Objects – TACK

_Constructing Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Political Commitment and Urban Planning in Postwar Milan

ABSTRACT

Exploring historical models of the construction of tacit knowledge, this paper examines the contribution of the communist architectural collective Collettivo di Architettura to Milanese postwar planning culture. During the reconstruction period, Milan underwent significant economic, social, and territorial transformations that intensified the divide between the city center and the periphery. The Milanese outskirts were left to speculation, rapid urbanization, and high migration rates without adequate urban planning tools and policies. In this context, leftist practitioners sought to address the problems affecting the Milanese periphery and wanted to contribute to their resolution. Among them, Collettivo di Architettura stood out for its explicit political stance and extensive contribution. Its members attributed social and political dimensions to architectural work and integrated collaborative ways of working and political militancy into their practice. From the 1950s, they provided free professional support in the Milanese periphery, using the expression urbanista condotto to define their work: in addition to their architectural practice, they assisted municipalities that lacked adequate planning tools and knowledge and initiated discussions with local authorities and institutions concerning urban development. As a result, procedures, strategies, and processes were collectively developed to establish effective planning methods and improve living conditions in the Milanese outskirts. By explicitly drawing from the Gramscian concept of the organic intellectual and the example of other committed practitioners of their time, the engagement of Collettivo’s members provided the basis for a shared knowledge of urban planning and management. Thus, this case study highlights the significance of political commitment in generating communities of tacit knowledge.

Elettra Carnelli

Conference Paper

June 20, 2023

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_Constructing Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Political Commitment and Urban Planning in Postwar Milan

Elettra Carnelli

ABSTRACT

Exploring historical models of the construction of tacit knowledge, this paper examines the contribution of the communist architectural collective Collettivo di Architettura to Milanese postwar planning culture. During the reconstruction period, Milan underwent significant economic, social, and territorial transformations that intensified the divide between the city center and the periphery. The Milanese outskirts were left to speculation, rapid urbanization, and high migration rates without adequate urban planning tools and policies. In this context, leftist practitioners sought to address the problems affecting the Milanese periphery and wanted to contribute to their resolution. Among them, Collettivo di Architettura stood out for its explicit political stance and extensive contribution. Its members attributed social and political dimensions to architectural work and integrated collaborative ways of working and political militancy into their practice. From the 1950s, they provided free professional support in the Milanese periphery, using the expression urbanista condotto to define their work: in addition to their architectural practice, they assisted municipalities that lacked adequate planning tools and knowledge and initiated discussions with local authorities and institutions concerning urban development. As a result, procedures, strategies, and processes were collectively developed to establish effective planning methods and improve living conditions in the Milanese outskirts. By explicitly drawing from the Gramscian concept of the organic intellectual and the example of other committed practitioners of their time, the engagement of Collettivo’s members provided the basis for a shared knowledge of urban planning and management. Thus, this case study highlights the significance of political commitment in generating communities of tacit knowledge.

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Clay landscape

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, built during the 1960´s as part of the Million Programme in Stockholm, where we are currently adding a wall of housing combined with an assembly hall, 100 metres long. In our practice we have used this kind of clay model for numerous projects over the years.

Ola Broms Wessel Klas Ruin Spridd

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Clay landscape

Ola Broms Wessel Klas Ruin Spridd

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, built during the 1960´s as part of the Million Programme in Stockholm, where we are currently adding a wall of housing combined with an assembly hall, 100 metres long. In our practice we have used this kind of clay model for numerous projects over the years.

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

The stool called WALDE

In contrast to space, we come into direct contact with furniture. We not only see it, but we also touch it, move it, carry it around, etc. Users feel what a piece of furniture holds and what distinguishes it from another.

Irmgard Frank

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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The stool called WALDE

Irmgard Frank

In contrast to space, we come into direct contact with furniture. We not only see it, but we also touch it, move it, carry it around, etc. Users feel what a piece of furniture holds and what distinguishes it from another.

Book Book chapter

The Tacit Dimension [Excerpt]

The book “The Tacit Dimension” by Michael Polanyi was published firstly in 1966 at The University of Chicago Press. The following is an excerpt from the chapter “Tacit Knowing” (p. 4-13). I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell. This fact seems obvious enough; but it is not easy to say exactly what it means. Take an example. We know a person’s face, and can recognize it among a thousand, indeed among a million. Yet we usually cannot tell how we recognize a face we know. So most of this knowledge cannot be put into words. But the police have recently introduced a method by which we can communicate much of this knowledge. They have made a large collection of pictures showing a variety of noses, mouths, and other features. From these the witness selects the particulars of the face he knows, and the pieces can then be put together to form a reasonably good likeness of the face. This may suggest that we can communicate, after all, our knowledge of a physiognomy, provided we are given adequate means for expressing ourselves. But the application of the police method does not change the fact that previous to it we did know more than we could tell at the time. Moreover, we can use the police method only by knowing how to match the features we remember with those in the collection, and we cannot tell how we do this. This very act of communication displays a knowledge that we cannot tell.

Michael Polanyi

Book Book chapter

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The Tacit Dimension [Excerpt]

Michael Polanyi

The book “The Tacit Dimension” by Michael Polanyi was published firstly in 1966 at The University of Chicago Press. The following is an excerpt from the chapter “Tacit Knowing” (p. 4-13). I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell. This fact seems obvious enough; but it is not easy to say exactly what it means. Take an example. We know a person’s face, and can recognize it among a thousand, indeed among a million. Yet we usually cannot tell how we recognize a face we know. So most of this knowledge cannot be put into words. But the police have recently introduced a method by which we can communicate much of this knowledge. They have made a large collection of pictures showing a variety of noses, mouths, and other features. From these the witness selects the particulars of the face he knows, and the pieces can then be put together to form a reasonably good likeness of the face. This may suggest that we can communicate, after all, our knowledge of a physiognomy, provided we are given adequate means for expressing ourselves. But the application of the police method does not change the fact that previous to it we did know more than we could tell at the time. Moreover, we can use the police method only by knowing how to match the features we remember with those in the collection, and we cannot tell how we do this. This very act of communication displays a knowledge that we cannot tell.

Lecture / Talk Video

Tack Talks #1: Haworth Tompkins

Dan Tassell Elizabeth Flower Haworth Tompkins Lara Schrijver Mara Trübenbach

Lecture / Talk Video

July 23, 2020

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Tack Talks #1: Haworth Tompkins

Dan Tassell Elizabeth Flower Haworth Tompkins Lara Schrijver Mara Trübenbach

Video

Weightless Bricks Act I: Production

Paula Strunden

Video

February 20, 2019

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Weightless Bricks Act I: Production

Paula Strunden

Book chapter Interview Open Access Publication

Shot/Reverse Shot: A conversation on architecture, design and the climate emergency

A Conversation on Architecture, Design and the Climate Emergency with Rania Ghosn, El Hadi Jazairy & Peg Rawes facilitated by Rodney Harrison (RH)

Peg Rawes

Book chapter Interview Open Access Publication

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Shot/Reverse Shot: A conversation on architecture, design and the climate emergency

Peg Rawes

A Conversation on Architecture, Design and the Climate Emergency with Rania Ghosn, El Hadi Jazairy & Peg Rawes facilitated by Rodney Harrison (RH)

Presentation

_Architectural photography as conduit for tacit knowledge: The Heinrich Helfenstein Estate at the gta Archive

The architectural photography of Heinrich Helfenstein (1946-2020) is grounded foremost in an understanding of language. A trained linguist, his approach to image-making was shaped by semiology and post-structuralism. Helfenstein’s point of entry to architecture, as Aldo Rossi’s teaching assistant at ETH in the 1970s, was also the start of his career as architecture photographer. Some of his earliest photographs are also some of the most familiar, having been used to illustrate Rossi’s widely circulated Scientific Autobiography. The delicate and absorbing dialogue between images and words that resulted from this collaboration influenced generations of architects, whilst paving the way to an extensive photographic oeuvre. By the time of his retirement in the early 2010s, Helfenstein was one of the most celebrated Swiss architecture photographers, having worked with Diener & Diener, Peter Märkli, Peter Zumthor, Meili Peter, Gigon Guyer, Burkhalter & Sumi, and Valerio Olgiati, as well as artists Hans Josephsohn, Per Kirkby, and Meret Oppenheim among many others. Due to his approach, his photography not only helped disseminate Swiss architecture in the late 20th century, but actively shaped its discourse, particular its interfaces with art. Based on original material from the Helfenstein holdings at the gta Archives, this paper explores the formation of tacit professional knowledge through the vector of architectural photography. It accompanies the exhibit co-curated with gta archivist and architect Ziu Bruckmann.

Irina Davidovici Ziu Bruckmann

Presentation

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_Architectural photography as conduit for tacit knowledge: The Heinrich Helfenstein Estate at the gta Archive

Irina Davidovici Ziu Bruckmann

The architectural photography of Heinrich Helfenstein (1946-2020) is grounded foremost in an understanding of language. A trained linguist, his approach to image-making was shaped by semiology and post-structuralism. Helfenstein’s point of entry to architecture, as Aldo Rossi’s teaching assistant at ETH in the 1970s, was also the start of his career as architecture photographer. Some of his earliest photographs are also some of the most familiar, having been used to illustrate Rossi’s widely circulated Scientific Autobiography. The delicate and absorbing dialogue between images and words that resulted from this collaboration influenced generations of architects, whilst paving the way to an extensive photographic oeuvre. By the time of his retirement in the early 2010s, Helfenstein was one of the most celebrated Swiss architecture photographers, having worked with Diener & Diener, Peter Märkli, Peter Zumthor, Meili Peter, Gigon Guyer, Burkhalter & Sumi, and Valerio Olgiati, as well as artists Hans Josephsohn, Per Kirkby, and Meret Oppenheim among many others. Due to his approach, his photography not only helped disseminate Swiss architecture in the late 20th century, but actively shaped its discourse, particular its interfaces with art. Based on original material from the Helfenstein holdings at the gta Archives, this paper explores the formation of tacit professional knowledge through the vector of architectural photography. It accompanies the exhibit co-curated with gta archivist and architect Ziu Bruckmann.

Case Study Note Presentation Site writing

Two objects and a visit

Photo of the book cover 'Lo studio di Wimbleton', © Filippo Cattapan

The object of this visit is a short novel, which has been later “translated” into a movie. The book is Lo stadio di Wimbledon by Daniele Del Giudice, while the movie is entitled Le stade de Wimbledon and it has been directed by Mathieu Amalric. Perhaps we could say that the visit has two objects, a book and a movie, or even, more precisely, that the real object of the inquiry at a certain point turned to be the intermediate operation of translation from the book to the movie. It is in fact in this gap or relation between the two, that it seemed possible to retrace a meaningful series of tacit reasons and of cultural connections, which were hiding behind the static singularity of the two considered in their autonomy.

Filippo Cattapan

Case Study Note Presentation Site writing

June 17, 2020

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Two objects and a visit

Filippo Cattapan

Photo of the book cover 'Lo studio di Wimbleton', © Filippo Cattapan

The object of this visit is a short novel, which has been later “translated” into a movie. The book is Lo stadio di Wimbledon by Daniele Del Giudice, while the movie is entitled Le stade de Wimbledon and it has been directed by Mathieu Amalric. Perhaps we could say that the visit has two objects, a book and a movie, or even, more precisely, that the real object of the inquiry at a certain point turned to be the intermediate operation of translation from the book to the movie. It is in fact in this gap or relation between the two, that it seemed possible to retrace a meaningful series of tacit reasons and of cultural connections, which were hiding behind the static singularity of the two considered in their autonomy.

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Arteplagemodell Swiss National Expo 02

Arteplagemodell Biel, Mst. 1:1500. Forum und Expopark. 26 x 115 x 80 cm. Ist Teil von: Architekturmodell. Arteplagemodelle der Direction artistique (Leitung: Pipilotti Rist). Herstellung: Koeppel & Martinez (bis 2003) (Modellbauer: LM-108202.1: Gn�nger LM-108202.2: Krpan Knopfel LM-108202.3: Kamm). April 1998. 26 x 113 x 80 cm.

A good example is the Swiss national Expo 02 that aimed to explore Switzerland’s identity under the banner ‘Nature and Artificiality’. During the preparatory phase, which lasted ten years, countless concepts were tested. In this phase, models often had the role of negotiating between organisers and the public.

Maxime Zaugg

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Arteplagemodell Swiss National Expo 02

Maxime Zaugg

Arteplagemodell Biel, Mst. 1:1500. Forum und Expopark. 26 x 115 x 80 cm. Ist Teil von: Architekturmodell. Arteplagemodelle der Direction artistique (Leitung: Pipilotti Rist). Herstellung: Koeppel & Martinez (bis 2003) (Modellbauer: LM-108202.1: Gn�nger LM-108202.2: Krpan Knopfel LM-108202.3: Kamm). April 1998. 26 x 113 x 80 cm.

A good example is the Swiss national Expo 02 that aimed to explore Switzerland’s identity under the banner ‘Nature and Artificiality’. During the preparatory phase, which lasted ten years, countless concepts were tested. In this phase, models often had the role of negotiating between organisers and the public.

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Model Haarlemmerplein

This design for 67 apartments, commercial spaces and underground parking was for a location on the edge of the 17th-century western part of central Amsterdam. To anchor the project in its site and broader context, the design draws on historical patterns of parcellation, housing and courtyard typologies, and material expressions that can be found in Amsterdam’s historic core.

Dick van Gameren

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Model Haarlemmerplein

Dick van Gameren

This design for 67 apartments, commercial spaces and underground parking was for a location on the edge of the 17th-century western part of central Amsterdam. To anchor the project in its site and broader context, the design draws on historical patterns of parcellation, housing and courtyard typologies, and material expressions that can be found in Amsterdam’s historic core.

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

Post CIAM

At the last CIAM conference held in Otterlo in 1959, members of Team 10, including Alison and Peter Smithson, Aldo van Eyck, Daniel van Ginkel, Blanche Lemco, and John Voelcker, enacted an ironic funeral procession, presumably carrying CIAM to its grave. It was captured on film by Jaap Bakema. After the demise of CIAM, Bakema initiated a newsletter to keep the network updated. Between 1959 and 1981 he compiled 18 such newsletters, which comprised a summary of contributions he received from around the world.

Dirk van den Heuvel Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI)

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

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Post CIAM

Dirk van den Heuvel Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI)

At the last CIAM conference held in Otterlo in 1959, members of Team 10, including Alison and Peter Smithson, Aldo van Eyck, Daniel van Ginkel, Blanche Lemco, and John Voelcker, enacted an ironic funeral procession, presumably carrying CIAM to its grave. It was captured on film by Jaap Bakema. After the demise of CIAM, Bakema initiated a newsletter to keep the network updated. Between 1959 and 1981 he compiled 18 such newsletters, which comprised a summary of contributions he received from around the world.

Case Study Reflection

(Atlas of) Typology Affordances

Gennaro Postiglione Andreas Lechner

Case Study Reflection

March 1, 2023

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(Atlas of) Typology Affordances

Gennaro Postiglione Andreas Lechner

Resources

Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing

Resources

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Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Clay 3D Print of Urmein

The model displayed here, a Clay 3D Print of Urmein, a rural village in Switzerland, highlights the exploratory path that architects often take when new technologies become available. The model is based on information drawn from photogrammetry and drone footage, and has been produced by a clay printer intended for pottery – all tools that do not typically belong in the architect’s toolbox.

Martin Roesch Nicola Graf

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Clay 3D Print of Urmein

Martin Roesch Nicola Graf

The model displayed here, a Clay 3D Print of Urmein, a rural village in Switzerland, highlights the exploratory path that architects often take when new technologies become available. The model is based on information drawn from photogrammetry and drone footage, and has been produced by a clay printer intended for pottery – all tools that do not typically belong in the architect’s toolbox.

Open Access Publication Paper

Knowledge in Architecture: draughtsmanship or craftsmanship?

Image 01: Mason worker drawing Date: 1425 Source: Hausbuch der Mendelschen Zwölfbrüderstiftung, Band 1. Nürnberg 1426–1549. Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Amb. 317.2°, © Public Domain

ABSTRACT

What are draughtsmanship and craftsmanship in architecture and what is their relation? This question represents, of course, what could be called two distinct fields of knowledge and communities of practice, architecture and craft, and can very generally describe how their specific knowledge take shape or, in other words, through what kind of practice it is manifested.

Eric Crevels

Open Access Publication Paper

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Knowledge in Architecture: draughtsmanship or craftsmanship?

Eric Crevels

Image 01: Mason worker drawing Date: 1425 Source: Hausbuch der Mendelschen Zwölfbrüderstiftung, Band 1. Nürnberg 1426–1549. Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Amb. 317.2°, © Public Domain

Image 02: Sketch of a detail by John Ruskin Source: http://www.themorgan.org/collection/literary-and-historical-manuscripts/191761, © Public Domain

ABSTRACT

What are draughtsmanship and craftsmanship in architecture and what is their relation? This question represents, of course, what could be called two distinct fields of knowledge and communities of practice, architecture and craft, and can very generally describe how their specific knowledge take shape or, in other words, through what kind of practice it is manifested.

Lecture / Talk Video

TACK Talks #2: How to choose the expert?

Monika Platzer Architekturzentrum Wien (AzW) Maureen Mooren Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI) Anna Livia Vørsel Hamish Lonergan Claudia Mainardi

Lecture / Talk Video

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TACK Talks #2: How to choose the expert?

Monika Platzer Architekturzentrum Wien (AzW) Maureen Mooren Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI) Anna Livia Vørsel Hamish Lonergan Claudia Mainardi

Essay

The American Pictures of the “Shrimps’ Vanguard”

ABSTRACT

The research addresses the idea of the “picturescape” as a form of episteme1, which tacitly and structurally influence the operative design modalities applied in both architectural theory and practice. The definition of “picturescape” is derived from the term “objectscape”, coined by the Leiden archaeologist Miguel John Versluys. Specularly to this notion, the term refers to the new configuration of visual culture that was caused by the emergence of the technical means of images reproduction from the beginning of the Seventeenth century onwards. During the course of the following centuries, pictures differently corresponded to the historical contexts in which they were acting, producing a substantial impact in the definition of the coeval cultures and of their related ideas of architecture. Final objective of the research is the thorough understanding of such an influence at the multiple levels at which it operated.

Filippo Cattapan

Essay

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The American Pictures of the “Shrimps’ Vanguard”

Filippo Cattapan

ABSTRACT

The research addresses the idea of the “picturescape” as a form of episteme1, which tacitly and structurally influence the operative design modalities applied in both architectural theory and practice. The definition of “picturescape” is derived from the term “objectscape”, coined by the Leiden archaeologist Miguel John Versluys. Specularly to this notion, the term refers to the new configuration of visual culture that was caused by the emergence of the technical means of images reproduction from the beginning of the Seventeenth century onwards. During the course of the following centuries, pictures differently corresponded to the historical contexts in which they were acting, producing a substantial impact in the definition of the coeval cultures and of their related ideas of architecture. Final objective of the research is the thorough understanding of such an influence at the multiple levels at which it operated.

Book chapter

‘To strike a beat, to string a necklace.’ Latent continuities across the architectural Epistemes and the heuristic tension of Indwelling.

ABSTRACT

In his theory of Tacit Knowledge Michael Polanyi introduced the concept of Indwelling, to explain the role of habit and skill in practice-based knowledge, but also to describe a heuristic tension that underlies all forms of knowing. Such a tension, Polanyi tells us, unfolds from the ‘depths’ of our biological being to the ‘heights’ of ideas and cultural values. The premise of this essay is that the choice of the spatial (and temporal) metaphor of Indwelling is hardly an accident: human consciousness is opened to knowledge primarily through our physical engagement with the world; marked by both space and time. The hypothesis is thus formed of architecture as a discipline that studies precisely these tacit processes of (In)dwelling, in search of correspondences between ‘lower’ levels of bodily disposition and ‘higher’ levels of intellect and intuition. To pursue this hypothesis, I turn to the example of a two-month apprenticeship in traditional stonemasonry, that took place in 2019 in Greece, entailing the reconstruction of a dry-stone kalderimi (i.e. cobbled pathway). Following this participatory project I observe the interplay between day-to-day Labor, culturally meaningful Work and politically charged Action (Arendt 1958). In this reading I employ tools drawn from different Epistemes of architectural theory, building on the awareness that these are bound to reveal – and thus also obscure – different dimensions of the architectural work (Avermaete 2021); and to reproduce different conceptions of the discipline. By placing the (auto)ethnographic study of this apprenticeship vis-à-vis fundamental perspectives of architectural theory a discrepancy is identified: While the lived experience of architecture embraces ‘the practical, the symbolic and the imaginary’ (Lefebvre 1974), its Epistemes tend to disconnect such dimensions. This paper concludes by proposing a consideration of architectural knowledge between Crafts and the City, as a means to elucidate the latent complementarity of the Epistemes of architecture, and the potential inherent in their attunement (Pérez-Gómez 2016). By illuminating the steps from the ‘lower’ to the ‘higher’ dimensions of the built environment, it closes a circle that leads to a specifically architectural interpretation of the heuristic tension of Indwelling – and thus to a more nuanced understanding of Tacit Knowledge in architecture.

Ionas Sklavounos

Book chapter

November 1, 2022

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‘To strike a beat, to string a necklace.’ Latent continuities across the architectural Epistemes and the heuristic tension of Indwelling.

Ionas Sklavounos

ABSTRACT

In his theory of Tacit Knowledge Michael Polanyi introduced the concept of Indwelling, to explain the role of habit and skill in practice-based knowledge, but also to describe a heuristic tension that underlies all forms of knowing. Such a tension, Polanyi tells us, unfolds from the ‘depths’ of our biological being to the ‘heights’ of ideas and cultural values. The premise of this essay is that the choice of the spatial (and temporal) metaphor of Indwelling is hardly an accident: human consciousness is opened to knowledge primarily through our physical engagement with the world; marked by both space and time. The hypothesis is thus formed of architecture as a discipline that studies precisely these tacit processes of (In)dwelling, in search of correspondences between ‘lower’ levels of bodily disposition and ‘higher’ levels of intellect and intuition. To pursue this hypothesis, I turn to the example of a two-month apprenticeship in traditional stonemasonry, that took place in 2019 in Greece, entailing the reconstruction of a dry-stone kalderimi (i.e. cobbled pathway). Following this participatory project I observe the interplay between day-to-day Labor, culturally meaningful Work and politically charged Action (Arendt 1958). In this reading I employ tools drawn from different Epistemes of architectural theory, building on the awareness that these are bound to reveal – and thus also obscure – different dimensions of the architectural work (Avermaete 2021); and to reproduce different conceptions of the discipline. By placing the (auto)ethnographic study of this apprenticeship vis-à-vis fundamental perspectives of architectural theory a discrepancy is identified: While the lived experience of architecture embraces ‘the practical, the symbolic and the imaginary’ (Lefebvre 1974), its Epistemes tend to disconnect such dimensions. This paper concludes by proposing a consideration of architectural knowledge between Crafts and the City, as a means to elucidate the latent complementarity of the Epistemes of architecture, and the potential inherent in their attunement (Pérez-Gómez 2016). By illuminating the steps from the ‘lower’ to the ‘higher’ dimensions of the built environment, it closes a circle that leads to a specifically architectural interpretation of the heuristic tension of Indwelling – and thus to a more nuanced understanding of Tacit Knowledge in architecture.

Review

Book Corner: “Architecture: The History of Practice.” by Cana Cuff (1992)

The book offers an in-depth analysis of the architectural practice culture –focusing specifically on the American one– as a “social construction”. It puts attention on the tacit knowledge seen as able to disentangle the substance of a professional ethos –affecting both espoused theory and theory-in-use, and it concludes that the design process is based on collective actions as the result of negotiations within a social process.

Claudia Mainardi

Review

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Book Corner: “Architecture: The History of Practice.” by Cana Cuff (1992)

Claudia Mainardi

The book offers an in-depth analysis of the architectural practice culture –focusing specifically on the American one– as a “social construction”. It puts attention on the tacit knowledge seen as able to disentangle the substance of a professional ethos –affecting both espoused theory and theory-in-use, and it concludes that the design process is based on collective actions as the result of negotiations within a social process.

Lecture / Talk Video

TACK Talks #1: De Smet Vermeulen

Paul Vermeulen De Smet Vermeulen architecten Tom Avermaete Jhono Bennett

Lecture / Talk Video

June 18, 2020

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TACK Talks #1: De Smet Vermeulen

Paul Vermeulen De Smet Vermeulen architecten Tom Avermaete Jhono Bennett

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Texture Kortrijk – Jewel Box

Wooden model (1/400), representing an existing warehouse and its extension. The orthogonal cast-iron column structure of the existing building is continued in the lightweight steel building on top. The new beams connect the column grid diagonally and at two different heights. The result of logic structural thinking is an unexpected golden crown. The museum Texture celebrates the prosperous past of the flax industry in the region, that used to give the river Schelde a golden shine.

An Fonteyne

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Texture Kortrijk – Jewel Box

An Fonteyne

Wooden model (1/400), representing an existing warehouse and its extension. The orthogonal cast-iron column structure of the existing building is continued in the lightweight steel building on top. The new beams connect the column grid diagonally and at two different heights. The result of logic structural thinking is an unexpected golden crown. The museum Texture celebrates the prosperous past of the flax industry in the region, that used to give the river Schelde a golden shine.

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Playa Blanca, Bankers, and the Pivotal Point

I made this 1:200 working model entitled ‘Playa Blanca, Bankers and the Pivotal Point’ during my time at the Städelschule Frankfurt. The three-dimensional knot bent from copper wire combines investigations into rotational symmetries, the programmatic linking of living and working environments, and early aesthetic explorations into the consequences of parametric design models. This physical model formed the basis for a series of digital models whose gene codes continue to shape the work of our office in terms of methods and aesthetics to this day.

Holger Hoffmann One Fine Day architects

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Playa Blanca, Bankers, and the Pivotal Point

Holger Hoffmann One Fine Day architects

I made this 1:200 working model entitled ‘Playa Blanca, Bankers and the Pivotal Point’ during my time at the Städelschule Frankfurt. The three-dimensional knot bent from copper wire combines investigations into rotational symmetries, the programmatic linking of living and working environments, and early aesthetic explorations into the consequences of parametric design models. This physical model formed the basis for a series of digital models whose gene codes continue to shape the work of our office in terms of methods and aesthetics to this day.

