Description of the video:

Kelly: Hi, I'm Kelly Wilson, Director of the J. Irwin Miller Architecture program for Indiana University located in the city of Columbus, Indiana. And with me is our Associate Director, Marleen Newman. Hi Marleen!

Marleen: Kelly (chuckles), Kelly and I have been buddies for I don't want to tell you how long, but we were in the same graduate program in architecture at Harvard and we've been hatching a plan to develop a program that is unique in the country if not the world. One that relinks art and architecture without losing specific advantages of architecture program which includes you know structures, environmental studies and computer technologies so we've created a really unique program and Kelly will tell you more about its location and the other unique aspects of the relationship between the city and the university.

Kelly: Thank you, Marleen. This was a product this graduate program the J Irwin Miller Architecture program, a three-year graduate program, for a master's degree was a collaboration between the city of Columbus and Indiana University. The effort to do this started nearly 10 years ago and resulted in this concept of a three-year master's program located in the Republic, a former newspaper building designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrell and is on the national historic register of important buildings and sits behind me in this image. That's where we hold our classes and our studios and is our home. The program is located in Columbus because Columbus is home to some of the more compelling modern moments of architecture and remarkable in the city of 50,000 people some 70 pieces of exemplary modern architecture populate and are salted throughout the city and it's almost our laboratory for experimentation we visit these buildings we live amongst them we witness their behavior and how they work and like a lot of stuff ideas really good ones slowly expose themselves over time and you learn and see things that you would never see if you were just visiting as a tourist or had made an occasional visit to it. So, this is something we've really enjoyed is being part of a city that are surrounded by so many good pieces of design that they become part of the environment of your learning and education.

Marleen: As far as the program has gone we've been really lucky to attract an incredible student body, students who we hope to attract have a variety of interests so that the discussion within the studios are unique and informative and inventive and instrumental in starting new paths of thought.

Kelly: As Marleen said, we do pick a variety of people from all kinds of walks of life because we want a diverse and interesting studio cohort that makes learning related to people who share common interests, but have a disciplinary background that's not the one you had and we find that to be a more powerful combination of minds than the inverse which would have been a lot of people graduate with out of the same degree program.

Marleen: You know, both our student and our faculty cohorts have a spirit of tear and experimentalism and they're all risk takers so we've managed to have a cohort of students who develop their own government, they communicate with the faculty on a regular basis, we have a really good relationship between the students and the faculty groups, we also have an incredible environment supportive environment among the students so it's not really a competitive you know razor sharp competitive environment that some architecture schools have, but it's a very supportive group and the students have always been interested in talking to potential students and so we Kelly and I would like to invite you all to uh talk with us individually on Zoom meetings and also for to have us link you with some of the students who will tell you what it's really like. So, anyways, we hope to hear from you shortly. Kelly.

Kelly: Well nice to meet you by this way by Zoom and we look forward to meeting you actually in person over this connection. Again, thank you for your interest in the J. Irwin Miller Architecture program and we look forward to hearing more from you.

Description of the video:

