Evaluation Stages: Presentation / discussion
2
Form-finding of Performative Surfaces through 3D Printing on Prestressed Textiles
Files: abstract, poster, full paper (‘paper submission’)
What Modes of Design Research are Transformative and Venturous?
Files: abstract, full paper
Fragments from proceedings (‘paper submission’)’:
Abstract.
Design although it generates a building is also a search for meaning, for a change in values and perceptions and even a change in power and politics, although in some instances it is a search to legitimise existing power dynamics and entrench them.
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In the South African context where our built environment and cities are struggling more than twenty years into democracy to subvert their Apartheid segregationist beginnings, design research has the capacity to understand the historical connections between design, power and politics, and purposefully subvert them and even venture new modes of practice.
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What are the most effective modes or routes through which architectural design research can be pursued which support and forward the transformation imperative of both academia and practice? Can the intellectual space and conditions be created that support a strong critical culture of architectural design research, with its’ hopefully resultant transformation of our built environment?
Through analysing various international Design Research modes and their applicability to the South African context, an understanding will be gained of how Design Research can be transformative and venturous both within practice and academia, but also within the larger socio-political context. As Teddy Cruz so aptly put it “new’.
Keywords.
Design Research; Modes; Transformative; Venturous; South Africa
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In the South Africa, where our built environment and cities are struggling more than twenty years into democracy to subvert their Apartheid segregationist beginnings, design research that has the capacity to understand the historical connections between design, power and politics, and purposefully subvert and transform them and venture new modes of practice.
Reflexive Practice
Files: abstract, poster, full paper
Fragments from proceedings (‘artefact submission’)’:
Abstract.
How can different creative practices inform and challenge each other? And, how can medial transpositions contribute to operate complex conditions in architectural creation? This project addresses the process of architectural creation as a trans-medial practice, here instantiated as an encounter between text, drawing, photography and model. The project enquires how these distinct medial affordances affect the architectural articulation through transpositions and interactions between them within an iterative process.
Keywords.
Architectural Media, Drawing, Model, Photography
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RESEARCH STATEMENT
The presented material is part of an ongoing research project on trans-mediality in the process of architectural creation. The enquiries are conducted through iterative series in the media of text, drawing, photography and model. The different stages of the process will be documented, but the presentation will put emphasis on the process of interaction between a physical model and photography. The contention of the project is that any material articulation always is engaged in and inseparable from its specific medial mode of expression. A given problem materialises in different ways when it is processed in different media and media environments. Thus, the differentiation of medial affordances is essential: the differences enacted in the trans-medial practice work as a vehicle for creation, premised on the transgression of the specific medium’s limitations. To identify specific medial affordances, the project enquiries establish sets of specific media environments.
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Sampling Ideas around Books as Public Space
Fragments from proceedings (‘artefact submission’)’:
Abstract.
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In 1975, Ulises Carrión wrote an article entitled The New Art of Making Books /…/. In it, he laid the foundation for a new way of understanding that object had served as a container of knowledge for so many years and centuries. Until that moment, the book had always been defined through its formal and constructive character. Ulises Carrión, gave us a definition based on emptiness and experience. The book is, I quote textually, a set of spaces. The book is also a set of moments3. Ulises Carrión tended to catch a concept that was already in the street fifteen years ago, but until then nobody had dared to define. The book, as a real art format, contradictive to the opinion of many critics, was born in the 60s. In fact that in the first half of the 20th century the book was already part of the art world. One should only point out, for example, the first Futurist manifesto of Filippo Marinetti in 1909, or the pamphlets and Dadaist and Surrealist publications, La Boite en Balise by Marcel Duchamp, or those first experiments of books which were carried out by Dieter Roth and Bruno Munari during the fifties. In that first initial stage, the book was a mere container of art. A simple warehouse.
The change produced in the sixties was due to the fact that a group of artists, headed by Ed Ruscha and Dieter Rot, began to consider that the value of the work of art would not only be the content, but also the building in which it was stored. And the form and laws that made up the content should have a direct relationship with these laws that make up the container, the building. The medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan said, and contrary to Sullivan’s ideas, function follows form4. The book is conceived in spatiotemporal terms. The content work that is constructed with the logic of the book itself, can only exist within the book because it does not make sense outside of it. And most importantly, following the original ideas of Gutenberg, for its ability to multiply indefinitely, for its ability to reach many more people than conventional art, and for being a cheap object affordable to any pocket, the book is understood, above all, as a public space. The lecture, will be a sampling of examples tends to construct all these ideas around Books as Space and Time, and books as Public Space.
Keywords.
Artist’s books, Public Space, Space and Time, Architecture, Narrative Structures
Film-Space Transcription
Files: abstract, poster, full paper
Fragments from proceedings (‘artefact submission’)’:
Abstract.
During my undergrad and Master’s studies, I was always exposed to the way my friends in other related fields, specificity film studies, approach to creating space. I constantly learned about possibilities that other canons can bring to my approach to space and design. I took a course which explored film as transcription for architectural design under supervision of Prof. Deborah Hauptmann at TU in Delft. I did my diploma at TU Vienna under supervision of Prof. Will Alsop under constant exchange with my cinematographic friends – using their cameras, their materials, their skills – to finish my studies.
10 Years later, a new big interior project is now the basis to develop this exchange further. Together with a director friend the idea emerged to pretend to do a movie while we are actually doing an interior design. We started to meet with an award winning costume designer and a lighting designer who is specifically interested in opera lightning after doing film. We considered different approaches, exchanging ideas, talking about plots and sequences. Things began to come exciting, suddenly a very problematic skylight became a very exciting artificial light source in the ceiling. The director instantly filled the apartment with buzzling situations of daily life, fabrics are chosen thinking about tangling toes at the end of a couch. Furthermore we are looking for a director of photography to picture the flat out of the mind of a film, as well for a sound designer who should be in charge of p.e the noise a moving chair produces on a wooden floor.
My study is a new approach to my architecture, much different from my working process of my former projects. In previous projects, very often, I worked solo, had limited budgets and time frame to create a concept or main idea. This research now is embedded in one of my current very different interior design projects for a private person in Vienna with very exclusive budget starting now being finished in approx. 6 months. Working on this project now together with a constant growing team of filmmakers is an spectacular opportunity to see which spatial possibilities emerge out of this exchange. The question is what kind of quality and depth can this bring to my architecture? What kind of new ideas, space settings, colour concepts, material suggestions and lightning conditions can be produced?
I came to this study proposal, following the review of relevant literature in the field and analysis of the major architectural projects in the past 5 years of working as an architect. I tried to look at things, which mattered most to me. I looked at my work done at Querkraft Architects in Vienna. I looked into the work of the stage designer Es Devlin. All of this research done including the story written above leaded me finally to the theme I suggest now to start with my PhD.
Keywords.
Film, photography, spatial possibilities, colour, light, sound
Slam Your Doors in a Golden Silence
Files: abstract, poster, full paper ( = updated abstract)
Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:
Abstract.
Often we judge architecture for its external appearance. In the spaces we perceive or construct we must become aware of its cultural and current spatial realities. As the architect Peter Zumthor has pointed out: “to experience architecture in a concrete way means to touch, see, hear, and smell it.” A keyword in my research practice is “experience”; we want to come to a different understanding of architecture, with the possibility of creating a relationship between the physical environment and the “immaterialities” of space, like sound and movement. When I am walking through a space for the first time, I often become aware of the inherent stillness of the architecture. The only things moving through the space are shadows and light. I look at the transitions between rooms, between floor and wall, ceiling and wall, window and door. Instead of making measurements or architectural drawings, I just listen to the sounds of my footsteps, all the while becoming carefully aware of the rhythm of walking and moving through a space. For me, this is the process of ‘reading the space’; it also involved making drawings and photographing the space in order to grasp its essence. These drawings are often not so much a means of illustrating but of understanding the space. While walking through the space (touching, smelling, seeing and listening), I am trying to find points of tension, lightness, silence or resistance in a space. The emptiness and silence of a space can give us time to observe the environment more carefully and make observations, as well as the possibility to reflect on ourselves. Our ‘dwelling’ might in future lead to a response to the corporeality of a space. In my research practice I focus on questions such as: How do architectural sensations, intuitions and fascinations lead to creation and invention? What specific property of a space leads to a physical experience? How can I make a room perceptible? What is visible, tangible and audible in an architectural experience? For a comprehensive research of experiential space we would need to examine different modes of this experience (tactile, auditory, visual, conceptual). And subsequently develop from these abstract ideas an independent research practice based on the so-called “thinking-through-making” concept of anthropologist Tim Ingold.
Keywords.
