_500-600 Options Studio: ‘Narratives Come and Narratives Go’
Philip Holden, Professor of Practice
Architectural narratives can be understood in two ways. First, the proposition that a narrative can validate architecture is both unstable and suspect. This narrative may be architectural story, a programmatic basis, a critical claim, an intentional construct, a metaphorical interpretation, or any other expression related to an architectural discourse.
Second, once constructed as part of a place, an architecture can have qualities that remain valid and valuable irrespective of its program or the discourse that prompted its making. Narratives of intention and program can change over time and are not wholly bound to the value of the architecture. This is not unlike the narrative of a stage set for a play that runs for a few weeks or months being replaced by another story and then another. A larger construct—the theater—remains, prompting relationships and emotions that exist in a longer time frame and in a particular place. It was hoped that the focus on site and “construction forward” design thinking in this studio would help students identify these values.
Unstable Narratives
Students were offered a choice from three different programs: 1) a place to exchange views between science and society, 2) a special needs adults art and music studio, and/or 3) a Native American archeological museum. They could be thought of one at time, separately, or as a full range of possibilities. Each program had the same basic spatial requirements, but the spaces could be used in radically different ways—meeting and activity spaces, pre-function/informal space, a theater, an exhibit system, kitchens, or rest rooms. The theater includes various pre-function and production spaces, a 250-seat studio theater, a construction workshop, and other support spaces.
Projects were located in Chicago on sites chosen by each student.
Construction Forward
“Construction forward” designs involved inventing and deploying complex wall systems with the expectation they could help create variegated spaces, develop social boundaries, and engage the site in a particular way—all while being responsive to our contemporary environmental crises.
Design began with walls, or hybrid boundaries. Students invented hybrid wall systems using different beginnings—light phenomena with regard to site and geometry/color, gravity with regard to social/site/cultural conditions, and thermodynamics with regard to art. These inventions served as architectural prompts, with the expectation that each might have the capability to extend into a full project. This allowed students to focus more directly on the enduring presence of the architecture in the city, with the possibility of ever-changing programmatic and cultural narratives.

Xiaoyu Yang

Zhouxian Deng

Zhouxian Deng

Zhouxian Deng

Shangfeng Rao

Shangfeng Rao