Categoria Atlas: Approaches

  • Layering Contexts

    Luigiemanuele Amabile in conversation with Maria Conen. LA: To begin: could you describe how you typically organize your design studio? Are there particular characteristics of your approach that you consider specific to the ETH context – or to your own architectural vision – when compared to other institutions? MC: I can say that the teaching…

  • Teaching from within: architecture as process and practice

    Luigiemanuele Amabile in conversation with Thomas Padmanabhan. In a context of multiple crises like the one we are experiencing, architecture has little room to shape public discourse. The contemporary design process – so complex and shaped by countless variables – makes the coexistence of teaching and professional practice one of the few viable ways to explore alternatives…

  • Architecture as social-material practice

    Luigiemanuele Amabile in conversation with Niall McLaughlin. LA: In your opinion, how should a contemporary architectural design studio be structured in terms of its work over an academic semester and its day-to-day practices? Which tools should it prioritise? In particular, I am curious to know whether physical models, hand-drawn sketches, digital renderings, immersive simulations, data-driven…

  • Architecture within uncertainty

    Luigiemanuele Amabile in conversation with Christoph Grafe. LA: Which challenges in our built and natural environments should today’s architectural design studios engage with? CG: Reuse and adaptation of buildings – as cultural, aesthetic, and technical questions; the needs and preferences of a culturally diverse society; regional appropriateness; the value of labour in building, and the…

  • Questioning typologies, or the hybrid future of architectural design

    Luigiemanuele Amabile in conversation with Andreas Lechner. LA: What challenges related to the built and natural environment should an architectural design studio confront today? AL: I consider myself a hybrid practitioner – someone who deliberately navigates and often blurs the boundaries between theory, practice, and pedagogy. Yet no matter how broad the investigative field, the…

  • We don’t have all the answers – we explore together

    Luigiemanuele Amabile in conversation with Marius Grootveld. LA: How does granting students autonomy over their research trajectories impact motivation, critical engagement, and the coherence of studio discourse, and how should this autonomy be balanced with structured guidance? MG: At the beginning of each studio, I try to instil a sense of responsibility in the students…

  • Teaching repetition

    Valentina Noce in conversation with Andreas Lechner. VN: The first thing I wanted to talk to you about is my struggle when teaching between two kinds of approaches. The first one is almost like a psychological, psychotherapy approach to students – where you act as a kind of disturbing observer. You let the students do what…

  • Teaching architecture in a fragmented world

    Luigiemanuele Amabile in conversation con Wolfgang Brune. LA: What issues in the built and natural environment should an architectural design studio address today? WB: The question is related to all the well-known general issues that we have to deal with today: Sustainability, recycling, emissions reduction, resource conservation, social responsibility and so on. That’s very true.…

  • The pedagogy of the complete gesture

    The philosophy of the gesture originates within American pragmatism, whose essential characteristic is that it is an anti-dichotomous philosophy, standing against the distinctions between description/norm, body/spirit, mind/brain, theory/practice, and so on – distinctions rooted in Cartesian and Kantian culture. Of course, we are talking about a certain interpretation of Descartes and a certain interpretation of…

  • The design studio as a research program

    “Sense of possibility”: without that, the pedagogy of design studios would make no sense, precisely. With the 1993 reform, courses in architectural composition and design began to be called studios because it was recognized that architectural design is learned by doing; but perhaps it was not stated just as clearly that in design studios, doing…