Spatial experiences; Interdisciplinary methodology; Sound; Acoustics; Art
Earth as a Contemporary Design Object
Files: abstract, poster, full paper
Fragments from proceedings (‘paper submission’)’:
Abstract.
Unfired earth materials present an opportunity for sustainable architecture on different levels. From an environmental point of view, earth has a triple benefit in the life cycle; the resource being abundantly available, the low need of energy to process the material and the potential for harmless disposal at the end of life. dditionally, in order to create a successful sustainable design, the material needs to be appreciated by its users, whether it is used for a building, building component or an object.
This research aims to put forward ways of using earth in a contemporary way through the method of Material Driven Design. The aim is to propose unfired earth material applied in a way that is attractive to the user and, meanwhile, taking into account environmental aspects. Exploratory interviews and a survey with a public of laymen and architect/designers were done to analyse the way they experience (unfired) earth. This input was used during the designing and building of an earth object; a combined phone vault and bedside lamp.
Rather than designing a building or building part, an object allows to go more profound into refining the shape, texture, production process and finishing method. Meanwhile, the deliberate choice of making a daily object, allows to introduce a more general public in order to provoke discussion on the material experience of earth. This way the object design can potentially function as a catalyst, between raw material and full-scale construction.
This paper gives an overview on the former steps (interviews, survey) and following reflections on potential tracks of using earth when applied in a contemporary western European context. The research for design phase guided the design process towards a specific shape and materiality. The process of materialisation is briefly presented, from material tinkering to a very defined production process. Lastly, a further example on how to apply a similar research and design process in future earth designs or applications on an architectural scale will be presented. Keywords. earth; contemporary; design; material experience
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Conclusions
Throughout this paper, the designing and building of an object out of earth object has been put forward. The use of the Material Driven Design method guided the design process, onsisting of several consequent steps: a technical and experiential characterization of unfired earth, followed by the creation of a material experience vision and concluding with a design and built prototype of the design.
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Approaching [Ma]
Files: abstract, poster, full paper (=updated abstract)
Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:
Abstract.
In 1978 the exhibition ‘間 [Ma]. Space-Time in Japan’/…/ opened its doors in Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. Japanse architect Arata Isozaki designed and curated this exhibition to introduce the concept 間 [Ma] to the Euro-American context. The exhibition consists of nine spatial installations in which 間 [Ma] shows up in different modalities of thought and action: logical, visual and performative. In its architectural context 間 [Ma] shows a moment at which time and space have not been disentangled as distinct and abstract notions: a single sensible spatiotemporal reality. In architecture 間 [Ma] is experienced in Japanese craftsmanship as a unique spatial arrangement, characterized as ‘movement space’/…/, and a unique approach to design (pedagogy), characterized as co-becoming/…/. Through re-enactment of (parts of) the exhibition I study the potentials of 間 [Ma] to develop discursive and non-discursive design tools to approach this single sensible spatiotemporal reality in contemporary architecture practice. In the past years I have analyzed the exhibition by means of archival research and an interview with Isozaki. I also have re-enacted and presented (parts of) the exhibition in my own (pedagogical) practice and in collaboration with students. In this presentation I will use the diverse documentation of my research material to introduce ‘biotopological craftsmanship’ as an architectural technique to approach 間 [Ma]. ‘Marking’, ‘Zig-zagging’ and ‘Rotating’ will be introduced as three specific examples. Biotopological craftsmanship can be understood as an architectural technique in which the architect carefully coordinates with social-environmental moving bodies through minor interventions. This interventions are directed towards the emergence of an autonomous socio-environmental and spatiotemporal interaction. ‘Marking’, ‘zig-zagging’ and ‘rotating’ are all means to activate this process of coordinating and interfering within contemporary architectural landscape that is characterized by a shift ‘from object to experience’/…/.
Keywords.
Architecture; exhibition; re-enactment; Ma; Space-Time
Drawing and the Cognitive Niche
Files: abstract, poster, full paper
Fragments from proceedings (‘paper submission’)’:
Abstract.
My drawing practice explores place. I return to the same place and draw, I take materials and alter their state to make drawings. I spend time repeatedly within a place to understand the knowledge gained. I draw to gain knowledge and to understand. In one location I have returned to draw from the same spot repeatedly over a year, initially as a reflection upon Merleau-Ponty’s stance on a phenomenology of movement. These repetitive acts of drawing enabled a layered situated perception of that environment, my research became fully focussed upon drawing as a tool for engagement with the environment.
