1 November 2012 – Landing in New York one day after Hurricane Sandy, we witness a week of total informational blackout. The Big Apple, the city that never sleeps, has come to a standstill below 32nd Street. We are listening to the silence of the closed electronic trading floors of Wall Street and observe herds of informational nomads, armed with their power-hungry laptops, searching for any electrical output. We are lost without mobile signals, emails or texts and cut off from global positioning systems; unable to manoeuvre without cybernetic feedback; out of our comfort zones by being disconnected from a system that typically caters to our needs. All activity has been suspended. This is the city’s confession to its subservient architectural relation to our electronic informational infrastructure. Meanwhile Barrack Obama is re-elected and we are stranded at the airport waiting for another storm to pass. 

Deeply rooted in the belief that the archi-tecture of today must face the challenges of a digitised and virtually immersed environment, Diploma 1 set out to design catalyst spaces and conditions that enhance and articulate digital space within -the urban frameworks between London and New York.

Investigating communication and system design, Gloria speculates on the absurdity of human dialogue in a technologically converted distant-communication network, while Kjetil proposes to use sensing devices to suggest that Heathrow’s Terminal 6 is a physical extension of the electronic cloud. Brian looks at how the transformation towards online courses and degrees may evolve into a new educational landscape typology situated in Mayor Bloomberg’s new zoning proposal. In project articulating architecture as constructs of desire and self-consciousness of a glutinous Schlaraffenland, Liza presents a digital vista of milk and honey while Goldshid explores the vanity of a self-obsessed global art market – the 24/7 televised post-industrial Warhol factory.

Through these projects we speculate upon prototypes for an architectural resolution and augment-ation of the networked electronic dream, questioning the infrastructural epitome of our time by defining architectural strategies for an informational behemoth inseparably amalgamated into every aspect of our life.

Unit Staff

Tobias Klein

 

Students

Lap Heng Fung

Kin Pong Ho 

Gloria Pou Wai Lei

Yuwon Kang 

Golshid Varasteh Kia

Soonil Kim 

Sergej Maier

Ranet Phanphensophon

Kevin Primat 

Kjetil Riegel

Liza Rudyk 

Luke Shixin Tan

 

Special thanks to 

Sam Joyce (Technical Studies consultant) 

Denis Vlieghe (Workshop Term 01/Interactive programming consultant) 

Dietmar Koering (Term 2 Workshop)

 

 

Critics 

Random International: Florian Ortkrass and Hannes Koch

Douglas Murphy 

Roberto Bottazzi 

Will Hunter 

Sam Joyce

Bryan Oknyansky 

Javier Castanon 

Matthew Butcher

Thomas Weaver

Kenny Kinugasa Tsui

Samantha Hardingham

Brett Steele 

Denis Vlieghe 

Carlos Villanueva Brandt

Mark Cousins

Sam Joyce

Ann-Sofi Rönnskog 

John Palmesino

Scanlab Projects: William Trossell and Matthew Shaw 

Michael Wiehart 

Alex Haw 

Madhav Kidao

Jon Ng

Francesca Hughes 

Javier Castañón

Christopher Pierce 

Ryan Dillon 

Jose Sanchez 

Sam Joyce 

Suraj Vithlani

Serafino Di Rosario

Yorgos Loizos 

Theodore Spyropolous 

Robert Stuart-Smith 

Nigel Coates 

Ricardo de Ostos 

Jon Goodbun 

Jeroen van Ameijde

Evan Greenberg  

Michael Weinstock  

Ben Parry

Peter McCoughey 

Alex MacKenzie 

Oliviu Lugojan-Ghenciu

Elliot Payne 

Andrew Beddard