Alexander McQueen (1969-2010) was one of the most influential and provocative designers of his generation. His clothing challenged the generic and conventional parameters of fashion to express culture, politics, identity. McQueen saw beyond clothing design physical constraints its ideological and conceptual possibilities, addressing questions related to race, gender, religion, sexuality and environment. During AA School Paris Spring 2012, McQueen’s evolutionary design will act as prompts for embryos’ naissance within the [Fashion+Architecture] body of work.

Within a framework of 10 days-germination, AA school Paris participants will take part of a collective embryo-genesis engaging McQueen’s DNA and legacy onto a novel and crucial debate about fashion in the Post-McQueen Era.
Featuring the most iconic and radical designs of his prolific career, AA embryos will grow and develop a self-intelligent état d’âme informed by a set of social, contextual, operational and performative parameters, such as: mass production driven by advanced capitalism; temperature variations in the globe, clothes’ adaptability in urban milieus, among other.

Post-McQueen Embryos seeks to eradicate the non-responsiveness within clothing design by reviewing Alexander McQueen’s alienated proportions, aiming at busting fashion design out of its commercial destination. Intended to become a design research laboratory, AA School Paris ultimate target is to keep growing the potential for meshing both disciplines [Fashion+Architecture] onto a digital/ physical cross-over studio helping to reaffirm AA School Paris research material.

The Paris Experience
Discussions, debates and lectures will take place on site with expertise on a day to day basis. By placing fashion designers at the centre of the process, the workshop seeks to challenge much more than just clothing design. At the core of Spring 2012 our solely goal is of consolidating the AA emerging discipline: bodily-architecture.
The AA Paris Fashion School will take in an exclusive insightful retrospective at the Exhibition ‘MARC JACOBS- LOUIS VUITTON’, to be held at the Les Arts Décoratifs- AA Paris Headquarters.
Post Mc-Queen Embryos is strengthened by a large network of Parisian Patronage, from industrial, publishing and collaborative links, taking the form of sponsoring inputs to the course.
The workshop is open to current architecture and design students, PhD candidates and young professionals. All applicants should submit a CV and portfolio to Jorge Ayala at info@ayarchitecture.com

Links:
Website: http://aaschoolparis.tumblr.com/
AA School Microsite: http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/STUDY/VISITING/Paris-part2
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/AA-School-Paris/175947042439516

Applications Link:

https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/STUDY/ONLINEAPPLICATION/visitingApplication.php?schoolID=68

Faculty:
Jorge Ayala, Director and Founder at [Ay]Architects
Isaïe Bloch, Collaborator Designer at Iris Van Herpen
Riyad Joucka, AA MA Emergent Techonogies Graduate
Santosh Kumar, Architect, Hernan Diaz Alonso Studio EXCESSIVE, Die Angewandte University, Vienna
Kibwe Tavares, Director and Founder at FACTORYFIFTEEN
and more.

The first stage in the Augmented Structures project by Salon 2 is the Augmented Structures v1.1: Acoustic Formations / stiklâl Caddesi installation which reanimates phenomena (architecture, sound and visual arts) that appear to be completed and concluded. The acoustic memory of ?stiklâl
Caddesi is first transformed into an architectural surface and then this solid form became a dynamic visual performance.

The project brings together disparate disciplines like architecture, sound and the visual arts which influence one another to such a degree that it is impossible to separate them. While the project aims to interpret the world in visual and aesthetic terms, in its capacity as an “interdisciplinary transformation” project it also questions the point where art and architecture stand today and the point they might reach in future. This is a project that forces each discipline to alter its own “material” state; transforming sound into mathematics, mathematics into architecture and architecture into a living canvas, while presenting the viewer with a new media experience that is multi-levelled, produces sound, moves and breathes.

The performance takes place on the Galatasaray side of Yap Kredi Cultural Centre, one of the urban landmarks on ?stiklâl Caddesi, which numbers among Istanbul’s most lively and popular streets. Blending the city’s own levels with those of differing disciplines, the performance celebrates their transformation into a multi-level new media art work as an urban experience.

