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ArchiFicture

“the future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed”

William Gibson

Architecture is really very much a form of storytelling. The studio stressed out the possibility of using it as a fictional discipline in order to speculate on and imagine new forms of futures. First we studied and analyzed the different ways within which architects have generated fictions about the future, as well as the past and the present. Yet, architecture has most obviously—and more often—fictionalized the present and the past. Since ever, architects have used representation to imbed stories and narratives in their projects. So it was for the modern avant-garde and its relationship with the “machine”, with the post-moderns and their use of the past, for the fictionalization of digital culture, so it was—and it is—for each architect who wants to produce something that is more than just a simply functional space.

Differently, and more obviously, other media (such as movies) have more capacity to speculate on the future. This is the case of the Sci-fi genre (from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, to by Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049). It is not in fact by chance that some architects have referred to this medium in order to create fictions. Le Corbusier did so in order to define the house as a “machine for living”. Rem Koolhaas has done a similar operation when, in the 1970s, he re-imagined virtual space by inventing virtual characters replacing real actors in movies.

As already done by these architects (and many others), we challenged the fictional and narrative aspect of architecture, by toying with different media. The research was based on the course’s topic and its main output was a book. Yet, students where asked to take a step forward and transform their research in a proper speculative product. Therefor the Studio Archificture also resulted in videos, comics and collages, using all potential skills for their realization.

Is this the way to utopia? / Niklas Bugelnig & Tobias Stenico

ONE WAY TO UTOPIA  Can you remember the first time you heard about “Utopia”? Is it something like a city or more like a country? Or even another planet? Right! It’s all of it and even more!  But to make things clear:  In 1516 Sir Thomas More was the first one to use the word […]

Nomadic Concepts through the Ages / Manuel Gsaller

“The word fit may be defined in the most generous terms imaginable, but it still does not necessarily imply the erection of buildings. Environments may be made fit for human beings by any number of means.” Banham, cited by Langevin, 2008 Nomadism has always been the adaption of societies to a diverse set of environments.This […]

Superheroism / Hofer & Maier

“When is a man a city? When it‘s Batman or when it‘s Gotham. I‘d take either answer”.  The Riddler This casestudy aims to extract the importance of architecture in superhero comic books. Where does it come from? What defines the architecture of our comic book heroes? Which role does it take, superhero or supervillain?

A fresh Start – A Story of a Colony / Hanna Mattila

On the current path of the Colony the day is starting to turn into night. Or to be exact, the day on the planet earth is starting to turn into night and on the colony that means that lights are beeing dimmed into night mode to simulate the cycle of earth. On the Colonys current […]

RealityCheck / Contola & Ehrenstraßer & Schwaderer

How does virtuality affect reality?  How will virtual environments change the way we build and perceive architecture in the future?  Freed from constrains it is already possible to create the wildest forms and virtual buildings of endless complexity within virtual space. The technology to fully experience this in a realistic way is already here. But […]

Underground Fiction / Georgieva & Koblmueller

Today technology is predominant almost in every part of our lives, there are areas that are unthinkable without it, but the more we are getting used to it, it seems like the more we are losing ourselves in it and we get easily tempted to the idea of even more comfort. And it is up […]

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