78301 - Architecture and Architectural Design Studio III

Learning outcomes

By undertaking this subject students will acquire the following:

. the ability to express the design concept under the light of contemporary paradigms (in phylosophical, scientific, social and economic fields) and apply it to architecture, with particular focus on construction intended as the architectural system's dynamic of formation and evolution, aiming for a reconciliation between aspects of conception and realization;

. the ability to intend project as construction of an information-based system made of relations which provides opportunities, as well as the coupled ability to assess its implications and consequences (on the ecosystemic, social and aesthetic fields) within the paradigm of complexity.

. the capacity to articulate and organize the architectural design complexity in opportunity patterns able to support ranges of functional mappings

. the know-how to unfold such capacity through computation-based tools and techniques intended as a pervasive medium throughout the whole design process, from the initial exploration to realization, fostering a critical reflection on the relations that connect material systems, space, society and environment.

Course contents

PREREQUISITES

The student who accesses this course knows the basic principles of architectural, technical, structural design and of 2D and 3D representation both through manual techniques and using CAD tools. This knowledge is usually acquired by passing the exams in Architecture and Architectural Design I and II, Architectural Technology, Construction Science and Technique, Architectural Representation I and II, Computer Graphics.

In addition, he masters the knowledge of the historical evolution of the project acquired during the Architectural History courses.

The lessons will be held in Italian; in case of a foreign guest, the lesson might be held in English. Furthermore, not all the bibliographic material and/or the adopted tools are available in Italian; in all these cases material will be provided in English. It is therefore necessary to understand the Italian and English languages to successfully follow the course and to be able to use the didactic material provided.

The structure of the course (both the content and the methodology wise) is divided into didactic modules - theory, exercise and project - interconnected and oriented to provide the knowledge bases for an integrated architectural design in a contemporary scenario and future projection.

CONTEXT / SCENARIO

The architectural project cannot be separated from the economic, productive, technological, cultural and social context in which it is conceived and operates. The acceleration gap between technology and the evolution of thought sees at increasing frequency the case of technology as a substratum and enabler of complex material and cultural phenomena and changes, and it is consonantly difficult to formulate a critical thought that can anticipate them or at least exploit them in time for the composition and self-improvement of society. Design approaches based on forecasting and solutionism no longer guarantee their validity. The course therefore aims to explore architecture and design as speculative and proactive tools, which anticipate possible scenarios:

. the project is intended as an open and not predetermined path; both for its generative and transformative potential (as a substrate that can support and integrate complex dynamics and instances) and for its procedural dimension (continuous negotiation of the complexity and uncertainty of the possible);

. the project has the character of a proposal, a set of opportunities rather than a solution.

The attention of the course will focus on the architectures that form the urban fabric, on the structure of the spaces that are created considering a project which, while acting on a scale traditionally associated with the "building", integrates architectural and urban dynamics, spaces for rituals ranging from private to collective. From this vantage point, each design process potentially represents an urban and community fact.

The individuation of key trajectories (functional to the project theme) through the history of architecture serves to trace parallels and differences with the contemporary situation, an indispensable step in shaping the problem, orienting it and formulating the questions that feed the design process. The analysis of the relationships between architecture and industrialization in the "age of systems" (or "the era of its technical reproducibility" to paraphrase Walter Benjamin - the indicative period from the early decades of the twentieth century to the beginning of the ecological awareness of 70s) allows us to observe a significant precedent in which the economies of logistics and construction systems have promoted the generation of new architectural and urban spatial concepts, from the Dom-Ino, to the plattenbau and the age of the "social project", including constructivists, metabolists, structuralists, megastructures. This analysis is instrumental to the construction of a critical reflection, to the tracing of parallels and differences, and to the extrapolation of opportunities and indesiderata in the relationship with the contemporary situation and the possible impact of a revolution with the same transformative potential: automation.

TOPIC

In addressing the consequences of climate change, the urban form and its densification play an important positive role (recognized by the New Climate Economy Report, 2014  and 2018, and by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2022), although still a largely unexplored topic. This is therefore an opportunity to experiment with new spatial organizations that incorporate urban dynamics in the architectural scale, aiming at the spatial reconfiguration rather than the expansion of the urban footprint.

The topic for the year 2022-23 is inspired by episodes that dot the Bolognese city area as a typical expression of the modern architectural-urban logic: the neighborhood supermarket juxtaposed with housing. These episodes will be rethought in a speculative key, integrating the market, automated production, public and private spaces in a form of collective habitat.

