Design Research: Experimentation and Innovation (v.14)

The DRL is a 16-month post-professional design programme leading to a masters of Architecture and Urbanism (MArch) degree. The DRL investigates digital and analogue forms of computation in the pursuit of systemic design applications that are scenario- and time-based. Considering controls systems as open acts of design experimentation, the Design Research Lab examines production processes as active agents in the development of Proto-Design systems.

Course Structure

Four terms of study are divided into two phases. Phase I, a three-term academic year beginning each autumn, introduces design techniques and topics through a combination of team-based studio, workshop and seminar courses. In Phase II, beginning the following autumn, teams carry forward their Phase I work in the form of comprehensive thesis design projects. At the end of January these projects are presented to a panel of distinguished visiting critics, after which each team documents their 16 months of design research work in a hardbound book.

Phase I Design Research Agenda: Proto-Design (v.3)

DRL will continue to pursue its design research agenda investigating digital and analogue forms of computation in the pursuit of systemic design applications that are scenario- and time-based. Proto- Design considers controls systems as open acts of design experimentation, examining production processes as active agents in the development of architecture.

Behavioural, parametric and generative methodologies of computational design are coupled with physical computing and analogue experiments to create dynamic and reflexive feedback processes. New forms of spatial organisation are explored that are not type- or site-dependent but instead evolve as ecologies and environments seeking adaptive and hyper-specific features. This performancedriven approach seeks to develop novel design proposals concerned with the everyday. The iterative methodologies of the design studio focus on the investigations of spatial, structural and material organisation, engaging in contemporary discourses on computation and materialisation in the disciplines of architecture and urbanism.

Phase II Design Research Agenda: Proto-Design (v.2)

Proto-Design systems developed in Phase I will be tested in site-specific scenarios. Theodore Spyropoulos’ studio, Digital Materialism, investigates behaviour as the means to explore self-regulating and deployable soft systems within the field of scientific enquiry. Proto-Campus, led by Patrik Schumacher with Mirco Becker, focuses on the design of parametric prototypes that intelligently vary general topological schemata across a wide range of parametrically specifiable site-conditions as a campus. Alisa Andrasek’s studio, Protocols, looks at infrastructure’s ecological implants within the context of heterogeneous networks. Robert Stuart- Smith’s studio explores how non-linear design processes may be instrumentalised to generate a temporal architecture with a designed life-cycle.

Phase I Design Studio: Proto-Architectures

Five design studios will continue to challenge the notion of the design project driven exclusively by contextual and programmatic parameters. Each studio will introduce a specific arena of design concepts, tools and intended outcomes, ranging from prototypes of urbanism, architecture and detail systems. This body of initial design research work will be carried forward to Phase II in 2011/12, and applied to a series of specific briefs and sites for each studio.

Phase I Design Workshops: Material Behaviour

Term 1
Term 1begins with two sets of three design workshop modules, emphasising computational and material prototyping as both an analytical methodology and the prime mode of design production and representation. Each five-week module focuses on a specific set of methods and intended design output, introducing Phase I students to a broad range of concepts and techniques that can be taken forward to further workshops and the year-long Phase I and Phase II studio projects.

Phase II Design Workshop: Adaptive Systems and Structures

Term 1
This five-week workshop at the midpoint of Phase II addresses a detailed part of the spatial, structural, material and environmental systems of each team’s thesis project, with an emphasis on modelling techniques which act as feedback for the testing and development of the larger-scale proposals. A presentation in November will serve as a major interim review.

Phase II Design Studio: Urban Protocols

Term 1
Design teams in five studios will carry forward their Phase I work on generative design systems, structures and prototypes in developing thorough Phase II design proposals. The aim is to develop adaptive models through proto-versioning that affords generative, transformative and parametric controlled systems that can be deployed on multiple sites. Systems will be developed to construct context-specificity, developing models of spatial practice that are hyperspecific rather than generic. The ambition is to design open systems that have the capacity to rethink conventions of practice through the design and fabrication of architectural prototypes and processes. Contemporary fabrication protocols will be explored to create correlations of nonstandard elemental distributions through an active engagement with digital and material interaction.

Phase I Core Seminars: Design as Research I – Open Source

Term 1
Pursuing design as a form of research raises a series of questions that this course will examine in relation to larger technological, economic and cultural contexts. The seminar will explore ways of associating design with forms of research, as well as the implications of this for architectural and design practice. Weekly sessions will include presentations related to course readings.

