Anonymous Spaces

Since the beginning of history, humans have been able to build without possessing precise architectural or design knowledge. The construction of houses, for example, has been a way to respond to the weather and the immediate necessity for private space. In these anonymous forms of building we find great creative potential. In this interdisciplinary workshop that mixes art, spontaneous architecture and vernacular engineering, we will consider native buildings from all over the world from a practical point of view. The well-known measurement standards published in 1936 by Ernst Neufert, one of the first Bauhaus students, takes the body as a standard for building. Since then it has been used as a handbook for rationalized and normative space design and industrialized furniture production. This seminar proposes to re-think this generalizing idea by going back to the ancestral ways of building personal spaces from all over the world. We intend to reflect on the different strategies to solve habitation needs and to see the human form as a measurement for the house, but this time in a contemporary manner that involves emotional architecture, and sustainable design.

We will meet every week for three hours. Every session will have a theoretical and a practical part where a different type or context of domestic architecture will be revised. Specific examples will be brought principally by the facilitators, though participants will be asked to bring their own examples as well. Additionally, two guest lecturers, both artists/architects from Chile and India, will share their knowledge about their homeland’s vernacular architecture.

Concerning the practical part, some sessions will be focused on replicating, on a small scale, building techniques from the different contexts reviewed in the theoretical part. In others, we will work with materials that can be found in the city, found furniture and natural resources. In some cases, we will need to work in the university workshops. After every practice session, there will be time for reflection and conversation about possible conceptual and formal outcomes.