Studio MA1 (Cierto)

Inside out

Conventional housing design often begins with a programme: a given number of bedrooms, a list of functions and a predefined organisation. This studio proposes a different approach. Working in pairs, students progressively construct a dwelling through a sequence of architectural fragments, each exercise focusing on a single domestic question. Rooms, spaces of care, filter spaces and housing typologies are explored one by one, allowing each investigation to inform and transform the next. The final dwelling emerges gradually, rather than being predetermined from the outset.

The studio deliberately avoids a specific site. Freed from the constraints of context, students are invited to speculate on the dwelling of the near future by concentrating on the most intimate scale of architecture: inhabitation itself. The physical model becomes the principal design tool throughout the semester, enabling each fragment of the house to be explored spatially before being assembled into a coherent whole.

We understand the house as something that is built from the inside out. Rather than beginning with the city or the urban block, the semester starts with the room: the smallest domestic unit, where everyday life unfolds. A single space is first designed - its geometry, proportion, light and atmosphere - before attention gradually shifts towards spaces of care, filter rooms and, finally, the housing typology itself. The semester concludes by assembling these successive investigations into a flexible, non-hierarchical dwelling conceived from the inside out.

. Case study (2weeks):

Reference dwellings

Capture what makes it valuable

Build a shared imaginary

. A room (2weeks)

Reflect on the smallest unit of the dwelling: the room

The model is the working tool

Programme is left open

The room's form as a design resource

The seed for the exercises that follow

. Spaces of Care (1week)

Spaces devoted to care work

Overturning the hierarchy

Servant spaces as rooms that are dignified

. Filter rooms (1week)

Rooms that mediate between inside and out

Tempering extreme temperatures, both heat and cold

Rooms that can shift their condition with the seasons

Extend the uses and comfort of the dwelling throughout the year

. Typology (2weeks)

Assembly

The dwelling as a whole

Knitting together

Completing with whatever is missing

Housing typology born of the earlier reflections

Materiality of the spaces

Model as a working tool

. Aggregation (2weeks)

Moving from the single unit to the many,

From one home to a set of homes that together make up the building

Variations and exceptions

A system with a clear spatial and design logic

Satellite room

. Timeline (2weeks)

A dwelling is never finished

Flexibility of the system

Projecting its transformation across fifteen years

Temporal reading

Revising and adjusting the aggregation already designed

Reversibility and ambiguity

The final review presents the project as the synthesis of a single architectural investigation developed throughout the semester. Rather than a collection of independent exercises, the project is understood as a continuous process in which each successive design decision has informed, challenged and transformed the previous ones. Students will revisit and refine every stage of the project - from the room to the spaces of care, from filter spaces to the housing typology, from the individual dwelling to its aggregation, and finally to its evolution over time - demonstrating the coherence of the proposal across all scales.

Alongside the updated project, each pair will produce a final axonometry drawing of the dwelling capable of conveying the spatial atmosphere of the project and illustrate the relationship between domestic life, spaces of care, collective living and the evolving nature of the housing system. The final review presents not the sum of a series of exercises, but the synthesis of a single architectural investigation progressively developed throughout the semester.