Do-It-Anyway: Place, Tectonics, and Time [M1]

In this studio, students will design and fabricate a sleeping space at one-to-one scale in the period of seven weeks. Why?
 
We are living in an unpredictable and volatile era. A seemingly unending series of natural disasters and anachronistic wars affect our daily lives. The places we inhabit may be unstable or mobile—a trend that will accelerate in the future—and we are expected to quickly adapt to a changing environment.
 
In this situation, we must question the traditional status of architecture as a stable occupant of real estate. Should we instead imagine ephemeral, temporary, or transient architectural artifacts? How could forms and techniques of building be adjusted flexibly and spontaneously to adapt to new situations? How do these tectonic strategies respond to the specificities of place? And can these architectural ideas be used to address pressing contemporary problems including housing instability, economic inequality, and climate change?
 
This studio will address these questions through a hands-on project with a clear outcome: a Sleeping Space. Sleeping is an essential part of our daily lives. A safe and comfortable place to sleep is indispensable for everyone, especially people affected by disaster and instability. When we rest, we find solace from worldly troubles, and we are free to explore a less constrained imaginative realm. In this studio, we will use sleep as a starting point for tectonic experiments that result in a space or assembly that engages the body. Often, sleeping spaces are flat, quiet, covered, and separated from other functions. The outcome of this project will be based on goals created by the student. It could be a shelter, partition, or structure which can accommodate a person for a restful night.

Students will design and fabricate the space and assembly at full-scale to put into practice their own concepts. As the studio designs and builds, we will examine and experiment with materials considering the constraints of time, ease of assembly, and cost. Typical building materials will be re-examined in addition to waste materials and other atypical materials.
 
Throughout the studio, we will discuss our methods of working, and how adaptable spaces and details can and should be used. At the same time, we will also work quickly and intuitively to reach a tangible conclusion. We will start with the conviction that something must be made, hence the theme of the studio: do-it-anyway.