INTERNATIONAL OBSERVATORY
OF STUDIES IN ARCHITECTONIC
AND ARTISTIC DESIGN

living between
INTERACTIONS MAN HOUSE COSMOS
new researches on contemporary space

SEMINARS OF STUDIES, RESEARCHES, WORKSHOPS, CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, WEBSITE, EXHIBITION, BOOK, FINAL DISCUSSION

PALERMO  MADRID  PORTO   january 2003 - march 2004

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Programme

 

Method
We would like to arrive to the final result as the sum of different works but at the same time parallels.We think that it is possibile to know before looking for, helping intuition and imagination.We want to promote production on thought.We want to have space coming from a diagram of initial conditions.

Clarifications
On the first day the workshop students will receive a text notebook, (in spanish or in the original language), the work schedule and the modalities of the final work.We will work in the classrooms of the ETSAM University of Madrid. The revisions of the workshop will be held at the same time of the revisions of the works by the students of the Design courses of the ETSAM University of Madrid.

Works
1. An abstract diagram will be given and it will have to be interpreted for some domestic spaces.
2. Two quick collages representing the corrispondent interiors will be realised.
3. A model of the diagram will be built and will be interpreted as a model of a real architectonic object..
4. A text with the experience results will be composed.
5. Another diagram of the final space will be realised.

Moreover the texts, images, and documents produced during the workshop will be collected.

The final result will be the compilation and composition of the whole material, being elaborated or not, in a notebook in the DIN A-5 format of at least 40 pages. It will be binded with a metal spirale. The cover will be the same for the whole group.

General calendar
april 29 afternoon: The theoretical documentation, texts, work programme and initial diagram.Partecipation to the work group at the ETSAM University of Madrid.
april 30 morning: individual work. The drawing given will be interpretated and modified with the conditions decided by the student.
april 30 afternoon: collective revisions with the students of the ETSAM course.
may 1-2: individual elaboration of collages and of the model.
may 3-4:free days, visits of Madrid.
may 5 afternoon: revision and talks on the works of the precedent days.
may 6 morning: rielaboration of the materials. Elaboration of the text. Construction of the final diagram.
may 6 afternoon: revision and talks on the final works.
may 7 morning: Construction of the final notebook.

Federico Soriano

Research

 

LIVING, ADAPTING, THINKING.
We are not interested in the origins, but in where the evolution of the word arrives. We forget the roots of the word living. We forget what it means. We forget in order to start to understand. Man lives in all the world's places because he doesn't have a specific own habitat. The reason is not even the fact of having to build it, of being an artificial habitat. We fall into the temptation of thinking that the towns are our artificial and personal world. All species, in a more or less important degree, modifies naturality for their convenience. Man's living is not construction but adaptation. Instead of building, arranging. Instead of doing, rehabilitating. Space doesn't set up our actions but supports them.

THE HOUSE OF OUR TIME
We don't find. They don't change. They don't invent themselves. And without doubt we feel this desire. We are living with flexibility factors, ambiguity factors, and the house doesn't get the message. Types, models, programmes repeat themselves endlessly, tiredly. Our habits have changed quicker and more radically than on a spatial translation. They keep on having the night/day division of the modern house, they keep on having structures without functions that have been conceived for the time of our grandparents,…The house of our time will be multitude, all will be exceptions. It doesn't come from homogeneity. Globalisation is not that everything will be the same but that everything is accessible. The house of our time wants to be our individuality. It will show that society is mixed because it will allow maintaining the differences. Other people, other obsessions. There will be specificities for each demand. For people who need to rent a house, for people who go in for sport, for people who want to change without moving, for isolated couples, for lofts, for a sect, with big or small kitchens, for people renting for a month, for desperate people, for illegal immigrants, for people with no interest, conventional, irreverent, for people who accumulate and accumulate rubbish…The house of our time is a landscape of events.

Research proposed
Why must a house look like a house? Why does it always have the form of a house?We'll start from abstract diagrams on which it will be necessary to impose a reading code whose key will be, precisely, the reflection on the living, the residence, the house. We won't suppose that some space is more important than another one. The same for the programmes. We won't even suppose that the living programme is only residential. We won't suppose that the house is permanent or to rent. We won't suppose. We want to give an abstract starting point, without specific uses and arriving to the result, to establish the reflection.

 Federico Soriano