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Overview + Objectives

“Id like to think that we are now entering a third, more mature phase in our relationship to digital technology. Thanks in part to a new generation of architects who have been educated entirely within the digital regime, and on the other hand to the first generation of digitally trained architects who have continued to evolve their thinking, the computer is beginning to have a practical impact, beyond the formal or the metaphorical.”  
– Stan Allen, If…then… Architectural Speculations

Design communication pervades the way design approaches today may be seen as systematic frameworks for participation that evolves through understandings of contextual experience from the bottom-up. This course will investigate design communication methods to explore the human experience of each student’s design intent in three parts: I. diagrams; II. analog parametrics; and III. digital parametrics. Students will bridge analog and digital media to create systems approaches that are calibrate to existing and proposed conditions. This method of systems thinking allows students to use digital media to apply existing data performative and subjective in nature not as singularities but as systems. The course will introduce theoretical ideas in a lecture format, meet for one hour in small computer lab settings and provide opportunities for one-to-one studio based learning in a studio setting.

James Corner, Time, Material, Place Diagram

 

Course Objectives

Students will use design communication to explore the following architecture objectives:

I.  Diagramming:  Drawing relationships as a generative design tool

  • Diagramming object/environment affect
  • 3D to 2D workflow, modeling to drawing
  • Single idea “d” diagrams: ink drawings and digital hard-lined
  • Collage Diagrams: vectoral space, materials/textures, time
  • Time-Based Diagrams
  • 4th degree generative diagrams
  • Simple volume surface modeling for use in diagramming precedents
  • Abstracting plan and section from volumetric models

II.  Analog Parametric Modeling:

  • History of tiling types as used in patterning
  • Two-dimensional tiling exercises, including transformative step-by-step diagrams of operations
  • Three-dimensional tiling exercises, considering volumetric implications and scale
  • Lighting and mapping, consideration of affect and human interface

III. Digital Parametric Modeling:

  • Analysis of studio design intent, generative diagrams, and material affect to create a parametric wall system and optionally for a plan/section organizational system for the studio project
  • Considering mapping data sets into the parametric system to inform a single operation such as a material assembly with consideration of affects to human experience

*.       Presentation Methods:

  • Studio board layout and other communication methods will be studied using case-study examples and diagrams to support the final studio presentation
  • Design Communication II final as an exploratory digital fabrication connecting virtual and physical media tested in a 1:1 mockup of material affect.

Critical design issues

–        Context
–        Organizational systems
–        Performative systems
–        Documentation and Analysis
–        Synthesis of systems
–        Abstraction of systems
–        Material Affect
–        Non-Linear Parametric Design

Course Method

This course is organized as one lecture group and smaller lab groups as coordinated with studio sections in which students engage in independent project-based learning.  The course time will be split between lectures, discussion and workshops using the analog and digital media in the studio environment.  The work will be shared in class to foster peer-to-peer learning.  Class meetings include a variety of communication formats including lectures, tutorials, desk-critiques, pin-ups, reviews, in-class discussions and reading assignments.  **Students are required digitally post work to the weblog before class unless stated otherwise:  last_first_610_F17_01.jpg at 2000×2000 pixels.

// Student should watch tutorials as homework BEFORE class.

Evaluation, Assessment and Feedback

Performance will be graded as per the outline below. Student work will be evaluated for understanding of each week’s lecture information, posted information and learning objective as outlined in each assigned exercise.

Attendance Policy

Attendance is mandatory. Lateness will be counted 15 minutes after class has started. Absences will be count­ed 30 minutes after class has started. After 3 unexcused absences your grade will be lowered by a grade point for each additional absence if you do not have a written medical, school or religious excuse and should be reported to the instructor prior to the missed class if at all possible. All students are expected to participate in class discussions and develop projects beyond the minimum requirement.

Grading

  • 10% EXERCISE 1.1 /// Diagramming
  • 10% EXERCISE 1.2 /// Time-based diagrams
  • 10% EXERCISE 1.3 /// First Schematic Project + Precedent
  • 10% EXERCISE 2.1 /// 2D Tiling
  • 10% EXERCISE 2.2 /// Lighting and Mapping
  • 30% EXERCISE 3.1 /// Parametric Material Experience
  • 10% EXERCISE 3.2 /// Final Studio Presentation Layout
  • 10% EXERCISE 3.3 /// Final Fabrication

Students will not receive a final grade until all work has been uploaded for digital submission.

Project Ownership, Publication, And Publicity

Work created for credit and/or using the facilities of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts belongs jointly to the school and the student. The AAA reserves the right to document and display all original work for the purpose of documenting student performance as mandated by the National Architecture Accrediting Board [NAAB]. Fur­thermore, the school reserves the non-exclusive right to use images or likenesses of the work for publicity and display in print and electronic media as well as to submit such work for competitively reviewed exhibitions or to various award programs, The School and its representatives [including faculty and teaching staff] have the non-exclusive right to use such work as illustrations in scholarly and/or technical publications and presentations.

Accommodations

If you have a documented need for and anticipate accommodations in this course please communicate with the instructor as soon as possible. You may also request that the counselor for students send a letter verifying the need for accommodations.  This is intended to support a accessible learning environment and is in way intended to inhibit privacy.

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