MInDS 2023

23-MIn DS23MInDS 23-MIn DS23

milano international design studio politecnico di milano school of architecture urban planning construction engineering m.sc architecture - built environment - interiors Milan, 9 - 21 January 2023

MInDS 2023

Milan, 9 - 21 January 2023

Andrea Campioli Dean of the School of Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering

Pierluigi Salvadeo M.Sc Architecture - Built Environment - Interiors (ACI-BEI) Coordinator

Matteo Umberto Poli M.Sc Architecture - Built Environment - Interiors (ACI-BEI) Deputy for Visiting Professors

Jacopo Leveratto M.Sc Architecture - Built Environment - Interiors (ACI-BEI) Deputy for Visiting Professors

Gennaro Postiglione M.Sc Architecture - Built Environment - Interiors (ACI-BEI) MInDS Founder

MInDS Direction and Coordination

Jacopo Leveratto

Pierluigi Salvadeo

Matteo Umberto Poli

MInDS Technical Management

Cristina Agazzi Efisia Cipolloni

MInDS Tutors’ Coordination and Organization

Serena Comi

Visiting professors

Fernanda Canales

Francisco Javier Gallego Roca

Jeremy Till

Johannes Norlander

Kevin Lamyukseung

Konstantinos Pantazis + Marianna Rentzou

Luigi Ferrara

Marta Peris + Josè Toral Mascha Fehse Philippa Tumubweinee

Tutors

(with the participation of AUID PhD students)

Arianna Luisa Nicoletta Scaioli

Bogdan Peric

Filippo Oppimitti

Giada Zuan

Gino Baldi

Kevin Santus

Marianna Frangipane

Sara Anna Sapone

Thomas Cabai

Yona Catrina Schreyer 23

MInDS / Milano International Design

Studio is an intensive design workshop conceived as an international exchange and education platform, activated between the third and fourth semester of the Master's degree program ACI-BEI. The workshop, which develops over two weeks, is articulated in ten distinct classes held by ten different visiting professors, committed to questioning ten different topics.

The scope is represented by architectural design, which is also the object of study and experimentation. But it is a form of design that can no longer be recognized in a single scale, or in a predetermined typological catalogue. Rather, it concerns an architectural know-how that tries to be open to contaminations coming from other practices, to better respond to the demands of an heterogeneous and constantly changing reality.

Fernanda Canales

Housing Water: Redefining the Relation between Architecture, Water and People in Cities

Fernanda Canales, based in Mexico City, holds a PhD in Architecture from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. She was awarded the Emerging Voices Award from The Architectural League of New York, and was selected one of the “100+ Best Architecture Firms” by DOMUS. She is the author of the books Shared Structures, Private Space (Actar, 2020), Architecture in Mexico (Arquine, 2013), and Mi casa, tu ciudad (Puente Editores 2021). She has been Visiting Faculty member at Harvard GSD, Princeton, and Yale School of Architecture, and her work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the ifa-Gallery in Stuttgart, and the Venice Biennale.

overview of the design topic

The relationship between water and architecture has been essential for humanity since the origins of civilization. However, with the development of modern technologies in the 20th century, the role of water in architecture took two opposite paths separating its functional and recreational qualities.

Water became either decorative or hidden inside pipes and in service infrastructures usually unrelated to public space, to be used and immediately disposed. In this Studio we will explore how architecture can participate in water´s natural cycles and reinsert in daily

life the communal behavior water historically stimulated. Students will design a collective dwelling space related to water understood as an integral ecosystem.

project site / area of intervention

Among the architects who in past decades have designed buildings in relation to water (Scarpa, Le Corbusier, Kahn, Wright, Siza, Ando, Zumthor, and Diller Scofidio), Luis Barragan stands out for having introduced water in an interior dwelling as a permanent element. The last project he built before his death, Casa

Gilardi (1978) in Mexico City, combines an indoor swimming pool with the dining area, but as most of the examples, it focused exclusively in the decorative qualities of water. The area of intervention will be an abstract site measuring Casa Gilardi´s plot (9.21m front x 30m), as a model for any city, to house water in a collective dwelling space for 20 inhabitants.

design tasks

Prior to the workshop each student will choose one of Milan´s one hundred fountains as a reference of the relation between water and public space. Next, students will

work in pairs in the design of a collective housing project highlighting water as a living organism, contemplating its harvest, functionality, symbolic nature and varying qualities. Each team will define the specific program to house water and people. The design will be developed through free hand techniques, collages, and paper models at a 1:100 scale. Considering the progressive elevated temperatures and water shortages worldwide,

we will search new ways to improve our relation with water, far from the idea that “architects design space and then engineers add water”.

