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STUDIO AIR2016, SEMESTER 1TUTOR: FinniaSTUDENT NAME: Haotian Wu (668986)
Table of Contents
4 INTRODUCTION
6 DESIGN FUTURING
10 CASE STUDY 1
12 CASE STUDY 2
14 REFERENCE
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
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
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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
CONCEPTUALIZATION 7
Speculating Future
Speculating Future
Defuturing
Speculating Future
Designer
Humanity
Design
How Design Redirect Humanity from Defuturing to Sustainable Future
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
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
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
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.
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Figure2. The site lays on a former china clay pit
Figure4. The Rainforest Biome
Figure3. The Mediterranean Biome
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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
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.
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Figure6. The structure spanning over the natural environment
Figure8. The structure embracing the huge waterfall
Figure7. The structure cutting in the landscape
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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
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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