Elemental Approaches
Architecture Criticism After Visual Culture?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Peter Kovacs
Today, we are witnessing a strong change in attitude in international theoretical discourse. In the ‘90s – mainly as a result of the theoretic works of W. J. T. Mitchell – Visual Culture Studies emerged to the fact, that nowadays texts are increasingly being replaced by images. Mitchell described that phenomenon as ‘Pictorial Turn’ in which the text-based interpretation of the world is increasingly taken over by images. This approach became more and more dominant in architecture criticism, the texts were increasingly taken over by perfectly photographed images, and in the criticisms, the interpretation of the architecture as a picture and image was emphasized. From the mid-2000s a culture studies approach has been created, moving away from the "hegemony of images" as a gesture of design as an ordering activity, as Julier mentions in the discourse-maker's essay of the validity of Design Culture. The essential feature of this approach is that it emphasizes the presence of the whole body, the multisensoriality in the act of reception. The architectural aspects of this are in Pallasmaa's work, and the aesthetic aspects are gained in Shusterman's somaesthetics. In my lecture, I look for answers as to how the Design Culture and the somaesthetics can transform the thinking of architecture in critical discourse, what new experiences can we gain by engaging architecture in multi-sensorial experiences. I wish to argue that the architecture criticism can radically be transformed by the approach that replaces the reductionism of the eye with the broad experience of multisensoriality.
Gestural Drawings : A Study of Spatial Data Held in Narrative Design Gestures
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Koumudi Patil
This paper attempts to explore the affordance of gestures to hold and aid spatial and procedural information of a reflective practice like design. Two experiments were conducted to determine whether a potter is able to gesticulate spatial information of varying complexities, in a procedural sequence. In Experiment-1, subject made a Clay-pot on the wheel from a given 2D stimulus. Subject was then blindfolded, and asked to gesturally rehearse the procedural sequence of the same Clay-pot, but in absence of clay. This led to the construction of a Virtual-pot. Similarly, Experiment- 2 was conducted, but with a more complex stimulus. In the absence of tactile and visual feedback, gestures of the subject could reconstruct not only the shape, but also its development from a lump-like form to a finished pot. Kinaesthetic feedback alone was found to be sufficient to evaluate and correct errors virtually. Furthermore, five kinds of Narrative Design Gestures (NDGs) characterised by absence of speech were identified, viz. dimensional gestures, spatiographs, evaluatory, complementary and non-processual gestures.
