Architectural design, level ii: material essence: the glass house

Lectures: 3 sessions / week, 4 hours / session

The theme that unites level 2 studios in the fall semester is a focus upon the 'making of architecture and built form' as a tectonic, technical and materially driven endeavor. It is a design investigation that is rooted in a larger culture of materiality and the associated phenomena -- but a study of the language and production of built form as an integrated response to the conceptual proposition of the project. The studio will look to works of architecture where the material tectonic and its resultant technology or fabrication become instrumental to the realization of the ideas, in whatever form they may take. This becomes the 'art of technology' -- suggesting a level of innovation and creative manipulation as part of the design process to transform material into a composition of beauty and poetry as well as environmental control. In this regard the studio will look to the works and design processes of a number of architects including Shigeru Ban, Peter Zumthor, Herzog and deMeuron, Kazuyo Sejima, Richard Horden, Rick Joy and Glenn Murcutt among others.

The studio will develop 2 projects:

The 'glasshouse' as a temperate space is a intriguing typology: the development of the building type in the early 19th century was an precursor to a material and assembly innovation that was several decades ahead of its time and led to significant advancements in the development and assembly of glass and cast iron -- and in a contemporary sense that opportunity exists today with new materials and technologies. The spatial volume of the project creates the opportunity to research how materials and the tectonic palette can control light and mass to fulfill various environmental objectives -- light, heat, air and other microclimatic forces naturally and without resource to excessive inputs of energy.

The studio will study develop ideas that look closely at working with the landscape: looking at the means of building in it, on it, above it, through it? Thinking about the relationship of nature to the nature of the architecture, looking at the changing form of the place -- seasonally, the sun, the wind, the light. We will also study and develop notions about form processes: generation of form from notions of folding of the land, space and enclosure to study variations of forms of shelter and microclimate.

The studio will have various supporting critics and consultants including a landscape architect, environmental and structural engineers. It is also possible that the studio may make a weekend visit, possibly to Cranbrook Academy in Michigan. In addition the 3 studios will collaborate over a series of seminars or field trips by or to architects or local fabricators of interest.

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