Campus and effect, or ways of designing incompletely

In this research, the campus is considered as a distinctive urban condition with frequently varying parameters which allow fleeting and often incomplete architectural outcomes. This design research looks at ways of engaging with and acknowledging the incomplete and the indeterminate within the established constraints of existing campuses and the common methods of architectural procurement. The projects also look for ways of operating in the campus cognisant of the temporal nature and architectural flux of these sites and institutions. <br><br>The project has evolved from an understanding of some of the modes of the campus, its procurement and various physical manifestations. These observation and assertions - originating in practice - form the departure point for the study. The position accepts three interrelated points: that master planning is a limited tool for architecture in the campus; that the campus continues to exist as a defined typology of urban accretion; and that rule formation and ‘ideal making’ are integral to the campus type. <br><br>The campus master plan is seen as increasingly ineffectual as a contemporary architectural tool of the campus, reduced to a fiscal document, data projection, demographics and the whim of political expediency. It is diminished in its capacity to remain valid as the variables are rapidly re-conceived in time frames too short for large construction phases. Hence the focus of this Masters has been towards implementation phase (additive) projects and explores the notion that the campus remains in ‘constant incompleteness’. <br><br>The research proposes Tacit Urban Principles, rules, puzzles and systems as strategies and tactics for the generation of campus orders which engage with the idea of the campus and contemporary practice based issues. <br>