This course becomes important for students as they understand that architecture is an intrinsic part of culture, informed by historic processes of architectural production as well as contemporary everyday practices. It asks ontological questions around modern institutions and their programmes that have come to principally shape the nature of our lived experiences in the last two centuries. (Ontology is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of objects, things, institutions, etc. It is a set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them.) This studio takes up one contemporary institutional programme that has emerged historically over the years and asks students to trace its genealogy. Architecturally it traces different spatial configurations that have developed across history under the same programme through case studies. With the help of these case studies students are asked to speculate on the societal structures for each spatial configuration, establishing the relationship between societal structure, programme of the institution and spatial configuration. Through this analysis students learn to ask the question ‘What is?’ What is the genesis of the programme? What is the deep structure of space? Was this configuration produced by the society? Did it produce the particular society? (For example: What is a School? What is a home? What is an Archive? What is a Clinic? What is a factory? Where did these come from? What is the next stage in their development?)
Hence, instead of starting from a given programme through precedent studies, and standards, the studio through its What is? provocation asks students to critically understand the programme and its relationship to the institution’s deep spatial structure in order to be able to rethink the configuration for a new institution towards a more egalitarian spatial structure. From the above analysis and a study of a contemporary site, students are asked to speculate on possible emerging societal structures and develop a corresponding new programme for the institution that produces new spatial structures. This design process will be undertaken through exploratory drawings and models, drawing on the genealogical studies.
A parallel seminar course will take students through texts in art and architecture theory that ask ontological questions about institutions, power structures and the psycho spatial dimensions of architecture. The seminar course will also look at references of other genealogical studies in architectural history and theory.
The course will focus on enabling students:
To ask ontological questions about an architectural program.
To develop interpretative abilities of architecture.
To understand how to take up genealogical studies from secondary source studies of an architectural programme and speculate on its relationship with contemporary societal structures.
To be able to speculate on possible societal structures and corresponding spatial structures for a given institution.
To be able to craft a design programme from the above speculation.
To design a relevant type from the design provocation that has rich interpretative qualities.
To develop exploratory drawings that are able to establish the relationship between speculative models of societal structures and the proposed type, its deep structures and its pyscho-social properties.
Specifically, the course will be conducted in following stages:
Archival studies of the genealogy of the programme across the world. With focus on form, programme, spatial structure and social structure. (Week 1.5)
Seminar classes: engaging with philosophical texts that conceptually open up concerns around the idea of institutions, their structures and spatial manifestations. (Week 1 + 2)
Field study that brings one contemporary institution that is added to the archival studies but also becomes the site of intervention. (Week 2)
Program building based on the speculations of a new institutional type. (Week 3)
Conceptual drawings and models that work with the provocation of developing a new institutional type for a new critical societal structure. (Week 3)
Design detailing (Week 4 - 6)
Exploratory psycho-social drawings that speak of relationships between the new type and emergent societal structures. (Week 7)