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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

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
Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

RE-enactment

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

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RE-enactment

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

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

Fig. 6.2: Focus on the front façade of the BMCC. Photographed December 2022.
ABSTRACT
The collection of localities that play an active (and overlooked) or quiescent (yet potent) role in architectural practices are put in question here. The chapter investigates how a project and its site specific geographical setting can contain traces of broader architectural contexts. It asks how architectural collaborative approaches that stem from the encounter of different perspectives can be read in the lived environment through the lens of plurilocality. Distinct yet intermingling perspectives of a contemporary architectural realisation are drawn out through a dive into the meeting and convention centre in Bruges. This is a building designed by two offices based in different architectural environments — the Portuguese practice Souto de Moura Arquitectos alongside the Antwerp-based firm META architectuurbureau. Various perspectives of the same building are set in parallel, exploring place through similarities and differences. From different modes of apprehending the project, concepts of place and architectural intentions set in motion in this instance are unpacked, involving a transversal reading through a broader architectural community of practice. Active instances of getting to know a place through experience can thereby be tacit yet situated: they can be embodied, embedded and enacted. This further explores Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s hint of a depth found in the latent form of impressions, in their ‘caché-révélé’ or hidden-revealed. Expressions of such instances, through interpreting reflexive features of buildings that stem from plurilocal collaborations, become productive insights into the mechanisms of place relation, their transfers and interweaving, and their impact in architectural design practices. Most of all, these parcels of the tacit dimension of place interpretation are put forward as such: aggregates that interfere with- and feed a relation-full practice of living environments.
Caendia Wijnbelt
Book chapter TACK Book

November 1, 2022

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

Caendia Wijnbelt
Fig. 6.2: Focus on the front façade of the BMCC. Photographed December 2022.
Fig. 6.X: Analogue double exposures. The BMCC overlayed with the Beursplein neighbourhood, photographed December 2022.
Fig. 6.X: Double exposure;;;;
Fig. 6.5: View of the historical center of Bruges from the Belvedere of the BMCC, photographed February 2022.
Fig. 6.X: Analogue double exposures
Figure 6.X: BMCC, photographed February 2022
Fig. 6.9:
ABSTRACT
The collection of localities that play an active (and overlooked) or quiescent (yet potent) role in architectural practices are put in question here. The chapter investigates how a project and its site specific geographical setting can contain traces of broader architectural contexts. It asks how architectural collaborative approaches that stem from the encounter of different perspectives can be read in the lived environment through the lens of plurilocality. Distinct yet intermingling perspectives of a contemporary architectural realisation are drawn out through a dive into the meeting and convention centre in Bruges. This is a building designed by two offices based in different architectural environments — the Portuguese practice Souto de Moura Arquitectos alongside the Antwerp-based firm META architectuurbureau. Various perspectives of the same building are set in parallel, exploring place through similarities and differences. From different modes of apprehending the project, concepts of place and architectural intentions set in motion in this instance are unpacked, involving a transversal reading through a broader architectural community of practice. Active instances of getting to know a place through experience can thereby be tacit yet situated: they can be embodied, embedded and enacted. This further explores Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s hint of a depth found in the latent form of impressions, in their ‘caché-révélé’ or hidden-revealed. Expressions of such instances, through interpreting reflexive features of buildings that stem from plurilocal collaborations, become productive insights into the mechanisms of place relation, their transfers and interweaving, and their impact in architectural design practices. Most of all, these parcels of the tacit dimension of place interpretation are put forward as such: aggregates that interfere with- and feed a relation-full practice of living environments.
Exhibition 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.
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.
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.
Book chapter TACK Book

