Superficial Spaces FAV

At a time when architectural discourse and practice are (still) brimming with references to new geometries, this offering investigates the architectural potential of abstract three-dimensional surfaces. Hand in hand with the practical ambition of the option studios, this seminar will help us devise formal prototypes for architectural consumption – while broadening our understanding of the rigours of abstract formal analysis.

With equal emphasis on theoretical reading, graphic analysis and diagramming, elementary mathematics, numerically controlled fabrication techniques, and theoretical writing, the seminar will circle, in increasingly tight loops, the surface as object of knowledge.

This year the seminar will be organised around a sponsored, limited enrolment student design competition for the GSD Technilum pavilion at the Festival d’Architectures Vives (FAV) held in Montpellier, France, on June 11-16 2013.

Precept Reading List (required):

Roland Barthes Cy Twombly: Works on Paper in The Responsibility of Forms, pp.157-176, University of California Press Berkeley, 1991

Peter Eisenman Iconicity and Instrumentality*, Cahiers de L’IRCAM, Instruments, Paris 1995.

Greg Lynn New Variations on the Rowe Complex, in Folds Bodies and Blobs, La lettre vole, Brussels 1998.

George L. Legendre Shin & I, essay on the ontology of the surface, in AA Files 52, AA Publications, London 2005

Readings of Related Interest (for reference only):

George L. Legendre Editor, Mathematics of Space (AD Magazine John Wiley & Sons, London 2011)

George L. Legendre, Pasta By Design, (Thames & Hudson, London 2011).

George L. Legendre, IJP: The Book of Surfaces, (Architectural Association, London 2003).

George L. Legendre, JP’s Way, in Mathematical Form: John Pickering and the Architecture of the Inversion Principle (Architectural Association, London 2006).

Prerequisites/Restrictions: None

Other Information: 1/3 short assignments will help the seminar participants learn the new tools. Participation to & preparation for the group reading session is required. The development and submission of an entry to the FAV competition will fulfil the midterm and final project requirement.