Visiting professor brings experimental practice to DAAP

Visiting professor brings experimental practice to DAAP

Jennifer Bonner explores possibilities for mass timber with students

For University of Cincinnati visiting professor Jennifer Bonner, architecture is not something that can be fully understood from drawings alone. It requires research, experimentation, making and getting your hands on the material.

This semester, Bonner, an internationally recognized designer and long-term educator, is bringing that approach to the UC's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) as a visiting professor through the Simpson Collaborative for Urban Futures.

She is co-teaching a graduate research and design studio with Mara Marcu, working with graduate students to investigate new possibilities for cross-laminated timber, or CLT.

The studio draws heavily from Bonner's research and professional practice, including Blank: Speculations on CLT, a book she co-edited with British structural engineer Hanif Kara. Rather than presenting CLT simply as another structural material alongside concrete and steel, the book explores how the material could challenge conventional approaches to architecture and inspire new forms of design thinking.

Bonner is also the founder of MALL, a creative design practice with focus on materiality, constructability, and conceptually driven ideas. She is bringing that same spirit of experimentation into the classroom.

Dollhaus by MALL (above) Haus Gables by MALL (below)

Learning by making

The graduate studio began with abstract exercises designed to get students thinking about the possibilities of CLT. By the third week, students were seeing the material in production.

Bonner took the class to Sterling Structural, a CLT manufacturing facility in Illinois, where students toured an active manufacturing operation and saw firsthand how the material is produced.

DAAP graduate students visiting Sterling Structural factory

The visit connected classroom research with the realities of architectural production, giving students an opportunity to understand not only what CLT can do, but also how it is manufactured and what constraints and opportunities are embedded in the process.

The experience also became a starting point for challenging those constraints.

At the manufacturing facility, students saw how efficiently CLT panels can be produced using standardized rectangular forms. Back in the studio, Bonner encouraged them to question whether those conventions had to define their designs.

Jennifer Bonner DAAP visiting professor

"We're going to be experimental," Bonner said. "We're supposed to push the field, not accept the status quo."

Students are using computer numerical control (CNC) fabrication to explore cutting shapes into CLT panels and are applying their research to housing at the scale of the "missing middle," including single-family homes, duplexes, row houses, triplexes and accessory dwelling units.

The studio is examining a neighborhood in the Washington, D.C., area that is the subject of an active request for proposals. For Bonner, the project provides students with a real-world context while allowing them to explore questions about material, housing and architectural practice.

A professional in the classroom

Bonner's presence in the studio reflects DAAP's emphasis on connecting education with professional practice. Her work bridges architectural design, research and teaching, giving students an opportunity to learn from an architect actively engaged in the field.

She also brings an intentionally hands-on teaching approach.

Bonner said she wants students, particularly those who may not traditionally see themselves as technically oriented designers, to develop confidence working directly with materials and fabrication.

"I try to be very technical and nerdy," Bonner said. "I want to give everybody the confidence that this is not two lines on a drawing for plan. This is a CLT panel. This is a CLT blank."

That combination of enthusiasm, technical knowledge and experimentation is shaping the studio experience.

For DAAP students, experiential learning extends beyond the project itself. The college's interdisciplinary environment gives students access to facilities where they can research, fabricate, test and document their ideas.

Bonner said two DAAP lab facilities particularly stood out to her: The photo lab and the college's large interdisciplinary build lab.

"I've never seen those two resources at this level before at a school of architecture. It's an incredible resource for the students and faculty," she said.

The labs support students across DAAP's creative disciplines, including architecture, interior design, industrial design and fashion, to mention a few. That interdisciplinary use creates opportunities for architecture students to work with tools, materials and approaches that extend beyond their own discipline.

The photo lab provides another dimension of the making process. Students in Bonner's studio will construct large-scale architectural models from birch veneer plywood and photograph them in the lab, using state of the art recently acquired professional lighting and imaging equipment to document and communicate their work.

A building designed for making

The experience reflects something central to DAAP itself: The college's physical environment is part of its educational model.

Architecture students are not learning in isolation from the other creative disciplines. They work in a building where studios, fabrication facilities, photography spaces and specialized labs support a wide range of ways to investigate and make.

Bonner's studio is taking advantage of that environment, moving students through a cycle of research, material exploration, fabrication and documentation.

For DAAP, that kind of experiential learning is an important part of preparing students for professional practice. Students are not simply discussing materials or studying finished buildings. They are investigating how materials are produced, testing what they can do, building physical models and using advanced equipment to explore and communicate their ideas.

The result is a studio that connects the work of a practicing architect with DAAP's culture of research and making giving students an opportunity to learn from an architect whose own practice continues to explore what architecture can become.

For the students in Bonner's studio, however, the most important lessons are happening every week: In the classroom, in the labs and through direct encounters with the materials they are learning to design with.

At DAAP, the studio becomes a laboratory itself, a place where students can move from an idea to research, from research to making and from making to new possibilities for architecture.

Your career is next

Through one of the nation's most robust co-op programs, UC students don't just learn about their future - they live it, alternating classroom study with real, career-shaping experience in industries around the world.

Students: Earn while you learn at UC.

Employers: Find your next hire.

Featured image at top of Haus Gables by MALL. Photos provided by Jennifer Bonner

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