Elective Project I _ Shelter - learning by doing

“Your creativity and skills play an important role in making an impact in responding to humanitarian challenges and global crises”

The world seems to be reeling from one crisis to another. Recently we experienced climate crises, global pandemic (Covid-19), economic uncertainty, wars, floods, wildfire, and earthquakes. Proceeding from the challenges facing humanity at the global level, especially after the recent events that threatened people's stability, safety, and existence by causing a massive displacement of people. The notion of the seminar was initiated by questioning our role as architects in responding to these challenges focusing on the phenomena of refugees and immigrants by preparing and training on emergency, temporary, sustainable solutions for designing a shelter – a roof above their heads.

The idea of “shelter-learning by doing” is to think globally regarding the concept of shelter which is one of the fundamental human rights and respond with creative design solutions. This elective seminar aims to initiate critical and analytical thinking, in addition to understanding the problem to develop innovative concepts.

“Learning by doing” is an interactive method that aims to meet the need of architectural students to build and understand the scale of their designs. An expert architect practitioner “Michał Podgórczyk” will take part in this course. In addition, the course will forge the ethos of on-site teamwork, where students are free to play with materials, colors, building techniques, and methods to get this assignment done.