The Different

The rise of 3D printing and advanced fabrication techniques are opening the possibilities of architecture to the unique, the bespoke, the one-off and the intricate. The potential to produce high resolutions of detail in architecture has not been seen since Modernism’s rejection of ornament and the embracement of mass production. Within this context, this studio proposes to explore high resolutions of detail in architecture through digital processes alongside a physical process of making.

The Different aims to use digital design techniques in a highly iterative design process. Workshops will be run in studio to develop students’ digital skills in Rhino, Grasshopper and potentially C#. Students will use these digital tools to create large matrices of designs borne out of their own algorithms. The studio aims to engage in a feedback loop between process, outcome and fabrication. Students will be taught how to evaluate the qualities of their iterations through themes of emergence, pattern, tesselation, intricacy, assembly and relationship to site.

Students will explore the history of the digital age through a contemporary digital precedent (Lynn, Fornes, Gramazio/Kohler, Hansmeyer, Kokkugia, Retsin), and will analyze, draw, iterate and fabricate for the first 3 weeks of the studio. Students will be asked to critically evaluate their precedent within the context of themes of intricacy, composition, form, tectonics, fabrication and assembly, and design and fabricate a new system that engages with these themes.

This new system will then be tested at building scale on a site in Melbourne’s CBD as a proposition for a new Tech School. The proposed system will be required to navigate existing site conditions and programmatic constraints, whilst engaging with the studios themes of intricacy, high resolution and mass customization.