Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic 
Landscapes
/
Robert M. MacLeod

Correspondences
1 Harry Dean Stanton walking into the desert
This essay offers an overview of a recent advanced graduate design studio 
at the University of South Florida School of Architecture and Commu-
nity Design. The studio began, as do most collaborative efforts, through 
conversation and correspondences between the collaborators. An 
interchange of ideas mapped through phone calls, emails and common 
aspirations. Rather than a defined project or building typology, the studio 
was organized around a specific place: Marfa, Texas. Marfa served as a 
place of work, a physical locale, a sensibility, and a purveyor of things 
mythical, wonderful and unusual. The essay also addresses pedagogy 
in terms of the inter-looping nature of an architectural education: the 
necessary redundancy and lineage across educators and academies.
CONTEXT
The 1984 Wim Wenders film,
 
Paris, Texas, is a beautiful, if difficult, tale of 
loss. The opening sequence is set in the Texas desert. A boundless land-
scape with an endless sky. Motionless clouds hang as if strung from ca-
bles. The tiny figure of Harry Dean Stanton emerges, walking with some 
purpose through the arid landscape in suit and tie and red baseball cap. 
The laconic Ry Cooder soundtrack echoes the vast emptiness of the sur -
roundings; though empty only in the sense of settlement. In reality, the 
landscape is one of great, jagged drama littered with the detritus of hab-
itation: railroad tracks, two-lane highways and lines of telephone poles 
project a sense of the infinite. Rust and ruin dot the rugged red earth. 
Abandonment and melancholy align our protagonist with his context. [1]
Paris, Texas was partially filmed in the Trans-Pecos region of 
“Far West Texas” , a place of unsubtle inversions: arid deserts and 
dramatic mountainous; vast lands (over 31,000 square miles) and 
modest populations (27 people per square mile); the lush Big Bend 
National Park and eastern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert (the larg-
est in North America); and elevations ranging from Guadalupe Peak 
(8750 ft.) to the Pecos and Rio Grande River Confluence (984 ft.).
1
Presidio County is a triangular shaped territory bordering 
Mexico by way of the Rio Grande River, flowing from the north-
west to the south east. The county seat is Marfa, home to the striking 
1   
Wikipedia contributors, “West Texas”
1

311 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
This essay offers an overview of a recent advanced graduate design studio 
at the University of South Florida School of Architecture and Commu-
nity Design. The studio began, as do most collaborative efforts, through 
conversation and correspondences between the collaborators. An 
interchange of ideas mapped through phone calls, emails and common 
aspirations. Rather than a defined project or building typology, the studio 
was organized around a specific place: Marfa, Texas. Marfa served as a 
place of work, a physical locale, a sensibility, and a purveyor of things 
mythical, wonderful and unusual. The essay also addresses pedagogy 
in terms of the inter-looping nature of an architectural education: the 
necessary redundancy and lineage across educators and academies.
CONTEXT
The 1984 Wim Wenders film,
 
Paris, Texas, is a beautiful, if difficult, tale of 
loss. The opening sequence is set in the Texas desert. A boundless land-
scape with an endless sky. Motionless clouds hang as if strung from ca-
bles. The tiny figure of Harry Dean Stanton emerges, walking with some 
purpose through the arid landscape in suit and tie and red baseball cap. 
The laconic Ry Cooder soundtrack echoes the vast emptiness of the sur -
roundings; though empty only in the sense of settlement. In reality, the 
landscape is one of great, jagged drama littered with the detritus of hab-
itation: railroad tracks, two-lane highways and lines of telephone poles 
project a sense of the infinite. Rust and ruin dot the rugged red earth. 
Abandonment and melancholy align our protagonist with his context. [1]
Paris, Texas was partially filmed in the Trans-Pecos region of 
“Far West Texas” , a place of unsubtle inversions: arid deserts and 
dramatic mountainous; vast lands (over 31,000 square miles) and 
modest populations (27 people per square mile); the lush Big Bend 
National Park and eastern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert (the larg-
est in North America); and elevations ranging from Guadalupe Peak 
(8750 ft.) to the Pecos and Rio Grande River Confluence (984 ft.).
1
Presidio County is a triangular shaped territory bordering 
Mexico by way of the Rio Grande River, flowing from the north-
west to the south east. The county seat is Marfa, home to the striking 
1   
Wikipedia contributors, “West Texas”

Correspondences
second empire influenced Presidio County Courthouse (1886-87), 
grounding the town with great flair. Indeed, it seems to pin down 
all that could otherwise drift away. The night sky hosts (unveils, 
reveals) a celestial feast. It is no wonder that the renowned Mc-
Donald Astronomical Observatory is located near Fort Davis in 
the Davis Mountains of nearby Jeff Davis County, Texas. [2]
MARFA AND JUDD
“Dear Mom, Van Horn Texas. 1260 Population. 
Nice Town Beautiful Country Mountains - 
Love Don 1946 Dec 17 PM 5 45. ”
2
Along the road from art critic to artist—so-called minimalist, a moniker 
disliked by Judd—and after many years based in New York, Judd returned 
to West Texas in the early 1970s and purchased a 45,000-acre ranch and 
several buildings in the town of Marfa. Throughout his life, Marfa served 
as one of three primary residences for Judd as he migrated between 
Marfa, New York and the Swiss village of Küssnacht on Lake Lucerne. 
Donald Judd and the West Texas landscape by way of Marfa are 
now inexorably intertwined. Marfa is a kind of bespoke village embed-
ded in the rugged and arid West Texas landscape. Fine dining and high 
art comfortably reside with burritos, mules and cactus. The modern 
Marfa clings to both its recent and distant past while grappling with 
a distinctly eccentric present. In Marfa, place is history. The history 
of Marfa is ever present by way of its atmosphere: a powerful land-
scape, rolling and horizontal, boundless until bounded by mountains 
and coupled with the thin air proffered by its 4800 ft. elevation. [3]
The near distant past of Marfa is rendered through the western 
epic film Giant.
3
 Released in 1956 and directed by George Stevens, 
it stars Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean (who died 
prior to the release of the film). Partially filmed in and around Mar -
fa, the region served as the expansive ranch of protagonist Jordan 
“Bick” Benedict, Jr. (Hudson). The film’s narrative mediates between 
a grand multi-generational drama of familial friction and transi-
tion, as big oil invades the traditional Texan ranchlands, and, for its 
day, daringly confronting the region’s pervasive racism as wealthy 
Anglos condescend toward service class Mexican Americans. [4]
Today, the shadow of Giant looms more modestly in Marfa. The 
El Paisano Hotel, home for the cast and crew for several months, still 
stands, renovated in 2004 after years of decline and safely secured on 
the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Judd’s eccentricities have 
2   
Telegram home from Donald Judd traveling to 
California by way of Texas for military duty in 
1946, Judd and Murray, Donald Judd Writings, 
424.
3   
Wikipedia contributors, “Giant (1956 film)”
2  Mainstreet Marfa from the cupola of the 
Presidio Country Courthouse
3 West Texas landscape
4 Giant film poster
2
3
4

