During the last Winter term, 2nd year students of the B.Arch in
Environmental Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano were involved in a 15 week experimental
workshop, focusing on a simple but often neglected topic: trees and houses.
The central issue was the speculation on possible definitions of
environmental architecture, rediscovering the relation between the built environment and
vegetation. Or, in the words of Decio Guardigli: "vegetation and the built environment, intended
experimentally as two equal halves existing in a mutual empathy as a possible
architecture: an architecture between trees, revealed through trees as well as
through seasons."
Architecture as a material practice, an architecture that defines spaces by the
conscious use of materials. A practice that projects spaces through well thought
modifications of the spatial qualities of different, well chosen materials, but also the
most extreme condition of this practice: an architecture that exists in absence of the
built environment, where trees, spaces and time become the ultimate material of architecture.
Architecture as a practice that is able to think spatially and design its physical
inevitability, but that does so from a distance, mediated through its own inherent
instruments and procedures. In this sense, special attention was given, during
the term, to two of those instruments: drawing and model making, both fundamental
design devices for an architect.
During the 15 weeks, each of the thirty students from countries such as Italy, Spain, France, China and Iran had done three exercises and three different projects. Each task had
its own context and, according to its scale, its own relative depth of detail. Art, music
and film were all considered as valid examples and inspiration.
Atelier Trees and Houses
An exhibition at the Politecnico di Milano proposes a series of projects, models and drawings by environmental architecture students, which investigate the relations between vegetation and the built environment.
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- Stephan Jung
- 09 October 2012
- Milan
The resulting work has been materialised in an itinerant exhibition which opened 8 October at the Politecnico di Milano, displaying 26 different projects, of which 8 models, more than 68 drawings, a material collection and a multimedia projection. In 2013 the exhibition will travel to Berlin, Halle, and Weimar, as well as Barcelona and Seville.
Through October 2012
Atelier Trees and Houses
Politecnico di Milano
Via Ampère 2, Milano