1. *This studio was instructed by Prof. Barron on the first half of the semester and by Asst. Prof. Tsubaki on the second half due to the teaching duty connected with the Rome Study Abroad Program
   

Studio Statement

"Nature in the form of water, light, and sky restores architecture from a metaphysical to an earthly plane and gives life to architecture. A concern for the relationship between architecture and nature inevitably leads to a concern for the temporal context of architecture. I want to emphasize the sense of time and to create compositions in which a feeling of transience or the passing of time is a part of the spatial experience. "

Tadao Ando, “From the Periphery of Architecture”

performance |pərˈfôrməns|, noun

1. an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment

2. the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function

A building performance is not simply a technical predictability of its structural and environmental behavior or an aesthetic legibility of the design ideas. It is an action, an ingenious response to various internal and external forces as they seek equilibrium through time.

Recent technological obsessions in architecture fueled by the proliferation of sophisticated structural, environmental and visual computer simulations re-ignited the interest in building performance. However, this trend tends to limit its potential by merely re-affirming the old functionalist thinking, predicting the predictable. A good musical performance has an element of surprise, an unexpected experience, as it is a response to the audience and to the context. So does the performance of a building.

This studio aims to examine the complex nature of building performance through focused iteration, cultivating student awareness to the temporal-spatial (phenomenal) quality of a physical construct as they develop technical proficiency in the design process. Our focus will be on the performance and the tectonic development of the building skin assembly.