Between January 24 and February 7, the Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture (COA) welcomed five guest lecturers as part of a search for new faculty members: Olaia Chivite Amigo, Olga Beatrice Carcassi, Il Hwan Kim, Catherine “Cat” Wilmes, and Francois Sabourin. As of writing, there has not been any announcement about who (if any) of these candidates will be hired.
I will say that, across the board, the presentations and lectures were fairly disappointing. They were interesting, but none of them were particularly strong presenters. That’s probably fine, given architecture is typically more like a workshop than a lecture, but it’s notable nonetheless. That said, I want to briefly discuss the candidates.
Amigo is a Spanish-Venezuelan architect who teaches at the University of Michigan, and has worked with the firms Mocha Studio, MAde Studio, PLY+ Architecture and Urbanism, and INFORM. Her work focuses on how graphic presentation can reveal relationships between different intangible aspects of design, particularly related to users and stakeholders. Examples of her work that I can find online do seem to prioritize landscape architecture and design, but I’m not sure if this is a genuine focus of hers. I’ll admit that, for someone who specializes in graphic representation, her works seem normal.
Carcassi is a researcher at Columbia University and is the only one on this list who doesn’t describe themselves as an architect (though according to her former faculty directory page of the Institute of Advanced Architecture at Catalonia, she is an architect). A lot of her work has to do with technical aspects of material design, particularly in sustainability of materials. Her work is impressive but raises some questions for me as to whether it would apply well to teaching or to practicality. A lot of it is much more technical than we would discuss in architecture material courses (though might be appropriate for grad students), and I personally think she’s overly reliant on use of construction techniques like 3-D printing to develop proposed rural design.
Kim is a professor at Syracuse University who has previously taught at Cornell University and researched at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He’s also worked at Link Arkitektur, Kjellander Sjöberg Arkitektkontor, and BIG, and founded Ø-Lingual Studio. His work focuses on digital design and fabrication in the design process and theoretical construction processes. I have mixed feelings about this, as his work probably aligns best with current COA focuses but also might duplicate focuses rather than complimenting it.
Wilmes is a fellow at Cornell University where she researches the intersection of art (photography in particular) with architecture; in architectural practice, she’s worked at scales ranging from furniture design to master planning but tends to focus on adaptive reuse projects. I think her work is mostly fine, but in researching this, I went through some of her professional Instagram photos. At least a couple images there had some hallmarks typical of undisclosed generative AI being used in the design or artistic process. Now, I can’t be certain, but I feel confident in this enough to raise some questions for me.
Last but not least, Sabourin teaches at Kent State University, where he mostly researches the relationship between architecture and instability. He’s also done work with architectural robotics and other forms of experimental construction techniques. He also was part of the project yyyy-mm-dd, which developed and implemented some of these construction techniques.
Considering a variety of factors – ranging from prior experience to how well their focuses correspond to curricula focuses within the COA – I think Amigo or Kim are probably the strongest potential candidates. Carcassi’s is interesting, but far more technical than would likely translate well. Sabourin is fairly reasonable, but if I’m being entirely honest, was kind of forgettable compared to most of the others. And I really struggle to endorse Wilmes while I have concerns about her using AI for her work. Overall, though, it’s up to the COA administration, and I’m curious to see who they end up picking.