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Half the group in progress

The first of three workshop days that will introduce digital design strategies and parametric thinking to Associates of White & Partners was facilitated in March in the Stockholm office. 25 participants from six different White offices took part, and will through the spring try out a number of digital tools while developing small design proposals within teams. The projects will explore parametric design thinking, analytical techniques and fabrication. The workshop is organized by Dsearch in collaboration with White R&D Building technology (Kunskapsbygget Byggteknik), with financial support from the ARQ Research Foundation.

Michael Speaks at White Arkitekter. Photo: Thomas Zaar

We were very happy to have Michael Speaks as a guest at White Arkitekter, in a lunch conversation organized by Dsearch in collaboration with White R&D. The theme was research and design in practice, and Speaks made the interesting statement that universities start to behave like companies, and large companies start to look at knowledge in a similar way as universities. He suggested that there is an urgent need to re-educate experienced architects, and that this can be accomplished by a more innovative mode of practice in addition to classical training. As a concluding remark, he stated that the only remaining value of vanguard architects is the vanguards of practice, the architects that reform the mode of practice itself.

Michael Speaks in the seminar with students from Perfromative Design and Architectures of Interdisciplinarity

As a collaboration between KTH Performative Design studio, we were happy to have Michael Speaks as a guest. The Dean of University of Kentucky, Speaks is previously known for introducing design intelligence as a source of innovation in practice, as well as introducing Dutch architecture to a wider international audience in the 1990s. He gave a public evening lecture at the KTH, and held a seminar with our two studios on the topic of design and research in teaching and practice. The events were organized by myself in collaboration with Daniel Norell of the Performative Design studio.

We were fortunate to receive additional funding from the KTH School of Architecture for this event.

Excpert from the project by Grégoire Stouck and Ecehan Esra Top

In the second project of studio 11 in the fall 2010 our students were asked to deploy the techniques for digital design as well as structural and environmental analysis in the design of a visitors´centre for the Högdalen Energy from Waste power plant. This involved a basic understanding of the programmatic requirements of the facility and the added functions, as well as the development of a design strategy for industrial sites. This assignment also introduced the theme of the year, as the spring will see the design of new Energy from Waste facilities in three different sites around Stockholm.

Beside all tutors of the studio; Hanif Kara, Paul Scott, Reuben Brambleby, Lina Martinsson Achi and myself, we also had our assisting tutors Alexander Trimboli and Raimo Joss, and invited guests Helena Jarlöv Glantz and Sander Schuur in for the review. A great ending of the first intense semester of the new studio.

More about the studio here: https://www.kth.se/social/page/architectures-of-interdiscipli/

Raimo Joss from Dsearch presenting at the network meeting

The first internal event organized by Dsearch in November 2010 was a collaboration with the White R&D Building Technology network. Facilitated in the Stockholm office, this event presented the initial aganda of the Dsearch development team, as well as provided a background to the current state of digital design strategies in practice. Special guests included Pablo Miranda and Åsmund Gamlesater from Aedas R&D, and Gustav Fagerström from UN Studio.

Romain Alarcon presenting his project at AKT

To end the first project in the fall of 2010, studio 11 did a study trip to London. Beside facilitating the final review in London at the AKT office, we also did a series of visits to pracitices especially relevant to the studio agenda. This included among others Fosters, Buro Happold, AKT, Aedas and BDSP. In addition, the studio participated in a Grasshopper workshop set up in collaboration with the AA and London Metropolitan University.

The ACSA Flip Your Field advert

I presented the paper Cognitive Estrangement in Digital Design Practice at the 2010 ACSA West Central Fall Conference in Chicago. The theme of the year was Flip Your Field, implying to a return to issues explored in architectural research over the past fifteen years in order to define ten opportunities for ideological re-investment with the aim to trade up the discipline. I was part of the Versions panel, and I suggested that there is a need to link speculative design work with global issues in order to not do less experimental work, but rather more, but tied into narratives that opens up the field of exploration.

The paper suggests that there are concepts and definitions within Science Fiction studies that may be useful in order to establish frameworks for this mode of speculative design. This is a trajectory that will be continued in my forthcoming PhD thesis.

Since August 2010 I am the director of Dsearch, a recently established environment for digital design and development within White Arkitekter AB. The aim is to continuously develop methodology and design tools in order to ensure that White retains a high international standard in regards to project design and implementation. This is achieved through the formulation of strategies, independent method development and direct support in projects. The internal Dsearch network allows the competences present within White to converge in order to generate new knowledge within the field of digital design, and disseminate it throughout the organisation. The external network of Dsearch is part of an international community with a high degree of knowledge sharing within the realm of contemporary digital methodology, which will affect our design processes and the architecture we create in the future.

With ten offices in Sweden and Denmark White is one of the largest firms in Scandinavia. The strong focus on research & development with project integration is a major reason why I took on this challenge. We are currently operating primarily internally, but we are also setting up an external network for future collaboration and exchanges of ideas. If you are interested in what we are up to, please contact me at jonas.runberger[at]white.se.

UFO members in Athens September 2010

The annual UFO meeting in Greece included a very enjoyable 3-day sailing trip around the Saronic Islands, in preparation for the final meeting on the hill facing Acropolis. A much needed getaway for all of us, and a very rewarding conversation on where our field of architectural exploration is heading in the near future.

We have now launched the new design studio Architectures of Interdisciplinarity at the KTH School of Architecture. The teaching team consists of Professor Hanif Kara, Lina Martinsson Achi, Paul Scott and Jonas Runberger. The studio is part of the 4th+5th year curriculum and will focus on design based collaborations between different disciplines.

Studio agenda

Studio 11 will seek to synthesise technological investigations and design through an interdisciplinary discourse to produce Architecture. We will research architectural, cultural, sociological and technological implications of contemporary design strategies.  The studio will emphasise methods for testing proposals and evaluating relative values of quantitative and qualitative modelling with the aim of testing a real proposition on a chosen site. Our interests will include high performance materials, digital design technique, rapid prototyping methods and computer aided manufacturing systems.

Each year the studio will select a particular typology and, during the 2010-2011 cycle of the studio, the overarching theme will be industrial architecture with a final project combining an Energy-from-Waste power plant with a public program.

The studio is founded on inter-disciplinary design methodologies led by Architects; linking technology and concepts at the intersection of architecture and structural/environmental engineering in order to develop innovative design solutions. Students will learn how to employ advanced digital design techniques at a strategic and detailed level. The interdisciplinary approach will provide skills in communication and collaboration with external specialists, as well as a general understanding of advanced structural and environmental concerns. Principles of fabrication, production and construction will be developed in the final output.