In/Out/Side

It is imperative to determine what is the architectural problem that the current syndemic condition poses. One cannot but note that the use of the term syndemic is much more accurate in describing the drastic shifts and far-reaching consequences that are usually simplified when speaking of Covid-19 as merely a medical pathology. A syndemic refers to the transversal (and therefore, transdisciplinary) synergistics of a condition that is at once biological, social, economic and, for our interest, architectural.

During the MSc2 Architecture Theory Design Studio we examined our relationship with urban and domestic spaces as fundamentally technological. To make such a claim clear, we incorporated a different understanding of technology, defining it as any attempt to manipulate, intervene and transform our (built) environment. Moreover, any such attempt, what philosopher Gilbert Simondon calls a technicity, simultaneously transforms our environment, our technologies and us.

Which are our current urban and architectural technicities? What do they change in their reciprocity and how have they changed themselves in the past year? These are the main questions we addressed during this Studio, making clear that the urgent issue of a syndemic urbanity is the significance of collectivity as something that surpasses the binaries between interior and exterior, private and public.

This is precisely what the five projects presented in this exhibition attempt to do: by transversing all different scales and levels of complexity, they aspire to trace, speculate and problematise the technicities of the past year, aiming not only to find out what we have learned but also what we could still learn were we to think and feel otherwise.

Studio Tutors: Stavros Kousoulas, Andrej Radman, Heidi Sohn

Students: Aleksandra Shopova, Alice Sikiaridis, Amber Sikkema, Daniel Behro, Francesca Crotti, Guus de Hoop, Jose Maria Gomez-Acebo Botin-Sanz de Sautuola, Juulia Jääskeläinen, Lucas Mézière, Margo Smeenge, Martynas Kilius, Midas Hoezen, Pieter Tilman, Rafaella Giannoudi, Raneem Nahawandi, Thomas Ibrahim, Timo van Dalen, Turan Ziaiemehr.