Studio Leader: Hella Wigge
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This studio explores our experience of space and tectonics as embodied beings through the highly charged environments of the Public Bathhouse.
Architects throughout time have cultivated analog 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 introduced a range of graphic media, physical model making and model photography as tools of expression in studio skilling sessions. Focusing on colour, texture and material, tectonic composition and proportion and light, students embarked on an iterative process of poetic, meaningful making alongside more conventional explorations. This set the foundation to generate, refine and present ideas for an architecture high in spatial and sensory quality.
Research on the history of bathing in different cultures, and precedent research on elements that define the bathhouse experience informed and complemented the more expressive focus.
With the pandemic necessitating a move online, some students transitioned to an either partly or entirely digital toolkit. Earlier explorations in light were brought to life with architect and lighting designer Josie White joining us to help students gain technical understanding and refine their ideas on lighting spaces and bodies of water.
Assessed components were a digitally curated journal and the formal design presentations, both assessed at interim and final. The journals were built incrementally throughout the semester, documenting explorations, research and, most importantly, reflections on the student’s process, thinking and designing; as well as all analog and digital poetic making.
Presentations moved from paper based, with an extensive atmospheric component, to online slide presentations, hand crafted physical models were largely abandoned. Some students made use of the auditory potential in their final recorded presentations, expanding the sensory profile experience of their proposals, a tool that now beckons further exploration in our new found current reality.