How do we make architecture today, in a time where single ideologies no longer guide us?
We need to find things that excite us, that are fun and fascinating, that arouse our curiosity – things that teach us to relate to our environment in new ways again. This semester, we will look into hidden places – places that were never meant for us. The murky depths of water, the tops of clouds, the inside of a water pond or a fountain, the secretive interiors of clubs, the scent of impossible combinations of odours, the impossible presence of certain rooms within a building. These spaces are what they are precisely because of how we relate to them – or how we‘re prevented from relating to them.
Living organisms can be first characterized as complex physical bodies or systems which through the continual functioning of their metabolism maintain their form and structure over time. Through active self-organization, organisms don‘t merely let matter flow through them, but transform it according to their own principles. Consider how humans can only perceive distinct visual moments at 1/10 of a second – anything faster appears as continuous motion or becomes invisible to us. A snail, processing at 1/5 of a second, sees our quick movements as lazy gestures, while certain fish, processing at 1/50 of a second, experience our world in extreme slow motion. This simple observation by Karl Ernst von Baer reveals how our very understanding of motion and stillness, of what appears present or absent to us, is fundamentally bound by our biological nature.
The development of our environment takes place in constant interaction with our perception of it. While we establish relationships with our surroundings based on our own capacities, architecture can deliberately challenge and expand these boundaries. Our studio explores this tension: how can we design for elements to enter and exit our perceptual framework, creating environments that shift, contradict, and embrace the ineffable?
We will work with materials and processes that reveal these hidden dependencies – fermenting substances, growing structures, evolving forms that respond to their environment in unexpected ways. Through careful observation and material experimentation, we will develop architectural proposals that bridge the gap between the controlled and the wild, the visible and the hidden. Each week combines hands-on work with lectures prepared by students, creating a platform where design research can unfold in unexpected directions.
The studio invites students to bring their own fascinations and curiosities about what remains hidden or inaccessible. Together we will explore how to create spaces that play with presence and absence, visibility and invisibility, pushing the boundaries of what we consider possible within our perceptual framework. Students will seek out the impossible, the secret, the inaccessible – not just to imagine it, but to test it, to challenge it through architectural intervention.
Steven Schenk
17.12.2024