Fall Studio 2010: MSc 3/4 Graduation Studio

DSD Urban Asymmetries Graduation Studio Option I

‘WHAT IS PROPERTY: Housing and Contemporary Relations of Ownership'

Studio Rationale:
‘Not owning' is not a mere category in contemporary urban reality. As Marx wrote, it is ‘a most dismal
reality; today the man who has nothing is nothing. ... Not having is ... a very positive having, a having of
hunger, of cold, of disease, of crime, of debasement, of hebetudes, of all inhumanity and abnormality.'
[Marx, K. & Engels, F. ‘The Holy Family' (1845)]
Ownership is an unquestionable contemporary prescription; it is what abstractly dictates the economy
and production of housing, as well as all other material components of the city. Ownership is what
immediately prescribes the forms of architectonic production, territorial repartition, wealth distribution
and social relations. However, its political and economic abstractions have rendered it cryptic and
inaccessible to the disciplinary lenses of most spatial disciplines, with architecture second by urbanism,
both being the most clueless disciplines about its designing force.
Far beyond the superficial conceptions of owned and rental property, or the opposition between
wealthy-owner and poor-disowned, the design and research studio proposes the understanding of both
as creations of a more complex and contradictory world of private property. On the hypothesis that
diverse modes of ownership produce different spatial configurations, as well as forms of economic
exchange and social relations, the studio will look at the conditions of ownership as design conditions,
designing ownership modalities that prompt specific spatial configurations. Rejecting the typical
preconceptions of contemporary ownership, the studio will conduct a wide research on the diverse
relations of ownership and its architectonic-urban product in fifteen different political economies of the
world.

The Research Questions:
- What are the specific architectonic and urban representations of these ownership models?
- Which type of spatial transformations do these models imply?
- What are the socio-spatial contradictions generated by these models?
- What forms of social relations do these models generate?
- Which types of labor and productive relations are prescribed in these models?
- What is the everyday life of such models?
- What are the economic forms that produce the models?
Under these premises, the studio will work to design possible models of ownership that could challenge
preexisting ones in the conception of a more just form of socio-spatial cohabitation, one that differs
from the old dichotomy of private-rental property.

The Case Studies:
The study group will carry out in depth research of these issues by investigating the contemporary
situations of four cities, which stand out for their progressive ownership policies: Zürich, Gothenburg,
Oslo and Copenhagen. This will account for the theoretical and analytical part of the graduation
studio. In the practical part of the studio the group will focus on the case of Berlin, for which it will
propose a set of urban-architectural projects based on alternative ownership patterns.

The Studio Team:
- Studio Participants: 6 students from both Architecture and Urbanism.
- Studio Instructor: Miguel Robles-Durán
- Program Leader: Prof. Arie Graafland
- Program and studio coordination: Heidi Sohn

The Courses:
- DSD -UA DESIGN STUDIO MSc3 & MSc4 (45 ECTS)
- MEDIA WORKSHOP II (3 ECTS)
- THE AGENCY OF MAPPING (3 ECTS)
- NEW URBAN QUESTIONS, OR MINOR INFRACTIONS? (3 ECTS)
- ARCHITECTURE THINKING SEMINAR (6 ECTS)

Info: MSc Information Booklet Fall 2010

Fall Studio 2010: MSc 3/4 Graduation Studio

DSD Urban Asymmetries Graduation Studio Option II

‘EAST ENDS: the case of East London's Tower Hamlets'

Studio Summary
The point of departure of our studio is that the relation of architecture to society can be determined via the relation of the building to the city. In this equation, the city is the social. The studio will investigate the architectural possibilities of the social betterment of a city area in London, which has been
experiencing extreme transformation in the last couple of decades. It will focus its attention on the difficulties of bettering a neighbourhood without causing gentrification, on the problem of adding to an existing environment, and on the social function of architectural form.
The studio will approach London's East End through a historical analysis of the political, social and economic forces that have shaped its urban morphology and the typology from its origins to the present. It will address the issues of social housing today focusing on the contemporary situation of urban decay, its relation to gentrification, and the implications this has and will have on the city. The assignment of this studio is to develop architectural and urban proposals and strategies that aim at the betterment, or urban improvement of a specific borough in London's East End, Tower Hamlets, without causing gentrification in the process.

The Research Questions:
- What urban strategies are available which depart from contemporary neoliberal policies?
- How to improve a neighbourhood without causing gentrification?
- How to add new architecture to an existing urban environment?
- How to apply architectural form socially ?

