Diploma seminar - Housing and Design
Prof. Michael Obrist - Ass. Lorenzo Vicari
One-year diploma seminar
Application with letter of motivation and portfolio to obrist@wohnbau.tuwien.ac.at and lorenzo.vicari@tuwien.ac.at
Kick-Off TBD
EXISTENZ MAXIMUM : RADICAL COMMON
WIEN - ROME: In search of new spatial typologies of living together
It is time to think radically differently together.
Confronted with changing social realities, the emerging consequences of advancing climate change, geopolitical upheavals, worsening distributional injustices and the commodification of architecture, we as planners are challenged to question our social role and mechanisms in the production of space and the city.
The question will be about liberating architecture from its marketability as an object to become cultural vessels with social programming. Away from the spaces of expectation of current housing production and towards building structures that are resource-efficient, cost-effective and open to use, enabling spaces for a diverse urban society.
How can the ordinary, serial, simple and affordable also enable the wild, unconventional and "other"? How can we strive for the structural framework for a liberated maximum existence rather than ensuring a scarce minimum?
There is a pervasive influence in neoliberalism which allowed it to cunningly positioned itself as the only viable societal model. Its dominance extends across political arenas and economic frameworks, leaving an indelible mark on urban and suburban landscapes. After the 90s, western democracies have been prioritising private speculations over public welfare, advantaging the empowerment of private power of the public one, fracturing civic balances and widening inequality. But how does architecture produce stances in this narrative of neoliberal ascendancy? Can we envision different modes of coexistence?
The ambivalence of the term common as "the ordinary" on the one hand and "the shared" on the other should be seen as a potential to permeate all these considerations with a new understanding of commonality, communality and cooperation, in line with Silvia Federici's ideas.
Roland Barthes wrote about 'idiorrhythmy'—a term denoting the harmonious coexistence of individuality within a communal framework. Drawing from the Greek roots of idios (private) and rhythmos (rule), it encapsulates the delicate balance achieved by different subjects living and working together, preserving their distinct spiritual virtues. It's a powerful analogy for our urban predicament —a call to articulate housing typologies as vehicles for enabling the wildest possible spectrum of living architecture has always taken care of.
As such, architecture fabricates habitats and suggests habits for people to inhabit the planet. In this way, types are first and foremost figures of thought through which architects participate - impersonally - in a ‘talk’ on architecture that has no owner but many authors. By articulating and drawing on types that are 'anyone's own', architecture - at all times - reinvents forms of living that are, by their very nature, always already contemporary. And yet, when we think of courtyards, platforms, roofs, corridors, niches, ... we face a certain dilemma: from the words we use to describe what constitutes a particular building type, to the formal qualities that seem to capture its main manifestations, to the spatial experience that each type offers in a different way, the nature of types tends to remain mysteriously elusive and fantastically abstract: indexical and open-ended.
As international capital converges on city centers, relegating peripheral areas to neglect and urban decay, we are compelled to reconsider the potential of these overlooked spaces. Born out of deregulation and industrial upheaval, they harbour the seeds of a fertile ground for forging new urban realities. By recognising cities as complex arenas of conflict and convergence, we unlock the potential to reimagine collective living on multiple scales simultaneously.
Vienna and Rome will be our starting blocks: we will study modernist Viennese rich constellation of collective housing projects and Roman millenary idea of civitas to subsequently act on the contemporary incandescent issues with the development of adequate models.
