Master in Advanced Architecture

Course: MAA01 22/23 Self Sufficient Buildings Studio

Self-sufficiency is about consuming the resources you are able to produce, annulling our ecological footprint. This scenario is close to the statements that we need to achieve for the 2020 agenda. During the Research Studio self-sufficiency will be a wider concept, not only we will apply this term when speaking about energy, but also speaking about other issues like water, food, economy and society among others. As architects, our role in this new concept of ecology goes beyond buildings, materials, light, space or shape. Our approach to this new way of thinking must be holistic, emphasizing the importance of the whole, and the interdependence of its parts. Therefore, for us, architecture is about this complex combination of elements and their relations. We will read and learn from the people that are already talking about this holistic way of thinking (Rifkin, Braunghart, Mc Donnough, Latour...). In order to face this approach to thinking, architects cannot be alone, they must learn to work inside multidisciplinary teams. A starting point will be the scenario of the studio, in which we will work on our projects together with physicists, biologists, economists and designers. Inside the topic of self-sufficiency, in the past years IAAC has developed projects around the ideas of Factory of the Future, Urban Retrofitting, Factory of Knowledge, and many more.