The Culture Now Project is an immersive investigation of the intersection of public policy, urban design, and the spatial manifestation of contemporary culture.Read more...
MEMBRANE: A PROPOSAL FOR RISING SEA LEVELS IN NEW YORK
TINGWE XU / XIE ZHANG
FERDA KOLATAN STUDIO
Confronted with the sea levels of New York rising, we...
Technology, Connectivity, Urban Revival: Energy Infrastructure as a Driver of New Economies
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Spring 2012 –...
Bioremediation and Aquaponics: Water As a Resource
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Spring 2012 – Academic Final
Team: Brad Austin,...
Permeable City: Ecology and Infrastructure As Opportunities for Invenstment
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Spring 2012 – Academic...
Technology, Connectivity, Urban Revival: Energy Infrastructure as a Driver of New Economies
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Spring 2012 –...
Densification of NKY: Points on a Line
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Spring 2012 – 90% UCLA Review in LA
Team: Zachary Henley, Mark...
Permeable City: Ecology and Infrastructure As Opportunities for Invenstment
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Spring 2012 – 90% UCLA Review...
Park-City Milkshake: Re-stitching the Park, City and River
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Spring 2012 – 90% UCLA Review in LA
Team: ...
Assistant Professor Martin Summers
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Spring 2012 – 90% Review at UCLA
In early April, we were invited...
Technology, Connectivity, Urban Revival: Energy Infrastructure as a Driver of New Economies
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Spring 2012 -...
Delamination and Densification: Points on a Line
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Spring 2012 - Public Midterm
Team: Zachary Henley,...
Park-City Milkshake: Re-stitching the Park, City and River
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios - Spring 2012 - Public Midterm
Team: Mike Domek,...
INFRASTRUCTURE: Primary Research Topic
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Fall 2011 - Final
Team: Brad Austin, Christopher Hayse, Mark...
Bioremediation and Aquaponics: Water As a Resource
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios - Spring 2012 - Public Midterm
Team: Brad Austin, Ted...
We are happy to announce that the first publication of the Culture Now project has been released. The publication was launched at UCLA's Hammer Museum in June...
Footage
Monica Earl's quick videos superimpose and juxtapose at the same time. Highlighting global controversies and hypocrisies alike, these works ask for...
EVO-NOPOLIS
MING YANG / YUANHAO WANG
ROLAND SNOOKS STUDIO
This project was set in the background of sea level rise which is likely phenomenon with the...
ZIPPER-NESS
SCARLETT ZHAO / CHEN FU
WINKA DUBBELDAM STUDIO
The concept is to design a system integrated with different functions such as levee, landscape,...
INTERWOVEN DELTA
HO SUNG KIM / EDNA VUONG
FERDA KOLATAN STUDIO
It has become apparent that the flooding problem in New Orleans has been exasperated by sea...
SELF-ORGANIZING CITY
HYOUNG SUB KIM / HYO YOUNG PARK
FERDA KOLATAN STUDIO
The water area which surrounds New York City is going to expand and elevate....
ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION AGAINST FLOODING
DAEHEE HAN / YEZHOU YANG
WINKA DUBBELDAM STUDIO
This project is located in New Orleans, where most areas suffer the...
REVIVING ROAD: AN AERIAL EVACUATION SYSTEM
WENBO GUO / XIOHAN WEN
ROLAND SNOOKS STUDIO
At the very beginning of this design, We began to imagine a possible...
The fullscreen will launch a slideshow of all the images on this page.
Assistant Professor Martin Summers
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios –...
What has evolved as a problematic since an initial perception of human disconnection or alienation identifies closely with a culture of consumerism in the...
CULTURE: Primary Research Topic
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Fall 2011 - Final
Team: Megan Doyle, Jonathan Erwin, Jamie Lam, Derek...
Yonathan Persovski and Rafael Roldan
Final Proposal
Water level rise is a reality that is affecting hundreds of cities around the world. Higher temperatures,...
Assistant Professor Martin Summers
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Fall 2011 - Vision 2015/Housing Summit
Our next presentation was in...
Assistant Professor Martin Summers
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios – Fall 2011 - Photo Essay
After the midterm presentation the studio...
