Studio 04

in-Finite

Laura Martires

This studio is available to students enrolled in ABPL90142 Studio C, ABPL90143 Studio D, and ABPL90115 Studio E.

Studio Description

The idea of the ‘House as a City’ emerges during the Covid-19 period where staying at home became the new norm. Work, play, dream, learn, despair, all occur in one place where the digital quickly surpassed the real as a lived experience. The realization that the house must now allow for all forms of human experience is as grand as the frustration that immediately ensues confronted with the realities of contemporary living of the everyday person.

The virtual world is becoming more and more accessible to all though incredible advances in technology and its commodification. Augmented reality is quickly becoming a tool to experience alternate spatial conditions in real-time and architecture has an opportunity to reshape itself. Architects often operate in the abstract world of drawings, models, images, and visions of unrealised projects - so what would it mean to design for the virtual world? If the laws of physics don’t apply to a world without matter, then what matters? How can these changes affect the way we think and operate as designers of spatial experiences? Can our phygital habitats be designed for more with less, and what would this look like?

This studio plays with the idea of ‘in-finitude’ within the bounds of a real lived space and requires a critical repositioning of the individual as a digital world-creator, an actor between the real and the virtual, designing through a series of vignettes of overlapping experiences within the home as well as a final real house artifact articulating the formality of the questions developed through the research, the in-Finite House.

Studio Outcomes

Students will work in groups and individually to develop a digital documentation of both domestic and urban conditions forming the base for a series of small-scale projects overlapping in one space. These explorations will form the first part of a project presented at the interim review. From here onwards, students will develop their projects individually to design an apartment/house integrating a series of ‘digital escapes’ and the means to do so. The projects will be speculative in nature and explored using advanced modelling techniques, real-time rendering, and the development of digital narratives through the production of cinematics using Unreal Engine 5.

Students will question ideas of domesticity and how architecture can shape the future of our living environments through the analysis of academic and fictional texts, as well as film and dramatization. Students will examine the role of technological advances in transforming the way we design real and virtual environments. Final projects will focus on representations of life in the ‘container’ and of ‘the contained’ through detailed drawing, model and film.

Note: Students will need excellent modelling skills using Rhino as well as a powerful processing computer with Unreal Engine 5 installed.

Studio Leader

As an individual I have always been interested in cities and how urban infrastructure, form or fabric can inform a certain design process. I believe architecture isn't formed in a vacuum and cities constitute an endless and rich field for research and design experimentation. These ideas have been pursued at different scales through my practices, MartiresDoyle (together with John Doyle) and COMMON (with John Doyle, Edmund Carter and Ben Milbourne). In both of these practices each project is seen as a unique opportunity to create spatial complexity from seemingly abstract notions of urbanity, cohabitation or socio-economical factors. The goal as a practitioner is always to create unique, complex and beautiful spaces that work as a connective platform between the context they're inserted in and their occupants.

Readings & References

Excerpts/chapters from:

• Planet City, Liam Young
• Machine Landscapes: architectures of the post-anthropocene/guest-edited by Liam Young
• A Journey Round My Room, Xavier de Maistre
• Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby
• Text:
• Of Other Spaces, Michel Foucault and Jay Miskowiec
• The Poor Little Rich Man, Adolf Loos
• Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard

Cinema/Digital Media:

• Her, Spike Jonze
• Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve
• Mon Oncle, Jacques Tati
• Ex-Machina, Alex Garland
• Tron Legacy, Joseph Kosinski
• Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock
• Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg
• Chungking Express, Wong Kar Wai
• Black Mirror
• The Peripheral

Other references provided in class.

Schedule Mondays 2pm - 6pm, Wednesday 2pm - 6pm, Thursday 5pm - 9pm

Contact Handbook