Context and Modernity - Public Building

 

The masters program of the department Architectural Design - Public Building is related to the research program Context and Modernity, in which it will develop four research themes:

 

Public Realm

1. Theme: Public buildings play a paramount role in the built environment: they organize and structure the city and act as points of orientation –not only due to their physical presence but also because of their important social, cultural, economic, political and symbolic role.

 

2. Practice: Within the theme of architecture, context and modernity, the Studios Public Realm address the contemporary meaning of the public domain as realm of (ex)change in an urbanized society, as ‘place where strangers meet’. Specifically, they focus on the question of how new architectural and urban models, typologies, programmes, and design strategies can be developed to meet a diverse and open society’s cultural, social and political needs in the beginning of the 21st century.

 

3. Method: The Studios Public Realm considers the architectural project as the basic unit for research and design. The architectural project is held to be the entity that reflects theoretical knowledge (savoir) and practical skills (savoir faire) and forming the working material and craft of architects. The Studios Public Realm combines theoretical investigations into sociological and philosophical notions of the public realm with reflections upon the physical implications for public building. Panoply of research and design methods, as well as drawing techniques –ranging from experimental to more conventional, like typological, typo-morphological and plan analysis— is developed to address these issues.

 

Tutors:

MSc1:    Tom Avermaete, Sien van Dam

MSc2:    Hans Teerds

MSc3/4: Michiel Riedijk, Niklaas Deboutte, Emre Alturk

 Susanne Komossa, Klaske Havik, Nicola Marzot

 

Border Conditions

 

1. Theme: Architecture can be regarded as the discourse on space. In this context, borders are means to define space as well as one of the most important instruments that determine our perception of space. Borders can be physical, psychological, socio-economic, and/or political. An investigation into the specific characteristics of contemporary border conditions gives an insight into contemporary spatial practices, while simultaneously providing tools to question the positioning of our discipline.

 

2. Practice: the Border Conditions studio’s provide the means, environment, and dialogue necessary for students to pursue in depth architectural investigations, while simultaneously encouraging critical reflection upon possible relations between developing projects and the contemporary questions of the discipline. The BC studios adopt a broad inclusive perspective toward the notion of design, with a strong emphasis on process-oriented (in contrast to object-oriented) investigations. The primary emphasis is on navigating a specific course while remaining open for unforeseen discoveries. This approach stresses the importance of projecting the design process into tectonic and spatial constructs, all of which form an important basis in the understanding of a project.

 

3. Method: In order to capture the complexity of contemporary urban border conditions and to relate them to the socio-political contexts in which they are situated, we will use tools and techniques of sampling, cataloguing, cartography and navigation. The map is a means to investigate the local (situated within the global) as a field in which various elements and forces on various scales exercise their influence. Mapping introduces a specific technique of urban analysis that engages the multiplicity of conditions that surround the architectural object. It also reveals different levels of complexities from conventional analytical architectural drawings. As such, the critical and operative function of mapping offers a typical spatial ordering that is developed through a system of notations.

 

Tutors:

MSc1:    Micha de Haas, Sang Lee

MSc2:    Sang Lee

MSc3/4: Henriette Bier, Oscar Rommens, Marc Schoonderbeek

 

 

Public Territory

The Public Territory Studios offer the possibility to research the role of architectural interventions in the context of the contemporary territorial (r)evolution. The city as such is not the reference for this architecture. The site of the public territory is the city region, consisting of a number of architectural strategies with a certain (permeable) autonomy. Architectural design is concerned with tactical alterations of the territory. Contrary to the birds-eye panoramic view of the planner and avoiding the mere iterations of the known hierarchies in the city region, the studio wishes to distil without prejudice the concrete facts and figures of particular fragments of this territory. We see one or the other singular bias has always informed dealing the metropolitan city-region: infrastructure, form ecology, historical city cores et cetera. An integrated or better – comprehensive – approach is lacking or deemed unfashionable. The studios propose another attempt: fragmented, iterative, but preferably well-drawn.

 

The groundwork of the studios is formed by the research revolving around three moments of analysis and inquiry about the territory in question: Survey- Systems – Things. The palimpsest (Corboz) nature of territory is confronted by these three ways of looking, analyzing, redrawing. The ‘survey’ produces first a field of knowledge across the territory in question: not to produce a map to represent its geography, but a drawn speculation in order to (re-)discover reality and ‘take measure’(Corner). A second moment ‘systems’ focuses on the more abstract and diagrammatic relationships projected on the territory by the way it is used, appropriated and to render evident the different regimes acting upon it: processes are not celebrated as flows but interrogated about their distributive/ logistic role. Lastly thin ‘things’ questions if it is still possible to talk about objects ‘an sich’, about the very quality of the artefact in an expanded field of sorts: what are the limits of architecture in a context not defined by an urban figure-ground and neither a picturesque landscape scenography.

 

Tutors:

MSc1:    Filip Geerts

MSc3/4: Filip Geerts, Stefano Milani

 

 

For more information you can download the semester booklet here.