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Technical Provocations: Material Inventions, Structural Assemblies, and Environmental Responses as Precursors and Design Prompts

Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0002-2909-566X

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/6ygf-b076

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to develop a studio course that is a precursor to the integrative studio in the University of Florida Master of Architecture curriculum. The studio course introduces each building technology discipline as design concept generators and the course intends to prepare students not to think of building technologies in only practical terms but to integrate a conceptual thinking regarding building technologies in their design work. Our primary goal is for the students to discover poetic approaches for working with building technologies before they need to integrate all disciplines simultaneously in their design work. The studio tests three projects in a 16-week semester: one project generated from materials and construction methods, a second rooted in structural principles at multiple scales, and the third centered on environmental strategies for extreme climates. In the first project, the students were challenged with the connecting their speculative proposals with built reality. In the third project, they had to address places and conditions that are beyond their own experience. In all three projects, we found that the majority of students struggled with the application of building technology principles in their design process. There was a disconnect between practicalities and conceptual thinking. In our analysis, this indicates that building technologies may not be most effective when they are separate studies isolated from studio design.

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