Publication

  • VORKURS: Exquisite Corpse
    Kristel Bataku, Jamie Lindsey, Thiago Silvino, and Rachel Vuchinich
    Editors
    Donna Cohen, Charlie Hailey, Dolores Hayden, Perry Kulper, Daniel Martinez, Robert McCarter, Andrea Ponsi, Paul Shepheard, Giovanni Traverso, and Nichole Wiedemann
    Contributors
    University of Florida, School of Architecture, 2018
  • GRANTEE
    University of Florida-School of Architecture
    GRANT YEAR
    2017

Laura Rodriguez, Drawing as Architecture, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

VORKURS: Exquisite Corpse is the second edition in the VORKURS series, the student-initiated publication of the University of Florida’s Graduate School of Architecture. Beginning as a probe of the Bauhaus foundation course developed by Josef Albers, VORKURS_making analyzed the significance of craft and learning through experience, featuring acclaimed theorists and architects such as Juhani Pallasmaa, Merril Elam, and Todd Williams Billie Tsien Architects. Rooted in the foundations of the flagship edition, VORKURS: Exquisite Corpse conjures the surrealist folded paper game to examine how concepts of the collective, authorship, process, and poetry relate to contemporary architectural discourse. It endeavors to analyze current events through contemporary methodologies, reframing our understanding of digital and analog; public and private; individual and communal. VORKURS: Exquisite Corpse hopes to interrupt preconceived notions of architectural style, change our understanding of the urban fabric, and re-conceptualize the role of materiality in the built world.

Jamie Lindsey is the VORKURS executive editor. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in architectural design from the University of Florida in 2013, she relocated to New York to practice design professionally. Between 2013 and 2016, she worked as junior designer on the Carnegie Hall Studio Towers renovation project and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater addition; contributed monthly to the female-directed ArchiteXX Sub_teXXt writing group; volunteered at the Open Architecture/New York collective; and was an active member of the Architecture League of New York. Lindsey is currently an MArch candidate at the University of Florida, where she works as a graduate teaching assistant for introductory design and material methodology courses.

Kristel Bataku is the VORKURS production editor. She was born in Albania and raised in Florida. After receiving a bachelor’s of design in architecture from the University of Florida in 2013, she practiced architecture as a junior designer in Savannah and New York. While living in New York, Bataku was an active member of AIANY and the Architecture League. She is currently pursuing an MArch degree from the University of Florida while serving as a graduate teaching assistant for undergraduate courses. She holds a strong interest in women's role in architecture, socially conscious design, photography, and the unknown.

Rachel Vuchinich is the VORKURS financial editor and holds a BS in geology from Tulane University. She worked in the oil and gas industry in west Texas assisting in the search for new oil and gas fields through data mapping. Vuchinich then changed career direction, joining the University of Florida to pursue a master’s degree and accreditation in architecture. She applies her experience in science to newfound creative design challenges. Her architectural interests include method, pedagogy, and application. In addition, she is a teaching assistant for an online undergraduate architectural history course.

Thiago Silvino is the VORKURS marketing editor. He was born In Sao Paulo, Brazil, and raised in Queens, New York. His professional journey began as an aircraft mechanic working at Orlando International Airport for over a decade with major companies such as Northwest, Delta, and JetBlue Airways. During this time, he completed his bachelor’s degree in architectural design at the University of Central Florida, effectively setting in motion a career change towards a profession in design. He is a current and passionate MArch candidate at the University of Florida. He is eager to apply a fresh perspective with his aviation industry experience, aiming to marry his design sensibilities with a strong technical background.

Kirsten Evans is the VORKURS research editor. She graduated in the spring of 2016 from the University of Florida, and is currently pursuing an MArch degree as the next step towards becoming a licensed professional. She has held office in Alpha Rho Chi, the professional fraternity for architecture and the allied arts for three years, and is the president of the University of Florida chapter. Evans has been passionately pursuing her career in architecture from an early age and enjoys seeing the design and cultures of the world through traveling at every opportunity.

Charlie Hailey received a BArch from Princeton University, an MArch from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in Architecture from the University of Florida. He is a practicing architect and has worked on many design-build projects, including several with Jersey Devils and is currently a research professor at the University of Florida's School of Architecture. He has written three books and contributed to numerous journals. He was also selected in 2011 as a Fulbright Scholar in Macedonia at State University of Tetovo to lecture and lead design workshops.

Nichole Wiedemann received her degree in architectural design from the University of Florida and an MArch from Princeton University. She is currently an associate professor of architecture and the director of the Professional Residency Program at the University of Texas at Austin, and, from 2008 to 2013, she was the associate dean for Undergraduate Programs. She has also taught at the University of Florida, the Rhode Island School of Design, and MIT.  She is a practicing architect, an architectural writer, and a fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

Robert McCarter is an acclaimed architectural writer, a practicing architect, and the Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. He was the director at the University of Florida’s School of Architecture from 1991–2001 and a professor of architecture at the University of Florida from 1991–2007. He was also an associate professor and assistant dean at Columbia University. McCarter was a finalist for the RIBA International Book Awards in 2006 has won numerous other awards, including a Graham Foundation grant in 1989 to fund his work on Frank Lloyd Wright.

Juhani Pallasmaa was professor of architecture and the dean of architecture at Helsinki University of Technology from 1991 to 1998.  He is a highly acclaimed architectural writer and author of The Eyes of the Skin, which has become a standard text in architecture education. In 1999, he received the International Union of Architects' Jean Tschumi Prize for architectural criticism. He has also served on the jury for the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, and, in 1991, he was Finland's architectural representative at the Venice Biennale.

VORKURS, founded in August 2015, is the publication for the University of Florida's Graduate School of Architecture. Developed as an ode to the Bauhaus foundation course of the same name, it aims to present the ideas of the school's graduate students and faculty through three different lenses—pedagogy, the transition from academia to practice, and the future of the profession—in order to present the University of Florida's unique voice to the larger discourse of architecture.