Design Principles | RISD | Graduate Arch. Studio

Brief:  Design Principles was a architecture course at RISD which each assignment presented focused opportunities  to develop formal, tectonic and spatial manipulations and to address the complex consequences of these manipulations in terms of experience, inhabitation, structure, scale, and site. They also involved particular means of representation and skills to understand, define and articulate problems and solutions through iterative sequences of making, critical reflection and design.

Concept:   Our design exploration started with rope and a knot, and studying the tectonics and logic behind the knot’s construction. Through the process of making, thinking with our hands, we constructed and deconstructed our knot and began to abstract it’s constructed logic. The knot changed configuration, eventually evolving away from a “knot” but moments of the original tectonic logic remained. We took these constructive narratives to eventually build a 2’x2’x3’ mass of connecting knots using only paper strips (no adhesive), a further adstraction to build an enclosure. And finally, to design a habitation based on The Labyrinth of Crete, the myth of the Minotaur.