Using Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise as precedent, this project develops as the ‘Mobile Architectural Portmanteau’, a portable framework transposing a solar-responsive system generating architectural outputs akin to site conditions.

Each section, synonymous with the box’s many compartments, is intended to guide the user through an interactive design methodology of visual and written content, as a collection of generative and computational principles.

The project proposes a recalibration of the RIBA Plan of Works through an early solar stage, [Sol]encce, a composite metric combining solar parameters to inform design before form is fixed.

This enables predictive environmental synthesis through carbon, sun and cost matrices, comparing solar-responsive and standardised approaches through the proxy of façades, tracing the effects under the RIBA plan of works & RICS whole life carbon stages.

The Portmanteau concludes with a Grasshopper solar analysis guide positioning the architect as a transductive agent converting environmental data into spatial form, championing their shift from sole recipient of environmental data to author of its spatial consequences.

Host Practice | AHMM