While a winner has not yet been selected, Tex-Fab’s new APPLIED: Research Through Fabrication competition has already produced interesting results as four semi-finalists emerge. The competition solicited proposals that best displayed “research through computational fabrication.” The four proposals selected in the first round of adjudication address acoustics, structure, construction, material, and surface effects, each using on digital modeling and fabrication techniques.

Two teams from CCA were on June 5 awarded top prizes at 2X8 TAUT, the tenth annual architecture and design student competition and exhibition sponsored by the American Institute of Architects, Los Angeles Chapter (AIA | LA). Fractals of Knowledge, by Osma Dossani, took second place; and FRESNOW, by Alex Decicco, Francis Silagon, and Hugh Vanho, took third.

The research Proposal by Michael Ippolito from the California College of the Arts proposes a radical rethinking of architecture and landslides. The Marin Headlands is home to over twenty landslides. The most notable and fastest acting landslide in the Headlands is located on the Oceanside of the park between rodeo cove and Tennessee Valley. It is known as place that has been left behind and rendered a volatile wasteland. This wasteland has consumed many man-made structures including eight abandoned military buildings, and two roadways.

On February 4, 2012, the faculty at California College of the Arts gathered at the college's San Francisco campus for a retreat focused on the state of the arts across our many disciplines. In the morning, 25 short presentations offered insights into challenges and opportunities faced by practitioners and thinkers in recent times. The word aired most frequently was crisis: the crisis of the Great Recession; the crisis of Global Climate Change; the crisis of understanding and working within a discipline in our digital age.

Watch the video of all the presentations (91 minutes), shot and edited by Yoni Klein (Photography 2012)

The economic downturn has produced an economic squeeze within most of our disciplines. Art directors, as Alexis Mahrus remarks, have diminished roles in shaping an illustration. Smaller profit margins reduce the flexibility and time given over to experimentation. Branding and celebrity worship take up a larger slice of the creative pie. Some presenters, like Sue Redding of Industrial Design, see no problem in this conflation of art and business and, furthermore, dispute the notion of a crisis. Yet many presenters feel that the economic crisis is not only real but wielding dangerously asymmetrical impacts. Demand remains strong for high-end craft goods and blue-chip fine art. Some small nonprofits are struggling to survive. To Ignacio Valero of Critical Studies, the priority given over to luxury items can be attributed to the ongoing influence of classical economic policies that privilege individual decision making over collective social and natural needs. Likewise, Sandra Vivanco of Diversity Studies notes that economic inequalities have greatly worsened over the past few years, especially in the developing world. Contemporary society is forging a timeless, spaceless way of conducting business, a race for lucrative and short-term gains that concentrates investment more than ever in the hands of a few.