In keeping with the line of enquiry initiated with Supersurface 2 (Learning Japanese, 2004) and Supersurface 3 (Mies Immersion, 2006), Dip 5 restricted the scope of its preliminary explorations to the mathematical analytic models that yielded the most promising prototypes to date. This year, too, the group narrowed down its objectives to the production of elaborate tectonic arrangements to be incorporated into pragmatic architectural proposals.

At a more speculative level the group scavenged the latest trends of global academicism to reformulate its essentially instrumental ideas in the context of what has possibly become (since the demise of the European Grand Prix de Rome) the hottest academic undertaking: planning high-rise structures for the fast-paced economies of the 21st century. Rather than simply aligning itself with such a topical problem, Dip 5 further developed its trademark formalism of mathematical and sensual aesthetics so as to better take on the apparent paradox posed now by high-rise thinking: Why is the field dominated by the empty structural expressionism of ‘iconic’ tower design (to the extent that high-rise building in the west has become the ultimate refuge for signature design and the fulfilment of the architectural ego) when, historically, meeting the demands of the ruthless, semi-automatic technical and commercial economy inherent in this type of brief ensured that high-rise building remained all but a sort of vernacular, an architecture without architects, much like the huts of rural Switzerland?

Based on Alejandro Zaera Polo’s recent analysis of the workings of this artificial design ecology in ‘High Rise Phylum 2007’, and in parallel with the more abstract mathematical formalisations of its trademark Indexical Modelling, the group explored the incidence of ‘imaginary’ variables through the making of abstract physical models, followed by a systematic analysis of real variables (FAR ratios, planning grids, facade-to-volume ratios, and so on) published in the form of a Skyscraper Manual. Eventually the team got hold of several real-life tender packages issued by the planning authority of Singapore and set out to deconstruct the type of high-rise as the modernist red herring and functionalist project par excellence, from the ‘primitive’ occupational assumptions governing the layouts of floor plates in the 1950s to the ‘progressive’ naturalistic metaphors in fashion today.

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