RE-ENGINEERING PRE-MAJOR



Co-ordinators
SIAL: Jane Burry + Andrew Maher
Civil Engineering: Professor Mike Xie + Dr Saman De Silva

In semester two 2005 SIAL offered a pre-major design studio to bring together students from architecture and structural engineering to explore the organisation, development and fabrication of built systems in co-rational collaboration.

Co-rationality is neither an approach to design in which a structural system is the starting point (“pre-rational”) or one in which structure is designed in reaction to formal resolution (make it stand up please, or “post-rational”) but an opportunity to explore structural systems in synthesis with other design drivers.

There was an emphasis on the design of built systems, structural evolution and flexible digital and physical modelling.

Projects
Three projects were undertaken through the semester. The first was to test conceptual design practice through a series of exercises. The second focussed on a particular example in a detailed manner and the third explored siting and location.

Exemplars from the Studio





The Hybrid Cathedral (above) and the Inhabited Bridge (below) - mathematically defined structures by Steven Swain and Sean Ryan

Wiki
Access to the Wiki Space