Student work 4

What’s the scenario? A constantly mutating sequence of possibilities. Add a morsel of difference and the results slip out of control, shift the location for action and everything is different. There is a fundamental gap between societies that base their development on scenarios and those that base their development on planning...”

Contemporary design rarely – if ever – takes scenarios into account. Rather, design disciplines continue to engage the task of planning and designing for new settlement in fixed, singular and unresponsive ways that presume the preferred outcome is the only one worth elaborating. However, designers need to begin thinking in terms of scenarios, contingency and variability. On that score, during the Graduation Studio 2016/2017, students were confronted to a multitude of “what ifs” that shaped their design, looking at the fabrication of the city through a multitude of filters.

What if the average global temperature rises 6C instead of 2C by 2100? What if national borders are eliminated? What if regulations impose a minimum global FAR of 20?, etc.   

During the studio, students were asked to test those scenarios at the scale of the housing block.