Architectural Association School of Architecture

This year the DRL concluded the thirs year of the four-year design research agenda Proto-Design, which investigated digital and analogue forms of computation in the pursuit of systemic design applications that are scenario- and time-based. Considering controls systems as open acts of design experimentation, the DRL examines production processes as active agents in the development of architecture. Behavioural, parametric and generative methodologies of computational design are coupled with physical computing and analogue experiments to create dynamic and reflexive feedback processes. New forms of spatial organisation are explored not as type or context-dependent but by examining scenarios that evolve as ecologies and environments that seek adaptive and hyper-specific features.

This performance-driven approach aims to develop novel design proposals concerned with the everyday. The iterative methodology of the design studio focuses on the investigation of spatial, structural and material organisations, engaging with contemporary discourses of architecture and urbanism. Four research studios run parallel to each other, exploring the possibilities of Proto-Design. Theodore Spyropoulos’ studio, Digital Materialism, investigates behaviour as the means to explore self-regulating and deployable soft systems within the field of scientific enquiry. Proto-Campus, led by Patrik Schumacher, focuses on the design of parametric prototypes that intelligently vary general topological schemata across a wide range of parametrically specifiable site-conditions as a campus. Alisa Andrasek’s studio, Protocols, looks at infrastructure ecological implants within the context of heterogeneous networks. Robert Stuart-Smith’s studio, Behavioural Matter: Broadening Our View of Buildings, explores how non-linear design processes may be instrumentalised to generate a temporal architecture with a designed life-cycle. 

Director

Theodore Spyropoulos

Founder

Patrik Schumacher 

Course Masters

Robert Stuart-Smith 

Alisa Andrasek

Course Tutors

Shajay Bhooshan 

Mollie Claypool 

Ryan Dillon 

Jose Sanchez

Mustafa El-Sayed 

Technical Tutors

Mehmet Akten

Hanif Kara 

Software Tutors

Torsten Broeder 

Paul Jeffries

Programme Coordinator

Ryan Dillon

Invited Critics

Hernan Diaz Alonso

Winka Dubbeldam

Ludger Hovestadt

Hanif Kara    

Marta Malé-Alemany   

Philippe Morel

Karsten Schmidt    

Brett Steele 

Albert Taylor 

Skylar Tibbits