CEPT Studio 8_Fall 2017

A PLACE OF LEARNING IN THE CITY NOTES ON THE STUDIO PROCESS

DESIGN STUDIO 8 (4TH YEAR) SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, CEPT UNIVERSITY, AHMEDABAD (INDIA) AUGUST - NOVEMBER, 2017 INSTRUCTORS: SHUBHRA RAJE HARSH DESAI

Student: Rushabh Sachdev

[The Response] ...we choose to link authorship and the creative process directly to the engagement with the body; to the sense of nearness and intimacy. Here, both passionate inquiry and play are possible, and newness of form as a primary and autonomous goal is relinquished.

It is, however, impossible to play without rules, and we see the task of the architectural studio is to establish conditions where play can begin, and where the rules of engagement are analogous to practice, simulating the nature and rigor of the process of design development. Allowing the student to develop his or her ability to invent through architectural form and ideas by understanding precedent, and then learning to find the opportunities within a given project to remake the conventional.

As much as play needs the knowledge of rules, it needs closure. A period of detachment, before the next play unfolds. In the studio, the work within each module becomes part of the existing condition for the next module, providing the student with the opportunity to extend relevant critique to her own creations, as well as greater insights into it by reengaging with its specificities. It situates the product of each module within a larger process, while directing awareness to the student’s own self by making her experience the workings and methods of her practice. .

Shubhra Raje | Harsh Desai Nov 2017. Ahmedabad

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Given that the contemporary world deems what is and isn’t architecture with the ability to identify individual authorship, there is tremendous pressure on the architect, and the architecture student, towards the pursuit of newness. It must be identifiable, and easily recognized on sight. While we do not deny authorship, we are suspcious of it contributing to an unnecessary anxiety which may stifle authentic innovation. This pursuit of perceived novelty of form and image is applicable equally to an individual seeking recognizability in most contemporary conditions. The motivation to the creation of the previously unseen is valid, but it is when this pursuit is predicated on formal identification, isolated from culture, history and ecology, that the problem of the burden of authorship arises...

Lecture-Seminar Mappings: On maps of places, perspectives and imagination Shubhra Raje

The Process

Module I Review Site Constructions Reviewed Surya Kakani Smit Vyas

Lecture-Seminar Changing Educational Landscapes in the Asian context Darshan Mutha, AdityaEDU, Bangalore

Mid Semester The Connectors reviewed within (Module I) Riyaz Tayyibji Kiran Keswani Smit Vyas Uday Andhare

Week 1-2 Module I Constructing the Site 1:500

Week 3-6 Module II The Connectors 1:500 | 1:200 | 1:50/ 1:20 | Video | Character

We Trans

The context plan for the site in City X is suggestive in its morphology, infrastructure and types of use. The students will be tasked to construct visual descriptions of their context by assembling specificities from cities/ urban environments that are evoked through the geographical and morphological conditions given.

The module will work with both, physical connectors as well as programmatic ones.

The students will be tasked to design a pedestrian connector across the railway line, as a widening to the existing vehicular overpass (to the south of the site) and as a means to provide a pedestrian pathway from the bus stop to the street level. This physical connector provides an opportunity to extend public spaces into the site, as well as identify programmatic elements that can become thresholds.

Readings w Discussions [with a focus contextualiz finding relev the texts wit studio proce work done s

This construction will serve as their context for the rest of the studio.

I. Introductions Chinese Whispers II. Meeting the City Collectively “Yes, and...”

III. Gathering Mining memories & imaginings IV. Architecture Assembled Exquisite Corpses: Body, Building, City V. Introducing Agency Constructing Site Maps, Building Narratives

This module will introduce students to the possibilities of vertical circulation as places of socialization.

I. A bridge as a moment unfolding in time Montage of 10s found footages spliced into a 1min video that explores the character of a vertical pedestrian connector within each student’s site context.

II. The architecture of the connector Ideation in the spirit of fabrication, across scales III. Fabrication Drawings of the Site Context Scaled drawings of each student’s context constructs, in order to make scaled models for bridge/ pedestrian connector investigations

Review s (Module II) the context

Seminar Joint session of student led studio presentations with BUD (CEPT) Studio “The Informal Marketplace” Faculty: Kiran Keswani

1. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga.

