Vegetating. Dwelling. Residing. Architecture as Cultural and Constructive Responsibility

There are moments when architecture can no longer explain itself—because its vocabulary has eroded, because its practices have become procedural shells. UNLEARN II begins at exactly this threshold: where architecture must be rethought not as a service, but as a cultural and constructive practice.

Corpus habitandi—the body of dwelling—is neither style, nor typology, nor programmatic grid. It is a spatially embodied, materially articulated expression of human presence: relational, mnemonic, and resistant. Between vegetating, dwelling, and residing emerges a field of tension that must be read both architecturally and socially—as a measure of permanence, differentiation, and spatial dignity.

In a time when terms like sustainability have lost semantic clarity, and housing is reduced to technical compliance and economic volume, UNLEARN II operates as a counter-model. It resists normative formulas, and asks instead:
What must architecture be, to remain relevant—culturally, materially, spatially?

Architecture as Negotiation

Vegetating denotes the existential minimum: spaces of survival—temporary, precarious, unanchored.
Dwelling describes functional containment: regulated, optimized, managed.
Residing, by contrast, is a cultural act: a spatial condition of depth, of belonging, of architectural continuity.

This triad is not linear, but dialectical. Architecture that truly aims to reside must understand the conditions of precarity and the limits of mere functionality. Only then can it create what is so often missing: dignity, duration, atmosphere.

From Department Store to Living Body

UNLEARN II operates not in the abstract, but in the constructed real: the former Karstadt department store in Augsburg. A modernist relic, designed for commerce, now emptied by systemic transformation. Here, we do not “repurpose”—we recodify. The monolith becomes the matrix of a spatial experiment.

Through careful mutation, a new corpus habitandi is born: modular, hybrid, precise.
Structure becomes strategy. Space becomes argument.
Rather than converting function, we reconfigure meaning—through constructive logic, spatial articulation, and atmospheric intention.

The transformation unfolds not only through theory, but through material, composition, and tectonics.
Architecture is not added onto the city—it is grown from it.
The city is read through construction; the context is translated into spatial structure; the detail becomes the bearer of resonance.

Attitude in Architecture

What defines architecture? Is it shaped by use, site, and circumstance—or by its inner determinations: material, proportion, structure, light, memory?

UNLEARN II is a space of inquiry into these fundamentals. It is not about what architecture does, but what it is—once it ceases to justify and starts to resonate. In an era of atmospheric erosion, when buildings and cities lose their voice, UNLEARN II reopens the question of the poetics of space:

How can architecture embody not only function, but meaning?
How does a building not just occupy, but carry?
How do we make architecture that does not explain itself—yet is entirely clear?

The studio opposes the simulation of democratization through catalog façades and DIY symbolism. Instead, design is understood as attitude:
an ethical, political, constructive, and atmospheric act.

UNLEARN II is not a studio for formulas, but for positions.
Not a place of repetition, but of research.
Not a space for answers, but for architectural questions with mass.

Above all, it is a call for an architecture that does not begin at the façade,
but in the depth:
in material, in memory, in construction, in space.
In the corpus habitandi.

FRAMEWORK BY
Dilan Vural M.A. TUM (Entwurf, Umbau & Denkmalpflege)

Studio UNLEARN II – Final Review

Final Review
Am 23. Juli 2025 präsentieren die Studierenden ihre Arbeiten im Rahmen der abschließenden Prüfungen.
Gastkritiker*innen: Prof. Jan Meier, Prof. Lena Unger, Meier Unger Architekten, Matthias Moroder, Büro Bietenhader Moroder, Prof. Niklas Fanelsa, Atelier Fanelsa
Ort: R 1325, Technische Universität München, Arcisstraße 21, 80333 München 
Zeit: 12:00–16:30 Uhr

Unlearn Gathering
Zum gemeinsamen Ausklang des Semesters laden wir am 23. Juli 2025 zu einem gemeinsamen Apéro ein – mit Wein von Martin Schnitzer und Musik vom Studio UNLEARN II.

Ort: R 1350, Technische Universität München, Arcisstraße 21, 80333 München 
Zeit: ab 17:00 Uhr

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