Post Machina is an architecture and urban design studio focused on the conceptual, metaphorical and material life and afterlife of ‘machines’ in their transformative interaction with architecture, with the goal of producing qualitative place-making. Trains, buses, cars, RVs and airplanes, but also grain silos and agricultural machinery in general, particularly in the prairie environment, have been part of our cultural landscape for over 150 years. Facing both, the prevalence of some, and obsolescence of other multiple pieces of machinery, this studio will explore the architectural adaptive reuse, insertion and transformation of machinery and systems in rural, sub-urban and urban contexts.

Fall: Two architectural interventions/transformations and adaptive reuse projects of progressive complexity will be developed in the fall. The first one on a plot of your own selection reflecting on and proposing for an interior and exterior of a selected ‘inhabitable object’ to adapt with minor implications at a larger scale. The second project will involve similar type of adaptive reuse of pieces of machinery yet, with larger implications in terms of master planning and community design, or place-making.

Winter: The Graham Mall Transit Corridor in Downtown Winnipeg will serve as exploratory architectural and urban design Laboratory during the Winter term. The metaphor and concrete reality or presence of machines with be transferred to the complexity of interactions between ‘systems’ of motorized vehicular interaction, pedestrians (significantly Winnipeg’s elevated and mostly internal walking system) in their exchanges, or lack of, with the public realm.
The conception of one mid-rise mixed use infill urban building in context will be the central subject of the winter studio. In the winter we will benefit from the input and interdisciplinary collaboration with Richard Milgrom’s City Planning Graduate studio in urban design. Our studio sessions will be enriched and complemented by discussion of relevant readings in seminar formats and collaborative work in the conception of an urban design master plan, with individual outcomes. Each infill project will then make part of a larger entity, conceived with an enhance understanding of the notion of place-making. This interdisciplinary studio builds upon previous successful iterations.