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"Elemental House" showcases designs
By JESSICA KELTZ
Reporter Contributor
A shoulder-to-shoulder crowd streamed into the UB Anderson Gallery on Friday evening for the opening reception for "Elemental House," an exhibit of work by first-year undergraduate architecture students.
A large crowd gathered in the UB
Anderson Gallery on Friday night to view "Elemental House," an
exhibit of work by first-year undergraduates in the School of
Architecture and Planning.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI
Beth Tauke, associate professor in the School of Architecture and Planning, who worked with the students who created the exhibit, said that the "elemental" theme could be understood on two different levels. Students were asked to design and construct models that accommodated the three elemental, or basic, body positions: standing, lying and sitting. In addition, Tauke said, the sand foundations they were required to work with and build on added an element of the elemental as well.
"The sandbox is a kind of beginning way of displacing the earth and thinking about ground," she said.
Tauke said that last year, second-semester freshmen did a similar project, but that project didn't incorporate a foundation.
"We felt that it was really important for first-year students to have an understanding of site," she said. "It's not just a flat piece of land. It's something with which you engage."
Tauke explained that students were given a 10x10x20-inch wooden box filled with 600 cubic inches of sand, which they could displace, but not remove. The models were made of balsa wood, and one of the project's major challenges was to keep the balsa wood intact, supported by the sand.
Michael Zebrowski, clinical assistant professor in the School of Architecture and Planning who also worked with the students, said the sand helped students learn about the concept of weight.
"As much as an aesthetically pleasing kind of project they were creating, they were also supposed to be creating something that's going to work," Zebrowski said.
Seth Amman, a teaching assistant who worked with the classes, agreed that incorporating a foundation made the project a better learning tool.
"With the sand, they have to deal with weight and balancing," he said.
Ashley Schwebel, a first-year student whose project is one of the 63 on display in "Elemental House," said she thought creating it helped her improve her craft over the course of the semester.
"There's a lot of people here," she said, noting the opening-night crowds. "It's very exciting."
Teaching assistant David Goldstein said the project helped students learn to work under deadline pressure. He also was glad to see the large crowd at the reception.
"I think it's good for these students to see public interest in what they spent all these long nights doing," he said. "Any event like this can only be good for the freshmen."
Tauke said that students had only about five or six weeks of architecture training when they began working on the models.
"They didn't have much under their belts at all," she said. "They were asked to do a lot pretty quickly."
"Elemental House" is supported by the Office of the Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. It is free and open to the public and will be on view through April 2. The UB Anderson Gallery is located on Martha Jackson Place in University Heights near Englewood and Kenmore avenues and is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and from 1-5 p.m. on Sunday.