Peg: Hello I’m Peg Faimon I am the Founding Dean of the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture and Design in IU Bloomington, which is the home of the J. Irwin Miller Architecture program in Columbus. We are so excited that you are interested in and you're seeking information about our program and we are here to really help you through this process. We wish we could see you in person, but we are really glad that we can offer you this virtual opportunity to get to know our program. As our school is housed in both Columbus and Bloomington we offer ways to connect with both communities and with all of your faculty and of course your peers. I came to IU in July of 2016 to assist the faculty in forming a new school of art and design at IU Bloomington. You may be familiar with the Herron School of Art and Design which is at IUPUI in Indianapolis that more urban based art school is a complement to our new more liberal arts focused art and design school. We are actually a part of the College of Arts and Sciences that I am at IU Bloomington and our graduate students and undergrads have wonderful and very varied opportunities that are available through both the College and through the entire campus. After the launch of the school in August of ‘16 we worked that academic year on the approval of the Master of Architecture degree and at that point the word architecture was added to our name thus becoming the School of Art, Architecture and Design and in 2019 the Eskenazi family of Indianapolis gave us a generous gift of 20 million dollars and in their honor, we renamed the school the Sydney and Lois Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture and Design. It's been my great honor and pleasure to work with the faculty in the formation of the entire school which was the merger of the Departments of Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design and the Department of Studio Art. We now are organized around areas and not departments and those areas include painting, print making, photography, ceramics, sculpture, metals, fibers, digital art, graphic design, interior design, fashion design, comprehensive design, architecture and merchandising and of course we have creative core which is our foundation here. On the Bloomington campus the school is housed in three main buildings: Kirkwood Hall which is next to Dunn Woods this houses interior design comprehensive design fashion design and merchandising, the Fine Arts Building which is by Showalter Fountain which houses all the studio disciplines, and the Studio Arts Annex which is over on 13th and Woodlawn and that houses BFA and MFA students and some faculty in five of the studio areas fibers, painting, printmaking, ceramics and sculpture. We are currently working on a building a fourth facility here on the Bloomington campus on the corner of Jordan and 7th street. It's a very very special building was designed actually in 1952 by the very famous architect Mies van der Rohe. The plans were rediscovered and we are in fact building the building now and it was redesigned for current times by Thomas Pfeiffer and Associates out of New York. The ground was broken this summer and we're watching it come out of the ground it's very exciting and it'll be a beautiful building a wonderful compliment to the Republic Building in Columbus, they look quite similar. Actually, Myron Goldsmith, the architect of the Republic it's said that he actually worked in the Mies van der Rohe office and may have actually had a hand in the design of this building as well. So that's a very interesting connection. A little bit about me, I am a graphic designer with an MFA from Yale University and after grad school I worked in Miami, Florida as a designer i then started my teaching career at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and that was confusing for people going from Miami to Miami. Made for a great moving card! I spent 25 years in graphic design teaching there at Miami wonderful time um and enjoyed it very much and I was also very involved in interdisciplinary teaching and leadership of different institutes and organizations and I was also involved in leadership through being the Chair of the Department of Art, which is how I ended my position at Miami before coming to IU. A couple it took a couple of years but my entire family ended up at IU. As I said I came in 2016. My husband started at the School of Optometry teaching in 2017, my youngest child is a sculpture major a BFA student in our own school and my daughter transferred to IU a couple of years ago and graduated in 2020 with a cognitive science degree. So, we are all IU. Again, I send my warm welcome to each one of you thank you for taking part in this virtual open house. I know it's strange and challenging time to be thinking about transitioning to graduate education we commit to making your process and your research and your application the best and easiest that it possibly can be for you. Be well and enjoy the information presented here, I hope you decide to apply and become a part of our community graduate education and architecture in the Miller M.Arch offers an amazing time of learning, adventure and growth. Take care.

Description of the video:

Dan: Okay I'll go ahead and kick it off all right um so I’m Daniel Green, it's nice to meet you all virtually. So, I am the logistics officer for the J Irwin Miller Architecture program’s graduate student association and I joined the program primarily because of the interest in the overlap between architecture and art and I’m thoroughly excited about this program because it's been a wonderful opportunity to connect and collaborate with like-minded individuals, people from all over the place. So, our graduate program primarily focuses on promoting that collaboration among students and community outreach, organizing events, and things that just enhance the quality of life in our program. So, with that I'd like to pass it off to Ross Mcknight.

Ross: Hi I'm Ross Mcknight, I'm in my third year of the program. My background is in architecture with a minor in environmental studies and I chose architecture because it's an opportunity to interact with people at a variety of different scales, we get to design the rooms that people work in, the buildings that they walk by in the city, we impact people at very intimate and remote scales. I am the advisory officer and my job is to be the primary point of contact between students and faculty, communicating events help helping resolve potential issues that students or faculty might be having, just the kind of helping hand of the student group. I think what I’ve enjoyed most about the program is just the variety of people that I get to work with. Not everybody comes from a background of architecture and I think that's really helped widen my view of how people see things and how the world works. And I'm going to pass it to Rachel.

Rachel: Hi everyone I am a second-year architecture student, I’m from Orlando, Florida and I chose this program because it was unlike any other Master of Architecture program that I had ever laid eyes on and I wanted to be a part of it. I am the finance officer, so I maintain any funds for our student cohort to use for the students for various reasons. Okay and now Maria can go.

Maria: Hi my name is Maria I am a third year in the program. My background comes from, I did my undergrad in architecture at Ball State University and then I worked for three years at an architecture firm in Indianapolis. So, the normal course is just to do the masters of architecture. So, my role is the member wellness officer and I help any like students that are having any any wellness or health issues sort of guide them towards a solution. I also establish the culture of sort of the studio culture of helping each other out and in any issues that we have when it comes to school on the school subject or like at least I I reach out to people and let them know that I am here to teach them anything that I know that they don't know and I also organize social events and help cultivate traditions in our classes. And then the next one I guess is gonna be Alyssa.

