BUILDING RESEARCH:
CENTERING BUILDINGS IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE
The Preston H. Thomas Memorial Symposium, "Building Research" on April 17th seeks to reignite the curiosity buildings inspire by asking: How can we center buildings and the knowledge that emerges from their construction within broader conversations about research in academia? How do we narrow the gap between academia and practice? How do we enable research to inform architectural practice?
Through rigorous single-building case-study lectures, participants will investigate the complex material and economic trade-offs among affordability, building performance, and carbon reduction as forms of applied research.
An accompanying exhibition titled CURIOUS CONSTRUCTIONS: SPECULATIVE MATERIAL ASSEMBLIES will be on display starting on April 16th in The Nave on the 3rd Floor of East Sibley Hall. The exhibition is a research and design initiative that explores unconventional, low-carbon material assemblies, challenging traditional construction practices through Building Research.
EVENTS PAGE
https://aap.cornell.edu/events/symposium/preston-h-thomas-memorial-symposium-building-research/
PARTICIPANTS
@the_ladg@saw.inc@french2d@ja_ja_co@studio.jih@hannah.office@primary_projects@cobaltoffice@buildingconstructionlab@david__costanza
GRAPHICS
@bernardo.berga@cornellaap@cornell.architecture
✨Meet @french2d , one of the 2026 Emerging Voices✨
Founded in Boston by Anda French and Jenny French in 2012, French 2D’s work spans large-scale multi-family and micro-housing projects, public infrastructure, and cultural institutions. The firm employs what they call “strange housing types” across residential developments and installations, which challenge familiar domestic ideas through radical organizations and typologies.
This Thursday, hear from French 2D and fellow awardee @futurefirm about their practices, followed by a conversation with Felecia Davis (@fadometer ).
🗓️ Thur, Mar 5
🕑 12:30 pm ET
📍 Online
🎟️ Free and open to all. CEUs are available for League members who attend each event in its entirety.
Register at the link in bio.
#EV26 #EmergingVoices2026
Video editor: @darlenachiem
Excited to be named a 2026 Emerging Voices winner by The Architectural League of New York @archleague ! This biennial award “spotlights North American individuals and firms with distinct design voices that have the potential to influence the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design…The work of each Emerging Voice represents the best of its kind and addresses larger issues within architecture, landscape, and the built environment.”
All the better to be honored among firms and friends we’ve admired along the way.
@futurefirm@coadaptive@bld.us@cooperacion_comunitaria@darcyjonesarchitects@g3.arquitectos@hopson_rodstrom_design
So happy to share that Anda has been appointed Professor of Practice @princetonarchitecture !
Many thanks to an incredible faculty and student body.
📷 @stephlarsenphoto 🤍
𝙊𝙪𝙩𝙛𝙞𝙩𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝘼𝙧𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚: 𝙀𝙭𝙥𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙙 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝘼𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙣𝙨
Jenny’s Harvard GSD options studio travels to Greece to redress existing structures for a changing climate.
The studio picks up where other threads have left off in the history of architecture and fashion, from the evolution of the polykatoikia, to ancient shading strategies, and architecture’s ongoing fascination with garments. Here we rehearse the 1933 Architect’s Congress visit to the Acropolis, with 2025’s eye to thermal comfort (on an unusually cool and pleasant October day).
@harvardgsd@harvardgsd_architecture
Generously supported by:
@harvardcgbc@harvard_jchs
Something House operates in two primary configurations: as a single large home where communal life comes to the foreground, or as three distinct row houses. The proposal is a single-family house cross pollinated with a row house typology, that is neither fixed nor one-size-fits-all. At its core is flexibility over time—the ability for households to merge, divide, and reconfigure as needs shift. Moveable thresholds are designed to accommodate both privacy and the ebbs and flows of shared lives.
In revisiting the boarding house, Something House reclaims its role as a socially and economically responsive housing type. By combining private domesticity with shared infrastructures, it repositions the home as a porous, adaptable framework—one capable of supporting evolving definitions of family and varied economic realities.
The House Transformed, Princeton SoA, curated by Monica Ponce de León, Shoshana Torn, and Massimo Giannone.
Project Team:
Anda French, Jenny French, Aidan Lozano (research), Tyler Gray (research), Rachel Skof (model), Samantha Guzman (drawings), Sean Ow (drawings)
Something House revisits the boarding house as a generative model for shared living in the 21st century. Once a cornerstone of American urban life, the boarding house provided affordable and flexible accommodations for nearly half of city dwellers during the 19th century. Far from being marginal, it was a primary urban dwelling type—at once intimate and communal, respectable and contested. As cities industrialized, boarding houses offered transitional housing for immigrants, workers, and women seeking financial independence, blurring the lines between private family life and collective living. Something House reflects this history, projecting it into the present.
Rather than neutralizing difference, the design acknowledges that households are dynamic and that intimacy often coexists with friction. The architecture accommodates varying timelines of inhabitation—short-term stays, long-term residence, and everything in between—reflecting the layered realities of contemporary life.
The House Transformed, Princeton SoA, curated by Monica Ponce de León, Shoshana Torn, and Massimo Giannone
Project Team:
Anda French, Jenny French, Aidan Lozano (research), Tyler Gray (research), Rachel Skof (model), Samantha Guzman (drawings), Sean Ow (drawings)
French 2D (@french2d ), Besler & Sons (@beslerandsons ), Firat Erdim (@firaterdim ), and BairBalliet (@bairballiet@central_standard_ conescubes) are among the U.S.-based practices participating in the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial, and next up in this SHIFT highlight series!
French 2D explores new ways of living through projects like cohousing, compact spaces, and adaptive reuse, as well as civic installations that bring people together in surprising ways.
Besler & Sons works at the intersection of architecture, media, and design, creating tools and platforms that invite collaboration among builders, makers, and the public.
Firat Erdim develops instruments such as the Kite Choir and Field Harp, which use wind and sound to reveal the atmosphere as a shared, living medium.
BairBalliet experiments with architecture across drawings, models, films, and built work—choreographing how ideas take shape in both concept and experience.
The countdown is on - see their work and more starting September 19!
#cabshift #chicagoarchitecturebiennial #cab2025
Photo credits:
1_ French 2D, Bay State Cohousing, 2023. Photo: Naho Kubota
2_ French 2D, portrait. Photo: Steph Larsen
3_ Besler & Sons, “Earth Sheds,” 2021
4_ Besler & Sons, portrait. Photo: Andy J Scott
5_ Firat Erdim, “Kite Choir Ribbon Reel Sounding,” 2019
6_ Firat Erdim, portrait. Photo: Olivia Valentine
7_ BairBalliet, “Imperfection,” 2022. Photo: Malvin Bunata Wibowo
8_ BairBalliet, portrait
Now under construction, Hindsight House challenges the norms of community preservation. The house re-occupies a vacant lot, the end of a row of 1870s houses, half of which were demolished at the turn of the 20th century. Here, we play between preservation as a myth in new construction and forgotten histories – under urban renewal in Boston, large swaths of row houses were taken down in this redlined neighborhood, and replaced with strange suburban Garrisons, distant cousins of the early Garrisons of New England. With its overhangs and form that folds around the property envelope limits, we have recast this tumultuous past as an uneasy process that is acknowledged as the marriage of the Row House and the Garrison. This becomes the driver for formal invention, walking a tightrope between the neighborhood’s comfort with fictional historicism and skepticism of newness.