The theme will be addressed by trying to emphasize the dynamics of an urban and collective nature within an architectural system, questioning some principles of spatial structuring that we tend to take for granted, such as the notion of building-object, its rigid separation with urban space, as well as the notion that the relations between space and function must be rigidly predetermined.

The design work will be addressed through the construction and management of a system (consisting of a set of parts and criteria for their combination), which generates by assembly another system (the architectural one) whose possible articulations and spatial, functional, constructive and aesthetic-experiential global scale effects are caused and regulated by the operation of the former. The design process is based on rigorous research, individuation and correlation of these overall properties of the architectural system with the operational modes of the generating system.

. THEORY

The theoretical part deals with addressing the founding concepts and nurturing an awareness of the implications of the design choices made.

The evolution of the concepts of systems and space in architecture (from modern onwards) and its multiple relationships with the dimensions of construction and tectonics, complexity, computation, technology, and its social and cultural repercussions will be addressed. All of these considerations will form a basis for discussing ecology and the role of contemporary design.

The course will try to promote a process of continuous investigation and reflection, placing the project as a “wicked problem”, that is a problem that resists attempts at a solution by constantly changing its terms, and how this changes the very concept of the project.

. EXERCISES

Under the acronym Co.De.S (Computational Design Sensibilities), the exercises are aimed at providing the preparatory bases for the transition between theoretical contents and design application, through the development of an aesthetic / operational sensitivity that implies both '' learning tools that the ability to use them as a means of investigation and expression in the design field (tools as a design medium). Within the design process, tools are seen as a means of systematic research that incorporate and restructure the designer's own thinking. Architectural discourse does not end in the instrument, but the instrument amplifies and supports the discourse itself, providing the potential for its conception, articulation and clarity of expression. The course promotes an approach that does not separate technology from the creative phase but considers it symbiotic to the way of thinking: design thinking is identified and expressed through the choices made and distributed throughout the process that leads to the project.

. PROJECT

This part is dedicated to the development of the project based on the theme introduced for the current year. An approach based on an initial driving idea is promoted (explored and discussed through the critical analysis of a series of examples - real and / or speculative - inherent to the project theme itself) which undergoes an iterative development and refinement process, made up of critical material production and filtering cycles in which each production phase learns from the previous critical phase.

It is carried out in groups (consisting of 3 people each), structured in periodic meetings with a reference assistant and involves work to be carried out outside class hours.

Readings/Bibliography

. Fundamentals

. Bratton, BH 2009, ‘iPhone City’, Architectural Design, vol. 79, no. 4, pp. 90–97.

. De Graaf, R 2017, Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession, Harvard University Press.

. De Botton, A 2006, Architecture and Happiness - in particular: 1. Il significato dell’architettura - pp. 7-24, 5. Le virtù degli edifici - pp.167-147.

. Hensel, M, Menges, A, & Hight, C, Hensel, En route: Towards a Discourse on Heterogeneous Space beyond Modernist Space-Time and Post-Modernist Social Geography, in M, Menges, A, & Hight, C (eds.) 2009, Space Reader: Heterogeneous Space in Architecture, 1st edition, Wiley, Chichester, U.K., pp. 9-37.

. Menges, A & Ahlquist, S 2011, AD Reader: Computational Design Thinking, John Wiley & Sons Inc, London - in particular: Alexander, C., Systems generating systems, pp. 58-67.

. Murphy, D 2022, Last Futures: Nature, Technology and the End of Architecture, Verso Books.

. Pasquinelli, M 2019, Three Thousand Years of Algorithmic Rituals: The Emergence of AI from the Computation of Space, e-flux, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/101/273221/three-thousand-years-of-algorithmic-rituals-the-emergence-of-ai-from-the-computation-of-space/

. Reiser, J & Umemoto, N 2006, Atlas of Novel Tectonics, 1st edition, Princeton Architectural Press, New York.

. Zevi, B 2009, Saper vedere l’architettura. Saggio sull’interpretazione spaziale dell’architettura. Ediz. illustrata, Einaudi, Torino. – in particolare: Capitolo 2 - Lo spazio, protagonista dell'architettura

. Wright, FL 1927, In the Cause of Architecture II: The Architect and the Machine, https://www.architecturalrecord.com/ext/resources/news/2016/01-Jan/InTheCause/Cause-PDFs/In-the-Cause-of-Architecture-1927-05.pdf .

