RMB 10.2 – Design Studio 2B: Reuse, building and urbanD

Recommended Prerequisites

N/A

Teaching Methods

Design Studio with lectures, seminar, studio and desk crits. Starts with an intensive two-week workshop.
-Theoretical lectures presenting themes and concepts that will be worked on in the Design Studio.
- Practical classes where teachers work with the students on the development of his/her project in which the work
of the students is either in group or individual work.
- Field trips to the site to promote a better design problem understanding.
Continuous Evaluation + Interim and final presentations, with critical evaluation and delivery of documentation.
Presentation at the RMB colloquium

Learning Outcomes

Through the simulation of the office environment and teamwork, the course aims to promote critical and creative
learning, mutual help in building common knowledge and empowering the student to:
Learn design methodologies to modernize existing collective Housing buildings.
Understand the need for and learn to seek “knowledge” to intervene in existing modern buildings.
Acquire the ability to successfully detect the specific multidisciplinary need for knowledge that informs
interventions on existing buildings.
Establish intervention strategies based on the knowledge of modern buildings.
Develop learning and understanding of the intervention over modern buildings because of a trilogy that includes
increased levels of performance; preservation of values; reinvention of buildings.
Mastering the graphic codes of representation of the project and proposing new modes of communication to defend
critical reflection clearly and adequately on the existing and intervention.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

Project is the pole of knowledge aggregation in the semester. It focuses on adapting a building to current usage and
performance conditions, with a view to maintaining its essential values, as an example of
"Modern building". The assignment of the project has a particular focus on the habitability and sustainability of the
building.
In RMB 10B, students should start with the identification of which values (technical, artistic,
morpho-typological) to preserve and which are the conditions of the intervention to propose competently informed
intervention strategies aiming for the conceptualization of the proposal.
Confrontation between the required program and its compatibility within the existing building is resolved in the first
ideas of the proposal.
Projects for buildings (reinvention) developed following the defined strategy and always framed by self-imposed
restrictions (values to preserve) and the objectives established for the functioning of buildings (performance).

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Continuous Evaluation + Interim and final presentations, with critical evaluation and delivery of documentation. Presentation at the RMB colloquium.: 100.0%

Bibliography

Lawson, B(1997) How Designers Think: the Design Process Demystified, Oxford: Architectural Press.
Ford, E. R.(1997) The Details of Modern Architecture, London: MIT Press
Melenhorst, M.; Moniz, G. C.; Providência, P.(2018), Teaching through Design, in: 2 nd Reuse of
Modernist Buildings Conference. Coimbra, Detmold: RMB Project, e|d|arq
Melenhorst, M.; Bastos, F. Contributions of Academic Workshops to the Discussion on the Reuse of Modernist
Buildings, in:DOCOMOMO Congress, Lubliana, Procedings of DOCOMOMO Congress,Lubliana, 485-492
Douglas, James(2006), Building Adaptation, Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann(1ª ed.2002).
Forty, Adrian(2012), Words and Buildings – A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture, London, Thames and Hudson (1ª
ed.2000).
Torraca, Giorgio(2009), Lectures on Material Science for Architectural Conservation, Los Angeles, The Getty
Conservation institute.
Venturi, Robert (2011), Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, New York, Museum of Modern Art (1ª ed.1966).