The semester task is tackled by all students, unregarded in which year they are. Throughout the semesters they adress continuing topics, such as structure, mass, poche, section, etc., so that a student will have completed the full spectrum during his studies at the studio. The semester tasks a accompanied with complementary lectures introducing the architectural context as well as the necessary tools or design standards.

The recent tasks:

Winter 09: Mass Effect

This term we will work on the topic of mass and we will study an architecture of; carving, hollowing, sculpting, thickness, poché and mass. We will shift our focus from layers of surfaces and structures to volume and mass.  We will investigate the architectural problem of a sculpted, freestanding mass, in a landscape. We will tackle a building typology with few or no windows, Agricultural Buildings. The site is in the Rhône Alpes region of France, along the main allee leading to the Royal Saltworks,  by Ledoux.

Read the task, take a look at the work done, at the review pictures and at the France study trip pictures.

Summer 09: Boarding School in south west England

Looking at the architecture and gardens of Edwin Lutyens in order to understand the complex creation of outdoor spaces in garden architecture and to look at mass as a topic in architectural design. The school was located in the west of Oxford in the countryside, nieighbouring a freshly developed area within a number of lakes.

Read the task, take a look at the work done, at the review pictures and at the England study trip pictures.

Winter 08: Crisis - Bank

The winter semester 08 we took the situation of the bank crisis to rethink the architectural representation of the bank as a building type. Since most of the banking transactions are made online and do not require the physical presence of a bank, the architectural requirement needs to be rethought. In the studio we investigated a numerous situations in different sites - from Switzerland to Bangladesh and all types of bank, from corporate headquarters to micro loan local banks.

Read the task, take a look at the work done, at the review pictures and at the Switzerland study trip pictures.

Summer 08: Factory for Today

Looking at the advanced technologies and the design sensibility in high tech boat building, the summer 2008 was about a boat factory on the sea in croatia. The goal was to creat an intricate system of long span industrial structure combined with the sophisticated design attitude of boatbuilders.

Read the task, take a look at the work done, at the review pictures and at the Croatia study trip pictures.

Winter 07: Musical Manifolds

This term the studio tackled the equally complex architecture of an earthbound institutional building in all its functional richness. As a building type, concert halls stage an array of activities and concerns: they channel multiple crowds, orchestrate the spectacle of a performance each night, and serve as cultural and urban monuments.

Read the task, take a look at the work done, at the review pictures and at the study trip pictures.

Summer 07: Space Collective

Inspired by Rebe Daalder's spacecollective.org the studio looked at the architectural, landscape and urban issues of extra terrestrial design. In the tradition of NASA's suburban proposals for space colonies in the 1970s, the post-cold war international space stations, and contemporary space tourism being developed by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic in New Mexico as well Spaceport Singapore, the studio worked on a link between ground and outer atmosphere, gravity and weightlessness.

Read the task, take a look at the work done, at the review pictures and at the study trip pictures.

Winter 06: Electric Dreams

The semester task is an EU-sponsored design center for electric car concepts, based in Vienna. The design center is made up of large volumes like auditoria, group design offi ces and CNC production labs as well as small support spaces. It has open visitor display areas and more secure, employee-only zones.

Read the task, take a look at the work done, at the review pictures and at the  study trip pictures.