BASIC PREMISE:
NATURAL PRINCIPLES + SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS = CITIES FOR THE FUTURE
New technologies and new scientific understanding now give us the possibility to design at a level of complexity approaching that of nature itself. At the same time, our cities are expanding, our global environmental crisis continues to unfold, and our lives are characterized by ever-increasing levels of complexity. We must respond to these challenges with new approaches to design and new forms of urbanism.
Only 14 percent of the world’s population lived in cities at the beginning of the 20th century. By the beginning of the 21st century, half of the world was living in cities, and meanwhile the population had increased from 1.5 to 6 billion. Human technology developed increasing possibilities for communication and interaction over greater distance and with more sophistication. Paradoxically this led not to more dispersion, but even more concentration of our population. As the cities inevitably grew larger and more complex, the problems of scarcity, waste, imbalance, and inequality approached a crisis point. This crisis is not only a human problem, but an all-encompassing environmental problem that includes human systems as well as the systems of nature itself.
We view the city and its architecture as organically integrated systems of collection, concentration, production, and consumption, no different in principle from those systems we see in nature. We will study these natural systems and how they articulate themselves in response to the challenges of competing demands. Through this study we will develop new spatial and functional approaches that can address the looming environmental and social imbalances that confront our cities today.
No matter what we do, cities will continue to grow larger, denser, hungrier, and more complex. How can we design them to create more balance rather than more iniquity, and how can we create a future of more prosperity rather than more scarcity? This can only happen if we leave behind our previous conceptions of production, consumption, and waste—conceiving instead of a society and a city where our participation in our environment is holistic and cyclical.
Our ideal city of the future will be so much more adaptive, so much more articulated, so much more nuanced, and so much more synergistic than the cities of our past.
CORE VALUES:
Conceptual rigor + expression through PHYSICAL form
This studio is looking for students who are enthusiastic to work within these demands.
Non-literal strategy
Our intent is to develop a design approach that emulates the adaptability and organic integration of the systems we study. The aim is to draw on the principles and organizational patterns, and not to directly imitate the forms.
THE CURRICULUM:
Students will work in pairs for the research and investigation portion of the studio. For the implementation stage of project development, students will have the option of working individually or continuing in pairs.
{ ! } Primary Research
Teams choose narrowly focused topics studied from natural systems.
Topics should have potential as generative diagrams related to:
Material systems
Morphological systems
Functional systems
Systems of differentiation
1) Analysis, re-interpretation, and re-creation of the organizational principles behind the systems
2) Collecting related systems and documenting these as variations or oppositions to the main topic.
{ ~ } System Mapping
Teams will apply the systems in a series of short exercises:
Systems will be evaluated and implemented at a variety of scales.
Studies will be developed into forms and tested through fabrication.
{ * } Conceptual Framework
Our work aims to tackle some of our most critical environmental and social sustainability problems using the tools we have created. Teams will choose among a range of principal areas of intervention:
Social interaction through space
Networks and infrastructure
Production
Building typology
Architecture of the ground plane and public space
Architectural expression
Primary research will be synthesized, collated, and presented. Each individual or team will identify the main areas of crisis that they would like to address, and produce a brief manifesto that ties their primary research topic into the equation:
Natural principles + Sustainable Systems = Cities for the Future
{ + } Implementation
This stage will be the synthesis of the work. Students will choose the appropriate site and program for their architectural and urban interventions. The designs will be generative prototypes as an expression of their manifesto.
We will use Hong Kong as a test bed for some of our ideas, and as a field study to search the extremes of complexity and density that our future may entail.
FINAL WORDS:
We have so many more ways to make our buildings communicate than we ever had before. We have so many more possibilities to produce forms and spaces that are appropriate to the complexities of our lives today.
Let us dream of cities that may approach the effortless beauty and elegant complexity of the natural world around us, and let us do so while solving some of the great problems of our day.
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