Morgan Jacobs

Architect at Clive Wilkinson Architects, Culver City, CA

Education:
Bachelor of Architecture; Minor in Architectural History, UNC Charlotte (2018)

“I thought I would be an architect, then a woodworker, then a welder, a digital fabricator, a graphic designer, a traveler, an urban planner, a social advocate, an animator, an entertainer, a storyteller, and finally a designer,” says Morgan. “At the end of the day I can say that while architecture isn’t ALL these things ALL the time it can embody all of them in ways little else can.“Attending the School of Architecture was one of the most formative experiences of my life to date,” they say. “The knowledge and skillsets acquired from my studies have proven invaluable in measures that transcend the needs of the building industry, guiding my passion to realize that which has yet to be realized.”

“Discussions, polemics, and late nights paved the way for even more questions of architecture’s role in the world, from entertainment media to social activism. These cornerstones of architectural nuance were grounded in the amazing Professors who questioned me and my colleagues who challenged me.”

Work Samples

Innovation Center
Date Completed: 12/20/2020 | Credit: UCLA

Pushing against questions of architecture as a machine for learning, this project focuses on the relationship between site, graphic indicators, and functional systems to produce a comprehensive proposal for an innovation hub at UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture.

Capitalizing on the existing two sided courtyard, the project creates a third wall that’s lifted off the ground to allow for a continuation of the existing site circulation strategies. The building’s posture is that  of a “relieved lean”. The set back, leaning structure gives air to the courtyard and encourages occupation of the ground and the upper level exposed balconies. The facades are individually crafted to support a combination of programmatic concerns and are visualized to make the material of its construction what gives the project texture while having the potential to be articulated past visualization on a built facade.

Climate Refugee Housing
Date Completed: 6/20/2021 | Credit: UCLA + Partner Sam Radice

As the forces of climate change begin to fundamentally change the way we inhabit our planet, causing in the most extreme cases some regions to become wholly unrecognizable and more devastatingly, uninhabitable, this project acts as a means to not only acknowledge and give credence to such a scenario but to use this moment as an opportunity to fundamentally understand the nature of migration and resettlement, to reexamine aspects of the typical American landscape, and explore how the built environment both has and could form it. At the core of our objective is a passion to create a building system that foregrounds the needs of uprooted peoples by assessing the pitfalls of current institutions of migration while anticipating needs, wants, and desires so as to facilitate the growth of highly cosmopolitan, sustainable communities embedded within new and foreign regions. As such, a few aspects lie at the core of the creation of our building system — a need for a sense of community, a preservation of cultural identity, an understanding of family that transcends the nuclear unit, and a deep embedment of agency which we contend comes in the form of adaptability, flexibility, and economic opportunity. Situated within a semi-rural context, one highly typical of large swaths of the United States, our broader aim is to reexamine infrastructural propensities within such regions and offer an alternative mode of habitation that draws from foundationally agrarian surroundings and spatial individuality while exploring an alternative to the typical single family home and introducing a means of density we argue to be at the core of building cultural sustainability and reinforcing a sense of community. As such, our project juxtaposes urban and rural, individual and collective, static and variable and situates the inhabitant at the core of every decision.

Beyond Beautiful
Date Completed: 3/10/2021 | Credit: UCLA + Partner Xavier Ramirez

It is 2021. Lithium brine pools have just begun to take off as a method for extracting lithium, and the industry will only continue to explode. In the future we will find these poisonous yet beautiful landscapes to be simultaneously necessary and repulsive. Our speculation proposes a new national monument to green energy as a national park on the location of one of these lithium brine mines. By 2041 the park’s official designation will have been made, and by 2061 the infrastructure for both industrial use and public travel will accommodate the park’s multiple purposes. This studio’s intent is to explore realism through future narratives. Excluding narratives that near fantasy, research was done on likely areas of expansion. The creation and collection of research items was then compiled into a “factual” collection of the present and eventually concluded with a presentation from the position of 2061 where all shown work has already concluded. Reconfiguration of existing buildings and source material into two image series finalized the work as an artists gallery exhibition and a documentary on the history of our site.

National Museum of the American Latinx
Date Completed: 3/10/2020 | Credit: UCLA + Partner Nate Waddell

This new proposal for a National Museum of the American Latinx (NMAL) is a re-imagining of the traditional typology of the museum. Rather than an insular, untouchable culture exhibit, NMAL embraces the existing heterogeneity of the Latinx community by fragmenting the museum-visitor interaction throughout a public compound. The NMAL is defined by a manifesto of 5 ideals: 1. Presence is to belong without concern for the establishment. 2. Encouragement of heterogeneous community occupation via an activated ground. 3. Curatorial Strategies that are not limited to history or artistry but are dynamic platforms for embracing public education. 4. Materiality that reflects the dichotomy between the existing structures on the National Mall and the reality of Latinx history. 5. Symbols and Metaphors have no place in a new expression of acceptance and accessibility. Through this conceptual framework the museum becomes a fundamental component of navigating the national mall. Rather than following the precedent of the tokenistic inclusion of Latin Americans in (the) American texts and being set to the sidelines by history’s writers, the museum engages visitors right from the subway exit and across the entire site, hosting cultural experiences along the way for past arts and – importantly – future protest. Unapologetically making edits where it sees fit, NMAL demands both recognition of the Latinx community and its inclusion in the American public.

The “Super Operable Window”
Date Completed: 6/20/2020 | Credit: UCLA
How can we design within the US Patent guidelines to produce architectural questions?

Defining a “Design” v. “Utility” patent and investigating architectural copyright this project leans on the representation of the real, and defined desires of patent offices to work on suggesting a “new” personal copyright. To copyright something it need not function, nor ever be built, nor can one copyright color. Notably small edits to existing patents often result in new copyrights. This patent obsesses over the image of the mechanical in a new highly operable window capable of infilling and replacing existing facades: a patent for those that find themselves suddenly trapped indoors. This window is occupiable both as an extension of your homes conditioned space and as an unconditioned balcony.