This semester, Archipelagos Studio will experiment with architectural chimeras —hybridized, juxtaposed, or nested compositions that bring together different ways of seeing, thinking, building, and relating. More simply stated, the studio will explore how two or more architectural typologies can be merged to create new spatial and conceptual possibilities. For example, wow can ritual or sacred architectures like holy wells or water festivals, and ecological stewardship practices like monitoring, planting and gardening, change the structure and form of technological-political water infrastructures and buildings like dams, treatment centres and pools? How can architecture cultivate radically experimental and inclusive modes of practice and form? And how can our approach engage not only excluded community members but also nonhuman entities, forces, and ecologies that actively shape political realities?
The studio will focus on architecture and infrastructure in relation to water within the European context, spanning scales from objects and buildings to entire territories. Students will examine the architectural dimensions of water-related crises, analyzing how extractive interests, exclusionary architectures, infrastructures, and abstract policies shape these crises. A key question will be how such systems have historically severed people’s relationships with water—eroding their capacity for stewardship while consolidating control in ways that are often subtle and difficult to contest.
Students will also identify movements and communities that, in the wake of crises, are reclaiming governance over local water infrastructures. These groups are generating new knowledge of water ecosystems and fostering a renewed intimacy with the web of forces, plants, animals, landscapes, and politics that sustain clean water—and, by extension, life itself. The course underscores that developing a new ethics of water—centered on care and local governance—necessitates novel public and common architectures and practices.
The course hypothesis is informed by Isabelle Stengers and Silvia Federici: a truly radical architectural transformation may only be possible if we explore new forms and practices of multispecies commoning—rethinking governance, knowledge production, and spatial design at the level of reproduction. That is, through the communal practices and architectures that sustain and maintain life itself.
Methods:
The course will use ethnographic, anthropological, and spatial research methods to uncover political conflicts manifested in architecture and infrastructure.
Mapping and drawing exercises will help analyze key architectural and infrastructural paradigms.
Students will develop research-driven briefs and architectural forms that critically engage with the opportunities and challenges identified in the research.
Lecturer:
Wilfried Kuehn
Brendon Carlin
María Páez González
further information:
Kick-Off: Thu, March 6th, 2025, 10am – 4pm, in White Cube, Spatial Design, Stiege 3, OG4
Meetings every thursday 10am – 4pm.
The course will be held in English.