Design Studio Required Elective at semester(s) 6, 8, ECTS: 12
Generic Competences: Ability to search for, process and analyse information from a variety of sources using the necessary technologies, Ability to adapt to and act in new situations and cope under pressure, Ability to make reasoned decisions, Ability to work in a team, Ability to work in an international context, Ability to work in an interdisciplinary environment, Capacity to generate new ideas (creativity), Ability to interact constructively with others regardless of background and culture and respecting diversity.
Teaching Assistants: Giorgos Kalaoyzis, Maria Loukou
Intervention: Kostas Moraitis (NTUA)
The design studio takes place in the framework of the collaboration with the Universities:
- Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria (UNIRC), Dipartimento di Architettura e Territorio, Prof. Daniela Colafrancesch y Enzo Gioffré
- Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Departamento de Música, Prof. José Luis Carles Arribas
Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis
The studio introduces students to an educational practice that aims to the design, production and organization of architectural narratives in a changing urban landscape. The concept of the narrative allows and encourages participants to approach and interpret the urban landscape - which contains temporal expressions in its form, structure and essence - in such a way that the features of the various changes can be incorporated in the design.
Students are invited to simultaneously manage the composition and connection of different scales in architectural practice, as part of an integrated proposal/narrative concerning the neighborhoods Mosxato and Kalithea in Athens.
Students are asked to intervene and redesign the area –river Ilisos- that divides the two municipalities of Mosxato and Kalithea through two levels of intervention:
1. Research / Analysis and programmatic design of the riparian front of the city with the aim to create a new public space. The height difference between the level of the river and the city makes the architectural solution of the forehead quite complex.
2. The design of social housing in the city plots chosen by the students themselves, where emigrant’s families will be moved to. Emphasis is given to the particular characteristics of the lifestyle of the residents and the way they will be delivered through the architectural design.
The course is organized in four phases:
A. IDENTIFICATION: Participants are required to make online and bibliographical survey to collect data for the municipalities of Mosxato and Kalithea of and the wider region.
Objective: To construct their own narrative after the identification and selection of the city's characteristic information from photos, texts, drawings, videos, diagrams, etc.
B. ACCUMULATION: Participants are invited to explore regular intervention in existing environment using specialized software / game engine.
Objective: The production of a new landscape, which is characterized by repetition, excess, extravagance, with the aim of redefining the meaning of space and the interpretation of their narrative.
C. ANIMATED LANDSCAPES: Participants are asked to create an audiovisual narration of the new landscape.
Objective: The implementation of a route designed to draw a parallel reading of the digital landscape, which enters in dialogue with its content and its spatial characteristics.
D. SYNTHESIS: The last phase concerns the synthetic proposal requested. Students are invited to incorporate in their proposals the information unveiled from the narratives of the previous three phases so that the various levels of intervention are characterized by a single architectural expression.
ASSESSMENT
The students are required to deliver a complete design solution (description texts, architectural drawings, three-dimensional representations, audiovisual compositions), as elaborated during the semester.
Schedule:
Duration of first phase: 2 weeks
Duration of second phase: 2 weeks
Duration of third phase: 1 week
Duration of fourth phase: 9 weeks
The work will be carried out in groups of two students.
Foucault, Michel, Of Other Spaces: Heterotopias, Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, 1984
Leach, Neil (Ed.), Designing for a Digital World, Academy Press; 2002
McCullough, Malcolm, Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing,The MIT Press; 2005
Tracy, S., Reindell P., CryENGINE 3 Game Development:Beginner's Guide, Packt Publishing, 2012
Amoroso,Nadia, Digital Landscape Architecture Now, Thames & Hudson; 2012