bad & boujee

harvard graduate school of design : core iii
benjamin bromberg gaber + khorshid naderi-azad
critic : jennifer bonner
spring 2017



Core IV began with GIFs and altered triple deckers. A table of curiosities featuring twenty follies initially set the tone for a semester of mushy and ambiguous architecture that provoked misreadings of all kinds.

Migos' boujee spelled b-o-u-j-e expresses the dichotomies embedded in contemporary conditions and ambitions. They drink champagne while eating microwaved ramen. Rem Koolhaas bridges a similar gap in social and economic contradictions

The triple decker bay window bump, an otherwise painfully ordinary architecture, is manifested in the buildings of our project in single curvature extrusions and double curvature protrusions. Late nights and early mornings were spent milling, sanding, and vacuum forming.

What brings the two sets of formal families together is that despite their three dimensional discrepancies, they are two-dimensionally consistent. Both produce the same scallop outline in plan and in section. The curvature in plan becomes a greenhouse, a reading nook, an indoor swimming pool, a circular staircase, or a walk-in closet.

No building matches another, but no building is foreign. The entire urban fabric is cohesive but not monotonous. We layer devices of misreading to create an urban housing project derived from the triple decker