FS 2018 STUDIO
FROM INSIDE OUT
The studio deals with contemporary urban conditions to explore optimal ways to live in the city while having an optimal use of ground and everything existing.
Cities offer a huge capacity of soils, potentials of construction and transformation. In a process of densification through reuse, regeneration, refurbishment and superimposition, the cities are able to provide a great capacity of permanent evolution as well as an exceptional quality of life. In contrast to a masterplan strategy, this process implies an approach of case by case – from inside out. It is based on an accurate observation in situ and inventories, as near as possible to what already exists. Observation, inventory, analysis, are part of the process of project. This approach instigates a process of transformation, based on accumulation, coexistence, perhaps increase, with precision, delicacy, far away from a mathematical or a regular densification or the application of general rules.
All qualities of the context, like spaces, programs, inhabitants, scales of time, uses and sensitive details such as what we could define as a neighborhood, are taken into consideration. Sensitivity, precision, the will of reuse instead of destruction and the attention to the existing is seen as a resource and opportunity which sustain the project. This attitude is at the same time ambitious, efficient, inventive, sustainable, economical and involves people actively into the process. It requires the learning of new skills and methods as well as the implementation of creative and inventive ideas on the issues of adaptation, reuse and assemblage.
By focusing on specific districts of Zurich, the studio explores the capacity and potential of the city in terms of transformation and densification. We will work in groups.