The Case Study:
The site comprises the Tower Hamlets borough in London's East End. The East End is usually
understood as the area bound by the Thames to the south, the City to the west, the River Lea to the
East and Hackney to the north. It includes one of the most deprived boroughs in Europe, Tower
Hamlets. Much of the history of the area resembles that of New York's Lower East Side: a melting pot
for impoverished migrants, including French Huguenots in the seventeenth century, Irish weavers, East European Jews in the late nineteenth century, and, more recently, Bangladeshis. The area has a rich
social history, ranging from the formation of trade unions to the battles against British fascism, from
being a locus of anarchist and communist agitation to the fight for women's rights. Located between
two epicentres of international finance - the City of London and the Docklands - the area finds itself
caught up in red-lining and speculation, starved for credit as a means of emptying it from the poor, the
criminal, the migrants and other unwanted elements. It is in this context that the studio will study the East End - its social, economic, and political history, as well as its urban morphology and architectural typologies. The study will form the basis for an urban strategy aimed at bettering the neighbourhood, including architectural interventions and policy proposals, utilizing the tools available to urbanists and architects as a means of addressing social issues which are, ecessarily, also urban.

The Studio Team:
- Studio Participants: 10 students from both Architecture and Urbanism.
- Studio Instructor: Tahl Kaminer & Gerhard Bruyns
- Program Leader: Prof. Arie Graafland
- Program and studio coordination: Heidi Sohn

The Courses:
- DSD-UA DESIGN STUDIOS MSc3 & MSc4 (45 ECTS)
- MEDIA WORKSHOP II (3 ECTS)
- THE AGENCY OF MAPPING (3 ECTS)
- NEW URBAN QUESTIONS, OR MINOR INFRACTIONS? (3 ECTS)
- ARCHITECTURE THINKING SEMINAR (6 ECTS)

 

 

Info: MSc Fall Information Booklet

DSD URBAN ASYMMETRIES GRADUATION STUDIO MSC3/4 ‘NEW YORK EPICENTER' (SPRING / FALL 2009).

Spring 2009 (course code AR3DSD020)
Program director:  Arie Graafland
Studio coordinator: Heidi Sohn
Studio instructors: Tahl Kaminer, Heidi Sohn and Miguel Robles-Durán
Experts and critics: Prof. David Harvey (CUNY), Neil Smith (NYC), Akke Visser, Stefan Metal (UvA, NL).

Studio description
The point of departure of the URBAN ASYMMETRIES-NEW YORK EPICENTER Studio is that the relation of architecture to society can be determined via the relation of the building to the city. In this equation, the city is the social. New York's Lower East Side, a dense immigrants' neighbourhood with a rich cultural and social history, will be the departure point for the studio's work.

The URBAN ASYMMETRIES - NEW YORK EPICENTER Studio will study the architectural possibilities of the social betterment of a neighbourhood which has been experiencing extreme transformation in the last couple of decades. It will focus its attention on the difficulties of bettering a neighbourhood without causing gentrification, on the problem of adding to an existing environment, and on the social function of architectural form.

The main Research Questions:

• How to improve a neighbourhood without causing gentrification?
• How to add new architecture to an existing urban environment?
• How to apply architectural form socially?

The Assignment
The studio will analyze the neighborhood in relation to the city, and intervene in it by focusing on housing issues in this area.

The Site
During Spring 2009 the UA-NYE Studio will visit NYC for a duration of 10 days; stationed in the DSD loft in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the studio will explore the city and the neighborhood. During this visit, the studio participants will hold a workshop with Prof. David Harvey, and consult a variety of experts in the topic.

The Studio Team

• Studio Participants: maximum of 12 select students (MSc3/4)
• Program Leader: Prof. Arie Graafland
• Studio Instructors: Tahl Kaminer, Heidi Sohn and Miguel Robles-Durán
  - Experts and critics include: Prof. David Harvey (CUNY), Neil Smith (NYC), Akke Visser, Stefan Metal (UvA, NL).

The Courses

• UA-LES Design Studio (15 ECTS)[AR3DSD020 - MSc3] [AR4DSD020 -  MSc4] (30 ECTS).
• Media-Workshop [AR3DSD040] (3 ECTS).
• The Agency of Mapping [AR3DSD040] (3 ECTS).
• New Urban Questions - or Minor Infractions? [AR3DSD040]  (3 ECTS).
• Architecture Thinking - Thesis Seminar [AR3DSD030]  (3 ECTS).

