340 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
Bauhaus pedagogical revolution if not in relationship with the whole effort to finally
address the important substance of the new society, and how to do that with design
in architecture? Why I am doing that is because those examples, those changes, those
real jumps in pedagogy always originate in one way or another in very important
paradigm shifts. I think one thing we have to focus on in our discussion is whether
we agree that we are in a paradigm shift now. That is the first thing that we have
to address and to decide: whether or not we think that we are in a paradigm shift at
this time. And secondly, if we are in a paradigm shift, then we have to change much
from the past, and as a good beginning change everything. Because the important
thing about the Bauhaus is that it changed a lot of things and basically threw out
many things connected with the whole idea of pedagogy, first and foremost history. I
think that these are important things for us to consider: first, do we believe that we
are in a paradigm shift; and second, if we do then we must at least on this occasion
- when we are in our schools, that is another story – decide how to change every-
thing, at least theoretically. That is my point of view, and I expect we will discuss
it more tomorrow. I am thinking in terms of paradigm shift; I go along with Toffler’s
idea that this is really a new phase of humanity. So it is much more than a purely
cultural shift: it is a major, major shift.
Dimitris Papalexopoulos, Athens, Greece
I think that you are tackling a big problem, and that maybe we will just make a few
observations; but this could be in a way the theme of this gathering. I am not sure
that we are in a paradigm shift. I need to think more about this, because it is very
easy to talk about a new paradigm and never sit down and define what it is. On the
other hand, too, we have very serious works that advance the concept of technological
paradigm. And because we make artefacts, because we speak about technology, we
have to listen to what constitutes a technological paradigm and then we can decide if
we have a technological paradigm shift. A technological paradigm is a paradigm that
has a broad spectrum of interesting research involved. It is a very complicated situa-
tion, from the point of view of the theorist. Turning now to Rivka Oxman’s presentation
this morning, it gave a very interesting series: Beaux-Arts, Bauhaus, Eisenman, today.
And there I totally disagree. Certainly I would leave Eisenman outside, probably I
would leave Bauhaus outside, and it is very possible I would leave Beaux-Arts outside
as well. I would go a hundred years before that, when we have a really important
paradigm shift, with the rift between civil engineering and architecture and the birth
of the profession of architect. So the question for me today is if we have a change,
a fundamental change from that time, then that means circa 1700.
I would like to point out just a few more things that, apart from the huge question
of paradigm shift, are also important. This afternoon we also had, coming from dif-
ferent directions, questions about creativity and strategies of morphogenesis. We
have different approaches to that, and today we have seen two very clear positions
approaching the morphogenetic theme. The most recent one was from Saeed Arida,
who said that from objects we go to sub-objects and then we make manipulations
in order to have a new whole in the performance. The other approach was totally
different. We saw it with Oosterhuis and we saw it with Paul Coates, and it is that
what exists, exists only as particles, and particles can provide us with different forms