After successful completion of the course, students are able to approach the complexity of an architectural task in a critical and inventive manner. They will have gained experience in working within an abstract context, exploring specific aspects of it in depth, and developing an active stance throughout.

While plants take root on earth and expose their leaves to the sun, their fruits grow mobile in nature. They become figures – each of them, in a current way, an ambassador of their solar kin. Whether sweet or familiar, sour or strange, fruits are the fruit of joy, if we follow their etymology, and joy figuratively opens again room for fruition – utilitas (purposefulness) and delectatio (delight). A pair of concepts that we will look for in the cosmic rhythms of architecture and that we will confront with its canonic notion of comfort.

Doing so, we will visit and study Pomona's pomarium – the orchard of a wood nymph and Roman goddess of fruit. A space of communication – mixture of inside and outside – that seeks a fruitful connection between two classically distinct architectural domains: the "interior" and the "landscape"; and one that, given this togetherness, also invites to think about its relation to the city. Each of us will act as a host and architect of such pomaria, not only to engender new fruits, but to go after what it can mean for something to be fruitful today – to be open to new nature(s).

Throughout the course, we will combine various architectural techniques (from contemporary landscape to interior practice) and involve plenty of texts, images and models, to observe and speculate, explore and invent; we will talk and work and work and talk climatically, and we will focus on generous architectonic gestures by looking for what can be condensed and dispersed rather than defined or divided up (built or demolished). Working through a series of assigned tasks, we will collaborate thereby on a pomona – a fruit volume.

The course stands alone in its approach, but in its interest it is in line with a design studio on fruits that took place last semester at the ATTP. ↗
For coursework reference, see the final volume of the Daedalus Observatory – outcome of a research involving the ACT courses of W17-18. ↗

ACT combines lecture, exercise, and discussion – active participation in all three, as well as the consistent development and richness of the work submitted, will determine your final grade. In addition, our sessions are not recorded, so personal attendance (except in cases of illness or force majeure) is required for successful participation and completion of the course.