Image: Song Jie Lim; course: Painting Architecture (Alex Kaiser), 2009/10
Required Media Studies Courses
Media Studies courses are a required part of the First Year and Intermediate Schools, providing students with the knowledge and skills associated with a wide range of contemporary design, communication and fabrication media. These weekly courses are taught by AA unit staff, the school's AV department, Workshop and Computing staff, as well as by invited outside architects, artists, media and other creative specialists. Each term-long course focuses on the conceptual and technical aspects of a specified topic of design media, and emphasises a sustained development of a student's ability to use design techniques as a means for conceiving, developing and producing design projects and strategies.
Media Studies Lab Courses
Working with the AA Computer Lab, Media Studies offers a range of focused workshops that allow students to quickly grasp fundamental techniques in major digital applications for architecture. As digital design technologies have now matured as an integral part of the architectural education offered by the school, Media Studies provides concise one-day courses that cover the fundamentals of many of the most common computer applications, covering content such as 3D modelling, computer-aided drafting, imaging, publication, digital computation and scripting, various physics-based analyses, and other relevant software.
First Year Courses
Peripheral Landscapes
Sue Barr, Terms 1 & 2
This year we will explore landscape photography in suburbia, taking inspiration from the work of legendary American landscape photographer Robert Adams. Instead of photographing iconic architecture within the city centre we will be working at the periphery of the city, where the landscape is subtler and reveals its forms more quietly.
Translation Object to Drawing
Shin Egashira, Term 1
An examination of the link between procedures used in representing and making space, through the translation of objects into drawings and the interpretation of sets of drawing into models.
One-to-One Instruments
Shin Egashira, Term 2
Techniques for constructing performative instruments, including collage and bricolage, are to be tested through application to the city. We will be working both on drawings and physical assemblages to develop design concepts.
Light Moments
Elif Erdine, Terms 1 & 2
The course will bring together different methods of algorithmic modelling and rapid prototyping in order to design and fabricate a 1:1 scale lighting element for interior environments. Students will be introduced to the principles of parametric tools using Rhinoceros as the digital platform to produce a range of experimental design options depending on specific rules.
Life Drawing
Trevor Flynn, Terms 1 & 2
The figure will be used as a departure point for drawings that enable us to study tone, mass, line, rhythm and underlying geometric pattern. We will work with a number of techniques to develop observational skills and draw with a wide range of media.
Information Design and Presentation
Heather Lyons, Terms 1 & 2
How does the way we present information influence the way it is perceived and understood? The aim of this course is to introduce students to different techniques for the presentation of information. Each session will look at different toolsets and devices, from the typographic through to graphing, charting and mapping tools, the iconographic and other representational devices and techniques.
Materiality of Colour
Antoni Malinowski, Term 1
This course focuses on the potential of colour in creating/manipulating space. Students will be introduced to the materiality of pure pigments with the focus on colour as micro-structure. Students will be encouraged to create their own distinctive notational system sensitive to space, time, light and the characteristics of materials.
Colour and Light
Antoni Malinowski, Term 2
The course focuses on the interaction of subtractive and additive colour. We shall be considering micro structure of pigments and other materials as a source of the perceptual interdependence of micro and macro scale.
Object Organisation
Marlie Mul, Term 2
In a course focused on formal improvisation, each student will work towards the creation of 1:1 scale functional objects from Styrofoam. Working according to a set of parameters, the object will be the site for finding a successful structure by means of both improvisation and calculation.
Video: First Year
Joel Newman, Term 1
Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world – Jean-Luc Godard
In these sessions students will make a 1500-frame animation using video technology. That's one minute in real time. After looking at examples of animated work we will embark on an exploration of techniques and methods. No techniques are excluded but students must create their own soundtracks.
Second Year Courses
Active Matter I
Shany Barath, Term 1
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 geometric articulation as the parameter of negotiation between the machine and the material.
Active Matter II
Shany Barath, Term 2
This course will continue the investigation into systemic production modes as both performative and sensual aspects of digital craft. In this term we will focus on the development of digital data sorting techniques and the possibilities of translating visible and invisible material properties into variables of colour, light and penetration patterns. Through the exploration of data-driven material effects, we will experiment with different modes of manufacturing techniques in order to generate a series of fabricated data prototypes.
