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2015 JURY SELECTION FINALISTS
Field Constructs Design Competition Announces Jury Selection Finalists
Field Constructs Design Competition (FCDC) is pleased to announce the 2015 Jury Selection
Finalists. The appointed jury reviewed and evaluated all eligible submissions, resulting in
the selection of 18 top-ranked proposals. The selection highlights a variety of approaches to
today’s design innovation and represents a breadth of material, technical, and social design
solutions for engaging the competition brief. The diverse qualifications of the project teams
capture cutting-edge work of emerging professionals and creative practices across multiple
disciplines. Jurors noted an appreciation for the scale and ambition of the chosen proposals,
the variety of material approaches, and the possibility for installations to marry a sense of
discovery with surprise. FCDC attracted submissions from 4 continents, 9 countries, 14 states,
and 35 cities. The finalist selection marks the conclusion of Phase One of the competition. The
2015 Jury Selection Finalists will be exhibited at The University of Texas at Austin in November
2015.
FCDC would like to thank the 2015 jury: Virginia San Fratello of Rael San Fratello in Oakland, CA;
Benjamin Ball of Ball-Nogues Studio in Los Angeles; Ingrid Spencer, executive director of AIA
Austin; Jason Sowell, associate professor and program director of landscape architecture at
The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture; and Seattle-based artist John Grade.
During Phase Two, the FCDC co-founders will review Jury Selection Finalists in order to identify
2015 FCDC Winners slated for realization. The selection—based on curatorial factors, funding,
and feasibility—will be announced in July 2015. The winning projects will be constructed and
open to the public at the Circle Acres Nature Preserve from November 14, 2015 to November 22,
2015 as part of a week-long event series, promoting design and community programming at
the competition site, the Circle Acres Nature Preserve in Austin’s Montopolis neighborhood.
2015 Jury Selection Finalists
99 WHITE BALLOONS
Invivia (Brad Cantrell, Allen Sayegh, Stefano Andreani, Craig Reschke, Ziyi Zhang)
Cambridge, MA USA
BLURRED BODIES
Studio Roland Snooks (Roland Snooks, Cam Newnham, Sascha Bohnenberger)
Melbourne, Australia
CLOUDFILL
Blake Smith, John Cunningham, Seth Brunner
New York, NY USA
COMMPOST
Daniel Gillen, Colby Suter, Gustav Fagerstrom
Beijing, China
DIS-FIGURE
Aptum Architecture (Julie Larsen, Roger Hubeli, Sean Morgan, Nathaniel Banks, Sai Lv)
Syracuse, NY USA
DUCK BLIND IN PLAIN SITE
Jonathan Scelsa, John Paul Rysavy, Jennifer Birkeland, Isaac Stein, Nick Mitchell, Erin Wythoff
Brooklyn, NY USA
ENTOURAGE
HA Architecture (Jamie Crawley, Dharmesh Patel, Charles Meyer),
Manuel Gonzales
Austin, TX / Lexington, KY USA
FRINGE
emerymcclure architecture (Michael A. McClure, Ursula Emery McClure),
Kristi Cheramie, Sarah Young
Lafayette, LA / Columbus, OH USA
GLAM CAMO: FIELD PHANTASMS
Studio Modo (Clay Odom)
Austin, TX USA
HYBROOT
OTA+ (Kory Bieg)
Austin, TX USA
LAS PIÑATAS
Goujon Design (David Goujon)
Austin, TX USA
MEAT CHURCH FIELD KITCHEN
Jordan Bartelt, Scrap Marshall
Los Angeles, CA USA
REPLACEMENT
Abe Drechsler, Allison Hale, Amanda Maderic, Claire Eddleman, Kristina Olivent
Austin, TX USA
S(P)OIL CORES
The OAK CLIFF Dirty 4 (Isaac Cohen, Chris Kiahtipes, Gwen McGinn, Maggie Winter)
Dallas, TX USA
TEXTEX
Banned Practice (Sarah Cowles, Maritt Vaessin)
Columbus, OH USA
TRANSECTUAL HEALING
Lauren Fasic, Clayton Holmes, James Morgan, Brendan Wittstruck
Austin, TX USA
WASTE CRACK
Ludovico Centis, Nerea Feliz, Logan Wagner
Milan, Italy / Austin, TX USA
YELLOWFIELDS
Cruz Mendez
Austin, TX USA
2015 Jury Selection Finalists are illustrated on the following pages with edited excerpts from
the authors’ abstracts. The projects are ordered alphabetically by proposal title.
Sponsors
Ecology Action of Texas, Texas Architect Magazine, Texas Society of Architects, Pentagram, AIA
Austin, Austin Foundation for Architecture, Bustler, Archinect.
