Investigations into shape, space, voids and porosity

Fundamentals of design, exercises and lectures at the University of Applied Sciences Dessau, Faculty of Architecture, winter semester 2024/25

Students are encouraged to think speculatively and to visualize these thoughts in imaginable spaces. The tools for

this are experiments, drawings and models.

The working method is methodical on the one hand, but intuitive at the same time. We develop spatial strategies

that we can also leave behind and break through. This means a kind of ‘parascientific’ approach, emphatically

subjective, but by no means arbitrary, and in any case extremely speculative.

Students building models in November 2024 (University of Applied Sciences Dessau)

Foto: © Michael Wallraff

We develop spatial methods from our imagination, but when we realize them in models we see new, unexpected

aspects that we do not negate, but include in our thinking, evaluate and, if necessary, pursue despite all

illogicality and against our better judgement. This gives rise to experimental spatial configurations and new ideas

for the next steps in our work. The aim of this semester is not to achieve a specific predetermined result, but to

explore the process.