AIMS / To research and design an emergency architecture in chosen context.
STRENGTHS / Understanding the need for a shelter in different emergency contexts and situations (refugee, natural disasters, homeless). Creating a possible scenarios and solution.
Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (POLAND):
Understanding the historical dynamics and characteristic features of the urban built heritage and the interaction with its dwellers in the process of developing a personal interpretation of the city through the eye of the camera.
TECHNIQUE
Students will use their camera in the exploration of urban patterns, textures, visual rhythm, contrasts, contextual interrelations and constellations, between the city and its inhabitants and prepare their personal reading of the city through a photo series.
AIMS
To understand how buildings and built structures and their interaction with the living environment define and initiate unique cultural, social and psychological synergies.
STRENGTHS
Developing a new perspective and understanding of the individual character of our urban environment.
Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Architecture (HUNGARY):
CONTENT / The church of Bethlehem was built in 1959 by German architect Joachim Matthaei and is considered as a prime examples of northern German post-war modernism architecture.
Desacred in 2005 the former church building houses a kindergarten since 2011. The award-winning transformation was planned by Stoelken and Schmidt architects. While interior fit out and open spaces of the kindergarten have been carefully designed the adjacent square has never been considered a public space of relevance in the vibrant quarter of Eimsbuettel.
The former bell tower – a significant monument built as a concrete structure cladded with bricks today only remains due to its status a heritage listed object and is surrounded by a fence inaccessible to the public. The neglected square surrounding the tower needs an upgrade to become the public space once again it was originally intended to be.
AIMS / The design project intends to transform the forgotten tower into a public building within the quarter that is deeply interwoven with the local community and enrooted and interwoven with the public spaces surrounding its entrance.
Inside the building today only a set of stairs and a few concrete slabs remain. The church bells have been removed. An existing roof terrace, once being home to the church bells offers a panoramic view of Hamburg’s cityscape.
The local church is looking for concepts to re-use the heritage protected building with unconventional, creative, out of the box and reasonable ideas to enliven this unique example of post-war modernism. Bethlehem tower and square is envisioned to be a lively public space catering for the multiple realities present in Hamburg’s inner-city quarter of Eimsbuettel.
From a wedding retreat to co-working spaces, rehearsal rooms, housing units or even a climbing center anything seems possible. So give free reign to your architectural-urbanistic fantasies!
METHOD /The Workshop focuses on adaptive reuse of a public space and a public building by design.
SCHEDULE
12.11.21 Introduction
19.11.21 Workshop
26.11.21 Workshop / Presentation
EVALUATION / Groups of two students propose concepts for an adaptive re-use of a former church tower and the adjacent square as an important public space in Hamburgs inner city quarter of Eimsbuettel.
groundfloor plan indicating relation of open spaces 1:100
Reinterpreting the notion of architecture through reuse of existing buildings and areas.
TECHNIQUE
Through exploration of existing and underused buildings and areas in the city we would like to discover new infinite places reinterpreting the notion of commons in the EU cities.
AIMS
To reflect on the role of the architecture and explore new tools for the architectural and urban design, through innovative participatory methods. The WS will include talks with practitioners and experts, reading seminars and co-desing sessions.
STRENGTHS
Interdisciplinar and Intercultural. The aim is to produce an ATLAS that can be used as the starting point for further explorations and reflections.
Umeå University (Sweden) / Malmö University (Sweden):
Storytelling – interpreting place through imagination and language.
TECHNIQUE
Through using the rhythm, tone and intonation of language explain and question place in words from language(s) you are not familiar with.
AIMS
To use languages and words that students are not familiar with to create a story that helps a listener to read a place, even if that listener does not ‘speak’ the language.
STRENGTHS
International, avoids the use of English uses a lingua franca, explores a medium of communication neglected in architecture and urbanism. Accessible to all students regardless of their mother tongue or other known languages.
University of the West of England, Bristol (ENGLAND):
METHOD / Thinking and seeing at emptiness as a design strategy that supports the construction of a place.
TECHNIQUE / Emptiness is a tool and a method of experimentation that allows the identification of strategies that improve a physical place that human can occupy spiritually.
AIMS / Working from a context that reaffirms the importance of emptiness in all gestures and actions, which constantly confront the constructed space and the natural space where we live daily.
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 a matter present in the built space. We speak of active emptiness, that is, an emptiness that generates and provides symbolic and identity spaces.
DATE:
5 to 12 November
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto:
Analyses & Self-reflection on different creativity styles. Based on 3 frameworks of design. 3 pre-recorded lectures about theory of creativity and workshops will be given as base for the exercise.
TECHNIQUE
First week will be desiccated to production of fast ideas, drawings/sketches based on theory and workshops. Second week will be dedicated to refine one concept.
AIMS
Undertraining theory of creativity and understanding of own design strength based on individual fast test-design exercised.
STRENGTHS
Developing more couscous and more structured and more approach to own creativity.
Use drawing as a tool to understand the experiences of people in place.
TECHNIQUE
Build a relationship with a participant in the neighbourhood you are studying and make a series of drawings of their experiences/stories/histories.
AIMS
To challenge the generic idea of ‘the user’ by understanding the nuanced and complex experiences of people in the places where they live, and how the built environment and urban form impact these experiences.
STRENGTHS
Use architectural skills combined with anthropology, to expand beyond common methods of analysis in architecture.
Architecture at Queen’s University Belfast School of Natural and Built Environment (UK) :
Identify and analyse the topographic condition you would like to work with in response to the brief (eg: land that becomes an island, land/water edge, open water).
TECHNIQUE
Through models, physical and digital, develop ways of dealing with unpredictable water levels to propose a structure for shelter, be it attached to land and responsive or amphibious or buoyant…
AIMS
To stimulate quick design responses for scenarios which require adaptable solutions.
STRENGTHS
Employ architects’ ability to solve complex problems to offer solutions for extreme situations (non-site specific solutions with site specific knowledge, skills, materials).
Through models, physical and digital, develop ways of dealing with unpredictable water levels to propose a structure for shelter, be it attached to land and responsive or amphibious or buoyant…
AIMS
To appreciate cognitive mapping as a tool that assigns preferences, determines attitudes and predicts possibilities.
STRENGTHS
To transcend the familiarity with cartographic maps (that correspond to a dimensional reality) and explore a plurality of experiences/ cultures/sites via alternative representation techniques.
CONTENT / What it is relevant on Architecture and Art, talking about objects is the matter. Matter as a physical substance that create atmospheres, relations and light.
The proposal for the workshop is to create matter with lines in order to design a “Material City”.
As a second attempt for this workshop, using the definition of Marble, we are going to create matter with a pattern of lines and, going beyond, to design one “Marble City”. For this purpose, we will work together with MIRO.
AIMS / To understand the presence of the matter in our projects.
To relate drawings, physical models and video as a way to produce an architectonical_artistic project.
METHOD / The students will use the drawing to create matter.
We will draw lines and model them to create a space as a matter.
Part 1
Draw. Individual Work.
Select a piece of marble, draw, and model the lines that constitute the matter of the stone.
Bibliography
“Power of ten”. Charles and Ray Eames.
“How I built a toaster from scratch”. Thomas Thwaites. https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch
Part 2
Model. Group Work.
Transform the lines into a three_dimensional object
Bibliography
“Cloud Cities and Solar balloon travel”. Tomas Sarraceno.
Work all together to design a “Material City” with all your ideas in MIRO.
Bibliography
“Let me tell you about my boat.” – The Life Aquatic. Wes Anderson
SCHEDULE / Workshop:
17 Sept / Presentation
24 Sept / Part 1 + 2
1 Oct / 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 non obvious 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 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 student 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 student 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 student 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.
STRENGTHS / Finding opportunities of Multimedia Dawing_Model_Video relationships to start with a project.
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 /
Identifying a corner of interest within an architectural or urban context (not forcibly made of stone)
Exploring and analyzing its architectural specificities, function and materiality
Determine defining the typology of the corner
Documenting in form of
line drawings (section, elevation, plan, axonometric projection)
3 photos (from context to detail)
Presenting and discussing the findings
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:
Introduction / 30 Apr 2021.
Development / 03-14 May 2021.
Final Crit / 14 May 2021.
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.
CONTENT / Architectural details are often seen or even reduced to tools for solving technical issues and other things related to construction. Or they are described in relation to architectural styles. But what happens when we look at the detail and use the detail as a form of spatial agency?
Agency has to do with performance. It fosters relationships. Agency is the capacity of an actor (detail) to act in a given environment (whole). Within that mindset we wonder whether the architectural detail can go beyond the mere solving of a technical issue and thus having agency? What is the relationship between the architectural detail and the conceptual intent of the building to which it belongs? Is it only ornamental details that can have agency or do other types of details have spatial agency? If we would affirm that an architectural detail can have agency, then this implies that details could teach us something about important themes related to the Anthropocene…
Through this workshop you will be invited to find and explore the relationship between material, the place a detail has in a project and the overall concept and intent of the project. You will be asked to consider in what ways a detail can represent the whole? How can you use the development of an architectural detail to move the project forward? How can the detail highlight and address actual ‘spatial’ urgencies?
So basically, it comes down to this crucial question: ‘Can a detail save the world?’
AIMS / To identify a place as a desire. To work with the imagination as a real context. To describe a place with 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 / Model-making, sketching, drawing, collage and annotating. Documentation of the process in a Leporello booklet A6.
1st day: Brings up to date regarding the state of your ongoing project or body of work developed during the semester. Formulate a clear intent.
2nd day: Individual work developing of the detail and documentation of the process. Discussion of the work in small peer-groups.
3rd day: Final crit.
TECHNIQUE / Documenting the process of the workshop through producing a small A6 Leporello booklet. No waste! Discussing the works in small groups. Organising a feedback carousel.
Together these Leporello booklets form a new collection of ‘details with intent’.
AIMS /
To consider that in a design process the arrow does not always point from the large to the small.
To think spatially in a multidirectional way.
To consider the architectural detail as an architectural gesture: something small that can have a big impact.
To get acquainted with the concept of spatial agency.
To experience documenting as an ongoing production and part of the design process.
STRENGTHS /
Putting the architectural detail center-stage.
Exploring the impact of the small in relation to the whole.
To work on a very tactile thing, as a sharp focus, but which also has the potential for a greater impact.
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:
Introduction / 30th April 2021.
Development / 3-13th May 2021.
Final Crit / 14th May 2021.
