Context: Architecture Department at RPI
Project: DEAN-DEN/LIB-REF-DESK
Final deadline: September 22, 24
For our Thesis Section hand-shake project, students will propose a new facility for the programs of either or both the “Dean’s Office” and/or the “Librarian’s Desk”, in 2029.
Students will assume a particular set of exchanges on one or both of these programs, which would reveal itself particularly prone to a new design of the facilities, including the possibility of a new combination or relationship between them (these 2 programs).
Moreover, students will search for different tectonic configurations which would allow for the relationships to be instantiated at the different scales these programs have the potential to unfold into.
___Week 1: Programmatic research. Main programmatic exchanges “tectonic” definition.
Deliverables: analytic and synthetic diagrams
___Week 2: Material research:
Deliverables: analytic and synthetic diagrams
___Week 3: Development and presentation of final proposal
Deliverables: diagrams, final design documents including sections through the proposal, details, text and renderings that depict variations through time in the proposal.
During this exercise, Wednesdays will be dedicated to group presentations and discussions (informal pin-ups), and Fridays will be dedicated to desk critics.
For this first exercise/assignment, students will join in teams of 2 or 3. Neither the teams nor the project developed are seen as initial developments of their thesis content and logistics. After this initial assignment students will start research and work on their thesis, which might be bound or not to the material developed in the first 3 weeks. As well, teams formed for the initial exercise need not continue after the finishing deadline of the same.
Initial Suggested Readings:
DELANDA, Manuel, “Cities and Nations” in “New Philosophy for Society”
http://www.ubiroom.net/academic/DELANDAcitiesandnationsNEWPHIL.pdf
STERLING, Bruce, “Shaping Things” excerpts
http://www.umasideia.com/academic/readings05/STERLINGshapingthings.pdf
DERRIDA, Jacques, “Archive Fever”
KWINTER, Sanford, “New Babylons” in “Far From Equilibrum”