Papers by Max Underwood
The Best of Triglyph, 2002
Paolo Soleri interview
18 Sept 1986
ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings, 1990
This paper examines the prolific residential career of Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959), and how he... more This paper examines the prolific residential career of Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959), and how he was able to formulate a coherent technical vocabulary out of two investigations, one into the "Technology of Appearance" and a second into the "Technology of Innovation", which ultimately led to a "Technology of Synthesis" and the realization of his masterpiece, Fallingwater in 1935."
As Frank Lloyd Wright reminds us, "A house we like to believe is the status quo; a noble consort to man and the trees; therefore the house should have response and such texture as will quiet the whole and make it graciously at one with external Nature. Human houses should not be like boxes, blazing in the sun, nor should we outrage the Machine by trying to make dwelling places too complementary to Machinery. Any building for humane purposes should be an elemental, sympathetic feature of the ground, complementary to its natural environment, belonging by kinship to the terrain and place."
Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 2011
book review
Henry Plummer
Stillness and Light: The Silent Eloquence of Shaker Architecture
(I... more book review
Henry Plummer
Stillness and Light: The Silent Eloquence of Shaker Architecture
(Indiana University Press, 2009).
National Conference on the Beginning Design Student , 2019
While Teaching Assistants (TAs) have been regularly used in large lecture courses and beginning d... more While Teaching Assistants (TAs) have been regularly used in large lecture courses and beginning design education in the United States for over 150 years, their preparation, use and empowerment has not been carefully examined. More recently, the preparation and use of Teaching Assistants has become increasingly codified to meet the ever-changing demands and expectations of students, Teaching Assistants, faculty, universities, professions, and the general public.
This paper is organized into three sections: First, we will examine how the role of a Teaching Assistant has radically changed in the past 40 years, from its past focus on assisting an individual faculty in the teaching of their class to becoming an integral member of a co-teaching team of students, Teaching Assistants and faculty today. Second, we share a series of best practices for preparing, collaborating with and empowering Teaching Assistants. Our advice is based on the authors’ past 40 years of experience working with over 100+ Teaching Assistants and teaching over 15,000 freshmen and sophomores campus wide in both face-to-face and online classes. Third, we will invite you, and other Teaching Assistants and faculty, to join the discussion, share your own experiences and innovations, and lay the foundations for your own future teaching pedagogy and research. While our paper and recommendations are primarily for first-time Teaching Assistants assigned to large lecture classes and beginning design studios, they are also broadly applicable to many teaching situations in both face-to-face and online courses throughout the university.
Teaching Documents by Max Underwood
Awakening Consciousness Observing Great Practice
(AIA National Education Honor Award 2003 - Honor... more Awakening Consciousness Observing Great Practice
(AIA National Education Honor Award 2003 - Honorable Mention)
A great practitioner is conscious to the world - awake to the core of their being. They have transformed their knowledge into capacity for perceiving our world and offering life-giving responses. In architecture education, little focus is placed on fostering consciousness in its broadest sense; on developing powers of observation or on intuition. As students transition into practice, many lack the insight to think deeply about their profession and ask significant questions: What is it to be conscious in the profession of architecture? What are the meaningful contributions I wish to make to the lives of other people, to our collective world? What enables a practice to transcend the norm, making lasting contributions, point to the future, and wake the light in all us? The Great Practice seminar assists students in answering these complex questions, and offers the opportunity to grapple with consciousness, both personally and professionally through an indepth exploration of exemplary practice. My intention is to provide each student and future architect with a meaningful model for achieving personal and professional excellence.
Collaborative Working Drawings
(AIA National Education Honor Award 1994)
The focus of the workin... more Collaborative Working Drawings
(AIA National Education Honor Award 1994)
The focus of the working drawing exercise was the development and understanding of each individual students' own level of collaborative construction discourse, inquiry, and representation skills. The course work pursued the notion of architecture and technology as part of a much larger socio-cultural condition that is inclusive of techniques, materials, tools and crafts people. There in lies the understanding of the necessity to connect and integrate knowledge and inquiry from other disciplines (arts, humanities, sciences, technical trades) in ways best suited to respond to current purposes and problems. The overall richness of this exercise lies in the individual realization that building well is equal to an architect's ability to understand the multiple socio-cultural conditions of making, and having the necessary level of insight to reveal, connect, and celebrate them.
Desert Silence - a house for John Cage
(AIA National Education Honor Award 1993)
Contemporar... more Desert Silence - a house for John Cage
(AIA National Education Honor Award 1993)
Contemporary architects are actively engaged in a dialectical process of critical inquiry and making, which clearly communicates their own acute attitudes on contemporary society, international culture, and the role of architecture today, manifested in their built work. Within this graduate studio, our primary collective concern was to pursue this same high level of critical inquiry and making, through our discourse and work,
in this case the design of a modest house for John Cage (1912-1992) in the Desert.
