Download - 668986 week1

Transcript
Page 1: 668986 week1

STUDIO AIR2016, SEMESTER 1TUTOR: FinniaSTUDENT NAME: Haotian Wu (668986)

Page 2: 668986 week1
Page 3: 668986 week1

Table of Contents

4 INTRODUCTION

6 DESIGN FUTURING

10 CASE STUDY 1

12 CASE STUDY 2

14 REFERENCE

Page 4: 668986 week1

4 CONCEPTUALIZATION

computing soon. It is not just about coding to generate fancy patterns or structures but push architecture towards a broader world, influencing much more than buildings.

For me contemporary architecture means in this age the task of architects is becoming ever challenging. We need to apply interdisciplinary knowledge to explore the possibility of architecture. I think Studio Air will be a great experience to synthesize contemporary design theory and skills so I am very looking forward to the project.

Now I am doing the last year of architecture and from the past studios and theoretical courses I have done, I found my interest in architecture is still quite broad. I am fond of playing with tectonics in Studio Earth, as well as learning theories and styles from masters in Studio Water. And I am particularly enthusiastic about model making and fabrication.

In the first year, I took computing and database courses as my breath subjects, which unintentionally opened the door of parametric design for me. I self-learned a bit Grasshopper during the summer and just found it would be a trend in future architecture industry. Just like people inventing pencil to replace charcoal, CAD to replace draft paper, I feel there will be a significant place for

My name is Haotian Wu and my friends usually call me Stewart. I originally come from Suzhou,

China and had one year of foundation school in Auckland, New Zealand, before coming to the University of Melbourne. My interest in architecture has been fostered since childhood by my architect uncle. I liked reading plans from his working materials and tried to draw my own version. Yet in the following years in China, my enthusiasm in architecture was not encouraged either by my parents or the school education, until I went to Taylors College in Auckland where I spent a really fun year in Art course. And interestingly, I did help my uncle who had been living in Auckland by then do some construction work, which made me more familiar with this field.

INTRODUCTION- about author and past works

Page 5: 668986 week1

CONCEPTUALIZATION 5

Second Skin - Keep Personal Space. Project from Digital Desgin and Fabrication 2015

Adapative Shelter - Urban Envelope. Project from AA Visisting School Melbourne 2016

Studley Park Boat House. Project from Design Studio Water 2015

Herring Island Pavilion. Project from Design Studio Earth

01 02

0403

01 02 0403

Page 6: 668986 week1

6 CONCEPTUALIZATION

and secondly there are also plural possible futures which can aid us to speculate designs, which can influence the direction of the eventual future. So future is something we design for as well as something we design upon.

Where Studio Air is going to

Though contemporary design theories and parametric tools will be introduced and

applied in this studio, the core characteristic of the project will be futuring which requires:

1. The design should not stick with solving current problems as we are still thinking within the frame of defuturing. Instead the design should speculate sustainable possible futures and illuminate transformative actions[3].

2. The design should envolve users in depth and inspire users to think the status quo critically[4]. It should be a compass to indicate how to think sustainably rather than as a map directly showing where or what is sustainability[5].

3. If necessary, the design should encourage fundamental changes from the underpinning concepts in order to break the existing defuturing frame. But at the same time inflated faith and idealist reform should be avoided[6].

Critical Moment

Now human are facing a critical moment as the future which is supposed set in the front, is no

more secured. The defuturing condition of unsustainability is accelerating and design because of its innate ability of prefiguration, should be human’s method of futuring. However, not all designs can play this significant. Fry suggests three main problems in the situation of current design which certainly includes architecture[1]. Firstly, the deregulated pluralization renders a large amount of design activities trivialized and stylized. Secondly, the limitation of social form causes most designs in the current world is either economy-oriented or culture-oriented but not sustainment-oriented. Thirdly, even those so-called sustainable design are just slowing the defuturing rather than fundamentally changing the condition. So before starting the Studio Air, we have to radically redefine the frame of design.

What is Future

Fry’s book describes human society as a train running towards a cliff and most design works with the

‘sustainable’ intention are just slowing down the train but the defuturing is still inevitable[2]. Therefore the task of design should instead redirect the train to an alternative future, which requires designers as the first brave passengers to jump off the train and look for other directions firstly. In this way the future is defined with a dual meaning. Firstly there will be a single future we are eventually going to

DESIGN FUTURING- background and direction of the studio

Page 7: 668986 week1

CONCEPTUALIZATION 7

Speculating Future

Speculating Future

Defuturing

Speculating Future

Designer

Humanity

Design

How Design Redirect Humanity from Defuturing to Sustainable Future

Page 8: 668986 week1

8 CONCEPTUALIZATION

Sustainability in the Project

As discussed above, the project will speculate sustainable futures as a design tool, will redirect

humanity towards sustainability and will inspire people to think sustainably. So seemingly there is a necessity to discuss the definition of sustainability at this first stage. There is one definition from my Reshaping Environments essay which I think will still work in this case:

“Sustainability is the quality of a system regardless of its scale, if the relationships between and within its all subsystems are able to persist and nourish each other. There is no fixed focus of sustainability as it attempts to balance all stakeholders. “

So we need to realize that sustainability is neither anthropocentric nor nature-centred and can never be prescribed. The focus of the project will not be the answer of sustainability, but the process to explore sustainable futures, and the method of mobilizing people to think about sustainability.

