Main Page
From Pratt 09
Welcome to Design Studio Jonas Coersmeier at Pratt Institute, New York, Fall 2009
Final review 12/10, 3-7pm
Jury:
Gisela Baurmann
Lawrence Blough
Jeremy Carvalho
Michael Chen
Karl Chu
Adam Dayem
Adam Elstein
Yael Erel
Carlyle Fraser
Hina Jamelle
Haresh Lalvani
Jason Lee
Joan Louge
Gregory Merryweather
David Ruy
Richard Sarrach
Erich Schoenenberger
Ludovica Tramontin
Contents |
IASS
INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED SUSTAINABILITY STUDIES
“I suggest then that a healthy ecology of human civilization would be defined somewhat as follows: a single system of environment combined with high human civilization in which the flexibility of the civilization shall match that of the environment to create an ongoing complex system, open-ended for slow change of even basic (hard programmed) characteristics.” --Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972).
In October 2007, a group of 15 Nobel Prize winners gathered at the Telegrafenberg, a hill south of Potsdam that is home to several renowned scientific observatories and facilities. Together they formulated a new global deal for sustainability, which included the idea of a new dedicated research institution. Subsequently, under guidance from the Postdam Institute for Climate Research (PIK) and the Geo Research Center Potsdam (GFZ), the Institute for Advanced Climate, Earth System and Sustainability Studies (IASS) was founded in May 2009.
The former executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, Dr. Klaus Töpfer, was appointed founding director. Elite scientists from all over the world will conduct research at the IASS with the goal of developing solutions for the most pressing challenges of our time: climate change and the preservation of the environment. The IASS’s funding will be provided by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
Project
The project is to design a permanent home for the IASS at the Telegrafenberg. The new institute will require living quarters for invited scientists and spaces for interdisciplinary research and interaction. In a concept paper, the scientists at PIK and GFZ articulated the following ideas about the facility:
The challenges of shaping our future world are breathtaking. At the same time, however, the cognitive abilities to deal with those challenges have dramatically grown in recent decades. It is vital to unite dispersed knowledge and shape it into a critical mass.
The institute could be a "research hotel" bringing together domestic and foreign researchers for limited periods with an impetus on innovation and the generation of sustainable futures.
The IASS seeks to become one of the world's leading centers for research and discourse on sustainability issues. The comparative advantage of the institution would not lie in its size but in its "convening power.”
Context
Einstein Tower
The site for the IASS is directly adjacent to the Einstein Tower, widely regarded as the most prominent example of expressionist architecture. Built in 1920, it is a stylized sculptural expression that defines a unique formal language within the context of the emerging Modern Movement. At the same time, the tower is a precise scientific tool and remains in operation today. The Einstein Tower is also an icon of the scientific method. It houses a telescope designed by the German astronomer Erwin Freundlich for the experimental verification of the general theories of relativity and gravitation.
Scientific Method
A hundred years after Einstein’s first theories and their attempted validation in Potsdam, the scientific method (hypothesis and proof) is becoming obsolete. With universal access to enormous amounts of data, science is shifting to an algorithmic paradigm. No theoretical models need to be constructed and tested when statistical algorithms find patterns and direct answers by crawling through a global database. It is a new way of understanding the world that dispenses with unified theories or models of the systems around us. It simply looks at the systems themselves.
Climate Research
Climate research is one area in which this new method⎯the statistical analysis of massive data sets⎯is actively employed. The world-renowned Potsdam Institute for Climate Research (PIK) studies the effects of global change on both environmental and social levels. At PIK, researchers in the natural and social sciences work together to study global change and its impacts on ecological, economic and social systems. They examine the Earth system's capacity for withstanding human interventions and devise strategies for a sustainable development of humankind and nature.
Questions
Echoing the institute’s primary research areas, the IASS design must strive to embody new sustainable building strategies and address fundamental questions about science and the built environment:
• What is the spatial expression of a research institute that deals with the most imminent challenges of our times? In the 1920s, the visible profile of the Einstein Tower was used for political gain. It was mediated as a symbol for a newfound German self-expression following World War I and meant to underscore the nation’s leading role in scientific and cultural fields. The new IASS may claim to advance its architectural presence as a means of communicating to the world⎯this time with an agenda beyond national interests.
• Which programmatic strategies capture the organizational opportunities offered by this new form of interdisciplinary research? As opposed to its institutional neighbors (the GFZ and PIK), the IASS will sponsor short-term research projects. The collaboration between international scientists is structured in a non-hierarchical way, and it fosters open and spontaneous exchange among the selected experts. At the same time, retreat areas will allow the participants to focus on specific research tasks.
• In which way do novel design techniques correspond to the algorithmic paradigm of the scientific method at large? Transitioning from a teleological to a generative design process, architectural means such as typologies and diagrams may be analogous to the theoretical models of the scientific domain and become obsolete. Is there a new architectural language/articulation for “A New Kind of Science”?
• With respect to the institute’s prominent neighbor, what is a contemporary embodiment of architectural expressionism?
Seminar
The studio “IASS” and seminar “Nanotectonica” are offered in conjunction as one research and design project on sustainable structures. While the studio will focus on sustainable design strategies and fundamental questions about science and the built environment, the supplementary seminar will serve as a forum for analysis and discussion.
NANOTECTONICA
The seminar focuses on incorporating micro- and nanostructures into the architectural design process. Research will be conducted in cooperation with the Hitachi Corporation, which will make a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) available on several occasions during the semester.
Nanotechnology and algorithmic tools enable expanded and deeper investigations into natural structures. At the same time, a new understanding of living systems emerges. The search is not limited to the phenotypical expressions of nature, but seeks to decipher its organizing principles. Nanotechnology and algorithmic processes allow us to speculate on the underlying organizational systems of biological processes. Beyond the bionic, which idealizes living structures as resolved and completed systems, and beyond biomimicry, which strives to copy those systems in their full complexity, we are in search of procedurally optimized building methods employed in living systems.
The seminar, while focusing on analysis and design production, will base its exploration in the context of recent architectural history. The search for structural precedents in nature is as old as the history of architecture itself, with Functionalism, Constructivism and Natural Symbolism as expressions of that search in the early 20th century. In its quest for natural prototypes, early Modernism found its inspiration in the work of Raoul H. Francé, among others. In the later 20th century Fuller, Ricolait and Frei Otto were interested in the processural in nature. In the age of advanced computation and nano technology, their methods of optimization invite re-examination and further development.
At nanoscale, the material properties of organizations change. Gravity is no longer the dominant force when the size of the system radically decreases. The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) will allow us glimpses into organizational systems that work beyond the logic of primary gravitational considerations.
The procedural operations of the SEM will be followed by generative drawing and fabrication techniques that analyze, process and enhance the source material. Digital output models inform structural and tectonic propositions that are tested in the context of the IASS studio.
The seminar will revolve around group discussions and instructor and student presentations. It will feature two guest lecturers: Gisela Baurmann, TU-Berlin and Princeton University, and Dr. Donovan Leonard, Nano Material Science, Duke University. Application Specialist Terry Suzuki will train students to operate the Hitachi SEM, TM-1000.
