DIFFERENTIAL POROSITY Workshop – Department of Architecture

Time is a system to understand space. During a 10-day intensive session directed by Marco Verde, students will be challenged to understand form as expression of processes that occur in space and time. Through investigations in dynamic systems, form will be studied as a dynamic process of space-occupation that manifests through the organization of matter into differentiated patterns.

Unfolding a research-based design approach, students will first develop catalogues of physical experiments to investigate the processes of formation of structures and patterns in space and time. The data produced will be regarded as pre-material state of potential architectural formation.

During the workshop, students will embrace the entire process of production from design to final materialization as an integral non-linear workflow. Emphasis will be placed on the parametric integration of data-driven fabrication and advanced assembly logics. These will be understood as intrinsic, operative variables of specific design intelligences. Advanced parametric-associative design strategies will be instrumental in developing integral project proposals.

The agenda of the workshop will be to investigate novel spatial repertories as integral morphologies: these are formations where the customary physical and performative boundaries between structure, skin, and space are dissolved in differential transitions of physical qualities.

Final aim of the course will be to detail, digital fabricate, and assembly refined corroborative prototypes that are catalyst of a holistic understanding. Extensive documentation of all stages of the process will serve as critical operative instrument within the design-research.

DIRECTOR
Marco Verde Eng, MArch



INSTRUCTORS
Odysseas Kontovourkis, Ph.D.
Lecturer at the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, University of Cyprus
Email: kontovourkis.odysseas@ucy.ac.cy
Link: http://www.ucy.ac.cy/~odykont.aspx

Marco Verde Eng, March
Founder of ALO and ALO Co.Re.Division
Email: m.verde@alo-architettura.com
Link: http://www.marco-verde.blogspot.com/

APPLICATIONS
The 10-day workshop is open to worldwide architecture, engineering and industrial design students (1), recently graduated designers (1), and professionals (2). Basic skills in Rhino and Grasshopper are recommended.
Application deadline: 8th of August 2011. For info and applications contact Odysseas Kontovourkis at: kontovourkis.odysseas@ucy.ac.cy

-maximum number of students: 16;
-tuition fees (1) for students and recently graduated designers: 250 Euro;
-tuition fees (2) for professionals: 500 Euro

Note: Materials for prototypes are not included.