Studio BA6 (Rolli et Schürch)

Summary

Urban Mending will explore new approaches of careful repair within fragmented urban territories by working on public spaces. Focusing this semester on the disjointed fabrics of the Città Ticino, students will develop projects aimed at re-establish connections between places and their communities.

Content

Keywords

A: Adaption - B - C: Care, Città Ticino, Collectivity, Collective memory, Communal - D: Dialogue - E: Ecumene, Encounters - F: Fragility - G: Grafting - H: History an histories - I: Identity, Inhabitants, Interaction, Inclusivity - J - K - L: Listening - M: Mending, Multiscalarity - N: Networks - O: Observation -  P: Permeability, Publicness, Public Space, Proximity - Q - R: React, Reframe, Resilience, Reveal - S: Sociality, Sustainability, Sponge City - T: Territory - U: Urbanity, Underground - V - W: Water - X - Y - Z

Learning Outcomes

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

• Interpret a complex place, understanding its qualities and issues from the perspective of public space, conceived in its social and spatial dimensions
• Contextualise the essence of public spaces within a specific reality, highlighting their qualities, potentialities, and critical aspects
• Formulate an effective strategy for intervening in public spaces within urban contexts characterized by strong spatial and social fragmentation.
• Demonstrate and reveal the interdependencies between private and public spaces;
• Design specific interventions as part of a broader, integrated strategy capable of generating a positive urban-scale impact in terms of social exchange, climate adaptation, and spatial quality;
• Represent one's project through appropriate means that effectively convey its multiscalar dimension (both punctual and urban).
• Integrate the perspective of inhabitants and turn it into design input.
• Synthesize patial and social conditions across multiple scales, operating simultaneously at the architectural-detail and urban scales.

Transversal skills

• Demonstrate a capacity for creativity.
• Take feedback (critique) and respond in an appropriate manner.
• Use both general and domain specific IT resources and tools
• Make an oral presentation.
• Collect data.
• Continue to work through difficulties or initial failure to find optimal solutions.
• Set objectives and design an action plan to reach those objectives.
• Use a work methodology appropriate to the task.
• Plan and carry out activities in a way which makes optimal use of available time and other resources.
• Resolve conflicts in ways that are productive for the task and the people concerned.
• Take responsibility for environmental impacts of her/ his actions and decisions.
• Take responsibility for health and safety of self and others in a working context.
• Give feedback (critique) in an appropriate fashion.
• Negotiate effectively within the group.
• Demonstrate the capacity for critical thinking

Teaching methods

Revealing * Reframing * Reacting *

The semester begins with a close reading of the chosen territory. By immersing oneself attentively and sensitively in the context, it becomes possible to understand the place in all its different components.
This phase will lay solid foundations for designing interventions that are respectful and precise, capable of enhancing the specific qualities of the existing fabric and the surrounding territory. Students will explore, map, and document its visible and invisible structures - its physical, historical, and social traces - revealing both qualities and contradictions.

Building on the observations and interpretations carried out in the first stage, students will define a mending strategy: a precise and forward looking series of interrelated interventions that enhances the identified values and potential while addressing the site€™s weaknesses. Students will develop a strategic framework that reinterprets the territory across multiple scales - from the detail to the urban system - seeking maximum impact with minimal resources.

Stage 3: Revealing * Reframing * Reacting *

In the final stage, students will translate their strategies into concrete design proposals. This phase focuses on developing selected interventions in depth - spatially, programmatically and materially - through drawings, models, and visual narratives that express the projects multiscalar dimension. The work should reveal how each intervention, no matter how small, contributes to a broader vision of Urban Mending as a way to strengthen social and urban fabrics. Projects are continuously discussed and refined until the final review, where they are evaluated both as individual works and as contributions to a shared studio vision.

Expected student activities

Atelier: working in the school's studio spaces - for design, drawing production, model making, and other forms of exploration - is fundamental to fostering a spirit of mutual learning and shared creation. Presence is mandatory.

Assessment methods

The final evaluation results from a combination of formal and informal assessments. It reflects the entire design process and is based on key criteria that consider both the quality of the architectural work and the students level of engagement.
The final grade is weighted as follows:
- 20% first stage;
- 20% second stage;
- 50% third stage;
- 10% overall attitude and commitment during the semester.

Resources

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)

No

Bibliography

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Random House, 1961
Augustin Berque, Être humains sur la terre. Principes d'éthique de l'écoumène, Editions Gallimard, 1996 
Plinio Martini, Il fondo del sacco, Edizioni Casagrande, 1970
Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, Rizzoli, 1979

Moodle Link

• https://go.epfl.ch/AR-302_az