Reflecting Urban Cultures
Semester 3, Brussels, English spoken.
Master of Architecture engagement Urban Cultures, Campus Sint Lucas Brussels
Academic year 2025 2026
Tutor: Dag Boutsen
First-time objects and present-momentness
This Design Studio wants to bring the wild and free 80’s in Amsterdam back to today.
We will learn about highly professional squatters of the time, how they structured and shaped their surroundings, how they dealt with rules and freedom, and especially how they incorporated instant objects into their architecture and design.
Architecture of Appropriation examines how squatters use radical improvisation techniques to appropriate the city and influence thinking on contemporary urbanism. Available spaces, which have usually fallen vacant as a result of speculation or neglect, are taken back into use. This does more than just transform the re-occupied building from the inside out; new forms of use, management and accessibility give it a new purpose in the neighbourhood. The squatting movement has developed tactics that renew the city from the inside out.
The studio connects to the engagement ‘Urban Cultures’ because it really seeks to develop and teach innovative design tools through creative processes that are totally based on the understanding of a given condition from a social, historical and environmental perspective.
Indication of the site: Amsterdam & Brussels
Typical working mode of the studio:
This studio combines:
- an analytical look at a specific period and context (Amsterdam, ‘80-ties),
- a personal investigation into the relevance of that movement
- and a contemporary design project that pays homage to these concepts.
After analysing the website of Dave Carr-Smith (https://www.davecarrsmith.co.uk), each student will present his/her own chosen key point in front of the whole group. These presentations will lead to a group discussion.
In the studio, we will then look for contexts in which improvisation is triggered.
And within these chosen contexts we will work out a design scenario.
Main deliverables: individual or small group (max; 3 students) story telling design scenario
Looking for students who are especially interested in: Improvised architecture, squatting, themes as vacancy, ownership and collective housing, inventiveness in time and space, spontaneity and individual freedom