Architecture, Methods + Emergence
[Actions, Intra-actions + Uncertainties] - 24/25
John Cook, Ben Pollock + Laura Nica
![Fingals Cave, Image:National Trust for Scotland]()
About
| This year DS18 continued our investigations into the concept of emergence,
fore fronting process-driven design methodologies for the generation of
experimental landscape and architectural form. Students began their projects
with a close study of the ‘natural’ systems and material processes of their
chosen subjects, before deconstructing and recreating these processes i)
materially through physical experimentation, and ii) digitally through
computational simulation. Students would then develop their own
generative design workflows, to produce responsive architectural forms driven
by and integrated within these complex dynamic interactions, whilst agile and
adaptive to the changing environmental conditions of their circumstance. We
recognise this design approach as fluid, abstracted and non-linear, where the
design of the design process is as critical as the architectural
outcome itself. Our site of study this year was focused along the Great Glen in Scotland, providing an ideal transect to observe and design amongst earth’s systems processes in action. This tectonic fracture, formed at the meeting point between supercontinents Gondwana and Laurentia around 400 million years ago, sprung topographic conditions that would direct glacial movement and meteorological weather systems for thousands of years. The resulting patterns of rainfall, solar exposure, drainage and sedimentation, formed conditions and climates that birthed the landscapes globally unique habitats and ecologies, and in turn, the settlements, infrastructures and civilisations along it. Upon closer investigations of site, students were tasked to integrate their site specific conditions and forces into their generative procedures, to understand impacts, logics and behaviours of isolated variables over time, whilst recording, evaluating and feeding back into their iterative and interactive design workflows. Finally, having incorporated their individual programmatic requirements, these generative processes were deployed onto site, giving rise to landscape and architectural entities emerging and flourishing amongst their environment, informing intelligent yet unpredictable outcomes, appropriate and adaptive to the uncertainty and extremity of our times. Guest CriticsThanks to:Alex Malaescu, BIG & UCL Alican Inal, Populous Ed Wall, University of Greenwich Elizabeth Terry, Hawkins Brown Elly Selby, UCL Emma Colthurst, Feral Landscapes & UCL Esther Rubio Madroñal, Grimshaw Fraser Morrison, Farshid Moussavi Architecture Justin Nicholls, Fathom Architects Katya Bryskina, IM-A-Studio Kirsten Davis, Squire & Partners Kirsty Badenoch, Artist & UCL Mitesh Dixit, Domain Office & Arhitektonski fakultet Beograd & Pratt Zuzana Sojkova, Wilkinson Eyre Architects Anthony Boulanger, DS16 UoW Ben Stringer, DS12 UoW Dusan Decermic, DS11 UoW Mary Konstantopoulou, DS25 UoW Yara Sharif, DS22 UoW |
