Studio: Designing the Architecture

Professors: Josep Ricart (Habitat), Roger Sauquet (Habitat), Isabel Castiñeira (Urbanisme), Lorena Maristany (Urbanisme), Marta Serra (Heritage) i Tiago Lopes (Heritage).

The Design Studio is a core subject and the driver for the design-based learning. It reunites approaches and methodologies from knowledge fields where design is the main component: Theory of Architecture (Heritage), Architectural Design (Habitat) and Urban Design (Territory).

The participants are challenged to deal with a specific site, which gathers a rich set of components for design reflection. The Design Studio will balance between two complementary approaches to the given site:

On the one hand, a specific proposal is to be developed individually all along the semester
On the other, shorter thematic exercises will enrich the designing process by focused intensifications on certain topics. They all will be referred to the given site and will be integrated in the proposal

Given the specific profile of ETSAV, the Design Studio of MArq will specifically stress the training on the abilities to:

Envision urban and architectural potentialities of a given spatial and timely context
Identify urban, social and economic challenges and shortcomings of a given urban site
Define the goals and material qualities of an architectural intervention on a specific site
Set up and deploy the proper design strategies that will allow the achievement of a successful previously defined goals
Consider and integrate citizen participation in the designing process
Guarantee conceptual consistency all along the designing process, from the first sketches to the ready-to-build blueprints
Relate all technical decisions with conceptual design, thus strengthening the coherence of design in all scales and fields
Extend the reflection on design beyond implementation by considering its future impact on site and the ecological relations that built architecture sets up with environment

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