M ARCH II SEMESTER 2 M ARCH II DESIGN RESEARCH THESIS

AR5807 1 SEMESTER ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN THESIS (SEMESTER 2)

Units: 20

Graded Course

The Master of Architecture design thesis will span across one semester establishing the final design criteria for achieving the degree of Master of Architecture. Students will be able to select from a variety of thesis advisors, and either align their thesis with their advisors’ research interests and expertise, or pursue their own self-directed thesis themes.

The two courses (AR5806 Architectural Research Report and AR5807 Architectural Design Thesis) dealing with the design research thesis have been put together to allow students to develop a high level of competence in creative practice design research; this competence would lead to architectural outcomes in a wide range of topics.

Building on the (AR5806) Architectural Design Research Report, the Architectural Design Thesis will drive the students to take a critical position of their research and hypothesis, where a semester-long design exploration will progress to the manifestation of an architectural proposition.

Students are encouraged to extend the research programme from Semester 1 through to Semester 2, translating and transforming a research topic and hypothesis into design outcomes. Deliverables include all necessary drawings, models, photos, films that represent the research and Expansion of Thesis preparatory report as an A4 Portrait document, illustrating and describing the research outcomes in Semester 2.

Learning Objectives :

1. To experiment with a variety of design solutions within the framework set in the architectural design research conducted in the previous semester.

2. To explore an innovative translation of the design research to an actual design.

3. To understand architectural design as a series of inquiries and they are pursued through reiterative design attempts.

4. To propose profound architectural design that takes into account its impact to social, urban and natural environments.

5. To propose meaningful architectural design through informed ethical judgments.

6. To demonstrate that the proposed design and its exploration are innovative and thus contribute to the disciplinary knowledge of architecture.

7. To use representational methods that are appropriate for the research contents, design process and final architectural design.

8. To experiment with representational techniques in both digital and analogue media and simulations in 2D, 3D and 4D media, to communicate ideas in the most effective manner.

Measurable Outcomes :

1. An innovative design concept in response to a formulated thesis statement.

2. Clear and rigorous design method and approach

3. Substantial architectural proposal

4. Contribution to the disciplinary knowledge

5. Architectural representation suitable for a design content

AR595XX

GRADUATE LEVEL ELECTIVES

Units: 4

Graduate Level Electives* are seminal learning experiences for M Arch students. Taught in a seminar format, electives are aligned with research clusters, as well as faculty members’ specific expertise and research efforts, providing a wide range of contemporary topics to enrich an architect’s education. Deep dives into specific themes allow students to align their personal interests in architecture with graduate-level research, thinking, making and writing.

SEMESTER 1 FACULTY OFFERING

Chang Jiat Hwee

Chen Yu

Lilian Chee

David Chin

William Michael Davis

Thomas Kong

Lai Chee Kian

Lam Khee Poh

Naomi C. Hanakata

Eddie Lau

Shinya Okuda

Tan Beng Kiang

Yuan Chao

SEMESTER 2 FACULTY OFFERING**

SEMESTER 1 FACULTY OFFERING

AR5951B

THERMAL MATERIAL CULTURE: BODIES, OBJECTS, AND ENVIRONMENTS IN THE MEDIATION OF HEAT IN THE CLIMATE CRISIS

Tutor: Chang Jiat Hwee

AR5952G

OVERSEAS CHINESE ARCHITECTURE AND SETTLEMENT

Tutor: Chen Yu

AR5952E

HEALTHCARE FACILITIES PLANNING AND DESIGN

Tutor: David Chin

AR5952A

DESIGNING WITH ENERGY. LOCAL RENEWABLES AS KEY FACTORS IN URBAN PLANNING

Tutor: Naomi C. Hanakata

AR5951C

HISTORIES, THEORIES AND CONTEXTS OF ARCHITECTURE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Tutor: Lai Chee Kian