Fanzine Site writing

Zine

Spridd’s office, photo by author, © Anna Livia Voersel

It’s a morning in autumn 2020, and I have let myself into Spridd’s office. It is quiet and empty. The curtains are drawn and the light is off. I look at the dark computer screens and imagine all the drawings being made, emails sent, conversations had between staff members elsewhere, from their computers at home. Work being made and discussed and planned on digital platforms that I can’t see from here.

Anna Livia Vørsel Spridd

Fanzine Site writing

May 3, 2021

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Zine

Anna Livia Vørsel Spridd

Spridd’s office, photo by author, © Anna Livia Voersel

Photo from stay at Forskningsstationen by author, © Anna Livia Voersel

It’s a morning in autumn 2020, and I have let myself into Spridd’s office. It is quiet and empty. The curtains are drawn and the light is off. I look at the dark computer screens and imagine all the drawings being made, emails sent, conversations had between staff members elsewhere, from their computers at home. Work being made and discussed and planned on digital platforms that I can’t see from here.

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

a Studio for Orbanism – Luc Deleu & T.O.P. office

The house of Luc Deleu, the founder of T.O.P. office, in the city of Antwerp (Belgium), is not only a design studio and home for the architect but, above all, it is a space of accumulated knowledge: a kaleidoscope of collected references and an archive of drawings and models produced over more than fifty years.

Sofie de Caigny Tine Poot Vlaams Architectuurinstituut (VAi)

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

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a Studio for Orbanism – Luc Deleu & T.O.P. office

Sofie de Caigny Tine Poot Vlaams Architectuurinstituut (VAi)

The house of Luc Deleu, the founder of T.O.P. office, in the city of Antwerp (Belgium), is not only a design studio and home for the architect but, above all, it is a space of accumulated knowledge: a kaleidoscope of collected references and an archive of drawings and models produced over more than fifty years.

Lecture / Talk

_Tacit knowledge and the locus of legitimate interpretation

I will suggest that tacit knowledge comes in three variants which are relatively easy, a bit more difficult, and impossible or near impossible to transform into explicit knowledge. The existence of tacit knowledge means that sciences are never as exact and deterministic as they were once thought to be. Scientific domains can be defined by their ‘locus of legitimate interpretation’ (LLI), the group entitled to comment on creative work. Science’s LLI is restricted to those very close to the producers; the LLI of the adventurous arts gives little emphasis to producers but much to consumers – gallery owners, newspaper critics, the general public. Architecture’s LLI has lobes of both types.

Harry Collins

Lecture / Talk

June 20, 2023

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_Tacit knowledge and the locus of legitimate interpretation

Harry Collins

I will suggest that tacit knowledge comes in three variants which are relatively easy, a bit more difficult, and impossible or near impossible to transform into explicit knowledge. The existence of tacit knowledge means that sciences are never as exact and deterministic as they were once thought to be. Scientific domains can be defined by their ‘locus of legitimate interpretation’ (LLI), the group entitled to comment on creative work. Science’s LLI is restricted to those very close to the producers; the LLI of the adventurous arts gives little emphasis to producers but much to consumers – gallery owners, newspaper critics, the general public. Architecture’s LLI has lobes of both types.

Online Teaching Module

Understanding Situated Tacit Knowledge through Southern Urbanist architectural practice approaches

Jhono Bennett Peg Rawes University College London, Bartlett School of Architecture

Online Teaching Module

February 15, 2023

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Understanding Situated Tacit Knowledge through Southern Urbanist architectural practice approaches

Jhono Bennett Peg Rawes University College London, Bartlett School of Architecture

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

Concrete Column, Pirelli Learning Centre

This precast concrete column fragment from the Pirelli Learning Centre built in Milan (Italy) in 2022 is a case in point. The physicality of the column has created a strong reference to the between-war Italian architecture culture. Its material form speaks to the innovation in construction techniques that characterised the period, while its ornamentation echoes that of the neighbouring Bicocca degli Arcimboldi villa; illuminates the company’s history as well as the common culture through a series of abstract tire thread advertising graphics imprinted on the columns and façade elements.

Onsitestudio

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

View

Concrete Column, Pirelli Learning Centre

Onsitestudio

This precast concrete column fragment from the Pirelli Learning Centre built in Milan (Italy) in 2022 is a case in point. The physicality of the column has created a strong reference to the between-war Italian architecture culture. Its material form speaks to the innovation in construction techniques that characterised the period, while its ornamentation echoes that of the neighbouring Bicocca degli Arcimboldi villa; illuminates the company’s history as well as the common culture through a series of abstract tire thread advertising graphics imprinted on the columns and façade elements.

_Horizons and References – TACK Exhibition

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.

Tom Avermaete Janina Gosseye

_Horizons and References – TACK Exhibition

Tom Avermaete Janina Gosseye

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.

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Anthropomorphe Form

Anthropomorphe Form, an installation produced by an interdisciplinary team led by Edelaar Mosayebi Inderbitzin Architekten and Fabian Bircher explores the potentials of an architectural space that moves and interacts with people.

Elli Mosayebi

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

View

Anthropomorphe Form

Elli Mosayebi

Anthropomorphe Form, an installation produced by an interdisciplinary team led by Edelaar Mosayebi Inderbitzin Architekten and Fabian Bircher explores the potentials of an architectural space that moves and interacts with people.

Essay

Designing space through motion pictures

Eva Sommeregger reflects on the winter semester 2013/14 at ABKW, where animation technology was used in the HTC design studio “Play Architecture” to design spatiality.

Eva Sommeregger

Essay

View

Designing space through motion pictures

Eva Sommeregger

Eva Sommeregger reflects on the winter semester 2013/14 at ABKW, where animation technology was used in the HTC design studio “Play Architecture” to design spatiality.

Book chapter

Decoding a Practice’s DNA: Multiple Registers of Tacit Knowledge

ABSTRACT

In the manifold spectrum of how tacit knowledge can be conceived in architecture, the contribution aims to investigate that embedded in the architects' design process by reflecting on the codes they employ. If the vectors are tools or communicative materials –i.e., drawings, sketches, models, texts, etc.– used for transmission, the codes are here interpreted as those characters –whether in the form of recurring patterns or aesthetic choices, technical solutions, vocabulary, etc.– that define the specificity of a practice. As the DNA of an office, and not just of its principal, as Rem Koolhaas argues (see: Anna Winston, “Zaha Hadid Architects should follow example of McQueen, says Rem Koolhaas,” in Dezeen, 2016 May 14: https://www.dezeen.com/2016/05/14/zaha-hadid-architects-should-follow-example-of-mcqueen-says-rem-koolhaas/), they articulate across different levels depending on the context within which they are shared: spanning from the ones used within the practice itself –forming the basis for collaboration between different project team members;– to those adopted externally to communicate with both clients and an extended community of practice. Differences in terms of codes might parallel diverse methods for their investigation. Indeed, for the former, the use of an ethnographic approach capable of unpacking specificities from within seems to be the most adequate –i.e., revealing how the implicit values of a practice are transferred into form through a collective process mediated by multiple actors;– for the latter, instead, it would be more proper to employ public occasions as a pretext through which to decipher a shared “language.” (Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana Univeristy Press, 1976)). In general, the paper argues that codification processes are necessarily conditioned by the context in which they take place, by the positioning within the disciplinary debate, and by the actors (Latour, Bruno, and Albena Yaneva. 2008. “‘Give Me a Gun and I Will Make All Buildings Move’: An ANT’s View of Architecture.” Networks 8: 80–89. https://doi.org/10.1145/2991079.2991124.) participating in their development. These closely interrelated aspects constitute the tacit knowledge inherent to a practice. Hence, although capable of changing over time, such knowledge is a unique and characterized product for an office. At the same time, it is the contribution that each firm provides in shaping its community of practice, whose shared knowledge unfolds through exchanges and encounters.

Claudia Mainardi

Book chapter

November 1, 2022

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Decoding a Practice’s DNA: Multiple Registers of Tacit Knowledge

Claudia Mainardi

ABSTRACT

In the manifold spectrum of how tacit knowledge can be conceived in architecture, the contribution aims to investigate that embedded in the architects' design process by reflecting on the codes they employ. If the vectors are tools or communicative materials –i.e., drawings, sketches, models, texts, etc.– used for transmission, the codes are here interpreted as those characters –whether in the form of recurring patterns or aesthetic choices, technical solutions, vocabulary, etc.– that define the specificity of a practice. As the DNA of an office, and not just of its principal, as Rem Koolhaas argues (see: Anna Winston, “Zaha Hadid Architects should follow example of McQueen, says Rem Koolhaas,” in Dezeen, 2016 May 14: https://www.dezeen.com/2016/05/14/zaha-hadid-architects-should-follow-example-of-mcqueen-says-rem-koolhaas/), they articulate across different levels depending on the context within which they are shared: spanning from the ones used within the practice itself –forming the basis for collaboration between different project team members;– to those adopted externally to communicate with both clients and an extended community of practice. Differences in terms of codes might parallel diverse methods for their investigation. Indeed, for the former, the use of an ethnographic approach capable of unpacking specificities from within seems to be the most adequate –i.e., revealing how the implicit values of a practice are transferred into form through a collective process mediated by multiple actors;– for the latter, instead, it would be more proper to employ public occasions as a pretext through which to decipher a shared “language.” (Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana Univeristy Press, 1976)). In general, the paper argues that codification processes are necessarily conditioned by the context in which they take place, by the positioning within the disciplinary debate, and by the actors (Latour, Bruno, and Albena Yaneva. 2008. “‘Give Me a Gun and I Will Make All Buildings Move’: An ANT’s View of Architecture.” Networks 8: 80–89. https://doi.org/10.1145/2991079.2991124.) participating in their development. These closely interrelated aspects constitute the tacit knowledge inherent to a practice. Hence, although capable of changing over time, such knowledge is a unique and characterized product for an office. At the same time, it is the contribution that each firm provides in shaping its community of practice, whose shared knowledge unfolds through exchanges and encounters.

Book chapter Conference Paper Open Access Publication

15 August 2021

The Tangible Presence of Human Labor in Architecture

Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria, © Public Domain

ABSTRACT

This essay aims to show that in many of the theories that fundament material culture and architectural experience, labor is implied in the constitution of material and, although seldom directly addressed, it is a determining dimension of materiality. From the Vitruvian and Renaissance treatises and Gottfried Semper to John Ruskin and the Art and Crafts Movement, the underlying presence of labor can be seen intertwined with materials whenever they are called into architectural discussion as sensorial arguments. Just like the physical qualities of materials, labor, skills and techniques are imprinted in the built environment and contribute to the creation of particular atmospheres.

Eric Crevels

Book chapter Conference Paper Open Access Publication

15 August 2021

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The Tangible Presence of Human Labor in Architecture

Eric Crevels

Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria, © Public Domain

Ruskin’s The Nature of the Gothic, © Public Domain

Vitruviu’s De Architectura Libri Decem, © Public Domain

ABSTRACT

This essay aims to show that in many of the theories that fundament material culture and architectural experience, labor is implied in the constitution of material and, although seldom directly addressed, it is a determining dimension of materiality. From the Vitruvian and Renaissance treatises and Gottfried Semper to John Ruskin and the Art and Crafts Movement, the underlying presence of labor can be seen intertwined with materials whenever they are called into architectural discussion as sensorial arguments. Just like the physical qualities of materials, labor, skills and techniques are imprinted in the built environment and contribute to the creation of particular atmospheres.

Case Study Review

Exploring The Infra-thin

Paula Strunden

Case Study Review

View

Exploring The Infra-thin

Paula Strunden

Website

Interactive Visualisation: The Correspondence Network of Jaap Bakema

Claudia Mainardi

Website

View

Interactive Visualisation: The Correspondence Network of Jaap Bakema

Claudia Mainardi

Label

_Forêt DesCartes_

Filippo Cattapan

Label

View

_Forêt DesCartes_

Filippo Cattapan

Lecture / Talk Video

“My” Tacit Knowledge In Architecture

Gennaro Postiglione

Lecture / Talk Video

May 22, 2022

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“My” Tacit Knowledge In Architecture

Gennaro Postiglione

Online Teaching Module

On Method: Tacit Knowledge in the Expanded Field of Architecture

Anna Livia Vørsel Helena Mattsson Helena Mattsson Jennifer Mack KTH Royal Institute of Technology, KTH School of Architecture

Online Teaching Module

February 10, 2022

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On Method: Tacit Knowledge in the Expanded Field of Architecture

Anna Livia Vørsel Helena Mattsson Helena Mattsson Jennifer Mack KTH Royal Institute of Technology, KTH School of Architecture

Lecture / Talk

TACK Talk #3: Concepts of Authorship in Architecture

Christoph Grafe Peg Rawes

Lecture / Talk

May 21, 2022

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TACK Talk #3: Concepts of Authorship in Architecture

Christoph Grafe Peg Rawes

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

Material Chariots

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.

Paul Vermeulen De Smet Vermeulen architecten

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

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Material Chariots

Paul Vermeulen De Smet Vermeulen architecten

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.

Presentation

_Unpacking Hermia

While we know little about the transport, we do know that the steam cargo ship SS Hermia, a Hamburg-London Line ship of the Flensburger Schiffsbau-Gesellschaft, launched in 1910, transported Warburg’s library, including furniture, from Hamburg to London by way of two voyages in December 1933 (Abert, 2002). During this time, the ship was owned by HAPAG and was bought in 1934 by Adolph Kirsten & Co., which had operated the HH-LDN line from 1910 until 1928. In 1940, Hermia became a hospital ship for the German Navy, was renamed Adriana, and sunk by a British air mine on the Elbe River near Flensburg in December of that year (Kuldas, 2009: 196). In 1943, philosopher Hannah Arendt described the state of migration as follows: "Our identity is changed so frequently that nobody can find out who we actually are” (Kohn and Feldman, 2007: 270). It is the idea of change and the fact of constant departure that I want to experience through material. The process of model-making is not about representing the truth, but about creating a vehicle for the library, which was transported from the port city Hamburg to the British capital. The performative potential of a model, which come to the fore in the employment a layered way, building on the scale of materiality, the scale of form, etc. participate in a performative act. The complexity of performative capacities has the ability not only to construct realities, but also to shed light on what kind of history is being produced and presented through the re-enactment of archival material.

Mara Trübenbach

Presentation

June 20, 2023

View

_Unpacking Hermia

Mara Trübenbach

While we know little about the transport, we do know that the steam cargo ship SS Hermia, a Hamburg-London Line ship of the Flensburger Schiffsbau-Gesellschaft, launched in 1910, transported Warburg’s library, including furniture, from Hamburg to London by way of two voyages in December 1933 (Abert, 2002). During this time, the ship was owned by HAPAG and was bought in 1934 by Adolph Kirsten & Co., which had operated the HH-LDN line from 1910 until 1928. In 1940, Hermia became a hospital ship for the German Navy, was renamed Adriana, and sunk by a British air mine on the Elbe River near Flensburg in December of that year (Kuldas, 2009: 196). In 1943, philosopher Hannah Arendt described the state of migration as follows: "Our identity is changed so frequently that nobody can find out who we actually are” (Kohn and Feldman, 2007: 270). It is the idea of change and the fact of constant departure that I want to experience through material. The process of model-making is not about representing the truth, but about creating a vehicle for the library, which was transported from the port city Hamburg to the British capital. The performative potential of a model, which come to the fore in the employment a layered way, building on the scale of materiality, the scale of form, etc. participate in a performative act. The complexity of performative capacities has the ability not only to construct realities, but also to shed light on what kind of history is being produced and presented through the re-enactment of archival material.

Exhibition Presentation

21-06-2023

_TACK – Exhibition “Unausgesprochenes Wissen / Unspoken Knowledge / Le (savoir) non-dit”

The exhibition “Unausgesprochenes Wissen/Unspoken Knowledge/Le (savoir) non-dit”, which will run in parallel with the conference “Tacit Knowledge in Architecture”, will explore the tacit dimension in architecture culture through a series of objects, artifacts and installations. From sets of references to augmented VR performance, from physical models to enacted collective practices, this exhibition will display a wide range of objects presented by scholars and architecture practices from across the world, from Japan to Spain, and from Belgium to Australia.

TACK Network

Exhibition Presentation

21-06-2023

View

_TACK – Exhibition “Unausgesprochenes Wissen / Unspoken Knowledge / Le (savoir) non-dit”

TACK Network

The exhibition “Unausgesprochenes Wissen/Unspoken Knowledge/Le (savoir) non-dit”, which will run in parallel with the conference “Tacit Knowledge in Architecture”, will explore the tacit dimension in architecture culture through a series of objects, artifacts and installations. From sets of references to augmented VR performance, from physical models to enacted collective practices, this exhibition will display a wide range of objects presented by scholars and architecture practices from across the world, from Japan to Spain, and from Belgium to Australia.

Conference Paper Open Access Publication

Everyday Practice As Paradigm To Study Architectural Contemporary Codes

Claudia Mainardi's contribution presented at the CA2RE Delft conference has been a significant opportunity to discuss her doctoral research that, dealing with the present history, proposes an empirical approach: without aiming to achieve a definitive response, yet disentangling processes while being formed.

Claudia Mainardi

Conference Paper Open Access Publication

March 2, 2023

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Everyday Practice As Paradigm To Study Architectural Contemporary Codes

Claudia Mainardi

Claudia Mainardi's contribution presented at the CA2RE Delft conference has been a significant opportunity to discuss her doctoral research that, dealing with the present history, proposes an empirical approach: without aiming to achieve a definitive response, yet disentangling processes while being formed.

Book chapter

No body, never mind: the entanglement of how architects construct imagination.

ABSTRACT

In architectural practice, one does not primarily write, one draws, models or explains with words, mostly through the visual communication of ideas. Just as architects use literacy to describe stories and connect with what touches them, material literacy is necessary to describe what architects literally touch. Material has the ability to respond to the design and even influence it at a very early stage of the process when it comes into contact with the body. As the scientist Barad rightly asked: “How did language come to be more trustworthy than matter?” (Barad, 2003). Material can create an experimental platform to trigger emotions, to go beyond norms and return to what has become schematic in the process of making architecture. This method of architectural dramaturgy, i.e., seeking a multifaceted narrative about house and home through engagement with material, could critically reveal unseen labour and unheard voices, and facilitate a connection to our surrounding. The paper argues feelings from the inside of the body that apparent on the outside of the body offer new ways of knowledge production in architecture. Adopting the interdisciplinary approach by Finish architect and critic Juhani Pallasmaa (in his The Thinking Hand, 2009) the paper considers theatre and performance studies as examples of phenomenological aspects of kinaesthetic and multi-sensory perception of “the internal space and one’s inner mental space” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p.19). By theoretically analysing related emotions embedded in the various hands-on processes mediated through visuals (image, video, drawings) and the applicability of the materiality of the human body (voice, gesture, etc.), empathy and trust in both architectural and theatrical production are an important trajectory to enrich collective knowledge. Starting from here, the chapter advocates not only looking at visual mediation of material, but going beyond that and prompting the capability to read and listen to sound, expression and movement that come from both sides equally – humans and non-humans – to build up material literacy and achieve a sensitivity towards tacit knowledge in architecture.

Mara Trübenbach

Book chapter

November 1, 2022

View

No body, never mind: the entanglement of how architects construct imagination.

Mara Trübenbach

ABSTRACT

In architectural practice, one does not primarily write, one draws, models or explains with words, mostly through the visual communication of ideas. Just as architects use literacy to describe stories and connect with what touches them, material literacy is necessary to describe what architects literally touch. Material has the ability to respond to the design and even influence it at a very early stage of the process when it comes into contact with the body. As the scientist Barad rightly asked: “How did language come to be more trustworthy than matter?” (Barad, 2003). Material can create an experimental platform to trigger emotions, to go beyond norms and return to what has become schematic in the process of making architecture. This method of architectural dramaturgy, i.e., seeking a multifaceted narrative about house and home through engagement with material, could critically reveal unseen labour and unheard voices, and facilitate a connection to our surrounding. The paper argues feelings from the inside of the body that apparent on the outside of the body offer new ways of knowledge production in architecture. Adopting the interdisciplinary approach by Finish architect and critic Juhani Pallasmaa (in his The Thinking Hand, 2009) the paper considers theatre and performance studies as examples of phenomenological aspects of kinaesthetic and multi-sensory perception of “the internal space and one’s inner mental space” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p.19). By theoretically analysing related emotions embedded in the various hands-on processes mediated through visuals (image, video, drawings) and the applicability of the materiality of the human body (voice, gesture, etc.), empathy and trust in both architectural and theatrical production are an important trajectory to enrich collective knowledge. Starting from here, the chapter advocates not only looking at visual mediation of material, but going beyond that and prompting the capability to read and listen to sound, expression and movement that come from both sides equally – humans and non-humans – to build up material literacy and achieve a sensitivity towards tacit knowledge in architecture.

Model TACK Exhibition Object

Four Square Levels

Complete perspective of the empty object.Carabanchel, Madrid, 2021. Photo: Samuel H. Ramírez.

For the past three years, I have been researching assembly methods that can join together different post-consumer objects found in the street without the use of glue or screws.

Samuel H. Ramirez

Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Four Square Levels

Samuel H. Ramirez

Complete perspective of the empty object.Carabanchel, Madrid, 2021. Photo: Samuel H. Ramírez.

For the past three years, I have been researching assembly methods that can join together different post-consumer objects found in the street without the use of glue or screws.

Lecture / Talk Video

Beyond Virtual-Reality

This lecture explores VR’s potential beyond its visual territory and probes how it can be used to explore the multimodality of spatial experiences and atmospheres.

Paula Strunden

Lecture / Talk Video

October 12, 2020

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Beyond Virtual-Reality

Paula Strunden

This lecture explores VR’s potential beyond its visual territory and probes how it can be used to explore the multimodality of spatial experiences and atmospheres.

Conference Paper

_(Un)Programming the Factory: Weaving Panopticon Stories

ABSTRACT

This paper departs from practice-based research developed in Coelima, a Portuguese textile factory under socio-spatial dismantlement, to investigate the relationships between its assembly line, stories, and weaving. I ask how sets of tacit knowledge developed through workers' stories and temporal hand-weaving practices can provide new directions for architectural design to reimagine alternative 'poethical' (Retallack, 2003) working modes in the assembly line. To do so, I build upon workers' stories, which refer to acts of surveillance experienced in the weaving department under capital efficiency (Giedion, 1948), to investigate the tacit process of patterning stories through weaving (Kruger, 2001; Albers, 1959). Words taken from the workers' stories are designed as weave draft notations, or 'panopticon patterns', through a collaborative event with a group of former workers of Coelima to generate a site-specific textile language and knowledge. Although this knowledge can only be transmitted via experience, repetition, and performative making (Nimkulrat, 2012), I suggest that it can evoke emancipatory possibilities for workers and architects to reimagine socially and spatially other configurations for the assembly line grounded in ideas of industrial commons (Rappaport, 2021). Finally, I argue that knowledge acquired from weaving, weave draft notations and stories can provide creative means for architectural design to (un)program work control and time in Coelima's assembly line while re-evaluating issues of (post)work, pleasure, and productivity within the contemporary workplace.

Fernando Ferreira

Conference Paper

June 20, 2023

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_(Un)Programming the Factory: Weaving Panopticon Stories

Fernando Ferreira

ABSTRACT

This paper departs from practice-based research developed in Coelima, a Portuguese textile factory under socio-spatial dismantlement, to investigate the relationships between its assembly line, stories, and weaving. I ask how sets of tacit knowledge developed through workers' stories and temporal hand-weaving practices can provide new directions for architectural design to reimagine alternative 'poethical' (Retallack, 2003) working modes in the assembly line. To do so, I build upon workers' stories, which refer to acts of surveillance experienced in the weaving department under capital efficiency (Giedion, 1948), to investigate the tacit process of patterning stories through weaving (Kruger, 2001; Albers, 1959). Words taken from the workers' stories are designed as weave draft notations, or 'panopticon patterns', through a collaborative event with a group of former workers of Coelima to generate a site-specific textile language and knowledge. Although this knowledge can only be transmitted via experience, repetition, and performative making (Nimkulrat, 2012), I suggest that it can evoke emancipatory possibilities for workers and architects to reimagine socially and spatially other configurations for the assembly line grounded in ideas of industrial commons (Rappaport, 2021). Finally, I argue that knowledge acquired from weaving, weave draft notations and stories can provide creative means for architectural design to (un)program work control and time in Coelima's assembly line while re-evaluating issues of (post)work, pleasure, and productivity within the contemporary workplace.

Lecture / Talk Video

TACK Talks #3 – “‘My’ Tacit Knowledge” x “In Between Realms”

Margitta Buchert Gennaro Postiglione Angelika Schnell Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture

Lecture / Talk Video

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TACK Talks #3 – “‘My’ Tacit Knowledge” x “In Between Realms”

Margitta Buchert Gennaro Postiglione Angelika Schnell Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Maputo Land Rover

Between 1998 and 2005, we engaged in the design and construction of the Dutch Embassy in Mozambique. Offering an opportunity to tap into local tacit knowledge, this project revealed the importance of culturally specific knowledge and skills in design and building projects.

Kees Kaan

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Maputo Land Rover

Kees Kaan

Between 1998 and 2005, we engaged in the design and construction of the Dutch Embassy in Mozambique. Offering an opportunity to tap into local tacit knowledge, this project revealed the importance of culturally specific knowledge and skills in design and building projects.

Essay Open Access Publication

2021

Investigating the 21st Century Emerging Approaches to Practice: Codification of Architectural Epistemes, from Discourses to Practices

ABSTRACT

Given the timeframe of the last 20 years, the research investigates the codification of diverse forms of tacit knowledge in architecture, its transfer, and translation from institutional narratives to principles and conventions that are crystallized in the everyday practice of selected design offices. Positioned into the lines of theories that see architecture as “a product” of a socio-political-economic condition, the aim is to understand how events that have occurred/are occurring in current times influence the professional practice and, consequently, its codes. The work is imagined to be developed through three phases. A first part –conceived as macro- analysis– is proposed as an attempt to reconstruct a historical framework of events not yet historicized; a second and intermediate one identifies the protagonists –or the practices that the research is interested at–; and a third one –as micro- analysis– made of in-depth investigations of case studies selected through the protagonists of the second phase.

