Copyright (c) 2009 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/tfowler Recent documents in Thomas Fowler, IV, AIA, NCARB en-us Sun, 31 May 2009 12:43:14 PDT 3600 http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/8 http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/8 Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:38:56 PST CIDS provides for an intensive three-quarter course sequence designed to familiarize undergraduate students in a first professional degree program working with interdisciplinary teams and with advanced digital technology. Students learn the fundamental principles and applications for interdisciplinary team collaborations along with technology. The sequence provides connections to students, faculty and professionals from a wide range of disciplines outside of architecture. Students are afforded an understanding of Innovative ways to see the role of design studio, building technology systems, history/theory and the use of a range of media for communicating design intent by adopting a new way of working as a basis for understanding practice beyond the typical confides of the design studio and the rest of the curriculum. CIDS provides students in the context of the design studio with connections to community design projects with real clients, budgets and schedules into the classroom in the following ways: short-term design charrettes for project conceptualization for future development, research grants, independent study projects, and support provided by a group of work study students. Thomas Fowler,IV Design and Building Technology http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/7 http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/7 Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:12:15 PDT Thomas Fowler Design and Building Technology http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/5 http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/5 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:35:58 PDT Students worked in four teams of three to four each and were assigned the construction of a light motion machine. Teams developed devices, which were an interpretation of László Moholy-Nagy's 1930's Space Light Modular Machine. These machines had to have moving parts for the purpose of studying light and shadow projections in motion. László Moholy-Nagy's Space Light Modular Machine was a mechanically driven rotating kaleidoscope projecting ever-changing patterns of light, shadow, and color. Students were provided information on Moholy-Nagy's machine and also shown a range of interpretations students developed in a previous studio. Thomas Fowler, IV Design and Building Technology http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/6 http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/6 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:35:10 PDT This paper illustrates the design work from an integrated third-year Architecture Design Studio and a Professional Practice (a.k.a., project constructability) Studio. There are two parts to this paper. The first part shows how students were involved in a collaborative interdisciplinary project with New Media Arts students in the Liberal Arts Department on campus. Students in collaborative teams designed and constructed a temporary pneumatic structure to house a virtually interactive technology called "Intimate Transactions". Lessons learned from this design build collaboration in working with the inventor of this technology system, along with the reading of a range of essays on new media design, and additional vocabulary generation exercises provided a launching off point for each of the architecture students' individual design projects. The second part of this paper shows the follow on building design process and design reflections for one of the student's studio projects (Jeff Hammerquist, who received the 2007 formZ Honorable Mention Design Award for his Satellite Automobile Assembly Plant project). Thomas Fowler, IV Design and Building Technology http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/4 http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/4 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:32:19 PDT This paper will discuss an unconventional methodology for using physical and digital media strategies in a tightly structured framework for the integration of Environmental Control Systems (ECS) principles into a third year design studio. An interchangeable use of digital media and physical material enabled architectural explorations of rich tactile and luminous engagement. The principles that provide the foundation for integrative strategies between a design studio and building technology course spring from the Bauhaus tradition where a systematic approach to craftsmanship and visual perception is emphasized. Focusing particularly on color, light, texture and materials, Josef Albers explored the assemblage of found objects, transforming these materials into unexpected dynamic compositions. Moholy-Nagy developed a technique called the photogram or camera-less photograph to record the temporal movements of light. Wassily Kandinsky developed a method of analytical drawing that breaks a still life composition into diagrammatic forces to express tension and geometry. These schematic diagrams provide a method for students to examine and analyze the implications of element placements in space (Bermudez, Neiman 1997). Gyorgy Kepes's Language of Vision provides a primer for learning basic design principles. Kepes argued that the perception of a visual image needs a process of organization. According to Kepes, the experience of an image is "a creative act of integration". All of these principles provide the framework for the studio investigation. The quarter started with a series of intense short workshops that used an interchangeable use of digital and physical media to focus on ECS topics such as day lighting, electric lighting, and skin vocabulary to lead students to consider these components as part of their form-making inspiration. In integrating ECS components with the design studio, an nine-step methodology was established to provide students with a compelling and tangible framework for design: Examples of student work will be presented for the two times this course was offered (2001/02) to show how exercises were linked to allow for a clear design progression. Thomas Fowler, IV Design and Building Technology http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/2 http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/2 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:32:02 PDT In a third year design studio, assignments are crafted for students to refine skills in both digital and analog media tools (physical modeling and traditional drawings), to allow them to see the advantages and disadvantages of both, to develop a critical attitude towards media and to develop a design project using these tools. Students start out the quarter participating in a week-long group warm-up diagramming exercise that allows students who are not as familiar with formZ to learn how to use the software in the context of completing a design assignment. Groups are arranged with students who are familiar with formZ, along with students who are not. These groups of no more than four students collaborate and the students who are least experienced with the software are exposed to a fair amount of the software navigation as the student or students who know the software assists in this process. Thomas Fowler, IV Design and Building Technology http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/1 http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/1 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:31:59 PDT In the third year of the 5-year Bachelor of Architecture Program, formZ is used as the preferred 3D digital modeling tool. formZ is used with a range of other 2D digital media (Photoshop, etc) along with 3D traditional-digital media (physical models, plan & section drawings) that allows the architecture students to go back and forth between multiple mediums during the design process. This particular methodology has the advantage of revealing more quickly and more clearly, weaknesses in the developing project as well as inconsistencies between a student's original intentions (for example about how daylight will change the character of a space) and what is revealed in their work as the design evolves. Being able to use formZ to early on simulate the actual mood of space via the source and quality of day and electric lighting along with the textures and vocabulary of the building's skin provides a great complement to the 3D physical model studies that are initially generated. Students early on in the quarter, start to understand the building constructability implications of their digital models. Thomas Fowler, IV Design and Building Technology http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/3 http://works.bepress.com/tfowler/3 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:31:39 PDT This paper illustrates the design work from an integrated third year Architecture Design Studio and Environmental Controls Systems (ECS) Studio. As the final project, all students developed a 'Center for the Study of Light', based on the quarter long experiments with light. The quarter began with spatial experiments with both day and electric lighting. In the ECS course students started with several physical model interpretations of James Turrell's electric light installations and in the Design Studio several full-scaled working versions of Moholy Nagy's Light Space Modular were constructed to explore the connection of movement, light, space and materials. Another instructor taught the ECS course, but exercises were collaboratively formulated, so the student work developed would inform the architecture projects in the design studio. Assignment activities in both the Design and ECS courses are a continuation of a methodology of this author for using digital and physical media in a tightly structured framework for integrating building system principles into design studio projects. The main learning objective for the integration of these two courses was to create a range of improvisations early on in the quarter to create an intense focus on a kit-of-parts understanding of the technical aspects of environmental systems that can be shaped and molded into design project vocabularies later in the quarter. This paper will briefly describe the sequence of ECS and design studio exercises that were assigned. The assignments along with student design work are a sampling of the type of exercises and analog digital process that students went through at a particular stage of the project. The paper will conclude with the instructor's reflections on this process. Thomas Fowler, IV Design and Building Technology