Alyssa: Hi I'm Alyssa, I'm a second-year student and I have a background in sculpture from Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. I became interested in architecture because I felt that it was a way for me to make an impact and be able to do something that benefits people. I was interested in this program specifically like Ross mentioned because of the connection between art and architecture and also the nomadic studio and being able to travel. I am the sustainability officer and so I work to make our program more sustainable as in terms of the building that we're in as well as student life and I’ve you know done that by putting up signs to ensure that everyone knows how to recycle and make sure that the shop has hazardous waste receptacles and I will pass it to Kaylee.

Kaylee: Hi everyone my name is Kaylee Adams I’m a second year and I’m in my second year at the program and my background is in animal behavior that's what I studied in undergrad with minors in nursing psychology and Spanish. I chose architecture kind of on a limb considering my background, but I was excited to explore the possibility of creating spaces for people to live and grow with the people around them. And my role in the organization is development officer so really what I do is a lot of community outreach projects as well as using our social media platform to promote the program throughout the rest of the community in Columbus, Indiana, as well as the Bloomington campus and kind of both in a general informative sense as well as a recruiting sense.

Dan: All right and collectively we are the current executive committee members of our organization. I realized I completely forgot to talk about my role so I primarily act as the coordinator for these wonderful people you see here and I support them in organizing events or if they need assistance with you know their various tasks and what they're doing in their roles. I organize our general assembly meetings, so yeah that is us that is the architecture graduate student association.

Description of the video:

Kelly: Hi I'm Kelly Wilson, Director of the J. Irwin Miller Architecture program and I'm happy to introduce you to our building the Republic that sits here in downtown Columbus across from the county courthouse and the war memorial designed by Maryanne Thompson.

This entrance pavilion which is a temporary structure designed by professors Martinez and Santiago with the help of IU students in our program was meant to extend a sort of welcoming handshake to the community to be introduced to our program and our building which opened new as of two years ago. Walk through the entrance pavilion and towards the door.

Welcome to the interior you'll see on the right a classroom those are tape drawings an exercise from visual studies class that are around the building and our entrance through to the other side and this is the architectural design studio space where the desks are laid out and where you'll be spending a great deal of your time in our program.

On the right-hand side are faculty offices there's a crit room for pinup and you'll notice these winches at the right-hand corner of the drafting desks which allow you to raise to lower the height according to your need and your abilities. As I proceed down the studio side you'll see there's a great deal of light coming from the north side and wonderful views of the county courthouse building and square. There's a seminar room that sits to my right, a beautiful cherry table and Saarinen chairs, tulip chairs. As I proceed down the right-hand side of this room, lockers and in that area between the lockers on both sides, there is a printing press, excuse me,, the plotters and printers for your architectural studio work and a supply cabinet.

As I continue I move into the visual studies area which is where you'll collect to make visual studies work.

We have large pin-up walls and at the end of the room as I walk towards it you'll notice a printing press which will be introduced to you in subsequent semesters to help develop your understanding of color and color performance and color behavior. The classroom you see beyond is an extension of the visual studies studio and those layout tables will occupy that room for first print making and they will be moved into this space for the extension of print making this semester.

I'm going to walk through this door show you our paper supply area where you'll collect your drawing paper for visual studies work a slop sink for cleaning brushes and clean your hands and a flammable cabinet or cabinet for flammable materials.

At the end of that hallway to the left is our fabrication lab but first I'm going to pop into the visuals what is the gallery the exhibition gallery that will this semester during the pandemic we'll be using as the third-year visual studies permanent easel and desk locations so they have a place to work throughout the semester and we don't have to share equipment. Walking down this hallway another pin up area to the left for your work it's very important that you pin your work up and look at it constantly as gives you some idea of your progress or goals that you're reaching or not reaching.

So, you rotate the corner this is the fabrication shops and so the tools that are in this area are all for woodworking. And beyond through the glass you'll see 3d printers, laser cutters in the back, and there's a vinyl digital printer as well and cutter. We have a large generous table saw, we'll see festools cabineted here and around the right-hand corner you'll see the pride of our program in the shop is a state-of-the-art CNC router. And Steve Baker sits inside he's the director of the shop manager.

We'll return by the way the shop to the parking lot side of the building which is the north side.

So that the unique form of the republic wasn't marred by a precluded shape on the roof for the air conditioner chillers this white brick box was built to hold those chillers just so the building's form could not be our silhouette need to be ruined by the shape of a chiller plant. This is the one of the two rear entrances or up front if you'd like it was where the newspaper actually was distributed to trucks after the paper was printed. This area we call the bullpen it's an area that is for community projects and also faculty offices. As we walk along the south side of the building you'll notice all these red chairs this is our auditorium which for this semester uh we're going to remove the chairs and this is where first year students will be having your drawing classes for visual studies in this area. That office right there is an important one, that's Rachel Wilken's, she's our program administrator and you'll be spending some portion of your time talking to her during the course of three years.

