Studio tutor: Philippe Rahm (Philippe Rahm Architectes)

Assistant: Phi Nguyen

The global pandemic we are facing has led us to reassess our approach to architecture and design. Indeed, scientific research has found a direct relationship between the transmission of the Coronavirus (human health in general) and the use of materials in interior spaces. For more than 70 years, during the period we call modern and post-modern, the criteria for the choice of materials in architecture was largely determined from a semantic and analogical viewpoint. However, current health and climate crises have signalled the end of structuralism in architecture, urging us to consider the actual value of materials and their physical, physiological, or thermal properties.

In this studio students are challenged to reinvent and re-imagine existing architectural spaces and typologies (residential, office, commercial, museum) by approaching design from the perspective of various health-related physical aspects of the natural and built environment, which are our greatest contemporary global issue. This is achieved through a two-phase process: first, rigorous research to achieve an understanding of a particular phenomenon; second, the application of the research results to different architectural programmes to arrive at an unconventional spatial configuration and design language. Students are engaged in both individual and group projects.