On April 24, a new exhibition titled Lightly Speaking opened in the lobby of UB south campus’s Hayes Hall. This exhibit showcases the culmination of work by the UB Department of Architecture’s 2024-25 Banham Fellow Tiffany Xu as well as work by the 13 students in her ARC 606 spring graduate studio. The title, Lightly Speaking, refers to light timber framing, the dominant American method of construction, with an emphasis on its tectonic rules.

At its core, timber framing is a composition of repeated 1-1/2” wide members spaced 16” apart, yielding a set of constraints and opportunities for infinite tectonic arrangements. Introduced in the late 19^th century, the proliferation of light timber framing signaled a shift in building culture that made structures more affordable but also more ephemeral and diminished in traditional markers of construction quality. Xu developed a familiarity and interest in light timber framing through her work in practice, mostly on residential-scale design, where she found that this medium was almost always utilized on these projects regardless of their size and budget.

Despite its prevalence out in the real world, light timber framing is not typically included in academic curricula. “It differs amongst schools,” Xu explained. “But, for example, I never saw a framing plan as a student. In practice, oftentimes, your contractor looks at your walls and then decides where things are going to fall. And there’s a lot of gray around whether a design is pushing materials’ capabilities a little bit, making it fall somewhere in between the contractor’s and the architect’s responsibilities. This project tries to bring that untouched subject a little bit more in the realm of experimentation.”

The Banham Fellowship honors the legacy of Peter Reyner Banham by supporting emerging practitioners whose work situates architecture within the field of sociocultural and material critique. Xu describes her work as Banham fellow as “tectonically driven, that’s to say how components of the building come together, or how materials come together and the relationships between them.” Lightly Speaking features a large-scale timber-framed design by Xu and constructed using Douglas fir, zinc-plated steel, spun polyethylene, polyester, and concrete. The culmination of her work as Banham fellow, this installation explores the habits borne from light timber framing over the years with emphasis on the relationship between dimensional lumber and finishes. It experiments with instances of sympathy, antagonism, and indifference in how materials relate to each other, borrowing qualities from everyday off-the-shelf products.

One of the qualities that has drawn Xu to Banham’s work is his tendency to conflate high and low culture. “There isn’t discrimination between what’s worthy of scholarly analysis and attention,” she explained. “A parallel with light timber framing is that it’s very basic. It could be very high brow; it could also be a very low-brow way of working. And I think by putting it in the academic setting, it might trouble unconscious distinctions we make between what’s architecture and what is construction or built environment."

The process behind the student work featured in Lightly Speaking began with a study followed by a prompt, the same one that Xu used to produce her own work. The students started by studying examples of light timber framing that varied in approaches to structure, location, and time period. Xu elaborated, “Some were prefab works, some were balloon framed, some were platform framed. Others were in Europe, some were in the U.S., some were contemporary, and some were from the early 20^th century.” This exercise enabled the students to understand the rules of light timber framing before moving on to the next step.

After becoming familiar with the medium, the students were asked to utilize light timber framing principles to design their own structures situated along one of three Buffalo water features: the Buffalo River, the Erie Canal in Tonawanda, or the Erie Canal in Lockport. There was one common denominator – students had to examine how their designs would respond to occupants across time, which Xu phrased as “transactions.” Working alone or in pairs, these designs were then constructed as models. 

Utsav Patel agreed. “It was a great experience making this big-size model and small-size model,” he reflected. “Learning how the joiners might work or not work, trying to imagine pieces rotating and folding. When you make a hinge, you need to calculate the distances and the margins.” Shubham Amrale (MArch ‘25) chose to study the changes in Silo City over time from its past industrial landscape to today’s widespread conversion of those buildings into residential spaces. He then designed and built a timber silo as an homage to Buffalo’s historic grain silos. “Being an international student, it was very difficult to understand timber, and this construction technology is particularly new for us,” he observed. “It was great to explore. After this studio project, I think all of us are in love with timber and wood construction.”

Xu also hopes that the exhibit will inspire viewers to be more aware of the architecture that surrounds them every day. A quote by Walter Benjamin inspired much of her exploration on this topic – “Architecture has always offered the prototype of an artwork that is received in a state of distraction and through the collective.” In other words, architecture isn’t consumed deliberately the way a painting or an opera might be. Architecture is all around us. Sometimes you get to experience the Taj Mahal or the Sistine Chapel, but more often, it’s a bus station or a deli or a doctor’s office.

“I think that’s one of the most unique things about architecture,” Xu noted. “You inevitably experience it whether you’re intending to or not because it’s just where we are. But if, by bringing something that is unremarkable into a space of active contemplation, maybe that will have an impact on how one looks at the regular built environment. And maybe it will make you look at something that is ordinary with a little more of a critical eye.”

Lightly Speaking will be on display in the Hayes Hall lobby through July 2025.

The project was developed in tandem with the spring graduate studio ARC 606 with contributions from the following students: