American Lines is an ongoing series of writings and visualizations suggesting data-driven drawing as a tool for situating objects of design and highlighting spatial analysis as a creative practice. See the latest interactive visualization - (built with Processing; requires Java)

Visit the American Lines page to VIEW THE FULL SERIES...

"Precious Isolation: A Pair of Invasive Species" is a large scale (125" X 55") infographic developed under "Landscapes of Quarantine" - a multi-disciplinary design studio directed by Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley exploring the spatial implications of quarantine.

Described by the curators: "The mobile infrastructure of perimeter defense and personal protection that allows the U.S. president to travel around the world is here compared to the climate-controlled environments of Plant Rescue Centers inside of which illegally imported plants secretly flourish. Endangered orchids and U.S. presidents alike are confined within hermetically sealed worlds, expensive microcosms cut off from their surroundings."

View the Precious Isolation panel HERE - (mouseover for detail)

Precious Isolation appeared in the resulting group exhibition at New York City's Storefront for Art and Architecture from March 10 - April 24, 2010. The exhibition was designed by Glen Cummings of MTWTF. Read the Storefront Newsprint here: (3MB PDF)

See photos from the opening.

A 2005 submission for Pamphlet Architecture No.31 focusing on the US/Mexico border:

The Cold War era conception of the border between the United States and Mexico is no longer valid. The two countries are now joined by a third, hybrid ecology accumulated along a shared political boundary and birthed by the processes of an uneasy embrace. The Borderland Sound is experiencing explosive growth, yet its hybrid nature goes largely unrecognized and unmanaged. Still maintained from Washington and Mexico City as a paired edge, it operates as a center.

Flying below the political radar, the cultural rhythms of the Borderland Sound have begun to align, but massive constructed asymmetries remain. Proposed here, is a recognition and repositioning of conditions on the ground – a more catalytic relationship with the manufacturing processes proliferated under NAFTA. Realignment requires a reconfiguring of customs policies to allow the smoother transborder movement of goods; an aggressive campaign to build water infrastructure to improve public health; and a research campaign to fill massive gaps in the water resource data for the Mexican side. The infrastructural crossfader is biased north.

View the full proposal here: (10MB PDF)

In exploring the role of architecture in conflict resolution, this (2004) master's thesis refrains from prescribing yet another edifice into the struggle for intermittent spatial sovereignty, and proposes a bottom-up architecture of creation, reconciliation, and social change through an exploration of the temporary and its traces. A study of contemporary Jerusalem reveals a tragic, labyrinthine sociopolitical situation whose solutions exist well beyond the reaches of conventional architecture. Yet it remains a problem of space.  Architecture is constantly at the forefront of the politics and the violence - the demolitions, new settlements, threatened mosques, and projected temples, are part of a constantly shifting landscape of spatial claims and disputed boundary. 

The thesis embraces the vehicle of Sustained Dialogue, an existing process of reconciliation in the Mideast context, which, as yet, lacks a physical trace in the environment. In the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a register of the persistent momentum of Sustained Dialogue’s subversive event space can be equally as significant as the internal processes of the meetings, and potentially catalytic of further dialogue and positive change. The thesis speculates on a series of tools for the making/marking of urban spaces that extend the temporal dimension of the Sustained Dialogue event at multiple scales.

View the full thesis book here: (15MB PDF)

Presented here are samples of professional design work executed under the tutelage of SMBW Architects in Richmond Virginia and Handel Architects in New York City; and academic work executed at Auburn University and the University of Virginia.

Find the portfolio samples here.

Pictured above, Belvedere Gardens Mausoleum at the Sherwood Burial Park in Salem, Virginia was led by SMBW principal Christopher Fultz. Take a video tour by the stone mason here.