Materials and Fabrication

“…And yet I think of the word ‘materia’ in a broader sense in which the purely material activity is closely connected with an intellectual process.”

—Alvar Aalto, The Relationship Between Architecture, Painting, and Sculpture.

In the spring of 2010, I co-taught an undergraduate architecture studio in “materials and fabrication” at the University of Pennsylvania. This was a foundational course for students in their second semester of Architecture coursework, one I had taken as a student in the program several years prior. In our iteration of the course, we drew from adjacent fields of painting and sculpture as means for seeing, thinking, and working with materials.

Exercise 1: Phase-point

The first exercise explored the transition from drawing to fabrication in a sort of mark-making exercise. Each student made a painting we called a “phase-point”, resulting from the application of fluid paint to a support (paper) using a randomly assigned tool. The fluid paint undergoes a phase change, becoming solid and thus taking a form.

Exercise 2A: Re-cut

The second exercise explored the transition from two-dimensional to three-dimensional fabrication and was divided into two parts. In exercise 2A, each student was issued one piece of 5/4” × 8” × 24” clear poplar. The board was to be cut and then assembled with glue into a ‘re-cut’. The re-cuts were to fit within an imaginary volume of 1′ × 1′ × 1′.

Exercise 2B: Panel

Students worked in teams to fabricate a full-size free-standing folded panel. All panels were to be self-supporting and designed to stand on the floor when unfolded. The panels were designed for one of the following situations: (1) between two people; (2) between a person and the environment; (3) between one person and a group of persons. The panels needed at least one fold and fit when unfolded within an imaginary volume of 6′ x 6′ x 3′.

Student work

Noor Al Awadhi, Sam Beattie, Laura Bridgman, Luna De Castro, Nhat Dang, Arianna Galan Montas, Juliet Gensemer, Marvin Harris, Garvin Hunt, Katherine Jones, Joanna Karaman, Susan Kolber, Miya Lee, Rachel Reese, Anne Rosen, Noelle Tay, Alicia Willett, Tina Xie, Elizabeth Young

More images

• Re-cuts
• Panel drawings
• Panels