Claudia Mainardi

Essay Open Access Publication

2021

View

Investigating the 21st Century Emerging Approaches to Practice: Codification of Architectural Epistemes, from Discourses to Practices

Claudia Mainardi

ABSTRACT

Given the timeframe of the last 20 years, the research investigates the codification of diverse forms of tacit knowledge in architecture, its transfer, and translation from institutional narratives to principles and conventions that are crystallized in the everyday practice of selected design offices. Positioned into the lines of theories that see architecture as “a product” of a socio-political-economic condition, the aim is to understand how events that have occurred/are occurring in current times influence the professional practice and, consequently, its codes. The work is imagined to be developed through three phases. A first part –conceived as macro- analysis– is proposed as an attempt to reconstruct a historical framework of events not yet historicized; a second and intermediate one identifies the protagonists –or the practices that the research is interested at–; and a third one –as micro- analysis– made of in-depth investigations of case studies selected through the protagonists of the second phase.

Presentation

_Forêt DesCartes – A Postcard Stand as Metaphor of Architectural Visual Knowledge

Forêt DesCartes is a prototype of a postcard display designed by Belgian architect Christian Kieckens in 1995 as part of a larger series of objects titled Jardins Divers. It is a rather small MDF board with maple veneer on which are inserted 16 postcard holders made of bent iron rods and arranged in a regular 6x4 cm grid. This curious object evokes Kieckens’ habits and practices: the collection of images and their arrangement in space, the journey as a form of disciplinary exchange with several communities of practice, the transmission of knowledge through the medium of illustrated books and exhibitions, the teaching of architecture by means of quotes and visual references. Forêt DesCartes can be seen as an experimental spatial device for producing disciplinary knowledge. The title of the object is a play on words that combines the term ‘forest’ with the name of René Descartes. Through its basic structure, the object metaphorically represents the fundamental tension and interaction between the two terms as a free landscape of images composed on a regular Cartesian grid. The two elements correspond respectively to intuition and rationality, or to analogical and logical thinking, which means also to implicit and explicit forms of knowing, with their opposite as well as complementary epistemological modalities. The pictures assembled on the podium mirror in turn the varied as much as fragmented landscape of Kieckens' architectural imagery, at the intersection between local Flemish culture and a wider network of European and international communities of practice. Forêt DesCartes is therefore the image of a complex and substantially visual knowledge paradigm, but also of the corresponding disciplinary culture made of parallel ideas, themes and references.

Filippo Cattapan

Presentation

June 21, 2023

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_Forêt DesCartes – A Postcard Stand as Metaphor of Architectural Visual Knowledge

Filippo Cattapan

Forêt DesCartes is a prototype of a postcard display designed by Belgian architect Christian Kieckens in 1995 as part of a larger series of objects titled Jardins Divers. It is a rather small MDF board with maple veneer on which are inserted 16 postcard holders made of bent iron rods and arranged in a regular 6x4 cm grid. This curious object evokes Kieckens’ habits and practices: the collection of images and their arrangement in space, the journey as a form of disciplinary exchange with several communities of practice, the transmission of knowledge through the medium of illustrated books and exhibitions, the teaching of architecture by means of quotes and visual references. Forêt DesCartes can be seen as an experimental spatial device for producing disciplinary knowledge. The title of the object is a play on words that combines the term ‘forest’ with the name of René Descartes. Through its basic structure, the object metaphorically represents the fundamental tension and interaction between the two terms as a free landscape of images composed on a regular Cartesian grid. The two elements correspond respectively to intuition and rationality, or to analogical and logical thinking, which means also to implicit and explicit forms of knowing, with their opposite as well as complementary epistemological modalities. The pictures assembled on the podium mirror in turn the varied as much as fragmented landscape of Kieckens' architectural imagery, at the intersection between local Flemish culture and a wider network of European and international communities of practice. Forêt DesCartes is therefore the image of a complex and substantially visual knowledge paradigm, but also of the corresponding disciplinary culture made of parallel ideas, themes and references.

Conference Paper

_On Twists and Turns. Architecture, Design and Judgment

ABSTRACT

Architects design in different ways, but rarely in the form of waiting for a singular hunch. Most often, instead, designing is hard work, reassessing material again and again, until the moment the various facets come together convincingly. In this paper, I use Hannah Arendt’s discussion of judgment in order to understand the process of design. Arendt borrows her understanding from Immanuel Kant, but draws it out of his aesthetic perspective and reassesses it into a political context. She emphasizes how a community is a necessary prerequisite for every judgment made. It is not enough to simply hear what others say, but one need to be able to think from that particular situation, in order to judge the validity of that perspective. I see a parallel here with design, though architects operate in different communities. The main challenge of design then is to connect these communities through the design and to understand what kind of information and knowledge can be gained within the different communities. By drawing the parallel, I will discuss the different knowledge communities wherein architects operate, and how 'judgment' offers a model of activating various knowledge systems.

Hans Teerds

Conference Paper

June 21, 2023

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_On Twists and Turns. Architecture, Design and Judgment

Hans Teerds

ABSTRACT

Architects design in different ways, but rarely in the form of waiting for a singular hunch. Most often, instead, designing is hard work, reassessing material again and again, until the moment the various facets come together convincingly. In this paper, I use Hannah Arendt’s discussion of judgment in order to understand the process of design. Arendt borrows her understanding from Immanuel Kant, but draws it out of his aesthetic perspective and reassesses it into a political context. She emphasizes how a community is a necessary prerequisite for every judgment made. It is not enough to simply hear what others say, but one need to be able to think from that particular situation, in order to judge the validity of that perspective. I see a parallel here with design, though architects operate in different communities. The main challenge of design then is to connect these communities through the design and to understand what kind of information and knowledge can be gained within the different communities. By drawing the parallel, I will discuss the different knowledge communities wherein architects operate, and how 'judgment' offers a model of activating various knowledge systems.

Presentation

_Clay landscape

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, built during the 1960´s as part of the Million Programme in Stockholm, where we are currently adding a wall of housing combined with an assembly hall, 100 metres long. 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.

Klas Ruin Ola Broms Wessel Spridd

Presentation

June 20, 2023

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_Clay landscape

Klas Ruin Ola Broms Wessel Spridd

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, built during the 1960´s as part of the Million Programme in Stockholm, where we are currently adding a wall of housing combined with an assembly hall, 100 metres long. 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.

Exhibition Image TACK Exhibition Object

Heinrich Helfenstein’s Photography

Peter Märkli, two single-family houses in Azmoos, photos from 2002. © gta Archives / ETH Zurich, Heinrich Helfenstein, © gta Archive

Swiss architectural photographer Heinrich Helfenstein (1946-2020) trained as a linguist, his approach shaped by semiology and post-structuralism.

Irina Davidovici Ziu Bruckmann

Exhibition Image TACK Exhibition Object

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Heinrich Helfenstein’s Photography

Irina Davidovici Ziu Bruckmann

Peter Märkli, two single-family houses in Azmoos, photos from 2002. © gta Archives / ETH Zurich, Heinrich Helfenstein, © gta Archive

Swiss architectural photographer Heinrich Helfenstein (1946-2020) trained as a linguist, his approach shaped by semiology and post-structuralism.

Reader

Konvolut

The Konvolut is a growing physical product, containing important material created by the TACK network, such as readers, programs, annotated bibliography, etc. Its concept was thought as a collection in an envelope that could grow with material over time. Its nature of being in-between and a work-in-progress fitted well with the idea of tacit knowledge. It’s playful design reflects its individual nature, as each envelope has grown differently for every owner.

Klaske Havik Tim Anstey Helena Mattsson

Reader

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Konvolut

Klaske Havik Tim Anstey Helena Mattsson

The Konvolut is a growing physical product, containing important material created by the TACK network, such as readers, programs, annotated bibliography, etc. Its concept was thought as a collection in an envelope that could grow with material over time. Its nature of being in-between and a work-in-progress fitted well with the idea of tacit knowledge. It’s playful design reflects its individual nature, as each envelope has grown differently for every owner.

Video

Toolkit for Today

As part of the 2017 Toolkit seminar, Janina Gosseye and Naomi Stead raise questions and discuss cases from their own work gathering oral histories, including for a project on female architects in Australia. They are joined by, Thomas-Bernard Kenniff, who discusses interviews he conducted with those affected by the development of Montreal’s Place des Festivals.

Janina Gosseye Naomi Stead

Video

August 17, 2017

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Toolkit for Today

Janina Gosseye Naomi Stead

As part of the 2017 Toolkit seminar, Janina Gosseye and Naomi Stead raise questions and discuss cases from their own work gathering oral histories, including for a project on female architects in Australia. They are joined by, Thomas-Bernard Kenniff, who discusses interviews he conducted with those affected by the development of Montreal’s Place des Festivals.

Lecture / Talk Video

6 December 2021

TACK Talks #3: Narratives of Tacit Knowledge

Janina Gosseye Klaske Havik Angelika Schnell Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture

Lecture / Talk Video

6 December 2021

View

TACK Talks #3: Narratives of Tacit Knowledge

Janina Gosseye Klaske Havik Angelika Schnell Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture

A still from TACK TALKS #3 – an online lecture by Prof. Dr. Klaske Havik and Prof. Dr. Janina Gosseye, © TACK

A slide from Dr. Klaske Havik’s lecture "Investigating Practices through Narrative" , © Prof. Klaske Havik

A slide from Dr. Klaske Havik’s lecture "Investigating Practices through Narrative"

A slide from Dr. Janina Gosseye’s lecture "Narratives of Tacit Knowledge", © Dr. Janina Gosseye

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Innerer Garten project, Zürich Leutschenbach

Model making can be a heuristic practice for architects. For us, this model was both a concept finding and communication instrument that we used in the Innerer Garten project in Zürich Leutschenbach.

Martina Voser

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Innerer Garten project, Zürich Leutschenbach

Martina Voser

Model making can be a heuristic practice for architects. For us, this model was both a concept finding and communication instrument that we used in the Innerer Garten project in Zürich Leutschenbach.

Essay

October 2021

Three Cities and a Village with Jan Morris

ABSTRACT

This essay explores the life and travel writing of Jan Morris through the places that she wrote about over her seventy-year career. It considers how individual subjectivity and biography, particularly queer identities and bodies, relates to our experience of cities. On a methodological level, the essay uses Morris’ writing to illuminate buildings (gender affirmation clinics, queer domestic spaces) and processes (decay, more-than-human relations) still often neglected by architectural history, while developing a writing approach that preserves her distinctive literary voice.

Hamish Lonergan

Essay

October 2021

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Three Cities and a Village with Jan Morris

Hamish Lonergan

ABSTRACT

This essay explores the life and travel writing of Jan Morris through the places that she wrote about over her seventy-year career. It considers how individual subjectivity and biography, particularly queer identities and bodies, relates to our experience of cities. On a methodological level, the essay uses Morris’ writing to illuminate buildings (gender affirmation clinics, queer domestic spaces) and processes (decay, more-than-human relations) still often neglected by architectural history, while developing a writing approach that preserves her distinctive literary voice.

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object Video

55°42’14.8”N 12°33’18.4”E

This film, 55°42’14.8”N 12°33’18.4”E, is produced in collaboration with Vandkunsten & Arkitema Architects as part of the EU-project CIRCuIT. It focuses on strategies for circular construction in regenerative cities, exploring a post-industrial area in Copenhagen before it undergoes urban renewal.

Sofie Stilling

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object Video

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55°42’14.8”N 12°33’18.4”E

Sofie Stilling

This film, 55°42’14.8”N 12°33’18.4”E, is produced in collaboration with Vandkunsten & Arkitema Architects as part of the EU-project CIRCuIT. It focuses on strategies for circular construction in regenerative cities, exploring a post-industrial area in Copenhagen before it undergoes urban renewal.

_Embodiment and Experience – TACK Exhibition

Bodies interact with their surroundings. We learn through bodily experiences.

Tom Avermaete Janina Gosseye

_Embodiment and Experience – TACK Exhibition

Tom Avermaete Janina Gosseye

Bodies interact with their surroundings. We learn through bodily experiences.

Book chapter

Post-post Positional Practice: Revealing Southern Spatial Design Values

ABSTRACT

Abstract The legally implemented South African Apartheid city model of the 20th Century very specifically separated urban inhabitants along strict racial spatial definitions as set out by city practitioners and mandated by the national government on top of the existing colonial state model of segregation. These societal logics and legal systems have had a wide-scale systemic phyco-spatial effect on the many generations of urban dwellers who have no reference to patterns of living and space-making outside of this city-model. More specifically, the laws and regulations that carried these ideologies have instilled largely prejudiced tacit forms of understanding of self and ‘other’ that remain deeply entrenched in the spatial practitioners who are trusted to design and make within this context. For this reason, a critically proactive engagement with these harmfully biased tacit knowledge systems is a crucial endeavour across the built-environment practice – especially so in the architectural and the related spatial design disciplines. Such a deeply interpersonal recognition of such dynamics within spatial-design practice call for approaches, methods, and techniques that operate through considered and inclusive forms of practice that are often difficult to frame within the current ‘northern’ framings of the architect or the designer. Instead, other conceptual frameworks such as Southern Urbanism offer a more situated armature to locate these questions and begin an other-wisely based inquiry through these challenges. By thinking about an architectural - or more appropriately: a spatial design practice - through values and actions that are true to the locus of the site from which they exist, on the situated terms of the context that produce them, and through the languages – spoken, gestured and visual – that they are actioned through; the research holds an the potential to reveal other forms of more connective tacit knowledge that exist in these ways of making and maintaining urban spaces. Such an inquiry holds the potential to guide these practices both within the disciplines of the architect and support those engaging with these dynamics to expand their understandings of practice and the ‘Imaginative Geographies’ of separation and difference that continue to shape the post-Apartheid and post-Colonial cities of South Africa.

Jhono Bennett

Book chapter

November 1, 2022

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Post-post Positional Practice: Revealing Southern Spatial Design Values

Jhono Bennett

ABSTRACT

Abstract The legally implemented South African Apartheid city model of the 20th Century very specifically separated urban inhabitants along strict racial spatial definitions as set out by city practitioners and mandated by the national government on top of the existing colonial state model of segregation. These societal logics and legal systems have had a wide-scale systemic phyco-spatial effect on the many generations of urban dwellers who have no reference to patterns of living and space-making outside of this city-model. More specifically, the laws and regulations that carried these ideologies have instilled largely prejudiced tacit forms of understanding of self and ‘other’ that remain deeply entrenched in the spatial practitioners who are trusted to design and make within this context. For this reason, a critically proactive engagement with these harmfully biased tacit knowledge systems is a crucial endeavour across the built-environment practice – especially so in the architectural and the related spatial design disciplines. Such a deeply interpersonal recognition of such dynamics within spatial-design practice call for approaches, methods, and techniques that operate through considered and inclusive forms of practice that are often difficult to frame within the current ‘northern’ framings of the architect or the designer. Instead, other conceptual frameworks such as Southern Urbanism offer a more situated armature to locate these questions and begin an other-wisely based inquiry through these challenges. By thinking about an architectural - or more appropriately: a spatial design practice - through values and actions that are true to the locus of the site from which they exist, on the situated terms of the context that produce them, and through the languages – spoken, gestured and visual – that they are actioned through; the research holds an the potential to reveal other forms of more connective tacit knowledge that exist in these ways of making and maintaining urban spaces. Such an inquiry holds the potential to guide these practices both within the disciplines of the architect and support those engaging with these dynamics to expand their understandings of practice and the ‘Imaginative Geographies’ of separation and difference that continue to shape the post-Apartheid and post-Colonial cities of South Africa.

Book chapter

Here & There: Designing and Inhabiting Performative 1:1 Extended Reality Models

ABSTRACT

Building on scenography, performance theory and findings from neurosciences, tacit knowing in architecture is understood here as embodied, embedded and enacted perceptual dimension of our built environment. Through art- and design-based research, tacitly knowing is examined as a form of practice and a new extended reality (XR) design tool is probed to exercise it. Since the atmospheric turn in architecture (Böhme 2017, McCormack 2014, Bille et al. 2015), it is well known that spatial perception is multi-sensory and that the interplay of our senses goes beyond the cross-fertilization of sight, touch, taste, smell and hearing. Nevertheless, architectural designers may have only touched the surface of what we might be able to feel regarding our spatial environments. Apart from the sensation of our movement and whether our environment is too hot or cold, our abilities to feel space physically remain challenging to represent and communicate through conventional architectural tools. This includes i.e. our sense of balance, our ability to feel time passing, our knowledge of which of our body parts are where without having to look at them, and our sense of gravity, orientation, and illumination. Some of these “always-there-but-never-felt” sensations can be revealed and physically experienced when entering a fully immersive virtual environment for the first time. As our brain takes a split second to adjust to the novel surroundings, it is at this moment that we can suddenly sense our senses at work. The XR case study “Infra-thin Magick”, exhibited as part of Speculative Fiction at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2022, explains how such unanticipated insights can be purposefully evoked by displacing and reassembling the components constituting our multimodal and synaesthetic spatial perception. Leaning on the design theoretician Thea Brejzek and Lawrence Wallan’s understanding of the “autonomous model”, this performative real-time and -scale XR model that oscillates between physical installation and virtual reality (VR) experience is employed as an operative tool for designing and analyzing spatial experiences beyond the known sensations of our built environment. First user-testing results are presented, and the premise of the autonomous model to co-create reality and allow architects to research through active participation, first-hand experience, discovery, and play are brought to light.

Paula Strunden

Book chapter

November 1, 2022

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Here & There: Designing and Inhabiting Performative 1:1 Extended Reality Models

Paula Strunden

ABSTRACT

Building on scenography, performance theory and findings from neurosciences, tacit knowing in architecture is understood here as embodied, embedded and enacted perceptual dimension of our built environment. Through art- and design-based research, tacitly knowing is examined as a form of practice and a new extended reality (XR) design tool is probed to exercise it. Since the atmospheric turn in architecture (Böhme 2017, McCormack 2014, Bille et al. 2015), it is well known that spatial perception is multi-sensory and that the interplay of our senses goes beyond the cross-fertilization of sight, touch, taste, smell and hearing. Nevertheless, architectural designers may have only touched the surface of what we might be able to feel regarding our spatial environments. Apart from the sensation of our movement and whether our environment is too hot or cold, our abilities to feel space physically remain challenging to represent and communicate through conventional architectural tools. This includes i.e. our sense of balance, our ability to feel time passing, our knowledge of which of our body parts are where without having to look at them, and our sense of gravity, orientation, and illumination. Some of these “always-there-but-never-felt” sensations can be revealed and physically experienced when entering a fully immersive virtual environment for the first time. As our brain takes a split second to adjust to the novel surroundings, it is at this moment that we can suddenly sense our senses at work. The XR case study “Infra-thin Magick”, exhibited as part of Speculative Fiction at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2022, explains how such unanticipated insights can be purposefully evoked by displacing and reassembling the components constituting our multimodal and synaesthetic spatial perception. Leaning on the design theoretician Thea Brejzek and Lawrence Wallan’s understanding of the “autonomous model”, this performative real-time and -scale XR model that oscillates between physical installation and virtual reality (VR) experience is employed as an operative tool for designing and analyzing spatial experiences beyond the known sensations of our built environment. First user-testing results are presented, and the premise of the autonomous model to co-create reality and allow architects to research through active participation, first-hand experience, discovery, and play are brought to light.

Review

Report from the TACK Talks #1

What sort of tacit knowledge can we glean on Zoom, when so much architectural literature on the tacit insists on prolonged physical interaction? The answer is a great deal, going by the first series of TACK Talks. Across 9 online lectures, 9 practices, 14 designers, 10 ESR respondents, 3 moderators and a weekly audience of between 85 and an astonishing 535 viewers, the TACK network joined together to tackle a deceptively simple question: ‘how do we know?’. Their responses reveal the breadth of experience and depth of reflective thinking in the network, already establishing key themes in how we conceive tacit knowledge.

Hamish Lonergan

Review

August 18, 2020

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Report from the TACK Talks #1

Hamish Lonergan

What sort of tacit knowledge can we glean on Zoom, when so much architectural literature on the tacit insists on prolonged physical interaction? The answer is a great deal, going by the first series of TACK Talks. Across 9 online lectures, 9 practices, 14 designers, 10 ESR respondents, 3 moderators and a weekly audience of between 85 and an astonishing 535 viewers, the TACK network joined together to tackle a deceptively simple question: ‘how do we know?’. Their responses reveal the breadth of experience and depth of reflective thinking in the network, already establishing key themes in how we conceive tacit knowledge.

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

20-11-2021

HERMIA

"Through the material, I built a relationship with the (hi)story of the ship and acquired knowledge that is tacitly held between the humans and the non-humans."

Mara Trübenbach

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

20-11-2021

View

HERMIA

Mara Trübenbach

"Through the material, I built a relationship with the (hi)story of the ship and acquired knowledge that is tacitly held between the humans and the non-humans."

Lecture / Talk Video

TACK Talk #2: How to define what belongs where?

Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI) Vlaams Architectuurinstituut (VAi) Filippo Cattapan Caendia Wijnbelt Jhono Bennett

Lecture / Talk Video

April 8, 2021

View

TACK Talk #2: How to define what belongs where?

Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI) Vlaams Architectuurinstituut (VAi) Filippo Cattapan Caendia Wijnbelt Jhono Bennett

Essay

Building worlds: architecture as speculation on society

As part of The Persistence of Questioning, critical reflections for the future: ‘What is architecture?’, Lara Schrijver argues that Science fiction in particular can help architecture to consider unforeseen consequences of design decisions. We thoroughly need to recognize how on the one hand the environment and society are connected, and how on the other hand the future remains difficult to predict.

Lara Schrijver

Essay

March 7, 2022

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Building worlds: architecture as speculation on society

Lara Schrijver

As part of The Persistence of Questioning, critical reflections for the future: ‘What is architecture?’, Lara Schrijver argues that Science fiction in particular can help architecture to consider unforeseen consequences of design decisions. We thoroughly need to recognize how on the one hand the environment and society are connected, and how on the other hand the future remains difficult to predict.

Lecture / Talk Video

Tack Talks #1: Cityförster

Verena Brehm CITYFÖRSTER Lara Schrijver Caendia Wijnbelt

Lecture / Talk Video

July 16, 2020

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Tack Talks #1: Cityförster

Verena Brehm CITYFÖRSTER Lara Schrijver Caendia Wijnbelt

Frame from the online talk with Verena Brehm, Lara Schrijver, Caendia Wijnbelt, © TACK

A slide from Verena Brehm’s presentation, © Verena Brehm, Cityförster

Circular City principle: a frame from the presentation by Cityförster, © Cityförster

A slide from Verena Brehm’s presentation, © Cityförster

Essay

Growing up as a Disney Girl: The Changing Spaces of the Feminine in Disney Films

Screenshot of Snow White from the 1958 Reissue trailer for the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs., © public domain

Invited to reflect on the contemporary cultural resonance of Disney in this essay, architecture historian Lara Schrijver explores how the emancipation of Disney’s female protagonists plays out in architectural scenographies. ‘I know my place! It is time you learned yours.’ Fa Zhou (father of Mulan)

Lara Schrijver

Essay

March 1, 2020

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Growing up as a Disney Girl: The Changing Spaces of the Feminine in Disney Films

Lara Schrijver

Screenshot of Snow White from the 1958 Reissue trailer for the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs., © public domain

Invited to reflect on the contemporary cultural resonance of Disney in this essay, architecture historian Lara Schrijver explores how the emancipation of Disney’s female protagonists plays out in architectural scenographies. ‘I know my place! It is time you learned yours.’ Fa Zhou (father of Mulan)

Open Access Publication Review

2021

Federica Doglio in a dialogue with Mirko Zardini: A book interview on crises during a crisis

Claudia Mainardi

Open Access Publication Review

2021

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Federica Doglio in a dialogue with Mirko Zardini: A book interview on crises during a crisis

Claudia Mainardi

Conference Paper

_Busy body: living and working in urban renewal neighbourhoods

ABSTRACT

Participatory urban renewal reinforces the isolation of working-class women. This was concluded in the 1983 publication “Zoiets maak je toch niet, ik zeg altijd, dat doen mannen…”. This booklet criticizes 1980s participatory urban renewal of the Staatsliedenbuurt in Amsterdam and addresses the exclusion of women. Several inventive tools were developed in this neighbourhood to empower women to make their diverse, tacit, embodied knowledge heard and make design suggestions that better fitted their needs. As a result, new knowledge was brought into participatory urban renewal processes of which women were so often excluded; diversifying and expanding what was commonly perceived as the concerns of the resident. This paper brings forward various tools developed in the Staatsliedenbuurt that were used as vehicles to bring women’s voices into urban renewal processes, such as the fictiocritical character Els, a workshop on dwelling stories, and a manual. The paper contributes to histories on the collective efforts by various women’s groups in the 1980s that fought exclusion and sought to develop feminist approaches for urban design by making what is the tacitly known, explicit; making the invisible, visible.

Soscha Monteiro

Conference Paper

June 19, 2023

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_Busy body: living and working in urban renewal neighbourhoods

Soscha Monteiro

ABSTRACT

Participatory urban renewal reinforces the isolation of working-class women. This was concluded in the 1983 publication “Zoiets maak je toch niet, ik zeg altijd, dat doen mannen…”. This booklet criticizes 1980s participatory urban renewal of the Staatsliedenbuurt in Amsterdam and addresses the exclusion of women. Several inventive tools were developed in this neighbourhood to empower women to make their diverse, tacit, embodied knowledge heard and make design suggestions that better fitted their needs. As a result, new knowledge was brought into participatory urban renewal processes of which women were so often excluded; diversifying and expanding what was commonly perceived as the concerns of the resident. This paper brings forward various tools developed in the Staatsliedenbuurt that were used as vehicles to bring women’s voices into urban renewal processes, such as the fictiocritical character Els, a workshop on dwelling stories, and a manual. The paper contributes to histories on the collective efforts by various women’s groups in the 1980s that fought exclusion and sought to develop feminist approaches for urban design by making what is the tacitly known, explicit; making the invisible, visible.

