Miniaturising the Gigantic: Translating Architecture’s Past into Future Environmental Projects

^{Third Year Undergraduate Design Studio / 2019-20 The University of Edinburgh
Assisting Instructor: Victoria Lee
Image: Taichung Gateway Project by Philippe Rahm Architects. Speculative Drawing: Andrew Dang}

Students analysed environmentally-consequential, built case study projects from 1990-present as a means for imagining an environmental architecture for our uncertain future. They used techniques of architectural representation including drawing, digital and physical model, subsuming the gigantic domain of the earth’s environments into the miniature  domain of architectural representation. The first half of the semester focused on analysing existing case study ‘techno’ and ‘critical’ environmental projects. The second half of the semester students adapted case studies into new speculative proposals that respond to consequences of climate change including global mean temperature increases, rising sea levels and associated coastal flooding, increasingly erratic weather patterns and increasingly frequent natural disasters.