C A R O L I N A D A Y E R

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THESISSTUDIO

D-WDAYER CAROLINA

WILLIMANSBARRYB A R R YW I L L I A M S

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Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed.Clifford Geertz

D-W thesis studio will focus on practices of cultural expressions to investigate critical aspects of architecture and propose novel and speculative design explorations. Recognized practices such as art, music and literature can drive the focus of this thesis studio, as well as less-recognized cultural expressions present in everyday life activities such as dressing, acting based upon superstitions, joking or letter-writing. Within such common practices diverse cultures embody through minimal details their deepest sense of being, posing architecture at a critical place. From cemeteries to birth places, from churches to prisons, from bathrooms to markets, cultural values of diverse ethnicities shape significantly the nature of design and how such designs are perceived and inhabited. In a world where rapid globalization tends to smooth ethnicity, favoring homogeneity, this studio calls for curious and speculative imaginations willing to go deep into cultural values, offering acute investigations and design proposals to address current, past and future issues and questions.

Regarding how to approach the thesis question, a paradox emerges. The Greek philosopher Plato in his dialogue Meno states: “To search for the solution of a problem is an absurdity; for either you know what you are looking for, and then there is no problem; or you do not know what you are looking for, and then you cannot expect to find anything.” The studio, thus, will not focus on problem-solving but in deeply understanding through design, problematic cultural scenarios. The studio welcomes investigations on usual and unusual aspects of cultures through theoretical and practical tangencies and explorations. Open to a broad range of specific interests the studio will challenge the student to look at particular cultural events, issues or practices and develop, through rigorous examinations, proposals that are both contemporary and thought provoking.

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Why Culture?

...the true contribution of a culture consists, not in the list of inventions which it has personally produced, but in its difference from others. The sense of

gratitude and respect which each single member of a given culture can and should feel towards all others can only be based on the conviction that the other

cultures differ from his own in countless ways...Claude Lévi-Strauss

Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to speculate that the story of culture has its beginning in the tale of the Tower of Babel. According to the biblical account found in Genesis 11:1, we learn that after the Flood the entire earth spoke only one language. The one language gave people the tenacious desire to build a magnificent tower that would reach the heavens and rival divinity. When God saw this under construction he realized that such a tower would be the beginning of endless actions of vanity. In order to punish people’s pride, he confounded their language so they would not be able to understand each other. According to scholar and architect, Marco Frascari, such language confusion affected how the various bricks and building materials were measured, thus the tower collapsed. With the Tower of Babel’s destruction, the birth of languages emerges and with them the various places where people spread throughout the earth. And within this new gathering, as philosopher Jacques Derrida has stated, once there is a language, there is within it a desire to have a new language, that is why jargon, slang, jokes and other forms of expression emerge. It could be inferred then, that the origin of cultures is closely related to an architectural story that involves both, making and collapsing as well as a desire to perpetually build.

Different languages and within them different expressions, slangs and idioms, spread across different locations, encompassing different ways of making, thinking and living, have conspired to make the world a complex and many times confusing place. The studio will engage such confusions and work with their materiality instead of trying to homogenize them. Confusion, after all, means a fusion of several things coming together. Cultures are not static, but they evolve, change and adapt to multiple variables. German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer uses the meaning of word Bildung (culture) which is paired with the word Formation, to explain how culture is the result of a process of becoming. In other words, culture is something that grows out of an inner process of formation and cultivation, and remains always in a continuous state of building itself. Just like architectural practices, culture is a process of construing and constructing.

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Between facts and fictions

‘We can’t overcome magical thinking. It is part of our evolved psychology. Our minds may fool us into thinking we are immune to magical thoughts. But we are

only fooling ourselves. That’s the neatest trick of all.’C. Nathan DeWall

Early drawings found in caverns were not just representations of animals but were actually magical conjures to secure a successful hunting day. The drawing virtually enacted the desired future. Architects, in the same way, work with the virtual reality of the buildings the draw and design. Virtuality, in fact, is at the core of cultural realities. From magic to philosophy, cultures are founded on virtual real phenomena as well as factual events. When we are kids the Tooth Fairy takes our lost tooth and when we grow up we buy Nike shoes because we can ‘Just Do It’. We cry when we go to the theater and the main character of the play dies, even if we know he is not really dead. Many ethnic groups celebrating carnivals, become ‘dead’ or become ‘someone else’ through masks while the festival takes place, changing their entire reality for another. Virtuality is embedded in how we inhabit the world, how we understand it and interpret it, and thanks to it we can appreciate works of art, literature and all other cultural practices that intertwine facts with fictions as one reality. D-W studio encourages the crossovers between these two and will encourage creative investigations that bring to light the complex realm of cultures.

