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Review: Spectral Process

MBIArch Notes

Adjunct Professor Renata Sentkiewicz describes the objectives and outcomes of the Short Design Studio ‘Spectral Process’, led by Visiting Professor Philippe Rahm.

The design studio 'Spectral Process’ consisted of a laboratory centered on different programs related to user’s activities in Barcelona. The design process was organized in three steps: dissociation, reconstruction and insertion in a site, each one of them treated as an independent exercise which had to be completed before proceeding to the next one.

Each student was given one of the followings programs: dwelling, office, art gallery, market, school, restaurant, sports, swimming pool and discotheque. All of them are typical activities which describe every day life in the city. The spaces wear those actions take place are perfectly defined by the specific data related with dimensions, interior organization, materials, etc. We know very well what they ‘look like’.

The objective of the studio was to suspend the conventional knowledge based on tectonics and programmatic organization of the space which has been defined along time in the discipline of architecture, and focus on the user, human or non human. What are the optimal conditions for the human body to hold a specific activity? Or what are the suitable conditions to store different products? What physiological processes take place while you sunbathe, eat, play sports or drink liquors, for example? The analysis of these programs were based on the study of data such as temperature, humidity, air exchange and it’s composition, sun radiation, light, sound, etc. to detect the most specific and necessary conditions for each of them.

Final Jury, view the full set of MBIArch 2011-2012 photos here
 
The results were tested in the natural exterior conditions of Barcelona, in two scenarios: winter and summer. The parameters needed to reach the conditions described in the previous analysis were detected, and led to design the necessary elements. These architectural elements were defined only through their qualities in order to filter the external conditions to the inside and once there to control their organization. Aspects such as position, form, dimension, texture and materiality of these elements were designed exclusively to manage the invisible realm.

At this point we had two groups of minimum elements which define each activity: one for the winter and one for the summer time. With these elements the aim was to construct a unique project that worked efficiently throughout the year.

The last step of the studio was to identify the optimum site in the city according to the natural conditions of the area and the project itself.

The overall design process lasted four weeks. Each of the three steps took a week, while the last seven days were used to review the presentation and produce the final outcomes of the project.

  Final Jury, view the full set of MBIArch 2011-2012 photos here
 
In this course the results were considered as valuable as the whole process of design. The work of the students demonstrated the efficiency of the method. All of them presented very interesting approaches in the analysis and the first schemes. Most of the students showed a very coherent development of ideas through all the steps. The most difficult challenge for the students was to translate the first steps focused on invisible realm into a more figurative project maintaining the intensity of their previous schemes. Some of them had difficulties - as expected - in escaping back to their habitual skills and images about how the architecture should look like. But even in these cases the recognition of these inertias was a productive critic driven by the students themselves.

The design studio ‘spectral process’ was an experience to work with the architecture as a tool to control the physical conditions and construct the project through the design process based on data of invisible realm.
 
-Renata Sentkiewicz, Adjunct Professor
Architectural Design: Short Design Studio ‘Spectral Process’

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