Tyler A
- Research Program Mentor
MArch at Princeton University
Expertise
Architecture, design, and environmental art
Bio
Architecture and design are more than an academic or professional occupation, for me, they represent an important way of both seeing and being in the world. Through my work as an aspiring architect and educator I’ve had the opportunity to engage in both research and design at a variety of scales, from furniture to infrastructure, in ways that address pressing issues of our age: how do we coexist within nonhuman systems, how does technology (both new and old) shape the built environment, what is the role of the symbolic in contemporary design? Wildly domestic: I’m an avid plant collector and keeper with a large and growing collection, ranging from philodendron to platycerium and everything in between. Many of my green friends live on furniture I’ve made by hand myself. Being able to live amongst a designed nature at home, helps me to think critically and creatively about how we as a species might design a more harmonious relationship to the natural world.Project ideas
Decoding Decoration
Despite most of the modern world's apparent lack of ornament, symbolism still plays an important role in the design of our homes and cities. This project will ask students to look at the world around them, and pick out what they see as underappreciated symbols of a particular time or place. By analyzing familiar buildings and environments students will begin to develop their own unique aesthetic sensibility through skills like pattern recognition, sketching or photography and descriptive writing. At the end of the project, students will have created a new taxonomy of built symbols which might form the basis of an artistic portfolio or a work of creative writing.
Parasite Project
Anywhere (and anything) can be a potential site of design. In a world that is already overflowing with the work of designers both past and present the ability to work with and within other preexisting systems is paramount. This project will ask students to design a "parasite" of some sort which will use some other object or building as its site. Students can choose to build on anything from a tree to a chair, with the goal of creating a new object or system that changes the use of the original thing. By working off of a real thing in the world students will develop their analytical drawing and writing skills all while engaged in an act of radically creative design. The goal of the project would be to build (make or grow etc.) the "parasite" either as a prototype or scale model which would be suitable for inclusion in a design portfolio.