The architect's studio is increasingly migrating onto online platforms, and studio paraphernalia such as drawing tables, pin-up spaces, and rolls of tracing paper is being replaced with ‘infinite whiteboards,’ ’digital canvases,’ and ‘mixed-reality desks.’ This shift breaks down barriers for working across locations and time zones and holds promise for new forms of architectural communities of practice, not least between practitioners in the Global South and North.
The subject of the proposed research project is the advent of the digital design studio as an increasingly pivotal site for architectural knowledge production by examining how the digital studio can lead to practices more perceptible to a diversity of informants, contexts, and local knowledge when global communities of practitioners are concerned. The practice-based Ph.D. investigates the subject through a sequence of intercontinental design workshops that will attempt to address ecological and urban issues through joined glocal perspectives and incorporate non-western narratives and forms of knowledge in a collective design process.
Itinerant Platform 2021
Itinerant platform is an intercontinental collaboration between academic institutions, exploring new forms of sharing architectural scholarship.
During nine weeks, researchers investigated three housing typologies in Los Angeles (United States), Hargeisa (Somaliland), and Copenhagen (Denmark). The student-researchers group comprised select students from Southern California Institute of Architecture, Abaarso Tech University, Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen University.
During nine weeks, researchers investigated three housing typologies in Los Angeles (United States), Hargeisa (Somaliland), and Copenhagen (Denmark). The student-researchers group comprised select students from Southern California Institute of Architecture, Abaarso Tech University, Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen University.
Student-researchers presented the research outputs for an international panel, which included, amongst others, the Head of the Royal Danish Academy, School of Architecture, the Head of Abaarso Tech University School of Architecture in Somaliland and faculty at SCI-Arc, and the city planner of the municipality of Copenhagen.
It showed that intercontinental educational platforms are possible. Student-researchers coordinated research tasks through multiple platforms (zoom, Miro, Discord, Google Drive), combining asynchronous and real-time collaboration. Visual representation took place on Miro, a browser-based 'collaborative whiteboard.' Student-researchers would 'draw together' by sharing ways to organize research. The choice of data representation bears importance since it points to the grammar of research collaboration and ways that platforms format interaction.
The research shows the demographic composition of residents in three housing typologies and how notions and imaginations of the home have been represented accordingly, at different times. Furthermore, it indicates how non-architectural representations such as popular media are important co-contributors to the imaginaries of 'the good home.' Finally, the research includes new data, such as interviews, photographs, drawings of plans, and photogrammetry recordings, including, amongst other typologies, nomadic and permanent settlements in Somaliland and Dingbats in Los Angeles.
Itinerant Platform 2020