Great Cities - a seminar + lecture notes.
In this course, we will investigate the rich history... more Great Cities - a seminar + lecture notes.
In this course, we will investigate the rich history of great cities and urban design; as we collectively seek answers to the following questions: What is the city? How are individual and community values generated and materialized within the city? How do political, social, economic and technological changes affect the city? What are the essential urban design elements of a city? How do citizens, designers, architects, developers, planners, and politicians effectively plan and change their city’s future? And, How do local, regional, national and international networks affect one specific city within our ever-changing contemporary global community?
including:
Great Cities introduction
Greek City
Roman City
Medieval City
Renaissance City
Baroque City
Enlightenment City
Industrial Revolution City
City Beautiful
Garden City
Modern City
New Urbanism
Combinatory Urbanism
Landscape Urbanism
Ecological Urbanism
Peter Zumthor - a seminar - syllabus + lecture notes.
Survey of the Pritzker Prize winning, Sw... more Peter Zumthor - a seminar - syllabus + lecture notes.
Survey of the Pritzker Prize winning, Swiss Architect Peter Zumthor, his life, philosophy, practice of architecture and buildings. Additionally, you will learn about the organization and workings of a great practice, and the specific personal, cultural, political, economic and technical forces which shape its daily evolution.
including:
who is Peter Zumthor?
how does Peter Zumthor design precisely and deeply?
Ateliergebäude Zumthor, 1986, 2005, 2017
Schutzbauten Welschdörfli, Chur 1986, (shelter for Roman ruins)
Caplutta Sogn Benedetg, 1988
Das Wohnhaus für Betagte, Masans, 1993 (home for Senior Citizens)
Haus Truog, Gugalun, 1994
Thermalbad Vals, 1996 (Therme Vals)
Kunsthaus Bregenz, 1997
Klangkörper Schweiz, Hanover, 2000
Kolumba Diözesanmuseum, Köln, 2007
Bruder Klaus Feldkapelle, Mechernich-Wachendorf 2007
Steilneset Memorial, Vardø, 2011
Chivelstone House, Devon, 2018 (secular retreat)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2025 (LACMA)
Charles + Ray Eames - a seminar - syllabus + lecture notes
Survey of the renown American desig... more Charles + Ray Eames - a seminar - syllabus + lecture notes
Survey of the renown American designers Charles and Ray Eames, their innovative design thinking and masterworks. Additionally, you will learn about the organization and workings of a great design practice, and the specific personal, cultural, political, economic and technical forces which shape its daily evolution.
including:
Charles + Ray Eames
Goods + Things
Work + Play - the Eames design process
901 – the Eames office
Photography + slide shows
Furniture + experiments
House + Home
Toys + Games
Film + Communication
Reflections - individuals who worked in the Office of Charles + Ray Eames
Exhibits + spaces
Graphics + Textiles
Eames Legacy
Next
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Papers by Max Underwood
As Frank Lloyd Wright reminds us, "A house we like to believe is the status quo; a noble consort to man and the trees; therefore the house should have response and such texture as will quiet the whole and make it graciously at one with external Nature. Human houses should not be like boxes, blazing in the sun, nor should we outrage the Machine by trying to make dwelling places too complementary to Machinery. Any building for humane purposes should be an elemental, sympathetic feature of the ground, complementary to its natural environment, belonging by kinship to the terrain and place."
Henry Plummer
Stillness and Light: The Silent Eloquence of Shaker Architecture
(Indiana University Press, 2009).
This paper is organized into three sections: First, we will examine how the role of a Teaching Assistant has radically changed in the past 40 years, from its past focus on assisting an individual faculty in the teaching of their class to becoming an integral member of a co-teaching team of students, Teaching Assistants and faculty today. Second, we share a series of best practices for preparing, collaborating with and empowering Teaching Assistants. Our advice is based on the authors’ past 40 years of experience working with over 100+ Teaching Assistants and teaching over 15,000 freshmen and sophomores campus wide in both face-to-face and online classes. Third, we will invite you, and other Teaching Assistants and faculty, to join the discussion, share your own experiences and innovations, and lay the foundations for your own future teaching pedagogy and research. While our paper and recommendations are primarily for first-time Teaching Assistants assigned to large lecture classes and beginning design studios, they are also broadly applicable to many teaching situations in both face-to-face and online courses throughout the university.
