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About TACK TACK Book How to Use What is Tacit Knowledge?
The different ‘places’ where one discusses or presents work, and the particular quality of the environment where these take place. These spatial metaphors range in character from being in-progress, pedagogical or informal to communicative, informational or archival.
The variety of media and formats in which research outputs can take shape, engaging different forms of communication, reaching particular audiences and accomplishing specific purposes.
The different ways in which one person ‘knows more than she can tell’ depending on the character and origin of the knowledge. These different forms of tacit knowing describe its specificity: pointing out whether something is implicit because it is unconscious, unrecognized, unsaid, uncodified etc.
The keywords, fields and concepts that situate the particular contributions of the network within broader literature and schools of thought.
The different phases and forms of dissemination that research and academic outputs can take, indicating the kind of publication, the progress of the work or the forum where they are presented.
The idioms that reflect the multinational character and vocalize the conversations of the TACK network and its outputs.
The members, contributors, facilitators, communities and organizations that build up, around and underneath the TACK Network and participate, in one way or another, in the endeavour of addressing the question of Tacit Knowledge in architecture.
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50 Objects

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)
© TACK
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 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
© Paula Strunden
© Paula Strunden
© Paula Strunden
© Paula Strunden
© 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.
TACK Book

Tacit Knowledge in Architecture, A Quest

This is the introduction to the TACK Book "Perspectives on Tacit knowledge in Architecture" written by Tom Avermaete, Margitta Buchert, Janina Gosseye and Klaske Havik.
Tom Avermaete Margitta Buchert Janina Gosseye Klaske Havik
TACK Book

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Tacit Knowledge in Architecture, A Quest

Tom Avermaete Margitta Buchert Janina Gosseye Klaske Havik
This is the introduction to the TACK Book "Perspectives on Tacit knowledge in Architecture" written by Tom Avermaete, Margitta Buchert, Janina Gosseye and Klaske Havik.
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
© TACK
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.
Image Newsletter Reflection

A Map of Movements

Gennaro Postiglione initiated the idea of a “TACK Map”, visualizing the research movements of the TACK PhD Students and shares with here his thoughts on the produced map.
Gennaro Postiglione
Image Newsletter Reflection

May 20, 2022

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A Map of Movements

Gennaro Postiglione
Gennaro Postiglione initiated the idea of a “TACK Map”, visualizing the research movements of the TACK PhD Students and shares with here his thoughts on the produced map.
Essay Open Access Publication

2021

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.
Claudia Mainardi
Essay Open Access Publication

2021

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

Claudia Mainardi
© 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.
Review

Book Corner: “Tacit and Explicit Knowledge” by Harry Collins (2010)

© Harry Collins
In this book, Collins argues that previous accounts of tacit knowledge were imprecise in distinguishing tacit knowledge from explicit, leading some writers to claim that all knowledge is tacit. Collins takes the opposite position, arguing that nearly all knowledge that seems to be tacit at first can be made explicit and that, paradoxically, it is explicit knowledge which is harder to explain and more rarely studied. He identifies an economic rationale in this focus on the tacit, particularly in management studies: tacit knowledge, transferrable through verbal or written instructions, are cheaper to provide than the ongoing training (apprenticeships, practice, socialisation,) required for explicit knowledge.
Hamish Lonergan
Review

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Book Corner: “Tacit and Explicit Knowledge” by Harry Collins (2010)

Hamish Lonergan
© Harry Collins
In this book, Collins argues that previous accounts of tacit knowledge were imprecise in distinguishing tacit knowledge from explicit, leading some writers to claim that all knowledge is tacit. Collins takes the opposite position, arguing that nearly all knowledge that seems to be tacit at first can be made explicit and that, paradoxically, it is explicit knowledge which is harder to explain and more rarely studied. He identifies an economic rationale in this focus on the tacit, particularly in management studies: tacit knowledge, transferrable through verbal or written instructions, are cheaper to provide than the ongoing training (apprenticeships, practice, socialisation,) required for explicit knowledge.
Interview Video

THE POWER OF SILENT ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN KNOWLEDGE

Tom Avermaete and Hamish Lonergan were interviewed by Gabrielle Attinger from the EU Grants Access in Zürich about their perspective on the TACK project.
Tom Avermaete Hamish Lonergan
Interview Video

