Re[Search] through Architecture
Under the title theme Re[Search] through Architecture, ICAR 2015 proposes a debate of the subject defining some new principles of nowadays architectural design.
In the XXI-st century, in searching of a “style”, after Postmodernism, it is considered that new architecture based on algorithms and parameters may offer new senses of space continuity and legibility. In opposite, the contextualist and phenomenologist movements consider this approach as a formal and fragile tendency, culturally un-sustained and which won’t prove its consistence in time as utopist and futurist did.
Topics like new avant-garde movement, stylistic searching, anachronistically architecture, space continuities and correspondences, lived architecture or experimental manifesto projects, the evolving of geometries, urban continuities or classical defragmentation, functional zoning, social impact scenarios, space formalization, aesthetic and symbolic design values, authentically or new built archaeology, sustainable design etc. will be presented and debated under three main sections:
- Traditional versus Computational
- Innovation and Experiment
- Archive – Utopia – Events. Built / Unbuilt
1. Traditional versus Computational
If the naturalism and graphic virtuosity of architectural portrayals are too great, if they lack “open patches” where our imagination and curiosity about the reality of the drawing can penetrate the image, the portrayal itself becomes the object of our desire (…). The portrayal no longer holds a promise. It refers only to itself.
Representation is vital for architectural education, being the basis for the transmission of knowledge, ideas, feelings etc. Architectural education can decide between remaining in the domain of absolute simulation and proposing a strong interaction with the real world, in search of the essence of things. Academic teaching and work with artisans, in the very place of the building site, within a concrete experience have historically been the two opposite ways of learning architecture. For pedagogy the topic appears in a different light when we locate the “real” beyond the material world that surrounds us.
Image divorces from any rules and proclaims its own reality (XX-th century). We are now facing a revolution of the enchained spirit searching liberation from the straight canons of technology and efficiency after having lost the contact with the transcendental understanding of the world. But technology has already become too powerful and art itself started to depend on it. The present paradigm of parametric architecture and of computer assisted design in general is an effect of this growing role of technology in architectural representation. Should we assume this role unconditionally or should we preserve classical patterns of representation? That is the question.
2. Innovation and Experiment
Motto: ipsa scientia potestas est / experientia docet
This section aims to find out and debate how innovation and experiment are shaping the architectural, planning and preservation field distinctively through the design process. This process is about exploring, protecting, rehearsing and delivering ideas in a buildable form.
The 21st century demonstrated that architecture is a process-oriented realm and the confines of the architectural object type realm are blurred.
The search through design here (in this specific section) takes in account how the built environment is transformed by various innovations both in technology and in the way people use and respond to this.
The experiment is perceived as a factor of progress and stands for a wide range of declinations: we aim to talk about experiment in creative process, in design programs, and experiment in architectural practice and in education.
In architectural design and urban planning realms Knowledge empowers / experience’s teaches.
Architectural experiment
3. Archive – Utopia – Events. Built / Unbuilt
If it is to translate the utopia of the architecture realm, it is synonymous with boldness, innovation and imagination: technology, hyper-nature, neo-ecological obsession, social artifact, fluid virtual enviroments or virtual transports are invoked in order to solidify the bridge between the critique of the present and the curative visionary project.
Currently, the architectural discurses generally start from the contemporary society premises. It is about the society that we live in, about the communicational, computerized society, about the architecture that must to give answers to the society requests.The terminology used is not randomly and derives from the actual trends-computerization, virtualization, spectacularization, consumerism, secularization, urbanization, the globalization process, obeying to ephemeral and of delocalization effects. Are also added the global climate change, the unprecendent environmental destruction, the gap between rich and poor, the dilution of community concept. Thereby, the present reality can often be difficult to face it and architecture try to give answers, assuming new conceptual fusions.
Today the space arises from utopias, heterotopias, dystopias rather defining itself by criteria of intermediaton. The context of research in architecture is fruitful and may shape different forms of expression, un-built projects or studies, unpublished or in-process research, architecture books, event related to interventions or participation, competition entries or workshops description.
Searches are different, conceptually rich and try to discover other kind of relationships between image and practice, permanently weighing the social impact over a post-postmodern society.
