Materials: Poster

4

From Geo-politics to Geo-poetics

Files: abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘paper submission’)’:

Abstract. 

For more than five decades, the School of Valparaíso in Chile has endeavored to develop a pedagogy and research in architecture based on the experience of building speculative works of architecture, away from traditional methods of research and theoretical production. This commitment for the Work has been materialized in projects such as the Open City and the Travesías of Amereida. However, and almost contradictory, this attitude towards architecture is based on a geo-poetic vision of the South American continent created by this School in the mid-sixties, which is postulated as a fundamental element in the development of architectural projects.

This geo-poetic vision emerged from the Travesía of Amereida in 1965, a wandering trip through the interior lands of South America, seeking to ‘unveil’ them through poetry and art in action, inquiring into the question of ‘being American’ and its correlation with the inhabited (and uninhabited) territory of the continent. From this original experience, the Thesis of the Interior Sea (1971) is formulated, taking the geo-poetic vision to the field of architecture and urbanism, and establishing a position facing the geopolitics of the seventies, particularly with the visions on the development of the South American region towards the Asia Pacific front.

However, for the School, this vision must be linked to the architecture-praxis. For this reason, since 1984 the Travesías are a direct experience of architecture carried out on the territory, whose main objective is to “unveil” the South American continent through the development of different design practices of architecture and design.

This paper aims to present the meanings of the geo-poetic embodiment of the Interior Sea and its transcription in the architectural-praxes developed in the Travesías over the last five decades, decoding how the iteration between descriptive, narrative and performative praxis allows to simultaneously build metaphorical and critical insights about the transformation of territories driven by continental urbanization and its architectural incarnation.

The presentation is based on the analysis of historical archive documents and experiences as professor at the School of Valparaíso.

Keywords. 

Geo-poetic; territory; design-practice; urbanization

Ongoing research

Based on this historical analysis and experiences as professor at the School of Valparaíso, this ongoing research aims to trace and decode how the origin and deployment of the Travesías in the Interior Sea has faced the historical and current urbanization of the continent, understanding urbanization, on the one hand, as the means by which the Travesías reach isolated places of the continent, and on the other, as the current process by which new remote territories are integrated into the global, but mainly for the exploitation of natural resources, paradoxically causing the displacement or resistance of places that are virtually unknown to the world.

Mapping and re-tracing of the Inner(s) Sea(s) based on the narratives and Works of more than 250 Travesías throughout South America (1965:1984-2019) aims to open up other ways of representing -digitally- the relationship between geo-poetics and a continent in transformation, overcoming the traditional methods of descriptive geography and geopolitics. Finally, this research expects to contribute in the current discussion within the academia committed to approaching subjects –such as urbanization and territorialization– through design practices beyond the disciplinary boundaries of architecture.

Entropy and Performance

Files: abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

This paper and the accompanying exhibit of drawings and film, will build on previous CA2RE presentations that looked at the relationship between tacit and explicit knowledge in the discipline of architecture by presenting a current research project that has measured and mapped environmental data and social experience in a modern Irish school building from the late nineteen seventies, and will present design propositions about how this building could be conserved and protected into the future while addressing the technical flaws that are currently contributing to its decline;- Completed in time for the Iranian oil crisis of 1979, and predicated on an almost unlimited supply of electricity by burning turf from the surrounding boglands, Birr School struggles with the changed environmental context of reduced fossil fuel consumption in the current century. Recognised as an exemplar of modern architecture, the building has been awarded funding by the Getty Foundation under its Keeping it Modern conservation initiative to support the development of a conservation management plan.

The research goes beyond mere conservation to analyse the relationship between environmental performance of the school fabric and the social experience of students who learn there. The data gathered includes quantitative analysis of heat loss, phpp analysis, air-quality measurement, daylight measurement, etc. and overlays these on qualitative data provided by students into their social and somatic experiences of the spaces. In examining the correlation between these data sets, the research seeks to test a hypothesis about the lived experience of a mat-building being conducive to social wellbeing. This hypothesis argues that thermally textured environments are necessary to stimulate learning and that the standard comfort conditions anticipated by contemporary building regulations may not be appropriate for schools.

The last part of the research is propositional in nature as it makes design proposals for ways to address the environmental failings of the building while still preserving the qualitative experience of the spaces. The project draws on design precedents such as Hunstanton School by the Smithsons, and the Free University of Berlin by Candillis, Josic, and Woods, as well as theoretical ideas from sources as diverse as Gottfried Semper and Inaki Abalos. The architectural propositions also build on other design projects within my practice, where the roof has emerged as an important locus of design, and it will extrapolate these to suggest ways that the school can continue to perform for decades to come.

Keywords.

