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The City as a Laboratory. Architectural Experiments in the North

We live in a city in constant change, demolitions and new constructions generates a temporary landscape in which architecture has the opportunity to experiment and act. Studio 3 explores the contemporary city and its changes to question the present and imagine future architectural scenarios. This studio investigates the city in relation to its constructed ecologies, exploring the Interactions between the urban environment, architecture, and its human and non-human inhabitants. Studio 3 operates in the North of Sweden, a context in which the urban development is associated to growth and densification, focusing on how to intervene on the existing, reuse and reactivate existing buildings and spaces in the city. We will explore the notion of architecture as a performative practice by understanding how the quality of space can be determined by actions and human relations, rather than superimposing a given function.

Context of Investigation 
Studio 3 explores the contemporary city to imagine future architectural scenarios and focusing on the notion of reuse and reactivation of existing buildings and spaces in the city. Starting from the specificity of each context, the studio focuses on the role of architecture in the contemporary scenario underlining the relationship with the urban fabric.  Studio 3 uncover the multi-layered identities and dynamics which contribute to the (physical and discursive) construction of the contemporary city. We explore, investigate, and represent how such dynamics are interconnected at different scales and times, locally and globally, and juxtapose permanent and temporary fragments of the city. Students explores the current relations between the urban fabric and its inhabitants: architects, artists, users, activists, authorities, cultural institutes, collectives, with whom the studio interacts. 

Studio Agenda and Methodology  
The city as a laboratory is a research-based design studio that continues the evolution of previous studios and builds on collective investigations: Futurescapes, Atlas of Future Explorations and Unlayering Umeå explored the existing context to identify potentials for future speculative scenarios at different scales.  
The thematic structure is organized in three main subjects: the city as a festival, the architecture of the city, architecture as a device. Studio 3 follows a methodology based on iterative and explorative model making and production of drawing, documents, and installations. 
The Studio is part of the UOU University of Universities project involving 42 international schools of architecture and collaborates with local and international invited artists and practices.  
 
Teaching team: Maria Luna Nobile (studio responsible), Sara Zetterlund, Rebecca Rudolph. 

Latest update: 2023-08-30