[MUSIC] You can only learn about design by actually doing the design. Now I know we've said this before, but it's so important that we're probably going to keep repeating this all the way through the course. And in fact, practice has such a crucial role in design education that we're going to ask you to do a little design project as a part of this course. Now don't worry, we're not asking you to do a masterpiece or anything complex. We just want you to get busy doing something so that you can really understand all these things that we're talking about. And this project that we're going to ask you to do, obviously, it's not going to be so complex as an architectural project. But it will be a good illustration of a design process that architects go through. We designed these assignments so that that reflects typical problems that architects encounter. So by doing these assignments, you will get an idea of how architects think in these kind of situations. This design project will unfold in phases. And every new assignment that you do will be one step closer to finishing the project. And of course, right now, maybe this might sound very complicated, but don't worry, you will see very soon, that not only very easy to do these assignments, but they're also going to be a lot of fun. Now without any further ado, let me just debrief you on your first design mission. Imagine there's an empty piece of land, an abandoned lot somewhere in the city, in fact, somewhere in your neighborhood. Now, if you don't live in a city, then try to think of a city next to your city that you know and try to situate your project there. That abandoned lot looks exactly like this, so this is actually a scale model of the site that we will ask you to do later, but for now, just don't worry about that. Let's just see what we have here. So we have an abandoned lot here, and these are the neighboring buildings, and you can get the sense of scale by looking at these small people over here. Now the reason we ask you to imagine this lot in your neighborhood because we want you to design for people around you. Your design task will be to take this abandoned lot and design a public space where people will enjoy to come together and just socialize and do things together. Now, as I said, since you'll be designing for the people around you, you can start by analyzing people around you. Ask yourself, who are these people? What do they want? What kind of things and activities they might enjoy? What would they enjoy, but currently, they cannot do? You want to create such a design that could enable all these wishes and all of these sort of activities that will bring life to this neighborhood. As I said, obviously, you'll be looking at people around you, but also, you should be looking at the climate around you. So take a look, and observe the nature around you. Think about the climate. Think about how weather changes all through the year. And this local climate, local people is what will get your project a very strong local flavor. So all of you students, you come from all around the world, but because of this local flavor, all of your design briefs will be slightly different. Now, although you will have a different context for your project, you will have some of the very same parameters that you will work with. So the thing that will be same for all of you is the way this space looks. So we can analyze, take a look again at this site model, and we will see that all of you will have the same size of the lot, which is 27 by 18 meters. Then a couple of more things, on this side of lot, so if you imagine that these are neighboring buildings, you imagine then on this side, you have a very busy street. Okay, don’t worry about how busy it is, just imagine there's a lot of people passing by here, this is one of the things that you should consider that should influence your design. On another hand, you can imagine that behind this low wall, you have a beautiful view. Now whatever beautiful view might mean in your environment, it could be a view of a beach, so you can imagine like this. Or it could be a view, panorama of a city. Again, this is one of the parameters that you want to consider in your design. Finally, the commenting that you will share is that for all of you, the sun will come from this direction, okay? So, the north points there, that means that during the day, for all of you, the sun will come here, then it'll move over here, and end up here. This sun movement will affect the way the shadows are created on this site, and you might as well want to use a lamp to simulate the sun movement. And so this was, in a brief, the site parameters, so the site is same for all of you, the context is different. Again, the task is, imagine that this piece of land is in your neighborhood, and think of the way that you can design on this place something that will activate and bring life to the neighborhood. And for now, just keep in mind two things. First thing, we would like you to think about acting in three dimensions. So, don't limit yourself just on acting on this ground floor plan. We don't want you just to distribute benches or grass over here. We want you to think in three dimensions and build up. Having said that, we don't want you to design a building, okay? So we wanted to try to imagine as if it was a public square with some sort of structure with platforms that is activated in 3D. In a way, imagine it as a sort of experimental public space. Or, if you want, imagine it as a building without a roof or without walls. But for now, don't worry about all these details. Right now, I just wanted to give you a big picture of what you will be making these three weeks. And you will get to learn more with each assignment that pass. For now, I just wanted to say that it will be really good if you can dedicate some time to do these assignments, because by doing these assignments, you will really understand and feel what it feels to be a designer or an architect. Now again, this might look like a lot of work to you. But as I said, don't worry about that for now, and in fact, not only try to do this, but try to find a way to enjoy it. And actually, this is really important point of how designers work. Because designers, and actually, we usually have a lot of work to do. And the way we get around working so much is that we actually enjoy very much what we do. So without any further ado, you will soon learn about your first assignment. In the meantime, good luck and enjoy it. [MUSIC]