Entropy; Environment; Performance; Integrated Paradigm

The Lean.City

Files: abstract, poster, full paper (= extended abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

objectives

How are cities changing? Introduction to the lean.city

The aim of this research is to demonstrates that the future of the city is already in action and it is producing spaces with new characteristics thanks to the combined use of traditional design tools and new digital opportunities (apps, platforms, social media), where the experience of designers is combined within information, opinions and needs of the people who will inhabit the spaces. A relationship that can act before, during and after the realization of the project according to a cyclic and lean process (research, project, prototype, test) supported by digital tools. These approaches can improve the general livability of the environment in indoor and outdoor interventions and allow the possibilities to have new experience of the space where online and offline spheres are part of the same augmented world.

method

A collection of best practices

The research uses a collection of examples and best practices from all over the world where designers and people are related in the transformation of the space using new forms of collaborative design. The lean.city is not an utopia, it is already around us, but in forms and uses that should be identified and related one to the other to understand how much are pervasive. The case studies identify four macro- topics. 1. DOMESTIC EXTENSIONS / Digital Nomadism and Sharing Attitude, 2. HYPER NATURE / Collective Projects for a Re-Vegetation of the City, 3. NATIVE SPACES / Activators and Experience of the Space, 4. SOCIAL HUBS / Onlife Spaces and Systems.

expected outcomes

A sharing and collaborative city

From the case studies and the data emerges a city capable of constantly changes according to the needs of its inhabitants, using the traditional tools of the architectural/ urban culture and those of the digital innovation. This scenario generates more shared and active places, co-designed within the users and they assume new characteristics that change or hybridize the traditional architectural and urban typologies, crossings the usual design scales and relationships. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, from the data set it is possible to recognize four macro-topics that can describe the new urban scenario: a city where the difference between interior and exterior is less tangible and more hybrid, a re-vegetation of the space developed together with people, new devices that re-activate underused spaces linking people’s needs together with brands and companies in a bottom-up/top-down process and vice versa, spaces that were born firstly online and then offline and create new opportunities, business models and “onlife” activities.

Keywords.

Lean; co-design; cross-scale; digitalculture; architecture; urbanspace

Questioning Images

Files: abstract, poster, full paper (= extended abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

The advancement and popularization of image processing techniques in the last twentyfive years has provided architects with a powerful tool to merge research and design. If the history of photography is the history of the duplication and recycling of reality, then the history of the digitization of photography can be read as the history of the possibility of blending the duplicated real and the virtual. By intervening seamlessly on photographs, it is now easier than ever to conflate a particular reality and its potential transformation, thus interrogating the very essence of said reality by providing an apparently plausible version of it.

Some of the prospects of this design driven research methodology are exposed here through the analysis of a speculative project that was produced for the XV Venice Biennale of 2016. The project used digital collage to initiate a collective conversation on the landscape of naked objects exposed by the building crisis in Spain, questioning the underlying processes made visible by the abandoned constructions –in short, a model of urban development that maximizes profit through the repetition of the same, ‘exclusive’ private units. In order to transform this reality into an expression of a community generated through difference, the conversation focused on the imaginary appropriation of twelve unfinished units of an interrupted development in L’Enova, a small village located 55 kilometers south of Valencia. Each interlocutor acted on a photograph of each unit with the only constraint of using the same graphic ingredients: a selection of 100 pictures to use in the digital collage. Beyond this constraint, the only limits were those of each individual approach to the project.

The most interesting aspect of this landscape of distinct voices is that, when placed in parallel, they revealed the potential of the conversation when it becomes a project. The twelve colonized photographs no longer appeared as a melancholic witness of what could have been, but as a tangible document that materialized a possible model, showing that the debris of an exhausted system of urban development can be reused as the foundations for an alternative form of urbanization. In so doing, lacadenadecristal elicited a new set of questions on the role of digital collage in contemporary design and research, for it proved to be a methodology that simultaneously serves as a design tool, a method of interrogation of a specific reality, and a prime communicative asset to engage multiple audiences.

Keywords.

photography; digital collage; design driven research

Feeling Space

Files: abstract, poster, full paper (=updated abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

This research is based on my current creative practice of making drawings and installations in response to the particulars of outdoor and indoor environments.

Such practice is based on the performative potential of drawing and situated between Visual Arts, Performance and Dance. Other recent practitioners have researched this field with a focus on the choreographic potential of drawing on flat surfaces (Katrina Brown) or by performing movement patterns in response to site particulars (Burgoyne).

This research asks the question, how does an embodied drawing practice using a mobile working kit on different environments determine the relationships between self and environment?

The project’s methodology assumes an analogy between line movement on paper and body movement in landscape. Indoor and outdoor spaces, and the creative practice itself constitute the material contexts of this research. In the same way as this creative practice faces the challenge of connecting to different material environments, requiring situated and relational approaches and improvisation, its methodological framework is one of interdisciplinarity, questioning the boundaries between Dance, Visual Arts and Performance, built on phenomenological concepts of experience, environment and self. Drawings, installations, experiences and events, either by the author, acting as a human instrument, or by other subjects and things in the environment, provide data within an aesthetic framework where linearity is a structural criterion. The research aims to generate new knowledge in three fields:

Firstly, in the field of Expanded Drawing practices, a new body of work will illustrate how using a mobile working kit can create engagement between landscape, place, creative practice and notions of self. I will use elastic bands, rolls of paper, wooden sticks and drawing utensils to produce temporary features in the countryside and permanent drawings, documenting the making processes with videos, photographs and texts.

