Architects and planners push code change study to boost affordability

Posted on by William Richards

Bills for both the Virginia House and Senate to study the capabilities of “point access block” construction and push for an amendment in the Virginia Construction Code are making their way through the legislative review process this month. HB 368 and SB 195 were sent to the House Committee on Rules on Jan. 6 and the Senate Committee on General Laws and Technology on Jan. 8.

SB 195 passed with a unanimous vote (with one abstention) at press time. 

The code amendment was raised by Charlottesville-area architects and planners in 2021, which encourages the development of multi-unit buildings higher than three stories to be connected by a single staircase and access point—a building type often seen in older apartment buildings, but now outlawed in new construction today. The current requirement for multifamily buildings taller than three stories is to have two staircases lead to a series of double-loaded corridors, which often result in large floor plates and large units on either side of the corridor that, when priced competitively, exclude many Virginians living on modest budgets. 

Advocates of HB 368 / SB 195 believe that, if passed, would offer the chance to consider greater flexibility for designers and owners to create a range of housing types and, as a result, counteract some of the effects of gentrification and improve the economic, social, and racial diversity of neighborhoods and communities. 

Inform sat down with William Abrahamson, AIA, a senior associate at Grimm + Parker, and Gillian Pressman, a managing director of the nonprofit YIMBY Action, to find out about why this legislative action matters and what architects and planners around the Commonwealth can do to support it.

Q: Where’s the common ground between architects and YIMBY Action?

GP: YIMBY Action is a network of local groups of community members who want to see more housing in their communities, and that’s largely because they’ve been harmed by the affordability crisis, the environmental crisis, and the housing scarcity crisis. We include architects and developers who have personal and professional interests in this, but we’re mostly neighbors who want to see more affordable housing in our communities. We value our architects and all of the folks in the building industry. We show up on building sites. We address systems change like legislation. We have four chapters in Virginia, and we formed the Commonwealth Housing Coalition, which includes the National Association of Homebuilders, AARP, various faith-based groups, people along the entire political spectrum, people working to end poverty. 

Q: If I’m one of the thousands of architects who works (or has worked) on multifamily projects in Virginia, what will this allow me to do for future clients and their residents? 

WA: This really expands the toolbox architects can use to unlock the value of infill sites to increase density.  It also helps to increase unit and demographic diversity.  Removing long, dark double-loaded corridors will expand opportunities for family-oriented units with more bedrooms in stacked flats.  Point access blocks facilitate more double-aspect units with greater daylight and opportunities for cross-ventilation.  These will also help us create more mixing zones and unprogrammed “third-places” where residents can meet, enjoy light and greenspaces, and develop new practices of community. Current codes, construction costs, and zoning ordinances drive most urban affordable housing developments toward overly large, four or five-over-one boxes. Aside from luxury townhomes, high-rises, or retrofits, there are very few alternatives.  Most families looking for somewhere to live close to jobs and entertainment are seeing the same thing over and over, and it often is not a good fit.

GP: I think the ability to influence the state legislation process as one person is way higher than you would expect. Not many people actually contact their legislators. Getting a bill that has community members who have called in about it, makes it really stand out. You can have a powerful impact. 

WA: On the radio this morning, state representatives were describing dropping school enrollments and that families are leaving Virginia. It is inefficient and expensive to build three-bedroom apartment flats. It’s expensive to build townhomes. In these double-loaded corridors, you have narrower apartments, fewer bedrooms, less daylight, worse ventilation—because of high construction and financing costs. That’s where the square footage efficiency of point access blocks stands out—it’s much higher.

Q: We know how gentrification can boost the tax bases of cities, but we also know that it comes at a much higher cost than land acquisition and construction. Is this enough to counteract outpricing and the erosion of neighborhoods and communities? Or is this code change better paired with other strategies?

WA: Unit mix is a dry term, but right now in a typical development, it might be 80-,  90-  percent of a single unit type. With taller point-access blocks, you can have one-, two-, three-, or even more bedrooms in efficient configurations.  This allows a growing family, a retiree, a middle-aged couple, or a single person to all find appropriate homes in a building AND to stay in their communities when they need a change in housing. It is a way of addressing the stratification of society, by blending all these types of life stages under one roof.

