This ongoing collection of images and videos (curated by students and faculty) shows the individual and collective work from Fall 2018, Stairs Studio. The techniques for discussion, evaluation, and reflection are evident in the organization of forums used to engage students’ work. In addition to formal reviews/presentations, discussion groups (2, 4, and 8 students) are typically used to exchange, record, and develop ideas that are central to the themes of the studio. This process is shaped by different media (catalogs, models, drawings, and images) and materials, which are documented across three interconnected projects: two Cube Projects and a Stair-Tape-Drawing, Cataloguing Project.
During four years of teaching, a series of collective reflections, documentation, and analysis of the studio’s pedagogy turned into a peer-reviewed paper for the National Conference on the Beginning Design Student: The Post-orthographic Tinkerbell Effect
Week 15: Project 3_Review (Pairs of students with 2-4 reviewers)
Week 14: Project 3_Model Set 1-3 (Collective model catalog, broken into 4 sections according to students’ evaluations)
Week 13: Project 3_Model Set 1-2 (Collective model catalog, broken into 4 sections and rearranged according to students’ evaluations)
Week 13: Project 3_Model Set 1
Week 12: Project 3 (Collective model performance, 4 groups with 8 students, groups are reconfigured based on students’ discussions and observations)
Week 12: Project 3_Models in Progress
Week 12: Project 3_Models in Progress (1 on 1 student reviews)
Week 11: Project 3_Images Round 4 (Groups of 4 students review images to reflect between the technical differences between “drawings” and “images”)
Week 11: Project 3_Images Round 3
Week 10: Project 3_Images Round 2
Week 10: Project 3_Images Round 1 (Groups of 4 students discuss model transformations through computer modeling in Revit)
Week 09: Project 2_Review Redux (After the review, students come together to rearrange the full-studio collection into “family portraits” that capture the range of variation within a seemingly monotonous set of models)
Week 08: Project 2_Fly Space Review (Paris of students with 2-4 reviewers)
Week 07: Project 2_Stair Cubes and Drawings (1 on 1 student conversations)
Week 06: Project 2_Stair Cubes 4-6 (Student-led reviews at desks)
Week 05: Project 2_Stair Cubes 1-3.
Week 4: Project 1_One Hundred Stairs (“on-site, wall” review of 1:1 scale tape drawings of stairs, each review group is 8 students and the conversation is led by 2 students)
Week 3: Tape Section Drawings (Based on the 100 stair catalog, students form pairs and develop tape-drawings across a 1:1 media translation of a 100-stair catalog into tape drawings. The cutting and taping of the catalog is analogous to the cutting and taping of the drawings.)
Week 3: Stair Catalogues (100 stairs across 500 years, each catalog is produced indivdually and organized according to a series of criteria that highlight the role of stairs as a practical, ableist, and fundamental way of organizing space across cultures and time)
Week 2: Cataloguing 100 Stairs
DoArch Stairs Studio 2018 