Unit 11:

Unit11 is part of the emerging digital design and manufacturing research area within the ASD focusing on architectural adaptation to extreme environmental conditions. This year Unit 11 will operate in close collaboration with Unit 04 with shared resources, workshops and other events facilitating crossovers. The two units operate within the same research area of digital design and manufacturing, environmental adaptation and the development of sustainable tourism but with two distinctively different briefs. Unit 11 will focus on hotter climates, emerging materialities and lightweight transient structures.

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.

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 techniqueoriented 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.

Eco-Tourism

We will use the nomadic nature of tourism as our test bed for our interests by examining the resort and the burgeoning industry of eco-tourism. We will be searching for a new form of ‘light-weight architecture’ that goes beyond the geodesic of Buckminster Fuller and relates to more pressing conditions of the resorts’ effect on the world in which it sits.

• We will begin with an examination of transitory living through a competition scenario

o Membrane

• We see the question as scalable where macro and micro exist simultaneously

• Diagramming and constructive analysis of the resort typology will be the key to the full description of the thesis

o Typological research

o Progressive and recombinant diagramming

• We see ‘light-weight’ architecture as the expression of our intent to find a way to reduce our impact on Earth.

• Analyse and understand the site’s climate and respond accordingly

• Research on experimental materials and construction techniques using prototypes, parametric design and digital fabrication.

Along the way we will be intensely engaged with the computer and its output/input processes while actively searching for new ways to twist the given condition of architectural computing. We see the physical model as a clear expression of the design intent and use it to record the development process. We do not seek to merely render the single condition present in the design, but to explore, examine and remodel by continuously examining the subject. It then can successfully become a breading ground for the ‘new’.

Superfusionlab’s Nate Kolbe, Lida Charsouli and Djordje Stojanovic have been practicing and teaching architecture for the past 8 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