ARC480H1 S
Instructor: Zachary Mollica
Meeting Section: L0101
Winter 2024

Facilitated by continuing growth in industrial productivity, architects and designers have become accustomed to specifying generic materials and predesigned assemblies. In the process, we lose sight of where materials originate, how far they travel, and many other effects that their preparation may have before arriving at a building site. Negative consequences of these tendencies are widely known.

New digital tools, which can provide solutions to the problems their mechanical predecessors created, too often only exacerbate the same problems. In contrast, this seminar focuses on developing students’ skills in deploying ‘Tools for Close Observation’ to enable a more resourceful approach to design that is rooted in adhocism and local material availability.

The seminar will include lectures, discussions, and software teaching, introducing both the use and histories of analog and digital surveying tools such as 3D scanning. Through project work, students joining will learn to work with the results of these observational tools in familiar digital modelling programs like Rhino. They will also learn to manipulate point cloud models to produce hybrid maps, drawings and digital animations.