Architectural Design V-IX: Mutual Aid - Expedition I (A.Brandlhuber)

Abstract

Every building is the result of a competitive system. This semester we are embracing Mutual Aid! It will offer students the chance to deepen their storytelling and visual production skills while gaining a comprehensive understanding of the systemic preconditions of architecture.

Objective

The studio will offer students the chance to deepen their storytelling and visual production skills while gaining a comprehensive understanding of the systemic preconditions of architecture. With a technical seminar they will be introduced to the methods of video and audio processing.

Content

WHAT IS ALL OF THIS?!? one could wonder, think or scream. Every day we are confronted with novelties and absurdities. Things that go against the logic of what we thought just the day before. Climate is changing. Borders and territories are contested. Power is centralized. Strategic horizons are becoming shorter and shorter. The state of the systems we once set up have reached their limits. What if changing the system is no longer enough? What if the logic of the system cannot be fixed? Together we want to set out on a journey. To document what was. To question what is. To reconsider what could be. To architect a path towards it! To hold. To give. And to receive. First, we will look back: In September 1872, around 200 people gathered in the Swiss Jura in the village of Saint-Imier to found the Anti-Authoritarian International, countering Marx‘s idea of a centralised workers movement. Coming from across Europe, they unanimously called for the abolition of rule and hierarchy, envisioning a society based on voluntary cooperation without state, property or factory owners. It was not by chance that the meeting took place in this village of watchmakers and the region became a centre of the anarchist movement in the 1870s. At that time, it took around 300 individual parts and more than 50 different steps to make a watch. These were distributed among various people, including watchmakers, engravers, spring makers. We will look at the houses they collectively lived and cooperatively worked in before industrialisation took hold and large factories were opened. And then into the future: We will together work on housing models that are based on this very idea of Mutual Aid. To be implemented, all of them require certain adaptations in both the legal and societal frameworks that surround them as well as their built structures. Semester Structure The semester is structured around three main phases. The first two phases consist of a translation of spatial and systemic interrelations, whilst the third phase will be about designing an operating system of a building and its architectural form. Collective readings, discussions, presentations and inputs create a shared base of knowledge and discussion. The studio will offer students the chance to deepen their storytelling and visual production skills while gaining a comprehensive understanding of the systemic preconditions of architecture. With a technical seminar they will be introduced to the methods of video and audio processing. Students that choose this course are encouraged to join the seminar week as it provides the chance to sharpen their understanding of architecting through time-based media, directly applying it to the case of Saint-Imier. Phase 1: Past (Week 1-4) Saint-Imier, Researching and Contextualising Individual Work Students will look at a specific example of a pre-industrialisation house in Saint-Imier in the Jura region to reconnect forms of organisation and production to the typology. Students will document, analyse and draw the house as a methodological example for the further semester. Phase 2: Present (Week 6-10) Switzerland, Translating and Representing Groups of 3 Students will get the operating model of a building that is based on Mutual Aid – amongst them the recently established concept of the French „Bureaux du Coeur“, housing schemes by Community Land Trusts and others. Together with an existing building or site they will document and analyse them with the skills acquired in Phase 1. Phase 3: Future (Week 11-15) Switzerland, Designing and Adapting Groups of 3 Students will develop a design and adaptation of the given operating system and building. They will find a method of representation in film and plans that feature layers of design decisions as well as new forms of ownership and Mutual Aid. Join us on a journey of exploration into unknown territory – to Jura and beyond!

Resources