UOU 5
We have discovered that a blended learning, both face to face and online, allows us to question the limits of our classroom and also to have an immediate response as architects to needs of society.
This semester we want to integrate Ukrainian students of architecture in our international course UNIVERSITY of Universities, collaborating with them in our exchange of exercises from prestigious Schools of Architecture.
War, climate transformation, and energetic and financial crisis are aspects that are appearing with strength in the different briefs of the 2-week workshops offered by our international colleagues.
Developing the methodology of the international groups of Architecture Design Studio 4 and 6 (please look at the programs), in this new semester we incorporate workshops by schools of arts:
ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS MUNICH (GERMANY)
PORTO UNIVERSITY (PORTUGAL)
REYKJAVIK UNIVERSITY OF ARTS (ICELAND)
As well, a novelty for this semester will be the participation in the BIP ERASMUS project, along with ENSAM-La Réunion (France), UCLouvain-LOCI (Belgium) and Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, KIT (Germany):
Rural Areas facing climate change
Crossed views
Keywords : architectural tentative design, citizenship, co-production, crises, economy-ecology, ethics, experience, heritage, identities, inhabited environments, neglected spaces, palimpsest, participation, social innovation, recycling, regeneration, resources, synergy, stratification, temporalities, traces, transformation, transition, typology,…
This BIP aims to cross views on the tropical and continental remote territories facing the challenges of climate changes and the realities of new rurality. In the light of the recent crisis and the desire of many people living in cities to reconnect with the countryside, a reversal of the rural exodus is observed. The desire to return to greater proximity with the food-producing areas, the sprawl of the human settlement, the desertification of the soils, added to climate changes, raise a certain number of problems.
We have planned a 3-year program, focusing each year on one of our specific contexts in the light of the shared topic.
2022-2023: We will start our study on the Reunion Island, and more specifically on the Mafate circle. This first session is programmed from Saturday 1st to Saturday 8th of April 2023
2023-2024: We will focus on a deserted remote rural area near Alicante,
2024-2025: We will end our program with the study of the recent flooded German and Belgian regions.
By comparing the scenarios and tentative designs produced during this 3-year program, a research by design will allow to think on new ways of developing rural areas in very different contexts.
Subject/topic of the programme.
«You have to know where you come from to know where you are going»
Amadou Hampâté Bâ (1901-1991), Malian ethnologist
This BIP aims to cross views at the topical and continental remote territories facing the challenges of climate changes and realities of new rurality.
In the light of the recent crisis and the desire of many people living in cities to reconnect with the countryside, a reversal of the rural exodus is observed.
The desire to return to greater proximity with the food-producing areas, the sprawl of the fabric, the desertification of the soils, added to climate changes raise a certain number of problems :
– How to preserve this quality of life, this proximity?
– How can we reconcile some of the contributions of modernity with local customs and traditions?
– How can we design infrastructures and systems that are more resilient to climate change (water management, landscape preservation, energy autonomy, etc.)?
These are the issues and problems that arise in the Mafate cirque in La Réunion, in the deserted remote rural ares near Alicante, in the heavt flooded countrysides of Wallonia.
By comparing their solutions and local approaches, these study cases will be an opportunity to reflect on the problems of water management in all its forms, but also on food and energy autonomy. A research by design will allow ti think on new ways of developing rural areas in very different contexts.
- Learning and teachings methods and expected outcomes
Targeted skills: Teach how
– to grasp contemporary societal transformations
and situate one’s action as an architect;
– to take up the multidisciplinary challenges
of an architect’s tasks and design solutions in a divers team;
– to develop research by design skills by tentative scenario;
– to develop a critical and self-critical posture;
– to develop a professional ethical attitude.
- Virtual component description
Online lectures before the in situ workshop
Online seminars after the in situ workshop
- Field of education targeted (students)
Students in their master’s degree program in
– Architecture
– Engineering-architecture
– Urban design
– Landscape
– Socio Anthropology
- Education level targeted (students)
students in their 4th year (bachelor degree) and master’s degree program
Thanks to the new Erasmus+ Blended Mobility Program funds, each partner will cover the costs for its own students and teachers mobilities during our inter-school meetings. The type of participants targeted are students and staff.
*10 to 20 students in their 4th year (bachelor degree) and master’s degree program per partner
*1 to 3 staff / partner.
UCLouvain will be the coordinator of the 3-year program but each year a different school will host the workshop. The BIP will count a 10-day workshop in situ and a virtual component.
Each partner will award a minimum of 3 ECTS credits for this program.
Objectives :
Train the students as citizens
Support sustainable development
Reduce global regional national gaps & recognize the large diversity of cultures in Europe
Contribute to the well-being and the persistence of commons
Develop links between teaching, research, innovation (exposure to research activities) – knowledge triangle
Theme covering pluridisciplinary dimensions
Sharing our different expertise, it is interesting to address the question
*at 3 scales and
*through 3 different approaches
- The landscape & Hydrology
- The concession & the local uses
- The building type & the materiality
How can rurality be part of a response to the crisis at stake?
How the scenarios can bring more than just a technical response?
Objectives and description of the programme
Among the diversity of transdisciplinary topics covered, we will work on
At the territory scale > The landscape & Hydrology
*the local dwelling types in relation to specific context (climate, religion, culture, sociology, economy, ecology…)
*a specific focus on the husbandry and management of the water
*the remains of the commons and leftover spaces,
*the recognition of the rural world and the concern to reestablish biodiversity and an ecology
At the community level > The concession & the local uses
*the influence of immaterial heritage on typomorphology, in remote areas, in relation to the sociology, the history, the landscape, the agriculture…..
*the interest in regenerating and rehabilitating the built heritage to housing and workplaces for a new equilibrium between economy & ecology,
*the guarantee of decent housing for all
*the guarantee of integration for everyone through service, work, a place in the community
At the scale of the building > The building type & the materiality
*the design of built types adapted to contemporary uses and lifestyles
*the integration of the notions of sustainability, and circularity, depending on the context under study.
Since there are more workshops than weeks in the second semester 2022-23, each student can choose what kind of education he or she wants to follow. According to your interests, each of you will be able to select 9 workshops, just keeping in mind that they don’t coincide in time. We will work organized in international groups, from our classrooms but having the guests online, and making use of the pedagogic platform MOODLE.
The course finishes with a Manifesto where the student put in personal context the chosen workshops.
More information in: https://uou.ua.es
Javier Sánchez Merina / P5
Joaquín Alvado Bañón / P7
- The images that illustrate this text correspond to the ws Machinery Landscapes, directed by Ozan Avci (MEF UNIVERSITY ISTANBUL)