HOORAY!

I am so happy to have gotten my first choice in the studio lottery. I am in Francois Roche's studio. You can check out the work of his firm, R&Sie here, but be warned, the site might give you a siezure. The other choices for the 704 research studios were David Adjaye, Cecil Balmond, Kieran/Timberlake, Ali Rahim and Homa Farjadi. The research studio, for those unfamiliar, is (as quoted from our memo):

"1.The mission of the research studio is open and explorative, yet providing a substantial intellectual focus on design research. This spans the entire range of architectural design.

2.Design research is constituted of investigating a design methodology that students can continue to investigate and benefit from beyond their education at Penn.

3.The specific area of ”˜design research' is interrogated through analysis and design as identified by each Research Studio Advisor."

It's sort of like doing a thesis project, but using the instructor's initial thoughts and interests, to generate the project. They are usually fairly experimental. Research studios at Penn have almost replaced the thesis, although several students are pursuing their own independent thesis projects this semester.

I think my studio is going to be lots of fun, and a welcome change from last semester. Our first assignment, besides research on various topics (ie swarm, robots, nanotechnology, etc.) is to construct a pile of tangled bio-noodles. (Easy right?)

Our reading list consists of:

- The Savage Anomaly: Tony Negri with the introduction of Gilles Deleuze
- The Three ecologies: Felix Guattari, Galileo,
- Utopia and Heterotopy, radiophonic conference: Michel Foucault
- Ecumes 3 / Peter Sloterdick, 2005
- The Society of the Spectacle: Guy Debord
- Mysticism and Anthroposophy: Rudolph Steiner
- Utopia: Thomas More
-Dead City: Mike Davis
-Tomorrow now, Bruce Sterling
-Life of Termites: Maurice Maeterlink

Our movie list includes:
-Alpha ville: JL Godart
-Fitzcaraldo: Werner Herzog
-Old and New / La ligne general: Eisenstein
-Pepe le moko / Jean Duvivier 1937 (avec Gabin et la Casbah)
-Two or three thing I know about her / Deux trios chose que je sais d'elle : JL Godart 1966
-Castle in the sky / Le château dans le ciel: Hayao Miyazaki
-Faust: Murnau (architect Poelzig)
-Existenz: Cronenberg
-Kingdom 1/2/3: Lars von Trears
-Punishment Park: Peter Watkins
-ABCdaire: Gilles Deleuze
-Abyss / Terminator 2 / Predator 1 / Dark City /....sub culture 3D effects

Here is a little snippit from our syllabus.

Title of the course
“....”

Preliminary hypothesis
The studio is targeted by the hypothesis of transforming the “social contract” confronted to the mass media culture biotope _ and to define the morphologies of “....”.

“.....” is an unknown urbanism fragment described by the following text.

The research is to define the shape, the social organisation, even the smelling of “....”.