Dance Space
GSD 1306, Fall 2006

This studio is concerned with the design of a mobile and experimental dance theater for a site in Boston and another site in Stuttgart, Germany. Dance Space is an opportunity to explore lightweight design and deployable systems for a performance space. The same studio is also being offered by Prof. Werner Sobek at the Institute of Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK) in Stuttgart. A fully funded field trip to Germany is part of the studio experience.

Traveling performing art groups have entertained and enlightened their spectators since the Middle Ages and longer. Sheltered by simple tents and ad hoc constructions, the physical envelopes of these performing arts ventures were initially simple, but grew increasingly complex as both stage technology and building technology evolved. Modern day performers require an extensive backup of lighting and mechanical technology, as well as carefully calibrated acoustics that contribute to unfolding original and often experimental performances.

Contemporary dance is a relatively young performing arts discipline that has parted radically from its classical counterpart. It has hybridized dance with installation and performance art, theater, storytelling and musical, to name just a few. Putting this art form on the road challenges our traditional understanding of performance spaces because of the highly dynamic and complex nature of the art form itself.

The studio is concerned with the materiality and immateriality, the light and darkness, the sensual level as well as the mechanical workings of a mobile performance space. The use of lightweight materials and systems is at the core of this quest as these facilitate an imagined transatlantic deployment of the dance theater. Students are encouraged to think about the broader process: the spectacle of assembly and disassembly, the transfer between locations, the question of siting a temporary building. As the actual program is comparatively small it is essential to move beyond a conceptual sketch and actually developing the proposal into a credible design proposal. This inevitably involves addressing functional questions, and questions of structure, mechanics, and materials. All students are expected to produce a tangible—not virtual—display of the materials used on their scheme, and physical prototypes of aspects of the scheme are encouraged.

Part of the studio experience are visits to dance studios as well as a field trip to visit lightweight structures in southern Germany from October 21 to 29. Here students also spend time at the ILEK under its director Prof. Werner Sobek. The institute, originally founded by Frei Otto, continues its tradition of excellence in cutting edge research on lightweight design. The short return visit of Stuttgart students is after our Thanksgiving break.

Coffee, Cake, CAD/CAM: Re-inventing the Urban Diner
GSD 1309, Fall 2002 
 

Diner:"A small, usually inexpensive restaurant with a long counter and booths and housed in a building designed to resemble a dining car."

— The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Introduction:
Digital Design and Manufacturing Techniques have greatly impacted the way many things are designed and made - from everyday consumer products to cars, ships and airplanes. Sophisticated digital design environments, virtual and rapid prototyping methods and computational simulation and analysis tools have greatly enabled our ability to produce custom work in individual or mass manufacturing environments. Combined with concepts such as lean manufacturing and just-in-time delivery these design tools shorten design development cycles and reduce the time-to market for an increasingly complex range of products. Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) technologies in architecture have altered the ways components are made but little impact has been felt in design and design practice. Computer-Aided Design in conventional architectural practice - technology which could easily enable a variety of new activities within the studio - is still largely disconnected from the Computer-Aided-Manufacturing processes used to define, fabricate and deliver many of the components and larger building elements used to construct our designs. This studio explores connecting the two worlds of design and manufacturing more closely by proposing new design methods and design solutions for a hybrid building type - the pre-manufactured urban diner.

Background:
The origin of the diner is the horse-drawn lunch wagon of the 1890's, open all night, serving simple food and beverages to those working at odd hours. Such wagons were found in the city, and only with the emergence of mass-motorization did lunch wagons - or diners as they started to be called in the 1920's - become a roadside feature outside urban centers. Due in large part to construction and delivery methods as well as to planning and zoning regulations the design of the "classic" diner retained clear references to its mobile wagon origins while also alluding somewhat romantically to railway dining cars. The compelling economics of diner manufacture were due to the cost- and time-saving advantage of building in factory environments over on-site construction. The diner unit became a good example of a mass-customized commercial product, able to be endlessly customized within certain controlled dimensions fixed by the need to transport the diners via roads to their sites.

Design Project:
Students are asked to develop a series of new and innovative urban diner/café units with seamlessly integrated video conferencing facilities and Internet access. The new program elements 'Café' and 'Information Technology' transform the nature of the historic type 'diner'. This new type is a node of global and local communication (virtual/real) as well as an urban place for the consumption of food and beverages. All units belong to one and the same client - an aspect to be communicated through the design. The basic type needs to adapt to a variety of given site contexts, ranging from the urban plaza and the narrow empty lot to the urban park and the indoor shopping center.

Studio Objectives:
The studio focuses on the idea of customization and variation of types using an integrated approach to digitally supported design and pre-manufacturing techniques. The design variations for an urban diner/café are derived from the programmatic requirements of various contexts. Students are encouraged to extend their design methodology by exploring digital design techniques such as parametric design or ruled-based design as relating to custom manufacturing. Representational and analytical design environments can be closely connected and open up new design opportunities. Students are expected to engage the extended range of design tools available at the GSD (rapid prototyping, reverse engineering, digital analysis and collaboration tools) and familiarize themselves with basic CNC manufacturing technology. Issues of systems design and modularity in the specific context of digitally enabled manufacturing processes is addressed throughout the semester. Deliverables at midterm include the conceptual design of the basic type and all its variations in the contexts of the different sites. In the second half of the term each student l pursues the detailed design development of one particular unit - addressing issues of materials, structures, pre-manufacturing, transport and assembly. All design proposals need to be communicated graphically and in models. Students fabricate a prototype of the key component in their project as prove of concept for their design and manufacturing strategy. Most expenses for materials as well as for rapid prototyping and local field trips to manufacturing facilities have to be covered individually.

Studio Prerequisites:
A general familiarity with 3-D digital modeling is expected. Students are introduced to CAD/CAM software and CNC machine environments.