More about Studio 13

Andrei Martin, Andrew Yau, Anat Stern

Marking a new research direction for our unit, this year we have undertaken to examine the role of parametricism as a mature design movement in the production of specifically qualitative architectural effects. Coupled with this exploration we questioned the way in which these effects shape the way we understand, inhabit and relate with buildings and the city, and perhaps more importantly, how our sense of agency is in turn shaped through their experiential appropriation. In other words we looked at how effects produce affect.

Working with spatial effects has become increasingly possible with the continual evolution of our ability to simulate rather than represent phenomena of space, material, light and sound. A ray- traced image demonstrating the actual radiosity and colour bleed of light in fact becomes more of a simulation than a representation. It is now also possible to ray- trace the actual sound of a space and to create an exact, predictive simulation of the effect within the space. The simulation surpasses both the virtual and the representation and becomes a more projective activity that attempts to predict aspects of the behavior of a system by creating approximate (mathematical) models of it. Implemented within a parametric design methodology these models can prolifically test a multiple iterative hypotheses and attempt to resolve spaces from a soft, qualitative perspective, from a point of view of sensed experience.

Our site for testing this approach was Seoul which allowed us to look at a wide array of programmes, to negotiate the complexities of Korean culture and politics and to delve into worlds of extreme interiority, mood and atmosphere.