This year the organizers of NOSA proposed an international design competition that asked entrants to consider the design of a new school in that area.  A couple of teams from Ryerson submitted and once again, a team consisting of Masters students won third prize, only to be beaten out by teams from Yale and Italy.  As the top Canadian entry, it is just another testament to the caliber of our students.

NOSA: A future Canadian School of Architecture

Congratulations to Michael Blois, Sean McLean, and Jason Fung as well as all the faculty at Ryerson that supported and helped them!

If you are too poor, take a look at online resources

The physical copy is also very cheap and would be a worthwhile addition to your library especially those of you who are intent on pursuing higher education beyond your thesis work.

Appreciate the work that the inaugural M.Arch students have assembled

This is an exciting moment in Ryerson University’s Department of Architectural Science program – the first contingent of M.Arch students will be showcasing their work as of tomorrow at noon. Everyone who has a vested interest in the school (not just current grad students) including faculty and undergrad students should come out and at the very least see what amazing work these people have done over the past few terms. The work is on display in the exhibition area on the second floor atrium for people to get a chance to see a sampling of the work.

If possible take an opportunity to actually attend the presentations (see list below) these people have put together to get a sense of the depth and breadth of work these people have covered in their work… and then thank them for setting the standard high for the program to not only accreditation teams and other universities, but to future generations of students coming through the program.

Fri 16 Oct:
David Platt 12:00 Noon
William Harispuru 1:00 PM
Jorge Silva 2:00 PM
Thesis Exhibition Reception 4:00 PM

Tue 27 Oct:
Joginder Dhanjal 1:00 PM
Roman Pevcevicius 2:00 PM
Roy Basso 3:00 PM
Mark Siemecki 4:00 PM
Timothy Mitanidis 5:00 PM
Ben Gaum 6:00 PM

Fri 30 Oct:
Leila Mazhari 11:00 AM
Clayton Payer 12:00 Noon
Johann Atterbury 1:00 PM
Lawrence Ng 2:00 PM
Jordan Breccia 3:00 PM

Writing isn't easy... BUT Lit-Reviews ARE!

Many (if not all) of you have likely received word from the administration that there are some components of the “Thesis Project: Detailed Fall Schedule” that may have caught you off guard.  Most notably the Literature Review component.  No worries… provided you’ve been keeping on track with your work as I outlined at the outset of the thesis project.

As you may recall from the emailed templates I emailed to you months ago, all those files did was keep track of your reading/research.  Whichever format you used (Word or Excel), the end result would be the same:

A) you demonstrated that you read something relevant
B) summarized it for your own future reference later on
C) articulated how it tied to your thesis (if at all)
D) documented all of the pertinent bibliographic information for later use

Remember that the most important thing is to continuously position all of the research information with respect to your thesis topic and interest.  You will find (if you haven’t done so already) that as you read/research more, you will systematically be reviewing and refining your thesis focus such that this information gathering exercise will ultimately lead you somewhere.

If you are in a bind and still don’t know what to do, take a look at the explicit details of how to do a lit-review below, it is highly recommended.

Literature Review Notes (courtesy of University of Toronto)

Just remember what the lit review is supposed to do; don’t get hung up on the formatting.  So long as it has all the major pieces as described above, you will be fine.

Nissan's Rolling Robots

Intelligence in Architecture drives many things that we often take for granted.  There are technologies behind projects that make these systems work.  In particular for Stanley, the interesting thing is the value of artificial intelligence whereby sensors and networks can actually operate on a larger system level – such as a flock of birds, school of fish (as in the example below), or even an entire organ – like the skin.

This same intelligence is used in more complex yet relevant systems posited for larger infrastructure as in those proposed by MIT’s CarCity concept.  By eliminating the human decision making process, the automation of cars in a swarm fashion allows the rapid and efficient transport of people.

