Duration
192h Pr
Number of credits
| Master in architecture (120 ECTS) | 15 crédits |
Lecturer
Marc Goossens, N...
Coordinator
Language(s) of instruction
French language
Organisation and examination
Teaching in the second semester
Schedule
Units courses prerequisite and corequisite
Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program
Learning unit contents
The search for new environmental balances associating architecture and human and natural landscape considered as an inclusive whole, is the condition of any form of sustainable environment. In this way, the design approach of the architectural project is part of a compositional continuity linking the different scales of architecture, the city and the landscape.
In direct contact with complex contexts, of architecture and nature, the student deepens the in situ capture, to recognize the writings of natural agents (air, water, soil and plants) and humans, likely to enter into close dialogue. The various incision lines in the ground constitute useful writing systems for reweaving collaborative and non-conflicting relationships with our lived environments (Anthropocene geomorphologies).
Understanding the landscape conditions and reasons is a prerequisite for a sustainable project, to be re-developed as a process of human-nature coaction.
By moving from the defensive attitude (doing against) to the preventive (doing with Nature) the project prepares: for the game of scales and actors, for investigation by drawing, for tactile perception, for mental prefiguration , to compose the architecture.
The sites, with landscape issues (urban countryside, river sites, enclaves, wasteland) and cultural, call for projects capable of: re-fabricating socio-spatial relationships, stimulating lost imaginations and recomposing fragmented landscapes through integrated architectural solutions.
Learning outcomes of the learning unit
- Develop the capacity to reinterpret the potentials of a place and to relate its natural elements: land, water, vegetation
- Ability to develop a critical reflexive argument from the reading and interpretation of the site and its narratives
- Learn to read, interpret and reconstruct collective imaginaries
- Learn to deal with nature and the landscape, as well as with the diverse materials of our living environments
- Learn to register architectural interventions as an element participating in the structural and morphological logics of a site.
- Integration of socio-spatial dimensions and decryption of residents' expectations
- Acquire reasoning methods specific to the project design process inscribed in a complex territory: adaptability and reflective flexibility, iterative questioning by hypotheses / projects, clarification of thought and progressive construction of a discourse, multi-scale and multi-definition -temporal
- Learn to state an architectural idea and support it as a societal position on the basis of its choices and fundamental values
- Use different modes of expression combined as a tool for project design, argumentation and communication
Prerequisite knowledge and skills
not applicable
Planned learning activities and teaching methods
From transcalar readings (through scales), learning focuses on an iterative mode of questioning, going from "vast to detail, from the past to the present and vice versa" ... towards the future. It consists of the following steps:
1. In situ capture by participant observation (T. Ingold) to refine the understanding of places and issues. Learn to discern the elements and characters built and not built, material and immaterial, minerals and plants; in order to better orient and reorient the project;
2. Interpreted reading of maps and historical documents to: reconstruct the process of formation of environments. Practice monitoring and critical interpretation of cartographic writings to build personalized maps for understanding places and their active forces (human and natural) in situ;
3. Formulation of integrated spatial hypotheses to experiment by several scenarios to be tested through non-fixed, dynamic spatial / environmental solutions, able to accommodate movement and variations. Design of spaces capable of adapting to fluctuations in natural elements: fluid, flexible and porous architecture, accommodating variation, instability, uncertainty and alternation of phases of equilibrium / saturation / rupture / rebalancing;
4. Enunciation of reasoned choices as possible responses to the issues that the sites pose in order to support decision-making by adopting the means of graphic and conceptual schematization to feed the debate with local stakeholders;
5. Development of critical summaries of reactivation of the architectural design process, giving it depth and new acceptability. Formulation of spatial hypotheses that change views and lead to the readjustment of the project: make it plural and attentive to the balance between environment and human expectations;
6. Presentations of sketches and project intentions repeated at each stage of the architectural and landscape design process. Exercise allowing the continuous review of learning, leading to the development of a system for explaining the components and values ¿¿of the project: adapted graphic representations, various meaningful and sensitive writings;
7. Final jury as a critical moment of discussion around the arguments that support the project;
8. Post-Jury: collective reflective reading to reorient learning ... to readjust for Q4 (final Master's test)
Mode of delivery (face to face, distance learning, hybrid learning)
Teaching in the form of workshops and occasional face-to-face interventions.
Field visits including learning activities on the perception, understanding and interpretation of the site and the meeting with stakeholders are organized at opportune moments in the project design process.
Organisational adjustments related to the current health context
The course is organized in face-to-face. However, in the event of force majeure related to the Coronavirus, student monitoring and assessment methods by video conference could be set up.
Recommended or required readings
Bruno Latour, Où atterrir ?, Comment s'orienter en politique, La découverte, Paris, 2017.
Assessment methods and criteria
Below you will find information on the evaluation methods planned for in-person and remote exams as well as those planned for hybrid sessions. Depending on how the health crisis evolves, the chosen method will be communicated to you no later than one month before the start of the exam session.
The assessment focuses on: the participation of the student throughout the learning activities, the reflective and methodological approach, the final proposals and their argumentation.
The final project is evaluated by a jury. Continuous evaluations or intermediate work are carried out by tenured teachers accompanied by supervisors.
The statement of learning activities disseminated at the start of the term completes and specifies the assessment methods and criteria defined.
Work placement(s)
Organizational remarks
Contacts
Marc Goossens: m.goossens@uliege.be
Rita Occhiuto: r.occhiuto@uliege.be