March 1, 2022

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THE POWER OF SILENT ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN KNOWLEDGE

Tom Avermaete Hamish Lonergan
Tom Avermaete and Hamish Lonergan were interviewed by Gabrielle Attinger from the EU Grants Access in Zürich about their perspective on the TACK project.
Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Model of Silodam Housing

© MVRDV
This diagrammatic model was developed to discuss the disposition of various elements of a new housing estate in Amsterdam with its clients; a private investor-developer and an affordable housing cooperation, embodies tacit knowledge in multiple ways.
Nathalie de Vries
Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Model of Silodam Housing

Nathalie de Vries
© MVRDV
© TACK
This diagrammatic model was developed to discuss the disposition of various elements of a new housing estate in Amsterdam with its clients; a private investor-developer and an affordable housing cooperation, embodies tacit knowledge in multiple ways.
Book chapter TACK Book

Traveling Perspectives: Tracing ‘impressions’ of a project in Flanders

Fig. 6.2: Focus on the front façade of the BMCC. Photographed December 2022.
ABSTRACT
The collection of localities that play an active (and overlooked) or quiescent (yet potent) role in architectural practices are put in question here. The chapter investigates how a project and 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 lived environment through the lens of plurilocality. 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 practice Souto de Moura Arquitectos alongside the Antwerp-based firm META architectuurbureau. Various perspectives of the same building are set in parallel, exploring place through similarities and differences. From 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 broader architectural community of practice. Active instances of getting to know a place through experience can thereby 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 relation-full practice of living environments.
Caendia Wijnbelt
Book chapter TACK Book

November 1, 2022

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Traveling Perspectives: Tracing ‘impressions’ of a project in Flanders

Caendia Wijnbelt
Fig. 6.2: Focus on the front façade of the BMCC. Photographed December 2022.
Fig. 6.X: Analogue double exposures. The BMCC overlayed with the Beursplein neighbourhood, photographed December 2022.
Fig. 6.X: Double exposure;;;;
Fig. 6.5: View of the historical center of Bruges from the Belvedere of the BMCC, photographed February 2022.
Fig. 6.X: Analogue double exposures
Figure 6.X: BMCC, photographed February 2022
Fig. 6.9:
ABSTRACT
The collection of localities that play an active (and overlooked) or quiescent (yet potent) role in architectural practices are put in question here. The chapter investigates how a project and 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 lived environment through the lens of plurilocality. 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 practice Souto de Moura Arquitectos alongside the Antwerp-based firm META architectuurbureau. Various perspectives of the same building are set in parallel, exploring place through similarities and differences. From 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 broader architectural community of practice. Active instances of getting to know a place through experience can thereby 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 relation-full practice of living environments.
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
© TACK
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.
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
© TACK
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 Model TACK Exhibition Object

Tannour

This installation emphasises this reciprocal relationship between the crafted object and the architectural space it inhabits. It pushes the boundaries of the tannour from the realm of adjustment to its architectural setting into an architectural creation in its own right. The soap tower no longer merely inhabits, it becomes inhabitable.
Nadi Abusaada Wesam Al Asali
Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Tannour

Nadi Abusaada Wesam Al Asali
© TACK
This installation emphasises this reciprocal relationship between the crafted object and the architectural space it inhabits. It pushes the boundaries of the tannour from the realm of adjustment to its architectural setting into an architectural creation in its own right. The soap tower no longer merely inhabits, it becomes inhabitable.
Site writing Website

2019-2023

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.
Klaske Havik
Site writing Website

2019-2023

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Writing Urban Places – New Narratives of the European City

Klaske Havik
© 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.
Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

RE-enactment

In 2015 we exhibited our work in this gallery and made some spatial interventions, including coloured columns, such as this one. These interventions represented our way of thinking, reflecting, acting, and communicating. We believe that a RE-enactment of a part of this exhibition fits well within the TACK framework. We thus proposed to RE-instal a column.
Architecten Jan De Vylder Inge Vinck
Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

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RE-enactment

Architecten Jan De Vylder Inge Vinck
© TACK
In 2015 we exhibited our work in this gallery and made some spatial interventions, including coloured columns, such as this one. These interventions represented our way of thinking, reflecting, acting, and communicating. We believe that a RE-enactment of a part of this exhibition fits well within the TACK framework. We thus proposed to RE-instal a column.
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.
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.
Paper Session ACTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

