The students will design a building starting from a given general “typology”, such as “public space”, “tower”, “timber, village, courtyard, foyer”, etc., which will become the themes of the design studio for the whole semester. We will propose three different themes in beginning of the semester. The students will develop just one of the three topics individually with one of the three Mendrisio and Oslo assistants and in public discussions with all the teachers. Each theme is thought so as to be a source of shared inspiration for a further project development, that was imagined to be both purposeful and free. All the parameters of the project, such as the site and the program, form part of the choices that each student will have to cope with individually by developing their own architectonic and spatial interpretations of the given “typological theme”. The students will decide independently whether to work on a small scale, concentrating on a single object, or on a large scale. The preliminary choices that they will take before undertaking the design of the project, will be discussed collectively.

The studio will be thought in collaboration with atelier Olgiati from Accademia di architettura in Mendrisio. http://www.arc.usi.ch/en

Architectonic Typologies is a guest professor master studio, chair ‘Rom og Teknikk’, concerned with exploring ideas about architectonic space and different techniques of making these ideas possible as real and beautiful everyday architecture. Technique should be understood here in its double meaning, as tools for imagining and representing spatial ideas and as technical know-how to make them physically present as real architectonic and spatial qualities. It is a project oriented studio, where architecture is thought through designing it. In the studio, we are studying different architectonic typologies and themes – the structures of different scales and meaning that embody the essence of an architectonic space.  We understand the process of design as a search into the nature of architecture. The studio is a collaborative studio, inviting the most interesting international architects, high level academicians and practitioners, to investigate and renew together with us the methods and representational tools for teaching and production of architecture.  http://www.romogteknikk.aho.no