Elasticity, or behavior of the matter and form confined to the reversible deformation range, was essential to the design and construction process. Previously identical modular components have reacted to tension forces and have gone through a process of gradual change to adapt according to local conditions. That way, overall stability of the structure became reliant on the multitude of local variations. Knowledge and ideas gathered in the previous phases of the project were transferred into this phase of the projects but there were neither drawings nor models produced prior to the construction process. Information was distributed amongst the assembly team members as a series of oral instructions, structured into a design and build protocol. The assembly at O3one Art Space took three days to complete with the help of students from the University of Belgrade and was documented in a time lapse sequence of photos.
4of7: Djordje Stojanovic, Milutin Cerovic and Milica Tasic. University of Belgrade students: Ivana Radovic, Katarina Mercep, Marija Pop-Mitic, Danka Sijerkovic, Jovan Pucarevic, Dea Kolacek, Miloš Simic, Emilija Zlatkovic, Milan Katic, Dusan Tasic, Sonja Elakovi?, Ana Todosijevic, and Marko Vukajlovic. Photo: Ana Kostic

The pavilion’s form is derived from the structure of a tree and intends to provide shade to the immediate area. a triangular footprintwith crisp planar walls begins to unfold at the roof plane into a series of pleats. the hyplane structure is comprised of white metal panels in the shape of isosceles triangles. the bends create a curving wall which reflects and introduces a soft light into the interior.

“I wondered what would happen if the walls were to keep growing upwards and present an uneven surface like ‘pleats’. Pleats resemble a tree in the way that they spread out and capture the sun and I felt that they would produce a bright, impressive exterior. I also thought that the space beneath this surface would present a relaxed atmosphere, similar to that of tree shade that would be an ideal quality for an exhibition space.”

Flight Assembled Architecture is the first installation built entirely by flying robots. Designed as an architectural structure on the scale of a “vertical village” of 600 meters, Assembled Architecture Flight tests a new paradigm of design and manufacturing, through a physical process of automated dynamic training. This project builds on the simultaneous use of multiple mobile agents. Considered as tools for adaptive production, these flying robots are programmed to interact and to capture, transport and assemble the modules to build architectural structures. They synthesize and the pragmatism of Gramazio & Kohler Architecture and visionary approach to Raffaello D’Andrea in engineering dynamics. The FRAC Centre supports this new project, which will ad up to its collection devoted to experimental architecture. This collaborative project will be exposed in the FRAC Centre in Orléans.

Every year in early September, as graduate students at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles put the finishing touches on their thesis projects, a Sci-Arc faculty member and students prepare a temporary pavilion for the annual graduation ceremony. This year, faculty members Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collaborative, along with their students, designed a pavilion entitled Netscape for the event that stretches across the northern end of the SCI-Arc parking lot, providing seating for 900. Consisting of 45,000 linear feet of knitted rope, 6000 linear feet of tube steel, and 3000 square feet of fabric shade louvers, the pavilion creates a sail-like canopy of rope and fabric that floats above the audience. With its fabric louvers tilted toward the western sky, the canopy is designed to provide shade for the specific date and time.

Netscape utilizes a double layer of netting in varying configurations to create a three-dimensional field of billowing shade louvers. Based on a conventional knitting technique, like that used in the making of a sweater, the pavilion exploits the malleability of this technique as it stretches to conform to the three-dimensional shape of the structure. Unlike a conventional net, the knitting technique is not fixed at its intersections, allowing the shape of the nets (and their grids) to contort both at the upper and the lower surface. With the nets contorting differently, the shade louvers that are stretched between them become a dynamic field of fabric, twisting and bending in order to span across the space in between.

Design of the project involved an elaborate back and forth between digital and analog systems of investigation. With engineering done by Nous Engineering, analysis of the tension in the nets provided constant feedback that informed the shape and three-dimensionality of the structure, as well as some basic form-finding for the nets. As the project progressed, however, large three-dimensional models provided a means of studying the behavior of the grids and their resulting geometries.

With the shade louvers designed to block the setting sun in the west, the view from inside the pavilion offers a dramatically different experience. The three-dimensionality of the double-layered netting reaches depths of about 10’, and becomes open and porous when facing eastward into the complex three-dimensional field of fabric and rope.