99 WHITE BALLOONS
Invivia (Brad Cantrell, Allen Sayegh, Stefano Andreani, Craig Reschke, Ziyi Zhang)
Cambridge, MA USA
99 White Ballons is activated by a series of microphones and proximity sensors as well as
396 LED lights that float high above the ground with the balloons. When a person, or deer, or
other wildlife moves closer to the proximity sensor a stepper motor slowly draws the balloon
cable closer to the ground at that anchor tower, as they move away the balloon cable is
released. Similarly sounds picked up by the microphones at each anchor tower increase the
intensity of the LEDs in waves outward from that tower. The towers themselves are equipped
with LEDs that respond to small temperature variations, illuminating the microclimates at
work between the ground and the tree canopy. Each tower and its relationship to floating
ring illustrates the small differences in each of the preserve’s three landscape types through
temperature, ambient sound, and movement.
BLURRED BODIES
Studio Roland Snooks (Roland Snooks, Cam Newnham, Sascha Bohnenberger)
Melbourne, Australia
Blurred Bodies hovers between the natural and the artificial. It shifts between camouflaging
with its environment and reveling in its alienation. The project has been designed through
behavioral-based algorithms in which a turbulent surface emerges from a swarm of
agentBodies. This process imbues the project with a natural or swarm like character, which is
balanced against the industrial nature of its fabrication process and tectonic detailing. While
sculptural in nature, the project is fundamentally an architectural prototype. It is part of an
ongoing exploration into the synthesis of surface, structure, and ornament through complex
systems. Blurred Bodies is an experiment that is intended to be inhabited—or at least
navigated. It sits somewhere between an installation and a pavilion, with ambitions of being
proto-architectural.
CLOUDFILL
Blake Smith, John Cunningham, Seth Brunner
New York, NY USA
Cloudfill is made up of three site-adjusted installations, one to address each of the three
distinct natural biomes comprising the ten-acre brownfield site: forest, wetland, and grassland,
each created using the same flexible construction module: plastic bags filled with plastic
bottles. In an effort to proliferate the educational mission of the Ecology Action of Texas,
each piece references an environmental issue affecting its respective biome: deforestation,
the Pacific Trash Vortex, strip mining, and landfills. The project proposes a vision of the
potential site transformation and the reuse of post-consumer materials in the construction
of architectural space. With strikingly contradictory objects in a serene context, Cloudfill
highlights the inherent uncanny-ness of the site’s many manipulations, calling into question
the true meaning of ‘nature’ and ‘landscape.’
COMMPOST
Daniel Gillen, Colby Suter, Gustav Fagerstrom
Beijing, China
COMMPOST is an educational tool informing the public of the techniques and benefits of
composting organic food waste. Guests of COMMPOST will be able to engage in the practice
of composting and see the results of their efforts over the lifespan of the installation. Given
its temporary site, COMMPOST is familiar in its iconicity yet playfully foreign. Computational
design allows for the complex form to be catalogued and described with a minimal kit of parts.
Components are nested for material ecology, with overage chipped and used as composting
ingredients. Similar to an Ikea or Lego set, COMMPOST comes with a step-by-step assembly
manual in addition to COMMPOST’s uncommon zero waste disassembly guide.
DIS-FIGURE
Aptum Architecture (Julie Larsen, Roger Hubeli, Sean Morgan, Nathaniel Banks, Sai Lv)
Syracuse, NY USA
Where artifice meets nature, dis-FIGURE privileges process over form by re-configuring the
‘figure’ not through a particular style but with a specific method of making. The pavilion is
designed to structurally maneuver around specific trees and debris on the site. The complex
form is generated from 1.5-inch-by-one-inch overlapping wood members that inherently
become self-supporting. Layers of thin biodegradable latex sheets ‘tattoo’ and wrap the
underbelly of the structure to create an illuminated surface that glows and changes the image
of the pavilion throughout the day. Through the intertwining of skeleton and mutilated skin, a
digitally enhanced structure and its biodegradable latex ornamentation dis-figures the form
and, in turn, alludes to a new reading of ‘form meets nature’ as the grotesque, the uncanny, and
the unexpected.