For those of you who have been posting up work on your blogs, I have tried to comment on relevant articles when possible and have tried to guide and ask questions that would better inform and introspectively allow you to determine the direction your thesis may take.  For those of you who have relatively recently posted, I will go through your blogs and comment accordingly.  I also know that for some of you, the recovery from summer absences, courses, trips has made for a bit of a challenge to catch up to other course work while cleaning up final projects.  That said, I would still like to ensure each of you has a caught up on the reading I have passed on/recommended to you earlier this summer.  In some cases, the readings were spot on and proved to be useful points of departure for your thesis studies; for others, it at the very least helped delineate where your interests were.

I would also like to quickly add some books/links of interest to you in order to keep the research-defining phase of this thesis on track:

Bernard Rudofsky

Architecture Without Architects
This book is an oldie but a goodie in that it deals with the informal urban growth that spurs urban fabrics into what we revere as the foundation for good architecture.  It engages issues relating to interstitial and public spaces that may be of interest to Sacha.  At the same time, Jessica may find that the issues pertaining to informal architecture and its emergence/pervasiveness in the world may be critical to developing a foil to her thesis on contemporary architecture and its perception.

Richard Burdett

Cities: People, Society, Architecture: 10th International Architecture Exhibition – Venice Biennale
This book comes off the heels of Ryerson’s Marco Polo’s work for Canada’s presence at the Venice Biennale.  Most of you have likely taken a gander through it but it may be worthwhile for Sacha as she explores urban infrastructures, their re-appropriation, and the potential interventions that may remedy these ailing areas.

Ralph Rugoff, Siobhan McCracken, Richard Parry

Psycho Buildings
This book may be appropriate for Jess as it deals with other architects and artists who have made interesting architectural spaces.  Given the potential design-basis of your thesis project, this book may not only enlighten you on the paradigm of potential designers’ aspirations in becoming architects but also inspire some work for future design-driven thesis projects (i.e. public showcases).

Dyesol
This website showcases one of the leading Dye Solar Cells which allows for the creation of potentially transparent solar panels (though at 8% efficiency, the standard panels are double that – however the transparency value is an interesting trade off feature.  Stanley may be interested in this if he wishes to continue pursuing a truly responsive architectural cladding especially if using the skin analogy.  For all the reactions and responses capable within a skin, the fact remains that it is driven by some energy and you have yet to define how the cladding is powered without impacting the adjacent environment(s).  The PV units can also be varying degrees of transparency and even colour!

Rachel Armstrong
Just when you thought you knew the absolutely smartest, best architecture student, there comes a woman like Rachel.  This one is right up Stanley’s alley – I just met Rachel Armstrong today during my workshop in Copenhagen and she has quite an impressive background. Not only is she a medical doctor teaching architecture at the Bartlett, but she is very well-versed in the relationships between the two – most notably the engagement of metaphors/biomimicry of human systems in architecture.  Without calling out healing, reactive, or interactive cladding systems, it will likely be worthwhile to follow up and find material that Rachel has produced.  She has been winning acclaim with her work on protocell technology (proto – not “photo”).

I will be returning on August 25th however if you would like to meet immediately after the conferences, please email me to know where they could potentially meet.

Yes, it is rather fantastic, but one only has to look to those “creative” folks in Asia (Hong Kong) for the unsettling reality of these ideas.  For those of you engaging matters related to urban development, this is a crying testament to the pitfalls of super-density.

A great resource for prepping your writing skills!

Now the more important pressing issue at the top of everyone’s mind is the immediate deadline set by the architecture grad office for the project brief.  The requirements for the project brief due in September are as outlined:

Contents:
Executive Summary: 1 page, 300 words maximum.
Introduction, problem statement, and background information: 2 pages maximum.
Research question(s): 1 page, 200 words maximum.
Preliminary literature review: 2 pages maximum.
Research Methodology: 1 page, 500 words maximum.
Fall term schedule: 1 page maximum
Bibliography: 1 page maximum.

So without getting too detailed (as each of you have different thesis tactics/interests), I’ll break it down like this:

Executive Summary:
-likely done last; this is the abbreviated one-page synopsis of the document; consider it like an abstract

Introduction:

• WHAT is the problem that you are trying to investigate?

