Integrated Digital Tools I_AS 11 & SS 12

AS 11 & SS 12 – A Setting for the Autumn Party

Lecturer: Jean-Lucien Gay
Assistant: Francesco Pusterla
School: Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio
Date: Autumn Semester 2011 & Spring Semester 2012

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 AS 11:
Nuno Bartolo Aires*
Matthew Bailey
Matteo Coello
Darragh Farrell
Jonathan Feldmann
Luca Marending
Federico Melzi
Christiane Müller
Filipe Silva Ferreira*

Students SS 12:
Martina Baratta
Manon Bertoïa
Giovanni Bresciani
Alessandro Cairo
Francesca Caravello
Sergio Casanovas
Thomas Cianflone*
Rocco Felice Corini
Pablo Garrido
Daniel Giezendanner
Oskar Grundström
Constance Leroy*
Andrea Maldarizzi*
Joan Massagué
Conor McGowan
Lorenzo Meschini*
Niccolo Cozzi
Francesco Piani
Gerda Persson
Giorgio Piscitelli*
Lorenzo Plebani
Ana Rodriguez
Cristina Roiz de la Parra
Ferdinand Schmidt
Juri Schoenenberger
Alessandro Scognamiglio
Theo Storesund
Marija Urbaite
Nicolas Vichard*
Srdjan Zlokapa

*selected student works

Photographs:
© Jean-Lucien Gay