Vortrag: Transportation Design | Martina Callegaro (ARUCAD Cyprus)

Montag, 18.12.2023
15:00
Seminarraum AE U1 - 7
Modul Emerging Fields in Architecture

Lecture by Martina Callegaro (ARUCAD Cyprus)
Downsize: Houseboating For Degrowth. Living Afloat As A Sustainable Form Of ‘Tiny House’ Inspired Dwelling.
In the frame of the Module Emerging Fields in Architecture (++), HB2, TU Wien

Houseboating is a relatively recent housing trend that is reshaping the waterfront of many European cities. Living ‘afloat’ is a form of settling that contributes to making the cost of housing more affordable, accomplishing the need of owning a space called ‘home’. The houseboaters belong to different generations and lifestyles, but they tend to create communities, tied together by a genuine sense of sharing and need for each other’s experience. Houseboating usually shares those 'Tiny House Movement' values, such as living with less according to the “less is more” philosophy. Living afloat on converted old working boats, abandoning the mainstream housing narratives (Nelson, 2018), enriches the cityscape with colourful inhabiting waterfronts. Furthermore, houseboating gives a second life to non-recyclable big and complex objects, as boats are. Most of the time, these boats are part of a local historical heritage that needs to be protected and preserved, keeping both the boats and the waterways alive. Even new pre-fab pontoon boats are a sustainable option, by requiring less work and construction materials than any similar-size building on land.

Houseboating is an interesting model of 'housing for degrowth', that is already providing accommodation to thousands of people, responsible for the different developments of this bottom-up phenomenon. This lecture will illustrate how this niche of alternative dwelling can contribute to a new more sustainable form of housing for the near future.

Martina Callegaro is an Assistant Professor and has taught Design in Italy, France, and Cyprus.
Her recent research concerns alternative dwellings for degrowth related to contemporary forms of nomadism. She also worked on houseboating for European Inland Waterways and adaptive reuse of working boats to protect historical floating heritage.
She studied Interior Design and Cruise and Vessels Design at the Politecnico di Milano and the University of Genoa. She completed her PhD in Architecture and Design at the University of Genoa, in Italy, where she was also working as Teaching Assistant. She worked as a Lecturer at Rubika – Institut Supérieur du Design in Valenciennes, France, and as a Transportation Designer for Type H, an Italian company working on custom body kits for Citroën vans.
Currently, she is a full-time Faculty Member as Asst. Prof. Dr. in Faculty of Design, Arkin University of Creative Arts and Design in Cyprus, working between the departments of Industrial and Interior Design.

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The module Emerging Fields in Architecture imparts current knowledge from new research fields in architectural and engineering disciplines, with the aim of dealing with current and future design challenges in a broader social context in an interdisciplinary and fundamental way. The lectures impart knowledge about different and interdisciplinary approaches to design, current developments and results of material and construction research, about planning and building under/in extreme conditions as well as about structures that change or develop due to changing parameters.

In this context, strategies for design (from the initial idea to implementation) are questioned in an interdisciplinary discourse, and the question of how the path from idea to realisation can be shaped and to what extent it is possible to be systematically creative is explored. In the practical part, an independent cross-thematic examination is to be carried out.