How should an architecture school respond to a profession, a society and ways of learning that are constantly changing? And what does this mean for the spaces it provides?
IN SPACE approaches the future of HIL by questioning both programme and space. Rather than starting with predefined spatial requirements and translating them directly into architectural solutions, the research group turns the process around: What is the programme – and is what we call the programme really what is needed? Which spaces are given, which are wanted, and which might not be necessary at all?
The project brings together five design chairs in a collaborative research format. Starting from the existing brief and the collective knowledge already developed around the transformation of HIL, the team will explore spatial ideas freely and critically. The aim is not simply to fulfil today’s requirements, but to investigate how architecture can remain open to needs that have not yet emerged.
By challenging assumptions about how much space is needed, what kinds of spaces are required and how needs themselves are formulated, IN SPACE contributes another perspective to the ongoing planning of HIL: one that sees uncertainty not as a problem to eliminate, but as a productive condition for imagining the future architecture school.