Master in Integrated Architectural Design

Master in Integrated Architectural Design

Logics of evolution for contemporary contexts

The cover in architectural design

Description
Suddenly, artificial intelligence has become public matter, as if fell from the sky, generating a commotion that we still do not know what form it will take, probably that of an altogether new naturalization of technology, of a new state of things that is rapidly absorbed and turned into a common resource, made available at every device or application, yet another form of whateverness. Both sinister and accessible, generic and specific, potent and trivial, tailored and depersonalized, opaque and transparent, amicable and repugnant, fascinating and terrifying, it has become theme and métier of everybody in equal measure. My mother uses it without knowing what it is about, my father constantly speaks of it, children play with it unconsciously, its ubiquity entertains everybody inside its hazy black box. Unintelligible overflow that makes system with the idea that nothing can be anymore truly new, artificial intelligence is capable to produce simultaneously everything, and nothing meaningful. Prolific and inscrutable, it is the ultimate machine of proliferation of nonsense. Yet rather than confronting this nonsensicality with skepticism, engaging the renewed promise of its broader specter of sense will be the challenge of this design-research workshop. We shall investigate the capabilities of Midjourney to produce an instantaneous architecture culture through the passionate consumption and the incommensurable proliferation of images. Using as a data base the most manifest canonical work of the 100 most influential architects of the past five centuries as a common platform (from Leo Battista Alberti to Rem Koolhaas), we shall extemporaneously navigate the historical sea of architecture, thinking-by-design, attentively but openly, its potential becoming process without pleading, celebrating, or honoring its orthodoxy, rather seriously playing through meanings, senses, and implications. Classes will work as short brainstorming sessions of intuitive thinking (intuition as a method to produce culture), learning to see architecture, identifying genius, formulating ideas, building up new forms of sense, in the vital and deep sense of the word.
Type Subject
Primer - Obligatoria
Semester
Annual
Course
1
Credits
3.00
Previous Knowledge
Objectives

01_To study and conceptualize an architectural precedent
02_To describe organizational characteristics of an architectural project into a computational instruction
03_To explore variations of an architectural project and denaturalize historical architectural materials
04_To develop a rigorously intuitive sensitivity out of a methodical approach to artificial intelligence
05_To synthetize an architectural proposal as an autonomous entity and rationalize its relevance

Contents

In its AI version, the architectural procedure will produce a myriad (a mosaic) of candid and elemental projects out of a historical architectural material that will be progressively mixed with others. In this mix, divergent directions will be recognized. They will be distilled and sharpened. They will be singularized, integrated, synthesized. And finally their concept will be nurtured until it becomes a new being in the world that, standing on its feet and dancing over the quicksand of extreme availability, will expand the spectrum of architecture culture as a mode of redefining itself. We shall work in five stages or segments: 01 investigation and construction of an archive of images, 02 description of the material and formulation of hypothesis, 03 development of blends and selection of ideas, 04 successive specification and writing of prompts, 05 calibration and final presentation. Unfolded along five weeks of work, these stages will mutually redefine their aims along the workshop, configuring an imaginative entanglement without beginning or end.

The work will be developed in teams of two students. Classes will consist of presentations and critiques. The course is organized in five stages:

01 investigation and construction of an archive of images
02 description of the material and formulation of hypothesis
03 development of blends and selection of architectural ideas
04 successive specification and writing of prompts
05 calibration and final presentation

Each stage will be one-week long, starting with a general introduction to the aims of the course and ending with a review of the documents developed. Ciro Najle and Andrew Pringle Sattui will be present Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursday, and Neslihan Gulhan will be present on-site every day.

Methodology

The studio is planned as a research tank. The objective of the research is to recognize and unfold the organizational potentials of blending architectural images of historical architectural materials, understood as open-ended organizations that latently contain potentials to launch further stages of differentiation and synthesis, thus criticizing and surpassing the very notion of an architectural precedent. The medium of the process of differentiation is constituted by an image of a precedent, recognizing its organizational deviances, and transfiguring its architectonic values, thus activating entirely new organizations. The pedagogy, based upon the learning of the characteristics of an architectural organization through the analysis of images, works against superficial approximations to form to launch an open yet rigorous notion of the disciplinary.

Evaluation

Students are requested to submit all the material on the e-study. Students will achieve these basis:
Investigation and construction of an archive of images. Description of the material and formulation of hypothesis. Development of blends and selection of architectural ideas. Successive specification and writing of prompts. Calibration and final presentation

Evaluation Criteria

System MIAD for grading exercises:
0–4.9 Fail (submit supplementary work). / 5.0–6.9 Pass. / 7.0–8.9 Good. / 9.0–10 Excellent/Distinction.
On this basis, students will be evaluated on several aspects such as:
Attendance - 10 % / Assignments - 50 % / Final presentation - 40 %

Basic Bibliography

Byung-Chul Han, Hyperculture (2022).

Additional Material

An archive of links to websites, publications, essays and images will be provided in a separate excel sheet. This archive will be supplemented by the student’s investigations.