Spring 2008 Territories of Investigation: Architecture and Technology
Responsive Systems Research Seminar
ARCH 338/638.04 Schedule: Tuesdays. 2:30 pm - 4:25 pm
Location: 142 East Sibley Hall
Professor: Chris Perry Prerequisites: ARCH 231/232 or ARCH 531/532 or permission of instructor.
Course Overview: This seminar will explore the assertion that architecture operates within the realm of circuitry. That is, architecture must be perceived as a collector, servo-mechanism, or transistor which absorbs, processes, and redistributes forces and information. This perception is motivated by the continuing, pervasive proliferation of electronic technologies, products, and interfaces. As a result, considerations of our environment – and, by extension, the field of forms and geometries that comprise architecture – as an in-variant or passive field are wholly inadequate. Rather, the environment must be considered as a field consisting of active components and temporal modules, and pulsating with the complex, manifold ebbs and flows of real-time, adaptive information, i.e. – data that do not merely track, say, the distribution of pedestrians or vehicles, but also act upon and thereby transform the very information being collected. In particular, this seminar will investigate both the correlations and distinctions between the formation of space by discrete devices, assemblies, and dynamic networks, and the demarcation of space by physical or otherwise static enclosures. Or, put more concisely, if elementarily, the productive tensions between the notions of machine and building. As a larger historical and theoretical framework, we will engage issues of systems design, organizational theory, technology, and urbanism in the postwar era – with particular emphasis on the late 50’s and 60’s – through a series of readings, seminar discussions, diagramming investigations, and presentations, all of which will lead to the formation of a collective research publication of the seminar’s work with each student contributing a chapter to that publication. This publication will include images and graphic content as well as text, so that graphic presentation will be viewed as integral and equal to our research process. This approach assumes an interdependence between critical work (history/theory) and projective work (design), and a blurring between the job titles of author and designer. To this extent, this publication of the seminar’s research will speculate on new ways of reading and scanning information content, on forms of pattern recognition as a way of navigating increasingly saturated media environments, and on new ways of producing and presenting research material.
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Organizing Effects - Part to Whole Relationships
ARCH 338/638.05 Schedule: Tuesdays. 2:30 pm - 4:25 pm
Location: 144 East Sibley Hall
Professors: Leyre Asensio Villoria and
David Syn Chee Mah Prerequisites: ARCH 231/232 or ARCH 531/532 or permission of instructor.
Images – Work and drawings from Andrea Palladio, Leone Battista Alberti, Rudolf Wittkower, Francesco Borromini, Foreign Office Architects, Neutlings and Riedjik, Zaha Hadid Architects, Herzog and deMeuron, Frank Gehry and Gottfried Semper.
Course Overview: The recourse towards architectural effects achieved through the organization/composition of part to whole relationships in architectural construction will be the focus of the course. This will unfold through the study of a number of readings and exemplary projects as a means to illuminate a number of disciplinarily significant as well as contemporary processes of architectural production. The course will study organizational techniques in relation to their emerging and/or consequent effects (inspired by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzsky’s Transparency: an architectural effect borne out of organization rather than that of inherent material qualities). The aim of the course will be to expand the study of an arsenal of architectural effects towards an understanding of part to whole relationships in architectural formation that also produce multiple effects in function, performance and the current interest in the production of new sensibilities.
The procedures for organizing part to whole relationships will be studied, from compositional rules through to the formation of performative material organizations and the contemporary interests in affect and percept.
Course requirements: This course should be understood as a semester long investigation with two equally important parts:
1. Seminars
This includes group presentations and readings. Students will be expected to read a number of texts provided in the seminar reading list and actively participate in weekly class discussions.
2. Research Project
Students will be expected to devote the semester to the development of a theory paper to be submitted at the end of the term.
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ARCH 465.01 Course Schedule: Wednesdays. 10:10 am - 12:05 pm
Location: 200 Rand Hall
Prerequisites: ARCH 361/362 or permission of instructor.
Professor:
Dana Cupkova
Course Overview:
TBA
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The Architecture of Weight
ARCH 465.02 Course Schedule: Mondays. 10:10 am -12:05 pm
Location: 144 East Sibley Hall
Prerequisites: All students interested may enroll on this course. Only simple notions on structural concepts are required. Maximum of 15 students.
Professors: Anton Garcia-Abril and Débora Mesa Molina
Course Overview: This course will give students different points of view to face architecture, when analyzing or designing it. Structures and construction processes will play an important part on the course content, emphasizing the importance of considering them from the first stages of a project. We will extend our reviews to artistic domains, significant works throughout the history of architecture, civil engineering examples and our own professional experience.
The course will be divided into 3 blocks (4 weeks each): piling up masses, piling up stresses, piling up spaces. Each of these topics will consist on theoretical and practical lessons, where the students will practice their knowledge by the elaboration of conceptual models.
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