STUDIO MY FAVOURITE STRANGER
2024-25, semester 3
tutor: Johan Nielsen
Sint-Lucas Ghent
Language: English
Fig. 1: Model and Picture Willem Willems and Tom Vandormael
“My Favourite Stranger” investigates the position of the architect as a stranger and the opportunities it can offer. It acknowledges the fact that architects never get to totally know their interlocutors or the places where they operate. Going further, the studio considers that the position of the stranger paves the way for honesty and benevolence as well as, incidentally, inventive design. The stranger here is somehow a welcome guest in a barely known environment and no one of her, or his, questions are misplaced. The aim is to explore the reality of building in a foreign city, although being designing from Brussels. It focuses on good domestic architecture despite – or thanks to – the distance. The traditional Western notion of architectural wisdom is put under pressure by the reality of this kind of remote practices. The methodology is simple: the studio is prosaic and tends to create the foreign conditions of designing, on a highly realistic approach. To do so, the studio collaborates with local contractors and clients. It reacts on all aspects of the process of a regular domestic project with all its pragmatic implications. The ambition to reinvent it through an alternative design process. Construction, as a cultural practice, is central in the studio as it allows to express bold personal positioning. Besides, the understanding of construction is a universal means of communication with distant people, contractors, and inhabitants (fig.1). We can also state that reflecting on craftsmanship in a foreign context is reflecting on our own building practices. Available materials, practical limitations and local know-hows, being reinterpreted – and let’s hope enriched – by our foreign eyes, will be the key to invent new forms of expression.
STUDIO BRIEF 2024-2025
The studio collaborates with a construction firm (Ayala) situated in the region of Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia. In addition to its construction activities, the company also carries out small real estate operations. The students will develop real cases among these operations. As an example, a plot of land is situated in the municipality of Guacari (fig. 2) and pertains to the family of the company’s owner. It is considered to convert and / or refurbish the existing buildings (fig. 3) so that the family can habits and have a small economic activity. Another site is situated in the northern countryside, two hours’ drive from Cali. The site is an unbuilt terrain recently acquired by a young couple, close to Calima Lake. The couple’s request is the construction of a single-family country house.
Fig. 2: Guacari Municipality. Mapa Cadastro Cali
Fig. 3: Existing buildings on site. Picture: Cesar Ayala.
Fig. 4: Calima Lake region. Mapa Cadastro Cali
Fig. 5: Calima Lake region. Picture: Cesar Ayala.
MODUS OPERANDI
The students will have significant liberty in defining their personal positioning through the critical reading of the initial commissioning, the program definition, social commitment, type of construction, material, data sources, etc.
In terms of design process, the studio creates an in-between situation, not totally in Cali, neither in Brussels. The spatial distance becomes space for inventive creation, liberating from local and remote preconceived habits and judgment. In doing so, the studio creates the conditions of a pragmatic fiction.
All types of means will be used for the (remote) fieldwork (fig.6)
To optimize the exchanges with the Colombian interlocutors and to limit the number of proposals, the students will work in groups.
At the end of the semester, the student presents a realistic architectural proposal to the project owner. The proposal must be buildable with the technical and financial means of the local operators. The studio acknowledges the possibility that the proposals can be partly wrong, naïve, or clumsy, at least different from the usual. In doing so, they can contribute to trigger unexpected perspectives and interests.
Fig. 6: Fieldwork: screenshots of communications Brussels – Cali and communication between local stakeholders in Cali
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Fig. 7: Available technologies to react upon: references sent by the local building contractor. Picture: Cesar Ayala.
PROVISIONAL PLANNING
| Week 1 | Starting session – Introduction to the brief by Johan Nielsen. |
| Opening Session jointly with Global University, Mexico.* | |
| Week 2 | Studio Session. Online discussion with Mr. Ayala on available construction means. |
| Week 3 | Studio Session. Research on available materials and construction know-hows. |
| Week 4 | Studio Session. First design proposal. |
| Week 5 | Studio Session. Input on constructions method from guest teachers. |
| Week 6 | Midterm Review with guest. Proposals are sent to Colombia. |
| Week 7 | Studio Week – no class. |
| Week 8 | Studio Session. Online feedback with Mr. Ayala on proposals. |
| Week 9 | Studio Session. Design development. |
| Week 10 | Studio Session. Design development. Lecture by Communal Taller de Arquitectura. |
| Week 11 | Studio Session. Design development. |
| Week 12 | Studio Session. Design development. |
| Week 13 | Final Review with guest. Proposals are sent to Colombia. |
| Week 14 | Supersalon KU Leuven. |
| Closing Session jointly with Global University, Mexico.* Final feedback on proposals (to be confirmed). |
*ACADEMIC COLLABORATION WITH LATIN AMERICA
The studio is held in collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture of the Global University, Aguacalientes, Mexico. A studio of this faculty will work on similar topics and / or sites during the semester. It is planned to share an opening session as well as a closing session to discuss the proposals crafted in Aguacalientes and in Brussels.
