Ionas Sklavounos reflects on the so-called ‘object sessions’ during the TACK Conference. A few of the submitting were invited as speakers during the TACK Conference to reflect on how the objects exemplify the ways in which tacit knowledge operates in architecture culture in an ‘object session’. During these ‘object sessions’, the different objects contributed to the exhibition and conference were discussed in brief, 10 minute presentations under the guidance of a session chair.

SITES

On the one hand, the “Sites” session dealt with artefacts aiming to capture the specificity of particular territories, yet not only as topographies, but as vibrant fields of actions and processes: from the annotated maps of more-than-human landscapes presented by Johanna Just to the 1:1000 clay models of intricate urban places by Spridd, we observed the capacity of such objects to embody personal knowledge and lived experience; to convey the complexity of places where different actors meet and interact. Yet at the same time we considered artefacts that may be seen as the material expressions of sites, the products of labor taking place in highly specific geographies, within distinct local traditions. Such were the cases of Chozo, the hut of nomadic shepherds in rural Spain, and Tannour, the conical towers of stacked soap in the industries of Arab Mediterranean cities. Through the discussion of such objects, the links between craftsmanship and architecture were highlighted while showing that even if such artefacts appear tied to certain territories or even localities, they are also informed by journeying and travel across regions and boundaries.
In this way, a key element of the sites’ tacit knowledge came to the fore: namely, how this emerges at the intersection of places, through exchanges and interconnections. This was vividly evidenced in the presentation of Mara Trübenbach’s 1:75 model of Hermia: this poetic-speculative reconstruction of the ship that in 1933 carried the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg from Hamburg to London allowed us to discuss artefacts themselves as sites of convergence of material knowledge, of ideas and values originating from different places and times. The specifically architectural value of such a dynamic understanding was further illuminated by the drawing of Eilfried Huth presented by Monika Platzer: this reinterpretation of the medieval Bauhütte as a focal point of modern participatory building highlighted the ways in which particular artefacts may serve as points of reference and as common grounds between different ages and cultures.

LINEAGES

The “Lineages” session addressed the decisive role of material evidence and visual arrangements in the workings of memory and imagination, both on personal and collective scales. From the ‘living’ archive of Luc Deleu and T.O.P. office, presented by Sofie de Caigny and Tine Poot; to the photographic oeuvre of Heinrich Helfenstein discussed by Irina Davidovici and Ziu Bruckmann; to Christian Kieckens’ peculiar postcard display presented by Filippo Cattapan, this session reflected on how processes of collection and juxtaposition imply affinities, construct continuities and build genealogies on which the creative endeavors of the present are founded. Yet alongside the deliberate selecting that makes up a lineage, we pointed to the implicit importance of the how objects are physically arranged and related to each other: the spatial character of the ‘living’ archive, the orderly presentation of photos and captions, the hanging of postcards on wires standing on a cartesian grid.
Such different modes of presentation and collocation imply different ways of constituting memory. Even more so when considered alongside the Bâtons à marques (pieces of carved wood to record use rights, taxes, and labor duties in early modern Swiss Alps) presented by Nicole de Lalouviere; or the laporello contributed by Eva Somereger, introducing the unexpected genealogy of navigators Tupaia, Kybernetes, and Lara Croft. However, despite their differences, the contributions of the “Lineages” session point towards a common search. The wordplay with which Filippo Cattapan illustrated the tension between intuition and rationality underlying Kieckens’ postcard display – Forêt DesCartes – served as an entry point to identify a similar tension across all contributions: a search around alternative understandings of modernity or a contemporary sensibility around pre- and early modern modes of remembering. The “Bâtons à marques” and the navigating figures of (Indigenous) Tupaia, (ancient Greek) Kybernetes, and (digital) Lara Croft bear witness to this sensibility, running in different ways through all contributions. Thus, the “Lineages” objects manifest a plea to discover other ways of positioning ourselves – other ways of navigating – beyond a Cartesian system of coordinates; to trace alternative ways of constituting memory and imagination beyond those bequeathed to us by modernity.

SHAPERS

The “Shapers” session was largely concerned with the role of tools, technology and infrastructure in the formation of tacit knowledge and particularly in their interaction with the human body. The artistic performances of Katharina Kasinger in public spaces allowed to discuss the body as a more-than-functional entity, capable of retrieving symbolic meanings from the infrastructures of the city. Thus, the performing body was framed as challenging narrow understandings of how infrastructure ought to serve and express a strictly instrumental organization of urban spaces. This question around the potential of technique and technology to enrich lived experience and open up new horizons of understanding was also raised in the discussion of Paula Strunden’s XR installation “Infra-thin Magick.” There, the play with the boundaries of perception, the bending of familiar images and the invocation of the uncanny brought to the fore the creative potential inherent in the intermodality of the senses and their deep intertwining with the realms of imagination and meaning.
This creative dynamic of our immersion in things was also illuminated by the ‘chariots’ used in Paul Vermeulen’s architectural office to display the building materials used in ongoing projects. The continued physical presence of materials on the chariot (rather than as printed samples in a catalogue) draws on the often neglected links between habit and ‘inspiration’, while bringing the materials ‘at hand’, and thus encouraging a comprehensive engagement with them. This intrinsic potential of tools to guide processes of architectural composition was also discussed in Holger Hoffmann’s “From copper wire to spline,” with the attention here turning to the links between the analogue and digital worlds; the possibilities of grounding parametric design on the material, structural and typological forms of architectural knowledge.
The key role of such exchanges for architectural imagination was further highlighted in the discussion around the “Concrete column for the Pirelli Learning Centre” presented by Angelo Lunati. The ways in which this prefabricated element draws equally from the Milanese architectural tradition and from the visual language of Pirelli tires hint at the importance of transfers and pollinations across different areas of material culture. Most importantly, however, transformations of this kind reveal a common thread running through the objects of the session, concerning the capacity of a culturally informed architecture to provide shape and meaning to technical or technological innovations, by establishing analogies between incumbent and emergent forms of material knowledge.