Studio BA3 (Peris et Toral)

Summary

This studio explores the transformation of existing structures into cluster housing at STAVECO, Bologna. Students develop strategies for collective inhabitation through adaptive reuse, connecting servant and served spaces with spatial, structural, material and environmental systems.

Content

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, the student must be able to:

• Analyze existing buildings by identifying and interpreting their spatial, structural, material, environmental and atmospheric qualities, and recognising their potential for transformation.
• Systematize different strategies for inhabiting and transforming existing structures, using comparative references and the Typology Atlas as operative design knowledge.
• Interpret servant- and served-space strategies in relation to existing buildings, using them to organise circulation, services, wet cores, storage, private spaces and shared facilities.
• Synthesize the qualities of the pre-existing architecture and the requirements of new forms of collective inhabitation into a coherent architectural proposal.
• Apply strategies of adaptive reuse and servant and served spaces to the specific conditions of an existing building, establishing a conscious position towards what is preserved, repaired, adapted, removed or added.
• Design cluster housing that articulates private, shared, common and collective spaces, different degrees of privacy, human scale and diverse forms of collective inhabitation.
• Coordinate existing and new spatial, structural, construction, material and environmental systems so that architectural expression emerges from their coherence and dialogue.
• Develop passive and thermodynamic strategies that integrate orientation, solar radiation, thermal mass, insulation, ventilation and seasonal occupation with the spatial and material transformation of the existing building.

Transversal skills

• Assess progress against the plan, and adapt the plan as appropriate.
• Evaluate one's own performance in the team, receive and respond appropriately to feedback.
• Give feedback (critique) in an appropriate fashion.
• Negotiate effectively within the group.
• Demonstrate a capacity for creativity.
• Demonstrate the capacity for critical thinking
• Access and evaluate appropriate sources of information.
• Make an oral presentation.

Teaching methods

TEACHING METHODS

Learning in the studio is organised as an open and iterative process of observing, documenting, comparing, interpreting, testing and revising. The aim is not to transmit a single design method or guide students towards a predetermined formal solution, but to teach them how to make interconnected, conscious and responsible decisions. The project is understood as an argument constructed over time, in which spatial, structural, material, environmental and social decisions must remain coherent with one another and respond critically to the conditions of the existing architecture.

Semester II begins with a study trip to northern Italy, including Bologna and the former STAVECO military complex. Observation and documentation of the existing buildings constitute the starting point of the design process. Students will identify their spatial, structural, material and atmospheric qualities and use them to formulate a position towards what should be preserved, repaired, adapted, removed or added.

Students will continue to work in pairs, but the groups will be reorganised after the trip and no student may work with the same partner as during Semester I. Changing partners expands the circulation of knowledge across the studio, exposes students to different approaches and working methods, and reinforces collaboration as a form of horizontal knowledge transfer.

Each pair will work on a different plot within the STAVECO complex. Rather than producing competing responses to an identical problem, this organisation creates a collective field of investigation in which different existing conditions generate different architectural questions. Students are encouraged to exchange references, observations, difficulties, discoveries and technical knowledge across groups.

The Typology Atlas produced during Semester I will remain an operative design tool. Servant- and served-space strategies and a comparative taxonomy of adaptive reuse will provide frameworks through which students can interpret existing buildings, test alternative forms of occupation and transformation, and develop new relationships between private, shared, common and collective spaces. These categories are understood not as fixed solutions but as tools for recognising differences, identifying architectural potential and making conscious design decisions.

The design process is supported by theoretical and instrumental lectures on collective housing, adaptive reuse, thermodynamics, structures, materials and construction. Rather than constituting independent areas of knowledge, these inputs are progressively incorporated into the project. Spatial organisation, environmental performance, structural logic and construction are developed simultaneously and tested through successive iterations.

Weekly reviews form the core of the studio. Mondays are devoted to intensive project discussions in which every group presents its current work. Drawings and models are placed on a large table around which students, teaching assistants and professors gather. This horizontal arrangement transforms the review from an individual presentation into a collective working session, allowing projects to be compared and discussed as part of a shared field of research. Students are expected to attend and learn from the discussions of other projects as well as their own.

Tuesday sessions combine lectures with follow-up discussions led by the teaching assistants. These sessions allow students to revisit the previous day's reviews, question and interpret feedback, and translate it into specific decisions for the next iteration. Feedback is therefore understood as material for critical reflection rather than as instructions to be applied mechanically.

The collective model of STAVECO at 1:150 extends this collaborative method to the scale of the entire complex. Each proposal becomes part of a larger transformation whose spatial, environmental and urban relationships can only be understood when the different plots are assembled. Cooperation thus becomes a structural condition of the project rather than an additional activity.

