ARCH 273 — Revival Architecture

Tell your Superfund site’s story 100 years back and 100 forward in a composite experimental analysis drawing — built from cutout parts you layer and re-layer, physically or digitally, to test variations — plus a group 3D-printed site model, which is due Wed Sept 23, two weeks after the Atlas, so the FabShop queue has room. Surveyor demo Wed Aug 26; after class, run your site in Superfund mode and download terrain + boundary for Rhino. By Sun Aug 30, your first 5 claims verified or overturned, with primary sources — the tagged-claim verification (checking the AI’s claims against primary sources) is part of the assignment, not homework about the tool.

• Surveyormain toolsign-in to run the AI claims

  Type in your site (the syllabus calls it Site Analysis) and it pulls the real public record — climate, terrain, hydrology, flood zones, the parcel boundary, and in Superfund mode the EPA cleanup file. Hard data arrives cited; the AI’s claims arrive tagged verified / unverified / suspect for you to check. Its exports drop measured terrain + boundary straight into Rhino and drawing layers into Illustrator, so the Atlas is drawn on real ground. The measured data, the exports and the map need no account; the tagged claims are an AI pass, so make your account before Wednesday — Sunday’s five verified claims come out of that pass.

• ReliefSurveyor ground → physical site model

  The group site model, made from data: cut a chunk of the Surveyor’s measured ground — its presets are this studio’s exact setups (the TA section’s 27″ set model, cut into printer-bed tiles; Individual at 1/8″ or 1/4″) — and fabricate it as printed tiles, a waffle grid, stacked contours or fold-scored paper strips, with the mapped roads, water and buildings cut in.

• Image Cleaner

  A phone photo of a pencil drawing is grey, warped and dim; this turns it into clean black-on-white line work at print resolution, right in the browser. Bring it to the Sept 2 scanning clinic, and use it whenever hand work has to survive into the hybrid sheet.

The game is 4 Rectangles: every study is a gable Eco-Lounge on your group’s Superfund site, made of four rectangles — a Roof ≤1,600 SF, a Room ≤800 SF inside it, a Plinth ≤1,200 SF, and a Gathering Space, a table pushed up out of the plinth or a conversation pit cut down into it, which is the focus of the whole thing. You change dimensions, positions, angles and amounts, never the DNA, and let the site’s forces inflect it — sun, wind, air, earth and mass, water, views — and the people who will gather there. Before Round 1, write three site-force goals as sentences — each a direction, a reason, and the evidence you will accept — and rank them.

Then three rounds of at least three, each pinned up and talked through before the next. Round 1 · Intuition: three studies in Rhino and three Bristol models, pinned up Wed Sept 16. Round 2 · Test + Remix: every study into Proving Ground V7 on your site, read against your goals, then new versions that answer the readouts — one of them a remix of a classmate’s Round 1 study — twelve or more posted by Sun Sept 27. Round 3 · Curate + Draw: choose the final nine, each with a number and a sentence against your goals, and draw every one by the same process. The board and the nine models go up at the Mon Oct 5 midterm; Modules 1 and 2 are due for grading Fri Oct 9. These are singular structures — the Ensemble comes after, in Module 3.

• Proving Groundmain toolFormerly Crucible (the ARCH 273 syllabus’s name). Nine versions behind one door: V1 Bench · V2 Grounds (the five Superfund sites) · V3 Live · V4 Solver (V7’s bench, every variable walked as the forces cycle; its classic Council one link away) · V5 Freehand · V6 Site forces (the full-service bench) · V7 Four rectangles (ARCH 273’s version, with the focus, and a switch that moves the drawn air to the day and hour) · V9 Century (V7’s bench weathered over a hundred years — decay, mould, rust, frost and soil loss, year by year) · V10 Genetic (V7’s bench bred by a genetic algorithm — a population selected, crossed and mutated, every knob of the search on the page, picks kept in a gallery)

  Round 2’s bench — V7 · Four rectangles, which this row opens (the syllabus calls the tool Crucible). Rebuild a study on the 4 Rectangles jig, which keeps the rectangles inside their rules for you in feet — except the roof: V7 lets the ridge height govern, so a low ridge over a steep pitch can drive the eave down through the walls and into the plinth or the ground, and a warning box on the model names what broke, in feet. Or import your Rhino file (.3dm, .obj, .stl, .ply or .glb) with the rectangles on named layers — Plinth, Walls, Roof, Focus (put “table” or “pit” in the name) and Glazing, one flat surface in every opening, skylights included; the V7 student manual lists every layer and what the engine does with it. Pick your site under The ground (one of the five studio sites, or Load coordinate for a pin you saved in the Surveyor) — until you do, every number is read on a placeholder site. Turn the building with Rotate the building (north stays true north), and read what each study actually does: sun on the floor and on the gathering space, the view from the seat, wind, stack ventilation, the mass the plinth banks, the ground under it. When it proposes a move you disagree with, keep your composition and write down why; the readout becomes the DATA frame on your board.

