Urban Performance

URBAN_PERFORMANCE

The discussions concerning the ecological problems that are threatening the life conditions on the planet have reached the architectural community within last 10 years. In that context issues like the evaluation and incorporation of the microclimate of a place in the design process and the recycling of materials has become crucial in contemporary architectural design strategies. The workshop URBAN_PERFORMANCE addresses both issues while it explores how they might become the means to develop new directions in design.

Cartographic Operations

A site is defined by multiple conditions and situations layered by: memory, culture, economy, phenomena, environmental and technological matrices that define a place. Cartographic Operations translate these dynamic formations into collective mappings for spatial order. Through the process of transformations a new architectural situation will emerge as the new territorial order. This abstract procedure develops and uncovers a totality of spatial practice in design process while incorporating environmental aspects into its very beginning.

Recycled Materials + Digital Fabrication

There are several examples from the architectural practice where waste objects are becoming the raw material for an architectural intervention. However the workshop is proposing a novice approach. Waste materials (like empty bottles, used tires etc), being usually industrially produced objects are homogenous and undifferentiated. Therefore their use as a building material tents to produce equally homogenous results. The workshop attempts to explore the design of the connecting devices, through the use of advanced computational techniques and digital fabrication, which will control the positioning and / or the transformation of the base material. That way, a waste product of mass production becomes manipulated by the means of mass customization that the new technologies are providing, creating a highly differentiated final product.

Visiting professors: Heather Woofter, Sung Ho Kim (Axi:Ome llc)