4 posts tagged “teaching”

After about two month of intensive working sessions the students of the Surface Grammar Studio presented the final iterations of their projects to a panel of critics consisting of Kari Jormakka (Professor of Architecture Theory, TU-Vienna), Oliver Bertram (Different Futures), Dörte Kuhlmann, Sandra Manninger and myself. One selected project will be produced to form a part of the Archdiploma exhibition which will be staged this fall in the Kunsthalle Project space in the Karlsplatz, Vienna.

Based on some of the recent explorations in our practice we designed this semesters task for the Students of the Dessau Institute of Architecture, Bauhaus Dessau: to scrutinize floral entities an their underlying geometric logic to create spatial conditions:

This Semester I had three students to coach as second adviser for their Thesis work at the Bauhaus Dessau, DIA Dessau Institute of architecture. They all had the same typology, a highriser. All of them used computational design techniques to explore the morphology of the highriser, especially in the aspects of performativity. Sandra and I travelled to Dessau for the presentation of all the thesis works that spanned two days of presenations. One very special guest appeared on invitation by Prof. Alfred Jacoby director of the postgraduate master course of the DIA: Lars Lerup, Dean of Rice University in Texas. A University I consider highly interesting considering the amazing faculty that includes the likes of Sanford Kwinter, David Erdman, Clover Lee and Sean Lally.

Following an invitation by Margerita Flores, the director of the architecture department of the ©CEDIM, Monterrey, Mexico, I joined into their "Summer-stars" workshop weeks. I prepared a workshop for the students dealing with geological phenomena as source of inspiration for the understanding of emergent conditions as design technique.

 It was interesting to discuss with the students possible consequences for the design of architectural entities dealing with issues such as erosion, tectonics and foldings.  Especially dealing with terms that are already well introduced design techniques in architecture, such as folding and tectonics, but trying to find a new flavor within the opportunities, proved to be an exiting issue within the workshop. Like with other courses we have done so far, the students had to create first an abstract machine. In this case the abstract machine consisted of chicken-wire and plaster in order to observe emergent behavior within the reaction of the materials to various intensities, such as varying gravity, viscosity, friction and more. In subsequent steps, the  students informed a digital model with insights from the abstract machine to generate their project. The project consisted of a simple pavilion that included one specific architectonic task: a stair. This is important in order to understand how form and geometry can generate specific architectonic conditions in a continuous fashion. The entire workshop took 6 days, and included lunch talks every day about specific issues such as A Glimpse of Contemporary Architecture Discourse, The Problem of Rigorosity, Advanced Fabrication Techniques, Advanced Materials, and so on.  I really enjoyed Monterrey, and its breathtaking Panorama. Thank you Margerita Flores, and thank you to Michel Garcia Novak, the very young dean of the School for this invitation.