Agenda Category: WORKSHOP

Facing the consequences of environmental exploitation and destruction makes a paradigm shift in resource consumption imperative. New ways of building must shift towards a “re-materialized”, climate-friendly and circular construction. The existing environment needs to be reconsidered as a source of ideas, knowledge and resources: to reuse, repair and sustain. It must be rediscovered as its architectural potential. Built from a catalog of reused building components, the first Basel Pavilion opened on the Dreispitz as a program of the first Architekturwoche Basel on 10 May 2022: “Loggia Baseliana” by isla contributes to the urban transformation as a temporary open venue whose architecture demonstrates a future-, environmentally and socially sustainable construction. All the main components of the “Loggia Baseliana” are sourced from regional deconstructions, which were compiled in a component catalog for the competition by the specialist planning office Zirkular via www.baselpavillon.store

The aim of this course is to learn and develop circular building strategies and practice. From the Basel Pavillon as a building laboratory, specific site and practice, we will identify strategies and agents of reuse from deconstruction for a better reconstruction and building to sustain. Regional and local ecosystems, urban transformation, material hunting and urban mining, deconstruction, infrastructures and logistics, labor, building codes, maintenance and care, and design processes will be part of the knowledge and skills to enable for a circular architectural practice. The goal is to develop diverse reuse strategies for the Basel Pavillon from 2023 as part of the Plan Guide of the Dreispitz development. Alongside this, the course will emphasize on the agency of architecture as a strategy and multidisciplinary practice.

Tutors:

Vera Sacchetti (HEAD MAIA) and Chrissie Muhr (Architekturwoche Basel)

Javier F. Contreras, Valentina de Luigi (HEAD MAIA)

Lecturers:

Martin Weis, Nico Scholer (Christoph Merian Stiftung)

Jan Nemeth (Studio Gleisbogen, denkstatt sarl)

Kerstin Müller, Blanca Garcia Gardelegui (Zirkular)

Juan Palencia (isla)

As probably most of you, I have never been in a house or a public space designed by the late architect Luis Barragan. That does not mean that I have no idea about the architect’s work. I actually believe I have quite a clear vision of his work since the images of his buildings that have been published embody his ideas in a powerful and iconic way that can hardly be challenged. It is clear that the images we know of Barragan’s architecture are ‘his’ images – carefully crafted representations of the idea of his own work. In this workshop, we will enter and visually inhabit two houses, Casa Barragan and Casa Pedregal, with the idea of representing the spaces, rather than the aura of images that we already know.

An important question we will try to address is how it feels to ‘appropriate’ through simple photography, the spaces, work and legacy of someone else for the benefit of one’s own visions, and what one can or cannot do. To begin to answer this question, we hope to start in the archives (near Basel, Switzerland) to look at and analyse the images, books and drawings that were produced during his lifetime. Following this, we will seek to focus on where we can insert and develop our own interpretation, without simply appropriating his legacy or iconography. These new interpretations, these new ‘images’, will then be presented at exhibitions in both Mexico and Switzerland.

Bas Princen, February 2021

This Summer School will be led by Bas Princen and assisted by Damien Greder.