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ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN III-V Ε: Landscapes in Motion - The River Studio / Cayasta
ΑΣ0406, ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN,
Design Studio Required Elective at semester(s) 5, 7, ECTS: 12
Cognitive Fields (2005/36/EU): Architectural Design, Fine Arts, Human Needs and the Built Environment, Social Factors in Design.
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 work in a team, Ability to work in an international context, Commitment to conservation of the environment.

Teaching Assistants:  Giorgos LoukakisAvrokomi Zavitsanou
Intervention:  Andrés Milos

The design studio takes place within the context of the inter-university network RedSur.

Research Project:
Los desafíos urbanos en ambientes ribereños.Estudio integral del sistema de protección de inundaciones y alternativas de integración físicas y socio-ambiental aplicadas al litoral costero de la localidad de Cayastá (Santa Fé – Argentina).

Director: Ruben Edgardo Cabrera
Grupo Responsable: Margarita Trlin, Javier Mendiondo, Monica Bertolino.

Participants:
UNL - Universidad del Litoral: Prof. Margarita Trlin, Ruben Edgardo Cabrera
UNC - Universidad Nacional de Cordoba: Prof. Monica Bertolino, Carlos Barrado
UNIRC - Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria: Prof. Daniela Colafranceschi, Enzo Gioffré
UTH - University of Thessaly, Volos: Prof. Spiros Papadopoulos

 

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The studio introduces students to an educational practice that aims to the design, production and organization of architectural narratives in a changing landscape. The concept of the narrative allows and encourages participants to approach and interpret the 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 enhancement and touristic development of a small town with archaeological interest.

SUBJECT

The studio is based on the charm of a small riverside town of Argentina, this of Cayasta, which is under transformation both due to its geomorphological changes – the city is steadily being transformed by the flow and height of the water volume of the river - and its cultural evolution and touristic development.

Students are asked to reinvent the city of Cayasta 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 of Cayasta 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 the fishermen families that currently reside in makeshift coastal structures will be moved to. Emphasis is given to the particular characteristics of the lifestyle of the city's 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 city of Cayasta 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.

Website:  The River Studio

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: two weeks
Duration of third phase: 1 week
Duration of fourth phase: 9 weeks

The work will be carried out in groups of two students.

INDICATIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

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