Workshops


Curated workshops promoted spatial and material experimentation from the outset. 

Structural Logics: Attitudes and Atmospheres

The unit was joined by Ryan Neiheiser whose curated workshop, Structural Logics: Attitudes and Atmospheres, was conceived as a disruption. The workshop was programmed to shift modes of production and enquiry, to loosen assumptions and provoke intuition, to assert a reciprocal relation between research and design. Structure’s elemental capacity to evoke meaning – democratic sheds, heroic towers, fleeting pneumatics, immutable load bearing masonry - is both a powerful asset and a potential pitfall for the designer of institutions. The studio gave serious consideration to the political and social agency of structural logics, with each student exploring unique, deliberate, and transgressive structural ideas in order to develop a spatial response to their understanding of the institution in the territorial city.





Drawing as Research, Research as Design



Led by Sayan Skandarajah, this workshop challenged drawing conventions based on Euclidian space, which have institutionalised, or made ‘static’ design representation.

Political regimes, institutional relations, cultural phenomena, behavioural analysis, economic influence - all directly inform the design process. If there is no commonly accepted language to portray such ephemeral and changing conditions, how do the conventions of architectural representation become subverted, manipulated or layered to tell a more complex story?

Drawing has the potential not only to be a means of communication but a tool of unpacking, understanding and a device of analysis. Drawing is research, and research is fruitful when it is initiated, exercised and interpreted through drawing. Research is design, and design is fruitful when it is initiated, exercised and interpreted through research. 



© Copyright 2014-2017 Institutional Forms and Urban Logics - if you have any questions please email admin@institutionalforms.com