Beijing Architecture Biennale 2008
(Im)material Processes: New Digital Techniques for Architecture
3rd International Architecture Biennale, Beijing, 2008
Australasia Architects Exhibition Curator:
Roland Snooks, RMIT Bachelor of Architecture, 2002
Architects Exhibition Curators: Neil Leach and Xu Wei-Guo
Australasian Architects exhibitors:
FABHAB: Prototypes, Fabrication and Architecture
Studio leaders:
Tom Kovac, RMIT Architecture Prof of Design
Jerome Frumar, RMIT SIAL Phd Candidate
SIAL Upperpool Studio, RMIT Master of Architecture Professional Degree, Sem 1, 2008
Digital architecture is now searching for deeper resonances, trajectories and outcomes, with a need for infusion of productive thinking and consequential outcomes. Potentials in this area are allready visible in the areas of engineering, innovative hybrid materials, digital fabrication and non – standard customization, as well as innovative strategies for environmentally sustainable responsive and intelligent buildings. This new phase of production still embraces the desire for the speculative and the unpredictable while emphasizing greater control over the symbiotic relationship between technique, process, an outcome. fab*hab operates at a scale between industrial object, furniture and building, where the exterior and interior, form and content, are explicitly and inextricably linked. This prototype is a vehicle to unleash outmoded preconceptions as well as conduct research and radical experimentation within this new dimension with a measured balance of rigor and speculation.
Cache, Melbourne
Farzin Lotfi-Jam, RMIT Bachelor of Architecture, 2008
Sam Rice, RMIT Bachelor of Architecture, 2008
Luke Waldron, RMIT Bachelor of Architecture, 2008
Project title: Systems of Exchange, RMIT Architecture Final Year Major Project
Supervisor: Paul Minifie, RMIT Architecture Senior Lecturer
This design curates a system of particles that interact with each other in ways governed by thermodynamic forces. Programmatic and formal intention is seeded as a set of rules and parameters in a cloud of particles which respond to each other and the site. In moving towards a dynamic equilibrium, a threshold is negotiated between programs. It is this threshold which acts as a new vertical public realm – one not based on precise programmatic placement but a mapping of variable intensities. This public space is essentially infrastructural – an infrastructure of spatial and surface manipulation which does not dictate programme specifically but rather encourages or enables certain types of activities and events to emerge.
Formal manipulation of space has a real effect on how space is occupied and appropriated. Form follows intensities; but so too does activation and occupation. Instead of assuming close fit between space and program, intensities of spatial manipulation generate certain patterns of use.
Ornament in this project is not considered to be applied as decoration, but instead it emerges from the generative process. Unlike decoration, ornament has a long history of reinforcing tectonic and structural intensities – in this project that role is rethought, with ornament reinforcing intensities of space and formal manipulation. This is not a simple one to one relationship of ornament and form but the two operate on different gradients which shift out of phase.
Homo Faber: Thrashing the Machine
Upperpool Studio, RMIT Architecture, Interior Design and Landscape, Semester 1, 2008
Studio Leaders:
Mark Burry, RMIT Innovation Prof
Peter Downton, Prof of Architectural Theory
Andrea Mina, Prof of Interior Design
Juliette Peers, Senior Lecturer, RMIT Fashion
Alison Fairley, SIAL Research Assistant
As part of the Homo Faber ARC research grant this studio explored the relationship between manual making and digital production of models. The work generated was considered for inclusion for the third and final Homo Faber exhibition at the Melbourne Museum in August 2008.
Minifie Nixon Architects, Melbourne
Paul Minifie, RMIT Architecture Lecturer, RMIT Bachelor of Architecture, 1995, Master of Architecture (research by project), 2001.
Jan van Schaik, RMIT Architecture Lecturer, RMIT Bachelor of Architecture, 2001.
Mesne, Melbourne/NY
Tim Schork, RMIT Bachelor of Architecture, 2005. RMIT PhD in Architecture, SIAL, candidate.
Jerome Frumar, RMIT Bachelor of Architecture, 2005. RMIT PhD in Architecture, SIAL, candidate.
Paul Nicholas, RMIT Bachelor of Architecture, 2004. RMIT PhD in Architecture, SIAL, candidate.
Kokkugia, Melbourne/NY
Jono Podborsek, RMIT Bachelor of Architecture, 2004
Roland Snooks, RMIT Bachelor of Architecture, 2002
& Rob Stuart-Smith
superManoeuvre, NY/London
David Pigram, Iain Maxwell
Offshore Studio, Sydney
Anthony Burke, UTS, Sydney
Benjamin Hewett, UTS Sydney
Joanne Kinniburgh
INVITED SCHOOLS:
RMIT Architecture, Melbourne, Australia
Architectural Association, London, UK
Bartlett, University College London, UK
die Angewandte, University of Applied Art, Vienna, Austria
Berlage Institute, Rotterdam, Holland
ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Institut d’Arquitectura Avancada de Catalunya (IaaC), Barcelona, Spain
SCI-Arc, Los Angeles , USA
Columbia University, New York, USA
Yale University, New Haven, USA
Harvard GSD, USA
Princeton University, Princeton , USA
MIT Computation Group, Cambridge , USA
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia , USA
Pratt Institute, New York , US
UCLA, Los Angeles , USA
Rice University, Houston , USA
Dessau Institute of Architecture, Dessau, Germany
Hyperbody Delft, Holland
CITA, Copenhagen, Denmark
ESARQ, Barcelona, Spain
Paris Malaquis, France
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Southeast University, Nanjing, China
Kyoto University, Japan
Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China
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