DIGITAL MODEL: Development of a Comprehensive Digital Model of the Five Cities.
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios - Fall 2011 - Midterm
Team:...
Assistant Professor Martin Summers
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios - Fall 2011 - Midterm
Midterm represented the first time that the...
CAB + IABR
Paducah, KY
Our Atomic Cities team began the task of addressing Paducah's cleanup by declaring that the problem would be the solution. In our...
Assistant Professor Martin Summers
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios - Fall 2011 - Kick-Off Event and Charrette
The fall semester started...
Assistant Professor Martin Summers
River Cities Project: Northern Kentucky Studios - Introduction
It is an honor to have been asked to participate in...
Reconciling the Main Street Mentalities with Modern American Growth Patterns
Contemporary political and media rhetoric commonly refers to “Main Street” to...
The goal of Swaleway is to provide a secondary city water circulation system while encouraging the redevelopment of a significant portion of Lincoln’s currently...
Project Description
This project responds to demographic shifts in Lincoln’s population by diversifying the city’s housing stock in its downtown. The project...
With the expiration of the ethanol subsidy and continued urban expansion along Lincoln’s crest, there may be an opportunity to create new extra-urban development...
Lincoln has a water quality problem. To address it, the City’s policy focus is on new construction and redevelopment. Given projections for future growth, much of...
LINCOLN: THE TRI-POLAR CITY
IntroductionLincoln has been shaped by three dominant forces: transportation, housing and agriculture. These forces represent three...
Agriculture in Lincoln is highly mechanized and focused on corn ethanol production. In order to better understand mechanized agriculture, we broadened our research...
Caitlin Kunzle & Thomas Stroman
In comparison to other cities in the United States with similar population densities, Newark has the highest percentage of city...
Brian Chu and David Kim
Thesis Design Midterm
During the research phase of our project, we were interested in the Port of Newark because it is so integrated...
Midterm Project Update
Scott Rominger and Dexter Walcott
Newark is the poster child for the American post-industrial, late-capitalist society. With its...
Museumscape is a distributed museum, that redirects pedestrian circulation to and between the underutilized interstices of the city that are within a walkable...
On Friday, March 23rd from 10-11:30 am, Charles Waldheim will join the Culture Now seminar to discuss his investigation of urban renewal and industrial economy in...
On March 9, 2012, Alan Berger, principle at P-REX (Project for Reclamation Excellence) and Tenured Associate Professor in Urban Design and Planning at MIT,...
On February 24th, Andres Lepik, GSD Loeb Fellow and curator at MoMA's Architecture and Design Department, spoke to the Culture Now seminar about his recent...
Drop Out
by Josh Robinson
This is the exploration of a long and ongoing lineage of drop out culture. In this context abandonment is used in the least as a...
Displaced Origins
by Charlie Heid
This study has arisen from a fascination that human beings need a purpose or way of identifying themselves in the context of...
Abandonment of Conscience
by Emily Meza
Capitalism, modernism, and institutional bureaucracy have dramatically altered western society. The end of feudalism...
Brian Chu and David Kim
Final Research Proposal
Port Newark is one of the most distinguishable aspects of the city of Newark. Contrary to this fact, Newark is...
Scott Rominger and Dexter Walcott
Final Research Proposal
Newark is the poster child for the American post-industrial, late-capitalist society. With its...
Avery Carrig & Michelle Frantellizzi
Final Research Proposal
Precis:
Properties and businesses in Newark are primarily not owned by the city or the people that...
Elena Hasbun and Gregory Pietrycha
FINAL RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Green space in Newark is currently divided between two extreme conditions. One condition is found...
The River Cities Project
By Michael Speaks, Dean
The Ohio River originates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and terminates in Cairo, Illinois. It is the largest...
Paducah+
Paducah, KY
The Paducah+ Studio started with the Manhattan Redux Studio's discovery that the problem is the solution, in defining futures for...
For the Spring 2011 semester, Martin Summers shifted the emphasis of the studio to the interior of the HMPL1 Power Plant. With progress underway and the city...
