Architecture II

Studio Architecture II: Future Architectures Platform

Studio Architecture II: Future Architectures Platform (A2|FAP) focuses on the production of ideas and work that aims to develop new forms of living that aspire to enable a more free and equitable society by looking into methods of co-operation, co-financing, co-living, co-working, co-education, and co-creation.

English is the A2|FAP's main communication language.

WHAT IF CULTURE

Museum as a Laboratory of Society. The Next Generation Museum.

Studio Architecture II: Future Architectures Platform (A2|FAP)

Spring 2024

What is culture? How does it change society? Why do we need the arts? In the last 150 years, the answers to these questions have evolved and shifted constantly.

In our first notions of cultural policy, culture was fundamentally the preservation of memory, and the production of a sense of community and identity. Culture tells us who we are, where do we come from, who do we belong to; what is our heritage, what is necessary to protect and preserve. In the mid XX Century, after the New Deal and the emergence of European Social Democracies, the notion that access to culture was a fundamental right that the state should guarantee started to appear in multiple countries. On par with Education and Healthcare, access to Culture is established as a central element in the welfare state. Public investment in cultural infrastructure multiplies, and public museums, theaters, concert halls are considered key assets in developed cities. Culture produces educated, critical, well formed citizens. It is a key element in the creation of a mature developed society.

In the last decades of the XXth Century, an understanding that culture is a valuable productive resource starts emerging. Like sources of energy or raw materials, societies with rich cultural assets can mobilize them to produce wealth in different ways. Some as a form of diplomacy and soft power, transmitting their values throughout the world and expanding their markets (US cinema, UK music industry, Italian fashion, the Korean wave). Others activating them as assets to accelerate key industries like tourism (heritage cities). Or producing models of tourism where culture is the driving element (music festivals).

The emergence in the 1990s of the notion of "creative industries" increases this vision of Culture as a relevant economic agent. In a globalized work of delocalized production, creativity and talent become key human resources, connected to urbanization and high income citizens that can locate wherever they wish. Film, Fashion, Architecture, Publishing, Advertising, Art, Design, Digital .. become key strategic sectors, and developed nations invest heavily in their development, in the search of growth and job creation in postindustrial urban centers.

Today, a new function of culture is appearing. Culture and the arts is embedding itself more and more in other spaces of knowledge production, from science and technology to social innovation, human rights or environmentalism. In a world in crisis, the clash between the space of the arts and the fields of research and knowledge production in every sector is thriving. Collaborations between artists, designers, ecologists, philosophers, activists, architects and creative technologists and universities, research
laboratories, tech companies, governments, NGOs and social innovation hubs .. are constant and thriving. They work on themes like the future of food, mobility, materials, the shape of cities, the social impact of AI .. Culture becomes more than ever an experimental space to test and rehearse new forms of living.

Culture today is the laboratory of society. A space where we can prototype other forms of living for the future. Where we can produce new imaginaries for a new society. It's the space of the What If? This semester the Future Architectures Platform will analyze different eras of culture production through the typology of the museum and conceive the mission, vision and institutional form for the Next Generation Museum, from its experiences to collections, and design its architecture. The architecture design will advance questions around publicness, sustainability, accessibility, financial transparency and equality addressing complex issues such as monumentality or independence through spatial, material, aural, digital and tectonic manifestations.