Studio 03

The Urban Straitjacket

Peter Stasios, Raymond Mah, Jesse Linardi, and Koos de Keijzer | Cities + Living Focus

This studio is available to students enrolled in ABPL90142 Studio C, ABPL90143 Studio D, and ABPL90115 Studio E.

Studio Description

The Urban Straitjacket is informed by a restless desire to question the current outcome of our built environment, and a deep seeded skepticism regarding the standardized approaches to city making. We currently reside during the high-water mark of technical proficiency & rational science to inform pieces of architecture and the formation of our cities. The prescriptive and rhetorical power of science has reduced cities to an empirical object of study, rather than representation of our collective DNA.

The Urban Straitjacket thinks we can to better. The Urban Straitjacket will challenge the philosophical positivism that informs current architectural production with the studio encouraging a rupture from the standardized & technocratic approaches to city making. This ambition will be undertaken by excavating and legitimizing old narratives and movements, dissenting voices and canonical projects, both inside and outside the realm of architecture.

Studio Outcome

The studio intendeds to foster an environment that will allow you access to the best of both worlds; balancing a passion for experiments and theoretical speculation, against rigorous design and structure. By extension, we take our mentorship of your personal development with the utmost importance, as we guide & push you throughout the semester. The Urban Straitjacket is all about developing your own voice, as we implore you to dream big and ask the tough questions!

The first 6 weeks of the Urban Straitjacket will prioritize theoretical speculation and architectural imagination, as we seek to realize “new improbable combinations” and the resurrection of cast aside ideas. Looking at key themes of the city such as civic-ness, domesticity, and history you will be asked to engage with these categories critically through a combination of diagramming, collage and design exercises, resulting in the production of new architectural types and formations. The culmination of these experiments will be the creation of a manifesto and a new building type in the second half of the semester that will address the way we live, work and inhabit the city

Studio Leaders

The Urban Straitjacket is a DKO practice lead studio. The studio is run by Peter Stasios with the support of DKO directors Raymond Mah, Jesse Linardi & Koos de Keijzer.

The foundation of the studio is the collective knowledge in design, research, practice and teaching that the 4 studio leaders share, as well as the skills we have acquired through the various iterations of this studio that have been run previously.

Readings & References

• CURTAIN CALL: Marika Neustupny & RMIT Architecture, 2006
• A WALK (film): Jonas Mekas, 1990
• ON THE DIFFICULTY OF IMAGINING AN IDEAL CITY: Georges Perec, 1982
• CRITIQUE OF EVERYDAY LIFE: Henri Lefebvre, 1947
• THE CULTURE OF CITIES: Lewis Mumford, 1966
• LAST BLACKMAN IN SAN FRANSICO (film): Joe Talbot, 2019

Schedule Thursdays 12:00-18:00 in MSD Room 449

Contact Handbook Key Dates