Secondly, it will produce new knowledge for the field of Critical Art Studies about how my particular interdisciplinary practice approach can impact on our understanding of indoor and outdoor environments and of who we are as embodied selves.

And thirdly, with regard to interdisciplinarity in the arts, and concerning the role of embodiment therein, the research will provide new knowledge about how a network between selected dance practitioners and visual artists can be used to communicate about their creative processes. /../

Keywords.

drawing, environment, movement, embodiment, dance

Architecture of Encounter

Files: abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

You are about to enter an archive of perspectives of the long term research project HALL33, consisting of photographical and textual contributions (40 images and 400 words in total) by theorists, team members, students and audience members documented between 2013 and 2018.

Keywords.

installation art, performativity, opensource design

Verbiest: House and Workshop in a Warehouse

Files: abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘artefact submission’)’:

Abstract.

This project addresses the transformation of a large warehouse of about 1000sqm built between 1900 and 1970 in Molenbeek into a single family house and a shared artistic workshop. The project addresses various issues and themes, amongst which the environmental impact of the construction and of the future consumptions. The artefact is not limited to the design outcome but comprises the design process. /…/

Keywords.

Architecture; Transformation; Reuse; Design Process; Sustainability

/…/
The threefold presentation explores a possible medium to create artefacts which somehow can be considered equivalent to the project itself. Through the embodiment of a network of inputs and outputs in a creative act. By enlarging the scope to the entire process and to the stimuli surrounding it. While respecting the subjective nature of such networks. In order to provoke the interpretation of the project by the audience. Resulting in statistic objectivation through the endlessness actualization of graspable combinations.
/…/

In Practice

Files: poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘paper submission’)’:

Abstract. 

(*) refer to suppressed names for the sake of anonymity. Initially, (*) are conferences at which architects were invited to unveil and tell the story of their working documents. These short conferences are followed by a conversation with a panel of critics, architects, editors and academics.

Recently, a first book was published about (the design process of) a house designed by (*). The text dissects the genesis of a project, it shares the doubts, it extracts the mechanisms that lead to choices and it discovers the intuitions that make poetry.

This paper explores the methodology inherent to the making of the book. The book makes the objective account of an architect’s erring towards a remarkable outcome. In essence, it is not a critical review of the project, as it dives in the objectivity of the produced documents. It is not a holistic interpretation, as the focus is on the local changes in perception and understandings. It is not a contextualization of a practice situating it in a field, as the appearing references relate to design decisions rather than to the designed object.

/…/

The result combines text, illustrations, photographs and layout into an irreducible, objective and observable whole explicating the ins and outs of a particular design process, to which can be referred in a more comprehensive research in the concerned practice or in other researches (on design processes for example).

Keywords. 

research by design; design process; publication; methodology

/…/

Perspectives

This book is a precedent that can be engaged in different perspectives. We are now planning to continue the series with four similar books. The future will tell to which extent the books will diverge or follow a similar track. Very different contexts and interests will probably result in a variation of approaches.

We would like to propose a similar exercise to researchers who engage their professional practice at the heart of their doctoral research. This exercise is probably slightly different because it would frame in ongoing researches which have their own agenda. 

This precedent will also be engaged as a pedagogic tool in a master dissertation studio at the KU Leuven, in which the students will be invited to compile work documents following similar (probably adapted) procedures. This growing body of work will open up to further speculation and observation, on an epistemological level, on the level of individual practices and on the level of pedagogics.

Researching in Architecture Practices

Files: abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘paper submission’)’:

Abstract.

This paper addresses the methodology of existing researches in active (professional) practices. The author obtained a PhD in his own practice, is currently supervising one doctorate nearing completion, in which the architectural practice is pivotal, and supervises two PhD proposals in young promising practices. In these researches, the subject is essentially threefold. First, there is the knowledge about the practices themselves. Other practices such as music, travelling, writing, fine rts, any practice can be part of the research, as long as they are connected to the architectural practice.

Second, there are the themes, the inspirationaal forces, the field of interests. This field of interest is not closed : other themes can appear during the research, similar to new projects that will appear in the practices during the PhD process. The paper will expand the notion of inspirational force in comparison to scientific subject. Third, the research explores the interaction between the two above. The researched themes provoke understandings about the practices. Inversely, the practice lead to new understandings on the themes. The complex nature of these interaction is inevitably a subject in itself. The methodology is structured around two fields: the practice and the inspirational forces. Inside these fields, the research is situated in specific actions and reflections.

/…/

Keywords.

Research by Design; Architecture Practice; Research in architecture Practice; methodology; inspiration

/…/

Process

Finally, I would like to refer briefly to three artefacts researching the design process. These are different from the former because they explicitly aim at understanding some aspects of the practice. However, they fit also in this paper because they are local research artefacts framing in a research, following different mechanisms which are not related to the global methodology. 

