Integrated Digital Tools I_AS 14

AS 14 – A concert Stage under the Roof of the Accademia

Lecturer: Jean-Lucien Gay
Assistant: Francesco Pusterla
School: Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio
Date: Autumn Semester 2014

The course introduces students to a range of digital tools and conceptual techniques emerging in the profession of architecture without being subsumed in a digital-only world. It adopts a pragmatic attitude toward new digital tools and focuses on the bridges between analog and digital techniques. The course is based on the software Rhino – an application widely-used in contemporary design practices, which has established itself as a basic platform for numerous advanced plug-ins and scripts. On a theoretical level, the class focuses on the use of digital technologies in the avant-garde architecture of the last 20 years, illustrating the evolution computer-based techniques from NURBS modeling to parametric design.

The iteration process between analog techniques and digital modeling, from the real to the virtual model and back, builds the core of the class. Each student proceeds through a series of tutorials and design sprints familiarizing itself with digital production techniques. On an intuitive level the course encourages the students to use the computer as creative tool by complementing established methods and giving surprising glimpses at new ones. On the professional level it gives the students a technical baggage to manage complex architectural projects in practice. The course aims to facilitate transfers between computer and more conventional methods that would be quick, easy and intuitively integrated with the normal working patterns of each student.

Students:
Lourenço Amaro De Oliveira*
Niccolò Bonini Baraldi
Antonio Botelho Sardo*
Pietro Brugo*
Alberto Caddeo*
Claudio Cortese
Enrico Fantini*
Stephan Lando
Giovanni Lazzareschi Sergiusti
Matteo Lunanova
Valentina Luvini*
Veronica Mendez Gonzalez
Rachael Neville
Masaru Otsuka*
Joseph Redpath
Luciano Ricci
Elia Rossi*
Andrea Scognamiglio
Lajdi Sulaj
Geng Tian*
Jacopo Valentini
Leonardo Vantini*
Alessandro Zanella*

*student works shown in the selection

Photographs: © Jean-Lucien Gay