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

Diagram Drawing Presentation Video

Re-enacting Le Corbusier’s way of sketching

Paula Strunden and Desilava Petkova (as students) are re-enacting the Le Corbusier's style to sketch.
Paula Strunden Desislava Petkova Angelika Schnell Eva Sommeregger Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture
Diagram Drawing Presentation Video

November 13, 2012

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Re-enacting Le Corbusier’s way of sketching

Paula Strunden Desislava Petkova Angelika Schnell Eva Sommeregger Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture
Paula Strunden and Desilava Petkova (as students) are re-enacting the Le Corbusier's style to sketch.
Newsletter

Map of Mobility – A visualisation of research movement

Gennaro Postiglione initiated the idea of a “TACK Map” and shares with us his thoughts on the map showing the research movement of the TACK doctoral students.
Gennaro Postiglione
Newsletter

May 22, 2022

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Map of Mobility – A visualisation of research movement

Gennaro Postiglione
Gennaro Postiglione initiated the idea of a “TACK Map” and shares with us his thoughts on the map showing the research movement of the TACK doctoral students.
Conference Paper Journal Article Paper

Aspectos da conceituação do trabalho em Marx: a alienação como abstração concreta

ABSTRACT
This article covers a question relative to the double determination and dialecticity in the concept of labour, as developed by Marx from the Hegelian dialectics. It seeks to demonstrate the ontological significance of the concept to the Marxian thought, a key element in his critics as a path to self-conscience and as a territory for alienation. Through the inquiry on the concepts of abstraction concreteness in relation to labour, it hopes to clarify its employment and epistemological reach as it provides an understanding of alienation as a process of abstraction that, projected in the social relations of production, becomes concrete.
Eric Crevels
Conference Paper Journal Article Paper

July 27, 2020

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Aspectos da conceituação do trabalho em Marx: a alienação como abstração concreta

Eric Crevels
ABSTRACT
This article covers a question relative to the double determination and dialecticity in the concept of labour, as developed by Marx from the Hegelian dialectics. It seeks to demonstrate the ontological significance of the concept to the Marxian thought, a key element in his critics as a path to self-conscience and as a territory for alienation. Through the inquiry on the concepts of abstraction concreteness in relation to labour, it hopes to clarify its employment and epistemological reach as it provides an understanding of alienation as a process of abstraction that, projected in the social relations of production, becomes concrete.
Paper Session NATURE(S) TACK Conference Proceedings

Busy body – Living and working in urban renewal neighbourhoods 

Littie Diederen and Yvonne van den Elsen, Zoiets Maak Je Toch Niet, Ik Zeg Altijd, Dat Doen Mannen... Ervaringen van Vrouwen in de Stadsvernieuwing (Amsterdam: NCDB, 1983).
ABSTRACT
Urban renewal reinforces the isolation of working-class women. This was concluded in the 1983 publication “Zoiets maak je toch niet, ik zeg altijd, dat doen mannen…”. This booklet criticizes 1980s participatory urban renewal of the Staatsliedenbuurt in Amsterdam and addresses the exclusion of women. Several inventive tools were developed in this neighbourhood to empower women to make their diverse, tacit, embodied knowledge heard and make design suggestions that better fitted their needs. As a result, new knowledge was brought into participatory urban renewal processes of which women were so often excluded; diversifying and expanding what was commonly perceived as the concerns of the resident. This paper brings forward various tools developed in the Staatsliedenbuurt that were used as vehicles to bring women’s voices into urban renewal processes, such as the fictiocritical character Els, a workshop on dwelling stories, and a manual. The paper contributes to histories on the collective efforts by various women’s groups in the 1980s that fought exclusion and sought to develop feminist approaches for urban design by making what is the tacitly known, explicit; making the invisible, visible.
Soscha Monteiro de Jesus
Paper Session NATURE(S) TACK Conference Proceedings

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Busy body – Living and working in urban renewal neighbourhoods 

