The Deborah J. Norden Fund 2017

In 2017, the Architectural League awarded one grant to “Pikionis’ Pathway: Paving the Acropolis” by Kevin Malawski, who traveled to Athens, Greece, to retrace and document Dimitris Pikionis’ 5-kilometer-long pathway to the Acropolis. The other grant went to Priyanka Shah for “Deep Skins: Roger Anger’s Façade Operations.” She traveled to Paris and Grenoble to investigate the geometric articulations and arrangements of the facades of Roger Anger’s high-rise residential buildings.

"Pikionis’ Pathway: Paving the Acropolis”

In order to explore the relationship between modern planning principles and regional sensitivity and building methods, Kevin Malawski traveled to Athens, Greece, to document the intricacies of Dimitris Pikionis’ 5-kilometer-long pathway to the Acropolis. The mid-20^th century pathway is a product of Pikionis’ academic background in modernist design and construction coupled with his personal research in regional Greek cities. Malawski examined how Pikionis designed his mosaic-paved walkways to address functional concerns common to the Mediterranean climate by including guttering and trenches to divert water from seasonal downpours, while also situating the walkways within olive tree groves to frame vistas for the visitor. In order to fill an academic void, Malawski documented the pathway through sketches, photographs, and diagrams to explore this case study of Pikionis’ architecture, which “employs a mix of operative regionalist undertones with modernism to define a space which authentically relates to the ancient Acropolis it is sited on.” Malawski received his BArch from Drexel University and currently works as a project lead and designer for EwingCole.

“Deep Skins: Roger Anger’s Façade Operations”

Priyanka Shah traveled to Paris and Grenoble to document the geometric articulations and arrangements that characterize the façades of Roger Anger’s high-rise residential buildings. An influential French architect in the 1950s and ’60s, Anger’s façade designs present a “direct antecedent to contemporary computational design” because of the links between spatial planning and façade patterning. The façade variations are not simply a result of surface formalism, but refer to the buildings’ interior programs. Upon Anger’s death, the majority of his work was kept with his estate and remains inaccessible to the public. Shah consulted various archives in Paris and Anger’s completed buildings in Paris and Grenoble to create a comprehensive digitized monograph of his most complex residential projects and façade designs. Shah received her master of science in architectural studies and master of city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently works as an architectural designer with Grimshaw Architects.