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The students can independently formulate and implement architectural concepts. They can convincingly communicate their designs, present them in detail and position them within their respective theoretical or creative context.

TECHNOSOPHICAL INTERFACES - Science Center Innsbruck

This semester’s design studio will ask students to speculate about the urban, architectural, educational, economic, and socio-cultural potential of implementing a new science centre for Tyrol within Innsbruck’s existing city fabric making use of the historical landmark building of the Rauchmühle. Today, conducting and communicating high-quality research has become more important than ever, helping to broaden scientific understanding and to jointly tackle the big issues of our time, from climate change to human health. At the same time, the free practice of science and education is endangered by political and social agendas, questioning its values and merits, resulting in the need to strengthen and manifest its position within contemporary society.

We as architects are called to provide the conceptional, spatial, and architectural framework to strengthen scientific work and knowledge collection, storage, transfer, and dissemination by developing novel concepts and typologies for these kind of spaces, in which scientists, educators and the general public can work, evolve and collaborate by exchanging thoughts, information, and ideas. Students will develop individual strategies and architectural concepts by using novel digital and analogue design tools. The goal of the studio is to design contemporary buildings based on spatial, programmatic and geometric explorations, with a special focus on volumetric design.

Abstract architectural concepts and spatial prototypes will be contextualised on the specific historical site of the Rauchmühle, at the same devising strategies about how to sustainably reuse the existing buildings and (infra)structures. Within the framework of this studio the question of Technosophical Interfaces will be addressed simultaneously on various different yet interconnected levels: On a conceptual level, students are encouraged to develop contemporary strategies for the research, collection, storage, organisation, education and transfer of scientific knowledge - either related to techne (practical knowledge) or sophia (wisdom and theoretical skill) within the scientific community as well as in relation to the general public. On an architectural and urban level, students are required to hypothesise about the physical and semiological spaces and spatial envelopes that frame, enable, and foster the social interactions connected to these contemporary modes of knowledge transfer. All architectural interventions, in turn, must be carefully interfaced with the historic building in place on the site in question making careful use of the existing spaces and infrastructures.

Students will analyse and explore a variety of best practice examples of relevant building typologies. In combination with input lectures by the tutors, the students collective research on educational spaces will help to develop a fundamental understandingof the topic‘s key aspects.The referenced projects will be understood as complex architectural systems, consisting of a series ofsystems and interrelated subsystems that together contribute to the building design as a coherent and functional architectural space. Systems and Subsystemsto be analysed include program, circulation, spatial organisation and hierarchy, structure, materiality and facades. In this course, students are challenged to select and thoroughly rethink one of these systems, developing new and experimental solutions for it. The studio’s underlying assumption is that a profound shift of one significant building system will - due to the interwovenness of all the building’s systems - push the building design towards an entirely new and novel typological solution.

Course examination according to § 6, statute section on "study-law regulations"

Will be discussed in the first meeting

The registration takes place via a preference system.

Information on registering for the Entwerfen courses can be found at: https://www.uibk.ac.at/fakultaeten-servicestelle/standorte/technikerstrasse/studium.html/

The Entwerfen subject presentations (PDF's, links, videos, etc.) will be posted on the faculty website https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/architektur/studium/entwerfen-2024w/ and in OLAT.