Vibrant Artifacts

Catalog description

As we move into an age of environmental consciousness and the nature-architecture dichotomy dissolves in favor of emerging ideologies of interconnectedness, it may no longer be appropriate to perpetuate the notion that our buildings are impervious and separate to the environments in which they are sited. Through the design of prototypical details cumulating in a spatial object, students will speculate on conditions of permissible weathering, degradation and inhabitation of our artifacts by non-human entities. In support of this task, students will learn the surrounding theoretical context by studying key texts from Ruskin, Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow, Kallipoliti, Morton and Bennet that focus on the topics of weathering, ruination and contemporary ecological ideas; where and why these various effects occur in the built environment at present; and procedural design, modelling workflows in Houdini FX that integrate computational intelligence through weather simulation and geometric analysis.