HAA 179x

Tectonics Lab: Materials and Form
Mark Mulligan
Monday, 9-10am; Friday, 2-5pm
Tectonics Lab introduces students to material properties, structural behavior, and fabrication-and-assembly issues in architecture through a combination of lectures, workshops, and design-build projects. The course emphasizes two modes of architectural experimentation: analytical and intuitive. Abstract and architectonic exercises involving these modes of experimentation will take place in a workshop format, with students working in teams of varying sizes. Weekly lectures provide a theoretical basis for the design-build projects, with topics including fundamental, non-quantitative statics (e.g., free-body diagrams, types of forces and reactions) and generic structural approaches; material properties and fabrication; joinery and assembly; scalar transformation; modular construction; kinetic structures; and more. Design-build projects challenge students to engage lecture material in a hands-on manner; these projects focus on the construction of full-scale artifacts that may be tested against a range of performance criteria. In each project, students will explore the role of material expression, figuration, and formal gesture in communicating their ideas. Project documentation through drawing, photography, and video is an essential component of coursework, and a comprehensive course portfolio will be due at the end of term.
The principal objective of Tectonics Lab is to extend our shared knowledge of material properties, structural behavior, and construction techniques by testing new ideas. Our research model is a hybrid: equal parts scientific laboratory (where narrowly defined hypotheses are tested and evaluated) and artist’s atelier (where expression of ideas, both articulated and ineffable, is the goal).