A hand reaches out and touches a wall. The wall is warm, dry, textured. Between morning and afternoon, a shadow appears and disappears. The body is not where we think it is. The building is not where it was meant to be. There is no more edge between inside and outside. There is no clear function, just a shift, a trace, a slight sense of the ghost of an industrial gesture passing through your skin. Architecture, like a second skin, adapts, resists, conceals, seduces.

Diploma 17’s research focuses on two areas of interest: rethinking the politics of architectural design and production, and exploring how architecture engages with the corporeal at both individual and collective scales. This year, we will continue to problematise material production, examining how manufacturing relates to power structures, processes of knowledge production and questions of labour, considering its impact on society and the environment. We will approach design and construction as a cultural practice, an intricate entanglement of bodies, techniques and materials which are shaped by labour, economy and climate. As architects, we must expand our understanding of the ethical, sociopolitical and environmental implications inherent in the ways architecture is conceived and produced.

We will start the year by engaging in fieldwork on manufacturing sites, using drawing, photography, documentary and drone filmmaking to uncover key issues. We will explore peri-urban territories where stratified and fragmentary conditions coexist, tied to the perception of edges and transitory conditions. These investigations will form the basis for our thesis question, explored through the design of a public building situated in a sub-urban setting. The design process will involve intuitive experimentation through model-making, full-scale material testing and animation, combining analogue and digital media as a way to develop speculative architectural strategies based on a thorough understanding of the real.