New Interpretations of Concepts

Work by Kitty Gidófalvy, Gáspár Hajdú

Invited by the department of residential buildings of the Budapest Technical University, Monika Bilska and Kristof Crolla, two young architects from Zaha Hadid Architects held a one-week workshop in October, 2009. The idea of this creative week was born at AA School and has already been organized in several countries since then. The whole week had been spent on familiarizing with Maya, an animation software. Monika presented the techniques of modelling, whilst Kristof focussed on software development and the world of scripts.

Work was carried out in teams. During the first daysparticipants focussed on acquiring the basics. After a large number of introductory tasks they had to design a pavillion of modest size. Vertex, Curve, Face, Array, Stack, Loft and Attribute: they are some of the concepts used for the elements and operations of „digital tectonics”. However, these terms actually mean series of numbers, vector and matrix operations, linear transformations and interpolations. We can use them as building bricks although it is not construction now but writing that we are concerned with. We can compose letters, scripts for the machine and the software to instruct them how and what to generate or create. During the six-day workshop both the tutors, Kristof and Monika assisted the participants. When assessing the work done, on the last day of the workshop the tutors emphasized how much they were satisfied with the group evaluating their work as inventive and valuable. Kristof and Monika said they also learn a lot during such workshops as the participants approach the topic with new ideas of their own and unusual way of seeing the issues dealt with. They also received new ideas here in Hungary. Heads of the department, Tamás Perényi and Tamás Varga Tamás concluded they would like to strengthen digital technology at the university in the future.

Bálint Botzheim