Spatial Thinking and Spatial Agency at ZHdK: Winter School 2027
In February 2027, Beatrice Fontana and Antonio Scarponi, co-founders of the Institute for Spatial Thinking, will lead Spatial Agency: Before / Towards Form at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), within the Winter School programme.
The course brings into educational practice the understanding of spatial thinking, an epistemic field of practice concerned with the conditions through which spatial relations emerge, stabilise and produce consequences. Design participates in these processes as a form of knowledge.
This inquiry operates across three coexisting temporal positions: envisioning, which engages possibilities before they take form; sensing, which works within situations as they unfold; and assessing, which examines relations and their consequences once stabilised. These positions continuously inform one another.
Participants assemble a shared archive of objects, images, rules and observations, then develop and test spatial configurations through drawing, model making, movement and prototyping. The relationship between spatial thinking and spatial agency is explored through the capacity to recognise and act upon the conditions that organise access, visibility and possibilities for action.
Teaching: Beatrice Fontana and Antonio Scarponi
Dates: 4 to 6 and 11 to 13 February 2027
Programme: ZHdK Winter School, 4 ECTS microcredential
Language: Theoretical sessions in English; exchanges also possible in German