2026
WORK IN PROGRESS
Sarah Eshak
The School as a Light Sanctuary Dani Damian Farcas
Ryan Maguire
The Limits of Optimisation Johan McDermott
BRIEF
WORK IN PROGRESS
Sarah Eshak
The School as a Light Sanctuary Dani Damian Farcas
Ryan Maguire
The Limits of Optimisation Johan McDermott
BRIEF
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How might today’s technologies be used in the future to retrofit the buildings we are designing now? Technology develops far more rapidly than architectural design, and its full potential and consequences are often understood only retrospectively. This observation forms the starting point for the project.
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Through the Future Retrofit project, the Architecture+Technology unit explores hypothetical future retrofit scenarios for a real building constructed today, situating the project around the year 2050. Students are encouraged to consider how future retrofits might address the unintended consequences of optimisation-focused design, restoring comfort and human experience, while also anticipating how living and working alongside AI lifeforms and robotics may reshape design practice. These qualitative possibilities will be explored through digital fabrication and computational design methods, with relevant skills developed through a series of workshops.
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“The fundamental denominator […] to account for the validity of any technological environment is man’s health.”
Frederick J. Kiesler (1939), On Correalism and Biotechnique: A Definition and Test of a New Approach to Building Design
Frederick J. Kiesler (1939), On Correalism and Biotechnique: A Definition and Test of a New Approach to Building Design
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Rehumanising the Digital
In the broadest sense, the central question investigated through the projects is: how can digital technologies be used to humanise, or rehumanise, the built environment? That is, how can they benefit human well-being while supporting sustainable development, understood as meeting present needs without harming future generations’ ability to meet their own, balancing economic growth, social well-being, and environmental protection for a better future for all. The studio is therefore not seeking innovation for the sake of optimisation of building performance alone, but rather innovation in service of human well-being. |
Frederick Kiesler, Endless House, 1924
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Each student begins the project from their own design position developed in the preceding semester. These positions relate to various aspects of computational design, including the capacity of computational methods to engage with phenomenological aspects of form (light, atmosphere), multi-objective optimisation, parametric approaches to spatial design, or the interaction between digital fabrication and materiality. Each project therefore responds to its own set of questions or brief. Site, programme, and scope act as frameworks for experimentation rather than primary drivers.
The Future Retrofit does not have to address the entirety of the building’s problems. Projects may focus on spatial relationships within and around the building (e.g. interior-exterior relationships, microclimates), environmental aspects (light, temperature, airflow), or material and technological innovations, tested on a fragment of the building (façade, room sequence, space subdivision, etc.). By situating the work in the future, students are encouraged to experiment and pursue radical proposals.
The Future Retrofit does not have to address the entirety of the building’s problems. Projects may focus on spatial relationships within and around the building (e.g. interior-exterior relationships, microclimates), environmental aspects (light, temperature, airflow), or material and technological innovations, tested on a fragment of the building (façade, room sequence, space subdivision, etc.). By situating the work in the future, students are encouraged to experiment and pursue radical proposals.
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SITE
The building used as a testbed for the Future Retrofit project is Presentation Secondary School, Loughboy, Kilkenny Presentation Secondary School, Loughboy, Kilkenny is a recently completed post-primary school building that opened in September 2025, delivered as a full campus redevelopment. The project involved the demolition of the former school and associated outbuildings and the construction of a new two-storey, 37-classroom facility with a total floor area of approximately 10,276 sqm. The building accommodates a combination of standard classrooms and subject-specific teaching spaces, alongside a general-purpose hall, PE hall, special educational needs unit, library, staff accommodation and ancillary support spaces, as well as on-site infrastructure including an electricity substation and service buildings. The wider site (some still under construction) includes a half-size GAA pitch, MUGA pitches, basketball court, play and horticultural areas, a sensory garden, and extensive hard and soft landscaping, together with reconfigured vehicular and pedestrian access, drop-off zones, car parking and bicycle facilities. Developed in line with Department of Education design guidance and technical standards, the school represents a contemporary benchmark for how educational buildings are planned, spatially organised and environmentally optimised in Ireland today. Precisely because it is new, compliant and highly rationalised, particularly through the use of prescribed classroom layouts and standardised spatial and programmatic typologies, the building provides a productive subject for critique within this brief. Students are invited to speculate on how future retrofit strategies might question, adapt or re-humanise today’s model of school design in response to evolving social, environmental and technological conditions |
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WEEKLY SCHEDULE
WEEKS 1-4: Mapping the Terrain Week 1 Thursday 29 January Studio 6a Introduction and task assignment. For the following three weeks, each student will work on three aspects of the project:
Thursday 5 February Presentation Secondary School, Loughboy, Kilkenny Site Visit Week 3 Thursday 12 February LI 226 Tutorials Weebly website introduction (MW) Beginning in Week 3, you are required to submit Weekly Reflection through website: 50 words approx. and at least one speculative image or drawing that begins to consolidate the relationship between your research interest and the project at hand. Week 4 Thursday 19 February Context review. Deliverables:
Week 5 Thursday 26 February Studio 6a Tutorials Week 6 Thursday 5 March Studio 6a Tutorials Week 7 Thursday 12 March BST 446.2 Tutorials Week 8 Thursday 19 March Interim review: design proposals Week 9 Thursday 26 March LI 226 Tutorials Spring Break WEEKS 10-14: Crossing the Terrain Week 10 Thursday 16 April Studio 6a Tutorials Week 11 Thursday 23 April Studio 6a Tutorials Week 12 Thursday 30 April BST 446.2 Tutorials Week 13 Review Week Week 14 Thursday 14 May Final Review: final design proposals |
MVRDV and HS-Architekten, HAUS 1, Berlin, 2019–2023
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