On the 3th of April 2015 the KU Leuven Department of Architecture hosts a workshop, for which proposals of 20-minute presentations are welcomed.
Within the international literature addressing the history of 20th century architectural theory, the post-war period is generally seen as fluid and open-ended, as giving rise to a diversity of coexisting or even contradictory paradigms. (Nesbitt 1996; Leach 1997; Crysler et al. 2012) Whereas these volumes have addressed a lot of issues, they often ignore the question of how theory is produced and used in different settings. Responding to this lacuna, this workshop explores how theoretical knowledge was formed and transmitted through texts and objects in architectural education between 1945 and 1985. Which kind of knowledge was cultivated through for instance course notes, study books, architectural models, drawings, isometries, axonometries, schemes, graphical representations and diagrams?
The workshop addresses the explicit transfer of theory in theory classes and seminars, as well its implicit presence in the context of studios. We welcome papers studying the ‘Objects of Schooling’ during this period, which, according to Davide Deriu, is marked by the rise and decline of the architectural model as a dominant pedagogical tool. (Deriu 2012) The question thus addressed is: what form of theory was transmitted in the postwar period, and what were its preferred media of transmission? Was the architectural model indeed paramount – until it was rendered superfluous due to new digital possibilities in the late 1980’s? What was the role of diagrams? How did texts function in the classroom? Which materials and techniques were used by architectural students to digest and generate theoretical knowledge?
The aim of this workshop is to gain insight into the multiple functions of the objects implemented in architectural education in the second half of the 20th century. In particular, we hope to illuminate how these objects became pedagogical devices through which practitioners engaged and developed knowledge.
When studying the double use of objects in the classroom or studio (being modeling and construction devices as well as communicative tools), researchers can benefit from the 'material' or 'pictorial turn' in humanities and social sciences. The recent interdisciplinary material turn after all offers an answer to the 'haunting silence' of teacher's work in historical documents and consequently to the inaccessibility of past classrooms. Over the last few decades, historians of education have undertaken considerable efforts to restage these former classroom practices and rituals of school life, which however intangible, were active and noisy in nature. Furthermore, these studies aimed to pull down the hegemony of published textual documents by establishing the material as a source for reshaping past learning environments.
Yet, the concept of materiality cannot be taken up lightly. Due to some persistent misconceptions, the educational and discursive roles of objects have not been fully understood. Photography, for instance, is too often relied upon by researchers as a neutral and objective entrance to the past. Consequently, visual production in the classroom often is approached as a) representative of its creator’s intentions and b) as an unmediated representation of the real. However, attaching such truth claims to objects leads to an instrumental view on materiality, assuming that objects are passive conveyors of knowledge. What this (humanist) approach thus fails to do is take into account the specificity of the material in the production of different forms of knowledge.
The workshop therefore seeks to critically interrogate these conceptions attached to objects and will discuss approaches which counter the object as a static given by considering the life of images and their circulation in different contexts.
We especially welcome case-studies which scrutinize post-war visual pedagogies by analyzing the way in which objects are given meaning, their use in processes of knowledge transmission and their role in the heterogeneous active network constituting school life.
Please send your proposal (max. 400 words) to present a 20-minute paper along with a brief bio (150 words) before 15 December, 2014 to objectofschooling@[at]asro.kuleuven.be. You will be notified whether or not your paper has been selected by 15 February, 2014. Should you have any question regarding the conference and/or the proposal, please do not hesitate to contact the organizing committee (Hilde Heynen, Rajesh Heynickx, Yves Schoonjans, Elke Couchez and Sebastiaan Loosen – KU Leuven Department of Architecture) at the same email address.
Selected Bibliography
- Albarn, Keith and Jenny Miall Smith. 1977. Diagram: The Instrument of Thought. London: Thames and Hudson.
- Carpo, Mario and Frédérique Lemerle. 2007. Perspective, Projections and Design?: Technologies of Architectural Representation. London: Routledge.
- Crysler, Greg, Stephen Cairns and Hilde Heynen. 2012. The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory. London: SAGE publications.
- Deriu, Davide. 2012. "Transforming Ideas into Pictures: Model Photography and Modern Architecture". In Camera Constructs: Photography, Architecture and the Modern City. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing.
- Elser, Oliver and Peter Cachola Schmal. 2012. Das Architektur Modell?: Werkzeug, Fetisch, kleine Utopie, The architectural model?: tool, fetish, small utopia. Zürich: Scheidegger & Spiess.
- Evans, Robin. 1995. The Projective Cast?: Architecture and Its Three Geometries. Cambridge Mass: MIT press.
- Evans, Robin. 1997. Translations from Drawing to Buildings. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.
- Grosvenor, Ian and Martin Lawn. 2001. Ways of Seeing Education and Schooling?: Emerging Historiographies. London: Taylor and Francis.
- Healy, Patrick. 2008. The Model and Its Architecture. Rotterdam: 010.
- Lawn, Martin and Ian Grosvenor. 2005. Materialities of Schooling?: Design, Technology, Objects, Routines. Oxford: Symposium books.
- Leach, Neil. 1997. Rethinking Architecture: a Reader in Cultural Theory. New York: Routledge.
- Moon, Karen. 2005. Modeling Messages?: The Architect and the Model. New York: Monacelli.
- Nesbitt, Kate. 1996. Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: an Anthology of Architectural Theory, 1965-1995. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
- Pérez-Gómez, Alberto and Louise Pelletier. 1997. Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge. Cambridge Mass: MIT press.
- Riedijk, Michiel and Else Marijn Kruijswijk. 2010. Architecture as a Craft?: Architecture, Drawing, Model and Position. Amsterdam: SUN.