Halfway between the socially responsive discourse of programmatic indeterminacy and the alleged futility of form-giving, this studio explores architecture’s critical return to form. The interest in the topic of form is neither aesthetic nor ideological. Contrary to the notion of shape (with which it is often confused), we understand form as a syntactic, procedural, and (increasingly) technical problem, much like the study of language in the 1970s –or the more recent emergence of Object Orientated Programming in the software industry.

This project explores the architectural potential of the variable parametric surface, a vehicle chosen for its relentless abstraction and relative resistance to predictable questions of architectural function and figure while aiming to produce sophisticated (if counter-intuitive) new formal prototypes –incorporated into a pragmatic urban and architectural proposal.

This proposal follows the guidelines of the the Shenzhen Architectural Competition for a new Museum of Contemporary Art, Planning & Exhibition, and the design focuses on visitors’ procession through a series of floating galleries intertwined within undulating, landscaped, public open-spaces.