studio cifuentes FS26
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Architecture is not produced in isolation. It emerges from the long-term interaction between territory, material availability, construction cultures, and socio-economic change. In alpine regions, these relationships become particularly legible: resources are limited, landscapes are fragile, and architectural decisions tend to have lasting territorial consequences. 

This design studio focuses on Riom and the Surses valley in Graubünden as a first case study to investigate the relationship between architecture and resources. In this alpine context, the effects of the climate emergency are already reshaping the valley’s main source of income, winter tourism. Diminishing snowfall, changing precipitation patterns, and increasing environmental instability reveal how climatic change affects not only ecosystems, but also everyday life and the socio-economic reality of the territory. 

The semester explores how timber, stone, earth, straw, existing buildings, and materials emerging from climatic processes such as landslides constitute both a material archive and a potential resource. These renewable or locally available materials have shaped vernacular architectures and continue to influence contemporary practices. Students are invited to read architecture as a record of care, extraction, abandonment, and reuse embedded in the landscape. Rather than treating territory as a neutral backdrop, the course positions it as an active condition that both enables and constrains architectural action.

Students will work in groups on site-specific architectural projects in Riom, developing proposals grounded in territorial conditions, available resources, and constructive logic. The studio places strong emphasis on material thinking, making, and technique, combining analytical work with hands-on experimentation and design development. 

Rather than treating architectural projects as isolated objects, the course frames architecture as a situated practice shaped by territorial, ecological, and economic conditions. Working with a real client and local industry partners, students will gain insight into how architectural decisions relate to value chains, labour, and regional economies, and how these conditions set real limits for design. 

Two field trips to different valleys in Graubünden structure the first part of the semester: the Surses valley, where Riom is located, and the Valser and Lumnezia valleys, including Vals and Vrin. These visits enable an immersive reading of distinct territorial conditions and support the production of a shared atlas. 

The atlas developed through territorial observation and fieldwork will inform material choices and design strategies in the subsequent phases of the course, leading to architectural proposals that are clear in construction, coherent in their relationship between material and form, and legible across territorial, spatial, and technical scales. 

“This prestige of remoteness leads us, I believe, to our current way of relating to the world, a world from which we are increasingly distant, which we contemplate through an exclusive optical relationship, as if there were a retina that separates us from the world and no longer allows fertile relations with it.” Perejaume

Perejaume reminds us of the distance that the word “landscape” often produces - something that is observed rather than experienced. He proposes instead the idea of “field”: a land that is worked with, inhabited, and understood through practice. This approach forms the conceptual basis of the seminar week in Mallorca.

During the week, students will follow materials from their origins to their architectural use, tracing their cycles, stories, and associated building cultures. This exploration takes place directly on site, through visits with local manufacturers and craftspeople.

Timber will be explored through forestry, processing, and fabrication, highlighting the relevance of local value chains, from the Voltor mountain as a source to Amarar as a circular timber manufacturer. Stone will be approached through the extraction and working of local marès sandstone, with visits to active quarries such as Cas Vilafranquer to understand its dimensions, material qualities, and construction logic. Earth will be studied through the island’s ceramic tradition, visiting local tile manufacturers like Alfareria Soler and Huguet, to reflect on how a deeply rooted material culture might evolve in the future.

Material origin and material outcome will be examined through visits to buildings spanning several centuries - from Palma Cathedral and La Lonja to more recent works such as Can Lis and Llubí’s kindergarten. These visits situate material practices within longer architectural timelines, showing how architecture has historically emerged from locally available materials and construction knowledge, and how contemporary practices are revisiting these conditions in response to ecological and territorial constraints.

Afternoons will be dedicated to a collective drawing workshop. Drawing is approached not as representation, but as a tool to read, understand, and discuss processes of territory, material, time, and transformation. Through these drawing sessions, observations from the site visits will be analysed, compared, and synthesised, allowing individual views to become part of a collective understanding of Mallorca’s territory and material culture.

Participation (Category C, 500 – 750 CHF)
Includes accommodation, local transportation, lunches, drawing materials, and workshop tools.
Travel to and from Mallorca to be arranged individually.
Min. 15 / Max. 21 participants.
Meeting: Sunday evening, 15 March, Palma.