Design as a Discourse

As Schumacher suggests architecture is a system of communication and the total mass of works

and process should work as a discourse to communicate the idea[7]. So not only the outcome but also the design process and all items invloved in the design should reflect futuring, or in Fry’s word, mobilize design intelligence[8].

1. The discourse should be participatory rather than consensual, which means the capability to be communicated among not only design community but the large group of people. It can act as an educational agency to promote design as a ‘common literacy’ in a sustainable future[9].

2. The discourse should explore the evolution from ‘things’ to a ‘design’ and how things act beyond their mere function as material or immaterial object. Trivalized pattern, function, structure and style must be avoided[10].

DESIGN FUTURING- background and direction of the studio

Page 9: 668986 week1

CONCEPTUALIZATION 9

DRAWING

DESIGN OUTCOME

WRITING MODELING

SKETCH PRESENTATION ......

trivialized styles / patterns / structures / functions

DISC

OURSE

sustainablefuture???

The Whole Mass of Design as Discourse to Mobilize People’s Sustainable Thinking

Page 10: 668986 week1

10 CONCEPTUALIZATION

Figure1. Eden Project consisting of two ‘Biomes‘

should be regarded as a discourse rather than a mere architecture - a complex of steel domes. The whole project, including the function, the lasting educational program and even the building progress are contributing collectively as a discourse to speculate future and inspire people to think about sustainability. The main function of Eden Project is to reserve and exhibit plants from diverse environments and climates which are artificially created by the two large ‘Biomes’(pic02, 03). Before the ‘Biomes‘ were set down, the soil was made from local mine waste and the organic matter was from composted bark. That indicates a new possibility for human to reapproach and regenerate the nature after the highly industrialized society isolated it. Besides, Eden Project also functions as an educational agency. It helds types of plant visit,

Before 1995 when the project started, the site was a working china clay pit that is nearing the

end of its economic life. The undulating landscape exhausted by human beings was waiting for the day of being ignored just like many other locations on the earth which used to be pit, factory, dump...... However, Eden Project changes its destiny. As an architectural work itself, the hexagonal structure of bubbles can set on any harsh terrains(pic01), and the strong sense of biomimicry forms a nearly fictional contrast between the project and the surroundings, between human-created nature and human-abandoned nature.

Despite its wonderful architectural design, Eden Project

CASE STUDY 1- Eden Project, 2003, Cornwall, England

Page 11: 668986 week1

CONCEPTUALIZATION 11

apprenticeship, school of gardening and even green cooking course. The programs aim to influence every aspect of human life and their focus is usually on children, to inspire the next generation. It is also a project involving users in depth. During the construction, the public was invited to see the progress of creating the paradise.

‘The moment we saw it we loved it, because it felt natural – a biological response to our needs, but forged in materials that would allow us to explore the cultivation of plants in a way never before attempted’

-Tim Smit, Eden co-founder

Therefore we can see that the project has never been launched to solve any urgent problems. The appearance of Eden Project creates a paralled world beside our current life where human is so closed to nature and so cares about nature. The design is speculating a future which is still far away but we are yearning for. Also Eden Project is a great example of participatory design - how to infuse users into an architecture.

01

02

03

Figure2. The site lays on a former china clay pit

Figure4. The Rainforest Biome

Figure3. The Mediterranean Biome

01

03

02

Page 12: 668986 week1

12 CONCEPTUALIZATION

Unlike the Edent Project that has been built and serving the society, the Continuous Monument

is just a series of photo-collages, not even a complete architectural proposal. However, it is also a discourse to express the idea of architecture. This discourse was proposed by Super Studio,which is known for conceptual architecture work, in 1969. Though none of their ideas have been really brought to the real world, they influence and inspire many following contemporary architects such as Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Bernard Tschumi. Many of their projects were originally published in magazine and ranged from fiction to storyboard illustration and photomontage, which reflects Schumacher’s opinion: architecture does not only concern buildings.

