Studio leaders: Katie Skillington and Jim Stewart
_
"what is the state of dwelling in our precarious age?"
In this Reheated edition of the Passive Aggressive studio, students were asked to contemplate the question of how we dwell in the context of global concerns relating to built environment sustainability, efficiency, and occupant comfort. The fragility and vulnerability of our environments, and threats to established social, natural and financial systems mean the status quo will no longer suffice. The next generation of built environment professionals will need to know how to adapt to these changing and confronting circumstances.
Over two design tasks – which culminated in the designs seen here – this studio challenged traditional ideas around how we design, construct, and occupy the spaces that house our daily activities. Students were tasked with designing for current and changing climatic conditions (PASSIVE), whilst exploring a passionate, well-articulated and individual expression of what it means to dwell in a place (AGGRESSIVE). The briefs were relaxed and with a choice of two sites, a variety of different mixed-use responses were crafted: from co-housing for students, to accommodation for creative professionals, and even a hospice. The German PassivHaus (Passive House) standard was introduced as a framework to help quantify and appreciate the real, physical implications of design decisions around materiality, form factor, orientation, glazing and envelope design. For the designs shown here, simplified energy assessments were conducted by each student, and they were required to demonstrate how their designs perform from a thermal comfort and efficiency perspective.
Each semester that Passive Aggressive runs, we’re joined by a number of professionals and critics who help our students along with their design and Passive House work. This semester, we’d like to extend our deepest thanks and gratitude to the following guests for their time, interest and support in delivering online lectures and crits for Passive Aggressive: Reheated – Cliff Chang, Anastasia Christoe, Walter van der Linde, Yi Lobachevsky, Adam Murray, Kate Nason, Nidhya Sakathevan, Sarah Huiseung Song, Johanna Trickett, and our additional date night guests: Erika Bartak, Xavier Cadorel, Adrian Chu, Tim Jones, Andrea (Andrew) Pianella, Nayan Puri, and Marcus Strang.
And lastly, the studio leaders would like to thank their students for their perseverance, hard work, and good humour during what was a very challenging semi-online semester.
See more of our work on Instagram @passiveagreessivestudio