MATTER

This studio is a slippery assemblage of MATTER, both physical and non-physical

MATTER interrogates how architecture comes into being; both materially and ideologically.

We will work at multiple scales, first looking beyond the building into the cultural, ecological, technological and relational contexts that assemble our society, grounded by interrogations of material histories and legacies. Short, sharp design and research tasks will allow each participant to build a repository of what MATTERS to them.

This studio is an opportunity to critique the dominant macro- and micro-movements that have shaped our current extractive and exploitative relationship to MATTER and propose an alternate future direction for architecture.

MATTER will be structured as a series of discrete esquisses that each combine a research task, a design task and a drawing format to allow the exploration of formal outcomes.

The specific research interests of each participant will be developed into a new public institution for testing, recording, archiving, discussing, teaching, exhibiting, probing and sharing knowledge associated with their chosen fields of inquiry. We are interested in architecture as both the container and generator of ideas.

MATTER builds upon the body of work explored throughout Caliper Journal 1-10, as well as the work undertaken in the design elective Proof and the studio Care. We are asking students to openly participate in the larger structures of the world surrounding architecture.