What?
Design studio 2015.
Learn to design sustainable by proposing fragile interventions in the city of Ghent. Focusing on reframing of the meaning and identity of a site by proposing architectural intervention and urban design in in-between scale, questioning programmatic specificity, political and cultural dimension of architectural intervention. The emphasis of this studio is the act of design and design is the means for communication.
Design a sustainable architecture project that takes into the account of all the interesting characteristics of the context that make the project and its context reveals theirs intense and unspreadable relationship. To reach sustainable projects the designer has to deal consciously with the qualities of an environment and what is already there on the site. Therefore building deep understanding of the fragile essence of a place and producing architectural intervention that respond to these aspects is crucial. This attitude can lead to a ‘simple’, ‘obvious’ and ‘sustainable’ architectural project.
Therefore students are challenged to explore and understand the opportunities and specificities of a site, to define your position and attitude as design of this site and to propose an architectural intervention is coherent in program and structural to the site, socially intelligence, ecological and economic efficiency. The design is not only the reflection of functionality and rational limits, but moreover it is the result of a more intuitive approach, how to manage complexity, responds to the universal needs for authenticity, beauty and humanity.
How?
Re-framing is an attitude and approach toward a sustainable way of designing by respecting existing conditions and embracing the complexity of the place.
The focus on the design aspects in this studio are:
- Choice of location as design site to challenge and reflect your “reframing Ghent” attitude.
- Propose urban design and architectural interventions that reflect your deep understanding of the complexity of the site.
- Design is the mean for communication of your reframing attitude.
- Architectural intervention should “intelligently” and “integrally” relates to building components and materials
Site
Ghent, (within the 19th century belt) where most of the international students in this studio will be staying and this makes it the excellent choice as the working site for this studio. You are expected to have intense and frequent site research.
Themes
This design studio is organized as horizontal structure of sub-studios that share the common theme of “Reframing Ghent” and the site location in the city of Ghent. A design guidance is assigned to each sub-studio who will provide specific framework for input, approach and methodology to that particular sub-studio. The students will work in groups in the early stage of the design studio and work individually in the later stage of the design studio. The reviews, lectures, exhibits and joint desk critiques are the shared moment between all sub-studios. Here are the short descriptions of the different sub-studios:
Temporality (Chotima Ag-Ukrikul) – The aspects of time in architecture and urban design such as “occasion”, “diachrony”, “synchrony”, “timing”, “chronology”, “protention”, “retention” and etc. The topic stretches from theory, method and materiality to performance in relation with time. The emphasis of this sub-studio is on developing in-depth designerly understanding of the sites and developing design attitude with ethnographic approach. It is essential for the students to challenge themselves to position “who they are” with in the contemporary architecture and urban design landscape. Using designerly ways of communicating implies that the students will have intense dialog and engagement with the reality of Ghent.
The uncertainty of architecture (Laurens Bekemans) – Doubting about almost exactly everything will be the main focus of this sub-studio. Everything is embedded. Nothing departs from a white paper, rather it is inscribed in the present, which comes from the past. The student is challenged to understand in a holistic way the chosen site and develop affinities with materiality, context and time. The students have to dare to develop their own architectural personality and experiment in a theoretical as well as a hands-on way.
The Temptation of Meaning (Johannes Berry Ströhmenger) – Slavoj Žižek states that meaning is a reaction on meaninglessness. This statement holds very true for architecture as it is in itself the embodiment of ideologies (be it the designer, client, builder etc.). This sub-studio sets out the challenge to create meaningless works onto which the viewer/user can project his/her ideas (like the ‘Zone’ in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker or the planet in his film Solaris).
Quest for Intrinsic Beauty (Wim Goes) – In the quest for intrinsic beauty the expectations and demands of the client and the designer has to make way for those of the project itself. Through observation and analyses the project starts to make demands. It is the designers job to serve those demands in developing the project into a direction unforeseen and transcending human expectation. The project stands autonomous disconnected from human intention. One could argue that a project so autonomous so pure is one of intrinsic beauty. However, such is the human condition that it is impossible to rid a project completely of external expectations, intentions and demands, and as such intrinsic beauty remains a quest. In this sub-studio we will investigate and experiment with possible techniques to create projects of intrinsic beauty. From conception to detail the project’s logic and demands are consulted. References are removed so that the project stands autonomous. In such an environment rid of reference the user has to reflect within as they become the only point of reference in presence of the project’s intrinsic beauty. Finally the presentation will be treated as a project itself in creating something autonomous rather than a representation of something else.
Borders (Christopher Paesbrugghe) – A frame defines, it makes the difference between what is inside and outside the frame, a frame is a border. Reframing literally means to re-interpret this border. In the search of reframing Ghent we will look at the borders in the city. What are the spatial and social borders in the city today, how do they influence each other and what are their characteristics? Can we re-interpret them? Do we need to connect or disconnect? What is the border of your site? Reframing Ghent as a student: starting from a freely chosen site knowing it has to deal with the topic “borders”. To act at this site, taking the act as serious as a new context as the context you started with. Reframing Ghent as a guidance: moving the frame of the students to new inputs/topics by questioning to broaden their perspective and make them conscious about their position as a designer. Nevertheless the emphasis will lie on the inspiration of the everyday within the different borders in the city.
Contemporary Reframing of Public Collective Spaces in Gent (Asiya Sadiq )
Within the larger framework of the studio, the case of Gent will be explored from an attitude of discovering the new patterns of public collective space usage. Public/Collective space will be terms which will be defined and redefined from the perspective of the inside-outside, private-public, built-unbuilt, local-global, intimate-exposed, minimal-maximal and native-adopted. This exploration will be tied up with developing an understanding of the changing social, cultural, political and physical attributes of the ever changing city in any part of the world. Our case being Gent, we will explore its specificity, but will not lose view of global generic trends. The current design research of the current patterns will be embedded in the historic structures of Gent. The sensitivity gained will be utilized to explore new space types which would not only suit the current but also the future of the city and its stakeholders. The designer will have to take responsibility for each step of the design process, its methodological components will be as important as the final product, which in the framework of a masters in architecture will encouraged to be spatial connecting various scale levels and the dimension of time.