Buildings, Systems + Decarbonisation

To really develop a sense of architecture's effect on the global ecology, we need, as it were, to be in two places at once. We need to occupy both the local, anthropometric, 'everyday' space of building, and the planetary space of strategy, logistics, flows and sites of production.

This double view is our focus this year. Our unit will explore a set of design methods – "scenario mappings" of material flows and future material cultures, alongside tectonic studies of building elements and spaces – to create an immediate connection between global environmental impacts and architectural fundamentals like material presence and detail. In the process, we will consider how architecture could reconstruct itself as a agent of environmental transition.

Architecture At Its Most Basic

Whether in the traditional emptiness of 2-dimensional poché, the hollow mesh-world of contemporary CAD (or on any contemporary building site — think of the hidden layers of steel trusses, panels, hangers and membranes) — this abstraction from material reality is as pervasive as it is unacceptable.

The best response to these questions may be a much more literal understanding of what a building is. When we think through the material reality of buildings, we are most closely in touch with their effect on the planet. In this sense, we are interested in construction and architecture at its most basic.

A building is a bundle of materials, all coming from somewhere, and on their way, in some way, to somewhere else. Its material supply chains shape the world outside themselves, from forests to quarries, from oceans to atmospheres. But at the same time, those existing supply chains and technologies create the space of possibility for architecture in the present day. It is a difficult thing to make a building with non-existent materials. By and large, the resources we can draw on are already those 'at hand.'

We consider that building materials and the systems which produce them are themselves also potentially objects of design. All material systems need to make rapid changes to their methods and processes in order to decarbonise. The effects of these changes will be recursive — profoundly altering the technological and economic systems of which modern industrial economies are formed.

Project 1 ~ From 1:20 to 2030

In term 1, we will map material flows and supply chains, explore different possible futures for material production, and design architectural elements and spaces using what we discover.

Students will select a material to study (extruded aluminium, EPS, cork, argon-filled glazing, plywood, chipboard, glass foam...), understand its contemporary lifecycle and geography, and consider a set of scenarios for these that could change in the future. What would happen if it were localised within a region or city? How can it be decarbonised? Should it be replaced with something else entirely? What happens if we need 1000x times more of this material? Or if it becomes much more expensive?

We will introduce a set of key methodologies to develop and understand these questions:

• Research methods for finding and mapping material flows
• Scenario based 'future forecasting' techniques for discovering other 'possible futures'
• Material tests and physical prototypes As well as individual work, the research from the first term will form a shared knowledge base which we will draw on collectively for the rest of the year.

In the last part of this project, students will develop an architectural proposal which "inhabits" one of the scenarios they have created. Each proposal will be a unique material and spatial proposal for either private inhabitation or public use, developed out of a basic and fundamental material logic.

Project 2+3 ~ Paradise City

The second project will explore the design of a new urban building for the 2030s. What should a civic building in an age of ecological transition be like? How the different aspects of its construction, maintenance, programmed activity or creation of public amenity help form an envrionmentally viable and humane urban environment? How can an understanding of time and future uncertainty be internalised as a creative and productive force?