Paper short abstract:

We will present the process of thinking/making a floating, more intimate and silent room at Umeå School of Architecture. We will also document and judge its effects both in the spaces of the school and in the times, academic experiences and lives of the actors involved in or affected by the project.

Paper long abstract:

We will present the process of thinking/making a 'floating' room within the spaces of Umeå School of Architecture, conceived to gift a small, more intimate, warm and silent space without occupying the available surfaces and as an alternative to the very open, cold and loud spaces of the building. We will document and judge its effects both in the spaces of the school and in the times, academic experiences and lives of the actors involved in or affected by the project.

The structural, acoustic and organizational challenges were solved through the exploration of alternative procedures and knowledge extracted from the situation. The project can be understood as an 'intravention' in at least two ways: firstly, as it takes place within the school responding to its material and spatial conditions; and secondly, understood as the generation of a situation in which students and staff work closely and collaboratively to build the room, leading not only to the development of relationships with the things, tools and materials used, but also to the establishment of something common.

Two transversal notions will be also used: the idea of technologies of experience will help us think through and develop ways of affording spatial experiences rather than looking at technology as an isolated, autonomous construct; and the idea of collaborative affordance, suggesting that straightforward, uncomplicated solutions generate a different experience of participation/contribution that can yield effects also in terms of the responsibility, care and fidelity to the things built by those involved in its design and construction.