Duration
192h Pr
Number of credits
| Master in architecture, professional focus in architecture and urban planning | 15 crédits |
Lecturer
Pierre De Wit, Olivier Fourneau, Olivier Henz, Margarida Tavares Alvares Serrão
Coordinator
Language(s) of instruction
French language
Organisation and examination
Teaching in the second semester
Schedule
Units courses prerequisite and corequisite
Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program
Learning unit contents
The "Habitat / Habitation postures" workshop is part of the "Habitat / Habitation" Master's workshops, which deals with habitability in the broad and complex sense of the term. Housing as a focal point, but also all the everyday places and itineraries that make up the living environment, the environment in which each person lives. The spaces in their materiality, but also the complex and dynamic relationships that the inhabitants have with these spaces.
The workshop questions the shaping of housing in an urban context. The exploration of references and fundamentals of the history of housing should enable the student to situate the spatial qualities of his own research and experiments on the notion of inhabitation.
The posture of a practising architect places the studio in a multi-criteria approach, which contextualises the shaping of individual and collective housing in the context of changing societal concerns.
Faced with global environmental issues, the student is led to address, down to the smallest detail, sustainability in architecture, the economics of the project, the environmental impact of materiality and the circular approach to building (reuse, recyclability, etc.). In addition to typological, spatial and formal studies of architectural production, particular attention is paid to the evolution of the project over time (flexibility of spaces, demountability, etc.). Finally, from a sociotechnical perspective, understood in opposition to spatial and technical determinism, the workshop explores the building/users couple from an in-depth point of view of the behaviours and lived comfort of the occupants.
Depending on the areas of observation and the projects developed, the student will have the opportunity to approach, in a reflective and personal way, the transversal axes of the master programme: sustainability (impact of human habitation on its (mid)place of daily life, the place of nature in the city...). ); art (poetic and sensitive dimension of the occupation of public, collective and private space, creativity of the inhabitants, spatial interventions in space...); digital (spatial and social impacts of the diffusion of digital technology in daily life, use of digital technology to observe and project...); society (occupation, privatisation, segregation, appropriation... of public, collective and private spaces).
Learning outcomes of the learning unit
According to the dynamics of an Architecture for Humanity, the objective of the workshop inscribes its fundamentals in a frugal posture in energy, matter, technicality and territory. In his final project, the student explores the capacity and specificities of the architect to respond to environmental issues through several self-assessment tools (learning and manipulation of which are integrated in the workshop).
The ecological-technical approach is not an end of the workshop, but a means to cultivate and stimulate in the student the sustainable sensibility of shaping in the architectural posture.
Prerequisite knowledge and skills
Generally speaking, the prerequisites consist of all the theoretical or practical notions and methodologies learnt in the previous courses and workshops, which are exploited and extended by the project practice. This concerns the subjects and skills developed in all areas of teaching at the faculty.
The workshop requires the demonstration of a coherent approach integrating the assimilation and appropriate use of all the prerequisites, in an overall approach to project design.
Planned learning activities and teaching methods
The main teaching device is the workshop: a place for individual or collective exchange between students and teachers, based on the students' weekly production and their proactivity. The workshop organises the learning process in various and free means: collective brainstorming sessions, instruction or debriefing sessions, round tables to pool questions and disseminate information, personalised interviews based on the student's personal work, presentations and collegial criticism. Other pedagogical devices are introduced to feed into the development of the projects themselves (internal presentations within the workshop, isolated quick exercises, external lectures, lectures by speakers within the workshop, reading of articles, etc.).
Specific theoretical contents:
- Introduction to the handling of tools for observing and interpreting constructed devices, based on quantification by thermal simulation, life cycle analysis (LCA) and economics applied to the architectural project.
- Analysis of "postures" of architects engaged in environmental approaches to techniques (low tech / high tech) and habitability (social acceptability / sociotechnical approach).
- Sociological analyses of the perception and construction of comfort in energy-efficient buildings.
- Architecture, material and reuse.
Mode of delivery (face to face, distance learning, hybrid learning)
Face-to-face course
Further information:
Teaching takes place mainly in the workshop and secondarily on the project site.
Course materials and recommended or required readings
More generally, students are encouraged to engage in their own research and to nourish their reflections (library, conferences, trips...), in order to form a critical judgement.
Common reference texts are made available to students via the eCampus platform. If necessary, more specific texts are sent to the students or groups concerned.
Reading the following books and articles is recommended:
Banham, R., 2011, L'architecture de l'environnement bien tempéré , HYX ;
Beslay, C., Gournet, R., et Zélem, M. C., 2015, «Le "bâtiment économe": utopie technicienne et "résistance" des usages», in : Boissonnade, J. (dir), La ville durable controversée. Les dynamiques urbaines dans le mouvement critique, Petra ;
Bihouix, P., 2014, L'Âge des low tech. Vers une civilisation techniquement soutenable, Le Seuil;
Brand, S., 1994, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built, Viking Press;
Eberle, D., Aicher, F., Steiner, D., Feireiss, K., Junghans, L. et Widerin, P., 2015, The Temperature of Architecture: Be 2226. Portrait of an Energy-Optimized House, Birkhauser ;
Zélem, M. C., 2012, « Les énergies renouvelables en transition: de leur acceptabilité sociale à leur faisabilité sociotechnique », Revue de l'Energie, pp. 1-8.
Exam(s) in session
Any session
- In-person
written exam AND oral exam
Written work / report
Continuous assessment
Further information:
Attendance and participation in all activities organised within the workshop and in the field are compulsory. Personal and/or collective work is monitored and commented on a weekly basis.
The progress of the personal and/or collective work is subject to cumulative evaluations by the workshop team, at pre-defined phases, and according to pre-established criteria which may vary according to the nature of the stages: preparatory analyses, thematic approaches, preparatory work, sketch, preliminary project, developed project. In some cases, self-evaluation will be advocated by teachers in order to develop autonomy and a sense of self-criticism and organisation of thought and work progress in the student. The weighting between the stages of the projects is established by the teachers in proportion to the duration and importance of the phases.
The end-of-year project is evaluated by an extended final jury made up of the teaching team, other teachers and external experts; this jury has an impact on 35-50% of the total year points.
The presence of students in the workshops is compulsory: the unjustified absence of a student at more than 30% of the workshops can be a reason for refusal.
Unless there is a valid justification and exceptional reasons of force majeure, the submission of work which is late in relation to the instructions given in good time shall be sanctioned by an evaluation of 0/20.
Work placement(s)
Organisational remarks and main changes to the course
Contacts
Olivier Henz : ohenz@uliege.be
Pierre de Wit : pdewit@uliege.be
Margarida Tavares Alvares Serrão : mserrao@uliege.be
Olivier Fourneau : olivier.fourneau@uliege.be