Studio Prize: Animate Archi-Tectonics: Structural Configurations Between Lines, Planes, and Volumes

This first-year undergraduate studio at the Cooper Union explored the principles of form and space by starting with Paul Klee's idea that "a drawing is taking a line for a walk."

Studio Brief | Working from Paul Klee’s observation that “drawing is taking a line for a walk,” this studio introduces first-year undergraduates to the principles of line, plane, and volume through a series of additive—or “animate”—exercises. The studio culminates in a presentation by each student of a portfolio of drawings and models, along with a narrative explanation of the work.

Investigation | Mersiha Veledar, an assistant professor at the Cooper Union, doesn’t believe in easing her first-year students into the school’s rigorous undergraduate program—and it shows in the way she designed her studio, Animate Archi-Tectonics, which throws them headfirst into a deep exploration of how lines, planes, and volumes come together to create architectural forms.

The studio is split into three phases, beginning with an examination of the ways lines intersect. From those drawings, students investigate how the forms created by those intersections function at different scales and dimensions; they then build models, which they test in terms of scale and habitation—inserting doors and stairs, for example.

“In my book the most exciting thing about this studio is showing students how abstractions can be made real,” Veledar says.

Students build on those line drawings and models in the next two phases, which move into a study of planes and then volumes—in this way, the students’ projects are “animate,” a way of emphasizing the dependence of even the most intricate designs on these basic architectonic elements.

The studio functions on multiple levels: not only in its explicit content, but in its structure—even the requirement that each project have a narrative and a title serves a pedagogic purpose, Veledar said. The student narratives had to explain how they developed their project, as well as how the final version coheres as a statement.

“They have to learn how to argue through a project, and how to present it,” Veledar says.

Though Veledar’s studio is a challenge for students who are just a few months out of high school, she said she was impressed with how much they were able to advance within just a few months. The jurors agreed. “I think the work is beautiful,” said juror Eric Owen Moss, FAIA, who was also impressed with Veledar’s unconventional approach to introducing basic architectural concepts. “It does seem to suggest that there is another way to see, study, and speculate about form and shape.”