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Those engaged in architecture culture rely not only on information that is explicitly recorded, such as social surveys, technical formulas and economic calculations, but also on knowledge acquired in other, more implicit ways. How such tacit, ‘unspoken knowledge’ operates in architecture is examined in the four sections that make up this exhibition.
‘Horizons and References’ explores the importance of visual, conceptual and material references in architecture culture. It shows how their tacit presence can install a horizon against which architects think, write, draw, speak and build.
‘Making and Materiality’ demonstrates how the act of making a drawing, a scale model, a piece of furniture, a book or a building can result in the acquisition of knowledge. It also reveals how the physical qualities of materials often adopt central roles in such acts of tacit knowledge production.
‘Codes and Communities’ focuses on how codes about building and buildings can be learned through tacit observation, and illustrates how the ability to decipher such codes is often a matter of belonging to an informed community.
‘Embodiment and Experience’ uncovers the role of bodily experiences in learning about architecture. It explores how our senses can be activated in analogue and digital ways to gain knowledge about the built environment.
The various objects on display in this three-day exhibition have been crowd-sourced. They are the result of a ‘call for objects’ to which a large group of practitioners and scholars responded. The selected items – models, photographs, videos, etc. – are prime witnesses to the critical and fertile role of tacit knowledge in architecture culture.
The TACK Exhibition will take place between 19-21 June 2023 at ETH Zürich, Hönggerberg, Archena (HIL D 57.1).
Curators
Tom Avermaete and Janina Gosseye
Scenography
Tom Avermaete and Janina Gosseye
Calligraphy
Eva Storgaard
Production lead
Laura Trazic
Production
Laura Trazic, Korinna Zinovia Weber, Jonas Pfändler, Sereina Fritsche
Technical support
Daniel Sommer, gta exhibitions
Contributors
Nadi Abusaada, ETH Zürich, & Wesam Al Asali, IE University
Alba Balmaseda Domínguez, Kyra Bullert & Špela Setzen, University of Stuttgart
Sarah Becchio & Paolo Borghino, ErranteArchitetture
Francesca Berni, POLIMI
Verena Brehm, Cityförster
Irina Davidovici & Ziu Bruckmann, ETH Zürich
Adam Caruso, Caruso St John Architects
Filippo Cattapan, BUW
Sofie de Caigny & Tine Poot, Vlaams Architectuur Instituut
Maria Conen, Conen Sigl Architekt:innen, Zürich
Nicole de Lalouvière, ETH Zürich
Nathalie de Vries, MVRDV Architects
An Fonteyne, noAarchitecten
Irmgard Frank, Institute of Spatial design, TU Graz,
Annette Gigon & Mike Guyer, Gigon/Guyer Architects
Holger Hoffmann, one fine day
Anne Holtrop, Studio Anne Holtrop
Johanna Just, ETH Zürich
Momoyo Kaijima, Atelier Bow-Wow
Katharina Kasinger
Joris Kerremans & Hong Wan Chan, Ghent University
Angelo Lunati & Giancarlo Floridi, Onsitestudio
Elli Mosayebi, Edelaar Mosayebi Inderbitzin Architekten & Fabian Bircher
Samantha Ong & Ariel Bintang, Yale School of Architecture
Monika Platzer, Architekturzentrum Wien
Elena Perez Guembe, TU Delft
Samuel H. Ramirez
Martin Rösch & Nicola Graf, ETH Zürich
Klas Ruin & Ola Broms Wessel, SPRIDD
Eva Sommeregger, ABKW
Sofie Stilling, University of Copenhagen
Paula Strunden, ABKW
Mara Trübenbach, AHO
U5 Collective, ETH Zürich
Dirk van den Heuvel, Het Nieuwe Instituut
Dick van Gameren, TU Delft
Paul Vermeulen, De Smet Vermeulen architecten
Inge Vinck & Jan De Vlyder, AJDVIV
Martina Voser, mavo Landschaften
Maxime Zaugg, ETH Zürich
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Citations and references have always been an essential part of architecture culture. They forge a horizon against which architects think, write, draw, speak and build.
