Studio

ARK-E1021 Studio Spring

Design of Structures

Credits: 18cr

Teacher: Toni Kotnik

 

Digital design is driven by thinking in structures and systems, translated into pattern of order and their interaction. The studio is an introduction into such thinking and emphasizes the exploration of spatial organizational patterns in various levels of abstraction and scale through the integration of computational methods and digital workflows. The studio is organized as an experimental design lab. Studio teaching is supported by intense skill building workshops as well as reading & discussion rounds. The course is aiming at the rethinking of fundamentals of contemporary architecture and serves as starting point for a thesis research.

2025

Over the past 30 years, computational technologies have catalyzed one of the most creative and prolific periods in architecture since the early twentieth century. They have evolved from being representational tools invested in the depiction of pre-existing models of architectural space to become performative machines that have transformed the ways in which we both conceive and configure space and material. These toolsets have radically altered the ways in which we integrate disparate types of information into the design process, while significantly expanding the methodological strategies that we use to encode and configure an already intricate matter. Central to this transformation is an algorithmic perspective onto architecture. The algorithmic is a design thinking of relationships that perceives architecture not as object but rather as embedded agent within a network of interactions with its surrounding. Thereby, the exchange is governed by geometric rules that can be modulated by the algorithmic. In the studio we will explore the design potential of this geometric language and develop an algorithmic thinking in a step-by-step approach. In the first phase of the studio we will approach the algorithmic from an artistic perspective and explore the aesthetic potential of organizational patterns and strategies like stacked aggregation, pixelated fields, cellular clusters, serial iterations, woven meshes, or multi-agent networks. In the second phase we will apply these strategies to architectural context, environmental data and interactions. In the final phase focus will be on the resulting tectonics and its implications for fabrication and assembly.