The Porto Academy Summerschool is held annually at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Porto and consists of a one-week workshop and lectures by various architects.
In 2019 I took part in the “Building Buildings” workshop led by Christopher Dyvik and Max Kahlen. This workshop had the intention to make the construction or the act of building tangible. By producing plasterboard models on a scale of 1:10, we speculated about room variations and a possible language for an architecture – under the topic of office buildings.
Act 1. Design intentions were articulated through simple drawings in plan and section – an iterative process to translate the most important spatial properties of two selected reference buildings. Intuition and careful reading of the picture were decisive.
Act 2. The translation of drawing into model. We examined the material aspects of plasterboard and developed a tectonics based on construction details and compositions in order to establish principles for our architecture – rough and specific at the same time.
Act 3. Positioning the model within the campus to create an ambiguous architectural element. The site became the pedestal. It staged the model in the actual space and established a context for the proposed architecture. A project somewhere between architecture, furniture and props.
