Studio Space Popular is focussed on Transmedia
Architecture through design and theory. Transmedia Architecture defines the experience of space through multiple means: physical
and virtual. We develop architecture that considers physical bodies and virtual beings equally.
Studio Space Popular
works at the intersection of the built and the virtual environments. We imagine alternatives towards responsibility and solidarity
in the ways we design, build and inhabit our buildings, cities, towns and villages, enabled by media.
Studio Space
Popular is concerned with the civic implications of media in the built environment. Our social lives occur across media –
in transmedia spaces whose design and regulation nobody takes responsibility for. Meanwhile our community ties online are
becoming as valuable and consequential as those offline. In the same way that we fight for the safeguarding of social housing,
public space, civic infrastructures, and overall public services, we must take care of the civic dimension of our virtual
environments.
The studio briefs are organised under four key themes: virtual craft, spatial data libraries, transmedia
gatherings, and virtual civic infrastructure. These topics involve architectural design of both physical and virtual spaces,
introducing a variety of tools and methods that bridge the digital and analog in architecture.
The theoretical
framework of the studio involves an array of topics currently organised in the following sections:
PERCEPTION & EXPERIENCE
Affordances
Semiotics | BODIES & CROWDS
Haptics & Interaction
Representation of Self | SPACE & GEOMETRY
Non-euclidean Spaces
Navigation Systems |
CRAFT & FABRICATION
Digital/Analog loops
Effort heuristics | VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
Social VR/Virtual Gatherings
Hybrid Gatherings
(Venn Rooms & Global Homes) | VIRTUAL URBANISM
Virtual & Augmented Cities
Civic Infrastructure design
& policy |
REUSE & ADAPTATION
Media-driven lifestyle transformations
Implications on geopolitical
entities | ENERGY & RESOURCES
Internet Infrastructure
Internet Politics | HISTORY & CONTEXT
Media & Architecture
Aesthetic Ideologies in Architecture |
During the three
year MArch programme students will have the opportunity of exploring these four key topics during semesters 1 to 4, leaving
semesters 5 and 6 for pre-thesis and thesis work. Each semester starts with three to four weeks of collective work in the
form of workshops and seminars that contribute to an ongoing research archive. Students are encouraged to shape their thesis
around individual interests and draw from the collective research archive.
The studio alternates yearly between
two types of design and research: practical and speculative. Semesters dedicated to practical work involve: experimental research,
local community engagement, and prototyping design projects; while semesters that are dedicated to speculative work involve:
historical and descriptive research, disciplinary community engagement, and speculative design projects.
Lara Lesmes
and Fredrik Hellberg lead the practice Space Popular; an architecture studio that explores the relationships between media
and the built environment through research, design and artworks. The studio has realised buildings, exhibitions, public artworks,
furniture collections, and interiors in Asia and Europe, as well as virtual architecture for the immersive web. Lesmes and
Hellberg have previously held academic positions at UCLA AUD in Los Angeles, the Architectural Association in London, the
University of Toronto, and INDA Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Clients, collaborators and commissioners include national
institutions such as MAK—Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria, MAXXI—National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome, Italy,
the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design ArkDes, Stockholm, Sweden, the Royal Institute of British Architects, London,
UK, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea, as well as independent galleries such as MAGAZIN,
Vienna, Austria, and Sto Werkstatt, London, UK.
