CCA Architecture/ Spring 2009 |
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Click on titles below for individual project handouts.
To begin our semester, we will look at microboundaries at the scale and site of the human body. We will also use this as a means to get familiar with some basic terms of sensory and responsive systems in both architecture and interaction design. First Microboundary: Body Matter Having now conducted initial research around technologies of/in the body, and sketched some possible consequences in space and time, we have what might be called scenarios. These are filled with explicit and implicit values of functionality and of beauty. They perform, even if they are not programmed. They are scaled and situated, but without site or material presence. These various aspects will be the focus of our next steps. As we prepare to move to the scale of building, we develop a set of material and spatial qualities through continued research and exercises in making three-dimensionally. In so doing, we make a first attempt to articulate the logics behind these qualities as a thesis for utility; an initial statement on our shifting definitions of both functionality and of beauty today Hypertextual Research Document For this short week exercise, we get familiar with basic HTML based web design methods as a means of engaging hypertextual construction: building the time-based space of your research and design response to date. Hypertext enables us in a sense to contribute back to the web source that has formed an important part of our primary research. It builds connections between the various resources and cultural phenomena that we have been studying. It mounts the drawings, videos and other work that we have crafted to synthesize and speculate on that mix. Lastly, it is a chance to commit to a growing archive your formulation of where we intend to bring this work architecturally. Second Microboundary: The Substation The next month of work begins with our visit to PG&E's Substation I. For example, it is both a single physical location and a node on a vast – perhaps endless – network. It is unique and yet ubiquitous. Diagonally across the street from the building, the Mission Substation still today carries within it fully 25% of San Francisco's electricity at any moment. This staggering amount of energy is constantly stepped down from high voltage to the sort of current that can serve our residential and commercial uses. The building's energy represents both the advances in 20th century technology as well as late 20th century wasteful consumption. The building is also both weak and strong: vulnerable to failure (it has had several fires over the past years, each time threatening the very functioning of the city). Also, our impending energy crisis and awareness of its ecological undercurrents are sparking an interest in new sources of energy, reduced patterns of consumption, and entirely different methods of distribution (self-generation for instance, which leaves the grid behind entirely). And yet, the substation holds an imposing grip on our city's public space and circulation. They dominate their sites and defy inhabitation. As you visit the site, keep these contradictory conditions in mind. How might you treat the building's strong and weak qualities? How might its role on the street be transformed? Begin by documenting its various qualities, each time as a detail of its space, its scale, its materials, its meetings with the street, and so on. Think of your photographs, drawings, and notes in terms. More importantly, think of these each in terms of the studies in which you've been engaged thus far in the semester. Your studies have all been enabled by electricity if not by electronics; by interactions with surfaces (floors, walls, etc.) and they have scalar relationships to the human body (or bodies). Where Final: Prototype & Retrofit |