Igea Troiani

‘in-between’: architectural drawing as interdisciplinary spatial discourse

This essay discusses the role of non-normative architectural representational practices in architectural design-based research. From a reading of Michel Foucaults concept of ‘discursive formations’, it sets out an inter-disciplinary practice-based design research approach to architectural drawing. It considers architectural research to be connected to the conception that drawing and the critical discourse of space are indissoluble and that the confines of each are products of specific ideological and disciplinary practices. Conventional, orthographic architectural drawings are challenged through ‘in-between’ drawings inspired by inter-disciplinary drawing methods. The site of exploration is the pedagogical context of the design studio. Two different bodies of student architectural design research drawings are discussed. One set is of digitally produced collages that examine island colonisation and that incorporate drawing methods used in geology and archaeology. The other set comprises hand-made collage drawings that visually incorporate the qualities of home typically excluded from architectural drawing and which reference social and anthropological readings of the space. The essay aims to propose alternative modes of practice through drawing ‘in-between’ disciplinary conventions.

Beyond the Academic Book: New “Undisciplined” Corporeal Publication

Abstract The book remains the primary, most worthy route through which scholarly knowledge is disseminated. With the easy access to low-cost technology, new opportunities are emerging to expand knowledge transfer beyond the academic book. Using a methodology of image-generating discourse, we argue here for the need for architectural researcher–designers to explore new “undisciplined” corporeal publication. From an ontological position, we present a radical space of research that is audiovisual, bodily and interactive, participatory, archival inspired by ethnography and architecture. We argue for a shift in research methodology to agency whereby academia, industry and audiences work together as a research team.

Architecture and Culture: Architecture's Disciplinarity

When the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) was set up in 2003, one of its main aims was to speak up for architecture’s particular and varied modes of research. [1] Like all university departments in the UK, architecture schools were and are expected to produce research that could be validated in some way. But if scientific research aims to solve identifiable problems, much research in the discipline of architecture, as in other areas of the arts and humanities, is intended instead to deepen cultural understanding, a more openended proposition. [2] And if scientific research is usually carried out by teams of researchers together following a pre-planned (and pre-funded) approach, research in the arts and the humanities is often carried out by lone individuals, [3] each acting independently, often raising questions rather than answering them, and, in architecture’s case, often testing architecture’s boundaries to ask what architecture might be. [4] AHRA sought to provide an interdisciplinary forum where such individuals could come together in mutual support, and to establish ways in which their research could be acknowledged even beyond the categories of “building science, social science, humanities, and art and design research.” [5] Igea Troiani, Oxford Brookes University. itroiani@brookes.ac.uk

Introduction: Transdisciplinary Urbanism and Culture

This book originates from the contemporary research approach and ideology centred on inter-disciplinarity to examine issues in urbanism and culture. The crux of that research lies at the heart of academic institutions, in particular the way in which various disciplinary discourses are available and the manner in which researchers are currently trying to address issues in urbanism and culture with inter-disciplinary research methods and approaches. This introductory chapter opens up different aspects and dynamics in urban research. It shows how established and early-career researchers are conceptualising and attempting to address various urban research strands, which were discussed at the 9th Annual AHRA (Architectural Humanities Research Association) Research Student Symposium.

Transdisciplinary Urbanism and Culture

This book originates from the contemporary research approach and ideology centred on inter-disciplinarity to examine issues in urbanism and culture. The crux of that research lies at the heart of academic institutions, in particular the way in which various disciplinary discourses are available and the manner in which researchers are currently trying to address issues in urbanism and culture with inter-disciplinary research methods and approaches. This introductory chapter opens up different aspects and dynamics in urban research. It shows how established and early-career researchers are conceptualising and attempting to address various urban research strands, which were discussed at the 9th Annual AHRA (Architectural Humanities Research Association) Research Student Symposium.

