4.144/4.156
Architectural Design: Level 2/3
Units: 0-12-9
Level: H
Prerequisites: 4.143 and 4.155
Instructors: D'Hooghe, Goulthorpe, Kennedy, Scott, Wampler
Sheila Kennedy
Telephone: 617-253-7907
Office:
10-431M
Send e-mail: skennedy@kvarch.net
SOFT SPACE: Active Cladding
Sustainable Strategies for Textile Construction
Interdisciplinary in spirit, this vertical studio at MIT will explore the integration of flexible solar nano-materials with lightweight textile construction as a new medium for renewable, distributed power generation in architecture. The studio will offer students at MIT the opportunity to work directly with the next generation of flexible, lightweight energy harvesting materials which are re-defining how and where power is produced, challenging the inherited modern conventions of centralized building services and expanding the spatial experiences and applications of the archi-tectural surface. To explore these potentials, students in the studio will engage key design problems in contemporary practice— the identification of spatial and programmatic opportunities presented by renewable energy, the creation of cladding designs for geometries of complex curvature and the development of fabrication techniques that enable the designer to work fluidly between digital and physical modes of production. Interdisciplinary discussion, critique and collaboration with MIT's Design Lab and EPROM, the Center for Photovoltaic Research and LEES will be encouraged throughout the design process.
Active cladding
Students will begin the semester by working in teams with flexible photovoltaic materials to design and fabricate full scale cladding samples organized around themes of ventilation: how soft space may "breathe", responding to air in-take, circulation and exhaust; communication: how soft space may provide re-newable power to support mobile cell phones and services, and illumination: how soft space may enable localized solid state lighting. Students will be encouraged to develop their own understanding of the material properties of active cladding, and will have the opportunity to combine and/or de-couple the conventional behaviors of urban infrastructure, the object appliance and the architectural envelope as produced by 20th century centralized distribution paradigms.
Textile construction strategies
Using the cladding concepts and samples as a shared resource, each student will design a set of principles for
a 20,000 SF sustainable textile membrane structure that is a reproducible model capable of adapting to different site circumstances. A set of intriguing formal problems is produced by the need for continuity and curvature required for the structural integrity of tensile construction and the competing need to design vertical disruptions in the textile cladding with developable surfaces on which mass produced orthogonal solar materials may be arrayed and integrated. Students will analyze selected fabric structure precedents drawn from the work of Frei Otto and explore how known fabric forms may be modified and morphed using MIT's impressive suite of 3-D parametric modeling software. Of particular interest will be the surface geometries of the agile involution, the exceptional condition present in forms such as the torus, the klein bottle, and the heliocoid when a surface turns in on itself moving smoothly from horizontal to vertical as its spatial reading transforms from volume to void. The re-discovery and adaptation of "lost" modern (pre-digital) fabrication techniques will enable students to verify the digital form making of their design projects with the physical modeling of complex fabric surfaces.
Applied research
Midway through the semester the latitude and location of the studio site will be announced. Students will then apply the parametric design parameters they have developed to modify, distort and optimize their designs according to the specific orientation and circumstances of the given site and its public program. Upon confirmation of studio funding, students will travel in the Spring to visit the site, understand the urban context of the project and calibrate their proposals to meet the given public program. Final designs will be presented with detailed architectural drawings that explore the student's active cladding and fabrication strategies, mise-en-scene perspectives and large scale architectural models. Invited studio guests at reviews will include architects and urban designers, engineers, manufacturers, anthropologists and cultural critics.
Andrew Scott
Telephone: 617-253-7171
Office:
10-441M
Send e-mail: amscott@mit.edu
"NEW Orleans City Hall: a sustainable civic center for the 21st century "
Tuesday and Thursday, 2.00-7.00
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Jan Wampler
Telephone: 617-253-7904
Office:
9-213
Send e-mail: wampler@mit.edu
"Homing and Community"
Housing for the Ancient City of Sukhothai
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The project for the semester is to design a demonstration project of housing for a World Heritage Site in Thailand. The intention is to counterbalance the building of high rises in Bangkok and create a new form of housing connected to the ancient city.
The project is sponsored by the Government of Thailand and the results will be publishes in a book.
The objectives of the project are the following:
- To design more intense housing, community, educational and commercial facilities in 2 to 4 story buildings.
- To explore the “space between” buildings as a way of designing and shaping objects.
- To design at three scales - dwelling, cluster and overall.
- To design micro economic components that will provide jobs for people living in the community.
We are using a general plan for a larger village, but taking a small area to design. The size of the project would be about 100 to 150 units, but is up to the student, although the density should be intense, but not high rise. Nor should it be one or two story buildings.
In the middle of February (date to be determined) we will travel to Thailand (all costs except food are provided) to visit Sukhothai, in the north , as well as other villages in the area.
Before this we will examine prototype housing to understand the basic issues of housing and community. We will also build an existing site model, have lectures and coordinate with Non Arkaraprasertkul and schools in Thailand.
Other issues to be explored during the semester:
Methods of designing with “space between”…
Designing the “extraordinary and ordinary”…
Materials that fit with the condition….
New attitudes towards housing – “homing”…
The role of the architect beyond designer….
For the final review, Non as well as other architects will come to observe the work.