Chapter XII: The Play Element in Contemporary Culture.

2. The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau. General Introduction.

3. Opportunistic Architecture: Lewis. Tsurumaki. Lewis by Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki and David Lewis. Chapters: Catalyzing Constraints, and Paradoxical Pleasures.

4. Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments by David Gissen. Epilogue.

Presentation Presentation of Studio work as an exhibition Sudipto Ghosh Riyaz Tayyibji Smit Vyas Kiran Keswani

eek 7 sition

Week 7-14 Module III Inhabitation & Architectural Environments 1:500 | 1:200 | 1:00 | 1:50 | 1:20 | Character

w s: s zing, and vance of th the ess and so far]

The students will be tasked to inhabit the ruined-before-its-time concrete skeleton programmatically, and formally. As the requirements exceed the area offered by the structure, new construction will be required as an extension to the existing structure. The site strategy will be the result of this module, followed by the detailed resolution of places of learning, of making, of play, of meeting and of performance in vertical urban environments.

Program Investigation & Organization 1. Initial programmatic strategies via thermocol blocks within the acrylic model (1:200) giving way to architectural elements determining the sense of enclosures.

2. Preliminary blocks are mainly for students to strategize the nature of extensions each will need in addition to the existing structure.

Design Development Charettes (5 in-Studio Sessions) 1. Unit of Learning - Architectural Explorations (1:50) 2. Exploring Extensions to the Dom-Ino Vertically (1:50) 3. How the Building Meets the Ground (1:500/ 1:200) 4. How the Building Meets the Sky (1:200) 5. Explore the Promenade Architecturale. (Only those parts that participate in generating the promenade to be made, of an opaque material. The rest of the building elements to be made in acrylic.)

Synthesis 1. Consolidating the Charette Work 2. Finalizing “typical” floor and vertical conditions 3. Form Studies as an expression of the character of the project

The Studio Context

The City Post-colonial urbanity, a consequence of incremental and ad-hoc growth.

Located within the Northern Tropic (23 deg N), +/- 10 deg.

The Site 2.58 acres. 225’ wide (east-west) x 500’ long (north-south).

Located within the city, straddling the commercial and residential districts.

Anodyne urban conditions.

An existing structure is present on the site, part of a speculative commercial development that was mysteriously abandoned mid-way. The rendering on a sole billboard on site suggests the structure is part of a two eight-storey block office development.

The Structure Concrete framework; a partially constructed office-building version of the Maison Dom-Ino structure.

No staircases, elevators or toilet blocks seem to have been constructed yet.

250’ long by 50’ wide; 12,500 sft floor plate.

The Program An urban school, grades 1 through 12.

800-900 students.

Approx. 70,000 sft / (6,600 sqm) Since the city administration has subsidized the land for the school, a campus with joint use of the facilities is expected.

To encourage a civic engagement, the city has offered use of adjacent open land (east of the site, across the railway tracks) for sports and athletic activities, should the school require it. Associated structures, such as athletic stands, storage and locker rooms, can be built on this land. The city has also pledged support to build a pedestrian connector across the tracks, ensuring a safe crossing for students and also addressing the current lack of a pedestrian pathway to the street level from the elevated bus-stop.

The [sub]challenge Given our site, space is a resource. The challenge is to intensify and expand the impact of a reduced set of operations, asking less to be more through the interweaving of functional engagements and material conditions.

MODULE 1 Constructing the Site 1:500 The context plan for the site in City X is suggestive in its morphology, infrastructure and types of use.

The students will be tasked to construct visual descriptions of their context by assembling specificities from cities/ urban environments that are evoked through the geographical and morphological conditions given. This construction will serve as their context for the rest of the studio.

I. Introductions Chinese Whispers II. Meeting the City Collectively “Yes, and...”

III. Gathering Mining memories & imaginings IV. Architecture Assembled Exquisite Corpses: Body, Building, City V. Introducing Agency Constructing Site Maps, Building Narratives

I. Introductions: The workshop began with an introductory exercise to loosen the hold of ‘literate’ experience, and begin to interrogate the nature of the oral. By ‘literate’ experience, the faculty focused on moving out of the dominant pedagogical paradigm of theoretical introductions preceding execution and realization of concepts. Instead, we asked the students in groups of 4 to practice telling, rather than writing, an incident from their lives. The theme was chosen to create intimacy, discomfort and negotiating between the two states of experience. The mode of interrogating the ‘oral’ was through the well-worn childhood game of Chinese Whispers. A perfect example to illustrate the changing fluid nature of narratives, and the sensory dimension of memory.

