UMA1: Finding Place / Making Space – Embodied methods of architectural explorations
In Finding Place / Making Space first-year students are introduced to the creative process and begin to find their way by expanding their position from user to designer of space. We explore and expand our inherent embodied understanding, we pay attention to what is and we experiment with these perceptions as we curiously work towards what could be. UMA1 unfolds through an interplay of artistic, systematic, and conceptual explorations, where making becomes a way of thinking. Beginning from the basics, the students work by hand and use their body as a tool to read, perceive, feel, measure and experience - to test places and create spaces. The approach allows us to sense, imagine, and articulate space, developing spatial awareness and material intelligence. Above all UMA1 is a collective laboratory for experimentation. It is a place where we learn by doing, where curiosity, exploration, and reflection are central to the design process, and where unexpected discoveries are welcomed as an indispensable part of learning.
Context of Investigation
The body is the starting point of exploration. The context is revealed through how the body relates to a place and how space unfolds, altering the body's perception and experience. The Fall semester is a test bed for different methods of formulating the relation between body and place, to create space. In the Spring semester the notion of site is introduced to add complexity and inform space-making even further, providing additional perspectives on relational systems -overlapping the concepts of body, place and space.
Studio Agenda and Methodology
UMA1 introduces the architectural process giving students basic skills and tools such as sketching, drawing and model-making to explore concepts of how the human body relates to form, scale, place and space. Students will learn how to work with iterative and experimental design processes, basic concepts of sustainability and tools to communicate an architectural project.
UMA 1 works with embodied experiments to explore and expand the body’s knowledge and perception of spatial qualities. These are tested and represented through thinking by the hand, using analogue tools as a way to embody knowledge and to acknowledge the physical properties and relationships of materials, sequences and atmospheres. Throughout the year the students are encouraged to move between observing and imagining, between reading what is already there and testing how it could be otherwise.
Teaching team: Maxine Lundström (studio responsible), Richard Conway, Robin Durand, Oskar Häggström Germann, Sara Zetterlund
Latest update: 2026-08-30