Instructors
Dr Joëlle Bitton
Dr Antonio Scarponi
Clemens Winkler
Timeframe
The module takes place over 4 weeks, from 26.03.18 to 20.04.18, from Tuesday to Friday, 9.30-17.00 - see timetable below for detailed hours and classrooms. Class sessions include discussions, mentoring sessions, in-class exercises, assignments and independent study blocks.
**Projects are conducted individually or in a team of three students at most** Check
Overview and Objectives: Habitat & Climate Change
Interdisciplinary DDE Praxismodul 2018 – Climate Change in Switzerland
Brief
The Latin word "habére" highlights and addresses multiple powerful meanings that refer today, to the relationship with our environment.
It means, in fact, to "have", to "hold", to "own", or to "possess". It is the etymological root of many words of today's languages. The word "abito" in Italian for instance, stands for the noun "dress" but also for the verb "abitare," to "dwell" or to "inhabit," in English. In Italian, it also stands for "abitudine," or "habit," in the sense of "having good or bad habits" exactly like in the English sense. But most important, it is also the etymological root of the word "habitat", defining in a more holistic way, our environment and the specific set of conditions in which a species lives.
All these multiple meanings reflect an attitude that humans have towards the environment. On the one hand, they stand for something that we "have" or "hold", "own" or "possess", like in the sense of a habit, of a dress, or a home, items with a very strong symbolic but also functional meaning. On the other hand, they stand for something in which we are held within, like a habitat. In other words, it describes an attitude that we keep in reaction to an external condition, but at the same time, it is the outer condition in itself.
Based on these etymological considerations of the word "habitat", students will be encouraged to reflect upon the fragility of the human existence under the constant threat of change (historicalpolitical, economic, technological, sociological, environmental, etc.). Based on the narrative of climate, students will be specifically asked to imagine and to build a 1:1 interior of the "house of the future", made of corrugated cardboard, as a symbolic material that stands for precarity, temporary, fragility, of human existence on the planet. In particular, the constraint of the uncertainty of what tomorrow is made of (anything can happen) should be emphasised in the overall creative process.
The "home of the future" will be constructed as cultural, theatrical, scenographic prop. Students will be divided into groups and develop the different part of what it will be considered the "future of living" based on the primary human activities that define our domestic landscape. The course will establish a temporary "cardboard lab" where the construction and realization of a collective interior of the future will be guided, reflected, developed.
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