LFU:online

>>Garbage city<<

Hybrid infrastructural elements for new urban tissues in El Cairo.

This studio will explore the possibility of using Artificial intelligent as a design tool to test design speculations on the Dom-Ino diagram to trigger the debate over new typological, formal and tectonic configurations capable of hosting that specific casuistic of Manshiyat Naser. A new hybrid which foresees the programmatic mixture of infrastructure, housing, and recycling

Manshiyat Naser is a neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt. It covers 5.54 square kilometers, home to 262,050 people. It is famous for the Garbage City quarter which is a slum settlement at the far southern end. Being Cairo's largest concentration of Zabbaleen -garbage collectors-, around 40.000, its economy revolves around the collection and recycling of the city's garbage. Over 66% of this garbage is being recycled in Cairo which has an estimated cost of 14 million dollars.

All these circumstances created a very peculiar landscape where tons of garbage are being collected, stored, classified and recycled in a very dense urban scenario. There are no public services or infrastructures. Hygienic and social conditions are deficient. But in the middle of all this chaos there is a very clear Modernist mass production system emerging, reinforced concrete structures, they host all this amalgam of events.

In such conditions, architecture is being reduced to the essence. Perhaps for this very reason it is often used Le Corbusier´s Dom-Ino system as structural prototype for mass production. An archetype in its most primitive state which creates a whole new urban scape created through variations and aggregations of itself.

"AI" is becoming a prominent premise on the current architectural debate. The aim is to explore the possibilities of implementing AI as a valid tool to produce disciplinary knowledge, in this case a design methodology in an academic environment.

>AI as a tool: AI is becoming a relevant topic in the current architectural debate. It appeared as a powerful tool to test arguments in a quick visual manner. Most of the platforms at our disposal are image generation tools that take inputs through text prompts and parameters and use a Machine Learning (ML) algorithm trained on a large amount of image data to produce unique images. Thus, in the “creativity/production” equation, quantity and computational speed are becoming important factors. Even further, assuming the fact that our imagination is 95% built out of the images we have archived in our memory, one could argue that counting with an immense archive or endless number of images would be a beneficial scenario in a creative environment. The challenge here is how to navigate between “algorithm driven mash-up images” and “unconscious design knowledge”, which requires certain training.

This course will be an Advanced Architectural Design studio which examines the connection between conceptual understanding of design and form generation through digital design techniques. Essential knowledge will be acquired by software modeling and critical current discourse on the discipline. Students will be instructed in theory and simultaneously they will be equipped with digital techniques of design and representation.

The course will be divided into three blocks. Each of them will last four weeks and it will contain theory and design tasks. These three design tasks will reflect over three main levels of understanding: conceptual, procedural and practical.

Lehrveranstaltungsprüfung gemäß § 7 Satzungsteil, Studienrechtliche Bestimmungen.

Wird im Rahmen der ersten Lehrveranstaltung besprochen.

Informationen zur Anmeldung zu den Entwurfsstudio Lehrveranstaltungen finden Sie unter: https://www.uibk.ac.at/fakultaeten-servicestelle/standorte/technikerstrasse/studium.html/

The design task will be to create a portion of the urban tissue. Students will have to develop an area of 500 m long by 400 m wide.

Course Structure & Organization

Students will work individually. Each session will contain a theoretical lesson, deskcrits and specific software tutorials needed for developing the project. Progress will be reviewed weekly at the studio.