After successful completion of the course, students are able to approach the complexity of an architectural task in a critical and inventive manner. They will have gained experience in working within a given context, addressing specific aspects of it in depth, and developing an independent proposal throughout.
While plants take root on earth and expose their leaves to the sun, their fruits grow mobile in nature. They become figures – each of them, in a current way, an ambassador of their solar kin. Whether sweet or familiar, sour or strange, fruits are the fruit of joy, if we follow their etymology, and joy figuratively opens again room for fruition – utilitas (purposefulness) and delectatio (delight). A pair of concepts that we will look for in the cosmic rhythms of architecture and that we will confront with its canonic notion of comfort.
Doing so, we are inviting new life to a rural villa – neither a proper retreat nor a pure farmhouse – with narrated and built foundations dating back to the 13th century (as found in the 'Divine Comedy' of Dante Alighieri). Situated on a great plain of temperate and subtropical climate (near the town of Faenza in the northeastern Italian province of Ravenna) – a region once wet, “uncivilized” and cradle of modern-day fruit growing – this semester (following the piano nobile in 2023S), we will focus thereby specifically on the piano terra – the earth-bound interior of the house. A square within a maze that, like the openings of a house according to Alberti, is “for the convenience of egress and regress, or the passage of things”, both figuratively and physically – services, goods; trades and treats. Elemental, functional and communal it was the operational space of the house – a base to a fruitful story – which through our designs is again to become both, a gathering place and a center of communication. A room with a temperature, mixing inside and outside, seeking to find a new connection between two classically distinct architectural domains: the “interior” and the “landscape”.
Throughout the course we will exercise in many things: we will observe and speculate, explore and invent; and we will compose spaces by focusing on what can be condensed and dispersed rather than defined or divided up (built or demolished). Working in groups of two, we will collaborate thereby on a project through a series of tasks, involving plenty of texts, images, and models, brought together in a final publication featuring each student's work.
The course is independent in its approach and at the same time part of a series – in line with two courses that have already taken place at ATTP, another design studio in 2023S and the ACT course in 2023W (part of the Meta-Architecture module).
Active participation throughout the semester, consistent design development, presentation of the outlined architectural project, and submission of the project materials are required for the successful completion of the course.
