Studio 13

Bathing

Hella Wigge | Senses + Process Focus

This studio is available to students enrolled in ABPL90143 Studio D or ABPL90115 Studio E only.

Studio Description

This studio explores our experience of space as embodied beings through the highly charged environments of an inner urban Public Bathhouse.

Architects throughout time have cultivated techniques of expression to help them generate and present ideas, hone their skills, train their eye, as well as provide some more instant gratification within the generally long-winded architectural process.

This studio will introduce students to creative writing, a range of graphic media and model photography as tools of expression. Focusing on colour and texture, composition and proportion, and light, students will embark on an iterative process of poetic, meaningful making alongside more conventional architectural research and explorations. This will set the foundation for a series of ideas for architectural spaces high in spatial and sensory quality.

Studio Outcome

There will be two main foci to students’ explorations that will drive the design process and run concurrently to the architectural design process:

• testing and developing analog methods to express, verify and represent envisaged atmospheres
• studying the elements that drive spatial experience

Research on the history of bathing in different cultures, and precedent research will inform and complement the more expressive focus of the studio.

Students will be given a brief, which they will be encouraged to take into whatever direction best suits their personal interest. Assessed components will be a journal documenting the semester’s explorations, research and reflections, a folio that comprises all analog making throughout the semester; Presentations will be paper based with an extensive atmospheric component and physical models.

Studio Leader

Hella is an architect and artist, she has lived and practiced in Australia and Europe and has been teaching since 2006.

Her primary design principles are based on phenomenology, focusing on materiality, spatial qualities and atmosphere. She is deeply passionate about the effect architecture has on the human body, mind and spirit, as well as upon the urban and greater environments.

A practicing artist with an interest in up-cycled fashion, she has a love and keen eye for colour, composition and proportion. In her teaching she sets out to inspire her students to find their passion and voice in architecture.

Readings & References

• Gruetter, J 2012, Architektur + Wahrnehmung, Architecture + Perception, Niggli, Sulgen.
• Holl, S, 2006, Luminosity / Porosity, Toto, Tokyo
• Meerwein, G, Rodeck, B, Mahnke, F 2007, Color, Communication in architectural Space, Birkenhauser, Basel
• Pallasmaa, J 2005, The Eyes of the Skin, Wiley Academy, Chichester.
• Plummer, H 1995, Light in Japanese Architecture, Architecture and Urbanism, Tokyo.
• Plummer, H 2009, The Architecture of Natural Light, Thames & Hudson, London.
• Tanizaki, J 1967, In Praise of Shadows, Leete’s Island Books, Sedgwick.
• Zumthor, P 2006, Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser, Basel.
• Zumthor, P 2006, Atmospheres, Birkhäuser, Basel.
• Zumthor, P 2007, Therme Vals, Scheidegger&Spiess, Zürich.

Schedule Mondays 18:15-21:15 in MSD Room 144; Thursdays 18:15-21:15 in MSD Room 244

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