newnow explores the vast changes in our contemporary society and asks, how does architecture adapt or react to these changes? The goal is to identify strategic design objectives and facilitate alternative development models that can provide solutions for the global challenges of today’s world. The students are given the freedom to imagine and test new visions for the present processes each semester with a different focus. This time the studio takes a thesis year with the topic of typologies of climate regimes.

Abstract

Over the past decades, architecture has been significantly influenced by ecological awareness and the increasing demand for energy efficiency. Thermodynamic performance, quantification, and technical optimization have come to dominate discourse and practice. While these approaches have generated valuable knowledge and tools, they have also risked narrowing architectural thinking to the purely technical, overshadowing the cultural, spatial, and experiential aspects of how architecture shapes human life. This studio reintroduces typological thinking as a framework for understanding the interplay between climate, form, and ways of usage.

Climatic typologies—both historical and contemporary—provide a disciplinary lens through which to examine how architecture mediates the relationship between outdoor conditions and interior life. Traditional forms of building often embody centuries of accumulated wisdom regarding local climate adaptation. In parallel, contemporary experiments demonstrate how low-tech strategies and the intelligent use of natural forces can generate resilient and contextually attuned architectures. By critically examining these precedents, the studio will build a foundation for students to develop new typological responses (or rediscover forgotten ones) to contemporary climatic challenges.

Studio objective

The studio will pursue the following objectives:

- To analyze historical and contemporary climatic typologies as disciplinary knowledge, paying attention to their cultural as well as technical dimensions.

- To explore how climate influences architectural type, form, material systems, and spatial organization.

- To examine low-tech and operable elements as mediators between human comfort, environmental conditions, and cultural practices and to develop models that resist standardized solutions and instead propose locally attuned strategies.

- To test how architecture can move beyond performance metrics to embrace qualitative dimensions of atmosphere, habitability, and social life.

Methodology

The studio will unfold in two complementary phases that together structure the research and design process. The first phase focuses on research and analysis. Students will investigate a wide range of historical and contemporary climatic typologies, examining how architecture across cultures and geographies has responded to local environmental conditions through type, form, and material strategies. Particular attention will be given to low-tech and experimental solutions that mediate between climate and everyday social life. This phase emphasizes careful documentation and critical analysis, enabling students to build a foundation of disciplinary knowledge from which to design.

The second phase, which will start in the end of the first semester, is devoted to design experimentation. Building on their research, students will develop speculative design proposals that test new possibilities for climatic typologies. Experimentation will be approached as a productive mode of inquiry, one that accepts initial imperfections or departures from standards in order to generate fresh insights and alternative solutions. Throughout the design process, students will be encouraged to articulate their proposals through multiple forms of representation, where modeling will be an important part of the process. Together, these phases aim to cultivate a design methodology that is both rigorous and open-ended, allowing architecture to engage climate as a technical, cultural, and experiential condition.

Skills and mindset

Highly motivated and skilled students who are curious and open to an experimental design process are welcome to join the studio. Commitment, strong drawing, and model skills are essential, as they directly contribute to the quality of the projects.

Excursion

Two excursions are planned across the academic year, one in the winter semester and one in the summer semester. The winter excursion will take place in Barcelona, where we will visit contemporary architectural projects and explore case studies connected to the research topic. The estimated cost for accommodation and travel is €270, with partial reimbursement available through university support.