Air Studio Journal (In Progress)

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-Week 1 Introduction Previous Work My Favorite Architecture

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Introduction

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Virtual Environments

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Architecture Studio: Water

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Landscape Studio: Site Tectonic

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My Favorite Architecture

Falling Water Frank Lloyd Wright, 1935, Mill Run, Pennsylvania

Th e Falling Water is one of my favour residential building. I believe the Falling Water is a dream house to nature lovers. Th e surrounding environments are so amazing. Not only the house was built upon the water fall is spectacular, but also the landscape is changing by seasons. Th is masterpiece is an innovation to the modern architecture. Mr. Wright was challenging the way of people’s thinking at that time. Th e site he chose to built upon the fall was beyond many expectations. Moreover, Wright was passionate about Japanese Architecture. He noticed the important of nature and cared about people--the users of an architecture. “Th e Falling Water is one of the great critiques of the modern movement in architecture, and simultaneously one of its masterpieces.” Frank Lloyd Wright had great distribution to the organic architecture and the modern architecture. He also prac-ticed architecture as an individual work of art and showed architecture as a discourse that dedicate the explication and advancement of architecture’s design process rational-ity.

My Favorite Architecture

Seattle LibraryRem Koolhaas, New York

In my mind, library is always a serious and formal study place. Few stories height in grey concrete and with steel frame windows,etc. For example, the Bailieu Library in Melbourne Uni. But this Seattle Pub-lic Library is really marvellous and break the normal design idea of a library. Rem Koolhaas is a con-temporary architect and urbanist. He created an interesting interior space inside which can see from the images aside. People can enjoy reading and observing the building at the same time. Indirectly cultivate people’s reading habbit. Even the form of the building is irregular and seems no rule on it, the functional area of the library is arranged in order and logical. New York city is one of the international fi nancial center in the world. Th e Seattle Library is perfectly matched with the urban facade and is part of the functional part of the city. Th e Seattle Library is a contemporary innovation. More importantly, it shows architecture can engage with it as visual culture as discourse and architecture’s philosophical , social or professional realm.

Architecture As DiscourseAn architectural project is an investment And architect is like an investment advisor, fi guring the best choice out for the client.

“[Architecture] exists because a client allows it to exist” (wk1 visual cul P.107)To every client, he/she has diff erent expectation and desire to an investment. Some want a low risk and medium reward investment while some want high reward whatever how risky it will be. Th ere is always an ideal portfolio to everyone. What an investment advisor responsible is to fi gure out the best choice for the patron. Th e choice may not be the highest reward one, but it must be the best fi t.

”Architecture can scarcely exist without patronage” (wk1 visual cul P.107)As an architect, he/she are always fi nding the best choice for every project.Each project is unique by site condition, limited budget and need of the pa-tron, etc. A best choice is the result of balancing diff erent aspects to meet the patron’s requirements. Here, the best choice means more than referring to the optimal design of the building. As it is always consist of a lot comprising issues, sometimes the optimal design is not fi t enough for making the best choice. Th erefore, a good architecture is not only about the brilliant design, but also expresses the pa-tron’s fulfi llment to the architect. Fortunately, Under certain constraints, there are still lots of spectacular architectures on the planet. It shows architecture has its own social identity and is a valuable investment.

‘In our society, people are always saying effi ciency. To an investor, effi ciency is making the most money in the shortest time; To a student, effi ciency is learn-ing the most in the shortest time. Time is always a parameter for effi ciency. So, there are questions arise out: what is effi ciency in architecture? How can architect fi nish the optimal design in relatively short time?

A form fi nder? Or a form maker? For the form maker to reimmerse himself in the form giving dialogue?

Space, structure and form are important architectural concepts. In the archi-tectural history, architects have been investigating these concepts with diff er-ent principles. Th e common one is designing with complex geometrical rela-tionships. Time consumption on creating and arranging geometrical forms is massive even with help of computation technology.

However, in our nature, there are lots of spectacular forms existed. Every single element in the earth, including we people, is surviving aft er a long time challenges in evolution process. Th erefore, my proposition is architect should get inspiration from the nature as a basis, and then further developed because it is time effi ciency and helps approaching to the optimal design.” Th e perfec-tion and variety of natural forms is the result of the relentless experimenta-tion of evolution”(evolutionary p.10) As the natural forms have already been tested and designed for thousand years, million years or even longer, if it is used as the origin in the design process, designers can save at least a thousand year time. Th erefore, architect can fi nish the optimal design in relatively short time by working with nature. How exactly architecture interact with nature will be discussed by the following precedents.