Research Question(s):

• WHAT are the critical facets of the topic you plan on addressing?
• WHY is it so important to investigate this topic? Why does your investigation/research
• This is important as it defines the specific scope of your research/production (you don’t want to be too broad or you run the risk of leaving out too many parts or wind up researching enough to do a PhD!)
• I should also point out that this is where your research comes into play so you don’t get caught reiterating what others have already investigated

Preliminary Literature Review:

• WHERE have you looked and found other support/evidence to validate your thesis interest?
• Also consider what you have already researched by this point to uncover the background that allows for you to state your research questions

Research Methodology:

• HOW will you get additional info/research?
• WHO are the major players/resources that you will investigate/focus on to ensure your work has significant ground to stand upon?
• Are you venturing out to explore stuff in a design/competition?
• Are you surveying/interviewing/collecting data from external agencies?

Fall Term Schedule:

• WHEN will you have key milestones/deliverables produced?
• This is absolutely critical to keeping you on track and setting realistic deadlines based on what you intend on covering in your thesis

Bibliography:
A bit more “WHERE” as in where do you get more info on the topic?

This is not a make-work exercise, it is really good to have a sense of focus so that you can get out in a reasonable timeframe.  That said, the Ryerson Architecture deliverables and milestones are really useful to ensure that it happens.  Again, any of you that wants to take a stab at a draft is more than welcome to work with me to sort these things out (the earlier the better!).

Sometimes if feels this way in Grad school...

In speaking with a bunch of you (and some of my graduate students at other architecture schools), I thought it would be worthwhile for some of you to take a look at where you are and find a way of documenting your ideas at this point.

All of you have the variants on methods for documenting your work that I emailed out earlier this term.  These are not meant to serve as alternatives to the blog, rather they are supplements.  The Excel spreadsheet or running Word document are both examples of how you should be conducting your documentation of “heavy” research (i.e. the stuff that you should be gathering from books and notable sources/authors).  The blog on the other hand is meant for you to a) keep in touch with me so that I can follow your work, b) you can follow each other’s work, c) you can post stuff up from the Internet that is likely not as conducive to convenient bibliographic documentation (i.e. video clips, cutting-edge discoveries, etc.). The blog also lets me comment on your current state of research and affairs; I can also offer relatively immediate insights on the relevance of the work or even whether it focuses your interest scope – the last thing we want is for you to get sidetracked!

The reason why it is important to keep a track of your work is ultimately because you have to produce a written research component in addition to a design component that is a response to the research.  It makes little sense to design something without a really well-established research background.  I equate it to designing a house without knowing the client and all their background (their preferences, requirements, etc.).  The beautiful thing about the Ryerson Masters is that it forces you to commit to your deadlines and thesis focus within a specific timeframe.  None of you wish to stay in school longer than you have to, so let’s make sure that your research is focused enough to merit a clear sign off on the direction your design work will follow!

The September requirement for a brief/report will be formalized shortly, but even the most diligent of you has yet to really address a specific thesis.  In most cases, you have chosen thesis topics or general fields of interests, but given that this is a Masters thesis, you must limit your scope.  Obviously it makes no sense to do a thesis on simply “Canadian Architecture” for example.  There are so many different facets, geographic conditions, urban constraints, social factors, and even historical periods that it makes little sense to try to tackle such a topic in one Masters degree.  Remember that a thesis tries to synthesize your research into adding value to the academic (or greater) community.

A thesis is NOT:

• simply a comprehensive building design project
• a regurgitation of existing material
• a topical observation
• a longer version of an upper year studio

A good architecture thesis should:

• be comprehensive but have a clearly defined scope of research and work
• build upon existing material and find new value in reframing or re-contextualizing it
• serve as a response to research/observation and synthesize into something altogether more comprehensive
• encourage individual interests/pursuits in architecture so long as it aligns with the thesis topic

Before jumping into a brief/report, I would highly recommend going through one’s research documentation weekly (at the very least) and take a stab at formalizing iterations of a thesis abstract.  An abstract writing exercise is useful as it preps you for some “fun” writing, but also makes you assess your research agenda incrementally.  For some samples, feel free to browse not only the UW thesis portal that I presented earlier, but also this generic website:

http://architecture.thesisabstracts.com/

Please contact me if you have a version that would be worthwhile reading so we can iron out thesis-related matters!