BUILDING EMOTIONS: FINAL DRAWINGS

Dear team,

We finished the series BUILDING EMOTIONS yesterday, when Architecture to Converse was presented in Alicante.

My last month and a half in Ottawa has passed very fast... and all of us know that when time flies it means that one has had a great experience!
When preparing the aims for this course, it was important to bear in mind that it consisted of an exercise of just one and a half months. I am used to formulate a course spanning a whole year, giving importance to the Process and, from there, to the Reflection.
I have also been invited for a week-workshop, or even only two-days workshop, just a weekend, when one values the process.
In our case, 6 weeks gives no time for Reflection, so my aim was to establish a Process that will make you reflect as soon as the course is finished. This is a Retroactive Reflection for this Xmas!

The first part of the year, RE-READING STORIES OF HOUSES, started working with Reality, with examples of existing houses that owed their origins to the specific culture of their clients. This is clearly an intellectual position that defends architecture as a Comparative Study. The exercise consisted of upgrading architecture from the 20th century to the 21st. It is true that at the beginning some of you considered it as a very theoretical course, although we finished even designing a technical detail drawing and a manifesto where all of you acknowledged the importance of this Method.

And this is precisely our key word, Method, which we have tried to develop in the Studio.

The second part, BUILDING EMOTIONS, was a course for full Production. Starting from very well known activities at our homes, the research was developed when constructing an installation. The agreement was that you had to take a Risk, to work with the known but to go beyond and into the unknown. Therefore, you would need to ask for help to an Expert.
I hope this exercise makes you Reflect. Although Canadians live in a very safe a stable society, the world is changing dramatically. Think that Athens was celebrating the Olympics just eight years ago! ... and all of us already know what is going on in Spain.
Still, even in the case of Canada, a country starting a new present of opportunities, you, as architects, will be asked to participate to construct the new future.
Therefore all these changes, for bad or for good, oblige you to learn a method for going beyond, asking for help. Imagine you could design and build all your installations again and question who would be your collaborators: engineers, industrial designers, sociologists, artists or professors of theory.

Please don't forget to upload the Final Drawing of your installation (It consists of a board 10" x 10" with drawings and a short description of the project, where the technique of the drawing itself has to refer to the aim of the project. That means, each group has to find the most appropriate design of the board to communicate the most).

Lastly, I asked the students in Alicante to describe the most positive points of this international experience, as well as comment on what can be improved in case we repeat the collaboration. I would appreciate that whose who haven’t done it yet (including the Canadian colleagues), would write this short text and send to me via email.

We keep in touch. Happy Xmas and the best for 2013!
javier