Regardless of its program, client, budget, or location, every architectural project negotiates a set of physical and conceptual conditions that together constitute its context.
Relational by essence, context literally means “to weave together.” As implied by its prefix con-, it is the deliberate binding of elements, regardless of their proximity. In its broadest sense, context—be it fictitious or real—is the means by which we can understand and create relationships across space and time, letting conditions belonging to different fields become part of the same epistemology.
Whether embraced, neglected, or even denigrated, context is the inescapable framework within which architecture is conceived and built. From the obsession with genius loci, to regionalism, to the more recent spread of a non-contextual, globalized design ethos, to contemporary positions advocating for a return to local, site-specific criteria—architects have always had to define the context within which they operate. Every architectural project exists within a context, but while contextual conditions may be given, context itself is a construct. It results from intentional architectural and conceptual choices, that include or exclude specific aspects and are integral to the design process.
The construction of context, therefore, implies the consideration and selection of criteria that span architectural, infrastructural, and geographical conditions, and exist within broad cultural, political, social and economic systems.
For the first semester of the master thesis cycle curated by VOLUPTAS, we invite each design chair to critically reflect on contexts. An extensive reader—combining texts and visual references from architecture and its corollary fields—will be provided at the beginning of July, offering both a shared theoretical foundation and a working tool for students.
Each chair will be required to explicitly define its understanding of context, and to develop a design brief and propose a site to test and design around this definition.
By bringing the entire Department to collectively work on this complex yet inevitable condition, we look forward to achieving a diverse, exhilarating range of positions and attitudes.
