September 17, 1:15pm
Transcription Lighty Edited
There is a heroic quality that peaks in 1960s Chicago; this quality stems from  the post war economy with the talent and institutions being built around them that would be perpetuated. With this sense of optimism buildings are built under that rubric that they would be part of a greater  lineage continuing forward. A perfect example would be here at UIC art and architecture building where only one quarter of what is now a midsize architecture school nationally, would be built with the assumption that the other 3/4 of the building will come later with more students, more talent with more money. This leaves a very particular condition in the building, a façade understood not as design but as a material queue. The exterior is finished like an interior, raw concrete CMU block on the interior of the wall. The interior finished block tiles, which would be in the future the same material used as the exterior. 

The campus also is well known to have formally had a second elevated pathway connecting the schools. The ground floor has always been imagined as a secondary space back entrance in the 1980tktk when it didn’t make sense anymore to maintain proposed security and cost reasons the bridges connecting buildings the majority of them were destroyed, and a new master plan grounded in circulation, literally back onto the grass. The new entrances are the back of house, and a handful of stairways and alteration exceptions were made to gain access to the second level, which was formally the grand entrances of the buildings. 

Inevitably as an occupant of UIC, you come to face the fact that the ground is a secondary class of circulation. This façade represents the fact that we live in a moment of failed optimism. This is not to say we are pessimistic, but to say that there was a project that was undertaken, and never finished or partially destroyed, so now we live with the artifacts of optimism. This artifact proves to be extremely exciting to show how architecture in this current moment finds meeting in the manipulation of the built fabric. The fabric itself, both in need of maintenance and in need of being used (for reasons of housing, the expansion of ideas and for carbon sink).  I am fixated on proving a form of authorship embedded in this moment of stalled optimism registering as an architectural non-place. Not in the sense of Smithson, but in the sense of it’s really not having been on purpose. It is an accident to its form. Accident maybe too strong a word it is a breath in the process of building a building. But as the larger building never survived we remain with breath held for what comes next. We can either anticipate the fall or prepare for sprint.

The question of how authorship interplay with this dynamic is a particular interest. First of all we have to have found this site as the entrance to the architecture building, but also we need to recapture to some degree in the way of a reconstruction like Rem did with Casa Palestra, the moment historically, in which the feeling of the future was present in the construction of the building. Now that we occupy that future anticipated by this CMU wall, we have to look back and reinscribe a narrative misunderstood by those who made it and so it is an authored analysis of that historical moment, recapturing the design process, but with the future we now live in. For our moment we to see the future anticipated in the same way that Walter did, but we will be wrong too.The differences how can we make meaningful work that spans these 50 year gaps in time past present future

September 5, 2025 4:24pm
100% Authorship

Authoring a project through a new enactment of it. The third memory, narrated by the protagonist of a memory, directing other actors in his own experience, filmed by the artist. It's clear that even something that is true, is altered by a reauthoring of it. It reminds me of a Prix de Rome in the 19th century Ecole des Beaux Arts - a talented author would be tasked with a survey of a historic piece of architecture, and in the case of Henri Labrouste (and many others) inscribed it with his own authorship. Stacking subjectivities. Alienating fickle objective truth, but imposing immediacy onto it. 

September 2, 2025 6:20pm
100% Authorship Notes


Format Problems (WHAT FORMAT IS MEANINGFUL)
Charm of the Egg (MONOFIXATION)
IntentIons Release (HOW TO LOOK AT THE WORLD WITHOUT AUTHORS)


01 Crisis Formalism Introduction. 
Crisis Formalism, Michael Abel and Nile Greenberg

02 Staring At Crisis (Afterimages)
Nothing but the End to Come? Extinction Fragments. Ben Ware
Hauntology

03 Collapse and Repair 
Cyprien Gaillard interview Humpty/Dumpty
Scaling Collapse: David Eskenazi

04 Authorship v. Illegibility
Introduction. Luigi Cippino C-Span Volume 01     (Buy)
Writing Degree Zero. Roland Barthes. 

05 Noise
Architecture and Abstraction. Pier Vittorio Aureli
….. TBD

Masterplan Farnsworth House
Fall 2025 - University of Illinois Chicago 
2025–26 Douglas A. Garofalo Fellow

August 20, 2025 9:12am
Two Paths

The aim of this studio is to monofixate on the Farnsworth House, its site as a legal boundary, its site as a hydrological territory, its structure as a 501c(3) non-profit, its registration as a national historic landmark, its situation in a local and international economy. The complexity of the site is typical. There are overlapping and paradoxical structures and requirements that make it both bureaucratic and a typical design brief. The primary difference for architects is that at its core this site is a piece of architecture that is both relevant and canonized. Its form has transcended into a tome, a meme, or an image torturing architects (see treacherous transparencies by Herzog and de Mueron).

In this studio we will redesig the site to be relevant: floods will increase, economies will change, bureaucracy and non-profit structures will falter. But first a new form of masterplanning needs to happen, one that understands how things fail as well as how things grow. Amateurplanning or failplanning might be more appropriate. But something like resilienceplanning is wrong(a bigger wall preserves too kindly.) Techniques like Managed Retreat might be more interesting and something that the Edith Farnsworth House has examined.  But there is a theoretical basis for all of this, Crisis Formalism, which situates itself within the flows of crisis, adopting crisis’ fluid and illegible structures.

We take two paths, the first is to fearlessly masterplan the site by adopting optimism and pessimism without hierarchy. The second path is to develop architecture that recognizes this new site, a out of it flows a piece of architecture suitable for this moment.

