Huckabee College of Architecture
A Texas Tech Huckabee College of Architecture Research Center
POST (Project for Operative Spatial Technologies) is an experimental, investigative, territorial think-tank situated on the US/Mexico border. POST seeks to reconstitute the cross-border environment as design context and the built environment as design outcome, invigorating models for design research within this territorial field.
The Border Consortium for Actionable Spatial Research and Practice is a platform for shared, comparative, and impactful cross-border research, led by POST directors Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller with participants from leading practices and universities in the US and Mexico.
POST directors Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller organized the Border Consortium Workshop at the ACSA 108 Annual Conference, in partnership with the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) in the US, and La Asociación de Instituciones de Enseñanza de la Arquitectura de la República Mexicana (ASINEA) in Mexico. The workshop convened spatial practitioners, researchers, and educators distributed throughout the borderland in one virtual space. Participants outlined challenges and opportunities specific to the border context, forged new partnerships, and developed shared knowledge and resources.
POST directors Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller led the Border Research working group discussion at the Border Consortium Workshop, presenting methodological challenges and barriers to spatial research in the borderland, and identifying cross-boundary research initiatives and resources.
Irradiated Shade is a design research initiative to develop computational mapping, drawing, and modeling tools that enable designers to uncover, represent, and protect against the unseen dangers of ultraviolet radiation (UVB) in public shade.
Kripa and Mueller presented computational design strategies for combatting unseen ultraviolet radiation in urban shade at the 2020 AIA/ACSA Intersections Research Conference.
Mueller presented computational mapping strategies to reveal urban areas with high levels of ultraviolet radiation exposure at the ACADIA 2020: Distributed Proximities conference. Irradiated Shade was also selected for the curated project exhibition at the ACADIA 2020: Distributed Proximities conference.
POST is working with Insights El Paso to design an outdoor classroom and shade structure, educating visitors to their archaeological site about the effects of ultraviolet radiation in the borderland. The shade structure design will be viewable on site in augmented reality (AR) in Spring 2021.
Kripa and Mueller explore the impact of ultraviolet radiation in transnational landscapes and national security infrastructures, in e-flux Architecture’s “At the Border” series with O/D/A.
Ersela Kripa (Texas Tech University, POST) and Stephen Mueller (Texas Tech University, POST) were named University Design Research Fellows for the 2021 Exhibit Columbus exhibition in Columbus, Indiana. Kripa and Mueller are one of seven teams of “leading professors of architecture, landscape architecture, and design from American universities who will create installations highlighting their research” at the celebrated biannual design showcase.
Ersela Kripa (Texas Tech University, POST) and Stephen Mueller (Texas Tech University, POST) present their design research for their Exhibit Columbus installation as part of the 2021 Design Presentations.
POST Director of Research Stephen Mueller explores territories of biosurveillance in the borderland for Manifest Volume 3: Bigger Than Big, edited by Anthony Acciavati, Justin Fowler, and Dan Handel. Other contributors to the issue include Ana Maria Leon, Enrique Ramirez, Neeraj Bhatia, Ila Berman, Felipe Correa, David Gissen, Charles Waldheim, and Nader Tehrani.
Mueller details novel computational representation strategies to capture and address transboundary environmental phenomena at the urban and regional scales for the ARCC 2021 Performative Environments conference proceedings.
Mueller presents applications for computational strategies capturing transboundary environmental phenomena for ACSA 109th Annual Meeting. The essay includes examples of student design research from Mueller’s Synoptic Observatory graduate architectural design studio, conducted at HCOA in Summer 2020.
POST is collaborating with Land Arts of the American West (Chris Taylor, Director) to host the Rio Meander Map, an original mapping of the courses and histories of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo along the US-Mexico international boundary.
Data Borders is an ongoing initiative to bridge the environmental data divide between the US and Mexico.
Visualizations from POST’s geospatial investigation of cross-border jurisdictional fragmentation will be published in ACSA Stanford Less Talk More Action Conference Proceedings.
POST researchers are conducting an interrogation of our atomized atmosphere, revealing the blindspots of environmental air quality sensing regimes in transboundary airsheds.
POST Directors Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller participated as invited experts in a roundtable about Architecture and Vulnerable Populations, as part of the Design for Vullnerable Communities Workshop led by Emanuele Giorgi of Tecnologico de Monterrey-Chihuahua.
Stephen Mueller
Director of Research
s.mueller@ttu.edu
806.834.5257
Ersela Kripa
Director of Projects
ersela.kripa@ttu.edu
806.834.6261
POST
Project for Operative Spatial Technologies
Texas Tech Huckabee College of Architecture
700-B W San Francisco Ave.
El Paso, TX 79912
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Huckabee College of Architecture