What gets remembered are sensory impressions, while the arc of the narrative will necessarily change, no matter how ‘exact’ the listener attempts to be.

It is the sensory nature of memory that leaves an impression on the listener, and feed into the narratives or the re-creation of narratives as they are passed from one mouth to another’s ear, and so on.

Chinese Whispers Timeframe/ Structure: The exercise takes 45 minutes from explanation to execution. There is another 15 minutes for feedback of ideas and experiences, and for the drawing out of concepts.

The exercise takes place among groups of 4 students. Each tells a two minute anecdote based on a theme from their life to the person on their left. The listener then re-tells the anecdote to the next person as though it were their story, ie. The re-telling is in the ‘I’ mode. Each of the anecdotes thus, acquires several washes of the ‘I’ re-tellings until it returns to the person who told it first, ie.

Whose anecdote it was. This person then listens to the anecdote observing how much it has changed and becoming aware of the process of externalizing one’s own experience that allows a new reconstruction to emerge. The feedback looks at how the reconstruction retains (or does not retain) the core elements of the experience of the first person. The feedback also examines what allows core elements to survive or get lost in the process of construction from a sensory experience

MODULE 1 Constructing the Site 1:500

THE CONTEXT (suggested)

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II. Introducing “the City” The generic context, in the convention of a massvoid plan diagram, is shared with the student. 30 min. of clarifications, questions and contemplation on the diagram and what it might represent to each student.

“Yes, and…”

The creation of a collective story, involving the full studio group, walking through “the City” is attempted. It involves working with both negotiation and accident. Each person in the group contributes to the story by adding one line. The members of the group have their eyes closed, and hence addition to the story requires intense listening to the images being created by each person in the group.

Negotiation does not require verbal agreements or debate. This mode of negotiation requires listening, and creating a common ground through which a story can emerge. Each person gets up to 3-5 turns. The story is built up not just through creating images through words. Descriptions are the most significant device for creating images; however, images can be created by alluding to textures, sounds, smells and other sensory elements.

III. Gathering: Based on the impressions, memories and visual associations triggered through the introduction and the collective oral story of “the City”, each student is tasked with gathering (in print form - hard copies) as many visual images as possible. The intent is for each student to mine their own visual memories.

The sequence followed for the gathering: First, the student’s own photos, sketches, notes; each student was encouraged to mine not just their sketchbooks and cameras, but also their social media postings, emails, other communiques.

Next, social media timelines, representing “secondary” material - the student’s friends, interest groups, subscribed pages Lastly, having exhausted the first two sources, the student is to dig up references they may already have encountered (in academic or professional practice).

The absolutely last resort - search engines.

MODULE 1 Constructing the Site 1:500 IV.I. Exquisite Corpse: Architecture Assembled The game of Exquisite Corpse (or Picture Consequences) is a collective drawing exercise.

It involves sequential drawing of a section of an entity (a body, a building, a city) by each player.

Each section is drawn in secret, folded over and passed to the next person to draw the next part of the sequence. The last member also unfolds the composition, and gives it a title.

Timeframe: Groups of 4 players. 1 minute per section. 4 sheets per group, so that at the end of each 4 minutes, 4 exquisite corpses are created.

We played three sets of games.

The first involved drawing the head/torso/body/feet of any living creature.

In the second, we worked with roof/upper floor/ ground floor/basement.

The third was an urban assembly. Assuming the centre of a city to begin at the main railway station, we moved outwards towards farmland periphery.

Each produced unlikely figurations, generated by the same kind of accidental coincidences that the Surrealists loved.

In a game of Exquisite Corpse, the normal, consistent narrative - and style - of a drawing of a person is ruptured. A different hand imagines and draws each body part on each fold of paper.

