Barcelona Candidate 22 - 25 November Abstracts & 2018 Images PRS November 2018

Examiners: Prof Michael Hensel Dr Christopher Pierce Dr Yael Reisner Prof Gabriella Seifert Prof Bob Sheil A/Prof René van der Velde

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@rmitprs Introduction

Welcome all to the November 2018 instance It is a pleasure to supplement Paul’s words of the Practice Research Symposium, here with a warm welcome to all participants Barcelona chapter, and to candidates and and guests from the School of Design, newly faculty from the Estonian Academy of Arts, formed in 2018. I would like to acknowledge Queen’s University Belfast, the University of the hard work and dedication demonstrated Innsbruck and the University Westminster. over many years by current and past The event is again generously hosted by colleagues from the School of Architecture the BAU Design College and we again and Urban Design, who have made these extend thanks to BAU and welcome to their symposia such a collegial yet rigorous candidates presenting during the weekend. platform for practice research training. The School of Design at RMIT and their Many staff and candidates from the School constituent disciplinary practitioners are of Design’s disciplines of Communication now fully represented in the European PRS Design, Digital Design and Industrial Design ecology and this is reflected of my co- have participated in research training in chairing of this event with Brad Haylock. this model for a number of years, but this Practice Research Symposium represents The weekend seminar will be preceded an exciting moment. From 2019 onward, by four examinations, with their diversity we will strengthen the School of Design’s demonstrating the keen ability of the participation in the PRS ecology, across the reflective practice research model to look three sites of Barcelona, and Ho deeply into design practices stemming from Chi Minh City, as we welcome new cohorts very different ontologies and motivations. of research candidates and supervisors into The partners in the generative architectural the PRS fold. I wish a fruitful few days ahead practice SPAN, Sandra Manninger and Matias for all candidates and supervisors from all del Campo will each be examined, and disciplines in both Schools, and especially then Marco Poletto, with his work spanning those candidates who will present for landscape, urbanism and virtual ecologies. examination at this PRS. The final examination, will be the particularly placed and materialised practice A/Prof Brad Haylock of Dermot Boyd. RMIT School of Design PRS EU Co-ordinator The PRS opening will focus on architectures of landscape and environment with a keynote lecture from examiner and guest René van der Velde and launch of the ‘Repair’ book by Louise Wright and Mauro Baracco.

A/Prof Paul Minifie PRS EU Chair RMIT School of Architecture & Urban Design Contents

Events

06 Keynote Address Transformation in Composition 34 Kieran McGonigle School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast Dr J.R.T. van der Velde (René) 35 Ben Milbourne School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT Delft University of Technology 36 Fraser Muggeridge School of Design RMIT Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment 37 Claudia Pasquero Faculty of Architecture, Estonian Academy of Arts Chair of Landscape Architecture 38 Megan Patty School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT 39 Sille Pihlak Faculty of Architecture, Estonian Academy of Arts 40 Anna Pla Català School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT 08 Book Launch Repair by Mauro Baracco 41 Eva Prats School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT Presented by 42 Walter Prenner Faculty of Architecture, University of Innsbruck Prof Ricardo Devesa, IAAC (UPC); editor-in-chief at Actar Publishers 43 Matthew Priestman School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster and urbanNext.net 44 Verena Rauch Faculty of Architecture, University of Innsbruck A/Prof Mauro Baracco, RMIT University and Baracco+Wright Architects 45 Ziga Testen School of Design RMIT 46 Siim Tuksam Faculty of Architecture, Estonian Academy of Arts 47 Gill Wildman School of Design, RMIT PhD Examinations

12 Marco Poletto School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT Maps 13 Matias del Campo School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT 14 Sandra Manninger School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT 50 PRS venues 15 Dermot Boyd School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT

PhD Candidates - Progress Reviews

18 Mohammed J Ali School of Design RMIT 19 Barbara Aronson School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT 20 Carla Boserman BAU Design College of Barcelona 21 Marta Camps Banqué BAU Design College of Barcelona 22 Ari Cohen School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT 23 Donal Colfer School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast 24 Dermot Foley School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT 25 Graham Ford School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT 26 Stuart Geddes School of Design RMIT 27 Alexey Ginzburg School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT 28 Mark Hackett School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast 29 Cheryl Heller School of Design RMIT 30 James Landgon School of Design RMIT 31 Graziella Leone School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT 32 Tarla MacGabhann School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast 33 Max Marschall School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT René van der Velde 08 Friday 23 November 2018 09 Held as part of the PRS Europe Keynote Address launch from 6 - 8:30pm Venue: Media-TIC, Carrer de Roc Boronat 117, 08018 Barcelona

Transformation in Composition: Ecdysis of Landscape Architecture through the Brownfield Park Project 1975-2015

