Evening reflections, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis 2025
e/merging encounters – people/situation/place
An invitation, a summons or a challenge; how do you encounter your fellow citizens? Who are the people you pass by on the street, stare at on the bus, stand behind at the café, chat with on forums? Do we actually share these spaces or simply tolerate the presence of the other? Can we find ways to connect and learn from each other as we move through our daily lives? How does the overlap of public and personal space affect our behaviours? Why in this world of unprecedented connectivity do we feel so isolated? Do strict barriers produce fraught formalities? Can we identify and learn from subtle thresholds within existing urban environments? Studio 4 works with an open-ended approach by engaging with urban situations and proposing new ways to participate in the spaces we inhabit together. The studio process focuses both on identifying emerging qualities and proposing new alternatives to provoke encounters. We invite you to join us on our journey of encounters as we explore cities, neighbourhoods and streets in search of community.
Context of Investigation
Richard Sennett states ‘The public realm can be simply defined as a place where strangers meet’. This frames the contextual approach of Studio 4 in relation to physical and social contexts. We view places as cultural artefacts that store memories and experiences. We see strangers are more than outsiders and interlopers. We all inhabit our own evolving situations composed of cultural backgrounds, daily routines and personal desires. These moments can simultaneously connect and divide us.
In Fall we focus on Urban situations by examining and reinterpreting fragments of a neighbourhood in the continuously evolving city of Berlin. In Spring we explore how we to create new synergies in similar contexts and how encounters with strangers can make resilient places.
Studio Agenda and Methodology
The methodology of Studio 4 begins each semester by investigating concrete case studies, progresses to contextual mappings and concludes with spatial resolution. The Fall begins with Emerging Understandings as we examine, analyse and interpret built elements and ephemeral activities through case studies. In Encountering Situations, we visit Berlin to observe, interact with and record activities in the urban realm. In Merging Situations, we implement our previous findings and explore design strategies to accommodate new contextual encounters in residential and public projects.
The Spring begins with Formulate where we scrutinise the issues behind societal issues. In Locate we position ourselves within a physical and cultural context and identify wider connections. In Allocate we propose spatial interventions before concluding the project with Consolidate.
Teaching team: Richard Conway (studio responsible), Martina Karlsson & Sangram Shirke
Latest update: 2025-09-02