In “Metarbitrariness”, Harold Fallon decomposes the design process of the Carré des Arts /…/  by displaying a series of work documents in a way that reflects the ongoing choices and hesitations. This exhaustive display of sketches and presentation documents on a single display allowed to understand the mechanism of opening up hypothetic possibilities and closing again to workable options in iterative refinements.

The last one is still different. The book “Philippe Vande Maren & Richard Venlet – In Practice” addresses the entire design process from the point of view of the architects, making use of external points of view as sounding boards (a writer, a photographer, a graphic designer…). The account of the design process can easily frame in a research about the practice.

The list of these methodological fragments could be extended. The border between the items of the list is sometimes unclear. Maybe this is not really a difficulty. The value of identifying them is to consider them as underlying mechanisms rather than strict objects or procedures. They show that this kind of artefacts can fruitfully be realized following a diversity of paths. They show also that these experiments are carefully designed by the authors (of the practice and of the research), and thus can become part of both of them.

Possibility of a Village

Files: abstract, poster, full paper (= updated abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.
How can we provide quality space, in a world evolving towards a man-centered planet (the Anthropocene), for 9 – 12 billion people by 2050? Can architecture play an important role in this necessary evolution? In Architecture man continually seeks to attain the exact relationship between the rational and the irrational. The goal is “completeness”, always based on man himself as a poetic rational being. The most important motive in the search is the perception of the environment. The site, the shape, the technicity, the program are all interwoven in a unison oneness within the most ultimate possibilities, out of which emerges a fascinating beauty, growing stronger while gaining accuracy. There exists an inextricable bond between “what” and “why” of Architecture and the development of a society. Through fascination for historical architectural phenomena as Abu Simbel, Chichén Itzá, Pienza, Tugendhat, Danteum and Passage, through extensive research of Ksar Tissergate, a historic village in southern Morocco and through experience with realised contemporary projects by Delmulle Delmulle Architects, we redesign a village in Flanders as an urban statement. Many villages in Flanders have their own identity and are definitely an alternative to mitigate congestion and pollution in cities. However, villages suffer with depopulation and ultimately become desolated ghost towns. Human and social capital are an important factor in the exodus. The “active” population is looking for career in our capitalist “hurry” society and are therefore forced to live in cities. The inactive population remains behind in the villages or is dumped in nursing homes. We redesign Elsegem as a village that can play again an important role in this new world. The implantation is situated in the centre of the village and is related to the church and ensures that there are compelling, useful, spatial qualitative, public spaces that binds the rest of the villages. This project is prospectivism and must be an effort to optimize the available space in a physical and human context. Axonometric drawings of 5 squares around the Sint-Mauruschurch, a sentō, a multifunctional building, an automatic parking, a vertical farm, a liquid space, a mega solar disk and a proportion triangle are used as “interfaces”: through a kind of simplification, the drawing clarifies the relationship between humans and spaces. It is a search for new forms of communication that are specific to the discipline as an opportunity to explicate research accurately. It is a way how architecture can generate own insights, can use appropriate forms of knowledge and can experiment with own forms of discourse.

Keywords.

prospectivism / social capital / human context / materiality / experience

Studio_ L28: Urban Sonic Design Conversation

Files:  abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘artefact submission’)’:

Abstract.

Our proposition consists of a public installation that seeks to infrastructure a multiplicity of conversations around the topic of a sonic urbanism as critical spatial practice hereby opening up to the affective or attractive and repulsive power of sonic force. To explore the affordances of a sonic urbanism as critical spatial practice and thus to break free from prevailing modes of urbanism which focus on sonic risk and vibrational nuisance – we constituted a working practice exploiting and nurturing the productive encounters between disciplines such as sound art, urbanism and urban architecture. By setting up an experimental design studio at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, embedded in local auditory culture and in connection to ongoing planning processes, we aim to facilitate an open learning ground for sonic design experimentation in the development of innovative sonic spatial tools and approaches. Our design studio is oriented to students of the International Master in Architecture summoned to research the multiple (sonic) vibrations of the Brussels L28 railway area, to exploit and contrast these vibrational forces, transforming them to into actions and opportunities. From a critical sonic understanding of urban space, we exploit a contradictory role compared to the widespread noise control practices, reformulate environments, perimeters and relations of urban phenomena and search for interactivity with vibrational dynamics that already exist in the territory. In a public installation we will show possible design approaches and perspectives that we have explored together with students and other guests. The documentation of the research project will be the central focus for a series of transdisciplinary conversations that we will organize in the exhibition space of the conference. Does the questioning of the politics of silence and noise lead us to alternative sonic strategies and tactics for the design of transitory urban space? What critical positions can we take from here for the creation of vibrational environments that enable new forms of urban negotiation?

Keywords.
Sonic Urbanism, Critical Spatial Practice, Conversation, Exhibition, Vibrational Force

/…/
INSTALLATION / SET UP

The complete installation consists of 1) a listening desk for max two persons 2) Panels with poster presentation 3) an audio recording/playback system. On the posters, design proposals for the open space of the railway space L28 will be positioned according to the research axes. The table we will present a sonic cartography of the research project using graphic and (sonic) vibrational material. Through an audio set up that integrates 3 headphones, an acoustic monitoring device into one system, conversations are recorded and later mixed with the field recordings and previous conversations. The results are made audible via play back.

