Lume Materiale

"where stones change themselves in light through architecture, and architecture exists because of light"

Inspired by both the physical and psychological notion of Lume Materiale Unit H will seek to explore an architecture of the senses, an architecture of human experience that examines the inner language of buildings, of perception, dreams and imagination.

We are interested in exploring the intangible within the tangible, the atmospheric and ephemeral within the tactile and tectonic.

The focus of our investigation will be the city of Venice and its dwindling inhabitants. We will explore the notion of a city as built landscape, constructed as a thick tapestry of interwoven layers, containing monumental past architectures, but also everyday lives and domestic rituals.

Spanning the duration of the first term, we will take part in an intense series of workshops that will give us the skills and techniques to discover Venice's intangible moments.

Aperture - Domestic Space/Public Space

This first exercise will explore a domestic space that you know or have known and its relationship to a public space. We will investigate ideas of drawing and representation and the simultaneous spaces that make up the city.

Exposure - Virtual Venice

In the second project we will study Venice from afar. We will construct our own imagined realities through photography, film, modelmaking, collage, drawing and/or a combination of these. We will look for inspiration within an existing narrative found in literature, cinematic space, music, and painting.

Projection - Venice

Towards the end of the first term we will visit the Renaissance city of Venice and study its private and public spaces. We will visit the palaces, markets, museums and domestic spaces of the city and we will be inspired by its magical labyrinthine topography. Here we will begin to conceive of new constructions that while mindful of the past, respond to contemporary needs and provide flexible public and private spaces as an armature for future occupancy and use.

The third exercise, entitled projection, will be the design of housing, public space and another element, sited in Venice; a new piece of the city.

Guided by your previous intuitive explorations, your architectural proposition will deal with human interactions and processes of use as well as materiality and built form; an architecture that supports and suggests inhabitations, narratives and adaptations, informed by site context and history, climate and weathering.

housing by Zucchi Architetti in the former Junghans area of Giudecca