EVALUATION /
Have I been able to formulate an intent for my project?
Did I explore different options?
Was I able to hold on to more than one line of thought simultaneously?
Was I able to document my process and development in an understandable way?
Did I succeed to communicate my insights and development in a clear way, both graphically and in annotating of the graphics.?
Did I increase my knowledge on spatial agency?
Was I able to express my thoughts and engage my peers in a conversation?
How much did I use experimentation to move the assignment forward?
Bibliography / Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy Till. Beyond Discourse: Notes on Spatial Agency. Footprint: Agency in Architecture: Reframing Criticality un Theory and Practice, Spring 2009, pp 97-111.
James Corner. The Agency of Mapping. Mappings (Denis Cosgrove ed.). Reaktion Books, 1999, pp 213-252.
Faculty of Architecture KULeuven Campus Sint-Lucas Brussel/Gent /
CONTENT / Today, architecture, public spaces, gardens and landscapes are experiencing moments of contamination like never before seen in the history of these disciplines. Probably, during the Renaissance and soon after, major projects such as Versailles brought together the disciplines 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 greater contamination between the closed space of architecture and the open space of gardens, landscape, parks, and public space.
AIMS / The workshop aims to investigate the relationship between inside and outside by imagining the disappearance of closed and open space, generating interconnected and fluid spaces.
METHOD / Students are asked to choose a place, either real or imagined, and propose spaces of relationship between architecture and landscape. Sections, diagrams, maps or any other media they consider useful to redesign of the ground of cities.
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 / Berrizbeita A, Inside outside: Between Architecture and Landscape. Editor Rockport Pub.
Corner J., The High Line, Phaidon.
……….
Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria (Italy) / Valerio Morabito(valerio.morabito@unirc.it)
CONTENT / Everyone has a favourite architect and artist and we would like to live two days and at least a night in one of the designed dwellings in an urban context by her or him. In this case we can understand the spaces of the house in the phenomenological way and know how it was more important for the architect, which were their concepts. It has to be part of the city because we will try to discover its way of integration.
In this pandemic period, we notice the openness of the architecture publications, magazines and even the famous architect’s will to share the precious information. In this way, we invite you to explore your most wanted building through, first of all, the plans and sections, second of all, the conceptual 3D model and, third of all, the short interview with the architect and someone from their office.
All of them create an imaginary atmosphere about that building and play with new spaces which you will add on the conceptual 3D model. You will design your house based on your needs, but related to the initial concept. So, we provoke you to re-design the former.
This year we have organized a 2-week workshop living in our favourite architect’s building.
It is also an experience to study the landscape of the windows of this house, because we will find many photos that have captured the exterior context and the way of entering the light in a room. Through these images the look is home to show the architect’s intentions.
We discover a fascinating world of the house only in two-week discussions and your serious analysis.
AIMS / To identify a dwelling as a desire. To work with the found documents, imagination and your needs. To describe a city with your chosen house in collaboration with your favourite architect or office of architecture. To find opportunities in your desires to start with a project.To introduce oneself to the class.
METHOD / The student’s life and interests as building concept and way of insertion in a context. To introduce our personal skills to re-design a building. Live imaginarily to a new space, which you desire to know.
1st day: Introduce yourself presenting a 3min video with the values of your interests of an architect.
2nd day: Group work according to your common interests. Connect around the main architect’s ideas from his or her period of design. Here we will meet with persons who appreciate the same architect, but not the same ideas, details.
3rd day: Final crit. Design your Zoom setting.
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:
Introduction / 30 th April, 2021.
Development / 3-7th May, 2021.
Final Critics / 10-14 th May, 2021.
EVALUATION /
Bibliography / The collection of El Croquis magazines.
The collection of Domus magazines.
The collection of OASE magazines.
The collection of SAN ROCCO magazines.
The collection of sITA – studies in History and Theory of Architecture publications.
Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urban Planning, BUCHAREST, ROMANIA/
CONTENT / In this workshop we will explore different approaches and methods in relation to moving and sensing bodies. We will look briefly at how artist and thinkers have used walking as a means to think, create and converse different terrains.
Together we will examine how walking in certain situations affects our knowledge, that we gain from experience, literacy and landscape views from the perspective of art. Participants will be invited to take part in a few exercises that are based around walking and to look at their own movement and walk through their environments and try ways to make that visible.
Participants can expect to walk indoors and outdoors, to sketch their ideas and make documentation of their movement, to share ideas and to discuss their own and others, to view work of others.
AIMS / To explore different ways of walking and collecting, measuring, thinking and sensing.
To gain insight into environmental, societal and personal layers of urban or natural landscapes.
To create visual documentation of these explorations.
EVALUATION / Assessment will be based on the following learning outcomes. Participants should be able to:
discuss different examples of walking for example in artworks, texts or exhibitions.
to engage independently with the course material, through discussion, writing or visual methods in their own work.
SCHEDULE / Prior to the workshop an audio lecture will be made available for participants to listen to before the 11th of May.
Tuesday 11th of May
Presentation of outline
Small group discussions
Walking exercise
Discussions
Bibliography / Selected pages from the publications will be made available before the workshop.
– Careri, F. (2017). Walkscapes: Walking as an aesthetic practice. Ames. Culicidae Architectural Press.
– Solnit, R. (2000). Wanderlust: A history of walking. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
Housing forms the rooms, neighborhoods and cityscapes of our everyday lives. Housing is where our most personal happiness and societal well-being originate and find their expression. Simultaneously housing illustrates personal dramas and social ills. The Question of Housing (referring to Engels, Friedrich: Zur Wohnungsfrage. Leipzig, 1872) is increasingly reduced to the phenomena of the real estate market and disassociated from the cultural practice of architectural urbanism. Across Europe alternative models of housing concepts are lacking and for large parts of societies it is becoming more and more difficult to gain access to self-determined and affordable housing.
The right to housing is a human right. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly and states that „Everyone has the right to standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.“ (Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Paris, 1948).
AIMS
Housing Europe – Challenging Sameness investigates the interrelation between urban design and architecture, between housing and social reality taking the participating University Cities as its Case Studies. Housing is the field of architecture most heavily influenced by formal, social and spatial conventions. Investigating specific typologies of housing in different urban environments and visualizing the manifold forms and types, considering the various scales of public and private interfaces aims to broaden the understanding of – and the perspective on Housing.
The relationship of density, complexity, difference and openness of spatial concepts and use arises in every housing design concept regardless of its location or size.
Today various forms of (re-)densifications continue to absorb the never-ending flow of new urban inhabitants while city expansions are being developed as new island within ever-growing metropolitan areas. At the same time shrinking cities, abandoned real estate speculations, or vast structural changes are phenomena found in various regions across Europe. All of these scenarios impact the specific responses to The “Question of Housing”.
What can we learn from traditional housing typologies?
How does housing types differ in various parts of Europe (or further)?
How can we learn from the specificities of the other?
How can the battle for quantity be transformed into new architectural quality?
How does the concept of adaptability manage the constant changes of individual and common demands?
How does the demand for adaptable, neutral structure relate to the fact architects are asked to create specific, unique buildings?
Which forms of housing do residents really identify with?
Due to factors like climate, culture, social practices, design – to name a few – the use of public space differs widely in different parts of Europe. Even if the proportion of ownership resided Housing varies greatly throughout Europe, the forms of Housing seem to be more of the same in different parts of the continent – but is this really true? New forms of communities, processes and ownership models are being encouraged and developed to either cope with an ever-increasing demand for affordable housing in rapidly developing urban environments or the immediate demands of structural shifts.
The term sameness has an ambiguous meaning. On the one hand it describes a lack of variety, uniformity and even monotony – on the other hand sameness defines the quality of being the same which has the capacity to generate identity through similarity.
METHOD
Housing Europe – Challenging Sameness identifies, analyses, visualizes and explains specific typologies of Housing present in the respective Case Study Locations. Representing the most important characteristics in a consistent manner: key facts, photo, axonometric projection of research object and urban context and axonometric projection of a selected single unit.
Comparing typical structures aids in understanding spatial qualities and deficits of urban housing architectures. How do essential architectural elements like dimension, proportion, cohesion, access, circulation, representation, private and public space contribute to the urban architectural form of Housing in the specific context? Creating an understanding for both conventions as well as concepts of alternative, unexpected spatial configurations, promoting the ideas of radical spatial, social and functional mix.
The Workshop focuses urban housing typologies and the multiplicity of relations between the architectural object and the city. As a manual of existing typologies, the outcome of the International Workshop allows all participants of Housing Europe – Challenging Sameness to evaluate existing conditions of Housing in a broader context based on different urban realities. This knowledge encourages a new thinking regarding the own design process that transfers, translates and transposes this understanding to ultimately challenge sameness with experimental Urban Architecture that has to be deeply enrooted and interwoven with the context of the contemporary city.
SCHEDULE
23.04.21Introduction / Workshop
30.04.21Workshop / Presentation
EVALUATION
Groups of two students to analyze, visualize and communicate on housing project
Key facts of research object
Series of photos
Axonometric projection of research object and urban context
Axonometric projection of a single unit
Evaluation of Drawings after Hand-in
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Engels, Friedrich: Zur Wohnungsfrage. Leipzig, 1872
Janson Alban; Wolfrum Sophie: City as Architecture. Basel, 2018
Wietzorrek, Ulrike: Wohnen+: Von Schwellen, Übergangsräumen und Transparenzen, Basel 2014
Wolfrum, Sophie: Squares – Urban Spaces in Europe. Basel, 2014
CONTENT / Once hugely determinant in the development of shoreside urban areas, the evolution of city structure, and vital in the survival of the local communities, the role and hence the appreciation of urban riverfronts largely diminished, somewhere in the last century. With the development of infrastructure and the general social and economic transformations, rivers were often viewed as obstacles in city planning. It wasn’t until about three decades ago that cities all around Europe began to rediscover the underlying enormous potential of urban rivers.
Beyond the apparent aesthetic, recreational values, rivers also largely define urban identity, and at the same time evoke a spiritual bond, cultural and historical cohesion among twin cities along their banks. Danube alone connects four capitals and a number of large towns both physically and culturally. Yet, up to this point there still are a great number of urban riverfronts which have been underused partly due to bad design, or simply by oversight.
AIMS / This workshop aims at the investigation of the relationship between inter-urban rivers and riverside communities; the understanding exploration of the potential of underutilised embankment sites, and the inspiration of architecture students to exploit this potential through creative design thinking and collaboration.