Field Notes from the Technospace

Files: abstract (Cannaerts and Helbig), poster (Cannaerts and Helbig), full paper (Cannaerts)

Fragments from proceedings (‘paper submission’)’:

Abstract. 

The environments in which we operate as architects are increasingly saturated with digital technologies: internet-of-things, global communication and transportation technologies, mobile devices, increased satellite coverage, location-based services, ubiquitous computing… The post-doctoral research project under the title architecture, agency and the technosphere, investigates architecture’s relation with this technologically saturated environment. The three year project coincides with setting up the Field Station academic design office (ADO) at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture. The aim of the paper is to reflect on the ongoing and completed projects and to establish a number of frameworks for the research agenda of the post-doctoral research project and the ADO, and attempt at developing a model for understanding the technosphere. The discussion will address open questions regarding research, teaching and practice of the Fieldstation ADO.

Keywords. 

Architecture, agency, technology, technosphere

/…/

DISCUSSION: UNPACKING TECHNOLOGICAL AGENCY

Fieldstation Studio’s ventures into the technosphere demonstrate that technology is increasingly influencing our environment. Digital technology is obviously human made and for the most part intentionally designed, its agency first and foremost lies with the people, corporations and governments developing and employing these technologies. However, the consequences of the large scale adoption of digital technologies, their impact on the environment, the cultural phenomena they give rise to are largely unforeseen. As such we can ascribe spatial agency to the technology itself, to the accidental emerging megastructure of the technosphere.

The work of this paper is based on is diverse in scope, this paper draws some cross sections through the work looking for come themes and strategies as part of the work in progress of unpacking the spatial agency of digital technologies. Each of the frameworks proposed here – the fertile middle ground to be found when thinking beyond dichotomies; the tentative model of interaction between vertical spheres and stacks, horizontal territories and shifting borders; the novel ways of seeing and mapping technology provides and resulting visual cultures – would benefit from being developed more, both in theoretical framing and in produced work. This paper reports on a research project in progress and hopefully the feedback and discussion will provide fruitful insight for the further development of the research, teaching and practice of the Fieldstation ADO.

Between Drawing and Sculpture

Files: abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘artefact submission’)’:

Abstract.

A series of plaster casts in the form of small tiles is the starting point for a reflection on a position between drawing and sculpture, between the two dimensional and the three dimensional. But also, a reflection on the imagination of poetic sculptural concepts through a casting method where negative becomes positive and visa versa. The production mode and the necessity of making a series of these plaster casts will be highlighted.

When a photographer shot detailed photos of a large drawing I made for the creation of an edition, I noticed how the medium of photography added a new reading of the depth in the drawing and of the material quality of the lines and cut-outs in that drawing. Without being able to say exactly what it was, I sensed a potential in these observations for the development of new works. In retrospect I can now clearly see how a text by Jean-Marc Besse on cartography, building and inventing that I studied some years ago helped me in setting up a project to give meaning to these observations.

I started making tracing drawings by engraving lines with an electric mill in wooden casting panels. I made small plaster casts of it. The plaster cast came out with a smooth white surface, and the engraved lines created the notion of an embedded relief. A three dimensional and material aspect was introduced. I could make different casts of the same fragment or look for other compositions. I imagine spaces and sculptures made with tabletops, window frames, ground planes of the studio space, badminton nets, billboards, road signs. The flat white surface of the plaster tile inspired as a mental space where the sculptural entities resignate.

I decided to create a method to investigate further the potentials of the observations I made in the photos. I developed a casting technique to allow the production of series of images where I could investigate the position where drawing and sculpture go hand in hand. According to Jean-Marc Besse these images, and the sequence of the different forms of the images, is establishing the path of the object or the project from which we can reconstitute its rationality. These sequences of images and thoughts don’t stop because something is proven, but because the last act was the right one. The logic of the project is about the work that had to be done and not about the rule that had to be used. It is within this dynamic of the research, within this investigation of open horizons based on a “position” (or a hypothesis or an idea of a form) that knowledge objects are being made which shouldn’t be seen as basic facts. Besse, 2001.

Keywords.

mental space; positive negative; poetics; sculpture; position

Dwelling, the Conversation Pieces

Fragments from proceedings (‘artefact submission’)’:

Abstract.

