Studios are as central to the culture of architectural education as public squares are to the culture of cities or laboratories are to the culture of scientific education. They host the chaos which allows free play of ideas in search of ordered thought, design and the exercise of imagination in the discovery and reconstruction of the field of architecture, and through it the development and formation of oneself in the process of education.

Design is a complex and fluid process but it can be studied most effectively by identifying some of its primary aspects for study and practice. Four such aspects relating to works of architecture are the basis of the design teaching, and are manifested in the four thematic studios: (To view the gallery, please click the link below)

Each thematic studio offers a studio project and a school project.

Studio projects

Studio projects are occasions for study and exercise based on the studio as “positions,” not as dogma.

The scope of the projects varies to suit the particular approach and pedagogical strategy of the studio. They provide the possibility of exercises which are particularly suited to the issues in the studio. Beyond the daily and immediate educational objectives, the studies and their results make a cumulative contribution to an implicit discourse between different positions in architecture.

However, in all studios the exercises remain as design exercises within the scope of architecture.

School projects

School projects are formulated independently of the studio positions and are occasions for the application of particular design positions to general designs. As in other parts of the programme they are not only statements of “design projects,” but are themselves a way of seeing and interpreting building types.

At the simplest level, three kinds of places seem to define the human world: place of work, place of gathering, and place of solitude. They are the necessary elements of any complete human environment: the house, the school, the factory, the temple.