Corporate Domain
In keeping with the body of research on the development of architectural frameworks, Diploma 8 has continued its investigations into scale-independent systems of reductive elements within the context of corporate domains. Focusing on corporate complexes, students developed a range of strategies identifying current and speculative roles of corporations within increasingly stratified and turbulent multinational economies. The work produced this year stands as both critique and an observation on the speculative roles of contemporary corporations, based on an examination of the increasingly layered and varied models that are evident in economies in both the established and the developing world. Projects focused on an array of contextual conditions, from the continuation of large and centralised multinational corporations and their associated cultures, to highly distributed and emerging structures in the city.
As part of the design process adopted by the unit, students began their research on complex organisational strategies in parallel to fundamentals of object-driven logical structures. The ambition of such a format was to establish a protocol capable of developing an architectural element that could be considered independent of its utility yet cognisant of scale-specific implementations. The objective was to develop an articulated yet indeterminate architecture, defined by its organisation and conditions much more than a prescriptive programming.
In parallel to their architectural proposals, students produced a synopsis of their theses in the form of a manual that served as a set of directives for a generic implementation of relevant conclusions reached throughout the year. This manual does not provide for an architecture of promise, yet yields an incredibly filtered speculation focused on the extrapolation of a singular idea, acknowledging the simultaneity of incongruent processes that form the contemporary architectural environment.