GRADUATION STUDIO - HYBRID ZONE
The University of Canberra, 2021
Background:
The task of this studio was a test of creativity and set upon us the task of designing in a way reminiscent of Álvaro Siza.
In small groups we were to collaboratively produce a painting - a layering of two-dimensional surfaces informed by the surrounding morphology and temporalities of the site. The process of layering was edited by brief distribution, texture and geometry, before the resultant painterly artifact was translated to a language of three-dimensional modeling, and finally, to a work of architecture.
The studio focus was to tackle two seperate issues through this framework; firstly, to deconstruct the CIAM approach in compartmentalizing the everyday life activities into residential, commercial, industrial, green areas. Secondly, how the German architect Oswald Mathias Unger’s proposal, the city within the city could establish a dialectical rapport with a given context. While part of the city could be plotted independently of the city by large, it should conspicuously relate to the former.
APPROACH
My component of the overall group project is highly centrered on a re-coding of architecture explored in John Hejduk's wall house series into a multi-residential courtyard housing typology - where circulatory elements are distinct and removed externally from the overall form.
A matrix of squares sweeping over the painterly phase of the project encouraged me to interperate the ground plane of the site as a fine grain mixed use precinct. I took the squares as subtractive to an overall form set to distinct levels of public and private usage.
My component formed an important role for my group members, who positioned sweeping cantilevered forms and irregular metabolist towers high above the formulaic intricacies of my ground plane.
