E3 Bachelor Design Studio – Typologies of Collaboration – an Institute of Multiplicity

This year, the i.sd Bachelor Studio once again works on the topic of Volumetric Design and its application to architectural typologies. Volumetric Design builds on established concepts such as “Spatial Design” (Rudolph Schindler) and “Raumplan” (Adolf Loos). It creates spaces and structures that are multi-layered, volumetrically intertwined and multi-scalar. Volumetric concepts permeate the scales and work on different levels, the urban, the typological, the spatial and the material. They create multi-material structures and hybrid programmes. In this way, a design detail can have an effect on the whole and vice versa. 

Volumetric design strategies utilise the higher resolution of digital methods and volumetric data. Through the refined design elements of voxels, points and data, architectural concepts of mass, void and poche can be reinterpreted.

This also allows us to see our designs in a different way: As with X-ray vision, we can develop the interior space and its structure simultaneously with the exterior design, thus also challenging our perceptual and design habits. 

Typologies of Collaboration – an Institute of Multiplicity

Students will develop an ‘institute’ as the centerpiece of their project; the institute can have any agenda or theme defined by the students’ interest – e.g. from the fields of art, culture, science, nature, politics or similar. The institute should be a place of research, learning, debate, communication and public knowledge exchange. This core programme had to be merged with the programme of a garden to create a hybrid overall building programme in which the space could not only be shared by the different user groups and functions, but could also be reconfigured, adapted or temporarily changed according to cycles of use, seasons, weather, etc. The building had to combine its various agendas and programmatic content in an aesthetic, spatial and volumetric way.