(UN)COMMON WORKSOPS EXHIBITION

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The (Un)Common Workshops Exhibition (September 22-October 6, 2023) took place at the ASAU, Carleton University, as part of the Agora II International Symposium co-convened by Dr. Federica Goffi (C R | P T | C Chair), PhD Candidates Isabel Potworowski and Kristin Washco (C R | P T | Coordinators).

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The workshops exhibition was organized with the support of Dr. Jesse Stewart SSAC | Dr. Sheryl BoyleASAU | Dr. Suzy Harris-Brandts ASAU. Three (Un)Common Workshops were featured:

 

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(UN)COMMON WORKSHOP 1. 

BETWEEN GASTRONOMY & ARCHITECTURE

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PhD and Masters students were asked to generate knowledge through an epistemic process that evolves through materiality itself. Each student was asked to engage with a crafts manual from the early modern period (1350-1750) and examine its origins, context, recipes or instructions, and physical properties. This genre of text demarks a the moment when practitioners began to write down their knowledge and included craftspeople working with fire, minerals, wood, glass, landscape, paper and ink, ships and food to name a few. By considering the broader scope of these primary sources (the manuals) and starting with materiality, students discovered the inseparable connections with andbetween the artisans, their cultural and social contexts and the broader world of the works. Rather than thinking “about stuff” the workshop explored the practice of architecture as thinking “with stuff” by approaching the manuals from asensory perspective and reconstructing the practices of a particular recipe in the manual of their choosing. In sourcingraw ingredients and executing recipes that are deeply rooted in the time of their conception, the students’ research was inherently physical and evolving as new discoveries and connections across fields were revealed. The workshopresulted in the construction of houses for both the manuals and the materials, further extending the feedback loop between research and making.

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PhD Students featured: Simone Fallica | Michelle Liu | MAS Student featured: Stephanie Murray | MArch Students featured: Miriam Doyle | Mark Meneguzzi.

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(UN)COMMON WORKSHOP 2. 

BETWEEN MUSIC & ARCHITECTURE

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This workshop explored musical notation as a precedent for architectural drawing. Music and architecture are both allographic arts. Both musical and architectural notation invite participation. They anticipate sound and movement.

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“The visualizations of sound through musical scores and architectural sketches of a

performance space in plans and sections can be based on sensory associations of one sense modality with another through the use of colored notations, allowing for chromesthesia—a silent color hearing through sound seeing. [...] The musical score is critical in sensing time, operating a silent listening. However, seeing the music is different fromhearing the music. In musical notation, sign and signifier belong to different sense modalities—vision and hearing, respectively. Line weighted orthographic plans and sections offer the opportunity to sense the sequencing of spaces and events synchronically, opening the gaze to the temporal aspect of architecture. Horizontal and vertical sections reveal the thickness of time, defining what I like to call ‘chronosections’, drawings that allow us to be here and there, in the before and after, at the same time.”

Federica Goffi, “Chromesthesia and the Multiverse of Listening in Music and Architecture: Luigi Nono in Collaboration with Renzo Piano,” in The Sound of Architecture, edited byAngeliki Sioli and Elisavet Kiourtsoglou, Cornell University Press, 2022.  

 

Based on the commonality between these two notation types, first year architecture students were invited to create hybrids of a musical graphic score and an architectural drawing. Such drawings lean more towards the abstract nature of a musical graphic score (yet still contain spatial elements), or towards conventional architectural representation, such as a plan or section. Whether it is musical or architectural, the drawing scores are designed to be interpreted musically by an ensemble of up to three musicians, while also informing further architectural development.

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Bachelor of Architecture Studies Students featured: Salma Ibrahim | Vanessa Lei | Amelie Murphy | Navnoor Bahia | Gasali Abdul-Rahman | Achilla Hamilton | Sameer Patel |  Monica Thompson | Morgan Brenner | Gabriel Normandeau | Leo Moon | Liam Bergeron | Nikki Sond | Nashia Williams | Casey Pantaleon | Eshum Mateen | Angela Crea | Shannelle de Cross.

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(UN)COMMON WORKSHOP 3. 

BETWEEN LITERATURE & ARCHITECTURE

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Fourth-year urbanism students were asked to explore how literary narratives can inform site analysis, better addressing issues of subjectivity, temporality and empathy as they unpacked the rich and complex history of their global studio site in Tirana, Albania. Working in groups of three, students drew from author Margo Rejmer’s book Mud Sweeter than Honey: Voices of Communist Albania, inspired by the literary design-research methods of Dr. KlaskeHavik. Their work brought together the experiences of several key protagonists in the book (human, biophysical,architectural) to better comprehend Tirana’s multi-layered past and diverse present-day society more holistically. The workshop resulted in large experiential collages spatializing these narratives across a range of scales (architectural, urban, regional) and relative to different timeframes (past, present, future).

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Bachelor of Architecture Studies (Urbanism) Students featured: Amra Alagic | Anthony Papini | Arden Hamilton | Bryn Skippen | Doliba Durkin | Katherine Kolody | Lara Kurosky | Leah Dykstra | Marly Magharious | Mouhamad Jamili | Samantha Pennock | Simon Martignago | Will Loizides.

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The exhibition was complemented by the music performance Sounding the Precedent, which took place on September 24, 2023, and was led by Carleton Professor Jesse Stewart, based on a drawing/score by architecture student Nikki Sond (Bachelor of Architecture Studies, Carleton University). 

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