Stepping Tower

In Collaboration With Ana Antoni

Instructor: Maxi Spina

The first studio of the third year core studio sequence locates the idea of architecture at the intersection of various systems of information: from technical to cultural, from visual to tactile. Students consider the uses of precedent and antecedent in their work, while the main investigation examines the particular of the building envelope and its material and geometrical determinations on site ana a Tall Building form, and the capacity top use transformation as a methodological tool to guide a rigorous approach to decision making. By studying the specificities of the Tall Building envelope students will be exposed to the tight dependency existing between serial determinations-of both geometric and material order-of the outermost surface, and the spaces it encloses, its surroundings and its iconographic performance in today’s metropolis. Throughout the semester we will thus attempt to situate processes of expression alongside the magnitude that control the economies of towers in order to articulate design proposals, that while fulfilling the different performative criteria of the contemporary High-rise, they contest its presumed identity. Students will hence be expected to put forward a critical position-one conceptual and the abstract to the physical realities of building, the work of the studio aims to productively embrace novelties and differences in the production of vertical organizations.