GP: When people talk about gentrification, most of the time they are talking about displacement; which is people of color living in urban cores losing their homes as richer people come in and outbid them.. YIMBY Action is vehemently against displacement. Our solution to displacement is to build more housing! YIMBY Action believes that the entire region needs to build, not just specific sections of the urban core. We have made it so that the only place to add development is in urban cores, so a lot of the area in the city are low density or suburban areas—we have made it impossible and illegal to build generous amounts of housing there. So, then what happens, only the sections of the urban core with disenfranchised populations can be developed—which is driving gentrification. Where there IS building in urban cores, it cannot and should not be displacement housing. It’s fine to get rid of old buildings that pose a health risk. But, we cannot displace people when that happens. Our ideal is that exclusionary suburbs that make up a region also share the housing burden that cities are asked to bear. 

WA: It’s a question of scale, too. The bill allows up to six stories, which sounds high compared to most single-family zoned units, but the alternative is a mega-block. This bill allows the kind of density that’s productive and flexible.

Q: Advocates of this strategy cite European cities as offering a healthy and diverse mix of residents because they are zoned differently. What sort of ripple effect would this create beyond Virginia in the United States if it’s successful?

WA:   Virginia is held up as one of the top building code adaptation processes in the country—we have some of the most rigorous standards of public engagement, feedback, and engagement with code officials. So, if a measure passes here, it carries a lot of weight. There’s a second stepping-stone to this issue, which is elevator codes. Point access blocks would benefit from the smaller, cheaper elevators found everywhere except the U.S.  The U.S. requires unique testing requirements and safety testing requirements, so any vendor selling here must pay gobs of money to participate in the market. However, if you look at safety testing, there’s no loss — it’s not as if other countries have any higher rates of elevator failures. But what it means is our elevators are much more expensive to implement, maintain, and operate. This presents a hurdle to market adoption.

GP: The biggest thing is that this is scalable. This isn’t a code problem or a design problem. It’s a political problem. We think communities can be and should be more diverse and walkable and vibrant, but people are scared of that. There’s a culture in planning schools and local governments  about deferring to what they think local constituents  want. But, the constituents that planners and local governments have historically heard from are NOT representative. The people that show up to public meetings are neighbors who don’t want something to happen because of noise, nuisance, or a change that will affect their private property. People who are angry are motivated to come out to these meetings, and the voices of “no” drown out any positive philosophies of “yes” that could be present. We have to be representative in our politics and organize people to come out and be the voices of “yes.” We also have to encourage planners and local government leaders to engage in more representative community-wide planning processes that take the true views of local neighbors into account; instead of being swayed by an unrepresentative group of the angriest neighbors. 

WA: Adding to that, if someone doesn’t feel they have agency, they tune-out changes, good or bad, in the built environment. Public officials may have low literacy when it comes to community development principles. So who is going to take the time and energy to look at this issue?  Opening up this aspect of building form allows the professionals and the market to present new ways of building and living.

Interested in learning more and participating? Check out the Commonwealth Housing Coalition to find out how you can help.

Design Forum reveals tech’s future for architecture’s craft

Posted on by William Richards

Is architecture’s craft threatened by technology? That was the question 30 years ago when CAD software was adopted widely by small and large firms alike, even if the technology had been around for a couple of decades already. Not everyone was gnashing their teeth over that question—and the opportunity that CAD represented far outweighed the existential threat to hand drawing. Schools of architecture boosted their technology budgets and invested heavily in machines, licenses, servers, and staff, and a sea of monitors flooded studios, flushing out maylines. 

Today, architects still draw—sometimes. 

Today, the craft of architecture is still a potent pursuit, nobley. 

Detailing is still evidence of craft, inarguably. 

Materials still matter, universally. 

So, why is everyone worried about technology again? 

That’s one of the big questions that this year’s Design Forum XVI asks (Apr. 5-6, in Richmond) under the banner of “[Un]Certainty: Reflections on Craft at the Cyber Frontier.” Over two days, attendees will be treated to probing discussions about the future of practical technologies that make design easier, as well as the future of how architecture is made. Can large language models (LLMs) transform materials specification for the better? For the greener? Does empathy differentiate humans from machines? Does it matter? How will future technologies change the studio culture of firms? 

The event’s blue ribbon panel of speakers includes three champions of craft in design—Ted Flato, FAIA, of Lake|Flato; Billie Tsien, AIA, of Tod Willams Billie Tsien Architects; Rick Joy of Studio Rick Joy; and Dwayne Oyler, co-founder of Oyler Wu Collaborative, who will set the stage during the event’s two days by asking what’s certain and uncertain at this frontier of artificial intelligence, ever-more adaptive digital learning models, the ethics of design, and the leadership role architects represent. 

The last biannual Design Forum in 2022, “South is Up!” featured visionary Latin American designers that explored questions of urbanism, ecology, and identity including Chilean architect Cazú Zegers and Colombian architect Viviana Peña. Since 1994, the biannual Virginia Design Forum matches urgent topics with speakers who have challenged and advanced those topics, including Samuel Mockbee, Tod Williams, Kai-Uwe Bergman, Anne Fougeron, Glenn Murcutt, Doris Kim Sung, and many more. 
Please join us for the upcoming 2024 Design Forum XVI on Friday, April 5-Saturday, April 6, 2024 at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU in Richmond. Register now!

Fuller/Overby redefines the lakeside respite with a courtyard house in cabin country

Posted on by William Richards

By William Richards

Designing a home for one’s parents is a complicated proposition—and this sort of commission might very well be the truest test of a designer’s mettle. Mom and Dad aren’t part of a “user group,” after all. Yet, it’s an act that’s part of architecture’s lore over the past century and the fact is you’d need a lot of hands to count the number of times an architect has designed a home for their parents. Charles Gwathmey did it. Robert Venturi did it. Arquitectonica’s Laurinda Spear and Bernardo Fort-Brescia did it. Ditto for Frank Lloyd Wright, George Howe, and Le Corbusier. 

Allure editor-at-large Joan Kron once wrote a brief piece for The New York Times in 1981 covering this small but notable corner of architectural production. In it, Steven Izenour, who was designing a home for his parents at the time, cautioned against the act in no uncertain terms. “It forces you to deal with things you didn’t resolve when growing up,” he said. “Never design a house for your parents.”

But, that’s just what Michael Overby did for his parents, working with his partner Emma Fuller—the two forming the nucleus of the New York firm Fuller/Overby, which they started in 2019. The team designed Nebo House, a 2,750 square-foot lakeside home in North Carolina for Kathi and Ken Overby that splits the architectural atom, creating both a sophisticated design and an obviously functional response to the brief: make an easy to navigate, easy to maintain home for entertaining. 

“It was their first time working with an architect—and the first time building a house,” says Overby of his client-parents, “and so that leaves such a wide field of possibilities.”

Photography Copyright © Paul Warchol Photography. Plans courtesy Fuller/Overby.

The conversations about needs and design were iterative. It started when they helped the Overbys scout land in an area where they’d had their honeymoon, long before any talk of retirement. They showed the Overbys arrays of other projects they admired, and tried to focus their attention on certain details like corners or materials. They did a lot of physical modeling to work out some of their ideas to, say, reduce the overall height of the house by rearranging the program, and its forms—ending with the courtyard house typology that’s unique for North Carolina, but certainly a time-honored approach.

“One has to make an educated choice to balance everything,” says Fuller, grabbing an early model of the project next to her, “and, in this case, this version was embedded less-so in the land, and it was more vertical—with a garage like the typical American home they had been accustomed to, and a bedroom on top of that.” 

Copyright © Paul Warchol Photography

Suddenly, the home that might have looked more like a woodsy ranger station reaching for the treetops became a much more contextual, low-slung home that took advantage of the landscape while also showcasing Fuller and Overby’s Cooper Union credentials. Nebo House received a 2023 Award of Merit from AIA Virginia in its annual Design Awards program.

