Click image for thesis pdf

Final Presentation

Please click on images for links to pdf booklet on the process in formal manipulation

Seminar August 31

click below for seminar

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B1ZG9ZzstL0_YzQ5ODg5NTItZWQyYy00M2NhLThiNjQtMTk2MWJkMmU3MGZj&hl=en

Superposition floor plans

3D form

Superposition

Folding images

Exploratory drawings

City and High School as diagram
The following drawings come from a synthesis of contextual operations in Eisenman's projects.
Rebstockpark - idea of singularity (repetition with difference) also of folding














Eindhoven Railroads - grids over one another till they fold. Pic 1 shows the overlaping grids. Pic 2 shows the intersections with varying intensities.



































Alteka Building - dealing with becoming form where form deforms with each repetition



















City of Culture in Galicia - ground becomes figure, interrupting/confusing with the figure of building

Handbrake Turn

Previously, I had outlined, my contents page and started some exploratory drawings for design. I just had my crit and now I have to make a sudden handbrake turn.

No longer will my design be a high school in the city, instead I will be exploring a high school that is the city. Although, what has not changed is my focus on the formalistic process – but now I have to look at how this process can be adapted at a larger scale to urban design. (Will I be designing architecture?) I don’t aim to build diagrams in the city, but that is what the design seems to be taking me. This turn of events throws half of my thesis research out the window. All the Greg Lynn and digital does not apply, although, looking at his work helps me understand how I can manipulate process.

So for now, I am going to look at design and leave the thesis for a bit.

Design:

The organisation/diagram of my topic will come out of the school’s relationship with the city.

• First, I will look at the industries the city provides in comparison to the subjects offered, this can be cartographic (3D cones)
• Then I might look at the relationships between these industries if any?
• That’s all for now!

Repetition of Difference

Thesis:

Will be split into four sections;

Part 1_Form Origin

Part 2_Organising Principles

Part 3_Operations for transformation

Part 4_Reading into Final Form.

These four sections roughly outline a formalistic architectural design process. Using PE as a basis and GL as a comparison, I will formulate my thesis and design. Interspersed in these chapters, I will also discuss four topics that are in consideration of PE’s thinking and how I consider them in my design. They are:

1_Role of external influences

2_Diagrams as generator

3_Representaion techniques

4_Role of arbitrariness in design

I do not yet know how I will fit these four considerations into the chapters, they seem more like sub-topics, but are important in my decision-making during design. Of course these sub-topics may change, but the four parts above make up roughly the topic outline.

Design:

After writing an initial page on Form Origin, I have decided to try to work inside-out as opposed to GL’s outside-in approach. Therefore, volumes are what I will be working with (as opposed to space). The problem lies in how these volumes are organised. Usually, GL and sometimes PE uses external parameters (such as Mercator Grid or movement) to form the form. In any respect, they diagram out the external forces and use that as a way to generate form – conceptual diagram generates form. What I should look at is the program of the building (in this sense the school) and generate diagrams which in turn will hopefully translate to how volumes can be organised.

First I want to generate diagrams from the following information (not complete list)

Typology of High School

Movement of people in public buildings

Movement of students

High School Coursework

Changes in high school throughout New Zealand

Manoeuvres

I was confused before as to how I can approach my thesis and design. I had outlined a few approaches and chose on one that used P.E as a basis for launching criticism and insight into the digital. I was not keen on identifying the similarities or differences only.

However, after speaking to Mike, I realized another direction that I can take.

Firstly, I have to find an opposition to PE and a representative of the digital. GL fits the glove.

Finding commonalities and differences between the two will be half of the work.

These differences and commonalities will be used to narrow down my conclusions (at the moment, I am thinking about the importance of arbitrariness in process design, is it really arbitrary?), so my own thesis/perspective about the two will come out.

At the same time, the conclusion should address what the state of architecture is today. Since GL’s form is the “first wave” what about the second, what can it look like? Anticipatory and “cutting edge” as opposed to stasis.

Comparing GL and PE as a process that comes from theory will be the core discussion, in this respect, it is possible to structure design and the thesis in a somewhat linear direction, from start of a design…the processes till the finish. At each relevant stage, there will be a discussion on the differences and the commonalities and my conclusion.

