BACHELOR

Design Studio Space II: YOU ARE HIRED!

Studio Raum II focuses on institutional spaces. How do these spaces embody social rituals and rules and how are the latter formalized with their help? The institutional context of Karlsruhe provides the framework: BGH/KIT/BST/ZKM/HFG/BVG.
According to the German Federal Employment Agency (BA), every second company in Germany is affected by staff shortage. More than half of the people looking for work do not have the right qualifications to meet the requirements of job applications. At the same time, the Babyboom-Generation is slowly retiring and the birth rate continues to decline. Due to the occupational mismatch and the demographic trends, there is a role reversal in the job market, where the search for jobs turns into a search for people.
The Studio faces the new planning reality of the employment agency: yesterday’s applicant becomes tomorrow’s new hope; the institution of demand becomes the institution of match-making.

Regular Meetings: Wed-Thu, 2:00-6:00 pm, Bldg. 20.40
First Meeting: 29.30.2023, Bldg. 20.40
Pin-Up: 03.05.2023, 24.05.2023
Submission/Presentation: 29.06.2023/05.07.2023

MASTER

Design Studio: MUSTERHAUS

The detached single family home could well be the most contested architectural trope of modern housing: Beloved by many as the built expression of personal success/standing/ambition and loathed by a some as proof of everything that has gone wrong architecturally and urbanistically. 
Its criticism is multifold. The single family home implies a dismal environmental track record. It is responsible for urban sprawl and it presents a major challenge for alternative means of transportation. It is also almost single-handedly responsible for the ever-growing spatial foot print in Germany which has reached an all-time high of almost 48 sqm per capita. The principle of isolation embodied in the single family home seems to prevent it from adjusting to personal as well as demographic changes.
Musterhaus-Siedlungen are the petry dishes of the single family home typology. At the same time Musterhaus-Siedlungen have also operated as influential laboratory for the archtitectural development during the modern movement. The Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart serves as just one example.
The studio will explore the potential of the Musterhaus-Siedlung for single family houses as a laboratory to address the undeniable short-comings of today´s suburban condition and will explore the possibility for its transformation in the light of the environmental and demographic challenges it is facing.

Appointment: Consultations Thursday by arrangement
1st meeting: 13.04.23, 11:00
Submission/Examination: 02.08.23 ???
Number of participants: max. 15 students
Language: German / English

Impromptu design: UNPLANNED PLANS

As part of the research project „Typological Resilience“, that investigates the potential of converting empty office buildings for residential purposes, a series of commercial and residential buildings were examined.
Selected housing references were translated into machine-readable grammars, by the process of extrapolation of predefined spatial parameters.
The aim of the Stegreif “Unplanned Plans“ is to take under investigation the given grammar and test its adaptability to firstly, current housing regulations and secondly, to an existing structure.

The question is: under what conditions do new or familiar floor plans emerge?
What architectural monstrosities or exact 1:1 copies result from the predefined rules?
How close or far are the generated floor plans to their originals?
At the end of the impromptu design, the source floor plans are finally revealed and compared with the “unplanned plans.”

Max. 15 students

Seminar: FERTIGTEIL

Secular precast buildings are an omnipresent part of our built environment.  Yet their fascinating evolutionary history remains largely untold.

The seminar delves into this forgotten architectural history, using concrete examples to explore the development of the underlying construction principles and joining logics. Building on this retrospective, questions regarding the future significance and potential of this construction method are addressed: What are the potentials of this construction method and which have already been explored?  What can we learn from it regarding circular construction? To what extent can the analyzed principles be rethought in other materials today?

Appointment: weekly on Thursdays 11:30 - 13:00, room to be announced
First meeting: 20.04.23, 11:30 – 12:30
Reviews: 25.05., 11:30-13:30 and 06.07.23, 11:30-13:30
Submission: 10.08.23, 10:00 - 12:00 Uhr
Number of participants: max. 15 students
Language: German/ English

Seminar: HARD CORE

As part of the research project "Typological Resilience", we are investigating the potential of converting vacant office buildings to residential purposes. 
With the help of already developed training data sets, an AI is being trained to automatically reduce existing floor plans to their structural building blocks and make them machine-readable. In a second step, they can be algorithmically checked for their potential for conversion to residential use. However, this entails different requirements for the development typologies compared to office construction. 
In order to maximise the adaptability of the existing structures against this background, the walls of the existing vertical development elements must be reduced to columns as far as possible, taking into account static axes and their degree of static utilisation. This does not take into account the transverse bracing.

The seminar focuses on the development and examination of approaches as to how these walls of the development cores can in principle be reduced to a minimum from a structural planning point of view in order to create the greatest possible scope for typological adaptation of the building fabric.
The aim is to develop an understanding of existing load-bearing structures so that the AI is fed with the correct data sets. So that a generally valid recognition is created that is not based on the individual case.

Appointment: weekly on Thursdays 10:00 - 11:30, room to be announced
First meeting: 20.04.23, 10:00 – 11:00
Reviews: tbd
Submission: 10.08.23, 10:00 - 13:00 Uhr
Number of participants: max. 15 students
Language: German/ English