AR5953B

ARCHITECTURAL ACOUSTICS: DESIGNING SOUNDSCAPES AND NOISE CONTROL IN BUILDINGS

Tutor: Eddie Lau

AR5953C

NET ZERO CARBON BUILDING

Tutor: Lam Khee Poh

AR5955F

WORKAROUND: ALTERNATIVE SITES OF LABOUR

Tutor: Lilian Chee

AR5953A

INTRODUCTION TO MASS TIMBER ARCHITECTURE IN THE TROPICS

Tutor: Shinya Okuda

AR5952B

PARTICIPATORY COMMUNITY DESIGN

Tutor: Tan Beng Kiang

AR5951A

ARCHIVAL FUTURES: A PERIPATETIC INTRODUCTION

Tutor: Thomas Kong

AR5951D

HOUSES ARE PEOPLE; ARCHITECTURE AND DISAPPEARANCE IN THE HOT WAR

* Graduate Level Architecture Electives are only offered to M Arch II students under the Concurrent Degree Programme or the Single Degree Masters of Architecture Programme

**The elective courses offerings for Semester 2 will be published to students in due course.

Tutor: William Michael Davis

AR5953D

INTEGRATED URBAN WIND ENVIRONMENT DESIGN

Tutor: Yuan Chao

Ba Arch Design Studio Sequence

Architectural design can be overwhelming in its complexity. To guide students’ learning and creative explorations, the six studios in the undergraduate design studio sequence are structured as deep dives into different facets of architecture. As each semester progresses, students gradually delve into a narrower breadth of considerations, while concurrently allowing for more opportunities in experimentation, exploration, and conceptual probing.

Design 1 introduces “Seeing, Thinking, Making” as a recurrent, non-linear process, equipping students with fundamentals of representation in architecture and understanding and processing visual information. In Design 2, students are guided by “Scale, Precedent, Context”, to design in three-dimensions, exploring the relationship between people and the spaces surrounding them, making small architectural components. Design 3, using “Aggregation, Structure, Space”, prompts the combining of courses to understand the relationship between parts and the whole. These three design studios are additionally characterised by a specific focus on equipping students with architectural literacy. Architecture is made through physical forms; “form” is therefore the architect’s language. The mastering of this language—whether writing, reading, or speaking it—is one of the nonnegotiable foundational skills of the architect.

Through “Environment, Climate, Envelope”, Design 4 interrogates the interface between architecture and its environment, expanding the idea of the facade as a zone of negotiation between the building and the atmosphere around it. Design 5 then further expands upon this concept into the spaces and conditions between architectures, as “Density, Urbanism, Publicness” are investigated and unpacked. By Design 6, students tackle “Systems, Comprehensiveness, Integration” and are expected to produce design work that displays a holistic and cumulative understanding of the knowledge, skills, and thinking from the five studios prior.

Some fundamental concerns such as architectural form, site, programme, and the user, are not named as “themes” but are nonetheless ever present from studio to studio. The revisiting of these concepts each semester allows for an increase in sophistication and complexity as students progress through the years. These fundamental elements should be seen as dynamic rather than static or given. Furthermore, as students cover the different studio themes, they should gain an understanding that throughout, a thorough examination of these components, and their associated parameters, should be incorporated as part of the design process.

Ultimately, the 18 design themes are lenses through which allows them to investigate architectural seeing, thinking, and making. The following pages describe in more detail the directions of the six design studios for AY 2023/24 .

Image Credits: Florian Heinzelmann and Chew Shi Cheng Christopher

Architecture is created and articulated through architectonic and formal language akin to authors using words and sentences to convey a story, and musicians using musical notation to express their compositions. Different formal languages arise from cultural, social, technological, and economic developments that reflects the zeitgeist of their respective eras. With each new formal language, a new set of approaches (Seeing), architectural ideas (Thinking), and syntax in 2D and 3D representation (Making) are invented.

Seeing is not merely looking. It involves thorough research, close reading and in-depth observations of precedents without prejudice. By uncovering various versions of original drawings, models and texts by the author; a wide range of topics will be explored, encompassing the broader context culturally, socially, technologically, and economically. In addition, specific architectural concepts, formal vocabulary, organising grammar and geometry, spatial phenomenology, materials, techniques and graphical representation methods can also be discovered and compared.

Thinking involves the dissection and analysis of complex information collected through the process of seeing. It includes evaluating the relevance of data, interpreting its meaning and significance, and making inferences based on the available evidence. This forms the basis of critical thinking, the core of all architectural design processes and formulation of new conceptual frameworks.

Making is the creative synthesis of seeing and thinking. It is not just a simple application of learnt methods but a rigorous process of experimentation with drawing and model making techniques, as well as prototyping and manipulation of materials. The making process, balancing both intuition and informed decision making, involving both digital and analogue tools, is essential for the creation of new forms and spaces. Drawings and models are what architects make to envision the architecture, regardless of whether the design is eventually built by craftsmen or not.