Suggested bibliography

Brook, Muller; Blue Architecture, Water, Design and Environmental Futures, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2022.

Sarah Thornton, Ian Davies; The collectors: Danish and Nordic Pavilions, 53rd Venice Biennale, 2021.

Hashim Sarkis; How will we live together?: Biennale architettura 2021, La Biennale di Venezia, 2021.

Bath views, Six bath views from six architects, Toto, Tokyo, 2009.

Riggen Martínez, Antonio; Luis Barragan 1902-1988, Mondadori, Electa, Milan, 2005.

Francisco Javier

Gallego Roca

Conservation of Monuments and Sites (Duration): Design of Minimun intervention

JAVIER GALLEGO ROCA(Granada. España)

Catedrático de Restauración Arquitectónica. Universidad de Granada Director de la Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de la Universidad de Granada (1993-2004). Doctor Arquitecto (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid 1986). Beca de la Academia Española de Historia, Arqueología y Bellas Artes de Rorna (1989 1990). Especialidad Restauración Arquitectónica Académico Correspondiente de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Madrid. (2002). Miembro de número de la Akademie Baukultur (2006). Director del Laboratorio Internacional de Restauracion Arquitectonica y Recuperacion Urbana (LIRAU), Universdad Internacional de Andalucia. Baeza. España. (2004-2014) Institutional Member of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee Theory and Philosophy of Conservation and restoration. (2007). Miembro Ordinario Accademia delle Arti del Disegno. Florencia (2016). Premio Speciale “Didattica Internazionale” Domus Conservazione e Restauro, Ferrara, 2019. Visiting Profesor diversas instituciones acaémicas en el panorama internacional . Autor de numerosas publicaciones sobre la cultura del patrimonio arquitectónico y urbano.

overview of the design topic

The Intensive Design workshop is 4 ECST-based academic progamme. You will acquire sufficient knowledge in all basic fields of conservation and restoration and specialised knowledge in conservation and restoration subjects.

You will gain the necessary common language needed for interdisciplinary communication in a restoration or heritage management project. You will obtain this knowledge through a variety of lectures, site visits and project Works in Castello Sforzesco (Milano) and Torres Bermejas (Alhambra).

Cultural heritage is a valuable resource for sustainable development of the environment

we live in. The Course of Monuments and Sites is an advanced international and interdisciplinary study programme in the conservation, restoration and design of historic monuments and sites. A ‘once-in-a-lifetime experience’ for built heritage preservation and innovation students.

project site / area of intervention

CS/09/01/2022/I WEEK

•Monuments and sites: Castello Sforzesco (Milano)

•Castello Sforzesco: architecture: space, construction, materials and light

•Project museographic setup in Castello Sforzesco and landscape (Milan) Valeria

Pracchi e Gianfranco Perrot

•Experiences of design: Studio BBPR (Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti, Rogers)

•Experiences of design: De Lucchi and Chipperfield

•Project of new use, museographic set-up and área exposition.

TB/16/01/2022/II WEEK

Description of the Project site/ área of intervention

•Monuments and sites: Torres Bermejas (Alhambra)

•Torres Bermejas (Alhambra): architecture: space, construction, materials and light

•Project museographic set-up in Torres Bermejas and landscape (Granada)

•Experiences of design: Patronato Alhambra (Prieto Moreno)

•Experiences of design:

•Experiences of design: Studio LRA (Gallego Roca)

•Project of new use, museographic set-up and área exposition.

•You will master the necessary common language, critical perspective, research methodologies and practices used in conservation of monuments and sites as reflected in international guidelines, charters and literature.

