Claudia Scholz - Research at USI

Perspectives on urban relationality (follow the link: www.urbanrelation.org)

Relationships between architecture and the city

I see urban environment defined as the relations between people (agents), society (culture) and the built environment (place). Therefore my research focuses on:

(1) How to re-define urban spaces via strategic interventions?

(2) How to re-address the city on different scales?

(3) How to connect diverse projects (or project intentions) via their spatial definition with the place?

Research approach:

(1) interaction with real-life practice

(2) reflecting and developing theory with practice

(3) re-evaluation of the built environment based on its unique urban history

The majority of architectural research focuses on an architectural object, whether a building, model or drawing. My research wants to investigate the relations between architectural objects and the practice and experience of architecture. First, it reconsiders the architect’s role and acknowledges other architectural producers (weather, time, emotions, communications, users …).

Second, I wonder why is the drawing’s hegemony over architectural practice rarely questioned and how do the principles, techniques and tools of architectural practice inform and limit the architect’s conception of the building and the user. Most architectural research focuses on one subject, such as history, technology or design, and one output, such as the text, drawing or artefact.

In contrast, my research combines contextual investigations (collecting traces, interviews etc.) with material studies (plans, photography etc.) and results in a documentation (visual essay) that becomes tool in a transformation process and gives ground to new projects (relational projects).