Lecture / Talk Video

TACK Talks #3: Architecture and its Tacit Dimensions

Held at the Institut für Kunst und Architektur, Akademie der Bildenden Kunst Wien, this is the initiating event in the 3rd round of TACK talks: Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing

Lara Schrijver Tom Avermaete Angelika Schnell Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture

Lecture / Talk Video

October 11, 2021

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TACK Talks #3: Architecture and its Tacit Dimensions

Lara Schrijver Tom Avermaete Angelika Schnell Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture

Held at the Institut für Kunst und Architektur, Akademie der Bildenden Kunst Wien, this is the initiating event in the 3rd round of TACK talks: Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing

Online Teaching Module

Engaging with Tacit Knowing: Reflexive dimensions as triggers for innovative design and research

Caendia Wijnbelt Margitta Buchert Leibniz Universität Hannover, Faculty of Architecture and Landscape Sciences

Online Teaching Module

February 1, 2023

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Engaging with Tacit Knowing: Reflexive dimensions as triggers for innovative design and research

Caendia Wijnbelt Margitta Buchert Leibniz Universität Hannover, Faculty of Architecture and Landscape Sciences

Presentation TACK Exhibition Object

Infra-thin Magick

The performative extended reality model "Infra-thin Magick" allows you to experience how such insights can be purposefully evoked by displacing and reassembling the components constituting your multimodal and synaesthetic spatial perception. It invites you to co-create embodied spatiality through active participation and play.

Paula Strunden

Presentation TACK Exhibition Object

View

Infra-thin Magick

Paula Strunden

The performative extended reality model "Infra-thin Magick" allows you to experience how such insights can be purposefully evoked by displacing and reassembling the components constituting your multimodal and synaesthetic spatial perception. It invites you to co-create embodied spatiality through active participation and play.

Lecture / Talk Presentation

_Unbinding the TACK publication (a digital publishing platform)

The TACK digital publishing platform is a response to a simple question: how can a large and complex organism like the TACK network – a group of over 40 individuals scattered across 10 academic partners, 3 cultural institutions and 9 architecture practices, living, growing, and producing individually and together over a period of three years – contain the sum of its parts in a single codex publication? During the course of this talk, presented in three parts, I will explain the process of making the collectively produced answer. The term ‘unbinding’ that occurs in the title belongs to a retrospective theoretical framework – a seeking of terms and a testing out of what have been largely responsive moves based on practical experience and tacit, rather than explicit and formalised, knowledge. Using this opportunity to reflect, issues of authorship, for example, the challenge of visual dominance and the acknowledgement of other senses, and the book as a performative, interconnected and relational process will be considered in terms of the publishing apparatus that we have assembled. This apparatus includes the technical architecture of the digital platform, but also its content elements and their conceptual frameworks. These embrace the classification and naming systems, and the connections, routes, and associations between the different parts. The possibility to make bespoke collections, or albums, of individual elements inspires the active participation of the reader and listener into an act of co-production. Framing this process within our discipline, we could even argue that the logic of the digital world finds a starting point in the work of an architectural theorist. When Christopher Alexander says, in the ‘Introduction’ to A Pattern Language, that “each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over in our environment” he explains a way of thinking and designing that became a basis for coding, but also the modular, associational networks that underlie the publishing platform. The process of making the digital platform will be briefly illuminated – from the moment precedents in my own work initiated my commissioning by TACK, through the communal consultations, workshops and conversations that miraculously resulted in consensus within this large group. Detailed conversations held with and between Lizzie Malcolm, the digital architect, Korinna Zinobia Weber, the editor, and the TACK editorial and executive boards signing-off at various stages are balanced by feedback loops, refinements, and intimate negotiations. Finally, we will visit the publishing platform together, carrying these narratives with us as we leap into the world of TACK to seek our own understandings of the mysterious concept of tacit knowledge.

Helen Thomas

Lecture / Talk Presentation

June 21, 2023

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_Unbinding the TACK publication (a digital publishing platform)

Helen Thomas

The TACK digital publishing platform is a response to a simple question: how can a large and complex organism like the TACK network – a group of over 40 individuals scattered across 10 academic partners, 3 cultural institutions and 9 architecture practices, living, growing, and producing individually and together over a period of three years – contain the sum of its parts in a single codex publication? During the course of this talk, presented in three parts, I will explain the process of making the collectively produced answer. The term ‘unbinding’ that occurs in the title belongs to a retrospective theoretical framework – a seeking of terms and a testing out of what have been largely responsive moves based on practical experience and tacit, rather than explicit and formalised, knowledge. Using this opportunity to reflect, issues of authorship, for example, the challenge of visual dominance and the acknowledgement of other senses, and the book as a performative, interconnected and relational process will be considered in terms of the publishing apparatus that we have assembled. This apparatus includes the technical architecture of the digital platform, but also its content elements and their conceptual frameworks. These embrace the classification and naming systems, and the connections, routes, and associations between the different parts. The possibility to make bespoke collections, or albums, of individual elements inspires the active participation of the reader and listener into an act of co-production. Framing this process within our discipline, we could even argue that the logic of the digital world finds a starting point in the work of an architectural theorist. When Christopher Alexander says, in the ‘Introduction’ to A Pattern Language, that “each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over in our environment” he explains a way of thinking and designing that became a basis for coding, but also the modular, associational networks that underlie the publishing platform. The process of making the digital platform will be briefly illuminated – from the moment precedents in my own work initiated my commissioning by TACK, through the communal consultations, workshops and conversations that miraculously resulted in consensus within this large group. Detailed conversations held with and between Lizzie Malcolm, the digital architect, Korinna Zinobia Weber, the editor, and the TACK editorial and executive boards signing-off at various stages are balanced by feedback loops, refinements, and intimate negotiations. Finally, we will visit the publishing platform together, carrying these narratives with us as we leap into the world of TACK to seek our own understandings of the mysterious concept of tacit knowledge.

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

The B-Sides. Tupaia, Kybernetes & Lara Croft

This book exhibits the B-sides of my dissertation – ideas that were cut from the final version but that have nonetheless proven promising. Dealing with post-digital forms of navigation, it juxtaposes the stories of Polynesian navigator Tupaia, Ancient Greek Kybernetes and Lara Croft’s avatar.

Eva Sommeregger

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

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The B-Sides. Tupaia, Kybernetes & Lara Croft

Eva Sommeregger

This book exhibits the B-sides of my dissertation – ideas that were cut from the final version but that have nonetheless proven promising. Dealing with post-digital forms of navigation, it juxtaposes the stories of Polynesian navigator Tupaia, Ancient Greek Kybernetes and Lara Croft’s avatar.

Book chapter Case Study Conference Paper Paper

2022

A Joint of Many Worlds: Entangled Stories in Battaile en Ibens’s 78+ Construction System in Timber

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the distinct networks of technical and embodied knowledge present in the development of the 78+ construction system in timber, designed in the 1970-80s by Flemish design office Battaile Ibens. It develops the history of the knooppunt, a joint of a particular material and technical complexity that structures the system’s wooden beams and cross-shaped columns, and argues for the understanding of architecture and construction as complex constellations of different crafts and skills, including but not limited to architectural design and engineering. Design and technical decisions are traced in parallel to economic and marketing strategies, weaving together social and material phenomena that shaped the system’s history. From the initial designs and prototyping, through publicity decisions and appearances in international expositions, until its idealization in the office’s approach, the history of the knooppunt exemplifies the interplay between different stakeholders and knowledge orbiting the technological development of construction systems.

Eric Crevels

Book chapter Case Study Conference Paper Paper

2022

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A Joint of Many Worlds: Entangled Stories in Battaile en Ibens’s 78+ Construction System in Timber

Eric Crevels

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the distinct networks of technical and embodied knowledge present in the development of the 78+ construction system in timber, designed in the 1970-80s by Flemish design office Battaile Ibens. It develops the history of the knooppunt, a joint of a particular material and technical complexity that structures the system’s wooden beams and cross-shaped columns, and argues for the understanding of architecture and construction as complex constellations of different crafts and skills, including but not limited to architectural design and engineering. Design and technical decisions are traced in parallel to economic and marketing strategies, weaving together social and material phenomena that shaped the system’s history. From the initial designs and prototyping, through publicity decisions and appearances in international expositions, until its idealization in the office’s approach, the history of the knooppunt exemplifies the interplay between different stakeholders and knowledge orbiting the technological development of construction systems.

Conference Paper Paper

POSTHUMANIST SANDBOX: THE POTENTIAL OF MULTIPLAYER – ENVIRONMENTS

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to reveal a novel assessment of creative production in academic education, re-evaluating the conceptual and artistic potential of virtual real-time collaboration through digital media. Allowing for transcultural exchange as well as global participation, this could positively influence the development of novel artistic approaches and innovative measures for universities by contributing to a more contemporary, location-independent, and ultimately more equal form of art and knowledge production.

Eva Sommeregger Valerie Messini

Conference Paper Paper

November 4, 2021

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POSTHUMANIST SANDBOX: THE POTENTIAL OF MULTIPLAYER – ENVIRONMENTS

Eva Sommeregger Valerie Messini

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to reveal a novel assessment of creative production in academic education, re-evaluating the conceptual and artistic potential of virtual real-time collaboration through digital media. Allowing for transcultural exchange as well as global participation, this could positively influence the development of novel artistic approaches and innovative measures for universities by contributing to a more contemporary, location-independent, and ultimately more equal form of art and knowledge production.

Essay

Return from the Future: The Concept of Retroactivity

OMA (1975), triptych, Boompjes Tower Slab, 1982. Colour silkscreen print, 716 × 1216 mm. Silkscreener: Bernard Ruygrok. Source: Drawing Matter

Koolhaas called his 1978 book Delirious New York a ‘retroactive manifesto for Manhattan’. In her essay Angelika Schnell describes how the concept of retroactivity is used in the architecture of OMA. Especially the high-rise project for Boompjes in Rotterdam, made between 1979 and 1981, is a design that ‘has become effective at a time in the past’. A careful reading of the accompanying text, but also the features of the design itself, reveal the circular logic of the hermeneutical model used by Koolhaas: designs are the stories that provoked the causes in the past.

Angelika Schnell

Essay

View

Return from the Future: The Concept of Retroactivity

Angelika Schnell

OMA (1975), triptych, Boompjes Tower Slab, 1982. Colour silkscreen print, 716 × 1216 mm. Silkscreener: Bernard Ruygrok. Source: Drawing Matter

Koolhaas called his 1978 book Delirious New York a ‘retroactive manifesto for Manhattan’. In her essay Angelika Schnell describes how the concept of retroactivity is used in the architecture of OMA. Especially the high-rise project for Boompjes in Rotterdam, made between 1979 and 1981, is a design that ‘has become effective at a time in the past’. A careful reading of the accompanying text, but also the features of the design itself, reveal the circular logic of the hermeneutical model used by Koolhaas: designs are the stories that provoked the causes in the past.

Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

City as Forest

We understand the city as a forest: a complex (eco)system in which various spatial elements are synergistically and dynamically networked. In this sense, with every design, the challenge and the opportunity arise to contribute to the system as a whole rather than creating a solitary object.

Verena Brehm CITYFÖRSTER

Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

View

City as Forest

Verena Brehm CITYFÖRSTER

We understand the city as a forest: a complex (eco)system in which various spatial elements are synergistically and dynamically networked. In this sense, with every design, the challenge and the opportunity arise to contribute to the system as a whole rather than creating a solitary object.

Journal Article

Architectural Ethnography? Incipits, distances, horizons for research and teaching practices

Figura 1 – profili degli abitanti e nuove tipologie di stanze (ReCoDe 2019), © Gennaro Postiglione

ABSTRACT

Architectural ethnography has increasingly been a focus of attention thanks to recent studies carried out by Albena Yaneva or to practices and research carried out by Momoyo Kaijima with her Atelier Bow Wow. Starting from an interest in the specificities of ethnographical approaches if practiced by architects, or by professionals and researchers having particular attention to forms, materiality and uses of the space in the everyday, this article outlines a literature review on ethnography for designers. This review has been helpful in defining through convergences and distances a specific positioning that we are assuming in teaching and doing research for design. A path that led to further questions on the role of transcription (graphical, photographic, textual) in architectural ethnography, as well as to challenging the role of tradition and innovation in this recent stream of research.

Gennaro Postiglione Paola Briata

Journal Article

June 18, 2022

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Architectural Ethnography? Incipits, distances, horizons for research and teaching practices

Gennaro Postiglione Paola Briata

Figura 1 – profili degli abitanti e nuove tipologie di stanze (ReCoDe 2019), © Gennaro Postiglione

Figura 3 – La mostra finale di Gratosoglio Ground Zero (2019) , © Gennaro Postiglione

Figura 4 – La vita attorno agli oggetti (QLHL 2020), © Gennaro Postiglione

ABSTRACT

Architectural ethnography has increasingly been a focus of attention thanks to recent studies carried out by Albena Yaneva or to practices and research carried out by Momoyo Kaijima with her Atelier Bow Wow. Starting from an interest in the specificities of ethnographical approaches if practiced by architects, or by professionals and researchers having particular attention to forms, materiality and uses of the space in the everyday, this article outlines a literature review on ethnography for designers. This review has been helpful in defining through convergences and distances a specific positioning that we are assuming in teaching and doing research for design. A path that led to further questions on the role of transcription (graphical, photographic, textual) in architectural ethnography, as well as to challenging the role of tradition and innovation in this recent stream of research.

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

_Making and Materiality – TACK Exhibition

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.

Tom Avermaete Janina Gosseye

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

View

_Making and Materiality – TACK Exhibition

Tom Avermaete Janina Gosseye

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.

Label

_Material Chariots_

Paul Vermeulen De Smet Vermeulen architecten

Label

View

_Material Chariots_

Paul Vermeulen De Smet Vermeulen architecten

Review

Konvolut – Annotated Bibliography on Tacit Knowledge

Book Collection on Tacit Knowledge by Filippo Cattapan, Photo: Filippo Cattapan, 2023, © Filippo Cattapan

Eric Crevels (EC), Mara Trübenbach (MT), Hamish Lonergan (HL), Anna Livia Vørsel (AV), Jhono Bennett (JB), Filippo Cattapan (FC), Caendia Wijnbelt (CW), Paula Strunden (PS), Ionas Sklavounos (IS), Claudia Mainardi (CM) compiled this bibliography with comments as part of the TACK Network training between 2019-2023.

Eric Crevels Anna Livia Vørsel Mara Trübenbach Filippo Cattapan Claudia Mainardi Paula Strunden Ionas Sklavounos Jhono Bennett Caendia Wijnbelt Hamish Lonergan

Review

View

Konvolut – Annotated Bibliography on Tacit Knowledge

Eric Crevels Anna Livia Vørsel Mara Trübenbach Filippo Cattapan Claudia Mainardi Paula Strunden Ionas Sklavounos Jhono Bennett Caendia Wijnbelt Hamish Lonergan

Book Collection on Tacit Knowledge by Filippo Cattapan, Photo: Filippo Cattapan, 2023, © Filippo Cattapan

Book collection on Tacit Knowledge of Hamish Lonergan, Photo: Hamish Lonergan, 2023, © Hamish Lonergan

Book Collection on Tacit Knowledge of Jhono Bennett, Photo: Jhono Bennett, 2023

Book collection on Tacit Knowledge of Mara Trübenbach , Photo: Mara Trübenbach, 2023, © Mara Trübenbach

Book Collection on Tacit Knowledge of Ionas Sklavounos, Photo: Ionas Sklavounos, 2023, © Ionas Sklavounos

Eric Crevels (EC), Mara Trübenbach (MT), Hamish Lonergan (HL), Anna Livia Vørsel (AV), Jhono Bennett (JB), Filippo Cattapan (FC), Caendia Wijnbelt (CW), Paula Strunden (PS), Ionas Sklavounos (IS), Claudia Mainardi (CM) compiled this bibliography with comments as part of the TACK Network training between 2019-2023.

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

Lava Brick

This ‘lava brick’ results from a situated project that studies-through-making the house-workshop of a Zapotec woman artisan who hosted me during two long periods of time.

Elena Perez Guembe

Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

View

Lava Brick

Elena Perez Guembe

This ‘lava brick’ results from a situated project that studies-through-making the house-workshop of a Zapotec woman artisan who hosted me during two long periods of time.

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Chozos, Houses of Nomadic Shepherds

Chozos in Cabeza del Buey. On the left the traditional chozo, on the right the demountable chozo that has toured to Germany and now Switzerland.

The chozos are traditional huts that up until about 50 years ago were built by shepherds in rural Spain as they moved around the fields with their sheep. This chozo was constructed in September 2022 by sixteen students from the University of Stuttgart during an intense exchange with experts in southern Spain.

Alba Balmaseda Dominguez Kyra Bullert Špela Setzen

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

October 5, 2022

View

Chozos, Houses of Nomadic Shepherds

Alba Balmaseda Dominguez Kyra Bullert Špela Setzen

Chozos in Cabeza del Buey. On the left the traditional chozo, on the right the demountable chozo that has toured to Germany and now Switzerland.

The chozos are traditional huts that up until about 50 years ago were built by shepherds in rural Spain as they moved around the fields with their sheep. This chozo was constructed in September 2022 by sixteen students from the University of Stuttgart during an intense exchange with experts in southern Spain.

Label

_Clay Landscape_

Klas Ruin Ola Broms Wessel Spridd

Label

View

_Clay Landscape_

Klas Ruin Ola Broms Wessel Spridd

Essay Note Presentation

Products In Architecture: From Formation To Effect And To Meaning

Gennaro Postigklione shares the presentation and the minutes of his lecture at PhD DARA11 Symposium.

Gennaro Postiglione

Essay Note Presentation

April 16, 2022

View

Products In Architecture: From Formation To Effect And To Meaning

Gennaro Postiglione

Gennaro Postigklione shares the presentation and the minutes of his lecture at PhD DARA11 Symposium.

Conference Paper Presentation

_UNCOMMONING: Artistic Knowledge in Architecture

ABSTRACT

While art and architecture share many characteristics, artistic knowledge offers some specific possibilities for contemporary architectural practice. Based on a theoretical framework around the artistic tacit knowing and with a focus on artistic reflexivity and its potential for knowledge production, the article explores artistic knowledge examples in the work of the Chilean architect Smiljan Radić. They mainly occur in accompanying practices like writing, collecting or photographing, but which are intertwined with and have an effect on the built. A light is shed on the imaginative, critical and transformative potentials of the artistic knowledge. These potentials especially come to play regarding the complexity of contemporary and future challenges for architecture. An outlook uses artistic works by Gordon Matta-Clark to raise approaches to action and thought for potential future architectural practice. The specific potential of art and artistic knowledge to address complex problems through focused, reflexive, contextual thinking is highlighted as a way to overcome the known and inadequate – here: uncommoning.

Valerie Hoberg

Conference Paper Presentation

June 19, 2023

View

_UNCOMMONING: Artistic Knowledge in Architecture

Valerie Hoberg

ABSTRACT

While art and architecture share many characteristics, artistic knowledge offers some specific possibilities for contemporary architectural practice. Based on a theoretical framework around the artistic tacit knowing and with a focus on artistic reflexivity and its potential for knowledge production, the article explores artistic knowledge examples in the work of the Chilean architect Smiljan Radić. They mainly occur in accompanying practices like writing, collecting or photographing, but which are intertwined with and have an effect on the built. A light is shed on the imaginative, critical and transformative potentials of the artistic knowledge. These potentials especially come to play regarding the complexity of contemporary and future challenges for architecture. An outlook uses artistic works by Gordon Matta-Clark to raise approaches to action and thought for potential future architectural practice. The specific potential of art and artistic knowledge to address complex problems through focused, reflexive, contextual thinking is highlighted as a way to overcome the known and inadequate – here: uncommoning.

Conference Paper

_ID – Integrated Processes of Reading and Creating Post-Objects in Digital Design

ABSTRACT

Α mechanism for generating logic that describes an under-design object by its user, in a digital design medium (AutoCAD by AutoDesk), using a deconstructive tracing of the design process is proposed. Creating multiple, independent, and autonomous correlations of the design language structure and its representation during the design process leads to new associations accessing the notion of Post-Object. The mode of deduction and the research results aim to measure the by-design idiosyncratization, a subject-oriented process of understanding and reacting to a deeper structure. This socially and culturally expected mode, described as a singularization process (Reckwitz, 2020) and the User-Interface relationship, provide correlations between a unique selection of things and an infrastructure, that could be understood as a dispositive of singularization (Agamben, 2009). Crafting a method of relating the design of objects to subjects, as well as the use of language to form, raises questions about how contemporary design is constituted as a way of conceptualizing contemporaneous subjectivities and implicitly post-industrial societies and economies.

Lina Mantikou Athanasios Farangas

Conference Paper

June 19, 2023

View

_ID – Integrated Processes of Reading and Creating Post-Objects in Digital Design

Lina Mantikou Athanasios Farangas

ABSTRACT

Α mechanism for generating logic that describes an under-design object by its user, in a digital design medium (AutoCAD by AutoDesk), using a deconstructive tracing of the design process is proposed. Creating multiple, independent, and autonomous correlations of the design language structure and its representation during the design process leads to new associations accessing the notion of Post-Object. The mode of deduction and the research results aim to measure the by-design idiosyncratization, a subject-oriented process of understanding and reacting to a deeper structure. This socially and culturally expected mode, described as a singularization process (Reckwitz, 2020) and the User-Interface relationship, provide correlations between a unique selection of things and an infrastructure, that could be understood as a dispositive of singularization (Agamben, 2009). Crafting a method of relating the design of objects to subjects, as well as the use of language to form, raises questions about how contemporary design is constituted as a way of conceptualizing contemporaneous subjectivities and implicitly post-industrial societies and economies.

Conference Paper Journal Article Paper

Aspectos da conceituação do trabalho em Marx: a alienação como abstração concreta

ABSTRACT

This article covers a question relative to the double determination and dialecticity in the concept of labour, as developed by Marx from the Hegelian dialectics. It seeks to demonstrate the ontological significance of the concept to the Marxian thought, a key element in his critics as a path to self-conscience and as a territory for alienation. Through the inquiry on the concepts of abstraction concreteness in relation to labour, it hopes to clarify its employment and epistemological reach as it provides an understanding of alienation as a process of abstraction that, projected in the social relations of production, becomes concrete.

Eric Crevels

Conference Paper Journal Article Paper

July 27, 2020

View

Aspectos da conceituação do trabalho em Marx: a alienação como abstração concreta

Eric Crevels

ABSTRACT

This article covers a question relative to the double determination and dialecticity in the concept of labour, as developed by Marx from the Hegelian dialectics. It seeks to demonstrate the ontological significance of the concept to the Marxian thought, a key element in his critics as a path to self-conscience and as a territory for alienation. Through the inquiry on the concepts of abstraction concreteness in relation to labour, it hopes to clarify its employment and epistemological reach as it provides an understanding of alienation as a process of abstraction that, projected in the social relations of production, becomes concrete.

Presentation

_Tacit(t)acts

Architecture formulates, organizes, and choreographs social behavior. It permeates our surroundings with architectural codes, value systems, and conventions that we have implicitly and explicitly learned to read, follow, and take for granted. Tacit(t)acts are performative urban interactions with relational objects – so-called Tactiles – that challenge spatial conventions and activate new relationships with the urban surroundings. As a strategy to develop spatial knowledge, Tacit(t)acts foster a process of unlearning restrictive spatial codes; re-learning through encounters of intimacy, embodiment, and connectedness; and co-learning through shared performative experiences. This project alienates urban infrastructures that determine spatial actions, such as sidewalks, traffic bollards, traffic islands, and fences, to withdraw their prescribed purpose and trigger unlearning. Legible architectural codes are transformed into Tactiles -unidentified objects- that function as perceptive mediators between the acting body and the social forces of urban reality. By creating embodied experiences of spatial proximity, Tactiles unravel tacit associations and layers of meaning and activate a process of re-learning. Forms of co-learning are probed and enacted through various performative workshops. These workshops initiate embodied and non-predefined communication through the objects that translate intuition, new thinking processes, and ideas performatively while merging into a collective choreography.

Katharina Kasinger

Presentation

June 21, 2023

View

_Tacit(t)acts

Katharina Kasinger

Architecture formulates, organizes, and choreographs social behavior. It permeates our surroundings with architectural codes, value systems, and conventions that we have implicitly and explicitly learned to read, follow, and take for granted. Tacit(t)acts are performative urban interactions with relational objects – so-called Tactiles – that challenge spatial conventions and activate new relationships with the urban surroundings. As a strategy to develop spatial knowledge, Tacit(t)acts foster a process of unlearning restrictive spatial codes; re-learning through encounters of intimacy, embodiment, and connectedness; and co-learning through shared performative experiences. This project alienates urban infrastructures that determine spatial actions, such as sidewalks, traffic bollards, traffic islands, and fences, to withdraw their prescribed purpose and trigger unlearning. Legible architectural codes are transformed into Tactiles -unidentified objects- that function as perceptive mediators between the acting body and the social forces of urban reality. By creating embodied experiences of spatial proximity, Tactiles unravel tacit associations and layers of meaning and activate a process of re-learning. Forms of co-learning are probed and enacted through various performative workshops. These workshops initiate embodied and non-predefined communication through the objects that translate intuition, new thinking processes, and ideas performatively while merging into a collective choreography.

Lecture / Talk

29th May 2000

Dove va la città dopo il coronavirus

La pandemia di coronavirus ha messo a nudo questioni che erano già oggetto di riflessione con un’accelerazione senza precedenti. Per questo Domus propone di ragionare, ancora a caldo, su quale sia la città che vogliamo.

Claudia Mainardi

Lecture / Talk

29th May 2000

View

Dove va la città dopo il coronavirus

Claudia Mainardi

La pandemia di coronavirus ha messo a nudo questioni che erano già oggetto di riflessione con un’accelerazione senza precedenti. Per questo Domus propone di ragionare, ancora a caldo, su quale sia la città che vogliamo.

