The PoP course critically explored a number of related issues concerning the areas between concept and technology, model and representation and process and proposal. The course reevaluated the components of the architectural project through the use and abuse of digital tools and the development of instrumental models.

The course was founded in the interest of the academic architectural project and its context, and the use of its potential. This five week course was set up to explore different themes and design environments, in order to find different potentials. Three different tracks were defined by references, in theory, literature and existing projects. Although dependent on texts to set up environments for discussion, the students were asked to do complete design projects, and stress issues as far as possible in five summer weeks. Projects range for explorations of attitude in a design-process, to actual suggestions for different “real” interventions, always with a mode of speculation.

KTH School of Architecture summer studio 2002
Examinator: Peter Ullstad
Tutors: Pablo Miranda, Daniel Norell, Jonas Runberger, Adam Somlai-Fischer

Communicative Spaces was first of a series of courses for the Media Technology department at the KTH, with the objective of merging technological skill and new approaches to design. Bringing in architectural aspects also fused spatial qualities with mediated environments.

The students were asked to conduct research into the fields where media and architecture meet. The practical task was to create media ‘environments’ for remote and local exchange, combining experience of interactive media with the presence of physical spaces. The result was a presentation of the working environment in principle, where each group demonstrated the technology, the ideas and speculated on the effects the installation might have on the interaction between people.

Hypersketch 3 / Communicative Spaces 1, KTH Media Technology, spring 2001
Tutors: Tobi Schneidler and Jonas Runberger

Communicative Spaces 2, KTH Media Technology, spring 2002
Tutors: Pablo Miranda, Daniel Norell Jonas Runberger and Adam Somlai-Fischer

Communicative Spaces , KTH Media Technology, fall 2002
Tutors: Pablo Miranda, Annika Nyström, Jonas Runberger, Maria Sigeman and Adam Somlai-Fischer

Part of a series of articles on new technologies for prototyping and production, presenting examples of architectural prototyping from the practices of Servo and Greg Lynn, as well as the Machinic Processes in Architectural Design. It looks into the potential of new digital rapid prototyping techniques, as well as new modes of professional operation based on those techniques.

Yearbook for the Polytechnic Society of Gothenburg

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

An electable course under the guidance of Professor Greg Lynn, investigating the aesthetic, technical and tectonic potential of topology based surface modeling combined with robotic manufacture.

The approach to design was to define the maximum and minimum limitations of a typical cnc (computer numerically controlled) machine and then exploit the formal permutations made possible within these limits. Advanced animation software was used for form generation and analysis.

ETH School of Architecture
Professor Greg Lynn
Tutors: MArcelyn Gow and jonas Runberger

More info and student projects available at:
www.arch.ethz.ch/lynn

Hyper:Sketch was an architectural research platform and design studio at the KTH School  of Architecture, looking into the potential spaces between physical built, and virtually mediated environments.

The second Hyper:sketch project was set as a 6 week summer course and discussed a new notion of neighbourhood:
Physical as well as digital proximity. Contextual thinking is extremely important for any design task, it becomes evermore important when there is more than one reality influencing the project development.

1:Site exploration
Teams formed different cells to work on 16 sites in the urban area of Stockholm.
The first task was to analyse the site, and to produce digital documentation that communicated the character, infrastructure or atmosphere of the site. One local spot in each area became the site for the design intervention.

2:Neighbourhood negotiation
The next task was to recognise the cell position in the information chain.
-Each cell received information from the previous cell
-Each cell produced inormation about their site
-Each cell passed this information on to the next cell
The linked cell where not given adjecent areas, as seen on the map.

3:Functional analysis
The challenge was to construct a local pavillion, a vessel of contextual information. The physical scale should be that of a pavillion or urban furniture.
Certain issues were emphasised:
-What kind of information do you receive.
-How does it affect your site, Do you project it, create a sound environment or create a haptic interface?
-How does the pavillion interact with the local physical context.
Does it activly aquire contextual information. Does it surpress information?
-How does it forward information?
The pavillion could fulfill various function: It could be a remote communication tool, interresting for touristic applications, business meetings, cultural exchange or contemplation.

KTH School of Architecture summer studio
Tutors: Tobi Schneidler and Jonas Runberger
www.hypersketch.com

Hyper:Sketch was an architectural research platform and design studio at the KTH School of Architecture, looking into the potential spaces between physical built, and virtually mediated environments.

The designer today is increasingly asked to provide integrated solutions to a design task, spanning architectural, media and network design problems. The Experience Bandwidth offered by an architectural design will not be confined to its local organisation. The building will reach through the use of technology into networked spaces, enabled for example by tele presence and ambient media.

KTH School of Architecture 4th year design studio
Tutors: Tobi Schneidler, Jonas Runberger and Malin Zimm

www.hypersketch.com