Studio Space Popular is a three year master (MArch) in the architecture design program at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.
The design studio is focused on Transmedia Architecture through design and theory.
Transmedia Architecture defines the experience of space through multiple means: physical and virtual. We develop architecture that considers physical bodies and virtual beings equally.
Studio Space Popular works at the intersection of the built and the virtual environments. We imagine alternatives towards responsibility and solidarity in the ways we design, build and inhabit our buildings, cities, towns and villages, enabled by media.
Studio Space Popular is concerned with the civic implications of media in the built environment.
Our social lives occur across media – in transmedia spaces whose design and regulation nobody takes responsibility for. Meanwhile our community ties online are becoming as valuable and consequential as those offline.
In the same way that we fight for the safeguarding of social housing, public space, civic infrastructures, and overall public services, we must take care of the civic dimension of our virtual environments.
The studio briefs are organized under four key themes: virtual craft, spatial data libraries, transmedia gatherings, and virtual civic infrastructure.
These topics involve architectural design of both physical and virtual spaces, introducing a variety of tools and methods that bridge the digital and analog in architecture.
During the three year MArch program students will have the opportunity of exploring these four key topics during semesters 1 to 4, leaving semesters 5 and 6 for pre-thesis and thesis work. Each semester starts with three to four weeks of collective work in the form of workshops and seminars that contribute to an ongoing research archive. Students are encouraged to shape their thesis around individual interests and draw from the collective research archive.
The studio alternates annually between two types of design and research: practical and speculative. Semesters dedicated to practical work involve: experimental research, local community engagement, and prototyping design projects; while semesters that are dedicated to speculative work involve: historical and descriptive research, disciplinary community engagement, and speculative design projects.
STUDIO BRIEFS:
Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg lead the practice Space Popular; an architectural studio that explores the relationships between media and the built environment through research, design and artworks.
The studio has realized buildings, exhibitions, public artworks, furniture collections, and interiors in Asia and Europe, as well as virtual architecture for the immersive web.
Lesmes and Hellberg have previously held academic positions at UCLA AUD in Los Angeles, the Architectural Association in London, the University of Toronto, and INDA Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Clients, collaborators and commissioners include national institutions such as MAK — Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria, MAXXI — National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome, Italy, the Swedish Center for Architecture and Design ArkDes, Stockholm, Sweden, the Royal Institute of British Architects, London, UK, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea, as well as independent galleries such as MAGAZIN, Vienna, Austria, and Sto Workshop, London, UK.