Book Open Access Publication

2021

The Tacit Dimension: Architecture Knowledge and Scientific Research

Lara Schrijver Margitta Buchert Angelika Schnell Tom Avermaete Christoph Grafe

Book Open Access Publication

2021

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The Tacit Dimension: Architecture Knowledge and Scientific Research

Lara Schrijver Margitta Buchert Angelika Schnell Tom Avermaete Christoph Grafe

Book chapter

Tacit noses and mouldy smells: material testimonies through stutters, ruptures and events

ABSTRACT

In 2016 two ‘moisture experts’ visited a small public building in Stockholm. Moisture had started to seep in, and mould started to grow in the wooden park building, the spores making the staff working there ill. The experts recorded the levels of microorganisms in the interior air and the composite building materials with scientific equipment and expert noses, identifying certain elements through technological data and odorous qualities. The expert noses registered the same smells as the staff in the buildings, but evaluated, analysed and categorised them according to their expert knowledge field. Rather than aiming to make tacit knowledges explicit, this paper puts forward a methodological approach to tacit knowledge which unpacks and makes visible what tacit knowledges does, how it operates, and what and who it affects within architecture. By engaging with material ‘events’ (Bennett, 2010) and ‘stutters’ (Graham and Thrift, 2007), like this mould and its smell, through archival documents, scientific reports and changing building materials, the testimony of the material (Material Witness, Schuppli, 2020) makes visible the socio-economic and political value systems and decision-making processes embedded into the fabric of the building. It unpacks how things, otherwise hidden, come into view when systems, infrastructures and buildings break and fall apart, and how the various knowledge productions and value systems tied and embedded into this specific building and its mouldy materials can be unfolded and detangled through a theoretical framework of stutters, ruptures and events. Through this building, its smelly materials, and the different noses inside it, expert and non-expert, the paper unpacks how tacit knowledges operates, who or what can carry it, and what and who it affects.

Anna Livia Vørsel

Book chapter

November 1, 2022

View

Tacit noses and mouldy smells: material testimonies through stutters, ruptures and events

Anna Livia Vørsel

ABSTRACT

In 2016 two ‘moisture experts’ visited a small public building in Stockholm. Moisture had started to seep in, and mould started to grow in the wooden park building, the spores making the staff working there ill. The experts recorded the levels of microorganisms in the interior air and the composite building materials with scientific equipment and expert noses, identifying certain elements through technological data and odorous qualities. The expert noses registered the same smells as the staff in the buildings, but evaluated, analysed and categorised them according to their expert knowledge field. Rather than aiming to make tacit knowledges explicit, this paper puts forward a methodological approach to tacit knowledge which unpacks and makes visible what tacit knowledges does, how it operates, and what and who it affects within architecture. By engaging with material ‘events’ (Bennett, 2010) and ‘stutters’ (Graham and Thrift, 2007), like this mould and its smell, through archival documents, scientific reports and changing building materials, the testimony of the material (Material Witness, Schuppli, 2020) makes visible the socio-economic and political value systems and decision-making processes embedded into the fabric of the building. It unpacks how things, otherwise hidden, come into view when systems, infrastructures and buildings break and fall apart, and how the various knowledge productions and value systems tied and embedded into this specific building and its mouldy materials can be unfolded and detangled through a theoretical framework of stutters, ruptures and events. Through this building, its smelly materials, and the different noses inside it, expert and non-expert, the paper unpacks how tacit knowledges operates, who or what can carry it, and what and who it affects.

Lecture / Talk Video

TACK Talks #2: How to archive embodied knowledge?

Sofie de Caigny Vlaams Architectuurinstituut (VAi) Monika Platzer Architekturzentrum Wien (AzW) Ionas Sklavounos Paula Strunden Mara Trübenbach Eric Crevels

Lecture / Talk Video

March 11, 2021

View

TACK Talks #2: How to archive embodied knowledge?

Sofie de Caigny Vlaams Architectuurinstituut (VAi) Monika Platzer Architekturzentrum Wien (AzW) Ionas Sklavounos Paula Strunden Mara Trübenbach Eric Crevels

Paper

From Unconventional Households to Unconventional Affordable Housing

ABSTRACT

Over the past years, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars at Politecnico di Milano (UHUAH!) has been exploring how contemporary social and demographic dynamics challenge housing policies and projects. These issues have been at the core of teaching activities in design-based studios involving architecture students. Spurred on not only by the literature on the subject (Ronald/Elsinga, 2012), we are engaged in field research investigating the state of the art of dwelling practices, with the aim to develop alternative housing solutions (and typologies) able to overcome the distance that emerged between demand and supply. A gap mostly depending on the major changes that happened in the last twenty years in households composition, and in what is typically referred to as the family (Carlson/Meyer, 2014), with the consequent crisis of the ideal equivalence between “the family” and the “apartment typology” (Star strategies + architecture, 2016). The paper will therefore present relevant case studies from the Research by Design explorations conducted on existing building stock, a decision taken to empower Adaptive Reuse as a sustainable approach also in Housing. Our Design Manifesto considers the apartment as constituted by a system of independent rooms, in which the bed is not anymore the core device, while the connective space is interpreted as common shared areas (Connective = Collective).

Gennaro Postiglione Paola Briata Constanze Wolfgring

Paper

October 10, 2022

View

From Unconventional Households to Unconventional Affordable Housing

Gennaro Postiglione Paola Briata Constanze Wolfgring

Drawing focusing on the life around furniture (@ReCoDe-DAStU)., © Gennaro Postiglione

Design strategy: a set of devices is set in place in dialogue with the existing structure (@ReCoDe-DAStU)., © Gennaro Postiglione

External view of one of the La Viridiana blocks (@ReCoDe-DAStU)., © Gennaro Postiglione

ABSTRACT

Over the past years, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars at Politecnico di Milano (UHUAH!) has been exploring how contemporary social and demographic dynamics challenge housing policies and projects. These issues have been at the core of teaching activities in design-based studios involving architecture students. Spurred on not only by the literature on the subject (Ronald/Elsinga, 2012), we are engaged in field research investigating the state of the art of dwelling practices, with the aim to develop alternative housing solutions (and typologies) able to overcome the distance that emerged between demand and supply. A gap mostly depending on the major changes that happened in the last twenty years in households composition, and in what is typically referred to as the family (Carlson/Meyer, 2014), with the consequent crisis of the ideal equivalence between “the family” and the “apartment typology” (Star strategies + architecture, 2016). The paper will therefore present relevant case studies from the Research by Design explorations conducted on existing building stock, a decision taken to empower Adaptive Reuse as a sustainable approach also in Housing. Our Design Manifesto considers the apartment as constituted by a system of independent rooms, in which the bed is not anymore the core device, while the connective space is interpreted as common shared areas (Connective = Collective).

Note

What is Tacit Knowledge?

Book collection on Tacit Knowledge of Hamish Lonergan, Photo: Hamish Lonergan, 2023, © Hamish Lonergan

Broadly speaking, we can think about tacit knowledge in two ways.

Hamish Lonergan Eric Crevels Mara Trübenbach

Note

March 1, 2023

View

What is Tacit Knowledge?

Hamish Lonergan Eric Crevels Mara Trübenbach

Book collection on Tacit Knowledge of Hamish Lonergan, Photo: Hamish Lonergan, 2023, © Hamish Lonergan

Broadly speaking, we can think about tacit knowledge in two ways.

Book chapter

TRAVELING PERSPECTIVES. Placing impressions of a project in Flanders

ABSTRACT

Active instances of getting to know a place through experience can be tacit yet situated: they can be embodied, embedded and enacted. This further explores Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s hint of a depth found in the latent form of impressions, in their ‘caché-révélé’ or hidden-revealed. Expressions of such instances, through interpreting reflexive features of buildings that stem from plurilocal collaborations, become productive insights into the mechanisms of place relation, their transfers and interweaving, and their impact in architectural design practices. Most of all, these parcels of the tacit dimension of place interpretation are put forward as such: aggregates that interfere with- and feed a wider relational practice of living environments. Distinct yet intermingling perspectives of a contemporary architectural realisation are drawn out through a dive into the meeting and convention centre in Bruges. This is a building designed by two offices based in different architectural environments — the Portuguese architect (and office) Eduardo Souto de Moura alongside the Antwerp-based firm META architectuurbureau. The building is first approached through its overarching architectural facets and relations to place, and through the lense of site analysis and interpretation by the designers. Two perspectives of the same building are then set in parallel, exploring impressions of place through similarities and differences. From these different modes of apprehending the project, concepts of place and architectural intentions set in motion in this instance are unpacked, involving a transversal reading through a range of architectural communities of practice. The repertoire of places that play an active (and overlooked) or quiescent (yet potent) role in architectural practice are put in question here. The paper investigates how one building in its site specific geographical setting can contain traces of broader architectural contexts. It asks how architectural collaborative approaches that stem from the encounter of different perspectives can be read in the built environment through impressions and expressions in architecture.

Caendia Wijnbelt

Book chapter

November 1, 2022

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TRAVELING PERSPECTIVES. Placing impressions of a project in Flanders

Caendia Wijnbelt

ABSTRACT

Active instances of getting to know a place through experience can be tacit yet situated: they can be embodied, embedded and enacted. This further explores Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s hint of a depth found in the latent form of impressions, in their ‘caché-révélé’ or hidden-revealed. Expressions of such instances, through interpreting reflexive features of buildings that stem from plurilocal collaborations, become productive insights into the mechanisms of place relation, their transfers and interweaving, and their impact in architectural design practices. Most of all, these parcels of the tacit dimension of place interpretation are put forward as such: aggregates that interfere with- and feed a wider relational practice of living environments. Distinct yet intermingling perspectives of a contemporary architectural realisation are drawn out through a dive into the meeting and convention centre in Bruges. This is a building designed by two offices based in different architectural environments — the Portuguese architect (and office) Eduardo Souto de Moura alongside the Antwerp-based firm META architectuurbureau. The building is first approached through its overarching architectural facets and relations to place, and through the lense of site analysis and interpretation by the designers. Two perspectives of the same building are then set in parallel, exploring impressions of place through similarities and differences. From these different modes of apprehending the project, concepts of place and architectural intentions set in motion in this instance are unpacked, involving a transversal reading through a range of architectural communities of practice. The repertoire of places that play an active (and overlooked) or quiescent (yet potent) role in architectural practice are put in question here. The paper investigates how one building in its site specific geographical setting can contain traces of broader architectural contexts. It asks how architectural collaborative approaches that stem from the encounter of different perspectives can be read in the built environment through impressions and expressions in architecture.

Review

Book Corner: “The Epistemology of the Unspoken: On the Concept of Tacit Knowledge in Contemporary Design Research” by Claudia Mareis (2012)

Design Issues 28, no. 2 (2012)

Anna Livia Vørsel Hamish Lonergan

Review

View

Book Corner: “The Epistemology of the Unspoken: On the Concept of Tacit Knowledge in Contemporary Design Research” by Claudia Mareis (2012)

Anna Livia Vørsel Hamish Lonergan

Design Issues 28, no. 2 (2012)

Essay

2021

Queer Stories, Off-Grid

Figure 1. Entrance to the Garden of Eden, Venice. Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, 2011.

Hamish Lonergan went to Venice over Summer to escape the grids of Zurich and Zoom, which seemed to close-in as he retraced the same tidy streets, week after week.

Hamish Lonergan

Essay

2021

View

Queer Stories, Off-Grid

Hamish Lonergan

Figure 1. Entrance to the Garden of Eden, Venice. Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, 2011.

Figure 2. Film still from Keep The Lights On, directed by Ira Sachs, 2012.

Hamish Lonergan went to Venice over Summer to escape the grids of Zurich and Zoom, which seemed to close-in as he retraced the same tidy streets, week after week.

Presentation

_Maintaining a Wetland

NSG Wagbachniederung is a nature reserve and birdwatching hot spot in the Upper Rhine Plain between Karlsruhe and Mannheim. Once, the site was a large peatland in the alluvial plains of the Rhine until the area was used by a sugar-beet factory for disposing of wastewater and mud in 1937. Over the years, the peatland was destroyed and turned into a wetland with large reed areas and mud plains, attracting numerous migratory and water birds and leading to the protection of the anthropogenic site as a nature reserve in 1983. With the closure of the factory and the subsequent discontinuation of water influx a few years later, the wetland was threatened to fall dry and deteriorate. Its newly gained importance for the avian world required the authorities to prevent this process by ensuring irrigation is continued. The controlled watering and other maintenance measures are defined in a management plan. However, due to the complexity and unpredictability of interactions affording the site’s ecology, the possibility of codification is limited and needs to be supplemented by the tacit knowledge of an expert. Biologist Ulrich Mahler takes on this role. Although retired from his position at the nature protection agency, where he was responsible for the site for over 50 years, he remains the site's guardian. He spends several hours daily walking and monitoring the site and operates the irrigation system when needed to prevent ecological succession. He keeps records of all his excursions in the form of annotated maps where he marks precisely the duration of the water flow and which birds, insects or amphibians he encountered along the way. His “Exkursionszettel” exemplifies how tacit knowledge is embedded in the maintenance of a highly modified and constructed landscape and expresses the impossibility of codifying its complex management.

Johanna Just

Presentation

June 20, 2023

View

_Maintaining a Wetland

Johanna Just

NSG Wagbachniederung is a nature reserve and birdwatching hot spot in the Upper Rhine Plain between Karlsruhe and Mannheim. Once, the site was a large peatland in the alluvial plains of the Rhine until the area was used by a sugar-beet factory for disposing of wastewater and mud in 1937. Over the years, the peatland was destroyed and turned into a wetland with large reed areas and mud plains, attracting numerous migratory and water birds and leading to the protection of the anthropogenic site as a nature reserve in 1983. With the closure of the factory and the subsequent discontinuation of water influx a few years later, the wetland was threatened to fall dry and deteriorate. Its newly gained importance for the avian world required the authorities to prevent this process by ensuring irrigation is continued. The controlled watering and other maintenance measures are defined in a management plan. However, due to the complexity and unpredictability of interactions affording the site’s ecology, the possibility of codification is limited and needs to be supplemented by the tacit knowledge of an expert. Biologist Ulrich Mahler takes on this role. Although retired from his position at the nature protection agency, where he was responsible for the site for over 50 years, he remains the site's guardian. He spends several hours daily walking and monitoring the site and operates the irrigation system when needed to prevent ecological succession. He keeps records of all his excursions in the form of annotated maps where he marks precisely the duration of the water flow and which birds, insects or amphibians he encountered along the way. His “Exkursionszettel” exemplifies how tacit knowledge is embedded in the maintenance of a highly modified and constructed landscape and expresses the impossibility of codifying its complex management.

Conference Paper Open Access Publication

Explicitly Tacit: Polanyi’s “Tacit Knowledge” in the Architectural Theory of Charney and Rowe

ABSTRACT

The scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi coined the term “tacit knowledge” in 1958 to describe a type of unconscious, embodied and social knowledge that could not be explicitly taught through rules or rote-learning. He argued, instead, that some knowledge relied on practice, critique, socialisation and personal biography. In this sense, something like tacit knowledge has long played an important role in architectural education — where skill is acquired through (re)drawing, writing and model-making, reviewed by teachers and peers — even before Polanyi named it. Yet, for all the affinities between design education and tacit knowledge, Polanyi’s epistemology has rarely been directly addressed in architectural theory. This paper considers two exceptions in the writing and pedagogy of Melvin Charney and Colin Rowe in the 1970s. Both figures used Polanyi’s philosophy to propose alternatives to the “ultra” positions of Modernism. Charney argued that Quebecois vernacular architecture reflected a tacit, collective building culture that was inseparable from the embodied construction practices of craftspeople. This could not be made explicit in construction manuals or histories; students had to discover it through drawing and building themselves. Meanwhile, Rowe credited Polanyi’s Beyond Nihilism (1960) in the gestation of Collage City (1978, with Fred Koetter). Polanyi’s essay argued that individual freedom was important in making new discoveries, but that individuals still had a responsibility to go beyond themselves by conforming to collective norms and standards. This, too, found a parallel in Rowe and Koetter’s rejection of Modernist utopianism. At the same time, a close reading of these minor encounters reveals certain continuities and misalignments between Rowe and Charney’s interpretation and Polanyi’s own position as a prominent anti-Communist and contributor to early neoliberalism. Ultimately, this paper aims to clarify the role of tacit knowledge in the theory of these two architect/educators and, in doing so, simultaneously clarify the relationship between tacit knowledge and architectural pedagogy more broadly.

Hamish Lonergan

Conference Paper Open Access Publication

November 10, 2021

View

Explicitly Tacit: Polanyi’s “Tacit Knowledge” in the Architectural Theory of Charney and Rowe

Hamish Lonergan

ABSTRACT

The scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi coined the term “tacit knowledge” in 1958 to describe a type of unconscious, embodied and social knowledge that could not be explicitly taught through rules or rote-learning. He argued, instead, that some knowledge relied on practice, critique, socialisation and personal biography. In this sense, something like tacit knowledge has long played an important role in architectural education — where skill is acquired through (re)drawing, writing and model-making, reviewed by teachers and peers — even before Polanyi named it. Yet, for all the affinities between design education and tacit knowledge, Polanyi’s epistemology has rarely been directly addressed in architectural theory. This paper considers two exceptions in the writing and pedagogy of Melvin Charney and Colin Rowe in the 1970s. Both figures used Polanyi’s philosophy to propose alternatives to the “ultra” positions of Modernism. Charney argued that Quebecois vernacular architecture reflected a tacit, collective building culture that was inseparable from the embodied construction practices of craftspeople. This could not be made explicit in construction manuals or histories; students had to discover it through drawing and building themselves. Meanwhile, Rowe credited Polanyi’s Beyond Nihilism (1960) in the gestation of Collage City (1978, with Fred Koetter). Polanyi’s essay argued that individual freedom was important in making new discoveries, but that individuals still had a responsibility to go beyond themselves by conforming to collective norms and standards. This, too, found a parallel in Rowe and Koetter’s rejection of Modernist utopianism. At the same time, a close reading of these minor encounters reveals certain continuities and misalignments between Rowe and Charney’s interpretation and Polanyi’s own position as a prominent anti-Communist and contributor to early neoliberalism. Ultimately, this paper aims to clarify the role of tacit knowledge in the theory of these two architect/educators and, in doing so, simultaneously clarify the relationship between tacit knowledge and architectural pedagogy more broadly.

Lecture / Talk Video

TACK Talk #1: SOMA

SOMA Architecture Lara Schrijver Paula Strunden

Lecture / Talk Video

June 25, 2020

View

TACK Talk #1: SOMA

SOMA Architecture Lara Schrijver Paula Strunden

Presentation

_Bâton à marques (tally stick) of the Bisse de Bitailla (irrigation channel), 1762

Bâtons à marques (also called ratement,s Tesseln) are pieces of carved wood used as tally sticks in the Swiss Alps. They functioned as records of use rights, taxes, products, and labour duties. Tesseln in Upper-Valais and and bâton à marques in Lower-Valais were employed in the governance of common property and resources, including alpine pastures, wine, and irrigation water. The tally stick of the Bisse de Bitailla, an irrigation channel in the Arbaz municipality, has carvings referring to domestic signs and their associated water rights. These link water right holders to water use, accounted in irrigation time. As they were passed down, edited, and made anew, tally sticks enabled tacit knowledge transmission and performed as adaptable physical supports of negotiation and cooperation—crucial components to govern the commons. Beyond their regulatory function, they also offer a glimpse into how premodern alpine communities engaged in practices of commoning.

Nicole de Lalouviere

Presentation

June 20, 2023

View

_Bâton à marques (tally stick) of the Bisse de Bitailla (irrigation channel), 1762

Nicole de Lalouviere

Bâtons à marques (also called ratement,s Tesseln) are pieces of carved wood used as tally sticks in the Swiss Alps. They functioned as records of use rights, taxes, products, and labour duties. Tesseln in Upper-Valais and and bâton à marques in Lower-Valais were employed in the governance of common property and resources, including alpine pastures, wine, and irrigation water. The tally stick of the Bisse de Bitailla, an irrigation channel in the Arbaz municipality, has carvings referring to domestic signs and their associated water rights. These link water right holders to water use, accounted in irrigation time. As they were passed down, edited, and made anew, tally sticks enabled tacit knowledge transmission and performed as adaptable physical supports of negotiation and cooperation—crucial components to govern the commons. Beyond their regulatory function, they also offer a glimpse into how premodern alpine communities engaged in practices of commoning.

Diagram Drawing Presentation Video

Re-enacting Le Corbusier’s way of sketching

Paula Strunden and Desilava Petkova (as students) are re-enacting the Le Corbusier's style to sketch.

Paula Strunden Desislava Petkova Angelika Schnell Eva Sommeregger Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture

Diagram Drawing Presentation Video

November 13, 2012

View

Re-enacting Le Corbusier’s way of sketching

Paula Strunden Desislava Petkova Angelika Schnell Eva Sommeregger Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture

Paula Strunden and Desilava Petkova (as students) are re-enacting the Le Corbusier's style to sketch.

Presentation

_Embodied Knowledge: Eilfried Huth’s Eschensiedlung in Deutschlandsberg, Styria, 1972–1992

As early as the Middle Ages, a Bauhütte referred to a place of cooperation and interaction between craftspeople. The Austrian architect Eilfried Huth, a pioneer of participatory housing, used this notion to express his reliance on the embodied knowledge of future inhabitants who gathered as an advocacy group to design a new housing estate called Eschensiedlung,1972-1990 in Deutschlandsberg, Styria.

Monika Platzer Architekturzentrum Wien (AzW)

Presentation

June 20, 2023

View

_Embodied Knowledge: Eilfried Huth’s Eschensiedlung in Deutschlandsberg, Styria, 1972–1992

Monika Platzer Architekturzentrum Wien (AzW)

As early as the Middle Ages, a Bauhütte referred to a place of cooperation and interaction between craftspeople. The Austrian architect Eilfried Huth, a pioneer of participatory housing, used this notion to express his reliance on the embodied knowledge of future inhabitants who gathered as an advocacy group to design a new housing estate called Eschensiedlung,1972-1990 in Deutschlandsberg, Styria.

Online Teaching Module

Unveiling Embodied Tacit Knowledge through the Act of Drawing

Paula Strunden Angelika Schnell Eva Sommeregger Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture

Online Teaching Module

February 20, 2023

View

Unveiling Embodied Tacit Knowledge through the Act of Drawing

Paula Strunden Angelika Schnell Eva Sommeregger Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture

Conference Paper

_Re-enacting everyday life. Architectural History meets the Body

ABSTRACT

The seventeenth century building were Hannie and Aldo van Eyck lived from 1965 was diligently remodelled into their treasured family home. Almost hidden from the street hustle, yet open to the outside, the place lights up as soon as the threshold is crossed. Both literally and metaphorically, the changes and additions to the building reveal their architectural thinking and ways of inhabiting. In the house, layers of temporality, materiality, everyday living and lived experience mingle with design solutions and worldviews affecting them. Grounded on a phenomenological approach, this paper argues for the use of Re-Enactments as a fruitful method for architectural historians. As re-enactor, the researcher recreates some of the repeated, stylised acts of the Van Eycks’ lives, somatically reproducing the customs, values and practices that instituted their ways of living. The researcher’s body informs the reflections and findings, from materiality to meaning, through the continuous and embedded experience of the house. Tacit architectural ideas, specific ways of understanding history, time, and space, are indeed embodied into the built environment, and they can only be disentangled with the help of our own bodies, by performing actions in, within, and around buildings. A task which is inevitably creative, striving to animate rather than simply mimic, to evoke rather than just report.

Alejandro Campos

Conference Paper

June 20, 2023

View

_Re-enacting everyday life. Architectural History meets the Body

Alejandro Campos

ABSTRACT

The seventeenth century building were Hannie and Aldo van Eyck lived from 1965 was diligently remodelled into their treasured family home. Almost hidden from the street hustle, yet open to the outside, the place lights up as soon as the threshold is crossed. Both literally and metaphorically, the changes and additions to the building reveal their architectural thinking and ways of inhabiting. In the house, layers of temporality, materiality, everyday living and lived experience mingle with design solutions and worldviews affecting them. Grounded on a phenomenological approach, this paper argues for the use of Re-Enactments as a fruitful method for architectural historians. As re-enactor, the researcher recreates some of the repeated, stylised acts of the Van Eycks’ lives, somatically reproducing the customs, values and practices that instituted their ways of living. The researcher’s body informs the reflections and findings, from materiality to meaning, through the continuous and embedded experience of the house. Tacit architectural ideas, specific ways of understanding history, time, and space, are indeed embodied into the built environment, and they can only be disentangled with the help of our own bodies, by performing actions in, within, and around buildings. A task which is inevitably creative, striving to animate rather than simply mimic, to evoke rather than just report.

Essay

2021

Hello Iwona

This text was entered into the 2020 Drawing Matter Writing Prize

Hamish Lonergan

Essay

2021

View

Hello Iwona

Hamish Lonergan

This text was entered into the 2020 Drawing Matter Writing Prize

Book

PORTRAITS

PORTRAITS is a significant publication that offers a unique perspective on fifteen major built works by the Dutch firm to date. These selected projects are portrayed as distinct characters with distinctive physiognomies, yet they belong to the same family and share similar features, hence the book's title.

Kees Kaan

Book

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PORTRAITS

Kees Kaan

PORTRAITS is a significant publication that offers a unique perspective on fifteen major built works by the Dutch firm to date. These selected projects are portrayed as distinct characters with distinctive physiognomies, yet they belong to the same family and share similar features, hence the book's title.

Review

Book Corner: Canteiros da Utopia

The book Canteiros da Utopia, whose title can be translated as Construction Sites of Utopia, is the result of Silke Kapp's Post-doc research in Urban Sociology from the Bauhaus Universiteit Weimar, conducted between 2014 and 2015. Being Kapp’s supervisee during my Master’s studies in Architecture and Urbanism at the same university, which I had the pleasure to read still in its pre-printed version. Kapp’s ability to converge imaginative and critical thought is fully represented in this oeuvre, turning the experience of reading it one of both great literary joy and intellectual stimulus.

Eric Crevels

Review

December 16, 2021

View

Book Corner: Canteiros da Utopia

Eric Crevels

The book Canteiros da Utopia, whose title can be translated as Construction Sites of Utopia, is the result of Silke Kapp's Post-doc research in Urban Sociology from the Bauhaus Universiteit Weimar, conducted between 2014 and 2015. Being Kapp’s supervisee during my Master’s studies in Architecture and Urbanism at the same university, which I had the pleasure to read still in its pre-printed version. Kapp’s ability to converge imaginative and critical thought is fully represented in this oeuvre, turning the experience of reading it one of both great literary joy and intellectual stimulus.

