As we stated at the beginning of the Study period and beginning of the presentations this week, this is a critical exit studio from the undergraduate degree and the grading reflects the need to indicate to those of you not performing to the required standard that you are at risk of failing. Anything below P1- should be seen as borderline. This is the stage to really assess your commitment, enjoyment and understanding of architecture as a future profession.
That said, the schemes in general produced a reasonable coverage of issues, as you grapple with learning + applying the digital skills. The blog submissions read pretty well and most of you are managing to deal with that side of production and communication. Recurrent issues were:
playing safe
The major criticism of the outcomes as a group was there was an overall tendency to play safe – both formally and digitally, using digital as representation rather than generation of form. The typologies and languages of the houses only offered a challenge in a few case – only a few taking on board the idea of the house as a manifesto. Those schemes that did try to do that were generally more successful e.g. Griffin’s ‘House for conversation + stories’. Examples of competent but safe schemes are Amila Hibeljic, Artur Fink, Kenny Loh, Megan South, and to a lesser degree the elegant work of Jane Eisenmann and Andrew Maystone.
As part of the architectural language many schemes need to attend to clunky junctions with site i.e. the apron of the building, the site surrounds itself (it isn’t just a green golf course) and the handling of the roof planes so that they don’t come across as thick hats plonked on top of complex extruded plan shapes.
planning
Many schemes have planning issues to resolve with the internal spaces – furniture that doesn’t fit, or encourage occupation in a generous way, awkward junctions of space or circulation, and a few where your planning is very predictable and suburban – without trying to take advantage of these beautiful sites or set up a new way of dwelling for these idiosyncratic and charismatic clients. This is the base line for completion of 3rd year – that the internal planning is sound in scale and should be pretty legible to get around (especially for a simple brief like this) PLUS offers something poetic in the way of occupation. It isn’t enough to join things together with excessive circulation space and then just extrude the walls, or just extrude an interesting footprint e.g. Ilicic, Cassar, Giannakakis.
fit between potentials and inhabited space
Sometimes the struggles with planning come from still trying to fit your design into the abstract shell of your potential origins e.g. Borgas, Quinn, Proferes and Nicholson – where we can see the beautiful sculptural forms sitting almost apart form the core of the design. A better approach – though it took courage – is that adopted by Upton and Sawicki – where the potentials models have been scaled, excavated and mined for interior spaces. The plans in these schemes are still a bit notional because of the difficulty of extracting a legible accurate plan form your VIZ model – but they are getting closer to making challenging schemes. And they are handling furnishing in an interesting way – just like Trotta’s seamless mesh of exterior, interior, furnishing surface.
digital experimenation
Most of you can take great pride in how far your digital work has progressed. Some of you are still refusing to take it on board though and have been penalised in the grades because of this. You know who you are! If you are set on staying with formally safe schemes then you need to find other ways of infusing your projects with the complexity available with digital skills. Take the internal screens in Kenyon’s schemes for example or Neilsen’s exquisite working of surface on what is essentially a simple layered box. Transparency, light and materiality are another area where the digital offers you scope e.g. Eisenmann’s layered glazed screens or Sophie Steer’s gutsy assemblage of material.
The other issue is to assess whether the software you have been using is dictating the quality of your work – Sketch Up if not used with subtlety can be very clumsy texturally (like a model with the wrong scaled texture on it). VIZ renders can tend to be gloomy and bland. Watch your colour palette carefully so that it doesn’t become lurid (e.g. Seman) or gluggy (e.g. Raslan). Better to limit the palette rather than overdo it.
site + client presence
The best schemes worked from the inception with sensitivity to context and client, both as a generative set of ideas and as visible content in the sheets. e.g. Fogliano, Kenyon, Griffin, Steer. Look at your work and ask yourself could this be anywhere, for anyone, and if the answer is yes then you need to focus on this for the next presentation. These are beautiful sites for really interesting people and they should exude a sense of place, joy and creativity.
