reading

Cover
Title
Contents
Contributors
Editorial: A New Manifold For The Discipline And Its Discours
Architectural Practice Within The Context Of An Expanded Profession
How To Collect Fragments
Out-Miesing Mies: Sanaa In The Barcelona Pavilion
Introduction To SAC: Small Is Beautiful
Essay AAD: Knowledge Formation
Project: The Fleabite Effect
Project: Space In-Between
Essay AAP: The Criticality Of Architecture
Project: Latencity
Essay APD: The Os Of Architecture
Project: Node Folding
Project: Sheet Formation
Project: Flexible Formwork System
Project: Bristles
Project: Heat Pressure Lamination
Project: Latex Tensility
Students At Work
Colophon
Backcover

PageList

Cover
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
Back Cover

Ben van Berkel is a professor of conceptual design and the dean of the Städelschule Architecture Class. Van Berkel studied architecture at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and at the Architectural Association in London, receiving the AA Diploma with Honours in 1987. His first projects were built almost immediately after founding van Berkel & Bos Architectuur Bureau. Among the buildings of this first period are Karbouw, the Remu Electricity Station and Villa Wilbrink. Being elected to design the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam (1996) profoundly affected his understanding of the role of the architect today and constituted the foundation of his collaborative approach to practicing, leading to the foundation ofUNStudio in 1999. Recent projects, which reflect his long-standing interest in the integration of construction and architecture, are the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart (Germany, 2006), Arnhem Central (Netherlands, 2007), GOW Nippon Moon (Japan, 2012).

from Princeton University. He has taught and lectured, amongst other places, at AA, UCLA, the Berlage Institute, Innsbruck University, the EPFL, Lausanne. His main interests reside in the intersection between materials, geometry and architectural design. He was a research fellow at the Oslo School of Architecture from 1997-2001 and headed a nationally funded research project on polymer composite materials in architecture. Until 2000 he led the OCEAN group in Oslo whose work on polymer composites and advanced digital modelling greatly influenced the group’s projects in this period. Bettum’s PhD is entitled ‘The Material Geometry of Fibre-Reinforced Polymer Matrix Composites and Architectural Tectonics’.

Christian Veddeler is a guest professor at the
Städelschule Architecture Class where he leads the se-
cond-year thesis specialisation, Advanced Architectural Design
with a focus on system thinking in architecture. As an associ
ate director at UNStudio in Amsterdam he is responsible for
the design and execution of several international projects.
Currently, he is lead architect on the project for the Singa-
pore Universityof Technology and Design. In close collab-
oration with Ben van Berkel, he was in charge of a series of
pavilion projects focusing on integral and emergent design
processes, such as the Holiday Home at UPenn’s ICA, the
Changing Room for the Venice Biennale, the Burnham Pavil-

ion in Chicago, the New Amsterdam Pavilion in New York City, the Motion Matters Series at Harvard GSD, Aedes in Berlin and the Maxxi in Rome. His continuous involvement in academia includes numerous teaching assignments, amongst others at Harvard University, TU Delft, the Berlage Institute and the University of Illinois in Chicago. He is a registered architect and received a Master of Science degree in Architecture with honours from Delft University of Technology.

Mirco Becker, guest- and ‘Stiftungs’-professor at the
Städelschule Architecture Class brings his knowledge in
computation and geometry in the design and execution of
projects to the Master degree specialisation, Architecture and
Performative Design. He has been responsible for building
up advanced expertise in this emerging area of architectural
design at offices, such as Foster and Partners and Zaha Hadid
Architects in London. At Hadid’s office, Becker worked as
a lead designer with responsibility for BIM integration on vari-
ous projects. Before this, Becker was senior associate prin-
cipal, heading the Computational Geometry Group at Kohn
Pedersen Fox in London for five years and responsible for the
geometric design for the Abu Dhabi Airport. At Foster and
Partners he was a member of the Specialist Modelling Group.
He has taught in Diploma Unit 1 at the Architectural Associ-
ation (AA) in London (2003-05), was a visiting professor for
Digital Design Methods at Kassel University (2006-08) and

tutored at the AA Design Research Lab. His work has been exhibited and published in Europe, the US and Asia, including at the Latent Utopias and Beijing Biennale. Becker founded informance 2012 in Berlin and holds an M. Arch. degree from the AA. His position at the Städelschule is generously supported by the Heinz und Gisela Friedrichsstiftung.

