Yona Friedman, Merzstrukturen (work in progress), 2006, courtesy of Museo di Rovereto.
Interdisciplinary DDE Praxismodul 2018 – Climate Change in Switzerland
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Overview and Objectives: Habitat & Climate Change threats
The Latin word "habére" highlights and addresses multiple powerful meanings that refer today to the relationship with our environment.
It means 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 “clothes" but also for the verb "abitare" - to “dwell" or to "inhabit". It also stands for "abitudine," or "habit," in the sense of "having good or bad habits". But most importantly, 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 meanings reflect an attitude that humans have towards the environment. They stand for something that we "have", "own" or "possess", like in the sense of a habit, of clothes, or a home - both symbolic and functional items. As well, 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 (political, economic, technological, sociological, environmental, etc.). With the narrative of climate, students will be specifically asked to imagine and to build a 1:1 interior of a habitat and highlights specific details of that domestic landscape.
The material for this habitat is 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.
As that habitat is shaped, it has the potential to become a theatrical and scenographic prop where a narrative can occur, and can serve as landscape for further contexts.
The course will be established in a temporary "cardboard lab", a room where the construction and realisation of that habitat will be guided and reflected upon.
Constraints:
Narrative
- taking the notion of climate change and its threats as a narrative
- students work on different scales (abito ~ human approach; habit ~ social approach; agitare ~ ecological approach;)
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