METHOD / Working in groups of 2 or 3, students explore the possibility of small-scale design interventions in larger riverside cities.
Using online maps, like Google Earth they locate urban locales, smaller embankment sites which in spite of their obvious proximity to residential areas have clearly failed to create the natural connection between the people and the water; or even worse, which currently act as a barrier between the community and the river.
Then, they select one and create design ideas to reintroduce, restore or strengthen the bond, the interaction. The groups lay out a series of design solutions which together help reinforce local, visual as well as international and intercultural identity, at the same time.
SCHEDULE / Two-week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:
1st class – Introduction & potential site mapping
2nd class – Development of conceptual solutions
3rd class – Final Crit
EVALUATION / Evaluation is based on the fulfilment of workshop aims. After the workshop students are expected to have a better understanding of river cities, the ability to evaluate the contextual quality of embankment sites, and to be able to create the scene of community interaction with the river through the language of architecture.
CONTENT / In his book Construire autrement in 2006, the builders, architect, artist, planner (…) Patrick Bouchain reflects on alternative way of building societies: “I believe in temporariness and mobility of things, in exchange. And I work in order to create, in architecture, a situation in which construction could be achieved in another way and could produce unexpectedness, and thus enchantment. Construire autrement is using ideas that I experienced/experimented [same word in French] with a lot of delight and then kept from a construction site to another in order to reach this goal: building within the context, knowing the rule, not acting but transforming, doing the least as possible in order to give as much as possible, involving everyone, interpreting, giving some time, transmitting, never doing the same thing…”
The phenomena global development and the current urban condition of our cities, induce to think about a different possible way of intervening on abandoned and empty spaces. This matter has alerted public awareness and produced a debate in which we are all involved as architect and urban designers. Thinking about the city as a place of experimentation in which citizens primarily, politicians, investors, public administrators and technicians are working together to contribute and to improve the quality conditions of life for the cities, means to design more open and flexible cities, improving our tools and references, towards a more sustainable future. Starting from these considerations, the workshop aims at identifying different points of view on the role of the architects and planners in the contemporary city, starting from an alternative way of “building”.
Starting from the experience of the Workshop held in October 2020 (ARCH EU1s 2020-21) with students participating from 6 different universities: Umeå University, School of Architecture; Malmö University, Urban Studies; Alicante University, School of Architecture; University of Nicosia, Department of Architecture; University Ion Mincu of Bucharest, Department of Architecture; University of Bristol, School of Architecture; about the Architecture as the art of building communities; we have learned that in the current pandemic situation we have an opportunity that can bring us beyond the trans-national/scalar/disciplinary boards learning from the local context, culture and society, and going beyond languages, national regulations. We built an ATLAS of more than
200 “infinite places” as possible places for a future intervention, sharing and reflecting on the potential of each of this places in 6 countries in Europe.
AIMS /
To unpack the ATLAS, considering the experience of the places.
To find opportunities in neglected and forgotten area/buildings.
To identify a potential place, from the existing ATLAS, as context of experimentation and work with the imagination in defining new rules for a collective “Imaginary Place” as a different idea for a trans national/scalar/disciplinary community. Sharing the voids, sharing the experiences, and the notion of “occupation” and transformation.
To learn how to contribute to group work and exchange as a small experiment for a learning society. To think about installation to be tested in scale 1:1.
To improve the ability of working in an international team using online teaching as an opportunity. • To learn about new techniques for communicating the projects through digital curation. • To find opportunities of Interdisciplinary relationships starting from a “common” project.
METHOD /
Research and investigate through case studies, speculate through the common sharing of knowledge. Positioning yourself as an architect producing a visual manifesto.
The students will work in groups from the 6 different universities, on a project of transformation, thinking about the short/mid/long term prevision, exchanging knowledge as a small experiment for a learning society, using as a starting point the ATLAS produced during the WS 2 / UOU ARCH EU2s 2020/21.
Part 1. / Reflecting and Unpacking the ATLAS choosing and unpacking three of the proposed Infinite Places from different countries. What is the potential for transformation? What can we learn from the different uses of the space? How do the community manage the place, what is the role of the architecture? Design the strategy of intervention sharing the voids, learning from each other, producing and sharing a first draft of a visual manifesto.
Part 2./ Communicating the idea/strategy through the production of a visual Manifesto to be displayed through an online exhibition/showcase.
SCHEDULE /
Fridays
10-14.00
(Time of Central Europe)
Expected Learning Outcomes/
After these two weeks workshop the student will be able to:
Apply methods for quantitative and qualitative mapping, through the description of a place in the city. Identify a potential for the reuse or reactivation of an area/building of the city. Learn how to use case studies. Explain the consequences of various urban development strategies and its relation to architecture and society. Improve communication ability through oral and visual presentations.
INGHILLERI, Verso un’architettura die beni comuni e dell’identità, in LOTUS n.153, 2014 S.MARINI, G.CORBELLINI, a cura di, Recycled Theory. Dizionario Illustrato/Illustrated Dictionary. Quodlibet, 2016
TUTORS/
Umeå University (Sweden) / Malmö University (Sweden)
This workshop is for students who want to overcome a worry about presenting design work It is deliberately designed to be relaxed and to build confidence
The architectural review is ritual in education in which the student presents work to academics in public for legitimisation but which research has shown to be a frightening experience (Webster 2005). Many architectural students live in fear of the review. It can remove their enjoyment of the subject and many potentially good designers are lost to the architecture profession because of the way in which reviews are held. The traditional review cripples learning, especially for the shy and reserved. This is an issue throughout architectural education. Myself and colleagues are very supportive of initiatives to overcome this and have been developing innovative new ways of helping students to explain their work and to receive feedback without being intimidated.
There are many words associated with this but all have roughly the same meaning and same connotations: ‘review’, ‘critique’ (crit), ‘presentation’, ‘jury’.
There are two common reasons for problems associated with this process of giving students feedback on their design work.
∙ The critic (who may be from academia or practice) does not understand what being a critic is about and how to explain his or her thinking without being aggressive or condescending. ∙ The student (who may be resilient or reserved) not being prepared, being too defensive or being argumentative.
Both of these broad problems can be overcome by the student taking control of the review.
But before we look at how this workshop might help you do that let’s consider some positive aspects of the architectural review. Reviews help you:
∙ To synthesise your design arguments and defend your ideas
∙ To work to deadlines and mimic practice
∙ To improve visual and verbal communication skills
∙ To improve your design output
AIMS
This workshop aims to help you think about the architectural review and its role in your education and in professional practice through undertaking research, practical exercises, including developing a piece of design and presenting it. You will also have a good idea of alternative ways of undertaking reviews and in how to make the most of them. All of the above is scheduled to be carried out over a period of two weeks, based on working approximately 4 hours (with academic staff) and 6 hours (without academic staff) per week.
At the end of the workshop you should have much more confidence in understanding reviews and in taking charge of the presentation and understanding of your project. This is useful for all students of architecture.
METHOD
We will start with an introduction to the review using examples and academic research. This will be done on line (staff presentations) and by individual learning and reflection. In particular you will be asked to reflect on your own work to date in design studio and your experience of the review. This
will be done in a systematic way with results posted on line. This first part of the workshop will be followed by an individual short design exercise (esquisse) that will help you to generate a proposition that might be reviewed.
You will then have a presentation about different methods of review and how to make the most of them, including advice on selecting the best one for the purpose. We will conclude week 1 by creating cross university groups ready for the start of week 2.
Week 2 will be group work. Your group will be assigned the task of choosing a review typology best suited to (a) the student presenting and (b) the type of project being presented. You will be helped to do this but at the same time encouraged to be creative and arrive at your own preferred approaches. These will be compared against traditional approaches (by academic staff) to help you understand them.
You will then have a review of your work – how that will be done will be revealed to you at the time. The idea being that this delay in revealing how you will be reviewed mimics some of the apprehension felt before a review – but please be assured that this is a relaxed, fun experience.
SCHEDULE
Friday 14h00 [or alternative tba] Short introduction
WEEK 1
Monday 13h00-15h00 Presentation of the workshop Overview of the review process
Setting the first task
Wednesday 11h30-12h30 Setting the design task
Friday 14h00-16h00 Submission of design task
Formation of groups
WEEK 2
Monday 13h00-15h00 Developing confidence
Review formats
All week Reviews at given times
Friday 13h00-17h00 Review of the reviews
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:
∙ your grasp of the concerns that surround architectural reviews,
∙ your self-reflection
∙ your development of a suitable approach to the review
∙ your review
University of the West of England, Bristol (ENGLAND) /
In this workshop we will pay attention to the margins of our visibility: the precarious, ephemeral, fragile, unstable. Based on the radicality of contemporary artistic practices, participants will be invited to reflect on their daily lives. Each participant will be proposed to use video as a privileged tool to document ephemeral actions, small occurrences and / or precarious situations that reconfigure their relationship or perception of the reality in which we live. It is proposed to introduce a certain form of slowness into the gaze, because what is intended is not just an observation but a stopped view. It is a repair: seeing it a second time and giving new opportunities not only to the object but to the visibility itself. As if the number of half-glances and overflows that we dedicate to things is harmful to this ethics that remains in expectation in the encounter with each look.
At the end, all videos will be compiled into a single video mosaic that will show all the small occurrences, poetic micro-actions that the participants performed simultaneously and in a loop. This video object resulting from a collective artistic process will later be hosted on the UOU website.
PLAN/
Session 1
Presentation.
a) Framework of the workshop, objectives and working plan.
b) Presentation and setting of the work proposal.
Session 2
Expository presentation of the working proposal where the supervisors will analyse some contemporary artistic projects that can inform the students’ projects.
Session 3
Forum to discuss projects and debate ideas. Monitoring of work.
Session 4
Presentation of the individual projects. Viewing of the videos.
Faculty of Fine Arts of The University of Porto (PORTUGAL)
CONTENT / What it is relevant on Architecture and Art, talking about objects is the matter. Matter as a physical substance that create atmospheres, relations and light.
The proposal for the workshop is to create matter with lines. MARBLE IS A HARD ROCK THAT HAS A PATTERN OF LINES GOING THROUGH IT THAT CAN BE POLISHED TO BECOME SMOOTH AND SHINY. Using the definition of Marble, we are going to create matter with a pattern of lines that could be smooth and shiny.
AIMS / To understand the presence of the matter in our projects.
