Image: Laurian Ghinitoiu, Transformation de 530 logements by Lacaton & Vassal, Bordeaux, France 2017

ARC3018HF (LEC0102)
Instructor: Pina Petricone

According to Elise Feiersinger, the German word umbau has many meanings. It can suggest transformation, remodelling, adaptation, conversion, etc ¹. and it forms the basis of Hermann Czech’s approach to city-building that makes a case for constant change (umbau.) Czech claims “transforming an existing building is more interesting than building a new one.” ²  For this to be true, the ‘existent’ is indispensable. It provides meaning against which and with which any design intervention can be understood, lived, and in turn layered onto in a similar way. 

Speculating on architecture that inspires meaningful change and at the same time is adaptable to change itself forms the basis of this seminar and subsequent thesis studio.

It challenges contemporary practice of adaptive reuse as a form of repair, resuscitation, and preservation to activate one of layered transformation. The key is to introduce a balance of power as it were, where revitalization (new life) and repurpose (new meaning) are achieved in critical dialogue with architectures built in, on, and around what exists and what has existed. 

Drawing, literally and figuratively, on contexts all over the world, students are invited to identify opportunities for impactful architecture interventions that test ideas for igniting new spatial models as a response to popular pressures. These forces can include changing needs, socio-political shifts, land-use demands, advanced technology, forging new connections, gathering and longing, environmental comfort, re-unification, food security, rapidly changing climate, and other site-specific provocations.

A framework for this exploration provides the structure of the Fall term seminar to help generate for each student a thesis studio brief that defines their final thesis and guides its design speculation in the Winter term. The general format of individual briefs will be agreed upon as a group in early days of the seminar after reviewing pedagogically-ready models such as competition briefs, course studio briefs, recipes, clothing patterns, and travel guides.

Our work will be generally organized in three parallel parts:

1. SITE OF OPERATION [Opportunity and Obsolescence]

   We begin by asking: ‘Where what why when is your Site?’ While the obsolescence of architectural typologies, spaces, and environments occurs for a variety of reasons (some of which are listed above) requiring natural urgency for design intervention, sites of operation for our pursuit might be equally if not totally shaped by opportunity. Establishing the criteria, ‘boundaries,’ and form of the site of operation will inevitably position your work pedagogically, politically, and in the wider discipline.

    

2. MAKING MEANING [The Generic and The Specific]

   While the studio’s presupposition that site-specificity through multilayered contextual resonance, on the surface, seems to reject a generic “one size fits all” approach, aspects of a-specificity seem crucial to its meaningful, lasting architecture. In this way, recipes for design strategies that transform existents will embrace unfinishedness and bake-in inherent convertibility.

    

3. SURGICAL INTERVENTION [Active Transformation]

   Material ideologies and tectonic prowess become the main instruments for longevity. Anticipation of change does not expect expiration dates rather it expects malleability within immovable parts. We amplify Elizabeth Diller’s claim “we work, we analyze, we read, we step into projects knowing that we’re not the first ones there” ³ with an understanding that we also will not be the last.

TEMPORARY PERMANENCE: Enduring Architecture for Change is for students interested in:

context (material, political, social, spatial, historic) as a generative and lasting agent in a design practice that instrumentalizes architecture to achieve intergenerational meaning via an expectation and even anticipation of future transformation and repurpose;

drawing as writing, modelmaking, storytelling, tracing, and thinking over time; and

design as an act of transformation at the scale of material detail and of infrastructure, simultaneously. 

1. Elise Fierersinger in “Transformation (1989)” Hermann Czech Essays on Architecture and City Planning, p.191
2. Hermann Czech, "Pluralism", a+u, No. 554 (Nov 2011), p112
3. Elizabeth Diller, "The trajectories of Elizabeth Diller" in domusweb.it, by Brendan McGetrick, April 18, 2011