ED3/AMP1 2022-2023 Studio Descriptions

“The phenomenon develops calmly, but it is inevitable, unstoppable. One feels, one sees it born and grow steadily; and it is not in one’s power to either hasten it or slow it down. Any person, brought into the presence of this fact, stops for a few moments and remains pensive and silent; and then generally leaves, carrying with [them] forever a sharper, keener sense of our incessant motion through space.”  
Léon Foucault – Describing his pendulum (1851)1

In describing the experience of his pendulum in 1851, Léon Foucault reorientates his sensation of the external world about the experiment’s demonstrated reality. The pendulum’s oscillating swing confirms the rotation of the earth before our eyes and the previously abstract becomes experiential. The magic-like spectacle of an empirical process or physical construction offers immediate structural, material, and chemical conditions that enable our intellect and imagination to flourish. As territories, studios and laboratories are both sites of knowledge-making and notation. In each space, research is nominally separate from the world in which its products are applied.² In this regard, scientific and architectural processes are generally ex situ in nature, but the agency of physical experiments can precede in situ applications as an instructive accomplice. 

Inter Situ Studio is simultaneously a physical in situ site for design inquiries and an ex situ laboratory for the projected application of their results. It offers a framework for architectural experimentation through physical constructions, analogs, and prototypes examining architectural ideas' conception, production, and notation. Emphasizing the experience of material fabrications and physically tectonic assemblies, the studio recognizes and develops the discipline as “as much a craft-based métier as an applied technique.”³ To motivate this work with historical precedent, the studio will travel to the cities of Paris and Lyon in France to examine a range of experimental architectural projects, radical urban spaces, and museums including the Musée des Arts et Métier’s prolific collection of scientific instruments and didactic models. Through the term, the studio will visit and collaborate with fabrication facilities both on and off the U of M campus to engage with a contemporary state of design practice. Projecting forward with regard to the manifold developing crises of this moment, Inter Situ Studio chooses an outlook of optimism and operates with dexterity. Instead of asking to return to the normals of the past, it asks how we construct new equitable tools for design processes and new modes of investigation for contextual architectural thinking. On the juncture of science and architecture, Kenneth Frampton writes: 

“The interface between architecture and science returns to the political… the epistemic criteria of a critical practice aren’t just out there waiting to be appropriated and applied. On the contrary, they have to be formulated in the process of constructing a world, just as building comes into being about the convergence of a set of forms and materials that do not as yet exist.”⁴

Paris / Lyon Travel Study 
Proposed Dates:     Oct 15th- Oct 22nd 
Suggested Budget: 
Flights + Train:             $1200
Accommodations:     $600 
Museums + Tours:     $150 
All food and other variable costs are at the student’s discretion. 

^{Notes:
1  Aczel, Amir D. Pendulum: Léon Foucault and the Triumph of Science, 15. New York: Atria Books, 2003.
2  Schmidgen, Henning. “The Laboratory.” Encyclopedia of the History of Science, April 2021, 2–3. https://doi.org/doi: 10.34758/sz06-t975.
3  Galison, Peter, Emily Ann Thompson, and Kenneth Frampton. “The Mutual Limits of Architecture and Science.” Essay. In The Architecture of Science, 1st ed., 363. MIT Press, 1999.
4  Ibid, 368.}

“Now comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours?  Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength: and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty.” (“Old Major” prize-winning boar. George Orwell. Animal Farm)

“The best human personality type for single unit dairy farms was characterized. A self-reliant, confident, introvert, quiet, reserved, non-sociable ("grumpy") person with cows can easily out-produce (eight herds with 5,191 liters) a similar person lacking confidence (six herds of 4,535 liters), while a confident extrovert ("cheerful Charlie") tends to have only average production achievement ( 4,629 liter average in six herds). A sound relationship is based on communication as well as confidence. Some competent cow man talks to their cows when they are under stress. They use a pleasant voice but at times display the necessary dominance. The good communicator is somewhat placid, rather than excitable, and he rein­forces good behavior by pleasant words and touch (contact comfort) with his cows.” (J.L. Albright. Human/farm animal relationships)

livestock (n.)
"domestic animals kept for use or profit," from live (adj.) + stock (n.2). 
Live is derived from alive: Live (liiv) is a verb that means to be alive, to find a way to subsist, to engage with life in a certain way, to survive, to exist in a certain location. 
Stock: inventory of goods or supplies. “to keep in stock”; a product   (noun)
(https://www.etymonline.com) 

The Anthropocene is introducing a revolution in human consciousness. Through the collective advancement of scientific data combined with the generations of indigenous knowledge we have come to understand as an enormously valuable resource, we have arrived at the realization that we do not belong to ourselves. We are enmeshed with all living beings on this planet, human and non-human alike and our interdependence and existence are dependent on this fragile coexistence. This revelation has destabilized man’s ego-centric claim to supremacy and has left only one solution; we need to drastically shift our relationship toward all other entities on this planet - from one of exploitation to one of solidarity. (Morton)

In an act of solidarity, this studio will explore the collective subjects between man and beast (nature), attuning to who we are as mankind by way of uncovering the beauty in the beast.  From the perspective of this alliance, the studio will survey topics such as ownership of resources (land and beast), the claiming of territory and the ontology of the “common good”.

This studio will be inquiry-based, motivated by speculation and direct material engagement pulsating between multiple scales, methods and dimensions. Students in this course will be encouraged to rely on their intuition and individual curiosities as “generators” for critical thinking and dialogue.

The year will be organized into three cumulative projects:
01 A speculative act of compassion
02 A fictitious act of realistic probabilities
03 A common act of solidarity 

Studio Collaborators: Carl Szczerski (Ecologist, Department of Biological science), Faculty members from the Department of Agriculture and Food Sciences, first and third-generational regenerative farmers, and members from Food Matters Manitoba/Food Action Hub and the Winnipeg food council

Field Trip:
5-day Farm Stay.  Clearwater, Manitoba.
Total estimated cost per student (transportation, accommodations, and food): $150.00
Total carbon emissions: 12.4kg/student 
 

Image: Movie still from the documentary COW. Directed by Andrea Arnold. IFC films. 2021
Orwell, George. Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. New York: The New American Library. 1946.
Albright, J.L. Human/farm animal relationships. In M.W. Fox & L.D. Mickley (Eds.), Advances in animal welfare science 1986/87 (pp. 51-66). Washington, DC: The Humane Society of the United States
Morton, Timothy. Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. New York : Columbia University Press. 2016