In an age of rapid developmental change and material depletion it becomes necessary to discover new effective ways of material usage. This studio aims at investigating material, and assembly techniques and their contribution to architecture.
The studio began with analysis of precedents that push the boundaries of material understanding to generate new forms in architecture. These cases were structurally analyzed and a detail was prototyped to reveal insight into its making. The main focus was to understand the relationship between ‘part’ and ‘whole’.
Having gained insights into the making, students made observations and inferences from their case studies and were encouraged to adopt a technique and a design stance for their own design process. Having chosen the material and techniques, their ideas were grown from detail to module and then expanded into structural systems that were capable of spanning to shelter human activity.
Depending on their individual explorations, an appropriate program was formulated and its possible application in architecture was presented along with behavioral models, prototypes and technical drawings that described the assembly. Their solutions often included utilitarian or ancillary structures such as pavilions, walkways, bridges, chhatris and other sheltering structures.
