Title:
Konrad Wachsmann’s Research Methodology: Designing a Contemporary Clip System
Konrad Wachsmann’s Research Methodology: Designing a Contemporary Clip System
Author(s)
Andrzejewski, Elizabeth
Advisor(s)
Editor(s)
Collections
Supplementary to
Abstract
As an architect and educator, Konrad Wachsmann’s life’s work demonstrates an architectural research methodology that uses prototyping and building as a means for testing ideas and theories in both his practice and teaching. In this paper, the author presents a methodological approach used to study the historical significance of Wachsmann’s work from the 1940s-1950s and apply the results to contemporary architectural developments. To construct this dialogue with Wachsmann’s work the author analyzed the Packaged House System and his theory of universality first in theoretical and historical context and then reconstructed the technical parameters that informed Wachsmann’s’ design process. Acting as the first part of a dialogue, this analysis of Wachsmann then informed the second part of the dialog where the author’s developed a new building system that made use of contemporary tools and fabrication technologies. prefabrication problems addressed by Wachsmann in his work, and then re-examine their potentials through the application of contemporary tools and fabrication technologies. Through building—as an active research methodology of discovery, analysis, articulation, and re-application—lessons learned from Wachsmann’s work create new scholarship, and can simultaneously be applied to prefabrication, building technologies, and systematic construction today. The essential dialog connecting historical search/analysis to informed making illustrates a methodology with the potential to further articulate and re-engage historical architectural works and practices through models/prototypes and simulations in ways that result in tactile and intellectual insight into contemporary architectural research projects.
Sponsor
Date Issued
2023-03
Extent
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Proceedings