Dr. J.R.T. van der Velde (René) Composition is a central notion in period 1975-2015. These projects emerge animals, whereby the growth from juvenile Delft University of Technology architectural praxis but has had a relatively as an important laboratory and catalyst for to adult takes place in stages involving the negative ‘press’ in landscape architectural developments in landscape architecture, moulting of an inelastic exoskeleton. Once Faculty of Architecture and circles in recent times. In his doctoral research whereby contextual, process, and shed, a larger exoskeleton is formed, whose the Built Environment Van der Velde re-examines composition formal-aesthetic aspects form central and shape and character is significantly different Chair of Landscape theory such as that developed at the TU Delft inter-related themes. The thesis of this to its forebears. Architecture in the 1990s, which elaborates composition research is that a major theoretical and In the slipstream of these findings, the as a methodological framework for landscape methodological expansion of the notion research sheds new light on the shifts in design. He takes a critical stance in respect of composition can be distilled from the the form and content of the city itself in this to this method in response to emerging brownfield park project, in which seemingly period, and the agency of the urban park in discourses on site-specificity and process irreconcilable paradigms such as site, process the problematique of urban territories. In in landscape praxis, but elaborates these and form are incorporated. examining the impact of de-industrialization in relation to formal-aesthetic foundations By extension, the study propositions a ‘radical on the contemporary urban realm, Van der of landscape architecture, instead of as maturation’ of the discipline in the period Velde also proposes a major revision of alternatives. 1975 – 2015 via the brownfield park project. abiding definitions of ‘city’ and ‘nature’, as well The lens for the reconsideration of the ‘Delft A metaphor for this process is offered by as the paradigms of modernity that backdrop Method’ is the brownfield park project in the the phenomenon of ecdysis in invertebrate them. Mauro Baracco Friday 23 November 2018 11 Held as part of the PRS Europe Book launch launch from 6 - 8:30pm Venue: Media-TIC, Carrer de Roc Boronat 117, 08018 Barcelona

Repair

Presented by and cultural repair of the places it is a part Prof Ricardo Devesa, IAAC (UPC); of. Repair as an approach to architectural editor-in-chief at Actar Publishers and thinking is set to become a critical strategy of urbanNext.net architectural culture. A/Prof Mauro Baracco, RMIT University This book unpacks the theme, documents and Baracco+Wright Architects the exhibition and catalogues Australian architectural projects that are conceived Responding to the theme Freespace through acts of repair exhibited at the at the 16th International Architecture Australian Pavilion. With contributions of Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 2018, Mauro Baracco and Louise Wright, Linda Repair at the Australian Pavilion, curated by Tegg, Paul Memmott, David Freudenberger, Baracco+Wright Architects in collaboration Chris Sawyer and Susie Kumar, Carroll with Linda Tegg, aims to expand the point of Go-Sam, Tim O’Loan, Giovanni Aloi, Caroline view from the object of architecture, to the Piccard, Jonathan Ware, Lance van Maanen way it operates in its context, advocating a and Catherine Murphy. role for architecture that catalyses or actively engages with the environmental, social

Photo: Rory Gardiner PhD April Examinations 2018

November 2018 Marco Poletto Thursday 22 November, 10am - 12pm 14 Matias del Campo Thursday 22 November, 2:30 - 4:30pm 15 PhD (Architecture and Design) Venue: Calle Pallars 85, 6-1, El Poblenou PhD (Architecture and Design) Venue: BAU College of Design Barcelona Examiners: Dr Christopher Pierce, A/Prof René van der Velde Examiners: Prof Bob Sheil, Dr Yael Reisner RMIT University Chair: Prof Martyn Hook RMIT University Chair: Prof Martyn Hook Supervisors: A/Prof Paul Minifie, A/Prof Roland Snooks, Supervisors: Prof Vivian Mitsogianni, A/Prof Paul Minifie Prof Alisa Andrasek

The Urbansphere. Autonomous Tectonics. Architecture in of Ubiquitous Computing The work of SPAN, between Autonomous Behavior and Cultural Agency