Online Teaching Module

Understanding Architectural Design Studios as ‘Communities of Tacit Knowledge’

Hamish Lonergan Tom Avermaete ETH Zürich, Department of Architecture

Online Teaching Module

October 10, 2022

View

Understanding Architectural Design Studios as ‘Communities of Tacit Knowledge’

Hamish Lonergan Tom Avermaete ETH Zürich, Department of Architecture

Drawing TACK Exhibition Object

Kunsthaus Glarus II, Drawing as a Synthesis, 2019

Kunsthaus Glarus II, Drawing as a Synthesis, 2019 Conen Sigl Architekt:innen, Zürich

The drawing as a synthesis is made after the project is built or the competition is over. This kind of ‘drawing made afterwards’ is about bringing all the principal ideas and responses that now already exist into a drawing. It is a synthesis, and like a poem it reduces or condenses the new reality of the project and describes it all at once very precisely.

Conen Sigl Architekt:innen, Zürich

Drawing TACK Exhibition Object

View

Kunsthaus Glarus II, Drawing as a Synthesis, 2019

Conen Sigl Architekt:innen, Zürich

Kunsthaus Glarus II, Drawing as a Synthesis, 2019 Conen Sigl Architekt:innen, Zürich

The drawing as a synthesis is made after the project is built or the competition is over. This kind of ‘drawing made afterwards’ is about bringing all the principal ideas and responses that now already exist into a drawing. It is a synthesis, and like a poem it reduces or condenses the new reality of the project and describes it all at once very precisely.

Exhibition

Communities of practice: Post-war architecture in cologne

Filippo Cattapan Christoph Grafe

Exhibition

View

Communities of practice: Post-war architecture in cologne

Filippo Cattapan Christoph Grafe

Conference Paper

_Dissemination of Architectural Culture: A View on Turkish Architects’ Journeys in the Pre-Digital Age

ABSTRACT

An architect is an intellectual person who develops a professional architectural identity and approach through an accumulation of their personal experiences, education and knowledge. Perhaps the most pivotal part in an architect’s ‘formation journey’ is the initial years they start constructing their architectural selfhood. The initial years in which a person “becomes” an architect, are signified by the mobility of young architects, ideas and encounters, through which an architecture culture forms and disseminates. The dissemination of ideas is facilitated through institutions, visual, verbal and textual representations. Traveling, with its ability to embody all of these components appears to be a fruitful practice through which architecture culture can be analyzed. During the twentieth century, new encounters provided a ground from which Turkish-speaking architects established a firmer professional position and disseminated new implementations in the architecture field. The purpose of this research is to understand how Turkish-speaking architects’ journeys in the pre-digital age, contributed to the period’s architectural discourse in Turkey. Therefore, the ways in which architects traveled, translated and disseminated their travel experiences were studied and evaluated through content analysis.

Ceren Hamiloglu Ahsen Özsoy

Conference Paper

June 21, 2023

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_Dissemination of Architectural Culture: A View on Turkish Architects’ Journeys in the Pre-Digital Age

Ceren Hamiloglu Ahsen Özsoy

ABSTRACT

An architect is an intellectual person who develops a professional architectural identity and approach through an accumulation of their personal experiences, education and knowledge. Perhaps the most pivotal part in an architect’s ‘formation journey’ is the initial years they start constructing their architectural selfhood. The initial years in which a person “becomes” an architect, are signified by the mobility of young architects, ideas and encounters, through which an architecture culture forms and disseminates. The dissemination of ideas is facilitated through institutions, visual, verbal and textual representations. Traveling, with its ability to embody all of these components appears to be a fruitful practice through which architecture culture can be analyzed. During the twentieth century, new encounters provided a ground from which Turkish-speaking architects established a firmer professional position and disseminated new implementations in the architecture field. The purpose of this research is to understand how Turkish-speaking architects’ journeys in the pre-digital age, contributed to the period’s architectural discourse in Turkey. Therefore, the ways in which architects traveled, translated and disseminated their travel experiences were studied and evaluated through content analysis.

Essay Journal Article Open Access Publication

Labor, Prescription and Alienation in Architecture: Critical Notes On The Architect’s Practice

Image 01: Tower of Babel under Construction Date: 1590 Artist: unknown Source: https://www.wga.hu/html/m/master/zunk_ge/zunk_ge4/ztower_b.html, © Public Domain

ABSTRACT

The present essay seeks to point out contemporary phenomena of decreasing autonomy by the alienation of everyday skills that, together with architectural drawing, promote the architect and urbanist’s figure to that of an expert, thus immobilizing its practice in a heteronomous form. It aims the exposition, with the critiques of Ivan Illich and Sérgio Ferro, how the architect’s practice contributes to the alienation and exploitation of the construction worker’s labour in detriment of the body-skill dialectics, which would allow for a closer relation between individual and society. Opposing this alienation processes, both in consuming as in the production of architecture, with studies about technology and anthropology, it argues in favor of a politics of transformation of architectures technology based on the relation between body, skills, learning and technique.

Eric Crevels

Essay Journal Article Open Access Publication

October 16, 2022

View

Labor, Prescription and Alienation in Architecture: Critical Notes On The Architect’s Practice

Eric Crevels

Image 01: Tower of Babel under Construction Date: 1590 Artist: unknown Source: https://www.wga.hu/html/m/master/zunk_ge/zunk_ge4/ztower_b.html, © Public Domain

Image 02: Building of Babel Date: 1882 Artist: Edmund Ollier Source: https://archive.org/details/dli.granth.77290/mode/2up , © Public Domain

Image 03: Weltchronik in Versen, Szene: Der Turmbau zu Babel Date: circa 1370 Artist: Meister der Weltenchronik Source: The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., © Public Domain

ABSTRACT

The present essay seeks to point out contemporary phenomena of decreasing autonomy by the alienation of everyday skills that, together with architectural drawing, promote the architect and urbanist’s figure to that of an expert, thus immobilizing its practice in a heteronomous form. It aims the exposition, with the critiques of Ivan Illich and Sérgio Ferro, how the architect’s practice contributes to the alienation and exploitation of the construction worker’s labour in detriment of the body-skill dialectics, which would allow for a closer relation between individual and society. Opposing this alienation processes, both in consuming as in the production of architecture, with studies about technology and anthropology, it argues in favor of a politics of transformation of architectures technology based on the relation between body, skills, learning and technique.

Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

The Yield of the Land

This vector drawing is the outcome of an elective course led by Wan and Joris at Ghent University that explored a fragment of the fast-changing landscape of Nanhai District in the Pearl River Delta, Wan’s ancestral home.

Joris Kerremans Hong Wan Chan

Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

View

The Yield of the Land

Joris Kerremans Hong Wan Chan

This vector drawing is the outcome of an elective course led by Wan and Joris at Ghent University that explored a fragment of the fast-changing landscape of Nanhai District in the Pearl River Delta, Wan’s ancestral home.

TACK Exhibition Object

Tesseln/Bâton à marques

Bâtons à marques (also called ratement,s Tesseln) are pieces of carved carved wood used as tally sticks in the Swiss Alps. They functioned as as records of use rights, productstaxes, products, and labour duties in relation to common resources. Tesseln in Upper-Valais and and bâton à marques in LowerBas-Valais were employed in the governance of common property and resourcesvarious forms of common property, including alpine pastures, wine, and irrigation water.

Nicole de Lalouviere

TACK Exhibition Object

View

Tesseln/Bâton à marques

Nicole de Lalouviere

Bâtons à marques (also called ratement,s Tesseln) are pieces of carved carved wood used as tally sticks in the Swiss Alps. They functioned as as records of use rights, productstaxes, products, and labour duties in relation to common resources. Tesseln in Upper-Valais and and bâton à marques in LowerBas-Valais were employed in the governance of common property and resourcesvarious forms of common property, including alpine pastures, wine, and irrigation water.

Book chapter Essay

Introduction to “Entwerfen Erforschen: Der performative turn in der Architekturlehre” (2016)

This is the introduction to the book "Angelika Schnell, Eva Sommeregger, Waltraud Indrist (Hrsg.), Entwerfen Erforschen: Der performative turn in der Architekturlehre, Birkhäuser Publishers, Basel/Berlin/Boston 2016".

Angelika Schnell

Book chapter Essay

View

Introduction to “Entwerfen Erforschen: Der performative turn in der Architekturlehre” (2016)

Angelika Schnell

This is the introduction to the book "Angelika Schnell, Eva Sommeregger, Waltraud Indrist (Hrsg.), Entwerfen Erforschen: Der performative turn in der Architekturlehre, Birkhäuser Publishers, Basel/Berlin/Boston 2016".

Lecture / Talk

From Critical Spatial Practice to Site-Writing

Prof. Dr. Jane Rendell, UCL gave a keynote talk 'From Critical Spatial Practice to Site-Writing: Approaches to Architectural Research and Pedagogy' at the 5th Intermediate Meeting of the TACK network.

University College London, Bartlett School of Architecture Jane Rendell

Lecture / Talk

June 14, 2022

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From Critical Spatial Practice to Site-Writing

University College London, Bartlett School of Architecture Jane Rendell

Prof. Dr. Jane Rendell, UCL gave a keynote talk 'From Critical Spatial Practice to Site-Writing: Approaches to Architectural Research and Pedagogy' at the 5th Intermediate Meeting of the TACK network.

Note Review Site writing

Book Corner: ‘Pre-Positions’, in Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism by Jane Rendell (2010)

Rendell, J. (2010) ‘Pre-Positions’, in Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism

The introduction to the author’s positional body of work, sets the theoretical and intellectual context for the ideas underpinning Site-Writing as a practice and their aims in giving voice to this form of practice. The author uses seminal writers on phycology, art-practice and philosophy as figures to guide their later theories and discusses the relationship between architecture and art-critique as reflective and positional practices.

Jhono Bennett Anna Livia Vørsel

Note Review Site writing

View

Book Corner: ‘Pre-Positions’, in Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism by Jane Rendell (2010)

Jhono Bennett Anna Livia Vørsel

Rendell, J. (2010) ‘Pre-Positions’, in Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism

The introduction to the author’s positional body of work, sets the theoretical and intellectual context for the ideas underpinning Site-Writing as a practice and their aims in giving voice to this form of practice. The author uses seminal writers on phycology, art-practice and philosophy as figures to guide their later theories and discusses the relationship between architecture and art-critique as reflective and positional practices.

Essay Journal Article

The Epistemology of the Unspoken: On the Concept of Tacit Knowledge in Contemporary Design Research

Design Issues 28, no. 2 (2012)

The concept of tacit knowledge has advanced to become a prolific guiding principle in contemporary design research. In their attempts to describe knowledge within the scope of design, design researchers frequently draw on this concept and its related references. They attest that design is influenced by tacit knowledge in a distinctive way.

Claudia Mareis

Essay Journal Article

View

The Epistemology of the Unspoken: On the Concept of Tacit Knowledge in Contemporary Design Research

Claudia Mareis

Design Issues 28, no. 2 (2012)

The concept of tacit knowledge has advanced to become a prolific guiding principle in contemporary design research. In their attempts to describe knowledge within the scope of design, design researchers frequently draw on this concept and its related references. They attest that design is influenced by tacit knowledge in a distinctive way.

Lecture / Talk Video

Tack Talks #1: De Vylder Vinck

Architecten Jan De Vylder Vinck Christoph Grafe Ionas Sklavounos

Lecture / Talk Video

July 2, 2020

View

Tack Talks #1: De Vylder Vinck

Architecten Jan De Vylder Vinck Christoph Grafe Ionas Sklavounos

Book chapter

Foret DesCartes. Christian Kieckens’ Visual Practices and the Re-Construction of European Disciplinary Discourse.

ABSTRACT

Christian Kieckens' archive at the Flemish Architecture Institute in Antwerp holds a curious object: the Foret DesCartes. It is a prototype of Kaartenstander (postcards display table stand) designed by Kieckens in 1995. The object is extremely simple: an MDF board with maple veneer on which are inserted 16 postcard holders made of bent iron rods arranged in a regular 6x4 cm grid. More than just an odd display of postcards, this small object is an operational tool for producing and transmitting architectural knowledge through the collection of images and their recomposition in space. The same cognitive mode that is represented by the Foret DesCartes can be found reflected within Christian Kieckens' key practices: the architectural trip and its communication within a Belgian and European community of practice, the use of photography as a documentation tool but also as a visual reflection on architecture, the transmission of knowledge through the medium of the illustrated book and of the exhibition, the teaching of architecture by means of examples and references. All these practices contribute to define a fragmentary and essentially tacit disciplinary knowledge. The enigmatic name of the prototype reveals how it is first and foremost a methodological device. The play on words in the title stages a crucial tension between two epistemological paradigms commonly considered as opposites: rational knowledge—i.e. the Cartesian method, or the 6x4 grid on which the cards holder are mounted—and imaginative knowledge—i.e. the forest of cards, or the free complexity of images that can be arranged on the basis of the previous grid—. The questioning of these cognitive modalities is not only a specific character of Kieckens, but is instead a more general phenomenon, which deeply informs the discipline of post-war architecture to the present day. The visual practices that the Foret DesCartes summarises in such an emblematic way have in fact played a crucial role in the coeval theoretical re-foundation of the discipline and, in particular, in the re-importation of a certain 'transatlantic' disciplinary culture within a renewed European landscape. The aim of the contribution is to analyse Kieckens' visual practices and the related cognitive processes, situating them within a broader historical context.

Filippo Cattapan

Book chapter

November 1, 2022

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Foret DesCartes. Christian Kieckens’ Visual Practices and the Re-Construction of European Disciplinary Discourse.

Filippo Cattapan

ABSTRACT

Christian Kieckens' archive at the Flemish Architecture Institute in Antwerp holds a curious object: the Foret DesCartes. It is a prototype of Kaartenstander (postcards display table stand) designed by Kieckens in 1995. The object is extremely simple: an MDF board with maple veneer on which are inserted 16 postcard holders made of bent iron rods arranged in a regular 6x4 cm grid. More than just an odd display of postcards, this small object is an operational tool for producing and transmitting architectural knowledge through the collection of images and their recomposition in space. The same cognitive mode that is represented by the Foret DesCartes can be found reflected within Christian Kieckens' key practices: the architectural trip and its communication within a Belgian and European community of practice, the use of photography as a documentation tool but also as a visual reflection on architecture, the transmission of knowledge through the medium of the illustrated book and of the exhibition, the teaching of architecture by means of examples and references. All these practices contribute to define a fragmentary and essentially tacit disciplinary knowledge. The enigmatic name of the prototype reveals how it is first and foremost a methodological device. The play on words in the title stages a crucial tension between two epistemological paradigms commonly considered as opposites: rational knowledge—i.e. the Cartesian method, or the 6x4 grid on which the cards holder are mounted—and imaginative knowledge—i.e. the forest of cards, or the free complexity of images that can be arranged on the basis of the previous grid—. The questioning of these cognitive modalities is not only a specific character of Kieckens, but is instead a more general phenomenon, which deeply informs the discipline of post-war architecture to the present day. The visual practices that the Foret DesCartes summarises in such an emblematic way have in fact played a crucial role in the coeval theoretical re-foundation of the discipline and, in particular, in the re-importation of a certain 'transatlantic' disciplinary culture within a renewed European landscape. The aim of the contribution is to analyse Kieckens' visual practices and the related cognitive processes, situating them within a broader historical context.

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Glassplitter / Broken glass

Near the end of the previous century, waste recycling became more common in Switzerland – not only for paper, but also metal and glass. While developing the plans for the Kirchner Museum Davos in 1989, we had the idea to use waste glass as roof covering for the glazed building, instead of gravel or sheet metal. Glass has a similar weight to gravel and is therefore well suited for ballasting flat roofs. Without much effort, the cullet could be taken from the recycling process before remelting.

Annette Gigon Mike Guyer

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

View

Glassplitter / Broken glass

Annette Gigon Mike Guyer

Near the end of the previous century, waste recycling became more common in Switzerland – not only for paper, but also metal and glass. While developing the plans for the Kirchner Museum Davos in 1989, we had the idea to use waste glass as roof covering for the glazed building, instead of gravel or sheet metal. Glass has a similar weight to gravel and is therefore well suited for ballasting flat roofs. Without much effort, the cullet could be taken from the recycling process before remelting.

Book Website

morethanone(fragile)

Helen Thomas

Book Website

View

morethanone(fragile)

Helen Thomas

Presentation

_From copper wire to spline. Reciprocal relationships of the Analogue and the Digital.

This project captures a moment at the Städelschule Architecture Class in Frankfurt in 2001 - when Ben van Berkel and Johan Bettum took over the class previously led by Peter Cook and Enrique Miralles. Both Cook and Miralles had shaped the class with crucial methodological and aesthetic guidelines. Balsa wood surfaces and copper wire models were the suitable tools for developing the sweeping architectural shapes so typical of the architectural class of the time. These techniques and aesthetic conventions still resonated noticeably among the students also under the new leadership.

Holger Hoffmann One Fine Day architects

Presentation

June 21, 2023

View

_From copper wire to spline. Reciprocal relationships of the Analogue and the Digital.

Holger Hoffmann One Fine Day architects

This project captures a moment at the Städelschule Architecture Class in Frankfurt in 2001 - when Ben van Berkel and Johan Bettum took over the class previously led by Peter Cook and Enrique Miralles. Both Cook and Miralles had shaped the class with crucial methodological and aesthetic guidelines. Balsa wood surfaces and copper wire models were the suitable tools for developing the sweeping architectural shapes so typical of the architectural class of the time. These techniques and aesthetic conventions still resonated noticeably among the students also under the new leadership.

Book

VADEMECUM

A field guide with inspiring theoretical concepts for urban studies

Klaske Havik

Book

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VADEMECUM

Klaske Havik

A field guide with inspiring theoretical concepts for urban studies

Book chapter

Coarse epistemes: skill, craftsmanship and tacit knowledge in the grit of the world

ABSTRACT

In the words of Dutch archaeologist Maikel Kuijpers, craft is “a way of exploring and understanding the material world”. This definition suggests that craftsmanship can be understood as a touchstone for a theory of knowledge in material productions. By exploring the role of skill in the processes of making and its epistemic correspondence, I develop the hypothesis that craftsmanship is as a perceptive-cognitive enactment within the making process, a form of attunement with production. The argument is that the material, productive side of work deploys and operates a particular epistemological regime, based on types of practical engagement deeply related to the possibilities and contingencies of objective, concrete reality. Making means implicating oneself with the material world, embedding the body in the processes of transforming matter and partaking in the flows of forces that form things. Thus, the knowledge in the making – skill – can be understood as the invention or establishment of a new mode of perception through action that is enacted by tools, movements, techniques etc. This practical perception acts as the foundational basis on which craftsmanship is performed, representing its conditions of possibility. Given the perceptual, embodied nature of craftsmanship, its transmission is rendered impossible outside the actual engagement with production. As such, this interpretation refers back to the original distinctions made by Gilbert Ryle of “knowing that” and “knowing how” that influenced Michael Polanyi in his definition of tacit knowledge. The particular epistemic rationality of crafts provides insights for understanding knowledge inside disciplines involved with creative practice, such as architecture. The epistemic coupling with production helps to understand how architects design, but it also reveals a general epistemic schism in the discipline, founded in the inconsistency between abstract designerly knowledge and the craftsmanship of construction.

Eric Crevels

Book chapter

November 1, 2022

View

Coarse epistemes: skill, craftsmanship and tacit knowledge in the grit of the world

Eric Crevels

ABSTRACT

In the words of Dutch archaeologist Maikel Kuijpers, craft is “a way of exploring and understanding the material world”. This definition suggests that craftsmanship can be understood as a touchstone for a theory of knowledge in material productions. By exploring the role of skill in the processes of making and its epistemic correspondence, I develop the hypothesis that craftsmanship is as a perceptive-cognitive enactment within the making process, a form of attunement with production. The argument is that the material, productive side of work deploys and operates a particular epistemological regime, based on types of practical engagement deeply related to the possibilities and contingencies of objective, concrete reality. Making means implicating oneself with the material world, embedding the body in the processes of transforming matter and partaking in the flows of forces that form things. Thus, the knowledge in the making – skill – can be understood as the invention or establishment of a new mode of perception through action that is enacted by tools, movements, techniques etc. This practical perception acts as the foundational basis on which craftsmanship is performed, representing its conditions of possibility. Given the perceptual, embodied nature of craftsmanship, its transmission is rendered impossible outside the actual engagement with production. As such, this interpretation refers back to the original distinctions made by Gilbert Ryle of “knowing that” and “knowing how” that influenced Michael Polanyi in his definition of tacit knowledge. The particular epistemic rationality of crafts provides insights for understanding knowledge inside disciplines involved with creative practice, such as architecture. The epistemic coupling with production helps to understand how architects design, but it also reveals a general epistemic schism in the discipline, founded in the inconsistency between abstract designerly knowledge and the craftsmanship of construction.

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Bed Chamber

Bed Chamber is a work from series Recreation Areas: 1:100 miniatures of islands that mimic or suggest a place. Recreation Areas are objects of power and models to believe. They are substitutes for places and non-places full of fantasy and memories. They can balance your life in turbulent times.

U5 Collective

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

View

Bed Chamber

U5 Collective

Bed Chamber is a work from series Recreation Areas: 1:100 miniatures of islands that mimic or suggest a place. Recreation Areas are objects of power and models to believe. They are substitutes for places and non-places full of fantasy and memories. They can balance your life in turbulent times.

Label

_Tests and References, ZSC Arena, Zurich 2012-22_

Adam Caruso

Label

View

_Tests and References, ZSC Arena, Zurich 2012-22_

Adam Caruso

Lecture / Talk Video

TACK Talks #1: Spridd

Spridd Christoph Grafe Anna Livia Vørsel

Lecture / Talk Video

May 28, 2020

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TACK Talks #1: Spridd

Spridd Christoph Grafe Anna Livia Vørsel

_Codes and Communities – TACK Exhibition

Architectural knowledge is codified. While many codes can be learned through manuals and textbooks, others can be best understood through tacit observation.

Tom Avermaete Janina Gosseye

_Codes and Communities – TACK Exhibition

Tom Avermaete Janina Gosseye

Architectural knowledge is codified. While many codes can be learned through manuals and textbooks, others can be best understood through tacit observation.

Reflection Video

TACK Summer School Report: Re-enacting Tacit Knowledge

During the 20th century, summer schools emerged as influential moments of encounter and collaboration between students and teachers from diverse cultural contexts. Yet despite their persistence and prominence, there has been relatively little exploration of their role in architectural culture and education. Re-enacting Tacit Knowledge, a summer school about the tacit dimension of summer schools held at Het Nieuwe Instituut in September 2021, set out to fill this gap. The event formed part of the ongoing collaboration between the institute and the Horizons 2020 Innovative Training Network: TACK / Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing.

Hamish Lonergan

Reflection Video

September 1, 2021

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TACK Summer School Report: Re-enacting Tacit Knowledge

Hamish Lonergan

During the 20th century, summer schools emerged as influential moments of encounter and collaboration between students and teachers from diverse cultural contexts. Yet despite their persistence and prominence, there has been relatively little exploration of their role in architectural culture and education. Re-enacting Tacit Knowledge, a summer school about the tacit dimension of summer schools held at Het Nieuwe Instituut in September 2021, set out to fill this gap. The event formed part of the ongoing collaboration between the institute and the Horizons 2020 Innovative Training Network: TACK / Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing.

Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

Public Drawings, Atelier Bow-Wow

For architects, hand drawing is not only an important tool to grasp the history, experience, and knowledge of a place but also a space of tacit negotiation with peers and others. After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake struck Japan, Atelier Bow-Wow began to produce collective hand drawings on large paper sheets, on which several work simultaneously, to jointly find a better future. This approach was further developed with students in different public spaces.

Momoyo Kaijima

Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

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Public Drawings, Atelier Bow-Wow

Momoyo Kaijima

For architects, hand drawing is not only an important tool to grasp the history, experience, and knowledge of a place but also a space of tacit negotiation with peers and others. After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake struck Japan, Atelier Bow-Wow began to produce collective hand drawings on large paper sheets, on which several work simultaneously, to jointly find a better future. This approach was further developed with students in different public spaces.

Conference Paper Open Access Publication Paper

Crackpot’ and ‘Dangerous’: On the authenticity of Miesian reproductions

ABSTRACT

In 2016, the architectural press reported the planned reconstruction of Mies van der Rohe’s Wolf House, built in 1927 in Gubin, Poland, and destroyed during World War Two. Supporters claimed that, by consulting the architect’s presentation drawings, they could rebuild the house authentically. They cited a simplistic reading of philosopher Nelson Goodman’s distinction between autographic art—where an original is certified by the hand of the author—and the allographic, which is replicated through notation. Barry Bergdoll called the proposal ‘crackpot’, arguing that without the lost construction documentation it would become a ‘simulacrum’: an allusion to Jean Baudrillard’s notion of a copy without reference. Mies himself thought there was something ‘dangerous’ in building ‘a model of a real house’ after constructing his own full-scale façade mock-up for the unbuilt Kröller-Müller House (1913). Since then, an unprecedented number of reproductions have entered into their own ‘dangerous’ conversation with Mies’ work, trading to varying degrees on their authenticity. Some, like the Barcelona Pavilion reconstruction (1986) engage with heritage and archival practices in an attempt to accurately reconstruct a lost work. Others, often appearing in exhibitions such as OMA’s La Casa Palestra at the 1985 Milan Triennale, exploit the fame of Mies’ architecture to offer a rhetorical interpretation that reinforces their own authorial signature. Meanwhile self-professed 1:1 models, like Robbrecht en Daem’s Mies 1:1 Golf Club Project (2013), seem deliberately tied to Mies’ authority, stripping away materials to focus on a singular reading of the work in a model-making tradition stretching back to Alberti. By returning to Goodman’s autographic/allographic dichotomy and Baudrillard’s simulacrum, this paper seeks to make sense of these multiplying reproductions across art, architecture and conservation, and their conflicting claims to authenticity. Ultimately, this frames Miesian reproductions as one contested site in broader discussions of architecture’s relationship to authorship and authentic heritage.

