Offramp 18
Summer 2021
Public/s

The public is not monolithic.

Publics are created, promoted, excluded, and denied - sharing a common name but unbalanced in practice. Publics are defined by positions of power.

Publics affirm consensus, relevance, and accessibility. Publics are homogenizing, idiosyncratic, and selective. Publics determine positions of power.

Publics emerge, submerge, coalesce, and disperse across places, platforms, cities, and territories. Publics require space.

Where are publics formed and what are the implications of making publics?

Contributors

Daniel Horowitz, Emily Pellicano and Carlo Sturken, Matthew Ridgeway, Michael Benedikt, Sandi Hilal & Reza Salehi, Seymour Polatin, Valeria Ospital, Vivian Charlesworth and Tanita Enderes and Ben Evans, Wesley Evans

Offramp 17
Fall 2020
Art(i)fact

ar·ti·fact

/ˈärdəfakt/

This issue aims to explore artifacts from a disciplinary approach, both as an objective and subjective matter, an artifact that could be understood not only as a Fact but also as the state of the Art. Critical questions are raised here regarding the position of matters of fact in architectural history, philosophy, and design. In our discipline, we constantly “build” intellectual and concrete artifacts, which not only brings the physical or digital object into existence but also the discourses built around it.

If facts imply certainty and probabilistic assurance while design signifies an act of subjectivity and speculation, does that make architecture more artifactual than factual? If the discipline rests on the aggregation of individual conceptualizations and beliefs, doesn’t that make it less empirical and more aesthetic? Is the intellectual collective consensus sufficient to constitute facts in the architectural discourse?

Contributors

John Cooper, Mariana Curti, Behnaz Farahi, Yara Feghali, Graham Harman, Marcelyn Gow, Karel Klein, Elena Manferdini, Fabián Marcaccio, Bruna Mori, Soledad Chamorro, Mohamed Badawi

Offramp 16
Summer 2019
Trauma

Contributors

Alejandra Avalos and Alan Rios, Curime Batliner, Lawrence Carlos, Joseph Di Matteo and Anna Hermann, Lawrence English, Ryan Gaston, Aurélie Hachez, Billie Howard and Andrew Chittenden, Tim Ivison and Julia Tcharfas, Norman M. Klein, Marine Lemarié, Kavior Moon, Lena Pozdnyakova, J Shyan Rahimi, Ainslee Alem Robson, Nicolas Stephan, Eldar Tagi, Benjamin Wiesgall

Untitled 1
Offramp 15
Spring/Summer 2018
Stuff

As we fling around the term “object” within architectural discourse, questioning its relationship to other things, perhaps it’s time to critically step back. Take a step back and look at all the stuff we have accumulated.

Stuff—the name we use to describe the indescribable, unspecific, imprecise—encompasses our overwhelming inability to consider things individually. However, stuff is not things. Stuff flattens things, it generalizes objects into a flat ontology and isn’t ashamed to admit it. Stuff is also versatile, and dimensional, in that it can collect miscellaneous entities across vast stretches of the universe in the simple use of any random adjective: Fun Stuff. Pink Stuff. That Stuff.

Stuff is unmeasurable, invisible. It can be matter, energy, space, collections, aggregates. Stuff can be old, new, borrowed, or blue. Stuff is inclusive and diverse. Stuff is microscopic and stuff is bigger than the universe. Stuff has smoky boundaries, stuff is shapeless. Stuff is everything and nothing.

Contributors

Marrikka Trotter, Jasmine Benyamin, Clark Thenhaus, Andrew Kovacs, Viola Ago, Erin and Ian Besler, Damjan Jovanovich, Claudia Wainer, Dylan Krueger, Yara Feghali

Protestors in Yemen
Offramp 14
Fall/Winter 2017
Crowds

‘The crowd’ can be understood as both object and experience: viewed from a distance, from above, as data, pressing in from all sides, pushing towards the exit, or up against the barricade. How to figure the crowd, and to what end, depends on the contingency of where one stands. Variously identified as the population, the masses, or the multitude, the crowd remains an urgent category of contemporary aesthetics and politics, yet is often undervalued in architectural discourse today.

