Study 01: Framework

The first study is about the construction of a framework i8n the form of a website to post all the assignments for the class. The site for this class will eventually comprise all your studies on different digital representations including solid models, surface models, wireframe models, drafted line drawings, maps, images, texts, sounds, animated images, video, kinetic models, and others. More details about the study will be given in the class.

This second study is about an active understanding of architectural canons though their re-construction with solid modeling software. For this study you will model an existing architectural project using simple 3-dimensional shapes and operations in Form-Z. The projects that have been selected for this assignment are all by Hejduk and Eisenman. These projects have been chosen for their evocative, ambiguous and strongly formal language. Furthermore, the primarily orthogonal and rectangular language of the houses, suggest a welcome degree of complexity achieved through simple means, and at the same time serves as a gentle introduction to 3-dimensional geometric modeling. All projects require a great deal of active, constructive reading in the sense that a great deal of information has to be reconstructed to suggest a spatially viable model. All models will be constructed by teams of two or three students. Hejduk’s houses will be modeled by teams of two students and Eisenman’s houses will be modeled by teams of three students. Details about the study will be given in the class.

Study 03: Rewind-Forward

The third study opens up the concept of a neo-language. Languages are sets of designs and neo-languages are sets of designs too. While languages are strongly associated to some original author(s) and a historicity associated with some designs, neo-languages are associated with the first languages themselves and the critical relationships they establish with these existing languages, that is, the relationships they establish between known and new. Often these new designs bear a close affine relation to the original but still they show clear differences from the original. Typical examples are the neo-Palladian villas in England, the neo-modern architectural movement in late 20th century, and so forth. In all, neo languages bear a strong formal relation with the original languages but still they quite often exemplify different processes and rationales in design thinking. You will be working in teams of two, and you will be creating a series of three spatial variations that will all be based on the same spatial elements and spatial relations that were used or observed to construct the originals. You may use the same spatial elements and spatial relationships that the authors of Phase I have suggested or you may construct your own interpretations and decompositions. More specifically, each team will construct 3 variations in the same architectural language with the original using iterative decompositions, recombinations and transformations of the elements and their relations with surface modeling software. The spatial elements may be simply instantiated, deleted, added, subtracted, multiplied, recombined in some fashion, or they may be altered, elongated, compressed or scaled to fit the new composition. All studies should provide viable architectural spatial solutions and they should appear to belong to the original languages of the houses. More details about the study will be given in the class.

Study 04: Seed

This fourth study is still about a critical and generative understanding of the architectural language of the house studies by Hejduk and Eisenman but the emphasis this time is shifted in its critical enhancement and distortion through a systematic array of operations including addition, deletion and transformation of the spatial elements and spatial relations observed in the original language. While Study_03 aimed at the generation of spatial studies that were simulating the original language, Study_04 aims at the generation of spatial studies that comment, reflect, set forward, reduce, hyperbolize, and unfold spatial elements and relations while they still retain the seed of the original language. For this study you will keep on working on the same project you modeled in Study 02 and within the same team, and you will still operate reflecting on the original spatial elements and spatial relations observed in the language. You may base your design decisions on the decomposition and parsing of the original design you made on Study_03 or you may introduce new dissections that bring forward other aspects of the original design. As in Study_03 you will construct 3 variations with solid and surface modeling software. All studies should provide viable architectural spatial solutions and they should be readily perceived as spatial extensions, commentaries, and reflections to the original languages of the houses. Details about the study will be given in the class.

Study 05: Severed Links

This fifth study is the third and last exercise in this series of unfolding three-dimensional new languages of designs from existing ones and it is still based on the generative understanding of Eisenman’s and Hejduk’s language pursued so far. The series concludes with the introduction of general topologies as generative transformations for the construction of new designs. While Study_03 aimed at the generation of spatial studies that were emulating the original language, and Study_04 aimed at the generation of spatial studies that had an affinity, straightforward or ironic one, with the original one, Study_05 aims at the generation of series of spatial studies that are removed perceptually from the domain of the original language while the overall structure of the original design or parts of the structure remain invariant. The only measure that can evaluate this work is the documentation of process that shows systematically the series of operations on spatial elements and spatial relations and the successive layering of the design in such a way so that any resemblance with the original will be lost at the end of the computation. In essence, this exercise calls for the construction of private languages of design that appear to be novel or at least far removed from some initial discourse; it could still be the case that these new designs could appear to belong closely to some other languages that perhaps had not been taken into consideration in the beginning. In those cases, you will have stumbled across possible relations and hybrids between architectural designs that could not have been thought before you actually made the experiment. For this study you will form teams of two persons and you will all work on a single initial architecture project that was modeled in Study_02. Each team will construct two variations and will fully document the whole process from the initial design to the very end. The teams may use any of the original decompositions proposed by the team that initially dealt with this house or may propose any other decompositions they see fit. The finished two new designs should provide viable architectural spatial solutions and will be exported through Shockwave technology for interactive viewing in the web. More details about the study will be given in the class.