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 anddetermining of a variety of forces beyond the individual’s control.
Alex Maymind
Paper Session ACTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

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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 anddetermining of a variety of forces beyond the individual’s control.
Online Teaching Module

Epistemic horizons of tacit knowledge: matters of skill and craftsmanship

© Eric Crevels
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
© Eric Crevels
© Eric Crevels
© Eric Crevels
© Eric Crevels
© Eric Crevels
© Eric Crevels
© Eric Crevels
© Eric Crevels
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

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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.
Image Series TACK Exhibition Object

Tests and References, ZSC Arena, Zurich 2012–22

4 Façade detail, ZSC Arena, Zurich
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
4 Façade detail, ZSC Arena, Zurich
© TACK
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.
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)
Paper Session NATURE(S) TACK Conference Proceedings

BODY OF KNOWLEDGE : KNOWING BODIES

Fig. 1. Sofia Pintzou, contribution to »Sasha Waltz & Guests’ Tanztagebuch«, 2020, interpreting choreographic material from Sasha Waltz’ »noBody«, first performed 2002 at Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin, film stills from the video, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj-dVgonIT0, accessed July 25, 2023.
ABSTRACT
This contribution addresses tacit knowledge as an embodied form of knowing and traces the potential of the body to inform and explore, contain and convey, obtain and express architectural knowledge — in the experiencing, designing, creating, and living of architectural space. If, as framed by Polanyi, »we know more than we can tell«, focusing on the body and its immanent knowledge allows to access immediate forms of architectural knowledge. Experience, memory, and the capacity for anticipation are equally rooted in the body; corporeally anchored, contained in, and inscribed to the body. Respectively, creative imagination in architectural design relies upon the body. Through knowing how we experience architecture, we are eager to anticipate future perception in architectural design. Following my doctoral thesis, entitled “Impulses and Dialogues of Architecture and the Body”, I present the knowledge of the body as a contribution to the body of knowledge of architecture: Using the example of the working method and oeuvre of Sasha Waltz & Guests – which I investigate against the background of my own artistic practice, especially in in-situ and site-specific performances, as well as my attempts at the including of somatic practices into my academic teaching in the field of architecture – I exploit the body as a medium of spatial research, and as an immediate form of conveyance and expression in the discipline of architecture.
Katharina Voigt
Paper Session NATURE(S) TACK Conference Proceedings

July 20, 2023

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BODY OF KNOWLEDGE : KNOWING BODIES

Katharina Voigt
Fig. 1. Sofia Pintzou, contribution to »Sasha Waltz & Guests’ Tanztagebuch«, 2020, interpreting choreographic material from Sasha Waltz’ »noBody«, first performed 2002 at Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin, film stills from the video, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj-dVgonIT0, accessed July 25, 2023.
Fig. 2. Antonia Krabusch: Embodied Gestures, Gesture of Intimacy (left) and Gesture of Public (right), initial task for the design studio “Tanzhaus München – ein Ort für zeitgenössischen Tanz”, general masters’ thesis, winter 2021/22, Chair of Architectural Design and Conception, supervised by Katharina Voigt and Prof. Uta Graff.
Fig. 3. Lukas Walcher: Embodied Gestures, Gesture of Intimacy (left) and Gesture of Public (right), initial task for the design studio “Tanzhaus München – ein Ort für zeitgenössischen Tanz”, general masters’ thesis, winter 2021/22, Chair of Architectural Design and Conception, supervised by Katharina Voigt and Prof. Uta Graff.
ABSTRACT
This contribution addresses tacit knowledge as an embodied form of knowing and traces the potential of the body to inform and explore, contain and convey, obtain and express architectural knowledge — in the experiencing, designing, creating, and living of architectural space. If, as framed by Polanyi, »we know more than we can tell«, focusing on the body and its immanent knowledge allows to access immediate forms of architectural knowledge. Experience, memory, and the capacity for anticipation are equally rooted in the body; corporeally anchored, contained in, and inscribed to the body. Respectively, creative imagination in architectural design relies upon the body. Through knowing how we experience architecture, we are eager to anticipate future perception in architectural design. Following my doctoral thesis, entitled “Impulses and Dialogues of Architecture and the Body”, I present the knowledge of the body as a contribution to the body of knowledge of architecture: Using the example of the working method and oeuvre of Sasha Waltz & Guests – which I investigate against the background of my own artistic practice, especially in in-situ and site-specific performances, as well as my attempts at the including of somatic practices into my academic teaching in the field of architecture – I exploit the body as a medium of spatial research, and as an immediate form of conveyance and expression in the discipline of architecture.
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 Nieuwe Instituut (HNI)
Reflection Video