313 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
second empire influenced Presidio County Courthouse (1886-87), 
grounding the town with great flair. Indeed, it seems to pin down 
all that could otherwise drift away. The night sky hosts (unveils, 
reveals) a celestial feast. It is no wonder that the renowned Mc-
Donald Astronomical Observatory is located near Fort Davis in 
the Davis Mountains of nearby Jeff Davis County, Texas. [2]
MARFA AND JUDD
“Dear Mom, Van Horn Texas. 1260 Population. 
Nice Town Beautiful Country Mountains - 
Love Don 1946 Dec 17 PM 5 45. ”
2
Along the road from art critic to artist—so-called minimalist, a moniker 
disliked by Judd—and after many years based in New York, Judd returned 
to West Texas in the early 1970s and purchased a 45,000-acre ranch and 
several buildings in the town of Marfa. Throughout his life, Marfa served 
as one of three primary residences for Judd as he migrated between 
Marfa, New York and the Swiss village of Küssnacht on Lake Lucerne. 
Donald Judd and the West Texas landscape by way of Marfa are 
now inexorably intertwined. Marfa is a kind of bespoke village embed-
ded in the rugged and arid West Texas landscape. Fine dining and high 
art comfortably reside with burritos, mules and cactus. The modern 
Marfa clings to both its recent and distant past while grappling with 
a distinctly eccentric present. In Marfa, place is history. The history 
of Marfa is ever present by way of its atmosphere: a powerful land-
scape, rolling and horizontal, boundless until bounded by mountains 
and coupled with the thin air proffered by its 4800 ft. elevation. [3]
The near distant past of Marfa is rendered through the western 
epic film Giant.
3
 Released in 1956 and directed by George Stevens, 
it stars Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean (who died 
prior to the release of the film). Partially filmed in and around Mar -
fa, the region served as the expansive ranch of protagonist Jordan 
“Bick” Benedict, Jr. (Hudson). The film’s narrative mediates between 
a grand multi-generational drama of familial friction and transi-
tion, as big oil invades the traditional Texan ranchlands, and, for its 
day, daringly confronting the region’s pervasive racism as wealthy 
Anglos condescend toward service class Mexican Americans. [4]
Today, the shadow of Giant looms more modestly in Marfa. The 
El Paisano Hotel, home for the cast and crew for several months, still 
stands, renovated in 2004 after years of decline and safely secured on 
the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Judd’s eccentricities have 
2   
Telegram home from Donald Judd traveling to 
California by way of Texas for military duty in 
1946, Judd and Murray, Donald Judd Writings, 
424.
3   
Wikipedia contributors, “Giant (1956 film)”

Correspondences
made Marfa a town eccentric unto itself. The ruin of Reata, the lonely 
estate owned by Bick Benedict, stood for many years, a derelict bill-
board of a one-time pretend mansion. The ruin is now gone. However, 
in a Marfa appropriate intersection of contemporary art and the Texan 
landscape, artist duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset erected a 
fake Prada store in 2005, some 30 miles northwest of Marfa on US 90. 
A billboard turned museum by way of the Texas Department of Trans-
portation (originally classified by the Texas DOT as an illegal billboard, 
the building was reclassified as a museum and remains standing), the 
Prada store is minimalist art, a critique of consumer culture, and a 
roadside attraction, in addition to serving as a ground zero for selfies 
and social media posts. It serves an an outpost, a pre-welcome station 
for inquisitive visitors and offers a sneak preview of what lies beyond. 
One might argue the fake Prada holds a distant kinship to (if not an 
obvious extension of) Judd’s solemn cast concrete boxes. Both foreign 
but oddly at home and welcome in the West Texas landscape. A land-
scape, it seems, capable of absorbing virtually anything. The pretend 
Prada proffers a cultural correspondence—one perhaps, of irony and 
dissidence—between Marfa and the outside urbanized world. [5-6]
THRESHOLDS
The Greek God Janus serves as a catalyst for the Marfa Studio. Janus is 
two faced. Each face looking in the opposite direction, one facing the past 
and the other peering into the future. Janus is a threshold and, as are all 
thresholds, a correspondence between and across two realms. The theme 
of correspondence provides a didactic structure for the studio work.
MATERIAL CULTURE
In “The Craftsman” , author Richard Sennett speaks of material cul-
ture and offers a reading of the value of skilled work where “the 
desire to do a job well done for its own sake” encourages individu-
als to “learn about themselves through the things they make” .
4
The concerns of material culture reside in the design studio. 
That is, the value imbued in the making of an object or set of relat-
ed things. Material culture binds the corporeal—the physicality of 
materiality—with intellectual production and situates the result-
ing work in a vernacular, place-based logic. We explore the intrin-
sic connection, correspondence, if you will, between the eye, the 
mind and the hand. One seeks “to make” as a means of inquisition. 
Making is considered an intellectual act, a form of thinking. 
4   
Sennett, The Craftsman, 20
5
6
5 Ruin of Reata
6 Beyonce at fake Prada

315 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
made Marfa a town eccentric unto itself. The ruin of Reata, the lonely 
estate owned by Bick Benedict, stood for many years, a derelict bill-
board of a one-time pretend mansion. The ruin is now gone. However, 
in a Marfa appropriate intersection of contemporary art and the Texan 
landscape, artist duo Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset erected a 
fake Prada store in 2005, some 30 miles northwest of Marfa on US 90. 
A billboard turned museum by way of the Texas Department of Trans-
portation (originally classified by the Texas DOT as an illegal billboard, 
the building was reclassified as a museum and remains standing), the 
Prada store is minimalist art, a critique of consumer culture, and a 
roadside attraction, in addition to serving as a ground zero for selfies 
and social media posts. It serves an an outpost, a pre-welcome station 
for inquisitive visitors and offers a sneak preview of what lies beyond. 
One might argue the fake Prada holds a distant kinship to (if not an 
obvious extension of) Judd’s solemn cast concrete boxes. Both foreign 
but oddly at home and welcome in the West Texas landscape. A land-
scape, it seems, capable of absorbing virtually anything. The pretend 
Prada proffers a cultural correspondence—one perhaps, of irony and 
dissidence—between Marfa and the outside urbanized world. [5-6]
THRESHOLDS
The Greek God Janus serves as a catalyst for the Marfa Studio. Janus is 
two faced. Each face looking in the opposite direction, one facing the past 
and the other peering into the future. Janus is a threshold and, as are all 
thresholds, a correspondence between and across two realms. The theme 
of correspondence provides a didactic structure for the studio work.
MATERIAL CULTURE
In “The Craftsman” , author Richard Sennett speaks of material cul-
ture and offers a reading of the value of skilled work where “the 
desire to do a job well done for its own sake” encourages individu-
als to “learn about themselves through the things they make” .
4
The concerns of material culture reside in the design studio. 
That is, the value imbued in the making of an object or set of relat-
ed things. Material culture binds the corporeal—the physicality of 
materiality—with intellectual production and situates the result-
ing work in a vernacular, place-based logic. We explore the intrin-
sic connection, correspondence, if you will, between the eye, the 
mind and the hand. One seeks “to make” as a means of inquisition. 
Making is considered an intellectual act, a form of thinking. 
4   
Sennett, The Craftsman, 20

