This studio presents a simple set of parameters that start on the outside of established methodologies of architectural design with a desire to find a way back inside through an unexpected side entrance . By following our intuition, embracing chance, and foraging for ideas we will aim to expose, splice, and nurture what is found into meaningful compositions, places, and stories.

Beginning with the analysis of two distinctly different found objects, we will explore ways to combine them, undertaking a process that transforms these separate things into a new, other entity or dyad. Experimenting with carefully drawn and built/modelled physical operations (i.e. grafting, stitching, blending, sleeving, nesting, lashing, etc.), we will fuse our objects via their own unique forms and languages of natural selection. While the original objects will be expressed and/or retain recognizable features, they will ultimately evolve into something other, both familiar and strange. The resulting hybrid will be manifested in a way more akin to discovery, being found and curated, or the result of opportunistic conditions rather than that of willful making. This exercise will lead into and inform the process for a comprehensive site and architectural proposition in the second term where a similarly divergent pairing will undergo synthesis.

Part of this studio’s inquiry lies in how we as designers can recognize and avoid the habitual, the reliance on what we think we already know, and outcome expectation. How can this process be a part of a leaner, ecologically sensitive approach to sustainable practices and ways of dwelling? What are our motivations and how can we suspend them, at least temporarily? Can a form of dream logic, an uncanny and wild originality resulting from assemblage of known or familiar components be used to fuel a design process? Where and when does exploration end and authorship begin, where do our motives and desires enter the equation?