The whole image is only known at the end when the sheet is unfolded. The things we expect the body to have - to belong, say, to a consistent genome, sex, class or occupation - are all mixed up by fragmentation and multi-authorship. Applied to the logics and codes of architecture (and urban planning), the same ‘impossible’ bodies emerge by distorting and disorienting our most familiar of referents, playing out personal, cultural, or social anxieties and desires on unwitting anatomies. But there is no transgenic impossibility to these visions.

Sure, we can (yet) have a creature with a chicken’s head, a corporate executive’s torso, a duck’s legs and a rat’s tail, but we can, if we choose, engineer a building or a street with exactly the same level of difference.

It would offend all our convictions of what architecture and urban planning are supposed to be. Their qualities are, instead, anti-logical, unvisionary and revel in accident. Yet we could argue, that many of the apparent logics of architecture and urban planning are simply codes of convention, and that accident and un-logic are real tools that can help us out of the self-replicating horror of contemporary design.

MODULE 1 Constructing the Site 1:500 THE CONTEXT (suggested)

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IV.II. Exquisite corpse: “the City” Assembled Using the visual material gathered since the first session, the students would now play the Exquisite Corpse to assemble their context. Each quadrant was to be considered one section of the ‘corpse’.

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MODULE 1 Constructing the Site 1:500 V.I. Individual Narratives The collectively assembled site collages (one per group of four) became the context that each student inhabited, and composed two letters written from these inhabitations. One letter would be formal, to a colleague, a mentor, a peer. The other, more intimate, to a loved one.

V.II. Introducing agency Based on the personal textual narrative[s] of the site, make a visual narrative (collage) that begins to map the spatial impressions, experiences and conditions that have begun to emerge. That is, the student can borrow parts of material generated thus far by themselves, or the collective. Each student will work on their own in this phase of the exercise. We are slowly moving away from the accidental, and are beginning to bring in individual agency into making the visual mappings.

What does individual agency mean?

Depending on the thematics of one’s point of view, different elements, conditions and locations can be placed into significantly different sets of relationships. The student can begin to investigate methods of cuts and folds, in addition to the overlays and adjacencies they have been working with thus far in order to determine how the parts are seen in relationship to each other. Therefore, each student presents the same context in radically altered, but equally “true� configurations. Potentially, at least, each arrangement possesses great usefulness with regard to strategic or imaginative possibilities.

Conclusion of module: Site Maps Presentation/ Pin-Up Format: A2 / Two Sides or Sheets Structure: Map Document; folded or unfolded The student may choose to present the maps in, but not limited to, either of the following ways: 1) Front and Back of the same A2 sheet, unfolded 2) Front and back of the same A2 sheet, folded 3) 2 separate sheets, placed adjacent to one another 4) 2 separate sheets, placed adjacent to one another, with fold marks indicated Notes: a.

Folding - unfolding enables you to control the method by which the context is revealed to the user. b.

The letters must be incorporated into the document Format Examples/ References: City Destination Maps, Road Maps, National Geographic Map inserts in their printed magazines. Each of these are printed documents, often folded into a brochure size which when unfolded results into an A2 document. One side includes a detailed and comprehensive visual mapping[s] of the city, combining locational information and character. As discussed with each student - the mapping[s] maybe one drawing or a structured combination of multiple drawings/collages. The reverse side combines your letters (narrative description), with vignettes, legends/ key drawings, and details that elaborate on significant details of places, buildings, landmarks or other unique conditions that constitute your site locality.

Student: Rushabh Suchdev

MODULE 1 Constructing the Site 1:500

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Dear Mom and Dad, We just had a talk yesterday over the phone. But I decided to write to clear all your worries about your son moving to a new city, of Marishello.

It takes a while to settle down at a new place, but not here. I feel like this city is the place I have been to.

Marishello is as safe as Ahmedabad, with comfortable climate to live in. The city is not so dense. i have rented a small apartment in a low-rise building on the other side of the railway line. The office is in the commercial zone, on the other side. Transport is convinient. I take the bus everyday. That is the only part of the day Marishello is like any other city. Too many people going as machines, fast cars. When destinations are more important than the journey. But otherwise, the city is quiet.

