Design & Memory

Professors

Luis Ángel Dominguez Moreno Ana Zubelzu Viarje                        Alejandra Mejon Vandrell

A-34, A-35

Introduction

Under the title “Project and Memory: Context, Culture, Construction”, the core subject of Architectural Design belonging to the 5th year (UPC-ETSAB, afternoon programme) is presented within the generic framework of the Thematic Workshop, whose preferred area of collaboration is the Department of Theory and History of Architecture, which complements the Thematic Workshop with theoretical sessions in the form of a Seminar. The Workshop takes place over one semester and is linked to the “optional intensification modules”.

The Thematic Workshop “Project and Memory” is a “sister” course to the subject of Projects I and II of the 2nd year (ETSAB, afternoon programme), taught by Professor Jaime Ferrer Forés, in which the notions of Types, Topos and Tectonics are addressed through the use, in the design of the project, of different constructive typologies, paying particular attention to built pre-existences that raise questions about the meaning of their presence, proposing their rehabilitation, extension or transformation within the new project being developed.

The main theoretical foundations underpinning the aforementioned subject of Projects I and II of the 2nd year are the same ones that inform the Thematic Workshop. However, in this case, as we are situated in the final year of the undergraduate degree, the Thematic Workshop must necessarily deepen the synthesis of the body of knowledge acquired by the student throughout their disciplinary education. This knowledge must be translated into an architectural project that responds in a reasoned manner to its physical and social context, to the coherence and suitability of its use, and to the technical and sustainable demands of its hypothetical construction, all without renouncing the ethical and aesthetic contents of the highest level of responsibility and poetics that the student is capable of achieving and consolidating.

The PLACE, which characterises the physical and social context, will undoubtedly be the principal issue to be investigated, reinterpreted and redefined through each proposed project. In parallel, and from the very beginning, work will be carried out on the technical and constructive solutions that will structure the responses to requirements such as: flexibility of uses, rationalisation of the programme, structural solidity, watertightness, insulation and energy efficiency, among others.

Added to this interdisciplinary course, as a relevant contribution, is the Seminar of the Department of Theory and History of Architecture, which complements and reinforces the work of analysis and conceptual development of the exercise (architectural project) that the student must undertake. Theory and History will bring to the reflective debate those exemplary works of architecture and their relevant authors, highlighting the reasons and interpretations that were involved in their conception.

Program