2010 Vertical Studio Options

13. Teasing Tastes

Amita Kulkarni and Adam Nathaniel Furman

This vertical studio will engage, investigate and expand upon the complexities and implications of a spatial aesthetic intuition that is fully conscious and analytic, a cultivated taste of both rigorous self awareness, and complete communicability. Using a variety of model-making techniques, and a range of materials, students will be given the opportunity to develop a small space of given dimensions, into a ‘scene’, a container and expression of a constructed architectural sensibility, in its broadest sense a “taste”. These will be treated both as vehicles of expression, and methods of explanation, so that as well as necessarily being worked up to a high level of aesthetic and atmospheric richness, complexity and depth, the spaces will be expected to eloquently convey -through allusion and impression- the intentions, meanings and contents which drove their formation. The works will be critically constructed and discussed based on three categories and their respective parts: Physicality, or the first impressions and technical aspects of the scenes Abstraction, or the associations that the scene conjures up based on a store of general cultural knowledge and common sense and Integration, or how the various elements in the scene work in concert . All the spaces will be photographed in high-resolution from the same perspectival point at the end of the course, with these images forming the basis for discussions during the final crit, and also being artefacts intended for publication following the course’s conclusion.