One of the foundations of Taubman College’s architecture program is its studio culture. So when COVID-19 forced classes online and closed the doors of the Art and Architecture Building weeks before the end of the winter semester, faculty and staff were faced with how to replicate the camaraderie and collaboration of the studio, as well as the up-close-and-personal nature of final reviews, in a virtual space.
Shortly after starting the shift to online teaching and interaction, a group of Taubman College faculty and staff initiated a pilot for a web portal that would assemble and then create awareness of and access to the variety of digital spaces in which the Taubman College community was gathering, teaching, and sharing — from pinups and reviews to galleries and conversation spaces.
A few weeks later, the platform formally launched as CMOK, an experimental digital space for the myriad virtual happenings at Taubman College. The letters, pronounced as an acronym, refer to the CMYK third-floor review space, one of Taubman College’s primary meeting spaces, and render a hopeful message: “SEE-EM (I’M) – OK.” Associate Professors John McMorrough and Julia McMorrough came up with the title as a way to create empathy in the space between the real and the virtual.
“In an age of COVID-19 constraints, we conceived the online site as a digital platform that aims to create a new space of connectivity, community, energy, intellectual cross-pollination, and serendipitous social encounters that are characteristic of the Taubman College architecture studio and commons spaces,” said Kathy Velikov, an associate professor of architecture who was part of the group leading the effort.