I start my day having coffee and breakfast on the balcony amidst all the green, staring at the blue sky and the red earth. And I think the both of you will love the peacefulness and the chaos of the city. Many restaurants are nearby. Finding vegetarian food is not a big deal. Weekdays are spent in a routine way, in weekends I go around to explore the city with a camera and diary. There is nothing to worry about. Visit me this Diwali. Don’t forget to bring some sweets, Ma.

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MODULE 1 Constructing the Site 1:500

Student: Aubin Eyraud

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Hello, Grandfather You asked about news, so I’m writing to you. I began courses this week, my studio is about the conception of a school, and the project area is situated in a little dense urban zone. The neighborhood is very interesting to study because of its diversity of typologies; it is composed of different uses, and it looks like a little city on itself. There is two main roads with a heavy traffic and fuss, you wouldn’t believe it. There is a lot of people on the street and a non-stop moves of rickshaws and two wheelers. On one of this main road, there is a flyover to go over a railway. It is hardly reachable by foot, but it gives a good vision on our project area. Under this flyover, it is less nice, there are slums in which people who work in this area lives, because at the end of the road there are an industrial area. There is a combination of markets very lively and mechanical workshops, you can repair there whatever you want. Around this industrial area, you can find more residential areas with block of flats but also houses. The difference between the main avenues and the little roads is amazing, it becomes in a second really peaceful with less traffic and noise, more vegetation as well. It looks like your neighborhood. At the center of the different houses, there is free space on which the kids are playing, it is very nice, the free space is big, they have enough space to play cricket. our project area is divided into two parts with the railtrack in the center. It is not so nice to hear the trains, but at the time as we are moving away we don’t imagine there is so much traffic. It is a very interesting area because I think that it is diversified and it connects different atmospheres.

Kisses, Aubin

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Student: Tosha Parmar

MODULE 1 Constructing the Site 1:500

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MODULE 2 The Connectors Video 1:500 | 1:200 | 1:50/1:20 The module will work with both, physical connectors as well as programmatic ones.

The students will be tasked to design a pedestrian connector across the railway line, as a widening to the existing vehicular overpass (to the south of the site) and as a means to provide a pedestrian pathway from the bus stop to the street level. This physical connector provides an opportunity to extend public spaces into the site, as well as identify programmatic elements that can become thresholds.

This module will introduce students to the possibilities of vertical circulation as places of socialization.

I. A bridge as a moment unfolding in time Montage of 10s found footages spliced into a 1min video that explores the character of a vertical pedestrian connector within each student’s site context.

II. The architecture of the connector Ideation in the spirit of fabrication, across scales III. Fabrication Drawings of the Site Context Scaled drawings of each student’s context constructs, in order to make scaled models for bridge/ pedestrian connector investigations

Student: Sai Netra

The Discussions

On concept diagrams, and the design process In the studio, we will move away from reductive formal diagrams as generators for the design process - we do not want to diminish the complexities of a site, a detail or a process, nor do we want the hubris of comprehension assumed to be located within the diagram. Instead, we will constantly be switching back and forth between ideations and scaled tests to validate these ideations. The tests are required in order to find what are the limitations when ideations get located into a material situation. One develops the preliminary ideations further, in response to the obstacles presented through the tests. That is how one begins to develop ideas into architecture, and how strategies become material.

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On infrastructure, and the everyday The program of the connector, at its most basic/ modest level, is to facilitate the everyday commuters to go about their business. This modesty and directness should not be forgotten in a pursuit of formal expressiveness; instead, the focus of the student should be on how one can elevate the everyday. In this, the bridge module is a reminder that the beginnings of the design process lie in being able to identify the fundamentals of necessity in order to generate a set of strategies - from this, specific exceptions can be found as moments of meeting, departures, exuberance etc. These moments then, when intentionally situated, become the next set of thresholds/ connectors…

Adding more program is not design development. It keeps you away from refining the elements at play in each of the student’s designs. Focus on engineering these elements - the floor of the connector, the space below the connector which gets activated, the railings, the sense of enclosure etc.

