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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

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.
Valerie Messini Eva Sommeregger
Conference Paper Paper

November 4, 2021

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POSTHUMANIST SANDBOX: THE POTENTIAL OF MULTIPLAYER – ENVIRONMENTS

Valerie Messini Eva Sommeregger
© Eva Sommeregger
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.
Newsletter Review

Book Corner: “The Invention of Culture” by Wagner Roy (1976)

The Invention of Culture, Wagner, Roy. (1976), © University of Chicago Press
Eric Crevels reviews the chapter "The assumption of Culture" from Roy Wagners Book "The Invention of Culture" (1976), The University of Chicago Press, London, Page 12 - 21
Eric Crevels
Newsletter Review

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Book Corner: “The Invention of Culture” by Wagner Roy (1976)

Eric Crevels
The Invention of Culture, Wagner, Roy. (1976), © University of Chicago Press
Eric Crevels reviews the chapter "The assumption of Culture" from Roy Wagners Book "The Invention of Culture" (1976), The University of Chicago Press, London, Page 12 - 21
Book chapter TACK Book

Mouldy Smells and Tacit Noses: knowledges coming into view

© TACK
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 TACK Book

November 1, 2022

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Mouldy Smells and Tacit Noses: knowledges coming into view

Anna Livia Vørsel
© TACK
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

29th May 2000

Dove va la città dopo il coronavirus

© Domus
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

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Dove va la città dopo il coronavirus

Claudia Mainardi
© Domus
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.
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

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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.
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.
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.
Paper Session VECTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

(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
Paper Session VECTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

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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.
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.
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.
Paper Session VECTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

Rooms: Architectural Model-Making as Ethnographic Research

Fig. 1
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
Paper Session VECTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

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Rooms: Architectural Model-Making as Ethnographic Research

Ecaterina Stefanescu
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
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 Object Session SHAPERS Video

Concrete Column, Pirelli Learning Centre

This presentation by Angelo Lunati from Onsitestudio was given as part of the object session SHAPERS during the TACK conference on 21 June 2023.
Angelo Lunati Onsitestudio
Lecture / Talk Object Session SHAPERS Video

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Concrete Column, Pirelli Learning Centre

Angelo Lunati Onsitestudio
© TACK
This presentation by Angelo Lunati from Onsitestudio was given as part of the object session SHAPERS during the TACK conference on 21 June 2023.
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.
Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

20-11-2021

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."
Mara Trübenbach
Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

20-11-2021

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HERMIA

Mara Trübenbach
© Mara Trübenbach
© TACK
"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 Talks #3: Architecture and its Tacit Dimensions

© TACK
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
© TACK
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 
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

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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.
Conference Paper Open Access Publication Paper

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

© Ron Frazier from Bloomington IL, United States
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

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

Hamish Lonergan
© Ron Frazier from Bloomington IL, United States
© Victor Grigas
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

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.
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.
Book chapter Open Access Publication

2021

Teaching Design in a Post-Rainbow Nation A South African Reflection on the Limits and Opportunities of Design Praxis

Example co-developed code of engagement (Author 2017), © Jhono Bennett
ABSTRACT
There has been an intense discourse on the relationship between inter-stakeholder university engagements, or service learning, and the broader society that South African universities claim to serve over the past decade in both local and international academia. The inherent problem within these power structures, the challenges to achieving mutually beneficial project outcomes and the growing concern of vulnerable, unheard institutional and individual voices are critical factors. The recognition of these dynamics within the emerging field of design research and design-led teaching is less nuanced in these debates. Training institutions of architecture have a rich history of undertaking service-learning initiatives to create value and learning for both the students and the stakeholders of such projects. Still, in South Africa, they are only now seen through a post-rainbow nation lens. The FeesMustFall movement is primarily driving this change. Larger institutions are recognising previously marginalised voices that now find traction in learning and practice across South Africa. This chapter reflects the author’s experience with emergent views and concerns as a researcher, lecturer and spatial design practitioner in Johannesburg. This section centres on learning regarding city-making in Southern Africa, and it presents two case studies followed by a discussion of growth opportunities.
Orli Setton, Eric Wright, Claudia Morgado, Blanca Calvo, residents and leaders of Denver Informal Settlement and the UJ Professional Practice students from 2013 to 2017.
Book chapter Open Access Publication

