type or prototype...

Last Friday we looked at the work of Blu Homes, particularly how they use Digital Project in their practice.  Super interesting products/buildings that might be described as halfway between a single-wide and custom home.  I'm wondering if they might also be described as somewhere on the continuum between typological and prototypical.  These also seem like terms of art with a bit more purchase than 'ideal' for the work in studio.  I draw the distinction from Raphael Moneo's essay "On Typology".

TYPOLOGICAL
"The first products of this activity, which we in retrospect have called architecture, were no different from instruments or tools: building a primitive hut required solving problems of form and design similar in nature to those involved in weaving a basket, that is in making a useful object.  Thus like a basket... the architectural object could not only be repeated, but also was meant to be repeated."

PROTOTYPICAL
"Now the word type-in its primary and original sense of permitting the exact reproduction of a model-was transformed from an abstraction to a reality in architecture, by virtue of industry; type had become prototype."


"The singularity of the architectural object which in the nineteenth century had permitted adaptability to site and flexibility for use within the framework of a structure was violently denied by the new [modernist] architecture, committed to architecture as mass production."




It's tempting to set up the two dialectically and declare our current digital moment a synthesis.

EDIT: When I say: "It's tempting to..", I mean: "I'm suspicious of the impulse to..."

X-fold

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux

Ideal Cooper's House (cube, cylinder)

Ideal River Keeper's House (cylinder)

Ideal Woodcutter's House (Pyramid)

Ideal Shepard's House (Sphere)

meet 10/23

My proposed agenda for our meeting this evening:

7:00-7:20

Stephanie and Brian report findings from their trip to Detroit.  What do people want that is achievable within the scope of our project?  What do people not want that we can explicitly avoid doing?  What do they want/not want that we have no ability to address?  Our best bet here is direct response to explicit requests.  It's important to me that we're not presuming to reflect our (super limited) knowledge of people's culture or identity back to them.  That's not our role.

7:20-7:40

Kevin and Lauren report on investigations with the sponsored LEDs.   Should we use them? what do they enable?  What do they not allow for?  has john gotten back to us on how many we'd get to have?

7:40-8:00

Ben presents a conduit mock up of a potential sub-assembly.  Specific tectonic options.  Potential for a more limited menu of connections/sizes (economy).  

8:00-8:20

Keenan has a digital model of the site with proposed installation.  discussion at the level of the site.  How might above mock up aggregate/proliferate/sequence.  Come to a resolution on discussion of dispersed vs. singular formal gesture, and precise location on site.  

8:20-8:40

Presentation.  what content?  what order? who is responsible for what slides?  who says what?  what physical mock up do we want to have on hand?

8:40-9:00

Is there another meeting before Tue?  when? what is everyone off to work on next.

Potentially break into smaller groups to tackle deliverables for Tuesday.

it moves...

Branden showed me this firm's work.

cube rotate:
http://www.olsonkundigarchitects.com/Projects/101/Chicken-Point-Cabin#

cube slide:
http://www.olsonkundigarchitects.com/Projects/38/Delta-Shelter

click through the images and watch the videos for the full effect.

ideal midreview

Below are some select images from mid review pin up last Friday.  As has been the case in the past, my diagramming fell a bit flat.  Also I won't be attempting Ideal anything moving forward.  Instead, I am thinking of these as simply abstract houses.  I'm comfortable in a world that is entirely made up of contingent relationships.  This seems to be precisely what parametrics should be good at responding to, and differently in each case, always.  We have some random criteria: shape, slope, environment, etc., and I don't think there is any real value in attempting to manifest something "ideal," in terms of Values at any rate, in response to these.  What is "ideal" is as contingent as these more literal variables.  Ideal for what, and who? Not a useful concept for me, as idealism implies some (imaginary) preconcieved outcome.  I never was a Platonist.  There's no diamond in my mind, you know?  Just the picture of one I saw on TV once, or the one in an inherited engagement ring, or a Tom Waits lyric I remember.

The other option would be to stake out a polemic regarding what a house should be; a far larger undertaking than the truncated scope of this studio can really take on.

agenda

As the current agendaist I proposed the following for our next meeting. I've tried to get as specific as possible and frame things in a way that will enable us to quickly pin down and move past, the remaining big picture issues.



7-730:
Review clustered Brainstorm.  What can we jettison? Can we streamline 1)what we want our system to do (scope/capability). 2)What specific technical issues we will have to resolve to accomplish this (feasibility) and 3) what underlying concerns, that are not easily or technically 'solvable', do we want to keep in the background of our work (context).  The goal here is to be specific and concise.

730-830
Define scope of the project moving forward.  This is an opportunity to expand on what we need to do/learn/test/research to achieve 1 and 2 from above.  We might also take the advice that "this project seems the most developed and successfully integrated use of technologies.  Work on the aesthetics." I think there should be a gut check here of just what we are capable of accomplishing (to a level of finish acceptable to us all) with the time remaining in the semester.

830-9
Define scope of work/presentation for this coming tuesday.  what are the most pressing immediate issues to resolve?  Will we use the sponsored LEDs?  What is the status of a trip back to Hamtramck?  When is the next meeting, and what are the expected deliverables for the start of that meeting for each group member?