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Fundamentals. Architecture through the body

FUNDAMENTALS is defined as a laboratory to introduce, explore and experiment with the core knowledge of architecture, where the design process is at the center of the practice and the human body is used as a tool for research and design. The studio works as a learning platform and as a pedagogical methodology based on artistic, technical and conceptual explorations, where thinking with the hands translates into learning by making. The studio focuses on the investigation and articulation of space, form and material starting from the human body as tool for spatial design in architecture. Architectural matter is explored as process, as method, and as intellectual construct. Therefore, the structure is defined by a series of pedagogical experiments that iterate, multiply and transform everytime an idea is crafted through the hands, testing multiple methods of representation as means for exploration and discovery, fostering abstract thinking as a mechanism for design thinking and building up an architectural language [grammar (logics), vocabulary (concepts), poetics (meaning)].

Context of Investigation 
Thinking through the body defines a unique approach to initiate the architectural journey from an experiential and embodied perspective. Through a series of movements or choreographies the body acts as a medium to register, experience or generate spatial relations at multiple scales, physical and perceptual. Body as a tool means to activate the senses, beyond the visual towards a total perception, becoming aware of the weight of the body in relation to its surroundings, as well as its structure or movement. The studio proposes an investigation of architectural space through the human body, not as an ideal canon, nor as a quantitative element, but as a dynamic mechanism, unveiling invisible geometries, composing and generating space as a performative practice. 
 
Studio Agenda and Methodology  
The pedagogical strategy is constructed by a collection of experiments that evolve from abstract to concrete. The methodology is based on continuous, iterative, and hands-on process, combining instrumental, technical, and methodological tools, in order to explore, conceptualize, and design architectural ideas. The experimental process navigates from concepts to objects, from traces to spaces, from ideas to materials, from making to re-making, revealing the complexity embedded within the architectural discipline, as a process, as a method and as a discourse. These multiple explorations intend to imagine, craft and design space through own our bodies as experiential mediums, exploring the physical environment as well as its phenomena and relations.  
 
Teaching team: Carla Collevecchio (studio responsible), Robin Durand, Elena Vazquez + invited guests. 

Latest update: 2023-08-30