Operative Design

The core idea for this book is the use of operative verbs as tools for designing space. These operative verbs abstract the idea of spatial formation to its most basic terms, allowing for an objective approach to create the foundation for subjective spatial design. Examples of these verbs are expand, inflate, nest, wist, lift, embed, merge and many more. Together they form a visual dictionary decoding the syntax of spatial verbs. The verbs are illustrated with three-dimensional diagrams and pictures of designs which show the verbs 'in action'. This approach was devised, tested, and applied to architectural studio instruction by Anthony Di Mari and Nora Yoo while teaching at Harvard University's Career Discovery Program in Architecture in 2010. As instructors and as recent graduates, they saw a need for this kind of catalogue from both sides - as a reference manual applicable to design students in all stages of their studies, as well as a teaching tool for instructors to help students understand the strong spatial potential of abstract operations.

Conditional design is the sequel to Operative Design. This book will further explore the operative in a more detailed, intentional, and perhaps functional manner. Spatially, the conditional is the result of the operative. It is not a blind result however. Both terms work together to satisfy a formal manipulation through a set of opportunities for elements such as connections and apertures.

Operative Mapping investigates the use of maps as a design tool, providing insight with the potential to benefit education and practice in the design disciplines. The book’s fundamental aim is to offer a methodological contribution to the design disciplines, both in conceptual and instrumental terms. When added to the resources of contemporary design, operative mapping overcomes the analytical and strictly instrumental approaches of maps, opening up the possibility of working both pragmatically and critically by acknowledging the need for an effective transformation of the milieu based on an understanding of pre-existing conditions. The approach is pragmatic, not only discussing the present but, above all, generating a toolbox to help expand on the objectives, methodologies and formats of design in the immediate future. The book joins together a review of the theoretical body of work on mapping from the social sciences with case studies from the past 30 years in architecture, planning and landscape design in the interest of linking past practices with future ones.

PRECEDENTS IN ARCHITECTURE

SMC COLOMBIER FONTAINE is a company in the AFE METAL group, which uses a sand casting process to manufacture steel primary parts. To reduce the "time to market", primary part producers need to reduce the time and cost of the industrialisation process. These factors, in addition to the global goal of improving process performance levels, brought SMC to develop numerical technologies and traceability from quotation to part delivery [1]. Nowadays, these improvements are incorporated into company culture. The next step in reducing the time and cost of the production process is to introduce a complete methodology of use and experience feedback of these new models and methods. To be able to generalise this approach, a CAD methodology is essential and thus becomes a step in the industrialisation process. The amount of improvements engendered by the numerical technologies largely justifies the time investment made to obtain a numerical definition of all the different elements in the sand casting process [2]. The objective of our approach is to optimise the product and its production process by generating a complete numerical reference, through the integration of quotation, CAD, simulation, new manufacturing technologies and effective production processes.

A wide-ranging and challenging exploration of design and how it engages with the self The field of design has radically expanded. As a practice, design is no longer limited to the world of material objects but rather extends from carefully crafted individual styles and online identities to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes. Superhumanity seeks to explore and challenge our understanding of “design” by engaging with and departing from the concept of the “self.” This volume brings together more than fifty essays by leading scientists, artists, architects, designers, philosophers, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, originally disseminated online via e-flux Architecture between September 2016 and February 2017 on the invitation of the Third Istanbul Design Biennial. Probing the idea that we are and always have been continuously reshaped by the artifacts we shape, this book asks: Who designed the lives we live today? What are the forms of life we inhabit, and what new forms are currently being designed? Where are the sites, and what are the techniques, to design others? This vital and far-reaching collection of essays and images seeks to explore and reflect on the ways in which both the concept and practice of design are operative well beyond tangible objects, expanding into the depths of self and forms of life. Contributors: Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Lucia Allais, Shumon Basar, Ruha Benjamin, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Daniel Birnbaum, Ina Blom, Benjamin H. Bratton, Giuliana Bruno, Tony Chakar, Mark Cousins, Simon Denny, Keller Easterling, Hu Fang, Rubén Gallo, Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Rupali Gupte, Andrew Herscher, Tom Holert, Brooke Holmes, Francesca Hughes, Andrés Jaque, Lydia Kallipoliti, Thomas Keenan, Sylvia Lavin, Yongwoo Lee, Lesley Lokko, MAP Office, Chus Martínez, Ingo Niermann, Ahmet Ögüt, Trevor Paglen, Spyros Papapetros, Raqs Media Collective, Juliane Rebentisch, Sophia Roosth, Felicity D. Scott, Jack Self, Prasad Shetty, Hito Steyerl, Kali Stull, Pelin Tan, Alexander Tarakhovsky, Paulo Tavares, Stephan Trüby, Etienne Turpin, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Eyal Weizman, Mabel O. Wilson, Brian Kuan Wood, Liam Young, and Arseny Zhilyaev.

A relatively new trend in architecture, folding is a playful method that opens up the design process to spontaneity and surprise. Folding Architecture presents the results of research into the technique, which was carried out in The Netherlands by the architectural faculty at the TU in Delft. It is an enlightening and inspiring survey that is vividly illustrated and presents all of the much-discussed concepts, projects and buildings in which this process has been applied. And as the book implies the possibilities are endless. Compulsory reference material for any architect or student of architecture who wishes to design outside of mainstream. Sophia Vyzoviti is an architect and teaches design method at the TU in Delft.