Studio 25

Invisible Place : Bounded Interior

Gini Lee & Mark Burry

Studio Description

This studio starts with the question “can place be adequately encompassed by the quantitative methods of digital and parametric design?”

The complex character of place is a key element in design, and especially architectural, interior and urban design, alongside recognising that we are in an age when big data, parametric design, and real-time interaction inform design decision making. The challenge is to incorporate qualitative elements (narrative, emotional, temporal and sensory) into digital processes. How can designers improve their capabilities to cope with emergent global challenges of homelessness in all its forms? And, how can design inquiry into place practices provide useful forms for an interior of shelter and respite?

Designing explicitly for temporary accommodation, designers will make digital models tested through scripting variables alongside analogue methods such as erasing and remaking. Working parametrically offers designers unprecedented opportunities to engage with performance characteristics of design propositions for autonomous interiors and architectures.

Studio Outcome

The teaching mode in this studio is guided and progressive, while allowing for student-led initiatives and discoveries. Students will be taught how to analyse texts, use sensing equipment, generate data maps, abstract and visualise this information, and develop a design proposal according to a specific social and/or ecological issue drawn from site. Studio specific learning objectives are:

• The ability to draw from literary and artistic sources for design inspiration, context and architectural form.
• To interrogate, manipulate and visualise data that is captured in situ and updated according to a responsive design brief for site.
• To develop computational design solutions with the use of digital technologies such as, Grasshopper, 3D printing, scanning, robotics and time-based video and audio capture
• To extract core design concepts into manageable prototypes for communicating and representing design research and exhibition curation through a range of media (as part of MSDx).

Studio Leaders

Gini Lee is a landscape architect and interior designer and is Professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her academic focus is in cultural and critical landscape architecture and spatial interior design theory and studio practice, to engage with the curation and postproduction of complex landscapes. She is currently working with Professors Mark Burry and Jeff Malpas, and others, on an Australian Research Council grant entitled Place and Parametrics, which provides the theory and practice basis for this studio. Her multidisciplinary research into the water landscapes of remote territories contributes to the scientific, cultural, and Indigenous understanding of fragile places.

Mark Burry is the Founding Director for Swinburne University of Technology’s ‘Smart Cities Research Institute’. His role is to help ensure that our future cities anticipate and meet the needs of all – smart citizens for smart cities. Mark is an architect who has published internationally on putting theory into practice with regard to procuring ‘challenging’ architecture, and the life, work and theories of the architect Antoni Gaudí. As Professor of Urban Futures at the Melbourne School of Design he helped develop its capacity to consolidate research in urban futures, drawing together expertise in urban visualisation, urban analytics, and urban policy.

Readings & References

• Peake, Mervyn, (1950). Gormenghast. London, UK. Eyre & Spottiswoode.
• Willis, A.-M. (2006). ‘Ontological Designing.’ Design Philosophy Papers 4(2): 69–92.
• Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press),
• Burry, M. and J. Burry (2016). Prototyping for Architects. London, UK, Thames & Hudson.
• Malpas, J. (1999). Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography. New York, US, Cambridge.
• Otero-Pailos, J. The Ethics of Dust http://www.oteropailos.com/the-ethics-of-dust-series/
• Thrift, N. (2010). Halos: Making More Room in the World for New Political Orders. Political Matter. B. Braun and S. J. Whatmore. Minneapolis, US, University of Minnesota Press: 139–174.
• Halpern, O. (2015). Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason Since 1945. Durham, US, Duke University Press.
• Johnson, J. S. and J. Vermillion, Eds. (2016). Digital Design Exercises for Architecture Students. New York, US, Taylor & Francis.

Schedule Tuesdays 18:15-21:15 in Room 213; Thursdays 18:15-21:15 in Room 213
Travel Week 3 | $400-$500

Contact Handbook Key Dates