The studio focuses on exploring the domestic space through interrogating convention of home versus community space. It also focuses on the notion of ‘context’ or ‘specific condition of place’ and the role it plays in an architectural design process.
An exploration of domestic space with a local autonomous community was pursued. Building on the notion of an autonomous body, students composed, displaced, arranged, constructed, played and created an ensemble that explores architecture as a communicative device translating spatial experiences into rational and effective systems in a “local community area” as an Autonomous Body.
Further through the semester, a specific site in the city of Ashrafieh was assigned. The students investigated existing typologies on site as a mean to better understand the context and propose a therapeutic center based on a living module that is repeated to create a system. The integration of the therapeutic center on the specific site called for a readjustment of the system.
Taking the room as the first element of a project for living space might allow us to see the question of living spaces on completely different terms from the ones we normally work with.
Ultimately, to imagine a city made of rooms for individuals or groups of people means ultimately to reject the model that sees the city as an agglomeration of nuclear families.