SHARE Sharing Economy and Urban Design Studio

ARCH 4/585 and ARCH 4/586 Advanced Design Studio

Fall / Winter / Spring 2016 Eugene

Philip Speranza, speranza@uoregon.edu

How do we understand the urban processes of a site to design architecture that acknowledges this urban ecological understanding over time?

The phenomena of the peer-to-peer share services include music, driving and now housing and urbanism. AirBnB is a peer-to-peer accommodation market place that connects hosts and travelers via a website. AirBnB was founded by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blechecharczyk when, as recent industrial design graduates in the economic crisis of 2007 living in San Francisco, rented their rooms online during the limited hotel vacancy of Design Conference of the Industrial Design Society of America. Some see AirBnB and other share services such as Uber, Lyft and Lending Club as means to open access and livability (Shared City). Others meanwhile see the phenomena as a way to avoid tax collection and collective regulatory control, as demonstrated in prohibition or limits of AirBnB in Berlin, Barcelona and New York. As an architect how would one’s design react to the philosophy of the “sharing economy?” Norman Foster’s Apple headquarters has currently been critiqued as trying to overtly control workers every life activity. What role does the architecture have in today’s urbanism?

This architecture studio will focus on the development of new workplace projects by confronting how a company such as AirBnB would address urban phenomena of a site and the development of urban architecture that relates to these phenomena over time. AirBnB’s current global customer service and support office is shared alongside the University of Oregon’s White Stag Block in the Blagen Block. The studio will work with stakeholders in Portland including AirBnB, Portland Planning and Sustainability, TriMet transit agency, artist/urbanism consultants, real estate developers and local architects to find an interface between public and private space that aligns with Portland’s values. Digital urban tools developed by the UO Urban Interactions Lab, Barcelona Urban Design Program and Parametric Places programs will be available to begin the term. Supplemental media instruction including Grasshopper and Elk will be made available at least once a week for the first weeks of the fall and winter terms.

Objective: 1) seed personal architecture philosophy for a lifetime; 2) prepare confidence to design upon graduation; and 3) job placement and preparation.

Architectural Design Description

Students will develop a project based on the issues mentioned above for a +/- 75,000 sqft mid-rise building. The Program will be a workplace with supplemental programming proposed by each student.

Each term the studio methodology will differ: 1) fall – preparatory meetings; 2) winter – urban design methodology and architectural design; and 3) spring – architectural design development. Course time will be spent with class discussions, pinups, group work, case studies and desk crits accordingly. Desk crits will be more common toward the end of the winter term and throughout the spring term. The studio will operate in the research driven studio approach. Software tutorials will be asked of students prior to, during the term in and after class hours. Urban ecology readings will include text by Salvador Rueda, Stan Allen, James Corner, Vicente Guallart, Sou Fujimoto, Karen Franck and Philip Speranza.