4.0 Ecologies
3.1 Brief
3.2 Requirements
3.3 Outcomes
29/01/18 - 18/05/18
For this project you are defining and refining the general theme of your research, working towards the main body of your output for the end of year show, and you will be engaging more closely with ideas of context through your design work. You will be taking the most fruitful and interesting aspects of your work in the first term, being critical and evaluative of that work and selecting an aspect to take forward, to develop and adapt the research you have already progressed to a more defined investigation, again with a tangible outcome, of a 1:1 human scale work that moves beyond furniture and device, by relating to some aspect of the built environment in a particular site. Your work will be dynamically responsive in some way to your site with its own ecology, be it very site specific, environmentally specific, such as changes of heat or humidity, interactive with users, or change over time. The responsiveness can be electronic, biological, chemical or kinetic, but must demonstrate some kind of very specific responsiveness, marking it out from other work that has been progressed in your field, of which you will be more and more aware as your knowledge of your chosen field improves. Be aware of what is entirely special about your work and develop it. You will increase your ability to make unique and well made artifacts which address a very specific concept or design, making intuitively from the body of knowledge built up during the first semester. You might develop your skills in detailed artful fabrication, prototype and iteration development, precise computer modelling and visualisation, futurecasting, working with immersive technologies and interactive electronics through coding and circuit building. What other fields might you start to engage with to create your own specialist niche? Ecologists? Historians? Neuroscientists? Material scientists? Game designers? It is up to you how you develop your interest but it should be rich and engaged with the experimental outer realms of contemporary design thinking. Make this design niche your home and adapt to it. UCA Canterbury School of Architecture // MA Architecture // MA Interior Design // 2017-18