The Program

Core Learning: 21,000 sft Early Ed & Elementary School (Grades 1-6) 12 @ 750 sft 9,000 sft (30-35 students per class; 2 CR per grade) Middle & High Schools (Grades 7-12) 12 @ 750 sft 9,000 sft (30-35 students per class; 2 CR per grade) Faculty Neighborhoods 4 @ 750 sft 3,000 sft Shared Learning: 21,000 sft Science Labs 3 @ 1,500 sft 4,500 sft Interdisciplinary Project labs 2 @ 1,500 sft 3,000 sft Arts - Visual (Studio Arts) Arts - Performing Arts - Film & Media

1 @ 1,500 sft 2 @ 1,500 sft 1 @ 1,500 sft

1,500 sft 3,000 sft 1,500 sft

Makers Workshop

1 @ 3,000 sft

3,000 sft

Library 1 @ 4,500 sft 4,500 sft Physical Education (outdoor/ semi-open) TBD — Activities: 12,750 sft Multimedia Hall 1 @ 4,500 sft 4,500 sft

Food Services / Commons - TOTAL 1 @ 7,500 sft 7,500 sft Shop 1 @ 750 sft 750 sft Amphitheatre/Gathering for 1200 (outdoor) TBD — Administration 1 @ 4,500 sft 4,500 sft PROGRAM TOTAL 59,250 sft Ancillary: 20% Circulation/ Restrooms/ Utilities/ Storage 11,850 sft TOTAL 71,100 sft

Notes: 1. Student to accommodate 80% of the program within the existing domino abandoned structure/ ruin.

2. The 20% ancillary functions/structure might be distributed inside and outside the structure.

3. No demolition allowed to the structure.

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MODULE 3 Inhabitation: Program 1:500 | 1:200 | 1:100 | 1:50/1:20 & Audio

On the school program The student is to investigate the list of requirements in terms of: 1. Specificity and generality (where a sense of enclosure may suffice) 2. Affinities 3. Proportional relationships between programmatic elements, rather than area as a numerical notion 4. Multivalence & the capacity for transformation - which programs in the list provided coexist as another; can become some other program on the list at different times of the day, occasion or season.

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On the Dom-ino Structure The student is to ponder a little bit on the opportunities the ubiquitous domino offers, without puncturing or demolition the structure itself: 1.

Framework for inhabitation 2.

Freedom of walls and other delineating elements from carrying loads 3.

The ability for elements to attach/ accrete to it, at any level The students will begin making an architectural program and testing it spatially in model form.

The existing Dom-ino structure will be made of transparent acryic. This is to be a working model, so the student will keep in mind the need to iterate and test through inhabitation of the model.

The school Student: Nicolas Prossi

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MODULE 3 Inhabitation: Design Development 1:500 | 1:200 | 1:100 | 1:50/1:20 & Audio

Charette 01: Unit of Learning

Charette 02: Exploring Extensions to the Dom-Ino, Vertically

The students will be tasked to inhabit the ruined-before-its-time concrete skeleton programmatically, and formally. As the requirements exceed the area offered by the structure, new construction will be required as an extension to the existing structure. The site strategy will be the result of this module, followed by the detailed resolution of places of learning, of making, of play, of meeting and of performance in vertical urban environments.

Program Investigation & Organization 1. Initial programmatic strategies via thermocol blocks within the acrylic model (1:200) giving way to architectural elements determining the sense of enclosures.

2. Preliminary blocks are mainly for students to strategize the nature of extensions each will need in addition to the existing structure.

Design Development Charettes (5 in-Studio Sessions) 1. Unit of Learning - Architectural Explorations (1:50) 2. Exploring Extensions to the Dom-Ino Vertically (1:50) 3. How the Building Meets the Ground (1:500/ 1:200) 4. How the Building Meets the Sky (1:200) 5. Explore the Promenade Architecturale. (Only those parts that participate in generating the promenade to be made, of an opaque material. The rest of the building elements to be made in acrylic.)

Synthesis 1. Consolidating the Charette Work 2. Finalizing “typical� floor and vertical conditions 3. Form Studies as an expression of the character of the project

The Discussions

Knowing this - what all happens in and around this simple act of removal/ putting on footwear and walking barefoot? Does the notion of a “door” transform, setting into motion a whole sequence of activities and experiences?

On keeping the design process contextual: The 1:200 model must be physically located on a 1:200 [existing] site plan print-out, on every desk (happily, the site plan measures to the size of each student desk). The structure and the school are not isolated! The bridge (Module 2) models must be at hand, to be brought into the context occasionally - as a reminder that it can participate in the sense of arrival and departure, in the materiality, maneuvers etc. The bridge is also going to be used everyday by kids to go to the playgrounds across the tracks.

On the “white” in the acrylic model Exploring the project wandering through the building[s] creating a hierarchy among architectural events, loosely deriving from Corbusier’s “promenade architecturale”.

What is contributing to establishing promenade[s] through your project? Elements such as stairs, ramps, of course, but also spaces, situations and strategies that participate in slowing/ hastening one’s pace; participating in creating conditions for gathering, interaction, play and ceremony that is a school.

The intent of this exercise is to investigate an aspect of the project’s behavior, rather than what the buildings generated look like.

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On thresholds “Where does one remove shoes in this campus?”

Student: Aesha Gandhi

The Charettes (Design Development)

MODULE 3 DESIGN DEVELOPMENT Charette 1: Unit of Learning 1:50 The students will investigate the core learning unit with a focus on: 1) What constitutes a learning unit in a school? How are its extents and influences felt, and expressed architecturally? Is it different for different age groups?

2) What is the appropriate organization to give this conception of the unit an architectural expression? is it a cluster? Is it a pairing (with an allied program)? Is it a linear chain that cretes a spine? Is it by itself?

3) How high/ thick/ thin/ moving/ immovable/ inhabited/ ephemeral are the walls that delineate enclosure?

4) Cross Ventilation - how does this unit breathe?

5) Where does the light come from? How is this light modulated to mitigate glare at times? What is the place of light within a learning environment, at its most essential?

6) How do the existing columns contribute to making spaces, and articulating a heirarchy, if required, in all three dimensions?

Deliverables

In-Studio (10.30am-1.30pm) One A2 Sheet 1:50 Drawings - plan, section, elevation, axonometric, testing detail Use the drawings to explain, in addition to the layout, the sense of light, air and thresholds Use poche, flooring patterns, shadows, occupation to articulate the sense of space and use Assignment 1:200 acrylic model (previously made) to be inhabited by the explorations of Charette 01 A unit of learning - Architectural explorations

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Student: Aubin Eyraud

MODULE 3 DESIGN DEVELOPMENT Charette 2: Exploring the extension[s] to the existing Dom-Ino, vertically 1:50 Students will draw, in order to explore, articulate and express the nature of the extensions each is proposing to the existing Dom-Ino. The focus of the charette will be: 1) to investigate spatial, programmatic and circulatory connectors, vertically 2) the attitude to the building meeting the ground 3) the attitude to the building meeting the sky 4) the attitudes to an extension: is it a void? is it a verandah? is it a place of light and air? is it an expression of a programmatic activity? is it services? is it “skin� which is inhabited?

Deliverables

In-Studio (10.30am-1.30pm) One A2 Sheet 1:50 Section (extents will be half of the depth of the structure in plan, plus the full extension) 1:50 Part Plan (to accompany the section) 1:50 Part Elevation that investigates materiality Materiality can be composite, where the student brings the textures as images to use as collage into their drawings. Textures to address materiality, which includes vegetation.

Assignment 1:50 part model to test the Charette 2 work formally.

Student: Aubin Eyraud

MODULE 3 DESIGN DEVELOPMENT Charette 3: How does the building meet the ground?

1:500 & 1:200 In this charette, students will explore a site plan. The focus will be on: 1) Is the connection heavy?

2) Is the building lifted up, such that the ground extends into, or through the building?

3) Does the building, with its voids, extensions etc go out into the site? If so, how?

4) What is the sense of introduction from the neighborhood to the school? What elements participate in giving a sense of arrival and departure - into the neighborhood, and into the school precinct?

5) What is the daily route to the playground across the bridge?

6) What contribution does vegetation (landscape) make to spacemaking?

7) How do various boundaries (of the school site) enter into the composition? What are the notions one can investigate towards the making of thresholds?

Deliverables

In-Studio (10.30am-1.30pm) 1:500 Site composition Extensions Vegetation Pathways Shadows Breeze Textures 1:200 Site Sections Assignment (over the weekend) 1:200 use the existing acrylic model (previously made), and add work of charette 03.

