On the 29th of January the remaining in Zurich, MAS students gave a presentation of their final theses projects for the researchers and the professor of the chair Ludger Hovestadt. Here a collection of images with a short descriptions from the students’ work that can give an overview of the range of topics that they chose to deal with computationally. Along with these images some snapshots from the day of presentation.
We wish all the best to the MAS1112 in their future ventures
Posted in M8_Final Thesis
During the last Module of the program each student is asked to develop a topic of his/her choice under the instruction of prof. Dr. Ludger Hovestadt and Dr. phil. Vera Buhlman. The topic should be implemented computationally within 12 weeks, under the programming guidance of the research group working in the chair.
Posted in M8_Final Thesis
The last theory module created abstract and complex setup, where we were challenged to explore and get an idea of what identity is, or might be. As a result, this really new and open architectural research gave a lot of different expressions. Therefore being the part of this adventure, each student was engaged to question and discover its own architectural articulation.
Find the students’ work here:
Posted in M7 Information and I
Tagged activities, artefacts, conceptual grammar, identity, nouns, time and space, verbs
It’s not easy, finding your own position as an architect. With our technologies, we accelerate everything: more people, more mobility, more television, more images, more phones, more networks, more research, more publications, more complexity, more statistics, more rubbish, more technology, more advertising, more consumerism… Google, Twitter, games, leisure, over-ageing, privacy, intellectual property, corporate communications, global village, mega-cities, economy drives, liberalism, marketing, entertainment, war architecture… It’s easy to think that all this could be halted, that it could all slow down, that it is possible to cast an anchor an arrest the movement. Sustainability, misery, crisis, scarce resources, nature, empathy, renunciation, limitation, insurance, reassurance, delegation, the original, the origin, territory, land, causes, simplicity, clarity, guilt, regeneration, recycling, recreation, creation, simplicity, materials-appropriate construction… but information technology is of a different ‘nature’. Which is why our old concepts are not sufficient to grasp it or its phenomena. Just as described in the fable of the Hare and the Tortoise: the hare kills himself running and the tortoise doesn’t even get out of breath. That’s exactly what we’re witnessing: we feel washed away every time we try to cast an anchor, within the sea of our old conceptions. And so, adrift, we keep looking for an equilibrium in arranging our belongings. But how about, instead of casting anchors, we learn to surf?
Posted in M7 Information and I
„Neither space nor number, nor even time, have the same significance for us that they had for the men [throughout history].“
(E.T. Bell 1937)
Artefacts mobilize spaces‘ and times‘ uniformity into an open scope and infinitesimal range of possible arrangements, foldings, compartimentability. With a non-romanticizing eye, we want to look at spaces of intense experience, under the following methodological assumptions: Grammar provides the possibility structure for what can be expressed in language. We will look specifically at two aspects: grammatical cases and articles. While the latter determine the definiteness or indexicality of nouns (a, this, none etc), cases provide the verbs with a voice (passive, active, medium), make possible subjects and objects of happenings distinguishable and relateable in a manner of ways (nominative, dative, instrumental, etc), and are capable of expressing circumstantial information as position or duration in space and time. In this module we will regard urban activities as verbs that engender cases, and we will regard artefacts as the specifying operators of such engendering. Continue reading
ETH CAAD and NCTU IAR have held a joint workshop “Teahouse 2.0” in the spring of 2012, which explore a new threshold of computational design and digital fabrication in the realm of education. Three teams from NCTU IAR and ETH CAAD designed and built 3 experimental “Teahouses”. Most of the group of MAS CAAD 1112 participated in this intense 2-week workshop in Taiwan. Continue reading
Following an invitation of Keisuke Toyoda , most of the MAS group participated in an intense two week workshop in Taipei/ Taiwan, hosted by NCTU (National Chiao Tung University). The rest of the group took advantage of the gap between this event and the upcoming workshop in OPU (Okayama Perfectural University) organized by Makoto Sei Watanabe and travelled to Tokyo for some days. There, they got further insight and a closer look into diverse architectural sights that vary from the vernacular to contemporary masterpieces and get familiar with the cultural achievements of the edo period. During this short time they paid a visit to Noiz Architects, where they had the oppoutunity to look from”inside-out” the work of an innovative japanese practice. Thank you for hosting!
Posted in Uncategorized
The departure point of the project is to create an interactive installation, that would have a certain behavior that would vary depending on external factors like the distance of the viewer or the intensity of sunlight. Each group conduced a series of explorations, in order to further investigate the properties of the materials. The decision was met to combine the electroluminescent foils and the Dye sensitized solar cells in an origami based surface, while the bioplastic group would develop the structural system of the installation. As far as the electoactive polymer elements are concerned, after further experiments concerning the material and the thickness of the frame,the initial wish of having them moving parts of the origami surface proved not realistic as the performance of the material could not allow it. Consequently, the design team proposed to array them on the ground level in order to form a “moving” landscape.
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