From Lab to Field: Extending the Architectural Design Studio to Integrate Emerging Technologies

Abstract

The architectural design studio, as a place for educating future practitioners, is faced with two necessary dissociations: the distance from practice and its futurity. While the responses in architectural education have been varied1, the question of how to integrate emerging technologies seems to further sharpen these dissociations. This paper discusses the MMlab and Fieldstation studio, two learning environments set up as extensions of the design studio aiming to question the impact of emerging technologies on architecture. These extensions are particular ways of responding to the dissociations between the design studio and practice and its futurity: through hands-on experimentation with emerging technologies and questioning their relevance for architectural practice and culture, and by exploring the impact of technologies on the environments in which we operate as architects, deliberately looking for places and sites where emerging technologies manifest themselves with a particular urgency. The argument builds on a number of design studios, workshops and elective courses, it discusses two case studies in detail and describes the shift from lab to field in terms of subject matter, spatial setting and pedagogical approach.