Syllabus
Reading 01 Crisis Formalism, Michael Abel and Nile Greenberg
Reading 02 Unfolding Structure, Detlef Mertins

August 18, 2025 3:31pm
Realities

Stating it plainly would claim that this studio is to develop a masterplan for the museum-house and grounds of the historically important Edith Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois. The house and grounds are in turmoil with a very unique funding mechanism and requirements. But the program is to allow the house and grounds to be continually preserved, but also to increase its capacity for meaning and relevancy. To make a new building that serves the neighborhood and community that supports the building. There are currently 6 buildings on the site that each have particularities that can be discussed, but as a whole the site, its ownership and its future are all being planned in coordination with its own balance sheet positioned in an ever evolving non-profit governmental framework.

We will travel to the Farnsworth House and do workshops with its leadership and teams to survey the needs and conditions. Help build priorities. Open paths to alternative means of development and futures. As architects we understand the meaning of the house as an object of history, media and aesthetics, but to understand how those functions operate in the context of a rural museum-house and its management already begins to destabilize the house as a piece of iconography.

August 18, 2025, 3:47 PM EST
Claude (AI Assistant). “Technical Summary of Fox River Geographic Facts, Environmental Issues, and Economic Benefits.” Generated summary incorporating geographic data, water quality research, and recreational/economic impact studies for the Fox River watershed through Plano, Illinois. August 18, 2025.

The Fox River flows northeasterly through Plano, Illinois (Kendall County) as part of a 202-mile waterway that drains 2,570 square miles across northeastern Illinois and southeastern Wisconsin before joining the Illinois River system. Located approximately 50 miles southwest of Chicago, the river maintains a gentle gradient through the glaciated prairie landscape with relatively shallow valley banks characteristic of Midwestern agricultural watersheds. While the river faces significant environmental challenges including water quality problems from mercury, PCBs, fecal bacteria, sediment, and pesticides that have led to Illinois EPA impairment designations, along with safety hazards and ecological fragmentation caused by aging dams, it also provides substantial economic and recreational benefits. The river generates millions in tourism revenue, supports the 158-mile Fabulous Fox Water Trail designated by the National Park Service, serves as a drinking water source for over 330,000 people in cities like Elgin and Aurora, and offers diverse recreational opportunities including paddling, fishing, camping, and wildlife observation that connect communities and support local economies throughout the watershed.

August 18, 2025
Masterplan Edith Farnsworth House

August 18, 2025 3:56pm
Crisis Formalism Notes for EFH

Stating it complexly, this is a studio to develop a formal language based on developing architecture in a thick atmosphere of crisis. Crisis Formalism. The immediacy of an apocalypse mindset is easy to see and hold onto. But while it’s very present, there is also no obvious outcome, no vector that feels isolated enough to examine. Crisis Formalism claims that if architecture is to be meaningful, it must be situated within the flows of crisis rather than trying to resist it. How can architecture maintain order within the scale and complexity of the Polycrisis? Architecture that generates responses to visible crises does not contain the disintegrated and fluid qualities that the polycrisis is built from. The proposal is to examine the conceptual, structural and aesthetic qualities in confronting this issue. What if form can be generated by the flows of the polycrisis? Forces large enough to reduce architecture to a plaything. To make form through harnessing these forces, rather than resilience concepts or complexity mindset, is an architecture of the collapse, of the tangent, of the illegible.

March 12, 2025
Crisis Formalism Pedagogy

Architecture is facing a crisis of relevance where form is losing its immediacy, with “Crisis Formalism” proposed as a framework to reconnect architecture with crisis.

As a working definition we are using  Edgar Morin’s  “Polycrisis” - not a single problem but interconnected crises that resist reductionist approaches or singular solutions.

Young architects are abandoning form-making in favor of focusing on policy, financing, labor practices, and post-occupancy considerations.

Traditional architectural responses to crises (like defamiliarization, dystopian visions, or engineering solutions) ultimately get absorbed into the system that caused them.

Crisis Formalism suggests that architecture should not confront crises directly but approach them obliquely, avoiding easy codification or analysis.

Some architectural projects intentionally embrace illegibility, noise, and rejection of precision to create forms that cannot be easily codified or copied.

We are proposing an architecture that harnesses the flows of crisis rather than fighting against them, potentially formalizing the collapse instead of resisting it.

Projects that exemplify these approaches include works by DSR, Kaiping Diaolou, Frei Otto and others.

The polycrisis is constantly generating forces, but reactions don’t drive new architectural forms. Instead we need to build work within the flow of crises.

March 12, 2025, 8:55 AM
Edith Farnsworth House History

Flooding History & Site Selection Tensions (1945-present)
The house was deliberately sited in a floodplain of the Fox River.
Dr. Farnsworth herself noted this problem in 1954

Major floods (1954, 1996, 2008, 2013) with waters reaching up to 5 feet inside the structure.

Preservation vs. Adaptation Struggles (1968-present)
Lord Peter Palumbo in 1968, the house underwent significant alterations to make it more livable, including air conditioning installation and furniture changes. The National Trust’s 2003 acquisition began a complex negotiation between strict preservation, climate resilience, and financial sustainability.
2012-2014 site restoration project

Media Image vs. Physical Reality (1951-present)
The house gained architectural fame through carefully composed black-and-white photographs that emphasized its geometric purity while concealing practical problems.

Public Trust Management vs. Economic Pressures (2003-present)
The National Trust’s stewardship represents converging tensions between preservation mandates, climate adaptation needs, and financial sustainability. The trust has had to balance maintaining historical authenticity with generating revenue through  tourism, events, and fundraising. 

Studio Nile Greenberg                Write