Within this final year research project, students shall be invited to question the relation between nature and architecture at a moment when the integration of architecture and landscape is considered as one of the main pillars for localization in architecture (versus globalization), to be added to other pillars such as: customs, culture, social and economic conditions of a particular geographical area, etc.
Students will therefore investigate several threads leading towards a natural environment sensitive architecture, based on various categories of interaction between the built and natural environments, as well as processes to generate a new space of dialogue between both. Among others, the following aspects could be explored by students within their final year research projects:
From an architecture that integrates within unmodified components of landscapes, such as mountains, rivers, wetlands, plains, coastlines, rocky outcrops or bluffs/cliffs…. to an architecture that serves as a space for co-existence between human and fauna and flora…An architecture that blends with natural sites through exceptional natural features (such as topography…), or even an architecture that can generate a new landscape – up to the point where architecture becomes a landscape itself -. It can be as well an opportunity to explore an architecture that can adapt to natural elements, alternate with its fluctuations … architecture that can – at least partially – change in relation with seasons and climatic conditions.
It’s an open-ended exploratory field in architecture, where architecture and landscape will be each playing a unique role in a functional pair, and in which students will be invited to find solutions adapted to each of their projects.