Fall 2007

with Kevin Pratt and Dana Cupkova, instructors

The component ecologies research studio, offered at Cornell University and sited in Abu Dhabi, focused on the development of a design methodology that forces architectural discourse to respond and adapt to complex ecologies, and seeks to understand context as both complex system and formative force.

The studio was based on the premise that contemporary building practice tends to describe architecture as objects situated in a spatial and cultural field. Historically, architecture has defined itself as an autonomous discipline that develops form through an internalized discourse responsive to both particular socio-political contexts and generalized trends in intellectual and popular culture. Compare this approach with the field of Ecology, which posits that entities that have thermodynamic relationships to other entities are bound together in complex systems of energy and information transfer: Ecosystems.

The studio began with the development of a simple material component that responded to and modified specific environmental conditions. This component was then studied in physical models and Generative Components, a parametric CAD environment, which allowed the rapid evolution of variations and the evaluation of their environmental consequences. The initial component design phase will ran concurrently with a preliminary investigation of environmental and urban conditions in Abu Dhabi, and culminated in a one week studio visit to the United Arab Emirates.