This will enable you to proceed towards a research career (PhD) or high level professional career in official organisations or as self-employed specialist.

design tasks

During the time (09/01/202221/01/2022) you are trained in a common theoretical and methodological framework. The theoretical knowledge is put into practice during various works and integrated projects dealing with the different aspects of conservation and use with new design and architecture. You are taught in small groups in close contact with professor. The course, concentrates on research training with seminars, including diferents thematics, supporting the writing of the couse thesis. It is completed with a professional world of heritage practice.

Teaching a method for the adptation of the historic built. Read of the coherent

or unsuitable transformations for the restoration project and urban regeneration aware and compatible with the recognized characters.

Suggested bibliography

John Ruskin. The Seven Lamps of Architecture, London, 1849.

BOITO, Camillo, Questione pratiche di Belle Arti, Milano, 1893.

Franco Minissi. Conservazione, vitalizzazione, musealizzazione, Multigrafica Editrice, Roma, 1988.

Beatrice A. Vivio, Franco Minissi. Musei e restauri: la trasparenza come valore, Roma, Gangemi Editore, 2010.

Fondation Juan March (Lafita and Gustavo Torner)

Jeremy Till

Architecture after Architecture

Jeremy Till is an architect, educator and writer. As an architect, he worked with Sarah Wigglesworth Architects on their pioneering building, 9 Stock Orchard Street, which is seen as an innovator in climateinformed design. As an educator, Till was Head of Central Saint Martins and Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Arts London from 2012-22. He is now Professor of Architecture at the University and a member of the research collective MOULD. As a writer, Till’s extensive work includes the books Flexible Housing, Architecture Depends and Spatial Agency, all three of which won the RIBA President’s Award for Research.

overview of the design topic

The studio starts with premise that climate breakdown challenges the values, modes and outputs of architecture in its current form. It therefore asks what might be architecture be as a spatial practice in the face of breakdown?

This takes the discussion of spatial practice beyond current discourses of sustainability and technology, and engages with the forces which have created the current crises of ecological and biodiversity collapse.

The workshop is based on our current research project Architecture after Architecture.

project site / area of intervention

On the understanding that climate breakdown affects everyone and impacts everywhere, the choice of site physically and geographically is less important than the social and political context. We will therefore be working with what people know: the immediate environment of Milan, looking at the everyday as our site rather than the extraordinary, because it is in everyday life that the clearest impact of climate can be uncovered.

design tasks

The studio will operate in three stages. The first part will take cuts through Milan and, working in groups, will identify how climate breakdown is manifested at all scales of the city. At the same time we will uncover those moments of

hope where action has or could be taken.

The second part will be imagining and designing scenarios for new forms of social (and thus spatial) relations which will be needed under conditions of climate breakdown. These will draw on the negative and positive examples from the first stage, and also on a database being constructed by MOULD.

The final stage will be for groups to design spatial (and thus social) interventions to encourage these scenarios to come about.

Johannes Norlander

OrderJohannes Norlander (1974, Gothenburg) is a Swedish architect with a di- ploma in Master of Architecture from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. In 2004 Johannes Norlander Arkitektur was founded with the primary drive to make consistent and characterful design in a redu- ced but poetic way, not rarely through pragmatic and rational means. The oce’s work is comprised of new buildings, renovations, interior de- sign and furniture. Recent work includes a new residential building in Antwerpen, a new head oce for the Swedish fashion brand Acne Studi- os and an extension of the School of Business Economics and Law in Gothenburg. Johannes Norlander has during past year also art directed the Austrian beauty brand Susanne Kaufmann and founded the new Swedish furniture company Tallum – with the aim to reinvigorate objects by some of the most prominent Scandinavian modernists such as Sigurd Lewerentz and Gunnar Asplund. In 2018, Johannes Norlander was elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts.

overview of the design topic

The aim of the workshop is to give the students an insight in the use of order in their work as shaping architects. The syllabus will include studies in different scales; spanning from the representation in graphic design, working with objects and the art of forming a building. The workshop will include studies in different topics such as; program, grids, sequences, proportions, structure and references, how to justify an architectural language and make it durable. The studio will focus on formative architecture, the treasure of originality in a commercial reality. It will be a practical course based on the everyday work at an office.

