Hernan Diaz Alonso and I are co-teaching Adavanced Studio V at Columbia. We’re adjusting our approach to what we’ve been researching over the last few years. All elements are now required to be 1” x 1” x 1” or less, forcing larger scale effects to emerge via hyperindexical accumulations.
Accumulative Micro Behaviors | Innovation and Novelty
Columbia GSAPP
Advanced Studio V
Fall 2006
Hernan Diaz Alonso and Alexander Pincus
Historically architecture always starts with a concept, an overall strategy or some kind of pre meaning. The studio proposes to re examine the possibilities of form generation as an autonomous entity.
As an extension of this interest in open-ended innovation as a legitimate form of design research the studio will be more specifically interested in the degree to which highly involuted geometrical forms can be interpreted as an accumulative mutation or in terms of having latent affective potential. In other words, how might architectural order be productively mutated (if not entirely mutilated) by the organizational influence of formal and geometrical effects? Advanced modeling software generates the potential for what we begin to see as a productive migration away from conventional notions of totality (that which is typically thought of in planimetric terms) and towards a reconsideration of architecture as something much less determinate. We began to think of micro behaviors as being less quantifiable in nature and more the product of specific qualities, in particular the notion of space and form as an embodied experience.
In the context of these conditions, the studio will focus in the generation and production of mutant micro-behaviors that will accumulate to create systems.
The studio will investigate perforations, follicles, hairs and the subsequent deformations, evolving into an investigation of exotics aesthetics isomorphism.
The studio will explore the predominant effect of this ‘isomorphism’ being the aggregation of diverse forms of design intelligence into an almost universal condition of image production.
Design always concerns a translation between forms and formats of image. More than ‘textuality’ or even ‘iconography’, its very form is a secondary function of how it performs as an image. Perhaps some might see this as a triumph of superficiality over depth, but it’s certainly also an intensification of the conjectural and fictive logics of design, of its ability to mobilize a social imagination and with it a series of potential futures. We see this as real and complex demand that global network culture makes on producers of architectural content.
Techniques
the studio will base its research on particle systems, scripting, Cellular systems, Incremental transformations
Fabrication and solid state, the studio will explore techniques of fabrication, which will allow the research to be evolved from the abstract speculation into very specific production experiments: Assembly strategies, Structure systems, Aesthetic effects, etc.
The project
the studio will propose a new space for the Mütter Museum [1] in Philadelphia. That will allow to recon figurate the notion of infrastructure and space to mutate into a new state of dynamism. As is one that transforms from one state to another, it should have to start as one thing and then become something else (formally programmatically).
[1] HISTORY & OVERVIEW
The Mütter Museum was founded to educate future doctors about anatomy and human medical anomalies. Today, it serves as a valuable resource for educating and enlightening the public about our medical past and telling important stories about what it means to be human. The Mütter Museum embodies The College of Physicians of Philadelphia ‘s mission to advance the cause of health, and uphold the ideals and heritage of medicine.