Abstract:

Architectural teaching is commonly based on the grounds of beauty and functionality, but it should be human-centric, understanding that all that architects produce should serve and understand human behaviors and needs, it should encourage healthy behaviors and provide comfortable spaces for all. The architectural studio presented in the following lines was designed specifically to provide first-year architecture students with a global view and understanding of wicked problems that affect all humanity and to aid them in developing easy-to-build solutions for the proposed lines of research.

Design and construction of an ephemeral habitat is a design studio held for ten weeks, in which the students start by learning and researching the most urgent wicked problems affecting humans and related to climate change. By utilizing an iceberg model of analysis they deepen topics such as poverty, displacement, biodiversity loss, natural disasters, and hunger, among others, in diverse parts of the world. Following the investigation, they develop proposals for the researched topics.

What is groundbreaking about the studio is that beginning week seven of the working time, the students have to build their proposals on a full scale, bringing them real experience in construction systems, structural criterion, and construction management, and they produce proposals that are alternative to regular buildings, materials, and infrastructure. By understanding the context, the user, and its needs, the students develop innovative habitational solutions and test them.

The idea of this presentation is to show those innovative proposals, highly related to spatial justice and equity since their design process, as the hypothesis question is always related to wicked problems, humanity, and climate change. Also, to present the design path and the course to follow to carry the proposals to full-scale; as well as the learning outcomes of this process, analyzed by the professors that teach the studio.

The proposals were built this year for the first time, and they show impactful criteria of sustainability, building innovative technologies, groundbreaking material studies, and inventive use of them. Last year, on its first edition with the professors, they were not built, but they developed proposals that also have interesting approaches to diverse problems worldwide. A comparison between both exercises results interesting in the depth of the learning outcomes and is provided to broaden the explanation of the approach and results.

The authors consider the exercise quite interesting as it helps students understand equity and habitational justice issues from a broader perspective than in a traditional design studio, It also aids them all, professors and students, in exploring innovative building materials and construction techniques.

Keywords:

Architecture, spatial justice, equity, experiential learning, latinamerica.