On the Face of It: Fabrication and Façade

This seminar examines the re-emerging concern with architectural representation through the discourse of geometry and computation. The building facade is the site of both performance (structural, environmental, and organizational) and politics (transparency, permeability, and fenestration). It orchestrates the building’s spatial relationships as well as engages with its social context. This seminar proposes that as architects have begun to engage with hands-on information processing, a set of sensibilities have simultaneously emerged that open up alternate modes of faciality. The dense pattern and expressed joints common to many contemporary building skins perform at multiple scales and orientations beyond front-to-back or top-to-bottom. Geometries of aggregation produce relationships between the part and the whole, the one and the many, the individual and larger social structures. Initially, the contemporary state of the façade is established by examining its historical evolution and associated meanings in relation to theories of perception, faciality, and assemblage. Students are asked to delve deeply into the formal potential of the Grasshopper scripting interface (tutorials and consultation throughout the semester are provided—no experience or particular software facility is necessary) and to engage with the theoretical content discussed. Students design façade systems that synthesize surface geometry, panelization, structure, and fenestration. Each student’s project must articulate an agenda about inside and out, material and assembly, affect and representation. Limited enrollment.