The process of Seeing, Thinking and Making, shows that the design process is non-linear and iterative. Design 1 introduces the students to diverse ways of seeing, thinking and making through a selection of critical formal languages in architecture and exposes them to the organic process of design conception. The end goal is to inculcate within the students the ability to discern between a piece of architecture and a purely functional building .

Architecture is a continuous rigorous investigative process. A discipline that requires as much knowledge that crosses its own discipline and yet obey its own syntax, like any language. When its syntax is disrupted, it is what Peter Eisenmen calls— ‘distortion’. And how this ‘distortion’ is to be resolved is the very essence of architectural development. It is this constant negotiation between internal programmatic pressures with external pressures that morphs the language of architecture. While “Scale, Precedent and Context” are ubiquitous in all architectural developments and embodies a broad definition, it is the interest in Design 2 to scope and define the extent of impact and coverage that best identifies with this level—building the foundation from tangible conditions. Its respective complexities will evolve over the succeeding years with the inclusion of intangibles.

Scale is defined within the fundamentals that has immediate impact on the ‘self’ rather than its broader definition to the city and the world (referencing to diagram on the right). It involves the introduction to anthropometry, i.e. how the body as an extension of itself relates to space and its immediate environment and vice-versa.

On a more technical aspect, it is recognising when to deploy the right scale of drawings to demonstrate the right number of details, from design detailing on one end of the scale, and site/location plan (which includes the contextual environment or its relation to the world) on the other end.

Precedents are important as it forms the basis of the formal languages for architecture throughout its own evolution and negotiation through historical events, socio-cultural changes, technological shifts, and politicaleconomical changes in territories. Albeit a complex evolution, the exploration of architectural languages from the 20th and 21st centuries, shall provide the necessary architectural vocabulary and form the basis to springboard into a project.

Context in Design 2 is defined as conditions that involves the physical site. This includes both static and dynamic forces afforded by its mere location; static forces like the immediate built environment etc. and dynamics like wind, rain and sun conditions. For this level, we will not be focussing on the broader intangible conditions that are affected and effected by social, cultural, historical, technological, economical, or political contexts.

Design 3 is interested in the emergent forms of spatial and tectonic organisations that arise primarily from the interrogation of Structure and Space through aggregation.

Aggregation is by definition a group, body, or mass composed of distinct parts or individuals. We can define what the individual parts are, how can they be brought together, and what they will be like as an aggregated whole. An architecture of aggregation can be seen as a number of unitised spaces, with a distinct formal character, organised in a certain formation as a collective whole.

The Structure and Space that defines individual units relate intrinsically through its form, giving rise to possibilities of activity and program. When units come together as similar or variations of itself, its individual quality may change where adjacencies must be considered. Through repetitions and additions, the newly formed combinations take on a new dynamic through its interactions with others—where the processes of aggregation define its outcome as a collective structure. Structure in this context, should be seen more as alluding to the structuring of a format or an order rather than just for its load bearing function. This process of structuring is developed through organisational thinking, giving rise to novel forms of formal and tectonic compositions. Through its aggregations, the key takeaway here would be the ability to conceive compelling architectural outcomes that demonstrate the intersection of such a structured spatiality.

The common theme of Collective Dwellings will serve as the programmatic vehicle of investigation. The function of a dwelling relates fundamentally to the understanding of its spaces for inhabitation in relation to the human scale. This builds upon the lessons learnt in Design 2 but increases the scope and complexity of the architectural endeavour, with the aggregation of individual dwellings—where the relationship of the individual and the collective, as well as the interplay of singularity and repetition becomes critical. An understanding of size, scale and the occupant’s basic need for access to light, ventilation, views, privacy and interaction at the individual unit level, as well as the forms of occupation it will demand, will be fundamental.

The pedagogical focus for Design 3 will extend from the earlier approaches of Seeing, Thinking, Making in Year 1 to the design processes developed via the unit framework across three different urban sites in the city. Each unit will offer a specific focus—investigating critical methods of aggregation. This will range from Unit 1’s form-driven, outcome-led self-referencing cuboid aggregations, to Unit 2’s aggregation via sectional investigation of positive and negative inversions; and finally, Unit 3’s process-driven operationalartistic exploration of composition, configuration, and complication in architectural aggregations.