Correspondences
The studio serves as a pre-thesis think tank and presumes a thesis of some 
kind is essential to all projects. Thesis seminar is both a self-driven de-
sign studio concluding one’s formal academic training and an intellectual 
trajectory for making architecture. Thesis as a formal project stands at 
the threshold between concluding an academic career and beginning the 
journey into practice. A Janusian moment. Thesis is presented as both an 
end and a beginning. The Marfa Studio seeks to engage ideas and serve to 
clarify the participant’s intellectual trajectory toward thesis and beyond. 
Studio participants dictate studio discourse and direction. Ambitions and 
doubts establish the arc of the work. The beginning of the term is spent 
uncovering the foundations of the student’s search and, more important-
ly, preparing a methodology that is both questioning and generative.
PEDAGOGICAL PALIMPSESTS
The term palimpsest originates in ancient Greek as palimpsestos with 
palin (again) combined with psestos (rubbed smooth or again scraped). 
This translates as “scraped clean and ready to be used again” and de-
scribes the process of erasing and smoothing wax coated writing tablets 
and repeatedly writing upon the surface. The Romans referred to this 
process as “washing papyrus” , a commonly used surface that was cheap-
er than the parchment prepared from animal skins. This washing or 
erasure is more often a product of preserving the afore mentioned and 
sturdier parchment.
5
 The palimpsest, then, is a ghostly structure with 
layer upon layer, written and erased, written and erased. A kind of ritual 
displacement of knowledge, a privileging of one order over another [7].
The Palimpsest is, perhaps, the most direct and intimate of cor -
respondences. The process of erasure and re-writing yields a density 
of ideas and information, collapsed into one place and awaiting dis-
covery and interpretation. A disjunct correspondence of collisions 
over time yields a disjunct overlaying of knowledge. This dense map of 
accidentally intertwined cultures and bodies of knowledge suggests an 
appropriately speculative pedagogical structure for the Marfa Studio. 
Archeologist Geoff Bailey outlines a palimpsest typology as follows:
True palimpsests
“True palimpsests are palimpsests in the strict sense of the term in which 
all traces of earlier activity have been removed except for the most re-
cent. ”
6
 A true palimpsest is an actual real time recording device. Erasure 
presents each successive mark as new and complete. Erasure yields an 
absence whereby history remains a mystery.
5   
Wikipedia contributors, “Palimpsest”
6   
Bailey, “Time Perspectives, Palimpsests and 
the Archaeology of Time,” 203
7
7 Palimpsest drawing

317 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
The studio serves as a pre-thesis think tank and presumes a thesis of some 
kind is essential to all projects. Thesis seminar is both a self-driven de-
sign studio concluding one’s formal academic training and an intellectual 
trajectory for making architecture. Thesis as a formal project stands at 
the threshold between concluding an academic career and beginning the 
journey into practice. A Janusian moment. Thesis is presented as both an 
end and a beginning. The Marfa Studio seeks to engage ideas and serve to 
clarify the participant’s intellectual trajectory toward thesis and beyond. 
Studio participants dictate studio discourse and direction. Ambitions and 
doubts establish the arc of the work. The beginning of the term is spent 
uncovering the foundations of the student’s search and, more important-
ly, preparing a methodology that is both questioning and generative.
PEDAGOGICAL PALIMPSESTS
The term palimpsest originates in ancient Greek as palimpsestos with 
palin (again) combined with psestos (rubbed smooth or again scraped). 
This translates as “scraped clean and ready to be used again” and de-
scribes the process of erasing and smoothing wax coated writing tablets 
and repeatedly writing upon the surface. The Romans referred to this 
process as “washing papyrus” , a commonly used surface that was cheap-
er than the parchment prepared from animal skins. This washing or 
erasure is more often a product of preserving the afore mentioned and 
sturdier parchment.
5
 The palimpsest, then, is a ghostly structure with 
layer upon layer, written and erased, written and erased. A kind of ritual 
displacement of knowledge, a privileging of one order over another [7].
The Palimpsest is, perhaps, the most direct and intimate of cor -
respondences. The process of erasure and re-writing yields a density 
of ideas and information, collapsed into one place and awaiting dis-
covery and interpretation. A disjunct correspondence of collisions 
over time yields a disjunct overlaying of knowledge. This dense map of 
accidentally intertwined cultures and bodies of knowledge suggests an 
appropriately speculative pedagogical structure for the Marfa Studio. 
Archeologist Geoff Bailey outlines a palimpsest typology as follows:
True palimpsests
“True palimpsests are palimpsests in the strict sense of the term in which 
all traces of earlier activity have been removed except for the most re-
cent. ”
6
 A true palimpsest is an actual real time recording device. Erasure 
presents each successive mark as new and complete. Erasure yields an 
absence whereby history remains a mystery.
5   
Wikipedia contributors, “Palimpsest”
6   
Bailey, “Time Perspectives, Palimpsests and 
the Archaeology of Time,” 203

Correspondences
Cumulative palimpsests 
“ A cumulative palimpsest is one in which the successive episodes of 
deposition, or layers of activity, remain superimposed one upon the 
other without loss of evidence, but are so re-worked and mixed together 
that it is difficult or impossible to separate them out into their original 
constituents. ”
7
This palimpsest is also most commonly referenced within ar -
chitectural discourse. The overlaid, simultaneous circumstance of 
coincident histories. This palimpsest is an exquisite entanglement of 
layers, imprint upon imprint, inviting distillation and interpretation.
Spatial palimpsests 
“…spatial palimpsests, a variant of the cumulative palimpsest but 
distinct from it and defined as a mixture of episodes that are spatially 
segregated but whose temporal relationships have become blurred and 
difficult to disentangle. … the boundary between cumulative and spatial 
palimpsests is not a sharp one. Both may be characterized by a variety 
of locations of activity and by different degrees of spatial and tempo-
ral integrity. The key difference is rather one of geographical scale. ”
8
Indeed, in the experience of a building we see, feel and en-
counter the building in radically different ways over time (or even 
in a relatively short period of time). The time of day and year al-
ters the disposition and character of light entering the spaces, 
yielding very distinct experiences, impressions and memories.
The very experience of architecture emerges as a multi-palimp-
sestic condition, altered by time, materiality, season, the weathering 
of surface, and cosmetic changes to a space. Each experience is in-
fluenced by a previous experience, mood, expectation, or pre-con-
ception. The randomness of the immediate environment shapes one’s 
memory: a nearby train, a car horn, a distant jackhammer, and/
or a passing conversation collide to form an intertwined hetero-
topic spatial/aural context. Context sways perception, and percep-
tion emerges from an ever-changing palimpsest of experience.
Temporal palimpsests 
“ A temporal palimpsest is an assemblage of materials and objects that 
form part of the same deposit but are of different ages and ‘life’ spans. 
On first description this sounds like a cumulative palimpsest by another 
name. However, in the cumulative palimpsest, the association of ob-
jects of different ages is really an aggregation due to the effect of mixing 
together what were originally distinct episodes of activity or deposition. ”
9
Think of temporal events such as rain, snowfall, wind acting upon 
7   
Ibid, 204
8   
Ibid, 205
9   
Ibid, 207

319 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
Cumulative palimpsests 
“ A cumulative palimpsest is one in which the successive episodes of 
deposition, or layers of activity, remain superimposed one upon the 
other without loss of evidence, but are so re-worked and mixed together 
that it is difficult or impossible to separate them out into their original 
constituents. ”
7
This palimpsest is also most commonly referenced within ar -
chitectural discourse. The overlaid, simultaneous circumstance of 
coincident histories. This palimpsest is an exquisite entanglement of 
layers, imprint upon imprint, inviting distillation and interpretation.
Spatial palimpsests 
“…spatial palimpsests, a variant of the cumulative palimpsest but 
distinct from it and defined as a mixture of episodes that are spatially 
segregated but whose temporal relationships have become blurred and 
difficult to disentangle. … the boundary between cumulative and spatial 
palimpsests is not a sharp one. Both may be characterized by a variety 
of locations of activity and by different degrees of spatial and tempo-
ral integrity. The key difference is rather one of geographical scale. ”
8
Indeed, in the experience of a building we see, feel and en-
counter the building in radically different ways over time (or even 
in a relatively short period of time). The time of day and year al-
ters the disposition and character of light entering the spaces, 
yielding very distinct experiences, impressions and memories.
The very experience of architecture emerges as a multi-palimp-
sestic condition, altered by time, materiality, season, the weathering 
of surface, and cosmetic changes to a space. Each experience is in-
fluenced by a previous experience, mood, expectation, or pre-con-
ception. The randomness of the immediate environment shapes one’s 
memory: a nearby train, a car horn, a distant jackhammer, and/
or a passing conversation collide to form an intertwined hetero-
topic spatial/aural context. Context sways perception, and percep-
tion emerges from an ever-changing palimpsest of experience.
Temporal palimpsests 
“ A temporal palimpsest is an assemblage of materials and objects that 
form part of the same deposit but are of different ages and ‘life’ spans. 
On first description this sounds like a cumulative palimpsest by another 
name. However, in the cumulative palimpsest, the association of ob-
jects of different ages is really an aggregation due to the effect of mixing 
together what were originally distinct episodes of activity or deposition. ”
9
Think of temporal events such as rain, snowfall, wind acting upon 
7   
Ibid, 204
8   
Ibid, 205
9   
Ibid, 207

Correspondences
and altering either immediately, temporarily or slowly over time the 
geography of a place.
Palimpsests of meaning 
“ A palimpsest of meaning can be defined as the succession of 
meanings acquired by a particular object, or group of objects, 
as a result of the different uses, contexts of use and associa-
tions to which they have been exposed from the original mo-
ment of manufacture to their current resting place… ”
“…whether in the ground, a museum, a textbook, an intellec-
tual discourse, or indeed as objects still in circulation and use. It is 
distinct from all the other types of palimpsests so far discussed in 
that it can apply to an individual object, and because it brings us 
more obviously into the domain of subjective time experience. ”
10
In Peter Eisenman’s forward to Aldo Rossi’s Architecture of the 
City he discusses Rossi’s notion of specific place, or locus: “…thus, 
while the locus is a site which can accommodate a series of events, 
it also in itself constitutes an event… Buildings may be signs of 
events that have occurred on a specific site; and this threefold re-
lationship of site, event and sign becomes a characteristic of urban 
artifacts. Hence, the locus may be said to be the place on which ar-
chitecture or form can be imprinted. Architecture gives form to the 
singularity of place, and it is this specific form that the locus persists 
through many changes, particularly transformation of function…
This relationship suggests a different limit to history. History 
exists so long as an object is in use; that is, so long as a form relates 
to its original function. However, when form and function are sev-
ered, and only form remains vital, history shifts into the realm of 
memory. When history ends, memory begins. …History becomes 
to be known through the relationship between a collective memo-
ry of events, the singularity of place (locus solus), and the sign of the 
place as expressed in form. ” And Eisenman goes on to say, “…the new 
time of architecture… is that of memory, which replaces history. ”
11
The palimpsest of meaning intersects with the palimpsest of 
history. History pivots to memory and over time we witness a scrib-
ing of events upon the place. This is the palimpsestic overlay of 
events; the creation of memory. The process is a kind of memory 
machine. And the production of architecture (the process of mak-
ing architecture) references one’s history, as if frozen in time, and 
coupled with one’s memory of events, of discourse, of experiences. 
Finally, thesis is from late Middle English (via late Latin from 
Greek), literally ‘placing, a proposition’, from the root of tithenai ‘to 
10   
Ibid, 208
11   
Rossi and Eisnman, The Architecture of the 
City, 7

321 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
and altering either immediately, temporarily or slowly over time the 
geography of a place.
Palimpsests of meaning 
“ A palimpsest of meaning can be defined as the succession of 
meanings acquired by a particular object, or group of objects, 
as a result of the different uses, contexts of use and associa-
tions to which they have been exposed from the original mo-
ment of manufacture to their current resting place… ”
“…whether in the ground, a museum, a textbook, an intellec-
tual discourse, or indeed as objects still in circulation and use. It is 
distinct from all the other types of palimpsests so far discussed in 
that it can apply to an individual object, and because it brings us 
more obviously into the domain of subjective time experience. ”
10
In Peter Eisenman’s forward to Aldo Rossi’s Architecture of the 
City he discusses Rossi’s notion of specific place, or locus: “…thus, 
while the locus is a site which can accommodate a series of events, 
it also in itself constitutes an event… Buildings may be signs of 
events that have occurred on a specific site; and this threefold re-
lationship of site, event and sign becomes a characteristic of urban 
artifacts. Hence, the locus may be said to be the place on which ar-
chitecture or form can be imprinted. Architecture gives form to the 
singularity of place, and it is this specific form that the locus persists 
through many changes, particularly transformation of function…
This relationship suggests a different limit to history. History 
exists so long as an object is in use; that is, so long as a form relates 
to its original function. However, when form and function are sev-
ered, and only form remains vital, history shifts into the realm of 
memory. When history ends, memory begins. …History becomes 
to be known through the relationship between a collective memo-
ry of events, the singularity of place (locus solus), and the sign of the 
place as expressed in form. ” And Eisenman goes on to say, “…the new 
time of architecture… is that of memory, which replaces history. ”
11
The palimpsest of meaning intersects with the palimpsest of 
history. History pivots to memory and over time we witness a scrib-
ing of events upon the place. This is the palimpsestic overlay of 
events; the creation of memory. The process is a kind of memory 
machine. And the production of architecture (the process of mak-
ing architecture) references one’s history, as if frozen in time, and 
coupled with one’s memory of events, of discourse, of experiences. 
Finally, thesis is from late Middle English (via late Latin from 
Greek), literally ‘placing, a proposition’, from the root of tithenai ‘to 
10   
Ibid, 208
11   
Rossi and Eisnman, The Architecture of the 
City, 7

Correspondences
place’.
12
 To place; to make a place; a place as thesis. The thesis of 
the Marfa Studio is to make place, or rather, an essence of place. 
And surely a sense of place drew Donald Judd to West Texas.
CONTEXTUAL CORRESPONDENCE
Travel to Marfa is something of a pilgrimage and, in this instance, 
intended to challenge and strip away the familiar surroundings of the 
students’ immediate context. In other words, to experience the near 
opposite of the known. In this circumstance, the known is the lush, wet, 
humid landscape of Florida. With 1350 miles of coastline, a fragile karst 
topographic underlay, and rising sea levels, Florida has both a tempo-
ral and ironically primordial character. It is primarily a landscape of 
canopy, shade and shadows interwoven with highways, a mish-mash of 
architectural pre and post war development, and various water bodies 
collectively blanketing urbanized regions in endless sprawl. It is a state 
defined through tourism, violent storms, the temporal, and the mythical.
Much of Florida is delineated by the liminal line between water and 
land; the sunrise and sunset of east and west; and the development and 
demographics of north and south. In many ways it is two states, rural 
and urban, wealthy and not, new settlers and increasingly rare natives. Its 
strangeness revels in contradictions and mis-alignments. The east-west 
disposition of the Interstate 4 corridor bisects the state north to south. 
It is said the Interstate 4 corridor decides national elections, such is the 
diversity of opinion, race, ethnicity and culture. The corridor is a place 
of fantasy and the fantastic, home to mass tourism, amusement parks, 
miniature worlds, and filmic narratives retold as themed rides. De-
funct attractions are modern day ruins as generations of entertainment 
venues die and are reborn only to die again. It is a state both of youth 
and exuberance, yet, for the elderly, serves also as God’s waiting room. 
Our contextual correspondence is one of opposition and con-
tradiction. Context means to weave together, from the late Mid-
dle English (denoting the construction of a text): from Latin con-
textus, from con- ‘together’ + texere ‘to weave’.
13
 Context is equally 
commonplace and elusive; multifarious and particular; concrete 
and abstract. The familiar juxtaposed by the foreign. [8]
PLACE AND SPACE
In his celebrated writings, Christian Norberg-Schulz speaks at length 
of genius loci, the spirit of place that we consider in the correspon-
dence between these apparent opposing landscapes. Although vastly 
12   
Oxford dictionaries, online
13   
Ibid, online
8 Provost project
8b
8a

