Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design

Titie Papadopoulou, Stavros Vergopoulos, Marianthi Liapi Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Architecture, Greece 417

to the project, Van Berkel, who is currently teaching at the Frankfurt Städelschule,

refers to the Mother Model, a technique that combines more than one programs in

one 3d model. Unfortunately, there is no known publication up to now referring to

this technique and Van Berkel’s mentioning to it was sparing. So, it is difficult to

connect this idea with Antonino Saggio’s^2 concept of the model, which allows the

architect "to start to master, even in the field of planning, a 'Philosophy of the

simulation': that is, to make use of the project not only to represent, decide and

describe, but as a structure that, from time to time, 'simulates' the behaviour of the

building system..." It was pretty vivid during the 2005 ENHSA meeting, that this

same point of view fuelled the Design-Construction Continuum [DCC] and the role of

the architect as a master-builder.^3

It is important to highlight the fact that the issue of the object-ground division is

touched upon by the generation of digital topographies that include in their modeling

'data' that would normally be separately diagrammed -the flows of traffic, changes in

climate, orientation, existing settlement, demographic trends, and the like. ‘Formerly

these would be considered by the designer as 'influences' to be taken into account

while preparing a 'solution' to the varied problems they posed. Now, however, they

can be mapped synthetically as direct topographical information, weighted accord-

ing to their hierarchical importance, literally transforming the shape of the ground.

The resulting 'map,' however hybrid in conception, is now less an icon to be read as

standing in for a real territory than a plan for the reconstitution of its topographical

form."^4 Many of the design courses in the catalogue, on the one hand, insist upon the

relationship between object-environment, redefining that way the object of archi-

tecture and extending the discussion beyond the restrictions of viewing the city as

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Example of student work from Lars Spuybroek's studios at the University of Kassel.