How architects and architectural firms compose these horizons of references varies. Many construct carefully curated libraries of architecture photographs, as ‘Heinrich Helfenstein’s Photography’ provided to various practitioners, but also of books, magazines and sometimes even scale models, as is shown in ‘Clay Landscape’. Others, like ‘a Studio for Orbanism – Luc Deleu & T.O.P. office ’, create a spatial universe of drawings, sketches, models and other knick-knacks within which to work.
Architects often engage with references from other fields of knowledge, such as literature and art, as is the case in ‘Tests and References, ZSC Arena, Zurich 2012–22’ and ‘Ink Blot Drawings’. Nature can also serve as a source of inspiration on which to draw, as ‘City as Forest’ exemplifies.
Sometimes architects design specific devices, such as ‘Material Chariots’, ‘Forêt DesCartes’ or miniatures (e.g. ‘Bed Chamber’), that can gather, visualise and activate frames of references. Even so, expressing horizons of references in architectural design is no mean feat. Building fragments at scale 1:1, such as the ‘Concrete Column, Pirelli Learning Centre’, can assist in gauging the legibility of the associative vocabularies that have informed a project.
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Material references play a vital role in the collaborative work of architects. At the office of De Smet Vermeulen architects in Ghent, chariots are used to expose samples of materials and combine them into palettes.
The main idea is that the materials stay on show for the duration of the project, to facilitate material decisions. The chariots are part and parcel of the design process.
As the office only has three chariots but more ongoing projects, each chariot carries more than one palette of materials. Complementary samples often lie on the floor. As a result, palettes of projects tend to melt together, creating new sources of inspiration.
Submitted by
Paul Vermeulen is an architect, writer and founding partner of the Ghent-based office De Smet Vermeulen architecten. He is a professor at TU Delft, leading the chair of Urban Architecture. In 2011 he was awarded the Flemish Culture Prize (Architecture) for his contribution to architecture, its culture and its criticism.
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This 1:1000 landscape model made from clay shows the site of a prominent 12th century church and graveyard located between two housing areas, Tensta and Rinkeby, both built during the 1960s as part of the Million Programme in Stockholm. We are currently adding a wall of housing combined with an assembly hall of 100 metres long on this site.
In our practice we have used this kind of clay model for numerous projects over the years. Collecting these models, we have built our own growing landscape of models in the office.
We enjoy the reference to John Soane’s house museum in London and his mode of producing imaginative collage paintings, representing the totality of his work as an autonomous place of culture production.
Submitted by
Klas Ruin and Ola Broms Wessel founded Spridd in 2005. Spridd is one of Sweden’s most innovative offices with success in competitions, research, debates and completed projects. Spridd is nominated for the Kasper Salin prize, best building of the year 2023, for the transformation of St. Paul’s church in Stockholm.
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We often include references in our competition submissions, images of places and buildings that hold something of the atmosphere that we intend for the completed project.
For the ZSC Arena we wanted to underline our interest in giving this sports building civic qualities appropriate to its social programme and to its position as a gateway into the city from the north west. We included images of the tents for the Swedish royal family at Hagaparken and an ancient mosque in the Syrian desert.
In the long process of developing the design for the in-situ concrete ‘textile’ façade we continued to use references, of architecture by Schinkel and etchings by Flaxman, to get ever closer to the image of what we were after.
Submitted by
Adam Caruso was born in Montreal and studied architecture at McGill University. He established Caruso St John Architects with Peter St John in 1990. The practice won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2016 for the Newport Street Gallery and represented Britain at the 2018 Venice Architecture. Adam Caruso is Professor of Architecture and Construction at the ETH Zurich.
