Design Studio fall semester 2016/2017

PATTERNS OF GROWTH: RESIDUALFORM

This volume presents an overview of the work conducted in the Design Studio PATTERNS OF
GROWTH: RESIDUALFORM conducted during the fall semester of the academic year 2016/2017
with the students from the ninth semester at the Faculty of Architecture, University Ss. Cyril and
Methodius Skopje.
Content:

001 PATTERNS OF GROWTH Introduction to the studio theme

002 PATTERNS OF GROWTH: RESIDUALFORM From form to object to city form

006 Part 1 RESEARCH

008 TEXT: Defining categories: Form, Event, Strategy
010 REFERENCES: Defining categories: Form, Event, Strategy
012 MODELS: Interpreting categories: Form, Event, Strategy
014 ANALOGOUS MAP: Interpreting categories: Form, Event, Strategy
016 PROGRAMMATIC MULTITUDE: Exploring the programmatic transgression

018 Part 2 FIELD TRIP: Milan-Como-Turin

024 Part 3 PROJECTS

026 Residual form: CLOUD
038 Residual form: SQUARE
048 Residual form: MATRIX
058 Residual form: XY TOWER
068 Residual form: 54 DEGRES
076 Residual form: WALL

084 Part 4 ANALOGOUS CITY

104 Part 5 EXHIBITION

PATTERNS OF GROWTH
Introduction to the studio theme

The PATTERNS OF GROWTH studio aims to acknowledge the transformative specifics of

urbanity in conditions of continuous quantitative change, having the city of Skopje as its
home-base captivating laboratory. The studio focus is set on the phenomenon of growth
in terms of size, volume and density, seen through the dichotomy between the city frag-
ment and the city as a whole.
The growth is an inherent and vital feature of every city. But the question our studio rises
is how does the city grow? In the last hundred years the city of Skopje has undergone
three major events that have direct impact on its socio-spatial character: first- the exten-
sive migration of people from rural areas; second- the strong urbanization of the city af-
ter the Second World War and especially after the highly destructive earthquake in 1963;
and the last one the shift of the political system and the change of the property ownership
transgressing the collective realm of socialist jurisdiction of goods towards privatization
on each segment of reality emphasizing commodities as anchoring concept of being.
Acknowledging the fact that the city is closely related to the conditions within the society,
the studio work revolves around their influence on the spatial structure of the city. In the
case of Skopje that is notable in terms of typology (single family houses turning exten-
sively into multistory buildings), morphology (houses with yards becoming sprawling
build mass of enclosed blocs), and relationship between the built structure and reflexivi- 001
ty of its content (urban voids and green rapidly in filled with accelerated privatization of
the concept of public and shared), changes driven exclusively by the real estate dogma.
Therefore, the Studio theme is set to explore the architectural effect in a reality of omni-
present speculation.
The 2016 session of PATTERNS OF GROWTH studio investigates the architecture of the
city simultaneously on six different sites on the territory of Skopje, along the axial of the
South boulevard (infrastructural corridor that has only been partially build), following
the key attributes of the cityness: the house, or dwelling as a dominant substance; the
urban void and its potential; and the distributive networks - the prosthesis of the infra-
structure corridors as anchors for the urban growth. These attributes are further related
to the issues of public, private and collective realm of the city.
The studio task is to reveal strategy of architectural urbanism and the concept of oper-
ational territory as possible tools for producing contemporary urban narratives. There-
fore, the outcome of the studio work is represented by the autonomy and the symbolic
value of the architectural artefact as cultural condenser creating the city-building as met-
ropolitan effect.
In posing those issues lays the question whether the architecture we are building is just
an image of pure self-indulgence, or there is a substance hidden beneath the imagery of
the everyday that reflects the concept of the contemporary city. Our studio is searching
for contemporaneous within the ethical dimension of architecture beyond the physical
appearance and scale, simultaneously following the meta-narratives of the present met-
ropolitan conditions.
 PATTERNS OF GROWTH: RESIDUALFORM
FROM FORM TO OBJECT TO CITYFORM