Students
P. Fischer
C.M.Karelse
M. DaaneBolier
J. Hilkhuijsen
S. van Berkel
E.J.A.Franken
S Hoogerheide
E.J.A.Franken
T.J.Meurs
R.Thijs
H.Park
 

Urban Asymmetries Masters 3/4 Thesis Studios

Fall 2008 (course codes AR3DSD020 & AR4DSD020)
Program director: Arie Graafland
Studio coordinator: Heidi Sohn
Studio teachers: Miguel Robles-Duran, Gerhard Bruyns, Heidi Sohn

General program description
Urban Asymmetries is an intensive theoretically and empirically driven research and design studio that aims at the understanding of the processes and conditions that produce uneven –or asymmetrical- development in contemporary urban environments. In particular, we will analyze the material consequences of the advancement of neo-liberal policies and practices in developing regions, investigating the ‘thin-line’ between the formal and the informal. We will focus on two simultaneous, but diverting, processes from a critical angle: the mutations undergone by the ‘formal’ (as manifested in the homogenization and uniformity of large-scale, low-density housing developments that conform the majority of contemporary urban sprawl), and on the other hand, we will assess the challenge brought about by the encroachment and consolidation of the ‘informal city’ (as embodied in the accelerated pace of ‘slumming’ in the peripheries and edges of cities in the developing world).
We will deal with these phenomena from a perspective that includes more than the architectural domain alone (in scope, program, and scale), extending our investigations to encompass other disciplines and fields as well. In other words, we will theorize architectural action, investigating and exploring a wide range of possibilities that may function as alternatives –or counter-proposals- to the present urbanization trends occurring in cities in the developing world from a multitude of disciplines and angles.
Our main aim will be the devising of alternative dwelling modalities that may act in the definition of new urbanities within the growing geographies left by the advance of neo-liberal globalization. Whether these include ‘housing’, ‘public buildings’, or other programs, will depend largely on the focus of each student.
During Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 the Urban Asymmetries Design Studio plans to run three MSc3 design units that will explore the situation of specific city-areas in Mexico City, Cape Town, or Santiago de Chile/Buenos Aires respectively (this is subject to change, and depends on group size). This program will run until Fall 2009, when two new case studies will be announced for MSc3.

1. Studio variant a: Mexico
2. Studio variant b: Santiago Chile

Required courses
Students enrolled in Urban Asymmetries Studio (both for Architecture and Urban degree tracks) are required to take the following  ‘Architecture Thinking’ courses:

• The Agency of Mapping (seminar)
• New Urban Questions or ‘Minor Infractions’? (lectures)
• Architecture Thinking: Architecture & Urban Thesis (lectures & seminars)

Students
D. Robers
T. Kolnaar
T. Duinhoven
S. van den Heuvel
C. Karelse
A. Maessen
A. van Zweeden
K. Vervuurt
S. Voogt
L. Verheul
P. Luhl
E. Tijhuis
A. Distelbrink
T. ter Weel
S. Jaffri
T. Guerrero Rios
C. Garcia Sancho
A. Martinez-Santos Argumanez
H. Moon
Y. Bai
I. Zveibil
S. Kohut
M. Marozas
V. Scheepers
L. Asabashvili

Urban Asymmetries Masters 2 Studio: Singapore

Spring 2009 (course code AR0044)
Program director: Arie Graafland
Studio coordinator: Heidi Sohn
Studio instructors: Gerhard Bruyns & Gregory Bracken

1 Course description
Singapore is not like other cities, it did not gradually develop around a trading settlement, or a river crossing, it was simply invented one morning early in the nineteenth century by a man looking at a map. Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles decided that the British Empire needed a manufactory (trading post) half way between India and China, he signed a treaty with the Malay Sultan and Singapore became a British colony on 6th February 1819. Independent since 1965 Singapore has reinvented itself as an important node in the global city network, one of the handful of cities whose decisions have ramifications that reach far beyond its borders.

The Singapore Studio intends to explore the city of Singapore, theoretically and empirically, with the aim of designing urban interventions for the densely developed fabric of the city-state. These interventions will be the ultimate aim of the Studio, but the overall focus of the course will be on the process and not on the product. The first part of the course will consist of a series of lectures and seminars aimed at gaining an understanding of the city of Singapore today, why it is the way it is, and the factors that have gone into its make-up. This will be like a Foucauldian geneaological analysis, and the students will be required to submit a paper at the end of Part 1 dealing the area of theory that they are most interested in.

