MMXIV
echos
Descriptive Form
Title: ECHOS
Editor: Mara Marcu
Size: 6.5in x 8.25in
Pages: 406
Illustrations: Color
Cover: Hardcover
Published by: Actar Publishers
ISBN: 9781948765046
Library of Congress
Publication Data: 2018942687
Languages: English
Order: https://amzn.to/2ENEjAV
Text: Echos; Mara Marcu
Image: Echos; ed. Mara Marcu
July 2018
SAID In Print.
About ECHOS:
The book of student and faculty work, co-op stories, and snapshots from several events places the reader in the midst of Peter Eisenman’s famous Grand Staircase, the living room of the Aronoff Center for Design and Art. Various constellations chart our diverse academic and social interactions—visible in the book’s five main themes: anxiety, praxis, trope, chreod, and utopia. Discussed by lead figures in the discipline—Peter Zellner, Victoria Meyers, Aaron Betsky, Edward Mitchell, Peter Waldman, Nader Tehrani, Shashi Caan, Jaime Velez, and Craig Dykers—the themes expand on the issues of theoretical anxiety, architectural style, practice, typology, the less-than-ideal, the peculiar, and the sublime.
Anxiety, introduced by Peter Zellner, collects and synthesizes multiple contradicting theories that entertain with equanimity various solutions to design problems. Praxis, introduced by Victoria Meyers, looks at outcomes—physical, prototypical, digital or analog, multi-dimensional and multi-media, spoken, written or unwritten—as well as working methodologies that shape design thinking. Trope, introduced by Aaron Betsky, maps out trends, emergent ideologies, and design expressions. Chreod, introduced by Edward Mitchell, documents and interprets field conditions, rule-based processes, issues of transgressions, non-smooth and nomadic entities that cut across arbolic-like divisions. Utopia, introduced by Peter Waldman, while suspending various otherwise necessary constraints, allows for an euphoric and unapologetically optimistic view of the world, with the goal of envisioning daring possibilities otherwise unimaginable. Utopia, therefore, prefigures all other themes and is the ambition and imaginary locus of the multiple programs and opportunities at the School of Architecture and Interior Design at the University of Cincinnati.
In general, the term echos means sound or voice. In music the concept refers to a chant sang in dialogue by a choir. This melodic structure has specific hierarchy, notes, an intonations. Although not as popular, echos has also become an increasingly accepted plural form of the noun echo. The spelling echoes is however more commonly found.
The publication ECHOS synthesizes the work done at the University of Cincinnati, School of Architecture an Interior Design, marked by moments of compression and release in our curriculum, which revolves around traditional semester-long sessions and co-op (curriculum-based paid internship) semesters.
Though intentionally dissonant
at times, our program reinforces the relentless belief that the profession and academia do not need to build on one another in redundancy to reinforce each other. Professional intership semesters weave with a year round schedule of highly theoretical,
experimental, and consequently research based courses.
Indexing student and faculty work, co-op stories, and snapshots from several events, the book places the reader in the midst of Peter Eisenman’s famous Grand Staircase, the living room of the Aronoff Center for Design and Art, where the many student and faculty voices form a multilayered chorus of one of the most vibrant and diverse design schools in North America. Part of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, the program benefits from its affiliations with industrial design, fashion design, communication design, art, landscape architecture, and urbanism. The opportunistic dialogue that inevitably influences the studio environment happens irrespective of disciplinary boundaries. This relaxes what might become an otherwise dogmatic curricular agenda, breeds new taxonomies and asks questions such as Amanda Lo’s thesis – “Do buildings dream of swallowed futures?”. In this way we elicit a ludic, nevertheless investigative attitude towards architecture and education.
all roads lead to SAID
Student Editors: Kyle Winston, Alan Alaniz, Chas Wiederhold, Christina Tefend, Jamie Kruer, John Meyer, Anjana Sivakumar, Erin Klein, Daham Marapane, Michael Sullivan, Brady Ginn, Seher Hashmi, Gael Perichon, Farshad Khalighinejad, Kristin Moreno, and Garcia Ghislaine
Editorial Board: Edward Mitchell, William Williams, Michael McInturf, Udo Greinacher, Elizabeth Riorden, Edson Cabalfin
Graphic Design: Mara Marcu with Student Editors
Copy Editor: Gabriela Sarhos
MMXIII 2020 — Cincinnati, USA