Studio MA1 (Bedir)

Summary

This studio will work with designing interventions, programs, spaces, and modes of collectivity and instituting for the inhabitation of human and more than human agencies in sites across Switzerland, where water cycles intersect with borders, infrastructure, industry.

Content

Keywords

Infrastructure, agency, commons, repair, collective intelligence

Learning Outcomes

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

• Investigate Research a selected site collectively, with a self-developed attitude, across the different scales that produce that site.
• Identify Identify issues and possible points of intervention.
• Synthesize Synthesise the group work into visions and ideas for a site.
• Design Design with commons towards repairing the social and ecological context.
• Interpret Expand the use of tools, methods and technologies from other fields into architecture.
• Propose Propose innovative ways of communicating design concepts.
• Assess / Evaluate Assess/evaluate the ways in which built environment respond to and shape cultural and environmental values. Examine the broad implications of architecture and the city on natural and built environments, both situated and planetary.
• Recognize Recognize architecture as an ongoing process, not as a product.

Teaching methods

Teaching methods

Field work / witnessing and engagement: Multiscalar drawings, collage and assemblage, patchwork, weaving, model making, video making (landscape theory), mixed media, poetry, performance

Where is here / where is there: How to deal with a site that we are not directly embedded in: Zooming in to molecular scale, zooming out to cosmos scale, patchwork ethnography

Dealing with black boxes of information: Dissecting, repeating, embracing, more than human anthropology

Intensive workshops: Learning with case studies, collective reading sessions, presentations of self-selected projects, discussions, lectures

Site visit / trips: First week's encounter will take the studio along sites around Lausanne. Fall semester will follow sites along the Rhône, and the Spring semester will follow the Rhine. Costs of these trips will be incurred by the students.

Methods of review:

Rehearsals: Preparing for midterm and final presentations

Peer reviews: Studio participants reviewing each other's work

Focused reviews: 1-1 reviews with participants, focused on specific questions

Expected student activities

Collaborations across teams.

Peer reviewing each other's work.

Self-organizing site visits.

Preparing collective exhibition with projects.

Assessment methods

Assessment is based on both individual and collaborative work and considers each participant's evolution and progress throughout the term. Evaluation is based on the following criteria:

Knowledge: Complexity, expand/depth and engagement of critical (design) research and analysis.

Vision: Development of vision based on the understanding of context, research synthesis informing design, development of attitude and position towards design project.

Proposition: Maturity of the project, experimenting and performative evaluation of possibilities in relation to parameters and priorities.

Process: Commitment to the studio throughout the semester, collaboration in teamwork.

Communication: Presentation and communication, articulation of criticality, communication of intention, context, arguments to the constituents.

Supervision

Resources

Moodle Link

• https://go.epfl.ch/AR-401_aq