Ruin Your Project – CANCELED

Instructor: Eliyahu Keller, MDS 2016
Max Enrollment: 16
Date/Time: Jan 5-12/2 – 5 p.m.
Location: TBD
Description: What and when is the moment in which we envision and imagine the project we design it? For most of us, this question does not appear in our consciousness during the design process, if at all. We design our projects as if they exist in some sphere outside of time; at best, we imagine them at the moment of inauguration; when they key is turned for the first time; at opening night while someone is giving a speech.
What of ruin then? All of our projects – buildings, parks, interventions – will one day face the decay of time; the results of catastrophe; the inevitable obsolescence of function; the futile changes in culture. Yet still, we do not imagine our projects in ruin. In fact, we might even say, that we conceive of them as if they are able to avoid ruin, as if they are eternal.
This course is intended to do just that. By engaging the idea of the architectural ruin, through theoretical and historical readings as well literary and cinematic visions, students will be asked to come up with a fictional narrative for the world-to-come in 10, 50, 100 or a 1000 years. This narrative will be then be projected onto one of their past student or professional projects, from which they will chose one representative image (rendering, photo or model) and will re-represent it, relating and adhering to the personal narrative of ruination. With this collections of imagined ruins the students will be able to critically examine their past projects and face the question whether they would have designed their projects differently, now that they have witness and created the \’death\’ of their own work.
Requirements: Each student needs to have a completed design project – landscape or architecture
Cost/Materials: Printing of readings and final project – $15 – $40