"What would you build if it were possible to build anything at all?

That wild question bedevils architecture professors trying to give their students an appropriate challenge. 3-D design software and digital-fabrication equipment mean that the old rules no longer constrain their students. Walls need not be straight. Corners don't need to meet at right angles."

 

read the entire article by Lisa Gray in the Houston Chronicle

The origins of Frederick Kiesler's design for the New Harmony Grotto and how UH architecture students turned those plans into a reality... Orignially intended to accompany a church designed by Philip Johnson in New Harmony, ID, the grotto could not in fact be built with technologies available in the 1960s.  Fast-forward 50 years to the emergence of digital modeling and fabrication and suddenly Kiesler's far-fetched ideas are plausible. Now the reimagined grotto is slated to rest, appropriately, next to the Philip Johnson-designed Gerald Hines College of Architecture building.   

We've been invited to present the Grotto at the upcoming ACADIA Conference in Minneapolis this week.  We co-authored the paper with Ben Nicholson our visiting critic for the studio that initiated the project.  It will be in the conference juried exhibition as well.

We are working with Buro Happold to analyze the Grotto's structure to determine where we need to be concerned about deformation and torsion in the frame.  Some preliminary feedback shows the tendancy to deflect toward the curled side.

"We have seen condos and housing concepts based on shipping containers with the idea to recycle these bulky cast-off containers. Putting them to use is not too novel. However, powering up the whole set up with solar energy is the focus."

to the link

This piece from the University of Houston student newspaper The Daily Cougar tells a little about how plans for the New Harmony Grotto came to fruition: from the original 1963 design by Frederick Kiesler to the project's resuscitation by UH Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture students under faculty advisors Joe Meppelink and Andrew Vrana with assistance from visiting critic Ben Nicholson.