2021

View

Teaching Design in a Post-Rainbow Nation A South African Reflection on the Limits and Opportunities of Design Praxis

Orli Setton, Eric Wright, Claudia Morgado, Blanca Calvo, residents and leaders of Denver Informal Settlement and the UJ Professional Practice students from 2013 to 2017.
Example co-developed code of engagement (Author 2017), © Jhono Bennett
© Jhono Bennett
Challenging practice students engaging in the workshop debate (The author’s photos), © Jhono Bennett
Students and staff of AT working with Denver residents on the Action Research Studio (Author’s photos), © Jhono Bennett
ABSTRACT
There has been an intense discourse on the relationship between inter-stakeholder university engagements, or service learning, and the broader society that South African universities claim to serve over the past decade in both local and international academia. The inherent problem within these power structures, the challenges to achieving mutually beneficial project outcomes and the growing concern of vulnerable, unheard institutional and individual voices are critical factors. The recognition of these dynamics within the emerging field of design research and design-led teaching is less nuanced in these debates. Training institutions of architecture have a rich history of undertaking service-learning initiatives to create value and learning for both the students and the stakeholders of such projects. Still, in South Africa, they are only now seen through a post-rainbow nation lens. The FeesMustFall movement is primarily driving this change. Larger institutions are recognising previously marginalised voices that now find traction in learning and practice across South Africa. This chapter reflects the author’s experience with emergent views and concerns as a researcher, lecturer and spatial design practitioner in Johannesburg. This section centres on learning regarding city-making in Southern Africa, and it presents two case studies followed by a discussion of growth opportunities.
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.
Online Teaching Module

Probing Tacit Knowledge. Codes of Tacit Knowledge

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

March 10, 2023

View

Probing Tacit Knowledge. Codes of Tacit Knowledge

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

View

Playa Blanca, Bankers, and the Pivotal Point

Holger Hoffmann One Fine Day architects
© TACK
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.
Review

Report from the TACK Talks #1

© TACK
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

View

Report from the TACK Talks #1

Hamish Lonergan
© TACK
© TACK
© TACK
© TACK
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.
Essay Paper

The Royal National Theatre from Architectural Review to TikTok

@whoresonlybathroom, ‘Brutalist architecture needs to die’, TikTok screenshot, 17 December 2019, © Hamish Lonergan
ABSTRACT
The Royal National Theatre in London (1976), designed by Denys Lasdun, has attracted an unusually high volume of critical debate. Tracing the ways that critics have disagreed over time, particularly on aesthetic grounds, reveals the fluctuating fortunes of concrete Brutalist architecture beyond the theatre. This cycle has continued to inform discussion online, on social media platforms including TikTok. Ultimately, this essay argues that the only way to make sense of these conflicting accounts is to value the theatre for its capacity to generate critical, aesthetic judgments.
Hamish Lonergan
Essay Paper

View

The Royal National Theatre from Architectural Review to TikTok

Hamish Lonergan
@whoresonlybathroom, ‘Brutalist architecture needs to die’, TikTok screenshot, 17 December 2019, © Hamish Lonergan
© Patrick Mackie
ABSTRACT
The Royal National Theatre in London (1976), designed by Denys Lasdun, has attracted an unusually high volume of critical debate. Tracing the ways that critics have disagreed over time, particularly on aesthetic grounds, reveals the fluctuating fortunes of concrete Brutalist architecture beyond the theatre. This cycle has continued to inform discussion online, on social media platforms including TikTok. Ultimately, this essay argues that the only way to make sense of these conflicting accounts is to value the theatre for its capacity to generate critical, aesthetic judgments.
Lecture / Talk Video

Tack Talks #1: Cityförster

Verena Brehm CITYFÖRSTER Lara Schrijver Caendia Wijnbelt
Lecture / Talk Video

July 16, 2020

View

Tack Talks #1: Cityförster

Verena Brehm CITYFÖRSTER Lara Schrijver Caendia Wijnbelt
© TACK
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
Conference Paper Paper Session ACTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

On Twists and Turns. Architecture: Design and Judgment

Herman Hertzberger, Sketch Ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid, The Hague, The Netherlands, August 1984
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 Paper Session ACTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

July 4, 2023

View

On Twists and Turns. Architecture: Design and Judgment

Hans Teerds
Herman Hertzberger, Sketch Ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid, The Hague, The Netherlands, August 1984
Herman Hertzberger, Sketch Chassé Theatre, Breda, The Netherlands, March 14, 1992
© TACK
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.
Essay

design-based.

