ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITION: 2018-19 BRANNER & STUMP FELLOWS

ON VIEW

February 4-22, 2019

LOCATION & HOURS

108 Wurster Hall
Monday-Friday 10am-5pm, CLOSED February 18

campus map

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The 2018-19 Branner & Stump Fellows Exhibition surveys the experiences and findings of Casey Alexander, Meg Anderson, Logman Arja, Jordan Cayanan, Eiji Jimbo, Amy Louie, Jordan Miodownik, Matthew Palmquist, and Cooper Rogers after their international travels. Free and open to the public!

The Fellowship recipients will give presentations about their research at the 2018-19 Branner & Stump Fellows Lecture on Wednesday, February 6 at 6:30pm in 112 Wurster Hall. Following the lecture, a reception will be held in 108 Wurster. Open to the CED community!

ABOUT THE AWARDS

The John K. Branner Traveling Fellowship and the Harold Stump Memorial Traveling Fellowship are prizes for international travel and research awarded annually to Master of Architecture (M.Arch) students, ranging from $10,000 to $20,000. Both Fellowships support independent travel in exploration of a particular architectural question or issue. Although the topic of research may optionally be expanded as a thesis, it is expected that the experience of travel will enrich the fellow’s design studies.

The John K. Branner Fellowship was established in 1969 for the purpose of maintaining and providing traveling fellowships to outstanding students of architecture at CED. Since the fund was established, there have been a total of 200 Branner Fellows. The fellowship fund is named for John Kennedy Branner, a prominent Bay Area architect of the early 20th century and the elder son of Stanford University’s second president, John Casper Branner. After completing his degree in architecture at Columbia University, Branner pursued travel and study in Europe, which he believed was formative to his development as a designer. Upon returning to San Francisco, Branner maintained a successful practice specializing in residential architectural design for 46 years. His principal works include Stanford Stadium, numerous residences in Hillsborough, Palo Alto, and Woodside, several fraternity houses at Stanford, and the Mein Estate in Woodside.

The Harold Stump Memorial Traveling Fellowship enables an outstanding architectural graduate to spend up to four months exploring significant architectural monuments in Europe and other parts of the world. The student is encouraged, through independent travel to achieve a greater understanding and appreciation of the art and architecture that has influenced the architectural profession throughout history.

Casey Alexander

Architecture by Non-Architects in Coastal Deserts

Climate directly and indirectly relates to humans and shapes our environment through physiological experiences, the food we eat, our culture and activities, and the way we build and design for comfort and survival. As the climate continues to change, architects need to adapt buildings to more extreme climatic conditions. By focusing on dry coastal regions around the Caspian Sea, Persian Gulf, Mediterranean Sea, Atlantic Ocean, and Pacific Ocean, Casey researched and compared how local, non-pedigreed architects around the world have used their traditional and local knowledge to select form, materials, and construction methods that are adapted to this environment. What can architects learn from non-architects? And, how can the knowledge from native builders and architects be combined? 

Meg Anderson

Bath Time

Throughout history, the public bathhouse has been seen as one of the most important spaces in any city. Each culture, with their own unique ritual and a space to perform them. Using the bathhouse as a lens, this research investigates these bathing traditions and the spaces in which they occur as a way to understand how ritual can begin to manifest itself into the physical environment.

Logman Arja

Architecture with an expiration date!

My research traces a line of ephemeral architecture that spans across multiple continents, and civilizations, and is centered around these four themes:

Theme # 1 ‘Move’ includes buildings that constantly configure within a system and relocate from one place to another on a virtually instantaneous basis. “It’s architecture that rolls, floats, or flies.”

Theme # 2 ‘Evolve’ includes buildings with a built-in capacity for long-term expandability and modification of space, shape, form or even appearance by the physical alteration of their tectonicity, or the life span of their materiality. “It’s architecture that opens, close, expands and contracts.”

Theme # 3 ‘Adapt’ includes buildings that have the capacity to adjust to different functions and users and maybe even environments. “It’s architecture that has a loose fit and in sometimes called ‘open buildings’."

Theme # 4 ‘Interact’ includes buildings that spontaneously respond to users’ spatial requirements over time. Buildings that mutually shape and are shaped by its users. “It’s architecture that uses sensors to initiate change.” 

Jordan David Cayanan

Characters of Convenience

Recognized through monikers like bodegas, milkbars, sari-sari stores, or conbini, all are namesakes of the convenience store typology, yet with subtle nuances that have been influenced by a particular set of contextual conditions. In every culture, a myriad of circumstances engender distinct characteristics of the built environment that are at times prominent, often times minute, but nonetheless, have considerable correlations with societal identities.

Eiji Jimbo

I've Got 99 Spirit

Among the oldest of the old, there is an extraordinary phenomenon of people aging well over 100 in close proximity to each other called 'Blue Zones.' Many of these centenarians walk through the world holding very particular values and practices that are not only related to lifestyle choices, but to place. In general, some of the common factors include plant based diet, daily physical activity, daily routines that solidify rhythms, and socializing. However, one of the key parts that is missing from this research are the narratives embedded in the built environment - the spatial, geographic, and cultural - that shape one century of healthy living. 

This project sought to document the relationship of these Blue Zones with architecture and landscape through the medium of video. 

Special thanks to Emiko Kaneshiro, Amadeo La Greca, Martin Jensen, Annaliese Chapa, and the John K. Branner Fellowship.

Amy Louie

On Being and Bathing 

Amy spent her summer visiting public baths around the world, asking - how does architecture, as understood through the public bathhouse, impose order upon bodies? Conversely, when and how is the bathhouse a space where order is transgressed? And more broadly, what can we learn about being through bathing?

Jordan Miodownik

MIND THE GAP: ARCHITECTURE OF THE IN-BETWEEN

Is the purpose of a doorway to make all feel welcome? Or meant to exclude? Can it blur the line between inside and out? Separate holy from profane?

This proposal seeks to illustrate the inherent, but often unrealized, potential of the transitional spaces of the built environment. Exploring the architectural typology of the front porch, I seek to ask broader questions about how we treat spaces that bridge the gap between public and private, inside and out. 

Matthew Palmquist

LIVING TOGETHER: ON MONASTERIES AND THE NEW DOMESTIC LANDSCAPE

Monasteries have existed as a longstanding typology of collective architecture that is owned, worked, repaired, and lived in communally. With the rise of the sharing economy and the shift in patterns of ownership amongst young professionals, questions about how future domestic landscapes will take shape are surging. As such, this research project surveys a variety of monastic structures and communities by asking to what extent architecture affects collective life.

Cooper Rogers

How to Leave Well...

Cooper spent three months following the canonical journeys of four architects through Europe, India and the Middle East, looking for the universal in their specific journeys; archetypes of the young architect finding inspiration in the great unknown, and the stories that define who and what is within or without the establishment of architecture.