SPATIAL SYNTAX

This course introduces participants to the ways of reading and deploying elements of architecture towards synthesizing functionality with meaning in the act of producing built form. The varied natures of practicing space by people inscribe spatio-material forms into new configurations that enable a renewed politics of living for emerging contexts. Here functions and meanings of stable, conventional architectural elements are revisited, their properties and arrangements are challenged and the resultant folding of space suggests new ways of experience. Students will learn to develop a language of architecture by setting the “rules” of putting together space and form – which in essence, is the grammar of space, in other words, syntax or code which disposes of the form in its material, behavioral and political dimensions.

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This course will delve into architectural language that may emerge in the elementary orchestration of volumetric configurations, material tectonics and behavioral cultural forms within a small setting. Thereby, the studio asks: How do forms come together and what meanings do they produce within a given context? What kind of spaces may be invented through the considered collusion of available space-forms and material experiences? From the arrangement of forms to the manipulation of light and materials, students will develop a nuanced perspective on spatial composition and its impact on human experience.