SPECIAL TOPICS | QUEST ON STRUCTURES

8th semester

Instructor: Yannis Zavoleas

Theme subject: Systemic approaches in architectural design. Archetypical schemas and their transference to space

Short Description

In the research framework outlined by a systematic understanding of space design, the course focuses on an analysis of archetypical schemas coined in the modern and the late modern era. Archetypes with reference to the grid, also to linear arrangements and their derivatives such as the web, the mat and the matrix, were developed as schematic interpretations of verbal descriptions about space, being descriptive of its structure. The related quest has evolved over the last twenty years. Advanced archetypical systems have been generated, whose nominative characteristics respond to contemporary issues about architectural design, also to a variety of conditions and qualities describing space, including the relationships among its units.

In reflection of the above, new archetypical alternatives are investigated over the course. As a general observation, there is a shift of interest concerning design methodologies. Specifically, an interest in preset typologies describing space would give way to a quest of its inner logic, stemming from the interaction among the parameters about an architectural project, thereby bridging the gap between analysis and synthesis.

DIGITAL MEDIA IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN | FIRST SEMESTER

Instructors: Yannis Zavoleas (coordinator), Vasilis Stroumbakos, Demetri Zisimopoulos, Vasili Patmios-Karouk, Nancy Psaraki, Natassa Kantidaki, Anna Chartofili.

Location: School of Architecture, University of Patras.

Years: 2008-10.

Theme subject: Analysis – Synthesis. Principles of architectural design with the aid of digital technologies.

Short description

The course aims at developing the ability to conceptual thinking, also to comparative research and experimentation in architectural design by exploiting the potentials of computer systems. The computer is introduced as an advanced medium that is also symbolic of the analytic operations it supports. In such, operations with the computer interfere with perception and spatial experience being understood as an aggregate of information. This introduction helps to nurture the critical framework upon which expressive processes related to presentation, representation, rendering and communication, take place.

Architectural design is about the analysis and the reformation of information invested in architectural elements, in order to create new spatial experience. In such, the dipole analysis/synthesis describes schematically two opposite processes. The computer is used as a medium and as a referent to methods first applied onto the material object, then onto its projection to image and drawing, giving emphasis to the reduction of its form and its aesthetics to the structural relationships lying low.