Diagramania: part 2 (small_the planless house)

Stan Allan sees architecture as a material practice that is able to
“deploy an open catalog of techniques without preconceived formal ends”.

Allen, S. (1999). Infrastructural Urbanism. From Points + lines : diagrams
and projects for the city. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 46-57

Over the last week we have asked you to closely observe the architectural space closest to yourselves, your home. You have then inscribed your home through the means of the diagram. These diagrams were intended to help you re-think the idea of “house” in the ways suggested by Kengo Kuma. The house, instead of being described by arrangement through the plan, and the division of spaces has been described by what Kuma calls lifestyle: inhabitation, patterns of behaviour, consumption and energy use, location and provenance of furnishing, positions and locations of bodies etc.

Now it is time to make these diagrams instrumental, to engage in architecture as a material practice, to deploy the diagrams as an open catalog of techniques, propositions, forms, relations; to begin to work towards formal ends.

Take materials and model one of your diagrams. Make at LEAST 10 iterations of models from your chosen diagram and a final model. Analyse your models through photographs and sectional drawings to suggest how your planless house might be programmed and inhabited.

The Plan-less House: part 2 timeline:

Mon 4 Aug: guest seminar - Sunny Kwong / open studio
Tues 5 Aug: studio
Thu 7 Aug: tutors Pecha Kucha / studio
Mon 11 Aug: open studio
Tue 12 Aug: PAVILION OF HAPPINESS (all day)
Thu 14 Aug: Planless House Crit

Image: mobius strip http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:M%C3%B6bius_strip.jpg