Corporate Domain
Image: Armin Linke
Corporate Domain
Diploma Unit 8 will continue its line of research into the role of the corporation as an integral and vital element in the development of the contemporary territorial condition with which architecture must now contend.
The unit’s core investigation within the Corporate Domain will utilise reductive elements in architecture as a means to understand the prevalent yet seemingly contradictory tendency for the development of an excessively individualised architecture for an ever genericized understanding of the corporation and the city.
Corporate Complexes
As the basis for researching and further developing their understanding of the evolving roles of contemporary corporations in relation to the urban contexts with which they intervene and structure, students will be required to develop speculative proposals for a large-scale corporate complex. In keeping with the unit’s adoption of form as derived from organisational logic, the design of the contemporary corporate complex must consider both the dynamic nature of economies in the city, and much more importantly, must be able to address underlying static constructions that allow for the perceptible change of the built environment. Fundamental to the methodology taken by the unit, we will seek to understand the process of the architectural ‘object,’ as adopted from a computational definition. Rather than commence proposals on any given size-dependent scale, be it small-to-large or a more non-linear sequence, such an object-oriented approach necessitates a simultaneous and non-scalar implementation of a priori architectural attributes.
Compositional Territory
The unit will collectively study seminal works in mid-twentieth century Europe and the US, as well as current trends and observations contemporary evolutions are producing. Though current trends in expansion and global territorialisation are immediately understandable, projects must demand a deeper understanding of the layered organisations that must be developed in order for such intricate frameworks to exist, and the varied repercussions they incur on architecture. In order to demonstrate their thesis, students will elect their own site and corporation for the development of their yearlong project. The resultant proposals will demonstrate the success and failures of their established architectural elements as tested for a large scale corporate complex within a stated context.
The value of projects will be based on both the credibility such speculations can produce, and much more importantly, on the fractional but precise elucidation of the role of the contemporary corporation within the city.
Term 1 Overview
Image: (L) Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, Phyllis Lambert (R) Inland Steel Building
Term 1
The unit’s first term will be organised within 2 major halves. The first half will focus on introducing students to common and significant topics that will influence the course of work for all student projects throughout the year.
Included within this first half is a series of seminars, covering the theoretical and historical basis of the corporation and architecture. From historic works of urban architecture from such cities as Chicago and New York City, the seminar will progress to the migration and evolution of such architectures into logistics-centred exurbias, and finally recent examples and writings on contemporary architecture/corporate strategies. This seminar will conclude with a series of discussions and writings that will set the tone for students to introduce their own architectural agendas within the yearlong brief.
Concurrently, the tutor will lead a series of workshops that investigate structural and fabrication strategies used in large scale buildings and infrastructures. Focusing on examples such as structural frameworks and component detailing, these workshops will make use of both physical models in conjunction with digital analysis using Finite Element Analysis. The final seminar will focus on the nature of contemporary computational frameworks and their relevance to the architectural design process. Using Object-Oriented paradigms as a model, this seminar will use such notational standards as UML to introduce students in documenting complex object-system relationships. We will introduce students to particular members from the Technical Studies department as well with staff from other related parts of the school. By the end of the term, logistic, conceptual, intellectual, and intermediary design solutions shall be fully worked out, and scrutinised for the end of term jury. By this stage, students should be well within control to continue detailing their physical structures and collecting/documenting corollary information to support their architectural claims throughout the break and during Term 2.
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The aims for this term is that students set up a precise framework of architectural elements that define their architectural propositions, clarify the type and characteristics of their chosen corporate client, and finally clarify the grammar of elements within their proposals that address a range of operative scales of spaces. Such grammar would need to addresses magnitudes of design that address the contextual situation of the project to the design of interior spaces, as well as constrain levels of organisational domains from the prescribe to the indeterminate plan. The term will conclude with a jury in which students will propose their architectural ambitions alongside their working version of their design ‘manual’ of elements and operation for a corporate complex.
As a project site assessment is required by the beginning of the second term, students will be encouraged to make any trips during the Winter Break if they have yet to visit their sites.
The schedule provided to outline the structure for Terms 1,2, and 3 should be taken as a general reference only, as dates for events and the nature of the curriculum may be modified to best suit the incoming body of students and the aspects of their developing projects throughout the year.