Candidate Marco Poletto investigated the In contrast to the examples that exercise of estrangement, the culture of the familiar dissolving boundaries between city and full control in a top down design process, vs the unfamiliar and seeks a conversation nature. The research focuses on building Autonomous Tectonics speculates on the on the aspects of architecture that possesses architectures, installations and digital aspect of a non-anthropocentric design disciplinary autonomy. At the same time it protocols testing human’s interaction with environment, where the architect as the is embedded in the currents of a changing non-human systems. The findings indicate sole genius of a design is perceived as a culture of production in which Autonomous that the increased spatial articulation and suspicious figure, and ideas of full automation Tectonics will be at play. This novel cultural material integration of such systems within in design are embraced as an alternative entity is shared with a series of colleagues architecture is crucial to evolve higher forms creative environment. This alternative method and peers who work on related conditions of urban ecological intelligence. May this be of design opens opportunities to discuss and problems. This dissertation is an attempt the time of the bio-smart, when the traditional aspects of a Postdigital world, of the impact of to discuss the evolution of the work of SPAN paradigm of is redefined by the automation to society, economy and culture, through the lens of discoursive inquiry and definitive advent of ubiquitous computing? as well as providing alternative morphologies, cultural agency, resulting in the concept of typologies and organizations of space. A Autonomous Tectonics. novel cultural entity that discusses moments Sandra Manninger Friday 23 November, 10am - 12pm 16 Dermot Boyd Friday 23 November, 2:30 - 4:30pm 17 PhD (Architecture and Design) Venue: BAU College of Design Barcelona PhD (Architecture and Design) Venue: BAU College of Design Barcelona Examiners: Prof Michael Hensel, Prof Bob Sheil Examiners: Prof Gabriella Seifert, A/Prof René van der Velde RMIT University Chair: A/Prof Suzie Attiwill RMIT University Chair: A/Prof Paul Minifie Supervisors: A/Prof Paul Minifie, Prof Vivian Mitsogianni Supervisors: Prof Martyn Hook, Prof Tom Holbrook, Dr Jan van Schaik

Atlas of Sensations Unravelling the Eurythmic Cage

The architecture of SPAN orbits around the application of geometries to design protocols My study lies in the primordial. It is an application of computational procedures triggered by the G-coded gestures of exploration of instinct and intuition and how in the generation of their projects. The fabrication tools to investigate autonomous they are exercised in the making of space. I use work in SPAN’s practice and in academy is processes. the device of the eurythmic cage to explain incorporating tools and instruments that my direct relationship with architecture, which have been just introduced to an architectural As computers start to develop their own is primarily visual and wholly immersive. I environment providing the opportunity to science, an environment that is not only research the underpinning of design strategies develop design protocols and directives understood as a biophysical reality but also informing the work of Boyd Cody Architects that might affect all stages of architectural incorporates the actuality of a computational and uncover persisting influences of childhood production, from conceptualization to design, ecology, both material processes and memories inflected by systems of eurythmic from fabrication to maintenance, creating algorithmic objects inform the generated proportioning. SPAN’s design ecologies. designs. This shift of design agencies in the practice’s design ecologies is not initiated to The presented work traces these moments optimize architectural objects but to create in SPAN’s practice through the application objects that act as seismographic devices or of geometries. The postdigital turn is further artifacts whose bodies offer a matrix for these revealed as the practice moves from the processes to materialize. Progress Reviews

November 2018 Mohammed J Ali 20 Barbara Aronson 21 PhD candidate, School of Design PhD candidate, School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT University RMIT University

Applying Speculative Design - Making Energy Ecologies Toward the Future of Shlomo Aronson Architects: Understanding the Fundamentals of its Legacy

Within my practice of speculative energy plays a role alongside craft and spontaneous In an office soon celebrating 50 years of interviews with past and present staff and possibilities, making goes beyond a utilitarian insight through material handling, but these existence, design culture and the personal analysis of seminal projects. aesthetic commonly found on maker are subservient to the speculative vision mark of its lead designers’ accumulated channels on sites such as YouTube, Vimeo articulated through the designed object. knowledge and planning abilities are key This data is intended to reveal the legacy of or Instructables. Speculative design proposes This research tries to define a making literacy to understanding the ongoing and future the office which is defined as the sum of all other potential realities through artefacts that within a practice speculating about applying success of the practice. knowledge about practice and design held suggest functionality. Within a practice of alternatives to current energy paradigms. within the firm. The data will be analyzed to reveal office specific design methods, design applied speculative design, the functionality This research aims to show the connection between design legacy and future excellence processes and mentoring methods while is not only proposed but exists. Engineering of the practice by exposing the underlying identifying constants and divergences over specific and generic contributing factors to time. the office’s creativity and knowledge and by understanding the role of mentorship. The research will result in the preparation of general guidelines for the assessment The research will be conducted by collecting and teaching of design knowledge. The qualitative data about the lead designers’ final goal is to provide ways to reconsider personal design footprint and theoretical office structure in order to maximize office influences on the office, as well as through resilience and design quality. Carla Boserman 22 Marta Camps Banqué 23 PhD candidate, BAU Design College of Barcelona PhD candidate, BAU Design College of Barcelona

Drawing epistemic things Teaching Experiences in a Workshop Coexistence of regulated knowledge and wild practices in learning