Image Credits: Tibet/China Border by Yuma_A (source : socialfoto.tumblr.com)

Design 4 will be a hands-on studio where students will research, design, build; and more importantly evaluate envelopes as a response and in dialogue with tropical climatic conditions. The pedagogical aim is for students to develop an understanding and gain experiences on several levels.

Firstly, students should learn about certain practical issues and tectonics in combination with material and geometry properties, directly leading to performative results—whether they are related to structure, durability or the microclimate. Secondly, by building a prototype that (re)acts on or alters the climatic conditions internally and externally, students will receive first-hand feedback for further design iterations. It also creates credibility through proof of concept. Thirdly, it is important to learn how to mediate between quantitative (the measurable performance aspects) and qualitative design aspects, since the outcome may clash with the design intent through a conflict of design parameters at times. In other instances, an unintended and unbiased design quality will emerge solely from experimentation through ‘thinking by doing’; which, once discovered, can be synthesised, and become part of the larger design system. Finally, the importance of training strategic planning processes will allow students to acquire skillsets related the knowledge of sourcing materials, manufacturing prototypes, and transporting the prototype to various locations for testing.

The studio brief intends to focus on the physically obtainable and verifiable, while discovering qualitative aspects through the process of design exploration. In the end, when the quantitative fails, a building’s functionality may be compromised—rendering it unusable; and concurrently leading to the qualitative aspects losing their shine, and the original design intent becomes meaningless. Hence, architectural design invariably encompasses both quantitative and qualitative aspects. The fundamental question for this studio, then is: How can one successfully achieve both a bottom-up design exploration approach within the framework of top-down project planning?

Federico Ruberto Design 5 Year Leader, Unit 1 Leader

François Blanciak Unit 2 Leader

Jacqueline Yeo Unit 3 Leader

Through the lenses of “Prototyping Urban Interfaces”, Design 5 explores how architecture always relates to other architectures, spaces and urban elements. It celebrates the singular-plural role of architecture in the definition and alteration of urban structures and situations.

Density, Urbanism and Publicness are conceptual poles that Design 5 employs to challenge existing urban-architectural typologies, discovering design possibilities responding to present and forecasted urban dynamics, forces and conditions. We approach Urbanism embracing the values of density, diversity and the public. By analysing socio-cultural qualities and predicaments nested differently within specific city-forms, we have a better understanding of how urban extensions are not only the result of large programmatic decisions, but how they are in part determined by architectural instantiations. Although the studio focuses on the urban scale, its approach does not involve master-planning. Instead, it presents possibilities of urban design made through tactical interventions, site-specific architectures— singular, yet able to affect larger contexts when adapted and transformed.

The studio also analyses the larger context in the form of a vehicle articulating innovative architectural projects that are both responsive to urban conditions and challenge them simultaneously. Accordingly, in Design 5, architecture is envisioned and examined as an urban interface between indoor-outdoor, public-private, collective-individual, natural-manmade, material-symbolic, and analogue-digital. Such a prototypical interface should have the capacity of fostering negotiations, exchanges and synergy— cherishing alternatives and critical life-forms (whether existing or to be promoted). Investigations within Design 5 should lead to a range of typological mediators—proposals that embrace the proto-para-meta, hybrids that are able to contest, connect, divide or expand the social, architectural and environmental context in which they are situated.

Students are guided through analytical and projective stages so as to design feasible architectural solutions: proposals that should not strictly adhere to, or exhaustively being framed by norms and regulations. This aim of this is not to promote a laissez-faire agenda, but to encourage critical creativity, and accept that the nature of design studios is to deploy alternative solutions—contesting the smooth acceptance of commodified modes of living and prototyping instead alternative “forms of life”. Thus, eventually we aim to invent typologies for inclusive social and environmental norms to be subsequently developed. Students will gain an understanding of the spatial implications of socio-political relationships and conditions generated by architecture when grasped and articulated within the urban space. Design 5 expands on scale and complexity of Design 4, which looked at the envelope as an interface between environment, climate, and architecture. The course embraces relational plurality, preparing the students for a more comprehensive and integrated building in Design 6—where architecture is approached as a larger microcosm-macrocosm, a complex system tightly related to, and part of a larger system—the city.

References:

Agnes Denes, “Wheatfield - A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan”, 1982.

© Agnes Denes, photo by John McGrall.