As a stage and framework, architecture is a well-developed medium for surrounding art. As a reference, art – by shape or meaning – serves architecture as an inspiration. What is of interest for the PhD project is if the architecture practice can learn from artistic practice, within its own act of space making. Probably there are design strategies to mutate or translate, in addition to the thinking in alignment, symmetry, solid/void, constructive details, harmony (in material, color or proportion) and other properties most architects are familiar with. The PhD project Dwelling, the Conversation Pieces aims at staging a productive dialogue between two disciplines. The goal is to set up several exhibitions that materialize conversations by using artefacts produced by the architects together with a carefully made selection of invited artists. By exhibiting the artefacts, the conversation becomes public and can be circumstantially debated by specialists from several disciplines. In his book, Iñaki Ábalos takes you on a guided visit to exemplary houses erected in the 20th century categorized according to seven different contemporary philosophies1. Seven worldviews relate to seven ways of structuring the home, both in the sense of constructing, orienting and the taking positions in the power relations of public life. By naming the parallels between philosophies and architecture, Ábalos underlines related ways of seeing the world through the spatial setting, the construction method and the chosen materials. Ábalos helps me to look at the shaped world as a field of opinions and designed intentions. By positioning different artefacts in relation to each other, at least one emerging meaning should speak of dwelling, the verb and dwelling, the object. Another one will report on the different ways of experiencing and imagining dwelling and by doing so, will bring forward a deepened exchange between art and architecture. For the CA2RE conference I will exhibit artefacts that illustrate a first collaboration. In this selection the design strategy of animism is on display. Human characteristics here work in relation with ‘telling’ architecture. As described above, these pieces aim to provoke a conversation.

Keywords.
Dwelling; artefacts; substantiating worldviews; design the conversation; interdisciplinary

/…/
I believe that by this selection of objects the design strategy of animism is on display, where recognisable human features work in service of art and architecture when transmitting messages.

Activating Empathy through the Act of Drawing

Files: abstract (De Brabander, Lagrange and Van Den Berghe), poster (De Brabander), full paper (De Brabander, Lagrange and Van Den Berghe)

Fragments from proceedings (‘artefact submission’)’:

Abstract.

We propose to present a set of drawings as an artefact. Through these drawings, we propose the act of drawing as a moment of embodiment and a tool to further enhance empathy in observations of phenomena related to architectural design which are difficult to understand otherwise. This research aims to develop ways of understanding fragility in architecture through initiating an (empathic) drawing process. We aim to critically assess and reflect on three series of drawings, their interrelation and how making those drawings contributes to understanding fragility through empathy. We will discuss these three series of drawings: Firstly, we will discuss a selection of drawings out of the first author’s drawing archive, consisting of drawings made as a child, a youngster, an architectural student and an architectural researcher. To obtain insight in the author’s way of drawing and hence observing, the author’s drawing archive has been observed. The observation has indicated that drawings made two decades ago are interlinked with drawings made over the past five years. Secondly, we will bring to the fore a series of sketches of a Belgian dune landscape made on site. We will elaborate on how these sketches are an initiator for current drawing cycles by serving as memo drawings. To conclude, we will elaborate on a drawing series that comprises layered drawings that gradually decode and unravel spatial observations. /…/

Keywords.
Perspective, analogue drawing, proto-renaissance, design driven research

/…/

Conclusion

The drawing process as described above provided the research process with the leverage that was necessary to question the status of the window. First, the window has been drawn and understood as an object placed next to the draughtsman. /…/ Is the window an object placed next to the draughtsman who is looking at one place? Or does the draughtsman personify the window for many places? If so, what are these places and are they important? These questions will be the subject of the next research phase. The drawing cycles as described above have been necessary steps to make this clear. /…/ The research is making clear that the act of drawing is an intense and empathic moment of embodiment, hence being a moment it is temporal. In that moment the draughtsman dwells where his ‘object of obsession’ that he is drawing resides. /…/ This moment of becoming, and thus the empathic window through which we observe, is extremely fragile. This is the fragility we are seeking to investigate and understand through this research. /…/ The drawings are a way to avoid the destruction in this moment by capturing it in drawing cycles of this kind so they can possibly give more permanence to ‘the fragile’.

Communal Space and Degree of Sharing

Files: abstract, poster, full paper (=updated abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

This paper reviews the regeneration project of Juer Hutong led by Chinese architect Liangyong Wu from 1987 to 1994, a dwelling research and practice for an old neighborhood with traditional courtyard houses in Beijing’s historical city. It is an early experiment of mediating historical conservation and the soaring housing demand in the late 1980s since the housing reform in Beijing. The whole research, design and implementation process of Juer Hutong project is documented in Wu’s 1994 book The Old City of Beijing and its Juer Hutong Neighborhood. Past studies of this epic housing project have been focusing on its theoretical value for conservation planning of historical cities as the biggest achievement. This paper wants to excavate another dimension of the project: how it employed the architectural design mechanisms and cultural idea of public-private relationship enclosed in traditional Chinese dwelling and created a new architectural typology, the new quadrangle, which can enable both community life and individual privacy. This paper argues that rather than being a traditional courtyard housing replica, as commonly misunderstood and criticised due to its un-traditional form, the new quadrangle stands as an interesting example of how to achieve communal living patterns in modern dwelling design, meeting nowadays requirements in terms of density and degree of collectivity.

Keywords.

Chinese dwelling design; communal space; new courtyard house; public-private gradient; urban regeneration design

Enframing the Scene

Files: abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘paper submission’)’:

Abstract. 