Soscha Monteiro de Jesus
Littie Diederen and Yvonne van den Elsen, Zoiets Maak Je Toch Niet, Ik Zeg Altijd, Dat Doen Mannen... Ervaringen van Vrouwen in de Stadsvernieuwing (Amsterdam: NCDB, 1983).
ABSTRACT
Urban renewal reinforces the isolation of working-class women. This was concluded in the 1983 publication “Zoiets maak je toch niet, ik zeg altijd, dat doen mannen…”. This booklet criticizes 1980s participatory urban renewal of the Staatsliedenbuurt in Amsterdam and addresses the exclusion of women. Several inventive tools were developed in this neighbourhood to empower women to make their diverse, tacit, embodied knowledge heard and make design suggestions that better fitted their needs. As a result, new knowledge was brought into participatory urban renewal processes of which women were so often excluded; diversifying and expanding what was commonly perceived as the concerns of the resident. This paper brings forward various tools developed in the Staatsliedenbuurt that were used as vehicles to bring women’s voices into urban renewal processes, such as the fictiocritical character Els, a workshop on dwelling stories, and a manual. The paper contributes to histories on the collective efforts by various women’s groups in the 1980s that fought exclusion and sought to develop feminist approaches for urban design by making what is the tacitly known, explicit; making the invisible, visible.
Image Interview Reflection

Echoes from the Venice Biennale TACK Visit

Image 01 “First Image”, Serbian Pavilion, Caendia Wijnbelt, © Caendia Wijnbelt
Caendia Wijnbelt and Paula Strunden reflect upon two images of the Venice Biennale 2021.
Paula Strunden Caendia Wijnbelt
Image Interview Reflection

November 1, 2021

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Echoes from the Venice Biennale TACK Visit

Paula Strunden Caendia Wijnbelt
Image 01 “First Image”, Serbian Pavilion, Caendia Wijnbelt, © Caendia Wijnbelt
Image 02 “Another Image”, Brazilian Pavilion, Caendia Wijnbelt, © Caendia Wijnbelt
Caendia Wijnbelt and Paula Strunden reflect upon two images of the Venice Biennale 2021.
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.
Book chapter Case Study Conference Paper Paper

2022

A Joint of Many Worlds: Entangled Stories in Battaile en Ibens’s 78+ Construction System in Timber

© Eric Crevels
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the distinct networks of technical and embodied knowledge present in the development of the 78+ construction system in timber, designed in the 1970-80s by Flemish design office Battaile Ibens. It develops the history of the knooppunt, a joint of a particular material and technical complexity that structures the system’s wooden beams and cross-shaped columns, and argues for the understanding of architecture and construction as complex constellations of different crafts and skills, including but not limited to architectural design and engineering. Design and technical decisions are traced in parallel to economic and marketing strategies, weaving together social and material phenomena that shaped the system’s history. From the initial designs and prototyping, through publicity decisions and appearances in international expositions, until its idealization in the office’s approach, the history of the knooppunt exemplifies the interplay between different stakeholders and knowledge orbiting the technological development of construction systems.
Eric Crevels
Book chapter Case Study Conference Paper Paper

2022

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A Joint of Many Worlds: Entangled Stories in Battaile en Ibens’s 78+ Construction System in Timber

Eric Crevels
© Eric Crevels
© Eric Crevels
© Eric Crevels
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the distinct networks of technical and embodied knowledge present in the development of the 78+ construction system in timber, designed in the 1970-80s by Flemish design office Battaile Ibens. It develops the history of the knooppunt, a joint of a particular material and technical complexity that structures the system’s wooden beams and cross-shaped columns, and argues for the understanding of architecture and construction as complex constellations of different crafts and skills, including but not limited to architectural design and engineering. Design and technical decisions are traced in parallel to economic and marketing strategies, weaving together social and material phenomena that shaped the system’s history. From the initial designs and prototyping, through publicity decisions and appearances in international expositions, until its idealization in the office’s approach, the history of the knooppunt exemplifies the interplay between different stakeholders and knowledge orbiting the technological development of construction systems.
Paper

