Théorie et critique du projet BA3 (Verschuere)

ON ARCHITECTURE

Stemming from the overarching approach of Vitruvius's Ten Books, the studio addresses a different theme each academic year. After Performative Objects in 19/20, Elements of Climate in 20/21 and Umwelt in 21/22, Firmitas in 22/23, in 23/24 the theme of Aetas will be dealt with.

Aetas i.e. lifetime or lifespan addresses the often supressed fourth dimension of building, understood more as a verb than a noun, investigates how time can be utilized in the making of architectural projects. The studios are always split up in two parts of different character, each semester another aspect of the overarching theme is addressed.

AUTUMN SEMESTER - Three Times, No Project

In Part I, a few case studies will be analysed regarding their history, followed by a speculation on their future. Going back and forth in time, we will try approximating the agency of time in architecture. As time eludes conceivability as such, but only appears in relation to other agents, we will seek to comprehend and avail of it through a time-filtered investigations of construction, context, and program. Architecture will cease to appear immutable and invariable; it will be put in motion. Asking whether we must think of buildings as ever possibly completed, we may conceive of architectural projects not as desperately static objects but as perpetual construction sites, ever unfinished.

The semester will be organized in exercises, alternating individual and group-work. From the 7th to the 10th of October, we will embark on a field trip to Rome. The successive formats of Part I will be plans, models, and images. They serve both as working documents and as final representations, meaning that both process and result, narrative and argument, the disciplinary and the non-disciplinary are valued.

SPRING SEMESTER - Three Times Three Projects

In Part II we will attempt to make use of the insights of Part I to tackle a task more common for swiss architects, but in a somewhat uncommon manner. While given site and program while be nothing unusual, we will attempt to insert the project in an active temporal matrix. Obsolesce, incompleteness and impermanence won't be considered adversarial forces, they will assume agency in the development of the projects. As a certain precarity spreads in the building sector a different approach to architecture might come about and this approach might entail the utilization of time as a compensation strategy for the increasing lack of material, energetic, programmatic, and financial stability that pervades the condition of our times.

The semester will be organized as one exercise in groups of three, punctured by two midterms and more importantly a set of workshops. At the very beginning of the semester we will embark on a field trip to Basel. The formats of Part II will be once again plans, models, and images and as previously they serve both as working documents and as final representations, meaning that both process and result, narrative and argument, the disciplinary and the non-disciplinary are valued.