Architectural Design V-IX: Fruit Behaviorology in CH/Designing Urban Rural Commons (M. Kaijima)

Abstract

Architectural behaviorology focuses on creating better accessibility to local resources. Urban-rural commons is defined as a notion of commons in rural and urban realms. In HS2020, we focus on designing architecture for fruit culture in Valais. Students will examine ethnographic approach by actor network drawings and propose an project for Urban-rural commons through drawing and models.

Objective

- Understanding of Architectural Behaviorology concept - Learning research method - Learning design method - Learning visualization method by actor net-work mapping, model, a large hand drawing - Learning structure and material

Content

Today’s local populations and ecologies are confronted by a raft of critical issues that have become manifest at a shared global level. A key worldwide aspect in these interlinked challenges is the dual phenomena of aging societies and the depopulation of rural areas, whereby the development of modern technology and industry in the course of the 20th century has played a huge role in triggering these problems by establishing barriers between everyday life and local resources, such as nature, human skills and accumulated knowledge. Rural communities based on small-scale primary industries, which have traditionally been vital not only in securing national food supplies but also in maintaining a sustainable ecosystem balance between mankind and nature, face a growing struggle in terms of generational succession and transfer. Using the core design approach of architectural behaviourology the research project advocates and demonstrates, both theoretically and in real-world practice, the significance of creating urban-rural commons to rejuvenate community livelihoods with small-scale primary industries (farming, fisheries, and forestry), taking both Asia (Japan) and Europe (Switzerland) as geographically distant yet mutually applicable and promising applied settings. Architectural behaviorology as an architectural design method focuses on creating better accessibility to the innate resources of rural communities. Urban-rural commons is defined as a notion of commons in both the rural and urban realms, including integrating their crossover interactions and hybridisation. Students will examine the existing livelihood with ethnographic approach and visualize them by actor network drawings. Then, through drawings and models, the students will propose an architectural project to intervene in the network and establish Urban Rural Commons to define a possible future for the study area. This year, we focus on designing architecture for livelihoods focused on permanent fruit crops, such as vineyards, apple orchards or chestnut forests. Fruit cultivation and the production of fruit based products and architectural as well as landscape design are widley interconnected, often completely blurring the bounderies between agriculture, landscape and architecture. A variety of specific buildings are needed to cultivate fruit, from growing seedlings, mainting orchards to harvesting, storing and processing fruit. Many of the build structures and buildings are needed to provide specific conditions, such as a certain temperature, amount of sunlight are protection from the weather. We will study the vernacular und modern methods to provoide these conditions and reapply them to new design projects. One of the biggest and most important fruit growing areas and our field of study in the autumn semester will be the lower Valais. There, plantations, retaining walls, irrigation system and other infrastructure have shaped the valley for centuries and fruit plantations reach within the most urbanized centers. Students choosing this design studio with first priority do not need to choose a seminar week in HS 2020. The trip to Valais during the seminar week is highly recommended and will be credited as a seminar week.

Resources