Teaching Documents by Max Underwood
(AIA National Education Honor Award 2003 - Honorable Mention)
A great practitioner is conscious to the world - awake to the core of their being. They have transformed their knowledge into capacity for perceiving our world and offering life-giving responses. In architecture education, little focus is placed on fostering consciousness in its broadest sense; on developing powers of observation or on intuition. As students transition into practice, many lack the insight to think deeply about their profession and ask significant questions: What is it to be conscious in the profession of architecture? What are the meaningful contributions I wish to make to the lives of other people, to our collective world? What enables a practice to transcend the norm, making lasting contributions, point to the future, and wake the light in all us? The Great Practice seminar assists students in answering these complex questions, and offers the opportunity to grapple with consciousness, both personally and professionally through an indepth exploration of exemplary practice. My intention is to provide each student and future architect with a meaningful model for achieving personal and professional excellence.
(AIA National Education Honor Award 1994)
The focus of the working drawing exercise was the development and understanding of each individual students' own level of collaborative construction discourse, inquiry, and representation skills. The course work pursued the notion of architecture and technology as part of a much larger socio-cultural condition that is inclusive of techniques, materials, tools and crafts people. There in lies the understanding of the necessity to connect and integrate knowledge and inquiry from other disciplines (arts, humanities, sciences, technical trades) in ways best suited to respond to current purposes and problems. The overall richness of this exercise lies in the individual realization that building well is equal to an architect's ability to understand the multiple socio-cultural conditions of making, and having the necessary level of insight to reveal, connect, and celebrate them.
(AIA National Education Honor Award 1993)
Contemporary architects are actively engaged in a dialectical process of critical inquiry and making, which clearly communicates their own acute attitudes on contemporary society, international culture, and the role of architecture today, manifested in their built work. Within this graduate studio, our primary collective concern was to pursue this same high level of critical inquiry and making, through our discourse and work,
in this case the design of a modest house for John Cage (1912-1992) in the Desert.
In this course, we will investigate the rich history of great cities and urban design; as we collectively seek answers to the following questions: What is the city? How are individual and community values generated and materialized within the city? How do political, social, economic and technological changes affect the city? What are the essential urban design elements of a city? How do citizens, designers, architects, developers, planners, and politicians effectively plan and change their city’s future? And, How do local, regional, national and international networks affect one specific city within our ever-changing contemporary global community?
including:
Great Cities introduction
Greek City
Roman City
Medieval City
Renaissance City
Baroque City
Enlightenment City
Industrial Revolution City
City Beautiful
Garden City
Modern City
New Urbanism
Combinatory Urbanism
Landscape Urbanism
Ecological Urbanism
Survey of the Pritzker Prize winning, Swiss Architect Peter Zumthor, his life, philosophy, practice of architecture and buildings. Additionally, you will learn about the organization and workings of a great practice, and the specific personal, cultural, political, economic and technical forces which shape its daily evolution.
including:
who is Peter Zumthor?
how does Peter Zumthor design precisely and deeply?
Ateliergebäude Zumthor, 1986, 2005, 2017
Schutzbauten Welschdörfli, Chur 1986, (shelter for Roman ruins)
Caplutta Sogn Benedetg, 1988
Das Wohnhaus für Betagte, Masans, 1993 (home for Senior Citizens)
Haus Truog, Gugalun, 1994
Thermalbad Vals, 1996 (Therme Vals)
Kunsthaus Bregenz, 1997
Klangkörper Schweiz, Hanover, 2000
Kolumba Diözesanmuseum, Köln, 2007
Bruder Klaus Feldkapelle, Mechernich-Wachendorf 2007
Steilneset Memorial, Vardø, 2011
Chivelstone House, Devon, 2018 (secular retreat)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2025 (LACMA)
Survey of the renown American designers Charles and Ray Eames, their innovative design thinking and masterworks. Additionally, you will learn about the organization and workings of a great design practice, and the specific personal, cultural, political, economic and technical forces which shape its daily evolution.
including:
Charles + Ray Eames
Goods + Things
Work + Play - the Eames design process
901 – the Eames office
Photography + slide shows
Furniture + experiments
House + Home
Toys + Games
Film + Communication
Reflections - individuals who worked in the Office of Charles + Ray Eames
Exhibits + spaces
Graphics + Textiles
Eames Legacy
Next
As Frank Lloyd Wright reminds us, "A house we like to believe is the status quo; a noble consort to man and the trees; therefore the house should have response and such texture as will quiet the whole and make it graciously at one with external Nature. Human houses should not be like boxes, blazing in the sun, nor should we outrage the Machine by trying to make dwelling places too complementary to Machinery. Any building for humane purposes should be an elemental, sympathetic feature of the ground, complementary to its natural environment, belonging by kinship to the terrain and place."
Henry Plummer
Stillness and Light: The Silent Eloquence of Shaker Architecture
(Indiana University Press, 2009).
