Design Studio 4 : City and Edifice [75h] [ LICAR1604 ]

A further cumulative experience of architectural design. A question is posed: Either the city as a background for the edifice, an unavoidable horizon. Or the city as a constitutive element of the city itself. Or both of these as inseparable and in complete synthesis. The way of posing the question will allow students to understand and analyze a complex spatial structure (the city) while integrating historical, spatial and cultural determinants of dwelling (the edifice) and their implications in the urban milieu and the built environment, including the realization of technical details. The studio will include a theoretical introduction and a presentation of analyzed references that may serve as a support for evaluation of the project. Questions of topography and hydrography, climate, socioeconomic context, urban context, siting constraints and logics, density and demography, property divisions, transport and circulation, planning envelopes and silhouettes, civic and domestic programs, etc., will be addressed.

By the end of this course, students will be able to: Describe and analyze a complex spatial structure, understand it in terms of landscape, its historical determinations and its practical logics. Evaluate the potential of a site and formulate the questions asked of it by the program. Understand the role of design in a milieu that is loaded with spatial, cultural and social determinations. Evaluate the impact of a decision. Associate the articulations of program, spaces and construction down to the technical details of structural pre-dimensioning. Practice taking account of physical and technological processes belonging to the realization of simple programs (loading, building envelope, waterproofing, insulation, etc.)