ARC3015Y F
Instructor: Eiri Ota
Meeting Section: L0107
Tuesday, 9:00am - 1:00pm; Friday, 2:00pm - 6:00pm
Location: TBD

Often nature is a starting point for developing or challenging architectural logic. For example, an iceberg’s form is shaped by expansion and contraction as it migrates. The shell of jewel beetle consists of 20 thin layers that change colour as a form of language. The villus in our intestines maximizes its surface in order to absorb nutrients efficiently. These adaptive functions and systems emphasize rationality that can be applied to architecture. In this course, we will look into these relationships between nature and architecture by developing an investigatory understanding of them both.

Tadao Ando used the term "Architecturalized Nature" to describe the control and containment of human-made nature within architecture, but we will use this term differently. We will observe and find uniqueness within systems in nature to discover methods to explore the boundaries of architecture. Here, students are asked to follow in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, whose observations documented in the book “The Voyage of the Beagle” allowed him to theorize adaptive strategies. Observation subjects can be anything around us, as long as they relate to nature. Through this process, systems and rationality will be discovered that can have possible architectural logic. For example, Akihisa Hirata applies the organization system of plants to create a mixed-use building with overlapping spaces that respond to its specific environmental and social context. Sousuke Fujimoto imitates the form and experience of cloud in a three-dimensional grid structure scaled to humans. Are these contemporary architects developing a new way to view architecture and nature? Alternatively, are they limited by their specific social and cultural context?

Taking the approach of finding architectural ideas through daily observation and research will allow students the freedom to conduct independent research. Each student will prepare a minimum of three different observations from nature with imaginary architectural applications every week. The parameters of research are flexible; it can be a proposal of a material, plan, section, or program. After continuing this process for a month, a building site in Toronto and a residential program will be given. Through this process, the goal is to generate a tectonic and feasible proposal in relation to the site, social and environmental context.