Drawing and model-making accompany the entire process and are understood as instruments of thought rather than final representations. Site plans, inhabited plans, sections, elevations, axonometric projections, thermodynamic analyses and physical models allow students to observe, test, compare and revise their decisions. Learning is consolidated through the continuous cycle of observation, interpretation, design, representation, discussion and revision

Assessment methods

ASSESSMENT METHODS

Semester II extends over 14 weeks and is structured around the progressive development of Exercise 3, including regular studio reviews, an interim review and a final review. Assessment is conceived as an active part of the learning process rather than solely as a final grading mechanism. It combines continuous evaluation, critical feedback, self-assessment and the evaluation of the final submission.

Although each pair works on a different plot and responds to specific existing buildings, all students must meet a common framework of requirements, scales, formats and deliverables. These shared standards ensure academic rigour while allowing each project to follow a distinct design trajectory. Assessment therefore focuses on the coherence and consequences of the decisions developed throughout the process rather than on conformity to a preferred formal or aesthetic solution.

Assessment is distributed as follows:

Exercise 3 -Cluster Housing at STAVECO: 80%
General Involvement: 20%

Exercise 3 - Cluster Housing at STAVECO: 80%

Exercise 3 is developed in pairs and assessed through both the design process and the final submission. Evaluation considers the students - capacity to observe, document and interpret the spatial, structural, material, environmental and atmospheric qualities of the existing buildings, and to formulate a clear position towards the pre-existing architecture through conscious decisions about what is preserved, repaired, adapted, removed, perforated or added.

Particular attention is given to the capacity to transform existing structures into housing while establishing a meaningful dialogue between inherited architecture and new intervention. The proposal is evaluated in terms of the forms of inhabitation it enables, the relationships between private, shared, common and collective spaces, and the articulation of different degrees of privacy. The appropriate application and adaptation of servant- and served-space strategies to organise circulation, services, wet cores, storage, domestic spaces and shared facilities is also considered.

Assessment addresses the coherence between spatial organisation, structural logic, construction systems, material choices and environmental performance. Students must demonstrate an understanding of the thermodynamic behaviour of their proposal and integrate orientation, solar radiation, thermal mass, insulation, ventilation, air movement and seasonal occupation into the design. Thermodynamic analysis is a mandatory component of the project.

The project is also evaluated through the precision, readability and coherence of its representation. Plans, sections, elevations, axonometric drawings, environmental analyses and physical models must communicate the reasoning and development of the proposal. This includes both the pairs 1:33 model and its contribution to the collective 1:150 model of STAVECO.

The final submission must be understood as a coherent body of work rather than as a collection of independent documents. Drawings, diagrams and models must complement one another and collectively communicate the spatial, structural, material, environmental and experiential logic of the intervention. The oral presentation is assessed through the students ability to explain and critically defend the reasoning, development and consequences of their project.

General Involvement: 20%

General Involvement is assessed individually and continuously throughout the semester. It considers each students preparation for weekly reviews, active participation in studio discussions, openness to feedback, capacity to revise the work and contribution to the shared learning environment.

Particular attention is paid to collaboration within each pair, the exchange of knowledge with other groups, participation in the collective model and engagement with the work presented during reviews. Attendance alone does not constitute active involvement: students are expected to arrive with updated and printed material, contribute constructively to discussions, document the development of their project and demonstrate sustained progress throughout the semester.

Supervision

Resources

Bibliography

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THEORY AND HOUSING

Abalos, Inaki. The Good Life: A Guided Visit to the Houses of Modernity. Translated by Paul Hammond. Zurich: Park Books, 2017.

Candilis, Georges. Planning and Design for Leisure / Recherches sur l'architecture des loisirs / Planen und Bauen fuer die Freizeit. English translation by James C. Palmes. Documents of Modern Architecture, vol. 9. Stuttgart: Karl Kraemer Verlag, 1972.

Druot, Frederic, Anne Lacaton, and Jean-Philippe Vassal. Plus: Large-Scale Housing Developments - An Exceptional Case. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2007.

Eleb, Monique, and Sabri Bendimerad. "Cohabit: Reasons, Places and Forms of Cohabitation." T18 Magazine, nos. 33-34, "New Ways of Living" (2020): 15-42.

Evans, Robin. "Figures, Doors and Passages." Architectural Design 48, no. 4 (April 1978): 267-278.

Hayden, Dolores. The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981.

Hertzberger, Herman. Lessons for Students in Architecture. Rotterdam: nai010 Publishers, 2016. First published 1991.

Hertzberger, Herman. Space and the Architect: Lessons in Architecture 2. 2nd rev. ed. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2010.

Kahn, Louis I. "Architecture Is the Thoughtful Making of Spaces." Perspecta, no. 4 (1957): 2-3.

Peris, Marta. "Servant Space, Served Space." In Des dels edificis / Desde los edificios / From Buildings, edited by Pere Joan Ravetllat, 164-185. Barcelona: Iniciativa Digital Politecnica, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, 2014.