Film as Architectural Theory

Abstract Publications in architectural theory have predominantly taken on the form of text-based books, monographs and articles. With the rise of transdisciplinary and practice-based research in architecture, new opportunities are opening up for other forms of architectural theory, such as film-based mediums, which promises to expand and alter the convention of the written practice of theory. Two possible types of filmic theory are presented here. One follows the method of ethnographic documentary filmmaking inspired by Sarah Pink’s observational practice of direct cinema. The second follows the line of art house filmmaking inspired by Kathryn Ramey’s creative cinematographic techniques in the making of documentary or short fictional films. Building upon anthropologists’ exploration into film as a means of explaining or constructing knowledge, new discourses on filmic theory can be opened up. It is argued here that film as architectural theory is part of this new discourse which broadens the audience engagement in architecture not only through “readership”, but also through “viewership”.

Orchestrating Spatial Continuity in the Urban Realm

ABSTRACT Any instance of filmmaking on location involves an interaction between the given space and the movement of the camera through it, the relationship of the recording plane to that movement, and the space as it is recorded and reconstituted in the finished film. Every level of this relationship has an apparent transparency but every level is in fact complex and open to manipulation and interpretation. In this context, the use of the long sequence shot takes on particular characteristics and significance in relation to real space. The long take is interested in establishing spatial continuity by offering an unbroken line of recorded action. By virtue of the path traced by the camera, and its shifting viewpoint along that trajectory, the full map of the terrain gradually reveals itself. Through analyzing a selection of long sequence shots this article examines how this particular technique of cinematography can be used as the site of design research.

Inside Architecture from the Outside: Architecture's Disciplinary Practices

ABSTRACT The purpose and knowledge of architecture is primarily enacted through practice. This essay makes an original contribution to the discourse on inter-, multi-, trans-disciplinary design practice research by asserting architecture’s skill in relation to utilization of its own and other disciplinary methods. Informed by the writings of Vittorio Gregotti, Elizabeth Grosz and Mark Linder a framework is established which consolidates and validates positions inside and outside architectural practice. The material practices of inside and the hybridized practices and emergence of new techniques of outside both contribute to possibilities of practicing inside architecture from the outside. Collaborative exchanges at disciplinary boundaries and beyond are argued to manifest and be made through disciplinary practice exchanges and attentiveness to technē, the “tools, techniques and technologies” of a discipline.

Eco-topia: “Living With Nature” in Edilia, Iceland

Through the presentation of a design research project inspired by the narrative “Edilia, or ‘Make of it what you will’” in Spaces of Hope by the cultural geographer David Harvey, this article shows a contemporary resurgence of interest in visionary utopian design. Springing from Harveys Neo-Marxist position, the design studio and ecotopia design presented explore an alternative relationship between nature and urbanization. That association is based not on exploitation of energy resources, but on the potential to create a sustainable ecology and community at the Jökulsárlón, a lagoon located at the base of the melting glacier, Vatnajökull in southeastern Iceland.

Questioning models and drawings Representing space in drawing, film and writing

This double issue of arq includes a number of papers first presented at a conference held in Nottingham in November 2005 which was hosted jointly by AHRA (the Architectural Humanities Research Association) and the School of the Built Environment at the University of Nottingham, in conjunction with the Nottingham-based Image Studies Network. The theme for the event was set by Professor Marco Frascari, Director of the School of Architecture at Carleton University, Ottawa, and also a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Nottingham in 2005–06. Both ‘models’ and ‘drawings’ have been interpreted in a particular way by Frascari, who wrote in the event’s Call for Papers: ‘Nowadays, we know what kinds of drawings architects make. They have been codified by tradition, by profession and by legislation. Although this canonisation is a relatively recent event nevertheless it has reached a condition where innovation is almost impossible. The architect’s drawings have become “models” and generate “models” to be preserved in museums, magazines and archives. To challenge this idle condition it is necessary to question the imagination of construction and the construction of imagination and how these processes affect and effect the envisioning of architecture in absentia’. The conference thus addressed relationships between drawings and buildings around four key themes: the tendency of architectural representations to become ‘models’ for imitation, following Frascari’s interpretation of that word; the claim of new imaging technologies to make visible what could be described as the previously unseen; the cognitive spatial implications of traditional imaging practices relative to CAD; and the critical potential of the architectural image.