project site / area of intervention

The main work takes place on a given historical site in Milan. The students will in their project relate to the architecture and the urban plan of the site. The context will have a big impact in forming the project, regardless of whether it is embraced or rejected. We will discuss tension and relationship to already built structures and how to define the new program in relation to existing. We will also cover how to add architectural value on the site and the importance of making elaborated design decisions based on the context.

design tasks

The main thesis from day one will be to design a building based on a given program in a Milan historical space. The function of the building will be, to a certain degree, rudimental and it will stand over time. The durability of the structure and function will be a topic for the workshop in relation to the given context and the building itself. The individual projects by the students will be complemented with shorter daily studies in represented topics, workshops and site studies. In the end of the course the students will present their work within a predetermined template including architectural drawings, images, and a physical model.

Kevin Lamyukseung

Supply Chain Tectonics, or Architecture in a Manufacturer’s World

his Masters of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and has taught at the Pratt Institute GAUD and Columbia GSAPP. He is a frequent guest critic and has lectured at AIA Brooklyn, Facades+ New York, Williams College, and the University of Florida SOA.

overview of the design topic

In June 2021 a 10-storey building was built in 29 hours and 45 minutes by BROAD Group, a company that began as a manufacturer of air conditioners and boilers. As clients and builders demand faster construction, product industries have begun to capture and consolidate architecture’s various elements.

The assembly of steel, concrete, and bricks – once controlled by the architect –are today being absorbed by manufacturers delivering a finished exterior panel in less time and cost. This workshop will experiment in this language of prefab systems – speculating on the ways architects can direct the industrial side of

construction off-site while still considering their ultimate assembly in the field.

project site / area of intervention

“The place for the work and the human being is therefore the tool of the encounter between the work and the human being, between the human being and the work. It is the specific instrument of their perceptive encounter: In it, the presentation of the work to the human being and of the human being to the work will be optimal.” Rémy Zaugg, The Art Museum of My Dreams

Systems exist in spaces as much as in construction.

The program is a ground-up 400m2 kunsthalle located at the east section of Via Serio, 21 Milano.

The building will accommodate 3-galleries, 1-lobby, 1-loading entry, 1-office, storage.

design tasks

Students are to design the new art space through the design framework of construction systems. Each student will develop (2) systems of construction which together negotiate the performance of the art museum with the building’s structure and exterior.

Systems may address structure, MEP, envelope, daylight, artificial lighting, art walls, doors, or insulation and waterproofing envelopes.

Kevin Lamyuktseung is Senior Associate at SO–IL. Since joining the practice in 2013, his work has focused on cultural spaces. His experience ranges from institutional projects such as the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art to multidisciplinary art spaces like the Amant Foundation, an exhibitions and artist residency campus in Brooklyn, New York. Kevin received

We will look to precedents like Abalos & Herreros’sSala

Municipal y Plaza en Colmenarejo, Miguel Fisac’s Hydrographic Studies Center, Diener & Diener’s Foksal Gallery, SANAA’s Gifu Kitagata Apartment, Eduardo Souto De Moura’s Auditorium A, among others.

Deliverables include:

1:500 site plan (Jan 10)

1:100 floor plans and section (Jan 13)

1:25 physical model (Jan 20)

Suggested bibliography

Remy Zaugg, The Art Museum of My Dreams

Sanford Kwinter, Beauborg or The Planes of Immanence

Konstantinos Pantazis + Marianna Rentzou

Ponti Worlds

Point Supreme were founded in Rotterdam in 2008 by Greece-born Marianna Rentzou and Konstantinos Pantazis after living and working in Athens, London, Brussels, Tokyo and Rotterdam. They have won 1st prize in various international competitions. Point Supreme was included among the 20 most influential personalities in Greece by popular Greek newspaper LIFO. They regularly publish self-initiated projects for the city of Athens where they are based.

