Project I: Atelier Bonnet

The next 3 autumn semesters, we’ll match the research program Qualiscape about Baukultur (Culture of building) that the Atelier won with a team from ETH Zurich and Université de Lausanne. The general goal is to show how design could face the challence of spatial quality in “ordinary” swiss urban situations and give alternative to standardisation due to “global non designed solutions”, fostering the sense of place and the capacities of common places. The research program will bring us more tools, including “Point Cloud” advanced computer design, but also a deeper interaction with local actors (institutions, habitants, associations) for a better understanding of the existing situation and its potential prospective vision.
This semester the Atelier will explore the site of Minusio, on the Lago Magiore shore, a town that has an exceptional geographic situation between mountain and shore. Buts those assets tend to weaken: densification reduces the potential of gardens and pressure the drainage capacity of the mountain creeks, connectivity and public space is still based on car traffic patterns… 
The municipality has launched a set of reflexion to explore how to combine densification with a better quality of common places, better risk management (especially water drainage of the alpine slope and its landscape potential) and better housing quality accroding to climate change new conditions. 
We start the semester by a workshop on site where local actors and the research team will provide inputs about the site and suggest some necessities of visions for the future. 
Each pair of students will identify a topic and develop, at the general scale and in more precise samples, potential design solutions, from spatial figures at 1:25000 to general proposals at 1:2500 or closer scale 1:25 definition, taken into account that the Point Cloud datascape is multiscalar.

Develop the ability of student’s multiscalar design, This includes buildings but extends towards ground, infrastructure public space and landscape. This suggests knowledge about built artefact, but also dynamics of milieu, living elements, natural phenomenons.
Develop the critical position about more global challenges and their interaction with design decisions: how do the precise understanding of local conditions, based on anchored research and surveys, impact the design hypothesis, and, reverse, what is the responsibility of design/actions in improving or altering thoses conditions? Furthermore, develop abilities in term of prospective.
Merge these tasks with the larger cultural background of Architecture and Landscape disciplines
Trigger the research capacity of the students to give strength and meaning to their proposals and anchor them in the contemporary paradigm of anthropocene, meanwhile supporting communication strategies that rely on images and drawings, but also narratives and more “philosophical” statements.
Support the use of computer tools to better explore and sustain the multiscalar dimension of design: GIS, Rhino+GrassHopper, and from this year Point Cloud advanced tools.
Trigger each student personal point of view, and support to deepen her/his own interest through the collective experience of the Atelier, with the help of common references and tools but also with an adaptative following of its own fields of knowledge

• Good health and well-being
• Quality education
• Gender equality
• Affordable and clean energy
• Decent work and economic growth
• Industry, innovation and infrastructure
• Sustainable cities and communities
• Responsible consumption and production
• Climate action

In presence

Project and research: the design options are based on a comprehensive critics of the precise situation, result of a personal research enhanced by the september workshop. The support group from local actors will be also present in all critics.
Project and tools: the multiscalar computer tools, from this year enhanced with Point Cloud processes thanks to Qualiscape research program, and the weekly support of Dr. Philipp Urech from ETH on this field. Two first weeks sessions will include intensive teaching on computer and point Could softwares and methods.
Individual and group dynamics: The Atelier trigger both personal achievement of goals and interests and collective debate and mutual interactions.

The evaluation of the semester focuses on the final presentation the week before Christmas, but will be weekly followed by Professor and both Assistants, and also Dr. Philipp Urech as far as Point Cloud is concerned. Intermediate critics second week of october (problematics and territorial figure), mid november (territorial design and more precise samples).

• Minusio, 25.09.25 - 26.09.25 (Compulsory)