After successful completion of the course, students are able to develop architectural solutions in relation to curatorial issues in dealing with listed modernist spaces. They will be able to relate museological issues to spatial principles and to conceptualize and formulate them in theoretical and practical terms.Through independent research, students will be able to understand existing structures in architectural and planning terms and use these as a basis for developing conceptual and spatial solutions. Building on their own research and concepts, they are able to create, discuss and comprehensively present design projects in plan, image, model, video and text.
MODERN HERITAGE AND ITS DISCONTENTS:THE POSSIBLE FUTURES OF VILLA BEER
EXHIBITING ARCHITECTUREThis design studio questions the way in which canonical Modernist houses have been transformed into museums in the last decades. Famous projects like the Villa Tugendhat, the Schroder House or the Villa Savoye—where family dwelling once took place—are today self-exhibiting spaces or museums dedicated to displaying their own architecture. This approach showcases architecture as a static being, and so it fails to incorporate the question of time, memory, and reuse—issues which are at stake when it comes to spatial practice in relation to heritage. In this studio, students will challenge this recurring preservation practice by proposing alternatives that do not see the building simply as a fossil that is stuck in time—and should only be looked at—but as a living architecture that should be used.
CASE STUDY VILLA BEERThe studio will focus on Villa Beer in Vienna. Designed by Josef Frank and Oskar Wlach and completed in 1929, it is not only one of the most important housing projects of Modernism but is also tied to the political and architectural history of Vienna. Architecturally, the Villa Beer provides an opportunity. Unlike the villas mentioned above, it lacks its interior fitting, which held much of the spatial character invested in by Frank. This void leaves room for answers to the following questions: How can we reimagine the former residential home space to exhibit not only the architecture itself, but also contextual content? How can we rethink the relationship between the interior spaces and the garden? How do we deal with architectural loss? And, most importantly, how do we question the permanence of collective memory, and consider forms of spatial re-appropriation instead?
TASKThis is a conceptual and practical design studio. Positioned between theory and practice as well as between the architectural and the curatorial, the students are expected to develop designs for today’s Villa Beer that make it at once readable as a complex exhibit of Modernism and as a novel display for contemporary artistic and social practices and uses.
Students in this studio will be expected to produce drawings, diagrams and models but also to write texts, use photography and take performative approaches to the use and curatorial design of the villa. The studio will also include a field trip to Brno and Prague. This studio will be held in English. Work in groups of 2 to 3.
DATES Weekly crits are generally on Friday from 09:00 to 15:00.
Special dates:
Concept Presentation November 11; Midterm Crits on December 16, Final Presentation on February 3, 2023.
Kick-off event on October 7th from 10:00.
Excursion to the Villa Beer on October 14th. Meeting point is the Villa Beer, Wenzgasse 12, 1130 Vienna, at 09.00.
Excursion to Prague on November 11th and 12th.
Detailed fundamental research of existing spatial and social structures and principles. Analyses of typological, cultural, construction, building physics, spatial and atmospheric aspects. Basic research on aspects of museology in architecture. Evidence of research by means of a logbook kept throughout. Planning, textual and graphic realization of a subsequent concept and design at scales of 1:5000 to 1:1. Site plans, floor plans, sections, elevations, façade sections, details, spatial principle representations, perspectives, models.