I draw. I sketch. I do graphic stories, diagrams think about research and how it affects their The current research project explores, from presentation and representation, nature and and drawings. practices. I have drawn maps and diagrams a pedagogical perspective, the tensions culture, subjects and objects, etc. It is in this to get lost between rare epistemologies and between regulated forms of knowledge context that I analyse the art workshop as My community of practice is comprised experimental cultures. I made an illustrated and wilder forms of wisdom and learning a playful space that opens the possibility to by those who understand drawing as an alphabet of the key concepts that concern that take place in the context of the art displace the scientific paradigm as a locus of epistemic activity, thing, and sketching and me as a researcher. I approach the idea of workshop or studio based practices. This knowledge production, allowing other types tracing as a place of discovery. epistemic things (Rheinberger, 1997) to revisit work looks into hybrid spaces of knowledge of wisdom to emerge. In this occasion I will my practice. From there I want to make a where the epistemological foundations present a set of pedagogical devices that I I have made graphic accounts of the activity contribution to the material epistemologies, inherited from modernity can be shaken and have designed in order to materialize other that takes place in art and design labs, trying those things that allow us to make knowledge put into question. Challenging the binary ways of learning through drawing, colour and to understand how these places deploy in practice. Specially I’m interested in seeing logics that still structures our cultural and classifications. At the same time, I will display experimental practices. I have collaborated how epistemic things operate in art and pedagogical practices, creating a rift between the general idea of the presentation of the with art production centres and I have drawn design. thinking and doing, deduction and intuition, whole PhD research. up conversations with artists about how they Ari Cohen 24 Donal Colfer 25 PhD candidate, School of Architecture and Urban Design PhD candidate, School of Natural and Built Environment RMIT University Queen’s University Belfast

Planning Processes in a Complex System Environment Overlapping Knowledge: Practice, People & Place A Retrospective Analysis – Israel 1990-2018

The planning processes currently employed My research will consist of a retrospective A long-time personal association with This stage of research examines a response in Israel are struggling to create new assessment of the different methodologies various sea-swimming communities around to the culture of coastal amenity at this deep environments that are vital and full of life. that I have employed in several select Dublin Bay has led to my practice recently water bathing place, which has been formed In many cases, new cities are characterized projects, investigating the reasons that these becoming involved in the regeneration of through the cutting of a channel, an access by “mechanistic” spatial structures that lack methods were, at the time, deemed preferable bathing infrastructure at the 40 Foot on path, railings and tempering the foreshore by individuality. to others. I will conduct a comparative critical the south coast of the city. Our remit here carving steps in rock. analysis of these past projects in order to involves liaising with local government and all The goal of this study is to improve the learn the reasons for my chosen methods’ vested and interested parties to consider how means and methods available to planners success/failure in eliciting effective planning facilities can be improved and maintained in a who are working within complex systems, processes for complex systems. sustainable way which recognises the pattern but behaving—knowingly or unknowingly—as of historic interventions that have supported though they are simple, linear systems. I wish The study will conclude with a series of bathers’ year round activities for over 180 to update, and if necessary revise, the Organic practical recommendations for relevant years. Planning for Social Systems approach, which I courses of action for large, complex projects co-created 15 years ago. such as those upon which I have worked. These will constitute an up-to-date planning approach for use by the workers in my firm and the public at large. Dermot Foley 26 Graham Ford 27 PhD candidate, School of Architecture and Urban Design PhD candidate, School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT University RMIT University

Preciseness, vagueness The expanded field of operation

A porism is a proposition affirming the secondary-raw-materials and with complex In this PRS I will be discussing how our My design process incorporates a method of possibility of finding such conditions as will archaeology, the exact format of even the contribution to knowledge in the field is co-ordination developed from working in the render a certain problem indeterminate, or inert materials is unknown to us when we provided through an expanded definition roles above, which has become a practice capable of innumerable solutions. In our are making the drawings. Since I wish to of architectural practice. This is achieved philosophy. The entities I co-ordinate include practice we try to draw with preciseness, but make drawings that emulate more closely through alternate working methods I adopt for example, stakeholders such as the local the materials with which we work cannot the materials with which we will work, the within practice including troubleshooting planning authority, government agencies, be fully known. When we work as landscape drawings, no matter how precise, must also (solving problems in the field), ghostwriting the client and the contractor. My agency in architects the magical qualities of living allow for openness and variation before and (developing an existing concept into this process is to embed social, political or materials are known unknowns, or perhaps during construction. They must cater for something that can be constructed), environmental agendas into the projects we more usefully, known unknowables. These vagueness. Layered plans, time lapse and translating (describing an architectural pursue. I include the city and the landscape as materials must be considered in processes various other types of drawing help us to keep language for a contractor to preserve design separate entities in the co-ordination matrix and these processes can be considered in the design and construction process open. integrity) and acting as a ‘caretaker of a body so I can ensure the architecture produced geometry. Uncertainty is a quality of all three I see the drawings as possible definitions of of knowledge’. These methods expand the involves the ‘custodianship’ of the built phenomena: mutability of materials, what geometry means in landscape design. ways in which I operate as an architect. environment. inter-related dynamics of processes, and changing semantics of geometry. With our recent work, innovating with Stuart Geddes 28 Alexey Ginzburg 29 PhD candidate, School of Design PhD candidate, School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT University RMIT University

The materials of the situation: on designing books Stitching, Modulating and Scaling in conversation and with silence

