Clossing Session 463
search is completely open-ended and none of us really knows what to expect. That,
I suppose, somehow reflects what Oliver was saying about the speed of technology
and the speed of experimentation.
That is why I do not want to try to sum up, even though this closing session is
probably meant as some sort of conclusion where we draw some message out of the
whole thing. But I just want to leave it at that and enjoy the complexity of what
we have seen.
Johannes Käferstein, Vaduz, Liechtenstein
At the end of the session yesterday I took the opportunity to ask a question. It was
basically a rhetorical question, which I left open; and, speaking for myself, I feel I
got some answers. The question I put to the room was whether we were experimenting
with the tool or we were experimenting with the subject itself. My view is that we are
experimenting with the subject as well, not only in communication and the flow of
information but also in construction, in materiality and also in space. But I think that
we have to be tough on ourselves, because experimenting as we are doing it in our
world is something that we should see as a privilege; it is not something that everyone
can do. As Per Olaf said, we are all very well fed. So again I repeat, experimenting,
the way I see it, is a privilege and a responsibility. We have this privilege and this
responsibility and I think we should really try to focus on what we are doing, but at
the same time to enjoy it, because I feel that it offers real possibilities of enjoying
and working. We have also seen a lot of shape, a lot of forms and objects; but there
is much more to architecture than that. I mentioned that we can experiment with
construction and materials in very modern and high-tech ways, and I think Fabio
Gramazio and Matthias Kohler showed a fantastic example of it this morning.
One thing that emerged very clearly from Neil’s approach is interdisciplinarity.
I think we have to work with other people, with other people who know different
things. This, it seems to me, is how we can focus. We cannot just generate things
that have or that might have an aesthetic value. This, I think, is one of our big
responsibilities; and one of the things in the European context that all our schools
are working within in their curricula is precisely this interdisciplinarity.
One last comment. Neil raised an interesting question when he remarked that
in all schools all over the world projects seem to be quite similar; and it made me
wonder where place comes in, for as you know there is a very traditional discussion
about place. I don’t know how to answer that, and he is not here now, but in the
projects we saw from the different schools today, where people were working together
with engineers, things really seemed to come together but somehow the place was
not the same. On one hand we are building in Beijing and Shanghai, on the other
we are building in Lisbon and Zurich and Berlin, and it all does look very similar. So
that was a question I wanted to put to you: where is this place?
Dimitris Papalexopoulos, Athens, Greece
Thank you very much. To my way of thinking there is good news and bad news. Let
us start with the good news. It was certainly a very rich conference, and very well
timed in relation to what is happening in education and information technology and
in relation to information technology and architecture in general. After twenty years