Unit11 is part of the emerging digital design and manufacturing research area within the ASD continuing its search for an architecture adequately responding to rigorous demands of site, environment, habitation, urbanism and structure. Unit 11 will continue its collaboration with Unit 04 to further develop the digital design processes in architecture.

This year our focus will be on a large scale piece of urbanism. It will become more than a link within the network of a city, but a functioning city fabric in its own right. The aim is to produce a habitable bridge.

Climate as site:

Globalisation has led to an ever-increasing similarity between cities worldwide; one could even say that the only unavoidable difference of substance is the difference in their climate. That is why we will take as our ‘site’ the specificity of the climatic conditions in combination with the effect the proposal then has upon that location. We will look to use the climatic information to develop a responsive skin in order to find an architecture that is more coherent as well as open to variation.

This year’s project will be conditioned on a North European climate.

Material investigations:

Throughout history ‘concept’ and ‘material’, in alteration, seem to have been architecture’s most critical components. Influential architectural concepts have been formulated through material developments; cultural breakthroughs have been interwoven with technological advancement. Our unit not only recognizes the value of material and technique-oriented laboratory work, but believes the next significant architectural movement will be based on material dexterity in particular. We will therefore deepen and widen our investigations into a range of generative material.

Test-bed:

We will use the habitable bridge as the test bed of our interests by examining the urban tissue and its connection to the river. We will be searching for new forms of habitation on the bridge that goes beyond the emblematic Tower Bridge. We will develop a landscape understanding of the relationship between the city, and the water, the bridge and its banks. We will work toward a structural understanding that is engendered by the parametric as well as the analogue.

The research of the unit will come from each individual student’s ability to develop and engage with the topic at multiple scales.

• We see the question as scalable where macro and micro exist simultaneously
• Diagramming and constructive analysis of the bridge typology will be the key to the full description of the thesis
  • Typological research
  • Progressive and recombinant diagramming
• Analyse and understand the site’s climate and respond accordingly
• Research on experimental materials and construction techniques using prototypes, parametric design and digital fabrication

This year’s project will be an integrated piece of urbanity. As a response to the infrastructural needs of connection and the qualitative needs of living we will form individual responses to the problem of the ‘habitable bridge’. The bridge is at the same time a continuous structural surface and a series of independent elements well coordinated. The bridge is in constant motion but resistant to physical forces. A towering emblem of the city, and an indispensable connection used ubiquitously throughout the year. The space of the bridge is often neglected as public space, but enjoys the opportunity stretch where landscape has forced the city to part.

It is this often neglected architectural agenda we seek to develop this year. Through didactic processes of diagramming, parametric and analogue modeling, discussion, debate and presentation we will formulate a series of independent projects all with the ability to capture the essence of a bridge in the city.

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Superfusionlab’s Nate Kolbe and Lida Charsouli have been practicing and teaching architecture for the past 9 years in London and across Europe. Their work has been exhibited widely and they continue to build new public and private buildings.

www.superfusionlab.com