Hamish Lonergan

Conference Paper Open Access Publication Paper

View

Crackpot’ and ‘Dangerous’: On the authenticity of Miesian reproductions

Hamish Lonergan

ABSTRACT

In 2016, the architectural press reported the planned reconstruction of Mies van der Rohe’s Wolf House, built in 1927 in Gubin, Poland, and destroyed during World War Two. Supporters claimed that, by consulting the architect’s presentation drawings, they could rebuild the house authentically. They cited a simplistic reading of philosopher Nelson Goodman’s distinction between autographic art—where an original is certified by the hand of the author—and the allographic, which is replicated through notation. Barry Bergdoll called the proposal ‘crackpot’, arguing that without the lost construction documentation it would become a ‘simulacrum’: an allusion to Jean Baudrillard’s notion of a copy without reference. Mies himself thought there was something ‘dangerous’ in building ‘a model of a real house’ after constructing his own full-scale façade mock-up for the unbuilt Kröller-Müller House (1913). Since then, an unprecedented number of reproductions have entered into their own ‘dangerous’ conversation with Mies’ work, trading to varying degrees on their authenticity. Some, like the Barcelona Pavilion reconstruction (1986) engage with heritage and archival practices in an attempt to accurately reconstruct a lost work. Others, often appearing in exhibitions such as OMA’s La Casa Palestra at the 1985 Milan Triennale, exploit the fame of Mies’ architecture to offer a rhetorical interpretation that reinforces their own authorial signature. Meanwhile self-professed 1:1 models, like Robbrecht en Daem’s Mies 1:1 Golf Club Project (2013), seem deliberately tied to Mies’ authority, stripping away materials to focus on a singular reading of the work in a model-making tradition stretching back to Alberti. By returning to Goodman’s autographic/allographic dichotomy and Baudrillard’s simulacrum, this paper seeks to make sense of these multiplying reproductions across art, architecture and conservation, and their conflicting claims to authenticity. Ultimately, this frames Miesian reproductions as one contested site in broader discussions of architecture’s relationship to authorship and authentic heritage.

Lecture / Talk Video

TACK Talks #1: Korteknie Stuhlmacher

Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten Tom Avermaete Eric Crevels

Lecture / Talk Video

July 9, 2020

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TACK Talks #1: Korteknie Stuhlmacher

Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten Tom Avermaete Eric Crevels

Conference Paper

_In Quest of Meaning: Revisiting the discourse around “non-pedigreed” architecture.

ABSTRACT

The topic of the current contribution is the discourse around “non-pedigreed” architecture (an alternative term for vernacular architecture), mostly in the first decades after WWII. As a matter of fact, knowledge around “non-pedigreed” architecture belongs automatically to the realm of the Tacit; little is known about its actual "ways of doing", relying mostly on interpretations. In this context, several key interpretations of the vernacular are being revisited and discussed through the perspective of its "actors", meaning the scholarly work of chosen architects. The paper is structured into three parts. The first presents the incentives behind the study of "non-pedigreed" architecture and touches upon questions of aesthetics and authorship. The second highlights the fruitful contradictions found in the first part while it focuses on the relationship of vernacular architecture with the notion of Time and the development of craft skills. Finally, in the third part, the contribution examines selected case studies in which the value of the vernacular is shifted from the realm of reference for architecture to that of the process of architectural production.

Vasileios Chanis

Conference Paper

June 21, 2023

View

_In Quest of Meaning: Revisiting the discourse around “non-pedigreed” architecture.

Vasileios Chanis

ABSTRACT

The topic of the current contribution is the discourse around “non-pedigreed” architecture (an alternative term for vernacular architecture), mostly in the first decades after WWII. As a matter of fact, knowledge around “non-pedigreed” architecture belongs automatically to the realm of the Tacit; little is known about its actual "ways of doing", relying mostly on interpretations. In this context, several key interpretations of the vernacular are being revisited and discussed through the perspective of its "actors", meaning the scholarly work of chosen architects. The paper is structured into three parts. The first presents the incentives behind the study of "non-pedigreed" architecture and touches upon questions of aesthetics and authorship. The second highlights the fruitful contradictions found in the first part while it focuses on the relationship of vernacular architecture with the notion of Time and the development of craft skills. Finally, in the third part, the contribution examines selected case studies in which the value of the vernacular is shifted from the realm of reference for architecture to that of the process of architectural production.

Book chapter

Hunting Tacit Knowledge; or, design studio encounters at ILAUD and ETH

ABSTRACT

Tacit knowledge in architectural education is slippery. It encompasses a broad range of unconscious, embodied, social and otherwise hidden forms of knowing. On one hand, this means that it manifests in different ways depending on the pedagogical format or context. On the other, it resists explanation through the traditional, and largely explicit, tools of academic writing. Therefore, rather than seeking to define it, this paper proposes three approaches for locating and describing it. First, forms of tacit knowing—which we rely on, often without thinking, in our studio, school, or regional culture—become more visible in “moments of encounter” between communities. Second, discussions and negotiations of tacit knowledge often occur through architectural materials: drawings, models, texts, buildings. Third, “moments of tacit encounter” require more evocative and speculative methods of writing and representation, with different evidentiary standards. To test these approaches, this paper narrates two “moments of encounter” as case studies, encompassing different pedagogical formats, actors, writing methods, and revealing different forms of tacit knowledge. In 2020, I arrived at ETH Zurich, where I began an autoethnographic study of tacit knowledge in discussions between critics across design studios. I was drawn to the realistic models of Studio Caruso, which I first encountered in my architectural studies in Australia. There, they represented a hitherto unimaginable departure from model abstraction. In Zurich, though, some critics were less dazzled, questioning the labor they required. Elsewhere, realistic models had been at the center of right-wing outrage over a kiosk designed by Caruso’s office in Escher-Wyss Platz in 2007. Around these models, the tacit architectural expectations of various groups seemed to reveal itself. In 2021, I organized a summer school in Rotterdam on summer schools. Over five days, we re-enacted a charette exercise originally set for the 1986 edition of the International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design (ILAUD): the summer workshops founded by Giancarlo de Carlo in Urbino. Summer schools are ephemeral in nature—intense, productive, social, life-changing, but only for a few weeks—leaving little evidence of their tacit dimension for us to study today. Re-enacting it ourselves, coming from different educational backgrounds, we started to understand something of what it must have felt like in 1986. We experienced the clashes and arguments, and overcome them through drawings or by discussing images, by talking in those informal moments on the staircase or over lunch.

Hamish Lonergan

Book chapter

November 1, 2022

View

Hunting Tacit Knowledge; or, design studio encounters at ILAUD and ETH

Hamish Lonergan

ABSTRACT

Tacit knowledge in architectural education is slippery. It encompasses a broad range of unconscious, embodied, social and otherwise hidden forms of knowing. On one hand, this means that it manifests in different ways depending on the pedagogical format or context. On the other, it resists explanation through the traditional, and largely explicit, tools of academic writing. Therefore, rather than seeking to define it, this paper proposes three approaches for locating and describing it. First, forms of tacit knowing—which we rely on, often without thinking, in our studio, school, or regional culture—become more visible in “moments of encounter” between communities. Second, discussions and negotiations of tacit knowledge often occur through architectural materials: drawings, models, texts, buildings. Third, “moments of tacit encounter” require more evocative and speculative methods of writing and representation, with different evidentiary standards. To test these approaches, this paper narrates two “moments of encounter” as case studies, encompassing different pedagogical formats, actors, writing methods, and revealing different forms of tacit knowledge. In 2020, I arrived at ETH Zurich, where I began an autoethnographic study of tacit knowledge in discussions between critics across design studios. I was drawn to the realistic models of Studio Caruso, which I first encountered in my architectural studies in Australia. There, they represented a hitherto unimaginable departure from model abstraction. In Zurich, though, some critics were less dazzled, questioning the labor they required. Elsewhere, realistic models had been at the center of right-wing outrage over a kiosk designed by Caruso’s office in Escher-Wyss Platz in 2007. Around these models, the tacit architectural expectations of various groups seemed to reveal itself. In 2021, I organized a summer school in Rotterdam on summer schools. Over five days, we re-enacted a charette exercise originally set for the 1986 edition of the International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design (ILAUD): the summer workshops founded by Giancarlo de Carlo in Urbino. Summer schools are ephemeral in nature—intense, productive, social, life-changing, but only for a few weeks—leaving little evidence of their tacit dimension for us to study today. Re-enacting it ourselves, coming from different educational backgrounds, we started to understand something of what it must have felt like in 1986. We experienced the clashes and arguments, and overcome them through drawings or by discussing images, by talking in those informal moments on the staircase or over lunch.

Presentation

_Book presentation: Tacit Knowledge in Architecture

This part of the conference will present the book that brings together the scope of approaches of the PhD researchers in the TACK network exploring `Tacit Knowledge in Architecture´. Offering glimpses into their research settings and contents, this session touch upon three wisely shared topics: Communities, Materiality and workmanship, and Situations.

Margitta Buchert Klaske Havik Eric Crevels Anna Livia Vørsel Mara Trübenbach Paula Strunden Claudia Mainardi Hamish Lonergan Ionas Sklavounos Caendia Wijnbelt Jhono Bennett Filippo Cattapan Christoph Grafe Wivina Demeester

Presentation

June 19, 2023

View

_Book presentation: Tacit Knowledge in Architecture

Margitta Buchert Klaske Havik Eric Crevels Anna Livia Vørsel Mara Trübenbach Paula Strunden Claudia Mainardi Hamish Lonergan Ionas Sklavounos Caendia Wijnbelt Jhono Bennett Filippo Cattapan Christoph Grafe Wivina Demeester

This part of the conference will present the book that brings together the scope of approaches of the PhD researchers in the TACK network exploring `Tacit Knowledge in Architecture´. Offering glimpses into their research settings and contents, this session touch upon three wisely shared topics: Communities, Materiality and workmanship, and Situations.

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Carpenter Chair

Carpenter Chair is an icon of construction and a eulogy to the exploration of the ordinary. It is a low, comfortable, and flexible lounge chair inspired by the aesthetics of the construction site.

Sarah Becchio

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

View

Carpenter Chair

Sarah Becchio

Carpenter Chair is an icon of construction and a eulogy to the exploration of the ordinary. It is a low, comfortable, and flexible lounge chair inspired by the aesthetics of the construction site.

Label

_Heinrich Helfenstein’s photography_

Irina Davidovici Ziu Bruckmann

Label

View

_Heinrich Helfenstein’s photography_

Irina Davidovici Ziu Bruckmann

Online Teaching Module

Bridging architectural knowledge and lived experience through apprenticeship

Ionas Sklavounos Lara Schrijver University of Antwerp, Faculty of Design Sciences, Department of Architecture

Online Teaching Module

March 23, 2023

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Bridging architectural knowledge and lived experience through apprenticeship

Ionas Sklavounos Lara Schrijver University of Antwerp, Faculty of Design Sciences, Department of Architecture

Presentation

_Chozos, Houses of Nomadic Shepherd

Chozos are traditional handcrafted shepherds’ huts. They were built by the shepherds themselves and served them as shelters when moving with their herds from field to field. The construction technique was used by shepherds in rural Spain until the end of the 20th century.

Alba Balmaseda Dominguez Kyra Bullert Špela Setzen

Presentation

June 20, 2023

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_Chozos, Houses of Nomadic Shepherd

Alba Balmaseda Dominguez Kyra Bullert Špela Setzen

Chozos are traditional handcrafted shepherds’ huts. They were built by the shepherds themselves and served them as shelters when moving with their herds from field to field. The construction technique was used by shepherds in rural Spain until the end of the 20th century.

Paper Site writing

REFLECTIVE ANIMATION. Navigating the What-What

ABSTRACT

Critically engaging with one’s positionality in contemporary architectural research in a post-Apartheid South African context requires an approach that blends concerns about identity, location, and voice in responsibly creative means, while not reinforcing the existing power dynamics inherent in such work. This essay employs Jane Rendell’s Site-Writing modality to develop a means of navigating these inter-demographic and inter-locational dilemmas - the What-What - that emerge when working from a »northerly« located institution and speaking from a »Southern« position through multiple audiences. A reflective-animation method has been developed that provides a proto-methodology for both documenting and speculating with the tacit nature of spatial design practice in post-Apartheid South African cities.

Jhono Bennett

Paper Site writing

November 1, 2022

View

REFLECTIVE ANIMATION. Navigating the What-What

Jhono Bennett

Figure 10: A Screen Grab from the Digital Exhibition of the Site-Writing Project Entitled: Spirit of the Order (Bennett 2021) that Blends Animation with Writing and Drawing., © Jhono Bennett

ABSTRACT

Critically engaging with one’s positionality in contemporary architectural research in a post-Apartheid South African context requires an approach that blends concerns about identity, location, and voice in responsibly creative means, while not reinforcing the existing power dynamics inherent in such work. This essay employs Jane Rendell’s Site-Writing modality to develop a means of navigating these inter-demographic and inter-locational dilemmas - the What-What - that emerge when working from a »northerly« located institution and speaking from a »Southern« position through multiple audiences. A reflective-animation method has been developed that provides a proto-methodology for both documenting and speculating with the tacit nature of spatial design practice in post-Apartheid South African cities.

Open Access Publication Paper

Scale in passing: Re-calibrating narrowness through spatial interventions

ABSTRACT

Reflecting on the art installation Motion of Scales, which was temporarily installed in the city centre of Kolding, Denmark, as a part of the NORDES 2021 conference, this article explores the interrelation between body, material and its performative potential. Analysing the design process through description and observation of how it was experienced and interacted with by urban public, the design-led research aims to interrogate subjectivity, emotion and embodied knowledge in academic research and its methods. How could movement within scale open up new perspectives? Does material hold a potential to reveal new modes of thinking in design research? How and to what extent could emotion contribute to design practices?

Mara Trübenbach Marianna Czwojdrak

Open Access Publication Paper

January 23, 2023

View

Scale in passing: Re-calibrating narrowness through spatial interventions

Mara Trübenbach Marianna Czwojdrak

ABSTRACT

Reflecting on the art installation Motion of Scales, which was temporarily installed in the city centre of Kolding, Denmark, as a part of the NORDES 2021 conference, this article explores the interrelation between body, material and its performative potential. Analysing the design process through description and observation of how it was experienced and interacted with by urban public, the design-led research aims to interrogate subjectivity, emotion and embodied knowledge in academic research and its methods. How could movement within scale open up new perspectives? Does material hold a potential to reveal new modes of thinking in design research? How and to what extent could emotion contribute to design practices?

TACK Exhibition Object

21-06-2023

_Introduction to “Unausgesprochenes Wissen/Unspoken Knowledge/ Le Savoir Non-dit” – TACK Exhibition

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.

Tom Avermaete Janina Gosseye

TACK Exhibition Object

21-06-2023

View

_Introduction to “Unausgesprochenes Wissen/Unspoken Knowledge/ Le Savoir Non-dit” – TACK Exhibition

Tom Avermaete Janina Gosseye

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.

Conference Paper

_Paperwork and Wordcraft: Institutionality at IAUS

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the bureaucratic management of the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) through the lens of tacit knowledge as manifest in an analysis of paperwork and wordcraft. Specifically an examination of the “little tools of knowledge”– the self-evident and mundane administrative tools–reveals the epistemological foundations and specific character of the institute as distinct from and similar to others in the same milieu, and positions it within a larger phenomenon of similar agencies, activities, and groups. Archival documents attest to a self-aware bureaucratic and representational medium in a state of flux as IAUS attempted to accommodate multiple and often conflicting modes of work, funding, and directions in order to stake out a productive territory in a landscape of similar institutes, all of which were competing for prestige, legitimation, attention, student participants, and dollars. An examination of these documents through multiple parallel trajectories that are not strictly chronological mirrors the manner in which the institute functioned, not as a cohesive entity, but as a contradictory one, as overlapping concerns struggled to find priority during the course of its brief history. This archival analysis forms the basis of a counterhistory in which the institution itself is considered as an abstract author in the larger context of New York City and beyond, determined by and determining of a variety of forces beyond the individual’s control.

Alex Maymind

Conference Paper

June 21, 2023

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_Paperwork and Wordcraft: Institutionality at IAUS

Alex Maymind

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the bureaucratic management of the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) through the lens of tacit knowledge as manifest in an analysis of paperwork and wordcraft. Specifically an examination of the “little tools of knowledge”– the self-evident and mundane administrative tools–reveals the epistemological foundations and specific character of the institute as distinct from and similar to others in the same milieu, and positions it within a larger phenomenon of similar agencies, activities, and groups. Archival documents attest to a self-aware bureaucratic and representational medium in a state of flux as IAUS attempted to accommodate multiple and often conflicting modes of work, funding, and directions in order to stake out a productive territory in a landscape of similar institutes, all of which were competing for prestige, legitimation, attention, student participants, and dollars. An examination of these documents through multiple parallel trajectories that are not strictly chronological mirrors the manner in which the institute functioned, not as a cohesive entity, but as a contradictory one, as overlapping concerns struggled to find priority during the course of its brief history. This archival analysis forms the basis of a counterhistory in which the institution itself is considered as an abstract author in the larger context of New York City and beyond, determined by and determining of a variety of forces beyond the individual’s control.

Diagram Fanzine Interview

Interview with Kristina Schinegger and Stefan Rutzinger

On 7 April 2021, Kristina Schinegger (KS) and Stefan Rutzinger (SR) were interviewed on Zoom by Paula Strunden, PhD Candidate, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Paula Strunden SOMA Architecture

Diagram Fanzine Interview

April 7, 2021

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Interview with Kristina Schinegger and Stefan Rutzinger

Paula Strunden SOMA Architecture

On 7 April 2021, Kristina Schinegger (KS) and Stefan Rutzinger (SR) were interviewed on Zoom by Paula Strunden, PhD Candidate, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Label

_City as Forest_

Verena Brehm CITYFÖRSTER

Label

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_City as Forest_

Verena Brehm CITYFÖRSTER

Presentation

_City as a Forest

Designing is based on images. Nature is an essential source. The image ‘City as Forest’ has accompanied cityfoerster since its founding in 2005 as a mission statement. We understand the city as a forest: a complex (eco)system in which various spatial elements are synergistically and dynamically networked. In this sense, with every design, the challenge and the opportunity arise to contribute to the system as a whole rather than creating a solitary object.

Verena Brehm CITYFÖRSTER

Presentation

June 20, 2023

View

_City as a Forest

Verena Brehm CITYFÖRSTER

Designing is based on images. Nature is an essential source. The image ‘City as Forest’ has accompanied cityfoerster since its founding in 2005 as a mission statement. We understand the city as a forest: a complex (eco)system in which various spatial elements are synergistically and dynamically networked. In this sense, with every design, the challenge and the opportunity arise to contribute to the system as a whole rather than creating a solitary object.

Image Interview Reflection

Echoes from the Venice Biennale TACK Visit

Caendia Wijnbelt and Paula Strunden reflect upon two images of the Venice Biennale 2021.

Paula Strunden Caendia Wijnbelt

Image Interview Reflection

November 1, 2021

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Echoes from the Venice Biennale TACK Visit

Paula Strunden Caendia Wijnbelt

Caendia Wijnbelt and Paula Strunden reflect upon two images of the Venice Biennale 2021.

Conference Paper

_Improvised architectural responses to the changing climate: Making, sharing and communicating design processes in rural Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable to global climate change because of the shifting riparian characteristics of its landscape and location, with weather-driven calamities disproportionately affecting low-income rural communities. Research findings highlight the unequal distribution of responsibilities and the greater burden on women in the community to respond to the threats of extreme climate. The research methodology for this PhD by Architectural Practice therefore seeks to empower those in Bangladeshi villages by enabling marginalised voices to be heard through an emphasis on collective engagement, especially incorporating the contributions by female residents. Carried out through community-oriented projects in the remote village of Rajapur, this ‘live’ practice-based thesis explores, tests, shares and disseminates some of the rich and varied forms of tacit knowledge which can provide valuable understandings both for those people in the locality and also for architects and designers on the international scale. Responding to social and ecological ‘entanglements’ in Rajapur, the specific problems addressed are erratic rainfall patterns which create both droughts and floods, rising sea levels caused by climate change, and naturally occurring extremely high levels of arsenic-contaminated groundwater supplies, poisoning the food chain and fish in nearby ponds and lakes. How to devise affordable, low-tech solutions that utilise the tacit knowledge and skills of those living in remote villages such as Rajapur? To reshape architectural practice as an active agent for decolonising design methods, so that issues of climate change and spatial justice can be better dealt with, the research draws upon applied anthropological methods – ‘ethnography in the field’ – which prioritise local community members as the indigenous producers of design research, analytical drawings, making and storytelling. The thesis thus addresses a gap in knowledge by contributing a unique approach to participatory architectural practice, showing how it can be expanded to include rural communities in the Global South.

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows

Conference Paper

June 19, 2023

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_Improvised architectural responses to the changing climate: Making, sharing and communicating design processes in rural Bangladesh

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows

ABSTRACT

Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable to global climate change because of the shifting riparian characteristics of its landscape and location, with weather-driven calamities disproportionately affecting low-income rural communities. Research findings highlight the unequal distribution of responsibilities and the greater burden on women in the community to respond to the threats of extreme climate. The research methodology for this PhD by Architectural Practice therefore seeks to empower those in Bangladeshi villages by enabling marginalised voices to be heard through an emphasis on collective engagement, especially incorporating the contributions by female residents. Carried out through community-oriented projects in the remote village of Rajapur, this ‘live’ practice-based thesis explores, tests, shares and disseminates some of the rich and varied forms of tacit knowledge which can provide valuable understandings both for those people in the locality and also for architects and designers on the international scale. Responding to social and ecological ‘entanglements’ in Rajapur, the specific problems addressed are erratic rainfall patterns which create both droughts and floods, rising sea levels caused by climate change, and naturally occurring extremely high levels of arsenic-contaminated groundwater supplies, poisoning the food chain and fish in nearby ponds and lakes. How to devise affordable, low-tech solutions that utilise the tacit knowledge and skills of those living in remote villages such as Rajapur? To reshape architectural practice as an active agent for decolonising design methods, so that issues of climate change and spatial justice can be better dealt with, the research draws upon applied anthropological methods – ‘ethnography in the field’ – which prioritise local community members as the indigenous producers of design research, analytical drawings, making and storytelling. The thesis thus addresses a gap in knowledge by contributing a unique approach to participatory architectural practice, showing how it can be expanded to include rural communities in the Global South.

Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

Eilfried Huth’s Bauhütte

The Austrian architect Eilfried Huth, a pioneer of participatory housing, used this notion to express his reliance on the embodied knowledge of future inhabitants who gathered as an advocacy group to design a new housing estate called Eschensiedlung,1972-1990 in Deutschlandsberg, Styria.

Monika Platzer Architekturzentrum Wien (AzW)

Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

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Eilfried Huth’s Bauhütte

Monika Platzer Architekturzentrum Wien (AzW)

The Austrian architect Eilfried Huth, a pioneer of participatory housing, used this notion to express his reliance on the embodied knowledge of future inhabitants who gathered as an advocacy group to design a new housing estate called Eschensiedlung,1972-1990 in Deutschlandsberg, Styria.

Online Teaching Module

Epistemic horizons of tacit knowledge: matters of skill and craftsmanship

Eric Crevels Klaske Havik Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment

Online Teaching Module

February 15, 2023

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Epistemic horizons of tacit knowledge: matters of skill and craftsmanship

Eric Crevels Klaske Havik Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment

Presentation

_Cylinders of Soap, Mud, and Pottery: On Cultures of Making Beyond Architecture

In this paper, we extend the concept of the site in architecture from being a future space awaiting a built product to an existing space of production. In expanding this concept, we trace spaces of building and environmental crafts that contribute to shaping the built environment beyond the boundaries of the architecture profession in its traditional sense. We focus on three products that are similar in their from as cylinders, but differ in their materials, the purpose of their production, and their cultural and social meaning. From the tanoura in the soap factories in Syria and Palestine, totannour mud ovens for baking bread in northern Syria, to abraj hamam dovecotes in Egypt, this paper presents a framework for understanding cultures of making in the Arab region and their connection to the production of the built environment in rural and urban setting. We aim to understand these formations from their tacit meanings (how they are built, what are their building techniques, and what knowledge is based on) to their spatial-cultural meaning (how the products of these crafts relate to their production sites). Finally, we work to extract the connections of these cultures with architecture and frame a methodology for how design today can dialogue with products outside its professional and educational boundaries.

Nadi Abusaada Wesam Al Asali

Presentation

June 20, 2023

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_Cylinders of Soap, Mud, and Pottery: On Cultures of Making Beyond Architecture

Nadi Abusaada Wesam Al Asali

In this paper, we extend the concept of the site in architecture from being a future space awaiting a built product to an existing space of production. In expanding this concept, we trace spaces of building and environmental crafts that contribute to shaping the built environment beyond the boundaries of the architecture profession in its traditional sense. We focus on three products that are similar in their from as cylinders, but differ in their materials, the purpose of their production, and their cultural and social meaning. From the tanoura in the soap factories in Syria and Palestine, totannour mud ovens for baking bread in northern Syria, to abraj hamam dovecotes in Egypt, this paper presents a framework for understanding cultures of making in the Arab region and their connection to the production of the built environment in rural and urban setting. We aim to understand these formations from their tacit meanings (how they are built, what are their building techniques, and what knowledge is based on) to their spatial-cultural meaning (how the products of these crafts relate to their production sites). Finally, we work to extract the connections of these cultures with architecture and frame a methodology for how design today can dialogue with products outside its professional and educational boundaries.

Essay Journal Article Open Access Publication

Pools, Carparks and Ball-Pits: Or why the Notre Dame restoration competition is a meme

By GodefroyParis - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78090147, © By GodefroyParis - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78090147

ABSTRACT

The first restoration proposals to emerge after fire destroyed Notre Dame Cathedral’s roof and spire were jokes. The more serious schemes that followed Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s announcement of a competition – many markedly similar, recreating what was lost in glass– were collected on mainstream design media websites like Dezeen where they attracted an unusually high volume of angry comments, accusing the architects of insensitivity. Soon after, Ulf Mejergren Architects’ proposal to replace Notre Dame’s roof with a meditative pool was edited into a carpark. It sparked a series of increasingly outlandish edits – first a multi-story carpark, then a ball pit – before the French Senate declared that there would be no competition after all. This at times absurd online interest might be new for architectural competitions, but it is easily explained through meme theory, as conceived of by scholars like Limor Shifman and Ryan Milner: systems of interconnected units of cultural exchange operating on both wider cultural and specific sub-cultural levels. In this essay I contend that meme theory can be used, in reverse, to analyse reactions to, and similarities between, even the most serious Notre Dame proposals. In applying this framework, we can begin to understand how competitions operate more broadly as part of a complex network online and how they relate to traditional competition conditions.

