Studio 40

Wind Architecture Studio

Stanislav Roudavski

Studio Description

Participants of this studio design, make and put to use – fly – state-of-the-art kites and others experimental inflatable structures. The studio begins with kite-flying lessons and continues with prototyping using generative and parametric design, physical and digital simulation, hand crafting and digital fabrication. The aim of the studio is to design and build speculative prototypes of architectural structures that can be supported or animated by air. Selected designs are produced at full scale and used on location with real publics. The resulting performances are documented and exhibited as moving images. Past and emerging examples of air-supported structures take the form of personal garments, individual shelters, mobile guerrilla installations, large-scale building skins, power-generating installations and means of transportation. Their uses can range from emergency rescue shelters to dance performances and their sites span the broad range from indoor environments to the stratosphere.

Studio Outcome

The broad blend of skills acquired when making such structures can be useful in many other forms of design, now and into the future. Specific learning outcomes of the studio will include:

1. Research and design skills, including speculative design and prototyping, performance-oriented and evidence-driven design, as well as recent approaches to ethics, aesthetics and practices of creativity;
2. Knowledge of history, utilisation, technology and the future of inflatable structures, including their design and making;
3. Knowledge of kites, their making and flying;
4. Traditional and digital model-making skills, algorithmic and parametric modelling, digital simulation, digital fabrication, interactive media; and
5. Photography and filmmaking, both traditional and assisted by flying robots. The past work of conceptually aligned studios has been broadly exhibited, received multiple awards and resulted in a range of academic and design publications.

Studio Leader

An architect, artist and researcher, Dr Roudavski studies and designs technologically sustained places. His current practice-based research integrates organizational techniques of architecture, unpredictability and richness of performative situations, creative capacities of computing, visual languages of the moving-image arts, dramaturgy and spatial narrative. See http://unimelb.academia.edu/StanislavRoudavski for details.

Schedule Tuesdays 10:00-13:00 at Burnley Campus; Thursdays 10:00-13:00 at Burnley Campus
Materials $200

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