Mark Stanley

Final Review / Thesis Studio, 5th-year B.Arch, ‘Self-Directed Project’ / University of Tennessee College of Architecture + Design very honored and proud of these 23 cosmonauts of the unknown / grateful for their trust, ambition, and creative intellects / thankful too for the efforts of @buckminister_mueller , partner in crime and co-teacher of this group Students: Austin Ayers, Kai Camacho, Beshoy Daniel, Sarina DePalma, Anthony Gonzalez-Martinez, Devon Haller, Reece Hummell, Sammi Hurd, Katie Hutt, Miquel Johnson, Thien Khau, Kacy Lyvers, Kiley MacDonald, Isabella Myers, Lauren Nicholson, Eli Oliver, Marisa Riley, Caroline Robertson, Max Scanlan, Jenna Tiger, Emma Tillis, Palmer Whittam, Jannan Wine @utk_arch @utkcoad #architecture #thesis #finalreviews

very happy and honored to have a chapter in @jeffreysnesbit new book, ‘Constructing Invisibility: Infrastructure, Militarization, and the Extreme Environment’ / in it, I wrote ‘Nuclear Blue: The Manhattan Project and Its Quieter Effects’, on the science infrastructures and radio-entanglements of the Oak Ridge Reservation in East Tennessee (former headquarters of the Manhattan Project and present day site of science and military intrigue) So many other powerful essays and tales in the book. Totally honored to be among these incredible contributors in Jeffrey’s orbit Release date is in a week—find it at @oro_editions

Happy to add my first contribution to the great collaborative project ‘Clouds Lent Out Use Discipline’ (CLOUD) by @cattydanzhang and @lostritto My first cloud is about a scalar conundrum, spanning between two ends of an impossible range between the particle and the globe. I study the history of the Manhattan Project (especially here in TN) and the lasting conceptual, technological, ecological, and geopolitical rifts it has left us. The discovery of fission yielded a competition between the infinitesimal and the gargantuan. Dealing with the smallest things ever studied required the largest buildings and science infrastructures ever built. There are many clouds that interest me in this genre, but the two I have concentrated on here occupy the extremes of the scalar spectrum: the Mushroom Cloud and the Cloud Chamber (both are Wikipedia articles I highly recommend). The Mushroom Cloud represents the violent enormity of the bomb, the Cloud Chamber the tiny invisibility of the atom. Cloud chambers were invented in the early 1900’s to literally see atomic-level particle movements via tiny contrails they would leave in a supersaturated alcohol vapor in a sealed chamber. The Mushroom Cloud was famously invented on July 16, 1945 above the New Mexico desert. My first cloud test here is an attempt at bringing those two to bear on one another—the irregularity and explosive potential of one concept of cloud and the individual traceability of particles within the other. I was gifted cloud input content by Catty and Carl, made by @uri_wegman . Uri’s cloud is buried somewhere inside the orange cloud here. Thanks to all for the acceleration. #cloudslentoutusediscipline #cloud #cloudscapes #cloudshapes

Synthetic Biology Field Station No. 4 // I made this drawing recently as a contribution to an exhibit called ‘Glimpses of Possible Worlds’—associated with our recent symposium here @utk_arch @utkcoad / the call was for a single image and a 100-word caption framed as an excerpt from a longer description, story, or essay // “…The forest is a catalog, a practically endless index of simulation data stored inside plant DNA sequences. Each leaf contains billions of copies, stewarded with pruning shears and lines of code. The Synthetic Biology field team trawls through the data orchard, grafting system updates, verifying archives. The deer, which we nicknamed Godzilla, is still at-large—last seen where a remote geiger reading came back hot. The Herder arrived in the night, silent, uncanny—twitching its withers, slipping through leaves without sound. A shepherd for animals, signals, pollinators, frequencies, it seemed to change the rhythm of the forest itself…” // This speculative design-research project critically examines the Oak Ridge Reservation—its history as the headquarters of the Manhattan Project, its present as the site of a contemporary national science laboratory, and its possible futures as a zone of existentially-sized scientific dramas // thanks to research assistants on this @parkerproduces (2022-23) @_annahaynes_ @avejax_arch (2024) @dillon.3dm @kjuliannn (2016-17)

Nearly one-quarter into the 21st century, architecture continually finds itself entangled in a host of planetary-scaled issues…a fundamental task of the discipline is to imagine things that do not yet exist and to explore the implications of how they might come to fruition…This symposium is organized around three overlapping sub-categories: environmental imaginaries, material imaginaries, and social imaginaries.

