After successful completion of the course, students are able to work on conceptual and constructive issues concerning architectural design, including the use of refined design and communication tools. They will be able to work with different scales of an architectural project in synchronicity.

LIFE WITHOUT BUILDINGS – HIDDEN GARDENS IN TRIESTE
This project set out to develop alternative critical approaches to urban regeneration in opposition to the imperative of urban growth. We will do this through the explorations of the poetics of the informal, the re-naturalisation of cities, co-habitation with non-human life forms and the role of transience in how we think about our built environment. The studio will continue its work on Triest, which started in 2022W with projects for an Integrationshaus at Campo Marzio. The central concern of our work is to formulate bottom-up strategies that improve the living quality of the 220.000 people still living in Triest today, as opposed to the top-down regional policies aiming to get the number of inhabitants back up to a level above 280.000 of a bygone era in the early 1980s. 
We will focus on dilapidated buildings in a ruinous state and empty, left-over and forgotten building plots. Here, we will explore strategies for turning these contingent places into open spaces for the local communities, offering the inhabitants joyous sites of rest, social gathering and space for bottom-up initiatives.

The studio will work actively with local communities during an on-site excursion in April. Our design methods will be based on and borrow concepts and techniques from artists' strategies, which we will study intensely in the initial phase before the field trip to Triest. A genuine interest in and knowledge of contemporary art and its related theories is advisable for participating in the studio. The design work of the sites for the 'hidden gardens' will be based primarily on experimental large-scale model techniques related to environmental sculpture and work intensively with photography and video.
Each team member will work individually to develop a personal position and critical design attitude. Nevertheless, the general premise of the studio work is a collective discourse developed through different forms of group work and collaborative exercises throughout the semester up until the final presentation.
The design studio works parallel to a group of diploma students currently doing projects for disused buildings in Trieste. With these two studios, our aim is, on the one hand, to generate synergies between two different architectural strategies and, on the other hand, to develop a critical mass of work that can impact the current local urban discourse through a presentation and exhibition in Triest in late autumn.
The studio will engage with numerous experts from Vienna and Triest throughout the semester, including lectures, discussions and additional day trips. The dialogue and student-initiative-based teaching approach requires permanent involvement throughout the semester, exceeding the requirements of a standard design project.

Design and presentation of an adaptive reuse project