troy NEW YORK

“Architects typically produce drawings and other artifacts—words, inscriptions, models, full-scale mock-ups, and so on—that allow buildings to be realized by others, at a distance from their authors. This has not always been the case. Gothic building, for example, was a constructive practice of geometric rules and traditions where master craftsmen operated to some extent as architect and builder simultaneously. In this situation, drawings were not the primary mediator between design and construction; discussions regarding the final form of a building continued throughout the construction process. . . .”

*Fig. 1: Robin Evans, “Projection and its analogues: The Arrested Image,” 1995.

[EXCERPTED FROM FRESH PUNCHES ]

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troy NEW YORK

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
critic: Casey REHM

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Will PYATT: The project explores a repeated geometries ability to express gradient in texture between a fluid soft-surface, and a polygonized hard-surface; wherein recognizable figural forms exist in contrast with a fluid and continuous surface. Simultaneously a secondary system operates according to the same logic; however rather than forming geometry, volume, & space these components seek to veil the existing geometries in a permeable sharp-screen that seeks to mask the nature of the interior spaces.

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troy NEW YORK

Adjunct Faculty, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Fleet HOWER: Collateral Intricacy is a proposition for an operationally contextualized architecture that combines the logic underlying Gothic geometry with the precision and expanded capabilities of contemporary computation. By encoding specific quantitative and qualitative Gothic operations such as subdivision and proliferation of detail, a radically new architecture emerges.

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troy NEW YORK

Jorge Silvetti was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he received his diploma in architecture from the University of Buenos Aires. He continued studies at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving his Master of Architecture degree and pursuing post graduate work in the area of architectural theory and criticism. Mr. Silvetti’s architectural practice, Machado and Silvetti Associates, was formed with Rodolfo Machado in 1974.

Jorge SILVETTI
, “Recent Work”
Moday, 04/15
6.00 pm / EMPAC, theater
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 8th Street
Troy, New York 12180

troy NEW YORK

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
critic: Brian de LUNA

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Margaret SHAY: My work on the topic “interior envelopes” set forth by our professor began with the study of the plan of Christopher Wren’s unbuilt version of Saint Paul’s cathedral. Through my studies, I extracted the pure geometries that were driving the plan and began calling out the new geometries that resulted due to overlapping, and also exploring those new geometries in three dimensions.

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troy NEW YORK

Peter Eisenman is an American architect, writer and educator whose work has long been informed by reading architecture through a wide range of cultural, intellectual and philosophical references. Famous during the late 1960s for his pioneering houses from his days among the New York Five, he has since then remained at the forefront of architectural discourse through the buildings he has produced, the numerous books he has written, and the lectures and courses he has taught.

Peter EISENMAN
, “A Defense of Architecture”
Wednesday, 04/03
6.00 pm / EMPAC Theater
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 8th Street
Troy, New York 12180

troy NEW YORK

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
critic: Casey REHM.

Students explored the image making ability of complex systems through a series of exercises targeted at analyzing and leveraging behaviors expressed through color and mechanical precedents. Students analyzed physical relationships in early industrial automatons and machines to produce logics for the organization of material in a multi-agent systems. Students then explored color relationships in Dutch still life painting, which they then integrated into their mechanical systems as new behaviors.

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troy NEW YORK

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Critic: Andrew SAUNDERS.

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Graham BILLINGS: “Normative Fluidity” is a museum extension that explores the process of transposition between a series of light studies, diagrammatic implications of the “affect,” and their resultant three-dimensional forms and spaces. Diffraction of light through water is known as caustics; a process that was coupled with a camera obscura during my initial research.

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troy NEW YORK

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
critic: Brian de LUNA

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Lisa-Christin LAUE: The beginning of the studio was spent analyzing the interior envelopes of a precedent of our choice from the baroque period. I chose Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza by Borromini for its sophisticated geometric relationships consisting of equilateral triangles and circles.

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troy NEW YORK

Alisa Andrasek is an experimental practitioner and research based educator of architecture and computational processes in design. In 2001 she founded biothing, a cross-disciplinary laboratory that focuses on the generative potential of computational systems for design.

Alisa ANDRASEK (Biothing)

, “Open Synthesis: Increased Resolution Fabric of Architecture”
Monday, 03/04
6.00 pm / EMPAC, theater
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 8th Street
Troy, New York 12180