1101 Design Lab

1101 Design Lab was founded to explore fundamental processes of composition in architecture while focusing on the human occupation of the built environment. This experimental art and architecture studio based in Charlotte, NC was formed out of an academic environment in order to propagate the tactics and strategies of an undergraduate foundation design studio into professional practice. The work produced by this studio presents architectural forms developed using fundamental principles of visual design while being rooted in an understanding of real and abstract architectural space, human scale and sequential experience. A primary objective of this studio is to question the role of projected drawing in contemporary practice in order to develop a methodology of form-finding that reacts to programmatic use and respects architecture as a discipline deeply rooted in projection. Emphasis is placed on the historic model that in architecture, both conceptual exploration and project development take place through the diagram; and the diagram through projected drawing. This approach leads to projects that inherently reinterpret conventional understandings of architectural form, space and order while also responding to the functional, social and cultural requirements of the discipline. As Simon Unwin states, “The only way to approach an understanding of architecture is through the medium used in its creation – drawing.” The work of 1101 Design Lab is not developed by way of the digital model; the work is drawn.