The science of cognition has opened new philosophical approaches to perception and cognition. The stance of situated cognition theory is concerned with the notions of embodiment, embedding and extension (Robbins and Aydede). These three conceptions envisage cognition as a process involving a multi-sensory individual moving within a contributory dynamic environment, which allows perception to build and knowledge to be generated (Noe). This knowledge can be used to relate to and alter the environment.
Drawing can be considered part of a cognitive process and I wish to explore this within my research. Drawing takes its place as does, seeing, perception and art within a philosophy of biologically structured organisation (Noe). Research in the biological sciences, are producing paradigms around the idea of extended physiology. A suggestion that some processes central to biology lie external to the organism Wilson). This seems analogous to the notions within situated cognition theory particularly that of niche construction theory (Odling-Smee). This contends that organisms make changes to their environment which then feedback and have an effect upon the development of the organism.
The concept of the niche has been developed within other research disciplines for example the social niche and the cultural niche, however that of the cognitive niche (Tooby & DeVore) is of interest within my research. Cognitive niche theory places cognition within a fully situated compartmentalised space where thoughts, concepts and memories are held. This extended space elides physiological thought processes with our inhabited environments.
In my paper I contend that drawing is a tool which changes our environments, and is a process which allows humans to create niches. My paper places my durational drawing practice within the context of cognitive niche construction theory. This opens the possibility of re-framing drawing within a cognitive process.
Keywords.
Drawing; Cognitive niche; Situated cognition
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I discovered that to draw at that scale I needed to rely on my bodily movement. My drawing movements were expansive and on refection were tuned to the movements of the sea, the time spent immobile, drawing the sea, had seemingly created learnt rhythmic patterns which now created the drawing. Creating the in situ drawings had produced a sustantial scaffolding for a more developed drawing exercise, an enhanced drawing process culminating in the production of the larger finished drawing.
I discovered that my imobility was inconsequential to any understanding of a phenemonology of movement, however it enabled my considerations within a cognitive niche, creating thoughts as objects, building scaffolds to generate new thoughts and new objects and allowing the possibility of creating new knowledge. This project clearly linked location and continuity and was therefore concerned with the enviroment of that particular beach. Thoughts as objects of that beach, thoughs as objects that allows collection and distribution of knowledge of that particular beach organised within a cognitive niche with open-ended cognitive possibilties of further sequential cognitive niches. Thus a drawing practice plays an important part within cognitive processes, and a durational drawing practice concerning our location can, I believe, contribute significantly to understanding the environment within which we live.
Moving Ground
Files: abstract, poster, full paper
Fragments from proceedings (‘paper submission’)’:
Abstract.
The research main question comes from the observation of the construction phase of landscape architecture interventions, from private gardens to public parks planned and realized in the south part of Switzerland, as an opportunity to think about ground movements connected to the realization of projects that deal with changes of the site’s surface and ground transformations inside landscape.
The first step of the investigation is indeed a critical recognition, through photographs and topographical drawings, that interprets both the physical and the inspirational aspects of a number of earthworks, resulting from the excavations for buildings foundations, from land leveling processes and embankments or, most of all, from the inert waste relocation inside depots. In particular the investigation scrutinize their effects inside everyday perceived and familiar landscape, to finally question how today, beyond economic concerns, earth management practices and soil resources assessments, environmental and sustainability programs on a global and on a local scale, this earthworks could enter the design process.
The critical observation proceeds together with the construction of a theoretical framework, from the founding meaning of re-shaping the land with earth, moving through Dinocrate, Vitruvio and Leon Battista Alberti, Gottifried Semper, Robert Smithson or John Latham and the shifting of the significance of ground inside ecological urbanism and environmental landscape design, up to examine more technical literature that underlines the fundamental role of advanced technological approaches and normative aspects about moving earth inside construction sites. The overview of on-going infrastructural projects, like the AlpTransit railway, that deeply affect landscape and imply complex building sites, allows the observation of great earth’s volumes often not acknowledged and not easy to recognize, spread as spoils inside the nearest territories. The research, trough maps, sections and topographical drawings, finally becomes a chance to sight, inside broad and heterogeneous environments, how it is possible to relocate, reuse and recycle earth.
Keywords.