• Sun & Shadow StudySolar geometry + cast shadows

  The evidence for a SUN goal: a sun study at both solstices and the equinox, 9 AM / noon / 3 PM, at your site’s latitude — real NOAA solar geometry, a sunrise-to-sunset animation, PNG export.

• ScoreboardCompare schemes · one weighted table

  Round 3’s curation move: twelve or more studies down to the final nine, each with a number and a sentence against your goals. Put the close calls side by side — up to six at a time — in one honest table: every cell links back to the tool that measured it, and no ranking appears until you say what matters.

• Hatch & PochéArchitectural hatch fills

  The assignment is black and white — the B/W swatches, or your own made here: real hatch and poché patterns scaled true to your drawing scale, exported as SVG or PNG.

One assignment, nine weeks, five phases, running through Module 4: design an Ensemble of eco-lounge pavilions for a 100-year remediation and monitoring center on your Superfund site, then tell the story of its life as an architectural graphic novel. The Ensemble is a community lounge, habitat for non-human life, and storage for the equipment that remediates the site — no other program — and it is built in successive campaigns, each adjusting its materiality and siting to how the soil, water, canopy and community actually change.

You work in teams of two (one team of three in a section with an odd number). This is a rework, not a cold start: put both partners’ Module 2 studies and their midterm critiques on the table, decide which notes you are acting on and which you are answering, and combine two study ideas into one new prototypical form, the Element. You should be able to say which move came from which partner, and why it survived. The Ensemble is nine Elements that share one DNA but vary in scale, proportion, orientation and arrangement, on a site no larger than 288′ × 288′.

The rules, in one breath. Every Element is the 4 Rectangles — Plinth, Walls, Roof, Focus — plus an optional fifth, a Greenhouse, and some walls may be glazed; every other aperture is open to the weather. Any rectangle may rotate. Nine Elements (twelve at most; some may merge), each at most 1,200 SF of interior floor. 2–3 doors, 7′ tall and no more than 15′ long; 1–2 skylights, no cutting-box side over 12′; every aperture a box cut. One ridge per Element, no higher than 30′ (split it for a clerestory); a second floor at most half the footprint; one curved surface, a circular arc. Pile foundations, 12″ diameter at most, about 4′ on center. The plinths join into one walking surface, ramps no steeper than 1:20 and no snaky paths. Furniture and entourage come from the same design language.

Phase 1 · Organize (week 8) — Charrette 3A, Typology Study, from Mon Oct 12. In Ensemble, walk the site box onto the landform you want (a tailings pile, a riverbank, a marsh edge, a berm), load each partner’s Module 2 study, and run it through all nine assignment-sheet organizations; then break the symmetry. Draw on trace at 1/16″ or ⅛″ = 1′-0″ in parallel, and name one physical and one social force the Element answers. Digital pin-up Wed Oct 14 at 11 AM. Phase 2 · Ground + Measure (weeks 9–10) — Charrette 3B, Define the Performative Measure: name the measure that shows those forces are answered, and develop the Ensemble until it holds — overlays on trace, three Ensemble iterations in cardstock and Rhino Mon Oct 19, section iterations to the ground Wed Oct 21, the progress review Mon Oct 26 at 9 AM, and the final Rhino model Wed Oct 28. Phase 3 · Build + Draw (week 11): the ⅛″ = 1′-0″ physical model, at least 36″ × 36″, Mon Nov 2, built to be weathered; clean photographs in the photo studio Wed Nov 4; then two section perspectives and a plan, drafted by Mon Nov 9 because the storyboards are built from them. Upload to the Archivist every day you work, tagged module-3.

