ALGORIST

ALGORIST is one of three design streams that make up the First Year Foundation Semester design and communication course.

An algorithm is a set of rules or procedures that can be followed to pursue a purpose or solve a problem. Recipes for Pavlova are algorithms. Algorithms are to blame for the click bait posts on your Facebook news feed. The hypersurfaces of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia are derived from algorithms. Algorithms can describe our language, predict our behaviour, drive our economies and pervasively occupy every bit (1/0) of our digital world. But they are not neutral.

They capture desires, fascinations, epiphanies, fears, cultures and capital. And the Algorist is their maker.

What does it mean for the Algorist to direct her craft in pursuit of Architecture? How does she find form, expression, tactility, poetry, nuance and affect in the autopoetic rules and processes at her disposal? How might this architectural algorithm be drawn, be challenged, be mastered and be built?

The studio will realise an architectural proposition within the surrounds of the Lyon Housemuseum and proposed extension.

The studio will explore the process of developing generative rule-sets and protocols as a compositional diagrammatic device for the organisation of individual components that collectively give rise to unexpected formal behaviours. these processes will be curated and constrained by an awareness of material and structural performance to direct their inherent architectural qualities in the realisation of physical prototypes capturing contingent spatial outcomes. the studio will critically interrogate how a designer can harness emergent properties of generative processes to realise complex, performative and enigmatic architecture.

2018 Teaching Team: Caitlyn Parry (stream leader), Francisca Rodrigeuz, Melissa Irahita, Jack Mansfield-Hung, Sean Guy & Bradley Elias.

2017 Teaching Team: Gwylim Jahn (stream leader), Caitlyn Parry, Francisca Rodriguez, Chris Ferris, Melissa Irahita, & Bradley Elias.

2016 Teaching Team: Gwylim Jahn (stream leader), Peter Charles, Dharman Gersch, Karla Martinez, Tina Atic, Caitlyn Parry & Patrick Macasaet.

2015 Teaching Team: Gwylim Jahn (stream leader), Peter Charles, Ed Carter, Sean McMahon, Tina Atic, Jack Ryan, Patrick Macasaet & Paul van Herk