Moving ground, Landscape architecture, Earthworks, Infrastructural monument, Construction sites, Topographical drawings
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Conclusion
The research is intended as an instrument to interpret and deepen the compositional, strategic meaning of moving ground actions inside the contemporary landscape design process.
Conclusions at this point of the research are intermediate, since the investigation is still in progress, however, the main objectives could be summarized as follows: • to foster a critical attention to the understanding of the landscape spaces resulting from ground movements during construction activities of infrastructures and to witness the effects of contemporary constructive actions on landscapes. • To claim the strategic value of design as a mean to find creative solutions between formal structures (revealing contemporary figurative and symbolic value of the ground) and fun tional requirements (as reuse of earth, reduction of C&D inert waste, optimization of construction sites in landscape, valorisation of new ecologies). • To evidence how landscape design interventions can inspire technical and ethical changes in infrastructures construction fields and vice versa. • To reflect on how, millennia after first ancestral earth mounds, earthworks inside landscape could today become part of a continuously renewed sublime collective imagination.
Details and Totalities
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Abstract.
This paper presents a sustained reflection on two large urban design experiments. The reflection describes an emergent effect named “epistemic reciprocity”. The latter part of the paper grounds its description in a body of design theory. The design experiments were carried out in Pendrecht/Zuidwijk (Rotterdam, NL) and Hellersdorf-Süd (Berlin, DE). Both areas are post-war urban expansions that are in need of an update in terms of urban sustainability. The design experiments were devised to explore and document the spatial possibilities of urban renewal and the epistemic potentials of architectural design. The reflection for this paper deals with the oppositional interplay between details and totality; large visions and tiny details; structural decisions and local details. This dialectic between the details and their totality can be couched in epistemic terms. Between the two opposites, an emergent effect of “epistemic reciprocity” occurs. Without details, the design proposal seems void; yet, it cannot be reduced to a collection of details. Dealing with totalities and details can be done in such a way that different scales of a given proposal reciprocally support each other. Knowledge from one level triggers insights on adjacent levels. Prudently switching between detail and totality enables these moments of “epistemic reciprocity”. The movement of zooming in and out on an idea is not only useful for defining details but is indispensable for developing parallel tracks of thought.
Keywords.
design theory, architectural design, epistemology, research through design, urbanism
/…/ it follows that totality and detail exist on the same ontological plane. It also follows that knowledge production is not confined to fact-finding but can consist in other forms of insight. These insights are enabled through systematic design experimentation unfolding at multiple levels in parallel. This parallel development is a way to bring detail and totality together in ways that fit a situation. Yet, thoughtful detailing adds – at its own scale level – coherence and intelligible meaning to the totality. Designing, then, develops the many scale levels of a future world in parallel. Overall design ideas (totalities) intersect on user interfaces (details), creating insights that could not be obtained without a multi-level, conceptional process of making. In this process, in-formation becomes information. The knowledge derived from the searching process can be used for inferential reasoning, discursive practices and reflections on such topics as everyday usage, atmosphere, construction or ecology.
Epicurus Garden
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Fragments from proceedings (‘artefact submission’)’:
Abstract.
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EPICURUS GARDEN The garden of the Epicurus (341-270 BCE). Different from other philosophers that practiced in public, Epicurus created an enclosed space in which a more inclusive school could be established. One could argue that the enclosed space of the garden was more public than the open space of the Painted Stoa where Zeno practiced. In the area around EPICURUS’ GARDEN, figures are meandering in a landscape of fragments. The spaces they explore, are constructed as an enfilade, it is a suite. A strange loop, a garden of forking paths, develops between Yard and World…
THE PERFORMANCE AS ARTEFACT The performance is a combination of a performed text and a piano score performed live. It becomes operatic. It is an experiment to explore the (musical) performance as research practice with the goal to test the ‘performance’ as a new vantage point on the author’s practice research, and from within this practice research. Epicurus Garden searches for ways to induce the practice research. The performance is designed as an enfilade that unfolds in the discursive space between: ‘Place, Moment, Relation’ and ‘Sound, Space, Wor(l)ds’, between Yard and World.
DRAWN INTO A STATE OF DISTINCTION The performance is an outlet of the design-driven research that examines the manifold of the authors’ practice. This manifold is an ecology of practices composed out of four ‘studios’: The Faculty Studio, the Office Studio, the Research Studio and the (Music) Composing Studio. The design driven research explores the mechanism of the ‘operationality’ of the form of re-entry. The real interest lies in the ‘spaces’ between the practices.
