Peripheral Futures

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1. Arnold Pumping Iron, Los Angeles Times Archives. 2. Assembly line robots, www.bigmarketresearch.com 3. Roxanne Williamson, Career Connections of Major American Architects, from American Architects and the Mechaniscs of Fame, 1991. 4. The secret history of woman in coding, New Yorks Times 5. The functions of the architect mural by Ruth Ellis for the Building Centre's New Bond Street exhibitions 6. World War II airplane production, www.history.com. 6.

Teachers: Ori Merom, Rumi Kubokawa

“To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.” It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger.”

Walter Benjamin

The studio will work with the periphery as a project, and examine ways in which architecture can work with models and methods that respond to the possibility of re-thinking the occupation of such territories. Exploring architecture from the notion of being in the periphery, things happening at the margins, seeing the world from a feel at home. Reflecting on the experience of the current crisis, its open ended nature and a sense that from now on we cannot go back

peripheral place. orthodoxies of progress and growth.

We will incorporate an awareness of change brought by an unusual set of circumstances: the sudden possibility of halting economic progress, with lives under expanded control, when no stability (political, economical or social) is assured. We will explore our preparedness and necessity to live with uncertainties and impart qualities found in this new condition. Not in a distant utopia but a closer alternative to a world more and more encapsulated in rules and regulations. We will consider the fragility of life but not create buildings as a protection from the strangeness of the world.

Studio Methodology The challenge of architectural education arises from the teachers' dual role: they are asked to lead, yet play only a supportive role. The studio proposes a teaching towards the unknown, as a shared discovery. Students are taught to respond to and act on their own vision and creativity. This involves a pact of trust between teachers and students, the pact is about personal development. Success means that students managed to form their own architectural identity, understand their strengths and weaknesses, exploit the former and find ways to overcome the latter.

This framework involves a custom tailored education that supports inspires students to think broadly and in an interdisciplinary manner; amalgamate learning and research that supports the study of applied issues of sustainability and construction. Project 1 Home The notion of home has different implications, informed by our memories, experiences, culture and aspirations, yet all of us seek to to business as usual, we will attempt to define the home of the postcrisis; this project will examine the dynamics of conflicts surrounding the home as places, working with concepts of imperfection and tolerance to reveal a process grounded on acute observation and precision.

Project 2 The Context of Home To design is to define a context and to re-shape the given. Considering the context of home, we will reassess the essential structures necessary to support this new life – from ecologies to infrastructures; attempting to find freedom in the limitations imposed by the curtailment of our social lives, examining the social relationships afforded by the disruption of the conventional image of the built environment as a stable entity and challenging the the specific development of each student with a holistic program that

Project 3 Peripheral Stories Magical realism is defined as what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe. This project will use text to explore in drawings the spatial relationship between people and buildings, the kinship between architecture and human gestures and the world they describe. The immediacy and the precision of drawings to figure something out, the thinking drawing that asks questions and seeks to understand the paradoxes of the world as a constructed entity.

Project 4 Peripheral Communities This project will take place in the north of Sweden. Reflecting on the current climate emergency and architecture’s lack of engagement with it, we will reconsider the outpost as a viable place of community. Developing the ideas from peripheral stories, we will explore different concepts for community, new forms of social and cultural relationships constructing narratives of how we live together, and the implications of these in spatial practice.

Ori Merom OM i s an architect and teacher. www.meromarchitects.com www.corsaroarchitetti.it/ www.hey5.xyz Rumi Kubokawa RK is an architect and teacher. Has practiced in the UK and taught at The University of East London.