AA Summer School (2025)
Student work examples, BA
Unit 4: Assemblages was an AA Summer School taught with Aoi Phillips Yamashita of Clementine Blakemore Architects, Mario Serrano Puche of t__m space and The Bartlett, and Tanil Raif of t__m space and Harvard GSD, focused on reconstructing urban forms and spatial abnormalities through digital scanning, modelling and physical fabrication.
The three-week school asked students to identify strange, overlooked and fragmented elements of the city, using photography, drawing, photogrammetry and LiDAR to build a catalogue of urban fragments, which were then digitally manipulated through changes of scale, repetition, distortion and combination. These fragments became the basis for speculative architectural objects, landscapes and spatial scenarios, with students moving between digital modelling and physical fabrication through 3D printing, foam, wire and card.
The final stage brought the individual investigations together into a collective assemblage, where fragments were combined to construct a shared architectural fiction and installation. The teaching therefore connected close observation of the existing city with scanning, computational modelling, making and exhibition, using assembly as both a method of design and a way of imagining how disparate architectural elements could produce new spatial relationships.