Emily Baker
Emily Baker, assistant professor, architecture, Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.
Honors alumna and former Bodenhamer Fellow Emily Baker has actively supported the
Honors College since returning to campus in 2017, taking part in honors thesis committees,
teaching honors sections, and working alongside Edmund Harriss and Carl Smith to develop Gearhart Hall’s courtyard curvahedra sculpture.
To take the curvahedra form from a palm-size paper model to a 12-foot-diameter steel sculpture, Baker worked with Harris to develop a Zip-Form system. They are now partnering with structural design scholars at MIT to explore whether concrete structures can be created using curved formwork in such a way that the amount of material used is reduced while keeping the same structural rigidity. Zip-form, because of its ease in creating precise curving forms, is being tested as a method for constructing this formwork in countries where other means of advanced fabrication are less accessible –– bringing high tech solutions into spaces that don't always have high tech equipment. Baker will bring this research endeavor into the honors section of her Structures for Architects course at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.