Architect confronts the recession

Author: Sam Dungan

Architect Andrew Corrigan '02.5, now 29 and working in Boston, gave a lecture on Monday, April 13, titled "A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Architecture in the Age of Uncertainty." In it, he discussed his experience after leaving Middlebury, as well as his thoughts on the role of architecture in the current recession.

For the past six years Corrigan has been globetrotting, working with architecture firms in North Carolina and attending Rice University in Houston for graduate school in architecture and design. He later moved to Copenhagen, where he worked with a Danish design firm, JDS, whose work reached as far as Taiwan.

In his lecture, Corrigan spoke of his experiences working abroad in Copenhagen with the firm JDS, headed by architect Julien de Smedt. He described the firm's architectural methods as "intelligent work that is built around a collaborative approach," explaining that if the firm were building a police station, they would make sure that they were working with a police expert.

Corrigan also explained the importance of architecture's function within the context and landscape in which buildings are designed. As an example of this, he cited the "twirl house" designed by JDS in Taiwan for the Next-Gene-20 housing design project. The final design features numerous crescent-shaped forms with grass roofs that are held together by a central pool. Corrigan explained that inspiration for this project arose out of paintings by contemporary artist Lucio Fontana, who cuts slits into his canvases to create an aesthetic suggesting that art is being pulled from the paintings. The "twirl house" expresses itself similarly by seeming to be a house pulled up from the lush mountains of Taiwan.

Besides a few residential projects, Corrigan has spent much time working with urban planning and design. He showed slides of how the firm he is currently working with, ORG, has been working with a small town in Belgium to create a more cohesive building scheme for their municipal buildings and common public spaces.

Corrigan's focus, however, was the importance of architecture in the recession. He addressed economically relevant issues, such as how local governments and cities should be spending stimulus package funding on public architectural projects. He cited the success of public works projects during the Great Depression by the Works Progress Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Corrigan argued that architects need to focus on small projects that are feasible and sustainable. He spoke of the current trend in mid-size American cities toward smaller, more goal-oriented public projects, which can promote economic growth and strengthen a community. As an example, Corrigan spoke of designing a transfer center in a city such as Concord, NH., where people traveling by bus could easily transfer to a train. Such a project would improve transit and invigorate the local economy.

Corrigan's views on architectural theory for the next few years, as the world fights through an economic recession, offered a refreshing view and a logical approach to what different sectors of our economy can do to encourage growth. Corrigan's ideas represent a liberal-arts way of problem solving that is greatly needed in a world that often seems one-dimensional. When the realm of architecture is so often flooded with celebrity projects and theoretical t