323 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
place’.
12
 To place; to make a place; a place as thesis. The thesis of 
the Marfa Studio is to make place, or rather, an essence of place. 
And surely a sense of place drew Donald Judd to West Texas.
CONTEXTUAL CORRESPONDENCE
Travel to Marfa is something of a pilgrimage and, in this instance, 
intended to challenge and strip away the familiar surroundings of the 
students’ immediate context. In other words, to experience the near 
opposite of the known. In this circumstance, the known is the lush, wet, 
humid landscape of Florida. With 1350 miles of coastline, a fragile karst 
topographic underlay, and rising sea levels, Florida has both a tempo-
ral and ironically primordial character. It is primarily a landscape of 
canopy, shade and shadows interwoven with highways, a mish-mash of 
architectural pre and post war development, and various water bodies 
collectively blanketing urbanized regions in endless sprawl. It is a state 
defined through tourism, violent storms, the temporal, and the mythical.
Much of Florida is delineated by the liminal line between water and 
land; the sunrise and sunset of east and west; and the development and 
demographics of north and south. In many ways it is two states, rural 
and urban, wealthy and not, new settlers and increasingly rare natives. Its 
strangeness revels in contradictions and mis-alignments. The east-west 
disposition of the Interstate 4 corridor bisects the state north to south. 
It is said the Interstate 4 corridor decides national elections, such is the 
diversity of opinion, race, ethnicity and culture. The corridor is a place 
of fantasy and the fantastic, home to mass tourism, amusement parks, 
miniature worlds, and filmic narratives retold as themed rides. De-
funct attractions are modern day ruins as generations of entertainment 
venues die and are reborn only to die again. It is a state both of youth 
and exuberance, yet, for the elderly, serves also as God’s waiting room. 
Our contextual correspondence is one of opposition and con-
tradiction. Context means to weave together, from the late Mid-
dle English (denoting the construction of a text): from Latin con-
textus, from con- ‘together’ + texere ‘to weave’.
13
 Context is equally 
commonplace and elusive; multifarious and particular; concrete 
and abstract. The familiar juxtaposed by the foreign. [8]
PLACE AND SPACE
In his celebrated writings, Christian Norberg-Schulz speaks at length 
of genius loci, the spirit of place that we consider in the correspon-
dence between these apparent opposing landscapes. Although vastly 
12   
Oxford dictionaries, online
13   
Ibid, online

Correspondences
different in climate, landscape and altitude, Florida and West Texas align 
through certain rubrics of place, as defined by Norberg-Schulz: “…it is 
an existential concept which denotes the experience of meanings. ” 
14
His four modes of understanding natural systems offer an existential 
reading of landscape as idea more so than an object or artifact:
15
Things: The forces of the natural landscape are related to concrete natural 
elements or things.
The Sun: An abstraction of the cosmic order, as defined by the presence of 
the sun as form giver and shapeshifter.
Character: The character of place, tied to human presence
Light: We understand light as a thing, an idea, and a symbol. In religious 
traditions, light is linked directly to the spirit, Devine presence, and a 
deep cosmic order.
Norberg-Schulz provides a typology of natural landscapes: Roman-
tic, Cosmic, Classical and Complex. Florida is a romantic landscape: 
“The sky is hardly experienced as a total hemisphere but is narrowed 
in between the contours of trees and rocks, and is moreover contin-
uously modified by clouds. ”
16
 The dense canopy of Florida’s interior 
is near primal, filtering light, creating shadow, and providing respite 
from the relentless sun and humidity. The sky is surely fast moving as 
Atlantic and Gulf winds crisscross the state yielding a complex and 
temporal sky pattern. The earth is ever-present: we sense, feel, smell 
and all but taste the richness of the earth. Interestingly, Norberg-Schulz 
specifically defines the Nordic Romantic landscape as “chthonic”; 
of the earth; belonging to or inhabiting the underworld.
17
 Florida’s 
underworld quickly shifts from a shallow layer of earth to a water 
world of aquifers, underground caves, rivers and fragile limestone. 
The West Texas landscape is Norberg-Schulz’s cosmic land-
scape: “In the desert the complexities of our concrete-life world are 
reduced to a few, simple phenomena…In the desert, thus, the earth 
does not offer man a sufficient existential foothold. It does not con-
tain individual places, but forms a continuous neutral ground. ”
18
 The 
West Texas sky is defined by the sun and, alternatively, by the moon 
and stars. It is a place of absolutes, at times formless. Norberg-Schulz 
further notes its existential character through the Arabic proverb: 
“The further you go into the desert, the closer you come to God. ”
19
 
As with the reciprocity of sun and shadow, Florida’s romantic land-
scape offers counterbalance to the cosmic landscape of West Texas.
14   
Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci, 23
15   
Ibid, 24-32
16   
Ibid, 42
17   
Ibid, 42
18   
Ibid, 45
19   
Ibid, 45

325 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
different in climate, landscape and altitude, Florida and West Texas align 
through certain rubrics of place, as defined by Norberg-Schulz: “…it is 
an existential concept which denotes the experience of meanings. ” 
14
His four modes of understanding natural systems offer an existential 
reading of landscape as idea more so than an object or artifact:
15
Things: The forces of the natural landscape are related to concrete natural 
elements or things.
The Sun: An abstraction of the cosmic order, as defined by the presence of 
the sun as form giver and shapeshifter.
Character: The character of place, tied to human presence
Light: We understand light as a thing, an idea, and a symbol. In religious 
traditions, light is linked directly to the spirit, Devine presence, and a 
deep cosmic order.
Norberg-Schulz provides a typology of natural landscapes: Roman-
tic, Cosmic, Classical and Complex. Florida is a romantic landscape: 
“The sky is hardly experienced as a total hemisphere but is narrowed 
in between the contours of trees and rocks, and is moreover contin-
uously modified by clouds. ”
16
 The dense canopy of Florida’s interior 
is near primal, filtering light, creating shadow, and providing respite 
from the relentless sun and humidity. The sky is surely fast moving as 
Atlantic and Gulf winds crisscross the state yielding a complex and 
temporal sky pattern. The earth is ever-present: we sense, feel, smell 
and all but taste the richness of the earth. Interestingly, Norberg-Schulz 
specifically defines the Nordic Romantic landscape as “chthonic”; 
of the earth; belonging to or inhabiting the underworld.
17
 Florida’s 
underworld quickly shifts from a shallow layer of earth to a water 
world of aquifers, underground caves, rivers and fragile limestone. 
The West Texas landscape is Norberg-Schulz’s cosmic land-
scape: “In the desert the complexities of our concrete-life world are 
reduced to a few, simple phenomena…In the desert, thus, the earth 
does not offer man a sufficient existential foothold. It does not con-
tain individual places, but forms a continuous neutral ground. ”
18
 The 
West Texas sky is defined by the sun and, alternatively, by the moon 
and stars. It is a place of absolutes, at times formless. Norberg-Schulz 
further notes its existential character through the Arabic proverb: 
“The further you go into the desert, the closer you come to God. ”
19
 
