Jennifer Bonner / MALL
Work
Sixteen Projects- HAUS GABLES
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- THE DOLLHAUS
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- 4 OVER NONE
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- HAUS SCALLOP, HAUS SAWTOOTH
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- BEST SANDWICHES
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- OFFICE STACK
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- ANOTHER AXON
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- X HOUSES
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- STILL LIFE
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- GLITTERY FAUX
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- LEAN-TO ADU
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- BIG CIRCLE ADU
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- MADE IN OPA LOCKA
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- CEDAR PAVILION
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Publications
Four Projects
MALL —
Info
- Business Matters
- MALL stands for Mass Architectural Loopty Loops. Or Miniature Angles & Little Lines. Or Maximum Arches with Limited Liability—an acronym with built-in flexibility.
- MALL uses the acronym, not to be quick or flippant, but because our architectural interests shift for each project.
- MALL is committed to projects that hack typologies, take creative risks, reference popular culture, and invent representation.
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Born in Alabama (b. 1979), Jennifer spent the first thirteen years of practice teaching at Harvard GSD, Georgia Tech, and Woodbury University.
STILL LIFE
Note: All work included in the Still Life photography and exhibition belongs to students and faculty of Harvard GSD. In 2016, Jennifer Bonner served as a faculty editor/curator for the publication/exhibition titled “Platform: Still Life”. The images to follow illustrate behind the scenes outtakes, Adam DeTours Still Life photographs, and views of the exhibition.
Platform: Still Life begins with a list: Infill, Big Box, Inverted, Las Vegas, Live Work, Perimeter Plan, Pink Foam, Ruin, and Pop-out.
This is not your ordinary grocery list. As editors, we assigned lists of words to the student work selected for this book. We based these words on design typologies, course descriptions, first impressions, and close readings that hint at what inspired and nurtured the work shown here. Other kinds of organizing systems and lists—floating words, paint-by-number diagrams, and still-life photographs—further reinterpret, redact, and recombine the typical roll call of student names and projects. With blatant disregard for disciplinary silos, these “lists” provide multiple readings of the work produced at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design over the 2015–2016 academic year.
How to present projects from academic programs including architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design, design studies, and doctoral degrees, and reveal the relationships among them rather than confine them to their respective disciplines? How to take hundreds of white and brown chipboard models—the starting point for projects including mixed-use mid-rise towers, modest passive-housing experiments, and outlandish formal experiments—and make each look like the singular and fabulous object it is?
As curators, we chose to challenge conventional ways of viewing work by adopting the model of the still life. We invited photographer Adam DeTour to Piper Auditorium (GSD’s beloved intellectual black box, where events, lectures, and studio crits take place) and turned it into a makeshift photo studio oozing colorful lighting and other special effects. To stage our still lifes, we borrowed freely from 16th-century oil paintings as well as food photography—a contemporary cultural obsession. We referenced advertisements in high-fashion magazines, Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit (1595), Giorgio Morandi’s obsessive tracings, and Umberto Eco’s The Infinity of Lists (2009). Most radically, perhaps, we experimented with color gels, partly in homage to the artist Barbara Kasten, whose influence we gratefully acknowledge, and partly to nudge our peers to take more liberties in the spectrums they choose, even during the earliest stages of making work. Students and faculty of these disciplines mingle all the time in the studios and review spaces and lobby of Gund Hall, debating and absorbing and playing with new ideas and disciplinary positions. Our goal was to reflect these overlaps, as well as the exuberance of production and enthusiasm for experimentation.
Platform: Still Life begins with a list: Infill, Big Box, Inverted, Las Vegas, Live Work, Perimeter Plan, Pink Foam, Ruin, and Pop-out.
This is not your ordinary grocery list. As editors, we assigned lists of words to the student work selected for this book. We based these words on design typologies, course descriptions, first impressions, and close readings that hint at what inspired and nurtured the work shown here. Other kinds of organizing systems and lists—floating words, paint-by-number diagrams, and still-life photographs—further reinterpret, redact, and recombine the typical roll call of student names and projects. With blatant disregard for disciplinary silos, these “lists” provide multiple readings of the work produced at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design over the 2015–2016 academic year.
How to present projects from academic programs including architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design, design studies, and doctoral degrees, and reveal the relationships among them rather than confine them to their respective disciplines? How to take hundreds of white and brown chipboard models—the starting point for projects including mixed-use mid-rise towers, modest passive-housing experiments, and outlandish formal experiments—and make each look like the singular and fabulous object it is?
As curators, we chose to challenge conventional ways of viewing work by adopting the model of the still life. We invited photographer Adam DeTour to Piper Auditorium (GSD’s beloved intellectual black box, where events, lectures, and studio crits take place) and turned it into a makeshift photo studio oozing colorful lighting and other special effects. To stage our still lifes, we borrowed freely from 16th-century oil paintings as well as food photography—a contemporary cultural obsession. We referenced advertisements in high-fashion magazines, Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit (1595), Giorgio Morandi’s obsessive tracings, and Umberto Eco’s The Infinity of Lists (2009). Most radically, perhaps, we experimented with color gels, partly in homage to the artist Barbara Kasten, whose influence we gratefully acknowledge, and partly to nudge our peers to take more liberties in the spectrums they choose, even during the earliest stages of making work. Students and faculty of these disciplines mingle all the time in the studios and review spaces and lobby of Gund Hall, debating and absorbing and playing with new ideas and disciplinary positions. Our goal was to reflect these overlaps, as well as the exuberance of production and enthusiasm for experimentation.
Location: Harvard GSD Druker Design Gallery
Date: 2016
CREDITS
Design Team:
Jennifer Bonner, Patrick K. Herron, Michelle Benoit, Evan Farley, Shaowen Zhang
Still Life Photography: Adam DeTour
Outtake Photography: Anita Kan
Exhibition Photography: Justin Knight
Exhibitions and Communications Team: Dan Borelli, Director of Exhibitions; David Zimmerman-Stuart, Exhibitions Coordinator; Travis Dagenais, Communications Manager
Installation Team: Jef Czekaj, Ray Coffey, Anita Kan, Yuanxi Li, Sarah Lubin, Jesus Matheus, Matt Murphy, William Talbot Penniman IV, Reid Schwartz, Joanna Vouriotis, Seok Min Yeo
Date: 2016
CREDITS
Design Team:
Jennifer Bonner, Patrick K. Herron, Michelle Benoit, Evan Farley, Shaowen Zhang
Still Life Photography: Adam DeTour
Outtake Photography: Anita Kan
Exhibition Photography: Justin Knight
Exhibitions and Communications Team: Dan Borelli, Director of Exhibitions; David Zimmerman-Stuart, Exhibitions Coordinator; Travis Dagenais, Communications Manager
Installation Team: Jef Czekaj, Ray Coffey, Anita Kan, Yuanxi Li, Sarah Lubin, Jesus Matheus, Matt Murphy, William Talbot Penniman IV, Reid Schwartz, Joanna Vouriotis, Seok Min Yeo
