Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design

374 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy

Introduction

Contemporary theories stress the fact of the multi reference cognitive and cultural
association, a fact that seems to be in value for architectural cognition and cultural
association as well.
The implementation of the above theories offers an ensuring theoretical founda-
tion, explains the immediate empirical results of architectural teaching and facilitates
the reform of studio teaching.
We are going to present such theories, and the way they influence the program
we run, in the 4th year of architectural studies in the practice oriented School of
Architecture in Athens.
In this architectural studio program, students are expected to resolve a public
building to its very detail. The question that is raised here is how one can challenge
such a down to earth orientation, to produce a creative experimental atmosphere,
within which students can find their own path of expression on all levels of design.

Multi reference cognitive and cultural association,
in contemporary theory

From almost a century ago, Vygotski^1 offers in the domain of genetic epistemology,
a new approach to cognitive development an interactive model that of a cyclical
non linear development. He argues that development is a complex dialectic process,
characterised by unevenness in the progression of different functions, metamorphosis
or qualitative transformation of one form into another, intertwining of external and
internal factors and adaptive processes. He rejects the concept of linear develop-
ment and incorporates into his conceptualisation both evolutionary and revolutionary
change. Development proceeds in a spiral, passing through the same point at each
new revolution, while advancing to a higher level^2.
In the same historical period, psychoanalytical approach stresses, the value of
free association. Association of images offers according to freudian and post freudian
theories, non predictable relations, confronting rational to irrational elements.

In contemporary semiotic theory, Jacques Derrida underlies through his text on the
science of grammatology, De la Grammatologie, that not only language and thinking
depend on “difference”, on the structure of distinctive oppositions which make up
their basic economy, but that meaning is always “deferred” by the endless supple-
mentarity of signification.^3 As a result meaning is created as a constant transforma-
tion, as a constant state of association and comparison between different moments
of thinking.
Thus the multi levelled state of relations must be accepted as a central problem
of contemporary theory. The term “rhizome” as used by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guat-
tari, in their famous book Milles Plateaux: Capitalisme et Schizophrénie, describes the
internal movements among different cultural formations, comparing them with the
multi directional roots of a rhizome brunching away, through thousand levels - “milles
plateaux”^4 of cultural expression.