The Schwäbisches Bauernhofmuseum Illerbeuren is the oldest open-air museum in Southern Germany. Opened in 1955 and located in a picturesque loop of the river Iller, it now features more than thirty translocated architectural objects from the region, which have been recontextualized as functional and geographic units and as an entire "museum village". The museum, on whose premises regional crops are grown and handicraft goods are produced, continues to expand. In the near future the museum would like to realize the construction of a small pig breeding.This requires the development of a stable building appropriate to the species and to the site itself, which is to be designed in the course of the seminar "Derivat I", which will be detailed and built in the course of the seminar "Derivat II" planned for the upcoming summer term.

In an introductory event, we will first explore the fundamental phenomenon of non-academic, vernacular architecture across cultures and typologies, and then – on the basis of the building collection of the Bauernhofmuseum – we will get to know and analyze the rural architecture of Bavarian Swabia.This analysis is not an end in itself, on the contrary: From the very beginning, we will try to distill the elementary conditions of vernacular architecture on site. The process of derivation and transition of what is found on site and its translation into a contemporary stable architecture will also be our aim from the very beginning.

So what are they, the elementary conditions of vernacular regional architecture? What functions are inherent in it? What relation does it have to the landscape? Which building materials are used, and to which forms do they lead? How can, how should, how must a stable architecture of the 21st century look like, dealing with the determined conditions, perhaps even – by carefully complementing the museum ensemble – fulfilling them in anideal manner? How can we at the sime time succeed in formulating the stable house as an independent, powerful architecture of the present, which we will construct with our own hands in the near future?