Topic outline

  • Housing Design Studio


    Spring 2025 | 8.1.–28.5.2025

    ARK-E1021 | 18 ETCS


    Topic

    Climate crisis challenges the cities and architects in providing dense, socially resilient, and adaptable housing with minimal environmental footprint. The common way of responding to these needs is oftentimes through replacing old buildings with new ones built from virgin resources. This solution, however, is not ideal as the manufacturing phase of a contemporary housing building accounts for half of its whole life carbon emissions. An alternative solution can be found in the idea of Circular Economy, which opens new possibilities in architectural design and tectonics. While ecological sustainability is a fundamental challenge, the social aspects of architecture are strongly related to it: any residential building is meaningless and becomes obsolete without residents.

    In 2025, we focus on housing for ageing people. The studio’s main assignment is an individually designed scheme for a memory-friendly housing neighbourhood in Kouvola. The site has existing buildings, such as a kindergarten and housing for elderly.  The objective is to design an inclusive multisensory housing unit while minimizing the ecological footprint.  

    The studio enables learning, and even produces new knowledge of how multisensory, adaptable housing, based on circular material flows, differs from the existing practice. What are the functional, aesthetical, and processual ramifications of circularity for housing architecture? How is adaptability of buildings considered? What kind of novel opportunities and challenges arise?

    The studio primarily involves individual work, except for the initial research phase, which is done in groups.

    Timetable

    See the Mycourses section "Timetable".

    Prerequisites

    Please read below of the studio prerequisites.