Beatriz Colomina is an architectural theorist, professor and founding director of the programme ‘Media and Modernity’ in the School of Architecture, Princeton University. She has written extensively on questions of architecture and the modern institutions of representation, particularly the printed media, photography, advertising, film and TV. Among her works are ‘Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media’ (1994, AIA 1995 International Book Award); ‘Sexuality and Space’ (1992, AIA 1993 International Book Award); ‘Architecture Production’ (1988), ‘Double Exposure: Architecture through Art’ (Madrid, 2006); ‘Domesticity at War’ (2007) and ‘Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X’ (2013). She has been on the editorial boards of Assemblage, Daidalos and Grey Room and lectured at institutions and events throughout the world. She is the recipient of several prestigious grants, including from the Chicago Institute for Architecture, SOM Foundation, Graham Foundation, Fondation Le Corbusier, and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts in Washington.

With this inaugural issue of the SAC Journal, A New Manifold, the Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC) reflects on its postgraduate master programme. In its ambition to contribute to the development of architecture through research, experiments and the excellence of its graduates, SAC- like other educational programmes - faces an increasingly multitudinous and complex context in addressing the future of architecture. Yet, A New Manifold is also the beauty and multi-facetted opportunity that this future offers.

Contemporary architecture, whether pursued academically or professionally, must answer to growing societal pressures of all different kinds. This includes increased public concerns with what is built in cities where land is often scarce and expensive; scrutiny of the use of money for public projects; heightened awareness of environmental responsibilities; increased technical demands and regulations, and so much more. In addition to this comes architecture’s expanded horizon of improved and new technologies, be it in the form of novel material systems, construction methods or infrastructural and service systems. In sum this offers a plenitude of possibilities, a richfauna of architectural futures leveraged by the discipline itself, contemporary technology and the wild and beautiful power of architectural imagination.

Given the complexity of this future one may ask if it is at all possible to maintain architecture as a holistic discipline where the architect is typically thought to be a generalist, knowing a little about a lot and answering to everyone? The new manifold, which is the sum total of the contemporary condition for architectural explorations and production, proffers a nervous platform for future practitioners and theorists. In the process, will this not dismantle the architect

as the master builder and once and for all bury the illusion that buildings are signed off by a single individual who draws inspired sketches of his or her complex designs? Or, will it once and for all deliver us to the free market vernacular, a built tomorrow without architects?

Meanwhile, architecture still demands an idea of the whole or, at least, a will to contribute to this whole. The new manifold needs to be collected and directed.

At SAC, these questions lead to research and experiments that unequivocally celebrate architecture as a discipline and architectural design as its greatest and most passionate expression. A modest reflection of the new manifold is to be found in SAC’s small size and the way its programme is sub-divided and structured. SAC is the meeting ground of its origin, the classical master class, and the new manifold. It is the continuous negotiation of the many and the one. This negotiation does not conflate either ofthese; it isfullyfocused on architectural design as a discipline, understood in all its historical glory and served at best through a continued, experimental approach in the form of research. In the second of the programme’s two-year course, leading up to the master thesis, SAC offers its students three alternative thematic specialisations, each led by a professor or guest professor.

SAC’s specialisations are: Advanced Architectural Design, which invites its students to develop a design thesis around a building proposal driven by research on a select, annual topic while considering architecture a product of the traditional, modernist amalgam of form, programme and structure; Architecture and Performative Design, which approaches building design with a focus on how material,

constructional and technological systems influence design decisions and the final thesis outcome; and lastly, Architecture and Aesthetic Practice (until July 2013 called Architecture and Critical Spatial Practice), which attempts to benefit from SAC’s unique relation to the arts within the Städelschule and use art theory and practice to invigorate architectural discourse and design.