DUCK BLIND IN PLAIN SITE
Jonathan A. Scelsa, John Paul Rysavy, Jennifer Birkeland, Isaac Stein, Nick Mitchell,
Erin Wythoff
Brooklyn, NY USA
Duck Blind in Plain Site is born out of a desire for contextual double-readings, wherein
architectural form “doubly functions” to exist in its own system while simultaneously within
the system of its site. Duck Blind’s exterior, shrouded in camouflage, seeks to hide within its
pastoral setting, while its interior attempts to subvert the exterior’s camouflage with apertures
and thresholds showcasing high chromatic interior claddings. Duck Blind’s contextual
tension is heightened through its material composition: a double-sided brick construction
featuring high-contrast post-consumer recycled materials as cladding on the interior, while
the exterior features grass harvested from the seasonal cycle of local ecologies. The goal is
to create an object expressing a visual tension in relation to its context, wherein the object
oscillates from being one with and against nature.
ENTOURAGE
HA Architecture (Jamie Crawley, Dharmesh Patel, Charles Meyer),
Manuel Gonzales
Austin, TX / Lexington, KY USA
Entourage explores the presence and presentation of place making—highlighting the role
of fiction. Viewers are encouraged to discover Entourage’s seeming discordance within the
Circle Acres Nature Preserve. Through a smart phone app, visitors can read each individual
story of the figure in front of them and view a rendered architectural reality not yet realized.
They also can view a map highlighting each individual Entourage, discovering stereotypes of
this place. The form follows fiction and each viewer interacting with Entourage provides the
bridge between realities presented.
FRINGE
emerymcclure architecture (Michael A. McClure, Ursula Emery McClure),
Kristi Cheramie, Sarah Young
Lafayette, LA / Columbus, OH USA
FRINGE is an exhibit of exposure: exposure of waste, exposure of reclamation, exposure to
the elements. On average, an American family uses 1,500 plastic grocery bags a year. Of this
amount, almost all of it ends up in the trash or loose in the environment, and the bags do not
break down. Austin is the first city in Texas to attempt to mitigate this waste issue by banning
plastic bags within the city limits. Fringe serves as a tribute to the city’s efforts and those of
Ecology Action of Texas. It is also a symbol of the environmental impact of this issue. Mimicking
the field and the plethora of plastic bags that lie beneath, Fringe rents the ground asunder to
expose. From afar, the visitor will see the field rise. As they approach, the ground will open up to
them. From inside, they will look back out through the bags at what the waste has become: the
field.
GLAM CAMO: Field Phantasms
Studio Modo (Clay Odom)
Austin, TX USA
Glam Camo: Field Phantasms engages a thread of research that investigates the
relationship between form, material, and ephemeral effects productions as both contextual
links and contextual production mechanisms. Using notions of the field condition as both a
tool of generating graphic pattern and as a formal, tectonic strategy, the project is designed to
generate a range of atmospheric, lighting, and formal effects.
Fundamentally, the proposal desires to critically engage in the notion of field constructs. Here
we understand field constructs to imply questions regarding nature and landscape or more
precisely the natural and the artificial to generate a proposal that is situated to both stand-out
from the ‘natural’ while also exhibiting tendencies toward concealment and linkage with it.
HYBROOT
OTA+ (Kory Bieg)
Austin, TX USA
Hybroot reflects the balance between urban fabric and natural landscape indicative of the
project site. The form, color, and material of Hybroot mimic the surrounding grasses and
tree canopy, while the fabrication, assembly, and surface patterning evoke a more synthetic
sensibility. At first glance the two are inseparable, but on closer inspection, one notices artificial
formal compositions, unnatural pixilation of colors, and the artifact of the CNC-lathing process
left as surface texture. The sheen and reflectivity of each paint color varies between the natural
and plastic. It is both root and robot.
Las Piñatas
Goujon Design (David Goujon)
Austin, TX USA
Las Piñatas tells the story of Austin’s growth through the life cycle of the piñata. In early 2015,
a local, family-owned piñata store was razed to the ground by a pair of transplanted property
developers in the city’s rapidly gentrifying East Austin neighborhoods. The low-income and
predominantly Hispanic neighborhood of Montopolis will inevitably become another friction
point between the development of a ‘new’ Austin and the preservation of ‘old’ Austin. Our
objective is to preempt this debate and engage the community in a project that ends not in
destruction, but in rebirth. The centerpiece of the installation will be two digitally-fabricated
oversized piñatas in the shape of the iconic Mexican burro crowned by a dense canopy of
superhero piñatas.
MEAT CHURCH FIELD KITCHEN
Jordan Bartelt, Scrap Marshall
Los Angeles, CA USA
The premise of the solitary church in the Texas landscape and Austin’s rich culinary heritage is
re-composed and redefined as a gateway, catalyst, and social generator. Here, on the remains
of a reclaimed landfill site, the bells toll for hungry souls as plumes of sweet smelling smoke
bring visitors and locals alike to a place of relaxation, community, and feasting. The Field
Kitchen will be designed and constructed in Los Angeles and brought to site as a series of
pre-fabricated parts, ready for easy assembly and installation. The Meat Church is agnostic,
contextual, opportunistic, and optimistic. It takes the form of two parts: a physical prefabricated
grill and smoker and a ‘menu’ formed and prepared by BBQ experts.