. Strongly suggested

. Carpo, M 2011, The Alphabet and the Algorithm, 1^st edition, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

. Frazer, J 1995, An Evolutionary Architecture, AA, London, https://issuu.com/aaschool/docs/an-evolutionary-architecture-webocr

. Negroponte, N 1973, The Architecture Machine: Toward a More Human Environment, The MIT Press, https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5049/The-Architecture-MachineToward-a-More-Human .

. Spuybroek, L 2008, The Architecture of Continuity: Essays and Conversations, V2_ publishing, Rotterdam.

. Media

. About Buildings and Cities (podcast) - https://aboutbuildingsandcities.org 

. Von Trier, L, The five obstructions

 

Further topic-related resources will be indicated during the course development.

Teaching methods

The methodological structure of the course reflects that of the contents, divided into the three parts of theory, exercises and project. The theory and project parts take place in parallel, trying to stimulate a continuous oscillation between productive moments and theoretical/conceptual growth to favor a progressive maturity and awareness of the design topic. The tutorial part is concentrated in two phases: the first aims to provide basic knowledge in order to stimulate project thinking and strategies, the second to promote more advanced strategies for the development of the project. The split is aimed at ensuring that a form of confidence and fluidity on the tools matures, favoring strategies and processes aimed at the project idea.

The alternation between lectures, moments of discussion and moments of production is considered of fundamental importance for the purpose of developing a conscious approach to the project as exploration; it is in the nature of the project to contain unknowns and to be problematic - it is in the designer's awareness to understand how to navigate this problem and provide proposals to address it.

. THEORY

The theoretical part aims to develop the conceptual contents of the course program and promote a critical reflection.

. EXERCISES

The exercises are aimed at providing the preparatory basis for the transition between the theoretical contents and the design application. By incorporating teaching, acquisition of practice and fluency on contemporary tools in design thinking, the aim is to promote the construction of strategies in the service of a coherent architectural discourse. A discourse that does not end in and with the instrument, but which the instrument amplifies and supports, providing the potential for its conception, articulation and clarity of expression.

. PROJECT

The course project is carried out in work groups (3 people / group except in exceptional cases by 4 people at the discretion of the teacher) under the supervision of the teacher and teaching tutors. The outcome of the work is represented by the drafting of an architectural project developed through all types of documents deemed appropriate (drawings, digital and / or physical 3D models, simulations, algorithms, etc.) up to the degree of development necessary to express the relationships spatial / tectonic/aesthetic of the project (the specific scales are linked to the project theme of the current year).

Assessment methods

The verification of learning consists, in addition to periodic reviews with one's own assistant, in two cross-reviews including a presentation and subsequent discussion of the project (with references to the theoretical topics involved) in front of a commission made up of internal members and, whenever possible, by external experts. There are two cross-reviews: one in the middle of the course and the other at the end of the lessons.

The documents required for the different panels will be specified during the first lesson of the course.

The final evaluation is elaborated with this breakdown:

. 1/3 working methods: planning attitude shown during the course: rigor in research, independence and originality of thought (in relation to the theme), attention to the process and critical reflection

. 1/3 topic interpretation: ability to grasp and interpret the assigned theme as an engine for design exploration - transforming analysis and concepts into operational methods of an architectural nature and assessing their consequences in a critical way, keeping the compass on the thematic objective.

. 1/3 quality of the final project and its communication: coherence and credibility of the project in its ways of functioning, slenderness and priority scale of project developments; ability to encode, summarize and read information in graphic form

Passing the exam will be guaranteed to students who demonstrate mastery, autonomy and operational capacity in relation to the key concepts illustrated in the teaching and their application in the design phase. A higher score will be attributed to students who demonstrate, while maintaining a proactive attitude, a high quality and autonomy both in the planning and communication phases.

This autonomy consists in being able to extrapolate from the teaching contents one's own path of design exploration, to skilfully illustrate it and to face complex issues showing operational slenderness and adaptability.

Failure to pass the exam may be due to insufficient knowledge of the key concepts, lack of or insufficient operational capacity in drafting the project and / or insufficient quality of the documents presented.

Teaching tools

Lectures, technical seminars on the digital tools used (Rhinoceros, Grasshopper and some specific plug-ins for the type of design process used), monographic lectures by figures of interest from the Italian and international architectural research landscape. Digital tools for mind-mapping and content organization (Miro), and for the remote sharing of 3D models (Modelo).

Depending on the possibilities of the course and if allowed by the situation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, architectural guided tours of specific educational interest for the current year may be organized.

Links to further information

https://www.facebook.com/a3unibo

Office hours

See the website of Alessio Erioli

See the website of Andrea Luccaroni