Another classroom sits at the very end which is each of the core corners have classrooms and on this right-hand side is a small holding library that holds a collection of current magazines, circulars and a number of books on the back shelf that are books about significant architects. Any book you need can be obtained through the rather large library system at IU. It's a wonderful program. This returns us to the beginning of our trip which was that side of the building. We have a block of bathrooms on this end and through this door was the editor and editor-in-chief's offices, which is now Marleen Newman, Associate Director's office to the right and my office here to the left and this is where you'll find me almost every day of the week.

And through this door Professor Riley who runs Visual Studies has her office, but this anti-chamber is actually has a good collection of books for visual studies and a place for you to sit and peruse those books. 

I'll complete our tour we'll walk around through the building. So again, welcome to the J. Irwin Miller Architecture program.

Description of the video:

Bill: I wanted to show you, some of you were talking about earth sheltered architecture and your reflections. This is a library that I did in Evansville Indiana and it's on a slope, steeply sloped site, they got a bargain on the site and unfortunately the slope slopes away from the road at the top which is on the upper right-hand side of the picture and so you're coming down this hill and you're trying to build a library branch with parking for 125 cars which is what the program called for and so where do you put the building? Do you slide the building down the bottom at the parking lot on the top? The solution that we came to here was to build the building into the hillside and build parking on the flat floor part and the my landscape architect said well this wants to be a mesic meadow because it's a wet hillside and I said okay and it sounds good. So, we did a seven-acre mesic meadow that comes up on the roof of the building.

Does anyone know what a mesic meadow is?

Student: No

Bill: I didn't either (chuckles), turns out that a mesic meadow is a meadow that wants to be wet.

So, I should have looked that up because it made this more complicated because a mesic meadow if it dries out the meadow can die. So, the landscape architect said well the mesic meadow it wants to be wet all the time so here's a library that's got a wet mesic meadow on top of it.

And this was the first project where my partners said hey Bill we think you should be the architect of record on this we'd like for you to stamp the drawings on this set. Why do you think they would say that?

Student: They didn't want their uh skin on deck?

Bill: Exactly! But I jumped at the chance because I thought yeah well, I'd like to get my stamp on this. So, um but that also caused me to lose a lot of sleep and stay awake at night thinking about this because if you're going to have a wet roof on top of a library you better get all the details correct or you're going to have an eventful life as an architect. So, this is the exposed side of the library and again when you drive up to the library you're coming in the parking lot, if you weren't paying attention this looks like somewhat normal building lots of glazing on the front big tall windows you know 11 foot tall windows on the front but um you have a parapet wall there that hides something and what it's hiding is a mesic meadow. So, when people drive by what they're seeing is this what I call the light bridge which is a clear story daylighting device that sticks up in the meadow causes some curiosity, I hope.

I took advantage of that feature and wrote an article in the library journal which is pretty good advertising.

And um you can see that the meadow in this case the meadow is not quite meadowy yet, curls up on top of the building and goes on the full seven acres of the site.

The key on the inside of a building like this is to bring in as much daylight as you can and that's what that big clear story is all about is to bring in daylight into the central space which is the circulation space. So on the right you're looking out the front door past the circulation desk on the right is the adult side of the collection on the left is the children's side and you also have the meeting room spaces off this front door area. This feature called cloudgate is during the day diffusing daylight over this checkout area.

At night it can be pushed down as a gate and the gate then allows the public meeting spaces and the public restrooms to be used after hours for a public meeting space. This is not electric it's just balanced on Teflon bearings. It is perfectly balanced where you can put a fingertip on it and move it into this position or back into this position and this is made out of um this is an aluminum tube and this is uh aluminum and this is a stainless-steel mesh.

This is looking back towards a magazine area that's got a fireplace, they wanted a real gas, well they wanted a gas fireplace which I would not say is a real fireplace, so we said if we're faking the fireplace let's fake it in a way that's energy efficient. So, we provided them with a virtual fireplace. If you're going to build a building underground you want to make sure it doesn't leak but you test it for leaking before you cover it up. So, this was kind of a structural test as well as a leak test you flood it for 24 hours that's a lot of weight it was designed to hold that weight and again as I said the contractor did not pay attention to the drawings where he's supposed to leave a slip joint at the top so that the roof can flex. He had to replace some of the top structure of the inside walls before they were covered but um this this roof has a double membrane on it so there's an outer kind of shovel proof heat welded membrane there's a felt inner layer that protects the main water barrier which is this orange thick heat welded membrane that has been used on things like underwater tunnels and then you have another felt protective layer and then you have the concrete structure the reinforced concrete structure of the of the roof.

