Foam Scape

"I contain multitudes" 

Walt Withman, Leaves of Grass

Studio Thesis – Foam Scape

In the context of this studio foam is an operative metaphor describing cultural processes of an inherently individualized society and a generative design model for an emergent architecture. In a first instance we will use foam as an analytical explication tool to research the intimate conditions of space production such as inhabitation, insulation and immunization. We will then analyze the adjacency of cells in a state of co-isolation and move on to complex cells clusters and stable foams. 

The studio will thus derive foam prototypes and implement these as parametric modules. These modules will be scripted in Rhino using Rhino-script. In-studio seminars will introduce all necessary techniques related to parametric design and digital fabrication. The studio is open to landscape and architecture students alike. 

Program - Spectator Sports Berlin Tempelhof

Programmatically the studio will work on the redevelopment of the Berlin Tempelhof airport field. Berlin Tempelhof was the world's first airport, the second largest building after the Pentagon, the umbilical cord linking West Berlin to West Germany during the Soviet blockade, yet became obsolete as inner city airport in the context of changing air travel.  The airfield and tarmac form an encapsulated urban space, surrounded by a dense urban fabric, the airport building offers vast enclosed spaces, waiting to be re-programmed. 

By introducing spectator sports we will test the thesis at the core of the studio: Can architecture find new ways to negotiate individual and collective spaces in a dynamic process without relying on pre-emptive notions of public and private, part and whole, object and landscape? The studio will strive for complex dynamic solutions, orchestrating processes more as editors than as designers. 

Structure:

I. Foam study - Foam prototype; 

The studio will examine natural and man-made foams and understand its genesis, structure and geometry to abstract a generative foam prototype.

II. Scripting foam; 

Looking at recursive functions and fractal geometry, the studio will "script" foam prototypes by establishing parametric relationships of cells and clusters. The prototypes will react on the micro scale of the cells and on the macro level of foam-clusters. 

III. Sporting foam in program and context; 

By introducing Olympic sports on the site of Berlin Tempelhof we will gradually design and inhabit the foam structures. Understood as a 3-dimensional landscape the proposals will explore the following aspects:

- Spatial potential: inhabitation, incubation, generation of environments

- Recursive behavior: scalability, stackability, performance at different scales

- Structural integrity: linear tensegrity, minimal surfaces, inflatable volumes

- Accommodation of global and local parameters and translation from script to form.