James Timberlake
(Photo © Ed Wheeler)

James Timberlake '74, highlighted the School of Architecture 2008-2009 Lecture Series. A founding partner of the Philadelphia-based firm KieranTimberlake, Timberlake received his undergraduate Architecture degree from the University of Detroit and his M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. Last year, KieranTimberlake received the 2008 Architecture Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects, the highest honor available.

Timberlake's interest in architecture started early. "I was about 4 or 5.  My father, an Episcopalian minister, was involved in several building campaigns at the parishes he led. I was often invited to dinner with him when he met with architects," he says. "I loved to draw, and imagine things spatially, and the opportunity to actually meet architects at that young age was formative."

However, his arrival on campus was tumultuous. '"At best, it was a difficult time. 1970 was three years after the Detroit civil disturbance. There was a lot of tension in and around the McNichols Campus neighborhood. On weekends you would see cars and trucks packed with belongings moving north and west to the suburbs—the beginning of the exodus from the city," Timberlake says.

"All of that said, this was an exciting and rich time socially, intellectually and from a maturation point of view. The campus was in disrepair, the University was having money problems and trying to find itself and reposition its place. Physical changes were rampant." These upheavals reinforced Timberlake's career path. "The School of Architecture was a rich and diverse place to hunker down and do work," he says.

Of his instructors, Timberlake remembers Charlie Merz and Steve Vogel as "young, full of ideas, energetic; they represented and encouraged exploration and intellectual curiosity. Nick Chatas, Dean Bruno Leon, John Loss were the experienced, grounded, mature faculty who we feared. Father Green, the lone Jesuit representative within the department, was a deep breath amongst much higher octane discourse."

Today, sustainable design is at the forefront of Timberlake's work, but he first learned about it at UDM. "I remember reading Victor Olgyay's Design with Climate as one of the very first books I picked up in architecture at school. We used principals of this and other site design mandates from Ian McHarg and others back then. It all formally took a turn in the late 70s with postmodernism and the reliance on surface rather than substance," Timberlake recalls. "I feel very fortunate that I had that training first."

According to Timberlake, green architecture will soon be standard. "But we will not continue to recognize it as 'green architecture' as opposed to 'not green architecture.' It will be holistic in its incorporation and use and application and we won't need to distinguish it as 'separate' any longer, " he says. "If it isn't 'green,' that's when you will get called out on it, rather than right now where we gain the awards for getting it green."

KieranTimberlake recently completed Cellophane House, a five- story house fabricated off-site and displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as part of the recently completed "Home Delivery" show. Its inspiration drew from several ideas, including the concept of actually living transparently.

"Philip Johnson's Glass House began that discussion 50 years ago, but Cellophane wishes to advance that discourse," he says. "Can you build in off-site produced components over two stories high particularly for housing? We knew we could, but the housing industry seems to be mired in building with one- or two-story chunks, max. Third, how might new technologies influence the way we live or build?"

Its technology is decidedly 21st century. "The systems applied to Cellophane include a scaffold system in aluminum, our NextGen SmartWrap™ wall out of PET and organic electronics, and a variety of polycarbonates and acrylics," Timberlake says. "All are eminently recyclable and restreamable to 90 percent of the content of the house. Lastly, the house explores the idea that something can be mass-customizable to fit the myriad of choices we have in housing and have off-site manufacturing produce those choices economically, and rapidly."

Learn more about Cellophane House.

Architecture has changed dramatically in the past 40 years. "Now, we design more holistically, more universally, more collaboratively than ever before," he says. "My education prepared me for this but I am not sure it anticipated it."