Articulating an Idea

3 units

Architecture has always related to other practices: painting, scenography and theater in the Renaissance, photography and film in the modernist era. Techniques of representation such as drawings, model-making, photography, cinematography or videography, etc. allow for different modes of interpretation, production and communication of architecture. Other systems that are not visual, such as music and literature, are transposed into architectural form through the different mechanisms at play in the process of representation (such as metaphors) in a purely symbolic manner. Architecture often operates metaphorically, trying to emulate other fields, in particular philosophy and science. In this case, architectural representation (through experimentation in drawings and other media) works as a shifter that allows codes of one system -- science, geometry, mathematics or physics -- to be switched to another, culture, painting or architecture. While new vocabularies are developed in this process generating stylistic changes, the mechanism or production and communication of ideas remains untouched. Most of the time more than one tool is required to illustrate an architectural idea thoroughly. To articulate this seminar, we will research five of these tools: Sketch (DaVinci, Siza, Luchini, Holl); Photomontage (Picasso, Miralles, Hockney, OMA); Diagrams/maps/notations (Tschumi, Big, Allen, OMA); Iconography (Venturi, FOA, Diller Scofidio, Holl); and Animation/parametric (Shop, Andrasek, Asymptote, Lynn). The sequence of research shall proceed as a series of focused exercises designed to build the student's knowledge in a cumulative fashion. As a final exercise of this seminar, students will be asked to articulate the idea of their current project to create a strong link between this seminar and the studio work.