September 1, 2021

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TACK Summer School Report: Re-enacting Tacit Knowledge

Hamish Lonergan Nieuwe Instituut (HNI)
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.
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
© TACK
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.
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

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Anthropomorphe Form

Elli Mosayebi
© TACK
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.
Newsletter

Report on the Intermediate Meeting at LUH, Hanover/Germany

Workshop Thursday #2
This is a report on the TACK 6th Intermediate meeting @LUH, written by Margitta Buchert and Sarah Wehmeyer.
Margitta Buchert Sarah Wehmeyer
Newsletter

October 13, 2022

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Report on the Intermediate Meeting at LUH, Hanover/Germany

Margitta Buchert Sarah Wehmeyer
Workshop Thursday #2
Workshop Friday #5
Workshop Thursday #3
This is a report on the TACK 6th Intermediate meeting @LUH, written by Margitta Buchert and Sarah Wehmeyer.
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
© TACK
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.
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
© TACK
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.
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

© 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.
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
© Eric Crevels
© Eric Crevels
© 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.
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
© TACK
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.
Essay Paper

Archives. On The Genesis of Architectural Design

ABSTRACT
This essay highlights the ‘archive’ as a productive and inspiring factor in architectural design. As one can observe in publications, interviews, and lectures of some contemporary architects as Sauerbruch Hutton, Brandlhuber I Kniess, Valerio Olgiati, John Pawson or EM2N for example, different kinds of archival operations might form triggers for the generic processes of basic conceptions as well as for project-oriented design actions and last but not least for the attitude and stabilization of the architects’ work and profile. With the lens of interpretations of the archive initiated by Michel Foucault and other French theorists of science and historians since the 1960s up to contemporary discourses, it is possible to show via analogies of acting and reflecting the powerful qualities of the ‘archive’ and of archival operations in the dynamic processes of architectural design.
Margitta Buchert
Essay Paper

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Archives. On The Genesis of Architectural Design

Margitta Buchert
Fig. 4: John Pawson, Cover Visual Inventory, New York: Phaidon Press 2012, Photo: a_ku
Fig. 5: John Pawson, Inside Visual Inventory: 20-21, New York: Phaidon Press 2012, Photo: a_ku
Fig. 7: EM2N, Cover Sowohl als auch: 32-33, Zürich: gta Verlag 2009, Photo: a_ku
ABSTRACT
This essay highlights the ‘archive’ as a productive and inspiring factor in architectural design. As one can observe in publications, interviews, and lectures of some contemporary architects as Sauerbruch Hutton, Brandlhuber I Kniess, Valerio Olgiati, John Pawson or EM2N for example, different kinds of archival operations might form triggers for the generic processes of basic conceptions as well as for project-oriented design actions and last but not least for the attitude and stabilization of the architects’ work and profile. With the lens of interpretations of the archive initiated by Michel Foucault and other French theorists of science and historians since the 1960s up to contemporary discourses, it is possible to show via analogies of acting and reflecting the powerful qualities of the ‘archive’ and of archival operations in the dynamic processes of architectural design.
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

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Tesseln/Bâton à marques

Nicole de Lalouviere
© TACK
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 Open Access Publication Site writing

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

© Anna Livia Vørsel
“For there is no peril greater than the sea. Everything is constantly moving and remains eternally in flux.” Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
Anna Livia Vørsel
Book Open Access Publication Site writing

June 1, 2018

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

Anna Livia Vørsel
© Anna Livia Vørsel
Poetic Water Boundaries, © Anna Livia Vørsel
© Anna Livia Vørsel
“For there is no peril greater than the sea. Everything is constantly moving and remains eternally in flux.” Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 860413. This website reflects only the author’s view and the European Commission Research Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
© 2022 TACK Communities of Tacit Knowledge
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