Replica Structures
Valentin Bontjes Van Beek, Term 1
The course will focus on the redesign (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 medium will be 12mm-sheet material (birch plywood). All components will be designed and produced with the use of CNC-milling technology. Issues of weight, porosity and composition should be considered. The course will culminate with a fabrication trip to Hooke Park.
Pending Structures
Valentin Bontjes Van Beek, Term 2
Going beyond the scale of the standard model, this course focuses on developing a working understanding of fabrication through designing on the CNC machine for an actual scale. Throughout the term, students will be developing projects that address the design of installation pieces within the school, examining the relationship of material structures and physical resolution. The 'Pending Structure' should be beautiful and consider ideas of independence while respecting forms of integration – a measured ratio of directionality and belonging. The course will culminate with the fabrication of a final project at Hooke Park.
Customised Computation
Eugene Han, Term 1
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.
MMORPM
Eugene Han, Term 2
In MMORPG (Massively Multi-Object Rapid Prototyped Models), students will be extending their knowledge in the scripting environment to include techniques in rapid prototyping to control workflow strategies within Rhino using Python script and model construction. Students will produce and document relevant processes to determine the most effective customised workflows for design research projects.
Drawing in the Nation's Cupboards
Anderson Inge, Term 1
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 visualisation was unravelled.'
The Invisible Visible – Interiority
Max Kahlen, Terms 1 & 2
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 collage techniques, developing a sensibility for detail and learning to confront the precise abstraction of the drawing with the surreal reality of the collage. We will conclude the course with a collective publication.
Painting Architecture
Alex Kaiser, Terms 1 & 2
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 redrawn, 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 that gradually aggregate into the final vision.
Bone-Paper-Scissors
Tobias Klein, Term 1
Focusing on the qualities of found data objects (objets trouvés), 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.
Matterhorn Bobsleds
Tobias Klein, Term 2
Modelled after the Matterhorn, a mountain in the Swiss Alps, the Matterhorn Bobsleds is an attraction at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Located between Tomorrowland and Fantasyland, it employs forced perspective. The course seeks to experiment with modes of representation between the artificial rendered beautification and the mechanic precise construction of the artificial mountain. We will use Rhinoceros, 3ds Max, Autocad and Photoshop to create an articulated set of documents of our own augmented natural imitation.
Scan It + Track It
Immanuel Koh, Term 1
The use of motion-sensor apparatus in today's gaming industry has allowed hackers/designers to capture 3D data for their own purposes without sophisticated knowledge of the underlying technology. This term students will use X-Box's Kinect sensor to extract Depth, IR, RGB data and then further manipulate them with Processing's rich algorithmic and graphical capabilities.
WebCam It + Augment It
Immanuel Koh, Term 2
The course continues the conceptual computational framework set out in the autumn by looking at Augmented Reality (AR) as another potential site of spatial investigation using real-time video-based input. This term students will use the webcam as the main hardware and Processing/Java as the main scripting software to implement the AR experiments (ie videofeeding, making & tracking 2D QR pattern and creating & importing 3D objects).
Video: Intermediate
Joel Newman, Term 2
This year the course will investigate new private spaces that have been shaped by the audio components you will create in the initial stages of the project. The piece which may be without narrative in structure, will be no shorter than three minutes in length and will incorporate live action footage.
The Unseen I
Goswin Schwendinger, Term 1
Lives will be observed and visualised as random yet personal guidelines that trigger photographic moments. The build-up of a personal vocabulary generates the foundation for the construction of new realities. 'A Mind-blowing Experience'.
The Unseen II
Goswin Schwendinger, Term 2
Based on results of the work from The Unseen I course we will dissect, reconfigure and recompose the final results and come up with a yet unseen composition of visual realities ('a crock', 'brilliant', 'indulgent').
