Undergraduate Honors Research Studio Date: Spring, 2017
Institution: Ohio State University
Instructors: Sandhya Kochar, Dow Kimbrell Team Members: Sami Samawi, Austin Gordon Level: Senior Honors: Studio Prize
Institution: Ohio State University
Instructors: Sandhya Kochar, Dow Kimbrell Team Members: Sami Samawi, Austin Gordon Level: Senior Honors: Studio Prize
This project creates new architectural worlds through the employment of a generative technique utilizing the visual language of architecture. The project begins with three samples “seeds” deployed within the generative machine. These samples have been selected based upon their strength of influence within the field at large. While some are more literal, some are diagrammatic, representing vectors of research, design processes and methods within architecture. These initial samples are then modified through what we call “filters”: architectural precedents chosen for their latent affinities with the initial seeds. Resonances and affinities between the seeds and the filters are analyzed, and that analysis guides the development of the subsequent architectural worlds produced. The technique relies heavily on the architect’s interpretation of the precedents to guide the outcomes of the translation through the filters. Traditional readings, mis-readings, and new takes are all valid in the expression of the technique and its outcomes. The worlds created are of varied complexities assuming different characteristics as they influence, contaminate and borrow from each other.
The generative machine can be seen below:
The Worlds
The Jeffersonian Dispenser
The Jeffersonian Dispenser employs the predominant existing urban layout, the grid, as a tool to distribute new complex worlds into old disused urban spaces. Distributing modernist urbanism opportunistically, it is an infill machine. A collective of conquerors, it is in constant search for new lands to occupy.
Cloud City
Cloud City is a world of aerial dwellers located just above the troposphere. It is the home of scientists and astronomers studying and exploring space.
Drill City
Drill City is located in a mine shaft. Its citizens are those whose desire is to mine the earth in search of precious minerals.
Aqua City
Aqua City is a collection of 1909 Theorems within a marine environment, a home for explorers of the sea.
New Tokyo
New Tokyo imagines a propagation of Isozaki’s Clusters in the Air over the existing urban condition of the Jeffersonian Grid. Its people are those who desire to be removed from the gridded reality laid by the Jeffersonian Dispenser.
Machine World
Machine World takes an alternative look at a dumpsite of old mechanical parts as a site for possible architectural intervention. As the mechanical gives way to the digital, its inhabitants are skilled at making use of old systems that have been discarded by others.
Canyon City
Canyon City dwells within the Grand Canyon and juxtaposes the relentless verticality of 1909 with the undulating nature of the natural terrain. It is the world of explorers and adventure junkies.
Oblique City
Oblique City examines what happens when the Oblique Function is interrupted by Mies’ Brick Country House, presenting a tension between two systems. It is the home of the Capitalists who are interested in expansion of territory, both vertically and horizontally.
No-Stop City
No-Stop City explores the seminal architectural project in the vertical as well as horizontal. It is a world where everything happens at the nodes and is home to the Nomads, a group of wanderers in constant search for new experiences.
