Summer Session I classes start on Monday, May 20, 2013.
Check postings in Crough for class locations.
Pairs of opposites, in partnership, set up the condition of understanding one because of the presence (or absence) of the other.In order to appreciate the light, there must be darkness. Embedded in the removal of something can be the heightened sense of yearning for it. As architects and designers, we position situations to amplify a set of conditions to alter our perceptions. The complexity of systems (structural, mechanical, ecological, electrical, etc.) sets the challenge for architects to devise mechanisms to conceal the building’s infrastructure while simultaneously celebrating the poetic and the experiential. A perforated roof plane modulates the sunlight’s ability to penetrate the space below it while also offering much required and desired shading from the harsh light. A structural system is ingeniously designed to soar to unbelievable heights…and it remains hidden from view. Advancements in the technology of making yield continuous surfaces, supple and smooth to the touch, belying its other side of joints, connections, and attachments. A site’s latent condition is brought into the foreground via careful and intentional layering and weaving new programs on and through it.
Absence can also be considered as the space between silence and light. In a world where information and data are a click away and the visual cacophony can be deafening, it is worthwhile to step outside of that place in pursuit of another condition. In the words of Louis Kahn,
Inspiration is the feeling of beginning as the threshold where Silence and Light meet. Silence, the unmeasurable, desire to be, desire to express, the source of new need, meets Light, the measurable, giver of all presence, by will, by law, the measure of things already made, as a threshold which is inspiration, the sanctuary of art, the Treasury of Shadow….
The 2013 Summer Institute for Architecture studios will speculate on the notion of absence.
Each Summer, the School of Architecture and Planning conducts the Summer Institute for Architecture (SIA), featuring numerous undergraduate and graduate level courses. Among these are design studios and elective courses, including history of architecture, graphics, furniture design, theory, and computer-aided design/fabrication. The faculty consists of selected members of the School of Architecture and Planning and those invited from other institutions. At SIA, students pursue and investigate the discipline of architecture with a rigor and intensity that is difficult to attain in conventional practices or academic environments. SIA presents students with opportunities to expand their understanding of architecture. Through the interactions of various creative individuals and the common research theme investigated each year, students exchange ideas and test them. They engage in direct and indirect debates in an open-ended, expansive environment, interactions that give rise to views alternative to those we are often accustomed.