To relate drawings, physical models and video as a way to produce an architectonical_artistic project.
METHOD / The students will use the drawing to create matter. We will draw lines and model them to create a space as a matter.
Finding opportunities of Multimedia Dawing_Model_Video relationships to start with a project.
Part 1: Draw. Individual Work.
Select a piece of marble and draw the lines that constitute the matter of the stone.
BIBLIOGRAPHY / “Power of ten”. Charles and Ray Eames:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0&t=14s
Part 2: Model. Group Work.
Transform the lines into a three_dimensional object.
BIBLIOGRAPHY / “Cloud Cities and Solar balloon travel”. Tomas Sarraceno:
CONTENT / In the Cambridge Dictionary “to pop-up” means to appear or happen, especially suddenly or unexpectedly. This word is also used to describe a shop, restaurant, etc. that operates temporarily and only for a short period when it is likely to get a lot of customers. Similarly, like a three-dimensional folding object that suddenly pop-ups from the book and soon after, when the page is turned, the object disappears.
The pop-up phenomenon is an answer to an instant occasions or events that create a space and needs for temporary use. Those events might have both positive and negative character. On the one hand, the growing popularity of the pop-up restaurants or shops brings the new opportunities for local communities and small entrepreneurs. On the other, the instant need for relief in situations such as earthquakes, floods, military conflicts cause an urgency to provide emergency shelters and to undertake other activities that are associated with the emergency situation.
Globally, the pop-up movement is connected with temporary use of space or structure that brings a new quality in a short period of time. In urban areas the pop-up installations make use of abandoned plot or unused (or unfinished) buildings, or they complement the urban pattern with new values.
The pop-up architecture is closely related to social, technical and cultural status of the space where it occurs. The idea of the pop-up places seems to be fitted in the flexible societies where people are less and less tight to concrete places and look for some constantly-changing physical and cultural landscape.
In Europe and North America, the pop-up places are the avant-garde in commercial, retail and housing services. Those temporary places which are often installed in urban voids or lands without any identity, have strong experimental character where the new concepts can be tested. The limited danger of large investments allows small entrepreneurs to risk and try new ideas, which will be evaluated in real life conditions.
The temporary character of the pop-up places makes them exclusive and limited. This goes together with high popularity in a short period of time. The marketing of pop-up places can be arranged by fast messages sent to the potential customers. Therefore, the Internet advertisement via web pages and social media, and spreading the information by the word of mouth are the best solutions for instant marketing. The pop-up places can also be self-advertised by the means of surprise.
AIMS /
The new city observation skills – identity of places with potentials for pop-ups
Analysis of the physical and social context of the chosen spot
Determination of the pop-up influences on a local community
Identification of the potentials (pros and cons) of temporary architectural interventions
METHOD /
Search for potential pop-up places in the local area
Observations and analyses of the local community (survey, interviews photos, drawings, diagrams, collages)
Development of the architectural design of a pop-up structure
Teamwork (3 -5 people in the team)
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:
Introduction / (What?)
Development – analytical phase (3 min presentations) / (Where and What for?)
Final presentation – pop-ups (3 min presentations) / (Why and how?)
EVALUATION / The following process and projects elements will be evaluated:
Chosen spot and argumentation (clarity, comprehensiveness, consistency)
Results of the surveys ( e.g. interviews, photos, diagrams, sketches)
Final design and its value in the context of the conducted studies
Bibliography /
Alkisti Eleni Victoratou (2013) Pop-up Initiatives in Athens, Greece Shed Light on Economic Crisis. The Global Grid. Urbanist news. Local views. https://theglobalgrid.org/pop-up-initiatives-in-athens-greece-shed-light-on-economic-crisis/
Ella Harris and Mel Nowicki (2015) Cult of the temporary: is the pop-up phenomenon good for cities? The guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jul/20/cult-temporary-pop-up-phenomenon-cities
Marni Epstein-Mervis (2016) The Rise and Rise of Pop-Up Architecture. Curbed. Accessed on 5th Feb. 2019: https://www.curbed.com/2016/3/9/11180920/architecture-history-temporary-banksy
Rebecca Burns (2014) Multistorey car park in US transformed into designer micro-apartments. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jul/09/multistorey-car-park-us-designer-micro-apartments-affordable-housing
Paul West (2011) Pop Up Concepts in Hospitality. Ignite hospitality. https://www.ignitehospitality.com/blog/pop-up-concepts-in-hospitality/
Laura Powell (2018) Hotels Experiment With Pop-Ups to Attract New Audiences. Skift. https://skift.com/2018/05/15/hotels-experiment-with-pop-ups-to-attract-new-audiences/
Robert Kronenburg (2008) Portable Architecture. Design and Technology. Birkhauser Verlag AG ISBN: 978-3-7643-8324-4
Peter Jones, Daphne Comfort, David Hillier (2017) A Commentary on Pop up Hospitality Ventures in the UK. Athens Journal of Tourism. Volume 4, Issue 3. Ed. Gregory T. Papanikos, Valia Kasimati, ISSN: 2241-8148, Pages 203-216. https://doi.org/10.30958/ajt.4.3.2
Pop-up power: How pop-up outlets are changing the landscape of fashion retail (2018), Strategic Direction, Vol. 34 Issue: 10, pp.7-9, https://doi.org/10.1108/SD-06-2018-0143
Aglieri Rinella, Tiziano; García Rubio, Rubén. 2017. Pop-Up, Liquid Architecture for a Liquid World. Arts 6, no. 3: 14, https://doi.org/10.3390/arts6030014
Gaitan, J. W. (2015). Pop Up: A Deployable Brand in the Urban Fabric (MArch Thesis, Carleton University).
Staback, D., Addison, J., Angles, Z., Karsan, Z., & Tibbits, S. (2017). Aerial Pop-Up Structures.
Hollwich, M. (2015). Lasting Impressions: Pop‐Up Culture by HWKN. Architectural design, 85(3), 124-129.
Rian, I. M., Chang, D., Park, J. H., & Ahn, H. U. (2008). POP-UP TECHNIQUE OF ORIGAMIC ARCHITECTURE FOR POST-DISASTER EMERGENCY SHELTERS. open house international, 33(1).
TUTORS/
Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (Poland) / Jerzy Łątka (jerzy.latka@pwr.edu.pl)
Yasar University in Izmir (Turkey) / Mauricio Morales-Beltrán (mauricio.beltran@yasar.edu.tr)
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 Travelbook” workshop, we will make a collective travelbook 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 travelbook 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 wholistic spatial characteristics. To discuss on the emancipatory character of architectural representations.
METHOD / The tutor will give a lecture on miniature drawing and travelbooks (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 travelbook 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:
March 12th, 2020 (Friday) – 30 minutes – Introduction
March 15th, 2020 (Tuesday) – 2 hours – Fragments of spaces, textures
March 18th, 2020 (Friday) – 2 hours – Layout of his/her miniature drawing
March 22nd, 2020 (Tuesday) – 2 hours – Finalise the miniature drawing and the text
March 26th, 2020 (Friday) – 2 hours – 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)
The rapid developments of the urban realms and the monstrous evolution of the socioeconomic systems together with the invading globalization deprived the people from the sustainable way of living which was forged by local conditions through the centuries.
The workshop will revisit existing, forgotten or lost worlds and traditions or vernacular architecture not nostalgically, not just to revitalise them. But rather to rediscover cultures, and vanished wisdoms to facilitate their evolution into the contemporary world.
Traditional elements such as courtyard typologies, shading devices of Mashrabiyas, traditional irrigational systems and building technologies are among a vast number of traditional wisdom that either was forced to extinction or to a dormant state.
The students are asked to revisit those ‘dusted’ wisdoms, reconstruct them and reuse them in their evolved metamorphosis in the ever changing and rapidly developing urban built environments for a future of environmental and social sustainability of regional identities.
AIMS /
To understand and experience the unique architectural qualities of forgotten traditional elements and mechanisms
To share knowledge and insights from diverse cultural backgrounds
To develop awareness, knowledge and understanding of extracted wisdom from traditional elements and their potential role in contemporary architecture
To develop a critical approach towards sustainability and an environmental awareness [of traditional wisdoms and vernacular architecture], as integral parts of a design process.
To amalgamate research findings in order to stitch, integrate and embed those findings in innovative and radical ways in the future architectural and urban realms.
To take a stance, and a voice of resistance for a substantial future for humanities against the devouring globalizations and erasures of identities.
METHOD /
E L E M E N T S T U D Y [space, mechanisms, infrastructures, materiality, technology]
RECORDINGS # DIS-ASSEMBLING # EVOLUTION
Analysing and assessing existing condition
Drawing and making experimentations
Discovering spaces & relationships through a specific methodology
Loose and Accurate methods of representation allowing different information to be revealed
Chance
Evolution
The intension is to create a new reading of the ELEMENTS which can be seen in various configurations and scales. Experimentation will be tested through hybrid drawings.
Transformation of the technical drawing becomes a device to read the different parameters and qualities of the dis- assembled and evolved elements.
Students will develop a series of creative work starting from an existing situation (photo, drawing etc) and leading gradually to a hybrid drawing. Emphasis will be given to the evolution through the layers / depths of the built and human topographies.
The process of drawings and results in the various stages of the development should be Recorded in a photographic sequence.
Students will be assigned to work in groups based on their categories of interest [ELEMENTS] by the end of week one.
STEPS
Week one
Investigate, collect drawings, photos and other materials of a chosen traditional element/ wisdom [visit if possible]
Create a 2d drawing of the existing element based on your interest [suggestions: sectional drawing, layering techniques, photo collage, cut-outs etc]
*** Exaggerate and accentuate elements that you want to focus on
Choose an unexpected/contrasting existing setting [you may use previous projects, existing landscapes and buildings] where you will apply your intervention
Week two
Evolve forgotten wisdoms and facilitate the emergence of their evolution through testing and hybrid drawing investigations
*** Specific human activities should be presented in ‘distinguished’ (not indifferent) graphic mode, adding to the general unique (not generic) atmospheres of the interventions
*** We strongly encourage a deep dive-in into radical experimentation and provocation through alternative techniques and ways of seeing architecture
SCHEDULE /
2-week Workshop.
