Tools of the Architect
Student work: Lucy Aafjes, Jenny Fang, Lida Ganotaki, Markus Köhler, Maximilian Loeschke, Haoning Zao
Semester: 2023 & 2024
Teachers: Angeliki Sioli, Willemijn Wilms Floet, Jorge Mejia Hernandez, Klaske Havik
The MSc2 elective seminar “Tools of the Architect” challenges the limits of an architect’s imaginative capacities. Based on the conviction that one of our discipline’s major tasks is to envision possibilities for a future to come, it develops and cultivates an imagination towards the analysis of the built environment. To achieve this end, the course challenges the tools of architecture, looking for the alternative and unconventional possibilities they can create. The visual, material and textual tools of the architect are examined and reinterpreted in order for imaginative and unforeseen representations of space to emerge.
The course departs from a discussion on the importance and role of imagination for architectural thinking. It proceeds with three consecutive workshops, exploring the use of visual, textual and material methods of analysis and imagination. All three of the investigations are related to the analysis of a specific site.
They are meant to help you discover imaginative possibilities in the many times prosaic reality of the built environment; to discover the unexpected and the magical into the real.
Over the period of ten weeks, hands-on assignments and short reading exercises prepare you for a short final project that will compile the findings of the different investigations under a common topic.
