Back to the Future

In 1802 Jean-Nicholas-Louis Durand published his book Précis of the Lectures on Architecture with no less ambition than to revolutionize architectural pedagogy and production. Emphatically, and obsessively, Durand completed his book with the chapter “Procedure to Be Followed in the Composition of any Project”. The Design and Research Studio Back to the Future took on Durand’s theoretical proposition and used it as a platform to inquire and test its claims, conventions and expressiveness and to ultimately elicit a constructive response by each student to this body of theoretical work in the form of a design proposition embedded within current theories and practices of architecture.

The studio consisted of two stages: The first stage will focus on the rigorous reconstruction of Durand’s method using Shape Machine for Rhino – a state-of-the-art shape computation interpreter that is currently developed at SCL at the School of Architecture at Georgia Tech. We read the Précis, drafted the compositional rules that are explicitly stated in the book and postulate the design of other rules to make a complete specification of a rule-based system to generate the designs illustrated in the Précis (and more too).

The second stage shifted the  focus of the studio to individual expression and critical engagement with current theories and  practices of architecture. The module will kicked-off with Schinkel’s transformative strategies in design and used them as a springboard to invite a range of contemporary transformative strategies suggested by each student. The deliverables for the second half of the semester included formal specifications of building types and/or complete specifications of site-specific projects.