INTER404 Senior Linkage Studio

Half the world's population will live in urban areas by the end of this year and about 70 percent will be city dwellers by 2050. According to the latest U.N. estimate last year, world population is expected to increase from 6.7 billion in 2007 to 9.2 billion in 2050. During the same time period, the new report said, the population living in urban areas is projected to rise from 3.3 billion to 6.4 billion (International Herald Tribune 2/26/08). As we consider this trend, space will become a premium in how we build. Becoming more compact, dwellings will need to become more flexible and adaptable in the ways people can occupy them. Smaller spaces by their very nature must be less specific in their nomenclature (i.e. dining room, living room, etc.), but also highly customizable as they engage the user in a multitude of ways to be most effective. With space at this premium we must develop methods of allowing users to modify and personalize their dwellings to suit changing needs of use, family demographics, age, preference and desire. A central question in this pursuit is how can the house morph and change to its varied conditions? This studio will investigate a small dwelling focusing on the reexamination of the rituals of food preparation, eating and personal hygiene. The course will center generally around the issue of tangible interfaces in the visual and haptic realm. This subject will be addressed broadly and will begin with investigations into both person to object and person to spatial relationships and how they are meaningfully formed. Projects through the semester will increase in scope culminating towards examining interpersonal relationships as facilitated through objects and spaces, and utilizing scenario building as a methodological tool in determining how the ecology of artifacts around us can, and do, mediate social interaction. The studio will engage in making artifacts and/or spatial environments to test these scenarios.