Andreas Luescher

Refashioning No-Man's-Land: Urban Image Politics and the Visual Dimensions of Democracy

Abstract The occupation and redefinition by outsiders of a profoundly emblematic no-mans-land surrounding a most famous conduit from one world to another would be problematic under the best circumstances. Against the backdrop of dramatic political upheaval, social displacement, and economic uncertainty that has characterized post-Wall Berlin, the American Business Center at Checkpoint Charlie encapsulates the complex interaction of private and public decisions that have shaped the process of re-forming – some would say deforming – Berlin, during the past decade. Checkpoint Charlie Bauprojekt which today, ten years after inception, is only partially complete, provides a platform for a discussion about the citys long and fractious tradition of urbanism, and the boom and bust atmosphere of the last decade, which trapped architects between the forces of central planning and those of the free market. The author, who was Project Manager for Das Business Center at Checkpoint Charlie from 1993 to 1994, describes the excess of means over ends, and questions sacrifices made to the intention to create a grand capital city in the shortest possible time.

The physical trace

This paper examines the pedagogical implications of the integration of different orders of images in architectural design studios and the re-introduction of what might be called existential or phenomenal dimensions to a representational agenda that has become predominantly conceptual as opposed to physical, rationalistic as opposed to experiential, production-oriented instead of purely investigative. By attempting to historicise the idea of the deployment of representations of space into real space I hope to contribute to a discourse which emphasises the experience of images rather than technologies and techniques of representation. Examples of seemingly antique and forgotten media that synthesised aesthetic and scientific ways of investigating the world are examined for their relevance and utility in twenty-first-century design education.

HI TECH COLLABORATIONS: PRODUCING A VIRTUAL CRITIQUE

This article describes a pedagogical experiment involving the transposition of a traditional semesters-end juried critique to a modern medium: video conferencing. Synchronized remote collaborations are increasingly common in academia as the facilitating technologies become faster and more affordable. The most exciting implication of media-supported remote juried critiques (or, similarly, joint studio work) is the possibility of working with scholars and acolytes worldwide. The author suggests that the development of imaginative and effective protocols for such remote exchanges is still in its infancy.

Poster as design dialogue

Abstract A fourth-year class in a pre-professional programme explored the idea of a visual dialogue emerging from the investigative nature of the properties and variables of individual responses to design studio challenges. All members of a Senior Design Studio collaborated in planning, designing and producing a single poster announcing a public parade of their work. This article describes the poster, as well as the use of alternative teaching and learning approaches which students learn to broaden their design and architectural repertoire to include more creative, collaborative, intuitive and flexible skills.

Unit of Luminous Flux: Mario Botta's Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel

This paper examines the Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel (CDN), which opened in 2000, as the site of a ‘dialogue’ between the ideas and practice of Switzerlands best-known Italian-speaking architect and designer, Mario Botta (1943–), and the countrys best-known German-speaking playwright, Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990). The CDN becomes a double portrait of two Swiss artists, separated by parole but not Sprache. Both felt peripheral to Swiss society, yet each was a product of the cantonal principle of strong regionalism aerated by the Federations facilitation of cosmopolitanism aligned in an environmental ecology that literally and figuratively mixed their respective media: the concrete for the ephemeral (Dürrenmatt) and luminous fluidity for the concrete (Botta). The central thesis is that the CDN inducts the visitor in a role of active participation and exchange in an atmosphere of transcendental logic and, ultimately, however ironically, optimism. A visitor to the CDN becomes part of a theatrical event in which two actors — one dead, one alive — communicate in physical terms about the metaphysical environment, the relationship between the scenographic and the tectonic, the architecture of the interior. Dürrenmatt, at once Aristotelian, reckless, immoderate, romantic, outraged, engages Botta, a Neo-Rationalist who cannot disguise his passion; a rationalist who honours intuition alongside reason.

The Professional Portfolio as Heuristic Methodology

The antecedents of literary autobiography as we know it today emerged during the 17th century against a backdrop of the rise of empirical science and inductive method. An arguably older form of autobiography—the portfolio—has, unlike the literary biography, languished on the periphery of academia during our time. While it should not be controversial to say that possession of an heuristic bent is one mark of a successful education (since learning how to think, that is learning how to be open, alert, engaged, is the fundamental mission of the student), the portfolio has been ignored in part because of its modern connotation as a ‘marketing’ tool but perhaps more significantly because as a heuristic methodology it is a threat to the centrality of the pedagogue. I argue that the portfolio deserves at very least a re-evaluation throughout academic (to say nothing of quotidian) life as an indispensable tool of the spirit of pedagogy. Like the autobiography, it is validated by the belief that gathering data or details about individual lives has to precede drawing general conclusions or seeing any overarching patterns.