We are pleased to announce YEE-O 2020 – Year End Exhibition – Online edition for this 2019-2020 academic year. This annual event celebrates the hard work and creative achievements of over 500 undergraduate and graduate students from every unit and level in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba. Unfortunately, COVID-19 led to the cancellation of this in-person event, but sharing and celebrating student achievements must go on!
Topo Illogical
Instructor: Chad Connery
In the opening lines of Gabriel Garcia Marques’ novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, he declares through his narrator that “Things have a life of their own… It’s simply a matter of waking up their souls.” The world is thus revealed through a magical realism not to be the immediate place we believe we know, but the place beneath that place. Marques lets the unseen and uncelebrated elements of the physical reality we sense come bubbling to the surface. It’s a cyclical procession of surprising images and extraordinary occurrences and builds a picture that comes closer to the truth of how we experience the world around us rather than how it might conventionally be described.
With the goal of fostering such alternative modes of vision, the motive of this studio is to engage with the hidden and surprising qualities of unassuming and unseen matter. Topo Illogical seeks to see the constructed world more holistically, more deeply, and with the critical empathy that the craft and practice of architecture requires of us. To provoke such altered sight, the studio will consider matter through a topological thinking of sorts. Rather than engaging the idea of topology in architecture as a drive towards tortured geometric computations in service of an aesthetic or imagined totality, Topo Illogical will use it as a model to examine material systems. This necessitates a retreat from the expected material palette informed by commercial supply chains that can obfuscate and pervert our understanding of matter’s origin, value, and possibility for architectural experimentation and production. Following this systemic logic, rather than merely seeing “beam,” we see “beam” as derivative of “wood” as derivative of “tree” as derivative of “forest” etc. Such considerations of architecture’s paradoxically immaterial conditions of materiality might proffer topological thinking as a more systemic, interconnected, or haptic practice.
Students are tasked with the challenge of developing propositions for public architectures historically and materially embedded in their respective contexts. This work has been sited in one of two contrasting but rapidly gentrifying urban conditions; either the neighborhood of Griffintown in Montreal, Canada or the old port city of Napflio, Greece.
+86 Stairs
Nichola Basford
In Nafplio, Greece, the ancient Venetian-built Palamidi Fortress hovers over the city at the end of a supposed 1000-stair climb. According to Greek myth, while under Turkish rule, a leader of the revolution named Theodoros Kolokotronis escaped from his imprisonment within the fortress by horse, knocking away the 1000th step as he sped away to freedom. Contrary to this narrative, only 913 stairs remain today. In order to soften the transition between modern Nafplio and the crumbling steps that lead to the ancient fortress above, this project seeks influence from both worlds in providing spaces to observe, rest, gather, perform, and transition. The design adds 86 stairs to the climb, resulting in a total of 999 stairs. (And 1 restored myth.)
Slow Grade
Chelsea Colburn
Located on the waterfront of Nafplio, Greece initially covered with unorganized parking lots, tourist café’s, and tour bus’s aimlessly circling over kilometers of hot concrete – the project seeks to bring the city’s gradual sloping condition to a “beachscape” that provides clearance for views of the Palamidi and Bourtzi fortress’ while allowing for both local and tourist vibrancy to merge on the waterfront. At the free-flowing market, locals can set up stands within the permanent infrastructure for tourists to engage with along the “beachscape” that runs parallel to a wet/dry walkway that leads to the pool. The 40 ft pool, enclosed by a gabion rock cage, is accessed from the pool house from a marble walkway that slowly descends between outdoor/indoor showers and washrooms. The pool house provides gradual slopes within the roof line providing sun and shade for visitors, sloping shower floors, and a gradual descend within the pool floor for a shallow and deep variation. As a whole, the project uses slow grades to accent the beachscape that the pool house and market provide, which allow for visitors to engage with the fluidity of the ocean that surrounds Nafplio, while viewing two of the city’s biggest landmarks and indulging in fresh local snacks from the market.
Topo Illogical
Michael Mandac
This project drew from the subtle presence of an uncanny set of stairs along the Arvanitias pathway in Nafplio, Greece. Further stirring the project was the mythical origins of the old town, and its mythical founder in Nauplius – son to Poseidon, father to Palamedes, and one of the Argonauts. It is from these three relationships that three architectural manifestations materialize.
The ghost of Griffintown
Thai Cao Nguyen
This project begins by investigating Saint Anne park in Griffintown, Southwestern downtown Montreal. The project, therefore, chose to be involved in the topic of the Irish community during the Gentrification period, which considerably became an important part of history. Besides, this project is also inspired by the ghost story of Mary Gallagher that also comes from Griffintown. The next phase of the project is to construct conceptual drawings and site models that depict the relationship between the past and the present. On the other hand, it is an exploration of current and past infrastructure at the park. During this phase, the idea of “stage” or “theatre” arrives since there is a similarity of the use of space at the park between and the period when Saint. Anne’s church had not been demolished. Finally, only the performing stages are designed since views are able to occupy everywhere within the park. With the motivation of connecting time and space, this performing stage is intended to revive the sense of gathering, the sense of community. At the same time, it is responding to what is there, what is existing instead of regretting what used to be there in the past.
Also part of Topo Illogical: Lexi Brennan, Renz Marinas, Giodana Nocita, Emma Onchulenko, Kristen Wallin, Jack Ziemanski