Clossing Session 461
find computations and numbers, the use of revolutionary geometry, and where we
end up using once more, after years and years, from different starting points, D’Arcy
Thompson’s “On Growth and Form” as a diachronic literature.
Going back to when we put the call together, I want to mention that we have a
very fancy editor of our newssheet, who goes into detail and scrutinises every single
word of it, and we are very pleased to have her. In the EAAE newssheet you received
there is a very carefully written piece of information, and she got back to me and
asked if I wanted it proof-read, and we said OK, since we are all foreigners apart
from Sean Hanna, so we would have some guarantee that the English is good; and
Anne-Elizabeth Toft got back to us and said she would have it proof-read. So she
found a native speaker who is not an architect, and got back to us again and told us
there were problems in the text, that we used both ‘lab’ and ‘laboratory’ and we had
to choose. That was very interesting, because it has a lot to do with the relationship
that we have developed since last November working on this particular workshop,
for we agreed on this distinction when we were putting the call together, because it
reflects certain connotations: lab, meaning digital era, meaning 2007 operations, as
opposed to modern movement laboratories with white outfits and designers looking
like psychiatrists. So we got back to the editor and told her to leave it, we mean
"lab" and "laboratory".
Last but not least, I want to refer to what I deem to be a very healthy confron-
tation between two very powerful women in our group, Professor Rivka Oxman and
Professor Vana Tentokali, with regard to students, when Rivka mentioned something
about looking down at students. I found this a very interesting episode indeed, and
as my last comment I want to say that I think we should look at it the other way
round as well. Looking at the presentations that the students have given over the last
two and half days, it occurred to me that instead of us looking down at the students
and lowering the level in order to communicate with them and not get too high up
and lofty, perhaps we should be raising the standards to make them look up to us.
We should try to be up to date and to understand what is going on. We must open
our eyes and realise that these things are not new to everyone; they are being done
and they are being done by people like Kas. What Kas says is not new; it is new to
everyone else but it is not new to him. So we have got to open our eyes and realise
that there is something going on here that is different and we have to look at it.
So, I will give the floor alphabetically to the members of the committee to give
their comments and accounts of the workshop, beginning with Oliver Fritz. Oliver?
Oliver Fritz, Vaduz, Liechtenstein
Thank you, Maria. I want to begin by saying that I have the feeling that while we
have heard many different opinions, there are some points that fit together. We also
heard, from Antonino, that there are some paradigms, some new paradigms, some
changes. We saw many projects made with digital processes, and I have the feeling
that we have to realise that something really has changed. I think that the main
change is the speed of everything. Everything has changed very fast. Ten and twenty
years ago, we would realise that something had changed ten years before, and now
things change every year. Take, for example, the mobile phone. It is a new thing,
only ten, twenty years old, and now every one has a mobile phone and everyone is