It is inspired by the beauty of nature systems with their inherent efficiency and performance. The project explored on-site fabrication of monocoques structures, thereby integrating skin and structure, along with services and infrastructure, with a household technique like knitting. It thus embodies a self organized micro system of textures and a macro system of structure. The book elaborates how the numeric aspects of a textile technique were used, first to digitally imitate the process of assembly and further exploited to develop and visualize a novel fabrication system, based on material research and technical experimentation. The digital machinic system was then deployed on a test site to demonstrate the tectonic capacity of the method developed.

BUILDING FASHION topics are concerned with the acquisition of appropriate knowledge and understanding of the in-vogue association [FASHION+ARCHITECTURE], supported by the mastery of essential digital skills which will equip and prepare AA Paris participants toward physical experimentations. To this extend, Building Fashion will develop a two-fold laboratoire: Computational and Physical Investigations.
The Computational Investigations Lab is an interdisciplinary design-research laboratory where -through digital based investigations- students will engage with the study of generative and evolutionary design strategies in fashion. The Physical Investigations Lab focuses on the study of physical performance and manufacturing of novel spatial repertoires. Physical prototyping will become an important instrument to the understanding of processual design- its improvement from the outset and along all phases of development.
Alongside our intensive design input, the workshop is addressed by a series of lectures, debates and presentations by guest designers, entrepreneurs and internationally renowned participants.

Unit 2 :
SELF-ASSEMBLED PRÊT-A-PORTER by JORGE AYALA AND RIYAD JOUCKA

Self-assembled Prêt-à-Porter will develop a new kind of skin operating as responsive systems to the contemporary needs of the human body, society and technology. 
Confronting the currently existing ‘capitalism comfort zones’ in fashion industry (mass- distribution primarily) this studio seeks to engage self-assembled protocols as dynamic landscapes to generate architectonic surfaces. Aided by handcrafted and software-generated physical modelling, the unit will experiment with form finding methods and prototyping in order to achieve a design proposal.

During week 1 the workshop will commence by researching the possibility of integrating natural systems within contemporary design disciplines, fashion and architecture. Participants will examine biological systems found in nature, from sea flora and fauna, like sponges, to all common-structure vertebrates and reptiles. The aim of the initial research is to draw inspiration to biomimic the local intelligence and structural systems of these creatures. 
During week 2 participants will be introduced to methods of creating feedback loops between their physical experiments and digital tools. Computation is used as means to facilitate multi-scalar design: from landscaped bodies and tectonics to experimental fashion design.

Fashion is a unique creative platform that must undergo onto mutation. Self-assembled Prêt-à-Porter Unit seeks to raise awareness within architectural education to avoid processes of ‘pop’ aestheticisation and thereby, preventing the risk of anaesthetisation of our society.

ONLINE APPLICATIONS

Using subtly lit relief panels, Linnaeus uses the park’s design as a framework for setting evolutionary conditions. The actual topography is used to divide the panel’s surface area into sections that have corresponding ecosystems. As a result, an abstracted genetic tree of botanics runs left to right across the walls.

The second level contains the vegetation that make their genetics visible. They branch off the abstract first level branches and generate a more organic visual complexity.

In the end, all this is represented as a giant fossil excavation. The actual park topography and height data is translated to rock texture, with superimposed fossilised vegetation.

SOFTlab has come up with a need project , a large outdoor installation for The San Gennaro North Gate located at on Mulberry St. between Houston and Prince St in New York. The piece was produced by Two Bridges and supported by St.Patrick’s Old Cathedral.

The geometry was engineered in collaboration with Matt Clark at ARUP and all of the building connections were designed by Nathaniel Stanton of CRAFT Engineering.

Installation will be up until September 25th, 2011

Design Team: Michael Szivos, Carrie McKnelly, Sean Madigan

Installation: Elliot White, Brandt Graves, Sarah Hunter, Liz Kelsey, Brandon Bartle, Sonal Patel, Simon Kristak, Henry Choi, Julia Schleppe, Katherine Salamat, Anthony Buccellato