Students will need to negotiate with the work done in charette 02 model. This model will elaborate on the ground floor attitudes developed in charette 02.

Student: Sai Netra

MODULE 3 DESIGN DEVELOPMENT Charette 4: How does the building meet the sky?

1:500 & 1:200 In this charette, students will explore the opportunities of a terrace/ the final floor/ the roof for their specific site imaginings, and the nature of their school. The roofscape studies will focus on:

a) textures

b) light

c) permanent/ impermanent structures

4) volumes - between the third floor & the terrace/ roof

5) vegetation

6) nature of railings/ walls, thereby exploring the sense of enclosure

7) the sense of horizon and with it, views

Deliverables

In-Studio (10.30am-1.30pm) 1:200 Plan, Section [s]

Inhabited perspective to explore relationship with the neighbourhood, the bridge Assignment 1:200 model within the acrylic for the third floor and roof/ terrace, negotiating with previous charettes

Student: Aesha Gandhi

MODULE 3 DESIGN DEVELOPMENT Charette 5: exploring movement (and pauses)

In this charette, students will explore their projects through the notion of the “promenade architecturale� (the architecture of movement). The investigations will include: 1) What is contributing to establishing movement within each project?

Elements such as stairs/ ramps, of course, but also the spaces that participate in

1) enlargements

2) pauses

3) anchors

4) changes in directionality and/ or scales

5) probes/ piercings through the fabric of the project (clue: think module 2)

Deliverables

In-Studio (10.30am-1.30pm) Axonometric - representing the promenade and associated spaces, complete with textures, vegetation, shadows etc.

The rest of the project should be much lighter, greyed out/ half-toned, underplayed.

Assignment (over the weekend) 1:200 Model showing only the promenade architecturale, in white board.

Student: Aesha Gandhi

Student: Rushabh Sachdev

The Synthesis Final Presentations Exhibition Piraji Sagra Basement, CEPT Univeristy, Ahmedabad Catalogue A4 Catalogue/ Report prepared by each student (to include the studio process, and their design conclusions in the spirit of an exhibition catalogue)

SYNTHESIS Audio Narrative, as a part of the final exhibition In a South Indian folktale, as recalled by A K Ramanjuan while introducing Folktales from India, one dark night, an old woman was searching intently for something in the street.

A passer-by asked her, “Have you lost something?”

She answered, “Yes, I have lost my keys. I’ve been looking for them all evening” “Where did you lose them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe inside the house.”

“Then why are you looking for them here?”

“Because it is dark in there. I don’t have oil in my lamps. I can see much better here, under the lights.”

Ramanujan has used this parable to argue the cultural legitimacy of folktales alongside written text. In principle, until recently, most architectural and urban studies have been similarly conducted in “well-lit” spaces, in places we already know. And, as Ramanujan says, in these we have found many precious things.

With our desire to engage in the sensory dimensions of the architectural experience, we are moving into architecture’s proverbial “indoors” - into the expressive culture of the intimate, the fragile, the hidden and the ephemeral. There is a sustained allusion: the work of architecture be returned to the stuff of life. Not all elements, or even all of the structures of everyday life are always evident. They become part of our “habitus” as conceptualized by Pierre Bourdieu as part of the experience of lived practices.

Each student is tasked to record upto 5 minutes of an oral walkthrough, that includes aspects of their neighborhood with the bridge (module 2) and the school (module 3) having been built, and functioning for at least a year.

The student will attempt to construct the walkthrough, using the narrator as a structuring device that provides the impetus to meander and discover experiences revealed by the student’s designs.

The student will not present the project as the designer/ architect.

The oral walkthrough is complimentary to the more conventional project presentation of architectural representations and models, and therefore should be able to extend the experience of the presentation, rather than merely explain it.

SYNTHESIS Student: AUBIN EYRAUD

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SYNTHESIS Student: RUSHABH SACHDEV

SYNTHESIS Student: AESHA GANDHI

SYNTHESIS Student: ADITYA PATEL

SYNTHESIS Student: SAI NETRA

SYNTHESIS Student: ABHISHEKH DURANI

SYNTHESIS Student: TOSHA PARMAR

SYNTHESIS Student: NICOLAS PROSSI

The school