The simple collage with abrupt blocks easily makes people think of the relationship between architecture and natural or urban environments. From the collages on the right page we can see that the structured and hierarchic system of blocks supersedes the natural landscape that lies beneath it. The uniform blocks show a strong sense of indifference to the topography, to what exists naturally. It represents both architecture’s unpredicatable power of reshaping natural environments as well as human’s offensiveness to nature. These structures have never been built but can inspire people of environmental thinking.

Another interpretation of the Continuous Monument is a form of architecture all equally emerging from a single continuous environment; the world rendered

Figure5. The most influential collage of Continuous Monument - the total urbanization in Manhattan

CASE STUDY 2- Continuous Monument, 1969

Page 13: 668986 week1

CONCEPTUALIZATION 13

uniform by technology, culture and all the other inevitable forms of imperialism. The collage on the left page seems predicting the way globalisation and urbanization are swamping the world in the 21st century. Given the way the world was developing, we shall realize that we might as well all live in one anonymous megastructure, with local cultures stripped away.

With the fictionally tremendous structures, Continuous Monument is an early version of speculative architecture. It was not proposed to solve a design problem but as an aid to understand the order of earth and as a critique on human society. Although none of these block structures have been really built, the drawings are showing the possibility of the future world. The idea might be bad for the inharmony and uniformity, or in another way good for human’s system governing nature. But in either way it opens viewer’s mind of thinking future and the relationship between human and nature. That is what we will pursue in Studio Air - inspirational architecture.

01

02

03

Figure6. The structure spanning over the natural environment

Figure8. The structure embracing the huge waterfall

Figure7. The structure cutting in the landscape

01

03

02

Page 14: 668986 week1

14 CONCEPTUALIZATION

Reading[1] Tony Fry, Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice (Oxford: Berg, 2006), p. 12.

[2] Tony Fry, Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice (Oxford: Berg, 2006), p. 5.

[3] Anthony Dunne& Fiona Raby, Speculative Everything: Design Fiction, and Social Dreaming (USA: MIT Press, 2013), p.33.

[4] Anthony Dunne& Fiona Raby, Speculative Everything: Design Fiction, and Social Dreaming (USA: MIT Press, 2013), p.35.

[5] Anthony Dunne& Fiona Raby, Speculative Everything: Design Fiction, and Social Dreaming (USA: MIT Press, 2013), p.44.

[6] Tony Fry, Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice (Oxford: Berg, 2006), p. 11.

[7] Patrik Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture: A New Framework for Architecture (Chichester: Wiley, 2001), p. 3.

[8] Tony Fry, Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice (Oxford: Berg, 2006), p. 12.

[9] Tony Fry, Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice (Oxford: Berg, 2006), p. 6.

[10] Tony Fry, Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice (Oxford: Berg, 2006), p. 13.

Case Study

Eden Project, ‘From Pit to Paradise‘, Eden Project <https://www.edenproject.com/eden-story/eden-timeline> [accessed 7 March 2016].

Eden Project, ‘What’s here‘, Eden Project <https://www.edenproject.com/visit> [accessed 7 March 2016].

Martin van Schaik and Otaker Máčel, Exit Utopia : architectural provocations, 1956-76, (New York: Prestel, 2005), p 105-126.

Jo Elworthy, Eden project : the guide (London: Transworld, 2012), p 5 - 13.

Jonathan Glancey, Superstudio: Life Without Objects is at Design Museum <http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/mar/31/architecture.artsfeatures> [accessed 7 March 2016].

REFERENCE

Page 15: 668986 week1

CONCEPTUALIZATION 15

ImagesFigure1. ‘Eden Project’ <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_> [accessed 7 March 2016].

Figure2. Eden Project, ‘Earlydays‘ <https://www.edenproject.com/eden-story/eden-timeline_> [accessed 7 March 2016].

Figure3. Eden Project, ‘Mediterranean Biome‘ <https://www.edenproject.com/visit/whats-here/mediterranean-biome> [accessed 7 March 2016].

Figure4. Eden Project, ‘Rainforest Biome‘ <https://www.edenproject.com/visit/whats-here/rainforest-biome> [accessed 7 March 2016].

Figure5. Harizan Cuma, ‘Continuous Monument 1‘ <http://arch122superstudio.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/continuous-monument-architectural-model_15.html> [accessed 7 March 2016].

Figure6. Harizan Cuma, ‘Continuous Monument 2‘ <http://arch122superstudio.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/continuous-monument-architectural-model_15.html> [accessed 7 March 2016].

Figure7. Super Studio, ‘Continuous Monument: On the River‘ <http://www.moma.org/collection/works/934> [accessed 7 March 2016].

Figure8. Super Studio, ‘Continuous Monument: On the Waterfall‘ <http://www.moma.org/collection/works/936> [accessed 7 March 2016

Page 16: 668986 week1