CITY OF GHOSTS

AIMS /

The temporal, transient and ephemeral nature of human presence in the urban environment.

(Arch. Photography Quest – Chapter 5)

METHOD /

Using their cameras, students will explore their urban environment searching for imprints of the transient human presence / absence and try to capture the contrasting character of these ‘haunting’ scenes.

TECHNIQUE /

Students will have the opportunity to develop their visual compositional and urban photography skills.

STRENGTHS /

Developing a new perspective and understanding of the individual character of our urban environment. Learning to see and imagine.

DEFINING & REDEFINING STREET SPACE

AIMS / The function of the street space and the way it’s perceived depend on activity level of its users. Observation and analysis of the street in an urban, universal design and artistic key.

Second edition.

METHOD /

1. analysis of:
– the function of buildings – urban composition
– user activity and movement – impressions

2. project of selected space
3. Street art way of communicating and presenting the project

TECHNIQUE /

19/04 pdf with observations, photos, videos and analysis sketches

26/04 pdf with the final version design including swot and street art implementation.

STRENGTHS / Training in perceptiveness and the sense of observing real situations in urban areas (in situ). A chance to draw a design directly in the urban fabric. A chance to discuss with street users.

 

Reus School of Architecture. Ear (URV)

Ferran Grau & Sílvia González & Pablo Roel & Arnau Tiñena & Juan M. Zaguirre
ferran.grau@urv.cat

BUILDING THE EMPTINESS

AIMS / Working from a context that reafirms the importance of emptiness in all gestures and actions, which constantly confront the constructed space and the natural space where we live our daily lives. And creating a New Narrative Through the spaces of Three iconic Houses.

METHOD / Thinking and looking at emptiness as a design strategy that supports the construction of a place.

a) Select and present a house during the workshop.

b) Choose two additional houses from a list provided by instructors.

c) Integrate spaces from the three chosen houses to create a new architectural design.

d) Convey a fresh architectural spirit and narrative through the new design.

e) Display, present the project within the workshop space.

TECHNIQUE / Emptiness is a tool and method of experimentation that allows the identification of strategies that improve a physical place that humans can occupy spiritually.

STRENGTHS / Development of the perception and need for the existence of emptiness using the creative process as a means of awareness. Like Eduardo Chillida and Jorge Oteiza ́s sculptures, emptiness is no longer an absence, but more as something present in the built space. We speak of active emptiness as an emptiness that generates and provides symbolic and identity spaces.

——————————————–

Porto School of Architecture. Portugal

Alberto Lage + Beatriz Freitas

jlage@arq.up.pt

MASHRABIYA, Ma’ Malqaf Modernization

AIMS / To understand traditional Architectural elements in Islamic world that are used to create environmentally comfortable and healthy buildings. To be able to design new elements inspired by traditional ones.

METHOD / Groups of 2-3 persons will be established to: choose one element, create 2min analysis presentation video -Design a modern element for the assigned building (storyboard, shop drawings are preferred).

TECHNIQUE / The importance of traditional and vernacular architectural heritage and its role in inspiring future design contextually compatible.

STRENGTHS / Intercultural exchange and cooperation between different members with diverse backgrounds, expose to different architectural schools and learning methods.

URBAN MUSICAL DEVICE: Music pavilion

AIMS / Interpreting Public Place and Local Heritage; designing a thematic (music) small ephemeral architectural structure for the Cultural Capital of Culture 2027.

METHOD / Students will be paired with international colleagues: select an historic urban space in Évora and propose an urban device to enable people (locals, visitors, etc.) to enjoy music that place.

TECHNIQUE / Raise awareness about the local heritage and music: how it can be displayed to the public and enjoyed in the outdoors.

STRENGTHS / Intercultural exchange. and cooperation between different members with diverse backgrounds, expose to different architectural schools and learning methods.

MEDITERRANEAN URBAN SHELTERS. Alicante study case

AIMS/ Year after year, climate change underline the lacks of the cities urban planning and the disconnection in between architecture and the urban fabric in terms of its insufficient adaption to the climate change demands. The aim of the exercise is to search and found, urban situations inAlicante where climate shelters would improve the urban context and the citizen life.

METHOD / 

SEMINARS: Understanding of the Alicante’s urban morphology in relation to the specific climatic conditions. (Seminar class  by Andrés Silanes and Paco Leiva (AeA professors, and partner of Subarquitectura and Grupo Aranea)

EXERCISES: To design an urban shelter built with recycled or natural materials; and placed into the Alicante context. The construction has to integrate greenery and self sufficient water management system (collecting system and a container).

OUTPUT:  Architectural – structural model, and retroactive construction plans

TECHNIQUE / 
  1. Site shadows model
  2. Architectural / structural model
  3. Construction plans
STRENGTHS /
  • Face the climatic change and urban issues through architectural design
  • Develop architecture projects through models construction and retroactive plans
  • Imagine a design unit as aport of a urban system

RADICAL ENCOUNTERS. The city as a laboratory

AIMS / Learning from the relationships between us and our urban environment students will conceive the program as an open framework, generating new radical scenarios in the city through architecture.

The aim of this workshop is to build upon what has been explored in the previous workshops.

METHOD /

SEMINARS: Reflecting on the architectural program
and concept in architecture, understanding its relationship with the society, through talks with invited architects and artists. EXERCISES: Unpacking the urban fabric. Reading the city as an ecosystem, identifying, understanding, and communicating (exchanging) the spatial and social dimension and qualities of the communities (Human and non- human) around the globe. OUTPUT: Communicating the idea/strategy through the production of an online showcase in form of a public exhibition. Each student will produce 10 images + a text of 200 words.

TECHNIQUE /

1. Montage technique (Reflecting)

2. Story tale / max 200 words (Unpacking)

3. Layered drawings / collage technique / AI (Communicating)

STRENGTHS /

Take care of the approach to your study object, how do we prepare for a field visit?

Look and describe the complex networks of agents that make urban life possible.

TABARCA: A PLANETARY INDIGESTION

AIMS / When we think of islands like Tabarca, it is common to imagine yourself disconnecting in an idyllic independent paradise. But far from being a self-sufficient island, Tabarca is a place deeply dependent on an outside world that provides it with services, manages part of its waste or delivers its tourists. A dependency much more prominent than in other ecosystems that are common to us, such as cities. Far from presenting dependency as a problem, we propose to understand it and become obsessed with it. By understanding the metabolic relationships of Tabarca with its environment, it is possible to propose architectures that mediate its future. And while you’re at it, organize a nice trip with friends.

METHOD /  On February 2 you will have to present in class (4 min max.) the design of a trip that, reaching Tabarca, connects it with another point on the peninsula. The activity will be carried out in groups of three people maximum. When designing your trip, consider that:

– It should be done before February 8.

– Each group must get obsessed over a very specific issue from a list. What is the network of agents of your object of study? How did it get to Tabarca? etc.

– Pay attention and prepare your travel equipment carefully. What tools do you need? How many hours will you be in each place? Should you contact someone beforehand?

On February 9, the record of that trip will be exhibited.

TECHNIQUE /  

February 2: Free format (My maps, vector cartography, PP Presentation, etc.).

February 9: Photo album with footnotes and a cartography or timeline.

STRENGTHS /  

Take care of the approach to your study object, how do we prepare for a field visit?

Look and describe the complex networks of agents that make urban life possible.

SCHEDULE /

02 Feb                Presentation

09 Feb                Final Crit

EVALUATION / Jury: UOU professors.

Those are 12 questions to be answered by students

1.-The WORKSHOP proposes that students begin to build a complete thought to tackle projects, to process, organize, view and display information so that “data collection” became proactive rather than an analytical tool.

Have I been able to go beyond analysis procedure and convert the project into a proposition display?

2.-Students must learn to self-reference and criticize their work and to draw conclusions. They have to process systems and models of architectural production, reformulating nonobvious descriptions, focusing his gaze on the invisible structures, not having preconceived ideas, producing unexpected findings, and non-discursive (arguments that are made but which does not follow anything immediately) reasoning.

Have I used my own ways of expression reformulating descriptions and avoiding the obvious and the use of direct images of the project culture?

3.-Student begins to explore architectural expression systems to formalize their projective ideas.

How many ways of expression have I used at work and what is the value expressed by each of them?

4.-We must learn to talk and discuss about architectural sustainability criteria, adding the concept of ecological niche project (mental territory, social, material, technical, medium-environmental, etc …).

Have I addressed the theme of THE WORKSHOP responding to the proposal on the sustainability?

5.-We are going to know how to work in-group to discover the roles in production systems.

How much information data made in-group have I used to express my project?

6.-The students must participate and contribute with their ideas to the class as an essential part of knowledge.

What is the intensity used to express my ideas through the architectural expression ways? How much time do I need to make a drawing or a model to express my ideas?

7.-The students must learn to establish a personal lexicon to express his architectural ideas.

Have you expressed your ideas through a personal lexicon or have you imitated expression systems used by other designers seen in the media (magazines or Internet)

8.-You need positively assess risk and innovation as a necessary condition of design. Innovation defined as the use of allied disciplines to develop intellectual and technical tools to create new realities, within their own reality, exceeding the established models.

Do I use allied disciplines for innovative production?

9.-The students must enter, step by step, work details the project culture, you must learn to interpret and criticize from their own proposal.

How many data have you appropriated from the culture to express my project?

10.-You should produce an open system work, with more questions than answers. The number of questions the student will be assessed is more than the number of certainties, you must use fuzzy logic, to support multiple possible truth-values, allowing multiple possible truth-values and strategies to create unpredictability.

How many questions have you made throughout the design process and how many have you tried to answer?

11.-Skills: Interest in the contribution, regardless of the attitude from which it was generated

What is the interest considering my contribution to the WORKSHOP?

12.-Attitudes: how to tackle the problem independent of the outcome

Have I tried to solve with intellectual and material effort to present the proposal. The project has developed enough quality

Alicante University (SPAIN) / Joaquín Alvado Bañón (joaquin.alvado@ua.es) + Javier Sánchez Merina (jsm@ua.es)

+

La Cuarta Piel (lacuartapiel.com)

DEFINING & REDEFINING STREET SPACE

AIMS

The function of the street space and the way it is perceived depend on the activity level of its users.
Observation and analysis of the street in an urban, universal design and artistic key.

METHOD

1. Analysis of:

– the function of buildings and transport; – the height of buildings and greenery;
– user activity and movement;
– impressions.

2. Project of selected space.
3. Street art show off.
The way of communicating and presenting main conclusions from the research part or the whole project itself.

TECHNIQUE

Week one:

Observation/photography/filming.

Week two:

Sketches/photomontage/visualization.
The presentation of the most inspiring observed problems will be drawn
in the city on the streets and sidewalks using chalk, charcoal or parts of brick.

STRENGTHS

A chance to use specific measurement methods. Opportunity to look for unusual forms of project presentation. Sensitivity to the diverse needs of users.
Team work.

ANALYSIS AND STREET DESIGN SHOULD BE PREPARED IN GROUPS.

WE CHOOSE ONE STREET LOCATED IN THE CITY CENTER. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THE MOST POPULAR STREET. IT SHOULD BE OBSERVED, MEASURED AND ANALYZED ACCORDING TO THE GUIDELINES.

THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE FIRST WEEK’S WORK SHOULD FORM THE BASIS FOR A PROJECT TO TRANSFORM THE CHOSEN STREET.

SCOPE OF WORK FOR THE 1st WEEK

ANALYSIS OF THE FUNCTIONS OF BUILDINGS AND TRANSPORT

The function of the buildings should be identified, e.g. single-family residential buildings – light brown and multi-family residential buildings – dark brown, services – red, services on the ground floors of residential buildings – brown with a red line, public utilities – orange. On this analysis also streets should be divided according to traffic intensity. The less traffic, the lighter the gray color, e.g. streets with low traffic intensity, medium traffic intensity and high car traffic intensity. Parking spaces should also be marked on the analysis – blue hatching. Photos of the most important services should be included in the analysis.

ANALYSIS OF THE HEIGHT OF BUILDINGS AND GREENERY

Buildings should be divided into height groups, e.g. buildings up to 2 storeys, up to 4 storeys and up to 6 storeys, The lower the building groups, the lighter the gray color. On this analysis also greenery should be divided into e.g. private greenery – light green (around single-family houses), semi-private – dark green (around multi-family buildings) and public greenery – very dark green (parks, squares). Photos of the most characteristic buildings and green spaces should be included in the analysis.

IMPRESSION CURVE FOR TWO FRONTAGES OF THE STREET

The analysis should be presented on a chart, with individual objects on the x-axis and a 1-10 scale on the y-axis, where 1 means the lowest rating and 10 means the highest rating;

– analysis of the aesthetic values of buildings; – analysis of the attractiveness of the function; – analysis of people’s activity.

ANALYSIS OF STATIONARY AND SOCIAL ACTIVITIES OF STREET USERS

This analysis involves observing where the greatest concentrations of human activity occur on the street. These behaviors must be stationary or social and last longer than 15 seconds. Stationary activities include, for example, sitting, standing, eating, drinking, smoking, reading a book, listening to music in a place or looking at shop windows. Social behaviors include, for example, talking with friends, but also with strangers, standing on the street or sitting at a restaurant table or on a city bench, making contact with a person handing out leaflets, collecting signatures for a petition, a street vendor, but also children playing or observing and commenting on street performances. However, the map does not include dynamic activities related to movement, nor does it take into account people waiting at public transport stops. Observations should be made along the entire length of the street, three times for 15 minutes in places ensuring good visibility of a given part of the street, at different times of the day. Each dot in the diagram corresponds to 1 person. The collected results are presented together on a map. The observed stationary activities and social behaviors indicate which places on the examined street attract people and make them stay in a given space for longer. The photos documenting selected activities should be included in the analysis.

ANALYSIS OF THE INTENSITY OF CAR, PEDESTRIAN AND CYCLIST TRAFFIC

In order to obtain this information, measurements should be taken three times in two locations approximately every 100-200 m apart, at different times of the day. This intensity is measured per minute on a strip of the space in which pedestrians, cyclists and cars move. The table should include unit measurements and the average value of the measurements taken. To perform this analysis, three videos should be recorded from each location at different times of the day. Videos can be sent on the Teams platform along with the entire project.

RUSIELIENCE- RUral reSIELINCE

Rusilience, is a workshop aims to achieve RUral ReSIELINCE, through developing traditional rural housing by locally feasible structural/construction systems.
CONTENT / Climate change resisting strategies and rapid transformation in developing countries focus on designing systems which modernize cities and make their structures resilient in the face of natural disasters.
Unfortunately, the process neglects rural areas in countries as Turkiye, which results in the abandon of rural areas and immigration to big cities and urban centers. In central Anatolia, and around the capital Ankara, a seismic prone area, the plans seeks either to transform the villages into concrete high-rise buildings, or (hobby gardens) with type of container slum housing.
The workshop seeks to use traditional rural structural systems and/or construction methods as a reference to develop a modern, cost efficient, and easy to build structural system for rural housing to help enhancing the resilience of these rural areas, protecting its traditions, and encouraging people to stay in their villages
AIMS / Designing a resilient structural system for a small rural house using available local materials and learning from rural traditional architecture.
Bala is a village 60 km south east Ankara, we will choose a local traditional structural system, and think how to develop it to become more resilient and compatible with modern context and needs.
– Analyzing traditional rural structural system.
– Understanding rural resilience
– Introduce yourself to the class.
– Defining your working group.
– Work as a team in different contexts.
METHOD /
1st working day: Introduce your rural context and the chosen traditional
structural/construction system in a 4min video analyzing risks with the strengths and
weaknesses.
Group work according to your common interests. Define possibilities of system
enhancement to suggest more resilient system, a story board (free technique).
2nd day: Final crit. Design the new structural system/ or draw the details of the
modifications on the traditional rural system you have analyzed.
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:
Introduction / 17 Nov. 2023.
Video + Story board / 24 Nov 2023.
Final Crit / 01 DEC 2023.
EVALUATION / The design should respond to the following requirements:
Did it enhance the preparedness to resist hazards?
Is it easier or more difficult to construct??
Does it require special technologies and instruments??
How it affects the cost of construction???
Is the technology and materials available in the site??
Who can build it?? Specialists, contractors or locals with the help of the
community???
Does it enable future expansion??
Bibliography / -VerSus Project: Heritage for Tomorrow, Vernacular Knowledge for Sustainable
Architecture.
-Resilient Structures and Infrastructure (Ehsan Noroozinejad Farsangi)
-Rural resilience as a new development concept(Wim J.M. Heijman)

BUILD THE EMPTINESS

METHOD / Students will work around the possibility of creating a space and its perception and imagining the place to built.

TECHNIQUE / Collages, sketches, drawings, photo, physical model, CAD drawings, tools that allows the construction SILENCE, TRUTH AND POETRY.

AIMS / Working from a context that reaffirms the importance of emptiness, which constantly confront the constructed space and the natural space.

STRENGTHS / Development of the perception and need for the existence of emptiness using the creative process as a means of awareness. Like Eduardo Chillida and Jorge Oteiza´s sculptures, emptiness is no longer an absence, but more as something present in the built space. We speak of active emptiness as an emptiness that generates and provides symbolic and identity spaces.

RADICAL HOUSING

CONTENT / Radical comes from the latin radix, -īcis, and means root which, as for the Oxford Dictionary, stands for the origin or basis of something. Therefore, a RADICAL HOUSE should be somehow connected to the original meaning of what a house is but…. what is a house? What are its main characteristics and ingredients?

We may not talk about it, but architecture (and architects, its most prominent agents) is always about imagining houses but most of the times the inner understanding of it is concealed within routine and unconsciousness.

In this workshop we’ll focus on radical houses-seekers (or radical architects) that pushed the possibility of imagining a house with extreme ideas. From the single mind of Ledoux to the proposals of Raymund Abraham, Ant Farm, Street Farmers, Archigram, Archizoom, Coop Himmelblau, Haus Rucker Co, Hans Hollein, Pettena, Walter Pichler, Raggi, Saint Florian, Superstudio, UFO and Ugo La Pietra our goal will be to learn about radical houses to criticize them and to finally create one of our own.

