Please find here the presentation as shown during the ASSEMBLEA in Gent.
DOORS OF PERCEPTION 2627_6 slides
Text as performed:
Slide 1 | Doors of Perception: Can a Detail Save the World?
Good afternoon.
The studio is organized by Vincent Matzmorr and myself, Tomas Ooms. We are both architects, and in our work we share a common interest: how architecture can create public value by working with what already exists.
This studio starts from the importance of understanding, caring for and transforming what is already there.
Therefore we will work on existing post-war buildings in Ghent and Brussels.
We will use those buildings as a way to develop a method of working with the as found..
The subtitle of the studio is Can a Detail Save the World?
Not because a detail solves everything, but because even a small intervention can change the relationship between a building, its users, and the city around it. However, working with a detail does not exclude a grand gesture.
Slide 2 | Understanding the Spatial Contract
We use the concept of the spatial contract to describe the relationship between a building and its surroundings.
Every building takes something from the world around it: space, materials, energy, attention.
But every building has the potential to give something back.
It can create public space, support collective life, offer places to meet, or contribute to the character of a neighbourhood.
The aim is to understand the building carefully, to identify its relationships and to explore how it is made.
Slide 3 | Understanding How It Is Made
Also paramount is building up an understanding of how the building is designed, and how it is constructed.
What materials are present?
Which elements are valuable?
What can be repaired, reused, adapted or transformed?
What can be re-used?
Designing then becomes a form of stewardship for the existing environment.
At a time when resources are increasingly limited, we see the existing building as a crucial resource to work with.
The better you understand a building’s material reality, the more possibilities you discover for its future.
This phase aims for a deeper understanding of architecture as both a cultural and a material practice.
Slide 4 | Exploring Alternatives
The third step is the exploration of alternatives.
At this point, three strands come together: the spatial contract of the building, its physical reality, and the position of the designer.
Architecture emerges from the negotiation between these three.
Your project will transform and renegotiate the existing spatial contract.
The aim is to develop an informed architectural position with the intention to negotiate the spatial conditions and towards a better spatial contract: better for the building itself, but also for the environment in which it stands.
Slide 5 | From Position to Project
The final step is about the relationship between ambitions and means.
The question then becomes: how can architecture realise these ambitions?
You will investigate the spatial, material and constructive means available to them.
If the previous phase asks what could and should happen?, this phase asks how can architecture make it happen?
And you do this with a focus on the detail.
Slide 6 | What You Will Take Away
On the blog you find this presentation, the full studio brief and some examples from previous years.
The projects you will find there are diverse, but they all share the same process.
You begin with a careful observation of an existing post-1945 building through one of its details.
You will build knowledge on the spatial contract and civicness through making.
You will explore alternatives through design.
And they arrive at architectural proposals that are rooted in both understanding and imagination.
The aim of the studio is next to a design project, to provide a context in which you develop your own way of working as an architect, A way of working that starts from what exists, engages critically with reality.
If this is your thing, then we would be very happy to welcome you to Doors of Perception.
Thank you.