ARC3020Y F
Instructor(s): Gilles Saucier, Christian Joakim, Gregory Neudorf
Meeting Section: L9110
Synchronous
Tuesdays, 9:00am - 1:00pm, 2:00pm - 6:00pm

“To perceive matter that casts no shadow, you must search not for its presence but for its consequence.” – Robert Macfarlane, Underland

We are living through a time of acute awareness of our impact on the earth and the scale of human influence on climate and geology. The artificial ontological gap between nature and humankind has been closed, and architecture is only beginning to grapple with the immense responsibility of realigning our profession’s thinking.

Humans are a geological force and architecture is human-activated geology. Architecture reshapes the earth, alters landscapes, redirects energy flows and changes the composition of our atmosphere. Our cities, our infrastructure, and even our landfills are part of the geological record. The magnitude of our actions and influence is such that it is now generally accepted that we are living through a human-driven period in the Earth’s climatic and geological history, the Anthropocene. There is both ominousness and optimism in the term Anthropocene: we are inculpated in climate change, but we can also reconnect with nature and our future to sculpt a new Earth (Schwägerl, The Anthropocene).

This studio will reconsider architecture’s place not in but of the natural world. Students will research a fundamental element of nature and its implication on architecture within the Anthropocene, create objects influenced by this research, to later inform a building that draws upon this inspiration through nature, natural processes, geology, thermodynamics, and technology. The first semester will involve the research of the fundamental element and the creation of inspiring objects - micro projects. In the second semester students will be asked to design a building drawing upon their research and inspired by the objects they have created. The program will be mixed and institutional, on an urban site where many forces converge and overlap.

The relation to nature will go beyond a mere celebration and romanticism of so-called natural elements as well as the notion that superior technologies can simply tame it (naivety / hubris). Our goal will be to grow or breed an urban architectural intervention to create new environments that are truly part of their physical context but that also belong to the broader social and cultural topography. Our focus will be on how to develop an intuition for architecture that can give creative form to the building, frameworks, infrastructures, and policies – creating new affects that in turn allow for new possibilities for perception and experience. A long view into nature.