2012S_China Program_Crembil Studio
ARCH 4240/50/60 | Gustavo Crembil, Assistant Professor
Vertical Arch Design Studio, China
Selected Student Work:
Dana Shin
A 9-weeks urban design studio developed in joint-collaboration with CAUP – Tongji University, Shanghai, aimed to speculate on Semper’s tectonic discussion (building as weaving) scaling it up to the urban domain. Students were asked to develop formal strategies that interworked programmatic and structural forces. Textiles structural systems were researched and explored by both hands-on and computational means in order to learn basic interworking techniques (knitting, weaving) and understand their embedded intelligence. Instead of developing textiles analogies to shroud conventional building forms, the studio focused in the development of novel forms and spaces, and in the “production of affective formations – works of architecture that maximize their affects and hence their responsiveness to users and contexts” (Rahim). The Great World (Dashijie), an infamous pre-revolution entertainment center, was perhaps the first multimedia complex before they were invented. Based on such precedent, students were asked to develop a new multi-programmatic structure along the Huangpu River’s West Bank, in the area known as South Bund. All projects were developed by 2 students (RPI + Tongji) joint-teams. Tongji joint-faculty: Cheng Hong, Wei Wei, and Hongwei Liu.
Travis Lydon
Dana Shin
Michael Stradley