第六福竜丸 / ‘Lucky Dragon No.6’, an existential research vessel, collecting inhuman geological samples and registering the markers and conditions of the Anthropocene / the vessel’s namesake is Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon No. 5), a Japanese fishing boat whose deck and 23-man crew were coated with radioactive ash and coral dust while (unwittingly) sailing underneath the fallout of the Castle Bravo test—the largest thermonuclear weapon the US ever detonated, on Bikini Atoll. The acute radiation sickness the sailors suffered upon their return to Japan was an(other) ominous layer on the emergent regime of nuclear weapons (and their insidious, latent radioactive effects) as geopolitical and existential domination (and US hegemony) / No.6 sets out to study these entangled phenomena—these naturecultures, anthropogeneities, and geo-horrors—by sampling nuclear traumas… the “black deposits” etched into buildings by Hiroshima shadows, Trinitite from nuclear tests in New Mexico and Nevada, exhumed animals from Chernobyl, sea creatures from Fukushima. Over time, these ‘inhuman geologies’ (K.Yusoff) became broader and more numerous—beach sands from Hiroshima, still containing tiny granules of vaporized and melted buildings (and presumably people), “sludge” from Hanford, coral dusts from Bikini Island… bone marrows, ice cores, soil samples… seafloor sediment containing carbon-14 from the Mariana Trench… these are housed in the vessel as it traverses the Pacific, in an ever-growing anti-archive of the effects of exfoliating the interiors of atoms // [this was a one-day-long project]

Farm & To & Market // Huge and special thanks to research assistants who labored on this project intellectually and creatively: @elijah_hale_design.zip @ella_larkin.rar @parkerproduces @milkymiel @dilemmachines @aliceiriz // [part 3]: Socialist Slow-Fashion in the Free State of West Texas: A vertically-integrated, celebrity-endorsed slow-fashion operation in the (speculative) free state of West Texas, in which a co-op political governance model establishes a profit-sharing producer block capable of rivaling other nations’ cotton production and market impact. This shared social investment in the rogue sovereign state allows it to (mostly unwittingly) inhabit leftist political positions opposite to the contemporary status quo in this part of America. Frustrated with manipulation of the international cotton market, increasing costs of corporately-owned plant gene technologies, and low profit margins compared to clothing manufacturers, cotton producers in West Texas (where the bulk of U.S. cotton is grown) use little-known clauses in the Texas constitution to legally secede from the union, forming their own free state, whose governance and economy are centered on cotton production. To maximize income, West Texas establishes its own slow-fashion brands, endorsed by popular celebrities who have ties to Texas and/or advocate for consciousness about climate change and carbon footprint reductions in industries like fashion— Matthew McConaughey, Joanna Gaines, Ree Drummond, Taylor Swift, etc. The growing and processing of cotton is combined with the manufacture of clothing in a vertically integrated manufacturing model (both organizationally and architecturally). The farm co-op serves as the economic model and governance structure. Citizen farmers form democratic boards of governors to negotiate and protect the collective, local farm ecologies, and the ability to maximize yield and profit. Crop rotation and water rationing is incentivized by increasing profits across the entire free state. Rotations are managed by the co-op, and profits are shared as dividends to each farmer-citizen. (Generously supported by UTK CoAD Seed Grant)

Farm & To & Market / an on-going design research project, speculating on the future of agriculture, with special attention for new possible re-mixtures of architecture, technology, information, living things, money, energy, and politics, through which more reliable and sensible (if also wild and strange) futures might emerge. // Huge and special thanks to research assistants who labored on this project intellectually and creatively: @elijah_hale_design.zip @ella_larkin.rar @parkerproduces @milkymiel @dilemmachines @aliceiriz // [part 2]: Mega Indoor Soybean Farm and Hog Hotel: A mega indoor soy growing facility in central-Illinois, between Decatur and Springfield, where Big Soy makes a play to overtake corn as the top cash crop in the U.S., exponentially increasing yields through controlled growing environments, 24-hour UV light control, sophisticated water recycling irrigation systems, and on-site energy production. Working entirely on closed-loop metabolisms, dehydration systems recapture huge amounts of water from soy beans after harvest (enough to create their own indoor weather systems) and re-feed it to next generations. Thousands of pigs live in on-site hog hotels, who are fed with a portion of the soy crop, and whose excrement partially powers the farm via anaerobic methane digesters. The farm mimics the sprawling vegetable greenhouses of southern Spain and flower greenhouses of the Netherlands, but at at a uniquely gargantuan American scale. On- site facilities for water and waste processing, soybean growth and dehydration, and atmospheric control allow the system to ‘breathe’ and digest as a single soy-growing organism. By quarantining plant and animal populations, polycultures of species and varieties can be grown without risk of losing entire crops to disease or infestation, creating new varieties and tastes for soy in the market. The economic power of Big Soy—leveraged to maximize yields and profits—are creatively motivated to produce ecologically responsible systems in which inputs and outputs (such as water, methane, CO2, and money) are all put into closed-loop metabolisms. (Generously funded by UTK CoAD Seed Grant)

Farm & To & Market / an on-going design research project, speculating on the future of agriculture, with special attention for new possible re-mixtures of architecture, technology, information, living things, money, energy, and politics, through which more reliable and sensible (if also wild and strange) futures might emerge. // Huge and special thanks to research assistants who labored on this project intellectually and creatively: @elijah_hale_design.zip @ella_larkin.rar @parkerproduces @milkymiel @dilemmachines @aliceiriz // [part 01]: Migrating Farms for Free-Range, Intelligent Poultry: A roving network of fully-automated and constantly-mobile poultry hatcheries and feeding sheds across Arkansas and Tennessee, in which chickens govern themselves and retail micro-investors collectively (and very temporarily) own equipment, land, and animals. Chickens migrate across parcels of land and free-graze for the duration of their lives, deciding as a system where to move next. Retail investing allows chickens and people to share profits. Micro-ownership of fractions of individual chickens and parcels of land detangles the farming operation from traditional systems of land ownership and fixed l. It is owned and operated collectively by software systems, conscientious chicken consumers, opportunistic investors, and chickens themselves—challenging ideas of commons, property ownership, free-grazing, free-range, land/lawn maintenance, etc. Online systems of land dealing (such as AcreTrader) facilitate online subcultures in which people speculatively by small fractions of real-estate in semi-rural peripheries around cities, anticipating where chickens will move next. Land assets appreciate, and are sold for small profit as the sheds move on, financing the free-range poultry operation. Chicken welfare motivates individual investors, spurred on by subreddit communities that speculate on where sheds will move. A GPS-based invisible fence keeps free-range chickens within 200’ of their home shed with a mild electric shock. Intelligent machines (such as The Scout) herd chickens, deter predators, and maintain the population. (Generously supported by UTK CoAD)

(details), ‘Self-Directed Project’ (thesis) studio I taught this past year / these are a few biopsies from + close encounters with the projects / I was lucky to work with these 12 incredible students: Lexi Anderson @eceeranders , Angela Chen @angelachen.11 , Nadine Ghezawi, Emma Hines @_emmahines , Michael Jenks @dilemmachines , Jakeb Moore @jakeb.me , Karly O’Dell @karlyodell , Katie Pennington @katie.pennington00 , Delaney Powell @delaneyy.powell , Shannon Story @shannon_story , Nick Van Son @nick_vanson , Sophia Walters @_sophiawalters

scenes from yesterday’s final review in the 5th year thesis studio (‘self-directed project’) / so proud of these 12 cosmonauts, who put on an astonishing show that I was privileged to be in the room for / these 12 projects are each incredibly astute investigations and massive contributions to this discipline… not to mention total rocket engine propulsion for me and for the school / will post more of the work in coming days / students: Lexi Anderson @eceeranders , Angela Chen @angelachen.11 , Nadine Ghezawi, Emma Hines @_emmahines , Michael Jenks @dilemmachines , Jakeb Moore @jakeb.me , Karly O’Dell @karlyodell , Katie Pennington @katie.pennington00 , Delaney Powell @delaneyy.powell , Shannon Story @shannon_story , Nick Van Son @nick_vanson , Sophia Walters @_sophiawalters