Kinghi Thao

1) Regarding reconstruction, Woods says that you must build upon the existing past in order to link the past to the future. Can or does this thinking apply to all buildings not just reconstruction? Are new buildings free of the past?

2) While architects speak of designing spaces to satisfy human needs, are the social norms associated with spaces shaping our human needs to abide to the designed spaces?

3) Is there a way as architects, to fight designing for “program”? Must a space need a functionary label in order for it to have meaning and the need to be inhabited?

4) Part of Wood’s reconstruction process for war torn countries heavily focuses on building upon the past. But even he says that this process takes place during a period of uncertainty for the city (Sarajevo).

“Something entirely new is struggling to emerge.” –Woods pg. 27

Does this make his reconstruction process just a transition phase, one in which will be subject to change as the city develops its new identity?

5) Should architects design with the intent to last forever? To be able to survive and transform through wars, social problems, and nature? Is it even possible?

SituationNormalAFU

1 Why does SNAFU stand for what it does now?

2 From the tactics section I was wondering about our own creative opportunities and methods that operate within the gaps and slips of conventional thought and the patterns of everyday. How do we push it in our projects? ... What pushes us?

3 What’s more important - Form or function? Is it mostly just based on societal needs at the time?

4 Is it true that the standards and practices we are using to make architecture are defining the work for us and our concepts driven by social pushes and codes, and standards?

5 Since a bomb shelter could be a digestible aspect of everyday life what are other functions or conventions that are being pushed in the world, or could be? Is it helpful to life – the radical architecture or hindering?

6 What role does speculative architecture play in the future of architecture?

-Bridgette

Presenting your work

representation as articulation between theory and practice

1. “Representation as part of the production of architecture is one of the most important operations that articulates theory and practice” Is Representation needed to create “good architecture”?

2. Architecture and other practices – Architecture can encompass a variety of different practices, making “representation a crucial field in the understanding of architecture as the mediated character of representation itself” Do you think this process has been lost in the discipline today? Where is the line between the representation being natural/superficial?

3. “Representation has become a part of the process of production of architecture and that the development of the techniques of drawing and design have an impact as important, if not more, as building techniques themselves” Is this the case for architecture in both academia and professional practice? Should the process of representation be just as important in practice as it is in theory?

4. “two paradoxical situations have resulted form the use of the computer in architecture: one is that of the resurgence of perspective, facilitated by computer programs; the other, and more important, is the reunification of the process of representation in the production of design and the process of construction” Agrest mentions that design and fabrication are linked together. Why is the linkage lost between academia and practice today? Will there be a day where the linkage follows through professional practice?

5. As mentioned in the course, Revit, the software most common in practice, can manipulate the design process, inevitably hurting architecture. Do you believe it is due to the limitations of the computer? The transition between technology? Or merely, the quality of work produced?

the cognitive style of powerpoint

6. What is the most effective software or tools to translate and present architecture today? What other software should be taught, instead of PP?

7. With technology on the rise, Do you think architecture is more effectively presented digitally rather than a physical pin-up presentation? What do you prefer, and why?

8. Will PP always be the most common used software in other practices due to the convenience of the software?