KNOWSPACE architecture + cities

KNOWSPACE is a studio for practice and research on architecture and cities. It regards architecture as a cultural practice that critically reflects upon contemporary societal issues, both locally and globally, with the goal to find original and surprising architectural solutions to them. KNOWSPACE understands its role as that of a moderator and organizer of the complex interactions between cultural, political, economic and material forces and the multiple agents that determine a project. In this sense, we act rather as competent trans-disciplinary mediators than as narrowly specialized experts. The objective is to identify synergies between practice, design research and teaching and to proliferate them as sources of knowledge. The organization of this knowledge serves as the foundation for the conceptual engagement with spatial and programmatic complexity, and the making of polyvalent space and form – both at the scale of the building as well as the city. KNOWSPACE is concerned with spatial, programmatic and performance-based organizations that deal with the dichotomies between local difference and overall coherence, tabula rasa and contextual integration, local and global, monolithic and differentiated, singular and multiple, individual and communal, and tries to reconcile these by applying the concept of type. We deal with types' parametric transformations and programmatic hybridizations, and the emergence of new proto-types. In doing so, many of the studio’s projects view surfaces not as mere interfaces between inside and outside, between one space and the other, between building and city, but use their spatial depth as a key means to organize and zone space, define programs and orchestrate atmosphere and affect.