Architectural Intervention: Realization and Consequences, 20 Credits

Contents

The course aims:

- to support students' in their use of combinations of improvisatory and performative techniques with more strategic and speculative (conventional) design methods.
- to develop the students' ability to synthesize, document and judge their creative and intellectual explorations of architectural interventions in relation to environmental context, materials, and cultural imperatives.
- to further develop students' conceptual and analytical skills and methods of investigation necessary to negotiate relationships between theoretical concepts and architectural design outcomes.
- To develop the notion of architecture as 'gift', the students' professional judgement, and their ability to take the initiative and make appropriate decisions in complex and unpredictable circumstances.
- To support students in their development of appropriate building techniques and their critical knowledge of architecture's environmental, cultural and economic impact.

Following on from “Architecture as Acupunctural Strategy”, this unit continues to develop an approach to the complexities of the city that engages simultaneously with its spaces, discourses, and events.

This unit focuses on architecture's ability to provide, through its transformative power, conditions of 'possibility'. The main 'matters of concern' in this part of the master program will be documentation/judgement, representation/diffraction, and discourse/event. Through these matters of concern, we will be developing the notion of architecture as 'gift'. We recognise the potential of architecture to be  an embodied critique of building-as-consumable-object as well as to produce 'uncertainties', contingent relationships, and unexpected effects which can help define different, more positive value systems. We understand the building as a relational object within a complex meshwork of other things, people and technologies.
We will further interrogate the inherent judgement of our representations and documentation, and their abilities to enact particular 'worlds'.

The course is divided into 4 sections:

1. Introduction: The Terms of Engagement; Relational Practices (1.5 ECTS)
2. Methodologies of Engagement III (3.5 ECTS)
3. Study Trip (1.5 ECTS)
4. Relational Project(s) (13.5 ECTS)

Expected learning outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, the student will have demonstrated:

- the critical ability to combine performative, strategic, and speculative methods in the realisation of architectural interventions;
- a critical ability to assess architectural interventions in terms of their effects over time, and an understanding of the performative power of documentation;
- the ability to enact architectural interventions as gifts in complex relations to their contingent contexts;
- critical knowledge of construction materials, methods, technologies and techniques and their various impacts and an understanding of their role within buildings as a relational objects;

Required Knowledge

Courses: In order to participate in the course the following courses or the equivalent are required: Advanced Architectural Design (5AR501); Communications Theory (5AR405); Technology of construction and optimization(502); and Architecture as Acupunctural Strategy (5AR505).

Form of instruction

Students engage with project briefs, independent research and study, practical workshops, lectures, seminars, group and individual tutorials, critiques, presentations and study visits.

Examination modes

The various sections of the course will be assessed and graded by on-going evaluation of the process as well as through mandatory assignments, exercises and reviews.

The main assessment requirements are: an architectural intervention, its documentation, and critical reflection on its effects. Documentation will take various forms including (but not limited to) records of information gathering, surveys, critical evaluation of theoretical strategies and precedent; critical reflection will be evidenced in a written essay of no less than 1500 words.

The grading scheme is pass/fail. In order to successfully complete the course all compulsory oral, written and practical assignments must be completed and passed. Attendance at all teacher-led classes is mandatory.
Students, who have not passed the course at the ordinary examination, will be given another examination date. The student has the right to another examiner if he/she has not passed the course or parts of the course after two examinations, if nothing speaks against it (HF 6 chapter. 22§). The request for a new examiner should be aimed at the board for the Architecture School.

ACCREDITATION
Accreditation is handled on an individual basis. This course cannot be examined together with another course with similar contents. In case of uncertainty the student should contact the person responsible for the education at the Architecture School.

Course Literature
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