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The premise of this history and theory advanced studio is quite straightforward: to reconstruct and render! We will work from various forms of historical documentation to build a series of digital models and tableaux that draw on skill-based tutorials throughout the semester. These models and tableaux will be in service in investigating the ways in which computer-generated images and architectural ways of knowing and representing can recover lost spatial histories and projected futures. While this studio, at its core, centers on skill-building it is deeply embedded in theories of history and is deeply committed to dismantling the design-history-theory division. You will in essence be designing an architectural site, not with the usual limitations of budget, construction technology, or program, but rather the limitations of history and archival knowledge. Students will work individually or in teams to reconstruct a historical or fictive site of their choosing that lacks a robust architectural archive (plans, sections, elevations, etc.). Using their architectural knowledge, students will construct methods of measurement and analysis to aid them in modeling their historic precedent. The goal of the first six weeks is to reconstruct as much and as relevantly as possible; in the words of Gordon Bunshaft, the lead designer of SOM New York, “from the masterplan to the ashtray.” Following, we will take our digital reconstructions and use them to support a narrative polemic about the selected site through a curated selection of five images that leverages the tools of architectural representation, including Virtual Reality, to highlight, reveal, or conceal salient architectural aspects or affects. In sum, this studio asks both how rendering might be taken as a critical tool for “queering” architectural practice and how the reconstruction of forgotten or ignored historical spaces might open new trajectories for contemporary design.
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Isabella Ruggiero
Quinta Liao
Rong Cao
Ryan Sotelo
Sam Leung
Sammy Salazar
Tiger Yi
Wei Wang
Xia Li
Xiao Yang
Xuhan Zhao
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