No Body, Never Mind: The entanglement of how architects construct imagination

Figure 3.1: My Mother’s back, 1996, Elinor Carucci Source: Elinor Carucci’s private archive. US Credit: Elinor Carucci., © US Credit: Elinor Carucci
ABSTRACT
In architectural practice, one does not primarily write, one draws, models or explains with words, mostly through the visual communication of ideas. Just as architects use literacy to describe stories and connect with what touches them, material literacy is necessary to describe what architects literally touch. Material has the ability to respond to the design and even influence it at a very early stage of the process when it comes into contact with the body. As the scientist Barad rightly asked: “How did language come to be more trustworthy than matter?” (Barad, 2003). Material can create an experimental platform to trigger emotions, to go beyond norms and return to what has become schematic in the process of making architecture. This method of architectural dramaturgy, i.e., seeking a multifaceted narrative about house and home through engagement with material, could critically reveal unseen labour and unheard voices, and facilitate a connection to our surrounding.   The paper argues feelings from the inside of the body that apparent on the outside of the body offer new ways of knowledge production in architecture. Adopting the interdisciplinary approach by Finish architect and critic Juhani Pallasmaa (in his The Thinking Hand, 2009) the paper considers theatre and performance studies as examples of phenomenological aspects of kinaesthetic and multi-sensory perception of “the internal space and one’s inner mental space” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p.19). By theoretically analysing related emotions embedded in the various hands-on processes mediated through visuals (image, video, drawings) and the applicability of the materiality of the human body (voice, gesture, etc.), empathy and trust in both architectural and theatrical production are an important trajectory to enrich collective knowledge. Starting from here, the chapter advocates not only looking at visual mediation of material, but going beyond that and prompting the capability to read and listen to sound, expression and movement that come from both sides equally – humans and non-humans – to build up material literacy and achieve a sensitivity towards tacit knowledge in architecture.
Mara Trübenbach
Book chapter TACK Book

November 1, 2022

View

No Body, Never Mind: The entanglement of how architects construct imagination

Mara Trübenbach
Figure 3.1: My Mother’s back, 1996, Elinor Carucci Source: Elinor Carucci’s private archive. US Credit: Elinor Carucci., © US Credit: Elinor Carucci
ABSTRACT
In architectural practice, one does not primarily write, one draws, models or explains with words, mostly through the visual communication of ideas. Just as architects use literacy to describe stories and connect with what touches them, material literacy is necessary to describe what architects literally touch. Material has the ability to respond to the design and even influence it at a very early stage of the process when it comes into contact with the body. As the scientist Barad rightly asked: “How did language come to be more trustworthy than matter?” (Barad, 2003). Material can create an experimental platform to trigger emotions, to go beyond norms and return to what has become schematic in the process of making architecture. This method of architectural dramaturgy, i.e., seeking a multifaceted narrative about house and home through engagement with material, could critically reveal unseen labour and unheard voices, and facilitate a connection to our surrounding.   The paper argues feelings from the inside of the body that apparent on the outside of the body offer new ways of knowledge production in architecture. Adopting the interdisciplinary approach by Finish architect and critic Juhani Pallasmaa (in his The Thinking Hand, 2009) the paper considers theatre and performance studies as examples of phenomenological aspects of kinaesthetic and multi-sensory perception of “the internal space and one’s inner mental space” (Pallasmaa, 2009, p.19). By theoretically analysing related emotions embedded in the various hands-on processes mediated through visuals (image, video, drawings) and the applicability of the materiality of the human body (voice, gesture, etc.), empathy and trust in both architectural and theatrical production are an important trajectory to enrich collective knowledge. Starting from here, the chapter advocates not only looking at visual mediation of material, but going beyond that and prompting the capability to read and listen to sound, expression and movement that come from both sides equally – humans and non-humans – to build up material literacy and achieve a sensitivity towards tacit knowledge in architecture.
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.
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."
Paper Session ACTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

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

Figure 1: Page showing the plans and drawings of Amsterdam and Berlin Stadiums. Source: Seyfettin Nasıh, ‘Stadyumlar: Almanya Stadyumları Hakkında Bir Tetkin Raporu [Stadiums: A Study Report on German Stadiums]’, Arkitekt, 33-34 (1933), 307.
ABSTRACT
An architect is an intellectual person who develops a professional architectural identity and approach through an accumulation of their personal experiences, education and knowledge. Perhaps the most pivotal part in an architect’s ‘formation journey’ is the initial years they start constructing their architectural selfhood. The initial years in which a person “becomes” an architect, are signified by the mobility of young architects, ideas and encounters, through which an architecture culture forms and disseminates. The dissemination of ideas is facilitated through institutions, visual, verbal and textual representations. Traveling, with its ability to embody all of these components appears to be a fruitful practice through which architecture culture can be analyzed. During the twentieth century, new encounters provided a ground from which Turkish-speaking architects established a firmer professional position and disseminated new implementations in the architecture field. The purpose of this research is to understand how Turkish-speaking architects’ journeys in the pre-digital age, contributed to the period’s architectural discourse in Turkey. Therefore, the ways in which architects traveled, translated and disseminated their travel experiences were studied and evaluated through content analysis.
Ceren Hamiloglu Ahsen Özsoy
Paper Session ACTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

