fall 2005
ARC 520M:
Design Five
Many Lives - an overlap of dwelling
Efficient delivery of bits to domestic space will, in addition, collapse many of the spatial and temporal separations of activities that we have long taken for granted. Many of our everyday tasks and pastimes will cease to attach themselves to particular spots and slots set aside for their performance - workplaces and working hours, theaters and performance times, home and your own times - and will henceforth be multiplexed and overlaid; we will find ourselves able to switch rapidly from one activity to the other wile remaining in the same place, so we will end up using the same place in many different ways. It will no longer be straightforward to distinguish between work time and "free" time or between the space of production and the space of consumption. Ambiguous and contested zones will surely emerge.
william j. mitchell in city of bits: space, place, and the Infobahn
This studio will explore the creation of a multiple domicile, examining the adjacencies that occur between short-term occupants (an international youth hostel) and longer term residents (full-time students at the university of texas at austin). The project may derive its impetus from an exaggeration of similarities and distinctions between these two culturally separate constituents. Explicit assumptions may include a critical reassessment of current student housing on campus. Suggestive provocations may include re-envisioning the overlaps between city and university.
Design five is an intermediate-level design studio with an emphasis on theory and research. The design five studio challenges each architecture student to develop clear working methodologies, formulate a design thesis or hypothesis, and test intention through an intensive process of vision and revision. Each student will be expected to assimilate and assess the conceptual and logistical relationship between site and program, form and experience, technology and material.
Design five includes a studio component and a seminar component. Studios are topic based and are initiated with questions and working methodologies. The seminar will provide a forum for weekly discussion of the studio's theoretical content and working methodologies. The seminars will be structured around student presentations.
The process of design will proceed from a sustained investigation of analytical and physical notions. This study will constitute the basis of individual design explorations. These investigations will occur in four stages:
Week 1-4: 24 hour phenomena
Navigating and mapping the intersections between a physical body and multiple phenomena e.g. the body and light, engagements between private motions and the city, relationships of urban rhythms with solitary action.
Week 5-7: Precedent analysis
Retracing projects of architectural significance i.e. simultaneously calibrating existing buildings with their design investigations (sketches, architectural drawings etc.) may offer valuable terms study. Does the physical artifact i.e. the building in its site, fulfill the original terms of its conception? Does the experience of the architecture fulfill the promise of its graphic deliberations?
Week 8: Programming a site
The relationship between an assigned program and its geographic setting remains fluid at best. Architecture may be envisioned as a series of strategic intersections between context and function. The arrangement of a physical, tectonic, and material presence at a specific location may suggest a symbiosis affecting both landscape and architecture. The students will conduct an extensive study of programming options particular to an assigned context.
Week 9-15: Schematic design
Subsequent to the investigation of architectural precedent and site study, this studio will initiate the programming and schematic design of a youth hostel/ student dormitory. Unlike conventional student housing, this project will seek an amalgam of architecturally distinct prototypes: the umbrella of a permanent structure accommodating temporary actions. The site for this project will require establishing a clear correlation between the zones of city and university.