New Babylon Station
Sohane Lou Eva Espie
/Melanny Andreyna Jacome Alban
/Michael Mazotti
New Babylon Station
Sohane Lou Eva Espie /
Melanny Andreyna Jacome Alban /
Michael Mazotti
The studio Baukunst at EPFL is conceived as an investigation into the archetypical elements of architecture in light of the challenges of our present age. By imbricating the contemporary and the fundamental a framework is set up in which a critical reflection on what architecture might be today can take shape. Research is envisaged as a project and the project is envisaged as research. Establishing a critical viewpoint is therefore regarded as the primary act of building an architectural proposal. Stemming from the overarching approach of Vitruvius’s Ten Books, the studio addresses a different theme each academic year. After Performative Objects in 19/20, Elements of Climate in 20/21 and Umwelt in 21/22, in 22/23 the theme of Firmitas will be dealt with. Firmitas as a core attribute of architecture is challenged by the gradual realization that the planetary crisis we are facing profoundly obfuscates our notion of the (im)permanence of our built environment. The studios are split up in two parts of different character, adressing a specific aspect of the overarching theme each semester.
The second semester is called Manifesto. Its site is the city of Berlin, its program the implementation of nine 20th century urban manifestos. As any future «plan» for Berlin is not a plan for a city in retrenchment anymore, but one for expansion once again, its latent characteristic as an archipelago acquires another meaning. Still a city made up of parts of various opposite and divergent conceptions, the possibility of islands has disappeared and with it the possibility of distinct enclaves. Today the parts cannot be precisely marked off, but are surrounded by more or less extended and indistinct bordering regions. These undefined vestiges of colliding urban models, ought to be identified and selected according to the extent to which they embody, in a pure and legible form, ideas and concepts, so that the history of architecture would coincide with the history of ideas once more. Berlin, appearing yet again as a dialectical laboratory for urban manifestos, is used as the testing area to probe capability and limits of architectural form.