From Unconventional Households to Unconventional Affordable Housing

ABSTRACT
Over the past years, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars at Politecnico di Milano (UHUAH!) has been exploring how contemporary social and demographic dynamics challenge housing policies and projects. These issues have been at the core of teaching activities in design-based studios involving architecture students. Spurred on not only by the literature on the subject (Ronald/Elsinga, 2012), we are engaged in field research investigating the state of the art of dwelling practices, with the aim to develop alternative housing solutions (and typologies) able to overcome the distance that emerged between demand and supply. A gap mostly depending on the major changes that happened in the last twenty years in households composition, and in what is typically referred to as the family (Carlson/Meyer, 2014), with the consequent crisis of the ideal equivalence between “the family” and the “apartment typology” (Star strategies + architecture, 2016). The paper will therefore present relevant case studies from the Research by Design explorations conducted on existing building stock, a decision taken to empower Adaptive Reuse as a sustainable approach also in Housing. Our Design Manifesto considers the apartment as constituted by a system of independent rooms, in which the bed is not anymore the core device, while the connective space is interpreted as common shared areas (Connective = Collective).
Gennaro Postiglione Paola Briata Constanze Wolfgring
Paper

October 10, 2022

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From Unconventional Households to Unconventional Affordable Housing

Gennaro Postiglione Paola Briata Constanze Wolfgring
© Gennaro Postiglione
Drawing focusing on the life around furniture (@ReCoDe-DAStU)., © Gennaro Postiglione
Design strategy: a set of devices is set in place in dialogue with the existing structure (@ReCoDe-DAStU)., © Gennaro Postiglione
External view of one of the La Viridiana blocks (@ReCoDe-DAStU)., © Gennaro Postiglione
© Gennaro Postiglione
ABSTRACT
Over the past years, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars at Politecnico di Milano (UHUAH!) has been exploring how contemporary social and demographic dynamics challenge housing policies and projects. These issues have been at the core of teaching activities in design-based studios involving architecture students. Spurred on not only by the literature on the subject (Ronald/Elsinga, 2012), we are engaged in field research investigating the state of the art of dwelling practices, with the aim to develop alternative housing solutions (and typologies) able to overcome the distance that emerged between demand and supply. A gap mostly depending on the major changes that happened in the last twenty years in households composition, and in what is typically referred to as the family (Carlson/Meyer, 2014), with the consequent crisis of the ideal equivalence between “the family” and the “apartment typology” (Star strategies + architecture, 2016). The paper will therefore present relevant case studies from the Research by Design explorations conducted on existing building stock, a decision taken to empower Adaptive Reuse as a sustainable approach also in Housing. Our Design Manifesto considers the apartment as constituted by a system of independent rooms, in which the bed is not anymore the core device, while the connective space is interpreted as common shared areas (Connective = Collective).
Online Teaching Module

Probing Tacit Knowledge. Codes of Tacit Knowledge

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

March 10, 2023

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Probing Tacit Knowledge. Codes of Tacit Knowledge

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

POSTHUMANIST SANDBOX: THE POTENTIAL OF MULTIPLAYER – ENVIRONMENTS

ABSTRACT
This paper seeks to reveal a novel assessment of creative production in academic education, re-evaluating the conceptual and artistic potential of virtual real-time collaboration through digital media. Allowing for transcultural exchange as well as global participation, this could positively influence the development of novel artistic approaches and innovative measures for universities by contributing to a more contemporary, location-independent, and ultimately more equal form of art and knowledge production.
Valerie Messini Eva Sommeregger
Conference Paper Paper

November 4, 2021

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POSTHUMANIST SANDBOX: THE POTENTIAL OF MULTIPLAYER – ENVIRONMENTS

Valerie Messini Eva Sommeregger
© Eva Sommeregger
ABSTRACT
This paper seeks to reveal a novel assessment of creative production in academic education, re-evaluating the conceptual and artistic potential of virtual real-time collaboration through digital media. Allowing for transcultural exchange as well as global participation, this could positively influence the development of novel artistic approaches and innovative measures for universities by contributing to a more contemporary, location-independent, and ultimately more equal form of art and knowledge production.
Essay

Designing space through motion pictures

© Eva Sommeregger
Eva Sommeregger reflects on the winter semester 2013/14 at ABKW, where animation technology was used in the HTC design studio “Play Architecture” to design spatiality.
Eva Sommeregger
Essay

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Designing space through motion pictures

Eva Sommeregger
© Eva Sommeregger
Eva Sommeregger reflects on the winter semester 2013/14 at ABKW, where animation technology was used in the HTC design studio “Play Architecture” to design spatiality.
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.
Site writing Website