• Ensemblemain toolsign-in to write your own ruleNine copies of one Proving Ground study, arranged — Module 3's layout families on a real chat pile

  Phase 1’s tool, and the measure for Phase 2. Pick your studio site and walk the box onto your landform with the key map or the Shift sliders (it opens on the summit of Tar Creek’s tallest chat pile). Under Study, load a Module 2 study: Ensemble reads the studies you saved in Proving Ground V7 with Save study, in the same browser — a study saved on another computer has to be saved again on this one; with none saved, the V7 default loads. Then cycle the nine organizations, export each plan as SVG or a screenshot, and break the symmetry: Rotation, Drift and its seed, drag a lounge by hand, switch on the ordering grid. The How to use tab holds the “Nine ways to arrange” sheets, loadable as drawn. The readings are your Phase 2 evidence — the fall under every plinth, cut and fill, sun, air and daylight per lounge, the two-winds study, a design storm over the whole Ensemble — and its Rhino export (surfaces or mesh) is a legitimate start on the Oct 28 model, which you then take further: connect the plinths, add the ramps and stairs, design what holds the cantilevers. It arranges and measures; it does not decide — adopt a move only when you can say why, and note what you overrode. Everything runs without an account except writing your own rule in words, which is an AI call.

• Proving GroundFormerly Crucible (the ARCH 273 syllabus’s name). Nine versions behind one door: V1 Bench · V2 Grounds (the five Superfund sites) · V3 Live · V4 Solver (V7’s bench, every variable walked as the forces cycle; its classic Council one link away) · V5 Freehand · V6 Site forces (the full-service bench) · V7 Four rectangles (ARCH 273’s version, with the focus, and a switch that moves the drawn air to the day and hour) · V9 Century (V7’s bench weathered over a hundred years — decay, mould, rust, frost and soil loss, year by year) · V10 Genetic (V7’s bench bred by a genetic algorithm — a population selected, crossed and mutated, every knob of the search on the page, picks kept in a gallery)

  Still the bench for one Element: the merged Element is rebuilt and tested here before it is copied nine times, and its ground readings on any single Element are the check on Phase 2’s sections to the ground. Save every version with Save study so Ensemble can load it.

• DetailerAssembly study · walls, roofs, floors · thermal, moisture, matter

  Each team picks a construction, tectonic and material system and draws it in the section perspectives. Build that wall, roof and floor here, layer by layer, and read its hatched section, weight and embodied carbon before you draw its grain at ⅛″.

• Hatch & PochéArchitectural hatch fills

  The final Rhino model takes simple black-and-white line-drawing textures — the provided templates or your own in the same style. Make your own here, scaled true to ⅛″ = 1′-0″, and export them as PNG for Rhino or SVG for Illustrator.

The Ensemble becomes an architectural graphic novel: not a static building at the moment of its construction but a generational system for remediation, its story running from the life of the place before it to its life and mission 100 years later, with characters on the site and in the buildings. You may keep working as a team (and deliver proportionally more spreads) or split up; either way, every novel carries all the required drawings and content. The heavy lifting is Rhino, Illustrator, Photoshop and Twinmotion — and the bulk of your time and the majority of the ink belong to the architecture. No blue skies, no Kentucky bluegrass, no park-like plantings.

Phase 4 · Weather + Storyboard (weeks 12–13). Mon Nov 9: act on the Oct 26 review in the Rhino model, the weathering session starts — stain, sand, break, grow, silt — and so does the novel: storyboard spreads that incorporate orthography. Look at the references and the graphic novels on display in Ricker, then iterate every spread on trace at least three times, at the correct aspect ratio; draft layouts are due Wed Nov 11. Remake the section perspectives and plan with more care, draw an asset page of your own entourage, and capture the perspective set. Mon Nov 16: aged model photographs in the storyboard, at least three overlay swatch treatments on a model photograph, the plan and the section, and one composite perspective sample. Wed Nov 18: the draft novel, about 75%, printed at full scale. Fall Break, Nov 23–27, has nothing due. Phase 5 · Produce (weeks 15–16). Mon Nov 30: the novel and the physical model at 80 to 90%, with test prints — leave with a written correction list. Wed Dec 2 is production. The print deadline is Mon Dec 7 — PDFs to the Archivist by 5 PM, tagged final; nobody prints the night before the review. FINAL REVIEW Wed Dec 9: all of the work. The complete semester archive goes to the Archivist by end of day Fri Dec 11. Upload to the Archivist every day you work, tagged module-4.