This practice-based PhD seeks to understand of designing them. This is characterised, in My research focuses on the interaction of an of a new object in the historic city allows us and make explicit the influence and utility of a my particular approach, by being in various architect and a historical city as the existing to continue to organically develop an urban series of ideas, tactics and techniques that are concurrent conversations, identified broadly project environment. Working in Moscow, fabric. central to my practice. as conversations with collaborators, with we are facing the necessity to revise the histories, and with materials. Further, a key set connection between the modern architecture The current presentation shows the This third milestone presentation will of tactics in these conversations is and the urban context. Large-scale application of articulated ways of working present the four key projects of the quietness—listening, waiting, creating silences transformation of the city in the twentieth on the example of one of our projects in PhD—four books that embody a way of and inviting interlocutors into them. This can century and repeated changes of paradigms the historical center of Moscow. It seems designing books that I have developed over be with people/collaborators, but it can also led to various deformations of the architect’s important to analyze how the embedding time and that has crystallised over the course be with histories and materials. methods of work with the surrounding or ingrowth of a building into a context of of this PhD. I would describe this way of historical environment. mixed historical layers affects interaction working as designing in conversation, with Reflecting the centrality of conversation as a with the client and municipal bodies, i.e. reference to Donald Schön’s idea of design key mode of practice as well as of research, In previous presentations the search for the affects the “usual” design process. Stitching, as reflective conversation with the materials this presentation will also discuss findings of a similarities and the differences in the work of modulating and scaling, as ways of reacting to of a design situation. My aim is to expand series of conversations with key collaborators architect, restorer and urbanist highlighted the environment, provoke the creation of an this idea with specific research into the on these four key books. the important techniques. With them, creation object that exists in dialogue with the city. form of the book and the complex practice Mark Hackett 30 Cheryl Heller 31 PhD candidate, School of Natural and Built Environment PhD candidate, School of Design Queen’s University Belfast RMIT University

Interstitial Practice The Impact of Social Design on the Human Condition

Reflecting on my urban design position I will I will reflect on some formative essays and Design has grown in scope, scale, perceived have written that outlines a system for social examine the role of extended threshold in precedent works experienced early in my value, and the diversity of contexts in which design and research into nine examples; past and recent ongoing projects. Regardless career and consider how these aspects of it is practiced; evolving from a practice further inquiry into ten additional examples of scale, plan and a preoccupation with enclosure, threshold, the psychological and where designers with specific subject matter spanning architecture, policing, programs section to create volume and space has been political are positioned within an architecture expertise focus on aesthetics and craft, to improve maternal and infant health and a long running concern. The examination and within a city. to a state today where designers work in address obesity in children, and a project I am will consider how juxtaposition, enclosure, disciplines in which they have no formal leading with the goal of diminishing the flow fragment and spatial continuity might relate I will also summarise a series of essays training or experience. The design process of youth from foster care to homelessness to the urban work and reading of Belfast. that inform context and positions raised at is now applied to non-material elements in the US. Questions I seek to answer are: Space and sequence are tracked through previous PRS reflections and comments. of human experience, from activities and What is social design; What difference does and around buildings as they may be in the interactions to the invisible interrelationships it make; and What makes it good? Through city. The critique of the city and its blockages between communities and individuals in this research, I will situate my work in may be seen to be related to and continue society. This practice of “social design” is the context with other design and non-design my mode of working in architecture, seeking subject of my research. The reflection on my approaches. public space and volume within each project practice includes the interrogation of a book I regardless of its scale. James Langdon 32 Graziella Leone 33 PhD candidate, School of Design PhD candidate, School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT University RMIT University

Isomorph and superstition The Double Agent: transdisciplinary creative practice in the public realm

I am interrogating the concept of Within an age of rapid urbanisation and possibility of evoking a more engaging ‘isomorphism’ as a graphic design strategy. globalisation cities are “under construction… individual and community experience of the According to Wolfram Mathworld, ‘The word a permanent state of affairs”* as infrastructure urban landscape; through the exploration derives from the Greek iso, meaning “equal,” projects are developed and implemented of transdisciplinary-facing, yet pedagogy- and morphosis, meaning “to form” or “to creating significant disruption and renewal led, art and design practice integrated shape”’. The term—common in mathematics, for the city. This research will be a reflection into the condition of a transforming chemistry and psychology—is used on design and art practice through the urban environment. Through the role of metaphorically in a design context, following exploration of the potential for, and value of, artist, designer, educator and curator this the English designer Norman Potter (1923- transdisciplinary practice in the interpretation research will involve the reflection on my 1995). and expression of the changing face of transdisciplinary practice to date and my the city. The catalyst for my reflective current practice under construction. Presently my research is focusing on the and generative practice research will be metaphorical isomorph as a union of logical undertaken through URBAN AGENCY: *Koolhaas, R, Foster, H, 2013, Junkspace with reasoning, superstition and faith. living laboratory (UA:ll) an experimental Running Room, Notting Hill, Editions London. platform for practice in the public realm. As a curator I created the platform as a vehicle for my practice to investigate the Tarla MacGabhann 34 Max Marschall 35 PhD candidate, School of Natural and Built Environment PhD candidate, School of Architecture and Urban Design Queen’s University Belfast RMIT University

Slow or Fast and Profit or Loss Buildings vs. Humans: Using Operational Data Capture and Analysis for Sustainable Architectural Design

In previous PRSs I have explained how we office were developed much more quickly, Microclimate considerations are largely The key to understanding such phenomena is design projects in the office, by building many and were therefore more profitable to the responsible for occupant comfort and energy to observe buildings and occupants in iterations of physical models with refinements office. At this PRS I will compare how we consumption, and yet they are usually real-world contexts. This thesis asks the to develop the forms. For this PRS I intend to developed a ‘fast’ design extension in 2018, relegated to the late planning phases in the question: How can data capture on occupant show a ‘how to’ or lesson I have developed to a house we designed in 2008, which was a architectural workflow. This is in part due behaviour and microclimates facilitate the of how this process can be used as a method ‘slow’ design. I will consider the pros and cons to a methodological disconnect between development of novel, sustainable design to develop a design. This process, albeit tried of fast versus slow design. I will also describe architecture and building science. Recent concepts in architecture? and trusted, is a slow and time-consuming a house we are currently designing which I building science research has uncovered an The research conveys the challenges and method. Through the previous PRSs I have am attempting to develop as a fast design. area of intersection between the disciplines, opportunities of data capture in operational realised that some designs produced in the by discovering that the non-deterministic buildings. It presents several new approaches nature of occupant perception and to integrating environmental data into behaviour is often misrepresented in building different aspects of design, from generating performance simulation. This new human- broad insights by analyzing past projects, to centric focus on the dynamic relationship creating prescriptive automated systems of between occupants and buildings provides climate-reactive building operation. Various an opportunity to foster innovation through data investigations and studies are developed interdisciplinary research. to extend the design toolkit by a more human-centric, microclimate-directed design approach. Kieran McGonigle 36 Ben Milbourne 37 PhD candidate, School of Natural and Built Environment PhD candidate, School of Architecture and Urban Design Queen’s University Belfast RMIT University

Abstraction and Landscape in the work of McGonigle McGrath Architects Mutations: Experiments in typology, procedure and the instrumentality of recognition

A Way of Drawing For this presentation I have focused on A reflection on the creative practice of Ben environment can be unearthed and explored drawing and process, and the emergent Milbourne, exploring a set of speculations to inform design. Experiments in Typological The research investigates abstraction and relationships between the bigger for operating within a reading of the city Transformation explore how existing base landscape in the work of McGonigle McGrath compositional strategies in the work and a as an evolutionary system, where ‘new’ urban or architectural types can be ‘evolved’ Architects. developed drawing technique, investigated constituent elements are not introduced via mutation, hybridisation or grafting of through Project Books both archival and as radical departures of existing situations, these systems and forms in response to Previously, I have established the connection current. but rather as mutations and emergent new demands. In these explorations design to modern art and photography in our work, transformations of existing conditions. Volatile outcomes remain recognisably related to and identified constants that relate to the Project Books offer a new level of research. Programs utilise process and generative their original condition and affect greater use of proportion, and to the relevance of These collections of sketches show the based strategies, to generate formal, resonance via operating at the edge of the landscape, enclosure and form. I have also beginnings of an exploration, and describe spatial & organisational arrangements that Novel and the Known. described how a developing language seeks the mental processes which allow ideas to accommodate programmatic indeterminacy. to articulate the spatial relationships between emerge using frame, proportion, geometry Experiments in Context investigate how form, observed at the scale of landscape, and and overlap to control space, relationships, information embedded within an urban volume, experienced as relationships both to depth and positioning, and which might help interior spaces and again to landscape. explain the compositional control in the work and ultimately the kind of spaces that result. Fraser Muggeridge 38 Claudia Pasquero 39 PhD candidate, School of Design PhD candidate, Faculty of Architecture RMIT University Estonian Academy of Arts

