Course Description
This course posits new ways to inhabit large urban structures through a process-driven methodology. By challenging type-driven formulaic structural responses, conflicts between architectural priorities and structural efficiencies are celebrated as the starting point of a dialogue that instigates structural adaptations creating rich tectonic expressions, complex spatial configurations, new program relationships.
When structural design lacks integration with architecture, the structural design criteria become largely dependent on efficiencies in cost and construction. The studio projects reinforce the concept of an efficiency that encourages resiliency through tectonic adaptation. This efficiency is understood to exist within a much longer time frame where the expression of the building is both integrative and timeless.
If we posit that architecture is to fulfill a need beyond structural stability and cost-effectiveness in construction, then the integration between architecture and structure points towards a different relationship in which the two disciplines engage in a dialogue. Founded on critical analyses of prevalent formulaic structural solutions, a productive dialogue is one in which there are meaningful conflicts that must be resolved. The students identify sources of conflict in order to develop an adaptable structural system. The metric by which resilience is measured is informed by the degree to which the integration between architecture and structure is successful in creating a trigger for a rich tectonic expression that adapts to conditions and needs while at the same time fulfilling the responsibilities of structural stability and efficiency.
karen seong architect 