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

Ceren Hamiloglu Ahsen Özsoy
Figure 1: Page showing the plans and drawings of Amsterdam and Berlin Stadiums. Source: Seyfettin Nasıh, ‘Stadyumlar: Almanya Stadyumları Hakkında Bir Tetkin Raporu [Stadiums: A Study Report on German Stadiums]’, Arkitekt, 33-34 (1933), 307.
Figure 2 Pages from Hulusi Güngör’s How to Build Cities, Istanbul, 1969.
Figure 5 Doğan Kuban on a trip from Istanbul to Diyarbakır with his students
ABSTRACT
An architect is an intellectual person who develops a professional architectural identity and approach through an accumulation of their personal experiences, education and knowledge. Perhaps the most pivotal part in an architect’s ‘formation journey’ is the initial years they start constructing their architectural selfhood. The initial years in which a person “becomes” an architect, are signified by the mobility of young architects, ideas and encounters, through which an architecture culture forms and disseminates. The dissemination of ideas is facilitated through institutions, visual, verbal and textual representations. Traveling, with its ability to embody all of these components appears to be a fruitful practice through which architecture culture can be analyzed. During the twentieth century, new encounters provided a ground from which Turkish-speaking architects established a firmer professional position and disseminated new implementations in the architecture field. The purpose of this research is to understand how Turkish-speaking architects’ journeys in the pre-digital age, contributed to the period’s architectural discourse in Turkey. Therefore, the ways in which architects traveled, translated and disseminated their travel experiences were studied and evaluated through content analysis.
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.
Video

A video report from the “Symposium Under the Landscape”

In June 2022, the “Symposium Under the Landscape” was held on the islands of Santorini and Therasia (Cyclades, Greece), proposing a critical rethinking of the increasingly topical notion of landscape.
Ionas Sklavounos
Video

August 1, 2023

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A video report from the “Symposium Under the Landscape”

Ionas Sklavounos
In June 2022, the “Symposium Under the Landscape” was held on the islands of Santorini and Therasia (Cyclades, Greece), proposing a critical rethinking of the increasingly topical notion of landscape.
Book chapter TACK Book

A Post-Post Positional Praxis: Locating ideas of repair in a Southern city

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

November 1, 2022

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A Post-Post Positional Praxis: Locating ideas of repair in a Southern city

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

Book Corner: “Speaking of Buildings: Oral History in Architectural Research” by Janina Gosseye, Naomi Stead, Deborah Van der Plaat (2019)

© Janina Gosseye
This book is a collection of twelve essays by an international group of scholars which deals with various research methods of oral history and the question of who has been unheard. The book critiques that architectural history contains mostly the main architect’s view as well as addresses only a particular group of intellectuals. Therefore the individual narratives within an on-going relational process should be decentralized by having an 'integrative dialogue with actors'
Mara Trübenbach Claudia Mainardi
Review

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Book Corner: “Speaking of Buildings: Oral History in Architectural Research” by Janina Gosseye, Naomi Stead, Deborah Van der Plaat (2019)

Mara Trübenbach Claudia Mainardi
© Janina Gosseye
This book is a collection of twelve essays by an international group of scholars which deals with various research methods of oral history and the question of who has been unheard. The book critiques that architectural history contains mostly the main architect’s view as well as addresses only a particular group of intellectuals. Therefore the individual narratives within an on-going relational process should be decentralized by having an 'integrative dialogue with actors'
Online Teaching Module

