Bachelor of Architectural Design- Design Studios 2022 Sem 1

MALEBOLGE In 1998, Ben Olmstead concocted a maledictive programming language known as Malebolge, so named for Dante’s eighth circle of hell. Impenetrable in its complexity, it would be over two years until the first program appeared. That program would output the words “hello, world.” It was not even written by a person - it was developed by a genetic algorithm.

Malebolge, the programming language, exposes something inherent about the devious, impish nature of computation. There is a disconnect between what humans understand to be logic and rationality, and what logic and rationality express themselves as in the realm of computation. Computers are not rational, at least not in a way comprehensible to a human being.

The Malebolge language, and this studio, drawing their names from the Divine Comedy are not mere accidents.

The Divine Comedy comprises a disposition. As much as the Malebolgian language lays bare computation, so too does the Comedia lay bare Florentine society.

The studio draws from these two a single thing: torment.

Not of the students, of course, but of your technique.

If this axiom of rationality is struck, a realm of generative practice that needn’t justify its sophistication emerges. Libraries of digital techniques emerge, ones from outside the discipline begin to intrude.

Works from MOS, LADG, and First Office Architects typify this. Those who utilise simple operations of hard body physics, soft body physics, and a variety of other chance-based techniques that are already present in the library of digital techniques that exist inside and exterior to the architectural discipline.

This studio is concerned with composition, so the program and typology of your built outcome are deprioritised.

Compositions that favour play and happenstance are to be celebrated in this studio.

We hope this doesn't seem too far out or too extra disciplinary for most of you. We promise that the end game is a micro campus of very architectural ideas. Delivering a specific artefact of architecture. It will be an exploration of practice at either end of the discipline, from the highly generative, to the top-down. We both enjoy both these positions, and situate ourselves between them. In doing so, this studio may form a gentle critique of both ways of working.

You will learn to situate yourself within a realm of digital practice in which you may feel like an interdictor. You will learn to critique your work as entries in a cultural milieu.

Students will be taught Houdini and Z-Brush - no prior knowledge is required, just a willingness to explore and experiment with these tools. Students will be provided with in class tutorials, template files and scripts to work with during the semester.

MALEBOLGE WILL TAKE PLACE ON Mondays and Thursdays 6pm-9pM

MALEBOLGE WILL BE LED BY Andre Bonnice | andre.bonnice@rmit.edu.au Bryn Murrell | bryn.murrell@rmit.edu.au

"BE NONE OF YOU OUTRAGEOUS: ERE YOUR TIME Dare seize me, come forth from amongst you one, Who having heard my words, decide he then If he shall tear these limbs."