Graphic design meets printmaking PolycephalumV

Graphic design is the practice of planning Ink, colour, form, process, constraints and My thesis investigates design as a where multiple degrees of stability coexist, and communicating ideas and concepts concepts all contribute to the creation and morphogenetic process triggered by hacking into natural as well as artificial with visual forms. This was traditionally the ‘design’ of an image or print, and these the meta-interaction of multiple form of morphogenetic processes, in real time. print-based, but now encapsulates all type of qualities can be used or applied in a creative intelligence, human as well as non-human. media, from physical to visual, on any surface. way. More and more, graphic Our projects engage with the notion of In my practice, I make all types of decisions image-making through printmaking is Technological evolution, in the form of synthetic territory at different levels and that communicate a feeling, an ‘emotion’. becoming an important aspect of my practice synthetic biology, bio-hacking, artificial scales, aiming to develop design models Whether literal or abstract, a message is through DIY print processes, traditional intelligence, nano-technologies, is currently beyond standard conventions of humanly portrayed through a visual image. print-making techniques, or commercial opening scenarios where the city cannot be commensurable sizes and functions. rotary offset lithography. described using traditional categories such Methodologically we operate within Printmaking, as a creative process, is related as natural and artificial, material and digital, assemblages of objects which we have to graphic design, but it is, to borrow Philip Can graphic design be thought of as human and not-human. termed ‘Objects with Universal Relevance’ Zimmerman’s phrase, a process of ‘production printmaking, or can print making be thought (O.U.R.). Each O.U.R. allows novel tactics of not reproduction’. Of all the creative of as graphic design? In my practice we experiment with the interaction to emerge, whilst various models, disciplines, however, printmaking is today application of scientific findings at various supported by collective intelligence and perhaps the most ‘uncool’. scales of design, from the object to the spatial memory, reveal universal intervention urban with the aim to mobilize artificial and strategies. Bottom-up and top-down models biological intelligence in search of a new of planning become obsolete methods in the mode of designing within a complex milieu wake of O.U.R. Megan Patty 40 Sille Pihlak 41 PhD candidate, School of Architecture and Urban Design PhD candidate, Faculty of Architecture RMIT University Estonian Academy of Arts

On Catalogues: Publishing and the new museum Automated Wood - from Design to Construction

The museum as we know it is in a state of outside of the museum? Contemporary This thesis focuses on experimental, digital flux; change can be seen across all areas museology’s response to new publics, and technological innovation research and of traditional museum practice, including participatory art and the politics surrounding implementation in timber construction. exhibition programming, exhibition display, this are well documented in and More specifically values such as material communication strategies and the online internationally, but little scholarship addresses sustainability and energy efficiency in wood environment. This change is underpinned by museum publishing. This research explores composites. Current PRS shows reflections the renewed value contemporary museums publishing as a critical activity that expands on emerging more profound architectural have placed on publics. Museums have long the reach of the museum. qualities of an timber element, which histories of publishing practice, but how might performs in multiple scales - from interior publishing be a significant act for the museum surface to structural to exterior scale. The diversity of one unit performance and higher engagement with construction scene has widened the potential that algorithmic craftsmanship could potentially bring to design and making in architecture.

Still from Human Flow, 2017. Image courtesy Ai Weiwei Studio Image: 5 axis CNC prototype for creating CLT angled joinery and fast assembly Anna Pla Catala 42 Eva Prats 43 PhD candidate, School of Architecture and Urban Design PhD candidate, School of Architecture and Urban Design RMIT University RMIT University

SuperBlock_ProtoBlock “To observe with the client, to draw with the existing”. Three cases of architecture dealing with the As Found

Automated technologies increasingly This research is focussed on rehabilitation inform built form blurring the boundaries in architecture, the discipline of working between data and physics at various sales with the existing. Through the study of three of operation within the urban field. Standard projects, it describes an approach towards the and non-standard building components existing where the conversations between combine with biological growth to produce architect, client and existing building have hybrid systems that deploy a layer of informed the decisions of the architect when intelligence that animates the static grid developing the project. making it dynamic, emergent and smart. Key to this is the potential for more attuned climatic and environmental performance of neighbourhoods within novel mobility models that aim at a different paradigm of urbanity and modes of collective inhabitation. Walter Prenner 44 Matthew Priestman 45 PhD candidate, Faculty of Architecture PhD candidate, School of Architecture and Cities University of Innsbruck University of Westminster

Social Impact Fluid City

My major interest lies on interactions in assume architecture and its realization as an From London, our studio is now in My research will speculate through live public space, the related strategic questions, initial spark for social development. Chongqing, South West , working projects, charts and drawings: The sites of their facilitation, realization and feasibility, on diverse types and sizes of projects and fluid, fruitful interaction between privacy as well as the possible cultural, social and Public space is the framework for the running workshops focussed on urbanisation and shared domain might be compared architectural changes that could result from identity of a city. in China. to Darwin’s idea of a warm pond where them. Thus, studying and work, interlock evolution began. Here, alternatives to the Claiming and occupying spaces with to one social practice, which on the one Environmental, socio-economic and spatial contemporary conventions of tenure, work temporary built interventions leads to hand, has its roots in a vibrant and active problems persist; the phenomenon of city place and social-creative circumstance could interaction and performance that generates, environment and is this vibrancy’s expression is also faced with rapid change from new be explored. As a depiction of cohesion, the enhances and thematizes public space. The as well as embodiment on the other. technologies and forms of occupation. tissues of connected shared domain could be aim is to generate content that reacts to civil Disrupted by top-down policy, bottom-up extended through many scales to inter-weave society and takes account of social aspects Architecture in the classical sense is mostly demand and the raw economics of the disparities of the city. apart from consumption and real estate located in the service sector. After graduation employment, consumerism and real estate, speculation. Motivation, energy and trust one has no own projects, it is advisable to the burgeoning city is an ongoing planned should be put into ideas and projects and be The agency of the architect in promoting gain experience in offices. In contrast, I tried experiment in China and received mainly as implemented in the city beyond fears and positive visions of the otherwise wicked city to initiate projects and processes in public out of control in the West. concerns. is a pressing need: How can we draw and space. Beyond architecture as a service, I explicate the complex and liquid substance of where most of us live? Verena Rauch 46 Ziga Testen 47 PhD candidate, Faculty of Architecture PhD candidate, School of Design University of Innsbruck RMIT University