Thus, comprising its own small manifold, SAC sees the three specialisations as complementary to each other and pursues the liveliest possible exchange between the faculty and students involved in the programme.

To portray SAC’s approach to architectural design, the first issue of the SAC Journal presents the projects that were nominated for the first ever Master Thesis Prize at SAC in July 2013. The prize was generously supported by the Architekten- und Ingenieur Verein Frankfurt am Main (AIV), which also has supported this publication. The finalists represent all three second-year specialisations. The Master Thesis Prize was won by Kavin Horayangkura with Lerpong Rewtrakulpaiboon receiving an honourable mention.

Guest professor Christian Veddeler introduces the work conducted in his group, Advanced Architectural Design. Guest- and ‘Stiftungsprofessor’ Mirco Becker introduces the projects completed under his tutelage in Architecture and Performative Design. Lastly, the project completed in the specialisation, Architecture and Critical Spatial Practice, led under this name by Markus Miessen from 2011 until 2013, is introduced by professor Johan Bettum. In addition to SAC’s tutors and many guests providing invaluable support and guidance, guest professor Mark Fahlbusch, of the engineering firm Bollinger +

Grohmann Ingenieure, consulted the students in structural design and material choices for their project’s.

The first part of A New Manifold presents three essay, each by a member of the SAC faculty. SAC’s dean, professor Ben van Berkel, teams up with Karen Murphy to delve on architects’ responsibilities and opportunities within the current professional climate. Their essay, Architectural Practice within the Context of an Expanded Profession, calls for intense research efforts and attention to the ‘softer side of the pro-fession’.

Johan Bettum, professor and SAC’s programme director, unfolds his ideas about teaching architecture in the face of the many influences that will weigh on future architects. His essay, How to Collect Fragments, traces the contemporary fragmentation of the discipline and provides comfort by arguing that strategic design methodologies may also defend it by catering to the essence of the discipline through language and close collaborative ties.

Last but not least, SAC’s guest professor in history and theory, Beatriz Colomina, turns her attention to SANAA’s installation in Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion (2008-9). Under the title, Out-Miesing Mies: SANAA in the Barcelona Pavilion, she expounds on a contemporary notion and role of transparency, demonstrating that disciplinary issues are not only alive but can be probed, devolved and, in astounding beauty yet shocking simplicity, contribute to the continued development of the discipline of architecture.

With the emergence of the digital age and the introduction of computational tools and design techniques, architects have not only experienced substantial changes to their methods of practice in recent times, they are also now faced with designing for a rapidly changing and increasingly connected world. A world of changing lifestyles and one in which innovation is no longer limited to isolated ‘experts’, but where instead social innovation quickens the pace of progress and challenges architects to reassess the core strengths and results of both their methods and their output.

In a recent article for the Financial Times, Charles Leadbeater stated: ‘Digital technologies are innovation multipliers: each new wave of technology amplifies our ability to create, [...and...] this is changing what people can do and where they can do it, reducing their reliance on professionals and formal institutions.’ Most interesting is his perception of how the current digital age differs from times of rapid progress in the past: ‘Whereas all previous civilisations created technologies that were tools to amplify our capacities, in this mobile and networked age, technology will become more like a form of life, which we will inhabit, all of the time.’¹

For the architect then, it is not digital design tools and methodologies alone that are bringing about change. It is precisely the shifts in how we live, work and play - this ‘form of life’ and the repercussions thereof - that have an essential role in determining what buildings are required to provide; how they need to operate, how they are organised and ultimately how they are experienced by the user. It could be said that it is in fact these concerns that have played an essential role in propelling the most significant changes that have occurred within the profession in recent years.

But what does this mean for the actual practice of architecture? In the past, architects learned to design through the triad of the eye-mind-hand relationship, at a time when learning was primarily concerned with the development of new and practical techniques for design. However, this applied approach is no longer tenable on its own in a profession which has recently undergone such considerable expansion in its scope, requirements and – therefore ultimately – in its possibilities. Similarly, we can no longer concern ourselves purely with aesthetics. It is for some time now that aesthetics no longer carries the all-encompassing meaning it once enjoyed, neither in architecture nor in a wider cultural context. Moreover, in architecture today aesthetics is linked to a healthy form of provocation, with the architect now in a position to reference other creative disciplines, such as art, fashion, literature etc.

