navigating in heterogeneitycomposed. architectural thinking gives a freedom here to use various kinds of logic,
more related to art than the traditionally scientific, linear logic of cause and effect,
theory and application, etc. it makes it possible to identify key points and construct
lines of tension or qualities of relationships that can be investigated through modelling
and simulation.
again, essential research questions like why, what, where, how, etc., are important
as instruments in the research work, serving as discursive and contrapuntal tools. By
using the abstract as one of several operative models in a heterogeneous system, we can
deconstruct the rhetorical line, create collages, set various forms of ‘what’ and ‘why’ in
different configurations or spatial contexts. This makes it possible to keep thinking in
terms of space, to zoom in and out between individual details and overall perspectives,
and quickly alternate between opening and defining, disruptive and converging parts
at different stages of a research project.
theme 5: critical construction and reflectionCritical construction involves both reflection and remodelling, to actively explore a
situation with an awareness of its positionings, ethical standpoints, performance, and
power relations. Critical trials, experiments, variations and simulations/ simulations may
be used to sharpen the interplay between various types of convergences (observations,
mappings, facts, conclusions, solution related proposals and questions, decisions,
etc.) and disruptions (provocations, confrontations, drastic changes, modifications,
explorative questions, etc.). hierarchies can be revealed and shifted – between
questions and answers, between what is taken for granted and the hidden possibilities,
between different actants in power relations.
Critical construction and reflection may imply taking on a position, as when Jonathan
hill speaks of ‘the illegal architect’, to re- examine conventional roles of producing
expected solutions to a problem and use the architectural project as ‘criticism by design’
that reveals other understandings and envisages alternatives for the future (hill 1998;
2007). a critical perspective can help the researcher take a stand in the initial approach
to a research subject or in the staging of explorative experiments. it may generate
artistic- architectural action that challenges given hierarchies, political dominance, etc.
When doina petrescu and Constantin petcou of the French architectural studio aaa
(atelier d’architecture autogérée) work in the city, they try to ‘imagine other spaces to
invest: grooves, cracks, breaches, loop- holes’, they must ‘multiply the modalities to act
on the edge, the margins, the borders’. if Foucault speaks of heterotopias, aaa speaks of
Alterotopias, spaces ‘built and shared with others ... who are different from you’. But,
they say, if ‘we limit ourselves to a criticism of the institutions, that of the state and of
Capitalism, there is little hope for change’, as they are constantly in the threat of being
either marginalized or absorbed by dominant forces. instead they aim to ‘reinvest urban
space collectively, ecologically and politically’ (aaa 2007: 321ff.).
design and architectural thinking has a double capacity for critical positioning: as
the architectural project not only appears in built form but also as models, simulations,
series of action and theoretical argumentation, it may use the designerly capacity to both
project an alternative vision for the future and to direct this projection to present repressed
conditions from a critical perspective. in accordance, there is also a challenge to find