The Future of the Design Studio

​

A world where architects are expected to be generalizing specialists, or a jack-of-all-trades and master of a few, requires integration of other fields of study into the architecture studio.  Thus, the architecture studio of the future becomes a living laboratory cultivated by the knowledge of many different disciplines.

​

I do not propose that other disciplines erode their boundaries or that architects strive to become more generalist.  However, I wonder about the potential of a studio in which different specialists coexist, or at least interact in ways that have not been exploited.  Interactions would take place in nodes or zones, which function as spaces for workshops, experimental labs, libraries, or discussion.  The nodes and zones are not permanent in the activities they facilitate.  They are flexible spaces that change based on the ever-changing demands of the architecture discipline.

​

This project contributes to architectural pedagogy because it showcases the potential of an abstract idea to become architectural.  Furthermore, it reveals that an abstract idea can visually and spatially manifest itself in a building.  Thus, the act of abstraction is integral to the act of making architecture-abstraction becomes spatial.  The method of abstraction is effective in integrating numerous fields of study in one building because it implies rather than strictly assigns potential systems, zones, and relationships. 

​

The abstract phase began with a series of gridded figure/ground drawings.  These drawings could be plans, sections, or elevations.  The grid, white faces, and variation of color were used to explore the idea of different zones or nodes that occur at various points in a building.  The resulting model was conceived by extruding the white faces in plan, section, and elevation.  The extrusions become habitable space, which act as the zones where interaction between architects and other specialists occur. 

​

The figure/ground drawing with intensive color can be used to index the possible combinations of specialists in each zone.  The overlapping colors are analogous to the overlapping of disciplines in the architecture field and can be used as a tool to reconfigure which specialists are in each zone.  Splitting the plans and sections into slices goes back to the act of splitting the composition up into squares in order to conceive potential built forms.  Thus, the building constantly fluctuates between concreteness and abstraction.

​

​

​

​