Design Studio (Three) Three ARCHIVE
YEAR THREE – DS3.3
Tutors: Constance Lau and Stephen Harty
Constance Lau is an architect and teaches undergraduate to doctorate level at Westminster and the National University of Singapore (NUS). Research interests are explored through the techniques of montage and notions of dialectical allegory. Narrative as an ongoing dialogue in architectural design is further articulated through publications, especially projects in the book Dialogical Designs (2016).
Stephen Harty is a practicing architect and director of Harty and Harty, an agency that specialises in arts sector projects including galleries and artist studios. He studied at The Mackintosh School Architecture, Glasgow School of Art, The Bartlett and the AA.
Instagram: @uow_ds3.3 and @ds3.3_wip
Dialogical Cities: Adaptive Multi-Use
The contributions of the creative user to design discussions and the idea of a ‘questioning and incomplete’ approach is fundamental to the process- driven methodology of this studio. The idea of ‘open work’ (Umberto Eco, 1989) further enables personal interpretations and dialogues to establish the design proposals. Studio teaching encourages the student to assume authorship, and shape the reading and outcome of the design brief.
This year, the projects involved urban ideas of rebuilding, renewal, adaptability and flexibility concerning the position of public institutions and the ability to adapt as needs change. Dialogical Cities adopt the technique of historiography to create new relationships between site, programme and individual research. These design conversations, where new readings and meanings are constantly shifting, are formed through individual narratives and experiences. Hence design practices are developed as sustainable processes that must first acknowledge and learn to pursue latent opportunities within the existing milieu.
Concierge Dwellings, Rethinking Habitation and Use
The Concierge Dwellings are accomplished through engaging with latent transitionary and intermediary conditions, especially in the ‘counter-spaces’ that occur in the voids and/or peripheries of the existing Museum of Home, Shoreditch. The proposals are part-parasite/part- catalyst and serve to alter the function and meaning of the host institution. This changes the existing meaning and manners in which the Museum is perceived and used through creating, destroying and/or appropriating. These studies that run between the realms of private and public spaces respond to shifting site, cultural and social conditions.
The Adaptive Multi-Use Museum of People and Places
Through interventions that alter existing understandings of ‘museum’, the new narratives hosted by the Concierge Dwellings now extend to the Museum of People and Places. Importantly, arguments for adaptive multi-use take on board the fact that many public buildings designed for limited programmes and purposes were unable to adapt during the pandemic. Hence the proposed designs need to accommodate vastly different programmes that acknowledge the retroactive past, site-specific present and speculative future. As such, notions of dialogue and user-centric multiple interpretations that allude to ideas of adaptive multi-use over a sustained period are used to formulate architectural proposals capable of adjusting to the needs of future cities.
Archive of DS3.3’s work from previous years:
