Urban Architecture MSc 1 Design studio

Msc1: What to keep?

At the chair of Urban Architecture, we study medium-size urban sites that are inaccessible for the regular tools of urbanism, and where expectations of urban design can only be fulfilled by architecture. Adding a building thus means (re)designing an environment.

The Msc1 studio opposes tabula rasa and addresses questions prior to the new design, concerning the existing structures on the site: whether to demolish (and what exactly) and how to re-use. The motives for preservation are not necessarily architectural value, but also rest-value of written-off material for social, non-profit uses and, especially, ecological value of used material in itself and in economizing the use of new material.

A particular urban site must be restructured with the design of a new building, whilst maintaining selected parts of an existing building. Students are challenged to re-interpret as-found constellations, to re-integrate them into a new design concept and to enjoy contingencies.

We want to make the best possible use of resources observed near the site, both socially, physically and technically. Other resources are buildings nearby and far-off, realized or only imagined, as an archive of human efforts to accommodate life. We favour programs that communicate their social role to the public realm sensitively and intervene in daily life, in urban areas where the right to the city, as Henri Lefebvre has put it, is in need of strengthening.

The course is in close collaboration with Building Technology.