2016 /17 WINTER SEMESTER
REVIEW
Master of Science in Architecture Institute of Architecture and Planning
Review
The Winter Semester 2016-17 has brought fascinating insights into possible understandings of cultural identities within the field of architecture. The work produced by students in the design studios could not have been more diverse yet crucial to establish a common ground. All three students intensively worked on and with specific cultural contexts; whether in form of visionary embassies (Studio Dworzak / Mackowitz), the relationship between us humans and the landscape (Studio Schwarz / Penzis) or working on an urban design in a culturally foreign environment (Studio Staub / Papathanasiou). Additionally, three research students compiled a wonderful set of ideas and findings on the theme in preparation for our big summer exhibition and the exhibition «4 by 4 – some cultural identities of an architecture school», curated by Alberto Alessi, provided us with a catalogue of books, places, objects, works assembled by 23 members of our faculty. Panel discussions and two more lectures by the external experts Conradin Clavuot and Peter Fattinger provided further food for thought. All in all, I am very excited about the results from last semester, some selected examples of which you find in this brochure. I thank everyone for their hard work and their invaluable contribution! PETER STAUB Head of Institute and Academic Director of the Master’s degree Programme
Cover picture MASTER THESIS ALENA TKACHENKA
Studio Hugo Dworzak Tutor: Martin Mackowitz
Design Studio
Embassy for a Cultural Identity
The topic of the studio focuses on creating an embassy for an individually chosen cultural identity. In this context, the expression embassy is not meant to be an institution in the common understanding. It is rather seen as a place for a minority, a group of people that is under pressure of society. As well as the cultural
identity, the place for the embassy is selected by each student individually. The project of the embassy should transfer a message between the cultural identity and society, in order to create a common understanding about values and intentions.
Design Studio
Visualisation Constantin Frommelt
ToGather Pia melichar
Project Abstract: Pia Melichar ToGather is the architectural proposal for an embassy of craftsmanship focusing on the making and the experiencing of crafts. The proposal combines working place, home for journeymen and platform for communication and exchange. Investigating the role of manual work in the contemporary context, it faces the challenges of its significance loss. Results and conclusions of conducted research led to cooperation, human actions and changeability as the driving forces to counteract this development.
Design Studio
ToGather Pia melichar
Under the overall topic of the semester Cultural Identity, the project, located in the Austrian city Dornbirn, deals with the research question of how the significance of crafting can be rehabilitated and answers the question why it is necessary to keep its age-old values alive. The starting point for the design is the re-use of an abandoned factory hall and the extension of the existing crane system. Covering an open outside working space, it supports flexible adjustments according to the users. In regard to the relationship of architecture and
craftsmanship, the proposal creates a framework with certain settings on the one hand and allows creation of spaces considering individual needs and requirements on the other hand. Facing the street in the north of the site, the project and its people become visible as part of the city. The embassy is seen both as a magnet and transmitter, collecting and spreading ideas, intentions and values. The proposal can be seen as an invitation to start a discussion about how craftsmanship will or how it should develop in future.
Design Studio ToGather Pia melichar
Studio Dietrich Schwarz Tutor: Daniel Penzis
Following Landscape
Design Studio
Manifesto Borja Castillo
The tendency that the landscape will be urbanized seems unstoppable and obvious, also that as a consequence we will lose our arable land. However, this is the basis of our emotional and cultural identity, but also of our life resources. This linear process that seems functionally reasonable is also questionable. For this reason, in the winter semester, as architects and urban specialists, we want first to comprehend the landscape and then to overcome the primacy of the urban to the landscape.