Study 06: Mappings

The 6th study is the first of a cycle of three studies that bridge 3-dimensional and 2-dimensional design worlds. While the previous 3 studies tackled direct manipulations of 3-dimensional shapes composed by solids, surfaces, lines and points in 3-dimensional space, this series intertwines these shapes with their counterparts in 2-dimensional digital design spaces and back. Moreover, this series adopts a more systematic take on the notion of designing languages of design by introducing a series of specific formal operations in composition, including projections, dissections, displacements, and NURBS and patch stitching. It will be up to the students to reflect whether the designs they came up in the end carry forward all, some, or none of the essential features of the language you started with. The 6th study opens this mapping series with the operations of dissection/projection and general sweeps. The study calls for the dissection of a 3-dimensional model in an array of 2-dimensional paths, their extrusion along some paths to form 3-dimensional entities and their final assembly in 3-dimensional space. For this study you will form again teams of two persons and you will all work on a single initial architecture project that was modeled in Study_02. You may choose any of original models by Hejduk and Eisenman modeled during that study; you will find the geometry of the models in the corresponding websites of the students that constructed them at the time. Each team will construct one variation and will fully document the whole process from the initial design to the very end. The finished new design should provide viable architectural spatial solutions and will be exported through Shockwave technology for interactive viewing in the web. More details about the study will be given in the class.

Study 07: Latent Interiority

The 7th study questions issues of authorship, appropriation, and latency in design. In this study you are asked to reflect on a set of given spaces and contemplate of their latent properties to suggest narratives of appropriations.  The interior spaces that you will be working with you have to be selected from a model constructed by another team during Study_6 and woven perceptually by a narrative that you will suggest. You may first browse the spaces and contemplate of their latent properties to suggest narratives of appropriations, or alternatively, you may construct the narrative along some path and then edit the spaces to fit your story. In this process you are free to remodel parts of the original house or the whole house itself to fit your scenario, that is, you may alter the geometry of the model, by extending, displacing or transforming parts to provide a sense of enclosure for specific spaces. You may also alter the textural properties of the spaces, that is, the textures themselves, the topology of the shapes so that you may accommodate overlapping textures, and so forth. All spaces and their properties will be studied from interior camera views along the path. Each team will be comprised by three students. More details about the study will be given in the class.

Study 08: Identity and Notation

The 8th study questions issues of identity, and conventionality of notation. While Study_7 emphasized an active perceptual organization of space with the editing and supplementation of given spaces along a path, this study emphasizes a cognitive organization of space with the editing and final programming in 2-dimensions of the spaces produced during Study_7. For this study each team will produce a set of 2-dimensional plans and sections of the house designed during the previous study, and all the drawings will exhibit conventions of architectural notation. In this study you will keep on working on the same design and with the same design team you worked with during Study_7. More details about the study will be given in the class.

The 9th study extends questions regarding issues of analysis, reflection and conventionality of architectural notation. While Study_8 privileged plans as organizational devices for the exploration of a design idea, study_9 focuses on bridging both spaces, 3D and 2D, by focusing on technical drawings correlating various analytical descriptions of the design idea in various orthographic projections. For this study each team will produce a set of 2½ -dimensional black-and-white technical drawings projections including axonometics, isometrics, dimetrics and trimetrics as well cut-out projections of the design study. The number of drawings is left to the discretion of the team to better present the programmatic structure of the house. The minimum requirements are at least 3 exploded axons in XY, XZ, and YZ planes and one cutout isometric. All the drawings will exhibit conventions of architectural notation. In this study you will keep on working on the same design and with the same design team you worked with during Study_8. It is expected that these new projections will call attention to various design problems of the study; you are free to change the design of the house as you see fit. More details about the study will be given in the class.

Study 10: Spatial Interfaces

The 10th study questions that middle ground between depictions of real spaces and depictions of virtual space. Quite often real space is designed to assume a character that is conditioned by imaginary, mythical, fictive, scenes, as well as contemporary genres such as computer virtual imagery, while on the other extreme virtual spaces in the Internet are often designed to resemble everyday landscapes, cityscapes, or familiar household settings.  For this study you are asked to operate within this in-between space and you are asked to design a space that clearly acknowledges both directions of this relationship between real imagineering and virtual reality. The program for this study calls for the mapping and spatialization of the design process carried forward so far in this course. Models were created, transformed, distorted, transmuted, passing through several stages and iterations from team to team. Some of these models, such as the infamous House_2 by Eisenman that was used extensively in the tutorials, lived for a long time, while others died immediately. Similarly there was a corresponding commotion in the team membership; some authors moved a lot around forming various teams while others moved less. The relations and the evolutions of the models and the authors can be depicted in diagrams that can capture these shifting structures. For this study you will trace the lines of these transmutations and you will depict them in a 3-dimensional spatial interface. Remember that all websites like the one you have been working with all along, is a 2-dimensional interface. It holds information, typically visually, textual, symbolic, etc., that sometimes is idle waiting to be retrieved by the user, and other times is augmented with links to link to other parts of your design. For this study you will extend this interface in three dimensions by designing 3D spaces and augment them with textures that will be as before, visual, textual, symbolic etc. The final outcome will be a rendition of one or more 3D scenes, very much in the spirit of Study_7 [Latent Interiority], but this time the info on the various parts of the design, i.e. walls, slabs, windows, etc will be links to the diagram of the evolutionary process. You will be working again collaboratively in teams of two students. More details about the study will be given in the class.

The 11th study builds on the previous study and uses the diagrams produced in the previous phase to structure the relationships between the spaces and their properties in 3-dimensional spatial interfaces. The task here is to spatialize the structural relationships observed or found in the evolutionary trees and the life spans of the designs produced so far. Alternative strategies might include mappings between students and spaces or mappings between studies and spaces. In both cases it is important to set forward or at least to suggest the characteristics of the individual language of each designer/author. In this study you will continue to work with the same team as in Study_10. More details about the study will be given in the class.