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Keywords.
Performance as artefact, Practice Research, Architecture
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DIALOGUES for piano solo – revisited and re-composed
The artefact is the performance of a piece of music (a suite, an enfilade, a cycle) as described in the research statement. For this a piano grand (probably ¼) will be placed in the artefact room of the CA2RE conference. At the time of writing, the involvement of a second instrument (human voices or other in under research).
From Geo-politics to Geo-poetics
Files: abstract, poster, full paper
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Abstract.
For more than five decades, the School of Valparaíso in Chile has endeavored to develop a pedagogy and research in architecture based on the experience of building speculative works of architecture, away from traditional methods of research and theoretical production. This commitment for the Work has been materialized in projects such as the Open City and the Travesías of Amereida. However, and almost contradictory, this attitude towards architecture is based on a geo-poetic vision of the South American continent created by this School in the mid-sixties, which is postulated as a fundamental element in the development of architectural projects.
This geo-poetic vision emerged from the Travesía of Amereida in 1965, a wandering trip through the interior lands of South America, seeking to ‘unveil’ them through poetry and art in action, inquiring into the question of ‘being American’ and its correlation with the inhabited (and uninhabited) territory of the continent. From this original experience, the Thesis of the Interior Sea (1971) is formulated, taking the geo-poetic vision to the field of architecture and urbanism, and establishing a position facing the geopolitics of the seventies, particularly with the visions on the development of the South American region towards the Asia Pacific front.
However, for the School, this vision must be linked to the architecture-praxis. For this reason, since 1984 the Travesías are a direct experience of architecture carried out on the territory, whose main objective is to “unveil” the South American continent through the development of different design practices of architecture and design.
This paper aims to present the meanings of the geo-poetic embodiment of the Interior Sea and its transcription in the architectural-praxes developed in the Travesías over the last five decades, decoding how the iteration between descriptive, narrative and performative praxis allows to simultaneously build metaphorical and critical insights about the transformation of territories driven by continental urbanization and its architectural incarnation.
The presentation is based on the analysis of historical archive documents and experiences as professor at the School of Valparaíso.
Keywords.
Geo-poetic; territory; design-practice; urbanization
Ongoing research
Based on this historical analysis and experiences as professor at the School of Valparaíso, this ongoing research aims to trace and decode how the origin and deployment of the Travesías in the Interior Sea has faced the historical and current urbanization of the continent, understanding urbanization, on the one hand, as the means by which the Travesías reach isolated places of the continent, and on the other, as the current process by which new remote territories are integrated into the global, but mainly for the exploitation of natural resources, paradoxically causing the displacement or resistance of places that are virtually unknown to the world.
Mapping and re-tracing of the Inner(s) Sea(s) based on the narratives and Works of more than 250 Travesías throughout South America (1965:1984-2019) aims to open up other ways of representing -digitally- the relationship between geo-poetics and a continent in transformation, overcoming the traditional methods of descriptive geography and geopolitics. Finally, this research expects to contribute in the current discussion within the academia committed to approaching subjects –such as urbanization and territorialization– through design practices beyond the disciplinary boundaries of architecture.
Entropy and Performance
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Abstract.
This paper and the accompanying exhibit of drawings and film, will build on previous CA2RE presentations that looked at the relationship between tacit and explicit knowledge in the discipline of architecture by presenting a current research project that has measured and mapped environmental data and social experience in a modern Irish school building from the late nineteen seventies, and will present design propositions about how this building could be conserved and protected into the future while addressing the technical flaws that are currently contributing to its decline;- Completed in time for the Iranian oil crisis of 1979, and predicated on an almost unlimited supply of electricity by burning turf from the surrounding boglands, Birr School struggles with the changed environmental context of reduced fossil fuel consumption in the current century. Recognised as an exemplar of modern architecture, the building has been awarded funding by the Getty Foundation under its Keeping it Modern conservation initiative to support the development of a conservation management plan.
The research goes beyond mere conservation to analyse the relationship between environmental performance of the school fabric and the social experience of students who learn there. The data gathered includes quantitative analysis of heat loss, phpp analysis, air-quality measurement, daylight measurement, etc. and overlays these on qualitative data provided by students into their social and somatic experiences of the spaces. In examining the correlation between these data sets, the research seeks to test a hypothesis about the lived experience of a mat-building being conducive to social wellbeing. This hypothesis argues that thermally textured environments are necessary to stimulate learning and that the standard comfort conditions anticipated by contemporary building regulations may not be appropriate for schools.
