I'll be a juror on Hani Rashid's studio review at Vienna's Die Angewandte on Monday November 21st, 12pm.
The studio brief follows:
DEEP FUTURES: New Works for Cities yet to be built
INTRODUCTION:
The Angewandte Architecture Program is shape shifting this year becoming now a three year masters program. In light of this Hani Rashid's studio will assume a structure more closely resembling a research lab than a traditional ( as we now know them ) architectural office. The collective and individual work by the students will predominately focus around the concept of the city, and in particular the notion of city as a laboratory for the deep futures of human interaction, technological and ecological intelligence, spatial and formal play and experiment and discovery. The search is for new forms, types and assemblies of architecture more or less centered theory and research into the future of architecture with the space of cities. Students in this, the inaugural Hani Rashid studio at the Angewante, will initiate Deep Futures by investigating both contemporary and future potentials for new yet to be designed cities. The intention, over time, is to individually and collectively within the studio form the very underpinnings and scenarios for entirely
new cities more for less designed from first principals. Some key concerns about the future of architecture and cities will be formed through the studio work itself, and these findings will be the impetus and rational behind the architectural projects students will choose and work on.
By virtue of two distinct but intertwined key interests, students will be encouraged to explore analytically formally conceptually and pragmatically various architectural scenarios for cities of the near and deep future. On the one hand an appreciation and exploration of what one might call 'obsessive tectonics', the forms, spatiality's and 'architectures' of such things as speed, mobility, flux, dissonance, networking, technological symbiosis and so on, and on the other side researches into the anticipated hardcore realities and needs that cities and humanity will inevitably be confronted with as we head into the deep future.
Cities, and particularly future cities have been a recurrent subject of intrigue and curiosity for all types of disciplines, and within ours especially, for what we have called 'visionary architects'. Today as the discipline of architecture seeks to realign itself according to methods of creating, new technological means ( particularly centered around energy resources and sustainability as well as social patterns and mobility ), entirely new forms of cultural expression and so on. The notion of 'city' itself as a subject is probably once again positioned.
The studio will unfold in a four part process
001: Focus
Working initially in groups made up of four students, the program will proceed with a number of sequential exercises, moving from initial research oriented work to conceptual design work and eventually targeting building, urban and spatial architectural solutions and proposals.
The first exercise will focus on isolating and delving into important key precedent strategies towards 'deep futures', predominately the visionary thinking and strategies that formed in latter part of the mid 20th century as future city proposals ( list below ). investigation of these precedents in terms of their preoccupations with technological networks, mobility, biological and ecological systems, and even more esoteric concerns such as urban delirium, social experiments, aesthetic preoccupation's ( 'physcadelics', optic flux and so on) , will become the basis for the survey and research in this first phase.
Assignment 1
From the list of 'avant-garde' precedents below each student is to focus on one particular precedent. ( other precedents can be selected with approval)
Though graphic, digital and/or photo-reprographic means decipher and describe the core concerns passions and parameters that drove the design of the particular deep future precedent
002: Mutation
With the use of various representational tools, predominately digital, each group will work to reinterpret and rework their precedents thereby 'appropriating' the principals at work in the precedents and applying these findings to entirely new and perhaps unprecedented 'master plans'. These results will form the basis of a new sub city in which students will be asked in the following phases to intervene and 'occupy' with their architectural proposals.
Assignment 2
Overlay the four repurposed precedent studies ( with criteria )
Describe graphically a foundation for an abstract 'master plan' scenario through the combination of the four key aspects
003: Plasticity and Purpose
Having formed a 'master plan' collectively students will branch away at this phase and begin work on autonomous works of architecture to 'input' into their master plans. The new works will concern themselves primarily with two preoccupations during this concept stage.
1. A deep understanding of the infrastructural, philosophical and practical concerns and needs as drawn from the mutation phase ( 002 ) of the master plan targeting a viability and purpose.
2. Tectonic obsessions, play, rigor and experimentation influenced by not only the master plan but also circulating contemporary discourses. Along with tectonic play the infusion of ( not limited to ) structural and material advances, technological possibilities, changes in social and political patterns, radical environmental solutions and so on would serve to challenge and heighten the formal explorations of this phase
Assignment 3
Concept design for a chosen scenario for intervening in the 'master plan' scaffolding. This could be a single pertinent and critical structure, a combination of structures, an
network of interventions or a field condition as an overlay
Describe and present the concept for the architecture that will be developed to interface with the master plan scaffolding.
Detailed design work on the proposed architectural works producing large scale models, high-end sophisticated representational drawings and animation sequences.
004: Propositions
The original group of four will reconvene at this stage to allow for the various individual works to be implemented and accommodated then presented as the key components to the larger city proposal ( still under development )
Assignment 4
The various projects will beed to be brought together on the 'master plan' scaffolding and work in this phase will be critical to the fusion, integration, implementation and formation of a cohesive and describable portion of a city space for the future compromised of four architects interventions.
Professor: Hani Rashid
Assistants: Armin Hess, Anja Jonkhans, Barbel Muller, Franz Sam, Angelika Zelisko, Reiner Zettl