If a picture is worth a thousand words that means photography often tells the story for us. In this photograph of the Pell Laboratory for Advanced Biological Studies at Penn State, a brief rainstorm broke through a gray, cloudy day and then left as quickly as it arrived. This flash of nature brought us a sweeping photograph of a highly technical building consisting of two distinct zones: the headhouse and the biocontainment zone. As soon as the skies cleared photographer Warren Jagger climbed his ladder and got the shot.
If you look closely you can see the rainwater in the scupper. While you’re looking, notice the panel near the front entrance – that graphic is based on what the plague looks like under a microscope. Fitting for a biocontainment facility, isn’t it? The building celebrated its grand opening earlier this month.
Sandrine Héroux, Sophie McKenzie, and Emily Chowdhury are each members of our in-house Fabrication team. Their day-to-day work centers on a simple question: what changes when design becomes something people can physically test?
These women challenge the notion of fabrication as a support service, framing it instead as an essential component of architectural authorship, a way to test ideas, share agency, and widen the boundaries of what architectural practice can include.
In our most recent blog, they discuss their individual paths in architecture and reflect on their experience using fabrication as a tool for fostering shared agency, community engagement and broadening the role of the architect. Link in bio!
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