‘Athens Projects’, the first book dedicated to their work was published by Graham Foundation in Chicago. They teach internationally at architecture schools such as Columbia University in New York and EPFL in Lauzanne.

overview of the design topic / area of intervention

Gio Ponti lived in Milan. He was an architect, designer, producer, publisher, writer and philosopher. He designed buildings, interiors, furniture, machines, lamps, textiles, ceramics, glassware, tableware, exhibitions, theater productions. With equal passion and commitment whether spoons or skyscrapers, cathedrals or coffee machines. He was an advocate for the art of living and achieved an absolute synergy between architecture, painting and sculpture. He was designing the exterior together with the interior, treating facades the walls of the street.

design tasks

Phase 1 individual work

10 projects of Gio Ponti will be studied and presented by students through a critical personal reading. They will treat the varying elements of the project as equally important, rejecting common-held beliefs about hierarchy or scale. Façades, handrails, ceramic tiles, doors. Windows, floors, cabinets, ceilings, chairs, tables. Decorative elements, fabrics, patterns, colors… Everything treated as equally important, just as they were made by Ponti. The most critical-important elements chosen will be reconstructed 3- dimensionally, creating a catalogue, or family of objects.

Phase 2 work in groups of 2

Using the reconstructed elements, we will reconstruct a new, emblematic image for each Ponti project that will communicate the synthetic principles but also reveal the project’s world in a new simultaneity; merging exterior and interior, big and small, architecture, furniture, object, surface.

These images will become new, complete representations of Ponti’s worlds, compressing each project in a single view. They will simultaneously act as alternative postcards of hidden mythical interiors of Milan, showing not cathedrals, but the unique spatial worlds that Ponti and other legendary Milanese architects and designers invented, radicalizing the ways

Luigi Ferrara

Exploring Systemateks and Scalable Interactive Modulable Simulations in the Context of Climate Positive Neighbourhood Design

Luigi Ferrara is a graduate with distinction of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto. He worked for the internationally recognized firm Stirling/Wilford Associates, and locally with Peter Turner Architects, Paul Reuber Architect and Russocki/Zawadzki Architects. Luigi is an Honorary Member of the Association of Chartered Industrial Designers of Ontario and a Senator of the World Design Organization, the UN recognized NGO for Design. He served on the Board of World Design Organization 1996-2002 and was President from 2003–2005. He is currently a WDO Senator.

Luigi Ferrara has spent his entire career advocating and practicing interdisciplinary design, both in Canada and internationally, working on the relationship between architecture, urban design, sustainability and digital transformation, brand strategy and design thinking.

Luigi is currently the Dean of the Centre for Arts, Design and Information Technology(2002-2022) and Director of Institute without Boundaries, a renown interdisciplinary studio. In addition to these duties he has been named the inaugural Chair and CEO of the Brookfield Sustainability Institute which launched this year.

overview of the design topic

Durability is a key thematic of sustainability as is persistence. Many have posited that the most sustainable part of our built environment is the continuing use of existing buildings that do not draw further on our resource consumption and which continue to enable our society to carry on its functions without expanding our carbon footprint. The stable and continuous use of our built environment is a key characteristic of a resilient and sustainable economy.

While our existing stock of buildings offers us a partial

solution to our needs to live more sustainability, how can we imagine and create new buildings, or improve and recycle our existing ones at key points in their life cycle to have the same low impact and long term viability. Currently our approach to sustainable design of involves using list of features and scorecards to check whether the buildings we design are sustainable or not. We develop a “sustainable” building by aggregating a set of features that we believe make our buildings more sustainable and then combine them together in an integrated manner. We then calculate their impact based on a recognized score card. Whether we are working within a LEED framework

or a BREAM framework, we are basically checking if our designs are sustainable but not developing a deeper and more fundamental approach to what constitutes a sustainable design.

project site / area of intervention

The students will explore using a Systemateks approach to solving the problem of building a climate positive neighbourhood with micro-housing options to foster a more sustainable way of living for our 21st century needs. The intention of the workshop is to test and expand a new

methodology for sustainable design that features smart sustainability and which will provide a signal to the architectural profession of an alternative approach for building a more sustainable built environment in the future. To this end, the students will examine the task of creating such a neighbourhood in three varying settings: -inside an existing city neighbourhood where existing buildings can be adapted and infilled -on a brown field site within a city that can be redeveloped with new buildings -in a rural setting where urban services are not available.

design tasks

Systemateks is an approach that is based on the idea of systems renewal and

persistence using an approach of Scalable Modulable Interactive Systems that borrows from software and game design to develop persisting holonic elements that can be reconfigured and reinterpreted over time and which, if generated correctly can lead to a more sustainable and durable product with an extended life cycle that renews the use potential of the material inputs but also extends their durability of use over time. The key to this new philosophical approach is not to design products and environments which are too specific and hence purely functional in the modernist sense of form following function, but rather to define archetypical building blocks that we can interact with over time and which lend themselves to creating a sustaining valid product that has been

customized and made more relevant to its many users over its life cycle as a user’s needs change and as the environment and the context within which they sit changes.

