I’m teaching studio with Hani Rashid again this semester, and we’re also adding Theo Lalis (former designer at Future Systems) into the mix.
The brief follows :
HotHouse(s): Prototypes, Assemblies and Architecture
Columbia GSAPP Advanced Studio VI
Spring 2007
Hani Rashid + Alex Pincus + Theo Lalis Sarantoglou
Ten years ago the Digital Design Studios were initiated at Columbia GSAP. It was a pivotal decade that brought some important discoveries to architectural theory and design mainly through the investigation of computation and the potential for new formal strategies and methodologies. Today a new approach and pedagogy should focus on the mutation and realignment of the original digital design initiatives to pursue a new pedagogical agenda. Experimentation in architecture is now in search of some deeper resonances and trajectories, in need of a new infusion of thinking that is more consequential. What is of interest presently can be found in the realms of radical engineering, innovative hybrid materials, new modes of digital fabrication and non standardization/mass customization as well as innovative strategies for environmentally responsive and intelligent buildings. Today we are embarking on a new phase that is clearly about a greater integration between the way architecture is conceived, iterated, fabricated and implemented. it is about achieving a greater level of control over the symbiotic relationship between technique, process, and outcome, even if that outcome is deliberately about the unpredictable and the speculative. This endeavor depends on the following:
