Project 01 - A Garden for the Ages
Landscape is history made visible – J.B. Jackson, Landscape Writer
Through the course of history, Architecture (the intervention of humankind on the landscape) is the artifact that remains across time. It has the ability to reflect a specific society, culture, critical events, or thinking of the time when it was created and made. Students' design objective for this project is to achieve this goal…for an age prior to the one in which we are currently living.
Students were allowed to freely develop a hypothetical client for their individual projects. The requirement was to design a garden for their client that represents a particular historic era. The historic eras to be addressed by each student were assigned randomly during the preliminary research portion of the project:
Students were all given a 75'x150' site on which to design their gardens. Students could select a location anywhere in the world for their client's garden so long as that location was relevant to their historic age. The garden was also required to include an architectural folly as an integral element that used light to represent a significant event from their historic age.
The garden design is the first phase of a larger project that will be completed in the second half of the semester.
Students were allowed to freely develop a hypothetical client for their individual projects. The requirement was to design a garden for their client that represents a particular historic era. The historic eras to be addressed by each student were assigned randomly during the preliminary research portion of the project:
- The Enlightenment Age
- The Industrial Age
- The Atomic/Space Age
- The Information Age
Students were all given a 75'x150' site on which to design their gardens. Students could select a location anywhere in the world for their client's garden so long as that location was relevant to their historic age. The garden was also required to include an architectural folly as an integral element that used light to represent a significant event from their historic age.
The garden design is the first phase of a larger project that will be completed in the second half of the semester.
Project 02 - The Shift Age House
As an Architect, you design for the PRESENT, with an awareness of the PAST, for a FUTURE which is essentially unknown – Sir Norman Foster
In the first studio project, students were able to explore how Architecture has the capacity to reference and make concrete, IDEAS of the past. In this final studio project, students will fix their gaze into the hovering mist of the future. Just as Architecture is a lasting artifact of the past, it is equally capable and responsible for exploring and defining our future. In this project phase, students will explore the future through Architecture’s most common artifact…the house.
How can architecture designed in the present represent the coming trends, thinking, and development of human civilization in the future? To establish a direction for how we think about the future, the studio was directed to investigate the work of futurist David Houle who has established the concept of The Shift Age. Students conducted research in the primary characteristics of The Shift Age to establish a working knowledge and foundation for their own design work. From this research, students created a house for their garden client in Project 01 to link a house of the future with a garden of the past.
Students were all given a 75'x75' site adjacent to their garden on which to place their house. Physical and implied design connections between garden and house were encouraged. In addition, students were instructed to re-think the concept of life in The Shift Age and to design a house that reflected these new possibilities for inhabiting domestic space.
How can architecture designed in the present represent the coming trends, thinking, and development of human civilization in the future? To establish a direction for how we think about the future, the studio was directed to investigate the work of futurist David Houle who has established the concept of The Shift Age. Students conducted research in the primary characteristics of The Shift Age to establish a working knowledge and foundation for their own design work. From this research, students created a house for their garden client in Project 01 to link a house of the future with a garden of the past.
Students were all given a 75'x75' site adjacent to their garden on which to place their house. Physical and implied design connections between garden and house were encouraged. In addition, students were instructed to re-think the concept of life in The Shift Age and to design a house that reflected these new possibilities for inhabiting domestic space.
The best way to predict the future is to DESIGN it – Buckminster Fuller
