D E S IG N 3: A G G R E G AT IO N, S T R U C T U R E, S PA C E
François Blanciak
Design 3 will investigate how architectural form can emerge from the
Design 3 Year Leader, Unit 1 Leader
combination of basic geometric elements. It seeks to provide students with a better understanding of how units can be aggregated, thus
Victor Lee
creating living environments that offer occupants equitable access to
Unit 2 Leader
light, air, and water. It also requires students to reflect on how these particles can be articulated into an overall form that engages in a
Federico Ruberto
meaningful dialogue with the city.
Unit 3 Leader While the studio will involve the design of housing, this programme will be used as a mere vehicle for exploring architecture as an aggregation, or a collection of parts, looking at the interplay of repetition and singularity. Starting from the careful definition of the requirements and internal logic of each unit, what will be endeavoured is the creation of coherent wholes wherein units respond to each other, as well as to their boundaries (ground, ceiling, walls, site limits). Not unlike the concept of Existenzminimum that flourished in 1920s Europe, the studio proposes to rediscover the basic elements of living spaces through the examination of their form and location within the built environment, and to experiment with their careful organisation in urban space. An emphasis will be placed on structure, inquiring how different arrangements of units can be devised with an eye to minimising the need for construction elements, without sacrificing architectural concepts. Formerly concerned with drawing lines, architectural culture has recently shifted its focus to a visual environment based on pixels. What are the implications of such a radical shift for architectural form? Should it affect architecture at all? How can we design buildings that foster communities made of bits, without falling into a literal transcription of this novel condition? Such questions will pervade the different units of this studio, which will revolve around the themes of the relation between micro and macro, the cube as a basic element of composition, and the void as a driver of architectural form. Image: “The Third Gift,” from Frances Post Van Norstrand, Royal Gifts for the Kindergarten: A Manual for Self Instruction in Friedrich Froebel’s Principles of Education (Boston, MA: J. Q. Adams & Co, 1896)
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