Danza Studio ORO Editions

Country: Uruguay

University: School of Architecture, Design and Urban Planning, University of the Republic, FADU–UdelaR.

Professors: Marcelo Danza, professor; Marcelo Staricco, coordinator.

Teaching team: Lucía Bogliaccini, Germán Tórtora, Marcos Guiponi, Ximena Villemur, Victoria Abreu, Macarena Trías, Patricia Carriquiry, Sebastián Olivera.

Duration: Active since 2011

Studio timeline: Design, management, and development, three months; Construction, one week.

Students: Approximately 100 students for each semester course.

Location of the projects: Montevideo.

Clients or organizations: Municipality of Montevideo.

Donors and financial support: The projects are financed with contributions from the students through the sale of food and beverages, their own funds, and donations.

Publications:

Revista Mapeo “Especies de Espacios” (2016), Montevideo, Uruguay. Taller Danza vol. 15 Placer en la Disciplina (2016). Montevideo, Uruguay. Taller Danza.

Folders 3 “Reflexión en la Acción” (2022), Montevideo, Uruguay. Comisión Sectorial de Investigación

Científica, CSIC, Universidad de la República Vol. 03.

The Danza Studio is one of the nine seminars in architectural design at FADU–UdelaR, which offers courses in all years of the architecture degree. During the first year, this studio engages in experiences of collective construction. The exercises are, in general, interventions in the public space previously defined by the faculty in collaboration with municipal authorities. The interventions, carried out as a team by faculty and students, aim to intensify the use of underutilized public spaces through ephemeral works of architecture for periods of time ranging between one and three months. To fund the projects, the participants form a cooperative, each contributing the cost of what they would normally invest in a conventional design studio. In some cases they also receive donations and other contributions.

In each version of the course, the faculty distribute the work among five teams of approximately twenty students. Each group develops a number of projects over three weeks and selects the most interesting one. An external jury then chooses the project that will be built from among the proposals of each group. The chosen project becomes everybody’s, and the teams are then organized into commissions by area of interest: prototypes, construction details, lighting, media, and logistics. After a month spent working on project development, the participants, led by the prototype team, build the project collaboratively in a week and inaugurate it together with the communities.

The professors of Danza Design-Build Studio place their focus on transitory and lightweight architectures that have the ability to trigger new uses and programs in the consolidated public space of the city, often disused or abandoned. They understand architecture as a public or collective event. Through modular and changing geometries, students propose interventions that energize the city and encourage the reappropriation of public spaces by citizens.