Research-led design studio I 2017

Investigated Territory: Western Isles,ISLES OF LEWIS AND Stornoway

Undergraduate STUDIO — Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture I University of Edinburgh

The technological shift towards smart entities — driven by automation, machine learning and IoT — mostly perceived as an immaterial phenomena, decoupled from a physical dimension, resides on a vast material footprint, which exists almost unnoticed in the suburbs of our perception. Tectonics of the Immaterial, a research-led design studio, engages with the notion of data as an immaterial entity which revolutionises the 21st century, initiating irreversible global dynamics, but at the same time relies upon a physical footprint, comprised of infrastructure and buildings. 

This work is mirrored in research-led teaching throughout the past three years during a semester-long design studio in 4th year BA/MA Architecture, focussing on the presented topics, within a global but also local — the Western Isles and the Orkney Archipelago — context. Strategies are being developed to repurpose obsolete oil and gas infrastructure for digital ICT infrastructures and hybridised programmes. The research has been thematised in a dedicated panel session at the AHRA ‘Smartness? Beyond Discourse and Practice’ Conference 2018 at the TU Eindhoven.

Fraser Morrison

Jack Lettice

Beth Dutson

Cameron Lintott