This approach tied well with a series of deeply embedded aspects of sustainability practice that need to be learned and applied when trying to design sustainable buildings and cities such as:

-Reduction and Conservation, Preservation Practices -Re-use and Design for Disassembly -Recycling and Circular Economy Practices -Renewal and Evolutionary, Ecological and Regenerative Practices

-Re-interpretability and Persistence and Durability -Re-materialization and Dematerialization and Digital Twinning

Marta Peris + Josè Toral

Form Follows Material

José Toral (Madrid, 1978) is an architect by the (ETSAB-UPC 2003), he obtained the ARQUIA Scholarship in Rafael Moneo’s office in (2002). Associate professor (ETSAB-UPC) since 2016.

In 2005 he founded PERIS+TORAL ARQUITECTES in Barcelona together with Marta Peris, developing public social housing projects won in architectural competitions. The office is interested in looking for new ways of living and building.

The creative activity of PERIS+TORAL.ARQUITECTES has been consolidated winning distinctions such as: the Matilde Baffa Ugo Rivolta European Architecture Award 2021, they have been finalists of the Mies Van der Rohe Award 2022 among others.

overview

of the

design topic

A design process is proposed that starts with the material, analyzing their capabilities, to then understand the logic of their systems in order to achieve a structure that shapes the space. It will be important to understand how the concept of duration affects materials, assuming that materials that last longer can be used as supports and those that are less durable should be thought of as removable for easy replacement.

The program will be a cohousing exercise, where the number of users will be defined, and different ways of sharing at different scales will be explored, depending on the aggregations of the clusters.

project site / area of intervention

An abstract site is proposed with topography, orientation, prevailing winds, monthly relative humidity values, and temperature. So the project will not have to relate to the urban form but to the natural features and climatic conditions to propose a bioclimatic response that takes into account the thermodynamics of the materials.

Different topographies as well as different climatic conditions and orientations will be proposed, in such a way that the combination of them makes each project face a unique site.

design tasks

Tasks:

- Analysis of site conditions - Analysis of the different material capabilities

- Program analysis

- Proposal of spatial system

- Proposal of bioclimatic behavior of the system

- Proposal of aggregation systems

- Axonometric project summary

Suggested bibliography

- OLGYAY, Victor. Design with Climate Approach to Architectural Regionalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963.

- ENGEL, Heino. Tragsysteme Structure Systems. Berlin, Hatje Cantz Verlag GmbH+ 1967

- DEPLACES, Andrea. Constructing Architecture: Materials, Processes, Structures. A Handbook. Basilea, Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, 2004

- MARZO, Jose Maria, QUINTANS Carlos, Tectonica Magazine 01-41. Madrid. ATC Ediciones S.L, 1996-2013

Mascha Fehse

Capturing Moments to Read them as Times: Construction Sites as Dynamic Endurance

Mascha Fehse deals with questions that concern public space and the commons, focusing on micro-scale collisions, applied experimental approaches and a design discourse that triggers curiosity and leaves room for a variety of perspectives. Her works orbit around social constellations, infrastructural relations, structural connections, environmental dependencies, imaginative associations, and constructive tensions, having resulted in a range of collaboratively produced and socially committed spaces. She has taught and researched in academia and holds a MA of architecture from the University of the Arts, Berlin. She has collaborated with artistic and architectural practices like ConstructLab (DE), collective disaster (BE), OnOff Collective (DE), raumlabor berlin (DE) and ya+k Paris (FR), always binding a hands-on approach with an interest in researching and understanding spatial contexts and motivations of agents of the surrounding.

