Counterprojects - Counterspaces

The Core Studio reflects on the “transition”, assuming its multiple dimensions (ecological, social, and economic) and developing transcalar design operations in concrete territories.
Different urban conditions will be considered in order to understand, read, and manage the thick complexity of the contemporary habitat where densities, distances, relations, and practices shape heterogeneous spaces and ecologies.
It investigates the territory of Bas-Chablais, a Franco-Swiss cross-border region within Greater Geneva. Characterized by significant socio-economic disparities, a rich ecological landscape of forests, wetlands, and watersheds feeding into Lac Léman, and the presence of monofunctional business parks, this area will serve as a testing ground for radical design explorations of possible futures.

Today, we are in a new urban era of distant extraction and local consumption. A new epoch for which we need new, alternative projects: counterprojects.
Counterprojects take up these different positions and push. Against theories, ideologies, and boundaries. Ask new questions. New questions of society. New questions of space. New metabolisms, new systems. They create counterspaces, spaces for a new society of co-existence.

By constructing “counter spaces” with students, beyond the problem-solving approach, the Core Studio will allow to systematically analyze and practice the set of “paradigm shifts” required by design for ecological and social transition to accommodate various practices of mobility, conservation, repair, regeneration, transformation, production and maintenance.