Studio 01

What Home?

Isabel Lasala | CIVIC + SENSES

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

Studio Description

There are an estimated 100 million children living in the streets of the world today. Australia, the 12th most powerful economy in the world, does not escape this situation. According to the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) census, 18.000 children, under 12 years of age, are reported to be homeless in the the land of the 'fair go’. This striking situation is even more dramatic when one learns that a significant proportion of those children actually prefer to live on the streets to escape from their violent and abusive homes. This situation makes extremely complicated the task of restoring the trust and the hope of those that have been betrayed by the people who were meant to unconditionally love and take care of them. The studio argues that architecture can contribute to address this problem, specifically through an appropriate implementation of the notion of ‘play’. Play, understood as “a distancing from the light and shade of daily life” (Callois, 1958), can create spaces in which children can start connecting fun and pleasure with a renewed sense of trust, safety, and reliability.

Studio Outcome

This studio seeks to challenge this situation, providing students with the opportunity to think how ‘play’ can start claiming an instrumental role in the creation of public space in the city. More precisely, the studio aims to use the notion of play as an instrument to connect the street with a building in which the basic needs of homeless children can be provided. Students will have the opportunity to explore and propose different formal and spatial configurations to provide those basic needs, which might include places to sleep and eat among others. The studio will also ask students to implement design strategies based on challenging the disciplinary boundaries that exist between architecture and landscape architecture. The intention is to create atmospheres produced by the ambiguous spatiality that emerges from their combination. The design process will be undertaken through three main methods that complement each other, which include observation, case study methodology, and design exploration. This project has to be represented employing a wide range of different tools of architectural communication, i.e. physical and digital models, drawings, and images, etc.

Studio Leader

Isabel Lasala is one of the Directors of Lasala & Lasala Architects, an award-winning practice with more than fifteen years of experience. Isabel holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Universidad Central de Venezuela, a Master of Architecture from ETSAB/Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, and an MPhil in Landscape Architecture from University of New South Wales. Her practice-based research investigates new possibilities emerged at the intersection of architecture and landscape architecture. In 2014, Ediciones FAU/UCV published her book Creating Places: Exalting and Overcoming the Architectural Object in the Work of Pablo Lasala. Before settling in Australia in 2009, Isabel was a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of UCV. Here, she has taught design studios at Melbourne University, Monash University, RMIT, UNSW, and University of Technology Sydney.

Readings & References

• Andersen, B 2003, Alvar Aalto and Jorn Utzon: An Architecture of Ancient Gathering Forms, University of Aalborg, Aalborg
• Callois, R 1958, Man, play and games, University of Illinois Press
• Cosgrove, D 1999, Mappings, Reaktion Books, London Galofaro, L 2002, Artscapes. Art as an approach to contemporary landscape, Gustavo Gili (Land&ScapeSeries), Barcelona
• Gehl, J 2001, Life between buildings: using public space, Island Press, Washington DC
• Gehl, J 2013, How to study public life?, Island Press, Washington DC
• Huizinga, J 1949, Homo ludens: a study of the play-element in culture, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London
• Leatherbarrow, D 2009, Architecture oriented otherwise. Princeton Architectural Press, New York
• Leatherbarrow, D 2004, Topographical Stories. Edited by John Dixon Hunt, Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Pallasmaa, J 2012, The eyes of the skin. Architecture and the senses, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK
• Pallasmaa, J 2012, The thinking hand. Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture, AD John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK
• Pérez de Arce, R 2018, City of play: an architecture and urban history of recreation and leisure, Blomsbury, London
• Petschek, P 2008, Grading for landscape architects and architects, Birkhauser, Basel - Boston – Berlín
• Ruby, I & A 2006, Groundscapes The rediscovery of the ground in contemporary architecture, Gustavo Gili (Land&ScapeSeries), Barcelona
• Sola-Morales, I 1999, Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston
• Tufte, E 1990, Envisioning Information, Graphics Press, New York
• Tufte, E 1997, Visual Explanations, Graphics Press, New York
• Tutte, C 2012, The child whisperer, the ultimate handbook for raising happy, successful, and cooperative children, Live your truth Press

Schedule 09:00-12:00 Mondays and Thursdays

Contact Handbook Key Dates