Weekly 4–hour class Tuesday 9.00 – 13.00 CET [additional hours may be offered at a later stage]
EVALUATION /
The evaluation will be based on the following Expected Learning Outcomes:
After completion of the workshop students are expected to be able to:
Examine and interpret traditional and vernacular conditions in relation to their appropriation and evolution in the existing natural and built environment [material and immaterial qualities of space, ambience and innovation]
Use appropriate representation and presentation tools, including mixed media techniques to explore a plurality of experiences/ cultures/sites via alternative representation methods.
Demonstrate competence in dealing with sustainability, environmental awareness and climatic modification as integral parts of a design process.
Experiment with materiality and mechanisms in order to achieve an atmospheric architectural environment, having as a drive the interaction of the human body and space.
Identify and critically address the inherent conditions of the site, deal sensitively with the social issues as an integral part of the design process
Bibliography /
‘From Shinto to Ando; studies in architectural anthropology in Japan’ / Gunter Nitscke ; Academy Press (October 29, 1993) ISBN 978-1854902894
Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture ; Kenneth Frampton ; The MIT Press; Illustrated edition (October 1, 2001) / ISBN-13 : 978-0262561495
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)
02 March | 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
04 March | Group work: development of ideas and teachers’ feedback
9 March | Group work: teachers’ feedback on finalising Mock-up scale 1:50 and presentations in Zoom setting.
11 March | 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.
CONTENT / The science on various design methods and processes is a fascinating branch of knowledge which architects perhaps do not study enough. The knowledge of design methods could organise and systematise your work, offer an X-ray vision, real psychanalysis of yourself as well as other designers and your tutors. This science may also help you to overcome design blocks when you are mentally stuck.
We could provide you a long, detailed and technical lecture about various methods of design, but why not experiment on yourself and feel how it is to become three different creative personalities?
AIMS / During this workshop we will talk and learn about libraries in the 21st century – this is a fascinating topic with its own unique problems and potentials. However, the workshop is not only about libraries. It is about making you aware about the design process; about who you are… and who you could be as a conscious architect. The seminal book Revealing Architectural Design Methods, Frameworks and Tools by Philip Plowright has a surprising conclusion that there are only three main types of architectural design process which represent three schools of teaching and creation. Architects, architectural tutors and students are often not aware of that so their arguments are actually pseudo-arguments… deriving from confusion on a meta-level. Some ‘big debates’ in the architectural world or academia stem from basic misunderstanding of those three different design processes.
The workshop is also about ‘fast methods’ for designing options. In the first week, you will be asked to design one option a day following specific instructions.
The objective of the project is only partly related to designing a library. The main aim of the workshop is for you to reflect on different design methods, your own strength and weakness and on the tools that are available.
During the workshop you will learn about:
Problem solving, problem redefinition, exploratory and evaluative thinking, architectural syntax, usefulness of bias, IBD (Intelligence-based design), pattern language, forces, intellectual tools and brainstorming, CPSP (Creative Problem Solving Process), TRIZ (theory of the resolution of invention-related tasks), domain-to-domain transfer.
METHOD / During the first week of this workshop you will be asked to approach the same architectural task – designing a library – three times. Every time, you will design it according to different architectural framework. This will allow you to learn something about yourself as an architect and about your own strengths and weaknesses. In the second week, you will be asked to analyse your work, evaluate the three projects and to refine the best result during group work.
…And one more thing… At the end, you will be asked to reflect on the work done and reflect on who you are and who you could be.
The workshop will be an exercise on fast design. For three days you will follow a different design framework, thus learning about different design methods and tools. As a result, you will create three, probably very different, projects. For now, let’s call the three projects Alpha, Beta and Gamma. (You will learn the real names of these frameworks during the workshop). In order not to confuse you, we will not explain the different methodologies here, but they will be explained on three separate days in special materials you will be sent.
SCHEDULE/
Week 1 – Individual design
Monday: Briefing, Preparation: Identify three sites in your city where a medium size building could be designed.
Tuesday: Alpha briefing, Visit the Alpha site, Create Alpha design, Present Alpha design to fellow students in your groups.
Wednesday: Beta briefing, Visit the Beta site, Create Beta design, Present Beta design to fellow students in your groups.
Thursday: Gamma briefing, Visit the Gamma site, Create Gamma design, Present Gamma design to fellow students in your groups
Friday: Presentation of individual projects chosen within groups
Week 2 – group work
Monday-Wednesday – group work
Thursday – final group presentation
Friday – individual reflection and online submission
EVALUATION / your work will be assessed according to the following criteria
Analyses/ How thoroughly and deeply did you analyse the issues and questions related to libraries in the 21st century as well as all the people involved in library life?How well did you formulate architectural questions according to those analyses? Mind that during the process of developing the project you will create several small projects. Each of these projects could have a different agenda, different analyses, different questions and different criteria. So it is important that you formulate this clearly by adding clear annotations to each initial sketch.
Concept/ How strong and coherent was the response (answer) to a problem (question) which you formulated during the analyses? Mind that in different projects the criteria ‘strong’ and ‘coherent’ could mean something different, e.g. functional, critical, original OR something different). Be clear about YOUR criteria. Clearly annotate the drawings
Development/ How systematic and rational was the choice of a design path? How many options did you take into consideration? How rigorously (according to your own criteria) did you choose the next step? (Mind that the development will be partly individual and partly group work. Engagement in each part of the work will be evident through peer assessment and the outcome you will have to submit.)
Presentation/ Did you submit all the required deliverables? How clearly did you manage to convey the final idea and how engaging was it? (The deliverables will be a combination of individual and group work. They should be clearly annotated. A very important part of the individual work will be the final reflection.)
University of Lincoln (UK) : Marcin Mateusz Kołakowski (mkolakowski@lincoln.ac.uk)
„Dancing and architecture are the two primary and essential arts. The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that express themselves first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person; and in the end they unite.”
Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life (1923)
What is architecture? A seemingly basic question, but actually one that is open to a diverse range of subjectivity. However, it is impossible to conceal that architecture is a positive balance between Science and Art, a point at which the two fields collide yet, finding the right balance is not always so easy to do. An architect should not only be familiar with the architecture and engineering principles but also have the ability to creatively manifest an emotive idea into something tangible. The ability to capture and physicalize invisible elements of our world through storytelling is an art itself. The building is not only the walls, the floor and the roof but also the atmosphere and feelings it celebrates. Many architectural projects are based on creating a narrative and engaging users into this relationship between space and mind. Architecture is an inseparable part of all cultures and the context in which it exists. It has the ability to comment on all the immaterial structures of our societies, such as the social, cultural, economic and political, immortalizing them as physical structures. It is important to identify the greatest needs of your local society and their environment. In architecture, just as in nature, nothing is accidental. Therefore, a discussion on the same topic in a multicultural environment can lead to very interesting and unexpected conclusions, „Quot homines tot sententiae: suo’ quoique mos” eng.: „So many men, so many opinions: to each his own way.” (Terence, 161 BC).
AIMS
A workshop will be conducted remotely between universities, we wish to discover different approaches to the narration in architecture, depending on the background of the participants. First, try to imagine the feeling of the space(s) you are designing and its atmosphere before drawing the architecture. Each participant will have to discover himself and take his own position in the given topic, devise its greatest needs and respond to them through their work. Through the discussion of the brief and the individuality of each member of the group, we will try to broaden our perception and discover new ways of observing the world to develop material and immaterial storytelling. The drawing will allow us to experiment with scale, proportions, colours material, light and shadow.
METHOD
Based on the brief issued during Day 1 of the workshop we will define the needs of local society in a given topic and each individually considers the question:
What is the most significant aspect of the brief that can be reflected in an Architectural narrative?
Each participant will discuss their initial intuitive response to the brief, their experience, passion, and hobbies, in order to ascertain a narrative for the brief, whilst simultaneously, revealing something of ourselves to the group. To help with the preparation of the narrative, a lecture will be conducted where the topic will be discussed with examples and ideas. Everyone will have the opportunity to exchange their thoughts and discuss an outline with their lecturers, along with colleagues in the group, where all will receive support in the development of their project. We will conclude with short presentations of each narrative and 500mm x 500mm drawing, discussed in the forum. Everyone will have the opportunity to ask questions, comment on other works and provide feedback.
SCHEDULE
Week 1:
(Monday) 25 Jan 2021 – Introduction and Brief Release
(Thursday) 28 Jan 2021 – Lecture and Open Discussion
Week 2:
(Monday) 01 Feb 2021 – Tutorials
(Thursday) 04 Feb 2021 – Final Presentation
EVALUATION
The workshop will focus on drawing as a primary medium. The conclusion piece will be a 500mm x 500mm drawing, exploring a range of mediums. In addition, our global studio will be required to produce a 200-word synopsis to compliment his or her work. Each piece will be considered under the following points:
Individuality and creativity in the process of generating an architectural narrative,
Understanding and responding to the needs of the local society,
Understanding the context and environment of the given topic,
Graphical representation of your idea and the ability to include the whole story in one drawing
CONTENT / In many cities, globalisation has contributed to the emergence of new urban environments which, over very short periods of time, have replicated similar and homogenous spaces, evacuated public ownership, erased local singularities and produced what may be defined as a generic and franchised city. Most of these cities retain urban environments developed on the long term, where palimpsest spaces give a fair share to public space and where the character and singularity of place are preserved.
This process raises a variety of questions, particularly that of the appropriation of public space by people in these two ‘versions’ of the city. Considering that the work of time in the construction of urban space cannot be replaced, it becomes crucial to identify the conditions which may accelerate the process of appropriation of public spaces by users whilst encouraging the emergence of uncontrolled and non-programmed uses and spatial arrangements.
AIMS / The workshop will explore how the implementation of more inclusive approaches in terms of public space design and usage may promote more vibrant urban environments
To this end, two urban fragments, one “palimpsest” and the other “generic”, will be explored through the prisms of public life. At first, emphasis will be put on identifying the types of public spaces encountered, the variety and density of uses observed as well as the factors that appear to favour or constrain individual and collective ownership of these spaces. Secondly, lessons will be drawn from this understanding to suggest conceptual processes that promote the appropriation of public space by people and allow them over time to develop their own responses and solutions.
METHOD /
Session 00: Introduction
Organised in groups of 3 to 4 students, you will introduce yourself with a 2 to 3 minutes video, explaining why you chose to attend this workshop and what urban sites you wish to investigate.
Session 01 – Immersion, interpretation and representation
You shall choose two urban environments of the same surface. The first one will be a part of the “palimpsest city” where you would usually enjoy dwelling and spending time, the second will be a part of the “generic city”, as described above.