EXPECTED OUTPUT:
The output of the studio is a detailed architectural proposal to be presented to the Colombian interlocutors.
Besides, the research data and the design output will be presented in the course “Culture of Exchange” at the Máster en Estudios Ibéricos e Iberoamericanos (KUL).
STUDY TRIP / LANGUAGE:
The paradox of the studio lies in the fact that fieldworks (in Cali) will be done remotely (from Brussels). However, if the opportunity arises, a study trip could be considered.
* Please note that in any cases, the language barrier doesn’t have to be a problem. Solving such issues is part of the studio methodology. Translation, collective organisation, and pooling of skills will be the key.
REFERENCES / FURTHER READINGS:
- Architectural Regionalism, Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition, ed. by Vincent Canizaro (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007)
- Aristoteles (384 B.C.-322 B.C) The Nicomachean Ethics, (author original work); trans. By Adam Beresford (London: Penguin books, 2020).
- Chee Lilian, ‘Remote Practices, Architecture in Promity’, < https://remote-practices.com>.
- Crossing Boundaries – Transcultural Practices In Architecture And Urbanism, Oase, 95 (2015)
- Grafe Christoph and Helena Mattsson, ‘Critique: Building Appraisals – Call for Papers’, The Journal of Architecture, 22:2 (2017), 185-187.
- Jullien François, On the Universal, the Uniform, the Common and Dialogue between cultures (Cambridge : Polity, 2014).
- Latour , Bruno. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018.
- Simmel Georg, ‘The stranger’, in Social theory: the multicultural and classic readings, ed. by Charles Lemert (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999), pp. 184–189.
- Von Clausewitz Carl, On war, trans. and ed. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). Original publication: Vom Krieg (Berlin: Ferdinand Dummler, 1832).
STUDIO POSITIONING
‘My favourite stranger’ is part of the ‘Remote Practices’ Series.
The effects of climate change, recent geopolitical shifts and systemic inequalities show us that physical limits and capacity of movement take new meanings and increase the interest to understand the world across its frontiers. to understand how our interdependent world is fragmented, alternative views must be proposed to the antagonism globalization – localism commonly accepted as a major framework of reference in the last decades (Latour 2018). However, the abandonment of this antagonism contributes to enhancing a state of confusion, notably in architectural critique (Grafe 2017). The studio explores this state of confusion and proposes to consider the figure of the architect as a stranger as a key notion to overcome dichotomies at play in architectural practice. Craftsmanship is here considered as a common ground shared with remote stakeholders and this pooling of resources allows us to reflect on our way of building.
Launched in 2020, Remote practices are design, research and educational practices developed within the KUL (Brussels), UPC (Barcelona) and architecture offices based in Brussels and abroad. They explore the position of the architect as a foreigner, a welcome guest with limited knowledge of the context in which she or he is called upon to intervene. This position imposes delicate interventions, recognising the limits of knowledge and the conceptual impossibility of meeting all expectations.
The practices question the notion of architectural wisdom as defined in the Western tradition by confronting it with the contemporary reality of the profession. They criticise the notion of adequacy in architecture, which is presented as an ideal impossible to achieve. In so doing, it highlights the contradictions and potentials of everyday architectural practice, contributing to invent new ways of doing things.
The practices focus on the pragmatism of construction, as it constitutes a common base for exchange that is easily identifiable. By taking a fresh look, the projects aim to uncover new potential in the materials, resources, and know-how available locally. To achieve this uncovering, all available tools are used, particularly digital ones. The assignments are always carried out on the basis of a specific request from a local project owner and relate to usual and often domestic programs.