Overall, I spotted a higher proportion of work involving mixing media, ie. Stylus drawing with CG renders, RP model with hand crafted components, cartoon style animation..etc. The crossover of disciplines is the key to pushing the boundary of architectural design in this year’s event. The new trend of visual 3D video was also introduced by students in Unit 15, led by Nic Clear. These students were using time-based media as a tool to illustrate the relationships of the human, city and spaces which can’t be drawn by using traditional architectural representation.

[+] Images via Jim Tze-Chun

Unit 23, lead by Bob Sheil, is a group that is focused on making. All of their work is based on the craftsmanship of the manufacturing using both CNC or tradition hand crafted techniques. Their manifesto is that architects shouldn’t just produce the representation of the production, but rather be involved within the process in order to make their idea work in real world. One of the student’s projects is a method of extruding the clay by a metal profile that can change in shape, as well using a sophisticated crafted instrument designed with a thin plywood membrane and connected to a webcam sensor that can pick up people’s gestures and motions to make different sounds.

[+] Images via Jim Tze-Chun

Unit 19 always produces fine and delicate stylus hand drawings opposite the approach of Unit 23. They produce drawings and illustration to explore their ideas as well as their imagination. Their projects are always inconceivable, impenetrable, but they are drawn as if they are feasible. You could name them as the neo-surrealism which is all about your own imagination and unconscious.

[+] Images via Jim Tze-Chun

In conclusion, the Bartlett Summer Show is more like an architecture carnival than just a year show. It’s like celebrating the fantasies of new architecture where everything is possible and enjoyable. You feel the passion, the ambition, the creativity all coming from here.
For more photos, visit http://picasaweb.google.com/weitze820/Exb_BartlettSummerShow2010#

Other notable designs were the Lightest Carbon Fiber Chair, designed by Shigeru Ban Architects, a low-cost sports wheelchair and The Folding Plug. Probably considered this year’s most revolutionary product for Britain, the Folding Plug, designed by Min-Kyu Choi, will help avoid that oversize UK plug weighing down ever shrinking portable devices.

The exhibit will be running from 17 February – 31 October at the Design Museum in London. [+] website here

Prior to architecture school, Kou-Yo Hu studied 4 years of chemical engineering. Kou-Yo still thinks of himself as more of an engineer than an architect. However, encouraged by his tutor and the College Chair, Professor Wu, to act on his particular skill in computation, he developed the ability to use Rhino script as a method for a particular architecture design. With his unique engineering background he thinks of the housing design as problem solving rather than object creation.

Despite the need for tweaks to the computations, the capacity of options are already well beyond what can be achieved by traditional human-only methods. What the project demonstrates well is the possible number of housing units, and their respective unit type, can practically fit within the site. This helps to determine the feasibility of this piece of land with various compositions for the client. Therefore, the project demonstrates that scripting computation tools aren’t just for design schools but can be effectively used in architectural practice.

Photos via Sublime Flesh

Yael Resiner, an architect with a background in science, speaks about the personal experiences that impacted her designs. She argues that the modern movement is an enemy that blinds the personal experience of architecture, to end up with merely a replication that compromises the depth of the experience, existing only as a single surface representing ‘the order’. ‘The Order’, in this case, doesn’t mean Classical Architecture but the order of trend, the trend of public values that control the design of architecture. When we value a time period like Romanticism, Modernism, or maybe more recently Parametricism, read Digital Cities AD,
we are under the influence of a trend for that time period. But in a period like Baroque they were announcing the end of Classic design; A period of rebellion, the end of trend and order, to free ourselves into a new age of art. Baroque represents a hybridization or an metamorphosis of the origin.

Photos via Jim Tze-Chun Wei

Photos via Jim Tze-Chun Wei

I feel we are currently in a ‘Neo’ age of technology, engaging in a more complex environment than ever, and if architecture can be seen as the echo of the era, how we deal with these parameters is the issue that architects face today. A shift from systematization to customization, from the orientation of objects towards the engaged body, the spiritual space is not just about the church of god, but about the spectacle and the spookiness that Peter Cook suggested is in the experience of the sublime. This refers back to Yael’s ‘Depth of Space’, the space that is created with layers of ideas and creations that all come together as a hybridization of personal and public, that can lead a new path towards contemporary sublime architecture. Today, with the assistance of digital media and fabrication techniques, instead of generating ‘random patterns’ of facade or following the trend of ‘fluid geometries’, we should embrace personal and public theatrical hybridization to create layers of depth in architecture.

Their design theory follows the concepts of their graduate professor, Ming-Hung Wang. Ming-Hung is a professor of design theory at NCKU. He has a doctorate of design theory and methodology from MIT, and is widely published on the topic of Formation Typologies and Spatial Representation Languages. As students of Ming-Hung, Original Studio’s work is a good example of his design theory in practice.

Their project begins with a diagrammatic study of geometric formations in water and shadows within the site. The initial geometries can then be analyzed and simplified to setup a “formation language” with its grammar(tectonics) and characters(materials).  This language is then tested and modified through a series of architectural designs. Site planning, programming, and building technologies are tested with the language as a guide. After many tests are preformed the group discovers a potential structure and spatial layout applied by the “diagrammatic language” of water and shadows within the site.