As with the reciprocity of sun and shadow, Florida’s romantic land-
scape offers counterbalance to the cosmic landscape of West Texas.
14   
Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci, 23
15   
Ibid, 24-32
16   
Ibid, 42
17   
Ibid, 42
18   
Ibid, 45
19   
Ibid, 45

Correspondences
9 Provost project
10 Provost project under construction
9
10
The studio format is tripartite with an epilogue 
that also serves as a preface.
Part 1  From Artifact to Palimpsest
Part 2  The Provost
Part 3  Fiat Lux
Part 4  Epilogue/Preface

327 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
THE MARFA STUDIO FORMAT: THE FAMILIAR MADE 
UNFAMILIAR AND THE SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF
Part 1 / From Artifact to Palimpsest
We begin with the familiar and strive to render it unfamiliar. The stu-
dent is asked to select an artifact of some personal significance. These 
items included a chess set, cufflinks, photographs and sewing pat-
terns. The artifact was represented and transformed through a series 
of hand-made drawings. It was redrawn, shifting scales and modes of 
representation. The nature of the drawing emerges as a muti-layered 
interpretation of the original artifact. It is a real time palimpsest assem-
bled through scalar shifts, juxtapositions, interpretations and re-inter-
pretations. The resulting document is a densely layered map of territo-
rial overlays resulting in a two-dimensional, yet spatial palimpsest. 
Part 2 / The Provost: the Overseer 
The resultant diagram is used to construct the Provost, a speculative 
volumetric construction that serves as a vehicle to determine and 
experiment with “the architectural edge” . Bounds mark the location of 
space and edge defines its character. The Provost is a 24” square cubic 
volume with only three requirements: one vertical surface must be 2” 
thick and built with an opaque material; an intersecting vertical surface 
must be a thin, tectonic assembly partially constructed with Plexiglas. 
Any sense of ground must float within the 24” volume. The intersection 
of thick and thin, transparent and opaque, tectonic and stereotomic force 
a didactic correspondence, a material, spatial and experiential dialogue 
programmed through a minimal, even liminal, condition of occupancy. 
The scale of one inch equals 1.5 feet yields a 36-foot scalar volumetric 
cube [10].The program is simply a place of arrival and exchange; pur -
posely left open-ended to promote a sense of speculation and poetic 
habitation. The artifact drawing exercise is used as a programing tool 
to develop a spatial logic within the confines of the Provost. [9-10]
Curricular Correspondence
The University of Texas at Austin, located in the state’s capitol city, 
lies 429 miles east of Marfa. In the mid 1950’s the School of Architec-
ture at UT saw the convergence of another set of giants, though at the 
time, no one could foresee the significance of this gathered faculty.
Under the guidance of School Director Harwell Harris, Ber-
nhard Hoesli, Colin Rowe, John Hejduk and Robert Slutzky con-
verged in the Texas hill country and commenced construction of 
a new architectural pedagogy. Impeccably detailed in Alexander 

Correspondences
Caragonne’s, The Texas Rangers, Notes from an Architectural Under -
ground, the curricular map of the architecture school both borrows 
from and rejects the trappings of both the beaux arts and modernist 
educational traditions. History and precedent were revalued, context 
reconsidered and architectural space forged ahead of architectur-
al form. An overlay of the fashionable and influential gestalt psy-
chology privileged visual perception and paved the way for “seeing” 
architectural space in two and three dimensional constructs.
20
The advent of the deeply influential “nine square grid” proj-
ect established a Cartesian point grid providing formal structure 
while inviting interpretation of rules and formal order. The nine 
square exercise privileges plan over section and presents a Mie-
sian inspired space of infinite expanse along the x and y axes. He-
jduk eventually interprets this in a more literal column and beam 
structure. We see this through his five experimental Texas Houses 
developed during his brief tenure in Austin.
21
 There is we learn, an 
authentic sense of discovery and invention through pedagogy.
“Hejduk thus began a career in teaching with a pattern that 
would repeat itself over the years, teaching others not what he 
“knew” but instead what he was in the process of discovering. ”
22
This nine square exercise is later extruded to an 18-square grid, 
thickened to permit an increasingly complex spatial order through a 
more animated section. Eventually a 27-square grid, essentially a cubic 
volume, makes the exercise far less two dimensional than the original 
nine square project. The nine square generated any number of related 
beginning design exercises: the kit of parts, the cube, the space box, 
and so forth.
23
 The Provost exercise continues this legacy, not as an 
introductory exercise, but as a project asking the student to “begin 
again” , to revisit fundamental relationships, to invent program as ex-
perience, to re-consider tutorials and re-shape strategies of making.
Perhaps the most important feature of the nine-square exercise and 
its myriad descendants is the clear sense of order that can be quickly 
acted upon and critiqued. Of course the nine-square references Le Cor-
busier’s free plan and Mies van der Rhoe’s precise grid based plans and 
universal space, but it also echoes the powerful symmetry of classical ar-
chitecture. The addition of a line or, in three dimensions, a plane, quickly 
modifies the order of the scheme and creates a language of representation 
and a means of discourse. Alterations and additions induce asymmetry, 
tension, re-centering, and re-ordering through a more complex tartan 
grid. The immediacy and accessibility of the nine-square inspired exercis-
es is essential to creating a place to begin making architectural decisions.
 
20   
Caragonne, The Texas Rangers, 5-12
21   
Ibid, 190-194
22   
Ibid, 192
23   
The variations of the nine-square project 
have been developed at myriad institutions by 
countless faculty.

329 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
Caragonne’s, The Texas Rangers, Notes from an Architectural Under -
ground, the curricular map of the architecture school both borrows 
from and rejects the trappings of both the beaux arts and modernist 
educational traditions. History and precedent were revalued, context 
reconsidered and architectural space forged ahead of architectur-
al form. An overlay of the fashionable and influential gestalt psy-
chology privileged visual perception and paved the way for “seeing” 
architectural space in two and three dimensional constructs.
20
The advent of the deeply influential “nine square grid” proj-
ect established a Cartesian point grid providing formal structure 
while inviting interpretation of rules and formal order. The nine 
square exercise privileges plan over section and presents a Mie-
sian inspired space of infinite expanse along the x and y axes. He-
jduk eventually interprets this in a more literal column and beam 
structure. We see this through his five experimental Texas Houses 
developed during his brief tenure in Austin.
21
 There is we learn, an 
authentic sense of discovery and invention through pedagogy.
“Hejduk thus began a career in teaching with a pattern that 
would repeat itself over the years, teaching others not what he 
“knew” but instead what he was in the process of discovering. ”
22
This nine square exercise is later extruded to an 18-square grid, 
thickened to permit an increasingly complex spatial order through a 
more animated section. Eventually a 27-square grid, essentially a cubic 
volume, makes the exercise far less two dimensional than the original 
nine square project. The nine square generated any number of related 
beginning design exercises: the kit of parts, the cube, the space box, 
and so forth.
23
 The Provost exercise continues this legacy, not as an 
introductory exercise, but as a project asking the student to “begin 
again” , to revisit fundamental relationships, to invent program as ex-
perience, to re-consider tutorials and re-shape strategies of making.
Perhaps the most important feature of the nine-square exercise and 
its myriad descendants is the clear sense of order that can be quickly 
acted upon and critiqued. Of course the nine-square references Le Cor-
busier’s free plan and Mies van der Rhoe’s precise grid based plans and 
universal space, but it also echoes the powerful symmetry of classical ar-
chitecture. The addition of a line or, in three dimensions, a plane, quickly 
modifies the order of the scheme and creates a language of representation 
and a means of discourse. Alterations and additions induce asymmetry, 
tension, re-centering, and re-ordering through a more complex tartan 
grid. The immediacy and accessibility of the nine-square inspired exercis-
es is essential to creating a place to begin making architectural decisions.
 
