21 June 2017

Elementary Design

From February 2016 until summer, Jasper de Haan led the Elementary Design studio at the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture on Friday afternoons together with Ernie Mellegers and Violette Baudet. Sixteen students each made five designs for a house in 15 weeks. The brief is the same each time. But the conditions are different each time. For instance, the first house had to fit in a 10 x 10 x 10 metre cube and all six valleys of the cube had to be touched at least once by the house. The second house has no windows on the outside and the front door is at 4.75 m. Apart from the 'normal' programme of requirements, the third house must also accommodate 250 linear metres of books, which must also be accessible. And so on.
 

According to Malcolm Gladwell and Richard Sennett, it takes around 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill, no matter which one. This studio is based entirely on that idea: practising design. It aims to accelerate that process through a series of short exercises. These cover various universal aspects of design. This exercise is heavily indebted to the German architect and teacher O.M. Ungers. He developed a didactic method at TU Berlin in the 1960s called the 'Wochenaufgabe'. This method consisted of short-term weekly assignments with a clear programme of requirements, zoasl, for example, a house.

Besides the designs for the houses, the students also had to make an 'urban' plan with these 80 houses.
 

It was a pretty good presentation thanks to the students:

Arnout Blankenstijn, Clenda Boonman, Roy van den Brand, Sefer Burhan, Fung Chow, Phillip Haak, Melvin van den Houdt, Danny van den Houte, Tjeerd Huisman, Phylicia Kok-Sey-Tjong, Trajko Mitev, Pascal Nederend, Lisa van der Slot, Charlotte Steenis, Tom Visser, Mariska van de Westelaken