Spring 2024 Stuckeman lecture series starts with environmental artist, architect

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A virtual lecture from artist and architect Yussef Agbo-Ola, founding principal of Olaniyi Studio, will kick off the College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School’s spring 2024 Lecture + Exhibit Series at 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 27.

Titled “The Art of Poetic Environmental Architecture and Design,” Agbo-Ola’s lecture will highlight the importance of the ephemeral, entropy in design and poetic environmental architecture relating to his work over the last decade. Attendees are encouraged to watch the virtual lecture in the Stuckeman Family Building Jury Space. The lecture will also be available to attend via Zoom.

Agbo-Ola founded his own London-based environmental art, architecture and design studio, Olaniyi Studio, “to expand environmental awareness through design creativity, collective collaboration, and speculative imagination.” He is an artist and medicinal architect living between London, Lagos and the Amazon Forest. Born in a multicultural household in rural Virginia, his work reflects hybrid identities and relationships to different landscapes, ecologies and cultural rituals.

Agbo-Ola’s artistic practices feature natural energy systems and interactive experiments that explore the connections between an array of sensory environments. His practice questions how art, architecture and anthropological research can create experimental environments that challenge how we experience geological conditions and living ecosystems. His works manifest as architectural temples, photographic journalism, material alchemy, interactive performance, experimental sound design and conceptual writing.

Agbo-Ola is also an adjunct assistant professor of architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation where he directs an experimental design studio titled, “The Art of Poetic Environmental Architecture.” He holds a master of fine art from the University of the Arts London and a master of architecture from the Royal College of Art.

Agbo-Ola has led art and architectural commissions for the United Nations, Institute of Contemporary Art (London), Serpentine Gallery London, Van Abbe Museum, TEDx East End, British Broadcasting Corporation Arts, Museum Folkwang, Venice Architectural Biennials, Palais de Tokyo, Tai Kwun Arts Center, Sharjah Architecture Triennial and Lexus Automotive Innovation Centre Japan, among others.

Events in the Stuckeman School Lecture + Exhibit Series are free and open to the public.

Stuckeman School professor and research director co-edits book on urban design

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — José Duarte, Stuckeman Chair in Design Innovation and director of the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing in the College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School at Penn State, co-edited “Emerging Perspectives on Teaching Architecture and Urbanism,” which was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in November 2023.

Duarte also co-authored chapter eight in the publication, titled “Teaching Shape Grammars and Parametric Urban Design in the Context of Informal Settlements: The World Studio Project,” with Fernando Lima, assistant professor of architecture at Belmont University.

According to the publication’s description, “[The book] argues that the teaching of architecture and urbanism is in a state of crisis; architecture seems unable to respond to current problems, and urbanism seems incapable of fulfilling the needs of a more balanced society and its built environment, including the human right to housing.”

The book’s 15 chapters describe new technologies for teaching architecture, landscape architecture and urban design. Each chapter details a case study where the author(s) describe an application of technology, the theoretical framework, the specifics of the case and the study’s results.

Duarte and Lima’s chapter describes the teaching and design methodology used in a Stuckeman School design research studio series called “World Studio,” which addresses informal settlements. Each year students travel to a location around the world to participate in a research studio, and the chapter focuses on the process and results of the studio Duarte instructed in Ahmedabad, India, in 2020. Informal settlements are areas where people cannot afford to buy a house, and the studio explores how the use of technology can make housing more affordable, safe and accessible.

Students in the course studied the settlement to understand its genesis and create a competition model to replicate the growth process. Then, the researchers “hack the process,” which Duarte describes as using the desirable qualities of the settlement’s growth while amending its flaws.

Duarte explained that informal settlements grow when people build their own houses following implicit rules that make the houses easy to build and affordable. Using the guidelines already created by the settlement, Duarte can plan settlements that keep the desirable qualities while making them more affordable and providing infrastructure.

“The idea was to design the new settlements in a way that follows the sample principles of making houses easier and cheaper, but then we introduce infrastructure,” Duarte said.

Duarte co-edited the book with architecture professors and researchers David Leite Viana, Emílio da Cruz Brandão, Franklim Morais, Isabel Cristina Carvalho and Nicolau Brandão.

“It’s a collection of innovative ways of using technology for designing architecture and urban sites, and I hope people enjoy it,” Duarte said.