Part 2 of the course will be a trip to Singapore for one week. This visit to the city, and its outlying areas, will be to enable the students to see for themselves what Singapore is actually like today, and will be an opportunity to gather empirical data for preparing for the third and final part of the course. The students will be required to present the material they have gathered once they are back in Delft.

The final part of the Singapore Studio will be a synthesis of Parts 1 and 2, where the theoretical knowledge, along with the empirical data gathered on the field-trip, will be combined in order to enable students to formulate their own design proposals for chosen area of the city (these can be up to the students themselves). These designs can be undertaken under different headings such as Business, Housing, Waterfronts, Hybrid (which could include Bioclimatics). Design decisions will be taken by the students in consultation with Studio staff.

Course outline
Part 1: Theory (6 weeks)
Required readings will be chosen from the following:

1. Saskia Sassen, Manuel Castells, Jane Jacobs and David Harvey for an understanding of what is meant by the phrases like ‘global city', ‘network society', postmodernism, etc.
2. Historical overview of Singapore's history and architecture in order to understand how colonial networks have enabled some cities in Asia to plug in so expertly to the global city network.
3. Confucius, Laoxi and Zhuangzi to help understand the neo-Confucian ethos of a city like Singapore.
4. Michel Foucault for power relations and how they are inscribed in the built environment, especially in a colonial context .
5. Michelle Huang on the everyday in Asian cities, and Professor Arie Graafland's on 'The Socius'.

These readings should hopefully begin to free the student from focussing on a city via the narrow conduit of its buildings and/or the spaces between them; the aim of the studio is to help students to see that cities are about people, and their networks of interaction, not merely the cold geometries of stone.

Part 2: Empirical (1-2 weeks)

• Site visits and other side trips in Singapore (April 2009)
• Urban Redevelopment Authority - URA. (city development - gallery with city models)
• Housing Development Board [HDB]
• City areas and specific regions.
• Pre-colonial regions.
• Museums
• and, National institutions.

Part 3: Synthesis / Design  (8 weeks)
Pick a topic, pick a place, produce a design.
This is to be done as if the students were designing for a client (e.g. the URA, HDB, private, etc.)
Students will need to show, alongside their finished design, a portfolio and (if possible) logbook of the design process. They will also be required to present esquisse stage designs throughout the process, and, ideally, should build some models (either working or finished).

Assignment
Readdressal of a specific section of the city through an intervention focussing on different housing conditions and contexts. Design work would have to be equated to the higher scales of the urban, as well as the local scales of the neighbourhoods. The Assignment will accommodate both urban and architecture track students. Urban students will be required to propose an urban intervention and planning strategy. Architecture students will be required to insert and architectural housing units, supplemented with models and relevant drawings.

The Site
A central location within Singapore will act as site and location for intervention. Students receive an extensive island tour which would include key locations as well as visits to those key parties involved in the development of the city.

Recommended electives with this course

• FILM / VIDEO / CITY: Media Workshop [AR0043] (3 ECTS)
• FIGURES OF THOUGHT: Theory Seminar [AR0042] (9 ECTS)
• SEEING AND WRITING: Lecture Series [AR0041] (3 ECTS)

Students
N. Benoit
S. Dubbers
K. Cheung
P. de Ruijter
A. Lambrinos
M. Zlatkov
H. Lee
B. van Leeuwen
L. Hong
C. Hwang
Y. Hong Wong
W. Wing Yun
S. Valerio
T. Jonauskis
O. Koken

 

Urban Asymmetries MSc2 Design Studio: Mexico City

Spring 2008 (course code AR0043)
Program director:  Arie Graafland
Studio coordinator: Heidi Sohn
Studio instructors: Miguel Robles-Duran & Heidi Sohn

Design & Research Description
The goal of the URBAN ASYMMETRIES MEXICO CITY pilot program is to devise and propose the first sketches for alternative habitats –different housing modalities- within two adjacent zones in a landscape of urban asymmetries: the uniform territory of the multiple, or serial, housing developments, and the informal city. It will analyze the conditions that intensify these asymmetries through a multimedia workshop in which students will be introduced to different techniques of mapping. This multimediatic mapping workshop will be intimately related to the Theory Project, in which students will become familiarized in seminars and discussion groups with different urban, architectural and aesthetic theories that take ‘mapping’ as their central element. Students will also follow a lecture series that will present a wide range of topics and subject matters, all relevant to the general outline of the Master Program FUTURE CITIES. The academic aim is to provide the students with a solid basis to sustain their design proposals and theory projects.

