UOU

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  • ARCH+ARTS: the space for learning as a landscape of life

    CONTENT / Many changes have been in the architecture profession since Journey to the East was 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:

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

    Alicante University (SPAIN) /

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

    Javier Sánchez Merina (jsm@ua.es)

    UOU_ws1 ALC

     

  • ARCH: discover nature in our buildings – enclosed nature and the city

    CONTENT /

    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.

     

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    ION MINCU University of Architecture and Urbanism Bucharest (ROMANIA) /

    Andreea Calma (andreeacalma.drd18@uauim.ro)

     

     

  • ARCH: architecture through language – a play for radio in one act

    CONTENT /

    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.

     

    UOU_05_Language

     

    UWE BRISTOL (UK) /

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

    Thom Gorst (Thom.Gorst@uwe.ac.uk)

     

  • ARCH: elements of architecture for the confinement

    CONTENT /

    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

    Here you can find more information on the catalogue of this exhibition:
    https://oma.eu/publications/elements-of-architecture

    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.

     

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    Alicante University (SPAIN) /

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

    Javier Sánchez Merina (jsm@ua.es)

     

  • ARCH: cognitive mapping

    CONTENT /

    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

     

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    University of Nicosia (CYPRUS) /

    Maria Hadjisoteriou (hadjisoteriou.m@unic.ac.cy)

    Yiorgos Hadjichristou (hadjichristou.y@unic.ac.cy)

    Markella Menikou (menikou.m@unic.ac.cy)

     

  • ARCH: architecture as the art of building communities

    CONTENT /

    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.

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    Umeå University (Sweden) /

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

    Malmö University (Sweden) /

    Marie Kraft (marie.kraft@mau.se)

     

     

  • ARCH: architecture & food – an international buffet

    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:

    Prats, E. & E. Miralles (1991). “How to lay out a croissant”. El Croquis 49/50: 240-241.
    https://unit01greenwich.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/how-to-lay-out-a-croissant-by-miralles/

    – 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:

    The Perfect Human by Jorgen Leth, 1967. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqJ1iX5n2d4
    Sublimotion by Paco Roncero, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoAX52FiDOM

    EVALUATION /
    Grades will be based on each university’s requirements.
    After completion of the workshop students are expected to be able to: TBA

     

    UOU _ ws1_AUD & UEM

     

    American University in Dubai (UAE) /

    Jose Antonio Carrillo (jcarrillo@aud.edu)

    European University in Madrid (SPAIN) /

    Miguel Luengo Angulo (mluengo@amarillostudio.es)