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Institute for Experimental Architecture, Building Construction and Technology, Studio KS
Professor
Karolin Schmidbaur
Univ. Prof. Dipl. Ing. Arch. ZT
Senior Lecturer
Heike Bablick
DI
Univ. Assistant
Markus Malin
Arch. DI
Senior Scientist
Gilbert Sommer
Arch. DI
Guest Professor
Franz Sam
Arch. DI
External Lecturer
Lukas Allner
Mag. Arch.
Univ. Assistant
Christoph Opperer
Mag. Arch.
Univ. Assistant
Gonzalo Vaillo- Martinez
Arch. DI MSc, PHD candidate
Univ. Assistant
Anastasia Zaytseva
MAS ETH, PHD candidate in computational modeling
Studio Profile
At the Institute of experimental architecture, building construction and technology (studio Karolin Schmidbaur), our mandate is twofold. We are committed to instructing students to understand the behaviors inherent within different forms, materials, construction and technologies so that this knowledge will inform their intellectual approach to the practice of architecture. Yet, we also link those traditions of design, construction and craft with investigations of the changing conditions of contemporary practice and discussion - the possibilities of rapidly developing new materials and technologies, processes and tools, a need for cultural and environmental preservation and larger issues within the discipline. We attempt to understand architecture holistically in its historical and visionary processes - for what is changing are not the principles of architecture but rather the determinants and materials of design.
Space of Life
In studio experiments we link construction back to the act of representation, model building, drawing and the generative moment, exploring the potential contributions of architecture to a changing world. We give space to imagination, interpretation and intuition to relearn the poetics of a space of life: a space that is disconnected from known conventions and free for a renegotiation of its elemental qualities, of poetics that lie within these elemental and universal forces.
Consciously, we search within the in-between, in the reciprocity between the material and the immaterial, the analog and the digital, the poetic and the rational, the intuitive and the factual, the elemental and the innovative, the historic and the visionary, the ethical and aesthetical, craft and technological intelligence. In the synthesis and productive translation between these complementing opposites we create possibilities for reinterpretation and development.
With this reframing – programmatically, technologically, spatially and materially - we look for alternative ways of perception, new dimensions of order that may change our relationship to the world, nature as well as to ourselves.
Gradually, out of this process, architecture, on its own terms, may become, once more, a force through which life is transcribed back into art in order to enhance life.
Methodology
Translation
In design studios we position ourselves at the intersection where free
ideas are translated into concrete, materialized architectural
prototypes.
Essential to our design methodology is an experimental, open- ended,
interpretative design process in which we activate both intuition and
analytical thinking through the use of analog and digital tools. We
consciously steer a reciprocal process whose aim is the productive
translation between media, techniques and readings. We are interested in
diversity yet synthesis and wholeness that we invite through the
linking of complementing opposites, staging situations for a ‘third
image’, a multiplicity of readings to emerge in their in-between. The
hypothesis is that the more balance between complementing qualities we
can integrate the higher the possibility for creating novel work in the
sense of sustainable1, lasting structures that remain alive,
valid and open for discovery beyond singular readings or quick
familiarization – what in art theory is referred to as a prolonged
reception time.
It is the challenge and explicit aim of the studio not to leave design
propositions at abstract representations, but to translate them into
concrete, modeled and materialized architectural space without losing
their essential attributes and spirit.
1 “sustainable” used here as ‘having capabilities with potential for the future’, in German “zukunftsfähig”.
Background
Architecture and Consciousness
Under the headline ‘Architecture and Consciousness’ (in German
‘Bewusstsein : Architektur’) the studio locates itself in the framework
of a larger topic starting with the beginning of the year 2020 that
investigates the relationship between the two terms and continues an
interest begun in 2017.
Architecture is an expression of consciousness, and outer circumstances
as well as our inner processes determine our actions. Our consciousness
shapes the world around us just as this outer world influences our
consciousness. We dedicate ourselves to the question which possible
other forms of spatial perception and dimensions of constructive order
may emerge in the investigation of the interaction of these two terms -
if we shift the focus from looking outside to looking inside, to the
in-between within the reciprocity of processes, to the ‘both and’, to
indeterminacies, imprecisions and incongruencies. This includes research
on spatial prototypes, material and component research as well as
building technique.
In the past decades we have experienced an increasing fragmentation of
our world through specialization, digitalization, automation and a
general dominance of analytical thinking and values that prioritize
progress, growth, image and performance. The light and shadow aspects of
such mindsets are widely thematized and the issues of our contemporary
practice are witness to its possible dangers: rapid technological
progress, urbanization, migration and social imbalances, as well as the
need for environmental preservation.
With the digitization of our world and increasing fluidity between real
and virtual environments comes also an increasing loss of a sense of the
body, of the capacity for the sensitive, sensual perception and
experience of our surroundings, of liveliness and life itself.
In the anticipation of future developments new trends and thought models
are usually expected from the arts, culture and philosophy. Within the
discipline of architecture that is responsible for shaping the built
environment we see the possibility for an investigation that combines
real phenomena and visionary constructs and contributes to the process
of raising awareness for and through the direct quality of that built
environment.
The proposed, alternative point of view we would like to test under this
thesis, converting it into a methodology for the creation of concrete,
spatial prototypes, is not one of a counter reaction against the
essences and achievements of the past decades, but one of integration
and transformation into the future, and for which we see the cultivation
of a heightened consciousness as a prerequisite.
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Prof. Karolin Schmidbaur 