Design Experiments
The theoretical studies by the LAPIS group are applied and verified in experiments that fold research themes into architectural projects. Experiments with a range in places and themes search for a coherence with the socio-spatial characteristics and needs of a specific context.
Design investigations designed to identify innovative approaches to contemporary dwelling are accompanied by experiments that confront the most dramatic current situations, such as housing in informal settlements or under emergency conditions.
Housing shortages in Italy and other countries are moving the group’s architectural research toward the adaptive reuse – as housing – of existing buildings, both industrial and non. The reuse of existing stock in turn permits the conception and design of less conventional and more experimental forms of housing, inspired by communal and shared living. These methods, also tested in new projects, may represent one possible solution to the current complexities of society, increasingly more multi-ethnic and elderly, and with increasingly less certainties; above all, a society in which the traditional concept of the family nucleus now appears a thing of the past, or at best unsuited to representing the multiplicity of day-to-day conditions.
The design experiments developed by the group, presented during competitions, conferences and exhibitions, are accompanied by numerous graduate student projects. Each is the result of an intense activity – of teaching and research – during the Architectural and Urban Design course, part of the final year of the five-year single cycle graduate program in Civil Engineering-Architecture. For the group, this educational activity is both a moment of synthesis and verification, as well as an opportunity to encourage new generations of future designers to reflect on the challenges of contemporary dwelling.