This paper is organized into three sections: First, we will examine how the role of a Teaching Assistant has radically changed in the past 40 years, from its past focus on assisting an individual faculty in the teaching of their class to becoming an integral member of a co-teaching team of students, Teaching Assistants and faculty today. Second, we share a series of best practices for preparing, collaborating with and empowering Teaching Assistants. Our advice is based on the authors’ past 40 years of experience working with over 100+ Teaching Assistants and teaching over 15,000 freshmen and sophomores campus wide in both face-to-face and online classes. Third, we will invite you, and other Teaching Assistants and faculty, to join the discussion, share your own experiences and innovations, and lay the foundations for your own future teaching pedagogy and research. While our paper and recommendations are primarily for first-time Teaching Assistants assigned to large lecture classes and beginning design studios, they are also broadly applicable to many teaching situations in both face-to-face and online courses throughout the university.
(AIA National Education Honor Award 2003 - Honorable Mention)
A great practitioner is conscious to the world - awake to the core of their being. They have transformed their knowledge into capacity for perceiving our world and offering life-giving responses. In architecture education, little focus is placed on fostering consciousness in its broadest sense; on developing powers of observation or on intuition. As students transition into practice, many lack the insight to think deeply about their profession and ask significant questions: What is it to be conscious in the profession of architecture? What are the meaningful contributions I wish to make to the lives of other people, to our collective world? What enables a practice to transcend the norm, making lasting contributions, point to the future, and wake the light in all us? The Great Practice seminar assists students in answering these complex questions, and offers the opportunity to grapple with consciousness, both personally and professionally through an indepth exploration of exemplary practice. My intention is to provide each student and future architect with a meaningful model for achieving personal and professional excellence.
(AIA National Education Honor Award 1994)
The focus of the working drawing exercise was the development and understanding of each individual students' own level of collaborative construction discourse, inquiry, and representation skills. The course work pursued the notion of architecture and technology as part of a much larger socio-cultural condition that is inclusive of techniques, materials, tools and crafts people. There in lies the understanding of the necessity to connect and integrate knowledge and inquiry from other disciplines (arts, humanities, sciences, technical trades) in ways best suited to respond to current purposes and problems. The overall richness of this exercise lies in the individual realization that building well is equal to an architect's ability to understand the multiple socio-cultural conditions of making, and having the necessary level of insight to reveal, connect, and celebrate them.
(AIA National Education Honor Award 1993)
Contemporary architects are actively engaged in a dialectical process of critical inquiry and making, which clearly communicates their own acute attitudes on contemporary society, international culture, and the role of architecture today, manifested in their built work. Within this graduate studio, our primary collective concern was to pursue this same high level of critical inquiry and making, through our discourse and work,
in this case the design of a modest house for John Cage (1912-1992) in the Desert.
In this course, we will investigate the rich history of great cities and urban design; as we collectively seek answers to the following questions: What is the city? How are individual and community values generated and materialized within the city? How do political, social, economic and technological changes affect the city? What are the essential urban design elements of a city? How do citizens, designers, architects, developers, planners, and politicians effectively plan and change their city’s future? And, How do local, regional, national and international networks affect one specific city within our ever-changing contemporary global community?
including:
Great Cities introduction
Greek City
Roman City
Medieval City
Renaissance City
Baroque City
Enlightenment City
Industrial Revolution City
City Beautiful
Garden City
Modern City
New Urbanism
Combinatory Urbanism
Landscape Urbanism
Ecological Urbanism
Survey of the Pritzker Prize winning, Swiss Architect Peter Zumthor, his life, philosophy, practice of architecture and buildings. Additionally, you will learn about the organization and workings of a great practice, and the specific personal, cultural, political, economic and technical forces which shape its daily evolution.
including:
who is Peter Zumthor?
how does Peter Zumthor design precisely and deeply?
Ateliergebäude Zumthor, 1986, 2005, 2017
Schutzbauten Welschdörfli, Chur 1986, (shelter for Roman ruins)
Caplutta Sogn Benedetg, 1988
Das Wohnhaus für Betagte, Masans, 1993 (home for Senior Citizens)
Haus Truog, Gugalun, 1994
Thermalbad Vals, 1996 (Therme Vals)
Kunsthaus Bregenz, 1997
Klangkörper Schweiz, Hanover, 2000
Kolumba Diözesanmuseum, Köln, 2007
Bruder Klaus Feldkapelle, Mechernich-Wachendorf 2007
Steilneset Memorial, Vardø, 2011
Chivelstone House, Devon, 2018 (secular retreat)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2025 (LACMA)
Survey of the renown American designers Charles and Ray Eames, their innovative design thinking and masterworks. Additionally, you will learn about the organization and workings of a great design practice, and the specific personal, cultural, political, economic and technical forces which shape its daily evolution.
including:
Charles + Ray Eames
Goods + Things
Work + Play - the Eames design process
901 – the Eames office
Photography + slide shows
Furniture + experiments
House + Home
Toys + Games
Film + Communication
Reflections - individuals who worked in the Office of Charles + Ray Eames
Exhibits + spaces
Graphics + Textiles
Eames Legacy
Next