Advanced Option Studio: TerraLogic — Manifesting Material Stories
This studio positions architecture as a translational practice operating between geological processes and architectural systems, prioritizing translation over representation.
Eco-Receptive/Habitable Facade, COOKFOX Architects, ACAW ’21.
This studio positions architecture as a translational practice operating between geological processes and architectural systems. The studio prioritizes translation over representation, seeking analogical relationships between material formation and architectural assembly. Students examine the effects produced through interactions among materials, climate, labor, technology and culture, using architectural drawing, modeling, and making as tools for inquiry rather than depiction. Aiming to reimagine the building’s adaptation to local ecology and its responsiveness to climate change, we look at the processes that mark the land.
Terracotta is the studio’s material focus due to this metamorphic potential, earthen origins, and non-extractive nature. Through analytical drawings, models, and material explorations, students develop architectural space, form, and ceramic systems that foreground craft and variability. Resultant surfaces are by their nature ornamental, so we will attempt to understand ornament’s role in both sociocultural and environmental "performance." To do so, digital fabrication techniques are paired with analog craft processes to cultivate material intelligence, environmental performance, and constructability. Engagement with facade engineers, ceramicists, and geologists supports a pedagogy grounded in formal and material speculation.