2019 LandLumnezia 1 master-level design studio @ Vienna University of Technology
Teaching Staff: Michael U. Hensel, Defne Sunguroğlu Hensel & Jakub Tyc
Joint studio with EPFL ENAC Media x Design Laboratory led by Prof. Dr. Jeffrey Huang
The embedded architectures approach aims for architecture and environment integration, with the aim to reconnect architecture, landscape architecture and urban design and linking them to correlated aspects of culture, climate and ecology. The site is Val Lumnezia, a Swiss high alpine valley in the canton of Graubünden.
The project focused on overlapping land-use, i.e. construction, agriculture and nature preservation. This entails a multi-scalar and multi-domain design problem. For this reason, the working scales range from the wider landscape systems to the specific layout of the settlement, and eventually to the proposed architecture. The latter is to reflect on local culture and to accommodate hybrid functions that reflect on the proposed overlapping land-use and to support the local community in ways that make it possible to live and work in the valley.
Methodologically the studio focused on computational data-driven design, employing data from cartographic sources and from simulations that is utilized in the design process. For this reason students were asked to consider and build-up the general and computational workflow for the design process.