From urban design to constructive detail
The trend towards spatial dispersion and functional dissociation of the built environment in recent decades is incompatible with the search for long-term equilibrium underpinned by the principles of transitions to sustainability. In fact, urban sprawl not only generates substantial consumption of land, but also environmental impacts, socio-cultural disparities and increased collective costs.
Given this fact, the architectural project is expected to play a central role in the search for alternatives to redirect urban development inwards, to densify constructed areas within easy access to public transport services, and to generate sustainable construction methods. By adopting an approach involving different scales of intervention – ranging from an urban project to the constructive details of buildings – the studio of Prof. Emmanuel Rey seeks to analyze, explore and experiment the challenges inherent in this research contribution for an architectural contribution to the sustainable city.
The activities of the studio are designed as a synergy between interdisciplinary theoretical contributions and specific experimentation of their integration into the architectural project. This double approach enables issues of conceptual, spatial, and expressive coherence to be dealt with, while simultaneously exploring ways and means of turning the challenges of sustainability into raw material for the architect. The project exercises are based on the search for creative solutions appropriate to the development of a dense and mixed-use urban site.
