Dynamic Architecture System: City Aperture

The studio project is to be located on the site of the recently completed New Museum (by SANAA) in New York. The New Museum is located on the Bowery at a pivotal geographic and cultural intersection where generations of artists have lived, worked, and contributed to the ongoing cultural dialogue of the nation.

In the second semester of the third year in the undergraduate school the students are asked to produce a “comprehensive” design that deals with the interrelationship of building systems and will rethink a building on the same site with an expanded brief for a contemporary art museum composed of exhibition spaces and integrated public spaces. They are required to articulate a projects performance structurally, thermally, acoustically and environmentally. Beyond competent articulation of systemic relationships we will ask that the students mine these systems for spatial and organizational potential. Issues of embedding, figuration, mass and interstice, solid and void as well as contemporary notions of poche incarnated by double skins and thick membranes are all within the family of formal problem related to systemic challenges that the studio will be exploring. The course objectives is to allow student to achieve Comprehensive Design, Critical Thinking Skills, Design Skills, Sustainability, Research Skills, Use of Precedents, Graphic Skills, and Accessibility.