Architecture and Design

Allographic Drawing explores the agency of coding in architectural design processes and its impact on architectural drawing and the allocation of authorship. The paper uses drawing as a lens to look at coding in architectural practice and argues that engaging with coding introduces novel ways of mediating between context, proposition and constructed artefact. Against the backdrop of the paradigm shift from drawing-based representation to model-based simulation, this paper argues that we can look at drawing as a means of understanding the mediation of coding in architectural design processes. The research looks specifically into algorithmic approaches to scanning and mapping environments, ideation and exploration of variation within architectural design processes and the translation between design proposition and material artefact through digital fabrication.

The emergence of the technosphere, a planetary accidental megastructure comprised of networked emerging technologies, leads to novel ways of seeing and understanding our environments. The paper questions the impact of these new visual cultures on architecture and urban design, practices that rely heavily on visual media. The research is contextualised and framed in contemporary design and artistic practices engaging with digital technologies as means of understanding the complexities of our technologically saturated environments, The paper looks into a series of case studies that probe the visual cultures of the technosphere, looks at emerging technologies as a lens for mapping environments and discuss the medial practices and strategies developed in the work.

This paper questions whether physical and digital models can be seen as models for rather than models of architecture. Stressing the mediated nature of the design process, it questions the role models play in the early stage of architectural design. This research draws from an experimental digital & physical modelling workshop. The conclusion argues for a modelling process that incorporates both physical and digital modelling, and acknowledges the mediated nature of the design process.

This paper looks into coding as a creative practice within architecture, more specifically into textual and graphical coding as a practitioner during the design process. It argues that coding is not a mere tool for designing but a particular design medium, with its own affordances and resistances. Using code as a design medium provides a specific form of feedback, it influences the design process and its outcomes. Code is a technological and conceptual support for design thinking. In other words, code and coding can be ascribed agency in architectural design. This research is based on a number of cases from design practice and teaching, ranging from small design experiments, developing software tools for specific design projects and teaching workshops. The cases are grouped into three metaphors, each describing a particular aspect of coding as a design medium.

The environments in which we operate as architects are increasingly saturated with digital technologies: global communication and transportation technologies, internet-of-things, mobile devices, increased satellite coverage, locationbased services, ubiquitous computing, etc. Digital technologies have become so pervasive that the digital is noticed only by its absence, not its presence. 1 Digital technologies are affecting our environments across scales: on a planetary scale they are rewiring the technosphere 2 into an emerging accidental megastructure 3 giving rise to radically new social, political, economic and technological geographies. 4 Several dichotomies at the basis of architecture as a discipline are rendered useless through the pervasive impact of digital technologies: collapsing differences between city and periphery, between artificial and natural, 5 between public and private, 6 between mediated and bodily

Recently, the notion of platforms has taken on different meanings through the increasing digitization of many areas within society: from production and commerce, over media, science, culture and politics. Field Station will present their collective work on the notion of platforms in architecture. The studio explored a wide range of ideas, possibilities and frictions related to platforms as a spatial metaphor, a structural system, an architectural typology, an interface where data space and physical space intersect, as a modus operandi, a model for novel architectural entrepreneurship, or as a site for countercultural resistance. DING, the extension of the Design Museum Ghent, functioned as means to confront these concepts with a concrete situation. Confronting the site and project with a specific perspective and considering several aspects (the site and existing buildings, its position within the context of Ghent, the ongoing competition, program and function, the ambition to become...

The environment is increasingly saturated with digital technologies: internet-of-things, global communication and transportation technologies, mobile devices, increased satellite coverage, location based services, ubiquitous computing… Together these technologies form an emerging accidental megastructure that is reordering the spatial layout of our planet. This technological layer is increasing sensing and logging our world, introducing new ways of seeing and making sense of the world. The PROMETHEUS video is an zoom through the various scales of the of technologically saturated environments. Reminiscent of the Powers of Ten, the film produced by Ray and Charles Eames in 1977, it traverses various scales over a number of sequences: into the screen, extended bodies, augmented interiors, mediated building and numb city. The video is resulted from a collective and blind data logging, scanning our environments through photogrammetry and rendered on screen as point clouds

The environments in which we operate as architects are increasingly saturated with digital technologies: internet-of-things, global communication and transportation technologies, mobile devices, increased satellite coverage, location-based services, ubiquitous computing… The post-doctoral research project under the title architecture, agency and the technosphere, investigates architecture’s relation with this technologically saturated environment. The three year project coincides with setting up the Field Station academic design office (ADO) at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture. The aim of the paper is to reflect on the ongoing and completed projects and to establish a number of frameworks for the research agenda of the post-doctoral research project and the ADO, and attempt to establish a model for understanding the technosphere. The discussion will address open questions regarding research, teaching and practice of the Fieldstation ADO.https://arch.kuleuven.be/ca2re-2019/ca2re...