This paper is part of a Ph.D. thesis. It originates in a cross-cultural observation, which is from the perspective of the contemporary architecture academic context to interpret one typical Chinese landscape spatial phenomenon: enframing the scene.

Starting from a discussion of frame1, both in contemporary architectural discourse and in retroactive research concerning Ancient Chinese landscape, this project aims to reveal certain similarities and differences in the use of frame between these realms.

Based on a cross-cultural methodological approach, we found a similarity in the use of frame in these two domains. They are both from visual habits. It is in one certain chain: ‘the way of seeing’- ‘the way to create space matching this seeing way’1. Due to the different visual habits, the cases from ancient Chinese landscape offer another way to see, and then another way to organize, the space by using frame. This “another way”, in this thesis, is defined as perceptual interaction between the users and space, happening in the user’s perception field.

In the present paper, it will discuss the possibility to employ the perception-phenomenology and visual psychology to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this perception interaction tool in contemporary spatial design.

The adoption of phenomenology is based on the assumption that human knowledge of space includes some a priori. This means that, excluding cultural differences, there should be some spatial prototypes that can serve people of varied cultural backgrounds.

Ultimately, the research will highlight how the perception interaction, used as a “design tool”, could lead to a higher context-sensitive spatial design practice in this contemporary extensively globalized society.

Keywords. 

Perceptual Interaction Design Tool; Contemporary spatial design; Ancient Chinese landscape architecture; Frame/windows and space/landscape

/…/

Conclusion

Although this is a study based on the spatial phenomenon of Chinese gardens when we talk about the perceptual cognition, that is the essential and fundamental working mechanism, we actually touched on the commonality of the human being. We believe a more in-depth analysis of it in this process, mainly employing perception-phenomenology and visual psychology, will help us return to the context of contemporary spatial design discourse. It would help to convert it into a tool using in contemporary design.

Design the Possible

Files: abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘paper submission’)’:

Abstract.

How can the transformation of a street tell the story of the redevelopment project of an urban district (if it can) and therefore of a wider marginal territory? How can a built pavilion tell about the redevelopment of a prison (if it can) and therefore of the Italian prison system? Starting from these two questions related to practical experiences/…/, I will try to explore empirically the nature (one of the possibilities) of the contemporary project in some realms of complexity. It is an investigation into how architectural design can equip itself to become one of the key stages of the transformations that involve marginal territories.

Nowadays, the development of a project often has to face complex and uncertain contexts. On the one hand, the contexts can be complex because of different and contrasting needs, fragmented responsibilities, multiple knowledge and unspecified problem issues. On the other hand, the contexts can be uncertain because of changing political intentions, lack of economic resources and the hesitant time of possible transformation. Inactivity seems to be an inevitable condition. To overcome this condition, design needs to be updated in order to become an ecology of practices /…/, inside the society. In other words, it should have an innovative attitude capable of overcoming the traditional public-private economic system, applying to calls for grants, for example, working in partnership with several stakeholders, designing not only on problem-solving tasks but also on the definition of critical issues.

Following the process and the outcomes of two researches I have actively took part in, the attention will be focused on the elaborated documents, investigating possible innovative aspects. Both experiences try to define devices to guide the possible transformation, experiencing punctual realizations. In this way, the strategic stage and the tactical action influence each other in a cyclic movement. An adaptive master plan for a marginal territory and a set of guidelines for the redevelopment of Italian prisons will allow us to reflect if it is possible and useful to design a well-done document, re-elaborating “la tet bien faite” by Morin (1999). This would not be a document that designs a model but a device that both places and answers questions and which has the criteria to put in relation the available elements. An open document that has the codes to change itself in accordance with the contingency, becoming something different, maintaining the same strategic orientation. However, the debate remains open.

Keywords. open documents, complexity, uncertainty, contingency, research in action

/…/

The aim is to design devices capable of distinguishing and merging, recovering the original meaning of the term complexus /…/. A rhizomatic tool that connects the scales, the temporalities, the different degrees of generalization and specification, that become a shared place of work. Here coexist the interactions, the exchanges, the choices, the specific formalisations, conflictual too. Here the multiple thrusts and the tools of an adaptive training process are expressed. The process advances by approximation and by parts whose positioning is agreed from time to time.

Aware that many questions are still open /…/, this intervention is to be considered only a first attempt to use what can be learned from the opportunities encountered.

Structural Model of Multigenerational Living Environment

Files:  abstract, poster, full paper (= extended abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

Multigenerational living environment as an alternative to existing institutionalized living environment of older population presents the main field of research. The high level of elderly segregation remains ever present despite constant developments in the area of institutionalized care. Necessity of elderly integration into general social environment reminds us of importance of active presence for all age groups in order to provide quality living environment. Furthermore, it opens numerous questions concerning the unexplored or underdeveloped potentials of living environment, when the needs of users of all age groups are taken into consideration.

The aim of research is to explore and understand how diverse needs of users of all ages can influence the development of wider living environment, building typology from urbanistic point of view, and on architectural design of living units. The goal is to develop a structural model of multigenerational living environment and test its applicability in diverse situations.

