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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.

50 Objects

Paper Session NATURE(S) TACK Conference Proceedings

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

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

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

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

Conversation – Lara Schrijver, Peg Rawes and Margitta Buchert

© TACK
Conversation on Contexts, Values and Reflexivity in Tacit Knowledge, between Lara Schrijver, Margitta Buchert and Peg Rawes.
Lara Schrijver Peg Rawes Margitta Buchert
Essay Lecture / Talk Reader Reflection Teaching Element

April 28, 2022

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Conversation – Lara Schrijver, Peg Rawes and Margitta Buchert

Lara Schrijver Peg Rawes Margitta Buchert
© TACK
Conversation on Contexts, Values and Reflexivity in Tacit Knowledge, between Lara Schrijver, Margitta Buchert and Peg Rawes.
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

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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.
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.
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.
Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

City as Forest

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

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City as Forest

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

25 Objects of Belonging

‘Objects of belonging’ are found or ready-made objects that users adapt to redefine the conventional boundaries of a home. These objects’ tacit presence dissolves where the house begins and ends, blurring boundaries between urban and domestic spheres.
Samantha Ong Ariel Bintang
Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

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25 Objects of Belonging

Samantha Ong Ariel Bintang
© TACK
‘Objects of belonging’ are found or ready-made objects that users adapt to redefine the conventional boundaries of a home. These objects’ tacit presence dissolves where the house begins and ends, blurring boundaries between urban and domestic spheres.
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

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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.
Lecture / Talk Video

TACK Talks #3: “In-tray – tracing lost voices in architectural archives” x “Election! Architecture and the Tacit Politics of Design”

© TACK
Jennifer Mack Tim Anstey Angelika Schnell Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture
Lecture / Talk Video

June 27, 2022

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TACK Talks #3: “In-tray – tracing lost voices in architectural archives” x “Election! Architecture and the Tacit Politics of Design”

Jennifer Mack Tim Anstey Angelika Schnell Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture
© TACK
© TACK
© TACK
© TACK
© TACK
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.
Essay Paper

COMMON GROUND. Discursive Orders in Architecture

ABSTRACT
Is it possible to characterize the relation of architecture and science, if it is not derived from established scientific conventions? This essay highlights one field of the multifaceted spectrum, which pops up in the context of this question, a field, which can be observed when expanding the focus from science to knowledge and processes of its formation and transformation. Focal point will be the question where and in which ways knowledge appears and marks a `common ground´. The investigations are revolved around the most important field of thematisation and mediation of architectural reality at the beginning of the 21st century to be found globally, the International Architecture Biennale, which takes place in Venice in a two year cycle. Furthermore special attention will be riveted on the biennale of 2012, which was dedicated to the theme `Common Ground´. The following notions are enmeshed with the consideration, that with a presentation and uncovering of knowledge and communication on it, we have here a kind of discourse in architecture that might not only process attitudes and a stabilization of the discipline, but also provides triggers for generic processes of scientific contexts and basic understandings of research and design in architecture.
Margitta Buchert
Essay Paper

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COMMON GROUND. Discursive Orders in Architecture

Margitta Buchert
Fig. 6:
ABSTRACT
Is it possible to characterize the relation of architecture and science, if it is not derived from established scientific conventions? This essay highlights one field of the multifaceted spectrum, which pops up in the context of this question, a field, which can be observed when expanding the focus from science to knowledge and processes of its formation and transformation. Focal point will be the question where and in which ways knowledge appears and marks a `common ground´. The investigations are revolved around the most important field of thematisation and mediation of architectural reality at the beginning of the 21st century to be found globally, the International Architecture Biennale, which takes place in Venice in a two year cycle. Furthermore special attention will be riveted on the biennale of 2012, which was dedicated to the theme `Common Ground´. The following notions are enmeshed with the consideration, that with a presentation and uncovering of knowledge and communication on it, we have here a kind of discourse in architecture that might not only process attitudes and a stabilization of the discipline, but also provides triggers for generic processes of scientific contexts and basic understandings of research and design in architecture.
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

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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.

Stoà n°6 Viaggi: Greetings from the Bruine Banaan. Christian Kieckens’ Journeys and the Construction of European Disciplinary Culture

Fig. 1-5. Marc Dubois, Postcards sent to Christian Kieckens, 1992-2013. © Flanders Architecture Institute – collection Flemish Community, archive of Christian Kieckens.
Filippo Cattapan

Stoà n°6 Viaggi: Greetings from the Bruine Banaan. Christian Kieckens’ Journeys and the Construction of European Disciplinary Culture

