V. Mitch McEwen [Co-founder A(n) Office/Assistant Professor, Princeton University School of Architecture] reflects on her path into architecture, urban design and academia. McEwen discusses current projects including the Black Box research group at Princeton University’s Embodied Computation Lab, work with a range of cultural institutions and a project for “The Architectural Imagination” at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016. McEwen’s work engages issues of shaping an environment and studying aspects of bureaucracy and power in society. McEwen also discusses how her class “The Zoning of Things” opens up a critical discussion on how we plan cities and the role of design the urban context. Watch V. Mitch McEwen’s SCI-Arc lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFSjw7nA_SI

McEwen is the co-founder of A(n) Office, an architecture collaborative of studios in Detroit, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn. McEwen's design work has been awarded grants from the Graham Foundation, Knight Foundation, and New York State Council on the Arts. A(n) Office projects have been commissioned by the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the Istanbul Design Biennial. Her projects in Detroit have produced a series of operations on houses previously owned by the Detroit Land Bank Authority. These include a combined residence and flower incubator for an engineer at 3M, a strategy for 100 houses selected by the City of Detroit to densify the neighborhood of Fitzgerald, and an award-winning repurposing of a balloon-frame house titled House Opera. Her work in urban design and architecture began at Bernard Tschumi Architects and the New York City Department of City Planning, as well as founding the Brooklyn-based non-profit SUPERFRONT. McEwen earned her M.Arch. at Columbia and B.A. at Harvard.

Crew Credits -

Production:
Creator and Executive Producer - Hernan Diaz Alonso
Producers - Marcelyn Gow/Reza Monahan
Director - Reza Monahan
Director of Photography - Sean Morris
B Camera - Robert Moreno
Sound Engineer - Chris Trueman

Post-Production:
Story Producer - Marcelyn Gow
Editors - Walker Sayen/Reza Monahan

Soundtrack:
"Shipping Lanes" by Chad Crouch
"Ellipsis" by Chad Crouch
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Additional Images Provided by V. Mitch McEwen

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