On Method: Tacit Knowledge in the Expanded Field of Architecture

© Anna Livia Vørsel
Anna Livia Vørsel Helena Mattsson Helena Mattsson Jennifer Mack KTH Royal Institute of Technology, KTH School of Architecture
Online Teaching Module

February 10, 2022

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On Method: Tacit Knowledge in the Expanded Field of Architecture

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

TACK Summer School Report: Re-enacting Tacit Knowledge

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

September 1, 2021

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TACK Summer School Report: Re-enacting Tacit Knowledge

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

The B-Sides. Tupaia, Kybernetes & Lara Croft

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

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The B-Sides. Tupaia, Kybernetes & Lara Croft

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image 01: Tower of Babel under Construction Date: 1590 Artist: unknown Source: https://www.wga.hu/html/m/master/zunk_ge/zunk_ge4/ztower_b.html, © Public Domain
ABSTRACT
The present essay seeks to point out contemporary phenomena of decreasing autonomy by the alienation of everyday skills that, together with architectural drawing, promote the architect and urbanist’s figure to that of an expert, thus immobilizing its practice in a heteronomous form. It aims the exposition, with the critiques of Ivan Illich and Sérgio Ferro, how the architect’s practice contributes to the alienation and exploitation of the construction worker’s labour in detriment of the body-skill dialectics, which would allow for a closer relation between individual and society. Opposing this alienation processes, both in consuming as in the production of architecture, with studies about technology and anthropology, it argues in favor of a politics of transformation of architectures technology based on the relation between body, skills, learning and technique.
Eric Crevels
Essay Journal Article Open Access Publication

October 16, 2022

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

Eric Crevels
Image 01: Tower of Babel under Construction Date: 1590 Artist: unknown Source: https://www.wga.hu/html/m/master/zunk_ge/zunk_ge4/ztower_b.html, © Public Domain
Image 02: Building of Babel Date: 1882 Artist: Edmund Ollier Source: https://archive.org/details/dli.granth.77290/mode/2up , © Public Domain
Image 03: Weltchronik in Versen, Szene: Der Turmbau zu Babel Date: circa 1370 Artist: Meister der Weltenchronik Source: The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., © Public Domain
ABSTRACT
The present essay seeks to point out contemporary phenomena of decreasing autonomy by the alienation of everyday skills that, together with architectural drawing, promote the architect and urbanist’s figure to that of an expert, thus immobilizing its practice in a heteronomous form. It aims the exposition, with the critiques of Ivan Illich and Sérgio Ferro, how the architect’s practice contributes to the alienation and exploitation of the construction worker’s labour in detriment of the body-skill dialectics, which would allow for a closer relation between individual and society. Opposing this alienation processes, both in consuming as in the production of architecture, with studies about technology and anthropology, it argues in favor of a politics of transformation of architectures technology based on the relation between body, skills, learning and technique.
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.
Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Clay Landscape

This 1:1000 landscape model made from clay shows the site of a prominent 12th century church and graveyard located between two housing areas, Tensta and Rinkeby, built during the 1960´s as part of the Million Programme in Stockholm, where we are currently adding a wall of housing combined with an assembly hall, 100 metres long. In our practice we have used this kind of clay model for numerous projects over the years.
Ola Broms Wessel Klas Ruin Spridd
Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Clay Landscape

Ola Broms Wessel Klas Ruin Spridd
© TACK
This 1:1000 landscape model made from clay shows the site of a prominent 12th century church and graveyard located between two housing areas, Tensta and Rinkeby, built during the 1960´s as part of the Million Programme in Stockholm, where we are currently adding a wall of housing combined with an assembly hall, 100 metres long. In our practice we have used this kind of clay model for numerous projects over the years.
Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

Material Chariots

Material references play a vital role in the collaborative work of architects. At the office of De Smet Vermeulen architects in Ghent, chariots are used to expose samples of materials and combine them into palettes.
Paul Vermeulen De Smet Vermeulen architecten
Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

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Material Chariots

Paul Vermeulen De Smet Vermeulen architecten
© TACK
Material references play a vital role in the collaborative work of architects. At the office of De Smet Vermeulen architects in Ghent, chariots are used to expose samples of materials and combine them into palettes.
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.
Drawing Exhibition TACK Exhibition Object

