Design Studio 25 Master of Architecture (MArch RIBA Part 2)
Alessandro Ayuso & Mary Konstantopoulou
Alessandro Ayuso is a designer, author and teacher. His studio-based practice has recently been the subject of his article ‘Body, Subject, Other, Thing: Drawing LEAPs’ in a special issue of the journal “Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice on Disobedient Bodies.”
Mary Konstantopoulou is an architectural designer and animator. Her work explores the theme of humans’ relationships with the environments they inhabit, and invites a questioning of architecture’s role in sustainability and myth-making. She currently works as a Project Manager on civic projects with Reading Borough Council.
Special thanks to Deniz Özbek who contributed greatly to the studio’s content and discussion
DS25: ALTER(Ego)ed Futures
Yr1: Yusuf Arfaan, Matthew Coyne, Suha Valiyaveettil, Monzurul Islam, Khushi Patel, Nirayan Patel, Xhesika Rama, Mara Sendroiu, Leader Luketa Tshibangu
Yr2: Jake Bone, Jessica Gabriel, Angharad James, Anastasia Kolioliou, Shannon McCaddon, Farah Mussadiq, Alice Own, Chloe Pegeot
This year DS25 jumped into the tangles and overlaps of temporal continuums by designing alter-ego Mythical Architects. Through considering the Mythical Architects’ aspirations, agenda and practices, the studio channelled them to act into our reality through drawing and making experiments. They became companions, body agents from a parallel world helping to show ways of navigating strands of time and possible futures.
Physical making and bespoke drawing methodologies became critical tools for designing outwards from the body. Through these, students cultivated expressive architectural languages stemming from the design of monuments commemorating their Mythical Architects, followed by a series of Echoing Details. Feeling for contextual links through mixed media workshops, the constellation of details was introduced to Bethnal Green, catalysing a questioning of site conditions and uncovering a design process that moved from the micro to the macro. The connection between myth, environment and architecture was made more tangible on a trip to Athens, where students visited sites including the Dionyssos marble quarry, the Acropolis Museum and the Elefsina cultural and archaeological site.
The adventurous architectural proposals created by the students imagined architectures that exist in ever-changing ecologies and contextual relationships, taking on critical and speculative questions. or instance, Anastasia’s project reconsiders animals and their role in the city. Proposing the redesign of Omonia Square in Athens, the primary function of the urban space becomes one that provides for animals’ pleasure. An opera house is inhabited by more-natural insects and less-natural engineered insect-cyborgs; their activities – flying, mating, singing, pollinating and gnawing away at materials – become a performance that changes the substance and atmosphere of the building.
Some projects interrogated the discipline of architecture directly: for example, through a process of drawing informed by graphic novels and paper architecture, Jake invented The Society of Failed Architects sited near the Bethnal Green Oval. His ever-growing tower design is comprised of spaces to question and archive ideas of failure in architecture, ultimately valourising human ingenuity and the inevitable imperfections it engenders in the face of a future environment saturated with imminent AI-driven ‘perfection’ in design.
Archive of DS25’s work from previous years:
