332 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
The Role of Theory – The Battlefield of Thought
The collapse of the academic model of professional validation and proclamation has
put an emphasis on the individual and his/her autonomy and responsibility. The
architect (and the architecture student to begin with) is confronted with the need
and the mighty responsibility of defining not only an expression of his/her work
(what we could generally call answers or results) but also, and fundamentally, the
disciplinary attitude towards professional practice.
It is now virtually impossible to adopt a posture of rational distance from work
and its results; in order to place it and see it recognised one is inevitably brought to
a complete commitment and to an explicit self and mutual awareness, adopting (and
showing) a certain degree of emotional involvement. The polarisation and multiplicity
of simultaneous discourses demands for an ability to communicate and justify options
and methods, making them converge in consistent and meaningful results. What is
implied is that results stand as a lexicon for which the individual is required to clarify
what syntax is structuring its correspondent line of thought. Furthermore there is the
matter of pointing out what values are assessing the criteria and working premises,
in a complex process of self criticism, questioning and exposure, made difficult by
the seduction of so many immediate influences and self-proclaimed masters.
Thought articulation and verbal communication are increasingly becoming daily
working procedures and, most importantly, programmatic content. This is a key issue
in a moment when architecture is recurrently used as hardware to convey messages
and iconic images and can be easily instrumented if not properly framed by its author.
Architecture works are subject of an unprecedented vulnerability for which the only
protection is a complete engagement by the authors in framing it and standing for
it.
The possibility of developing an individual mythology, a personal structured lan-
guage, appears then not so much as a synonym of omnipotence, as it might seem
at first glance, but as a dramatic challenge, requiring a much larger array of compe-
tences and inter-related capacities, along with personal skills of perseverance and
self-leadership.
Within an ongoing moment of paradigm metamorphosis there is an obvious claim
to contextualise work and give it a solid theoretic and methodological background,
revealing a critical approach and coherence between the practical steps that lead it
and the base in which it stands. In parallel with the operative individual empowerment
should therefore emerge a significant development of a new strategic role of theory
and thought, no longer understood as a privileged and safe viewpoint for inconsequent
speculation but as a battlefield where work is put to discussion, argued, defended
and given content. Theory/thought must take part in every working and creation
method so as to validate its intrinsic self assessment as well as the dynamics of its
modus operandi, becoming an operative sub-system altogether.
Theorising around practice is particularly critical in a moment when so many
concepts are shifting so quickly and dramatically the role they play in architecture,
the importance they have and even the meaning they bear. When fundamental terms
such as tools, function or program are being readdressed and put in confrontation
with others that are emerging and apparently taking their place, the rawness of