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The act of making a drawing, a scale model, a piece of furniture, a book or a building can result in the acquisition of tacit knowledge. This knowledge can be about materials and their capacities, as is the case in ‘HERMIA’. It can be knowledge about particular sites and spaces of production, as is shown in ‘Innerer Garten project, Zürich Leutschenbach’, ‘Tannour’ and ‘Lava Brick’; or it can be knowledge about craft, skill and (new) modes of making, as is demonstrated in ‘Clay 3D Print of Urmein’, ‘The Yield of the Land’ and ‘Four Square Levels’.
Materials are also carriers of tacit knowledge. Their physical qualities, along with their dents, tears and scratches, can silently speak about their provenance, material capacities, past lives and previous usages, and can stimulate designers’ imaginations, shaping (or sometimes even dictating) new realities and novel possibilities, as is shown by ‘Carpenter Chair’, ‘Glassplitter/Broken Glass’ and ‘The B-Sides. Tupaia, Kybernetes & Lara Croft’.
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Making and Materiality
Designed to capture the lesser-known history of the 1933 transportation of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg from Hamburg to London, for me, this 1:75 model of a ship embodies how material literacy is tacitly acquired through the model-making process.
A key moment occurred when I had to carry the finished model. It felt lighter than the MDF sheets from which it was constructed; not only because a compact model is easier to carry than large MDF sheets, but also because I had established a relationship with the object. I touched every layer, assembled it carefully, and glued and finished it. This, along with the energy I had invested in producing accurate drawings for laser-cutting, gave me a keen awareness of the material.
Through the material, I built a relationship with the (hi)story of the ship and acquired knowledge that is tacitly held between humans and non-humans.
Submitted by
Mara Trübenbach is an architectural designer and scholar. She holds an Architecture MSc from Bauhaus University, and is undertaking her PhD at AHO (Oslo). Part of the TACK network, she is strongly interested in the intersection of craft, material and alternative design methods in architecture, including performance and theatre studies.
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Architectural knowledge is codified. While many codes can be learned through manuals and textbooks, others can be best understood through tacit observation. If ‘Model Haarlemmerplein’ devised an architectural proposition through a close reading of urban morphological conventions, ‘Texture Kortrijk – Jewel Box’ did so by carefully interpreting a building’s structural codes.
Architectural codes create communities of those who understand them. These can be global, as in ‘Post CIAM’; they can operate on the level of nation-states, which ‘Maputo Land Rover’ hints at, or exist at the scale of an architectural office, as is the case in ‘Playa Blanca, Bankers, and the Pivotal Point’. Shared tacit knowledge not only binds communities of architects, but also other collectives, such as residents, as is shown in ‘Objects of Belonging’ and ‘Tesseln/Bâtons à marques’.
Various approaches, techniques and tools have been developed to share codified tacit knowledge. The ‘Arteplagemodell Swiss National Expo 02’ and ‘Model of Silodam Housing, Amsterdam’ models, for instance, were specifically designed to engage heterogeneous actors in conversation about architecture. ‘Public Drawings, Atelier Bow-Wow’ and ‘Chozos, Houses of Nomadic Shepherds’ employ the physical act of drawing or building together to share and co-construct tacit knowledge, while ‘Eilfried Huth’s Bauhütte’ was conceived as a designated place of cooperation.
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Bodies interact with their surroundings. We learn through bodily experiences. ‘Anthropomorphe Form’, an installation that responds to people’s movement through space, draws upon such embodied learning to forge a collective. ‘Tactiles’ similarly uses shared performative experiences to unlearn pre-ordained spatial codes and activate an intuitive process of re-learning.
Embodied experience appeals to different senses. ‘The stool called WALDE’ demonstrates how tacit knowledge is acquired through touch – by direct physical engagement with furniture and its production – while ‘Invisible Elastic Structure’ activates our sense of sight: observing the leaf, we gain insight into its structural and aesthetic behaviour.
Capturing, transmitting or even evoking embodied tacit knowledge is challenging. ‘55°42’14.8”N 12°33’18.4”E’ does so through film, ‘Ulrich Mahler’s Exkursionszettel Wagbachniederung’ uses a map, and ‘Infra-thin Magick’ proposes a performative extended reality model to activate our senses.