This studio will explore how built environments can influence the development of graphic communication by exploring numerous locations in and around campus. It will aim to examine how three dimensional structures can inform two dimensional compositions, and work towards establishing a dialogue between contrasting dimensional fields. It asks you to engage the everyday built environment through a simplified perspective, and keep an open mind towards rethinking and reevaluating what constitutes two dimensional visual language; it will ask you to explore, experiment and expand your own point of view.

Through a range of in class activities and workshops, you will be asked to survey the built environment around you in a detailed manner. These studies will look at built structures through a graphical viewpoint, extracting their existing graphic conditions, and subsequently applying their findings towards a series of 'site specific' communicative outcomes. These investigations will not only allow for alternative ways in which graphic visually language is developed, but also influence the manner in which it is observed, referenced and experienced.

The focus of the studio will be on process, making and experimentation; engaging the built environment in a comprehensive and motivated way. There will be a strong focus on the development of one's own work through regular deliberation and analytical discussion. As the studio progresses you will be asked to develop your initial findings into complex graphic outcomes; considering how three dimensional structures have the potential to inform graphic visual communication, thus establishing a dialogue between dimensional fields. Design elements and principles such as line, shape/form, colour, and space will be explored and examined through a variety of processes including extraction, simplification, deconstruction, fragmentation, reconstruction, and spatial translation through a series of in-class exercises / workshops.

Over the course of the semester you will create three different design artefacts exploring the potential of the built environment towards informing and developing graphical communication. (1) Preliminary experiments, explorations and observations of built environments / graphic communication (2) Broader observation and engagement of built environments / graphic communication within a confined locale (3) Site specific project, exploring a particular built environment and its graphic communication potential in detail.

Brief 01: Initial process journal / Reflective document.
Brief 02: Refined design series
Brief 03: Publication / Book (Studio Knowledge Object / SKO)

1-Visual Grammar - Christian-Leborg
2-Staging Space Architecture : Scenic Interiors and Spatial Experiences - R. Klanten, L. Feireiss
3-Elements and Principals of Design - Kevin Rigdon