HOT-COLD LAB — SS2 Architects

HOT-COLD LAB

The project focuses on the relationship of form, matter, and energy in both abstractand actual ways through a study of the intensive and extensive properties of architecture.

What is at stake in this project is a question of causality. Aristotelian form presumes that ideas are imposed on seemingly inert matter. Other systems of thought about formation presume that matter and energy are imbued withinherent capacities and propensities—and that these tendencies sponsor formation.

Architecture is product of conjugate causalities. Whether it is the illumination of an atrium in a museum, the span of an arch, or heat in a thermal bath, as architects we both impose order on—and seek order from—the matter and energy inherent to buildings. Architects both suggest order as well as amplify the orders suggested by matter/energyin the formation of buildings. This recursive causality is the focus of this project.

To elaborate this question of causality in architecture, the project considers both forms of causality as a recursive basis of design. To do so, extensive and intensive properties of architecture were considered. An extensive geometric armature (a three-dimensional hinged dissection) was used to mix intensive properties (e.g. temperature, density, pressure, humidity). The fundamental aim of considering the intensive and extensive properties of architecture is the development of an agenda for matter, energy and form; a way of thinkingthermodynamically about architecture and architecturally about thermodynamics. This implores to think about matter, energy, and form; in ways that immediately eclipse technocratic paradigms such as “energyefficiency” or “sustainability” and their errant impositions on architecture. Something much more fundamental—and something at once more rigorous in terms of design and science—is at stake in this project: the perennial andponderous relationship between matter, energy, geometry, and formation in architecture.

In this project, you will begin with a particular geometric armature. From an architectural and thermodynamic analysisof the propensities of a single scale-less geometric armature, two architectural proposals were developed for radicallydifferent contexts. These two proposals reflects two different states inherent in the same physical architecture of extensive and intensive properties. In this project, the degree of divergence between the two states, and theresolution of those two states, is essential. The difference of the two states depends on both the extensive andintensive constitution of the architecture.

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