96 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
because it is those tools that allow us to express ourselves, and that I think is something
that is extremely important and interesting. And if those tools are not good enough
for us to do what we like with them, we should improve them. One of the things that we
wanted and tried to do with these immersive things is to bring intuition into the design
process and to make those tools receptive to it.
Rivka Oxman, Haifa, Israel
You misunderstood me. I was very impressed by your project. But you described the whole
process and everything you do, whereas if you could describe the results you have shown
us, you would describe them in a different way. You have to categorise them. You have
to make categories. You have to say what the difference is between the first one and the
second one, because the first one is associated with the track movement. I do not want a
traditional way of architectural expression, I want a new way of architectural expression,
and perhaps your demo is a fantastic thing to try it on.
Sean Hanna, London, United Kingdom
We will have just one more comment from the panel.
Darren Dean, Kingston, United Kingdom
I want to make a comment on the students’ perspective. I do not believe that stu-
dents are unresponsive to abstract explanations; it depends on how you place them
around a project. As everybody in the room is aware, there is a difference between
a project brief and a module structure. Now, what we use to describe one is not the
same as what we use to describe the other. They are two separate things. Abstraction
is distillation; it does not necessarily mean making tangible. So if a student came to
me and asked me to explain what the course was about, where it was leading, how
the parts interrelate, I would probably show them a few of these diagrams. These
are early stages and we will try to develop them; but whatever you think of them,
we ran two or three of them past a group of our students a week ago and they were
quite enlightened. So it is a kind of the umbrella. Now, you were asking how to talk
to a student on a day-to-day basis. That depends very much on the problem. Let us
say, for instance, that a student came to me with this big question “space”, which
encompasses quite a few questions. What I would say to the student is that maybe
there is a difference between room and space, and suggest starting with that as a
difference. And I think that what we have tried to do with our paper today is to show
that maybe what is happening in architecture is that we are becoming more and more
accomplished at explaining the complexities of a building, and that you do not search
for one kind of defining order, which is why I was referring to the question of parts
and elements earlier on. I am a young man, I am 36, so I am still coming into it, but I
have been teaching for four years, and I think what interests me is how, as teachers,
we can explain buildings in slightly different ways and facilitate projects and so on
and so forth. I think that is a key skill. Now whether that means that we have a new
paradigm, I am not sure; maybe it is too early for us. What I can certainly say, in terms
of my own personal position and Eleanor’s, is that because of our age and our work
to get where we are, we have something interesting to say; but we are also part of
the rearguard, and we must not forget that. We must not forget that word either. It