Piniara, Ioanna. We Have Never Been Private: The Housing Project in Neoliberal Europe. New York: Actar, 2025.

Poch, Marta, ed. Housing in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona: Metropolitan Institute of Land Development and Property Management (IMPSOL), 2015-2024. Barcelona: Actar, 2025.

Rybczynski, Witold. Home: A Short History of an Idea. New York: Viking, 1986.

Sabater, Txatxo, and Ricardo Guasch. "Albergue-Sharing-Cohabitacion-Cohousing-Coliving: Nuevos descriptores, nuevos operadores proyectuales. Ampliacion operadores, su extension." T18 Magazine, nos. 33-34, "Nuevas maneras de habitar" (2020).

Teige, Karel. The Minimum Dwelling. Translated and introduced by Eric Dluhosch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Originally published in Czech in 1932.

CONSTRUCTION

Ching, Francis D. K., and Mark Mulville. European Building Construction Illustrated. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2014.

Deplazes, Andrea, ed. Constructing Architecture: Materials, Processes, Structures - A Handbook. 5th English ed. Basel: Birkhaeuser, 2022.

Muttoni, Aurelio. The Art of Structures: Introduction to the Functioning of Structures in Architecture. Lausanne: EPFL Press, 2011.

Neufert, Ernst. Architects' Data. 6th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2023. First published in German as Bauentwurfslehre in 1936.

Semper, Gottfried. The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings. Translated and edited by Harry Francis Mallgrave and Wolfgang Herrmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. "The Four Elements of Architecture" was first published in 1851.

Torroja, Eduardo. Philosophy of Structures. English version by J. J. Polivka and Milos Polivka. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958. Originally published in Spanish as Razon y ser de los tipos estructurales in 1957.

Engel, Heino. Tragsysteme / Structure Systems. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009. Bilingual German-English edition.

Frampton, Kenneth. Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture. Edited by John Cava. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.

Otto, Frei, and Bodo Rasch. Finding Form: Towards an Architecture of the Minimal. Edited by Sabine Schanz. Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges, 1995.

Rudofsky, Bernard. Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture. New York: The Museum of Modern Art; distributed by Doubleday, 1964.

Kaufmann, Hermann, Stefan Kroetsch, and Stefan Winter. Manual of Multi-Storey Timber Construction: Principles, Constructions, Examples. Munich: DETAIL, 2022.

Minke, Gernot. Building with Earth: Design and Technology of a Sustainable Architecture. 5th rev. ed. Basel: Birkhaeuser, 2025.

Schmitt, Heinrich, and Andreas Heene. Hochbaukonstruktion: Die Bauteile und das Baugefuege - Grundlagen des heutigen Bauens. 15th ed. Wiesbaden: Vieweg, 2001.

THERMODYNAMICS

Grohar, Jure, Eva Gusel, Masa Mertelj, Anja Vidic, and Matic Vrabic, eds. +/- 1 deg C: In Search of Well-Tempered Architecture. Ljubljana: Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO), 2024.

Heschong, Lisa. Thermal Delight in Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979.

Heywood, Huw. 101 reglas basicas para una arquitectura de bajo consumo energetico. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2015.

Heywood, Huw. 101 reglas basicas para edificios y ciudades sostenibles. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2017.

Olgyay, Victor. Design with Climate: Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism. New and expanded ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015. First published 1963.

Prieto, Eduardo. Historia medioambiental de la arquitectura. Madrid: Catedra, 2019.

Rahm, Philippe. Climatic Architecture. New York: Actar Publishers, 2023.

Rahm, Philippe. Historia natural de la arquitectura: Como el clima, las epidemias y la energia dieron forma a la ciudad y los edificios. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2024.

Rahm, Philippe, and Sana Frini. 4 deg C entre toi et moi. New York: Actar Publishers, 2025.

Ressources en bibliothèque

• Find the references at the Library

Notes/Handbook

Proposed Study Trip: Northern Italy BOLOGNA, Beginning of Semester II (SS27)

• Train: Round trip Lausanne-Bologna (via Milan), approximately CHF 150 if booked in advance. The Swiss Half Fare Travelcard applies only to the Swiss section of the journey.
• Accommodation: 2 nights, estimated at CHF 50-65 per night (Total: CHF 120).
• Local transport: Approximately CHF 40-60 for the three days, including urban transportation and travel between the different cities visited.
• Meals: Estimated at CHF 10-20 per meal
• Total Estimated Cost: The total expense is projected to be between CHF 350 and CHF 480, depending on final accommodation choices and personal spending habits.

Estimated Personal Budget

Overall cost estimation for model making, drawing and production: approx. CHF 250 (depending on student)

Moodle Link

• https://go.epfl.ch/AR-202_bc