PROTOTYPING

In Spring 2023, as part of the Representation studio, I instructed second-year architecture students in the design and fabrication of a pavilion based on folded plate geometry. In this project, students chose one artefact from the ones produced by everyone and constructed it at full scale (6’x6’x6’). The artefact was conceived as a structural unit. Through this exercise students were taught:

1. Physical behavior of materials: the qualities of surface, texture, temperature, fragmentation capacity, repetition, superposition, connections, additive materials, structural behavior (traction, compression, torsion).

2. The importance of construction techniques. Real characteristics and availability of materials, access to tools and technology, production and efficiency of processes (economy of materials and time).

3. The drawing as construction and communication tool. The drawing as an instrument of knowledge of what and how the architectural fact is built.

4. Relationship between the material and spatial dimensions, relationship between the whole and the parts, and formal structure of the construction elements.

Instructor: Manal Anis
Professor: Andrea de Berry