overview of the design topic

The physical conditions under which architectures are produced are at the least questionable. It is through the engagement with spaces in transformation (construction sites) that we encounter the potential of emancipation and active citizenship that lies in the construction of our worlds, our cities, our spaces and our imagination. This is why I see self-construction and close observation and collaborations with the constructing fields, such as crafts, the building sector, mining and resource trade, as crucial and enlightening interactions. Planners are responsible not only for the spatial living conditions of future inhabitants or users, but similarly for living and working contexts and conditions of workers involved in the production of space that

can easily last years and even decades. It is thus worth looking at the composition of personal biographies, materiality, skills and techniques, ethnic backgrounds and origins; the structures of responsibility and power and the financial flows of architecture in the making, to raise an awareness and understanding of the fluid and floating components of contemporary architecture production. The availability of materials and work force and their origins don’t only shape how our objects and architectures look. Their ending up on a construction site is also an act of transforming territories on many levels. e.g. the demographics of regions, the earthly surface of territories close to urban conglomerates, cultural ex- and imports and many more...

project site / area of intervention

We will focus on two areas in Milan through visits and encounters as a group: San Siro Neighborhood and Corvetto district. Sites of investigation will be contemporary construction sites that should allow us to look at a range of constructions that could be sites of demolition, private dwelling, transformations within the existing, major city developments…

At the same time this workshop will take us to places in Milano and across borders that have gone through sensible or exemplary process of transformation and give us the opportunity to encounter and question actors within political activism, community making, investigative research, collaborative crafts, and articulating critical feminist perspectives.

design tasks

We will collaboratively find paths of curiosity and personal interest, accompanied by exercises and conversations, which can guide the research into our selected case studies, reorienting design, in Arturo Escobar’s words “from the functionalist, rationalist, and industrial traditions from which it emerged (...) towards a type of rationality and set of practices attuned to the relational dimension of life” (Escobar 2018) We will work with the notion of one to one: understanding one site, conversing one to one, mapping and sourcing to eventually produce a scale 1:1 setting to share findings and learning and create a forum of discussion, nourished with media retelling the accumulated research in artistic and sensible ways, as the final moment of the workshop.

Suggested bibliography

Doucet, Isabelle (2019): ‘Anticipating Fabulous Futures’, in: Overgrowth, E-Flux Architecture

Doucet, Isabelle and Hélène Frichot (2018). Resist, Reclaim, Speculate: Situated perspectives on architecture and the city in Architectural Theory Review

Escobar, Arturo (2018): Designs for the Pluriverse. Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Gotti, Francesca, Jacopo Leveratto and Cristina F. Colombo (2022): The Design of Tactics. critical Practices Transforming Public Space

Philippa Tumubweinee

“We are here: 30 VOICES”

Philippa Nyakato Tumubweinee was awarded her PhD at the School of Higher Education Studies, University of the Free State in 2019, is a co-founder and director of IZUBA INafrica Architects; and is currently a senior lecturer and the outgoing Head of School at Architecture Planning & Geomatics, University of Cape Town. tumubweinee’s commitment to the profession and architectural education has developed in various ways: first, her as a course convenor at several architectural learning sites (als) in varied Design, Technology/ Construction and Representation studios across South Africa. Second, her engagement with different als’ across South Africa and abroad as an external examiner. Last, her interest and focus on alternate and mainstream materials and technology(ies) in building construction. The latter grounds both her design and technology studios that explore four questions: (1) how students acquire knowledge; (2) how students interpret knowledge; (3) how students represent knowledge to show their understanding (4) how students transform existing knowledge systems

overview of the design topic

Where are we when we say that ‘we are here’? can we define our existence in the place where we grew up, where we now live, and maybe another place, if we do not know where we are? If the ‘we’ in ‘we are here’ commits any number of individuals into what we understand as our society, ‘we’ find ourselves in a place where our humanity asks for belonging and inclusion in rituals that define our experience of our everyday existence. And it our experiences that tell us where we are.

