Urban Architecture MSc2 Design Studio

Msc2 material culture

Material culture pertains to the physical objects, resources and spaces that people make and use to define their culture. In the context of climate change and the current carbon footprint impact of the building industry, the profession needs a radical and fundamental shift in its building cultures. Architects can use their capacities as 'signifiers' to challenge the industry's building conventions and develop material points of view that offer new solutions and trigger appropriate design motives. While theories of new materialism suggest that the affordances of materials or what they enable should be the starting point for future design, material culture theories add a notion of cultural continuity. The studio will merge these ideas in an assignment that will develop new material attitudes and products from the study of existing examples. This will be done by creating and (as far as possible) implementing elements and details that work from an enhanced understanding of material properties and their cultural values and a meaningful integration of old and new. The precise brief and materials with which the studio works changes every year, and aims at refreshing conceived ideas while making your hands dirty.