Studio 3A: CARE

In Studio 3A: CARE we explore ecological thinking in architecture. We develop architectural positions to make sense of the challenges within our material and immaterial contexts. For us, sustainability is not a mood, style, or technological paradigm, but rather a series of investigations in climate change adaptation. We consider a building not an object, and an architectural project is never limited to its circumstances. Therefore, we work towards architecture that is aware of both its generative and destructive potentials. We advocate for design that maintains, reuses, repairs, mends, refurbishes, adds and subtracts.

As the narratives of economic growth based in abundance no longer seem to correspond with the environmental realities, we see that our ways of thinking and designing need to be reformed. From growing CO2 emissions, material waste and excessive consumption of non-renewable resources to increasingly unbalanced socio-economic conditions, we see our work being situated in a world that is in a state of multiplying crisis. The greater frequency of systemic shocks—natural, manmade, or most often a combination of both—reveal how brittle are the seemingly stable forms of economic, social, and spatial organization, and we see architecture being closely entangled with these conditions.

We take time to engage with these urgencies. At a moment when both problems and ad-hoc solutions that intended to address them are multiplying quickly, Studio CARE is devoted to studying elements and processes of architecture from an eco-systemic perspective, and this necessitates unpacking the notions of sustainability. As the built form is always embedded into multiple contexts and time scales at once, architects need to develop methods and tools to engage with these modalities. We do this through design briefs, research, and collective reflections that are looking for architecture that embraces ambiguity, complexity and interconnectedness of the built environment; an architecture that cares.

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