Wednesday, March 16, 2011

A hole in the earth

Part of the Mitchell Lab of Texas A&M University.
Organized by Gabriel Esquivel and Professor Mark Clayton

The idea is to make of the studio a real professional office with full participation of the members in every aspect of the project. Each student will be in charge of a specific task in order to fully develop the project. The idea is to bring two distinguished practitioners to design a house prototype, and the topic is “The House for a Future.” Each designer will use the highest degree of technology and discuss the implementation on new technologies in design, performative systems, and fabrication.

The first group is Productora (http://www.productora-df.com.mx/) from Mexico City. They are an international firm with projects in different Latin American countries. They have won several important competitions.

A HOLE IN THE EARTH

Underground architectural spaces.

Investigation of a house of the future.

General idea

When Chillida is asked about his project in Tindaya, he talks about his interest in “introducing space in the matter”.

The idea to work on a workshop called “A hole in the ground” starts with the same interest that Chillida expressed. We are interested in starting a research centered on the idea of subtracting instead of adding, an architecture thought in spatial terms instead of an architecture conceived as an iconic landmark. We will propose a wide range of references from different fields. The interest in the relationship space/matter has been a rich source of inspiration from time immemorial. We suggest the students to take them into account for building their theoretical basis. Alice in the Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) and The Burrow (Kafka), the caves in Capadocia (Turkey), Sacromonte (Granada, Spain) and Petra (Jordan), the sculptures of Chillida, the architectural proposals of Juan O’Gormann, Hans Hollein, César Manrique and Saénz de Oiza, the work of Gordon Matta-Clark … 

We are interested in the space, the matter, an underground and/or excavated architecture, an architecture without facade. We will suggest to investigate evocative architectural examples, structural and technical principles which will help the students to build their ideas, new technologies, environmental advantages and disadvantages … and every other issue that will allow them to develop sensitive and engaged answers to the problem we are inviting them to solve. Students will work an a proposal for a house of the future. The house, because of its manageable scale, will become a perfect laboratory for testing architectural ideas.