La Vita è Bella examines architecture as an active process to increase quality of life. We analyse our immediate environment and intervene on-site in the urban reality.

Through sketching, walking, talking and building we acquire knowledge and uncover new potentials and perspectives, which are directly tested in practice through the 1:1 prototype.

This studio is the collective attempt to explore design processes. We face the discomfort of the unknown by asking what if questions. Based on our desires we map out a possible future. To carry out this research, we build 1:1 prototypes, walk through the city, and visit our homes. We observe and question the reality, test ideas, and challenge the limits.

La Vita è Bella engages with the question of how people appropriate their surroundings in the private and public sphere. How do we adopt and intervene in this world? By means of built interventions and collective activities, we investigate space in its proportions and dimensions.

1:1 BUILDING

We think and design in 1:1. Only the scale of reality exists. The potential of these prototypes lies in the immediate experience of a physical concept. Thinking in the 1:1 prototype as an idea calls for a spontaneous, detailed approach.

The 1:1 prototypes are the built fragment of a possible future and the realistic argument of the project. They are proof that we can change the way we think about the future. From imaginative speculation to constructive details, we shape and define the reality to come.

TESTING TESTING TESTING

By experiencing a space through our body and senses, we create a spatial argument that becomes the foundation of our discussions. To sharpen this arguments and our vocabulary of space, we need to repeat this process again and again.

WALKING

During the semester, we develop a collective memory. Walking is more than just relocating ourselves, it is a tool to start a dialogue within the group and to create an alternative understanding of the urban territories we live in. The studio investigates the idea of collective learning and questioning as a design process.

CRITICAL DIALOGUE

The collision of different interests creates a versatile and shared memory. Through the receptivity of learning from others and the erasure of personal authorship, unforseeable, surprising and unexpectedly rare things are possible.

THE ROOM

The field of interventions spans from your intimate bedroom to the public square. First, we test our arguments in 1:1 prototypes in a private room and explore possible implications in real life. By analysing the 1:1 draft collectively, we question what is common perception and what is individual assumption.

THE CITY

In a next step, the 1:1 intervention moves from the room to the city. The relocation of a spatial idea from the intimate living space to the urban context questions boundaries between private and public space. It gives rise to social and spatial questions in an inevitable but playful way. Urban initiatives organised by students for students highlight collective interests in the city and landscape.

TEAM: Lovis Caputo, Sarah Kueng, Michelle Geilinger, Nicolas Rothenbühler

WORKSHOP: Susanne Kaelin

GUEST CRITICS: Gian Trachsler, Li Tavor