Teaching Associate
AAP Department of Architecture Cornell University
1st Year BArch
Studio Critic Mon-Wed-Fri
Fall 2015 + Spring 2016
The first term of the Freshman design studio sequence engages the beginning architecture student with the subject of architecture in ways that run counter to normative and popular perceptions. To a certain degree the semester is meant to purposefully destabilize these perceptions, whether they be about what architecture is or how it is made or, most importantly, how it is thought about.
It is hoped that by challenging these perceptions the new student of architecture will begin to acquire an understanding of the discipline that goes far beyond these perceptions and ultimately lead to an understanding that this historically grounded field of study is simultaneously and paradoxically always open to change – and even open to the possibility that each student develop a place within the discipline and its history as well a unique and personal understanding of it.
The Unfamiliar Way
Unfamiliar ways of seeing and thinking-through-seeing…the development of a set of refined sensibilities…and an understanding architecture as a unique way of apprehending the world –and therefore a unique way of being in the world
Unfamiliar approaches to architecture through the use of analytical and creative tools that will be used to transform the banal and the mundane - paper, graphite, sticks of wood - into the marvellous
Unfamiliar issues: the importance of representation and the craft of making, the intelligence of form and material, to the trajectories of drawing, and to the body’s relationship to making and inhabitation
Students are assigned a creature among diggers, weavers and builders. They investigate about the creatures, their actions and their environment. Representation of research, observations and conclusions through sketches, diagrams and simple models followed by presentation to the group. Static and kinetic drawings are required.
Instrumental creature group drawing
An instrumental model is build
A site for the instrumental model is then built
Final review models
Review culture