© ABKW
The starting point for the following descriptions, analytical reflections and meta-theoretical questions is the course “Design Project in History, Theory, Criticism”, which Angelika Schnell taught over several consecutive semesters together with Eva Sommeregger at the Institute for Art and Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Elke Krasny Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture
Essay

View

design-based.

Elke Krasny Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture
© ABKW
The starting point for the following descriptions, analytical reflections and meta-theoretical questions is the course “Design Project in History, Theory, Criticism”, which Angelika Schnell taught over several consecutive semesters together with Eva Sommeregger at the Institute for Art and Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
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.
Review

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

© Dana Cuff
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

View

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

Claudia Mainardi
© Dana Cuff
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.
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
© TACK
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.
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

View

Konvolut

Klaske Havik Tim Anstey Helena Mattsson
© Janina Gosseye
© Janina Gosseye
© Janina Gosseye
© Janina Gosseye
© Janina Gosseye
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.
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. Photo: Marie Kuch
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 Markus Vogl
Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

October 5, 2022

View

Chozos, Houses of Nomadic Shepherds

Alba Balmaseda Dominguez Kyra Bullert Špela Setzen Markus Vogl
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. Photo: Marie Kuch
© TACK
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.
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

View

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.
Book chapter TACK Book

Forêt DesCartes: Images, fragments, and repertoires in Kieckens’s tacit knowledge

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. Currently underway at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal within the framework of the TACK network, the research project, ‘The Pictures on the Wall. The Composite Culture of a Contemporary Flemish Architect’, investigates Kieckens’s role as mediator between the transatlantic architectural culture of the 1980s and the local context of Flanders. The key assumption is that this process of cultural migration happened first of all at the tacit level. Kieckens’s tacit knowledge is primarily found in its fragmentary nature – as a repertoire of themes and images – as well as in its crucial relationship with a number of visual practices and media. This attitude is considered from an interdisciplinary perspective that integrates external viewpoints such as those of cultural studies, anthropology, and iconology. On this basis, Kieckens’s practices have been operatively addressed by means of a hybrid methodology, which combines bibliographic and archival studies with a series of performative approaches such as interviews and immersive ethnographic investigation, pedagogical re-enactment and experimental display, images collection and visual comparison. Within a curatorial secondment at the Flanders Architecture Institute VAi in Antwerp and a collaboration with Hasselt University, these approaches finally resulted in the exhibition, ‘Forêt DesCartes – Christian Kieckens and the Composite Culture of Architecture in Flanders’, which opened at the De Singel Centre in November 2022.
Filippo Cattapan
Book chapter TACK Book

November 1, 2022

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Forêt DesCartes: Images, fragments, and repertoires in Kieckens’s tacit knowledge

Filippo Cattapan
© TACK
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. Currently underway at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal within the framework of the TACK network, the research project, ‘The Pictures on the Wall. The Composite Culture of a Contemporary Flemish Architect’, investigates Kieckens’s role as mediator between the transatlantic architectural culture of the 1980s and the local context of Flanders. The key assumption is that this process of cultural migration happened first of all at the tacit level. Kieckens’s tacit knowledge is primarily found in its fragmentary nature – as a repertoire of themes and images – as well as in its crucial relationship with a number of visual practices and media. This attitude is considered from an interdisciplinary perspective that integrates external viewpoints such as those of cultural studies, anthropology, and iconology. On this basis, Kieckens’s practices have been operatively addressed by means of a hybrid methodology, which combines bibliographic and archival studies with a series of performative approaches such as interviews and immersive ethnographic investigation, pedagogical re-enactment and experimental display, images collection and visual comparison. Within a curatorial secondment at the Flanders Architecture Institute VAi in Antwerp and a collaboration with Hasselt University, these approaches finally resulted in the exhibition, ‘Forêt DesCartes – Christian Kieckens and the Composite Culture of Architecture in Flanders’, which opened at the De Singel Centre in November 2022.
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.
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