In this studio, we aim to capture and make visible the specificities of place by describing for ourselves, the rituals that define who we are, where we are. By describing everyday rituals, we take on the role of a contemporary Griot, a storyteller who captures and make visible the gloriously

disorderly affair of humanity in a localised context. A humanity that can be understood in the way our everyday rituals find expression in a place. By describing our rituals, we start to gather information about our experience of a place. This act of gathering our experiences, in relation to ourselves and others, is the evidence that we exist, and we do so in a place that is expressed in different ways. When these expressions are made evident through familiar descriptions they can be utilised as devise from which to design and create.

project site / area of intervention

You might start by describing your everyday rituals and how these presents themselves as evidence of your being in the city. Through a process mapping, narrate how these descriptions of your rituals present themselves in your

city through a range of (architectural) expressions. You could start by looking at how your rituals capture and make visible the specificities of the everyday in your city. You could also focus on how your rituals engage with, and relate to the social, political, cultural, and spatial patterns and happenings in your city. For example, you are made evident through the ritual of you engaging with the grocer who greets you every day on your way to university. This could create a desirable or perhaps undesirable relationship in your understanding of the city. There are countless ways you can start, so begin by describing, then mapping your everyday rituals in the city.

Because we map through memory, rituals cannot be seen without looking at the context. Our memories are made profound by the way they are framed within the aesthetics of our specific context, our socialisation, our livelihoods,

and aspirations. This narration of rituals located in a specific place is what makes them profound.

Each student will present their descriptions of their everyday rituals in a quick presentation on day 001. This will form the basis for the work we will undertake in the studio.

In the context of your city, each student should have a series of maps that narrates their descriptions of everyday rituals to shows how they experience the city.

By gathering these descriptions of our experiences, different and differentiated pictures of the city that bespeak the humanity of locality may emerge. The more we know about where our rituals and experiences are set, the broader the expressions of ourselves become, in relation to others, in the place we live. We will start in the studio by talking through descriptions of everyday rituals in your city. To be able to gather information about how and where different and differentiated descriptions in and of your city interact, engage, and overlap. Do not attempt to design anything yet - explore, observe, listen, look, stay still for a while to absorb what is in front of you. Open yourself to possible new ways of seeing the city.

Following on a studio discussion, around descriptions of everyday rituals, we will explore how we can synthesise different and differentiated expressions of the city. We will conclude by making a large collective drawing of the city that captures the different and differentiated expressions in and of your city. We will use Axonometric and Plan as a tool to combine each of the individual descriptions into a subjective, collective, and exciting narrative. The design phase will start

on the day 002. Over the next days, in groups, the ‘designed’ narrative that describes the range of expressions in a city will be refined and explored in three dimensions through two and three-dimensional modelling.

Each group will work independently, researching, exploring, defining, and distilling the further, to propose an architectural intervention that speaks to the implications of the range of expressions in your city.

design tasks

The outcome of this workshop will take shape in two ways.

First, a drawing that captures a narrative that describes a collective understanding of the your city. Second, an architectural intervention that speaks to the implications of the range of expressions in your city. These two things cannot be seen in isolation, they need to play against each other, and be developed through a process of conversation.

Describing our rituals as evidence of who we is a profound way in which to understand where we are as process of discovery of ourselves active citizens of multi-worlds, who live and exist in the human specificities of a place.

we are here : 30 VOICES

MInDS 2023 public lectures 10

- 14 january

11:30-13:30 11 jan

11:30-13:30 12 jan 11:30-13:30 13 jan 11:30-13:30 14 jan 11:30-13:30

Rentzou & Kevin Lamyukseung

lecture room Aula Rogers

https://politecnicomilano.webex.com/meet/mariaanna.rentzou

Luigi Ferrara & Jeremy Till

lecture room Aula Rogers

https://politecnicomilano.webex.com/meet/luigibernardino.ferrara

Johannes Norlander & Marta Peris + Josè Toral

lecture room Aula Rogers

https://politecnicomilano.webex.com/meet/justafjohannes.norlander

Philippa Tumubweinee & Mascha Fehse

lecture room Aula Rogers

https://politecnicomilano.webex.com/meet/philippanyakato.tumubweinee

Francisco Javier Gallego Roca & Fernanda Canales

lecture room Aula Rogers

https://politecnicomilano.webex.com/meet/franciscojavier.gallego

Fernanda Canales Francisco Javier Gallego

Roca

Jeremy Till Johannes Norlander Kevin Lamyukseung Konstantinos Pantazis + Marianna Rentzou