Design Studio IV

Main topic:  Medium Size Public Facilities and Collective Space

Architecture - Drawing from people-centred courses on special building types and considering social, psychological and cultural user-need variables of different user groups to design medium sized facilities (e.g., schools, health centres, libraries, etc.) designed to enhance the relation between function in its broadened definition, gradients of privacy and transition spaces, with an emphasis on structural systems as form givers in architecture, building materials and technology, and skin as a regulator of indoor-outdoor continuity and transition.

Urban Dimension – Fostering interaction between facilities and collective public spaces as a constitutive system of the public realm. The studio covers the scope of the collective space, its typologies, sizes and boundaries: from large urban parks or waterfronts to small plazas, squares (midans) and courtyards. Public space design of fixed and semi-fixed feature elements and their composition with an awareness of the experiential implications of the design (cognitive and behavioural) and change over time (adaptability and flexibility, management and upkeep). It directly applies and can be coordinated to ARU342 People-centred Urban design course.