Architectural Design V-IX: The Economy of the Project I - Forms of Living (Vertr. Kerez)

Abstract

Architectural space is shaped from the dialogue between the world of facts and the world of ideas and one cannot exist without the presence of the other. The design studio starts from the belief that architecture is the expression of its time and that architects translate, through the medium of space, their own awareness of a specific way of living in a specific geographical context.

Objective

Task Students will be asked to work in groups of two. Eighteen plots scattered all around the Swiss context will trigger eighteen forms of living for human dwellings that range from a house for one person to the scale of housing. Each group will develop their own design position that should have a strategic, an economical and a spatial strive that makes sense within the framework of the context and their vision of form of living. The design strategy will be the result of the collision between the awareness of the context - as a set of categorical facts - together with the design intention. One will reinforce the other and the two will give form to architecture. Tools A reader, intended as a manual, will serve as a general guideline of how to extrapolate design criteria from context data. It will highlight the different clusters that shape our context in order to define possible starting points for analyzing and developing a design strategy. The design process will develop by testing technological tools that enable the design of spaces in real time (VR). External support will be provided by the studio through the presence of Visual and Digital Artists. The course will provide two series of lectures which will run in parallel. Invited guests will take a position from each side of the spectrum.

Content

Architectural space is shaped from the dialogue between the world of facts and the world of ideas and one cannot exist without the presence of the other. The design studio starts from the belief that architecture is the expression of its time and that architects translate, through the medium of space, their own awareness of a specific way of living in a specific geographical context. Context is intended as a sum of scientific agents that form its being in a specific locus today. Architecture exists in the threshold between a scientific understanding of the context in which we operate and the phenomenological investigation of the forms of living we want to project on it. When both are translated into the design process, their encounter generates architecture. Context is meant as the representation of the data inherent to the listed below clusters: - Real Estate Context: the economical laws and systems that govern the market; - Normative Context: the series of regulations that frame our interventions; - Environmental Context: the natural agents that exist; - Matter Context: the physical substance that molds our spaces; - Theoretical Context: expressions of forms of living. The consciousness and acquaintance of this data embedded and instrumentalized as part of the design process gives rise to the economy of the project. Each of them will be treated in an analytical way and processed through tools that are able to put into evidence their meaning in order to extrapolate criteria for design strategies. The Governance of the economy of the project through Technology, at the service of Architecture, drives efficiency and precision, raising continuous awareness across the design process. In parallel to this knowledge-based research, the design studio will focus on the phenomenological ideas of possible forms of living. A strategy will be then formulated and translated in space, defining variations of the living form, rooted in the interpretation and awareness of the context. The goal is to develop forms of living that are a manifestation of our time, a declination, a new trajectory of experiencing space rather than the result of predetermined conventions inherited from the past.

Resources