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Result of the studio will be a series of storyboards and short films, highlighting different scenarios for different groups using the inner city of Innsbruck -inhabitants, tourists, shoppers, students-, with a focus on the Market Square and the area that was theme of the last Europan competition Productive Cities. As this competition did not produce a winner and the city does not know how to proceed with the site, the two runners up in the competition in collaboration with the City Planning Office, the Mayor of Innsbruck and Europan currently develop further ideas for this area. The films will be presented to this audience and the scenarios may open up the debate. They can expand architectural theory beyond the readable into the audible, visible and performative and open up new discourses beyond writing. 

Story Telling, Scenario Planning

 In this year’s Master Studio, we will investigate through the moving image how different different groups of people - inhabitants, tourists, shoppers, students- move around and use the inner city of Innsbruck and how this may be captured and changed. The use of time-based media and storyboards will gradually define the city’s rhythm and reveal gaps for potential interventions. In other words, we will develop scenarios and programs based on and for the inner city of Innsbruck and show them in films.

Over the last decade, storytelling has become an important tool in architecture and urbanism and films and moving content in general are increasingly important in the communication of architecture. 

According to Jeffrey Inaba, in his editorial to the special issue of Volume dedicated to storytelling, Storytelling has become so important because of our need to explain crises and dramas of our time, from the real estate crises to pandemics. By doing so, they try to give events, situations and things a meaning. “The all-consuming effort to follow these events seldom leaves a moment to contemplate the explanations themselves. What is the stated dilemma, context or motive for any one of these problems? And most importantly, how does a problem’s formulation determine its proposed solution?” For the latter, Inaba writes, that “while the truth is important, so is the ability of fiction to elevate fact.”

This is where scenario planning comes in, a form of strategic planning that, different from the more rigid master planning, enables to make flexible long-term plans. Scenario planning originates in the military world, where simulation games were used to estimate the possible success of military strategies, depending on different external factors. It was further developed to be able to imagine previously unknown futures, like the situation after a nuclear disaster and anticipate on it. From the nineteen sixties on, it was used in spatial planning in among others, France and the Netherlands. It was also a field in which computing played its earliest role in architecture and urbanism, long before it was mainly reduced to an instrument to generate form. 

Under the influence of former journalist and screenplay writer Rem Koolhaas, storytelling in the form of retroactive manifestoes and scenarios became an integral part of the architectural design process, to generate architectural and urbanistic programs and charge projects with meaning. The Oscar winning movie Parasite has brought the relation between the scenario and the organisation of houses and their place in the city back in popular attention (again).

It may be superfluous to say that in a broader sense, storytelling and scenario planning define the very essence or core of architectural theory as well. 

The studio will work around the themes of storytelling, scenario planning, urban cinematics and essay film, providing corresponding literature and references as well as workshops to develop skills in digital editing of moving image.

Learning Goals

Important learning goals and outcomes for the course beyond its central theme:

. Learning to read and express oneself in English.

. Learning to edit a book and to make up a fictional narrative.

. “Learning to Learn”: learning from books, from lecturers and from other students.

. Acquisition of learning strategies and content in the context of the research of architectural theory and history.

. Learning an effective use of the library(s) and archives. Learning important research techniques, also for archival research.

. Writing texts, using pictures, making books, editing videos, and producing effective fictional narratives.

. Use of several presentation techniques in varied contexts and with different media: essay, short presentation with PowerPoint or Keynote, book, comics, website, video and so on.

.Teamwork: we usually work in teams of two students. The topics and presentations are structured in such a way that all teams can benefit from each other and the individual presentations are part of a larger whole or product.

Lehrveranstaltungsprüfung gemäß § 7 Satzungsteil, Studienrechtliche Bestimmungen.

Wird im Rahmen der ersten Lehrveranstaltung besprochen.

The studio language will be English and German. 

The Studio will take place on Wednesdays from 10.00 on. First meeting is on Wednesday March 11 at 10.00. At the institute for Architectural Theory.

Informationen zur Anmeldung zu den Entwurfsstudio Lehrveranstaltungen finden Sie unter: https://www.uibk.ac.at/fakultaeten-servicestelle/standorte/technikerstrasse/studium.html/