There is a growing awareness amongst the stakeholders to question the ‘Status Quo’ of architectural production, to critically engage with different processes involving questions of resources that shape it - materials, water, energy, waste, labor and so on - the ‘quotidian realm of architecture’. This studio investigates the idea of manifestos and specific canons of architecture in the context of their times and their histories, to understand their relevance, and move the discussion to the future, to look back at the present in a historical sense, to re-imagine/re-frame an individual manifesto that addresses the immediacies of our time. The statement of a manifesto for the present became an anchor for the project to investigate/design. This manifesto was used to interrogate site, project and program through the notions of materiality, structure, construction, technology, detailing, multiplicity of functions, complex programming and building performance.
The pedagogic emphasis of this investigative journey was to understand these through the conscious use of resources (local and global) as well as systems of production (vernacular and modern). The critical inquiry lay in provoking and thereby informing one’s position as a producer of architecture in the context of our times.