20   
Caragonne, The Texas Rangers, 5-12
21   
Ibid, 190-194
22   
Ibid, 192
23   
The variations of the nine-square project 
have been developed at myriad institutions by 
countless faculty.

Correspondences
Part 3 / Fiat Lux: Light catalogued and cast
Marfa’s high altitude and intense sunlight yields a dramatic play of 
light and shadow. Students are asked to assemble an archival cat-
alog of light through carefully composed photographs. Vincenzo 
Scamozzi’s 16th century treatise, L ’Idea dell”Architettura Universale 
serves as a point of departure as he outlines six categories of light:
24
Intense: from direct sun on a clear day
Lively/perpendicular: as received in courtyards and domes
Horizontal, free: as received frontally or di-
agonally as in rooms or porticoes
Limited light: obstructed by a place’s narrowness, like a street
Secondary light: as it enters from an adjacent directly lit space
Minimal light: reflected
From the project outline:
“Each of Scamozzi’s light types depends on an encounter with an archi-
tectural body or space. In other words, the light is altered as it enters a 
space by first being interrupted (or gathered) by a roof, wall, or other sur-
face. The verbs are revelatory: light enters, is received, obstructed, reflect-
ed… The adjectives, intense, lively, horizontal, limited, secondary, mini-
mal, are likewise informative. Literature and poetry provide us with other 
descriptives: light can shake, pour, sputter, and flow; it can be caught; it 
can be false or deceiving, divine, ancient. It can affect the senses: it can 
blind and burn. Keep in mind we cannot perceive heavenly light indepen-
dent of its earthly twin, shadow, which gives rise to measure and time. ”
A palimpsest of light and shadow is digitally construct-
ed using overlaid images to collapse the temporal photograph-
ic documentation into a single frame. An accompanying narra-
tive describes the light quality of each image and, in turn, serves 
as a program for the construction of “light vessels” . [11]
The Vessels / Seriality and Light as Program
Inspired by Donald Judd’s Marfa works and guided by the afore-
mentioned light studies, students designed and cast (using plaster 
or concrete) a series of light vessels. Casting the artifact necessitates 
an inversion of spatial logic, a dance between solid and void. The 
casting of artifacts designed to capture the casting of shadows sug-
gests an intellectual correspondence between conception and con-
struction; light and surface; time and space. The vessels emerged 
as a serial assembly interacting through proximity, juxtaposition 
and locale, vis-à-vis, the registration of ground as datum. [12]
The vessels, through their cast forms, correspond and invert 
24   
Borys, “Lume Di Lume: A Theory of Light and 
Its Effects,” 7-8
11 Light/Shadow study
11

331 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
Part 3 / Fiat Lux: Light catalogued and cast
Marfa’s high altitude and intense sunlight yields a dramatic play of 
light and shadow. Students are asked to assemble an archival cat-
alog of light through carefully composed photographs. Vincenzo 
Scamozzi’s 16th century treatise, L ’Idea dell”Architettura Universale 
serves as a point of departure as he outlines six categories of light:
24
Intense: from direct sun on a clear day
Lively/perpendicular: as received in courtyards and domes
Horizontal, free: as received frontally or di-
agonally as in rooms or porticoes
Limited light: obstructed by a place’s narrowness, like a street
Secondary light: as it enters from an adjacent directly lit space
Minimal light: reflected
From the project outline:
“Each of Scamozzi’s light types depends on an encounter with an archi-
tectural body or space. In other words, the light is altered as it enters a 
space by first being interrupted (or gathered) by a roof, wall, or other sur-
face. The verbs are revelatory: light enters, is received, obstructed, reflect-
ed… The adjectives, intense, lively, horizontal, limited, secondary, mini-
mal, are likewise informative. Literature and poetry provide us with other 
descriptives: light can shake, pour, sputter, and flow; it can be caught; it 
can be false or deceiving, divine, ancient. It can affect the senses: it can 
blind and burn. Keep in mind we cannot perceive heavenly light indepen-
dent of its earthly twin, shadow, which gives rise to measure and time. ”
A palimpsest of light and shadow is digitally construct-
ed using overlaid images to collapse the temporal photograph-
ic documentation into a single frame. An accompanying narra-
tive describes the light quality of each image and, in turn, serves 
as a program for the construction of “light vessels” . [11]
The Vessels / Seriality and Light as Program
Inspired by Donald Judd’s Marfa works and guided by the afore-
mentioned light studies, students designed and cast (using plaster 
or concrete) a series of light vessels. Casting the artifact necessitates 
an inversion of spatial logic, a dance between solid and void. The 
casting of artifacts designed to capture the casting of shadows sug-
gests an intellectual correspondence between conception and con-
struction; light and surface; time and space. The vessels emerged 
as a serial assembly interacting through proximity, juxtaposition 
and locale, vis-à-vis, the registration of ground as datum. [12]
The vessels, through their cast forms, correspond and invert 
24   
Borys, “Lume Di Lume: A Theory of Light and 
Its Effects,” 7-8

Correspondences
the Provost project with its roots in the tectonic, Cartesian world. 
The vessels, each in character a more-or-less cubic volume, revis-
it the figure/ground interplay of space and form, so appreciated 
by the Gestalt theorists (literally from the German Gestalt, ‘form, 
shape’)
25
. From some distance, the vessels revisit the nine-square 
project of the 1950s without the strict formal order and, instead, 
promote the emergence of space over the superimposition of log-
ic. The ensemble of vessels has a somewhat urban character, mark-
ing negative space both between objects and within each artifact. 
Forms negotiates between one another for presence and relevance. 
The serial nature of the exercise echoes Judd’s aluminum boxes and 
concrete landscape frames. Seriality supports the inherent repetitive and 
redundant nature of architectural education. To be made redundant is, 
in the most literal sense, to be cast off or superfluous. Yet, redundan-
cy is also rhetorical, repetitive, and excessive. Pedagogy is inherently 
rhetorical, as is true with any language including the language of archi-
tecture. We address composition, technique, and expression in order to 
deliver, convince and argue for an architectural (formal/spatial) propo-
sition. Bricks can, and indeed, must be as rhetorical and convincing as 
words. Space is expressive, nuanced, figurative and finally, negotiated.
Part 4 / Epilogue/Preface/Toward Thesis
The last portion of the studio is devoted to each participant’s the-
sis-borne agenda. While the first three design exercises reveal ideas and 
strategies, the final project brings these predilections and sensibilities 
directly to one’s research and design work. This project is the Janusean 
threshold between design studio and thesis proposal; between thesis 
project and beginning again in the professional realm. Thesis projects 
(remember, “placing a proposition”) in an academic setting are invari-
ably ambitious, optimistic and even naive. Students dwell – as they 
should – in an ideal circumstance of making, whereby an architectural 
proposal can address things extraordinary, complex, unfamiliar, person-
al, and even strange. Within the academy lies the hope of clarity. [13]
Historian Charles Jencks famously timed the death of modernism 
to the destruction of a single profoundly failed housing project. The 
demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe project surely marked a dark moment in 
the optimism of architecture as a social project. But was Jencks correct? 
The modern project, it seems, is alive and well. Students inherent a world 
littered with problems, shortages, threats and obstacles. It seems they 
often wish to create impact and offer concrete responses to often abstract 
problems; matters that are sometimes not so much solved as theorized.
In the exquisite essay, Weak Architecture, Ignasius Solà-Morales 
25   
Oxford dictionaries, online
12 Vessel project
12a
12b
12c
12d

