‘Strictly speaking, at the moment of design, architectural discourse is not and has never been theory or history at all’ – Jeffrey Kipnis, Forms of Irrationality, 1988

Contemporary practises of ecological architecture and urbanism tend increasingly and autocratically towards performance targets, systemic design, organic integration and hyper-engineering. EX17 would like to disrupt this trend and focus instead on spatial sensibilities, physical experiences and architectural theatricality, encouraging students to formulate and test precise new objects and objectives for the field of ecology in a fast-moving, culturally complex and technologically advanced context.

The unit will question what our role is as citizens of a global-local living ecology, how the built environment influences the way we live today and how architecture as an ecological construct might offer new forms of urban development. Together we will investigate, analyse and reformulate speculative, progressive futures for ecological architecture.

EX17 is a design-oriented unit – we encourage architectural experimentation through physical constructs, drawings and digital design processes. Students will learn to develop their own repertoire of design skills, employing highly specific technologies, tectonics, construction techniques and formal strategies to move beyond limitations of current ecological discourse and develop experiential architectural projects in both the domestic environment and the public, cultural domain.