Shelter. Studio project 09. 2022 – 07.2023
The aim of the first-year students’ autumn term task is to introduce the prerequisites, reasons and possibilities of architecture. In their search for solutions, students need to explore and consider the relations between a person and their surroundings.
The semester consists of four parts. In graphics every student chooses a small building and describes it with one word. During the course, drawings characterizing the chosen building (plan, section, view) must be presented in both the original and the mutated form. In the second part of graphics, students create various moving digital images by writing code in the Processing program.
During their five-day creative code studio, students have to express their abstract ideas in a digital world by using the processing programming language. As a result, dynamic graphics are created.
In the VR studio, this code gets turned into a three-dimensional space, using a VR headset along with other 3D modeling tools.
The main focus of the autumn semester is on a more practical part, where students design a shelter based on their needs and wishes. From 2021 to 2024 the shelters are built in Tartu, as it is the European Capital of Culture in 2024. Every year there are four possible locations, which are issued to students at random. In addition to the location, students are provided with 1 kilometre of wood and 80 concrete blocks. The rest is up to the students themselves.
The culmination of the course is the construction of one of the designed shelters. Such collective construction activities help to understand the complex relationship between architecture and the real construction, as well as to create a strong course spirit.
Thus the shelter of 2023: BIRDWAY was born.
Supervisors: Ott Alver, Alvin Järving (Arhitekt Must).
Compiler: Sofia Schneider-Sepping.
Estonian Academy of Arts Department of Architecture and Urban Design, 2024.
Supported by The Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
ISBN 978-9916-740-08-8 (print)
ISBN 978-9916-740-09-5 (pdf)
ISSN 2461-2359