Hamish Lonergan

Essay Journal Article Open Access Publication

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Pools, Carparks and Ball-Pits: Or why the Notre Dame restoration competition is a meme

Hamish Lonergan

By GodefroyParis - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78090147, © By GodefroyParis - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78090147

ABSTRACT

The first restoration proposals to emerge after fire destroyed Notre Dame Cathedral’s roof and spire were jokes. The more serious schemes that followed Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s announcement of a competition – many markedly similar, recreating what was lost in glass– were collected on mainstream design media websites like Dezeen where they attracted an unusually high volume of angry comments, accusing the architects of insensitivity. Soon after, Ulf Mejergren Architects’ proposal to replace Notre Dame’s roof with a meditative pool was edited into a carpark. It sparked a series of increasingly outlandish edits – first a multi-story carpark, then a ball pit – before the French Senate declared that there would be no competition after all. This at times absurd online interest might be new for architectural competitions, but it is easily explained through meme theory, as conceived of by scholars like Limor Shifman and Ryan Milner: systems of interconnected units of cultural exchange operating on both wider cultural and specific sub-cultural levels. In this essay I contend that meme theory can be used, in reverse, to analyse reactions to, and similarities between, even the most serious Notre Dame proposals. In applying this framework, we can begin to understand how competitions operate more broadly as part of a complex network online and how they relate to traditional competition conditions.

Fanzine Video

A walk through forestry — Cityförster secondment fanzine

Caendia Wijnbelt

Fanzine Video

May 15, 2021

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A walk through forestry — Cityförster secondment fanzine

Caendia Wijnbelt

Presentation

_a Studio for Orbanism The living archive of Luc Deleu & T.O.P. office as a source of commons for unsolicited architecture practice.

The house of Luc Deleu, the founder of T.O.P. office, in the city of Antwerp (Belgium), is not only a design studio and home for the architect but, above all, it is a space of accumulated knowledge: a kaleidoscope of collected references and an archive of drawings and models produced over more than fifty years.

Sofie de Caigny Tine Poot Vlaams Architectuurinstituut (VAi)

Presentation

June 20, 2023

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_a Studio for Orbanism The living archive of Luc Deleu & T.O.P. office as a source of commons for unsolicited architecture practice.

Sofie de Caigny Tine Poot Vlaams Architectuurinstituut (VAi)

The house of Luc Deleu, the founder of T.O.P. office, in the city of Antwerp (Belgium), is not only a design studio and home for the architect but, above all, it is a space of accumulated knowledge: a kaleidoscope of collected references and an archive of drawings and models produced over more than fifty years.

Online Teaching Module

Probing Tacit Knowledge. Codes of Tacit Knowledge

Claudia Mainardi Gennaro Postiglione Gaia Caramellino Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies

Online Teaching Module

March 10, 2023

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Probing Tacit Knowledge. Codes of Tacit Knowledge

Claudia Mainardi Gennaro Postiglione Gaia Caramellino Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Forêt DesCartes

Christian Kieckens, Forêt DesCartes, postcards stand prototype, 1995

This curious object evokes Kieckens’ habits and practices: the collection of images and their arrangement in space, travel as a form of disciplinary exchange with a community of practice, and the teaching of architecture by means of references. Forêt DesCartes is an experimental spatial device for handling, transmitting, and producing tacit visual knowledge.

Filippo Cattapan

Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Forêt DesCartes

Filippo Cattapan

Christian Kieckens, Forêt DesCartes, postcards stand prototype, 1995

This curious object evokes Kieckens’ habits and practices: the collection of images and their arrangement in space, travel as a form of disciplinary exchange with a community of practice, and the teaching of architecture by means of references. Forêt DesCartes is an experimental spatial device for handling, transmitting, and producing tacit visual knowledge.

Lecture / Talk

_Ways of Knowing Architecture: Resisting the Master’s Tools

What does architecture know? How can this knowledge of architecture be made accessible and what does this knowledge tell us about our relations to each other, to other sentient beings, to land and resources, to the planet at large? What are the tools that shape ways of knowing architecture? Starting from these questions, and acknowledging that knowledge is never singular, never neutral, and always situated and that tools are implicated in the master’s power, this lecture places ways of knowing architecture at the intersection of dimensions of tacit knowledge, hegemonic power knowledge, epistemic violence and myriad ways of rendering ways of knowing otherwise silent and invisible. In order to work towards ways of knowing architecture otherwise and to become more fully aware of how epistemic violence operates in tandem with economies based on the paradigms of extraction, exploitation, and compulsory growth, knowledge needs to become plural. Learning to listen to plural knowledges that matter to architecture, knowledges that come from the ground, the air, the water, humans and other sentient beings, will require more complex ways of engaging with what architecture knows. Learning how to listen to such plural knowledges in architecture, requires tools and methods that make such learning and listening possible. Insisting on this possibility links ways of knowing architecture to ethical and political dimensions of interdependencies, which are materialized and spatialized in designing, building, and constructing architecture. Ultimately, this lecture asks how ways of knowing architecture otherwise will and can enter into architectural education and curricula as well as into the architectural profession.

Elke Krasny

Lecture / Talk

June 19, 2023

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_Ways of Knowing Architecture: Resisting the Master’s Tools

Elke Krasny

What does architecture know? How can this knowledge of architecture be made accessible and what does this knowledge tell us about our relations to each other, to other sentient beings, to land and resources, to the planet at large? What are the tools that shape ways of knowing architecture? Starting from these questions, and acknowledging that knowledge is never singular, never neutral, and always situated and that tools are implicated in the master’s power, this lecture places ways of knowing architecture at the intersection of dimensions of tacit knowledge, hegemonic power knowledge, epistemic violence and myriad ways of rendering ways of knowing otherwise silent and invisible. In order to work towards ways of knowing architecture otherwise and to become more fully aware of how epistemic violence operates in tandem with economies based on the paradigms of extraction, exploitation, and compulsory growth, knowledge needs to become plural. Learning to listen to plural knowledges that matter to architecture, knowledges that come from the ground, the air, the water, humans and other sentient beings, will require more complex ways of engaging with what architecture knows. Learning how to listen to such plural knowledges in architecture, requires tools and methods that make such learning and listening possible. Insisting on this possibility links ways of knowing architecture to ethical and political dimensions of interdependencies, which are materialized and spatialized in designing, building, and constructing architecture. Ultimately, this lecture asks how ways of knowing architecture otherwise will and can enter into architectural education and curricula as well as into the architectural profession.

Site writing Website

2019-2023

Writing Urban Places – New Narratives of the European City

Writing Urban Places proposes an innovative investigation and implementation of a process for developing human understanding of communities, their society, and their situatedness, by narrative methods.

Klaske Havik

Site writing Website

2019-2023

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Writing Urban Places – New Narratives of the European City

Klaske Havik

Writing Urban Places proposes an innovative investigation and implementation of a process for developing human understanding of communities, their society, and their situatedness, by narrative methods.

Presentation

_Navigating, Performing and Book Making

The talk introduces my recently published art book, 'The B-Sides', which juxtaposes the stories of Polynesian navigator Tupaia, Margaret Mead’s Kybernetes and Lara Croft’s avatar. The investigation of the three characters’ specific ways of navigating two worlds at once moves the focus on a particular form of space: a space characterised by the practice of a body mediating between two coexisting environments. Even though very different—one character appears in Western history when getting involved in a British expansionist sailing expedition across the Pacific Ocean, one is a character from Ancient Greek philosophy, and one is a gaming character, an avatar—, they meet through the navigational practices they embody. For its making, the book project adopts a performative approach that sheds light on conceiving, writing, designing and making the book while keeping the characters’ blurry qualities. The limited print edition comes in the guise of a leporello: Even though having received their name by an opera character invented by the European composer Mozart, accordion-fold books surface in many epochs and cultures across the globe. The leporello’s history thus can be described as temporally and geographically ambiguous—it opens up space for the indeterminate. During the writing and layouting of the present book, tacit conversations unfolded between the theoretical content and the limitations of the physical copy: as if the projection of the future book object talked back, sharing its constraints of appearance with me—the designer/author—and thus influenced decision-making. The endeavour of making performance part of the project culminated in me, the author/designer, screen printing all twenty copies myself. The final book copies continue the tacit conversations: In sync with its subject matter, Kraft paper tells the stories of long journeys; white colour expresses non-standard printing and double sided print on continuous paper reveals hand-made methods.

Eva Sommeregger

Presentation

June 20, 2023

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_Navigating, Performing and Book Making

Eva Sommeregger

The talk introduces my recently published art book, 'The B-Sides', which juxtaposes the stories of Polynesian navigator Tupaia, Margaret Mead’s Kybernetes and Lara Croft’s avatar. The investigation of the three characters’ specific ways of navigating two worlds at once moves the focus on a particular form of space: a space characterised by the practice of a body mediating between two coexisting environments. Even though very different—one character appears in Western history when getting involved in a British expansionist sailing expedition across the Pacific Ocean, one is a character from Ancient Greek philosophy, and one is a gaming character, an avatar—, they meet through the navigational practices they embody. For its making, the book project adopts a performative approach that sheds light on conceiving, writing, designing and making the book while keeping the characters’ blurry qualities. The limited print edition comes in the guise of a leporello: Even though having received their name by an opera character invented by the European composer Mozart, accordion-fold books surface in many epochs and cultures across the globe. The leporello’s history thus can be described as temporally and geographically ambiguous—it opens up space for the indeterminate. During the writing and layouting of the present book, tacit conversations unfolded between the theoretical content and the limitations of the physical copy: as if the projection of the future book object talked back, sharing its constraints of appearance with me—the designer/author—and thus influenced decision-making. The endeavour of making performance part of the project culminated in me, the author/designer, screen printing all twenty copies myself. The final book copies continue the tacit conversations: In sync with its subject matter, Kraft paper tells the stories of long journeys; white colour expresses non-standard printing and double sided print on continuous paper reveals hand-made methods.

Image Series TACK Exhibition Object

Tests and References, ZSC Arena, Zurich 2012–22

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.

Adam Caruso

Image Series TACK Exhibition Object

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Tests and References, ZSC Arena, Zurich 2012–22

Adam Caruso

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.

Lecture / Talk Presentation

One and Many Details: Considering the Contingencies of Building as Empirical Evidence for Architectural Pedagogy

Eric Crevels Jorge Mejía Hernández

Lecture / Talk Presentation

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One and Many Details: Considering the Contingencies of Building as Empirical Evidence for Architectural Pedagogy

Eric Crevels Jorge Mejía Hernández

Figure 9

Figure 12

Conference Paper

_Understanding the roles of tacit knowledge in the historical collaboration between AEC: a case study approach

ABSTRACT

This paper tries to introduce three kinds of tacit knowledge that, according to the authors, are present in the process of designing and constructing a building. By looking through the lens of the concept of tacit knowledge, collaboration between the architect, engineer and contractor, thus the building professionals is evaluated. By closely examining a limited number of key archival documents in three case studies that were already developed before, it becomes visible that tacit knowledge is an indispensable part of the intangible process of collaboration in building. Since creating buildings requires to assemble large amounts of knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines, also interdisciplinary knowledge is necessary, which is often tacit in nature. As the complexity in building grew, throughout history it also became visible that roles of the building actors started to shift and new roles emerged. Using the concept of tacit knowledge this research tries to bridge the gap of looking at the building process as a collaborative effort also showing that the building process is governed by much more than the factual explicit knowledge of only one actor.

Laurens Bulckaen

Conference Paper

June 21, 2023

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_Understanding the roles of tacit knowledge in the historical collaboration between AEC: a case study approach

Laurens Bulckaen

ABSTRACT

This paper tries to introduce three kinds of tacit knowledge that, according to the authors, are present in the process of designing and constructing a building. By looking through the lens of the concept of tacit knowledge, collaboration between the architect, engineer and contractor, thus the building professionals is evaluated. By closely examining a limited number of key archival documents in three case studies that were already developed before, it becomes visible that tacit knowledge is an indispensable part of the intangible process of collaboration in building. Since creating buildings requires to assemble large amounts of knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines, also interdisciplinary knowledge is necessary, which is often tacit in nature. As the complexity in building grew, throughout history it also became visible that roles of the building actors started to shift and new roles emerged. Using the concept of tacit knowledge this research tries to bridge the gap of looking at the building process as a collaborative effort also showing that the building process is governed by much more than the factual explicit knowledge of only one actor.

Conference Paper

_Rooms: Architectural Model-Making as Ethnographic Research

ABSTRACT

Within design and architecture, scale models can create worlds of proposition, speculation and fiction. This paper situates the model as a tool for observation, documentation and engagement; a slow, durational method that manifests a deep participation in the lives of place and people marginalised by wider society. Rooms was an artistic and research project undertaken as part of the Urban Nation artistic residency in Berlin which looked at the Romanian immigrant community inhabiting the city, the spaces they occupy and appropriate, and the objects that they surround themselves with. These instances were drawn, surveyed, documented and then recreated through 1:20 paper models. Built to an extreme level of detail the models of everyday space visualise, offer new insight, and give a sense of value and recognition to the lived realities of individuals. A situated mode of research, this form of representation transforms the seemingly mundane into an object of beauty and atmosphere, encouraging access and participation from the participant, maker and the viewer. The inherently collaborative aspect of this process reveals the tacit, implicit knowledge present in everyday actions.

Ecaterina Stefanescu

Conference Paper

June 20, 2023

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_Rooms: Architectural Model-Making as Ethnographic Research

Ecaterina Stefanescu

ABSTRACT

Within design and architecture, scale models can create worlds of proposition, speculation and fiction. This paper situates the model as a tool for observation, documentation and engagement; a slow, durational method that manifests a deep participation in the lives of place and people marginalised by wider society. Rooms was an artistic and research project undertaken as part of the Urban Nation artistic residency in Berlin which looked at the Romanian immigrant community inhabiting the city, the spaces they occupy and appropriate, and the objects that they surround themselves with. These instances were drawn, surveyed, documented and then recreated through 1:20 paper models. Built to an extreme level of detail the models of everyday space visualise, offer new insight, and give a sense of value and recognition to the lived realities of individuals. A situated mode of research, this form of representation transforms the seemingly mundane into an object of beauty and atmosphere, encouraging access and participation from the participant, maker and the viewer. The inherently collaborative aspect of this process reveals the tacit, implicit knowledge present in everyday actions.

Lecture / Talk Video

TACK Talk #1: OnSite Studio

Onsitestudio Christoph Grafe Claudia Mainardi

Lecture / Talk Video

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TACK Talk #1: OnSite Studio

Onsitestudio Christoph Grafe Claudia Mainardi

Presentation

_Concrete Column, Pirelli Learning Centre

Architectural references and citations of visual culture are embedded in the form, materiality, and ornamentation of a structure. This precast concrete column fragment from the Pirelli Learning Centre built in Milan (Italy) in 2022 is a case in point. The physicality of the column has created a strong reference to the between-war Italian architecture culture. Its material form speaks to the innovation in construction techniques that characterised the period, while its ornamentation echoes that of the neighbouring Bicocca degli Arcimboldi villa; illuminates the company’s history as well as the common culture through a series of abstract tire thread advertising graphics imprinted on the columns and façade elements.

Angelo Lunati Giancarlo Floridi

Presentation

June 21, 2023

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_Concrete Column, Pirelli Learning Centre

Angelo Lunati Giancarlo Floridi

Architectural references and citations of visual culture are embedded in the form, materiality, and ornamentation of a structure. This precast concrete column fragment from the Pirelli Learning Centre built in Milan (Italy) in 2022 is a case in point. The physicality of the column has created a strong reference to the between-war Italian architecture culture. Its material form speaks to the innovation in construction techniques that characterised the period, while its ornamentation echoes that of the neighbouring Bicocca degli Arcimboldi villa; illuminates the company’s history as well as the common culture through a series of abstract tire thread advertising graphics imprinted on the columns and façade elements.

Online Teaching Module

Retracing Visual and Formal Migrations of Tacit Knowledge within Communities of Practice

Filippo Cattapan Christoph Grafe Bergische Universität Wuppertal, School of Architecture and Building Engineering

Online Teaching Module

April 8, 2023

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Retracing Visual and Formal Migrations of Tacit Knowledge within Communities of Practice

Filippo Cattapan Christoph Grafe Bergische Universität Wuppertal, School of Architecture and Building Engineering

Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

Ink Blot Drawings

Drawings, tracings, automatic drawings, ink blots like Rorschach have no logical connection to architecture. Yet they offer a base from which research into the possibility of architecture can start. Could they be used as a plan for the building? If so, which parts? What might be the size of this work in relationship to the building? Etc.

Anne Holtrop

Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

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Ink Blot Drawings

Anne Holtrop

Drawings, tracings, automatic drawings, ink blots like Rorschach have no logical connection to architecture. Yet they offer a base from which research into the possibility of architecture can start. Could they be used as a plan for the building? If so, which parts? What might be the size of this work in relationship to the building? Etc.

_HERMIA_

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.

Mara Trübenbach

_HERMIA_

Mara Trübenbach

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.

Conference Paper Open Access Publication Paper

Urban Predation: The symbolic economy of the Pixo

ABSTRACT

This essay proposes an analysis using the “symbolic economy of predation” to provide new perspectives on the question of pixo. For this, pixo will be considered as any act on walls, building facades, asphalt or monuments rejecting the hierarchical separations between writing, scribbling, painting or graffiti imposed by the art system and other institutions. In Amerindian ontology, as Viveiros de Castro describes, the feeding regime is the predominant model upon which relations are perceived. The predator and prey duality stands as the archetypical role ruling interactions between different subjectivities and perspectives. This “symbolic economy” permeates social relations and translates them into a particular epistemology shared by many indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon region. We aim to consider the relationships between those who practice pixo and the city through an analogy with the predator and prey dialectic. We argue that, on the one hand, these taggers get symbolical dominion over the city’s territory by marking places with their signatures, thus gaining recognition from their peers; on the other, the city - represented by formal governmental and economic institutions - preys upon taggers by criminalizing their practice as vandalism and by socioeconomically excluding peripheral populations, thus denying their access and right to the city itself. Pixo is a reaction to the passive role imposed on society that gains critical and artistic qualities as a practice of protest, endorsing its predatory performance. This analogy intents provide a new perspective to describe the city and its complex relations with the aesthetical and social realities of its inhabitants. A distinct description of the urban relations that might enable planners and policymakers to evaluate socio-political phenomena within the city through a new set of lenses, allowing the development of innovative approaches to tackle and decriminalize conflictual practices as the pixo.

Eric Crevels Alice Queiroz

Conference Paper Open Access Publication Paper

March 25, 2021

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Urban Predation: The symbolic economy of the Pixo

Eric Crevels Alice Queiroz

Image 03: Topo Museu de Artes e Ofícios e Artes nos Edifícios no Centro de Belo Horizonte Photo: Magno Dias, © Creative Commons

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. “Metafísicas Canibais: Elementos para uma antropologia pós-estrutural”. São Paulo, Cosac Naify, 2015

ABSTRACT

This essay proposes an analysis using the “symbolic economy of predation” to provide new perspectives on the question of pixo. For this, pixo will be considered as any act on walls, building facades, asphalt or monuments rejecting the hierarchical separations between writing, scribbling, painting or graffiti imposed by the art system and other institutions. In Amerindian ontology, as Viveiros de Castro describes, the feeding regime is the predominant model upon which relations are perceived. The predator and prey duality stands as the archetypical role ruling interactions between different subjectivities and perspectives. This “symbolic economy” permeates social relations and translates them into a particular epistemology shared by many indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon region. We aim to consider the relationships between those who practice pixo and the city through an analogy with the predator and prey dialectic. We argue that, on the one hand, these taggers get symbolical dominion over the city’s territory by marking places with their signatures, thus gaining recognition from their peers; on the other, the city - represented by formal governmental and economic institutions - preys upon taggers by criminalizing their practice as vandalism and by socioeconomically excluding peripheral populations, thus denying their access and right to the city itself. Pixo is a reaction to the passive role imposed on society that gains critical and artistic qualities as a practice of protest, endorsing its predatory performance. This analogy intents provide a new perspective to describe the city and its complex relations with the aesthetical and social realities of its inhabitants. A distinct description of the urban relations that might enable planners and policymakers to evaluate socio-political phenomena within the city through a new set of lenses, allowing the development of innovative approaches to tackle and decriminalize conflictual practices as the pixo.

Lecture / Talk Video

TACK Talks #1: One Fine Day architects

Holger Hoffmann One Fine Day architects Tom Avermaete Filippo Cattapan

Lecture / Talk Video

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TACK Talks #1: One Fine Day architects

Holger Hoffmann One Fine Day architects Tom Avermaete Filippo Cattapan

Presentation

_Infra-thin Magick: An Extended Reality (XR) Ceremony

It is well known that spatial perception is multi-sensory, and the interplay of our senses goes beyond the cross-fertilization of sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. Yet architectural design tools only touch the surface of what we can feel regarding our spatial environments, such as our sense of gravity, balance and orientation, our ability to feel time passing, or our knowledge of where each of our body parts is without having to look at them. Some of these "always-there-but-never-felt" sensations can be physically experienced when we enter an immersive virtual environment. As our brain adjusts to these novel surroundings, we can suddenly feel our senses at work. The performative extended reality model "Infra-thin Magick" allows you to experience how such insights can be purposefully evoked by displacing and reassembling the components constituting your multimodal and synaesthetic spatial perception. It invites you to co-create embodied spatiality through active participation and play.

Paula Strunden

Presentation

June 21, 2023

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_Infra-thin Magick: An Extended Reality (XR) Ceremony

Paula Strunden

It is well known that spatial perception is multi-sensory, and the interplay of our senses goes beyond the cross-fertilization of sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. Yet architectural design tools only touch the surface of what we can feel regarding our spatial environments, such as our sense of gravity, balance and orientation, our ability to feel time passing, or our knowledge of where each of our body parts is without having to look at them. Some of these "always-there-but-never-felt" sensations can be physically experienced when we enter an immersive virtual environment. As our brain adjusts to these novel surroundings, we can suddenly feel our senses at work. The performative extended reality model "Infra-thin Magick" allows you to experience how such insights can be purposefully evoked by displacing and reassembling the components constituting your multimodal and synaesthetic spatial perception. It invites you to co-create embodied spatiality through active participation and play.

Presentation

_Material Chariots

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 future 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.

Paul Vermeulen De Smet Vermeulen architecten

_Body of Knowledge: Knowing Bodies

June 19, 2023

_Body of Knowledge: Knowing Bodies

Conversation – Lara Schrijver, Peg Rawes and Margitta Buchert

April 28, 2022

Conversation – Lara Schrijver, Peg Rawes and Margitta Buchert

_Constructing Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Political Commitment and Urban Planning in Postwar Milan

June 20, 2023

_Constructing Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Political Commitment and Urban Planning in Postwar Milan

Poetic Water Boundaries: towards a possible borderless sea, (2018)

June 1, 2018

Poetic Water Boundaries: towards a possible borderless sea, (2018)

Clay landscape

Clay landscape

The stool called WALDE

The stool called WALDE

The Tacit Dimension [Excerpt]

The Tacit Dimension [Excerpt]

Tack Talks #1: Haworth Tompkins

July 23, 2020

Tack Talks #1: Haworth Tompkins

Weightless Bricks Act I: Production

February 20, 2019

Weightless Bricks Act I: Production

Shot/Reverse Shot: A conversation on architecture, design and the climate emergency

Shot/Reverse Shot: A conversation on architecture, design and the climate emergency

_Architectural photography as conduit for tacit knowledge: The Heinrich Helfenstein Estate at the gta Archive

_Architectural photography as conduit for tacit knowledge: The Heinrich Helfenstein Estate at the gta Archive

Two objects and a visit

June 17, 2020

Two objects and a visit

Arteplagemodell Swiss National Expo 02

Arteplagemodell Swiss National Expo 02

Model Haarlemmerplein

Model Haarlemmerplein

Post CIAM

Post CIAM

(Atlas of) Typology Affordances

March 1, 2023

(Atlas of) Typology Affordances

Tactiles

Tactiles

Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing

Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing

Clay 3D Print of Urmein

Clay 3D Print of Urmein

Model of Silodam Housing, Amsterdam

Model of Silodam Housing, Amsterdam

Knowledge in Architecture: draughtsmanship or craftsmanship?

Knowledge in Architecture: draughtsmanship or craftsmanship?

TACK Talks #2: How to choose the expert?

TACK Talks #2: How to choose the expert?

The American Pictures of the “Shrimps’ Vanguard”

The American Pictures of the “Shrimps’ Vanguard”

On Circular Windows, and their sudden appearance on Instagram

March 1, 2020

On Circular Windows, and their sudden appearance on Instagram

‘To strike a beat, to string a necklace.’ Latent continuities across the architectural Epistemes and the heuristic tension of Indwelling.

November 1, 2022

‘To strike a beat, to string a necklace.’ Latent continuities across the architectural Epistemes and the heuristic tension of Indwelling.

Book Corner: “Architecture: The History of Practice.” by Cana Cuff (1992)

Book Corner: “Architecture: The History of Practice.” by Cana Cuff (1992)

TACK Talks #1: De Smet Vermeulen

June 18, 2020

TACK Talks #1: De Smet Vermeulen

Texture Kortrijk – Jewel Box

Texture Kortrijk – Jewel Box

Playa Blanca, Bankers, and the Pivotal Point

Playa Blanca, Bankers, and the Pivotal Point

Zine

May 3, 2021

Zine

a Studio for Orbanism – Luc Deleu & T.O.P. office

a Studio for Orbanism – Luc Deleu & T.O.P. office

_Tacit knowledge and the locus of legitimate interpretation

June 20, 2023

_Tacit knowledge and the locus of legitimate interpretation

Understanding Situated Tacit Knowledge through Southern Urbanist architectural practice approaches

February 15, 2023

Understanding Situated Tacit Knowledge through Southern Urbanist architectural practice approaches