Newly Released: LUNCH 18 — Everyday
Image
Editors: Michael Schaefer-Friedman, Benjamin Jacobs, Sofia Kuspan, Sophie Maffie, Sam Rosner, Margaret Saunders
May 2025
Applied Research & Design
Is there anything as ephemeral, mundane, or difficult to capture as the everyday? For most, the everyday is not spectacular, provocative, or fiery. It may be easy to brush aside as unimportant or banal, especially as countless alerts of thrilling global events imply our own doings are mild and humble. For this iteration of LUNCH, volume 18, the editorial board made a choice to dwell in this everyday space, look around a bit more carefully, and find the spectacular hiding in plain sight.
The everyday contains the quiet fabric of our lives, our routines, and the familiar places where we work, live, and study. The reliable infrastructures that tether our world together melt into the background, while the norms and practices that give shape to our social ecosystems may pass by unquestioned. Days blur together and become forgotten; days are spent waiting for the spectacular to save us from boredom.
But everyday is fragile. Moments of excitement, trauma, and displacement punctuate the continuum. What comes afterward is different. The river narrows and quickens, deepens and slows. The landscape of the everyday floods, inundating familiar landmarks and overwriting the ground itself, creating a new topography on which we rebuild. We mark the highwater line and carry on.
|
Image
|
Image
|
|
Image
|
Image
|
LUNCH 18 is organized into four sections: Artifacts, Ritual, Overlooked, and Questioning. These arose from inherent tensions between the contributions, highlighting the richness and complexity of the everyday. Ritual focuses on the act of returning, while Artifacts reexamines that which is left behind. Overlooked inspects visibility and commonness. Questioning seeks to reframe our relationships to both physical space and ideas.
We hope this journal will provide you space for slowing down, shifting perspective, and finding beauty in the everyday.
Michael Schaefer-Friedman, Benjamin Jacobs, Sofia Kuspan, Sophie Maffie, Sam Rosner, Margaret Saunders, editors of design research journal LUNCH 18
...
|
Image
|
Editors
Michael Schaefer-Friedman holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Virginia. His background in teaching, writing, and literature combine to allow him to tell the stories of overlooked landscapes. At UVA he was a research assistant with the Natural Infrastructure Lab.
Benjamin Jacobs is a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in architecture at the University of Virginia. His design and research interests include connecting architecture with his fascination with sound and art. He is a member of the UVA-based research team, the Arctic Design Group, that explores the future of the built environment in the Arctic region.
Sofia Kuspan is a designer at Schwartz/Silver Architects based in Boston. She graduated from the Ohio State University with a B.S. in Architecture, and the University of Virginia with a Master of Architecture where she participated in both research and teaching positions. She is currently a contributor for an ongoing collaborative book project, expanding upon her graduate thesis research on spolia.
Sophie Maffie is a recent graduate of the UVA Master of Landscape Architecture program. She also holds undergraduate degrees in Geology and Latin American Studies from Oberlin College. With her interdisciplinary background, she is passionate about designing public spaces that reflect geographic identity and cultural heritage.
Sam Rosner is an artist, writer, and landscape architecture researcher. In 2017, she received her BFA from the Cooper Union where she studied film, painting, and media studies and she recently received her master's degree in landscape architecture at the University of Virginia. She was named a Hart Howerton Fellow, in support of her ongoing research on historical Black beaches.
Margaret Saunders is a graduate student in Architecture at the University of Virginia. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture on the Urban Studies track, and a certificate in advanced language study in French from Yale University. At UVA she has engaged in sustainable materials research with the Before Building Laboratory, as well as assistant teaching undergraduate students in their foundation course, Lessons in Making.
Contributors
Ariana Arenius
JT Bachman
Ehsan Baharlou
Shirley (Dongwei) Chen
Judy Shao-Yu Chen
Amanda Coen
Isaac Cohen
Alex Daley
Philip Edmonston
Clara Gardner
Lara Call Gastinger
Sean Kois
Zhouhan Li
Ryan Moody
Paul Mosley
Zlata Onufrieva
François Penz
Emma Potter
Patrick Sardo
Eli Sobel
Katie Stranix
Emily Wettstein
About LUNCH
LUNCH is a design research journal produced at the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. Everyday is the 18th issue of the journal, which is developed, edited, and produced by a student editorial team.