Using walking as an exploration too, you will dwell through site for an average of 2 hours. You shall prepare the itinerary of your journey beforehand using a map, but you will allow yourself to drift once on the spot.
Whilst on site:
– Identify the main types open spaces you encounter (sidewalks, paths, squares, café terraces, playgrounds, etc.) and the forms of public life that take place in them as well as in the spaces visible from them (e.g., outdoor extensions of dwellings), distinguishing between spontaneous and more official uses;
– Associate keywords with each identified situation;
– Register your perception and feelings in each place (e.g., excitement, anxiety, boredom, …);
– Register your perception of time and the density of the uses you observe along the way.
– Seek potential correlations between the shape and location of the open spaces and their degree of appropriation by people.
Once off site:
– Process your observations and “findings” by organising this new knowledge in a “narrative” (example: exploration book, graphic novel, comic strip, video, etc.) that clearly highlights your understanding of the issue of public life in your two chosen urban environments;
– Indicate your route “before” and “during” the drift, highlighting times of movement and pause. When using graphical supports such as plans or maps, use the same scale for both urban fragments.
Session 02 – / Reflexions & projections
Based on your previous work and if necessary, by referring to existing practices and experiences, define the broad outlines of “proposals” or “recommendations” that could set up and promote a more people centred urban life in your generic city fragment. Beyond the production of artefacts, you may focus on defining processes which will ultimately contribute to this objective (i.e., alternative urban morphologies / specific spatial arrangements / new urban planning rules / experimentation and prefiguration phases / Post-occupation phases / new “permission to do” for inhabitants / ….
The presentation format remains free, but shall be in continuity with your previous work.
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop / Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:
Session 00 – Introduction / 15 Feb 2020.
Session 01 – Development (Immersion, interpretation and representation) / 15-19 Feb 2021.
Session 02 – Final Crit (Reflexions & projections) / 26 Feb 2021.
EVALUATION / Fulfilment of the requirements of sessions 00, 01 & 02
École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Bordeaux (France)
CONTENT / In many different ways, European cities have suffered a common fate: the compulsive increase in buildings, the financialization of the real estate market, the enslavement of urban space to cars. Despite the diversity of individual national events, these are the distinctive traits of the contemporary city that have left on the ground portions of the territory in disuse, incongruent urban fabrics, open wounds in historical structures.
AIMS / Identify the role of project disciplines to remedy the casual use of territorial resources and the dissipation of the urban landscape that we have inherited from the last century.
The city of Forlì will be the scene on which the project workshop will be applied with the aim of regenerating / redeveloping the undecided or degraded spaces of the historic city. Students from other European schools will be able to work remotely based on the descriptions prepared by the University of Bologna, or work on similar topics within the cities where their course is located.
METHOD / Students and teachers from different cultural areas of the project disciplines will work together to contribute to the debate on the possibility of transforming urban space and its perception, proposing a different and integrative logic with respect to the social and economic urgencies imposed by the market rules.
Imagining the shape of the public space by evading the impositions of current utilitarianism means projecting the imagination beyond the horizon of the short range.
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 8-hour class arranged with the students:
Introduction / 17 Feb 2020. Presentation of the city of Forlì and the issues underlying the workshop.
Development / 18-27 Feb 2020.
Final Critic / 28 Feb 2020.
EVALUATION / The workshop is a form of project action based on the exchange of quick proposals. The proposed solutions do not aim to obtain a definitive character but to open debates on the fate of cities in a conjectural and multiple form. By offering points of view distant from the logic and mechanisms that preside over the transformation of cities, they open up a panorama of alternative possibilities capable of conditioning consciences.
The more different and unexpected positions emerge, the more we can consider the experience successful.
Bibliography / Italo Calvino. Visibility, in Six memos for the next millennium. Cambridge, MA: Harward University Press, 1988, pp.81-99
CONTENT / TO COME IN CONTACT with ourselves and with our to have become through lifetime (bonnländer 2019): Places of Remembrance – A practical experiment to reconstruct memories through developing a city map
People who suffer from dementia, for example Alzheimer’s, suffer from memory loss. Events that occurred long ago, but which can be emotionally significant for us, often lie in childhood. But in what ways can we bring back to life emotionally significant memories for our present life or for the development of new designs for ourselves and for being recognized as a person instead of a patient? How can a world and an architecture for persons who suffer from dementia look like – so that their live can be a personal live? The philosopher, psychotherapist and art therapist Karl-Heinz Menzen says that exercises that support the reconstruction of places from childhood stimulate emotional memory. And that re-associating personal memory with time and space as a system of coordination is critically responsible for the capacity of memory. His practical ideas are based on neurologically-oriented theories of the structure of the brain, of rehabilitation. By connecting to neuronal networking intact brain areas, such as the areas of long-term memory reconstruction of memory performance thus the ability to remember is activated. He focuses on training through a methodical approach in the art therapeutic setting to promote the relationship to space and time and the own personality in its individual and historical aspects. According to Menzen, impulses for the reconstruction of memory, for example are places of childhood – “Our hometown”. With the support of an art therapist, the old people draw streets of the place from their own childhood like an architect on a large piece of paper assembled for everyone and then replicate the houses that were formerly inhabited (Menzen, 2008, p. 63 f).
Keywords: Interdisciplinary aspects of architecture – Fine Arts, Art Therapy, Memory of Emotions, Dementia, Alzheimer
AIMS / The aim is to come in contact with our memories and to build a map and to tell about the experience after. The students investigate whether and which memories are brought to life with this method. They observe whether details become more and more detailed, whether there are special smells and colors, surface textures, haptic or acoustic memories. Whether long-forgotten people appear with whom they are perhaps connected by a special event or who have played an important role in their lives. As we sketch and model in ever greater detail, we investigate whether narratives emerge during this process and whether we want to share them with others.
SUMMARY OUTCOMES To bring together – synchronize – space and time in this specific method support remembering and the ability of being in contact with the own emotions, related to the awoked sensual aspects, that are experienced while creative working – f.e. – hammering – noise, vibration, rhythm – reminding of sounds and sensations of the past, relating to the actual moment.
Drawing and building the (emotional) objects of remembering in context of space awoke inner pictures and stimulates associated atmospheric memories and so it creates narratives: f.e. from the wallpaper with pattern of roses to the memory of elegant parties, music and athmosphere of the parents house.
To tell and show after reconstructing promotes the communication into the social group. To listen to the stories and see the visual representations of biografic memories transport them into an actualized space and moment. Both – social space and the concrete perceptive space of the moment relate to past and present of an individuum and of a society.
This method transferred to a working situation with a person suffering from dementia it enables both – the individuums of the group of clients, and the accompanying artist to make the whole personality recognizable in the relation. Emotions, experiences aspects of identity, qualities of the person / character – of past and present become awoke in the actual relation Architects can reflect on their professional practice in a playful way, getting impulses by both personal and cultural – historical aspects of experienced places and spaces – connected to their own experienced past or to the cultural and historically – different – memories of collegues. (Connert und Bonnländer, 2019).
METHOD / First we draw and reconstruct a map of the places of our childhood: the streets and places around, the buildings and the environment. We will reconstruct the house of our parents or the people we grew up with, for example with clay. We all work on our own map or city map at the same time. This way we can hear the sounds of the other participants. Afterwards we want to show and to reflect and exchange our experiences and observations.
Working Instruction: Draw a memory of a residency place in childhood, for example also the pathways to school and so on… – in a map perspective, after having the plan, add memory specific details like situations, experiences, by drawing, painting, or in any other way for example threedimensional with clay or with tape Materials you need: A big paper for the city map, drawing materials – pencils, water colors or other colors, Scissors, brushes or crayons to paint. Materials to build houses on the map, for example clay, cardboard, strong paper, glue, adhesive tapes. Please send the foto of your object in JPEG 200 ppi during the first day workshop to us.
1st day: Introduction, Group work, show the city-map in JPEG 200 ppi.
2nd day: to show and tell.
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students: Introduction, Development and to show part 1 / 16 Feb 2021.
EVALUATION /
Part 2 Final Crit / 23 Feb 2021.
To sensitize oneself to oneself and others by exploring the importance of memories of childhood places.
Did I succeed in bringing back to life memories of my childhood by reconstructing streets and houses in a map of the place of my childhood?
How does my memory of the place of my childhood change after I have worked out a map of it? What do I generate? What emerges, what changes – memories of events, colors, sounds, objects, characteristics of materials or surfaces, ideas of space?
Are there emotions involved? Which one?
What is the meaning of the fact that I created my city map by my own hand, without digital tools? Please observe your sensuality in your hands, your sense of space…
Students can show and explain their city map to others and exchange experiences with others.
They can reflect on a meta-level and describe how two-dimensional and three- dimensional processes work in combination with biography.
Students deal with related sciences and interdisciplinary aspects.
Explore possibilities of how to support people suffering from forgetting in the field of space and time through sensitive spatial development.
Bibliography /
Menzen, K.-H. (2008). Art therapy with people confused by age (2nd ed.), 53-70. Munich: Ernst Reinhardt Connert, S. (2019). Ein Leben mit Demenz im hohen Lebensalter. Beispiele aus der Kunsttherapie.
Forum für Kunsttherapien – Die Fachzeitschrift des GPK, 47(1), 8-11. https://www.theatertherapie.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Forum_-Heft_2_Lebensalter_Mai_2019.pdf
CONTENT / Many changes have been in the architecture profession since Journey to the Eastwas written: A 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 a number of cities in Southeast Europe. Later, the acquired disciplinary knowledge acted as an inspiration for his architecture.
This year we have organized a 2-week workshop travelling to the unknown: to places that have awakened in each of us a need to learn from the local, its technology, culture and society; consolidating links of specialisation. It is also an experience to empathize Architecture as a Comparative Study, learning as a trip, a journey as an experience.
We will discuss and go with our proposals and designs in our desired trips, redefining the limits of architecture by working with the unknown as a way to build up a research.
AIMS / To identify a place as a desire. To work with the imagination as a real context. To describe a place with 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 life and interests as building material. To introduce our personal skills and portfolio into a place. Trip to a new destiny you desire to know.
1st day: Introduce yourself presenting a 3min video with the values of your experiences in the desired destiny.
2nd day: Group work according to your common interests. Connect your destinies into a sequence.
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 / 03-05 Feb 2020.
Development / 08-11 Feb 2020.
