The Three Little Pigs

The Three Little Pigs is a story about building three houses from straw, wood and brick each with various capacities to negotiate flexibility and thresholds between conditions. The Melbourne Hoddle grid has various blocks that feature dominant materials according to their historical period. In the south there is various stone and brick, moving to concrete, then purple glass further north. Some timber dwellings remain scattered.

The Three Little Pigs investigated different material systems as components, extracted from Melbournes architectural language, and reconfigured using aggregation algorithms to create porosity in building thresholds now possible with contemporary manufacturing technologies, and testing their limitations.

Different porosities were driven by sensorial and atmospheric inputs such as sound, light, humidity, smell and touch explored through using digital technologies. In essence, the contemporary role of ornament was explored using these inputs as socially and environmentally performative forces that affect the form of porosity.

The major aim of the studio was to transfer students accustomed to digital simulations into the material world who have become disconnected from the physical nature of architecture, through the filter of technological seduction, getting hands on through the comfort of technology and pondering the different roles of algorithms.