Studio 3A: CARE

In Studio 3A, we see architecture as a practice of ecological thinking. Our design projects focus on adaptive reuse, regenerative materials and reversible construction systems. In our work, we cultivate care about what already exists by acknowledging the eco-systemic entanglements of circular buildings, materials and practices. We celebrate the qualities of space, elements and materiality that emerge as we rethink the approaches to building and unbuilding. This way, much of our work is a speculation that departs from the current realities of the industry. We look at sites of material extraction and harvesting, their processing facilities, supply chains, and buildings to critically reflect and speculate about how architecture can play a positive role towards a non-extractive future.

As the building economy makes a shift towards carbon neutrality in Denmark and elsewhere, Studio 3A considers new roles for future architects who will be inevitably engaged in working with life cycles of buildings and materials. For us, this means learning to examine existing resources and to make architecture that is used, maintained, repaired and cared for until it gets disassembled, reused or perhaps disintegrating and disappearing. We learn to unpack the emergent possibilities for life cycle thinking in architecture, so students can build a future-oriented set of skills and sensibilities both in research and design practice.

Studio 3A gives space to read, discuss, reflect, experiment, and hang out with practicing architects. In our process, we try to meet diverse societal and economic actors to collectively reflect on appropriate approaches to our design work. We take time to imagine, test, sense, write, experiment, draw and re-draw, build and unbuild our projects. In our work, we focus on quality rather than quantity, giving students time and space to develop their interest within the field. We borrow concepts from other disciplines and speculate with them, mixing tools of architecture with other media to rethink and re-tell stories through design, hopefully reimagining an ecological and forward-looking architecture.

Studio 3A is taught by Associate professor Ula Kozminska and Teaching assistant professor Matīss Groskaufmanis.

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