In this semester’s Advanced Architecture Design Studio we will push the boundaries of skyscraper building envelopes with novel potentials for reactive membranes to harvest untapped airborne energies, organisms, and material phenomena. The studio will consider the possibilities for a new type of tower: edifices that merge urban infrastructure with occupancy, and seed alternative locations for living around the Bay via extreme and opportunistic siting. Based in part on biological systems (i.e. Haeckel’s Forms in Nature) and on architectural precedents (Japanese Metabolism, MVRDV/The Why Factory Vertical Village, etc.), students will research and develop their own architectural design tactics that will allow for upward building and functional ‘harvesting’. 

Throughout the duration of the semester the studio will consider tectonic strategies that ask: Is there a 

capacity of ‘building intelligence’ that efficiently adapts to unexpected events (atmospheric, urban, etc.)? How will this web like plurality of spaces develop and mature by processes of informality, flexibility, diversity, and real time phenomenal growth?