V/PRO+DR

In the coming semester, we will explore democratic spaces in the context of global environmental challenges, focusing on the design of a floating “parliament of water.” The studio investigates democratic spaces as a spatial and conceptual framework for“giving voice to water.”

We propose to study water not only as a fundamental element of human civilization, but as a political actor—one that flows across territories, accumulates conflicts, and calls for new forms of assembly beyond human-centered institutions. Rather than viewing water as a resource to be extracted and exploited, this approach calls for engaging with its voice and agency. As Astrida Neimanis (2017) suggests, human bodies are inseparable from the world’s waters, continuously exchanging matter across oceans, rivers, and atmospheres; environmental conditions are therefore not external, but intimately shared.

Echoing these ideas, the studio envisions a parliament—or parliaments—of water, where diverse human and non-human agents—currents, algae, microplastics, sediment, and living organisms—can gather, assemble, and engage in dialogue. The aim of the studio is to develop democratic, dialogic, and speculative architectures that can serve as a visible political symbol for the invisible features and agents of water. These structures function as a political forum—an open space for negotiation, knowledge-sharing, and encounter. This parliament engages local communities and translates environmental realities into spatial, material, and experiential conditions.

The studio treats fiction and speculation as projective design tools, constructing new imaginaries and institutional forms through which distributed, invisible, and non-human agencies can be engaged. Architecture is approached as a performative and ethical practice, mediating between human and non-human actors, and making ecological processes legible, representable, and politically present.

Students will study various existing sites—such as parliaments, town halls, community centers, and other venues for democratic assemblies—as spatial systems, examining tensions such as publicness and control, representation and performativity, transparency and staging, as well as hierarchy and visibility.

The design to be produced will go beyond conventional parliamentary architecture: it will be a mobile, floating structure capable of site-specific interventions in various bodies of water, including oceans, seas, rivers, and lakes. The course will feature an intensive exploration of visionary and speculative architectural approaches to floating structures and environmental settings.

Course Schedule:

1. Warm-up

"Discursive Space"

2. Research & Experiment

Typological, thematic, and theoretical research & excursion to Berlin

3. Examine & Understand

Conceptual ideas, site analysis, spatial programs, design scenarios

4. Design & Conceptualize

Initial architectural concepts, form-finding; exploring spaces, atmosphere, and aesthetics

5. Elaboration & Narrative

Elaboration of the project with a presentation concept; 2D/3D drawings, atmospheres, materials, and construction details

Additional Notes:

Log in via Moodle! FB06.532

The studio takes place in our studio space on Tuesdays starting at 2:00 p.m.

The first meeting will take place on Wednesday, April 15, 2026, at 4:00 p.m. in K10 2110

A two-day field trip with a workshop (3 credits) to Berlin is planned as part of the intensive week and is recommended; further information will be announced.

The studio is conducted bilingually in German and English.