project by Matilda Eriksson, Milo Lavén and Hjalmar Mann
The six-week course acted on the friction between concepts and technology, and was looking for new ways to develop ideas, new worlds to explore and new problems to solve. Through the three linked concepts of Navigation, Organization and the Narrative, the course looked at ideas in related disciplines, the use and abuse of software and the development of new tools that address the architectural process.
The non course was set in two phases. During the first three weeks all 70 students worked on the same topic, while divided into text seminar groups in the three NON tracks, Navigation, Organisation and Narrative. During phase two the students selected to continue the pursuit of one of the tracks, either individually or in design teams.
During the two phases of the NON course, students were encouraged to work in different constellations, to explore new topics and transform ideas between different media. Although the second phase was divided into three different tracks, Navigation, Organisation and the Narrative, with different tutors and agendas, the projects were finally reassembled under ten different topics.
Different input was given throughout the 6 weeks, including numerous lectures and presentations, text seminars and intense workshops. All participating teachers brought in their own interests to provide a rich context for the overall course, and students were given access to all agendas, while choosing their own line of progress.
navigation outline (tutor Shaun Murray)
Consider work that operates in three or more spaces simultaneously, some narrative, some metaphorical. The research would embark on an architecture of shifting velocity and vector; they are objects that are reflexive, and inhabit vessels and spaces that are fast, slow, slippery or simply suddenly absent, but always fluid. We know that architecture is no longer a cold machine on a brutal planet. It’s the little things that drive us wild: small movements, tiny recalibrations, minute metricutations, digital differentiations and meddlesome menisci these and many other extreme phenomena silently undermine the prison of a naive reality; a naive reality in which other architects continue to plonk a plodding architecture for a preposterous posterity.
organisation outline (tutors Jonas Runberger, Daniel Norell and Pablo Miranda)
The isolated structure in different medias carries information to be used as guidance, interaction and control. Systems are always changing, barriers are formed, gates are opened and closed. The unexpected can happen. The planned does not take place. The Model becomes the probing platform for the unknown, the simulation becomes a tool. The adaptive landscape is put to the test. Through studies of interactive scenarioes on the borderline between Models and Tools, the potential in the generated was investigated, keeping in mind the importance of the underlying order, while being aware of the difference between the extarnal overview and the internal experience.
narrative outline (tutors Minna Henttu and Malin Zimm)
The Narrative is the oldest known method of bending space and mastering time. Language is a virus and we are contamined. Communication is a drug and we are addicted. The voice, the gesture, the game, the sign, the trace, the wall and the system are the vehicles for the narrative. Within this segment we handle the narrative as the engine of the project, disassemble its parts and learn about maintenance of this vehicle and manouvering ways of communication in harsh conditions (speechless, reckless, in darkness, in competition with other media, digitally). A passionated interface should form between the driver and the vehicle. The story could be the shortest way between idea and culture, between thought and mass movement, between knowledge and memory. It takes time and takes place, and may be passed down generations with only a drop of fuel in the tank.
general
Jonas Runberger was coordinator and administrator of the overall course, which was run within the Communications department of the School of Architecture, the Royal Institute of Technology, with Peter Ullstad as examinator. A team of assistants supported the course with technical expertise: Karin Arnberg, Roger Eriksson, Henrik Hansen, Fabian Lindén and Ulrika Wachtmeister
KTH School of Architecture crash course, 2001
More information and samples of student projects can be found at: www.hypersketch.com/non