REPLACEMENT
Abe Drechsler, Allison Hale, Amanda Maderic, Claire Eddleman, Kristina Olivent
Austin, TX USA
Within the wetland at the Circle Acres Nature Preserve, a black willow stand is reaching the
end of its lifecycle. What will succeed it is unknown. Replacement interlaces willow saplings
with steel rebar to call attention to temporal change within man-made and natural systems.
The carefully situated strands of steel and willow will serve as a rigorous formal metric to gauge
changes in the landscape and the Montopolis neighborhood. The rebar will be removed after
one cycle of seasons, while the cuttings will continue the story of growth and decay indefinitely.
As the stand matures, the established pattern will gradually undo itself.
S(p)oil Cores
The OAK CLIFF Dirty 4 (Isaac Cohen, Chris Kiahtipes, Gwen McGinn, Maggie Winter)
Dallas, TX USA
S(p)oil Cores allows us to exaggerate and interpret the many layered natural and human
horizons of the Circle Acres Nature Preserve. Through an investigation of the site’s past, this
simple installation of curated soil cores enables visitors to imagine a new future for the site,
one of thoughtful creation and understanding of the ground we walk on. S(p)oil Cores is a
24-foot-by-24-foot-square grid made of fabricated 16 “soil cores,” illustrations of the whimsy,
toxicity, historic, contemporary, and future — offered at a variety of scales. A narrative of
exploitation and regeneration unfolds, one that applies to numerous illegal dumps across
Texas, helping us to see below the surface.
TEXTEX
Banned Practice (Sarah Cowles, Maritt Vaessin)
Columbus, OH USA
TEXTEX is an ecological armature constructed from commercially available environmental
restoration materials: geo-textiles, erosion control mats, hydroseed mixes, coir logs, and
live stakes of native Texas plant species. By amplifying, hacking, and foregrounding the
aesthetic qualities of ecological restoration materials, TEXTEX draws attention to how living
systems perform in tandem with man-made materials to restore ecological health and alter
site aesthetics. It is experienced as a garden. Each prototype is a locus of visual intensity,
composition, and handiwork within the existing landscape matrix. The materials and species
palette is specific to the conditions of each site: low and wet, sloped and shaded, sunny and
dry. The siting of these prototypes brings attention to the range of disturbed conditions within
the Circle Acres Nature Preserve.
TRANSECTUAL HEALING
Lauren Fasic, Clayton Holmes, James Morgan, Brendan Wittstruck
Austin, TX USA
Transectual Healing is a spatial intervention emerging from and spanning across the
Circle Acres Nature Preserve. It intends to enrich user engagement by creating an armature
telling the story of the site by exposing its layers and history, revealing the ebb and flow of
water and seasons, embracing decay and providing spaces and surfaces on which multiple
media and the site itself can perform. The installation is built of three interwoven parts. A
bamboo armature transects the site and references the past site topography as it has changed
with human intervention. Within it, an assembly of construction debris reveals the hidden
layer beneath the ground. Finally, a west-facing screen collects shadows and provides an
opportunity for digital media and social connectivity.
WASTE CRACK
Ludovico Centis, Nerea Feliz, Logan Wagner
Milan, Italy / Austin, TX USA
Waste Crack is a crafted fissure conformed by rammed earth walls made from the local
sand. The vividly colored stripes at the base of the cavity introduce a further narrative: They
remind us of the site’s past and the hidden substances we may find underground. In a society
where the perception of a successful life is often associated with accumulation, waste
becomes a shameful thing. Waste Crack introduces a pause, both spatially and visually, as
an interruption in the continuous surface of the grass field. But first and foremost, it invites us
to take a pause, as it provides an opportunity to stop our movement, our gaze, and our thoughts
to inquire on what the crack itself reveals.
YELLOWFIELDS
Cruz Mendez
Austin, TX USA
YellowFields engages the natural surroundings of the site and draws attention to a part of
Austin that has long been socio-economically neglected. The structure’s framework mirrors
the winding boundary of the forest surrounding the open field. The unique use of fabric is dual
purposed: to provide shade and to create an interactive experience with the structure. The
project is meant to attract pedestrians and cyclists to a reclaimed oasis within the city and to
stimulate reflection on the man-made construct within the beauty of the natural site on which
it rests.