Tucked into the hillside, the home possesses a natural insulation strategy that makes it seem like a couple of different houses, depending on your standpoint. On one hand—and because of the fact that half of it abuts earth—the house almost functions as a passive house, “without a lot of the investment passive house builders make,” says Fuller. Overby notes their decisiveness about window placement to take advantage of the breezes off the lake, and the aperture sizes to draw in that cool air have rendered barely-there energy bills, too. Since completing the house, Overby and Fuller have had several chances to return, and report that the favorable energy use intensity measurements are precisely what they expected them to be.

On the other hand, and from a design perspective, it’s not just a borrowed vernacular cabin form. From the road looking down on the site, some have called it a “village of small pavilions” (in the words of Cliff Pearson writing for Architectural Record). Feeling less committal, Kate Mazade called them “pavilion-like volumes,” writing for Dezeen. You don’t have to squint very hard to see their point, but it seems as if there’s more to be said about the whole, itself, at Nebo House, rather than the parts—and in this respect Charles Moore, Donlyn Lyndon, William Turnbull, and Richard Whitaker’s work at Sea Ranch come to mind, not to mention Marcel Breuer’s own Cape Cod house in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

“We looked at a wide range of houses, and there was an educational aspect to this for us and for my parents, too” says Overby, “so we put together a bunch of references of things we liked in other projects, and we walked them through it.”

Material choices define the life of Nebo House, too, notably the cypress cladding on the exterior. There’s also a generous amount of rift sawn white oak millwork in certain parts of the house that creates a ribbon of warmth as a counterpoint to the 1920s steamship lines that call to mind the Maison La Roche or Villa Savoye in their spareness. That ribbon is functional, concealing storage or lighting or kitchen hood ventilation, as well as formal, announcing a change in program for an otherwise open plan. 

As a courtyard house, though, the focus is really what client Kathi Overby once called “the second living room,” or the courtyard, itself, which is the best place in autumn to understand the indoor-outdoor connection most acutely—when the surrounding canopy has a honey yellow glow, much like the stained millwork inside.

“The courtyard, the use of oak—it was a good way to take the conversation away from style for the clients and toward things like context,” says Fuller, “and a relationship to the landscape.”

William Richards is a writer and editorial consultant based in Washington, D.C. From 2007 to 2011, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Inform Magazine.

Project credits:

  • Architect: Fuller/Overby
  • Structural Engineer: Nat Oppenheimer, Silman
  • Mechanical Engineer: Mark Cambria, Fusion Systems
  • General Contractor: Cottonwood Development
  • Roofing: Rhenizink, Natural Metal Associates
  • Cladding: Nakamoto Forestry
  • Cabinetry: Southfork Millwork
  • Stonework: Hammerhead Stoneworks
  • Lighting Supply: Tony DeLaurentis, International Lights

Op-Ed: Connecting architecture and landscape architecture

Posted on by William Richards

By Arnaldo D. Cardona

The term “landscape architecture” can be associated with many fields like construction, design, horticulture, and so on, and finding books about architecture and landscape architecture in college libraries that have programs in both disciplines (or even engineering) will be the most logical place to find them. But, can you find books related to architecture or landscape architecture in college libraries related to medicine, journalism, law, business, pharmacology, human resources or education? How can architecture and landscape architecture be in places where it was not before?

Let me share my personal experience. I had the joy of writing two books: K-12 Landscape Architecture Education (2021) and K-12 Architecture Education (2022), which are interdisciplinary STEAM curriculum guides that put landscape architecture at the center of curricula. Beyond presenting landscape architecture as a design profession, it presents our profession as:

1- a problem-solving method
2- an ideal theme for interdisciplinary curriculum design
3- an educational term defining Architecture and Landscape

With these books now part of Teachers College Library, Columbia University, educators will be able to see landscape architecture as an ideal medium for curriculum design and instruction. Currently, there is a big trend in the pedagogical field in the areas of design education, STEAM education and environmental education; now, K-12 educators will have a comprehensive interdisciplinary curriculum to develop these educational programs.

On Oct. 13, 2023, Teachers College, Columbia University invited me to share my journey in publishing books I previously presented. I had the opportunity to highlight the importance of landscape architecture to the educational world. I shared how these interdisciplinary K-12 STEAM curricula put architecture and landscape architecture at the center of the curricula. I also presented pedagogical definitions of educational terms not identified before, wherein architecture and landscape architecture are
defined not just as professions but as problem-solving methods as well.

On Sep. 15, 2022, Jennifer Govan, Director of Teachers College Library, invited me to do a talk about both books. During this book talk I found out from some attendees that the books are currently being
implemented from Dubai to Hong Kong, in other parts of the nation and close to home (Chesterfield County, Virginia). My mission with these books is to inspire the next generation of architects and landscape architects. I felt honored that the terms “architecture and landscape architecture” are now present in the educational field.

Attempts to reach K-12 audiences have been done but as project-based activities; now with my books, architecture and landscape architecture can be seen as fields of study that promote interdisciplinary, critical thinking STEAM and high-order cognitive skills.

I am a believer in diversifying the profession. That is why, even though I hold a pre-professional degree in architecture and a bachelors in landscape architecture, I am proud to have won graduate scholarships in
the fields of art education and special education. I am always trying to support the importance of scholars seeing architecture and landscape architecture as art disciplines. Doing this opens up the possibility for grants to promote STEAM and K-12 programs in design education. It is my hope that my contribution to the fields of architecture and landscape architecture can be remembered, besides designing built and natural environments, as designing landscapes of learning, and curricula that connect architecture and landscape architecture with the educational field.

Arnaldo Cardona is a retired landscape architect, art and special education teacher, staff developer and college professor. A graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University, with a degree in Art Education, he also holds degrees in Landscape Architecture and Education from City College of New York.

A version of this op-ed appeared in ASLA’s blog The Field under the title “Bringing Landscape Architecture to New Places.” The views expressed here are the author’s own.

Five revenue and morale boosters for small firms in 2024

Posted on by William Richards

What a year, right? Well, if you’re in charge of an architecture firm, there’s often little time to reflect as you keep the cash flowing and while you’re prospecting for new business. Maybe you want to position yourself for that plum project everyone wants, or maybe you’re looking to staff-up because you know you’ve got a big project on the horizon. Then again, maybe you’re looking to get into new areas of practice or invest in new technologies, while also keeping your bread-and-butter clients happy (not to mention your employees). At the end of the day, it’s all about shoring-up that revenue and the morale of your firm. Here are the top five things you should think about at the end of the calendar year to improve your position next year—especially if you’re a small business. 

