Entwurf V-IX: Ticino Tempesta (E. Mosayebi)

Abstract

In the semester, we ask: is there also an ecological form of temporariness? Temporary architectures reflect our growing need for lightness, freedom, independence, and flexibility. Their provisional nature, speed, adaptability, and simplicity seem much more in line with increasing mobility and multiple lifestyles.

Objective

- Insights into temporal forms of building - Knowledge about social, economic and ecological issues in Canton Ticino - Design of new forms of housing - Constructive knowledge - Models in different scales - Experimental photography

Content

Architecture embodies duration and time. It contains the temporality of everyday activities, of small and large maintenance as well as necessary repairs and renewals to protect against weathering and decay. Since the 1970s, short-liveness found its breakthrough in the building sector, as industrialization provided construction materials as products with expiration dates and short renewal cycles (Uta Hassler, 2011). This economically driven form of short-liveness came at the expense of sustainability. In the semester, we ask: is there also an ecological form of temporariness? Temporary architectures reflect our growing need for lightness, freedom, independence, and flexibility. Their provisional nature, speed, adaptability, and simplicity seem much more in line with increasing mobility and multiple lifestyles. It is not for nothing that Zygmunt Baumann in 2003 called «fluidity» as appropriate metaphor to describe the «specificity of our present». We consider architecture as a «volatile mixture of time and substance» (Ákos Moravánszky, 2020). Processes of liquefaction and solidification shape our search for a new ecological aesthetic. We distinguish two types of temporary buildings: ephemeral houses made of perishable materials, which - as soon as they are no longer used - decay on site. Nomadic structures, made of long-lasting materials, which are continuously dismantled and rebuilt. The Canton of Ticino as a border region, between the Alps and the great lakes, its specific weather and climate conditions, its great seasonal and daily population fluctuations, its economic and ecological reality, forms the territory of our interventions. We ask in which architectural projects narratives of the temporary manifest themselves. We start the semester with a full-day excursion to Canton Ticino and exchange with local experts. After an initial research on the narratives, the students build an architectural detail on a scale of 1:10 as a tool and model of a material and constructive understanding of the temporary. The architectural projects programmatically address temporary housing. During the semester, we collaborate with the team of building technology and construction (BUK), as well as with Guillaume Habert's chair of sustainable construction. In workshops with the artists Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs we create experimental images of the projects.

Resources