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Research Seminar: Arch 492 taught by Carolina Dayer

Only when the creative process achieves its goal from the inside out can it generate new views of reality, which is at most built in pieces, never imitated as

a whole.Franz Roh

Every 5th year studio is paired with a research seminar that is thought to aid and deepen the thesis question exploration. The fall quarter seminar sets the stage for the year long thesis project and provides critical discussions for the thesis process. Through theory and practice, the seminar (arch492) will focus on architectural representation. The course is structured as a series of intersections between architecture, philosophy and literature. Through readings, studies and the making of specific drawings the course will investigate the role of representation in architecture through the following topics:

-Demonstrations, Monsters and MastersReadings by Architect Marco Frascari, Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Writer Mary Shelley

-Virtual and Factual NarrativeReadings by Architect Douglas Darden, Philosopher Paul Ricoeur, and Writer Jorge Luis Borges

-Magic, Frames and CluesReadings by Architect Frederick John Kiesler, Philosopher Slavoj Zizek, and Writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

-Everyday Life and Life EverydayReadings by Architect Peter Zumthor, Philosopher Pierre Bourdieu, and Writer Georges Perec

-Latency and EmergenceReadings by Architect Daniel Libeskind, Philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and Writer Raymond Roussel

-Embodied MindReadings by Architect Filarete, Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Writer Julio Cortázar

-Synesthesia and AnesthesiaReadings by Architect Rudolf Steiner, Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Writer Carlo Emilio Gadda

-Through the Looking GlassReadings by Architect Dalibor Vesely, Philosopher Walter Benjamin, and Writer Lewis Carroll

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Thesis Year in 3 Stages

Fall Quarter…a way of making such that, while one makes, one invents a

way of making.Luigi Pareyson

A thesis in architecture is a serious and playful question about something that has its origin in curiosity and desire. It is a question that unfolds into hundreds of drawings, models, discussions and various forms of making. During the Fall quarter D-W studio will nurture and investigate deeply through demonstrations aspects of such question. Projects like Vellum and the Abstracts Exhibition will become fully integrated into the thesis investigation. Short trips or studio events will also be part of this quarter. The studio during the Fall quarter will be guided by Carolina Dayer.

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Thesis Year in 3 Stages

Winter Quarter

Man’s curiosity, which has led him to experiment with material, was always based on the idea that indirectly he could find out

more about thedivine mystery.

Marie-Louise von Franz

During the Winter quarter projects enter into a process of gestation. Each student, based on her/his thesis question manages and learns to take charge of her/his own time, discovering particular ways of working that feed simultaneously into the investigation. Specific knowledge on material, processes, design inventions and constructive as well as constructing forms of architectural representation emerge at this quarter illuminating even further how the thesis question begins to materialize into an architectural design. Studio events and exhibition of drawings will aid a critical review of the student’s processes helping to encourage or modify aspects of the work. The studio during the Winter and Spring quarters will be guided by Barry Williams.

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Thesis Year in 3 Stages

Spring Quarter

I consider this work, if you permit me, to be rather good and which will even get better over time. I have tried to put some

poetic imagination into it, though not in order to create poetic architecture but to make a certain kind of architecture that

could emanate a sense of formal poetry. I mean an expressed form that can become poetry, though, as I said before, you

cannot intentionally make poetry.Carlo Scarpa

The last quarter, the mature thesis question has taken a life of its own and students are stimulated to work and produce drawings, models and events that they were not even aware they could do. The precipitation of work is joyful and laborious. During Spring break D-W studio will possibly organize a major trip to Mexico and engage with various cultural aspects studied during the Fall and Winter quarters. Large exhibitions like the Final Thesis Show and Chumash become places for showing the work of a full year of thinking and making.

XVI century drawing of a reading machine The Reading Machine, Daniel Libeskind The Memory Machine, Daniel Libeskind

Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself

like a man digging.Walter Benjamin

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About the Professors...(The responsability for the studio during the year is as follows)

FALL

Carolina Dayer defended her PhD dissertation at WAAC - Virginia Tech in Architectural Design Research in 2015. She is a licensed architect in her native country, Argentina. Her research, teaching, and original work center on investigations and demonstrations of the role of the imagination and the reality of everyday life in architectural drawing and building. Her teaching expertise has focused on upper undergraduate levels as well as master theses. She has composed and instructed several theory and history courses and design studios utilizing explorations through drawing and making to pursue theoretical questions of the material and magical imagination. Her doctoral work focuses on the intersections between the literary practice of magic realism and the material imagination in architectural drawing. Additionally, Carolina has published, lectured internationally, and organized symposia on matters of the imagination and drawing practices, collaborating with leading scholars in the field. Her personal design work has been exhibited in Argentina and in the United States. www.bottega11.com

WINTER and SPRING

Barry Williams is an architect, and professor of architecture. For the past 35 years he has maintained an active role in both professions. Both his students and employees are familiar with his Mantra; “Sene’” a Catalonian word that roughly translates to ‘live with your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground’. He is a proponent for pushing the boundaries of architecture, to try to go beyond the known, and at the same time try to understand the full complexity of the problem. For the past ten years Barry has been very interested in the role that contemporary architecture plays in the social and cultural fabric of the community.As an educator, Barry has taught nearly all core courses offered in the architecture department. The diverse areas he has been assigned to are an indication of his versatility and adaptability as an instructor. For ten years he taught teaching the fifth year design thesis course and is a founder of the year end 5th year thesis show. In 2007 he was awarded the Faculty Merit Award, In 2009 his collaboration with Tom Fowler was recognized for a AIA National Education Honor Award and the work was displayed at the National AIA Convention in San Francisco. In 2014 he and Ansgar Killing were awarded a grant by the CSU Campus as a Living Lab Grant Program. In summer of 2015 they presented their work at the CHESC conference in San Francisco. In 2014 he was appointed to the California Architecture Board by Governor Brown.