The aim of this course is to offer students their first encounter with an architectural project. More specifically, while the teaching of architectural projects during the previous century cultivated the birth of shapes from nothing, students will come face to face with the reasoned approach of ‘how to do’ rather than ‘what to do’.
Modern space, in its optimist and militant definition arising from the modern movement, is fuelled by the contradictions of the context in which it appears, for example, its technical, social and artistic context.
In 1927, Mies van der Rohe, expressed it in the following way:
’Life and form, interiority and exteriority, the unshaped and the overshaped, nothingness and illusion, the past and thought, the how and the what, the classic and the gothic, constructivism and functionalism. (…) We are not living in Antiquity nor in the Middle Ages, and life is neither static nor dynamic but a combination of the two. (…) Only life, in all its plenitude, brings these contradictions together in one true form.’
Cubists considered the unilaterality of figurative representation to be insufficient for the representation to have meaning. Movement and, by extension, time, were therefore introduced into their work, to appeal to an additional sense and enrich perception. In the same way, modern space has been enriched and fuelled by a search for the resolution of Mies van der Rohe’s opposites, particularly by making use of the body, its movement and its feelings, and thereby appealing to the immediate powers of emotion.
Within the framework of this course/workshop, a simple programme will be offered to students. This will take the form of a sequenced journey through space and time. During the first sessions of the course, students will have to formulate spatial intent for each of the elements identified and their intersection. Students will be offered elementary tools for spatial qualification, comprising the qualitative criteria of light, view, spatial topology, material, etc, in addition to the programme’s quantitative information.
The goal is to aid and guide students in identifying ‘what they want to do’, independently of any spatial or formal representation.

Using this work hypothesis as a starting point, students will develop their project step by step with the assistance of the teacher to put in place the relevant architectonic elements with regard to formulating their desire. A site within the campus will be offered to ‘contextualise’ the project designed to a large extent ‘from inside’.

The work will be carried out in groups of two or three students, using the following means of representation: plan, cross-section, perspective, model and photomontage.

To carry out the architectural project successfully, students may be asked for personal work (models, graphic representations).

Last Modification : Friday 16 March 2007