Start semester
60 529 The Desert
Credits:
24
Full course name in Norwegian Bokmål:
The Desert
Course code:
60 529
Level of study:
Master
Teaching semester:
2021 Autumn
Assessment semester:
2021 Autumn
Language of instruction:
English
Year:
2021
Maximum number of students:
15
Person in charge
Luis Callejas
Gro Bonesmo
Required prerequisite knowledge
Advanced digital drawing and modeling skils. The course is ideal for students in their last master semester before diploma.
Course content
The studio is the final act in the sequence Mountain, Island, Ocean and Forest. The studios have challenged the distinction between architecture and landscape architecture by exploring their shared tropes, particularly those related to geography and its translation to design. Moreover, the studio questions the need for direct experience when designing in delicate environments.
For the desert, we will investigate persistent metaphors of emptiness employed by designers. By looking at historic and sophisticated cartographic representations of sites commonly described as deserts, the students will learn to address remote locations and act creatively with the limited information available about them.
Learning outcome
The students will learn how the way we model a site is a significant design act.
Techniques for translating physical models to digital models
How to translate information from sources rooted in geography, cartography and visual arts into precise desig acts.
Modeling techniques (phisical and digital) that expose a continous link between representing a site and designing on it.
Design techniques at different scales that operate in the intersection of architecture and landscape architecture.
Architects will learn how to address live matter (plants and animals) as media for design
Working and learning activities
Model making, model documentation. Desk critics and discussions with guests. Short workshop on techniques
Curriculum
The studio will investigate persistent metaphors of emptiness employed by designers. By looking at historic and sophisticated cartographic representations of sites commonly described as deserts, the students will learn to address remote locations and act creatively with the limited information available about them.
As traveling might be limited in the autumn, the studio provides an opportunity to radically test the methods employed in previous studios to address sites that can not be easily visited. Our sites will be located worldwide, all of them with little to no transparency regarding how their governments share geographic information publicly.
The studio will address the poetics and challenges of addressign obscure site data remotely, testing the creative potential triggered of addressing landscape from a distance.
Programs and scale of intervention are self formulated under constant guidance from the teaching team.
The specific technique that will be taught and used in the studio will be the invention of detail and artificial increase in resolution of artworks and drawings about each site. The technique are based on the ones employed by Luis Callejas in the ongoing project “Desert as model” for the 2021 Venice Biennale.
Depending on traveling restrictions we will have two possible trips.
If constrained to Europe we will visit the Venice biennale and a few arid locations in Italy, Spain or France.
If restrictions for traveling are completey lifted we will visit Morocco.
The projects can be buildings or landscapes and are guided by self formulated programs, however, the programs must relate to the themes present in the research stage about each site.
| Form of assessment | Grouping | Grading scale | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project assignment | Individual | Pass / fail |