Manifold Masses

The intent of the studio was to further investigate formal internal orders in architecture. As design research, we looked at a universal network of saddle polyhedra and its formal potential for generating intensive massing and figural interstices. While the studio was not necessarily opposed to the hypothesis of systems being perceptible in the built form, it was expected that projects would move beyond the transparent dogmatism derived from the system’s apparent purity. The aggregative nature of a network of saddle polyhedra should give rise to a myriad of formal conditions and transcalar features within the system; precisely including those wherein saddles figures themselves are completely erased, to allow for more relaxed and attenuated moments to emerge.