Filippo Cattapan
Fig. 1-5. Marc Dubois, Postcards sent to Christian Kieckens, 1992-2013. © Flanders Architecture Institute – collection Flemish Community, archive of Christian Kieckens.
Fig. 1-5. Marc Dubois, Postcards sent to Christian Kieckens, 1992-2013. © Flanders Architecture Institute – collection Flemish Community, archive of Christian Kieckens.
Fig. 1-5. Marc Dubois, Postcards sent to Christian Kieckens, 1992-2013. © Flanders Architecture Institute – collection Flemish Community, archive of Christian Kieckens.
Fig. 1-5. Marc Dubois, Postcards sent to Christian Kieckens, 1992-2013. © Flanders Architecture Institute – collection Flemish Community, archive of Christian Kieckens.
Fig. 1-5. Marc Dubois, Postcards sent to Christian Kieckens, 1992-2013. © Flanders Architecture Institute – collection Flemish Community, archive of Christian Kieckens.
Fig. 1-5. Marc Dubois, Postcards sent to Christian Kieckens, 1992-2013. © Flanders Architecture Institute – collection Flemish Community, archive of Christian Kieckens.
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.
Book chapter TACK Book

Exploring Spatial Perception through Performative 1:1 Extended Reality Models: Preliminary insights from Infra-thin Magick

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

November 1, 2022

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Exploring Spatial Perception through Performative 1:1 Extended Reality Models: Preliminary insights from Infra-thin Magick

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

Revealing the tacit: a critical spatial practice based on walking and re/presenting

ABSTRACT
Spatial practices that investigate architectural space with the ideal architect's eye and a commonplace representational perspective have been the subject of a lot of writing. The potential of critical spatial practices, which combine performative actions with incomplete representation possibilities, to investigate and reveal the tacit knowledge underlying space is yet unexplored. This paper finds its problem in these missing pieces in the literature and tries to decipher by deconstructing the conventional methods and tactics it criticizes, a way is sought to trigger the creative potentials of the relationship between body and space that cannot be stable. Critical spatial practices can be situated as alternative ways of understanding the architectural space and establishing a dialogue with it since they pave the way for new kinds of relationships to emerge between the subject and the space. This study focuses on the act of walking, which is claimed to be a critical spatial practice, and its re/presentation, which is argued to reveal tacit knowledge in the walked place. Based on the poststructuralist critical theories, the case study was carried out in the Historical Peninsula of Istanbul in the Khans District by walking and extracting the things which can reveal tacit knowledge. By finding top-down investigation and representation tools problematic in capturing and expressing the body and space interactions, experiences, and experimentation on the ground level, I believe walking by drifting through the invisible spaces and transitions of the Khans District when viewed from above is meaningful in expressing the experimental and creative flows on the ground level. Depending on the re/presentation, it can be suggested that performing a spatial practice with the participation of the body and interpreting the architectural space from a critical position carry the contingency of uncovering tacit knowledge.
Nilsu Altunok
Paper Session VECTORS Site writing TACK Conference Proceedings

View

Revealing the tacit: a critical spatial practice based on walking and re/presenting

Nilsu Altunok
ABSTRACT
Spatial practices that investigate architectural space with the ideal architect's eye and a commonplace representational perspective have been the subject of a lot of writing. The potential of critical spatial practices, which combine performative actions with incomplete representation possibilities, to investigate and reveal the tacit knowledge underlying space is yet unexplored. This paper finds its problem in these missing pieces in the literature and tries to decipher by deconstructing the conventional methods and tactics it criticizes, a way is sought to trigger the creative potentials of the relationship between body and space that cannot be stable. Critical spatial practices can be situated as alternative ways of understanding the architectural space and establishing a dialogue with it since they pave the way for new kinds of relationships to emerge between the subject and the space. This study focuses on the act of walking, which is claimed to be a critical spatial practice, and its re/presentation, which is argued to reveal tacit knowledge in the walked place. Based on the poststructuralist critical theories, the case study was carried out in the Historical Peninsula of Istanbul in the Khans District by walking and extracting the things which can reveal tacit knowledge. By finding top-down investigation and representation tools problematic in capturing and expressing the body and space interactions, experiences, and experimentation on the ground level, I believe walking by drifting through the invisible spaces and transitions of the Khans District when viewed from above is meaningful in expressing the experimental and creative flows on the ground level. Depending on the re/presentation, it can be suggested that performing a spatial practice with the participation of the body and interpreting the architectural space from a critical position carry the contingency of uncovering tacit knowledge.
Lecture / Talk Video

Tack Talks #1: Cityförster

Verena Brehm CITYFÖRSTER Lara Schrijver Caendia Wijnbelt
Lecture / Talk Video

July 16, 2020

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Tack Talks #1: Cityförster

Verena Brehm CITYFÖRSTER Lara Schrijver Caendia Wijnbelt
© 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
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.
Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Concept model, ‘Innerer Garten’, Zürich Leutschenbach

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

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Concept model, ‘Innerer Garten’, Zürich Leutschenbach

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

The American Pictures of the “Shrimps’ Vanguard”

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

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The American Pictures of the “Shrimps’ Vanguard”