Final Crit / 12 Feb 2020.
EVALUATION / Develop the answers to 3 questions from these 12:
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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)?
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?
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?
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?
Skills: Interest in the contribution, regardless of the attitude from which it was generated. What is the interest of my contribution?
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.
The pandemic period offered us a chance of seeing a deserted city. Empty streets, empty squares (piazzas), empty parks, empty churches, empty theatres, empty museums, all of these created a non-living city. We know that a city does not operate in this way. The city and, at a micro scale, a building live through spaces and ‘their patterns of events which we experience there’. (Christopher, ALEXANDER, The timeless way of building, New York, Oxford University Press, 1979, page 62 – I strongly recommend reading this book.)
Let’s try to imagine a diverse life in the natural environment even in the heart of the building. We will focus on the dwelling buildings, because these were the spaces in which we were captured.
How do we, the neighbours, create the city through the activities we carry out?
I am certain that all of you know at least one enclosed space, among the walls of the same building or of different buildings, which can be investigated and can identify the patterns of events.
AIMS /
Search, find, investigate and identify the patterns of events in an enclosed garden. Create a link between the built space and the unbuilt enclosed one. Formulate a hypothesis about the influence of nature on this closed space.
Illustrate in any way you consider appropriate, how to show both the garden, along with the façades that border it, and how the garden reaches the streets of the city.
These illustrations will offer us a prospect of a wide range of lives in our cities and with their help we will collect fragments of ideal islands in which we dwell.
As a final aim, we generate a new city formed by our islands. The city will be read through our book, which will result.
METHOD /
It is compulsory to work in groups of two or three students for the first week. In the second week, every group has to interact with other four groups because every part of the building meets other requirements.
1 st day: Introduce yourself presenting an image of the contemporary hortus conclusus from your hometown. 2 nd day: Show us the above-mentioned illustrations. 3 rd day: Final crit. Design our puzzle.
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:
Introduction / 02-06 November, 2020
Development / 09-12 November, 2020
Final Crit / 18 Sept 2020
EVALUATION /
The student will be able to understand and shape the ground floor of the building in relationship with the city, with its inhabitants and other citizens, with the nature, mainly he or she will know how to keep a balance between the built and the unbuilt space and will tell us which are the advantages and the drawbacks of a city with enclosed gardens.
The architect is a storyteller. The architect designs spaces that speak to the user and, in turn, the user hears that story through an interaction with a building. What would architecture be without a story? We suggest it would not be architecture. But to tell a story we need a language in which to communicate.
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) the founder of modern linguistics saw language as ‘signs’ that express ideas. Each sign has a ‘signifier’ (a word) and a ‘signified’ (a meaning). We want to use this concept and apply it to architectural space. We want to tell stories that help the listener to imagine and indeed to experience space without seeing it.
We have designed a two week long workshop that will encourage you to use your imagination and apply it to a piece of significant architecture. By doing so you will elaborate a story through the body of someone else – not yourself – who experiences that architecture. You will need to consider questions about the building (the signifier) and the architectural intention (the signified) that the architect wishes to imply. So, for us and for our storytelling workshop the building becomes what Roland Barthes (1915-1980) would have called the ‘rose’ and the architectural connotation is what he would have labelled ‘passion.’
This is a creative exploration, interpreting architecture through storytelling and choosing words and sounds to communicate an idea. There is no right or wrong answer.
As students of architecture you need to become storytellers, and this workshop will help you to do so.
AIMS /
Over the two weeks from 16th to 27th November you will work (via the internet) in groups with students from other universities. You will all speak different languages and come from different cultural traditions. First, you will need to decide on a common language(s) of communication for the group. Then, you will need to think about how we express feelings through words by using rhythm, tone, inflection etc…As well as doing this you will be guided in developing ideas about what is a ‘story’. Would the same story told in one language be the same when translated into another? And if architectural space is a ‘story’ we might then ask would the same architectural space be understood differently depending on the language, words, rhythm, tone and inflection used to describe it.
When we are familiar with a language the words we use carry meaning. Our cultural development gives words (signifiers) a particular cultural meaning (signified). So whilst we can translate a word into another language it is the meaning that’s all too often lost in translation. The listener does not give the word the same meaning as you. When applied to architecture we can think of this as the difference between the building (the signifier) and the architect’s intention. But we can take it a step further an explore the difference between the architect’s intention (signified) and a reading of the building as experienced by the user (which might be a different ‘signified’ to the architect’s).
We aim to explore the translation of architectural idea into architectural experience through storytelling.
By the end of our two weeks, you will have found a way within your groups of describing an architectural space that we (as architects) know well, and of situating a narrative within that space, that helps someone else experience it as architecture. In other words, we will tell a story about something that happened/happens/will happen somewhere, but in an immediately intelligible language.
METHOD /
At the start of the workshop, under the guidance of Mike and Thom, we will work together to answer the questions posed above. We will you into groups that are deliberately multi lingual. We hope as many native languages as possible will be brought together, and none dominate. We will introduce you to the ideas of language and storytelling and how to apply them to three dimensional space. We will encourage you to be confident in expressing yourself using unfamiliar language and in recognising how ‘sound’ is just as important a concept as ‘word.’
Each group will be allocated a building well known to students of architecture but which no-one in the group will have visited. Each group will have a different building. Information on the building will be easily available on line and it will be able to be visited ‘virtually.’ The building will have been the subject of architectural writing and the intentions of the architect will be readily found via the internet. Getting an architectural understanding of the building will be the starting point for each group. That will happen quickly.
The group will then be allocated a persona and will be asked to develop a one act radio play (story) exploring that persona’s interaction with the building in a fictional way. Guidance will be given on the storyline but the important point is that the interaction must be such that it is with the architecture. In other words the action of the play could not take place meaningfully anywhere else but in the building given. The play will last 5 minutes and will be spoken, but accompanied by sound effects (but only such that can be made by students’ voices) as appropriate. The play must not mention the name of the building or give express clues as to what or where it is. No expressly architectural terminology must be used and you must not simply describe the space – the important thing is the narrative. There must be a clearly understandable narrative (beginning, middle and end) to the story, all of which must be appropriate for the architectural space. The choice of words, rhythm, intonation and tome are vital as will be the sound effects. The play is to be pre-recorded by the group. The speakers must not use their native tongue nor English.
If done well the other groups should be able to describe the architectural space (perhaps by drawing it as they listen) and even guess the name of the building in which the play is set, just as a play about passion might lead us to draw a rose (without ever using the word rose in the play).
SCHEDULE /
To be developed, when we establish other unis’ schedules.
Monday 16:
Participants identified.
Initial briefing.
Understanding what a story is.
Using language to convey meaning.
Tuesday 17:
Allocation of building.
Identification of ‘signified’ and ‘signifier’
Further briefing to all groups.
Wednesday 18 and Thursday 19:
Allocation of persona – the storyline in the architectural space.
Mike and Thom ‘visit’ each group for live tutorials
Friday 20:
The story – guidance and development.
Plenary for all groups
Monday 23, Tuesday 24:
The ‘script’ and ‘roles’ (voice, sound, effects)
Mike and Thom ‘visit’ each group for live tutorials.
Wednesday 25:
A rehearsal
Thursday 26:
Recording and submission
Mike and Thom available as required
Friday 27:
On-line performance
On line interviews with the directors and actors
Simultaneous posting of individual live drawings as each performance ends
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:
A demonstration of understanding the application of ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ to architectural space.
A grasp of the architectural intention behind a given space.
The use of rhythm, tone and delivery as regards language to convey feeling.
The creation of a story that evokes architectural atmosphere through its telling
The creative process and participation to a professional level.
The COVID-19 crisis has obliged us to rethink the evolution of our models of architecture, our squares and streets, our homes and other typologies of buildings. Our entire cities are being judged due to new relationships within society.
Under these novel circumstances we have listened to more experts from different disciplines to give their opinions about necessary changes in architecture than to architects themselves. During the last months, epidemiologists, economists, politicians, anthropologists, sociologists, scientists, policemen, reporters or general citizens from all over the world have been the real spokesmen for new architecture. Without a doubt, it is time to question the single authorship of the future of Architecture: more than ever, as a discipline, it cannot continue being taught alone, nor on a local level.
From the architect’s point of view, all of us we have also being secluded in our architecture. The confinement that forced many of us to be at home has encouraged to reduce the speed of our fast life and reflect on our social-political engagement within this new reality. This period has been a real impulse to assume those commitments and transform them into architecture, opening new ways of working and collaborating with other colleagues and disciplines internationally, something that just some months before would have been rather arduous.
A direct example, in terms of the pedagogy of architecture, is our ambitious project “UNIVERSITY of Universities”. Although this exchange of workshops was technically possible before, it is only now when it became a reality.
AIMS /
Rem Koolhaas directed the exhibition “Elements of Architecture” at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. It consisted of a massive recollection of information about the evolution of selected fragments of building details of architecture:
WINDOW FAÇADE BALCONY CORRIDOR FIREPLACE STAIR ESCALATOR ELEVATOR FLOOR RAMP CEILING ROOF DOOR WALL TOILET
The aim of our workshop is to complete that book. We consider that this research on historical evolution of elements from early times to the end of the 20th century, directed by Koolhaas, calls now for an additional reading. Foreseeing new confinements, our society starts to ask for therapeutic qualities of these same elements. And we believe that this will be the result of an international collaborative work between architects and other disciplines.
METHOD /
To achieve this, the participants in the workshop will be organized in groups of 6 members, each one from a different school of architecture.
Every group will choose one of the elements listed above to develop during this workshop for confinement.
Since each member belongs to a different culture, the task consists of collaborating with an expert from a different discipline than architecture and to compare the diverse applications in your particular realities.
1 st day: Individual introduction / each student chooses an element and produces a document (free technique: video, drawing, model…) that speaks about him/her or the way it inspires him/her (memories, interests, reflexions…). After his/her personal presentation, we will arrange the groups by affinities and interdisciplinary collaborations.
2 nd day: Group proposal / produce a conceptual image that contains the new interdisciplinary qualities that your element of architecture should adopt due to a future confinement and apply it to the work developed in the former UOU Workshops.
3 rd day: Final Crit of the precise constructive details of group’s Therapeutic Elements of Architecture.
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:
Introduction / 30-04 Dec 2020.
Development / 07-10 Dec 2020.
Lecture: Architecture can heal, by Francisco Colom and Ana Fernández Martínez (MASS design group).
