"I constantly came up against a borderline where I felt, well, if I could go a little further it might get very interesting, that is, if I were allowed to make things up. That temptation to work with very fragmentary pieces of evidence, to fill in the gaps and blank spaces and create out of this a meaning which is greater than which you can prove, led me to work in a way which wasn't determined by any discipline." W.G. Sebald in conversation with Christopher Bigsby

"A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you." Alice Munro, Selected Stories, 1996

In neighbourhoods where private property is king, there is no way to stop your neighbour from selling to the highest bidder.

Could institutional ‘Outcasts’ become a driving force for a more equitable and inclusive development of cities rather than contributing to the ongoing practice of property speculation? 

"Often treated as failure or loss, subtraction when accepted as part of an exchange can be growth." Keller Easterling, Subtraction, 2014

"I believe in the world, and I want to be in it. I want to be in it all the way till the end of it because I believe in another world in the world and I want to be in that."

Acknowledging the plurality of learning forms, voices, and methods already present within student communities.

“If, today, our world is in crisis, it is because we have forgotten how to correspond.” Tim Ingold, Correspondences. Cambridge: Polity, 2021

By dressing up as a Competence Center, we take the perspective of the institution seriously. What if we are the Ministry of the Future? What would we do? 

“If, today, our world is in crisis, it is because we have forgotten how to correspond.” Tim Ingold, Correspondences. Cambridge: Polity, 2021

Pleasure. Often regarded as suspicious in an academic context. We want to explore its potential as an active posture. 

Retake. What do you choose: to preserve energy or history? Will the next generation agree with your choice or regret your blindness?

"What I’m gonna do is embrace homelessness for the possibilities that it bears, hard as that is, hard as they are. Homelessness is hard, no doubt about it. But, home is harder."

Acknowledging the plurality of learning forms, voices, and methods already present within student communities.

Disobedience. The conscious refusal to act or behave as told or taught. The deliberate decision not to follow the rules, laws or standards explicitly or implicitly prescribed by authority. 

What do you choose: to preserve energy or history? Will the next generation agree with your choice or regret your blindness?

Doubt. Doubt has, one could say, a dubious reputation. It prevents action, postpones decisions, puts everything off. Yet, we believe doubt can be a fruitful strategy.

We hold that an in-depth study of, with and through the undercommons can offer us clues to design according to different values than those that result in the generic ‘types’ of neighbourhoods, buildings and spaces that continue to emerge all over our cities.

Trust. A firm belief in the reliability, truth, or capacity of someone or something. A belief in the self, but also in the other. Can one trust in something one does not yet fully understand? 

We hold that an in-depth study of, with and through the undercommons can offer us clues to design according to different values than those that result in the generic ‘types’ of neighbourhoods, buildings and spaces that continue to emerge all over our cities.

How can we reassert that form does matter? That form is actually about life, and about community, about all the things that the form enables around and within itself?

In the tradition of flaneurs and strollers, we develop a walking practice, a habit of observing a street, over and over again, by day, by night, learning to discover the hidden qualities of the everyday, and make the familiar strange again.

Multiplicity refers to a plurality of facets, implications and ramifications any question, even seemingly simple, can have. This layered reality, if fully embraced, verges on hyper-complexity, but can also be considered a productive entanglement, a richness.

Empathy is the ability to project oneself into someone else’s position and take their perspective for a while. An understanding based on the temporary weakening of the limit between oneself and ‘the other’.

Ambiguity. The capacity of an individual object or idea to be perceived in multiple ways. A status which can be seen as unclear and confusing, or as valuable in its complexity and richness.

Consistency. This semester we will adopt the attitude of consistency. We will explore how we could actually free architecture by tightening its rules even more.

Exactitude. An attitude orienting choices towards decisiveness, a posture in which everything is weighed, measured, examined and determined.

Optimism. Can we use this term without feeling embarrassed? It seems naive and light-hearted. Can it be appropriate today? We believe so.