This course is as a way to understand that within the clear taxonomy of houses the radical ones have their own qualities and expectations. From there, each group of students will imagine one Radical House (verbally first, graphically at the end) and explain it to the rest of the class.

Our workshop takes this radical projects as an inspiration to imagine new houses in order to extend the radical family. In this workshop we must push our limits and believe that utopia is still possible (please, do not forget that, for starters, the concept of a house must be critized).

AIMS / To study, think about the idea of a radical house and to imagine a contemporary one. To address the experience of radicality, to conceal life maybe between walls, to draw…. To dismiss scale to start with a project. To generate a world map or radical houses that may coexist. To explain your ideas to the rest of the group. To design floor plans, elevations, cross sections and a render (the most efficient way to understand architecture) of your Radical Houses.

METHOD + SCHEDULE / Radical knowledge and imagination as a tool. To imagine, agree and design your own Radical House.

1st day / Presentation (27th Oct, 12:30CET) 20 minutes + homework: Introduction of the course by the professor, student’s questions and comments about the workshop and homework details.

2nd day / Crit (03rd Nov, 09:30CET) 4 hours: Short lecture by the professor + Group work to start the design of your Radical House. Submission 01: First sketches and 100 words brief of the project (free technique).

3rd day / Crit (10th Nov, 09:30CET) 4 hours: Feedback of submission 01 (before the class). Group work to complete the design of your Radical House. Submission 02: Floor plans, elevations, cross sections and a render of the project (free technique and scale).

4th day / FESTIVAL (17th Nov, 9:30CET) 3,5 hours: exhibition in the city. EVALUATION AND EXPECTED LEARNING OUTCOMES/ After these two weeks workshop the student

will be able to:

 Understandradicalarchitecturemainconcernsandtools

 Developarchitecturalcriticismbyanalysingradicalarchitecture

 Developradicalarchitectureprojectsthroughradicaldesignprocessesandconceptual work methods

 Composearadicalarchitecturalprojectandpresentitorallyandvisuallytotheclass.  Design radical floor plans, elevations, cross sections and a render of a Radical House.

Bibliography and Basic References:

1. Radical Architecture: Radical Architecture | MoMA and How the 1960s and 1970s inspired radical architecture | CNN

2. Exodus: Exodus, or the voluntary prisoners of architecture. – SOCKS (socks-studio.com)

 

Universidad Europea de Madrid (SPAIN)

ONEIROPHRENIA

A tribute to Mickael Sorkin

CONTENT / We are convinced that the city has a role to play in the ecological transition we are experiencing. It seems essential to see the city as an ecological system that needs resources to be able to function, give us the opportunity to Live and Circulate but also that rejects waste.
In addition, we take the measure of the role of the private car in the urban sprawl, the artificialization of soils, the sectorization (offices, commercial areas, residential areas, …) of our cities. Even more so its impact on the reduction of social ties in neighborhoods.

“A study conducted in San Francisco compared streets in different neighborhoods to assess the impact of car traffic on the sense of belonging to a local community. The movements of individuals from one house to another in busy streets and quiet streets were recorded in different neighborhoods. The data collected reveals the shocking but predictable reality: the level of social interaction between neighbours on a given street, the feeling of belonging to a community on that street, are inversely proportional to the amount of cars that use it. This study denounces car traffic as a fundamental cause of the alienation of the city dweller, a key phenomenon in the decline of the notion of citizenship.”

Richard Rogers, Cities for a Small Planet, Published by Faber and Faber, London, 1997.

 

As a tribute to Mickael Sorkin, we propose to you to choose a part of a city, a neighborhood with a couple of streets where man can drive and to plant a tree in a crossroad, that is to say to replace driving by walking. What should be the consequences? On the way of life in that neighborhood?

Intervention of Mickael SORKIN in the streets of New York

AIMS /

  • –  To be able to observe, to read one site,
  • –  To be able to present one site with our sensibility,
  • –  To design a master plan with the theme of nature in the city / decline of car
  • –  To interview inhabitants of the street on which you plan to change the mode of traffic (no more cars but walking)

METHOD /

1st working day: The process consists of preparing a photo-drawings report of the site that you have chosen and explain why it could be interesting to plant a tree in a street.
Produce a 3min video / interviews of inhabitants.

2nd day: Final crit. Design a master plan and draw photo montages of the atmosphere of the life there.

 

SCHEDULE /

3-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

– Introduction / Friday 6th of OCTOBER 2023

  • 12h30 – 13h00 (CET) / 14h30 – 15h00 (RUN)

 

– Crit / Friday 13th of OCTOBER 2023

  • 9h30 – 13h30 (CET) / 11h30 – 15h30 (RUN)
  • Presentation of choice of the site / photos report / questions for the interview of inhabitants / video.

 

– Final Crit / Friday 20th of OCTOBER 2023

  • 9h00 – 13h00 (CET) / 11h00 – 15h00 (RUN)
  • Master plan design with our first idea to plant a tree in a crossroad and taking into account the opinions of residents.

 

– FESTIVAL / Friday 27th of OCTOBER 2023

EVALUATION /

–  This topic is about to “read” the site chosen ad how to account of our reading. Be able to “read” the site. What is the best way to explain this data or the other? What are the characteristics of the site that I will use in the project?

–  It is question to change our way to live in a neighborhood.

–  More than this the question is to begin thinking about YOUR IDEA OF THE CITY.

–  Which city do you want to plan?

–  What do you really find important and needed to renew our cities?

References /

–  https://www.floornature.eu/adieu-laarchitecte-et-urbaniste-michael-sorkin- 15374/?_gl=1*1c0zjdn*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTk3NDcxNjMzMi4xNjk2MDcxMDg5*_ga_2Z26GF WJ1G*MTY5NjA3MTA4OC4xLjAuMTY5NjA3MTA4OC4wLjAuMA..

  •  Richard Rogers, Cities for a Small Planet, Published by Faber and Faber, London, 1997.

INTERWEAVINGS

CONTENT /  We are situated within complex interweavings of event; environmental, human, non-human, digital.  Our urban spaces are complex relational realms in a constant state of becoming; a thick space of overlapping narratives set in both physical form and mercurial digital form. Ambitions for the evolution of the metaverse, avatars, and the expansion of our lives further into the digital through online worlds, can start to portray a retreat from physical reality. Such an apparent escape to digital realms might draw forth dystopian visions of environmental catastrophes aggravated by further separation from the physical world. As David Attenborough wrote “No one will protect what they don’t care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced.” With the latest research stating one in six species in the UK are at risk of extinction there is little need for argument that action is needed. Might we harness this thicker understanding of space to further our connection to the other creatures with whom we share the planet? Might engaging the interwoven digital layers within the spaces we inhabit enable us to draw other lives further into our realm of daily experience? Might this enable the evolution of a knowing entanglement that acts to enhance all of our futures?

Expanded and augmented realities might enhance our engagement with the world we inhabit, extending our senses and strengthening our understanding. This might offer entry into others’ worlds, to hear ultrasonic communication of bat’s, to see magnetic fields alongside birds; to begin to see beyond our anthropocentric perception. Our spaces might become able to hold their histories more tightly, with the ghosts of lost occupations drawn back into a digitally augmented being.

Might the digital begin to expand rather than contract the physical? Might it act to enhance embodiment, extending our senses and furthering the limits of our temporal engagement with place? By embracing this thicker understanding of space might we begin to evolve liminal interventions that augment and extend our experience of physical reality? In our workshop we will explore how the design of our architectures and cities might critically engage with these spatial interweavings, to begin to redefine our modes of engagement with our non-human companions through the spaces we dare to imagine.

AIMS / The aim of our workshop is to begin to explore the potential of a thicker understanding of space to further our connection with other creatures. We will begin to explore technologies that move between the physical and the digital to construct speculative concepts for augmented reality projects as potential frameworks of engagement.

METHOD / We will be working within the digital extension of space we will be contemplating as we come together through digital platforms, with our voices echoing around rooms we have never entered.  Working in small groups our process will engage emerging AI image generation tools, trialling their use as a critical tool. We will begin with evolving 1 minute films, develop experimental work which will be summarised within story boards leading to speculative proposals for proto architectures that extend our experience to encompass a deeper understanding of our non-human companions.

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Introduction / 6th October

Workshop / 13th October:  including talks: Interweavings: Sarah Stevens, and AI: Marcus Winter

Final Review / 20th October

EVALUATION / Develop these actions:

– Engage critically with the digital realm that augments our day to day lives.

– Evolve a clear critical position from which to evolve design proposals.

– Explore AI image generation as a critical tool.

– Uncover cultural implications.

– Develop a speculative augmented reality proposal which begins to explore the potential of this new space to extend our experience into non-human worlds.

Bibliography /

Liam Young: https://liamyoung.org/projects/seoul-city-machine

Anicka Yi: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/hyundai-commission-anicka-yi

Google AI, Whalesong: https://www.blog.google/technology/ai/tale-whale-song/

Pierre Huyghe: https://www.kistefosmuseum.com/news/pierre-huyghe-is-the-artist-of-the-year-2022

https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/pierre-huyghe-uumwelt/

Sarah Tze: https://www.sarahsze.com

Sol Ey, Sonic Storm: https://sol-ey.com/sonic-storm/

MIT senseable city Lab: https://senseable.mit.edu

Sandipan Nath: https://www.behance.net/gallery/107173861/Interference-53N42E-v20

Ocean Bloom: https://v2.nl/archive/works/ocean-bloom

BTO Cuckoo Tracking Project: https://www.bto.org/our-science/projects/cuckoo-tracking-project/about-project/international-projects

Beyond Human Scale: https://www.archdaily.com/949912/beyond-human-scale-designing-for-ecosystems-migration-and-machines

Situated technologies: http://www.situatedtechnologies.net

Accessing habitats remotely: https://architecturetoday.co.uk/steve-mcintyre-and-ashley-welch/

Watershed: https://www.watershed.co.uk/studio/projects

BIOTOPES

A biotope is an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage of plants and animals.

 

The proposal is to redesign a network of Biotopes in Tabarca to project a future for the Island. The improvement of the biotopes through the project, as a network of connections, must effectively produce architecture for future conditions. We will project to find the most effective strategies to think the future as regenerative uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage of plants, humans and animals.

Along the project, we will focus in three main topics to connect the different areas of the Island.

  1. Water
  2. Construction management (recycling)
  3. Non_Human agents and the countryside.

We propose a rural area geographically isolated, located outside towns and cities. Tabarca has a low population density and small settlements. Tabarca is an island that connects the three main topics.

  1. Water. The climate change is going to produce a change of the limits and relations between see and land. Drawing the maps of this future will be a knowledge of the ongoing landscapes.
  2. Construction management (recycling). An historic place with a profound sense of reusing the construction buildings and walls. A fishermen and rural area settlement transform into a touristic attraction.
  3. Non_Human agents. A landscaping marvellous space, full of species and with an interesting relation between diverse organisms live on the countryside and water.

CONTENT / This year again we start making emphasis on the many changes that are shaking the architecture profession. More specifically, this time the introduction of non-human conditions in the process of design is needed to preserve the theory of the Earth as an organism – see Gaia hypothesis.

In this semester, our course has students from more than twenty different nationalities. This is a strength of our learning, and we want to proceed with that singularity:

Every student needs to study and measure a biotope from Tabarca. A piece of landscape to understand the environment and the rules of the relations between plants and animals, including people.

AIMS / Our aim is to be capable of measuring an activity in a specific landscape and improve the environment. To do it we will have to design our measuring tools.

After identifying a local biotope in Tabarca, we will work with the measurements and descriptions of the place to redesign the site.

–        Find opportunities in our environments to develop a project.

–        Introduce yourself to the class.

–        Get to know the rest of the future members of your working group.

–        Learn how to contribute to group work.

METHOD /

1st working week: Introduce your biotope presenting a 3min video with the values of your singular environment and the project you propose for the site.

After the presentation, group work according to your common interests. Connect the activities of your biotopes in a story board (free technique).

2nd week: Design your instruments of measuring aspects of live in your group selected biotope and improve the site with your project.

3nd week: Final crit. Presentation of the model in the city.

SCHEDULE / 3-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Introduction / 15 September 2023.

First Crit: Video + Storyboard / 22 Sept. 2023.

Class workshop / Model / 29 Sept. 2023.

Festival: Tabarca / 6 Oct. 2023.

 

SELF_EVALUATION / Develop the answers to 5 questions from these 12:

 

  1. The WORKSHOP proposes that students begin to build a complete thought to tackle projects, to process, organize, view and display information so that “data collection” became proactive rather than an analytical tool. Have I been able to go beyond analysis procedure and convert the project into a proposition display?
  2. The students have to learn to criticize their work and to draw conclusions. They have to process systems and models of architectural production, reformulating nonobvious descriptions, focusing their gaze on the invisible structures, not having preconceived ideas, producing unexpected findings, and non-discursive reasoning. Have I used my own ways of expression reformulating descriptions and avoiding the obvious and the use of direct images of the project culture?
  3. The student begins to explore architectural expression systems to formalize their projective ideas. How many ways of expression have I used at work and what is the value expressed by each of them?
  4. We have to learn to talk and discuss about architectural sustainability criteria, adding the concept of ecological niche project (mental territory, social, material, technical, medium-environmental, etc). Have I addressed the theme of THE WORKSHOP responding to the proposal on the sustainability?
  5. We are going to know how to work in-group to discover the roles in production systems. How much information data made in-group have I used to express my project?
  6. The students must participate and contribute with their ideas to the class as an essential part of knowledge. What is the intensity used to express my ideas through the architectural expression ways?
  7. The students must learn to establish a personal lexicon to express his architectural ideas. Have you expressed your ideas through a personal lexicon, or have you imitated expression systems used by other designers seen in the media (magazines or Internet)?
  8. You need positively assess risk and innovation as a necessary condition of design. Innovation defined as the use of allied disciplines to develop intellectual and technical tools to create new realities, within their own reality, exceeding the established models. Do I use allied disciplines for innovative production?
  9. The students must enter, step by step, work details the project culture, you must learn to interpret and criticize from their own proposal. How many data have you appropriated from the culture to express my project?
  10. You should produce an open system work, with more questions than answers. How many questions have you made throughout the design process and how many have you tried to answer?
  11. Skills: Interest in the contribution, regardless of the attitude from which it was generated. What is the interest of my contribution?
  12. Attitudes: how to tackle the problem independent of the outcome. Have I solved with intellectual and material effort to present the proposal?

 

Bibliography / The work by Neri Oxman, Thomas Thwaites and Philippe Rahm

A.I.DENTITY

METHOD

The course will help identifying and visualizing the distinct characteristic architectural traits in an urban environment, understanding what makes our context individual.

 

TECHNIQUE

Using their cameras, students will explore their urban environment for recurring unique patterns. Then, using their findings, students will synthesize an imaginary signature collage of their city with the aid of Artificial Intelligence.

 

AIMS

Students will develop their visual compositional and urban photography skills and will have a chance to use A.I. to create thoughtfully composed graphical imaginary visions.

 

STRENGTHS

Developing a new perspective and understanding of the individual character of our urban environment. Learning to see and imagine.

 

PROF / UNIV

Szabolcs Portschy

–

Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Fridays

09.00-13.00 CET

ARCHITECTURE, CREATIVITY AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE DAWN OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

METHOD

Future of architecture and urbanism will be greatly influenced by AI, but first, we need to know what kind of tools will be available and how to use them.

 

TECHNIQUE

– Searching for the tools, apps, protocols…

– Analyses of what is about to happen, short essay.

– Using the tools for rapid prototyping in development project– document + images / or video.

 

AIMS

Learning, how to navigate in the world of rapid technology development, globalisation, hyper communication, and over-flow of information.

 

STRENGTHS

Looking for the new tools and protocols and using them to achieve better results in architecture, urbanism and real estate development.

 

PROF / UNIV

Sinan MIHELČIČ

–

Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Fridays

09.00-13.00 CET

TREES ARCHITECTURE FOR MOVABLE CITIES

METHOD

The course will explore the immaterial meaning of trees for moveable future scenarios in cities.

Trees are used as metaphors and tools to explore cities’ contexts according to new utopia creativity.

 

TECHNIQUE

We explore our ideas using hand drawings, digital drawings, and other media.

 

AIMS

Imagining different and unexpected methodologies of communication

 

STRENGTHS

Escaping from comfort well-known zone. Students are required to explore deep creative processes of imagination.

 

PROF / UNIV

Valerio Morabito

–

Universitá Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria

Fridays

09.00-13.00 CET

NEW VISION OF PERFECT PLACE TO GIVE A BIRTH

METHOD

Students create an idealistic vision of place which do not exist: ‘New Vision Of Perfect Place to Give A Birth’ and spend time before and after. Opposite of conventional – hospital which are focused on doctors, machines, and medication.

Forget about it!

 

TECHNIQUE

First week: the aim to produce series of sketchy ideas. To learn theory about various methods of creating many ideas and overcoming design blocks.

Second week individual design. The workshop is possibility to enter the competition and exhibition and research which will be organised at the University of Lincoln.

 

AIMS

Students have opportunity to participate in lectures and meetings with experts in product design and design of medical facilities but also theory of creativity. The aim is not to design classical birth centre but to overcome all design blocs and learn about creative design methods.

 

STRENGTHS

1) Access to important but not well publicised knowledge about natural & positive birth.

2) Developing skills on fast and experimental (enjoyable) design techniques e.g. pattern based force based and concept based.

TEACHING DAY AND HOURS

Mon-Thursday

online lectures

Fridays 10:30-14:30 CET

Seminars (Flexible time if needed lectures could be pre-recorded)

 

PROF / UNIV

Marcin Mateusz Kolakowski

&

Franka Jagielak

–

University of Lincoln (UK)

&

Pedagogical University Cracow (Poland)

3M: MASHRABIYA, MA’ MALQAF

METHOD

To understand traditional Architectural elements used in creating environmentally comfortable and healthy buildings. To be able to design new elements inspired by traditional ones

 

TECHNIQUE

-A model of the designed element.

-A story board (shop drawings are recommended)

-2min analysis presentation video.

 

AIMS

The importance of traditional and vernacular architectural heritage and its role in inspiring future design contextually compatible.

 

STRENGTHS

Intercultural exchange. and cooperation between different members with diverse backgrounds, expose to different architectural schools and learning methods.

TEACHING DAY AND HOURS

Fridays

09.00-13.00 CET

 

PROF / UNIV

Salah HAJISMAIL

–

Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University, Turkiye

EPHEMERAL ARCHITECTURE: URBAN FOLLIES

METHOD

Interpreting Public Place and Local Heritage; designing small ephemeral architectural structure for the Cultural Capital of Culture 2027

 

TECHNIQUE

Students will be paired with international colleagues: select an historic urban space in Évora and propose an urban device to enable people (locals, visitors, etc.) to enjoy that place.

 

AIMS

Raise awareness about the local heritage and how it can be displayed to the public in the outdoors.

 

STRENGTHS

“Bringing international students to Évora” and exchange knowledge about architectural heritage, as space and place.

TEACHING DAY AND HOURS

Tutorials|Lectures available on

Tuesdays + Thursdays

16:00-18:00 CET

Crits

Fridays

09.00-13.00 CET

 

PROF / UNIV

Sofia Aleixo

&

João Santa Rita

_

Évora University, Portugal

SITE WORKS: THINKING THROUGH DRAWING

METHOD

Evolving the site drawing as a tool to think through.

TECHNIQUE

Evolving drawing techniques using your choice of medium in relation to site interests and project concerns.

AIMS

To explore the capacity of drawing as a means of extending cognition.

STRENGTHS

Evolving tools to investigate a site.

TEACHING DAY AND HOURS

Fridays

09.00-13.00 CET

PROF / UNIV

Charlotte Erckrath

&
Sarah Stevens

–

Bergen School of Architecture + University of Brighton

BIOTOPES v2 COMPETITION

A biotope is an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage of plants and animals.

Last semester we did a workshop related to biotopes. This year we will start with this information and we will revise the concept of Biotope using the work developed by the students as a task.

CONTENT / This year again we start making emphasis on the many changes that are shaking the architecture profession. More specifically, this time the introduction of non-human conditions in the process of design is needed to preserve the theory of the Earth as an organism – see Gaia hypothesis.

In this second semester, our course has students from more than twenty different nationalities. This is a strength of our learning, and we want to proceed with that singularity:

Every student needs to study and measure a biotope from her/his country, city, or town. A piece of landscape to understand the environment and the rules of the relations between plants and animals, including people.

AIMS / Our aim is to be capable of measuring an activity in a specific landscape and to do it we will have to design our measuring tools.

After identifying a local biotope, we will work with the measurements and descriptions of the place.

  • Find opportunities in our environments to start with a project.
  • Introduce yourself to the class.
  • Get to know the rest of the future members of your working group.
  • Learn how to contribute to group work.

METHOD /

1st working week: Introduce your biotope presenting a 3min video with the values of your singular environment. For that purpose, you have to revise the work developed by the students in the first semester.

Group work according to your common interests. Connect the activities of your biotopes in a story board (free technique).

2nd week: Final crit. Design your instruments of measuring aspects of live in your group selected biotope.

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 8-hour class arranged with the students:

Introduction / 5 April 2023.

Video + Storyboard / 17 April 2023.

Final Crit / 21 April 2023.

 

EVALUATION / Develop the answers to 3 questions from these 12:

  1. The WORKSHOP proposes that students begin to build a complete thought to tackle projects, to process, organize, view and display information so that “data collection” became proactive rather than an analytical tool. Have I been able to go beyond analysis procedure and convert the project into a proposition display?
  1. The students have to learn to criticize their work and to draw conclusions. They have to process systems and models of architectural production, reformulating nonobvious descriptions, focusing their gaze on the invisible structures, not having preconceived ideas, producing unexpected findings, and non-discursive reasoning. Have I used my own ways of expression reformulating descriptions and avoiding the obvious and the use of direct images of the project culture?

 

  1. The student begins to explore architectural expression systems to formalize their projective ideas. How many ways of expression have I used at work and what is the value expressed by each of them?
  1. We have to learn to talk and discuss about architectural sustainability criteria, adding the concept of ecological niche project (mental territory, social, material, technical, medium-environmental, etc). Have I addressed the theme of THE WORKSHOP responding to the proposal on the sustainability?
  1. We are going to know how to work in-group to discover the roles in production systems. How much information data made in-group have I used to express my project?
  1. The students must participate and contribute with their ideas to the class as an essential part of knowledge. What is the intensity used to express my ideas through the architectural expression ways?
  1. The students must learn to establish a personal lexicon to express his architectural ideas. Have you expressed your ideas through a personal lexicon, or have you imitated expression systems used by other designers seen in the media (magazines or Internet)?
  1. You need positively assess risk and innovation as a necessary condition of design. Innovation defined as the use of allied disciplines to develop intellectual and technical tools to create new realities, within their own reality, exceeding the established models. Do I use allied disciplines for innovative production?
  1. The students must enter, step by step, work details the project culture, you must learn to interpret and criticize from their own proposal. How many data have you appropriated from the culture to express my project?
  1. You should produce an open system work, with more questions than answers. How many questions have you made throughout the design process and how many have you tried to answer?
  1. Skills: Interest in the contribution, regardless of the attitude from which it was generated. What is the interest of my contribution?
  1. Attitudes: how to tackle the problem independent of the outcome. Have I solved with intellectual and material effort to present the proposal?

 

Bibliography / The work by Thomas Thwaites and Philippe Rahm

Alicante University (SPAIN) /

Joaquín Alvado Bañón (joaquin.alvado@ua.es) + Javier Sánchez Merina (jsm@ua.es)

VENICE IN THE METAVERSO v2

CONTENT / what it is relevant on Architecture nowadays is talking about SUSTAINABILITY AND DIGITALIZATION. Last year we designed in the Metaverso in Venice to create new environments, relations and horizons.

The proposal for the workshop is to create a sustainable space with agents and objects in order to redesign the project developed last year inside the “METAVERSO”. The design was a scenario for a video game in VENICE.

As a third attempt for this workshop, using the video developed by the students last year, we are going to create a new horizon with LINES, AGENTS AND OBJECTS, and, going beyond, to design it into the “METAVERSO”. For this purpose, we will work together with one digital platform.

AIMS / to understand the presence of the SUSTAINABLE AND DIGITAL SPACES in our projects.

To relate drawings, physical models and video as a way to produce an architecture DIGITAL project.

METHOD / The students will use the drawing to create A SUSTAINABLE SPACE USING the video design by students AS A TASK. We will draw lines, agents and objects, and model them to create a space as a sustainable scenario to improve that video.

Finding opportunities of Multimedia Dawing_Model_Video relationships to start with a digital project.

Part 1: Draw. Individual Work. Picture frame

Select one scenario of the video in Venice and redraw the lines, agents and objects that constitute the sustainability of the space.

BIBLIOGRAPHY / “Power of ten”. Charles and Ray Eames:

Part 2: Model. Group Work. Story Board

Transform the individual work into a three-dimensional object.

BIBLIOGRAPHY / “Cloud Cities and Solar balloon travel”. Tomas Sarraceno:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61fybvkZiDE

Part 3: Video. Class Work.

Work all together to design the project as a new scenario for the video into the “METAVERSO” with all your ideas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Let me tell you about my boat.” – The Life Aquatic. Wes Anderson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1RnYfFZK2k

 

SCHEDULE /

31 Jan                Presentation

03 Feb                Part 1

10 Feb                Part 2

17 Feb                Part 3

 

EVALUATION / Jury: UOU professors.

Those are 12 questions to be answered by students

1.-The WORKSHOP proposes that students begin to build a complete thought to tackle projects, to process, organize, view and display information so that “data collection” became proactive rather than an analytical tool.

Have I been able to go beyond analysis procedure and convert the project into a proposition display?

2.-Students must learn to self-reference and criticize their work and to draw conclusions. They have to process systems and models of architectural production, reformulating nonobvious descriptions, focusing his gaze on the invisible structures, not having preconceived ideas, producing unexpected findings, and non-discursive (arguments that are made but which does not follow anything immediately) reasoning.

Have I used my own ways of expression reformulating descriptions and avoiding the obvious and the use of direct images of the project culture?

3.-Student begins to explore architectural expression systems to formalize their projective ideas.

How many ways of expression have I used at work and what is the value expressed by each of them?

4.-We must learn to talk and discuss about architectural sustainability criteria, adding the concept of ecological niche project (mental territory, social, material, technical, medium-environmental, etc …).

Have I addressed the theme of THE WORKSHOP responding to the proposal on the sustainability?

5.-We are going to know how to work in-group to discover the roles in production systems.

How much information data made in-group have I used to express my project?

6.-The students must participate and contribute with their ideas to the class as an essential part of knowledge.

What is the intensity used to express my ideas through the architectural expression ways? How much time do I need to make a drawing or a model to express my ideas?

7.-The students must learn to establish a personal lexicon to express his architectural ideas.

Have you expressed your ideas through a personal lexicon or have you imitated expression systems used by other designers seen in the media (magazines or Internet)

8.-You need positively assess risk and innovation as a necessary condition of design. Innovation defined as the use of allied disciplines to develop intellectual and technical tools to create new realities, within their own reality, exceeding the established models.

Do I use allied disciplines for innovative production?

9.-The students must enter, step by step, work details the project culture, you must learn to interpret and criticize from their own proposal.

How many data have you appropriated from the culture to express my project?

10.-You should produce an open system work, with more questions than answers. The number of questions the student will be assessed is more than the number of certainties, you must use fuzzy logic, to support multiple possible truth-values, allowing multiple possible truth-values and strategies to create unpredictability.

How many questions have you made throughout the design process and how many have you tried to answer?

11.-Skills: Interest in the contribution, regardless of the attitude from which it was generated

What is the interest considering my contribution to the WORKSHOP?

12.-Attitudes: how to tackle the problem independent of the outcome

Have I tried to solve with intellectual and material effort to present the proposal. The project has developed enough quality

Alicante University (SPAIN) / Joaquín Alvado Bañón (joaquin.alvado@ua.es) + Javier Sánchez Merina (jsm@ua.es)

ARCH: MAPPING THE IMAGE OF URBAN GAIA

The Gaia hypothesis (/ˈɡaɪ.ə/), proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet. It was formulated by the chemist James Lovelock and the microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s. Learn more about it in Wikipedia.

 

CONTENT / A healthy ecosystem provides manifold benefits to humans and non-humans, climate stability and resilience. Envisioning future urban ecosystem services integrated within evolving cities is crucial to face the radical shift that the urban environment has to undertake in the coming years.

This seminar is followed by students from more than twenty different nationalities. This is a strength of our learning, and we want to proceed with that singularity: every student needs to study and map the interaction of the built and the natural environment at her/his/their city/town. Places that have hosted a “Gartenschau” or garden event are highly appreciated.

Taking advantage of bulk scraping of geolocated images and data, each student will develop mappings of the whole selected city/town that highlights the dynamic balance of nature in the urban realm. These mappings have to display the complexity of the existing relationships, and reveal connections and narratives that are unveiled thanks to the technology used.

AIMS / Our aim is to generate a comprehensive and comparable set of mappings of different cities around Europe, that describe the network of interactions of the built and the natural environment throughout the whole city.

METHOD / Research by design: remote sensing

Introduction: Presentation of the goals of the seminar and first contact with bulk download of images for your use. Please have Rhino and Grasshopper or QGIS installed in your computers. Basic knowledge of Grasshopper or QGIS is welcome but not mandatory.

1st mapping event: Present your first mapping ideas online (or in a pre-recorded video if you prefer so) of a ½ Pecha-Kucha format (10 slides, 20 seconds per slide: a total of 3 minutes 20 seconds).

2nd mapping event: Final crit.

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Introduction / 11th Nov 2022 12:30, 1 hour.

Technical support (if needed) / 15th Nov 2022, 1 hour.

First mappings / 18th Nov 2022 09:00, 4 hours.

Final Crit / 25th Nov 2022, 4 hours.

 

OPEN QUESTIONS / Your mapping reflects with the following (uncomplete) list of open questions:

Which aspects, relationships, concepts and narratives are discovered and/or triggered by this use of technology?

How can remote sensing help to perform analysis beyond traditional methods?

How can remote sensing be a design tool beyond analysis?

Which perspectives can be integrated? Which ones are left behind?

How can your mapping be useful for urban planning?

 

Bibliography / Local Code. Nicholas de Monchaux

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (DEUTSCHLAND) /

Arturo Romero Carnicero  /  arturo.romero@kit.edu

Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape (GREAT BRITAIN)/

Miguel Paredes Maldonado  /  Miguel.Paredes@ed.ac.uk

With the support of

Eduardo Gonzalo Amorox, Gustavo Romanillos

ARCH: Radical futures_Contemporary Edens

Athanasius Kircher, Garden of Eden in Arca Noë, 1675

 

CONTENT / Paradise comes from the latin paradisus, from the greek paradeisos, from the persian pairidaeza or “enclosure”, from “pairi” (meaning “around”, in Greek it’ll derive to “peri”) and “daeza” (meaning “wall”). Paradise or Eden was, therefore, first of all, a fortress, a place to protect from the outside (from Una breve historia del jardín, Gilles Clément, Ed. Gustavo Gili, 2019).

We may not talk about it, but architecture (and architects, its most prominent agents) is aiming towards paradise in every work.

In this workshop we’ll focus on radical paradise-seekers (or radical architects) that pushed the possibility of imagining Eden to extreme ideas. From the single mind of Ledoux to the collective partnership of Neom (via Boullée, Le Corbusier, The Metabolist group, Archigram…etc) our goal will be to learn about contemporary paradises (or fenced environments), to criticize them and to finally create one of our own.

This course is as a way to understand that within the clear taxonomy of architectural Edens the linear ones have their own qualities and expectations. From there, each group of students will imagine one Contemporary Eden (verbally first, graphically at the end) and explain it to the rest of the class.

Our workshop takes this radical projects as an inspiration to imagine new paradises in order to extend the radical family. In this workshop we must push our limits (literally…the two sides of our fenced Eden) and believe that utopia is still possible (please, do not forget that Eden was a garden, so the experience of Nature is a must).

AIMS / To study, think about the idea of paradise and to imagine a linear one. To address the experience of radicality, to conceal nature between two walls, to draw…. To dismiss scale to start with a project. To generate a world map or radical lines that may coexist. To explain your ideas to the rest of the group. To design a cross section (the most efficient way to understand a linear city) of your Contemporary Edens.

METHOD / Radical knowledge and imagination as a tool. To imagine, agree and design your own Contemporary Eden.

1st day- 20 minutes + homework: Introduction of the course by the professor, students questions and comments about the workshop and homework details.

2nd day- 4 hours: Short lecture by the professor + Group work to start the design of your Contemporary Edens. Submission 01: First sketches and 200 words brief of the project (free technique).

3rd day- 3 hours + 30 minutes final crit: Feedback of submission 01 (before the class). Group work to complete the design of your Contemporary Edens. Submission 02: Cross section of the project (free technique and scale). Final crit.

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Introduction / 28 Oct 2022.

First class / 04 Nov 2022.

Second class and Crit / 11 Nov 2022.

 

EVALUATION AND EXPECTED LEARNING OUTCOMES/ After these two weeks workshop the student will be able to:

  • Understand radical architecture main concerns and tools
  • Develop architectural criticism by analysing radical architecture
  • Develop radical architecture projects through radical design processes and conceptual work methods
  • Compose a radical architectural project and present it orally and visually to the class.
  • Design a radical cross section of a Contemporary Eden.

 

Bibliography and Basic References:

  1. Monumento Continuo: https://www.frac-centre.fr/_en/art-and-architecture-collection/superstudio/il-monumento-continuo-317.html?authID=185&ensembleID=988#:~:text=Superstudio Il Monumento Continuo%2C 1969-1970 As a manifesto-like,the Earth’s surface%2C negotiating megalopolises%2C mountains and oceans.

Superstudio, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, Gian Piero Frassinelli, Alessandro Magris, Roberto Magris, Adolfo Natalini. The Continuous Monument: On the River, project (Perspective). 1969 | MoMA

  1. Exodus: Exodus, or the voluntary prisoners of architecture. – SOCKS (socks-studio.com)
  2. The line: THE LINE (neom.com)

Universidad Europea de Madrid (SPAIN) /

Miguel Luengo Angulo (miguel.luengo@universidadeuropea.es)

ARCH: Ecosystemic Relationships

CONTENT / Situation. In the city people, ideas and objects cohabitate. Some have attracted the others, but their relations remain difficult and the potential profits of their cohabitation remains largely unrealized. In the article “Do it by yourself” published in L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui in 1970, Tschumi and Montès developed a reflection on interaction in architecture underlining how the cohabitation of people, ideas and objects in the city can facilitate ‘urban success’ and challenge the issues of contemporary society. They also claimed that ‘restricting the interaction [between people, ideas and objects] impoverishes the urban condition: I felt the need to see people talking and confronting experiences, expanding the field of knowledge, I was walking through the city through ancient objects that had come to a new existence.

(Montès F, Tschumi B. Do-It-Yourself-City. L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui. 1970)

In this sense the topic of Interaction in the context of architecture helps us in understanding the importance of raising a dialogue between inhabitants (human and non-human / visible and invisible) and architecture, understanding the political framework through a critical analysis of our current society. What does interaction mean? How this can be improved and defined in architecture dealing with a specific climatic, cultural and social condition?

We can explore this by thinking of the program as an open framework that can be adapted to the current social, environmental and political challenges. We will learn from the cultural specificity at different climatic zones, from the north to the south. Looking at the urban environment as an ecosystem.

 

AIMS / Learning from the ecosystemic relationships in their own urban environment students will understand the notion of program as an open framework inducing us as architect to rethink the traditional relation between forms and function, considering the interaction between the space and its inhabitants to generate new radical scenarios in the city through architecture.

The aim of this workshop is to build upon what has been explored in the previous workshops.

 

TOOLS / Students will learn how to define a program as a series of activities, understanding architecture as an instrument to provide the space for life.

  1. Montage technique (Reflecting)
  2. Story tale / max 200 words (Unpacking)
  3. Layered section drawings / collage technique (Communicating)

 

METHOD / The design process will be structured in three moments:

SEMINARS: Reflecting on the role of “Interaction” as a way of generating the architectural program and concept in architecture, understanding its relationship with the society, through talks with invited architects and artists. Reflecting on the notion of ecological design thinking. How will we live together in the future city?

EXERCISES: Unpacking the urban fabric. Reading the city as an ecosystem, identifying, understanding and communicating (exchanging) the spatial and social dimension and qualities of the communities (Human and non-human) around the globe.

OUTPUT: Communicating the idea/strategy through the production of an online showcase in form of a public exhibition. Each students will produce 10 images (montage+future scenario+layered section) + a text of 200 words.

 

SCHEDULE /

We will meet in zoom: https://umu.zoom.us/j/9465597160

  • 1st day /: Introduction to the workshop + Lectures (recorded).
  • 2nd day / Group work /Feedbacks and tutorials.
  • 3rd day / Online Showcase + Final discussion.

The schedule will be adapted to the needs of each university providing access to recorded lectures and a-synchronous submissions.

Expected Learning Outcomes / After these two weeks workshop the student will be able to:

  • Develop architecture projects through design processes and conceptual work methods
  • Document an architectural project and present it orally and visually
  • Design a building programme based on research (mapping) and strategy.

References /

Film / Audio:

Wenders, Wim (2010) If Buildings could talk

Text:

Koolhaas, Rem (1977) The Story of the Pool

Calvino, Italo (1972) Invisible cities

Lynch, Kevin (1970) The image of the city

Collage:

Superstudio (1972) Supersuperficie

Montage:

Mili, Gjon (1939) Black and White Movements.

Tschumi, Bernard (1994) Architecture and Disjunction

Umeå School of Architecture – Umeå University (SWEDEN)/

Maria Luna Nobile (maria.nobile@umu.se)

Richard Conway (richard.conway@umu.se)

ARCH: The Immersion in the Spirit of Architecture

ARCH: Re: Enactment

CONTENT / ‘Re:Enactment’ is the latest chapter in a series of workshops exploring the various interpretations and potential in narrative architectural photography, following workshops from the previous semesters: ‘Texture, Rhythm, Pattern’ & ‘Visual Storytelling’. Students once again use their photo cameras to capture their personal interpretation of human interaction with the architectural environment, and the potentials in visual storytelling through still images.

 

AIMS & METHOD / In a similar fashion to the previous semester, the workshop is structured into two photo exercises. Students this semester investigate their broader urban living environment and look for architectural features and situations, which – by way of creative abstraction and with the help of human re-enactment – can be associated with a chosen works of art. In the first exercise they will focus on the contemporary re-enactment of a well-known planar visual artwork (painting, mural, graphics) while on the second week they will choose an emblematic scene from arthouse cinematography for their creative photographic reflection.

These individual reinterpretations shall rely heavily on the interaction between the static architectural background and the human presence. Students are encouraged to utilize a wide range of visual accessories and to follow compositional principles consciously in their effort to put the original situation into a new perspective, adding new layers to the original narrative. In the process, students will have the opportunity to further develop their visual compositional skills, learn to understand the compositional values and narrative potentials in their built surroundings, and to explore the interdisciplinarity and the permeability of borderlines among the different genres of visual art.

SCHEDULE / Two-week workshop. Weekly on-line classes (+ individual work during the week) arranged with the students:

November 11th 2022 (Friday) – 2.00 pm (CET) – Introduction & Project Description

November 15th 2022 (Tuesday) – 9.30 am (CET) – Consultation (Project 1)

November 18th 2022 (Friday) – 10.00 am (CET) – Presentation & Critical Review (Project 1)

November 22nd 2022 (Tuesday) – 9.30 am (CET) – Consultation (Project 2)

November 25th 2022 (Friday) – 10.00 am (CET) – Final Critical Review (Project 1&2)

 

EVALUATION / Evaluation is based on the fulfilment of workshop aims. Participating students are expected to gain a better understanding the visual characteristics of their urban surroundings and develop their visual compositional skills.

Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Architecture (HUNGARY) / PORTSCHY, Szabolcs Dávid (portschy.szabolcs.david@epk.bme.hu)

ARCH: Characters in the Open Building

CONTENT / The city as any living organism should be looked at not only in a three-dimensional (spatial) context but in a four-dimensional one that takes into account time. The changes taking place in the urban fabric range from the construction of new buildings to the adaptation and the demolition of existing structures. Thus, it is important to consider already at the design stage the possibilities of transforming a building during its lifespan.

The direct participation of future residents is the domain of single-family houses. In contrast, it is difficult to identify the needs, ideas and opinions of future residents of multi-family housing, and the possibility of transforming the space is reduced to changing the partition walls within the occupied apartment. Furthermore, public consultation in the execution of multi-family buildings is fraught with the risk of tailoring the dwelling only to the first occupant.

An approach that addresses these issues is the principle in which the building’s load-bearing elements such as walls, roofs, foundations, staircases and technical infrastructure are made by professionals, while future users influence shaping the internal spatial and functional layout. Such a design methodology is called Open Building and it was created and developed by the Dutch architect prof. John N. Habraken.

The Open Building methodology assumes that the residential environment is divided into two main components. The frame consists of an analysis of the urban layout, the necessary infrastructure and the basic building structure. The second key element is the infill, i.e. the façade and internal spatial layout, which is influenced by the inhabitants or future users of the space (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 source: ModRule: A User-Centric Mass Housing Design Platform [Marc Aurel Schnabel, Tian Tian Lo, Yan Gao]

AIMS / The aim of the workshop is to understand the principles of the Open Building design method by personal experience. Through that process participants will gain knowledge of the frame structures, research the context the chosen character, compare different cultural background and various historical periods (i.e. different architectural styles, social relations) and tests the individual/ collective design processes.

More about the Open Building idea can be found in the movie DE DRAGER / A film about Architect John Habraken:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85vhtwRwk9k&t=649s

 

METHOD / The participants will be gathered into groups of 5 – 8 members from different universities. Each member of the group will choose one given historical character. Next, the group will propose a configuration of the apartments’ design for the characters as a neighbour. At the first stage, individual apartments will be proposed. At the second, the configuration of the apartments will be taken into account.

The design process will include: to get know the chosen character and his/her context, to design a suitable apartment for the character, to agree between the individual designers on the relationship between the apartments in a given structure that meets the Open Building principles.

TECHNIQUE / The presentation of the projects may have a form of sketches, notes, collages, mock-ups, diagrams, CAD drawings, visualisations, animations, videos, and other visual techniques that will support description of the assumed project idea, functioning and materialisation of the architectural building.

The students will get the primary structure (frame) of a multifamily building (in .dwg/PDF file) and will be asked to design the apartments (infill).

The expected drawings include: floor plan of the apartment, section of the apartment, interior/ exterior design, elevations, and plan of the building and landscape.

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Introduction / 14 October 2022

Workshop – characters and apartment design / 18 October 2022.

Consultations 20 October 2022.

Final Presentation / 25 October 2022

 

EVALUATION /

– Quality of the research on the Character’s context.

– Originality of the concepts.

– Cooperation between group members

– Clear and comprehensible project content and presentation.

 

Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (POLAND) /

                                                      Jerzy Łątka (jerzy.latka@pwr.edu.pl)

                                                      Agata Jasiołek (jagata.jasiolek@pwr.edu.pl)

Yasar University in Izmir (TURKEY) /

                                                      Mauricio Morales-Betran (mauricio.beltran@yasar.edu.tr)

ARCH: Before Me the Deluge

page1image62115280

Hokusai’s Great Wave. Photograph: British Museum

CONTENT/ Last summer, biblical floods in northern Europe washed away houses, undoing roads, revealing subterranean services. If our environment is unpredictable because of human or celestial activity is irrelevant: the reality is that water, while vital, is for architects a design constraint. Keeping water where it needs to be is one of our perennial challenges, regardless of what state it is in: solid, liquid or vapour.

AIM/ To interrogate the role of the architect in extreme situations and understand how potent our craft can be to assist people and communities.

This brief invites you to think about deluge, in other words the macro scale, the effect of unexpected behaviour of water levels on buildings. You are also encouraged to consider other states of water, if that is something that can be addressed by your design proposition.

 

METHOD/ A physical/digital model of prototypes / proposals / reactions

The site typologies you may want to consider are:

_terra firma [land] that can get flooded by abundant precipitation (eg overflowing lakes, rivers that burst their banks, coastal sites)

_edge [limen = threshold] liminality is a physical condition, as well as a psychological one

_island which can be natural or artificial

_open water

SCHEDULE/

  1. Consider as a group:
    what_look at the 4 site typologies to decide which site condition to tackle. The decision should be justified by analysis of possibilities, literature, stories, anecdotal evidence, news, statistics etc
    why_document the decision-making for your site typology (use sketches, film, models etc)
    where_consider if the site is a real location, and identify it, or imaginary and explain graphically your choice
  2. [fri 21/10/21 10.30+ CET] Present your investigations and ideas as first iterations of concept and strategies for your design:
    _consider what architecture is suitable and why, based on research
    _appraise technologies and systems
  3. Develop:
    _solutions and construct models, physical or digital for proposals – they can be stand alone, clusters, involve infrastructure strategies – all in response to: site, vernacular (if real site), projections of technologies (if prototype, not site specific)
    _ the intervention which is the device/reaction
  4. [fri 28/10/21 10.30+ CET] Present:
    _final proposals.

 

EVALUATION/ You may consider:

_what the intervention is… a generic, multi-purpose building or with defined programme, permanent/temporary, independent/parasitic?
_what characteristics it needs to have to respond to conditions… permeable/non- permeable, amphibious, buoyant
_laws of physics… applied to materials and systems
_resilience… and anything else that floats your boat…

LINCOLN UNIVERSITY (UK)/

Doina Carter (docarter@lincoln.ac.uk)

ARCH: Positive Birth

DESIGN A NEW BIRTH CULTURE 2022

WORKSHOP – SEMINAR – COMPETITION – EXHIBITION – RESEARCH

QUESTIONS CONCERNING NEW VISION

“In today’s culture, birth is in crisis” says Milli Hill, author of the Positive Birth Book who campaigns for dignity and right of choice for women planning birth. But perhaps the whole culture before and after birth needs rethinking as well? We are inviting designers to create a vision of a New Model of a place perfect to give a birth.

Evidence suggests that architecture may ease or hinder the natural process of giving birth.

Birth places are designed primarily to meet the needs of healthcare professionals – bright lights, ease of disinfection, convenient access to patient and monitoring equipment.

Many women suffer birth trauma. Nowadays it seems impossible to give birth without a team of doctors, machines, and medication. But is that the case?

Design a birthplace thinking only about the needs of a woman about to give birth. What she needs to do it peacefully and naturally is darkness, peace and quiet, ability to focus inwards, water, being able to move around, bend, bounce, squat…

What would that space be if you disregard the needs of medical staff which are currently prioritized and focus solely on the needs of birthing women?

What would the building and its surroundings offer? A form of a hotel for families before and after birth? Places that revolve around socialising, healthy lifestyle, training/learning/therapy, or a swimming pool? With a landscape that stems from thinking about this place more than merely a maternity ward: as a place where all the family can spend time before and after birth, a place that would support a positive time for woman before, during and after giving birth.

What could be the role and place of such a birth centre in the community in terms of organisation status and the way in which it functions?

Please design the brief and organisation: what rooms, functions and requirement this place should include. Tutors and guests of this workshop will offer knowledge about new model and support for a new way of thinking about the design of such places.

Can we also imagine an alternative low-tech birth? Instead of concentrating on high-tech, why don’t we focus more on a highly humanistic birth? What could that mean? Designers often ignore/give up design of topics related in any way to medicine and are ready to let technician to lead the design. It could contribute to creating trauma. Good design can support heathy, natural birth and allow celebrating the magical moments of bringing new life into the world.

WORKSHOP – SEMINAR – COMPETITION – EXHIBITION – RESEARCH

We would like to invite you to visit, join or participate in a series of events which aim to stimulate the discussion on contemporary culture surrounding Giving Birth. This should be a platform to spread knowledge and support research on this topic.

During the workshops, students from over 34 European universities associated with the UNIVERSITY of Universities (UOU) – Design Teachers Collective – will develop design answers to the question of a ‘Perfect Place for Giving Birth’. Best designs will take part in a competition and will be exhibited at the University of Lincoln. This exhibition will be associated with a seminar and talks which will prepare a platform where academic and non-academic partners could meet and exchange knowledge on the Culture of Giving Birth. This event is planned as ground for international research. We would like to invite anyone who is interested in this topic to follow or participate in this event.

Dr Marcin M Kołakowski (University of Lincoln)
Dr Franka Jagielak (Pedagogical University of Cracow)
Dr Javier Sánchez Merina (University of Alicante, UNIVERSITY of Universities Facilitator)

COMPETITION

We are launching an open idea competition for designers which will be supported by the UNIVERSITY of Universities. In this competition, designers will be asked to create a vision for a place that would support an ideal, woman and family centered birth and culture around birth. The design could be idealistic vision of an institution which is not merely a maternity ward, and which possibly does not exist yet – It should be a place dedicated to giving birth but possibly also a center which would support woman and families before, during and after birth. This kind of institutions are not popular in our cultures, but maybe they could/should be (re)invented.

We will ask participants of the competition to suggest a vision for a place of birth which will be woman and family centered. This vision should include at least 3 elements:

  1. Concept of organization & program: how this place should function and be organized? What spaces should it include and what should be requirements and functions of such a place?
  2. Architectural vision of such place.
  3. Visions and ideas for interiors and equipment.

We encourage designing in groups of 3 participants, but smaller groups and individual designs will be accepted as well. Designers are asked to create their vision in any chosen setting: urban or rural. The vision presented in an A0 format should be sent digitally to the University of Lincoln. The best contributions will be printed and displayed as part of an exhibition organized by University of Lincoln.

The competition is open both to students taking part in the UOU workshop supervised and supported by tutors and experts but also to designers who not taking part in UOU events.

UOU WORKSHOP

In the UOU community, we all come from different cultures and environments… Yet, despite all the differences, we definitely have one thing common… we were all born.

During the 2 weeks workshop, we will offer knowledge about design that surrounds giving birth. This will be included technical facts and practical tips for designers, but we would also like to offer knowledge which may sometimes be surprising and eye opening.

UOU students are invited to take part in the competition.

This workshop will be open to UOU students as well as any designers who would like to join in. We will offer lectures on the topic of architecture and design of places dedicated to birth. Dr Franka Jagielak will present a lecture on the cross-cultural research on designs which support giving birth, and Dr Marcin Kołakowski will deliver lectures on the three main methods in the design process. We also intend to provide practical information and support with regard to designing birth places. Yet, this factual and practical information should not limit student’s imagination or prevent them from inventing visions which could be very far from the conventional understanding of traditional places for giving birth.

The 2-week workshop will include tutorials offering consultations on design developments.

ORGANISATION OF THE 2-WEEK WORKSHOP:
During the workshop, participants from different counties associated with UOU will be encouraged to create groups ideally of 3 participants which will allow internal discussion and better exchange of ideas. In every group, each member will focus on a different scale and issue of the project, which should pose various questions:

  1. ORGANIZATION: What should the place be? What should be its program? What spaces should it include? How should it be run in an organizational sense? How long should people spend there: a day, a week or maybe a month? What should this place offer in terms of program, activities, services? Maybe you would like to suggest a very different idea for how this place should be run and organized?
  2. BUILDING & SURROUNDINGS: What should the building/place look like? How should it be designed externally? What should internal plans and massing of the building be like? What should be the relation between this building and its surroundings? What should be surroundings/landscape? Where should this place be located? In the city center? Next to the hospital? Or in a remote place? Maybe it could even be mobile? What should the surroundings be? Should there be only good access for cars and ambulances, or could you imagine it differently?
  3. INTERIORS: What should woman-centered interiors look like? What should be the equipment / furniture / materials used internally? How to allow women to choose the mood and atmosphere of the space? How to enable possibilities of different positions and movements beneficial during birth? (Tutors will offer knowledge about this topic in detail).

As a team you should ask yourself: What are the other questions you could ask? Remember: good architecture stems not only from good answers, but also from good questions…

It would be a good idea if each student focused on one aspect, but all together you will create one vision. In this case, collaboration is essential in order to achieve one coherent narrative – a visual statement that would address the question of an ideal place for being born and giving birth. The vision could be created by using various media: sketches, drawings, collages, mood board etc.

GROUP DYNAMICS: international teams of (ideally) 3 UOU students consisting of students from various universities.

Introduction: Friday – Week 0

The introduction will take place on the first Friday after finishing previous UOU workshop. Contacts and organization will be explained.

Week 1:

Students will be encouraged to conduct interviews with their mothers or other persons who gave birth.

Students will have a chance to listen to lectures online.

After this introduction, teams which were formed during the first week will be asked to create TWO visons for the first review on Friday in Week 1. The two visions will be created following a change of roles within the team e.g.:

VISION ALPHA

ORGANISATION: Student A

BUILDING & SURROUNDINGS: Student B

INTERIORS & EQUIPMENT: Student D

VISION BETA

BUILDING &: SURROUNDINGS Student B

ORGANISATION: Student A

INTERIORS & EQUIPMENT: Student C

Team can choose, vote or in any other way decide the roles of students A, B or C during week one. This way, each student will have an opportunity to go out of their comfort zone and design something that they would not usually design. The internal reshuffle of the whole group will create an opportunity to see how the dynamic changes and how internal reshuffling impacts design.

Week 2:

After the review on Friday in Week 1, the teams will have a chance to select the best ideas and focus on creating the one final design, which will be presented on Friday in Week 2.

The initial vision for the first week could take the form of various media, such as drawings, images, collages, models etc. All the elements would then be merged into one narrative which will be a coherent design statement.

TIMEFRAME:

Week 1: Conduct interviews, listen to lectures, develop 2 visions with your team

Week 2: Focus on the final presentation

(See detailed framework below)

FINAL DELIVERABLES FOR UOU WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS:

The vision which could be presented in the exhibition should consist of:

  1. Individual Development portfolio (all the sketches that you did working on the project) identifying which students did what: one sketchbook with all the notes, drafts and drawings which lead to the final design (including those that were not continued).
  2. Final group presentations of the VISION OF Mother and Family centered PLACE TO BE BORN IN AND GIVE BIRTH. This should be an A0 poster which would be a graphical design statement with annotations.

The project may be entered into a competition/exhibition at the University of Lincoln, UK.

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA FOR UOU WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS:

The project assessment will be based on the following criteria:

ANALYSIS (FORMULATION OF QUESTION): Thorough and critically evaluated theories and findings. Context considered: environmental, social, cultural and philosophical aspects. Investigation conducted through literature review with a theoretical underpinning.

CONCEPT (ANSWERING QUESTION): Strong original response to psychological needs and societal problems identified and their impact at various levels.

DEVELOPMENT (EVALUATION OF ANSWERS): Development sketches, evidence of design investigations in different scales and aspects. Evidence versatile design paths.

PRESENTATION (PRESENTING THE ANSWER): Content/deliverables: purposeful, coherent, high quality, rigorously developed body of work, professionally presented using a variety of media and a well-structured narrative

TIMEFRAME

ACTIVITY 1 (First Friday: Week 0)

ALL STUDENT SESSION (Introduction)

Activity Time
1 All tutors and students introduce themselves.

Where were you born? What makes you feel creative?

Students form teams of 3 students

IMPORTANT: do not forget to exchange contact details so we can contact you during the week.

 33 Min

 

ACTIVITY 2 (Weekend)

INDIVIDUAL TASK: listening, watching & learning, suggested: conduct an interview,

Activity Time
1 Suggestion for inspiration: Call your mother or any other woman who gave birth. Ask about her experiences of giving birth. Ask her what was good and what was negative? Discuss what helped and what did not help her at the time of giving birth. As much as needed
2 Listen to lectures
3 Read literature and learn about design and birth 1 hour

 

ACTIVITY 3 (Weekend)
INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT OF IDEAS: sketching your own ideas

Activity Time
1 While conducting the interview, listening to lectures or reading literature, behave like a designer: make sketches and develop ideas. This will help you start a conversation when you meet with other students from your team.

Prepare yourselves for the next activity (which is a student team meeting) by making some hand sketches or ideas for a good place for giving birth. Each student should prepare at least 12 ideas for different aspects of the place. (This is a design method which forces you to be creative… so don’t stop when you have 20 sketches). The sketches could be in different scales answering different questions, e.g. What should the space be like? Who should organize the space? Should it be one space or more spaces connected? How should this place be organized? Etc.  other aspect of this space… do not limit yourselves… do your own brain storming, sketch, sketch, sketch, sketch, …

The sketches do not need to be coherent. They could refer to very different aspects of the project. Keep these ideas even if they are crazy or nonsensical. Remember that at this time you want to suggest in sketchy way a lot of ideas which will perhaps inspire other ideas later. Later on, you will choose the best ones or refine some of them but not now. Focus on producing quantity not quality. Follow your wild intuition and creativity and do not exclude any ideas.

 As much as needed

 

ACTIVITY 4 (Monday, Week 1)
MEETING WITH YOUR TEAM FOR THE FIRST TIME: introduction, discussion and role distribution

Activity Time
1 Meet as a student team (approx. 3 students)

1)     discuss your interview with woman who gave birth. Discuss the cultural differences, difficulties, anxieties and positive aspects of this moment.

 20 min
2 Present to each other your own sketchy ideas. Inspire each other to think about other ideas.
3 PREPARING A TEAM PROJECT. Discuss you team project with your group. Discuss the organization of work. Remember that for next Friday you will need to present two visions. You should therefore share tasks and set up a meeting (Activity 6). Please divide tasks among yourselves e.g.:

VISION ALPHA

ORGANISATION & PROGRAM: Student A

BUILDING, SURROUNDINGS & LANDSCAPE: Student B

INTERIORS & EQUIPMENT: Student C

VISION BETA

ORGANISATION & PROGRAM: Student C

BUILDING, SURROUNDINGS & LANDSCAPE: Student A

INTERIORS & EQUIPMENT: Student B

 

ACTIVITY 5 a,b,c…  (Tuesday/Thursday Week 1: whatever time is good for the team)
STUDENT TEAM MEETINGS: develop your ideas 

Activity Time
1 Discuss and develop your project as a student team.

Prepare for Friday presentation.

 

ACTIVITY 6 (Second Friday: Week 1)

REVIEW: Online review for all students taking part in the competition (presentations of ideas) Perhaps a workshop on creative design methods if times allows

Activity Time
1 Students present their group work. TWO VISIONS
Discussion about each group project		 10-am

12pm
2 IF TIME ALLOWS, THERE WILL BE A WORKSHOP ON CREATIVITY WICH WILL SUPPORT YOUR PROJECT: divergent and convergent design methods 12-2

ACTIVITY 7 (The same Friday in Week 1: after review)

INTERNAL STUDENT TEAM MEETINGS: discuss the review plan for next week

Activity Time
1 Meet after the review to discuss in what direction you would like to go as a team and how you will organize the next week’s presentation 20 min

 

ACTIVITY 8 a, b, c…..  (Week 2)

INTERNAL STUDENT TEAM MEETINGS: development of projects

Activity Time
1 Meet after the review to discuss in what direction you would like to go as a team and how you will organize the next week’s presentation As much as needed

ACTIVITY 9
Final REVIEW (Third Friday)

Activity Time
1 Each team presents their own project 4 hours

ACTIVITY 10 (after the final review, and before the deadline for the competition)
WHOLE STUDENT TEAMS:  refining and submitting competition entries

Activity Time
1 Refining your project and submitting it for the exhibition

EXHIBITION & COMPETITION:
After that, students will be asked to submit the work which may be exhibited at the University of Lincoln and which will take part in the competition.

SEMINAR / CONFERENCE:

Seminar with contributions from academic and non-academic partners is planned to support the exhibition. This event will create a platform for further research and developing guidelines which could be used be teams supporting homebirths and parents who are interested in gaining knowledge about good parenting.

 

University of Lincoln (UK)/

Marcin Kołakowski (MKolakowski@lincoln.ac.uk)

Pedagogical University of Cracow (POLAND)/

Franka Jagielak (franciszka.jagielak@up.krakow.pl)

ARCH: Rusilience

Rusilience, is a workshop aims to achieve RUral reSIELINCE, through developing traditional rural housing by locally feasible structural/construction systems.

CONTENT / Climate change resisting strategies and rapid transformation in developing countries focus on designing systems which modernize cities and make their structures resilient in the face of natural disasters. Unfortunately, the process neglects rural areas in countries as Turkiye, which results in the abandon of rural areas and immigration to big cities and urban centers. In central Anatolia, and around the capital Ankara, a seismic prone area, the plans seeks either to transform the villages into concrete high-rise buildings, or (hobby gardens) with type of container slum housing.

The workshop seeks to use traditional rural structural systems and/or construction methods as a reference to develop a modern, cost efficient, and easy to build structural system for rural housing to help enhancing the resilience of these rural areas, protecting its traditions, and encouraging people to stay in their villages

AIMS / Designing a resilient structural system for a small rural house using available local materials and learning from rural traditional architecture .
After identifying a village, or a rural center, we will choose a local traditional structural system, and think how to develop it to become more resilient and compatible with modern context and needs.

  • Analysing traditional rural structural system.
  • Understanding rural resilience.
  • Introduce yourself to the class.
  • Defining your working group.
  • Work as a team in different contexts.

page1image57407712 page1image57397104

METHOD /

1st working day: Introduce your rural context and the chosen traditional structural/construction system in a 4min video analyzing risks with the strengths and weaknesses.

page1image57399184 page1image57398560

Group work according to your common interests. Dvefine possibilities of system enhancement to suggest more resilient system, a story board (free technique).
2nd day: Final crit. Design the new structural system/ or draw the details of the modifications on the traditional rural system you have analyzed.

SCHEDULE /

2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Introduction / 14 Oct 2022.
Video + Story board / 21 Oct 2022.
Final Crit / 28 Oct 2022.

EVALUATION / The design should respond to the following requirements:

  • Did it enhance the preparedness to resist hazards?
  • Is it easier or more difficult to construct?
  • Does it require special technologies and instruments?
  • How it affects the cost of construction?
  • Is the technology and materials available in the site?
  • Who can build it?
  • Specialists, contractors or locals with the help of the community?
  • Does it enable future expansion?

Bibliography /

  1. VerSus Project: Heritage for Tomorrow, Vernacular Knowledge for Sustainable Architecture.
  2. Resilient Structures and Infrastructure (Ehsan Noroozinejad Farsangi)
  3. Rural resilience as a new development concept(Wim J.M. Heijman)

Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University (Turkiye) /

Salah Hajismail (salah.hajismail@aybu.edu.tr)

ARCH: Liminal: Digital Landscape

Liminal: an intermediate state, phase, or condition: in-between, transitional

CONTENT / We live suspended between the digital and the physical, in a liminal space. The pioneers of digital landscapes we navigate realms unfettered by physical constraints. A place where stories can construct and reconstruct themselves at will, where time is not just static but can be reversed, where truth can be rewritten and history revised. Orientation increasingly turns to an expanding mirror world, the echo of Borges fiction. A 1:1 remaking of the world, where huge ships may hide within the folds of fake signals, infrastructure is analysed through its digital twin and non-existent islands rise into being leading very real exhibitions to search for them.

This can begin to paint a picture of an increasing retreat from reality into our imaginaries, with all the dystopian and problematic environmental consequences this could bring. Yet it also holds within it the potential to enhance and deepen our embodiment within the physical realm. AI and other technologies offer the opportunity for us to sculpt this liminal realm to enhance our spatial embodiment, extending our understanding and engagement of the physical world and ourselves.

We will explore how the design of our architecture and cities might engage critically with these liminal landscapes, beginning to define our mode of engagement through the spaces we dare to imagine.

AIMS / The aim of our workshop is to begin to explore the implications of our evolving liminal condition as an opportunity for extending embodiment. We aim to begin to construct potential frameworks of engagement; formulating a zoo of proto architectures for the liminal realm.

METHOD / We will be teaching through the medium we are contemplating, the digital realm of Zoom, Teams, Miro. We will therefore begin through a questioning of the space of this connection. For our workshop each of us will automatically and simultaneously enter into multiple spaces in multiple countries through our digital presence. Yet the sound of our voices will echo around solid walls and physical spaces, influencing and impacting that space. Working in small groups of members in disparate locations we will begin attempting to grasp the nature of this liminal space, using drawing as a tool to start to discuss its implications for our inhabitation of space. With the aid of this initial navigation we will begin to focus on how AI might inform our engagement with liminal spaces to extend embodiment. We will workshop opportunities to evolve our zoo of proto architectures.

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Introduction / 30th September
Workshopping / 3rd October including talks: ‘Liminal landscapes’ Sarah Stevens, and ‘AI’ Marcus Winter Opening of the zoo with the Final Crit of the group’s proto architectures / 14th October

EVALUATION / Develop these actions:

– Engaging critically with the digital realm that augments out day to day lives.
– Uncovering cultural implications.
– Finishing with a proposal for a proto architecture which begins to discuss both the physical and digital realms we inhabit.

 

Bibliography /

Work by artists, architects and computer scientists including:
Liam Young: https://liamyoung.org/projects/seoul-city-machine
Anicka Yi: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/hyundai-commission-anicka-yi
Google AI, Whalesong: https://www.blog.google/technology/ai/tale-whale-song/
Machine Memoirs: Space, Refik Anadol: https://coventry2021.co.uk/explore/the-reel-store/
Pierre Huyghe: https://www.kistefosmuseum.com/news/pierre-huyghe-is-the-artist-of-the-year-2022

https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/pierre-huyghe-uumwelt/ Sarah Tze: https://www.sarahsze.com

Sol Ey, Sonic Storm: https://sol-ey.com/sonic-storm/
MIT senseable city Lab: https://senseable.mit.edu
Sandipan Nath: https://www.behance.net/gallery/107173861/Interference-53N42E-v20
Ocean Bloom: https://v2.nl/archive/works/ocean-bloom
Smart city: https://v2.nl/lab/alternative-imaginaries-for-the-smart-city
Centre for Digital Built Britain: https://www.cdbb.cam.ac.uk/what-we-do/national-digital-twin- programme
BTO Cuckoo Tracking Project: https://www.bto.org/our-science/projects/cuckoo-tracking-project/about- project/international-projects
Rif Anadol: https://refikanadol.com/works/machine-memoirs-space/
Richard Vijgen: https://www.richardvijgen.nl/#world
Beyond Human Scale: https://www.archdaily.com/949912/beyond-human-scale-designing-for- ecosystems-migration-and-machines
Situated technologies: http://www.situatedtechnologies.net
Accessing habitats remotely: https://architecturetoday.co.uk/steve-mcintyre-and-ashley-welch/ Watershed: https://www.watershed.co.uk/studio/projects
Ghislaine Boddington: https://ghislaineboddington.com/videos/

 

University of Brighton (UK) /

Sarah Stevens (s.stevens2@brighton.ac.uk) + Marcus Winter (Marcus.Winter@brighton.ac.uk)

ARCH: Designing with the Climate

CONTENT / Nowadays we can hardly think of architecture without a focus on sustainability and energy efficiency. It is obvious that climates in many parts of the word are changing due to our huge CO2 footprints. If we want to design climate responsive architecture, we carefully need to choose the building materials and think about how to achieve thermal comfort in the most efficient way. Passive design strategies and innovative building systems and technology will go hand in hand.

Further, we can think about how our buildings can even significantly produce energy. Today, many buildings are able to produce more energy than needed for operating. With this in mind we will investigate different design strategies for a small climate responsive building. However, different climates require different design solutions.

AIMS / A global perspective on climate responsive architecture – from an urban design to building technology

 

METHOD /

  • Design a minimal room (hotel room/minimal apartment) that is climate responsive, adaptive to its specific context, location and climate
  • Working in an existing structure (e.g. hotel 4-star) with a parasite creating a climate responsive architecture inside/outside to create am energy harvesting adaptive building envelope.

SCHEDULE / 4-Week Workshop. Weekly, 4-hour class arranged with the students:

  1. Introduction / Week 9
  2. Strategy Development + Design Development / Week 10
  3. Final Crit / Week 11

EVALUATION /

Evaluation criteria:

  • Originality of the designed object
  • Clarity and depth of the analysis:
    function, design, interaction and impact on the context and climate, integration of passive and active measures
  • Quality of the presentation material

Learning outcome:

  • Creating awareness responsibility of architects and urban design practitioners for the responsibilities of the profession for human made climate change.
  • Finding answers how to design and change things for the better

IU Internationale Hochschule /

Prof. Heiner Stengel (heiner.stengel@iu.org)

Prof. Philipp Molter (philipp.molter@iu.org)

Prof. Thomas Loeffler (thomas.loeffler@iu.org)

ARCH: Biotopes

A biotope is an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage of plants and animals.

CONTENT / This year again we start making emphasis on the many changes that are shaking the architecture profession. More specifically, this time the introduction of non-human conditions in the process of design is needed to preserve the theory of the Earth as an organism – see Gaia hypothesis.

In this first semester, our course has students from more than twenty different nationalities. This is a strength of our learning, and we want to proceed with that singularity:

Every student needs to study and measure a biotope from her/his country, city, or town. A piece of landscape to understand the environment and the rules of the relations between plants and animals, including people.

AIMS / Our aim is to be capable of measuring an activity in a specific landscape and to do it we will have to design our measuring tools.

After identifying a local biotope, we will work with the measurements and descriptions of the place.

  • Find opportunities in our environments to start with a project.
  • Introduce yourself to the class.
  • Get to know the rest of the future members of your working group.
  • Learn how to contribute to group work.

METHOD /

1st working day: Introduce your biotope presenting a 1 min video with the values of your singular environment.

Group work according to your common interests. Connect the activities of your biotopes in a story board (free technique).

2nd day: Final crit. Design your instruments of measuring aspects of live in your group selected biotope.

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Introduction / 16 Sept 2022.

Video + Story board / 23 Sept 2022.

Final Crit / 30 Sept 2022.

 

EVALUATION / Develop the answers to 3 questions from these 12:

  1. The WORKSHOP proposes that students begin to build a complete thought to tackle projects, to process, organize, view and display information so that “data collection” became proactive rather than an analytical tool. Have I been able to go beyond analysis procedure and convert the project into a proposition display?
  2. The students have to learn to criticize their work and to draw conclusions. They have to process systems and models of architectural production, reformulating nonobvious descriptions, focusing their gaze on the invisible structures, not having preconceived ideas, producing unexpected findings, and non-discursive reasoning. Have I used my own ways of expression reformulating descriptions and avoiding the obvious and the use of direct images of the project culture?
  1. The student begins to explore architectural expression systems to formalize their projective ideas. How many ways of expression have I used at work and what is the value expressed by each of them?
  2. We have to learn to talk and discuss about architectural sustainability criteria, adding the concept of ecological niche project (mental territory, social, material, technical, medium-environmental, etc). Have I addressed the theme of THE WORKSHOP responding to the proposal on the sustainability?
  3. We are going to know how to work in-group to discover the roles in production systems. How much information data made in-group have I used to express my project?
  4. The students must participate and contribute with their ideas to the class as an essential part of knowledge. What is the intensity used to express my ideas through the architectural expression ways?
  5. The students must learn to establish a personal lexicon to express his architectural ideas. Have you expressed your ideas through a personal lexicon, or have you imitated expression systems used by other designers seen in the media (magazines or Internet)?
  6. You need positively assess risk and innovation as a necessary condition of design. Innovation defined as the use of allied disciplines to develop intellectual and technical tools to create new realities, within their own reality, exceeding the established models. Do I use allied disciplines for innovative production?
  7. The students must enter, step by step, work details the project culture, you must learn to interpret and criticize from their own proposal. How many data have you appropriated from the culture to express my project?
  8. You should produce an open system work, with more questions than answers. How many questions have you made throughout the design process and how many have you tried to answer?
  9. Skills: Interest in the contribution, regardless of the attitude from which it was generated. What is the interest of my contribution?
  10. Attitudes: how to tackle the problem independent of the outcome. Have I solved with intellectual and material effort to present the proposal?

 

Bibliography / The work by Thomas Thwaites and Philippe Rahm

Alicante University (SPAIN) /

Joaquín Alvado Bañón (joaquin.alvado@ua.es)

Javier Sánchez Merina (jsm@ua.es)

ARCH: Coastline Window

As a tribute to our coastline …

CONTENT / We know, now, that the rising waters could reach about 90 centimeters. This information should change our way to design the architectural project in this area. Above all, it is a question of letting the site guide the project rather than thinking of the architectural object and inserting it into a natural context.

Each student has to choose one a site located on the coast, a site close to home or a site visited during a trip, … a site well known to the student. The richness of UOU is that we should share the way these sites are experienced in different countries and share our views of how to proceed forward the climate change.

AIMS / The aims of this topic are:

  • To be able to observe, to read one site,
  • To be able to present one site with our sensibility,
  • To understand the rule of a window (not only seen by inside – light, wind, … – but also seen by outside – opening on a landscape, framing
  • To use the window as a pretext of showing something from one point of view (our point of view made of all we are made of OR the one from another)

The architect navigates in his house whose windows have the shape of a tribute, Lucas MERLINI, 1999.

 

METHOD /

1st working day: Present a sensitive collage (sketch, photo, references that come, free technique) and a story. Both, the collage and the story describe, in a sensitive way, haw the coastline site is experienced by people.

On a beach of Nice, in the South of France, 2015. Martin Parr for Magnum Photos agency.

2nd day: Final crit. Design a photomontage made by the model of a cabin, that stage the landscape (fictional  and reality) as seen through a window. The cabin has to be built with organic material in order to be digested, one day, by the ocean.

Model of Strasbourg Cathedrale seen from Scharrabergheim-Irmstett

– 40km far away from, 2005

 

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Introduction / Friday 30 SEPTEMBER 14:00-14:30 CET

Stories / Thursday 06 OCTOBER before midnight

Presentation of the collages and creating of groups / Friday 07 OCTOBER 2022 – 12h30 – 15h30

Model – Final Crit / Friday 14 OCTOBER 2022– 12h30 – 15h30

 

EVALUATION /

  • This topic is about to “read” the site chosen ad how to account of our reading. Be able to “read” the site. What is the best way to explain this data or the other? What are the characteristics of the site that I will use in the project?
  • It is question to exchange our way to live on the coastline depend on where we live in the world. How can I explain the others students my culture and the way this site is experienced?
  • The window is a strong theme of the topic. The different functions of the window are :
    • to watch through,
    • to light the room,
    • to bring the wind into the room,
    • but moreover the way to see the world through our eyes, our culture, our “ourselves”,…
  • To be aware of the climate change and to explain the attitude we can have toward these changes.

 

References /

Reunion School of Architecture ENSA /

Magalie Munier (Magalie.munier@hotmail.fr)

Jane Coulon (jane.coulon@lareunion-archi.fr)

ARCH: Interpretation through Photography

CONTENT

We, as designers of buildings and places, need to understand the spaces in which we are creatively working. Without that we cannot begin designing. This workshop is all about using photography as a tool to help us to understand place and to capture our personal take on it. It will provide you with an introduction to a lifelong and transferable skill. This is important because it will encourage you to look carefully at place, to read the intangible elements of place and to record them. The workshop brings together two things: an urban humanities approach to observation and understanding, and the use of photography as a tool to capture your ideas. You do not need to be an expert photographer to participate, a mobile phone camera is ideal.

URBAN HUMANITIES
This workshop uses an urban humanities framework to address the question of what is place – what is its genius loci? It is an emerging way of looking at place that has developed from thinking at UCLA, Berkeley. Take this quote:

“Those fields that aim to understand history, the arts, meaning, expression, and experience make substantial contributions to our thinking about cities and culture. From classicists to contemporary film scholars, humanists enrich an understanding of situated collective life… [but]… the absence of a humanist perspective in urban thought is brutally apparent (Cuff and Wolch, 2016, p. 14).”

This workshop uses the humanities to inform a reading of place and to photograph it. In doing so, it addresses this ‘absence’ that Cuff and Wolch draw to our attention. It allows for a subjective, iterative and creative interpretation of place as something of a counter balance to more established objective, data driven, quantitative approaches to urban analyses.

This more humanistic way of looking at place drives artistic practice, such as that of Cecilie Sachs Olsen at zURBS artistic collective in Switzerland, http://zurbs.org/wp/biographyintro/. In explaining her work, she draws attention to the fact that:

“zURBS work is situated within the Urban Humanities and the exploration of the complexity of urban space in order to generate new and varied forms of creative output that demonstrates the rich terrain where urbanism, geographical knowledge and practice, and the humanities overlap. Central to this work is creative and practice-based art research” (Sachs Olsen, 2016).

PHOTOGRAPHY
There is a famous article, written by Claire Zimmerman, an architectural historian. published in the Harvard Design Magazine in Fall (Autumn) 2001. In the article – Tugendhat Frames – Claire Zimmerman examines the house designed in the 1930s by Mies van der Rohe in Brno. This house has been, and still is, often cited by students and academics as one of the prime examples of modernism in architecture. Yet, most of our understanding of it is derived from photographs, the house being inaccessible during the Cold War. The article asks, how seeing place through the framed lens of a photographer influences our view of it. And this is the point of our workshop. How can a photograph express a sense of place – or can it?

Poyner (2002 p. 71) makes a strong case for ‘amateur’ (but informed) photographs being very useful in capturing place:

“… By virtue of one’s training or experience one simply looked at things in a different way and selected details and viewpoints which the professional photographer wouldn’t have chosen”.

and

Sarah Pink (2006, p. 16) noted that the visual brings fieldwork experience “directly to the context of representation” and the same author argues that, amongst all the senses, the visual as expressed by photography has a strong role to play in the ‘mapping of space’ (2011, p. 4).

With these two themes in mind – ‘urban humanities’ and ‘photographic interpretation’ – we will explore, in groups, places you both are and are not familiar with.

 

AIMS

The aims of this workshop are, therefore,

  •  To understand urban space
  • To grasp the difference between the ‘appearance’ of place and the ‘character’ of a place
  • To consider the intangible
  • To think about different way of using photography to capture our ideas
  • To learn how to use photography to communicate

 

METHOD

We will start by critically thinking a little about the urban humanities – those matters mentioned by Cuff and Welch – as they relate to place and are expressed visually in films, posters and photographs. We then move on to consider the deliberate framing and composition of the image in the way Claire Zimmerman describes, and then we produce creative output along the lines of Cecilie Sachs Olsen.

We will use different photographic techniques, all of which will be explained to you. In particular:

  • Photography as found drawings – a very personal view of place
  • Documentary and found photography – using someone else’s photographs to express your own view
  • Deep mapping and photography – exploring a very small place in depth using ‘forensic’ photography

You will work in groups, experimenting with these techniques and using them to produce a group portfolio that investigates and interprets a given place.

Everything is designed to be delivered online and will be run via Moodle.

 

INDICATIVE SCHEDULE (All times are GMT)

WEEK 00

Friday 25.11.22 / 14h00 – Short introduction

Publication of Task 1 (individual)

 

WEEK 1.0

Monday 28.11.22 / 14h00-15h30 – Discussion on task 1
Talk: Photography & Place in the humanities Approaches to photography

Formation of groups
Publication of Task 2a (group) – archival photography

Wednesday 30.11.22 / 16h30-17h30 – Discussion on task 2a
Publication of task 2b (group) –manipulation

Friday 02.12.22 /  14h00-16h00 – Discussion on task 2b
Lecture: Types and purposes of photography Task 3 (group)

 

WEEK 2.0

Monday 05.12.22 / 14h00-15h00 – Seminar and questions about task 3

Wednesday 07.12.22 / 16h30-17h30 – Tutorials

Friday 09.12.22 / 14h00-17h00 – Final review (submission) and assessmentpage3image47159680 page3image47159872 page3image47160064 page3image47160256

EVALUATION – ASSESSMENT

Each university has its own expectations and requirements and you will be informed of those separately. As a general guide to assessing your involvement in this workshop the following will be considered:

Evaluation is based on:

  • A grasp of the role of urban humanities as a frame for understanding and interpreting place
  • Ability to use different photographic techniques, especially ‘archival’ and found drawings’ to help an understanding of place
  • Visual communication
  • Ability to explain and justify an approach take to the brief
  • Ability to produce a group output and to participate in that

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cuff, D. & Wolch, J., 2016. Urban Humanities and the Creative Practitioner. Boom: A Journal of California, 6(3), pp. 12-17.

Sachs Olsen, C., 2016. Re-imagining the city through the Urban Humanities. [Online]
Available at: http://geohumanitiesforum.org/project-re-imagining-the-city-through-the-urban- humanities/

Pink, S., 2006. The Future of Visual Anthropology. London: Routledge.
Pink, S., 2011. Amateur photographic practice, collective representation and the constitution of place.

Visual Studies, 26(2), pp. 92-101.
Poyner, R., 2002. The Camera as Pen. In: Typographica. New York: Princeton Archhitectural Press. Zimmerman, Claire (2001) Tugendhat Frames, Harvard Design Magazine, Fall 2001

 

UWE BRISTOL (UK) /

Mike Devereux (Mike.Devereux@uwe.ac.uk)

Catalina Morales Maya (Catalina.Moralesmaya@uwe.ac.uk)

 

ARCH: Behi(yo)nd a Picture

CONTENT / Starting from a picture chosen by me the students are asked for developing the architecture of the landscape the image represented in it. The picture could be a painting but also a comic or postcard and the students have to produce plans, section, and sketches and all they consider enough to represent the architecture they image is “behind” o “beyond” the picture.  During the critic student will show the concept of the architecture they are going to develop.

AIMS / The workshop aims at students focusing on the power of imagination in the design process and about the idea that the reference of a project can be a synthetic image

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Introduction / 28/11/2022

Crit /02/12/2022

Final Crit / 09/12/2022

 

EVALUATION / for the final evaluation students has to produce a trip in the model (virtual or real) representing the architecture that, according to their imagination, is behind the picture assigned.

 

Bibliography /
Ferlenga Alberto, (edited by) Étienne- Louis Boulée. Architettura. Saggio sull’arte, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, Torino, 2007.

Feireiss L., Klanten R. (edited by), Imagine Architecture: Artistic Visions of the Urban Realm, Die Gestalten Verlag, 2014.

Ungers Oswald Mathias, Architettura come tema/ Architecture as theme, Electa, Milano, 1982

UNIVERSITÀ DI NAPOLI FEDERICO II (ITALY) /

Paola Scala (paola.scala@unina.it)

ARCH: Inside outside – Contaminating architecture and landscape

CONTENT / Today, architecture, public spaces, gardens, and landscapes are experiencing moments of contamination like never before seen in the history of these disciplines. During the Renaissance and soon after, major projects such as Versailles brought together the fields of architecture and landscape, creating physical connections and visual relationships between garden spaces and the monumentality of architecture.

Today, at a time of democratization of public spaces in the city that is taking place through new and important projects, they need to strategically review the design of the soil, triggering processes of more significant contamination between the closed space of architecture and the open space of gardens, landscape, parks, and public space.

 

AIMS / The workshop has two moments. The first one is a physical workshop during which students and the professor draw a tree-city on a large canvas to be seen only from above. The second one is online, reflecting on the previous workshop experience to image more realistic relationships between trees and architecture.  

 

METHOD / Students draw without having a direct relationship with the scale of the canvas, imagining a landscape city intuitively. Later, they are required to visualize their city through sections, diagrams, maps, or any other media they consider helpful to redesign their city. 

 

1st day: brief introduction of inside outside by professor; Presentation of the spaces chosen by the students.

2nd day: Group work.

3rd day: Final critic.

 

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Introduction / TBA.

Development / TBA.

Final Crit / TBA.

 

 

Bibliography / Morabito V, The City of Imagination. ORO edition.

Corner J., The High Line, Phaidon.

……….

 

Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria (Italy) /

Valerio Morabito (valerio.morabito@unirc.it)

+ TBA

ARCH + ARTS: COMPETITION / RESEARCH: Venice in metaverso

CONTENT / what it is relevant on Architecture nowadays is talking about SUSTAINABILITY AND DIGITALIZATION. WATER as a physical and digital substance that create new environments, relations and horizons.

 

The proposal for the workshop is to create a sustainable space with lines, agents and objects in order to design a project inside the “METAVERSO”. The design will be a scenario for a video game in VENICE.

 

As a third attempt for this workshop, using the WATER AS AN ARCHITECTONICAL MATTER, we are going to create a new horizon with LINES, AGENTS AND OBJECTS, and, going beyond, to design it into the “METAVERSO”. For this purpose, we will work together with one digital platform.

 

AIMS / to understand the presence of the SUSTAINABLE AND DIGITAL SPACES in our projects.

To relate drawings, physical models and video as a way to produce an architecture DIGITAL project.

 

METHOD / The students will use the drawing to create A SUSTAINABLE SPACE USING WATER AS A MATTER. We will draw lines, agents and objects, and model them to create a space as a sustainable scenario.

Finding opportunities of Multimedia Dawing_Model_Video relationships to start with a digital project.

 

Part 1: Draw. Individual Work. Picture frame

Select one scenario in Venice and draw the lines, agents and objects that constitute the sustainability of the space.

BIBLIOGRAPHY / “Power of ten”. Charles and Ray Eames:

 

Part 2: Model. Group Work.

Transform the individual work into a three-dimensional object.

BIBLIOGRAPHY / “Cloud Cities and Solar balloon travel”. Tomas Sarraceno:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61fybvkZiDE

 

Part 3: Video. Class Work.

Work all together to design the project as a new scenario into “METAVERSO” with all your ideas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Let me tell you about my boat.” – The Life Aquatic. Wes Anderson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1RnYfFZK2k

 

 

SCHEDULE /

11 Apr                Presentation

13 Apr                Part 1 + 2

26-29 Apr          Part 3

 

EVALUATION / Jury: UOU professors. 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize.

Those are 12 questions to be answered by students:

 

1.-The WORKSHOP proposes that students begin to build a complete thought to tackle projects, to process, organize, view and display information so that “data collection” became proactive rather than an analytical tool.

Have I been able to go beyond analysis procedure and convert the project into a proposition display?

 

2.-Students must learn to self-reference and criticize their work and to draw conclusions. They have to process systems and models of architectural production, reformulating nonobvious descriptions, focusing his gaze on the invisible structures, not having preconceived ideas, producing unexpected findings, and non-discursive (arguments that are made but which does not follow anything immediately) reasoning.

Have I used my own ways of expression reformulating descriptions and avoiding the obvious and the use of direct images of the project culture?

3.-Student begins to explore architectural expression systems to formalize their projective ideas.

How many ways of expression have I used at work and what is the value expressed by each of them?

 

4.-We must learn to talk and discuss about architectural sustainability criteria, adding the concept of ecological niche project (mental territory, social, material, technical, medium-environmental, etc …).

Have I addressed the theme of THE WORKSHOP responding to the proposal on the sustainability?

 

5.-We are going to know how to work in-group to discover the roles in production systems.

How much information data made in-group have I used to express my project?

 

6.-The students must participate and contribute with their ideas to the class as an essential part of knowledge.

What is the intensity used to express my ideas through the architectural expression ways? How much time do I need to make a drawing or a model to express my ideas?

 

7.-The students must learn to establish a personal lexicon to express his architectural ideas.

Have you expressed your ideas through a personal lexicon or have you imitated expression systems used by other designers seen in the media (magazines or Internet)

 

8.-You need positively assess risk and innovation as a necessary condition of design. Innovation defined as the use of allied disciplines to develop intellectual and technical tools to create new realities, within their own reality, exceeding the established models.

Do I use allied disciplines for innovative production?

 

9.-The students must enter, step by step, work details the project culture, you must learn to interpret and criticize from their own proposal.

How many data have you appropriated from the culture to express my project?

 

10.-You should produce an open system work, with more questions than answers. The number of questions the student will be assessed is more than the number of certainties, you must use fuzzy logic, to support multiple possible truth-values, allowing multiple possible truth-values and strategies to create unpredictability.

How many questions have you made throughout the design process and how many have you tried to answer?

 

11.-Skills: Interest in the contribution, regardless of the attitude from which it was generated

What is the interest considering my contribution to the WORKSHOP?

 

12.-Attitudes: how to tackle the problem independent of the outcome

Have I tried to solve with intellectual and material effort to present the proposal. The project has developed enough quality. 

 

Alicante University (SPAIN) /

Joaquín Alvado Bañón (joaquin.alvado@ua.es)

Javier Sánchez Merina (jsm@ua.es)

ARCH: architectural cornerstones

CONTENT / The corner plays a very special role in any architectural scale – from the micro to the macro. It is the boundary of architectural spaces, both inside and outside. Corners define places and transitions, they mark beginnings and ends. Corners are the exceptions of any rule.

 

However, the corner has, for a long time been also an architectural theme (the Doric Corner Conflict) of rhythmic-harmonic transition from one side to another, of proportion, scale, dimension and creative materialized expression. The aesthetic solution of the corner is closely connected with the constructive solution.

At all architectural scales we find manifold examples and spatial situations where the corners play a special role representing unexpected creative design solutions: from furniture design to interior fit-out, in constructive details, in the building scale as well as in urban design. Depending on their function, their context, and the designers specific answer, corners appear in different shapes: right-angled, rounded, beveled, recessed, dissolved, different materializations or different roles as spaces of transition.

 

AIMS / Analyzing, understanding and visualizing the meaning of a self-selected corner, describing its role as the end of a grid, an architectural component of precise thought and materialization in different scales (multi scalar context).

 

METHOD /

  1. Identifying a corner of interest within an architectural or urban context (not forcibly made of stone)
  2. Exploring and analyzing its architectural specificities, function and materiality
  3. Determine defining the typology of the corner
  4. Documenting in form of
  5. line drawings (section, elevation, plan, axonometric projection)
  6. 3 photos (from context to detail)
  7. Presenting and discussing the findings

 

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly, 4-hour class arranged with the students:

  1. Introduction / 00.00.2022
  2. Development / 00.00.2022
  3. Final Crit / 00.00.2022

 

EVALUATION /

Evaluation criteria:

  • Originality of the chosen corner object
  • Clarity and depth of the analysis:
    function, design, interaction and impact on the context, typological classification, materiality-immateriality
  • Quality of the presentation material

 

Learning outcome:

  • Learning to identify and understand that architectural elements (here: corners) can have specific roles within different scales and contextual situations.
  • Training analytical and presentation skills.

 

IU Internationale Hochschule /

Thomas Loeffler (thomas.loeffler@iu.org)

Heiner Stengel (heiner.stengel@iu.org)

ARCH: Visual Storytelling – Interaction with Architecture through Photography

CONTENT / This workshop is a spiritual and thematic continuation of ‘Texture, Rhythm, Pattern’ from the fall semester. Students once again use their photo cameras to capture their personal interpretation of human interaction with the architectural environment, and the potentials in visual storytelling through still images.

 

 

AIMS & METHOD / In a similar fashion to the previous semester, the workshop is structured into two photo exercises.

 

In the first exercise students seek for various unique and unusual scenarios in which the architecture of the urban setting influences the way people interact with buildings or the way they interact with each other. They try to capture these strange urban rituals that are characteristic only that one distinct environment, one special context or one micro location.

 

In the second exercise they try to find spatial (architectural) situations where the elements of the visual composition are created by light and shadow, or where light or the lack of it fundamentally changes how we perceive the space.

 

In the process, students further develop their visual compositional skills, learn to understand the compositional values of their built surroundings, and to explore the narrative potentials in their environment beyond the obvious.

 

 

SCHEDULE / Two-week workshop. Weekly on-line classes (+ individual work during the week) arranged with the students:

 

March 25th 2022 (Friday) – 2.00 pm (CET) – Introduction & Project Description

 

March 29th 2022 (Tuesday) – 9.30 am (CET) – Consultation (Project 1)

 

April 1st 2022 (Friday) – 10.00 am (CET) – Presentation & Critical Review (Project 1)

April 5th 2022 (Tuesday) – 9.30 am (CET) – Consultation (Project 2)

 

April 8th 2022 (Friday) – 10.00 am (CET) – Final Critical Review (Project 1&2)

 

EVALUATION / Evaluation is based on the fulfilment of workshop aims. Participating students are expected to gain a better understanding the visual characteristics of their urban surroundings and develop their visual compositional skills.

 

Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Architecture (HUNGARY) /

Portschy, Szabolcs Dávid (portschy.szabolcs.david@epk.bme.hu)

ARCH: Drawing Spatial Movement

CONTENT / Movement is fundamental to our experience of the spaces we inhabit, but design can fail to fully engage with this simple truth. Our representational traditions seem caught in ambitions for static portrayal, capturing our world as frozen moments in a seeming denial of time. So, when we begin designing the drawing tools we turn to are not necessarily promoting ambitions that contemplate the dynamics of everyday activity which our environment consists of. There is also little sense of our place within these drawings.

In our workshop we will begin a critical engagement with movement, building understanding of the nature of dynamic spatial experience, such as perceptual border zones of spatial vagueness, through direct engagement, teasing out implications. We will begin with a walk of fixed time and length, but in numerous locations, engaging with neighbourhoods near and familiar to each workshop participant. We will then start to untangle our experience and evolve our drawing techniques and tools to begin to construct a new vocabulary for dynamic representation. Through this we will start to challenge conventional technique and offer drawn frameworks which can be inhabited by our experience, offer our presence a voice to within the drawing.

AIMS / The aim of our workshop is to critically examine our experience of movement through space and begin to identify means to subvert traditional modes of representation in order to represent this. We therefore aim to identify modes of drawing and representational tools that can enable us to capture movement space so these might offer frameworks for future design proposals informed by movement.

METHOD / We will start with a shared ‘walk’ in the same time but multiple places. On route we will begin to identify perhaps previously overlooked phenomena. What do we notice, what starts to blur or fade, how do we experience these spaces differently in movement? We will experiment with capturing our movement through different means such as drawing, photography, photogrammetry, lidar depending on facilities available. We will evolve these evidences towards a representational language for dynamism

1st day: Introduction
Lecture: Spatial movement and drawing
We will divide into internationally diverse groups for a ‘walk’ taken at the same time for the same time period yet in disparate locations. Each group member will record this using one of a range of techniques agreed within the group. The ‘walk’ constitutes moving through space in the manner and at the speed you are familiar with for the set time.

2nd day: The findings from the ‘walk’ recording are critically analysed and key findings identified. The phenomena each group identify as the most intriguing become the focus of the exploration. How might this growing understanding begin to inform how we draw that space? Are we present within the drawing or are we outside of it? How does this start to challenge traditional forms of architectural representation? How might a drawing start to speak of this experience and assist us in designing within it? Review of each groups drawing tools.

 

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

Initial introduction at the end of the preceding week

Tuesday 29th March Introduction and development

Lecture: Movement and drawing: Sarah and Charlotte

Tuesday 5th April Evolution and Review

 

EVALUATION / Develop these actions:

  •  Engaging critically with traditional modes of representation, questioning the static world they discuss.
  •  Uncovering the variety of spatial experience.
  •  Finishing with experimental proposals for drawing techniques which are capable of speaking of our experience of space through movement.

Bibliography /

  • Allen & Pearson Drawing Futures: Speculations in Contemporary Drawing for Art and Architecture.
  • Robin Evans Translations from Drawings to Building and Other Essays.
  • Perez-Gomez, Pelletier Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge.

University of Brighton (UK):

Sarah Stevens (s.stevens2@brighton.ac.uk)

+

Bergen School of Architecture (Norway):

Charlotte Erkrath (charlotte@bas.org)

ARCH: Genius Loci

CONTENT / We, as designers of buildings and places, need to understand the spaces in which we are creatively working. Without that we cannot begin designing. This workshop is all about using photography as a tool to help us to understand place and to capture our personal take on it. It will provide you with an introduction to a lifelong and transferable skill. This is important because it will encourage you to look carefully at place, to read the intangible elements of place and to record them. The workshop brings together two things: an urban humanities approach to observation and understanding, and the use of photography as a tool to capture your ideas. You do not need to be an expert photographer to participate, a mobile phone camera is ideal.

URBAN HUMANITIES
This workshop uses an urban humanities framework to address the question of what is place – what is its genius loci? It is an emerging way of looking at place that has developed from thinking at UCLA, Berkeley. Take this quote:

“Perhaps the most widely recognized fields of expertise considered relevant to urban concerns are design and planning along with engineering and the physical and social sciences. But what of the humanities? Those fields that aim to understand history, the arts, meaning, expression, and experience make substantial contributions to our thinking about cities and culture. From classicists to contemporary film scholars, humanists enrich an understanding of situated collective life… [but]… the absence of a humanist perspective in urban thought is brutally apparent (Cuff and Wolch, 2016, p. 14).”

This workshop uses the urban humanities to inform a reading of place and to photograph it. In doing so, it addresses this ‘absence’ that Cuff and Wolch draw to our attention. It allows for a subjective, iterative and creative interpretation of place as something of a counter balance to more established objective, data driven, quantitative approaches to urban analyses.

This more humanistic way of looking at place drives artistic practice such as that of Cecilie Sachs Olsen at zURBS artistic collective in Switzerland, http://zurbs.org/wp/biographyintro/. In explaining her work, she draws attention to the fact that:

“zURBS work is situated within the Urban Humanities and the exploration of the complexity of urban space in order to generate new and varied forms of creative output that demonstrates the rich terrain where urbanism, geographical knowledge and practice, and the humanities overlap. Central to this work is creative and practice-based art research” (Sachs Olsen, 2016).

PHOTOGRAPHY
There is a famous article, written by Claire Zimmerman, an architectural historian. published in the Harvard Design Magazine in Fall 2001. In the article – Tugendhat Frames – Claire Zimmerman examines the house designed in the 1930s by Mies van der Rohe in Brno. This house has been, and

still is, often cited by students and academics as one of the prime examples of modernism in architecture. Yet, most of our understanding of it is derived from photographs, the house being inaccessible during the Cold War. The article asks how seeing place through the framed lens of a photographer influences our view of it.

Poyner (2002) makes a strong case for ‘amateur’ (but informed) photographs being very useful in capturing place:

“… By virtue of one’s training or experience one simply looked at things in a different way and selected details and viewpoints which the professional photographer wouldn’t have chosen” (p. 71).

and

Sarah Pink (2006, p. 16) noted that the visual brings fieldwork experience “directly to the context of representation” and the same author argues that, amongst all the senses, the visual as expressed by photography has a strong role to play in the ‘mapping of space’ (Pink, 2011, p. 4).

With these two themes in mind – urban humanities and photographic interpretation – we will explore, in groups, places you are (or are not so) familiar with.

AIMS / The aims of this workshop are, therefore,

  •   To understand space
  •   To think about different way of using photography to capture our ideas
  •   To consider the intangible

To learn how to use photography to communicate

 

METHOD / We will start by thinking a little about the urban humanities – those matters mentioned by Cuff and Welch. We then move on to consider the deliberate framing and composition of the image – in the way Claire Zimmerman describes and then we produce creative output along the lines of Cecilie Sachs Olsen.

We will use different photographic techniques, all of which will be explained to you. In particular:

  •  Photography as found drawings – a very personal view of place
  •  Documentary and found photography – using someone else’s photographs to express your own view
  •  Deep mapping and photography – exploring a very small place in depth using ‘forensic’ photography

You will work in groups, experimenting with these techniques and using them to produce a group portfolio that investigates and interprets a given place.

Everything is designed to be delivered online.

INDICATIVE SCHEDULE (All times are UK)

Friday 25.03.    14h00 GMT [or alternative tba]

Short introduction and initial task

 

WEEK 1

Monday    13h00-15h00

Presentation of the workshop
Urban humanities

Different approaches to photography

Formation of groups

Setting the first task

 

Wednesday 11h30-12h30

Seminar

 

Friday    14h00-16h00

Presentation first task

Interpreting photography

Setting the second task

 

WEEK 2

Monday.   13h00-15h00.   Seminar and questions

All week.   Developing the group project

(Wednesday).   Seminar – feedback and questions

Reviews at given times

Friday 13h00-17h00.    Final submission and review

EVALUATION – ASSESSMENT

Each university has its own expectations and requirements and you will be informed of those separately. As a general guide to assessing your involvement in this workshop the following will be considered:

Evaluation is based on:

  •  A grasp of the role of urban humanities a frame for understanding and interpreting place
  •  Ability to use different photographic techniques, especially ‘archival’ and ;found drawings’ to help an understanding of place.
  • Visual communication
  • Ability to explain and justify an approach take to the brief
  • Ability to produce a group output

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cuff, D. & Wolch, J., 2016. Urban Humanities and the Creative Practitioner. Boom: A Journal of California, 6(3), pp. 12-17.

Sachs Olsen, C., 2016. Re-imagining the city through the Urban Humanities. [Online] Available at: http://geohumanitiesforum.org/project-re-imagining-the-city-through-the-urban- humanities/

Pink, S., 2006. The Future of Visual Anthropology. London: Routledge.

Pink, S., 2011. Amateur photographic practice, collective representation and the constitution of place. Visual Studies, 26(2), pp. 92-101.

Poyner, R., 2002. The Camera as Pen. In: Typographica. New York: Princeton Archhitectural Press.

Zimmerman, Claire (2001) Tugendhat Frames, Harvard Design Magazine, Fall 2001

University of the West of England, Bristol (ENGLAND) /

ARCH: re: cultivation

CONTENT / The urban fabric is interwoven with specific places such as urban gardens, parks, river banks, semi-public or semi-private green areas. Those little lungs of the cities, often play a role of informal gathering spots, where inhabitants can undertake various activities from picnics and barbecues, through sports, yoga, leisure up to everyday walks with pets or simply reading a book. Some of those actions are taken by individuals, while other require the group effort. The beauty of these spaces lies in their appearance in the form of (more or less) well-kept greenery, accompanied with equipment, seats, playgrounds and specific meeting places such as garden houses or sheds.

 

re: cultivation means a response, a cultivation of the plants in urban gardens as a social activity, but also the process of trying to acquire or develop a quality or skill. The “re:” refers also to re-fuse, re-duce, re-use, re-purpose and re-cycle (the 5R principle). Therefore the topic concern designs that will enhance social interaction, which lately was damage by COVID-19 pandemic, but also will pay attention to the eco-friendly materials and their multiply use or recycling.

 

AIMS / The aim of the workshop is to research and find the social potentials in the small green areas in the cities and to propose the factor that enhance social interaction and local community cooperation. The participants should take into account the environmental impact of the proposed architectural objects, as well as their simplicity (understood not as an object to which nothing can be added, but from which nothing can be subtracted in order to fulfil its intended role). The objects what can be retransformed, recycled or re-purpose and are made of local, recycled, unobvious materials will be of high demand.

The workshop will be an initial step to the summer school of architecture, during which participants will develop further their concepts, create shop drawings and finally will build prototypes of those social boosters for public spaces.

 

Have a look at the previous Summer School of Architecture workshops: https://youtu.be/k_NDe6ka-bo

 

 

METHOD / The participants of the workshops will gather into group of 5- 8 members from different universities and cooperate in order to create a preliminary conceptual design of an architectural object that will answer for the need described above. The work on the project will include the research on certain areas (online and onsite – by the students from chosen location), research on the needs of users and potentials of the space, preparation of scenario for actions and social activities, preparation of conceptual design. Next, the concepts will be discussed during the mid-term presentations and further developed in terms of structural design and materialisation with the respect to the mitigating their negative impact on the environment.

 

THECHNIQUE / The presentation of the projects can have a form of sketches, notes, diagrams, CAD drawings, visualisations, collages, mock-ups, animations, videos, and other visual techniques that will support description of the assumed project idea, functioning and materialisation of the architectural object.

The object may have varies forms and functions, and the authors should not limit themselves at the first stage of design.

 

 

 

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

 

Introduction / 11 March 2022.

Mid-term presentations / 18 March 2022.

Final Presentation / 25 March 2022.

Optional consultations 15 and 22 March 2022.

 

EVALUATION /

 

– Quality of the research on the potential spots and needs of local community.

– Originality of the concepts.

– Innovation in social and material solutions.

– Use of materials and solutions that mitigate the negative impact on the environment.

– Clear and comprehensible project content and presentation.

 

 

Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (POLAND) /

Jerzy Łątka (jerzy.latka@pwr.edu.pl)

Agata Jasiołek (jagata.jasiolek@pwr.edu.pl)

 

Yasar University in Izmir (TURKEY) /

Mauricio Morales-Betran (mauricio.beltran@yasar.edu.tr

ARCH: ephemeral architecture: urban follies

CONTENT / We live in a time of change. What we took for granted in the summer of 2019 is now an enormous uncertainty. Each day we sick for answers to questions such as when can we travel? When can we visit a museum? And I ask how can I introduce students, here and worldwide, to the World Heritage City (WHC) of Évora?
Following Darwin’s quote “It Is Not the Strongest of the Species that Survives But the Most Adaptable to Change”, in this workshop we will change the way we travel, by “bringing international students to Évora, and to the city Museums”, and exchange knowledge about architectural heritage, as space and place.
Participants will be asked to design an Urban Folly (from French folie, “foolishness”, a generally non-functional building that was in vogue during the 18th and early 19th centuries, to enhance a natural landscape), an ephemeral structure to place in an urban space, where the unimaginable will happen: the city heritage will be displayed, not inside a traditional and immoveable museum, but in the square or the street, perhaps from where the museum pieces have been found. And, by 5G technology, these Follies will be in contact with the rest of the world and provide a virtual tour to the WHC of Évora.

AIMS / To raise awareness about the local heritage of a WHC. To reflect on how it can be displayed into the public, here and elsewhere, in the outdoors.

METHOD / Interpreting Public Place and Local Heritage – Local participants (Évora) will be paired with international colleagues. Then they will be given an historic urban space in Évora and describe it to the foreign colleagues. To design an architectural structure to enable people (locals, visitors, etc.) to enjoy the historic values of that place. To present the idea in a mock-up.

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class

OFFICIAL TEACHING HOURS: 2 h Tuesdays + 2 h Thursdays 15:00-17:00 (PT)

Day 1 | Introduction of the workshop objectives (video-lecture of 15 minutes) + questions and feedback / Introduce yourself and three major values of the historic core of the city where you are living, in a short video (3min. máx) / Define work groups according to shared city’s values / Group work: Start the development of ideas

Day 2 | Group work: development of ideas and teachers’ feedback

Day 3 | Group work: teachers’ feedback on finalising Mock-up scale 1:50 and presentations in Zoom setting.

Day 4 | Final Crit.

(SELF-) EVALUATION / Answer to these questions in order to identify what skills you acquired:

Question 1 | Our world is increasingly composed of visual images – phones, tablets, laptops, cameras, therefore it is important to develop the ability to recognize, sort, and rearrange them in order to create something new: did you heightened your visual acuity (your ability to look at things on their own terms but also to make visual connections and to turn those visual connections into an evolutionary history that has a past, a present, and a future)?

Question 2 | This workshop has the capacity to be a consequential experience if it is used to enhance your knowledge on cities values, on why and how they can be used as triggers of new architectures. As you study other follies and ephemeral architectural structures, in order to understand how you can design one that responds to the challenge, you became an interactive learner, you expand your mind, you exchange ideas with other students, you work together in groups, and create real world projects and, by so doing – have you enhanced your academic and personal life? Please explain how.

Question 3 | By proposing an interactive learning experience, mixing students from different geographies and cultures, a contemporary solution (to bring cities values to wherever you are) to a real life problem (the impossibility/difficulty to travel to other countries to know indigenous cultures on-site) has been found and communicated using a mock-up – How have you learned with your colleagues and enhanced/enlarged your architecture communication methods?

Question 4 | Working in groups in such a short period, requires the establishment of tasks such as data gathering, discussion/brainstorming of ideas and methods, and time management – have you reached a definition of the concepts of space and place to suitably respond to the workshop proposal on cultural values?

Question 5 | Explain how innovative your proposal is.

Bibliography |  https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/361/
Tuan, Y.-F. (2011). Space and place: the perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Évora University (PORTUGAL)
Sofia Aleixo (saleixo@uevora.pt)

João Santa-Rita (santarita@uevora.pt)

ARCH: Homeland Miniatures: A Collective Digital Travel book

CONTENT / In architectural education, one of the most common and universal representation technique is central perspective which was discovered during Renaissance period. The rational world that Renaissance offered us helps to create a universal language in the field of architecture and enables to represent our thoughts on space so as to create a dialog between ourselves and others. On the other hand, some other techniques like iconography or miniature drawing reflects another understanding of the world and space per se that could be a new way of representation in our era.

 

The understanding of perspective in miniature drawing is different from the European Renaissance painting tradition. The scene depicted usually includes different time periods and spaces in one picture. Thus, we may say that miniature drawing is a multi-layered representation. Miniatures are always a part of book, not like a standalone work of art and because of that they are closely related with the context of the book they were included in.

 

In our “Homeland Miniatures: A Collective Digital Travel book” workshop, we will make a collective travel book that represents different cities/countries through miniature drawings of those homelands. Each student will draw a miniature drawing of his/her homeland or the city where he/she is living at that moment and write a short reflection paragraph that is related with his/her drawing. By putting all these drawings together, we will create our collective digital travel book at the end of the workshop.

 

AIMS / To introduce a new way of looking and understanding the world around us. To start a debate between “Western” and “Eastern” thoughts. To think on how to represent a city/country through one drawing. To discover the textures, important landmarks and cultural artifacts of a city/country. To discover the multi-layered world of miniature drawings and their fragmented but yet holistic spatial characteristics. To discuss on the emancipatory character of architectural representations.

 

METHOD / The tutor will give a lecture on miniature drawing and travel books (seyahatname) and introduce the drawing techniques through various examples. Each student will make one miniature drawing and write a short text about it. The process of the workshop will be as follows:

 

1st > Introduction of the history and technique of miniature drawings and discussion on different cities

2nd > Each student will start to draw fragments of spaces, textures that are related with their homelands

3rd > Each student will propose a draft layout of his/her miniature drawing

4th > Each student will apply all the fragments and textures to his/her miniature drawing and finalise it and write a text about it.

5th > The tutor will put all drawings together to create the collective travel book and each student will present his/her page in it at the final crits session.

 

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

 

Feb. 11th, 2022 (Friday) | 30 minutes – Introduction

Feb. 15th, 2022 (Tuesday) | 11:00-13:00 (CET) – Fragments of spaces, textures

Feb. 18th, 2022 (Friday) | 11:00-13:00 (CET) – Layout of his/her miniature drawing

Feb. 22nd, 2022 (Tuesday) | 11:00-13:00 (CET) – Finalise the miniature drawing and the text

Feb. 25th, 2022 (Friday) | 11:00-13:00 (CET) – Final crits

 

EVALUATION / The following will be considered in the evaluation process:

  • Active participation in discussions and production of drawings
  • Precise drawing in his/her own way
  • Writing a critical reflection text

  

Bibliography /

  • Sener, S., (2007). “A SINGULAR ART: A Theoretical and Artistic Survey on Miniature and Hybrid Possibilities of Traditional Arts in Contemporary Art”, Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design Thesis, Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Mahmut Mutman, Bilkent University.
  • Avci, O., (2016). “Rethinking architectural perspective through reverse perspective in Orthodox Christian iconography”, ITU A|Z Journal of Faculty of Architecture, 12(2), p. 159-171

 

 

MEF University Istanbul (TURKEY) /

Ozan Avci (avcio@mef.edu.tr)

ARCH: 2043 a dinner with Churchill in the Metaverse

CONTENT /

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British Prime Minister (1940-45, 1951-55) in his speech to the meeting in the House of Lords on October 28th, 1943 said “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us,” requesting the House of Commons, bombed out in May 1941 during the World War II, be reconstructed exactly as before. He stated that the old Chamber with rectangular configuration shaped the two-party parliamentary system, the essence of the British democracy. This is a profound and powerful statement that reveals how the environment we have created constantly shapes and affects us and how we perceive things.

Since 2020, the pandemic has made more apparent the flexibility or rigidity, not only spatial, of the structures that organize the world we inhabit, the times of adaptation and the human predisposition to change. On the other hand, it has also revealed the increasingly recurring technological lifesaver, based on the need for networked, remote work without physical limitations—a clear invitation to reflect on how we architects can position ourselves to unfold the future. University of Universities, a pioneering example of adaptation, becomes the ideal setting for this reflection.

In With a new mind Daniel H. Pink (2008) speaks of the end of the “Knowledge Age” and the beginning of a new era, the “Conceptual Age”, where the future belongs to a type of person with a global and creative vision. That seeks transcendence instead of people with logical, linear and computational capabilities, typical of the information age. In the middle of an intermittent pandemic, we will consider whether, as Churchill did with the old camera after World War II, we cling to the replica of the already known models that have shown their deficiencies, or we begin to anticipate what the new ones may be like. Physicalities, spatialities and social relationships that will “shape” the future, and consequently us, or rather, our alter-egos: the avatars. It is time to enter The Metaverse.

The Metaverse responds to the growing incursions and dependence on the virtual world, where users can interact socially and financially using an avatar. Interactivity, incorporeality and continuity are essential for its operation. The Metaverse concept is not new but originates in 1992 in the novel Snow Crash by American writer Neal Stephenson. In 2018, director Steven Spielberg popularized it with the film Ready Player One, based on the 2011 Ernest Cline novel of the same name. Different companies such as Epic Games, Roblox or Facebook are leading and developing their Metaverse concept in which it will converge the physical or tangible with the digital. These companies will not constitute the Metaverse by themselves. However, they are already the first “architects” and inhabitants in it, and they are anticipating a paradigm shift for many professions and markets, architecture being one of them.

As the futurist Matthew Ball points out in A Framework for the Metaverse, what happens in this space will become part of our culture. “Building things with friends within virtual worlds will become common, and major events within the most popular virtual worlds will become pop culture news stories.”

 

AIMS /

  • Learn from our own experiences by taking an introspective journey to the food-space relationship.
  • Propose new ways of socialization around virtual/hyperreal food experiences.
  • Looking around us and highlighting the physical formats that are falling into disuse or being replaced by digital formats that reinforce our increasing dependence on the virtual world: digital money, documentation, art, workplaces, education, entertainment, shopping, socializing.
  • Conceptualize the future and propose a new professional framework for architects and designers.

 

METHOD /

Among the many transformations and changes in different sectors that The Metaverse proposes, this workshop invites us to focus on a critical economic and social engine in most cultures. We will talk about food and its power to socialize. We will first look at it by analyzing the traditional role it has been playing in our lives as a binding agent of social and family relationships, as a builder of memories, as a stimulator of meanings. After looking at the past, we will now reflect on the relationship that food establishes with the spaces where it is enjoyed. More specifically, we will imagine those gastronomic spaces of the virtual future.

Day 0: Launch Part 1 and 2

PART 1. FOOD-SPACE-FOOD (INDIVIDUAL WORK)

Describe a space and a food/meal from your culture that both are intimately and uniquely intertwined, creating a distinctive symbiosis as food-space relationship. Your chosen space gives the food a unique dimension, just as the food gives the space an exceptional grade. Tell us, using ppt format, how the food builds the space and vice versa.

Bonus reflection, any finding in other species?

PART 2. ARCHEOLOGY OF THE VIRTUAL GASTRONOMIC FUTURE (TEAMWORK 2 STUDENTS)

After extensive research, groups will present, using ppt format, the most relevant findings of existing experiences around food, or that can relate to food, in virtual environments. Reflect on how this “Meta-reality” can affect our relationship with food. Conclude with a summary table/chart/diagram of the most relevant features of the findings.

Day 1: Presentation Part 1 and 2. Launch Part 3.

PART 3. 2043 (TEAMWORK 4 STUDENTS)

We are in 2043, a hundred years after Churchill’s mythical quote “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”. The students propose a space, menu and eating experience in The Metaverse for virtual social gatherings around food. The following will be designed and presented (ppt):

  1. The virtual space: a transformable geometry and atmosphere
  2. The menu: 1 starter + 1 main course + 1 dessert showing their cutlery and eating ritual
  3. The eating experience in 4 interactions: avatar-avatar, avatar-food, avatar-space, space-food

Do not miss including Mr. Churchill’s avatar in the performance.

Important note: The student’s mindset should be wholly detached from reality. A dining experience in The Metaverse should benefit from unprecedented, exceptional and fictional conditions.

Along with the ppt presentation, students will submit an A4 landscape manifest with the ten key features of the dining project. Each feature page includes the feature name, descriptive short sentence and image.

Day 2: Final presentation and jury

 

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop

 

  • Friday, February 11th 14:00 (CET)

Workshop 02a Presentation & Launch (30 minutes)

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83777914345

 

  • Tuesday, February 15th 10:00-11:00 (CET)

Review & Progress

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84853602418

 

  • Friday, February 18th 10:30-14:00 (CET)

PART 1 & 2 PRESENTATIONS

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87018723206

 

  • Tuesday, February 22th 10:00-11:00 (CET)

Review & Progress

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86718328382

 

  • Friday, February 25th 10:30-14:00 (CET)

PART 3 PRESENTATIONS AND FINAL CRITICS

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82256887417

 

EVALUATION /

The following qualities will be positively valued:

  • Risk
  • Creativity
  • Understanding of the task
  • Submission of all the required elements

 

Grades will be based on each university’s requirements.

 

 

American University in Dubai (UAE) / Jose Carrillo (jcarrillo@aud.edu)

 

 

 

GUEST JURORS /

 

Dr. Juan Carlos Arboleya

Physical Biochemist. Expert in improving sensory and nutritional properties of foodstuffs

Professor and Researcher at the Basque Culinary Center (University of Mondragón, Spain)

Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, published by Elsevier

 

José de la Rosa Morón

Gastronomic Scientist and Food Alchemist Lab

Fermentedfreelance

 

Dr. Georges Kachaamy

Architect, expert in Future & Virtual Environments

Professor of Architecture, Director of the Center for SAAD Research, Innovation and Design (CRID) at AUD.

 

Jashan Sippy

Food-Architect. Expert in sustainable food future

Sugar and Space | Food Design Nation | Online School of Food Design

 

José Antonio Antoli Salva

Architect, Enterpreneur

3DSC | Virtual You (VIU) | Savory Spain

 

Dr. Francesca Zampollo

Food Design Thinking Consultant, Teacher, Facilitator, Researcher

Chief of Inspiration at Online School of Food Design

Editor of International Journal of Food Design

Founder of International Food Design Society

Huffington Post Blogger

 

Sergi Freixes

Historian, food designer and graphic designer.

Coordinator and professor of the Master’s Degree in Food Design at IED Kunsthal Bilbao, and the postgraduate course in Food Event Design at IED Barcelona

Partner of the Food Design company Biscuits Barcelona

Studio Freixes Pla

 

Caroline Hobkinson

Anthropologist

Experiential event expert investigating the interrelationships between Tech, Food, Art and the Senses

Collaborations with Unilever, Disney, Barilla, Magnum, Selfridges, Bang & Olufsen, Kensington Palace

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY /

The Metaverse Primer. (2022). Mattewball. Retrieved February 1, 2022, from https://www.matthewball.vc/all/category/The+Metaverse+Primer

 

Metaverse Ecosystem Infographic. (2022). Https://Www.Newzoo.Com. Retrieved February 1, 2022, from https://newzoo.com/insights/infographics/metaverse-ecosystem-infographic/?utm_campaign=GGMR%202021&utm_content=170823463&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&hss_channel=lcp-1710460

 

Nudake. (2022). Https://Www.Instagram.Com/. Retrieved February 1, 2022, from https://www.instagram.com/nu_dake/

 

Bompasandparr. (2022). Http://Bompasandparr.Com/. Retrieved February 1, 2022, from http://bompasandparr.com/projects

 

This is Mold. (2022). Https://Thisismold.Com/. Retrieved February 1, 2022, from https://thisismold.com/

 

Alien Worlds. (2020). Https://Www.Netflix.Com/. Retrieved February 1, 2022, from https://www.netflix.com/ae-en/title/80221410

 

Ortega, L., & Puente, M. (2017). Total Designer: Authorship in the Architecture of the Postdigital Age (English ed.). Actar.

 

Pink, D. H. (2006). A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. Riverhead Books.

ARCH: the space for learning as a landscape of desire

CONTENT / We started last academic course saying that many changes have been in the architecture profession since Journey to the East was written: the diary of Le Corbusier’s trip in 1911. This book is a collection of visual notations or impressions perceived by Le Corbusier as a visitor to several cities in Southeast Europe. Later, the acquired disciplinary knowledge acted as an inspiration for his architecture.

Our aim last year was to travel to an unknown part of the city with the task to practice an activity to learn from the local, its technology, culture, and society. It was an experience to empathize Architecture as a Comparative Study, learning as a trip, a journey as an experience.

 

We start this course realizing that many changes have also occurred since last year. Let’s focus in just this important fact: no one is capable to predict the future.

Our workshop takes this uncertainty as an opportunity to imagine new realities and, why not, coexisting at the same time.

This time we will discuss and go further with our proposals and designs for our desired trips, redefining the limits of architecture by experiences to build up research.

 

AIMS / To identify a desired experience. To work with the imagination and describe a place for your experience. To find opportunities in your desires to start with a project. To introduce oneself to the class. To get to know the rest of the future members of your working group. To learn how to contribute to group work.

 

METHOD / The student’s desires as building material. To introduce our personal skills and portfolio into a place. Trip to a new destiny you desire to create.

 

1st day: Introduce yourself presenting a 3min video with the values of your experiences in the desired reality.

 

2nd day: Group work according to your common interests. Connect your realities in a story board (free technique).

 

3rd day: Final crit. Design your Zoom setting. Mock-up scale 1:1.

 

SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:

 

Introduction / 01 Feb 2022.

Video of experience / 04 Feb 2022.

Group story board / 08 Feb 2022

Final Crit / 11 Feb 2022.

 

EVALUATION / Develop the answers to 3 questions from these 12:

 

  1. The WORKSHOP proposes that students begin to build a complete thought to tackle projects, to process, organize, view and display information so that “data collection” became proactive rather than an analytical tool. Have I been able to go beyond analysis procedure and convert the project into a proposition display?

 

  1. The students have to learn to criticize their work and to draw conclusions. They have to process systems and models of architectural production, reformulating nonobvious descriptions, focusing their gaze on the invisible structures, not having preconceived ideas, producing unexpected findings, and non-discursive reasoning. Have I used my own ways of expression reformulating descriptions and avoiding the obvious and the use of direct images of the project culture?

 

  1. The student begins to explore architectural expression systems to formalize their projective ideas. How many ways of expression have I used at work and what is the value expressed by each of them?

 

  1. We have to learn to talk and discuss about architectural sustainability criteria, adding the concept of ecological niche project (mental territory, social, material, technical, medium-environmental, etc). Have I addressed the theme of THE WORKSHOP responding to the proposal on the sustainability?

 

  1. We are going to know how to work in-group to discover the roles in production systems. How much information data made in-group have I used to express my project?

 

  1. The students must participate and contribute with their ideas to the class as an essential part of knowledge. What is the intensity used to express my ideas through the architectural expression ways?

 

  1. The students must learn to establish a personal lexicon to express his architectural ideas. Have you expressed your ideas through a personal lexicon, or have you imitated expression systems used by other designers seen in the media (magazines or Internet)?

 

  1. You need positively assess risk and innovation as a necessary condition of design. Innovation defined as the use of allied disciplines to develop intellectual and technical tools to create new realities, within their own reality, exceeding the established models. Do I use allied disciplines for innovative production?

 

  1. The students must enter, step by step, work details the project culture, you must learn to interpret and criticize from their own proposal. How many data have you appropriated from the culture to express my project?

 

  1. You should produce an open system work, with more questions than answers. How many questions have you made throughout the design process and how many have you tried to answer?

 

  1. Skills: Interest in the contribution, regardless of the attitude from which it was generated. What is the interest of my contribution?

 

  1. Attitudes: how to tackle the problem independent of the outcome. Have I solved with intellectual and material effort to present the proposal?

 

Bibliography / Le Corbusier. Journey to the East. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987.

 

Alicante University (SPAIN) /

Joaquín Alvado Bañón (joaquin.alvado@ua.es)

Javier Sánchez Merina (jsm@ua.es)