ARCH1102 Architecture Workshop 1

SESSION TWO 2007

UNITS OF CREDIT, 8UOC

COURSE CONVENER

Russell Lowe russelll@fbe,unsw.edu.au

STUDIO TUTORS

Russell Lowe
Jeremy Harkins
Christian Grennan
Tam Nguyen
Matt Day
Sandra Loeschke
Sharron Campbell
James Pedersen
Ross Nicholls
Gero Heimann
Shaowen Wang
Anna Ciliberto

TIME

6 hours per week (4 hours studio plus 2 hour lecture).
Lecture: Monday 10-12am, Webster B
Studio: Wednesday 2-6pm, SquareHouse level 2

In addition to the 6 hours spent in class students are expected to spend an additional 10 hours per week on self directed study for this course.

Course Description

The workshop will develop inquiry, literacy, and compositional skills in architectural design placing a focus on manual as well as digital techniques of architectural representation. In doing so it will consider the similarities and distinctions between manual and digital techniques as well as developing potential overlaps. Students will be introduced to a range of key spatial and architectural terms and will use them to develop a vocabulary for designing in three dimensions.  

projects: a series of short and highly structured design experiments.
program : spaces for observation, contemplation and critical review.
scale: small.
site: abstract.

TEACHING STRATEGIES AND ATTITUDE TO REPRESENTATION:

"Dada's devotion to the imaginative disruption of convention is an essential liberation force. I can't imagine how dada relates stylistically to my work, but in sprit it is fundamental." Gordon Matta Clark

In this course students will be introduced to a wide range of representational techniques and strategies. Students will be encouraged to take a critical and reflective attitude toward representation and develop opportunities for Architecture that grow out of Dada's "imaginative disruption of convention". In other words this Architectural Workshop is about provoking and developing an imaginative disruption in the application of the conventional. Students will be introduced to collaborative research and will be expected to take advantage of contemporary ICT to build a body of knowledge and community of scholarship.

As the title 'Architecture Workshop' implies, the three experiments will prioritize investigation and experimentation. Students should record evidence of both over the course of the session.

LEARNING OUTCOMES TO BE DEVELOPED WITHIN THE STUDIO

At the end of this course students will have:

Developed skills in critical thinking and problem solving using freehand sketching. Students will engage with the conventions of the section, axonometric and perspective.
Developed skills in critical thinking and problem solving using digital representation. Students will engage with a range of important software, including Sketchup, UEd3, Moviemaker and Blogger.
Developed techniques and strategies for overlapping manual and digital forms of architectural representation.
Developed research skills especially as they relate to formulating research questions.
Developed breathtaking and significant objects, spaces and environments.

WORKSHOP EXPERIMENTS

Included below are abstracts for the three workshop EXPERIMENTS. They are included here to give you an overall impression of the course and to bring your attention to the concepts, clients and software we will be working with. Each abstract will be expanded into a full brief at the introduction of each EXPERIMENT.

EXPERIMENT 1: THE DATUM

TIMETABLE: 4 Weeks, 25% of final grade.
ARCHITECTURAL ISSUE: Selling Creativity
ARCHITECTURAL CONVENTION: The Stair
ARCHITECTURAL CHALLENGE: Articulating below, on and above a ground plane. A studio
REFERENCE TEXTS: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/ and http://www.saatchi.com/worldwide/index.asp
CLIENTS: Patricia Piccinini, Marcel Duchamp, Leonardo Da Vinci
SOFTWARE: Sketchup, Blogger
TECHNIQUES: The section, texturing and UV mapping, story boarding and animation, blogging
OUTPUTS: 18 sketch sections, 36 custom textures, 2 draft sketchup models, 1 developed sketchup model, 3 animations on a Blogger weblog
PREMISE: We can understand Architecture as a series of relationships between surfaces, objects and spaces. The datum introduces an idea of measurement into these relationships so that we can begin to understand the balance or otherwise of a scheme

EXPERIMENT 2: THE EDGE

TIMETABLE: 3 Weeks. 30% of final grade
ARCHITECTURAL ISSUE: The Art of Experimentation
ARCHITECTURAL CONVENTION: The Ramp
ARCHITECTURAL CHALLENGE: Articulating behind, through and in front of a vertical surface. A lab
REFERENCE TEXT: http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
CLIENTS: Florence Nightingale, Stephen Hawkins, Charles Darwin
SOFTWARE: UT2004, Fraps, Blogger
TECHNIQUES: The axonometric, Boolean operations, real time image capture, blogging
OUTPUTS: 18 sketch axonometric drawings, 36 custom textures, 2 draft UT2004 environments, 1 final UT2004 environment, 5 real time image captures on a Blogger weblog.
PREMISE: Architecture may be designed by the amalgamation of discrete forms. Such Boolean operations promote an abstract understanding of the relationships required to make whole systems.

EXPERIMENT 3: THE BRIDGE

TIMETABLE: 5 Weeks, 45% of final grade
ARCHITECTURAL ISSUE: The Architecture of Power
ARCHITECTURAL CONVENTION: The Elevator
ARCHITECTURAL CHALLENGE: Articulating within, below and hanging from a bridging structure. An office
REFERENCE TEXT: http://www.volumeproject.org/
CLIENTS: Ratan Tata, Zhang Yin, Carlos Slim
SOFTWARE: Sketchup, UT2004, Fraps, Moviemaker, Blogger
TECHNIQUES: The perspective, Matinee, video editing
OUTPUTS: 18 sketch perspective drawings, 36 custom textures, 2 draft UT2004 environments, 1 final UT2004 environment, 2 animations and 5 real time image captures on a Blogger weblog.
PREMISE: Environments change over time. Action and interaction within an environment provide a vehicle to synthesize information and make sense of continually shifting structures.

SCHEDULE:

ASSESSMENT BREAKDOWN

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

Evidence of thought and rigor in concept development
Imagination and innovation in terms of the use of the representational instruments introduced in studio.
Precision and skill in each of the above areas of assessment

In addition to these criteria you will be assessed on the level and extent to which you engage with the learning outcomes for the course and the PREMISES listed in each EXPERIMENT abstract.