RIBA studio – year one

RIBA Studio 2020

Letter of academic intent 2020

Through observations in my traveling and work, I believe that Architecture and Art can transcend time and foremost overcome the ephemeral ideas of a particular era; by that becoming Sublime Architecture.

My last academic essay, written in my final year of my part one course at the University of Cape Town in 2015 began to explore precedents of Sublime Architecture in history. Outstanding designers that achieved an elevated understanding of buildings and art in the context of past present and future. In my findings, I noted that there isn’t a defined recipe or solution to achieve it. It is not only on light or dark, rational or the irrational, evil or good but in the balance of these worlds. I expect to use D4 to explore these ideas farther.

In the next years, I would like to explore the ambiguity and contradictions that reside in precedents of architecture and art, and through interpretation and critical thinking apply my findings in new designs, creating unique responses to each cultural, social and intellectual influence of each project. I expect that C4 will explore the theoretical, historical and social aspects of art and architecture.

Through my own experience working and studing architecture, I see the importance of understanding and respecting the different materials our built environment is made of. T5a together with social context and sustainable design must embrace the challenges of our times to respond to a rapidly changing world. I would like to explore materials that replace traditional construction materials that are no longer applicable to our reality, where population growth and consumption escalated exponentially in the past decades. The built environment has a major task to reinvent itself in order to build in mass scales but yet sustainably and uniquely respond to each scenario.

In conclusion, the different aspects of the built environment have to be balanced by two contradicting forces; one organic and inexact where the complexity of the human nature is understood, and another pragmatic side where architecture has to respond to much-needed set of rules that ensures the performance of such buildings in society. I would like to explore the possibilities that these parameters offer in P3.