Studio Statement:

"The discovery of meaningful architectural order should occur in the realm of perception, through the operations of making, of "concrete poetry" or poesis, derived from the challenge of materials and techniques.....(edited by KT)...... Embodied making, involving a mind in a body, its flesh, pleasure and pain, searching for an order rooted in history, perception and materiality, is the opposite of the construction of an object or building through the implementation of conceptual, methodological tools, and formalist or technological processes. The product might represent a technique in the first instance, but the personal techniques endowed with a theoretical and historical content, and implemented in the project as deliberate acts of discovery, will become pregnant with meaning."

Alberto Pérez-Gómez, “MODERN ARCHITECTURE, ABSTRACTION, AND THE POETIC IMAGINATION”

Through phenomenal qualities such as materiality/texture, light/shade, time/sequence, scale/proportion and spatial/structural order, architecture as a discipline aims to evoke an emotional and intellectual response far beyond the basic human need for shelter.

The pedagogical intention of the studio is to acknowledge the divide between phenomenal qualities of physical construct and representational methods employed in the design process. The studio intends to exploit this difference as a possible source for architectural inquiries.

The studio begun with a search for conditions with patterns and textures in our immediate surroundings. The selected subjects became a point of departure and a reference to the subsequent architectural investigations.

To familiarize themselves with their subject, each student conducted research on the materiality, typical use, property, production method, history, packaging, etc.

They were then asked to meticulously represent their findings through an orthographic projection to internalize the formal quality.

The tectonic potential, inherent within the repetitive natureof patterns and textures, was drawn out through the "whiteout operation" and a series of analytical drawings, which aimed to establish relationships within the individual units and to the whole.

The studio spend considerable time on experimental fabrication of full scale “surface modules” as a mode of investigation into “making” - challenge of materials and techniques. Each student explored ways to translate materiality and formal quality of the subject into fabrication methods and emerged with authentic ways to articulate interior/exterior surfaces.

The final (5) weeks were dedicated to redesigning the local park and it’s restroom structure as a synthesis of investigations conducted in the studio and to speculate it’s application as an architectural construct.

List of exercises conducted in the studio:

Exercise 1.1: Restroom Design Assignment

Exercise 1.2: Finding Patterns and Textures

Exercise 1.3: Container for transporting

                      patterned/textural subjects

Exercise 1.4: Material Research on

                      patterned/textural subjects

Exercise 1.5: Drawing the patterned/textural subjects

Exercise 1.6: Tex/Tile Exercise

Exercise 2.1: Surface Modules

Exercise 2.2: Concept Translation and Synthesis

Exercise 3.1: Public Restroom Structure in the Park

Readings:

Arnheim, Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order