Clossing Session 475
you need, exactly as Dino said, to throw forward a point in space and that will give
direction to what you are doing, so that time is also seen as a boundary condition.
That was just a small observation on the discussion.
Per Olaf Fjeld, Oslo, Norway
I want to follow up on the last comment in a very particular way, because I do think
that there is a creative link here that it is perhaps important to at least introduce.
After hearing all the speeches I do think that it is very much developing into a
situation where the relationship between what we have called tools and the process
is the content. I have not heard any other type of content except the relationship
between the tool and the process and what they offer together. In that sense we
have tools that within themselves have their own strategy and we have tools that
work in a different way. It is very interesting, then, at least the way I read it now,
that the different types of strategy are now our content. In other words, we have
different types of strategy but we have no other content except that which lies in
the strategy that we choose. In that, there is also the individual act.
What is very interesting for me within the idea of teaching, the relationship between
the virtual (so-called) and the real, is the capacity of the virtual to take on the real. In
that there are, I think, many different types of creative links that will be the challenge
of this relationship between student and teacher. Because it is not necessarily all the
models that we have seen that in themselves offer a very strong architectural capac-
ity: they do not, in other words, necessarily have a strong capacity to transform into
architecture. I am referring to all the resistant forces or limitations that architecture
after all has. In that link there are two ways of moving (there are probably many ways,
but for the moment I am taking two). In a pedagogical creative process you either say
that the virtual object has a capacity to transform into architecture, that it has that
potential, or you look upon the virtual object more as an inspiration towards another
type of inspiration for what will then be the final architectural project. There are, then,
two different ways of going on, and one can then clearly see that these will generate
two different capacities in this link between the virtual and the physical. And I do
think that link will continue to be a challenge for every one of us.
Neil Leach, London, United Kingdom
A very brief comment. I do not see a relation between meaning and process. I do not
understand that. I do not see the opposition in that. When you seek meaning not
as a noun but as a verb, finding meaning and so on, it is a process in itself. Just as
identity is never static, it is always dynamic, always fluid, so meaning is also always
a dynamic notion. I think you have to sort of see it as a part of a process of find-
ing meaning, and I think that Kas’s point maybe was precisely that, that out of the
process of making architecture you find meaning and so on. So I do not necessarily
see any opposition between the two.
Dimitris Papalexopoulos, Athens, Greece
I am a little bit afraid of what Nino said about the free individual. There is a very
interesting article, written by Katrine Julliard in the 70s or 80s, about technology and
architecture, entitled Enfin libres et unis. We are not talking about the individual.