How to Learn Better
The Poster proposal "Notes on Conceptual Learning in Architecture" by Andrea Alberto Dutto and Carolin Stapenhorst was selected for the CARTHA exhibition and issue ""How to learn better".
This proposal bears on Eisenman’s article of 1971 “Note on Conceptual Architecture; Towards a definition”. While Eisenman states for the necessity of a double ‘structure’ of thinking in architecture (the syntactic and the semantic) our attempt is to extend that same feature to the learning in architecture. This double-sided ontology (semantic/syntactic) is what gives the representation the caesura between how learning in architecture is expressed (dots) and what is the meaning of learning in architecture (footnotes). On the one side, the syntactic learning in architecture needs a physical presence—it is something VISUAL, whose complexity is corresponded by a graphic notation. On the other side, the semantic learning in architecture —Eisenman’s definition of ‘deep structure’— is connected to its VIRTUAL nature: it is contained within the possible body of knowledge of learning in architecture expressed in the footnotes. This partial and selective apparatus of footnotes is actually thought to actuate the visual part in order to convert it into an educational tool of architecture. Thus, the footnotes relate to two meaningful tools and strategies in architecture and arts. First, ASCORAL’s grille [1], which first became the physical scene of the theoretic debate between CIAM’s protagonist of Modern Movement and Team 10[2], and later the tool of design education within the research and teaching around the “Polytechnic Grid”.[3] [4] Second, the handling instructions defined by Sol LeWitt in his “Paragraphs” and “Sentences” on Conceptual Art. The visual and virtual part together form a tool structuring design thinking in architecture – the virtual part knows and the visual part shows all the possible connections and interdependencies. Thus, an open, non-hierarchical net may be woven.
[1] Heuvel, Dirk van den/Risselada, Max (eds.): TEAM 10. 1953–81. In search of utopia of the present, Nai Publishers, Rotterdam 2005.
[2] Stapenhorst, Carolin: Grids. Projektdokumentationen als Denkinstrument, in: Schmitz, Thomas/Häußling, Roger/Mareis, Claudia/Groninger, Hannah: Manifestationen im Entwurf, transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2016.
[3] Motta, Giancarlo/Pizzigoni, Antonia: La Nuova Griglia Politecnica, FrancoAngeli, Milan 2011.
[4] http://frigo.polito.it/grid/