Dip Unit 24 Yr 4: Alan Pottinger, Charlie Coates, Dominque Laurence, Gayle Chan, Hannes Mayer, Huali Zhang, Ian Law, Justin Goodyear, Richard Roberts, Kwan Pik (Sonia) Chiu. Yr 5: Chris Jones, Poyuan Huang, Takehiko Iseki, Tuomas Pirinen, ViJay Patel, Wei-Haw Wang. .Phenomenal Noumena: extreme
PHENOuMENA Noumena exist in themselves as independent from experience in contrast to phenomena which exist within the experienced world, as 'objects' perceived by the senses. Many contemporary design techniques continually decontextualise the experience of architecture and replace the experiencing subject with the notation of the statistical, the representational or the programmatic subject. In parallel, the semi-autonomous emergence of architecture from systemic and algorithmic methods places the practice of architecture closer to that of the pseudo-noumenal. The unit aims to reintroduce qualitative experience to the otherwise typically quantitative practice of architecture. Rather than work towards the understanding of a neo-cognitive experience, the charge is to work by interlacing the qualitative with the quantitative. Working within instrumental simulations it is possible to provide qualitative feedback of phenomenal effects for the quantitative manipulation of systemic or material conditions which create the effects. In altering the porosity of a wall through which light passes, for example, one increases the potential sensation of a brightening/darkening space. The design research is situated between the noumenal and the phenomenal, between the systemic algorithm and the sensed, in what we will call the phenoumenal. Focusing on the phenbionics of the sensed, natural and mechanical phenomenon, students avoid complacent effects and instead seek out extremes. The unit continues to design effectual and experiential phenomena within pseudonoumenal structures.
Steve Hardy, Jonas Lundberg with Ken Faulkner
Top to bottom: Tuomas Pirinen, Chainsaw Animation; Huali Zhang, Shark Research Centre, Florida; Vijay Patel, Mangrove Growth Mesh, Cuba; Wei-Haw Wang, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Greece.