In Hairpin House, drawing becomes an iterative process that continuously adapts to the contingent figure of the stair itself, through a series of representational translations from sketch to model to eventually 1:1 hand drawn details, before manifesting into built form. A photogrammetric scan of the stair then reimages the finished stair as an object extracted from its context, and otherwise un-seeable in its entirety. This as-built documentation reinserts itself into the realm of projection, allowing for further speculation beyond its construction.
Stair built by Jonathan Michael, from Stairworks of Boston
Special thanks to Studio J.Jih team member @davidwhite830 for compiling and editing the photogrammetry scan
Delighted to share that our design for the Memorial to the Victims of the 1871 Chinese Massacre has been selected as one of six finalist proposals to be further developed. Designed in collaboration between @figure.office and @studio.jih
“Penjing is a Chinese art form and ancestor to Bonsai in which the garden becomes a microcosm that focuses the visual and mental gaze towards introspection. Often seen as living sculpture or physical poetry, it embodies a cultural attitude towards sculpture as something existing between object and landscape, and is regarded as an extension of surrounding built and natural environments. Scaling to fill each site and protected by a quiet vessel, each Penjing offers ritualized care to unassuming places that often lack it, with its microcosmic interior serving as a mirror of the communities who design and sustain it. They not only survive but thrive in residual spaces, in keeping with stories of resilience many Chinese immigrants trace in the building of their communities.
The outer vessel of our proposal is a honed cylindrical form shaped from locally sourced limestone, emerging from a hewn base. Three openings carve away its thick exterior to reveal an inner void sculpted with 18 polished flutes, each memorializing a victim of the massacre, collectively centered upon a hidden garden. In this nested vessel, the memorial becomes a space of absence, where loss nurtures a garden growing in the face of adversity. This balance between ruggedness and refinement, protectiveness and vulnerability, suggests a spirit of resilience that we see as both poetic and pragmatic.
We see remembrance as a constant and ongoing act rather than something sacred and unchanging. As such, in resistance to rigid interpretations of history and memorialization, we imagine the garden within the memorial to be a space and scene to be grown and renewed by its surrounding community. By setting a living landscape as the memorial itself, the act of remembering also becomes one of care.”
#chinesemassacrememorial #pastduereport @culture_la@camlaorg
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
Perched within a rapidly densifying neighborhood on Boston’s outskirts, Periscope House reflects J. Roc Jih’s (@j.roc.jih ) innovative approach to form. Defined by strategically placed apertures and softly curving walls, the design addresses frictions between existing ideals of the American single family home and a densifying urban context.
“The whole motivating idea behind Periscope House was its extroverted views and introverted privacies,” explains Jih, Principal of @studio.jih and Associate Professor of Practice at @mit , in an extensive Q&A with Linda Just for @metropolismagazine . After storyboarding vignettes of different scenarios in the daily lives of the clients that required a balance of varying levels of extroversion and seclusion, J found that “diagrammatically they formed a series of almost curving linkages that at times started to skirt and merge with each other…that form of turning became a really key idea in the project”.
Inspired by the figure of the periscope, an optical instrument used in submarine navigation to see objects above the water, Jih introduced a series of rounded volumes and precise apertures within the home, resulting in a sanctuary-like blend of private yet light-filled spaces that peer out onto the Boston skyline.
“I hunt for ways to think about form that are more expansive and inclusive than the lineages that have been given to us,” Jih continues.
📖 Read the full Q&A to learn more about Jih’s renovation of the 1960s ranch home and their ongoing collaboration with Skylar Tibbits (@skylartibbits ) at MIT aimed at expanding material research in the profession. The home was also featured in @aninterior . (🔗 in bio)
📸 Photos by Randy Crandon (@randycrandon ); Axon Diagram Courtesy J. Jih Studio.
#periscopehouse #metropolismagazine #progressivearchitecture
Imagining new multi-family typologies for Cambridge, Massachusetts. Designed in collaboration with @militana.studio with special thanks to @samuraislevin . Starting construction spring 2026
What if stone could be transformed into highly insulative, resilient, sustainable, mono-material architectures that are both rooted in history and place, and deliver 21st century standards of performance? Stone Systems proposes to combine all of the functionality, structure, and performance of architecture into a single material to produce an architecture that would be fully composed of the surrounding earth, that melts back into that surrounding earth at the end of its lifespan, and that can be recycled infinitely.
Basalt is already curiously rooted in past, present, and projective architectures. Many civic buildings in the mid-20th century utilized cast basalt as an low cost, vitreous, and durable, floor tile. Cast basalt plumbing is currently used for almost all powerplants due to its corrosion resistance. Fiber-based and heat-proof basalt applications are increasingly common at the product scale since their military declassification in 1995. Mineral wool is primarily basalt. And basalt is furthermore the most abundant rock in the earth’s crust; 90% of volcanic rock is basalt, and its distribution is global.
This prototype stone system seeks to reduce the intensity of labor, skill, and carbon expenditure typically required of masonry construction. By using jammed gravel fill as structure, local low cost materials can be assembled within sewn basalt textile forms without the need for precision stone cutting. The next generation of prototypes will further include basalt rainscreens and facade systems.
These prototypes on display show several forms of stone: insulative foamed block, insulative felted mat, extruded and woven textile, and gravel structural fill, together fulfilling structural, moisture, and thermal performances of wall assemblies. The final case study house will further use cast basalt plumbing and post-tensioned jammed aggregate beams.
Supported by the MIT Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grant Program.
Exhibited at the Berggruen Cultural Center as part of the 2025 Venice Biennale
Project Team: J. Roc Jih, Skylar Tibbits, Emily Ezquerro, Avigail Gilad, Natalie Pearl, Nof Nathansohn, Oliver Moldow, Simon Lesina-Debiasi, Jared Laucks
Situated within a rapidly densifying single-family neighborhood newly characterized by tense exposures and uncomfortable adjacencies between neighbors, Periscope House takes the periscope as its motivating force, choreographing turns and displacements of circulation and views within a tightly packed cubic volume. While most often deployed and seen as a voyeuristic device, the periscope becomes an anti-voyeuristic device at the urban scale within Periscope House. Curved walls and precise apertures gently reorient the body and the gaze to produce both extroverted views and introverted privacies, between exterior neighbors and interior occupants. The contradictory acts of turning within and looking afar, born of contradictory domestic desires, become linked ends of the periscope. Photographs by the talented @randycrandon