Design Studio
Manifesto Borja Castillo
Design Studio
Manifesto Borja Castillo
Project Abstract: Borja Castillo The project is a ÂŤmanifesto of natureÂť in an abandoned island called San Giorgio in Alga in the Venetian lagoon, Italy. This manifesto is understood as an architectonical approach towards the island that enlightens a harmonic relationship between nature and human, it is a manifesto that claims that architecture can be used as a mediator tool between nature and culture that should create awareness of the power of nature and its importance within the built environment. In this manifesto both architecture and its program will be the connection between past and present: past of the history of Venice, but also past of the island. The proposed skin will be the witness of the ruin and the architectural history of the island when the ruin will be gone in the same way the that books that are inside are the witnesses for us of the history of Venice, by writing.
Design Studio
Manifesto Borja Castillo
The incompleteness, the broken, the mutilated, the fractured and no longer cultivated nature in shape of the ruin that is located in the island, acquire a new status. Status that this project deals through the duality of conqueror-conquered, destructor-destroyed, nature-humanity, which are binomials involving transformations of the ÂŤorder-chaos, chaos-orderÂť type, a boundless loop that involves thanks to the provision of new relationships in the inner system. A loop that is created by layers of history that creates this new relationships within the system, therefore, a new layer is designed, the archive of the history of Venice in 2017.
Studio Peter Staub Tutor: Georgia Papathanasiou
Urban Design for Coexistence, São Paulo, Brazil Schindler Global Award 2017
Design Studio
Farmacy Ahefaz Panjwani / Sami Akkach
During the Winter Semester 2014-15 Studio Staub successfully participated in the first Schindler Global Award. Out of 250 entries from around the world, the project by Martyna Michalik and Hana Plescakova was selected among 12 finalists. During an award ceremony in Shenzhen, China, they were awarded USD 5’000 for their visionary proposal. The Winter Semester 2016-17 Studio Staub participated again, still pursuing the same unconventional urban design approach that had led to our previous success in this competition. Following a bottom-up strategy starting from small-scale pop-up interventions we developed a framework and later scenarios for an appropriate and visionary transformation of this complex site in São Paulo.
Design Studio
Urban Spine Alena Tkachenka
Extract from the competition brief: «The 2017 competition site is in São Paulo, the main economic engine of Brazil and most populous city in South America. With a population of twelve million and more than twenty million people in the metropolitan region, the city is well established and embedded in global flows of resources, people
and power. The city faces challenges at all scales, and the competition asks students to address them using urban design frameworks and strategies. The competition site is centered on the CEAGESP (Companhia de Entrepostos e Armazéns Gerais de São Paulo) wholesale market, along with its surrounding neighborhood and infrastructures. The CEAGESP will be relocated by the city in the coming years, freeing up a substantial part of the city for redevelopment and change. Its location in the center of São Paulo offers the potential for forward-thinking approaches to the creation of a new centrality within the city, connected and integrated into the local and regional context.» (Schindler Global Award Competition Brief, p. 3) Four essential topics were meant to guide proposals, and served as the benchmarks for the evaluation of entries. Students were free to define additional considerations, but the following topics were used to ensure holistic designs: 1. Regional and local urban design impact 2. Mobility and public space integration 3. Urban living, urban economy and creation of jobs 4. Cultural, social and architectural heritage.
Design Studio
Urban Spine Alena Tkachenka
Student’s Work (Urban Spine): Alena Tkachenka The Urban Spine proposes an alternative view on the principles of urban design. Within a series of urban tools the project proposes a multi-layered and complex masterplan. A first recognition of the everyday life moments in the surrounding areas sets up the main framework of flows and movements (Actions records tool). In order to organize and set up a spatial framework, a grid is been proposed as a main platform for social interaction (The grid tool). Subsequently, the regional and the local activators organize and propose the main cores in the area (The regional activators tool, the local activators tool). These main urban tools subscribe a primary plateau where multiple actions, uses and movements can take place challenging the borders of conventional urban development and triggering social interaction and furthermore creating an interesting development of the site.
Design Studio
Urban Spine Alena Tkachenka
Semesterstart University of Liechtenstein
Seminarweek Studio Dworzak
Seminarweek Studio Schwarz
Semester Impressions
Seminarweek Studio Staub