Brief

Each architect is shaped by their own history in space. In this workshop we are interested in this knowledge - its form, its acquisition and its application. This knowledge is embodied in a different form in each architect, and always occurs in relation to others. Architecture is a social thing - depending on others for its initiation and its realisation.

To begin our students are assigned to 3 groups of 9. The workshop then runs in three two-day blocks.

On the first day the students are taken to a site in Porto. They are to pick a space which the collective agrees is compelling. They are to measure it using only their bodies.

On the second day they are given a site in FAUP and 200sqm metres of scaffolding mesh. They are asked to make a translation of their found space. The material and the site are where they can test, adjust, discover limits. They are also given a design office. They are allowed to draw here - to design, to abstract and reflect. They cannot draw on site, and they cannot bring the material to the design office. The day oscillates between aspiration and contingency.

In these three places - memory, design office and site we seek to create in microcosm of the architects life. The participants develop group behaviours, they reflect on things that are working, there are frustrations. They are asked to reflect on how they can engender a group conversation, one which leads onward. There are difficulties. The material is unruly, it misbehaves. The participants get to know one another - to recognise and empathise with each others position, and way of acting. The memories they are seeking to translate don’t accord with the realities on site.

Each time they do this 2 day exercise the aspirations develop, the techniques refine. Each group is becoming a practice, with its internal conversations woven with the set constraints. They develop techniques, sensibilities, an emerging language.

In the end they make spaces which they hold up with their bodies. The architects, holding their design in space can never experience it - ultimately architecture is for others.

At the end, the spaces are gone, and each practice makes a representation to communicate their work to the wider community.

The output is the conversation that ran all week. A place to make common cause between teachers and students - to share insights about practice, construction and our lives.

Architecture lives in imagination and the lives of those close to it. This is not a contradiction.