Thesis Lab Spring 2014 menu

Z @ graduate WIT

Protheses: On Design and Research Methodology

Protheses presents a series of design and research methods towards the development of an architectural thesis. More specifically the presentation discusses: visualization tools for quantitative and qualitative data; inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary research; research through making; original research; subjectivity; engagement with the discourse and society; and the individual voice. The use of the word Protheses, deriving from προ (=pro, before) and θέσεις (= theses, positions), has a double function: it refers to preparations for a thesis (Thesis Prep for WIT) including a literature review which happens prior to development of a thesis statement; and through its Greek meaning (προθέσεις = intentions), it emphasizes a personal approach to research methodology (one's intentions).

This Friday, October 25th, 8:00am at Wentworth Institute of Technology, Beatty, room 419.

Z @ CoF

THE ARCHITECT’S TECHNO-PEDAGOGY TOOLKIT 

Following the advent of digital and information technologies, many architecture schools currently prioritize a “digital architecture” approach that frames technology through fabrication and scripting. As a critique to this trend, my teaching pedagogy investigates the new role of technology in design through the lens of culture, craftsmanship, and user perception. This approach suggests the expansion to a wider exploration of technological methods to be researched and associated to design: These range from social platforms and collective intelligence, digital culture and anthropology, storytelling and web journalism, neuroscience and cognition, to games, visualization and mapping, scripting, and fabrication, among other. To further define the architect’s techno-pedagogy toolkit, I have developed a process that involves mixed media and experiment-based approaches: the design and construction of interactive prototypical installations; the development of software participatory platforms; and the conduction of experiments using both the installations and the platforms to collect and analyze user data. 

The above text is the abstract of my upcoming presentation at the Annual Colleges of the Fenway (CoF) Teaching and Learning Conference, between 14-15th of November. Keynote speakers include Dr Chris Dede from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Colleen Macklin from Communication Design & Technology at Parsons The New School for Design

concept-context-content

"In Event-Cities 3, Bernard Tschumi explores the complex and productive triangulation of architectural concept, context, and content. There is no architecture without a concept, an overriding idea that gives coherence and identity to a building. But there is also no architecture without context—historical, geographical, cultural—or content (what happens inside). Concept, context, and content may be in unison or purposely discordant. Against the contextualist movement of the 1980s and 1990s, which called for architecture to blend in with its surroundings, Tschumi argues that buildings may or may not conform to their settings—but that the decision should always be strategic." (text via the web)

Tschumi, Bernard, and Museum of Modern Art (New York). Event-cities. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.