The studio is structured around two main exercises that provoke a re-evaluation of territorial hierarchies within the “home space” and where students reflect on and review the preset boundaries and relations in space, question the standard patterns and venture into new spatial explorations. Both exercises involve a research on seminal projects and their theories as a way to inform the students’ design proposals.
Exercise 1 investigates the recent challenges in life after the Covid 19 pandemic and the rising economic crisis and their impact on new life patterns. Today many Millennials work from home which is transforming the home identity into both a private and a public facility. New sets of spatial relationships are appearing leading progressively to self-sustained neighborhood and a utopian life style.
Each student is invited to design a home-work space for an invented character living around a fictive piazza. The design will reflect on the personal space/territory versus its possible invasion/occupation.
Exercise 2 addresses essentially communal living arrangements. It initiates students to observe and understand a particular context in the city in its physical and socio-cultural facets as a starting point of the design. This will result in the design of a “Unit” that will be multiplied to build up a “system” of organization. Each student will propose a therapeutic facility combining clinics and home spaces for the health practitioners. The process involves inventive modes of organizations and reaches unexpected spatial relations.