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

Latent Continuities: Architectural knowledge and the heuristic tension of Indwelling

ABSTRACT
In his theory of Tacit Knowledge Michael Polanyi introduced the concept of Indwelling, to explain the role of habit and skill in practice-based knowledge, but also to describe a heuristic tension that underlies all forms of knowing. Such a tension, Polanyi tells us, unfolds from the ‘depths’ of our biological being to the ‘heights’ of ideas and cultural values. The premise of this essay is that the spatial (and temporal) metaphor of Indwelling is hardly an accident: human consciousness is opened to knowledge primarily through our physical engagement with the world, marked by both space and time. The hypothesis is thus formed of architecture as a discipline studying precisely such tacit processes of (In)dwelling, in search of correspondences between ‘thick’ levels of bodily disposition and ‘thinner’ levels of intellect and imagination. To pursue this hypothesis, I turn to the example of a two-month apprenticeship in traditional stonemasonry, that took place in 2019 in Greece, entailing the reconstruction of a particular type of dry-stone cobbled pathway, called kalderimi.
Ionas Sklavounos
Book chapter TACK Book

November 1, 2022

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Latent Continuities: Architectural knowledge and the heuristic tension of Indwelling

Ionas Sklavounos
ABSTRACT
In his theory of Tacit Knowledge Michael Polanyi introduced the concept of Indwelling, to explain the role of habit and skill in practice-based knowledge, but also to describe a heuristic tension that underlies all forms of knowing. Such a tension, Polanyi tells us, unfolds from the ‘depths’ of our biological being to the ‘heights’ of ideas and cultural values. The premise of this essay is that the spatial (and temporal) metaphor of Indwelling is hardly an accident: human consciousness is opened to knowledge primarily through our physical engagement with the world, marked by both space and time. The hypothesis is thus formed of architecture as a discipline studying precisely such tacit processes of (In)dwelling, in search of correspondences between ‘thick’ levels of bodily disposition and ‘thinner’ levels of intellect and imagination. To pursue this hypothesis, I turn to the example of a two-month apprenticeship in traditional stonemasonry, that took place in 2019 in Greece, entailing the reconstruction of a particular type of dry-stone cobbled pathway, called kalderimi.
Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

Ulrich Mahler’s Exkursionszettel Wagbachniederung

Ulrich Mahler’s Exkursionszettel exemplifies the importance of embodied tacit knowledge in the management of constructed landscapes.
Johanna Just
Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

May 29, 2022

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Ulrich Mahler’s Exkursionszettel Wagbachniederung

Johanna Just
© TACK
Ulrich Mahler’s Exkursionszettel exemplifies the importance of embodied tacit knowledge in the management of constructed landscapes.
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

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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.
Conference Paper Open Access Publication

Everyday Practice As Paradigm To Study Architectural Contemporary Codes

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

March 2, 2023

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Everyday Practice As Paradigm To Study Architectural Contemporary Codes

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

REFLECTIVE ANIMATION. Navigating the What-What

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

November 1, 2022

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REFLECTIVE ANIMATION. Navigating the What-What

Jhono Bennett
© Jhono Bennett
Figure 10: A Screen Grab from the Digital Exhibition of the Site-Writing Project Entitled: Spirit of the Order (Bennett 2021) that Blends Animation with Writing and Drawing., © Jhono Bennett
© Jhono Bennett
ABSTRACT
Critically engaging with one’s positionality in contemporary architectural research in a post-Apartheid South African context requires an approach that blends concerns about identity, location, and voice in responsibly creative means, while not reinforcing the existing power dynamics inherent in such work. This essay employs Jane Rendell’s Site-Writing modality to develop a means of navigating these inter-demographic and inter-locational dilemmas - the What-What - that emerge when working from a »northerly« located institution and speaking from a »Southern« position through multiple audiences. A reflective-animation method has been developed that provides a proto-methodology for both documenting and speculating with the tacit nature of spatial design practice in post-Apartheid South African cities.
Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

Invisible Elastic Structure

Behaviour rather than form: nature as a worldview. Nature as technique, posture, and condition. A perpetual ongoing construction, nature is meant as an 'artifice' appearing in the encounter between thought and the world: both in the project and the leaf, a minimal resistant force, and a maximum space potential cohabit in a tensional condition. Architecture is a continuous experience of the world.
Francesca Berni
Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

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Invisible Elastic Structure

Francesca Berni
© TACK
Behaviour rather than form: nature as a worldview. Nature as technique, posture, and condition. A perpetual ongoing construction, nature is meant as an 'artifice' appearing in the encounter between thought and the world: both in the project and the leaf, a minimal resistant force, and a maximum space potential cohabit in a tensional condition. Architecture is a continuous experience of the world.
Book Book chapter

The Tacit Dimension [Excerpt]

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

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The Tacit Dimension [Excerpt]

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