The Informed Modularity 4th year track 5 aimed to reconsider the history of the component or module in post- war 20th century architecture and to further re-examine the implications of a componential approach in contemporary architectural design practice. This includes the modularisation of skill and expertise, industrial production and construction systems as well as business models in post-war architecture. Central for Post-war architecture were processes of modularisation that resulted in programmatic and material organisations of mass-production and standardisation. Today there is a renewed interest in the component as an architectural approach. Standardisation is today replaced by an interest in mass customization and in the possibility for components to be systematically or parametrically differentiated or modulated in order to generate spatial, programmatic, infrastructural and material configurations that respond to local conditions and desires.
part 1 was the Crash Course called The construction of Swedish identity: rethinking the Kurbits and the filling of surface. The work focused on the construction of identity/identities and its relationships to the ornamental and the decorative through a small urban program. Further the work concentrated on an architectural cellular strategy with a rigor in structural, programmatic and material applications. The crash course was run by Ulrika Karlsson.
part 2 was an architecture studio in the second trimester of the year where the students was looking at identity/identities in relation to living and housing of the future. Looking back at experiments of the last century; including the work of Jean Prouvé, the Californian Case Study Houses program from 1945-1962, Archigram and the Metabolists of the 1960s, a wide range of projects addressing technology and its social and cultural ramifications can be identified. With contemporary issues of industrialization such as Lean Production and mass customization as a departure point, the studio projected ideas further, using advances in technology and new modes of living to explore future issues of housing development. The studio also conducted a study trip to London visitng practices such as AKT, KPF and Aedas, as well as took part in workshops with Architectural Association Diploma Unit 16.
KTH School of Architecture design studio 2005 – 2006
Examiner: Ulrika Karlsson
Tutors: Pablo Miranda and Jonas Runberger
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