MASTER STUDIO SKÅTAR
DIA DESSAU 2022-2023
Lehrbeauftragter: Fredrik Skåtar
skatar.com/vag...
This studio is about people: their identities, communities and well-being. Promoting these components can initially feel uncertain and vague, so that was the initial term the studio discussed-a catalyst for ideas. Why are they difficult? Aren't they actually architecture's driving force? What can we do to make them more concrete and manageable?
The thesis framework revolved around cultural sustainability, urban acupuncture, slow urbanism and mapping. These concepts guided the students in getting to know their site’s users and their design’s societal meaning.
An essential part of the studio was to explore different thesis structures. When focusing on hard-to-prove parameters, a solid structure is crucial.
When working, we applied Research by design, choosing a site and identifying a target group early, enabling a project-based research phase.
Thanks to everybody for the great projects and great atmosphere!
METHODS & CONCEPTS
Cultural sustainability
We can view cultural sustainability as four-tiered: cultural heritage conservation, cultural diversity and identity, community engagement and participation, and adaptive reuse and revitalisation.
Urban acupuncture
Bottom-up urbanism is where a specific function is added carefully into a tough neighbourhood, automatically revitalising its surroundings (Lorquet, 2012).
Slow urbanism
is a strategy where building a new neighbourhood should pay attention to identity, history, communities and technical development, carefully creating places. Such an approach takes time, even several years. “It's better to spend 10 years in development than live 100 years with the wrong project" (Borret, 2014).
Mapping
- methods for getting to know a neighbourhood: observing, talking to residents, taking notes.
Research-by-design
The studio structure and individual projects will adapt to the research-by-design (RbD) strategy, closely tied to the project topic, site and users. This implies that students choose a site and topic at an early stage.
Structuring one’s academic text applies not only to a thesis but also to project presentations and the design process of most projects. There are many ways of structuring one’s project, and the studio looked at
- Umberto Eco’s How to Write a Thesis (2015)
- Wayne Booth’s The Craft of Research (2016)
- and selected examples from universities such as UNSW.
PRECEDENTS
The Bouwmeester- The Belgian city architect has a strong position in Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels. They promote architecture and act as a project consultant and incubators, carefully maintaining and fostering the architectural concept (Bouwmeester, 2023).
Paola Viganò is an Italian architect and urbanist who is influential in Belgium and has made several projects relevant to cultural sustainability (Viganò, 2018).
Jan Gehl is a Danish architect whose interesting notion of “first life, then spaces, then buildings - the other way around never works.” (Gehl, 2013) fits well in the course context.
Jane Jacobs is a central person for the course; her book (1961) serves as a guiding mindset.
LITERATURE
Booth, W. et al. (2016) The Craft of Research. University of Chicago Press, pp. 114-140
Borret, K (2014) Slow urbanism. Bauwelt no 12, pp. 38-47
Bouwmeester maître architecte (2023, June 29) Who we are. bma.brussels/e...
Eco, U. (2015) How to write a thesis. The MIT Press, Boston (original work published in 1977)
Fisher, S. (2015) Philosophy of Architecture. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Gehl, J. Svarre, B. (2013) How to Study Public Life. Island Press
Heilmeyer, F. (ed.) (2021) Celebrating Public Architecture: Buildings from the Open Call in Flanders 2000-21. Jovis, Berlin
Jacobs, J. (1961) The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House, New York
Lorquet, A. (2012). Urban development in Antwerp: Designing Antwerp. Patricia De Somer, Antwerp
Ostwald, M.J. (2010) Ethics and the auto-generative design process. Building Research and Information, vol 38, no 4, pp. 390-400
Research[x]Design (2023, June 29) Research Projects. rxd.architectu...
Richardson, M. (1982) Being-in-the-Market versus Being-in-the-Plaza: Material Culture and the Construction of Social Reality in Spanish America. American Ethnologist Vol. 9, No. 2. Wiley.
Viganò, P. (2018) Lecture at BOZAR Center for Fine Arts, Brussels. Retrieved October 25, 2022, from • Lecture by Paola Viganò
Special thanks to:
Dr. Anna Hougaard, guest crit, architect and researcher, Copenhagen/Berlin
Dr. Agnieszka Zajac, guest crit, project manager at SoGent, Ghent, Belgium
Michael Heimann, lecturer, graphic designer at Heimann & Schwandtes
All second advisors:
Roger Bundschuh
Saša Ciabatti
Özgün Günaydin
Nur e Tazallee Mehjuba Hisan
Ivan Kucina
Egor Kuzmin
Amelie Rost
Peter Ruge
Yong Thang Shaun
Elif Gökcen Tepekaya
Vesta Nele Zareh
11 июл 2023
