Topic outline

  • General

    Vitalising the Centre of Helsinki

    Studio project course

    Munch painting

    Edvard Munch, Man in the Cabbage Field (1916) – an example of Vitalism in art. 

    Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edvard_Munch_-_Man_in_the_Cabbage_Field_(1916).png


    Around the year 1900, there occurred a shift in European art from the dark and melancholic towards sunlight and the life-giving forces of nature. Following theories of Vitalism by Henri Bergson and Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘the vital state’ (‘l’élan vital’) became widely engaged for its conception of life as a constant process of metamorphosis, impelled by the free flow of energies able to generate what Bergson called ‘creative evolution’. Vitalism was also embraced for being anti-rationalist and anti-mechanistic, particularly in its opposition to Thomas Huxley’s conception of plants and animals as machines, and its reconception of them as inspiring organisms within unspoiled nature, perpetually mutating into increasingly complex species and solidarist colonies following the Transformist concept of ‘life-force’.


    ARK-E1020 Studio Autumn, Capstone

    3.9.-3.12.2024


    12 ECTS, contact teaching Tuesdays 9:15-12

    Place: Väre, Q202

    Except an intensive workshop "Incomplete City" of three days between 5-10 October in Paimio Sanatorium (Alvar Aalto 1932), expenses covered by Paimion Parantola Ltd. 


    This course is suitable for students in the following Majors 

    • Architecture & Interior Architecture
    • USP (USP’s architecture students will pursue urban design or building design work and the students from USP’s non-architecture fields will produce a written study as their final assignment)
    • Landscape Architecture (the course can be transferred into the studio course MAR-E1031 Monialainen projekti 10-15 cr, where landscape architecture students participate in courses by other majors and act as if they were landscape architecture consultants)

    Teachers 

    prof. Antti Ahlava  & architect Karoliina Hartiala


    Students can select

    • site from a list of eight
    • the type of submission (urban design / building design / landscape architecture / text)
    • reference projects in analysis


    Theme

    This course is arranged in collaboration with the City of Helsinki. We will contribute to their programme of vitalising the city centre. Our task is to design housing buildings and workplaces for 10.000 people. This task is divided into several areas identified together with the city. 

    The course starts with two group work tasks (analysis and concept design, 1-2 students / group) and ends with an individual assignment. 

    Evaluation and grading

    The weights of different assignments to the course grade: analysis (groupwork) 9%, concept task (groupwork) 9%, main task (individual) 82%.

    Accessibility, participation and discrimination 

    A student may propose, before the course, during and after it, factors in the course served to promote the accessibility of the teaching, encourage participation, and reduce discrimination (e.g. in the selected teaching and assessment methods, course material, or learning environment).