Design in Dialogue: Precedent in the Introductory Design Studio

Beginning with works of architecture ranging from Qingyun Ma’s Father’s House to Robert Morris’s Select Architecture, a series of introductory studios tasked students with the analysis and redesign of an assigned precedent. The precedent was presented as an interlocuter rather than an authority. It guaranteed nothing, and could neither be dismissed nor followed in any straight-forward way. The aim was to present architecture’s history as a series of incomplete acts requiring interpretative reassessment. Students were encouraged to view their work as contributing to an interpretative context surrounding (yet always exceeding) the precedent. Thus, the studio sought to develop a model of design agency based neither on the inimitable “perfection” of supposed exemplars nor on the self-expression of the supposedly autonomous designer. Precedents provide an object of analysis and a context for meaningful action. Rather than decontextualized objects and claims, the redesign is understood in relation to the original—amplifying, qualifying, challenging, criticizing, or undermining.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.112.75

Volume Editors
Germane Barnes & Blair Satterfield

ISBN
978-1-944214-45-6