Studio D/08

Triplicate: Alliez at Morphosis’ Hypothekenbank – passage towards limits

Scott Woods and Belinda Yang

Studio Description

The institutional setting of the BANK produces practical, cultural and mythological assets for everyday consumption in equal measure. The bank, as an architectural project, has usurped its own typological and material history (it’s ‘body’) but has not (and cannot) find its place within the contemporary dominion of capital and those markets that regulate and produce it. The bank is everywhere and nowhere, its HQ is an over pumped yet somehow mysterious programmatic figure far from the steadfast, stable, secure and singular service to society it was once believed to be.

Studio Outcomes

To develop discourses and projects for the bank, Thom Mayne / Morphosis’ Hypothekenbank HQ in Austria, will be cited, sanctified and templated to aid the production of the bank of our times somewhere between a post-neo-classicism and a neo-post-modernism.

The architectural work of Thom Mayne / Morphosis and the writings of Eric Alliez will buttress the studio experiments in a 3 stage attack on the idea of a coherent and legible design process - ironically, echoing the opacity of today’s over regulated institution. Micro, molar and territorial design operations will develop incrementally across the project timeline endeavouring to expose formal and programmatic instabilities at the heart of the banking complex.

Studio Leaders

Scott Woods is an Academic Fellow in Architecture at MSD.

Belinda Yang is a tutor at MSD and works in practice.

Readings & References

A reading list will be supplied to students in Week 1.

Schedule Mondays 18:15-21:15 in MSD Room 139 and Thursdays 15:15-18:15 in MSD 216

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