The ongoing research project Citography explores the impact of technologies such as image sharing, social media, mobile devices, geolocation, surveying, computer vision and data visualisation on our understanding, mapping and design of cities. It questions how these technologies impact notions of place, location, commons and citizenship. This paper presents a first framework resulting from a case study looking into the relationships between protests in physical public space of the city and within the public sphere of social media. It uses data scraping, modelling, data visualisation and animation to construct a tempo-spatial model of the city. The case study explores public spaces vs public sphere and their vision with different devices, emphasising collectively constructed surroundings by people who participate in the protest.

This paper discusses how the tension between arts and science inherent in the discipline of architecture, can be traced in architectural representations, which are not neutral but actively contribute to the design process, ranging from highly poetic, subjective, and artistic to more exact and objective. Within this paper, we reflect on how to overcome this restrictive perspective implicit in conventional design media by comparing two elective courses that aim to broaden the traditional architectural perspective. In doing so, we take a position in the broader debate on the role of artistic practices within an academic learning environment.

This paper is concerned with the way in which the ideal of the 'sustainable city' is currently spoken and written about in Australia. Using the 2003-2005 Australian Federal Government's House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage's Inquiry into Sustainable Cities as a case study the paper employs a discursive approach to analyse the Inquiry documents. The paper argues that use of the word sprawl has powerful metaphorical importance in sustainable city discourse, suggesting alternative stories about the future of cities. The first, the story of decline, suggests out of control growth of cities that threatens not only the resource base, but also 'nature', agricultural land and social stability. It also leads to isolation, loneliness, boredom, crime, obesity and a whole litany of other evils. The alternative storyline, the story of control, is presented as the only choice 'we' really have-the compact, contained city is a place where resources are used wisely, 'nature' and agricultural land are protected, and there is a sense of 'community'. However, it is the contention of this paper that the dominant focus on sprawl in sustainable city discourse effectively closes down rather than opens up discussion about the future because embedded in the use of the term sprawl is a predefined conclusion. In addition, the abundant use of pronouns in the discussion paper, the inquiry and in sustainability literature more broadly-'we, 'our', 'us'-all denote a common responsibility and a common pathway that encourages compliance, not the active and open ended involvement of citizens in shaping their future.

In this paper we draw on our experience of teaching in an undergraduate landscape architecture design studio that aimed to test ways in which sustainability could be incorporated into design teaching. In the studio we pursued an approach to teaching that challenged students to think critically about many of the taken-for-granted assumptions about what sustainability could or should mean, and how this unfixed, critical thinking about sustainability might translate into design.

This paper discusses the outcome of a collaborative design studio that aimed to investigate climate adaptation strategies for ten Bayside municipalities in Melbourne, Australia. The studio was part of a larger, 3-phase project titled Bay Blueprint 2070 in a partnership between the UN Global Compact Cities Programme and RMIT School of Architecture and Urban Design. The aim of the studio was to identify potential adaptation strategies for 10 municipality 'hotspots' vulnerable to increasing coastal and catchment flooding by working with local governments, the CSIRO, and key stakeholders. The studio adopted a research approach that focused on testing future scenarios for each of the hotspots. Four scenarios were identified, the first two based on representative concentration pathways (RCPs) 8.5 Extreme and Moderate RCP 4.5. The second two focused on differing approaches to adaptation. Using the 4 scenarios, students were asked to investigate potential adaptation strategies in their responses and to explain how they considered the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainability. These responses then were presented to key stakeholders for feedback. The final project outcomes provided a catalyst for conversations around what adaptation could look like and could be like into the future as an aid for decision making.

In this paper we draw on our experience of teaching in an undergraduate landscape architecture design studio that aimed to test ways in which sustainability could be incorporated into design teaching. In the studio we pursued an approach to teaching that challenged students to think critically about many of the taken-for-granted assumptions about what sustainability could or should mean, and how this unfixed, critical thinking about sustainability might translate into design. ~IS PAPER IS A REFLECTION of our experience teaching in an undergraduate 1 landscape architecture design studio where student levels range from second year to fourth year. This studio set out to challenge existing models for design that claim to be sustainable and to test alternative approaches to thinking about sustainability in relation to design. We explicitly adopted an approach to learning which went beyond acquiring knowledge about sustainability, to one where we encouraged both ourselves and students to ...