October 10, 2025 - Surjan Super School Weekly Newsletter - PART 1

SURJAN SUPER SCHOOL NEWSLETTER PART 1

WEEK OF OCTOBER 10, 2025

Title: Domestic Radicalisms, Floating Schools & Cloud-Covered Rooflines

An exploration of the architectural imagination through shingled facades, elevated typologies, waterfront temples, and technicolor steps.

This week's newsletter celebrates the radical reimagination of domestic typologies and waterfront monuments. From A-frame dreamscapes to pink box libraries, we explore a world where clouds cast long shadows over candy-colored housing, where stairs lead not just to entries, but to entire civic stages of assembly, pause, and celebration.

At SURJAN SUPER SCHOOL, the typology of “home” is never singular. It expands, compresses, stretches, and floats—sometimes above concrete lots, sometimes over cliffs, and sometimes above mirrored pools of still water reflecting a surreal optimism.

❶ THE DOMESTIC AS GRAPHIC ICON

Images 01–04

A series of simplified, almost cartoon-like dwellings—with white shingled upper stories perched atop bright yellow and orange bases—remind us of children’s books and LEGO sets. But these are not playful for play’s sake. They are precise, with windows circular and square, doors rhythmically marching along shared porches. These homes suggest a civic neighborhood, where repetition becomes ritual. The roofs reference New England vernacular, while the bodies assert a new, vibrant urbanism.

This is where storytelling begins: on the sidewalk, under a porthole window, before the doorbell rings.

❷ THE CLIFF DWELLERS' TEMPLES

Images 05–07

Here, architecture climbs. A red structure stretches up a cliff, its roof becoming a promenade. The sharp, linear form both contradicts and completes the softness of the surrounding pine forest. These buildings do not ask permission from the landscape—they arrive like ceremonial masks perched above the sea.

Architecture as pilgrimage: an incline to perspective, a landing at edge, a temple for collective breath.

❸ THE OBSERVATORIES OF LAKESIDE MYTH

Images 08–10

Twin towers—half aquamarine, half red—stand sentinel at the edge of water. Their facades are pocked with curious apertures, recalling eyes on a dice or the sightlines of a fortress. These are learning observatories, playful lookout posts that frame the sky, lake, and life itself. Every window is an invitation to reframe the ordinary.

Inside, children sketch clouds. Outside, wind folds time.

❹ ARCHITECTURE AS AN ACT OF LANDING

Images 11–13

Each of these images offers a new typology of descent—a staircase that becomes architecture itself. These red civic towers are not entered so much as approached ceremoniously, as if arriving at the gates of a place where stories live.

You don’t go in. You rise into them.

❺ THE PINK-YELLOW RAZOR EDGE

Images 14–15

Set against a muted horizon, these two pink-and-yellow structures evoke both cheer and restraint. The cantilevered roofline, sharp as a folded page, contains a skeletal core—an exposed infrastructure of platforms, stairs, and glass. We see the entire life of the building on display.

This is not form following function—this is form following fantasy.

❻ THE FLOATING BOXES OF KNOWLEDGE

Images 16–20

Across several images, a repeating motif emerges: a coral-pink box hovers above a grand central stair. It is suspended above water or plaza, its structure hidden or celebrated. Inside the box? A library, a community center, a classroom, a future. These drawings echo Aldo Rossi’s Teatro del Mondo—but rewritten in candy-colored optimism and civic softness.

A place that is lifted, as if too precious to touch the ground.

❼ FROM ICE CREAM TO INFRASTRUCTURE

Images 21–22

Now pink gives way to pale pastels, but the typology remains: the monumental box on top of a stair. These structures are clearer, calmer, more atmospheric. The reflections in the water add to their dream-like quality. And yet, these are serious civic architectures—places of gathering and wonder.

The elevation is not for spectacle, but for collective elevation of thought.

❽ DOMESTICITY AS CURVED MEMORY

Images 23–24

We close with rooflines that undulate like dunes or waves. Here, shingles become a surface of motion—wooden skin rolling over volume. These homes feel nostalgic and speculative at once. They’re suburban, but also experimental—Midwest meets seaside fantasy.

Where architecture curls like a smile, soft and unexpected.

❾ THE TRIANGLE REBORN

Images 25–26

Finally, the most radical simplification: A-frame dwellings with playful facades. Their geometry is so direct, it becomes radical. Front doors in orange and blue. Gable windows that wink. They stand like origami houses in a field of clouds. The sky is impossibly blue.

The triangle is no longer a primitive hut—it is a poetic one.

Closing Note from Surjan:

This week’s visual archive reveals a profound lesson: elevation is a narrative device. Whether it’s a home lifted for floodwaters, a temple perched for perspective, or a library suspended for reverence—height in architecture isn’t just structural, it’s symbolic.

At SURJAN SUPER SCHOOL, we climb stairs to learn.We pause on landings to remember.We dwell in shapes that reflect joy.

Let every platform be a place of poetry.Let every roofline bend to wonder.Let every child’s drawing of a house be taken seriously.

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See you next week, with more platforms for imagination.

—Surjan Super School 🌀