If social thought at the turn of the twentieth century understood the crowd as a figure to be feared and suppressed, we now speak of both ‘crowd intelligence’ and ‘smart cities’ as a new data-driven optimism towards the crowd and its algorithmic management. Politically transformative and spatially ambiguous but increasingly measurable, the crowd is the client, the brief, and the site: the universal basic datum of mass culture and contemporary urbanism.

Contributors

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Kyle Hovenkotter and Jake Matatyaou, João Victor Navarrete, Yasamin Fathi, Alejandro Hernandez Galvez, Peter Trummer, Frank YT Chen, Mikiko Takasago, Ryan Scavnicky, Nicholas Korody, Graham Harman.

Bh07 Png File Offramp Copy
Offramp 13
Spring/Summer 2017
Guise

As our lifestyles become more immersive, we are increasingly less aware of our congenital modes of experience. The ubiquity of digital technology has rearranged and restructured these modes, simultaneously creating illusive, yet palpable relationships to one another and our mechanisms of interaction. Our unprecedented access to the Internet, enables us to consume news, images, and information (both legitimate and illegitimate) rapidly. As a result, we interact with media superficially, obligated to instantly accept or reject the outward appearance of things in the form of ‘likes’ and emojis. This commodification of form and image has profound implications for the discipline; in the way we produce, discuss, and represent architecture. Offramp 13: Guise includes essays and projects that reflect on the oscillation between observing what is immediately perceivable and contemplating the indexicality of its construction.

Contributors

Michael Young, Ferda Kolatan, Florencia Pita, Marcelyn Gow, Jia Gu, David Eskenazi, Keith Marks, Garet Ammerman, Matthew Lopez, Pierce Myers, Andrew Goodhouse, Albert Ferré, Todd Gannon, Marcelo Spina

Studies for Ida in a Picturesque Landscape #1
Offramp 12
Fall/Winter 2016
Tolerance

The essays and texts included in this issue examine the relationship architectural discourse has with other disciplines and the effects on and of architecture. By shedding light on these relationships, Offramp 12 establishes new frameworks through which to view projects seeking such aesthetic variation.

Contributors

Maya Alam, Mari Beltran, Graham Harman, Kallipoliti + Theodoridis, Ted Krueger, Elena Manferdini, Jason Payne, Michael Rotoni, Sehwail + Zimmermani, Martin Summers, Josh Taron

Ground
Offramp 11
Spring/Summer 2016
Ground

Would it be blasphemous to propose that contemporary discourse is over-saturated with discussions of architectural objects? Recent debates on the desirable qualities of objecthood--legibility, abstraction, and so on--appear to have reached an impasse. 

Contributors

Besler & Sons, Jennifer Bonner, Benjamin Flowers, Stephen Nova, Florencia Pita, Alexander Robinson, Carolyn Strauss, Neyran Turan, Nora Wendl, Tom Wiscombe

Xefirot Shenzhen 1
Offramp 10
Fall/Winter 2015
Useless

Offramp 10 seeks essays and projects questioning architecture’s alternatives for cultural value. What possibilities for form and program, what challenges for material and immaterial qualities reveal features re-thinking architecture’s purpose beyond use?

Contributors

Volkan Alkanoglu, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Kristy Balliet, Barbara Bestor, Elizabeth Keslacy, Alfie Koetter and Emmett Zeifman, Anthony Morey and Duygun Inal, Zachary Tate Porter, Shane Reiner-Rot, M. Casey Rehm

Fig 11
Offramp 9
Spring/Summer 2015
Lies

Granting that architectural representations are in themselves a form of truth, what do they actually represent? What is the nature of their plural truths? To what degrees do falsehood, deceit, fiction, and lies play in this analysis? These are some of the questions Offramp 09 sets out to ask.

Contributors

Laurel Broughton, Joe Day, Ramiro Diaz-Granados, Debbie Garcia, Perry Kulper, Bruna Mori, Kyle Miller, Roxy Paine, Pita + Bloom, John Southern, Uri Wegman, Michael Young