Summer 2012: Dale Clifford

Working models are a means to experiment first hand with materials and modes of assembly associated with natural forces /phenomena of light, air, water and heat with the end goal of identifying building strategies that allow humans to live in balance with nature. In this sense working models are a vehicle to discovery, innovation and practical application. In this course, modeling is an activity that initiates “hypothetical propositions of a possible order, real or imaginary.” (Á, Malo)

Locate experts from other fields (biology, materials science, ecology, optical science, manufacturing) to advise your team.

A few points that will guide our work:

• Living organisms are generally constructed from (and operated by) soft pliant materials that are renewable and fabricated at low temperatures.
• Resilience and flexibility are key attributes to species success.
• Complexity is an emergent property based on simple rule sets.
• As a system, life is a micro and macro performance based condition of checks and balances and therefore Life generates conditions conductive for life and produces no waste

Faculty

Philip Plowright
Jacob Chidester
Beverly Geltner
Mary Cay Lancaster
Ralph Nelson
Christopher Schanck
Tod Stevens

Critical Practitioner

Dale Clifford