78301 - Architecture and Architectural Design Studio III

Learning outcomes

By undertaking this subject students will acquire the following:

. the ability to express the concept of design in the light of contemporary paradigms (philosophical, scientific-technological, social, economic) and their application to architecture;

. the ability to understand the project as a complex problem that eludes any attempt at reduction, confinement or solution, as a generator of potential and opportunities;

. the ability to approach the project as the construction of systems of relationships based on information, evaluating their implications and consequences (ecosystemic, social, aesthetic) within the paradigm of complexity;

. the capactiy to articulate and organize the complexities and opportunities of contemporary architectural design to respond to contemporary and future functional mappings;

. the ability to convert theoretical-speculative reflections into operational strategies by incorporating the appropriate tools into their own way of thinking throughout the entire design process, encouraging critical reflection on the material-technology-space-society-environment relationships.

Course contents

PREREQUISITES

The student who accesses this subject knows the basic principles of architectural, technical, structural design, and 2D-3D representation both through manual techniques and using CAD tools. This knowledge is normally acquired by passing the exams in architectural design, technology, structures and representation included in the previous years' teaching programme. Furthermore, he masters the knowledge of the historical evolution of the project acquired during the History of Architecture courses.

The lessons will be held in Italian; if the opportunity of a foreign guest arises, the lesson will be held in English. Not all the bibliographic material and/or tools adopted 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 in order to profitably follow the course and to be able to use the teaching material provided.

The structure of the course (both content and methodological) is divided into teaching modules - theory, practice and design - interconnected and oriented towards providing the knowledge bases for integrated architectural design in a contemporary and future-projecting scenario.

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 difference in acceleration between technology and the evolution of thought makes the case of technology as a substrate and enabler of complex material and cultural phenomena and changes more and more frequent, and the formulation of a critical thought that can anticipate them or at least exploit them in time for the composition of society for its own improvement is increasingly difficult. Design approaches of a forward-thinking and solutionist nature 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 non-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 that, while acting on a scale traditionally associated with the "building", integrates dynamics of an architectural and urban nature, spaces for rituals ranging from the private to the collective. From this point of view, every design process potentially represents an urban and community fact.

The identification of key trajectories (functional to the project theme) through the history of architecture in the "age of systems" (or "the era of its technical reproducibility" to paraphrase Walter Benjamin - the indicative period that goes from the first decades of the 20th century to the beginning of ecological awareness in the 1970s) serves to draw parallels and differences with the contemporary situation, an indispensable step for giving shape to the problem, orienting it and formulating the questions that fuel the design process. This analysis is functional to the construction of a critical reflection, to the tracing of parallels and differences, and to the extrapolation of opportunities and unwanted ones in the relationship with the contemporary situation.

TOPIC

The theme for the year 2023-24 deals with the relationship between the structure of spaces and learning with particular reference to university education and research. The agile evolution of knowledge and its ways of accumulation, processing and transmission contrasts with a reality in which the structures of the spaces support a rigidly set didactic-organizational structure with a prevalence of programmed activities and which rarely or not at all supports spontaneous activities and the informal/casual exchange of knowledge. We will try to rethink these structures with the aim of creating an 'educational city' (the term used by Shadrach Woods in reference to the project for the Free University of Berlin) to manage the intrinsic uncertainty of the changes that are taking place and their impact on knowledge and its dynamics, focusing the work on the spatial structure and the potential flows that this promotes and causes between planned and spontaneous activities.

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 from urban space, as well as the conception according to which the relationships between space and function must be rigidly predetermined.

The design work will be tackled 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 overall effects are caused and regulated by the work of the first. The design path is based on rigorous research, identification of these overall properties of the architectural system and their correlation with the ways of operating of the generating system.

. THEORY

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

The evolution of the concept of architectural space (from the modern period 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, posing the project as a "wicked problem" (i.e. a problem that resists attempts at a solution by continuously changing its boundaries), and how this status changes the very conception and approach.

. EXERCISES

The exercises are aimed at providing the preparatory bases for the transition between the theoretical contents and the design application, through the development of an aesthetic / operational sensibility which implies both the learning of tools and the ability to use them as a means of investigation, expression, reflection and construction of the design process (design medium). The tools incorporate and restructure the designer's thinking; the architectural discourse does not end with the tool, but the tool 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 conceptual phase but considers it symbiotic with the way of thinking: design thinking is built, identified and expressed through the choices made and distributed throughout the process that leads to the project.

. WORKSHOP/PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

This part is dedicated to the development of the project on the basis of the theme introduced for the current year. An approach based on an initial guiding idea is promoted (explored and discussed through the critical analysis of a series of examples - real and/or speculative - inherent to the design theme itself) which undergoes an iterative development and refinement process, made up of material production cycles and critical filtering 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 provides for work to be carried out outside class hours.

Readings/Bibliography

. Fundamentals

. Alexander, C. (1965) ‘A City is not a Tree’, Architectural Forum, 122(1–2), pp. 58–62.

. Bratton, B.H. (2009) ‘iPhone City’, Architectural Design, 79(4), pp. 90–97. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.923 .

. De Botton, A. (2006) Architettura e felicità, Guanda, Parma - in particolare: 1. Il significato dell’architettura - pp. 7-24, 5. Le virtù degli edifici - pp.167-147.

. Dovey, K. (2013) ‘Assembling architecture’, in Deleuze and architecture. Edinburgh University Press Edinburgh, pp. 131–148.

. Easterling, K. (2012) The action is the form. Victor’s Hugo’s TED talk. 1st edition. Edited by S. Press. Strelka Press.

. Graaf, R. de (2017) Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

. Hertzberger, H. (2008) Space and Learning - Lessons in Architecture 3, Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.

. Hensel, M., Hight, C. and Menges, A. (2009) ‘En route: Towards a Discourse on Heterogeneous Space beyond Modernist Space-Time and Post-modernist Social Geography’, in Space Reader: Heterogeneous Space in Architecture. 1st edition. Chichester, U.K: Wiley, pp. 09–37.

. Johnson, S. (2010) Where good ideas come from - TED Talk. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from

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

. Murphy, D. (2016) Last Futures: Nature, Technology and the End of Architecture. Verso Books, p. 240.

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

. 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 .

. 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/ .

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

 

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 parts take place in parallel, trying to stimulate a continuous oscillation between productive moments and theoretical/conceptual growth to favor a progressive maturity and reflective, planning and operational awareness. The exercises part aims to build confidence and fluency on the tools, favoring functional strategies and processes to stimulate design thinking.

The alternation between frontal lessons, moments of discussion and moments of production is considered of fundamental importance for the development of a conscious approach to the project as an exploration; it is in the nature of the project to contain the unknowns and be problematic - it is in the awareness of the designer 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 path used). Digital tools for mind-mapping and content organization (Miro), and for remote sharing of 3D models (Modelo).

Depending on the possibilities of the course, guided visits to architectures of specific didactic interest for the current year may be organised.

Links to further information

https://twitter.com/a3unibo

Office hours

See the website of Alessio Erioli

See the website of Andrea Luccaroni