Nach positiver Absolvierung der Lehrveranstaltung sind Studierende in der Lage, sich der Komplexität einer architektonischen Aufgabe auf kritische und erfinderische Weise zu nähern. Sie haben Erfahrung darin gesammelt, in einem abstrakten Kontext zu arbeiten, sich vertieft mit spezifischen Aspekten dieses Kontextes zu befassen und dabei eine aktive Haltung zu entwickeln.

Room, Fragrance

“It surrounds us and penetrates us but we are barely aware of it. It is not a space: it is a subtle, transparent body, barely perceivable by touch or by sight. But it is from this fluid, which envelops everything, which penetrates and is penetrated by everything, that we have the colors, forms, smells, and tastes of the world. In this same fluid we can encounter things and let ourselves be touched by everything that exists and does not exist. It is this fluid that makes us think; it is this fluid that makes us live and love. The atmosphere is our first world, the medium in which we are wholly immersed: the sphere of breath” (Coccia) – the ‘vaporous realm’, and – the realm of scents. Breathing we move through the earth, and through smell we interact with its volatile interiors, rather than its surfaces. To smell is to breathe in color.

Exploring the ‘smell(s)oftheworld’, in ACT we will look at the act of olfaction as a way of going after ‘what is in the air’, which is to ‘learn to be affected’, meaning, put into motion by everything else. Thought to be our first and one of our chemical senses, smell is special: it blends the immediate and the abstract, “[…] slides from knowledge to memory and from space to time – no doubt from things to beings” (Serres); for some it is of a ‘half-formed nature’, for others it is the sense of the imagination. Following that, each of us will exercise to ‘become a nose’ (French. un nez, as in cosmetics) as a means to become active as an architect, and explore fragrances and odors – natural and synthetic – as airborne building materials; not only to engender new scents, but to explore what it can mean for something to be volatile today – to be open to new nature(s).

Throughout the course, we will combine various architectural techniques (from contemporary landscape to interior practice) and involve plenty of texts, images, models, and AI, to discover and invent; we will study olfactory cultures and atmospheric spaces, and we will focus on generous architectonic gestures by looking for what can be condensed and dispersed, or spread, rather than defined or divided up. Working through a series of assigned tasks, we will collaborate thereby on an osmotèque – an archive of smells: room(s), fragrance(s).

The course stands alone in its approach, but in its interest it is linked to a series of courses on 'Fruits' completed last semester at the ATTP. ↗
For coursework reference, see the final volume of the Daedalus Observatory – outcome of a research involving the ACT courses of W17-18. ↗

ACT combines lecture, exercise, and discussion – active participation in all three, as well as the consistent development and richness of the work submitted, will determine your final grade. In addition, our sessions are not recorded, so personal attendance (except in cases of illness or force majeure) is required for successful participation and completion of the course.