McRae, who will be our client and role model as she evolves her studio into an entrepreneurial trans-media incubator focusing on the fusion of art, technology, biology, and speculative design, creating a space-place for you and your fellow collaborators to explore our future. Lucy’s work often blurs the lines between science fiction, body augmentation, and design, encouraging new ways of thinking about human experience, technology, and the built environment.
 

Your incubator should be a space that allows for the collaborative exploration and production of trans-media art in all its forms, created by a cross-sector / trans-disciplinary team of artists and scientists led by Lucy. The Architecture and spaces should foster creativity at the intersection, technology, biotechnology, and speculative design, equipping artists, architects, innovators, and you with the resources and tools needed to experiment, create, and bring new visions to life. By combining artistic exploration with entrepreneurial intentions for business incubation, to turn visionary concepts into innovative products, immersive experiences, and groundbreaking performances, this project is your opportunity to understand how to do the same for yourself.

Our objective is to conceptualize how to incubate.

What are your current interests? What are Artist McRae’s interests?
Is there a life-practice after graduation that is a continuation of the life formed here at SCI-Arc?
The answer to these questions will unfold from our work this semester.

Again, the most important project you will ever design is your own life. Why not start NOW?

Our objective is to imagine and create a Studio, Laboratory, and Production and Performance Complex on several unusual sites for a science fiction artist, filmmaker, inventor, and body architect who leads a multidisciplinary art-research team investigating the impact future technologies have on human evolution, speculating on the future of human existence by exploring the limits of the body, beauty, biotechnology, and the self. Together we will imagine a place for her to work, live and incubate her business.

As we go through the process, you will conceptualize how to do the same for yourself.
You will be the architects for Future Sensitive Studios and for your own near-future Practice.
Yours will be a place for you to begin your multi-hyphenated practice.
Lucy McRae will be our client and a co-teacher.

Backstory
Prof. Max Underwood and I have been collaborating for many years, co-teaching studios and parallel studios at SCI-Arc and ASU. This semester there will be parallel studios. Over the past few years, our studios have focused on addressing certain of the grand challenges we face by imagining places that would incubate the polymathic minds and trans-disciplinary ethos of individuals taking up these challenges. The subjects were the future of work, the future of learning, and ecological resilience. Our students have had the pleasure of learning from a series of individuals, groups, and institutions as we designed facilities for them (Montana farm hub and owl preserve, ASU Learning Incubator, Camp Colton, Pomona Urban Forest-Farm, etc.). This spring, we are going to add to our pedagogical intentions and shift focus. Lucy and the students will be the subjects of incubation in this co-creative process.

Program
Design Studio
Collaborative Work Space
Business Office
Meeting-Working Areas
Costume and Textile studio
A/R V/R Studio
Film / photography studio-stage and darkroom
Exhibition / Gallery / Theater
Conference Center (20 people)
Library (literature, film, material)
Media Lab (research, experimental, communications)
Technology Lab and Mechanical Shop
Fab Lab
Furniture Shop
Storage material and archives (dry and wet)
Pool (anti-gravity studies)
Observatory – sky
Outdoor gardens and decks (private and public)

Home space (adjacent)
-living
-resting
-media
-gathering of friends
-food storage, prep, dining

 

assignment 1

what matters to me

 

The most important project you will ever design is your own life.

 

When we introduce ourselves to each other on Friday, the questions that will guide your answer should be,

How did you get here?

Why are you here?

Where do you want to be at semesters end?

Where do you want to go after that?

 

Designing your life involves reflecting on your current aspirations compared to your current capabilities, setting goals, making choices that align with your personal values, and taking steps towards achieving your aspirations. 

It is an iterative design process which aligns, nurtures and supports you, and your personal and professional evolution and growth. 

 

The goal of our first assignment is to help you identify and share, What matters to you, and Why? 

 

On the first day of our class, I would like you to share the contents of the following paper with everyone (5 min).

Please take some time to reflect on your life experiences, personal interests, and passions, and write a "what matters to me" paper (500 words) explaining:

1) What you value and hold dear?

2) How you want to practice architecture and use your architectural mind beyond making buildings?

3) What are your actual or aspirational multi-hyphenates?

3) What type of impact would you like to have?

 

Unlike other assignments later in our course, you MAY NOT use AI writing generators to write this paper (ChatGPT, etc).

 

a few suggestions

 

Many young architecture students struggle with writing and expressing their ideas clearly in the written word.  (And yes, many mature architects too).   A few suggestions:

 

1) Pause and engage your subconscious mind before your write this paper.

     Become mindful and reflect.  Meditate, take a long walk, dream about it, etc.

 

2) Brainstorm and journal ideas on paper,  or record yourself talking - use an audio transcription app (Apple transcribe, Google voice typing,

3) Outline your paper with a thesis statement, paragraph topic sentences, and a conclusion. 

4) After writing a draft, pause and read it out loud.  Iterate.

 

5) Refine your paper, check your spelling and grammar with Grammarly or Language Tool.

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assignment 2

what matters to US

 

We had a very good first meeting yesterday.

Our conversation was beginning to become more fluid – back and forth –

With the fluidity of the conversation, we touched on a lot of interesting thoughts and ideas.

Write down what you heard and what it made you think about.

The significance of doing this is – to remember and build upon them.

I recommend that after each session, you write notes and your thoughts – ‘riff in text and diagram’

 

Remember, although your thoughts are in the present your mission is also your vision, inventing and incubating a life-practice –

with the aspirations of being a thinker, maker, and entrepreneur, who does well and does good.

this next exercise we all discussed and agreed upon, while in the ‘future music studio’,

we will use as a basis of our next conversation on Monday afternoon.

 

A.-Pick an object you are most curious about ‘unpacking’ 

1. What is it?

2. How did it become that?

3. Materiality, character, and attributes

4. How does it fit into your mission – clarity, embodiment, armature, metaphor?

5. Purpose, impact, connectivity

 

B.-Identifying the widest range of disciplines you associate with the object

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C.-Now that we understand what matters to you, exercise and discussion - begin to think and write about ways that your personal and professional aspirations can be shared, applied, and enriched, working collaboratively in the incubator to identify –

what matters to us?

            

Collaborative design is an approach that involves a group of individuals working together to create and develop solutions to complex wicked problems. The process encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together people with diverse backgrounds, skills, and perspectives to contribute their expertise towards a common goal.  Collaborative design emphasizes collective decision-making, open communication, and active participation from everyone throughout the entire design process.

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assignment 3

meeting our CLIENT and Co-Teacher

 

Tomorrow, Weds, we will have our first meeting with Lucy McRae, at SCI-Arc.

In dialogue with us, we will learn about her Art, her vision, and simply, how and why she does what she does.

A

Prepare yourselves.

Do some research. 

Look at a lecture she gave recently at the University of Tennessee in Nov 2024. 

Read, listen, and think of what you hear and read and think beyond the words, deep listening, as indigenous might say.

B

Prepare yourselves for the first Project, the Board Game.

Research storytelling, worldbuilding, and storyboards.

C

Read Scott McCloud – the summary of Understanding Comics