Synthesis of Nature and Architecture

Synthesis of Nature and Architecture (SYNAAR)

A collaborative Project by Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC), Escola da Cidade - Arquitetura e Urbanismo, Sao Paulo, Instituto Cultural Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil, the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil.

In autumn 2008, Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC) started a five-Year academic research and experimental project in Brazil entitled The Synthesis of Nature and Architecture (SYNAAR). Through close collaborations with Brazilian academic institutions SAC seeks to learn from the unique relationship to nature that Brazilian Modernist and contemporary architecture embodies as the future of the discipline lies in the challenges that such a relationship represents. SYNAAR thus explores the classical duality between architecture and nature with focus on its synthetic qualities, serving as one of the most potential role models for the development of novel strategies for innovative architectural solutions. SAC exploits the embedded potential of strategies derived from crossbred solutions of engineering and natural systems as manifested in the question of sustainability in light of new technologies, social responsibility and material and structural sustainability. Contingent on the conjugation of nature and architecture comes the three strong points of SAC: architecture, art and technology. As such, the project investigates architecture as an integrated whole, bridging technological and constructional frontiers with artistic opportunities.

Being faced with increasing demands to build ‘efficient’ and ‘sustainable’ buildings and environments, architects are gradually turning to material and systemic means for producing designs that meet with these requirements. This new interest among architects is supported by technologies and design methods that support an ever-finer description and processing of variables and considerations, both in a projective and an analytic fashion throughout the design process. These new considerations shift the attention also to so-called ‘intensive properties,’ that is properties that exist in gradients and cannot be measured in an absolute way, as ‘extensive properties’ like length and width can.

The multi-faceted and multi-collaborative nature of architecture intrinsically begs consideration of not only traditional design issues but also how these connect and are transformed through technological developments. SYNAAR selectively assimilates these by focusing on problems in contemporary design, the creative and artistic development of the individual within the collective setting, and material and processing technology.  In architecture, many of these issues have become coded in how regulating and material geometry are deployed within the design process. SAC affirms this through the centrality of architectural design and its role within a larger societal context.

SAC Programme

SYNAAR succinctly encapsulates the fundamental ethos of SAC which sees architecture as a bridge between art and science motivated by the ambition that architecture can and must continue to contribute to the social, cultural, economic and artistic forms of our society. With SYNAAR, SAC stages a unique pedagogical setting that prepares the next generation of architects for the future challenges that the field has to offer.

SYNAAR takes place in the second year of SAC’s two year post-graduate Master programme and culminates with the students presenting the results of their research and experiments in an architectural design thesis proposal. By July 2010, the project will have involved two sets of final year (diploma) students and is planned to continue for three more years. SYNAAR is the perfect example for illustrating the teaching programme at SAC mirroring its core concerns comprising of advanced research and experiments in architecture that pertain to contemporary design processes, the use of computerised technology as well as the design and construction of complex geometric forms with advanced material systems.
Research and project-work are conducted in an intense and demanding atmosphere and formulated in close collaboration with specialists from a wide range of professional and research fields.  By the end of SYNAAR, the students would have acquired a mature comprehension of architecture and have developed a set of select techniques and methods with which they can articulate their personal approach to architecture.

SYNAAR explores architecture and the transformative potential of design intelligence and know-how within the backdrop of Brazilian architecture and its highly intense relationship to the natural environment. SYNAAR offers the students a research oriented background as well as the knowledge and executive ability to engage and deal with contemporary design challenges, such as the integration of architectural form with functional, structural and environmental performance as well as material sustainability. To this end, it arms future architects with advanced design methods and strategies, the critical capability to see emerging and relevant design opportunities within their own work, and incorporate considerations of advanced material systems and performative aspects, such as environmental, urban and sustainable issues, in their designs for select Brazilian contexts.

SYNAAR which involves a collaboration between SAC and various institutions in Brazil including Escola da Cidade - Arquitetura e Urbanismo, Sao Paulo embraces cutting-edge know-how, technology and contemporary architectural themes. The collaboration offers the students a unique platform to study the particular way that Brazilian architecture engages with the landscape, the natural environment and the climate. SYNAAR exposes the students to state-of-the-art sustainable material applications modelled on examples from nature exploring the classical duality that exists between nature and architecture in the context of urgent contemporary issues.  For example SAC undertook during the first phase of SYNAAR  in-depth research on the artificial and synthetic models of nature and architecture as exemplified by Instituto Cultural Inhotim - an educational Museum - located in a forest reserve which is part of the Atlantic Forest biome in Brumadhino, state of Minas Gerais. The conceptual and architectural structure of this institution is strongly interwoven with the local flora, hosting one of the largest botanical collections in the world, with rare tropical flowers as well as an extensive contemporary art collection.

Pedagogical and Teaching Methodology

SYNAAR exemplifies SAC’s approach to teaching combining traditional pedagogical techniques which include a lecture series and seminars with individual in-depth consultations and collaborative modes of working as exemplified by regular and continuous desk-crits and reviews. This encourages openness and continual exchange between students and the faculty as well as consultants from related disciplines, where practical and critical speculation is strongly encouraged so as to maintain the highest possible academic and professional standards. Students profit from the teaching of the school’s diverse and multi-facetted faculty recruited from established and first-class German and international art and architectural circles. Each project review panel, in particular the end-of-year jury, consists of world renowned theorists, critics and practitioners from other elite schools from around the world.

SYNAAR, as an important component of SAC’s academic programme, aims to contribute to the advance of architecture through the excellence of its graduates. Students are thus prepared for a professional and/or academic career where their individual resources and talents contribute to the development of the field through outstanding practical, intellectual and creative merits.

The brief for SYNAAR has been formulated to mirror the complex, multi-party collaborative reality of contemporary architectural praxis while catering to each student’s individual talents and interests cultivating these in relation to international standards in architecture and the specific goals of the project. SYNAAR actively realises the differences inherent to such a collaborative set up through its various modes of teaching. While the project is specifically focused on architecture and architectural design, on a more general level, through the conduct of research and experimentations, the students are taught a wide array of transferrable skills that they can later apply to a range of different settings and professional activities.

SYNAAR encourages the students to develop new knowledge and design strategies to meet future architectural challenges in a broader cultural context. In particular, the influx of new computational and processing technologies pose at once an enormous pressure on architects to transform their ways of thinking and working while also offering new avenues for design processes. For this reason, SYNAAR allows the students to become familiar with contemporary processing and material technologies in order to advance contemporary design skills and procedures. This is pursued in a unique manner through the assimilation of various technological aspects into the design process on a methodological, strategic and practical level.

Results

SYNAAR progressively develops the design and research capabilities of each student reinforcing individual design concepts while allowing each to develop a mature critical understanding of their own work as well as that of others. The project will become a staple part of each graduating student’s portfolio and will continue to showcase the level of work and standards of SAC’s teaching programme for many years to come. In addition to this, SYNAAR generates other means of public dissemination: academic publications and exhibitions (Schmal, 2009; The Pavilion: Pleasure and Polemics in Architecture exhibition, German Architecture Museum, Frankfurt, 2009) as well as by its very nature promoting networking and further collaborative opportunities on an international level.