Architectural Design V-IX: Making Plans for Living (A.Caruso)

Abstract

The consumer driven economy is not sustainable and the desires it claims to fill can never be satisfied. What should we be doing and how can we have fulfilling lives? We will start by looking at a range of life-practices. While we attempt to discern them, we will start to draw plans, plans that form a notation for these rituals, plans that describe existing spaces, plans for new ways of living.

Objective

Qualification to control the design process increasingly independent and with sole responsibility and to find to an individual design methodology and attitude.

Content

A few semesters ago the studio tentatively approached modernism. The evident failure of architecture to address the imbalances of contemporary life provided the motivation to look again at the more ideological and programmatic promises of modernism, particularly the second wave of the 60s and 70s, whose discourses were broadened to encompass themes of gender, the legacies of empire and the growing imbalances in our environment. The research has been fruitful, if a bit speculative, so now is the time to get more specific and to explore how themes of emancipation and responsibility can form the basis for new architectures. The consumer driven economy and its insatiable consumption of precious resources is not sustainable, and the desires it claims to fill can never be satisfied. We need to shift our attention to things that give us purpose and happiness. What should we be doing, and how can we have fulfilling lives? We will start the semester by looking at a diverse range of life-practices; from the cave paintings made by our distant ancestors, to St Francis’s labours as depicted by Giotto in Assisi, from the multiple disciplines encompassed by classical Indian dance to the slow and deliberate narratives in the films of Tacita Dean. While we attempt to discern new practices that address the challenges of today, we will start to draw plans, plans that form a notation for these rituals, plans that describe existing spaces, plans for new ways of living. The studio will have an integrated Seminar Week. From our new home in ONA we will meet and debate with (both in person and with Zoom) a wide range of figures who are challenging the status quo of technique, economics and politics. In the course of the week these new ideas will be added to the ongoing research of the studio and will form the basis for an interactive, screen based journal, and for the production of a reader, a modest call to arms.

Resources