2019-2023

Writing Urban Places – New Narratives of the European City

© Klaske Havik
Writing Urban Places proposes an innovative investigation and implementation of a process for developing human understanding of communities, their society, and their situatedness, by narrative methods.
Klaske Havik
Site writing Website

2019-2023

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Writing Urban Places – New Narratives of the European City

Klaske Havik
© Klaske Havik
Writing Urban Places proposes an innovative investigation and implementation of a process for developing human understanding of communities, their society, and their situatedness, by narrative methods.
Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

Carpenter Chair

© Sarah Vecchio
Carpenter Chair is an icon of construction and a eulogy to the exploration of the ordinary. It is a low, comfortable, and flexible lounge chair inspired by the aesthetics of the construction site.
Sarah Becchio Paolo Borghino
Exhibition Model TACK Exhibition Object

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Carpenter Chair

Sarah Becchio Paolo Borghino
© Sarah Vecchio
© TACK
Carpenter Chair is an icon of construction and a eulogy to the exploration of the ordinary. It is a low, comfortable, and flexible lounge chair inspired by the aesthetics of the construction site.
Book chapter TACK Book

Coarse epistemes: Skill, craftsmanship and tacit knowledge in the grit of the world

© TACK
ABSTRACT
In the words of Dutch archaeologist Maikel Kuijpers, craft is “a way of exploring and understanding the material world”. This definition suggests that craftsmanship can be understood as a touchstone for a theory of knowledge in material productions. By exploring the role of skill in the processes of making and its epistemic correspondence, I develop the hypothesis that craftsmanship is as a perceptive-cognitive enactment within the making process, a form of attunement with production. The argument is that the material, productive side of work deploys and operates a particular epistemological regime, based on types of practical engagement deeply related to the possibilities and contingencies of objective, concrete reality. Making means implicating oneself with the material world, embedding the body in the processes of transforming matter and partaking in the flows of forces that form things. Thus, the knowledge in the making – skill – can be understood as the invention or establishment of a new mode of perception through action that is enacted by tools, movements, techniques etc. This practical perception acts as the foundational basis on which craftsmanship is performed, representing its conditions of possibility. Given the perceptual, embodied nature of craftsmanship, its transmission is rendered impossible outside the actual engagement with production. As such, this interpretation refers back to the original distinctions made by Gilbert Ryle of “knowing that” and “knowing how” that influenced Michael Polanyi in his definition of tacit knowledge. The particular epistemic rationality of crafts provides insights for understanding knowledge inside disciplines involved with creative practice, such as architecture. The epistemic coupling with production helps to understand how architects design, but it also reveals a general epistemic schism in the discipline, founded in the inconsistency between abstract designerly knowledge and the craftsmanship of construction.
Eric Crevels
Book chapter TACK Book

November 1, 2022

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Coarse epistemes: Skill, craftsmanship and tacit knowledge in the grit of the world

Eric Crevels
© TACK
ABSTRACT
In the words of Dutch archaeologist Maikel Kuijpers, craft is “a way of exploring and understanding the material world”. This definition suggests that craftsmanship can be understood as a touchstone for a theory of knowledge in material productions. By exploring the role of skill in the processes of making and its epistemic correspondence, I develop the hypothesis that craftsmanship is as a perceptive-cognitive enactment within the making process, a form of attunement with production. The argument is that the material, productive side of work deploys and operates a particular epistemological regime, based on types of practical engagement deeply related to the possibilities and contingencies of objective, concrete reality. Making means implicating oneself with the material world, embedding the body in the processes of transforming matter and partaking in the flows of forces that form things. Thus, the knowledge in the making – skill – can be understood as the invention or establishment of a new mode of perception through action that is enacted by tools, movements, techniques etc. This practical perception acts as the foundational basis on which craftsmanship is performed, representing its conditions of possibility. Given the perceptual, embodied nature of craftsmanship, its transmission is rendered impossible outside the actual engagement with production. As such, this interpretation refers back to the original distinctions made by Gilbert Ryle of “knowing that” and “knowing how” that influenced Michael Polanyi in his definition of tacit knowledge. The particular epistemic rationality of crafts provides insights for understanding knowledge inside disciplines involved with creative practice, such as architecture. The epistemic coupling with production helps to understand how architects design, but it also reveals a general epistemic schism in the discipline, founded in the inconsistency between abstract designerly knowledge and the craftsmanship of construction.
Book chapter Interview Open Access Publication

Shot/Reverse Shot: A conversation on architecture, design and the climate emergency

A Conversation on Architecture, Design and the Climate Emergency with Rania Ghosn, El Hadi Jazairy & Peg Rawes facilitated by Rodney Harrison (RH)
Peg Rawes
Book chapter Interview Open Access Publication

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Shot/Reverse Shot: A conversation on architecture, design and the climate emergency

Peg Rawes
A Conversation on Architecture, Design and the Climate Emergency with Rania Ghosn, El Hadi Jazairy & Peg Rawes facilitated by Rodney Harrison (RH)
Paper Paper Session ACTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

Understanding the roles of tacit knowledge in the historical collaboration between AEC: a case study approach

Author: Laurens Bulckaen (picture taken) Title: Testing report of Hennebique office on the reinforced concrete floors of the Postal office in Ghent (1906) source: KADOC
ABSTRACT
This paper tries to introduce three kinds of tacit knowledge that, according to the authors, are present in the process of designing and constructing a building. By looking through the lens of the concept of tacit knowledge, collaboration between the architect, engineer and contractor, thus the building professionals is evaluated. By closely examining a limited number of key archival documents in three case studies that were already developed before, it becomes visible that tacit knowledge is an indispensable part of the intangible process of collaboration in building. Since creating buildings requires to assemble large amounts of knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines, also interdisciplinary knowledge is necessary, which is often tacit in nature. As the complexity in building grew, throughout history it also became visible that roles of the building actors started to shift and new roles emerged. Using the concept of tacit knowledge this research tries to bridge the gap of looking at the building process as a collaborative effort also showing that the building process is governed by much more than the factual explicit knowledge of only one actor.
Laurens Bulckaen Rika Devos
Paper Paper Session ACTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

June 20, 2023

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Understanding the roles of tacit knowledge in the historical collaboration between AEC: a case study approach

Laurens Bulckaen Rika Devos
Author: Laurens Bulckaen (picture taken) Title: Testing report of Hennebique office on the reinforced concrete floors of the Postal office in Ghent (1906) source: KADOC
Author: Laurens Bulckaen (picture taken) Title: Detail of testing report of Hennebique office on the reinforced concrete floors of the Postal office in Ghent (1906) source: KADOC
ABSTRACT
This paper tries to introduce three kinds of tacit knowledge that, according to the authors, are present in the process of designing and constructing a building. By looking through the lens of the concept of tacit knowledge, collaboration between the architect, engineer and contractor, thus the building professionals is evaluated. By closely examining a limited number of key archival documents in three case studies that were already developed before, it becomes visible that tacit knowledge is an indispensable part of the intangible process of collaboration in building. Since creating buildings requires to assemble large amounts of knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines, also interdisciplinary knowledge is necessary, which is often tacit in nature. As the complexity in building grew, throughout history it also became visible that roles of the building actors started to shift and new roles emerged. Using the concept of tacit knowledge this research tries to bridge the gap of looking at the building process as a collaborative effort also showing that the building process is governed by much more than the factual explicit knowledge of only one actor.
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

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.
Video

Toolkit for Today

As part of the 2017 Toolkit seminar, Janina Gosseye and Naomi Stead raise questions and discuss cases from their own work gathering oral histories, including for a project on female architects in Australia. They are joined by, Thomas-Bernard Kenniff, who discusses interviews he conducted with those affected by the development of Montreal’s Place des Festivals.
Janina Gosseye Naomi Stead
Video

August 17, 2017

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Toolkit for Today

Janina Gosseye Naomi Stead
As part of the 2017 Toolkit seminar, Janina Gosseye and Naomi Stead raise questions and discuss cases from their own work gathering oral histories, including for a project on female architects in Australia. They are joined by, Thomas-Bernard Kenniff, who discusses interviews he conducted with those affected by the development of Montreal’s Place des Festivals.
Online Teaching Module

Unveiling Embodied Tacit Knowledge through the Act of Drawing

© Paula Strunden
Paula Strunden Angelika Schnell Eva Sommeregger Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture
Online Teaching Module

February 20, 2023

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Unveiling Embodied Tacit Knowledge through the Act of Drawing

Paula Strunden Angelika Schnell Eva Sommeregger Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture
© Paula Strunden
© Paula Strunden
© Paula Strunden
© Paula Strunden
© Paula Strunden
© Paula Strunden
Paper Session VECTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

History meets the Body. Re-enactment as a mode of architectural inquiry.