Some things to remember for days to come: my research and design is really on the processes of formalism and how it relates to today’s digital forms.

With that in mind, a high school is also a process, it constitutes an awkward stage in life where one is just beginning to start out life, being independent and responsible. My project will re-look at education at a high school, question the current learning methods, and hopefully undergo change that for decades have been suppressed in education. Education is something that is very conservative and has not changed, but been passed down , institutionalized. I want to question that just as Eisenman questions architecture by challenging it. Education does not happen in the classroom, it is through experience knowledge is gained.

Site and program

After conferring with supervisor, I have decided on a seemingly arbitrary site and program. I would like to desgin a High School in the Wellington CBD. A great influencer in this choice is Coop Himmelb(l)au's Central High School No. 9: http://www.arcspace.com/architects/coop_himelblau/no_9/no_9.html (image sourced here)


This may seem like an arbitrary choice (I first had TJ as a site), but...
"We believe that the knowledge of the future will not be found within closed disciplines any more but rather at the intersection points between different fields of knowledge, such as the sciences, arts, economics and ethics." (Coop Himmelb(l)au)
There is a move in education to shrug off the old, closed idea of what constitutes an education. This "becoming" can be expressed aptly with Eisenman's pradigms, reworked with digital influences.

Beginnings - Research Proposal Hand in

Week 2. Required for hand in is my timeline + aim of thesis. This is just for reference.


I propose to re-evaluate the formalistic approach of Peter Eisenman to incorporate or substantiate the recent phantasmagoria of digital buildings. Architectural work to be examined will come from buildings by Greg Lynn and Frank Gehry. Both eminent masters of form work.
I want to also address the move in architecture into hybrid space. Practices such as Asymptote and Reiser + Umemoto are experimenting with hybrid spaces where fluidity, time, etc… is expressed by form. I think that there is a connection between hybrid spaces and Eisenman’s approach in his recent work with the interstitial and blurring.
The two points above can be summarized as the unstabilised reading of form.

Weeks Thesis Design
Weeks 2/3 Research and formulate argument points General site analysis and HS data
Weeks 4/5 In depth analysis of buildings chosen HS(high school) typology/programs/sketches
Weeks 6/7 Milestone 3 (WIP work) Outline of thesis Sketches/digital or physical models
Weeks 8/9 Flesh out arguments/start draft Refine/adjust design, presentation
Weeks 10/11 Milestone 4 (sketch design) Drafting thesis/editing Week 10, presentation
Week 12 Milestone 5 (draft handin) Soft bind thesis

I'm back

After a few weeks holed up in a bedroom in Howick, I have read three pivotal texts that I believe will define my master's thesis and hopefully sow the seeds to my perspective in architecture. The three texts will be posted in a few.

Umbrella thoughts:
Peter Eisenman has defined an approach to architecture that I feel I have been circling around these past four years. In school we are taught representational architecture, experiential architecture (phenomenology) but we were never exposed to a self-referential architecture. Architecture should exist in and of itself, despite its functional and aesthetic endowments. According to Eisenman, the architecture is a digram of becoming, in that its transformation (and later deconstruction) is inherent. Objects are defined by their relationship to each other only irrespective of all other relationships such as culture and function after all they are fleeting.

Directions:
What Eisenman has not addressed is how the digital age of information can wind it way into his diagrammatic/rational approach to architecture. I propose to clue into this theory, approaches such as that of MVRDV (Metacity/Datatown), and Asymptote (3DTF). Both attempt to use information and virtuality to create space. Both approaches, Eisenman and the digital are seemingly at odds with another, but can a bridge be built between the two? That is my investigation.

Eisenman talks about texts and overlaying them to create a conceptual blur. The first text is the practical considerations such as site, program. The second text is the interiority and anteriority of architecture. The third is arbitrary. In my thesis, it would be digital information.
The question lies in how this third text is applied to blur.

(Source: Benjamin, A. E. (2003). Blurred zones : investigations of the interstitial : Eisenman Architects, 1988-1998. New York: Monacelli Press.)

1/1/09

First Blog.
First day.
Last year of architecture



to begin.