This studio is based on a premise that both architecture and the economy at large are geared towards the production and consumption of “more” at an unsustainable rate. There is an insatiable appetite for more products, services, and experiences, but also more design, more floor area, more performance, and more added value. At the same time, the degradation of the environment (be it air, soil or water) is constantly reminding us of the potentially fatal side effects of this expansion- and performance- driven development.
In search for alternatives, students have explored decommissioning as an architecture practice. Rooted in the fringe ideology of de-growth, the studio experimented with forms of architectural production that seeks to slow down the destructive economic processes through strategic erosion of built form. By identifying clashes between intentions and value, meaning and utility, each decommissioning project serves as a counter-proposal to a fully operational building, reconsidering the question of what makes architecture useful.
The projects have investigated concepts such as obsolescence, subtraction, and deconstruction. Cumulatively they attempt to destabilize the authority of expansion-driven developments by producing new meanings, programs, and narratives, and perhaps suggesting unconsidered possibilities for things to become less than the sum of their parts.
