Studio 4: (e)merging encounters – Cultural depth, social plurality and spatial plasticity
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? How do they choose to spend their time once they have passed you by? Will you meet again and under what circumstances? Why in this world of unprecedented connectivity do we feel so isolated? What kind of spaces can encourage collaborative gatherings and social exchanges? Where can you find them? Can you design them? Studio 4 focuses on investigating diverse social urban neighbourhoods. Based on the everyday dynamics of urban spaces and their associated thresholds our pedagogy develops methods that enable students to uncover the complexities of how spatial configurations affect the habitual activities of local inhabitants, occasional users, and their interrelations. Here the urban whole is understood as multiple fragments, perceptions, and experiences. By encouraging active participation within the context rather than passive observation, students are invited to test, refine, and develop their own autonomous approaches to urban research.
Context of Investigation
Richard Sennett states ‘A city is a milieu in which strangers are likely to 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 that can be accessed and accentuated. Between the street and the sanctuary lie a multitude of thresholds that once acknowledged and explored reveal the hidden cultural depth of or habitat. Are these spaces mine, yours or ours?
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.
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), Sangram Shirke & Sara Zetterlund
Latest update: 2026-08-30