E3 Bachelor Design Studio – „HABITATS BEYOND TOMORROW: Designing for Spatial Capacity“

ABSTRACT
Like many contemporary cities, Innsbruck is shaped by continuous processes of social, environmental, and urban transformation. Increasing environmental pressures, changing ways of living and working, and evolving societal demands challenge conventional architectural models and call for more resilient, inclusive, and flexible typologies. In response, the E3 Bachelor Design Studio investigates how architecture can engage uncertainty not as a constraint, but as a design driver.
Located along the southern edge of the city, the former industrial site of St. Bartlmä becomes a laboratory for reimagining an emerging cultural destination as a vibrant urban habitat. Students will develop compact architectural clusters whose adaptive and polyvalent structures support multiple forms of collective life by accommodating changing patterns of inhabitation, production, and public use.

INTRODUCTION
The challenge of contemporary architecture is no longer simply to design for change, but to design for uncertainty. Rather than prescribing fixed programmes or anticipating every future scenario, the studio explores how built form can remain relevant as social, environmental, and programmatic conditions continue to evolve.
Herman Hertzberger describes this capacity of architecture as polyvalence: the competence of form and space to accommodate different interpretations while retaining a distinct architectural identity. Polyvalence is therefore understood not as flexibility through constant transformation, but as the ability of architecture to support changing patterns of inhabitation and use through the inherent qualities of its spatial organisation.
Central to this understanding is the notion of structure, conceived not simply as a load-bearing system, but as an organisational logic of spatial, programmatic, circulatory, and social relationships through which different forms of occupation and interpretation become possible.
These principles will be tested at the former industrial site of St. Bartlmä, located along the southern edge of Innsbruck. Once a place of industrial production, the area has gradually evolved into an important destination for cultural initiatives, exhibitions, performances, and creative practice. Yet despite its growing cultural significance, the site remains largely disconnected from the everyday life of the city.
Operating between the scale of a single building and a conventional masterplan, the studio investigates how compact architectural clusters can transform St. Bartlmä into a vibrant urban habitat. By introducing new forms of collective life, the proposals seek to unlock the site’s existing potential, extend its cultural activity beyond temporary events, and establish stronger connections to its wider urban context.

DESIGN PROPOSAL
Each design proposal develops a compact architectural cluster through a coherent yet versatile volumetric structure that responds to the site’s spatial, social, and environmental conditions. Informed by the principles of polyvalence, its configuration should accommodate changing uses rather than fixed programmes.
The Site Situated between the Sill River, the railway corridor, and the rising Alpine landscape, St. Bartlmä occupies a unique threshold where infrastructure, landscape, and urban life converge. Its existing fabric forms an integral part of the design process, requiring students to carefully assess how existing buildings, structures, landscapes, circulation networks, and open spaces can inform the development of each proposal and should be preserved, adapted, transformed, extended, or selectively replaced.
Programmatic Framework Temporary inhabitation, creative production, and shared public spaces provide a programmatic framework for testing the spatial capacity of each proposal across different forms of occupation and use.
Architectural Intervention The architectural intervention should form a coherent yet differentiated volumetric composition and a multi-layered network of interconnected spaces. Articulated through thresholds, transitions, and in-between spaces, it should mediate between public and private, open and enclosed, mass and void, while supporting multiple forms of occupation, interaction, and appropriation over time.

DESIGN METHODOLOGY
Volumetric Design Within the framework of the i.sd year topic, the studio explores volumetric design as its primary design methodology. Building on the principles of the Raumplan, volumetric design understands architecture as a differentiated three-dimensional spatial organisation rather than the subdivision of horizontal floor plates. Programmatic, environmental, material, and social information are synthesised into articulated spatial configurations, where the relationship between interior and exterior is enriched through thresholds, transitions, in-between spaces, and material as a three-dimensional entity. Volumes are not conceived as inert mass, but as layered, porous, and interconnected environments.
Polyvalence & Spatial Capacity Through this approach, students develop proposals whose volumetric organisation supports a high degree of spatial capacity. Instead of prescribing fixed programmes, robust spatial structures accommodate evolving forms of use and future uncertainty. Polyvalence therefore emerges as built form starts to allow multiple interpretations and changing patterns of occupation without requiring continuous physical transformation.
Structure as Character However, the capacity of space to accommodate changing functions should not come at the expense of architectural identity. Structure therefore extends beyond technical support to become a carrier of meaning, experience, and expression that organises spatial, social, and aesthetic relationships. Rather than being confined to a single layer of the built fabric, structure emerges through the organisation and interrelation of its different layers—from space, volume, and circulation to programme, material, and tectonics. Their spatial and volumetric articulation allows structure itself to become a generator of architectural character. Throughout the course, the studio asks: How can architecture embrace polyvalent structures while developing a distinct identity?

FORMAT & DELIVERABLES
The design process progresses from analysis and experimentation to high architectural resolution. Throughout the semester, drawings, volumetric studies, physical and digital models, and visualisations are used as tools to develop, test, and communicate architectural ideas. A continuous master drawing will evolve throughout the semester, combining plan, section, and three-dimensional representation while progressively integrating new layers of information and architectural articulation.
Thematic workshops explore methods of mapping, representation, and modelling, through physical, digital, and computational design approaches. Additional seminars introduce students to integrating AI-assisted methods into the design workflow to further explore contextual, programmatic and atmospheric information of the design proposal.
The submitted work should demonstrate how spatial, programmatic, structural, material, atmospheric and environmental information has informed the volumetric organisation of each project. The required output includes plans, sections, elevations, diagrams, visualisations, and physical models.

REMARKS
The E3 studio will meet once a week for joined workshops and individual tutorials. Additional block seminars will occasionally take place on a second day in selected weeks. Besides the final project submission, the design process is also part of the assessment. The attendance at Pin-Ups and Reviews is therefore mandatory.