Media Studies Tutors
Head of Media Studies
Eugene Han runs AVAStudio, developing systems in industrial design, architecture and computation. He is also the Unit Master of Diploma 8. eugenehan@aaschool.ac.uk
Staff
Shany Barath is a registered architect and the cofounder of SHaGa Studio. She received her degree in architecture from the TU Delft faculty of architecture in the Netherlands (Hons), and her MArch in design and computation from the AA. She has practised architecture with Ben Van Berkel_UNStudio in Amsterdam and Adrian Geuze_West 8 in Rotterdam, and has been teaching at the AA since 2009.
Sue Barr studied at the London College of Printing where she specialised in photographing Brutalist architecture. She is now in practice as an architectural photographer and tutor at the AA. She is currently a PhD student within the architecture department at the RCA, where she is using large-format digital photography to research and produce topographical photographs of motorway infrastructures.
Valentin Bontjes Van Beek trained as a carpenter in Germany before attending the AA, from which he graduated in 1998. He has practised architecture in Berlin, New York and London, and has taught at the AA since 2001, where he is currently a First Year Tutor.
Shin Egashira makes art and architecture worldwide. His recent collaborative experiments include the rebuilding of Alfred Jarry's 'Time Machine', 'How to Walk a Flat Elephant' and 'Twisting Concrete'. His work has been exhibited in Japan and Europe in venues like the Spiral Garden in Tokyo and the Venice Biennale. For the last 16 years he has conducting a series of landscape workshops in rural communities across the world including Koshirakura (Japan), Gu-Zhu Village (China) and Muxagata (Portugal). He has been Diploma 11 Unit Master since 1996.
Elif Erdine is a PhD candidate at the AA and Director of the AA Istanbul Visiting School and AA DLAB Programmes. She has been working at Zaha Hadid Architects since 2006. She received her BArch degree from Istanbul Technical University in 2003 (High Honours), and MArch degree from the AA DRL in 2006 (Project Distinction).
Trevor Flynn received his MFA (Goldsmiths) and is Director of Drawing at Work. He is a drawing instructor at Rogers, Stirk, Harbour and Partners, an associate lecturer at Central St Martins College of Art and Design and has produced short tutorial films for the Architects Journal about freehand drawing.
Anderson Inge is a practising architect who has completed additional training in structural engineering (at MIT) and sculpture (at St Martins). He also teaches at the Rural Studio and Royal College of Art (sculpture).
Max Kahlen is working as an architect in London and Germany. He is founding director of Dyvik & Kahlen Architecture and worked as an associate at IJP Corporation after studying at the Stuttgart Academy of Art & Design and the AA where he graduated with Honours. Max has been teaching courses in Diploma and Media Studies at the AA since 2008.
Tobias Klein studied architecture at the RWTH Aachen, the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and gained his Diploma and MArch at the Bartlett School for Architecture. He is a founder of .horhizon, an experimental architectural design platform. He has taught First Year and Media Studies at the AA since 2008 and was previously a unit master at the Royal College of Art and visiting teacher at the University of Innsbruck.
Heather Lyons is an architect and interaction designer who has been producing digital products for the last 12 years. She has worked on a wide variety of projects from mobile handsets to interactive kiosks and environments. She concentrates on creating interfaces which are simple, charming and useful. She received her MArch from Princeton University in 1999.
Antoni Malinowski is an artist whose practice comprises painting and large-scale drawing installations. He has exhibited widely in the UK and Europe, and his paintings are in most major collections, including the Tate's. Recent art in architecture projects include a mosaic for the facade of the new Eric Parry building on Maddox Street, London.
Marlie Mul is an artist from The Netherlands, living and working in Berlin and London. She received an MA in Architectural Histories & Theories from the AA in 2009 and a bachelors degree in Fine Art from the Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht in 2003. She is an initiator of the online artists' publishing platform www.xym. no launched in 2009.
Joel Newman was born in 1971 in rural Hertfordshire. He studied fine art at Reading University and has exhibited in the UK and abroad. He has run the AA's Audio Visual department since 1994 and taught Video within Media Studies since 1998.
Goswin Schwendinger was born in Belgium, became an architect in Switzerland, went to Spain to learn photography and moved to London to live. He has been teaching at the AA since 1999 and recently collaborated with Paul McCarthy on a Tate Modern publication.