  • Conduct a financial analysis and set some realistic goals: By conducting a comprehensive financial analysis, you can understand the current state of your business’s revenue, expenses, and overall financial health. Evaluate the previous year’s financial performance and set realistic revenue goals for the upcoming year. Assess profit margins, identify areas for cost-cutting, and establish achievable revenue targets as tactics for sustainable growth.
  • Court feedback: Gather and analyze client feedback to gain insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your business. Did they have preferences that maybe aren’t as quirky as you thought and are possibly more and more common? What evolving market trends are they tracking about materials or design ideas—for better or for worse—and what’s your plan to address them? Everyone says architects are part-time therapists to their clients, but thinking along these lines (with all kidding aside) will help you increase their satisfaction. It’ll also increase the chances they’ll come back to you again and again for future projects. 
  • Hold a proper communications, messaging, and marketing strategy review: What are you saying about yourself and your services, and how are you saying it? Have you evaluated your current marketing strategies and campaigns before rubber stamping the next one? Identify the channels that net you business and the campaigns that have yielded a return on your investment. Explore new social media channels, even if you don’t think you have time for “another thing” because, guess what, your clients are on those channels. Investing in messaging, social media, digital marketing, and content creation can significantly expand your business’s visibility and customer base.
  • Technology brings innovation, but also headaches: Evaluate the efficiency of your business operations and consider workflow software to keep projects moving (And especially if you’re collaborating with other firms on a regular basis). But, if you suspect that you spent too much time in front of a Miro board or a Gantt chart, you’re probably right. Nothing beats pen, paper, coffee, and a face-to-face conversation to work out thorny problems. Adopting digital tools and software can enhance productivity, improve customer service, and reduce operational costs—there’s no doubt about it. But, adopting doesn’t mean assimilating with the Borg. 
  • Develop employees to retain them: Whether you employ three people or 13 people or 30 people, the key word here is “employ.” Their satisfaction and development are part of the landscape for them, just as their hard work and commitment are part of the landscape for you. Provide opportunities for skill development, training, and career advancement to boost their morale and productivity—even if that’s a quarterly outing or even a game of pickleball in the courtyard with beers. (Pro tip: don’t make it “forced-family-fun.” Make it a day that’s alluring and relaxing and that gives people options rather than obligations.) Recognize and reward outstanding performance to motivate employees, too, which is too often overlooked as a simple but effective morale booster. Why? Happier employees lead to happier workplaces, which is an added value beyond revenue you can’t afford to ignore. 

By prioritizing these key areas at the bottom of the year—and before hitting the new year— small businesses can position themselves for success.

William Richards is a writer and editorial consultant based in Washington, D.C. From 2007 to 2011, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Inform Magazine.

Tangential Timber creates something out of the things we usually deem nothing

Posted on by William Richards

Cast-off lumber is just part of the cost of doing business for the timber industry, sold for pulp, wood chips, or otherwise discarded. It’s the lemon peel nobody wants or the broccoli stem nobody seems to care for. But what if we could do something useful with timber industry waste—upwards of 55% of harvested wood that’s deemed unusable for lumber because it’s a little (or a lot) irregular, damaged, or undesirable? 

That’s the question Kyle Schumann and Katie MacDonald asked who—along with their project partners at the UVA School of Architecture, alumna Abigail Hassell, the school’s FabLab team, the UVA Sawmilling folks, and students—wanted to do something more with the stuff everyone thinks less of. That’s the idea behind their project “Tangential Timber,” which recently received an Honorable Mention in the Small Project category by AIA Virginia in its annual Honors and Awards program.

Tangential Timber started in 2021 as a research project focused on developing what After Architecture principals call “non-linear wood masonry.”

Using more of what’s around is kind of a sweet spot, research-wise, for Schumann and MacDonald, whose firm After Architecture was the subject of an Inform piece last year that focused on their award-winning project “Homegrown,” a small room constructed of walls made of invasive plants and yard waste and installed at the Knoxville Museum of Art in 2020. 

Like Tangential Timber, “Homegrown” boils sustainability and decarbonization down to two facts that are true in virtually every arena: we manufacture more than we need as global industries and we ignore a lot of what nature has to offer as a species. Resourcefulness is a good virtue and a good practice, say Schumann and MacDonald, and it’s probably a lot more scalable than we realize. Call it upcycling. Call it recycling. Call it MacGyver’ing.

Call it whatever you like. But, resourcefulness and doing more with what you have is a scalable idea that works for an architecture school just as well as a C-suite’s P&L report.

This year, Tangential Timber was recognized in AN’s Best of Design Awards, as well, put on by The Architect’s Newspaper, on the heels of last year’s R+D Award from Architect Magazine—both offering a well deserved boost to one of the most creative and principled firms in Virginia. Here’s what Schumann and MacDonald had to say about what’s quickly becoming one of the most memorable projects of the last couple of years.

You developed what you’re calling a “low-tech, parametric digital imaging workflow” to photograph and trace the cookies—or wood rounds—in 2D and then translate them into 3D models. What exactly does that mean?

