472 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
Neil Leach, London, United Kingdom
I am a bit confused here, because actually the person that brought up tools is
Deleuze, right? And he says that theory is a box of tools. I think that the problem
is that in architecture people talk about forms in a very objective way, and I think
these objective processes with which we engage with the material world are crucial
questions, and that is what Deleuze talks about. And I think he opens this up as a
possibility, not of form, but of ways of thinking about form and the critical tools
that can be deployed in a certain way. And I think that what has been lacking are
the tools that are required to critique the formal processes. And that is why I think
Deleuze is so useful, because he opens up that possibility.
Darren Dean, Kingston, United Kingdom
I just wanted to say something about the language the panel used to sum up what
has taken place here over the last three days, because I think certain terms were
fed back to us. I heard the panel mention methods, processes, standards, perform-
ance, speed, tools, optimisation, richness, institutionalisation or not of the new,
change, multiplicity of points of view, collaboration, which I guess on one level can
be summed up as controlling information. Now without placing myself in this other
category, something else came out that is summed up in your title. We heard about
mediation, we heard about mixed reality, we heard about acts of making that were
digital and physical, we heard about metaphysical geometry, we heard about content,
ideas, meaning, reading the city, emotions, description, interpretation, site specificity,
place, context, haptic space, the topographic, co-presence, the agora, and a great
one, triggering inventiveness. Now what this reminds me of is Kafka’s The Trial. The
German word for trial is der Prozess, the process, and the book tells the story of a
man caught up in a bureaucratic process that has no end and no meaning. And I am
wondering whether this conference has actually thrown up a divide between those
that think that the answer lies in processes, and the processes have been around for
a long time, and those who look for meaning; and I am wondering how one resolves
that conflict between process-driven architecture and the notion that architecture
can also be meaningful or have some end.
Antonino Saggio, Rome, Italy
Is this your project?
Darren Dean, Kingston, United Kingdom
Or it could be a conference. I do not think it is just a case of having forty different
presentations, because I think there are certain themes.
Antonino Saggio, Rome, Italy
You are saying that there is a truth, while basically everything that Dino was explain-
ing was that the way you posed the question is perfectly fine and it is your duty to
answer it. I mean that the relationship between commitment, process, project and
meaning, in the end becomes a personal story. It is our personal story. We are in a
phase of liberation. In this part of the world it is incredible: we can address these
issues individually, whereas the whole story or the whole process of humanity up to