INTRODUCTION | Our current global condition makes built reality

transitory and extremely unstable. In such generic context of com-
plete transgression of values and material goods, the condition of
crises is omnipresent. Despite of idealistic ideals of modern archi-
tecture and belief that architect in practice belongs and represents
important part of cultural, intellectual and political milieu, the last
few decades of the twentieth century and the liberal capitalism show
that architects and architecture has limited influence on general con-
sciousness in society. In other words, intense modernity made archi-
tecture a tool for more or less ambitious, megalomaniac, and often
indoctrinatory ideas in various social and political circumstances
with architects being vastly speculative and egocentric individuals.
In current global conditions of society based on commodities and
transitions, ‘with everything ever solid, easily melted into air’, mod-
ern syntagma that ‘form follows function’ is questionable simply be-
cause form is conceptually and structurally resistant towards reality
comparing with instability inscribed in the function as such. Starting
002
from that point, this year our studio focus took back towards form
(of architectural object) exploring its permanence and examining
the process of form evolving into strategy and becoming architec-
ture of the city.
Since contemporary aspects of urbanity are generic and vague in
terms of architectural discipline and spatial rigour because they re-
flect cultural, economic and political, but not clear spatial determi-
nants of today’s society, our studio work accepts the effect of such
condition, but simultaneously recall upon the need of precise use of
basic architectural elements as fundamental language to restructure
contemporary currents on a conceptual level. Spatial connotations
of typological archetypes such as atrium/void, stoa, portico, walls
and colonnades, domes, free plan, infrastructures/aqueduct, shapes
(domes, boxes, and towers), facades and scaffoldings/curtain walls
etc. are structures by which architecture is simultaneously read as
representational and content tool, with spatiality being concept of
being instead of becoming.
The idea is to use architecture as instrument of city building, a tool to
reconstruct and create representations of radical difference within
existing reality in order to position architecture as one of the ground
principles (besides economy and politics) for building society. By
absorbing multiple relations of autonomy, equivalence, contrariety,
symmetry, correlation, simultaneity, identity, whole, continuity, im-
permanence and (sub)alteration, cultural and formal amalgam be-
tween architecture, its spatiality, and society would be obtained.
PROCESS OF WORK & METHODOLOGY | The studio strictly en-
courages collaborative work and sharing knowledge and production
efforts. Aldo Rossi’s dictum l’architettura sono le architetture under-
stands architecture of the city as being made of aggregation of other
architectures. Among other things it recalls the effort of embracing
individual, social and political desires, dreams and beliefs within the
experience of collective memory as city itself represents. The end re-
sult of the studio work also resembles the collective consciousness.
The work methodology reflects upon three basic pedagogical tools
for exploration and interpretation:
First, the issue of Growth was explored as programmatic thickening;
growth was tested through complex relations derived from architec-
tural object coded with multilayered events. Basically the form is in-
troduced as a background of growth since it embraces the multiple
relations in itself, creating model of polyvalent urb-architecture or
architectural urbanism.
Second, the Scale of the project was deliberately XL, simultaneously
urban and architectural, with deliberately big architectural gestures,
spatial cut-outs, and distinguished appearance instigating vast dia-
pason of contemporary urban experience. And third, precise use of
architectural References exploring mainly the character of the archi- 003
tectural form, its value as permanent objects vs. their programmatic
indeterminacy.
In terms of methodology, a series of weekly studio tasks were in-
troduced in order to establish distinction between the meaning of
terms function, program and event as inscribed assets of architec-
tural object. Function was observed as direct need (school, theatre,
hospital etc.) and as such marked as too static to fit the transitory
currents of contemporary society; program as well had a similar re-
marks, as having precisely predefined nature (as design program for
instance) thus becoming predictable act. The concept of event is on
the other hand open-ended; its content is active and as such it can
populate the body of architecture simultaneously remaining transi-
tory experience.
The studio projects were encouraged to avoid clear functional and
programmatic patterns and were speculatively pushed towards rep-
resentation of event architecture diachronically, embracing multi-
tude of possibilities because such regenerative content makes archi-
tecture a communicative tool.
AIM | In the studio, series of autonomous architectural gestures are
practiced- each of them coded with basic typological clarity. The aim
is to put such architectural gestures as anchoring points within the
 existing urban morphology of the city, demarcating and making new
structure upon which further generic city building (immeubles-cités)
would grow. As a result, they could create social coherence of frag-
mented narratives of the city by achieving functional, emotional and
speculative wholeness.
The aim of the studio work was to introduce a sequence of spatial
artefacts situated on unfinished 13 km long infrastructural corridor
re-captivating this non-existent spatial item as primary urban struc-
ture defining the southern inner city border. Thus, the space-machine
architecture used on six distinctive sites, was deliberately specula-
tive, making studio projects conjectural interventions in big scale
with architecture being radical in its own uncertainty. The projects
are indicatory experiences of what metropolitan architecture should
represent, with all its vague predictions and limitless possibilities of
urban life.
TASK | The idea is to obtain relationship between the architecture of
the city and architecture as a single building. Therefore, each of the
projects is capable to create a place/nomos for practicing contem-
porary urban life spanning from private enclosures to domesticating
public space for individual and collective indulgence (markets, baths,
universities, sports; lifelong learning creative hubs; public halls and
arenas, resorts, malls, media houses, temporary living etc.)
004 The proposed architecture does not only project functionalistic pat-
terns, but it represents an architecture without content; un-solicited
architecture that could embrace various events within its time-en-
durance, one that produces ‘condition for communication’ among
urban dwellers – a dream-vehicle for ultimate public-ness.
RESULTS | Studio results were reflecting the collective effort that
was asked during the whole semester work. Despite the usual draw-
ings at the end, additionally, from each of the six projects done, stu-
dents were asked to extract particular formal gestures that further
contribute in one singular map made of various spatial experiences.
Through the process of multiple iterations of formal juxtapositions
the map evolved into a spatial diagram creating a model that inte-
grated the whole studio work – a collective idea, a strategic entity.
We ended it up with Citta Analoga, our own city made of formal anal-
ogies representing surreal speculative interpretation of architecture
of contemporary city. In its own existence this architecture is spa-
tial infrastructure that becomes a city – a 21st century Campo Mazio
made of bits and pieces and cuts of other architectures, aggregating
architecture from FORM to OBJECT to CITYFORM.

Key words: Monumentality, Pavilion, Permanence, Heterotopia, Type vs. Antitype,

Infrastructures, Machines