Spacebound

Let’s take a closer look at the midterm jury assignment for our “Field & Matter”- themed Computation-based Basic Design 2 studio, which I conducted last year alongside Serkan Uysal, İpek Kuran, and Sinan Logie. I shared the studio’s final project, Earthbound, in a previous post. In this post, we will focus on our process-oriented midterm project named Spacebound.

Topography as a Data Field

In this first major phase of the “Field & Matter” studio, we examined how moving and stationary objects are positioned on a topography. In this context, topography is not just a passive surface to walk on; it is treated as a continuous data field characterized by variables such as slope, flow, and curvature. Here, architecture went beyond random placement, becoming a strategic intervention that manages surrounding conditions and possibilities.

Space Production Through Games

The primary objective of the project was to design an innovative children’s playground that would allow various age groups to engage in different games. The process started with generating a digital topography and analyzing its geometric features. I shared the Grasshopper code that generates and analyzes this topography in previous posts. Our main analysis layers guiding the design included:

• Slope: Used to distinguish between accessible and steep areas.
• Curvature: Served to identify concave (hidden/enclosed) and convex (exposed/open) regions.
• Occlusion: Helpful in mapping visual privacy and blind spots.

Once the analyses were completed, the studio held collective discussions to decide which parts of the land would host which games. Afterward, each student worked individually on their own terrain, intervening in the topography with minimal additions (sticks and thin walls). Our core approach here was not to force functions arbitrarily, but to let the function emerge organically by creating the right geometric and physical conditions. Games like sledding, hide-and-seek, hopscotch, leapfrog, and tag served as powerful catalysts for reading the data offered by the terrain and translating it into design.

With this project, first-year architecture students were introduced to numerous architectural concepts for the first time. Topics such as scale, dimensions, vista, topography, and even some fundamental structural and functional decisions were introduced. We included basic architectural drawing and modeling skills into the process as well. This project became an unforgettable initial experience for the students. This was also their first experience in an architectural design jury.

The 40-year-old Field Conditions (after Stan Allen and his contemporaries) are surprisingly fresh in today’s digital design education. Below is an example of student work (Muhammed Demir):