Summary:

The Climate Form studio aims to equip the student with a knowledge platform where architecture is examined within a context of environmental sustainability. The studio curriculum and associated assignments will revolve around strategies for climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation and actively seek to integrate the understanding of these in form-finding processes and critical evaluation. Through studies of local climate and building traditions at present, and parallel investigations on future scenarios - both in accordance with central UN sustainability goals (SDGs) and more conservative estimates (projections with less climate mitigation than what is anticipated in the Paris Agreement), the course activities seeks to inform and discuss adequate design response. The final result of the course is an architectural project presented with drawings, models and visuals accopagnied with in-depth analysis of the final design focusing on a climate mitigation strategy introduced in introductory sub-assigments.

Background:

Humankind has a distinct relationship with environment spanning millennia intrinsically forming human interaction with nature from provision to creation to destination. Architecture’s foundation as a human centric discipline is required to respond relatively to environments not only as a specific adaption, but also relatively to its own agency in influencing those environments on many scales.

Deep knowledge of effects upon climate and ecology as a result of the practice of construction and the procurement of materials that forms and reshapes our physical environment is overdue as a fundamental driver for design in the Anthropocene. Resultant change in the prerequisites for design have duly created a demand for distinct changes in formal expression, a revivification of the architectural language of climate-adaptive existence. Examined through three distinct proponents of change; climate adaption, climate mitigation and user behaviour.

The studio’s approach method is projective prototyping – examining typology, function, materiality and form as a result of contemporary understanding of climate change implications both regionally and globally. This accompanied by a narrative of projection that should inform design work and results, generating a coherent thread from conceptualization through iterative ideation to detail.

Task description:

The studio’s main assignment autumn 2022 is to design an accommodationfacility for the tourism industry now entering Finnmark and Varanger. This region seeks to attract new users and industries to dam up for ongoing depopulation, simultaneously the region experiences rapid changes in local climate and weather due to expedited climate change in the Arctic. This again demands urgent attention to the management of areas to foreseewhere to develop land and to which use. A tourism industry wanting to establish buildings and infrastructure close to the shoreline will have to build to withstand radically different conditions than what are observed on site today, requiring a long-term perspective in the planning and development of potential facilities. Setting the scene in 2100 will require students to create design concepts as adaptable to projected changes, while knowledge on mitigation strategies and post-carbon economies will initiate a new take on both user behaviour and needs, material palettes and consequently form.