Air at an unexpected location
With the addition of air, liquids and solids diminish their density. Something homogenous and solid transforms into a loose and perforated structure. The foam model indicates that under circumstances yet to be clarified, the dense, the continuous and massive yields an invasion of the void. Air, the element most misunderstood, harvests means and ways to protrude into places, where no one expected its presence. Even more so, it brings into being strange places, which did not exist before. The process of becoming, is an occasion to watch the subversion of substance. By tradition, we are concerned with the potential to excavate substances and respond with suspicion or even guess transgression.
The aggregation of air filled voids, springs from a questionable victory over the solid, and as a foam like structure, appears to turn upside down the natural order within nature. In Sloterdyk’s words, it seems to be emerging from an illegitimate marriage of elements. (Sloterdyk P., Sphären, Schäume, Eine Trilogie)
As opposed to this common disrespect of the seemingly vague, the latent, the close to arbitrary, and the irregular, the Studio will take the foam model as example and work on a rehabilitation of its inherent processes and expressions.
In order to complement the widely used methodologies of becoming, such as drift, repetition with difference, processes of catastrophy or creative recombination, we will explore the term explication, in the sense of a discrete move from one condition to the next, like a continuous escape from the status quo.
Program-context
The Studio project will explore the design of a showroom. A particular interest will be directed towards the concept of recent brandspaces, which are an outcome of strategies for market differentiation and the search for identity (as opposed to vernacular fashion Outlets) of major international firms, such as fashion-houses (Gucci, Prada..), or furniture companies (B&B Italia, Cappellini..)etc. The initial research will in this respect also look at the ongoing global competition, which forces the Italian design industry across different sectors, to unify its forces under the known brand label, Made in Italy. A central theme will play especially the industry for luxury goods, which engages in company-fusions and co-brandings, to be always in search for new ways of creative promotion. Brandspaces are mostly an ingenious mixture of innovative programmatic components and spatial interventions, both geared towards the creation of a singular atmosphere, which immerses the consumer into an experience with all senses, and represents the product(s) and its definitive lifestyle.
Site-context & space
An increasing market share in the above mentioned luxury product segment is dominated by the East Asian and Arabian countries. The site of the studio project will be in the city of Dubai, which seems to play a role model in terms of contemporary extravagance and excess. Dubai is since several years already an emergent tourism destination, and because of its politically guided attraction for investment capital offers for planning experiments a pioneering test ground. It is the most vital part of the United Emirates, and boasts more than 30% of the world’s cranes at work at any one time, evolving entire new city quarters at an astonishing rate. Yet its enormous development opportunity is also paralleled by the misleading potential for kitsch and misguided vernacular in its architecture, which will be discussed critically in the Studio. The tallest skyscraper Burj Dubai in construction in the city, the seven star hotel Burj al Arab and man made islands like Palm Island, and The World, in planning offshore, are just some examples of ambitious realizations of dreams and unprecedented urban developments, driven by brilliant market economics and geopolitical investment. The ongoing construction strategy to build an image of desire and fantasy, will lead the students critical approach towards new planning tactics and challenge the Studio proposals in terms of technological performance and economical feasibility. The Studio objective is to invent a Brandspace environment, featuring a unique combination of program and spatial tectonics to satisfy the requirements of several industry leaders of the Made in Italy “league”. As an example, the Studio will critically inquire the recent phenomena of Villa Moda, a brandscape development and fashion mall concept, spreading across different cities like Dubai, Kuwait etc..
Pattern-material
The Studio will emphasize techniques of digital craft reaching from design to fabrication and construction, and will explore an architecture of emergence and experience, based on deep surfaces, or topologies of skins & bones related to particular work with materials and textures.
The Studio will look at patterns and geometries at different scales, in order to foster the creation of original architectural building components, while simultaneously considering the interplay of pattern design to the larger geometric structure of the building.
Primary interest is the process, which will undertake design exploration by analyzing form and structure such as in nature, optimizing our often iterative form finding techniques, and to look for strategy translation between techniques and the linked objects. Students will get interested into material behavior and combined structural effects and how they link to design techniques. Students will pursue technological innovation with different materials with the need to inquire the related design and manufacturing constraints.
Key words:
Deep surface
Pattern-material
Performance-material
New materials - smart materials
Emergent structural organizations in nature
Self organized systems
The informal in engineering
Studio phases
The Studio work will be organized in several phases, beginning with an initial project design research phase on selected geometry and patterns, and representation methods in form of digitally scaled 3D prints. A successive development phase will study geometric rules for new design variations, which will be translated into the studio project in different scales. Software and program techniques will be crucial for the studio progress. The project design phase will give particular attention to the building envelope in terms of cladding and structure principles.
In the prototyping phase, students will experiment with materials in order to permit the evaluation of design variations and, or to test an assembly with 3D solid free form fabrication methodologies. Material experiments may cover wood, metals, concrete and in particular stone.
Each phase will be accompanied with selected texts.