The beauty of the formation language is the flexibility of the forms, and to have extensions or deductions of the main building due to the lack of complete singular geometries. The design of the master plan is therefore set-up like a reference manual to help unify later development to the site.

Original Studio also performs extensive research on materials such as perforated mesh, timber louvers, polycarbonate board, etc. They use paper models, computer models and eventually, full scale prototypes to test forms and find a unique arrangement of the metal panels and timber screens. From the images and diagrams you can see, their work is precisely simulated, expressing the initial concept into the built form.

With my short time working with them, I found it to be a difficult task for a group of young graduates to deal with the various issues on such a complex building. Understanding building technologies was one thing, but arguments against the Tainan City Council and the fights with contractors was a surprising difficulty. But after years of persisting and compromising they have proven themselves by rising up to the occasion.

Unfortunately, from the conceptual stage to the construction stage, the budget has been reduced to ten percent of its original numbers, which is almost impossible to fabricate even the landscape around the harbor. Now it’s only a character of their language that is being written on the site which makes it hard to read the whole story. However, I find it encouraging for such a young firm to be dedicated to doing great design despite the challenges they face.

More images and competition panels can be viewed from this link.

Architects traditionally produce drawings as a preface of the space, and we rarely act in the process of constructing them. As a result, architects have become more virtual designers than physical. Compare this to sculptors, who are expressing the ideas of their projects in both drawings and the physical act of making. However, the scale of architecture can be a big difference compared to that of most sculpture. Plus, the construction of buildings usually involves a vast amount of issues, to the point that architects become the role of facilitator rather than fabricator. As an alternative, Inbreeding Field takes the opposite approach of the traditional architect, by not making models or drawings, and rather going straight into the site constructing and contextualizing it. The most interesting feature of their studio is that the project is always under construction and the new generation of students will modify it to fit a new program. I once visited their studio in Tainan; all the facilities of general living are built by hand, these students work and live in their own interbreeding field.

Some essays from the Professor are worth glancing at to understand more about their manifesto of interbreeding.

FieldInterbreeding Project B – “Non-Side Zoom“, Open Reatity
Location: Hai-an Rd., Tainan, Taiwan
Director: Li H. LU
Collaboration: Cheng-Chi CHENG, Hsuan-Cheng CHEH, Hung-Yu HUANG, Sun-Chiang CHOU, Goang-Hwa HUANG, Ching-Wu YANG, Kuan-Hung CHEN
Chi-Tsung WU, Chun-Yuan WANG, Tzung-Shin LIN, Han-Hong TAI, Chung-Chi WU, Cheng-Chi CHENG , Yi-Hsiang HSU, Pei-Chi LO

As a reaction to the Hai-An Raod destruction, Kou-Chang developed a poetic approach of recording the history of the Hai-An Street. Kou-Chang took the existing front facade from the ruins, painted it blue, and applied 2d plywood frames of the old furniture. He then added white lines to represent the beams and windows in a trompe l’oeil effect. The result is a one to one blueprint acting as a virtual copy of the destroyed house. When asked -”Don’t you mind that people can easily steal the objects on the wall?” – his answer was; “That is part of the idea, the destruction and reconstruction, and I welcome the Tainan Citizens to dump their unwanted furniture in front of the wall… to compose a new wall.” As a simple concept, this architectural project is both interacting with and merging with the history of the Hai-An Road area, fighting back with only blue paint and some old furniture.

Kou-Chang completed his masters of architecture at NCKU in 1998 and then founded OU studio in 2001. Since then the studio taken on a wide range of projects including architecture, interior design, furniture design, and art installations as well as teaching design studio in the university.   Kou-Chang also acted as a design representative of the Taiwan Pavilion in Venice Biennale2006.

Having Kou-Chang as a design professor myself, I experienced his personal belief and perspective towards architecture first hand, which, to say the least, is intriguing and unique. His attitude towards design is a combination of both experimental and practical philosophies. His concepts revel in the immaterial condition of time and memory, while simultaneously he is focused on balancing the projects’ budgets with cost-saving industrial materials and low-tech fabrication. His work is commendable and I applaud his efforts towards bringing about change in Tainan.

Kinetica Images

To be fair, there were some ideas that were more simple and yet enjoyable.   My favorite two projects [shown in the images above], interestingly so, were the least technology based projects.  The first one [image right] was created with the use of refraction and  fiber optics. By cutting off the light transmission in particular points along the light path they created ghost-like forms from the light.  The second one, [image left] is using a traditional light projector to enlarge the image of a colored water basin as water drips from above. He then controlled the speed of a drum to syncronize with the dropping speed of the water.  The effect was like feeling your pulse only in color patterns on the wall.

Maybe I am a bit harsh on this year’s Kinetica Art Fair,  but the projects are mostly technically challenging for people like me, who don’t understand the ins and outs of electronics.  However, I think it’s another issue as well.  When technology is involved, who is actually the designer? Is it the software, or the engineer?  Maybe the Neo-Renaissance is coming, and we all need to be a bit more like Da Vinci – the artist and the scientist.