>>>>> Singularities of the evident/ vehicles for events

[Spring 2013]

>>1909 theorem: 
the Skyscraper as utopian device for the production of unlimited numbers of virgin sites on a single metropolitan location.<<[1]

>>(…) I have always conceived of the term "apparatus" (apparecchio) 
in a rather singular way: it is related to my reading and possession in early youth of the volume by Alfonso dei Liguori entitled Apparecchio alla morte. This strange book, which I still recall in many images, seemed to me to be an apparatus itself just by virtue of its rather small and very wide format: I felt that one need not even read the book because it was sufficient merely to own it: it was an instrument. But the connection between apparatus and death also 
reasserted itself in such common phrases as apparecchiare la tavola, meaning
 to set the table, to prepare it, to arrange it. From this point on I came to 
regard architecture as the instrument which permits the unfolding of a thing. I must say that over the years this awareness has increased my interest in
 my craft, especially in my latest projects, where I have tried to propose
 buildings which, so to speak, are vehicles for events. (…)<<[2]

Aldo Rossi

A Scientific Autobiography

During the Fall semester Unit2+3d looked into the complexity of the opening in much smaller scale- a room and the window. The second part of the 2012/13 term, will involve designing the specific building. A special emphasis will be placed at the surroundings and the role of the opening as a mediator between the inside and the outside, different programs or different environments, and its potential quality as a vehicle for generating new atmospheres and scenarios.

The complexity of the contemporary world- social, technical, environmental, infrastructural and economic changes- radically affects and challenges traditional forms, materials and representation of architecture. Undoubtedly, our way of living is changing too. There have been a lot of speculations about the future city and its dwellings. This semester Unit2+3d will navigate between the archeology and the futurology and will continue, among others, to explore the habitat of tomorrow. Thus, our designs will derive from an investigation of radical architectural proposals, ideas of transformations, and the understanding the complexity of everyday life as an operative force.

>>That is how it begins. The place is New York, the time is present, and neither one will ever change. (…)<< [3]

Paul Auster

The New York Trilogy- Ghosts

New York will be an operational field- the play-board- its genesis, its location, its culture, its people, its climate, its stories and peculiar character…The research undertaken during the first semester is to be the other point of reference, and of course the students’ interests, obsessions… are another.

New York is a unique culture- a vibrant place of dense cosmopolitan life. It offers an ideal opportunity to explore the historical, social, economical and political development of urban form, as well as to question the role of architects and planners upon it.

It has been a city of dreams, also a place constantly intertwining fact and fiction. And the architectural proposal always operates in some imagined future. Moreover, nearly always we, as the architects, assume that this future will be somewhat better. But… how to shift from the fantasy to operating in reality? Trying to respond to this question, this semester we will seek an architecture where a reflective reading of the world we inhabit now, an exploration of the past and the experience of the present will be the points of departure for many possible futures.

The project of this semester will be a hybrid building sited at the Keap Street/ South 4^th Street in Williamsburg- a neighborhood with a particular situation (recently, one of the epicenters of gentrification)- an extraordinary place of a multi-faceted reality. Oscillating between the pragmatic and the poetic, fiction and reality, this project- following the Fall semester- should explore the extraordinary of the evident, pushing the boundaries of all possibilities.

The project development will be structured combining tasks of different complexity and duration. However these tasks are not to be understood as a separated assignments- they are rather sequential exercises that nourish each other. Therefore, in this semester we will replace the word assignment with phase.

>>>Structure:

[CUP]  Cross Unit Presentation/ reflection upon the Fall Semester- seminar

[P0]     Play-board/ Cross Unit (CDE) workshop- site model

[P1]     The Williamsburg Trilogy/ Constructing a scenario

[P2]    ‘The art of inhabitation’/ Constructing a place

[P3]     Fictional realities/ Constructing a narrative

---

[1] In: KOOLHAAS, Rem: Delirious New York, The Monacelli Press, New York, 1994, pg.83
[2] ROSSI, Aldo: A Scientific Autobiography. Opposition Books, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, 1981, pg.5.

[3] AUSTER, Paul: The New York Trilogy, MIT Press paperback edition, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002