By the same token, the scope of the profession has in re-
cent years also expanded considerably in terms of its func-
tional responsibilities and requirements. In contemporary
practice we are concerned - now more than ever – with the
utility of space, with efficiency models, with the importance of incorporating sustainable constructive elements and with
global and economic constraints and considerations.
This augmentation of what is required from the contempo-
rary practice of architecture means that architects today
need not only to resolve complex structural relationships, but
are also called upon tofind a cohesive integration of varia-
bles. A building can no longer simply be approached as a
purely autonomous entity or the sum of disparate elements
merely in terms of a grid, a façade or as an iconic ‘image’. To-
day’s architect is in fact in a position to create an architecture

We additionally live in a time where hard data is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and easily accessed. This not only affords the architect a vast source of readily available information, it has also enabled us to devise numerous computational tools with which to process data and apply explicit parameters in order to meet the requirements of precisely tailored designs.

Computational design has propelled the profession almost inestimably in recent years and has brought about vast changes to the practice of architecture. In particular there has been much excitement surrounding the adaptability of form enabled by the use of digital tools, and this continues to be the case today. However form-making is no longer tenable on its own in the context of an expanded architecture. It is essential that transformative computational processes enable a more intelligent architecture. Digital design as it is applied today is therefore – and is required to be – the result of adaptive processes.

Through engaging with all of the parameters contained in
a project brief we are now in a position to give architecture a
new expression. We can engage the computational to include
and process data that is specifically related to parameters

garnered from multiple sources and to tailor this information to the specificities of the project at hand. What is of most importance, however, is the way in which this knowledge and data are combined in the parametric and the influence that this adaptive information has on all architectural ingredients: technical and constructional systems, spatial constructs, integrated sustainable solutions, programme organisation, materials and, of course, form making.

Considerable developments in design and production techniques have also been brought about by the application of knowledge garnered in analytical phases and the linking of this to technical data applied in later design stages. In a future that seemingly promises increased levels of available data and knowledge along with inevitable new tools to process this information, if we ourselves adapt accordingly, we will be in a position to create a more intelligent, responsible and performative architecture.

However, if computational tools are to hold the responsi-
bility of calculating and correctly proportioning vast amounts
of relational information, they of course rely on the input of
relevant data. So how does the practice of architecture set
about acquiring this specific knowledge, and how does it or-
ganise itself to not only have vast stores of potentially rele-
vant knowledge at hand, but also to generate and share this
information? If we understand that knowledge generates further knowledge and that knowledge-sharing is essential
for co-creation and innovation, then it is essential that to-
day’s architect puts systems in place that enable these mech-
anisms to operate as fluidly as possible. This I believe also re-

quires a shift in focus from approaching projects as singular endeavours with their own specific problems, to placing research in a position of key importance within the practice. By so doing, we create a serial effect within our work and witness a more efficient application of knowledge and a continual refinement and evolution of our design thinking and practice.

It must be added, however, that we do not and certainly should not limit ourselves merely to the research or knowledge that we ourselves undertake or generate. It is equally essential that we look outside of the profession for all that will assist us in optimising our work. We need to spread a wide net that captures relevant knowledge from a broad range of sources, from the sciences to the arts. We need to have indepth knowledge of the social sciences, scientific innovations, even of new theories of time and space – in short, everything that is scientifically understood to affectthe way we live and perceive the world around us.

At the same time we need to garner knowledge about the ‘softer’, more subjective side of human experience: art, music, literature, film -the list goes on. It is a big task, but in today’s society it is also an essential one. If designers or architects are to fulfil a relevant role and continue to make a substantial contribution to how the physical world is experienced, then we need to continue to build on existing knowledge from the past, whilst thoroughly researching and engaging our design thinking with all aspects of how we live our lives today.