333 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
the Provost project with its roots in the tectonic, Cartesian world. 
The vessels, each in character a more-or-less cubic volume, revis-
it the figure/ground interplay of space and form, so appreciated 
by the Gestalt theorists (literally from the German Gestalt, ‘form, 
shape’)
25
. From some distance, the vessels revisit the nine-square 
project of the 1950s without the strict formal order and, instead, 
promote the emergence of space over the superimposition of log-
ic. The ensemble of vessels has a somewhat urban character, mark-
ing negative space both between objects and within each artifact. 
Forms negotiates between one another for presence and relevance. 
The serial nature of the exercise echoes Judd’s aluminum boxes and 
concrete landscape frames. Seriality supports the inherent repetitive and 
redundant nature of architectural education. To be made redundant is, 
in the most literal sense, to be cast off or superfluous. Yet, redundan-
cy is also rhetorical, repetitive, and excessive. Pedagogy is inherently 
rhetorical, as is true with any language including the language of archi-
tecture. We address composition, technique, and expression in order to 
deliver, convince and argue for an architectural (formal/spatial) propo-
sition. Bricks can, and indeed, must be as rhetorical and convincing as 
words. Space is expressive, nuanced, figurative and finally, negotiated.
Part 4 / Epilogue/Preface/Toward Thesis
The last portion of the studio is devoted to each participant’s the-
sis-borne agenda. While the first three design exercises reveal ideas and 
strategies, the final project brings these predilections and sensibilities 
directly to one’s research and design work. This project is the Janusean 
threshold between design studio and thesis proposal; between thesis 
project and beginning again in the professional realm. Thesis projects 
(remember, “placing a proposition”) in an academic setting are invari-
ably ambitious, optimistic and even naive. Students dwell – as they 
should – in an ideal circumstance of making, whereby an architectural 
proposal can address things extraordinary, complex, unfamiliar, person-
al, and even strange. Within the academy lies the hope of clarity. [13]
Historian Charles Jencks famously timed the death of modernism 
to the destruction of a single profoundly failed housing project. The 
demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe project surely marked a dark moment in 
the optimism of architecture as a social project. But was Jencks correct? 
The modern project, it seems, is alive and well. Students inherent a world 
littered with problems, shortages, threats and obstacles. It seems they 
often wish to create impact and offer concrete responses to often abstract 
problems; matters that are sometimes not so much solved as theorized.
In the exquisite essay, Weak Architecture, Ignasius Solà-Morales 
25   
Oxford dictionaries, online

Correspondences
critiques architecture’s instrumental monumentality and insistence 
upon the self-definition of the monumental as physical permanence 
(per Rossi). Solà-Morales calls for another kind of monumental state-
ment, one steeped instead in memory. In his words, “…as a vestige, as 
the tremulous clangor of the bell that reverberates after it has ceased to 
ring; as that which is constituted as pure residuum, as recollection” .
26
Solà-Morales concludes his essay in search 
of another kind of permanence:
“In contrast, the notion of monument I have sought to put forward 
here is bound up with the lingering resonance of poetry after it has 
been heard, with the recollection of architecture after it has been seen. 
This is the strength of weakness; that strength which art and archi-
tecture are capable of producing precisely when they adopt a posture 
that is not aggressive and dominating, but tangential and weak. ”
27
The architectural thesis an an academic endeavor has fallen out of 
favor in many institutions. The speculative, open-ended thesis has been 
displaced by various vehicles including the terminal project, a carefully 
orchestrated display of competence, the research studio, echoing larger 
university investigative agendas, or simply a final design studio of no 
particular focus, except providing a proficient, if modest, conclusion. We 
see a renewed interest in the architecture of crisis, privileging focused 
problem solving over broad conceptualization. Resiliency, sustainabili-
ty, housing, and addiction serve such a taxonomy. The academic thesis 
project is a labor intensive endeavor, requiring a committed faculty 
coupled with a curriculum designed to anticipate the leap into thesis 
through a runway of research and critical thinking opportunities.
As the academic thesis binds statement with problem and proposi-
tion with project, the exercise might well learn from the notion of weak-
ness proposed by Solà-Morales. Architecture is an instrument of jurisdic-
tion. We guide movement, stake territory and, dare I say, build walls. The 
simple act of delineating space necessitates some degree of control. And 
the control of boundaries, edges, and spaces is inherently political. Hege-
mony is integral to the act of making. We so often seek an answer when 
we are actually in search of a question. Studies of architecture might 
channel deeply personal sensibilities and the desire for answers into 
architectural proposals that interrogate, doubt and ultimately contribute 
to a larger social project of porous intellectual boundaries contribut-
ing to a multifarious, palimpsestic query of the very discipline itself.
26   
Solà-Morales, Differences : Topographies of 
Contemporary Architecture, 71
27   
Ibid, 71
13  Thesis Palimpsest (Residue of Transformation, 
NYC)
13

335 / Pedagogical Palimpsests and Cosmic Landscapes
critiques architecture’s instrumental monumentality and insistence 
upon the self-definition of the monumental as physical permanence 
(per Rossi). Solà-Morales calls for another kind of monumental state-
ment, one steeped instead in memory. In his words, “…as a vestige, as 
the tremulous clangor of the bell that reverberates after it has ceased to 
ring; as that which is constituted as pure residuum, as recollection” .
26
Solà-Morales concludes his essay in search 
of another kind of permanence:
“In contrast, the notion of monument I have sought to put forward 
here is bound up with the lingering resonance of poetry after it has 
been heard, with the recollection of architecture after it has been seen. 
This is the strength of weakness; that strength which art and archi-
tecture are capable of producing precisely when they adopt a posture 
that is not aggressive and dominating, but tangential and weak. ”
27
The architectural thesis an an academic endeavor has fallen out of 
favor in many institutions. The speculative, open-ended thesis has been 
displaced by various vehicles including the terminal project, a carefully 
orchestrated display of competence, the research studio, echoing larger 
university investigative agendas, or simply a final design studio of no 
particular focus, except providing a proficient, if modest, conclusion. We 
see a renewed interest in the architecture of crisis, privileging focused 
problem solving over broad conceptualization. Resiliency, sustainabili-
ty, housing, and addiction serve such a taxonomy. The academic thesis 
project is a labor intensive endeavor, requiring a committed faculty 
coupled with a curriculum designed to anticipate the leap into thesis 
through a runway of research and critical thinking opportunities.
As the academic thesis binds statement with problem and proposi-
tion with project, the exercise might well learn from the notion of weak-
ness proposed by Solà-Morales. Architecture is an instrument of jurisdic-
tion. We guide movement, stake territory and, dare I say, build walls. The 
simple act of delineating space necessitates some degree of control. And 
the control of boundaries, edges, and spaces is inherently political. Hege-
mony is integral to the act of making. We so often seek an answer when 
we are actually in search of a question. Studies of architecture might 
channel deeply personal sensibilities and the desire for answers into 
architectural proposals that interrogate, doubt and ultimately contribute 
to a larger social project of porous intellectual boundaries contribut-
ing to a multifarious, palimpsestic query of the very discipline itself.
26   
Solà-Morales, Differences : Topographies of 
Contemporary Architecture, 71
27   
Ibid, 71

Correspondences

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