FRAMEWORK
TRESDA operates with a method rather than a style.
The method exists to address a recurring problem in contemporary practice: decisions are often made before position is understood, expression is prioritised over responsibility, and form is produced without accountability to those it affects.
At TRESDA, method is treated as a discipline. It establishes how one locates themselves, how they engage what lies beyond them, and how decisions are translated into work that can be read, tested, and situated beyond the individual.
At TRESDA, method is understood as a way of holding responsibility rather than achieving outcome.
Every decision produces consequence: spatial, social, cultural, and personal. Method exists to slow decision-making long enough for those consequences to be recognised, weighed, and owned. Without this discipline, form becomes expressive but unaccountable.
Responsibility, in this sense, is not moral posturing. It is structural. It concerns who is considered, what is excluded, and how choices are made legible beyond the individual. The method does not promise correctness; it demands clarity.
This framing positions method as a condition for seriousness. It establishes a shared ground from which work can be read, challenged, and situated — rather than defended as taste or intuition.
Within the method, Self refers to position rather than personality.
It encompasses the assumptions, references, histories, and instincts that shape how one perceives and acts. These elements operate whether acknowledged or not, informing decisions long before form is produced.
The method begins here because unexamined position leads to projection. When the self is not located, responses to the world are framed as expression rather than decision, and responsibility is deferred rather than held.
To work from Self is not to prioritise individuality, but to establish clarity. It is the act of making one’s point of departure visible, so that what follows can be read, tested, and held accountable.
SELF
OTHER
SYNTHESIS
Within the method, Other refers to what lies beyond individual authorship.
This includes other people, contexts, systems, histories, constraints, and realities that cannot be shaped by personal intention alone. The Other introduces difference, limitation, and friction — conditions that resist projection and demand response.
Engaging the Other requires restraint. It asks that attention be given before form is imposed, and that decisions be shaped by use, presence, and consequence rather than preference. This is where interpretation replaces expression.
The method insists on this encounter because responsibility cannot be practiced in isolation. Without the Other, work remains self-referential; with it, decisions must be justified in relation to something that cannot be controlled.
SELF
OTHER
SYNTHESIS
SELF
OTHER
SYNTHESIS
Synthesis is the act of holding Self and Other together without collapse.
It is not compromise, balance, or resolution. It is coherence: the capacity to translate position and constraint into decisions that can stand without explanation or defence. At this point, interpretation becomes form.
Synthesis is where responsibility becomes visible. Decisions are no longer private or intuitive; they are legible, testable, and situated beyond the individual. The work must withstand reading, use, and critique.
Within the method, synthesis is not an endpoint but a condition. It marks the moment when identity, context, and consequence are held together in a way that can be shared, challenged, and sustained.
SELF
OTHER
SYNTHESIS
SELF
OTHER
SYNTHESIS
The method is not bound to a single discipline.
While spatial design is used as the primary medium at TRESDA, the logic of Self, Other, and Synthesis applies wherever decisions are made in relation to people, systems, and consequence. The method concerns how position is established, how context is engaged, and how outcomes are made accountable.
This is why the method remains stable even as tools, technologies, and outputs change. It does not prescribe what to make, but how to think before making. As such, it is transferable across creative and non-creative practices without being reduced to technique.
Transferability here does not mean flexibility. It means durability: a method capable of holding under different conditions, pressures, and forms of work.
The method does not exist solely for the courses.
TRESDA functions as the site where the method is practiced, tested, and refined through teaching, research, and spatial work. The institution acts as custodian rather than owner, maintaining the rigor of the method through structure, critique, and application.
By situating the method within an institutional context, its use is protected from dilution and misapplication. The courses are one expression of this work, not its limit. What is preserved is not a format, but a discipline.