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A Character Building Experience

Part 2 Project 2003
Peter Ryan
Emma Macann
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology | Australia
This project re-evaluates the school type as a place of connections, no longer just between students and knowledge, but also between students, their peers and the wider community. The efficient housing of students is no longer the primary motivating factor of the proposal. In its new expression, the school type is viewed as a social space, where relationships emerge and develop according to individual characteristics and community interaction. The manifestation of this realignment is a three-dimensional mapping of the school, where the interrelation between programmatic components and their occupants can be understood in terms of the formal and organisational compositions they create.
Peter Ryan
Emma Macann


In this highly original project Peter Ryan re-examined the program for an Australian suburban school from the point of view of the character and behaviours of its inhabitants. The first move used dynamic systems to map the site as a series of attractors. The behaviour of particular actors (technically, agents) were then characterised by attractions and repulsion to other actors and programmatic elements. Interacting together on the site (controlled by software written for the project), each actor has a propensity to enact particular constructive operations related to its character. Though displaying a certain wry humour, the serious intent of this project shows the rich architectural possibilities of digital systems truly interacting with the intent of the architect.

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2003
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