Architectural Ethology Studio: Across the Evolutionary Aesthetics of Architecture

Abstract

I here introduce a double teaching innovation, in its content and also in its methodology. An experiment rehearsed in the context of the Senior Research Studio in Architecture at the University of Calgary during the 2016-17 academic year, whose theoretical framework, the Evolutionary Aesthetics of Architecture, considers that architecture is a typical behavior of the human ethology. After the claim of a periurban site, the students develop their designs in three nested levels. The individual level (a dwelling with a workshop) the group level (within the claimed enclosures) and the collective design of a functional neighborhood. The submission of interim outcomes every few weeks (iterations) enable us to verify on a working model of the site, how the basic architectural emotions of the human species arise as the individual interests get articulated with those of the group and, in their turn, also the group interests get articulated with those of the studio.