Hybrid Assemblages
Cornell AAP
Spring 2025
The studio introduces architecture as a global, diverse discipline shaped by local culture, environment, materials, and methods of construction. Students study regional precedents to understand how context produces distinct design strategies and how materials, tools, and techniques inform space, scale, and structure. Across all work, the course challenges students through defamiliarization, helping them see everyday spaces with fresh eyes and become more critical thinkers while building the analytical, technical, and representational skills needed to articulate their own design approach. The semester is structured in two parts:
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Assignment 1 trains students to document and analyze precedents, reinterpret their essential ideas, and convert those insights into new spatial and material concepts. Students record organizational and construction logics, extract and abstract design principles, and apply them in a short design competition.
- Assignment 2 focuses on a comprehensive design project that consists of a communal cookhouse. Students explore rituals of use, spatial sequencing, and site adaptation. They use knowledge gained from precedent analysis to define context, develop structural and material strategies, and advance the project through iterative studies.
Program:
1st Year B.Arch Studio
Teaching team:
Jennifer Newsom*, Manuel Bouzas, Fany Kuzmova, Suzanne Lettieri, Ryan Whitby, Catherine Wilmes.
Students (Bouzas):
Maddie Banks, Leo Chen, Maia Cook, Eli Galdston, Sara García, Yuxin He, Jack Hu, Olivia Lapaz, Ziqi Lin, Horen Wang, Renee Wang, Heather Zhang.