Architecture of the possible ‘Glaube und Wirklichkeit’ (Belief and Reality). The role of ideology in the making of graphic design history and in contemporary practice

My focus lies on the architecture of the as an architect plays a major role in my way Via a case-study, my research interrogates literature and discourse and investigate possible - processes, methods and strategies of working. The university system is getting the relationship between design discourse(s) the role of these historical narratives on are used to develop and realise projects and more and more academic, as a reaction to and design practice. Building upon the the formation of contemporary practice. In designs based on a collective consciousness. that, I work and teach with the method of historiography of German/Swiss designer other words I propose that the construction learning by doing. and typographer Jan Tschichold, I aim to of historical narratives simultaneously At the interface of contemporary art, culture demonstrate how the making of design constructs particular versions of the world and experimental architecture, pedagogical The challenges that emerge in all phases are discourse and in particular that of design and the positions of subjects within them, and as much part of the project as performative strategies, but mainly individual learning history is embedded in, and reflects the social these constructions in turn limit or enable processes are analysed as well as documented and creative elements. From the first draft to context of the subject or in this particular what can be said and done in practice. This and discussed based on specific projects. the final realization, I regard all architectural case the historiographers. This research is not progress review presentation will focus on the work as communally designed project. concerned with finding new historiographical currently on-going discourse analysis of the As a contribution to the common architecture information on Jan Tschichold. Rather, it Tschichold corpus. education, which is strongly focused on digital How can this make a change? media and the training of creative service aims to critically reflect upon the existing providers, I see the great potential in teaching projects on 1:1 scale and the related processes and methods as added value. “Design build” in architecture education and in my practice Siim Tuksam 48 Gill Wildman 49 PhD candidate, Faculty of Architecture PhD candidate, School of Design Estonian Academy of Arts RMIT University

Organised Chaos – ornament and understanding in the age of automation The voice of the Trickster. Articulating an intangible practice through different voices to discover the one that works

The aim of ornaments in the classic sense I am looking into ways of using algorithmic Through writing, maps and prototypes I am As I build on a new understanding of and was to organise the elements of the building, design, automated fabrication and standard finding my voice and establishing a story of deeper appreciation of the form of visual to make them clearly readable and draw industrial materials to create ornamental the practice and my part in it. As my PhD mapping I make, I am delighted with the attention to them. Thus, the ornament is designs that combine the fabrication progresses, this becomes clearer, and then role it plays as a language authentic to my concerned with understanding and meaning. and structural restrictions with formal not so clear. Through exploration of Trickster practice. I explore the role it plays in the With interpreting the machinic world for the expression, while working at the intersection tactics, workshop books, forensic analysis of practice itself and the communication of my human mind. Machine thinking expands our of modularity and variation to simplify the live workshop work, deep visual mapping and practice with myself, with other designers, opportunities, however, we must be able to assembly process or even automate some an exploration of themes that are emerging, I and finally with clients. Now to try out what interpret it back into human thinking and parts of it. am uncovering my strategic design practice. this form of communication means to others. create a coherent world understandable to us. By looking at others who have written about Working mainly with industrial prefabrication, this I am understanding the differences that exist in what is called strategic design, and a clearer differentiation between what I do and what they do is taking place. Maps November 2018 Calle Pallars

Diagonal Subway

Alma Hotel Media-TIC Bogatell Subway Subway Llacuna El Menjador at BAU Passeig Sala Beckett de Gràcia Subway Melia Sky Hotel

Hotel Melia Sky, Carrer de Pere IV, 272 El Pescadors Poblenou

Subway Examinations Calle Pallars 85, 6-1 El Poblenou & BAU Design College of Barcelona, Carrer de Pujades 118

Friday Opening Event RMIT Europe, Media TIC, Carrer de Roc Boronat 117

Friday Examiners’ Dinner El Pescadors, Plaça de Prim 1

Saturday & Sunday Reviews BAU Design College of Barcelona, Carrer de Pujades 118

Saturday Dinner Alma Hotel, Carrer de Mallorca, 271

Sunday Plenary and Closing Drinks El Menjador, Sala Beckett, Carrer de Pere IV 228 - 232 in collaboration with