Title: AS5 – Responsive Structures
Type: Teaching Publication
Year: 2023
Course: MA Design Studio
Editor: Sherene Ng, Eike Schling, Geradline Borio
Published in: Architectural Structures Series
Preface
Within the dense, overbuilt and saturated environment of large Asian cities, residual and unplanned areas offer the inhabitant’s an opportunity to breathe. In Seoul, owing to the particular geography, a dozen mini-mountains interrupt the urban fabric. These unbuilt territories act as a buffer zone between the dense neighbourhood and the natural ground. But because they are not considered major cultural landmarks, such residual buffer zones are threatened to be gradually eaten up by the frenetic urban sprawl, with the risk of losing their qualities as green refuge. Instead of filling up those gaps, can architecture articulate the fringe of these unbuilt territories and operate as a bonding element between nature and humans?
Students proposed an architectural space, at the threshold between the city and the hillside, that response to place, climate, culture and materiality and enables an enriched appreciation of nature while reducing the negative impact onto the site. The architecture is considered a framework that adapts to the existing qualities of the place and produces new behaviour and awareness. Activities enabling social gathering will take place within, above, under and besides the structure and help to interrogate the
traditional boundaries between the natural and artificial world. The studio results present innovative solutions on how our intervention touch, span and transform the site, based on their structural behaviour and materiality.
We aim to maximize the richness of contextual and architectural qualities, combining the identity of the site with innovative construction techniques. We follow an iterative design process through analytical drawings, and digital and physical experiments, with a focus on context, form-finding and construction. The studio created a realistic, sustainable architectural proposals, which exhibit an intelligent use of material, form and structure at high resolution.
This publication exhibits the work created by 16 Master students during the fall semester 2021. Despite the short time, the inability to travel to Seoul, and the highly technical brief, students created architecturally and structurally sophisticated work investigating and designing complex projects
up to a scale of 1:20. In this publication, we first introduce the site analysis, including physical diagrams of site conditions, we then present tectonic experiments that guide the further development of specific material and structural solutions, finally, 16 design projects are displayed that respond to the site with their unique tectonic approach.
Eike Schling 