Students in Douglas Appler’s Historic Preservation Design Studio (HP 616) developed plans for the "Northern Kentucky Historic Art Spaces Trail." The studio...
January 26, 2011
Culture Now: The Contemporary American Condition
Our second paper fresh off the press this morning. A national policy review and 8 cities...
For the Fall 2010 semester of the River Cities Project, Martin Summers asked his students to focus on the granary site in Henderson, KY. Previously identified in...
Florian Idenburg, Jing Liu / SO — IL
Now that we have entered a phase of involuntary fasting, any anxiety that the architect is destined to turn into the...
Freek Persyn, founder of 51N4E, led two workshops with University of Kentucky College of Design students to develop proposals for the Louisville Water Company...
Strange Networks.
As with many aspects of contemporary life, the overwhelming wealth and availability of data pertaining to the attributes and function of the...
On September 30, the Crisis Fronts studio took in the intersection of ecology and infrastructure along the southern end of the Hackensack River with Hackensack...
HMPL 1 powerplant: Jordan Hines, Ian McHone, Kyle Tierney
In spring, 2010, the emphasis of the Henderson Project shifted to the recently retired HMPL1 Plant...
100 POINTS OF PUBLIC SPACE
ACTIVATING A POST-INDUSTRIAL RIVER
Cleveland, Ohio
LOCATING OPPORTUNITY
In 1950, Cleveland was a thriving industrial city with...
by student Ian Pepek
The aim is to re-invigorate the brewing culture of Baltimore by creating a new brewery that revitalizes the historical identity and the...
EDGE EVENTS
CONNECTING A CITY TO ITS ECOLOGICAL HERITAGE
Mobile, Alabama
ECOLOGY AND ECONOMY
In a city where stable population and employment growth defy...
Productive Landscapes
Transforming Vacancy
Flint, Michigan
WHY SAVE FLINT?
The city has the highest crime rate in the United States. It has lost half its...
This thesis research sequence (seminar + studio) cooperates with, advances and explores the Culture Now project through a close look at the way cultures of nature...
THE NEXT AMERICAN DREAM
COMMUNITY, ENERGY AND THE FUTURE OF SUBURBIA
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is Growing
A city of expansive growth since its inception in...
NEW ARCHIPELAGO
SHIFTING COMMUNITIES IN A POST-DISASTER CITY
New Orleans, Louisiana
THE CITY HAS BEEN DISSOLVED
New Orleans was breaking apart long before...
Karen Lohrmann and Thom Mayne introduce the studio to the morning session guest critics (from l to r): Greg Otto (Buro Happold), John Enright (SCI-Arc), Neil...
Ecology Rewind: Los Angeles + Tucson
A Los Angeles thirty years younger, Tucson can currently be defined by a set of its own ecologies: The Plains of...
Learning from Detroit
In the Motor City, a theater has been gutted and renovated as a parking garage. Contemporary needs replace cultural desire… is this...
After visiting Helen Wood Park, the site of Mobile’s oyster restoration project, we were given a tour of the neighboring fishing communities within the larger...
Cleveland presents a unique opportunity to re-define the role of contemporary culture in the urban environment. Our weeklong research trip from February 15th-20th...
Culture Now: Research Archive 1
8.5"x11"x4"
1,200 pages
Hardcover book with laser and inkjet prints, original notes, posters, mixed media.
Edition of...
As our research continued we reached the point that we needed on the ground knowledge of the city. Walking around the city we got a better knowledge of the...
St. Roch, New Orleans, LA
Drive through some of the neighborhoods in New Orleans and you begin to get an idea about what 60,000 blighted properties actually...
After another exciting journey into the depths of Supra’s cities, Flint has been de-mystified. The city remains at the core of many tough issues that face our...
December 03, 2010
Reviewers from left: Richard Weinstein, Jason Payne, Stephen Deters, Victor Jones, Orhan Ayyuce, Jens Hommert, Karen Lohrmann, Thom Mayne...
November 19, 2010
California, Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas. In 3 vans. In 4 days.
The backstory: As we looked at various elements of culture in...
Rockford is a mid-sized city located on both banks of the Rock River in far northern Illinois.
Often referred to as “The Forest City”, Rockford is the...