RDF Design Studio

RDF Design Studio 4th Year

Project Team: Dorotea Ottaviani with Prof. Enric Ruiz-Geli
Year: 2019
Place and Institution: Virginia Tech, College of Architecture and Urban Studies

“The past ten years have been about discovering new ways to create, invent, and work together on the Web. The next ten years will be about applying those lessons to the real world.” 
― Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

The Design Studio will enable students to speculate about what is the Factory for the contemporary Makers.

The RDF (Research and Demonstration Facility) is and has been the home of some of the greatest projects at the School of Architecture at Virginia Tech.

As part of the new Masterplan for Virginia Tech campus, the students were invited to experiment with the existing facility to transform the area in the “Factory of the Future”, engaging with an innovative vision based on makers mentality and fablab intuitions.

Within this scenario, the students have addressed ideas connecting with public art together with farming, net-zero approaches, open innovation logics, self-production of construction materials.

The course focused on the transformation of the RDF on 3 scales:

·      the Masterplan of the site

·      the Retrofitting of the existing building

·      the design of a new Dome

Fourth-year students engaged in the design of the new RDF will then reflect and put in use the skills and theory they have learned while developing a design for a space that will see them as the real ultimate co-authors and users.

The pivotal role of the RDF gave the students a great opportunity for reflecting on the way we teach and learn.