Dip 1

Augmented Exuberance Polemics

Over the past three years Diploma 1 has worked on defining a contemporary architectural response to today's environment dominated by the non-physical, the ephemeral data streams and the virtual super-saturation of augmented reality. Our studio takes the form of experimentation, critique and design, surrounding the polemical ideas of prototypes of the Informational Revolution. Here, we speculate and draw out questions about architecture’s relevance as a catalysing force on our evolved digital culture. In this simulacra we inhabit, we design spatial interfaces between the virtual and actual – exuberant augmentations. 

Each year, the unit has explored the emergence of today’s changed status from a different angle – beginning in the first year with the definition of prototypes from a cultural and social point of view, following in the second year with explorations into the construct of synchronicity and the loss of genuis loci, and finally this year arriving within a larger historical context encompassing the emergence of augmentation in the baroque up to today’s collision and hybridisation of realities and media. As researchers and designers, we ventured into Europe’s past of the counter-reformation, adopting, extending and mutating strategies of architectural propaganda – from anamorphic painted and build articulations in Rome to today’s collapse of realities in addictive MMORPG-driven Occulus rift worlds. The result of such precisely choreographed spaces  – our journey through the Kunstlandschaft Over the past three years Diploma 1 has worked on defining a contemporary architectural response to today's environment dominated by the non-physical, the ephemeral data streams and the virtual super-saturation of augmented reality. Our studio takes the form of experimentation, critique and design, surrounding the polemical ideas of prototypes of the Informational Revolution. Here, we speculate and draw out questions about architecture’s relevance as a catalysing force on our evolved digital culture. In this simulacra we inhabit, we design spatial interfaces between the virtual and actual – exuberant augmentations. 

Each year, the unit has explored the emergence of today’s changed status from a different angle – beginning in the first year with the definition of prototypes from a cultural and social point of view, following in the second year with explorations into the construct of synchronicity and the loss of genuis loci, and finally this year arriving within a larger historical context encompassing the emergence of augmentation in the baroque up to today’s collision and hybridisation of realities and media. As researchers and designers, we ventured into Europe’s past of the counter-reformation, adopting, extending and mutating strategies of architectural propaganda – from anamorphic painted and build articulations in Rome to today’s collapse of realities in addictive MMORPG-driven Occulus rift worlds. The result of such precisely choreographed spaces  – our journey through the Kunstlandschaft 

of Europe – sees projects that can be read not solely as architecture of the built form, but also as the social and cultural embedded thinking and articulated design of interfaces applied to the complex realities of today. We believe that today’s shift in technological perception entices a shift in the architectural profession. If ignored, this re-articulation will render us bystanders into the most important evolution in spatial design  since the development of the central perspective in renaissance times.

of Europe – sees projects that can be read not solely as architecture of the built form, but also as the social and cultural embedded thinking and articulated design of interfaces applied to the complex realities of today. We believe that today’s shift in technological perception entices a shift in the architectural profession. If ignored, this re-articulation will render us bystanders into the most important evolution in spatial design  since the development of the central perspective in renaissance times.

Unit Master

Tobias Klein

Thanks to

Robert Stuart Smith, Serafino Di Rosario, Sam Joyce, Yoo Jin Kim, Jeroen van Ameijde, Sergio Irigoyen, Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Lorenzo Vianello, Ricardo de Ostos, Mollie Claypool, Evan Greenberg, Jon Ng, Evan Greenberg, Anneli Giencke, Oliviu Lugojan-Ghenciu, Tyen Masten, Justin Lau, Soomeen Hahm, Brett Steele, Carlos Villanueva Brandt, Ferdinand Fritz, Walter Fritz, Matthew Shaw, William Trossel, Howard Bowland, Roberto Bottazzi, Jonas Lundberg, Jon Palmesino, Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Seamus Ward, Christopher Pierce, Harriet Harris, Michael Pelken, Vasilena Vassilev, Kate Davies, Ann-Sofi Rönnskog.