A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Portrait of a white man crouching indoors and looking into the camera

On This Page

Tristan d'Estree Sterk

Associate Professor

Contact

Bio

Tristan Sterk, the incoming 2024 Architecture and Interior Architecture Chair, is a founder and an associate professor of the intelligent environment. His innovative research has a profound impact on responsive architecture and dynamic building forms, with a focus on reducing construction's energy footprint.

Media: Economist (2006–2011); Discovery Science TV (2009); Wired (2006); CNN (2006); BBC World Service (2006); ABC Radio National (1999–2006). Awards: The Kalil Endowment for Smart Design at the Parsons School of the Constructed Environment (2012); The AIA Chicago, Dubin Family Young Architect Award (2011); The AIA Chicago Award of Design Excellence for Unbuilt Work (special recognition, 2011); The Chicago Architectural Club's Emerging Visions Award (2005); NCERC (2004); The Schiff Fellowship in Architecture (2003). Exhibitions: The Center for Architecture AIA New York (2009); Architectural League of NY (2009), Art Institute of Chicago (1989/2011–12).
 

Personal Statement

Tristan is an American-Canadian architect who grew up in London, Ontario, Canada. He moved to Chicago in 2008 to teach, before which he worked in London, England; Vancouver, Canada (Busby Perkins + Will); Chicago (SOM); and Boston (Carlos Zapata). His early education was in architecture and its thermal performance – an area of excellence at the University of Adelaide, one of Australia's premier research universities.
 

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

Codes are examined as explicit as well as tacit instances of social values, which reflect cultural boundaries between the built environment and human behavior. Students investigate the notion of confinement and explore the possibilities, as Michael Sorkin put it, where codes, through 'acknowledging the gravity of permanence and the oppressions of extent,'seek, in their limits, 'not to restrain associations, but to free them.' While codes are a means through which society speaks to the architect, their compliment, specifications, are investigated as a vital architectural component of architectural expression. In order for an architectural vision to be manifest in the world, it must be communicated in a common manner both comprehensible and commonly valued. In courts of law, the written always trumps the drawn, even in cases where the drawing is worth a thousand words. In addition to basic proficiency in specification writing and the surrounding professional and legal processes, students also gain crucial understanding of the role of specifications in allowing the practitioner to best control the material articulation of their architectural propositions.

Class Number

1844

Credits

3

Description

The studio?s one semester-long project will focus on an inclusive process where interior spaces, existing building envelope and site location bind to form a sustainable environment. At the end of this course, students will understand the steps, and organizational skills it takes to come up with a comprehensive design that uses all constraints from the various building systems as assets. The final solution will be a sum of connected parts which cannot be replaced without affecting the whole.

The building systems that will be designed in connection with one another are Environmental, Building Envelope, Materials and Assemblies, Sustainability. Precedents will be analyzed using such tools as described in 'A genealogy of Modern Architecture: Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form' by Kenneth Frampton and Ashley Simone, to inspire solutions that fit in specific cultural, social and political contexts. Students will learn to understand and interpret zoning and building codes as well as construction standards and best practice guidelines.

The studio will find its culmination in a set of design drawings and models at various scales ranging from site plan at 1/32? = 1?-0? to details at 1? = 1?-0?

Class Number

1072

Credits

6