Masonry and Emerging technologies
2017-2018
This studio framed its pedagogical approach around a conversation between digital to material in this case masonry through theoretical, experimental, and practical approaches. It focused on the potential of masonry, combined it with economies of forms and fabrications to celebrate digital, matter and material processes in architectural production. It focused on creating the new possibilities of masonry as a building material through the use of computational design and digital fabrication. This studio pushed masonry toward a dynamic and participatory end. It created a new dynamic Farmers' market in Pullman that can be served as a public urban space during the year (even when the Farmers' market is not active) and exhibits a strong attachment to place and informal culture.
Throughout, the students were challenged to rethink masonry capacity to affect and contribute to the spaces in which we live and enjoy. Rather than a static set of bricks, here masonry was pushed to accept an evolving scenario, specifically a Farmers' market whose transitory condition provided the means to see in masonry a kinetic possibility, accepting and accommodating changes in the built environmentThis studio showcases the new possibilities of masonry as a building material through the use of computational design and digital fabrication. It not only represents a final expression but lessons developed over the entire semester, starting with a review of the relationship between the part and the whole and ending with a keen interest in pushing masonry toward a dynamic and participatory end. Throughout, the students were challenged to study visual bias to the material, create their own formal systems based on the limitation and possible creativities, using analytical drawings of the given images as a tool to initiate their own system including both parts and wholes. Then they continue exploring their system in 3D by spatial construct and body installations.