ABSTRACT
Although we normally think about ideas and discourses as disembodied entities, the truth is that tacit architectural concepts, specific ways of understanding history, time, and space, are inscribed into our built environments, and they can only be disentangled with the help of our own bodies, by performing actions within, in, and around buildings. This paper explores the use of re-enactments as a method for architectural historians, using Aldo and Hannie van Eyck’s own house as a case study. The researcher’s body informs the reflections and findings, from materiality to meaning, through the continuous and embedded experience of the space, a seventeenth century building were the Van Eycks lived from 1965, which was diligently remodelled by themselves into their treasured family home. Almost hidden from the street hustle, yet open to the outside, the place lights up as soon as the threshold is crossed. Both literally and metaphorically, the changes and additions to the building reveal their architectural thinking and ways of inhabiting. In the house, layers of temporality, materiality, everyday living and lived experience mingle with design solutions and worldviews affecting them. However, while re-enactments allow for an embodied understanding of how architectural ideas take material form, they also hold the potential to show the situatedness, partiality and contingency of the re-enacted practices, questioning the same values that they unearth. keywords.
Alejandro Campos-Uribe Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
Paper Session VECTORS TACK Conference Proceedings

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History meets the Body. Re-enactment as a mode of architectural inquiry.

Alejandro Campos-Uribe Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
© TACK
ABSTRACT
Although we normally think about ideas and discourses as disembodied entities, the truth is that tacit architectural concepts, specific ways of understanding history, time, and space, are inscribed into our built environments, and they can only be disentangled with the help of our own bodies, by performing actions within, in, and around buildings. This paper explores the use of re-enactments as a method for architectural historians, using Aldo and Hannie van Eyck’s own house as a case study. The researcher’s body informs the reflections and findings, from materiality to meaning, through the continuous and embedded experience of the space, a seventeenth century building were the Van Eycks lived from 1965, which was diligently remodelled by themselves into their treasured family home. Almost hidden from the street hustle, yet open to the outside, the place lights up as soon as the threshold is crossed. Both literally and metaphorically, the changes and additions to the building reveal their architectural thinking and ways of inhabiting. In the house, layers of temporality, materiality, everyday living and lived experience mingle with design solutions and worldviews affecting them. However, while re-enactments allow for an embodied understanding of how architectural ideas take material form, they also hold the potential to show the situatedness, partiality and contingency of the re-enacted practices, questioning the same values that they unearth. keywords.
Book chapter Open Access Publication

2021

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

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

2021

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

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

Tannour

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

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Tannour

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

Book Corner: ‘Pre-Positions’, in Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism by Jane Rendell (2010)

Rendell, J. (2010) ‘Pre-Positions’, in Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism
The introduction to the author’s positional body of work, sets the theoretical and intellectual context for the ideas underpinning Site-Writing as a practice and their aims in giving voice to this form of practice. The author uses seminal writers on phycology, art-practice and philosophy as figures to guide their later theories and discusses the relationship between architecture and art-critique as reflective and positional practices.
Jhono Bennett Anna Livia Vørsel
Note Review Site writing

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Book Corner: ‘Pre-Positions’, in Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism by Jane Rendell (2010)

Jhono Bennett Anna Livia Vørsel
Rendell, J. (2010) ‘Pre-Positions’, in Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism
The introduction to the author’s positional body of work, sets the theoretical and intellectual context for the ideas underpinning Site-Writing as a practice and their aims in giving voice to this form of practice. The author uses seminal writers on phycology, art-practice and philosophy as figures to guide their later theories and discusses the relationship between architecture and art-critique as reflective and positional practices.
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."
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 860413. This website reflects only the author’s view and the European Commission Research Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
© 2022 TACK Communities of Tacit Knowledge
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