Jeffrey L. Day, AIA
Brief Vitae
AB, Harvard College 1988
MArch U.C. Berkeley, 1995
Teaching and Research Interests
Design and theory in relation to architecture as a tactical practice, digital fabrication, site and landscape, and artistic models of practice. These and other diverse interests form the basis of Jeff’s work in which he attempts to erode the boundaries between teaching, practice, and research. Jeff has published articles on these and other interests in the Journal of Architectural Education, 306090, Praxis, Review, Architectural Record, Dwell, and various ACSA publications.
Professional Practice
Founded in 2000 by E.B. Min and Jeffrey L. Day, Min | Day is a multi-disciplinary design practice with studios in San Francisco, California and Omaha, Nebraska. Because we resist specialization, our work ranges from institutional projects to residential and furniture design. Rather than looking to a particular building type, we seek projects with potential for innovation in methodologies of practice, materials and fabrication and programming. Our approach privileges an evolving process that searches for unique opportunities hidden in the facts of the project at hand. With each new project we attempt to build flexible spaces that remain open to the improvisations of everyday life. As designers, we often forego rigid formal orders to allow more responsive organizational systems that can accommodate the circumstances of inhabitation. At times, our projects reference familiar modernist systems but locate points of flexibility and instability within presumably fixed orders. A variety of recent projects have provided opportunities to explore prefabrication, sustainable practices, landscape, art practice, and interior environments as integral facets of the architectural endeavor. Predominant in all of our projects is an attempt to coax specificity out of the generic and contingent identities bound up in the sites where we work.
FACT
Jeff also runs an allied practice, FACT (Fabrication And Construction Team) at the University of Nebraska. FACT is an academic/professional collaborative design lab which offers students a forum for exploration aimed at expanding the understanding of the complex relationships between thinking (conceiving, designing, theorizing) and making. A frequent collaborator with Min | Day, FACT engages design intensive projects and creative clients in collaborations that bridge the gap between design and construction. In such a practice the boundaries that conventionally distinguish the profession of architecture are eroded to admit other disciplines ordinarily thought of as distinct. FACT would like to be on the leading edge of efforts to integrate design and production, efforts that may profoundly impact the future of the design professions through the introduction of new digital technologies. Such techniques include CAD-CAM technologies such as rapid prototyping, 2D computer numerically controlled (CNC) cutting, and 3D CNC milling. In summary, FACT hopes to offer students the opportunity to explore a more fluid practice that integrates design and production. Such a practice allows production to influence design as much as design directs production, but in the end our goal is to educate designers, not builders.