So…back to the old drawing board + screen for the next stage, and good luck with bringing it all to life.
That said, the schemes in general produced a reasonable coverage of issues, as you grapple with learning + applying the digital skills. The blog submissions read pretty well and most of you are managing to deal with that side of production and communication. Recurrent issues were:
playing safe
The major criticism of the outcomes as a group was there was an overall tendency to play safe – both formally and digitally, using digital as representation rather than generation of form. The typologies and languages of the houses only offered a challenge in a few case – only a few taking on board the idea of the house as a manifesto. Those schemes that did try to do that were generally more successful e.g. Griffin’s ‘House for conversation + stories’. Examples of competent but safe schemes are Amila Hibeljic, Artur Fink, Kenny Loh, Megan South, and to a lesser degree the elegant work of Jane Eisenmann and Andrew Maystone.
As part of the architectural language many schemes need to attend to clunky junctions with site i.e. the apron of the building, the site surrounds itself (it isn’t just a green golf course) and the handling of the roof planes so that they don’t come across as thick hats plonked on top of complex extruded plan shapes.
planning
Many schemes have planning issues to resolve with the internal spaces – furniture that doesn’t fit, or encourage occupation in a generous way, awkward junctions of space or circulation, and a few where your planning is very predictable and suburban – without trying to take advantage of these beautiful sites or set up a new way of dwelling for these idiosyncratic and charismatic clients. This is the base line for completion of 3rd year – that the internal planning is sound in scale and should be pretty legible to get around (especially for a simple brief like this) PLUS offers something poetic in the way of occupation. It isn’t enough to join things together with excessive circulation space and then just extrude the walls, or just extrude an interesting footprint e.g. Ilicic, Cassar, Giannakakis.
fit between potentials and inhabited space
Sometimes the struggles with planning come from still trying to fit your design into the abstract shell of your potential origins e.g. Borgas, Quinn, Proferes and Nicholson – where we can see the beautiful sculptural forms sitting almost apart form the core of the design. A better approach – though it took courage – is that adopted by Upton and Sawicki – where the potentials models have been scaled, excavated and mined for interior spaces. The plans in these schemes are still a bit notional because of the difficulty of extracting a legible accurate plan form your VIZ model – but they are getting closer to making challenging schemes. And they are handling furnishing in an interesting way – just like Trotta’s seamless mesh of exterior, interior, furnishing surface.
digital experimenation
Most of you can take great pride in how far your digital work has progressed. Some of you are still refusing to take it on board though and have been penalised in the grades because of this. You know who you are! If you are set on staying with formally safe schemes then you need to find other ways of infusing your projects with the complexity available with digital skills. Take the internal screens in Kenyon’s schemes for example or Neilsen’s exquisite working of surface on what is essentially a simple layered box. Transparency, light and materiality are another area where the digital offers you scope e.g. Eisenmann’s layered glazed screens or Sophie Steer’s gutsy assemblage of material.
The other issue is to assess whether the software you have been using is dictating the quality of your work – Sketch Up if not used with subtlety can be very clumsy texturally (like a model with the wrong scaled texture on it). VIZ renders can tend to be gloomy and bland. Watch your colour palette carefully so that it doesn’t become lurid (e.g. Seman) or gluggy (e.g. Raslan). Better to limit the palette rather than overdo it.
site + client presence
The best schemes worked from the inception with sensitivity to context and client, both as a generative set of ideas and as visible content in the sheets. e.g. Fogliano, Kenyon, Griffin, Steer. Look at your work and ask yourself could this be anywhere, for anyone, and if the answer is yes then you need to focus on this for the next presentation. These are beautiful sites for really interesting people and they should exude a sense of place, joy and creativity.
So…back to the old drawing board + screen for the next stage, and good luck with bringing it all to life.
p.s. image above is Ocean Park Hatch shell , Patrick Tighe + Andy Cao 2006, from 'Micro:Very Small Buildings' by Ruth Slavid.
