TECH 1: Notes from Lecture
Introduction and the case study houses
Stuart Harrison
The
Tech1 website:
http://users.tce.rmit.edu.au/stuart.harrison/tech/
>Subject structure and
timetable introduced and explained.
Tutorial
lists on website. All the same time, 9.30-12.30 Wednesday for
10 weeks.
>Lecture
Program overview.
>Activities
with tutorials, project based learning.
>Students should check
their RMIT email accounts and the Tech 1 website for updates.
>The timeplan
is a dynamic document like a schedule and is subject to revision (excel format)
The Course
This course introduces
technology and we learn through study of houses, exceptional and generic.
Each piece of design should
be embodied with an idea or design intent.
Ask yourself – what is the
architect trying to do?
We embody ideas in
Architecture not in building.
An Architect makes decisions
and sees them through a project, from sketch to detail.
The Architect is the only
person who cares about design decisions on a project.
Exemplar Houses
The house embodies qualities
of larger projects.
A house is put together like
a larger building.
A house is often a prototype
for architectural thinking.
These houses often used a combination
of generic construction and more specialised systems, depending on budget.
Tech 1 studies construction
through examining and modelling example houses. Three case study houses for
this year are:
Boston Villa, Nest Architects
Brent Knoll, March Studio
Smokey Town, Judd Lysenko Marshall
Frames
Buildings are space wrapped
in stuff – ‘stuff’ is what we are investigating.
Key Image for the subject is
the Timber Framing Drawing –
something you should all learn. Timber Framing is the generic construction
method for houses in Victoria.
Le Corbusier’s
Domino House (1914) drawing explains a new role for architecture and its
relationship to structure – enabling the façade to be independent of it (refer
the Five Points of Architecture).
We can split structure into
three: Primary Structure (that which holds the building up); Secondary
Structure (that which holds up the primary structure) and tertiary structure
(that which holds the skin up).
Architecture is the age of
mass production (Modernity) can become about choosing things as much as anything
else. Eames houses great example of
this.