Studio - 2020-21
Digital Anatomies & Material Autonomies
1. COURSE DESCRIPTION
The interest of the course is in engaging with emerging material-digital conditions of in-habitation, which are generated within the techno-digital contexts. It intends to develop new spatial diagrams and configurations within these contexts and manifest them in a form of simulated realities and materialist strategies. The course also intends to discuss the role of the ‘process’ in making and inhabiting space and form. The projects emerge in the intersection of materials and technologies in the spatial context. This course will study and engage actively with ‘maker culture’ and questions of making built form and space as a method to mobilize the intent of the project.
2. LEARNING OBJECTIVES
This purpose of this course is to: (a) To articulate relationships between techniques and matter to develop material questions on form. (b) To articulate a relationship between the digital and the material understanding of form. (c) To develop an apparatus to generate diagrams to manifest space and form.
3. LEARNING OUTCOMES
Within the above frame, at the end of this course, you will learn to: (a) develop an argumentation for a problem statement and frame a research question; (b) synthesize a review of relevant concepts and research in the field of materials and techniques; and, (c) develop a methodological approach to engage with your experiment and execute it.
4. COURSE FORMAT
This is an experimentation based hands on driven studio. An approach to making-observation-specific readings and building on that in an progressive way is the studio format. Techniques and material techniques to be experimented based on their respective set objectives for the selected material. A minimum of 5 recorded experiments are to be conducted in the course of the module of 4 weeks. Discussions on research papers from across academia and special experimental projects will be conducted to orient and provide direction in the respective pursuits.
Rethinking Tools and Skills of Fabrication
The technique of layering develops new methods, techniques and technology of imagining, designing and making a form.
Using the layering process, the idea explores how the layering of concrete, clay and mud, the relentless three-dimensional deposition of extruded lines of material, and the act of layering can explore new strategies for imagining form.
The idea of a unit formation through natural processes verses through the digital contexts varies on its process of formation and how it gets shaped and the geometry that it follows. This idea was explored by understanding the various places where these units are found and how they become dense through a certain generative process.
Idea of tools is seen as a process of exploration and making of material and form respectively. How do tools shape our design process, and how can one rethink the role of tools and hence the role of human engagement in the tools of today, are few of the questions which are discussed during the making of a new tool.
Understanding the concepts and relationships of ‘algorithms’ and ‘computational design’ with its relevance in contemporary times. This led to analyse the importance of fabrication in the post process. The motivation behind the work was to explore the possibilities of form and space, when an algorithm takes command over a set of rules defined by a being.
Concrete V2.0
Exploring the phenomenological context of form, texture, material appearance and tactility. Understanding material behavior through act of crafting gestures.
Exploring the various dimensions in which the molds can be and are thought of by using multiple methods of making and casting techniques.
Exploring material autonomies and its formal possibilities in an apparatus, to understand intersection of making processes in the formation of a material. Looking at how due to surface tension a material takes shape based on its viscosity and viscoelasticity.
The New Science of Making - Phenomenological Material Formations
Exploring formal possibilities as a result of application or removal of heat (flow of thermal energy), to or from materials and observing the modulation / deformation in the same due to the difference in coefficients of expansion / contraction.
Exploring the blowing techniques as we know plastic goes under change in its state when exposed to heat when heat is exerted as well as air to blow the mixtures the changing form are appeared
Nishith Parulekar
Exploring the beheviour of air with the materials and trying to make the process of process of inflation more dynamic
Exploring the changes in form that different materials undergo when subjected to their critical temperatures and the patterns in which they change their state.
Techniques of Weaves and Stitches Perishable Material Composites
Pranjal Sancheti
Exploring the ways of developing form using fibres . The weaving techniques affects the 3 dimentional form which gets generated .
Jay Kanti
Exploring various techniques of inducing formal capacities within a flexible material condition .i.e Fabric
Riya Israni
Exploring Corn starch and trying out different techniques to shape the material by trying out different sets of experiments like: (1) Sheet Experiments, (2) Making forms using piping bag, (3) Making chunkier forms.
Swamini Nagare
Exploring different types of starch like cornstarch and tapioca and how they combine with different natural and synthetic materials. Also trying to form a composite material having different forms and techniques.