ARC3015YF (L0106) 
Instructors: Aránzazu (Arancha) González Bernardo & Michael Fohring

This studio continues our ongoing interest in material research, and explores how we can re-think the conventional dichotomy of architect and builder to discover not only more efficient ways of building, but also more expressive resultant forms.

Regardless of the number of documents and drawings, the process of construction is incredibly complex and riddled with countless adaptations at all scales. We’re desperate to avoid it, but there’s no denying the fact that construction is messy work.

But what happens if we stop resisting the process of construction, and we instead embrace it; even more, that we indulge in it? If it’s inevitable, can it be used to our advantage?  

This studio posits that by introducing more uncertainty to the design process, we can not only discover means of novel, artistic architectural expression, but also building strategies which actually leverage the limitations of technology.  

Fabric-formed casting will be used as a design and fabrication methodology to investigate these ideas. Rather than beginning with a predetermined geometry and forcing materials to conform, students will investigate how gravity, hydrostatic pressure, material composition, and methods of making can actively and spontaneously generate form. Textile, as an inherently adaptable and formless medium, becomes a vehicle for embracing uncertainty and understanding architecture as the negotiation between technique, space, matter, and the forces that shape it.

The first phase of the studio will be dedicated to experimentation. Drawing from precedent research, students will develop and test a series of casting methods by manipulating variables such as fabric type, seam construction, elasticity, suspension, casting material, and rigid supports. Throughout this phase, students will balance loose, artistic creation with the maintenance of a detailed fabrication log documenting their processes, using each iteration to refine their understanding of material behaviour and technique. The objective is not to achieve a preconceived result, but to develop material intelligence by learning what each process makes possible—and impossible.

As the iterations progress, each student's work will begin to reveal its own formal language and architectural potential. Rather than imposing a predetermined application, students will identify the latent possibilities within their castings and determine how they might become part of a building system: a modular or monolithic wall, a façade screen, a shell, a staircase, a column, or another structural or spatial component. This decision will mark the transition from experimentation to design.

The final phase focuses on refinement and speculation. Students will continue developing their fabrication process to produce a scale prototype of their chosen building system while improving its performance through criteria such as material efficiency, reusable formwork, structural integration, ease of assembly, daylight modulation, acoustics, thermal performance, or reduced labour.

By the end of the studio, students will understand fabrication and tectonics not simply as a means of executing design, but as a process through which architecture itself is discovered.