Landscapes of Quarantine and the Counterfeit University

bldg|blog’s Geoff Manaugh along with Edible Geography have been hosting an independent design studio called Landscapes of Quarantine, which has been meeting every week at the Storefront for Art & Architecture with an expected show in the spring. Besides the interesting content which have been trickling out of the studio and posts Geoff has been writing on bldg|blog, what struck me most about this studio is that this should be happening more often that it does. Geoff makes this explicit point in his post, Landscapes of Quarantine and the Counterfeit University

But you need nothing more than a structure, a common topic, a place to meet up, a backpack full of the most basic office supplies, perhaps a bottle opener, and the will-power to see it through; with any luck, in other words, more “counterfeit universities” will be popping up here and there, their research published independently on blogs, their meetings hosted in apartments, offices, restaurants, bars, and other spaces in their after-hours, bringing more and more people into productive conversation.

Exactly.
That isn’t to say there isn’t prior art in this space: SwissMiss hosts Creative Mornings, a small group presentation/mixer Friday mornings (ImprovEverywhere’s Charlie Todd is up next. For awhile there was the 10 Minute Lectures in Brooklyn where I saw (and chronicled) Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat who published An Atlas of Radical Cartography.
I have been toying with a Critical Thinking/Theory syllabus for too long. After the holidays I think it would be a good time to restart planning for an Architecture Theory book club.
Any takers?

The Box Office – Another Shipping Container Office

The Box Office is a new office tower in Providence, RI designed by distill studio:

The Box Office consists of 12 office/studio spaces constructed from 32 recycled shipping containers on an abandoned strip of Providence history – the former Harris Lumber site. The project was designed by Joe Haskett, principal at Distill Studio, and developed by truth box, inc. The project will be built by Stack Design Build, LLC.
Among the many green features are a well-insulated exterior with high performance windows and doors, high efficiency heat pumps for economical heating and cooling, energy recovery ventilators (ERV) to conserve energy and to provide fresh air, and low-energy light fixtures and daylight harvesting to reduce electrical usage. Optional spiral stairs to create multi-level suites of 2, 3 containers or more are available. Green lease incentives for tenants to promote energy conservation and savings will be available.

Box Office Aerial
box-office-south-web-wp4.jpg
We’ve covered shipping container architecture before, and I just can’t understand how people could work in a single ISO container for longer than a few hours. [Quick Interpolation: generally containers come in two types (in different lengths) but with the upshot that the usable gross interior height is either 7′-9″ or 8′-9″. In other words, the height of the container is either one or two feet taller than your standard US door.] For me, the proportions are all wrong; there is only so much of the container you can remove before the integrity (structural or theoretical) of the container degrades, thus creating long, narrow tube-like spaces. Not to mention once you add insulation, services and any additional structure, the net inhabitable space drops to less than 8′-0″ of head height (often less). I’ve seen proposals where the designer creates a double-height space by removing ceilings and floors, but at some point justifying economy of using containers becomes pure fetish.
Not the Freitag office isn’t beautiful.