Architectural Design V-IX: Jura Tendu (E.Mosayebi)

Abstract

The studio explores stress as a design methodology for landscape and architecture, shifting from risk avoidance to risk acceptance in response to intensifying climate threats. Focusing on lightweight structures, students stress-test designs against landslides, floods, fires, and storms. By pushing materials to their breaking point, they develop resilient, adaptive strategies.

Objective

- MATERIAL AND CONSTRUCTION - FLOOR PLANS AND CONTEXT - NARRATIVE AND REPRESENTATION

Content

WHAT: STRESS If 'STRESS' is a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension from exposure to externally applied forces, 'ENDURABILITY' is the property of a system, subsystem, equipment, or process that enables it to continue to function within specified performance limits for an extended period despite severe disturbance. In an increasingly volatile environment, we ask ourselves can 'stress be applied as a design methodology for landscape and architecture?'. WHY: RISK LANDSCAPES 'RISK' is the probability of an outcome having a negative effect on actors, systems, or assets, and it is typically depicted as a function of the combined effects of hazards. The increasing frequency and intensity of risk landscapes in the Jura demand a shift in approach–from risk aversion [prevention/avoidance operations] to risk acceptance [reaction, redundancy and productive failure]. Climate change, insurance and construction are inextricably linked, with impacts shaped by geography, economics, and politics. As disasters [landslides, floods, fires, storms] intensify, they increasingly threaten livelihoods, drive up insurance costs and affect landscape and construction policies and practices. HOW: BREAKING POINT In this context, we focus on lightweight landscape structures for living designed to address climatic risk. Students collaborate with four ETH scientific departments specialising in landslide, flood, fire, and storm risks to build knowledge through research. Using scientific modelling [software] and physical experimental prototyping [anagogic] we 'stress test' at different intensities on constructive skins, joints and structures. Over the semester we explore the accumulation of stress on designs until breaking point which forms constructive strategies, parts or technologies for the projects. By inviting nature’s destructive forces to generate strategies for landscape and architecture that not only resist but react productively, we ask ourselves, until what point can design endure? COLLABORATORS: We collaborate on developing constructive prototypes [with BUK and the Chair of Structural Design], experimental photography [with Taiyo Onorato], Google Earth Engine Mapping [with Lucia Rebolino Forensic Architecture] and anagogic stress test models [with Valentina Noce Sabotage Practice]. The studio is the concluding semester in Chair Mosayebi's trilogy exploring durability in the canton of Jura.

Resources