Final Crit / 11 Dec 2020.
EVALUATION /
Develop these actions:
– Finding opportunities of Interdisciplinary relationships to start a project.
– Describing the differences when dealing with different cultures.
– Finishing with a precise building detail of an element that defines Therapeutic Architecture.
Bibliography /
Sacks, Oliver. (1995). An anthropologist on Mars: Seven paradoxical tales (1st ed). Knopf.
The process of mapping extends and enriches our interaction with the specific conditions of site, therefore it allows the reader to understand and experience the unique characteristics of a specific place.
In his article “The Agency of Mapping, Speculation, Critique & Invention”, James Cornertalks of the map as having the power to ‘Reformulate what already exists’. The ‘agency’ of the map, is that which exploits the research to identify, decode and create the potential of possibilities for the place. Mapping is understood, not as a process of representing geographies or ideas, but ‘effecting the way they are manipulated’.
Cartographic maps correspond to the dimensional reality of the external world. This in many ways makes them totally inappropriate for reading and representing site qualities/phenomena because of their objective qualities.
Mapping is often understood as a technique for representing (predetermined), i.e. given – entities. This conception of mapping as a tool to visualize spatial concepts does not utilise the full potential that the map has to ‘reveal the specific qualities of the site’.
Cognitive mapping is an abstraction covering those cognitive or mental abilities that enable us to collect, organize, store, recall and manipulate information about the physical environment. Underlying this definition is a view of behavior that, although variously expressed, can be reduced to the statement that human spatial behavior is dependent upon the individual’s cognitive map of the spatial environment.
From a cognitive map, the individual can tell where certain valued things or experiences are to be found and how to reach them as required. The map assigns preferences, determines attitudes and predicts possibilities. It changes at all levels of timescale and is modified by education, experience and available resources. Cognitive maps could be simply understood as perceptual maps and cannot be merely a series of photos or measured drawings of what a place is.
AIMS /
To introduce and explore the idea of mapping as a tool for reading the site.
To understand and experience the unique characteristics of a specific place.
To acquire the understanding of site to transcend the standard and often inappropriate objective analysis of just a dimensional reality.
To explore site as multiple systems and processes.
To introduce the notion that any given site may mediate between the scale of humans, of the city and the environment.
METHOD / Week 1: Students have to document a chosen site through producing a photography mapping. They will be allowed to only capture twenty frames (20 photos) and manipulate them accordingly to communicate their findings. Important factors:
– How the specific topology (enclosures, light/shadow, introvert/extrovert, accessibility, materiality of the ground, noise/quietness, visibility) affects the ways the site is inhabited / How the inhabitation practices are related to the qualities of the site.
– Patterns of inhabitation in time (repeated actions, rhythm of activities, same location with different activities depending on the day/hour, individual activities happening rarely, permanent/temporary activities).
– Patterns of inhabitation in place (activities related to the specific topology are repeated every time you encounter the same topology, how every activity affects the others, what are the connections between different activities, how different activities overlay, what activities cannot take place at the same time with others, activities that exclude others)
Week 2: Developing cognitive mappings of the chosen site.
Cognitive mappings could deal with a spatial fragment, a sectional quality or 2D maps. The mappings should be developed as hybrid drawings incorporating a variety of media (2D+3D, collage, text, sketch, photos, maps, drawings, memories etc).
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class (schedule to be confirmed at a later stage)
Photography mapping / 19-23 Oct 2020
Cognitive mapping / 26-30 Oct 2020
EVALUATION /
The evaluation will be based on the following Expected Learning Outcomes. After completion of the workshop students are expected to be able to:
-Examine and interpret site conditions in relation to the natural and built environment, materiality, boundaries, users, social issues, activities, usage of space, privacy issues, objects, ambience and immaterial qualities of space.
-Use appropriate representation and presentation tools, including mixed media techniques and mappings, for recording existing site conditions.
-To appreciate cognitive mapping as a tool that assigns preferences, determines attitudes and predicts possibilities.
-To transcend the familiarity with cartographic maps (that correspond to a dimensional reality) and explore a plurality of experiences/ cultures/sites via alternative representation techniques
In 1982 the English-Swedish architect Ralph Erskine, opened his lecture reflecting on the definition of Architecture as the Art of Building Communities. Thirty-four years later the Urban age Conference held in 2016 in Venice opened up a series of reflections inviting experts from all over the globe, sharing ideas on the future of our cities. What is the role of the Architects? How can architecture respond to social challenges and environmental daily problems? Which are the limits of the design in facing the human condition scale and nature? It is more and more evident that nowadays the Architect does not stay within the boundaries of building construction but also seeks to building communities. An infinity of possibilities, both here and now.
Infinite places are pioneering places that explore and experiment with collective processes for dwelling in the world and for building community. These are open places, possible places, un-finished ones that establish spaces of freedom and the search for alternatives. These places exist by virtue of their determination to engage in experiment. Almost all of them started with an abandoned building, or a neglected site. Here architecture finds its means of expression through the confrontation of pre-existing spatial qualities with an organic process of transformation, whose meanings depend on common needs and the aspirations of those who commit themselves to it with courage and determination (Hencore Hereux) 1 .
The concept for “Infinite Places – Building or Making Places?”, developed by the Encore Heureux team in the Architecture Biennale of 2018, presents places produced by new and inventive processes that generate architectural processes of value. This exhibition project, which considers the territory as a whole, highlights initiatives on the part of civil society and communities that embody a certain free spirit of experimentation and the infinite possibilities opened up by architecture.
This 2-week workshop aims to build a reflection in between territories, nations, regions, cities, places, and their own inhabitants, on the topic of the role of the Architecture in the society: each group of tutors/students will identify an “infinite place” in their own nation. These are not meant to serve as sites for the development of a project, but as sources for the elaboration of our own a trans-national/scalar/disciplinary community starting from the local context, culture and society, and going beyond borders, languages, national regulations.
We will discuss and go from our “Infinite Places” to building an “Imaginary Land” where the architecture can re-conquer its function in “revealing”; the relationship between the humans and the world. (Dorfles 1968) 2 .
The workshop will include short talks between tutors from different universities.
AIMS /
To unpack the city based on your own experience of the places in which you live at the moment. To find opportunities in neglected and forgotten area/buildings. To identify an “Infinite place”. To work with the imagination in defining new rules for a our collective “Imaginary Land” as a different idea for a trans-national/scalar/disciplinary community. To learn how to contribute to group work and exchange as a small experiment for a learning society.
1. Encore Hereux, Infinite Places (Lieux Infinis) – Constructing Buildings Or Places?, Publisher Editions B42, 2018.
2. G. DORFLES, 1968 “Artificio e Natura” Einaudi, Torino – pag. 20-21
METHOD / Phase 1. SEMINARS / Reflecting on the role of “Architecture as the art of building communities” and its relationship with the society, through talks with tutors and other experts. Reflecting on the notion of ecological design thinking. “How will we live together” in the future city? Phase 2. EXERCISES / Unpacking the urban fabric. Reading the city, identifying the Infinite Places, understanding and communicating (exchanging) the spatial and social dimension and qualities of the communities around the globe. Phase 3. OUTPUT / Communicating the idea/strategy through the production of Collages (one for each group of students) that will define one or more “Imaginary Lands” – different media will be considered -. The Imaginary Lands will be displayed through an online exhibition/showcase.
– 1 st day: Introduce yourself presenting an image of your Infinite Place.
– 2 nd day: Group work according to your common interests. Build your Imaginary Land!
– 3 rd day: Online Showcase + Final crit.
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students:
Monday 5th October 13-15
Introduction and first ideas
Friday 9th October 9-12
Optional Tutorial and feedback discussion
Wednesday 14th October 9-12
Closing discussion
EVALUATION /
The evaluation will be based on the following Expected Learning Outcomes:
After these two weeks workshop the student will be able to:
Apply methods for quantitative and qualitative mapping, through the description of a city.
Identify a potential for the reuse or reactivation of an area of the city. Explain the consequences
of various urban development strategies and its relation to architecture and society.
Bibliography /
Encore Hereux, Infinite Places (Lieux Infinis) – Constructing Buildings Or Places?, Publisher Editions B42, 2018.
CONTENT /
Architecture, open and expansive in nature, has explored unlikely interactions and projected hybrids with unpredictable results. Danish architect Bjarke Ingels has defined it as bigamy; Take multiple elements that apparently don’t fit together and merge them to create a new creation or genre. This is a positioning that will allow us to get out of the accepted parameters of architecture and, in doing so, give life to new ideas that previously seemed impossible or unknown.
AIMS /
Propose a new way of interpretation for the teaching and the practicing of architecture through interaction with a different field of creativity such us the food world and the use of experimental design techniques.
Study and understand the inherited relationships of the architecture-food bigamy with the intention of deriving in a better relational sustainability between both.
Highlight local values and encourage, through online group work, the discovery of other gastronomic and architectural cultures. Create + Act + Collaborate + Iterate + Invent + Question + Disseminate + Transcend
METHOD /
In this workshop we will work on the architecture-food bigamy:
• We will present edible products-objects.
• We will draw the conditions demanded by objects that are perishable and edible, the actions and rituals
associated with them and the spaces that are defined around their tasting protocols.
• We will rethink architecture and context from the gastronomic objects and, on the contrary, we will rethink
culinary art and its elements from an architectural approach.
SCHEDULE / 2-Week Workshop. Weekly 4-hour class arranged with the students: Day 1 – Analytical-Descriptive (Individual Work)
Find out an edible and man-made object/product that is iconic of your region-culture, with interesting shape, aesthetic and geometric qualities and that is perishable. Define the key parameters of its geometry and the relationships, proportions and rules between its parts. Day 2 – Representative (Group Work)
– Part 1
Group members choose by consensus a final edible object/product they will work with.
– Part 2
Represent the object through free graphic language. Draw with detail the architectural representation of the object, through a specific and free representation system. Include dimensions and annotations. Reference:
– Part 3
Generate a never seen ritual and space for the tasting of your chosen food/product. Design the utensils and the spatial, social, sensorial, interactive and emotional conditions that define how to eat it. Show clearly the relationship with the human body through sequences, phases, times, temperatures…
Output: One multi-layered drawing Reference:
Philippe Rahm architects http://www.philipperahm.com/ Day 3 – Performative Video (Individual Work)
Create the physical setting and represent the architectural scenography generated by the object and its tasting. References:
