The emanation of the commons – Anti-bodies
Constructing Urban Cultures
Semester 2, English spoken
Master of Architecture engagement Urban Cultures
Campus Sint Lucas Brussels
Academic year 2024-2025
Tutors: Patrick Moyersoen & Irene Feria Prados
Can architecture be the agency installing a contemporary common?
In an era of individualism, the collective negotiation of public spaces becomes a tangible process for commoning. This studio finds its roots in the urban condition of Brussels, as a playground to question ongoing metropolitan transformations. Seeking anchor points in the tumultuous metropolitan environment is no easy task, but a necessary one.
The city enacts obsolete narratives: from the soil to the monument, power is materialized in the man-made built environment. Grandiose top-down scenarios serve as memorabilia for grieving, celebrating or debating collective memories. At the same time, these historical remains set the ground for the possibility of contemporary rituals, that reclaim collective social practices in their contemporary values. These are spaces where resistance can be enacted, as an urban stage for renegotiating collectivity.
The studio focuses on the architectural embodiment of these commons, by designing a public interior into a significant detail, to become tangible architectural proposals. Architectural dialectics need to be developed to be able to give form to an actual urban culture(s) and able to address the urban complexity.
To do so, the studio departs from an honest relation to making, often overlooked in architecture as a performative way of addressing the matter. Seeking for the emancipatory potential of matter, through the act of making – drawings, plans, models, images – the design takes form. This work is the driving force of our exchanges, challenged week by week, allowing you to go into the depth of your design.
Ways of the studio:
- Individual work in close interaction with peers
- Design driven, by trial and error, in search of a personal architectural proposal
- Expect hands-on analog approach, with models and other crafted documents
- Targeted scoops with a limited number of imposed formats
- A large-scale site, on a seismic fracture line in Brussels, providing very different contexts
- An open exchange about the potential of architecture
More info here