Location
The selected site for our project interventions is located in the north-eastern tip of the metropolitan area of Mexico City. This conurbation is situated in the municipality of Ecatepec, in the State of Mexico. It includes two adjacent areas: a relatively recent formal housing development (in progress) known as Las Americas, and an informal neighborhood that has evolved and consolidated over the past three or fours decades. In addition, the area includes interesting infrastructural elements: a former water-treatment plant known as El Caracol to the east, a series of toll highways and secondary traffic infrastructure, two “no-man’s-lands” and a network of open sewage canals. The approximate surface-area of our site adds to 12 km2. (See Google Maps: El Caracol, Ecatepec, Ciudad de Mexico)

Design Parameters
Our studio consists of an intense analytical phase during the first quarter of the semester in which students will explore the assigned areas (or ‘themes’) through their representations (orthophotos, maps, satellite images, photographs, statistical information, etc). This analysis will be aided by a parallel workshop with Marc Boumeester in which students will become familiarized with diverse digital and audio-visual media and their application. The aim here is not to duplicate the information already available, but instead to extract additional information from these representations. The goal in this first phase is to produce a notational map of the areas in question that highlights the essential features of the site beyond the merely physical. During the design studio, students will apply their findings into thorough graphic analysis of the different conditions of their assigned areas, extracting a set of patterns and relationships which they consider to be key elements in the overall ‘logic’ of the analyzed site. Further, students will carry out short analytical analyses of precedent examples of housing schemes from diverse sources.  During this first phase, students will work in teams, collecting and formatting their findings into a data-file that will function as the backbone for the second phase: the actual architectural (and urban) design phase.
The second half of the semester, the assigned areas will be randomly ‘swapped’, meaning that the teams will be confronted to a terrain vague in which they will be asked to propose a scheme for habitation. Whether this scheme consists of a ‘proto-type’ dwelling, a spatial strategy, a methodology to encourage the insertion of unexpected programmatic events, mixed functions, or different densities, is up to the design teams. The parameters will be set at the beginning of this second phase, but to look ahead, the scale of these interventions will never be larger than the analyzed area itself. This roughly translates into the proposal of projects that oscillate between the architectural and urban scales, between 1:1 and 1:5000, or a combination of both. The level of complexity and detail of each proposal will, however, be proportional to the analysis carried out in the first half of the semester.
Throughout the entire duration of the semester, the design group will be working simultaneously on two different ‘site-maps’: one 3-D model of the study area constructed in wood and steel, and a collaborative multimedia map in digital format, that should reflect the evolution and transformation of the studio as a whole over the entire semester. This map, together with a collaborative website of our studio, will be the final assignments of the multimedia workshop.
The final assignment of the design studio will be the presentation of different housing or habitat schemes represented in models, drawings and other type of graphic and architectural representations.
The last part of the semester, students will focus on the production of a booklet that reunites the findings and results of the entire semester.

Design Brief
a) The final architectural assignment consists of the design of a “serial habitat” within one of the selected zones or areas in Ecatepec, Mexico City. The production of the design exercises will be limited to the following formats:

• physical study models (volumetric analysis, i.e.) in different materials and scales (to be specified on each model variation)
• drawings (sketches, plans, traces, sections, etc) in different techniques and scales (to be specified on each modality)
• sequential documentation of the design phases & process (photographic, audio-visual, etc)
  Note: final model requirements will be at scale 1:20

b) The collective design assignment consists of the production of a detailed site-model 1:1000 in three parts, and its variation. The specifications and detailed explanation of this model will be provided during the introduction of the program.

c) The analytical/research assignment (in joint collaboration with the Theory Project and the Multimedia Workshop) will be the production of the following:

• collective ‘evolutionary’ multimedia map in digital format (to be specified during the workshop)
• the studio’s webpage (to be specified during the workshop, aim is to produce an interactive -communication devise to be used in collaboration with other design studios abroad)
• a formatted and edited studio booklet with the collection of design proposals, analysis and theoretical elaborations.
  
  

Outstanding final projects will be considered for inclusion in the DSD publication Mapping Urban Complexity published by 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, to appear at the end of 2008.
Outstanding students will be considered potential candidates for the DSD Master Program Future Cities Graduation Project, and will present their final MSc2 design projects in Mexico City in Fall 2008.

Students
T. Kolnaar
P. Luhl 
W. van de Ven
T. ter Weel 
T. Guerrero
C. García-Sancho 
T. Jaskari 
I. Zveibil 
S. Bizzarri
L. Asabashvili