OOE Workshop Ghent


Workshop Object-Oriented Eclecticism (OOE), Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, Gent 

The workshop introduced an unorthodox, hands-on workflow based on the concept of Object-Orientated Design. OOD is a new paradigm in contemporary philosophy, physics, computer programming and critical theory and can be understood as the process of planning a system of interacting objects for the purpose of solving a specific problem. In contrast to contemporary thought and design, which views things as the aggregation or assembly of smaller bits and parts,  in OOD new objects emerge out of an ecology of interaction of multiple and heterogeneous objects. Through a process of formation or computation, highly differentiated, contradictory concepts and structures can become one object, without resulting in an incongruous collage.
The workshop brief understands OOD as fundamentally eclectic, it does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions but can instead draw upon multiple theories, ideas or “objects”.
What emerges out of this is a “non-representational collage” , a bunch of totally different objects together with an intensive, computated relationship between them.  The collage has gone through a process of formation, in which the different objects mutually inflect each other.

The workflow itself is as eclectic as the concept of object-orientation. Students set up computational models both through programming in processing and physical models. One team for example, 3D-scanned a found object, a neo-gothic gypsum capital. The 3D-scan was digitally reassembled and collaged into a new object using Z-Brush. A similar process happened physically with molten plastic imprints of the object. The flowlines and vectors of the ornament subsequently became guidelines for two different swarming systems: one wich distributes threads and an other one small, panel-like components. Although alien to each other, both objects collage together in an intensive way through recognition of the initial ornamental patchwork. Another team developed two radically opposed objects: a hybrid, tensile surface and a typical industrial, factory-like space. This hybrid surface is implanted within the factory space, where it deflects and destructs the industrial trusses. The destruction becomes a designed and computed affect, a result of the interaction between the two objects. 

Teaching Staff
Gilles Retsin (AADRL), Isaie Bloch ( Eragatory, Die Angewandte), Corneel Cannaerts (MMLAB).

Special thanks to the participants
Djordje Stanojevic, Enrico Zago, Ewa Kaszuba, Julia Kubisty, Pierre Cutellic, Bram Van Wichelen, Ingrid Hufnagl, Jakub Mrotek, Kwinten Delvaux, Rasa Navasaityte, Marvin Bratke, Stefanie Pesel, Christian Tschersich, Mikolaj Scibisz, Jakub Grochulski, Alexandre Carpentier, Cafer Kutru, Gerben Modderman, Ann-Sophie Ostyn, Maria Smigielska.


group 1












group 2















group 3














group 4