The Yield of the Land

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

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The Yield of the Land

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

Return from the Future: The Concept of Retroactivity

OMA (1975), triptych, Boompjes Tower Slab, 1982. Colour silkscreen print, 716 × 1216 mm. Silkscreener: Bernard Ruygrok. Source: Drawing Matter
Koolhaas called his 1978 book Delirious New York a ‘retroactive manifesto for Manhattan’. In her essay Angelika Schnell describes how the concept of retroactivity is used in the architecture of OMA. Especially the high-rise project for Boompjes in Rotterdam, made between 1979 and 1981, is a design that ‘has become effective at a time in the past’. A careful reading of the accompanying text, but also the features of the design itself, reveal the circular logic of the hermeneutical model used by Koolhaas: designs are the stories that provoked the causes in the past.
Angelika Schnell
Essay

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Return from the Future: The Concept of Retroactivity

Angelika Schnell
OMA (1975), triptych, Boompjes Tower Slab, 1982. Colour silkscreen print, 716 × 1216 mm. Silkscreener: Bernard Ruygrok. Source: Drawing Matter
Koolhaas called his 1978 book Delirious New York a ‘retroactive manifesto for Manhattan’. In her essay Angelika Schnell describes how the concept of retroactivity is used in the architecture of OMA. Especially the high-rise project for Boompjes in Rotterdam, made between 1979 and 1981, is a design that ‘has become effective at a time in the past’. A careful reading of the accompanying text, but also the features of the design itself, reveal the circular logic of the hermeneutical model used by Koolhaas: designs are the stories that provoked the causes in the past.
Conference Paper Paper Session VECTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

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

Fig. 1 Cologno Monzese on a Saturday afternoon in the 1960s. From Casabella Continuità, n. 282, December 1963, p. 4
ABSTRACT
Exploring historical models of the construction of communities of tacit knowledge, this paper examines the contribution of leftist practitioners to Milanese postwar planning culture focusing on the communist architectural collective Collettivo di Architettura. During the reconstruction period, Milan underwent significant economic, social, and territorial transformations that intensified the divide between the city center and the periphery. The Milanese outskirts were left to speculation, rapid urbanization, and high migration rates without adequate planning tools and policies. In this context, leftist practitioners sought to address the problems affecting the Milanese periphery and wanted to contribute to their resolution. Among them, Collettivo di Architettura stood out for its explicit political stance and extensive contribution. Its members attributed social and political dimensions to architectural work and integrated collaborative ways of working and political militancy into their practice. During the 1950s, they provided free professional support in the Milanese periphery in addition to their architectural practice: as urbanista condotto, they assisted municipalities that lacked adequate planning tools and knowledge and initiated discussions with local authorities, institutions, and economic operators concerning urban development. As a result, procedures, strategies, and processes were collectively developed to establish effective planning methods and improve living conditions in the Milanese outskirts. By explicitly drawing from the Gramscian concept of the organic intellectual and the example of other committed practitioners of their time, the engagement of Collettivo’s members provided the basis for a shared planning culture. Thus, this case study highlights the significance of political commitment in generating collaborative communities of tacit knowledge.
Elettra Carnelli
Conference Paper Paper Session VECTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

