Tempting Tools of the Trade

Tyler Swingle, Emerging Scholar in Design fellow at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture, opened his Friday talk with an image of Giacinto Brandi’s Figura Allegorica Femminile. The composite subject of the seventeenth-century painting wears a sly smile that, in Swingle’s interpretation, alludes to the potential for misuse of the divider she holds. “All tools contain inherent biases,” he said, just as “influences come in the form of standards.”

In his research and teaching, Swingle explores how to misuse architectural tools to produce novel spatial and material effects. His penchant for such deviation, he noted to the intimate audience gathered in the dean’s meeting room, can be seen in his studies of “variable laminated” wood. By changing the moisture content and grain direction of wood, he is able to produce predictable-enough curving (what he calls “self-curving”). Only at this point does he introduce BIM tools, which would typically be used a priori to determine lines of curvature but which he uses for purposes of analysis. The typical process…