The basic research frame of structural model development is defined by the key properties of multigenerational living environment from the social and spatial point of view. How do these properties affect the content of an environment, how are they regulated and how do they relate to each other in order to establish multigenerational living environment of higher quality? These are the focus questions of the doctoral thesis. Research includes all of the users of a living environment of all the age groups as well as multigenerational living environment in itself.

Research terms will be inducted through analysis and categorization of the users needs. Study of relations among users is to be performed, exploring relations among the members of the same age group, as well as with the members of other age groups.

Based on established research terms, the further study should be conducted, how users interrelations are expressed upon living environment and what kind of relations does the living environment generate towards its users, thus forming a foundation of structural model development.

Structural model of multigenerational living environment as a system of social and spatial relations has three primary roles. Firstly as a system of initial design, secondly as a system of review in the planning stage and finally as a system for evaluation of living environment in use. Diverse modes of application include transformation-of or addition-to an existing living environment and establishing of a new living environment. Scale adaptability of the model enables application on the level of wider living environment, building typology development and architectural design of living units.

Keywords.

structural model, multigenerational living environment, age group

Public Space at the Interface of Interior and Exterior

File: abstract, poster, full paper ( = updated abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.
/…/
What kind of relationship between interior and exterior public spaces create particular architectural qualities? How are these qualities to be put and evaluated in the historical and contemporary discourse? How can these qualities be translated into a design strategy?

I am intending to research the relationship of interior and exterior theoretically and practice based. Readability and orientation are qualities of perception, the dramaturgy of the spatial sequence a quality of experience. In the theoretical part I will examine and compare urban and architectural theories of perception and spatial experience, looking for similarities and differences. Starting with the concept of the “body-subject” (le corp proper /…/) and the “lived space” /…/ comparing different theories concerning the phenomenology of perception; I will look at relevant architectural and urban theories e.g. the image of the city and the visual sequence /…/, the serial vision/…/, the choreography of architectural spaces /…/, in order to find descriptions and categories of architectural qualities resulting of the perception and spatial experience in public spaces.

Within a case study I will analyse existing architectural concepts – such as the flowing space at city level/…/, the passage10 or the “traject”/…/ – with regard to historical development, variation and backgrounds. These build projects form the basis for the practice-based research. I am intending to address unused potentials or even weaknesses by carrying out a series of 4 architectural interventions or installations on different buildings on a scale of 1:1 and reflect the effect.

Keywords.

spatial perception, spatial experience, interface of interior and exterior

Home: Things and Bodies

Files: abstract, poster, full paper ( = updated abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract. /…/

Home is the site of our intimate lives/…/. To inhabit a house is to inscribe it in our habits, and while we habituate to it, the domestic falls into the automatic perception of habitual use/…/. The house becomes ours while we get used to the house, and it slowly starts to disappear in the background. As often said, “home is where the heart is”, but if we don’t feel it beating, we may be homeless.

The big and small architectural conventions that shape our quotidian lives can be observed and questioned3. By questioning them, we somehow question ourselves and we open a possibility for engagement and change4. Modifying the implicit characteristics and relations of the objects that take part on our daily rituals can destabilise their meaning, and can bring the estranged objects back to the foreground of our perception (2). Once they are here, we see them flowing free and open to new interpretations, creating a tension between the real and the possible, transforming the context and giving us the opportunity to imagine new ways of inhabiting.

The project proposes the use of alternative medial practices –collected and classified in a catalogue of references– to document and narrate specific domestic scenarios. The catalogue will be applied in 5 different case studies in order to train and sharp perception, and produce specific critical observations about every day rituals. These observations will be translated into different estrangement techniques of objectual specific qualities –categorised in relation to the catalogue of medial practices– that will introduce difficulties on the (re)design of household objects and their relations within the limits of the real, and will intensify their presence avoiding the absurd. The goal is to trigger reactions on the user and produce self-awareness about living practices hitherto hindered.

As the result of the study, the outcome of the catalogue –composed by the categories of medial practices and the related terms of defamiliarization– will be evaluated through the user’s experience. This may prove that there is a layer of meaningful information about real specific inhabitation needs that can be extracted from the documentation of the relationships between space, objects and inhabitants. Findings may indicate specific qualities of familiar objects and specific defamiliarization techniques with which to experiment in the field of design in order to inform the context, open reality to creative speculation and drive conscious social transformations.

Keywords.

domesticity, rituals, habituation, perception, joy, documentation, representation, speculation, object-based study, estrangement, self-awareness, transformation, integrity of living.

In my experience as an architect, focused on the production of the domestic environment, I have always been fascinated with the potential of architectural representation for documenting and speculating about inhabiting narratives from a different point of view than the user’s perspective. Moreover, my personal interest in conceptual and performative art has encouraged me to test other medial practices, not only as a means to deliver content, but also as an aesthetic experience in itself. In addition to that, my participation in several Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) workshops has helped me to refine my perception, and to become aware of my constant intimate interaction with the things that compose my personal domestic environment and my usual lack of perception.

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