Project Studio II - The Prototype

This week the semester is finally over (even thou I already started the spring semester so I guess no breaks for me). As in every semester, the most exciting and time consuming subject was the project studio. This semester we were working in the opposite way as the previous spring semester went. Instead of zooming in from a big urban project to the level of one single building, we had to start out with designing a tiny living space for two people and then progressively looking at it from a bigger scale of a dormitory area. The semester started out with a group work of analysing an already designed small living space in order to understand how this area of design truly works. After this we spent a lot of time on the prototype and we noticed something interesting: every group of students had a different approach. Our group of internationals and Portuguese students who wanted to get more comfortable in English were all thinking of offsetting the level to integrate their prototypes in the maximum 100 m^3 and the maximum 27 m^2 measures. After the comfortable space for two individuals is presented and modelled, we had to analyse the site in the Sintra. We had to look at the surroundings: the train station, the kindergartens, the schools, everything. We also had a list of requirements to tick off such as having an administration area, a commercial centre, a multipurpose room and plenty of outside space for the residents of the dormitory - and the city - to hang out. It was really interesting to deal with this challenge after my long past of living in dormitories and student shared flats. Without adding any more words to the topic, here are the final panels of the semester, featuring the models.