PROFESSORS

When looked at relationally these samples can provide an understanding of the active conversations being had between architects, throughout history, that together construct our built environment. These conversations depend upon critical acts, deep but also new readings, each setting the grounds for the next exchange. Architectural discourse, in this sense, can be seen as a chain of sympathetic extensions, partial revisions, or even outright rejections, as materially embodied in the work of architecture itself and the intellectual positions taken by their authors. This studio aims to provide the platform for students to become effective and inventive participants in this conversation.

In UG1 this year students were assigned a constructed, contemporary house to study. Each student produced three analytical design projects to closely and critically examine their precedent. Armed with this understanding, the fourth and final project was a redesign of the original house imagined in a new context. Toward this, the studio’s attitude toward historical precedents was not one of quotation, but one of inspiration where a distillation of principles, analytically understood, provided a critical framework from which to generate new architectural propositions.