KS: Why we’re doing this is we’re interested, in general, to leverage digital tools to make them easier to use across our projects. In this case we had 164 cookies used in the final construction—when you have that many pieces, if you scan them individually, there’s a lot of data there and it quickly becomes difficult to use them when you’ve got all that data in Rhino on a laptop. So, we wanted to use a lower-data way to do this. We photographed each cookie and processed the image using custom software, which automatically scales it, corrects for perspective, and extrudes it to produce a simple 3D digital model. This process means that we can work with hundreds of pieces of digitized material in the same file with ease. It’s the digital version of Incan stonework—and after the scanning process, there are different Grasshopper scripts that are run through Rhino. We modeled the vault shape to make sure it was a compression structure. We arrayed the cookies into a grid, side by side, and then used spring simulations to pull those cookies together with some overlap—a couple of inches—to produce joinery. Once we have that in 2D, we translate it back into 3D form and then make the joinery. 

“We’re also interested in the inventory of tree species being broader than what are usually selected for the production of buildings,” says After Architecture’s Katie MacDonald. “We want to broaden the definition of what’s usable or deemed appropriate for construction.”

KM: The expression of the geometry is related to how engineers have created compression structures. We were interested in how the cookie became a masonry block. As Kyle alluded to Incan structures, we also zeroed in on masonry compression structures as a precedents. Rather than thinking about stone, we thought about wood. We were looking at Heinz Isler’s hanging fabric structures as one model. 

KS: On one hand, we found that the timber industry is materially efficient—offcuts are broken down into chips and composited into things like oriented strand board. But, then, when you use formaldehyde glue, it makes it hard to deal with that material at the end of its life. So, we want to figure out how to use technologies in a new way to make these materials accessible to everyone to use, and to leverage the embodied intelligence of materials like bamboo, native grasses, and timber in a way that’s about incremental change. We see dimensional lumber as being optimized for labor, ease of construction, and codification. I think we can branch out from that with the growing complexity of computer simulations. 

“This process means that we can work with hundreds of pieces of digitized material in the same file with ease,” says After Architecture’s Kyle Schumann. “It’s the digital version of Incan stonework.”

KM: We’re also interested in the inventory of tree species being broader than what are usually selected for the production of buildings. We want to broaden the definition of what’s usable or deemed appropriate for construction. There’s an interesting split between dimensional lumber for light-frame construction and the emergence of the mass-timber market, which is about cranes.

It seems that part of architecture school for incoming students is unlearning what they know about materials so they can really understand how those materials work. How do you get students to see things the way you do?

KS: Students were involved in every step of this project, and when we teach, and we’re teaching fabrication, it’s about letting go of preconceptions about materials. We have some abstract exercises to get them to see materials they know differently. We ask them to cut and operate on a log, and they find that the geometry of a log is at odds with most of the tools we have in our woodshops. So, they have to develop tools to overcome the embedded bias that comes with common woodworking machinery.. 

Do you see this as a scalable solution, since we talked about both this project and Homegrown as prototypes?
KM: We hope this provides a transferable solution about adapting to local tree species, but also adapting to local inputs. This is about taking an inventory of material and assembling it to maximize the geometry and thickness of each piece. The vault is something we’re doing with cookies today, but it could be timber in different orientations, too.

KS: As a prototype, it’s at the far end of the local prototype spectrum. We used logs from UVA Sawmilling, so it’s a hyper-local solution in this case, but it doesn’t have to be. 

KM: Following up on Tangential Timber, we’re working on developing tools to deal with non-linear wood. Tools that allow us to respond to the varying qualities of a piece of wood rather than assuming a straight log. 

KS: With that, we’ve worked with collaborators to invent a robotic sawmill system that allows us to cut curving and twisting geometries from logs at a large scale. A lot of the work in architecture schools now is with robotic arms, often used in industrial production for cars, but far less common in the production of building products. One of our aims with working with a sawmill as our tool rather than a robotic arm is that it is something that’s deployable and something that the timber industry is already working with—increasing the chances of wide scale implementation. Tangential Timber was a fairly laborious process—time and energy and machining—so we are hoping with the new robotic sawmill to make that easier in the future. 

How do you draw others into collaboration with you?

KS: We’ve seen growing excitement in this. The annual conference of Computer-Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) just had its meeting recently, and it’s all about digital fabrication and computation and materials—and almost all of those projects have a relationship to climate. So, there’s a lot of excitement about this work and we see people doing it in various ways. One way we try to approach it is to work between a strictly technological view of the work but also valuing design, itself. That’s why we refer to our projects as prototypes. There’s a believability with something you can touch and walk into and even see in a photograph. 

KM: The last big thing to upend architectural education—or really to change architectural discourse—was the digital turn and the introduction of digital tools. Some celebrated that with smooth parametric designs. Some see BIM as the big product of that development. But, what we posit is that the biomaterial turn is going to be the next thing—or currently the thing that’s changing architectural education. We’re seeing that evolve really rapidly now. Mass timber really gave that fuel. Today, there’s a real willingness to experiment with it. We have a lot of talented people doing a lot of innovative things in this field, so we’re lucky to be in this space and get to experiment. It’s funny, even submitting to things like AIA awards, a “pavilion” is so outside of what’s commonly recognized, but it’s important to us to present it in this way and to participate in those awards programs. It’s part of the effort to highlight biomaterials and what we feel is an important evolution for architecture.

William Richards is a writer and editorial consultant based in Washington, D.C. From 2007 to 2011, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Inform Magazine.

Project credits:

Tangential Timber, University of Virginia and After Architecture

Principals: Kyle Schumann (Assistant Professor, University of Virginia / Cofounder, After Architecture), Katie MacDonald AIA (Assistant Professor, University of Virginia / Cofounder, After Architecture), Abby Hassell (B.Arch ’22 University of Virginia)

Wall Prototype Students: Abby Hassell, Audrey Lewis, Jacob McLaughlin, Rohan Singh, Abbie Weissman (developed in ARCH 3021: Design Thinking Studio II: Material Cybernetics, taught by Kyle Schumann in spring 2021) 

Vault Research Assistants: Sonja Bergquist, Cecily Farrell, Alex Hall, Caleb Hassell, Dillon Mcdowell, Annabelle Woodcock. 

Funding: UVA Jefferson Trust Flash Funding Grant; UVA Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation Faculty Global Research with Undergraduates (FGRU) Grant; UVA School of Architecture Dean’s Office.

Springfield loses bid for FBI HQ to Greenbelt

Posted on by William Richards

The General Services Administration (GSA) confirmed this week that the new FBI headquarters will go to Greenbelt, Md., which was chosen over nearby Landover and Springfield, Va.

Inform reported on the debate back in February as lawmakers in Maryland and Virginia appealed to GSA and FBI officials one final time. The arguments were fairly simple: Springfield has easy access to Quantico and other national security facilities, not to mention Metro access; Greenbelt and Landover in Prince George’s County also has Metro access, is home to 15 federal agencies, and seems perhaps less snarled by rush hour traffic than Northern Virginia. Maryland lawmakers also made a compelling that both county sites could satisfy the FBI’s racial equity requirement, with more than 60 percent of residents identifying as African-American.

In recent years, however, the choices around weighing amenities and demography had been bogged down by political wrangling on Capitol Hill and tit-for-tat sniping across the Potomac by boosters in Fairfax and Prince George’s Counties. The ghosts of former D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray’s administration also appeared in the press, who still felt that keeping the FBI within the District’s borders best served the agency and its workers. (The Washington Post published an excellent piece on Nov. 8 covering all of it, but you will need several hours and a big piece of paper to keep track of the factions.)

Now that the choice has been made, what will become of the jilted Virginia site? It’s anyone’s guess, but Fairfax County officials say demand for affordable rental housing for households with low- and moderate-income remains high, offering a strong highest-and-best-use case. It’s also near several behemoth employers like Amazon, Boeing, and Raytheon, not to mention the Franconia-Springfield Metro station, making the site viable for both federal agencies and peripheral private sector players. The government isn’t getting any smaller, after all, and the booming tech industry inside and outside the Beltway continues to, well, boom.

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