Designing with Others

The built environment is not produced by architects alone. Inhabitants, builders, and experts from other professions are also responsible for co-creating the built environment together with architects and engineers.

Through experimental design practice you will examine and use analytical and projective instruments and methods of the architectural discipline and other related professions in collaboration with the different actors who participate in the production of architecture. The final outcome of the studio is a real-size built architecture, produced in collaboration between architects and non-architects.

The three design studios offered by the chair of Methods of Analysis and Imagination form future architects with the skills and knowledge required to: (a) inscribe architectural designs within concrete sites and situations (MSc1, Situating Architecture), (b) collaborate with others productively in the development of architectural designs (MSc2, Designing with Others), and (c) scale fully developed architectural designs meticulously and insightfully in relation to human proportions (MSc3/4, A Matter of Scale).

Well situated, co-created, human-scaled architectures result from the thorough and creative analysis and imagination of possible futures for particular architectural contexts. In the three courses analysis and imagination are fully integrated in practice through the proficient and explorative use of instruments and methods of the architectural discipline and other related professions.

Student work may be used for educational purposes, and students must self-notify the coordinator/ lecturer of the course if they do not wish to give permission to do so.

The analyses and designs produced in the first part of the studio are subject to individual progress reviews (formative assessments, not graded), which make clear to what degree you have fulfilled the learning objectives developed so far, and allow all participants involved in the studio to decide which design(s) to build.

Two final outcomes (project and construction) are assessed and graded collectively, and one (evaluation) is assessed and graded individually, using relevant aspects and criteria determined in the EMMA feedback and assessment tool, adapted for the MSc2 level.

The design project is awarded a grade that is a whole or half number between 1.0 and 10.0. Students pass the course with a 6.0 or higher. With a grade below 6.0: students who presented assessable work during the course are allowed to do a repair to change the grade into a ‘pass’. The repair is unsupervised and needs to be completed within 2 weeks after the end of the course. When the repair is unsuccessful, the student needs to follow the entire course again.