Montaging Precedents of Architecture: A First-Year Design Studio Experiment

This article discusses montage as a method of experimental design learning through the montage of precedents, based on the findings from an ethnographic study. To do so, the article explores a first-year studio project, A House of Poetical A., where architectural precedents were first used to montage a façade and then to provoke a house. The primary drive was to explore the presence of precedents within the studio and to engage in experimentation with learning. This experiment is embedded in the design process by the complex interaction between what we discuss as frontality and its probable spatiality. The project removed the key figures of a common brief, such as the program, site, and user, and introduced montaging to explore spatiality through its juxtapositions of seemingly irrelevant parts. The article then expands the research by sequential stages, using various montage acts as an experimental method. The outcomes are analyzed through an analogy to Rowe’s writings on La Tourette’s spatiality and his discussions on the provocative façade. Therefore, the article is centered on the project process, incorporating its montage acts and gestures of approach to both architecture and precedents.