Aedificum: or how i learned to stop worrying and love the box

Abstract

Urbanisation is one of the growing trends of the 21st century, and seems to be picking up speed again post-pandemic. It has its downsides, with the death of the countryside cited as one of the worst case scenarios, but it comes with significant upsides too. Dense population centers decrease travel distances which decreases fuel consumption. Even with the advent of the affordable electric car upon us, the stock of vehicles on our roads is still decades away from being sustainable. The sustainable course of action seems to be embracing urbanisation, and seek solutions within the urban fabric. To continue building our cities responsibly and sustainably, experts in planning the built environment are in growing demand. This expertise, while not limited to, is most often found in architects. Architects are needed to both maximize the benefits of urbanisation as well as to mitigate the negative impacts. In Finland employment rate of architects is 99% with a larger number set to retire in the coming years that are being graduated from the three active schools across the country. This highlights a necessity to increase education of new architects. Turku is Finlands third largest university city (by number of students), but has so far no program for architecture. In fact only as recently as of 2019 has there been a technical science board as a collaboration between Turku University and Åbo Akademi. And there are plans to expand the technical science education by adding more programs. This makes the campus uniquely suitable for a new school of architecture. This master thesis explores contemporality and the ideological and philosofical basis for building our environment. It examines current architecture education facilities, and other similar buildings and attempts to create a proposal for a building that offers the foundation for the future education of this complex subject. A building that houses all the necessary locales and inspires the future generation of Finlands architects.