And then you test and then you'll notice that the heat welded material goes up and over the parapet walls and so every place where water could get into the building you want to make sure you've got it right. What's not shown here is that this material actually continues down around the vertical walls of the building so three of the vertical walls of the building are just poured concrete but they have this material this red material the membrane is going all the way down and it's adhered to the concrete and then you also have the extra protective layer that goes over the top there.

And that was put on before this was backfilled they back filled it to test it with this water.

And you know unnervingly they do testing and there's patches all over this thing but these patches are as good as the original apparently because it hasn't leaked 10 years.

So inside you want to make sure your day lit big tall windows lots of inside lighting indirect lighting in this case direct indirect. Here's the fake virtual gas fireplace with uh this is a video monitor behind tinted glass and people really can't tell that that's not a real fire and um unless they're really looking at it carefully but you can also you know watch CNN or a football game on here as well. This particular library had a cafe coffee shop run by an outside vendor this is uh the children's area here with lighting that changes it can be programmed to do all sorts of weird things. But you know the fun thing is that they do wildflower identification classes now on top of the library and it's completely accessible to people. The neighbors complain about the rabbits that live in the meadow which I don't know why but they complain about it. The weed police had to be kept away for years, there's a weed ordinance that says that you can't let stuff grow up. So, they fought that for years and finally won. So, if you go to Evansville sometime you might want to check out Oaklyn library to see what an earth shelter public building looks like, it can be done.

Description of the video:

This is recording.

Yes, there it is good. Okay so this was one of the original artworks that i started off with and we put some detail pictures from the painting itself.

Those are design principles that you try to understand from larger painting to smaller moments, right?

Exactly.

And then so from here made a scaled six by six squares out of them made them into squares and for this one I took the bottom half of this one or here and then the top half for someone else and then created it on the square right here and then that's where I pulled out pieces from inside there for here so like this was one piece this was another piece one bigger piece had this piece here there's two legs there like a V-shape. So, then I pulled them out in like 3d from back to the front and connected them and then from there that's where I got a front view which is like right there right there two side views the back view and then top and bottom. And then for the envelope put this shape here

And it will curl over shape, shape, and the roof. And then right here.

So, for at least for mine you're trying to keep it open through here and here and you can see through the middle there and kept like an open area back here in the back just to kind of help create movement through the piece.

So, then my vertical section is cut through pretty much the middle of it right here and straight down looking at the back and then my horizontal is right here right above that middle plane right there to come through looking at him.

That's the angle that I had in my 3d drawing.

Jonathon, who's the artist that you study? Do you remember?

He was in the Russian constructivism movement I don't remember his exact name. I think the same guy of the... Malevich

Um I just wanted to ask where the circular geometry entered into this because I don't see it in the original when you guys you guys did a mashup? Yeah, we did a mash up so some of the other students work came in that kind of we mushed it and then they had to mediate two different geometry and mediate that boundary that was from Dane.

Dane, you inserted the virus down there I shouldn't use it.

You mean coronavirus? No.

Right so you had to make a new composition, yes, basically based on because you're extracting elements from the original, the painting, like vocabulary parts you put them into a lexicon then you import a language that was foreign to the first one so that you have two uh you have geometry wars and then you have to resolve them once you did that in a two-dimensional design you then have to extrapolate that into a layered model which is the photographs I see and then how do I provide a surface for that model and continue a sort of dialogue that started the second convention from new vocabulary parts and ended up with the third the measure of its worth would be how well that two-dimensional new pattern is able to make a uh both retain its cubic volume right I suppose anyone didn't look like a cube you'd be in trouble right uh and that and then from the front to last planes are somehow an integrity of maintaining the cubic-ness. Yeah and how to relate to internal composition. Right. Whether it's complete like mimicking it kind of similarly or framing it indifferently and then try to understand the logic between solid and void and spatial flow within the space.

A small point where I'm pointing out, Jonathan, in your draftsmanship on that final sheet where you hope to show the curve the surface by showing the um or the lines you don't need them.

The contour line is sufficient to explain that it's curved but it appears it's trying it looks like this is trying to make a surface texture when I have this line is perfect enough this is perfectly fine these two guys will tell me that it's a curve. Or it can be very very fine.