Phase I Core Seminars: Embodied Patterns

Term 1
This seminar will investigate key ideas from the history of computation and contemporary sciences and their reverberations in the domain of architecture and design. It will probe concepts such as generative design, algorithmic information theory and key ideas from quantum physics, biology and systems theory as a knowledge resource and means of production. A productive dialogue will be instigated with experts from other fields, including mathematics, computer science, quantum physics and engineering, under the larger collaborative platform of Computational Salon.

Synthesis: Project Submission, Writing & Research Documentation

Terms 1 & 2
These weekly sessions will review the basics of writing and research related to DRL course submissions. Presentations will cover resources in London, the preparation of thesis abstracts, writing styles and issues related to essays, papers and project booklets. Tutorials will discuss ongoing research topics and seminar and studio presentations.

Behaviour: Examining the Proto-Systemic

Term 2
This core seminar will articulate Proto- Design as a behaviour-based agenda that engages experimental forms of material and computational practice. Examining cybernetic and systemic thinking through seminal forms of prototyping and experimentation, the seminar will look at the thought experiments that have manifested since the early 1950s as maverick machines, architectures and ideologies. Team-based presentations will examine these methods and outputs as case studies for studio experimentation.

Design as Research II: Computational Space

Term 2
This seminar is an overview of computational approaches to architectural design, strategies and processes. Weekly readings on software technologies and design systems will relate computational work in art, music, new media, science and other sources to contemporary architectural discourses around parametric design. Teams will make weekly presentations related to the readings and an analysis of selected projects.

Digital Tools: Maya, Rhino, 3D Studio, Catia, Processing, Arduino & Macromedia – Software & Scripting

Terms 1 & 2
These optional workshops provide an introduction to the digital tools and systems used in the DRL, introducing the basic skills needed to build and control parametric models and interactive presentations. Sessions will build up to advanced scripting, programming and dynamic modelling techniques.

All taught graduate degrees at the AA are validated by the Open University.

DRL Programme Tutors

Alisa Andrasek is an experimental practitioner of architecture and computation in design and director of Biothing. She studied at the University of Zagreb and Columbia University and has taught at Columbia, Pratt, UPenn, RMIT Melbourne and RPI.

Robert Stuart-Smith is a Founding Design Director of Kokkugia, and former graduate of the AADRL. He has worked in the offices of Lab Architecture Studio and Sir Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners, prior to cofounding Kokkugia. He has previously taught at RMIT University (Australia), the University of East London, and First Year Studio at the AA. He also leads Kokkugia’s consultation to Cecil Balmond on algorithmic design research. Kokkugia is currently working on projects in the UK, USA and Mexico.

Shajay Bhooshan currently works as Lead Researcher in the Computation and Design (co|de) group at Zaha Hadid Architects. He completed his Masters Degree at the AA in 2006. He has taught and presented work at various events and institutions including AU 2010 Las Vegas and Beyond Media Florence 2009. Previously he worked at HOK Sport Architecture on projects such as 02 Arena within the Millennium Dome and the Oval cricket stadium. He recently completed his scholarship-in-residence with Autodesk Idea Studio in San Francisco.

Mollie Claypool is a designer, writer and editor with experience working with NY-based and international architectural practices as well as major arts, architecture and design publishing houses. She studied architecture at Pratt Institute and received her Masters with Distinction from the AA in 2009.

Ryan Dillon is currently working for EGG Office based in Los Angeles. He is a tutor in the History and Theory Studies department at the AA and has previously taught at the University of Brighton. He is a graduate of the AA and Syracuse University School of Architecture. He has previously worked at Moshe Safdie and Associates.

Jose Sanchez is an architect/ programmer based in London. In 2009 he joined Biothing expanding the research of generative design/complexity. He is also co-founder of Probotics, a architecture/robotics practice in London.

Director

Theodore Spyropoulos is director of the experimental architecture and design practice Minimaforms. He has been a visiting Research Fellow at MIT and co-founded the New Media Research Initiative at the AA. He has taught in the graduate school of the University of Pennsylvania and the Royal College of Art, Innovation Design Engineering Department and previously worked as a project architect for the offices of Peter Eisenman and Zaha Hadid Architects.

Founder

Patrik Schumacher is partner at Zaha Hadid Architects. He studied philosophy and architecture in Bonn, Stuttgart and London and received his doctorate at the Institute for Cultural Science at Klagenfurt University. He is a visiting professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and university professor at Innsbruck University.