July 19, 2023

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

Elettra Carnelli
Fig. 1 Cologno Monzese on a Saturday afternoon in the 1960s. From Casabella Continuità, n. 282, December 1963, p. 4
Fig. 2 First scheme of the Intercommunal Plan of Milan’s territory, known as “modello a turbina”. Centro Studi PIM, 25 July 1963. From Urbanistica, n. 50-51, October 1967, p. 34
© TACK
ABSTRACT
Exploring historical models of the construction of communities of tacit knowledge, this paper examines the contribution of leftist practitioners to Milanese postwar planning culture focusing on the communist architectural collective Collettivo di Architettura. During the reconstruction period, Milan underwent significant economic, social, and territorial transformations that intensified the divide between the city center and the periphery. The Milanese outskirts were left to speculation, rapid urbanization, and high migration rates without adequate planning tools and policies. In this context, leftist practitioners sought to address the problems affecting the Milanese periphery and wanted to contribute to their resolution. Among them, Collettivo di Architettura stood out for its explicit political stance and extensive contribution. Its members attributed social and political dimensions to architectural work and integrated collaborative ways of working and political militancy into their practice. During the 1950s, they provided free professional support in the Milanese periphery in addition to their architectural practice: as urbanista condotto, they assisted municipalities that lacked adequate planning tools and knowledge and initiated discussions with local authorities, institutions, and economic operators concerning urban development. As a result, procedures, strategies, and processes were collectively developed to establish effective planning methods and improve living conditions in the Milanese outskirts. By explicitly drawing from the Gramscian concept of the organic intellectual and the example of other committed practitioners of their time, the engagement of Collettivo’s members provided the basis for a shared planning culture. Thus, this case study highlights the significance of political commitment in generating collaborative communities of tacit knowledge.
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.
Open Access Publication Paper

Knowledge in Architecture: draughtsmanship or craftsmanship?

Image 01: Mason worker drawing Date: 1425 Source: Hausbuch der Mendelschen Zwölfbrüderstiftung, Band 1. Nürnberg 1426–1549. Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Amb. 317.2°, © Public Domain
ABSTRACT
What are draughtsmanship and craftsmanship in architecture and what is their relation? This question represents, of course, what could be called two distinct fields of knowledge and communities of practice, architecture and craft, and can very generally describe how their specific knowledge take shape or, in other words, through what kind of practice it is manifested.
Eric Crevels
Open Access Publication Paper

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Knowledge in Architecture: draughtsmanship or craftsmanship?

Eric Crevels
Image 01: Mason worker drawing Date: 1425 Source: Hausbuch der Mendelschen Zwölfbrüderstiftung, Band 1. Nürnberg 1426–1549. Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Amb. 317.2°, © Public Domain
Image 02: Sketch of a detail by John Ruskin Source: http://www.themorgan.org/collection/literary-and-historical-manuscripts/191761, © Public Domain
ABSTRACT
What are draughtsmanship and craftsmanship in architecture and what is their relation? This question represents, of course, what could be called two distinct fields of knowledge and communities of practice, architecture and craft, and can very generally describe how their specific knowledge take shape or, in other words, through what kind of practice it is manifested.
Book chapter Conference Paper Open Access Publication

15 August 2021

The Tangible Presence of Human Labor in Architecture

Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria, © Public Domain
ABSTRACT
This essay aims to show that in many of the theories that fundament material culture and architectural experience, labor is implied in the constitution of material and, although seldom directly addressed, it is a determining dimension of materiality. From the Vitruvian and Renaissance treatises and Gottfried Semper to John Ruskin and the Art and Crafts Movement, the underlying presence of labor can be seen intertwined with materials whenever they are called into architectural discussion as sensorial arguments. Just like the physical qualities of materials, labor, skills and techniques are imprinted in the built environment and contribute to the creation of particular atmospheres.
Eric Crevels
Book chapter Conference Paper Open Access Publication

15 August 2021

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The Tangible Presence of Human Labor in Architecture

Eric Crevels
Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria, © Public Domain
Ruskin’s The Nature of the Gothic, © Public Domain
Vitruviu’s De Architectura Libri Decem, © Public Domain
ABSTRACT
This essay aims to show that in many of the theories that fundament material culture and architectural experience, labor is implied in the constitution of material and, although seldom directly addressed, it is a determining dimension of materiality. From the Vitruvian and Renaissance treatises and Gottfried Semper to John Ruskin and the Art and Crafts Movement, the underlying presence of labor can be seen intertwined with materials whenever they are called into architectural discussion as sensorial arguments. Just like the physical qualities of materials, labor, skills and techniques are imprinted in the built environment and contribute to the creation of particular atmospheres.
Online Teaching Module

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

© Caendia Wijnbelt
Caendia Wijnbelt Margitta Buchert Leibniz Universität Hannover, Faculty of Architecture and Landscape Sciences
Online Teaching Module

February 1, 2023

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

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