The Shapes of Fiction will look into reading and writing as a stereoscopic phenomenon. It will look at fiction as a multi-dimensional entity, responding to its own laws. It won't be a writing course but a practice-based investigation of the underlying structure and movements that hold a fiction. On one side, students will read and watch, according to a specific perspective each session, a set of texts and films. On the other side and in parallel, they will produce a multi-dimensional fiction using text and images. By the end of the course, they shall be able to approach an architectural program not only as a built proposal but as a set of potential narratives. They shall also be able to access a fiction as they enter a physical space.

This course will experiment with systemic procedures and speculate on the possibilities of production modes as both performative and sensual aspects of digital craft. Working at the interface between computed geometry, material properties [melting points, colour, translucency] and machinic inputs [drill bits, speed, temperature], we will explore the production of geometrical articulation as the negotiation parameter between the machine and the material.

The course will focus on the re-design (copy) and fabrication of an existing chair. Each student will select an original (chair) and work towards a translation and a fresh construction strategy for the fabrication of this Replica Structure. Our sole material will be 12mm sheet material (birch plywood). All components will be designed and produced with the use of CNC milling technology in mind. Issues of weight, porosity and composition should be considered. The course will culminate with a fabrication trip to Hooke Park.

This course will focus on the manipulation of digital geometry using scripted techniques within a NURBS modelling environment, using Python for Rhino. We will cover the basics of scripted logic to customise geometry using iterative logic. Students will also be introduced to the basics behind the theory of computation and processing as a means to establish intelligent geometrical systems, and its application to their ongoing unit projects.  

Students will achieve confidence in drawing-by-hand. We'll enjoy the riches of nearby national collections, as we draw both from observation and from imagination. "So much more than I expected from a 'drawing class', a new perspective in visualization was unravelled."

This course will focus on the construction of two contrasting forms of representation: one drawing and one image - aiming to represent precisely one idea and one moment, dedicated to the notion of ‘interiority’. An atmosphere somewhere between plan and space. In a series of workshops students will explore specific drafting and collaging techniques, develop a sensibility for the detail and learn to confront the precise abstraction of the drawing with the surreal reality of the collage. We will conclude the course with a collective publication.

Using the medium of digital painting we will be creating large scale narratives. We will hurl pixels at a virtual canvas, which will then be re-drawn, modelled and deconstructed as we navigate our way through it. Architectures and stories that exist within it will be surgically extracted and edited. Ideas will be siphoned through various software, techniques and projections - gradually aggregating into the final vision.

Focusing on the qualities of found data objects (objet trouvé), in particular data residues of 3D scans, laser-scans and Magnetic Resonance Images, the course will contextualise, interpret, and situate embodied data in the architectural landscape of London. We will use Osirix, Rhinoceros, 3ds Max, Modo, laser cutting and 3d printing technologies to create models within a Duchampian tradition as a result of composition, scale, placement and articulation between assorted architectural monuments of London and our found objects.

The use of motion-sensor apparatus in today’s gaming industry has allowed hackers/designers to capture 3D data without sophisticated knowledge of the underlying technology for their own purposes. This term students would use X-Box’s Kinect sensor to extract Depth, IR, RGB data and then further manipulating them with Processing’s rich algorithmic and graphical capabilities.

Lives will be observed and visualised as random yet personal guidelines trigger photographic moments. The build-up of a personal vocabulary generates the foundation for the construction of new realities. "A Mindblowing Experience"