A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

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Odile Compagnon

Professor, Adjunct

Contact

Bio

Diploma of Architecture, 1982, Ecole d'Architecture de Versailles, France; 1986, Istituto Universitario de Architettura di Venezia, Italy. Concurrent position: Principal, Odile Compagnon Architecture, Chicago. Publications: Mas Context, Boundaries, d'A, AMC, le Moniteur des Travaux Publics; CAC magazine.

Experience at SAIC

I have taught in the AIADO department since 1998, mainly in lighting, theater and set design, interior architecture, and architecture design studios. Throughout the years, my main focus has been to expose my students to as many influences as possible and enable them to define a strong identity for themselves as well as a strong set of communication skills. Co-teaching, invited lecturers, guest critiques, and workshops outside of the school walls have made this exposure extremely fruitful and rewarding, not only for my students, but also for all of those whom I have involved in the learning environment.

Personal Statement

My professional practice as well as my research and work with students at SAIC are transdisciplinary and transcontinental. For me, a vital aspect of sustainable design involves weaving a network of knowledge, experience, and connections, so that endeavors in one arena become a source of creative solutions in another. I collaborate, in teaching and research, with professors from several departments, including Performance, Writing, Continuing Education, and Art Education. Recently I have taught Set Design, Undergraduate and Master of Architecture design studios, and Design with Light. I have also enjoyed curating and designing four thesis shows: Making Modern (2009) GRAVITY (2010), TELEVISION (2012), and SET OFF (2013). In 2011, in collaboration with Paul Tebben, I was selected to teach the GFRY studio: a two semester multidisciplinary design studio focusing on post earthquake reconstruction in Talca, Chile.

Current Interests

Since I graduated in 1982, the practice of architecture has evolved considerably, and my own practice has gone through many changes as well. Today I am interested in involving my clients in the design as well as in the construction process. I am a founder of the Good City Group, an initiative under the umbrella of Archeworks, which promotes collective participation in the re-imagining of our public spaces and infrastructures. The work I have done with theater companies has permeated my architecture practice, which I now see as the coordination of a collaborative effort, allowing for many voices to be heard, and leaving some space and time for the unpredictable.

 

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This two-day core undergraduate design studio focuses on the role of the designer in public life, and the role architecture plays in shaping public life. Students address the legal, ethical, cultural, and political concerns that shape architecture practice through the development of a design project. Students use rigorous representation techniques, achieving a professional level of presentation. Students are expected to complete a professional portfolio and resume, along with their design work.

This studio examines issues of program, structure, and building skin to identify how public architecture represents itself as a cultural and political artifact. Rather than understanding architecture as autonomous from its social, cultural, and political environment, the studio posits that architecture must be integrated into the world, be informed by and transforming the social and technical systems that enable our built environments.

Students will review and study design approaches to expand their understanding of possibilities about new spatial dynamics informed by emerging social relationships, hybrid conditions and the social shaping of technology.

Readings, textual and visual case studies and site visits will vary, but always provide the background and theoretical grounding for the site and project analysis and final project development and portfolio presentation.

Project work is a cumulative archive of the process of problem analysis and design exploration that are translations of observations, facts and ideas ? all being made visible through diagrams, drawings and models. Parts of the semesters work will be conducted in groups, in group discussions and workshops and/or site visits; and which will all contribute to individual project work and portfolio development to be presented in a final critique.

This course requires students to have a laptop that meets SAIC's minimum hardware specs and runs the AIADO template.

Class Number

1026

Credits

6

Description

In this course, students will be introduced to techniques by which they can design environments (spaces, performances, exhibits, architecture, interiors, landscapes) with strong potential 101 narrative, storytelling, memories Borrowing from the theater, to animation, puppetry, stop motion or urban spectacle, the course will teach ways in which lighting, movements, interactivity, space hierarchy can make nonfigurative concepts accessible to wide audiences, A digital approach will be merged with analog fabrication and scaled prototyping of props and physical environments.

Chicago will serve as text book, Field trips to performances , outdoor spectacles, screenings , exhibition will be the teaching tools to understand light, scale, interaction between participants Readings and videos by Peter Brook, Jeremy Till, Olafur Eliason, Patrick Bouchain will set the stage for conversations about minimalism, technology, and the importance of details when telling a story through space.

Four short design assignments. inspired by the readings and field trips, will teach students the basics of orthographic projection, scale, additive and subtractive color mixing, materials, computer assisted design, and encourage them to apply their own making and designing skills to creating environments that resonate wilh a strong voice.

Class Number

1016

Credits

3

Description

In this course we focus on a participatory placemaking project in North Lawndale where community members and student artists gain skills in natural building techniques with cob, straw-bale, willow, rammed earth, hemp, and brick. The studio works within the constraints of the local conditions to determine material specification, use, reuse, and recycling or upcycling options available for on-site construction. Co-creation activities are at the heart of the design and building process, which requires a detailed understanding of the unique capacities of the community with which the students collaborate.
The studio explores the work of artists, designers and thinkers such as the ones who received the 'Global Award for Sustainable Architecture' or are part of the Design for the Common Good (DCG) coalition. Guest presenters also facilitate hands-on demonstration and workshops in alternative building materials and methods to which students and community members participate together. This includes, among others: cob construction materials and techniques, live hedges purpose and benefits, living walls and bug hotels, brick making and firing, material upcycling.
Students will work collaboratively on one to three design projects involving community members. At the end of the semester they will present their material research, building prototypes, design, construction strategies, timeline and budget proposal to a group of stakeholders who will give them feedback on the feasibility of their proposal.

Class Number

1032

Credits

3

Description

This introductory design studio introduces a broad range of investigative techniques and applies the results to the design of a multi- level environment designed from the inside to the outside.

Course Goals and Objectives
1) Integrate ideas about enclosure and envelope with scale, site, structure, program and form, experimenting with skin effects and affects as a generator of a design, adapting an existing building, and addressing the existing building envelope.
2) Investigate the design of building skins including design, technical, structural, environmental, and social performance, ranging from cultural questions to accessibility, through the conceptual design of a small public building.
3) Develop design and graphic skills by completing the conceptual design of a small public building with a complex program, producing architectural drawings and models at an accomplished level, demonstrating a command of drawing and modeling conventions and an ability to manipulate those conventions to convey ideas relevant to a particular design idea.
4) Demonstrate awareness of the role of accessibility and sustainability in the design process.

Class Number

2225

Credits

6