We will start in this module with a comparison.

Let’s imagine a judge in a courtroom who stops the proceedings and remarks, “Without further ado, a thief is a thief, and therefore he needs to be convicted!” 

This would not be likely, because this is not how a judge works. To administer justice there is a method to substantiate the verdict. The judge will look into the subject (the crime), but also at the context and the details of the offense. Furthermore, the history of the suspect and the history of similar cases will be studied.

In conclusion, the judge could find out that the ‘thief’ is a little boy who stole an extra cookie for his hungry little sister. And the judge could be a judge in reality, but what if in this case she was the grandma. The boy could have a history of taking too many cookies. The point is to realise that no precise decision is made without acknowledging the surrounding factors. This works the same in the design process.

Until now in this course we have focussed mainly on the intent of the dream house. Now we will start to think about how it is possible to make the design more precise and embed it into the site you would intend to build it on.

In architecture we use methods that are comparable to how a judge studies a case before drawing conclusions.

Through using models, you can further explore the potential of your ideas by referring to the context, details, precedents, and concepts.

This week we will focus on models about context and concepts.