The last part of the research is propositional in nature as it makes design proposals for ways to address the environmental failings of the building while still preserving the qualitative experience of the spaces. The project draws on design precedents such as Hunstanton School by the Smithsons, and the Free University of Berlin by Candillis, Josic, and Woods, as well as theoretical ideas from sources as diverse as Gottfried Semper and Inaki Abalos. The architectural propositions also build on other design projects within my practice, where the roof has emerged as an important locus of design, and it will extrapolate these to suggest ways that the school can continue to perform for decades to come.
Keywords.
Entropy; Environment; Performance; Integrated Paradigm
The Descent of Architect
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Abstract.
The reconversion of Güldenhof is the field of my research. This is a project I have been working on the last 4 years, together with the architecture studio Heim&Balp. I now decided to go deeper, exploring it through the lenses of Actor- Network Theory. /…/
An ANT prospective demands Action. Where is action in architecture? Action happens when human and non-human actors form associations. So of course during planning, design and construction, but also and maybe even more in the way spaces are used, lived and transformed again by other actors, when the construction is finished. Güldenhof is the transformation of an entire farming complex into a centre for art, sustainable living and human interaction. The program is huge, therefore divided into different phases and always adapting to the creative impulse of the community living in it and to the results achieved. Here I have the possibility to explore action taking place at the different stages of construction and observe how the people use and transform the space after the architect (in their official role) left. The expertise, knowledge, values and interests of the actors, concerned and affected by the project formulates in a collective way the design result itself. They affect each other’s knowledge and values in sucha way that the common knowledge and objectives of the organisation is both questioned and developed. All actors in the process are regarded as experts and their participation is therefore based on their relevant knowledge rather than on their roles as representatives for different interests. All internal actors are also users. This puts them in an interesting dual situation.
Theoretical frameworks like ANT may help explicate the roles and contributions of all parts of these complex network. If I have always been convinced that architecture is not only the work of architects, thanks to ANT I am able to analyse this position and also see the influence of other non-humans actors. In this way I want to question the classical role of architects and try to find out what sort of architect would make the world a better place, for everyone?
Keywords.
ANT; Mapping; Rural area; Reconversion; Architect´s Role
The Lean.City
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Abstract.
objectives
How are cities changing? Introduction to the lean.city
The aim of this research is to demonstrates that the future of the city is already in action and it is producing spaces with new characteristics thanks to the combined use of traditional design tools and new digital opportunities (apps, platforms, social media), where the experience of designers is combined within information, opinions and needs of the people who will inhabit the spaces. A relationship that can act before, during and after the realization of the project according to a cyclic and lean process (research, project, prototype, test) supported by digital tools. These approaches can improve the general livability of the environment in indoor and outdoor interventions and allow the possibilities to have new experience of the space where online and offline spheres are part of the same augmented world.
method
A collection of best practices
The research uses a collection of examples and best practices from all over the world where designers and people are related in the transformation of the space using new forms of collaborative design. The lean.city is not an utopia, it is already around us, but in forms and uses that should be identified and related one to the other to understand how much are pervasive. The case studies identify four macro- topics. 1. DOMESTIC EXTENSIONS / Digital Nomadism and Sharing Attitude, 2. HYPER NATURE / Collective Projects for a Re-Vegetation of the City, 3. NATIVE SPACES / Activators and Experience of the Space, 4. SOCIAL HUBS / Onlife Spaces and Systems.
expected outcomes
A sharing and collaborative city
From the case studies and the data emerges a city capable of constantly changes according to the needs of its inhabitants, using the traditional tools of the architectural/ urban culture and those of the digital innovation. This scenario generates more shared and active places, co-designed within the users and they assume new characteristics that change or hybridize the traditional architectural and urban typologies, crossings the usual design scales and relationships. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, from the data set it is possible to recognize four macro-topics that can describe the new urban scenario: a city where the difference between interior and exterior is less tangible and more hybrid, a re-vegetation of the space developed together with people, new devices that re-activate underused spaces linking people’s needs together with brands and companies in a bottom-up/top-down process and vice versa, spaces that were born firstly online and then offline and create new opportunities, business models and “onlife” activities.
Keywords.
Lean; co-design; cross-scale; digitalculture; architecture; urbanspace