Representation as research: Design Model and Media Rotation

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size The author would like to thank the Bachelor and Master of Architectural Design students of the University of Sydney for the massive effort put into the design projects, and to extend this appreciation to the staff members of the Faculty of Architecture, who offered valuable support and critical comments throughout the research and in jury sessions. Copyright to images is held by the Author, by the project author or as referenced in text and notes. An IPA and IPRS Scholarship of the University of Sydney supported the research. Notes 1. The Author is an architect and principal of reinhardt_jung, an architecture office run with partner Alexander Jung, based in Frankfurt am Main and Sydney (www.reinhardt-jung.de). While our installations, curatorial work, projects and buildings address architecture in a practical realm, concepts and theories are simultaneously explored in an academic and educational context, as here in a studio series with the Master of Architectural Design course at the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney (www.arch.usyd.edu.au). 2. T. Dorta, ‘Hybrid Modelling — Manual And Digital Media In The First Steps Of The Design Process’, Digital Design: The Quest for New Paradigms (Lisbon, eCAADe 23, Conference Proceedings, 2005), pp. 819–827. 3. D. Schön, The Reflective Practitioner — How Professionals Think in Action (New York, Basic Books- Harper Collins, 1983), p. 79. 4. B. Moggridge, ‘People and Prototypes: Elements of the Design Process’, in, B. Moggriddge, ed., Designing Interactions (Cambridge, Massachussetts, MIT Press, 2007), pp. 729–735. 5. P. Downtown, Design Research (Melbourne, RMIT University Press, 2003), p. 92. 6. E. Grosz, ‘The Future of Space’, in Architecture From The Outside (Cambridge, Massachussets, MIT Writing Architecture Series, 2001), p. 112. 7. ‘An idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements. [This combination is] not so much a fact as it is an illustration of a general law applying to a whole series of facts. …To some minds each fact is a separate bit of knowledge. To others it is a link in a chain of knowledge. It has relationships and similarities. …When relationships of this kind are seen they lead to the extraction of a general principle. This new principle, when grasped, suggests the key to a new application, a new combination, and the result is an idea. Consequently the habit of mind can undoubtedly be cultivated.’ J. Webb Young, A Technique for Producing Ideas (NTC Business Books, 1986), pp. 18 and 25–26. 8. E. Grosz, ‘The Future of Space’, op. cit., p. 126. 9. The description is derived from a number of sources, which predominantly describe software-modelling programs, yet the rules are inherent in a process of design model strategies. See: A. Eden and R. Kazman, ‘Architecture, Design, Implementation’, in Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software engineering (ICSE, IEEE Computer Society, 2003), pp. 149–159; S. Giesecke, ‘Software Architecture’, access date 25/06/05, http://www-i3.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/private/giesecke/software-architecture.html; and S. Alhir, ‘Understanding the Model Driven Architecture (MDA)’, ‘Methods & Tools’ (2003), access date 25/06/05, http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id = 5. 10. B. van Berkel and C. Bos, UN Studio: Design Models, Architecture, Urbanism, Infrastructure (London, Thames and Hudson, 2006), pp. 13–21. 11. T. Kvan and R. Thilakaratne, ‘Models In The Design Conversation: Architecture vs Engineering’, Design + Research (AASA, Second International Conference of the Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia, Melbourne, 2003). 12. B. van Berkel and C. Bos, UN Studio -Move (Amsterdam, UN Studio & Goose Press, 1999), p. 85. 13. ‘Why not sneeze Rose Selavy?’, by Marcel Duchamp (152 marble cubes, sepia bone, bird cage painted white, thermometer), in C. Tomkins, Duchamp — Eine Biography (Vienna, Carl Hauser Verlag, 1999), pp. 274–275. 14. B. van Berkel and C. Bos, UN Studio –Move, op. cit., pp. 221–225. 15. P. Eisenman, Diagram Diaries (Thames and Hudson, London, 1999), p. 30. 16. G. Lynn, ‘Embryologic House’, in, A. Rahim, ed., Contemporary Processes in Architecture, AD, Vol. 70, No 3 (London, Wiley Academy, 2000), pp. 26–35. 17. Geometrical — Surface Folds; Phenomenal — Optical/Reflective; Phenomenal — Force Impact/Cause — Effect, are design models produced with students in a series of Design Studios at the University of Sydney conducted by the author between 2004 and 2007. 18. ‘Reflective conversation with materials’, an interview with Donald Schön by John Bennet in, T. Winograd, ed., with John Bennett, Laura De Young and Bradley Hartfield, Bringing Design to Software (Stanford University and Interval Research Corporation, USA, Addison-Wesley, 1996), pp. 171–184. 19. M. McLuhan, The Medium Is The Massage (London, Penguin Press, 1967). 20. G. Deleuze, Francis Bacon — The Logic Of Sensation (London, Athlone, 1990), p. 113. 21. M. Herbert, ‘Models, Scanners, Pencils and CAD: Interactions between Manual and Digital Media’, in, L. Kalisperis and and B. Kolarevic, eds., Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture — ACADIA (Seattle, Washington, University of Washington, 1995). 22. T. Fry, Remakings (Sydney, Envirobook, 1994), pp. 92–94. 23. ‘Systemic delay: by this we mean the temporal interstice of conceptual development between initial idea and its material form.’ Rahim continues to explore the advantage of a delay as allowing for a state of open creativity in the absence of material or reality requirements. ‘At the deterministic end of the spectrum is the utilisation of material processes, which rely on the isomorphic relationship between concept and object, similar to the philosophical distinctions between the representation of objects perceived (images) and representations of objects formed by the mind (abstractions). Non-material processes abandon this model and begin operating autonomously from it.’ A. Rahim, ‘Bound Inspiration for Architectural Innovation’, in, A. Rahim, ed., Contemporary Processes in Architecture, op. cit., pp. 6–7. 24. M. Tamke, ‘Crossing the Media’, CAADRIA, 2005, Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (New Delhi, India, 2005), pp. 364–374. 25. B. Kolarevic, Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing (New York and London, Spon Press, 2003). 26. H. Park, ‘Digital and Manual Media in Design, in Education and Practice’, Proceedings of 14th European Conference on Education in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (Lund, 14th eCAADe, 1996), pp.325 – 334. 27. M. Schnabel and T. Kvan, ‘3D Crossover — From 3D Scanning to Digital Modelling, Rapid Prototyping and Physical Depiction’, Conference Proceedings, 22nd eCAADe (Copenhagen, eCAADe, 2004), pp.304–311. 28. T. Dorta, ‘Hybrid Modeling: Manual and Digital Media in The First Steps Of The Design Process’, op. cit., pp. 819–827. 29. D. Reinhardt, ‘Surface Strategies And Constructive Line — Preferential Planes, Contour, Phenomenal Body In The Work Of Bacon, Chalayan, Kawakubo’, Colloquy 9 (Melbourne, Monash University, 2005): http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/others/colloquy /issue9/reinhardt.pdf.