Methodology

Methodology of Replacement

If density is a question of how to bring objects in close proximity to each other, the design studio raises the question of how do urban entities meet in order to unify. If you look into the example of the Bonaventure Center in Downtown LA, the intention of the project was unite two different urban entities: a high-rise tower and an Italian Piazza. What happened when a public space moved into the tower, it had to change its content. When it was a space of collective memory and expression of political gathering before, it turned into a privatized owned and controlled and secured interior void afterwards. Something similar happened to the High-rise Tower. When the Piazza moved into the Highrise Tower it changed its form. The Buildings turned from a solid object into a topological torus.

When two entities meet, like describe above, it seems as in order to become unified, each of the entities have to lose their form or their content in order to melt together. What happened is that the content and form of an object becomes replace by the form or the content of another object.

The resulting methodology for the design studio will be based on the thesis of replacement. The methodology of replacement can be found in various theoreticians and the studio will take a closer look to Gilbert Simondon examples in his text On the Mode of existents of technical Object, we will ask if Graham Harman to give us an introduction to his text On Vicarious Causation and we can find the idea of replacement in Russian Formalism. This methodology will be used in all the phase of the studio research project:

Studies of Densification

The first phase of the research studio is to study forms of densification. These forms of densification can come from any discipline and will be analyzed on the thesis of replacement.

Techniques of Replacement

The second phase of the research project is to formulate techniques of replacement based on the previous studies and to test these techniques on architectural examples. This phase of the research project will be guided by a workshop in which two entities will be unified by replacing their form and content. The representation will be in 2d drawings.

Application on the scale of the city

Within the third Phase of the Design Research Program, the techniques of replacement will be applied on the scale of the city. Each team will choose a series of urban entities, buildings, streets, parks and garages and will try to unify these entities into one new entity. The resulting 2d drawing will be presented at the Mid Term review.

The last Phase of the design research project is to visualize the new model of density in a photorealistic image, an image that places the project back into the context of the city.

The four phases of the research project will be guided by one LAB, which allows the participants to learn techniques of representation in order to visualized their idea. At the same time a seminar will be given be the tutor on 9 postmodern positions on how architecture has been thought from the viewpoint of the city and forms the disciplinary context of the Design Research Project.