Way­far­ing through Poem-Draw­ing in Spa­tial Design

Wayfaring as the ​‘Softball’ Metaphor

A per­son can move on foot from one place to anoth­er in three ways: 1. by gaz­ing at (dis­solv­ing with­in) the sur­round­ing as isolated—separated—from the self; 2. by walk­ing with eyes wide closed, con­cealed in one’s own inner thoughts; 3. by estab­lish­ing a dia­logue with the sur­round­ing through sen­so­r­i­al lis­ten­ing and reflec­tive respon­sive­ness. Only the third way can be said to con­sti­tute a real jour­ney, since the mode of dis­place­ment is trans­for­ma­tive for both inter­locu­tors: the trav­el­er and the sur­round­ings. This anal­o­gy can also be per­ceived as a metaphor for the research jour­ney, in which human beings gen­er­ate and inte­grate explic­it and tac­it knowl­edge. The anthro­pol­o­gist Tim Ingold names this jour­ney ​“way­far­ing”: ​“com­bin­ing move­ment and atten­tion” in the process of dis­cern­ing the out­side world through inner means of per­cep­tion and eval­u­a­tion (2016|2007, 16).

In a lec­ture titled ​“The Art of Pay­ing Atten­tion” (2017), Ingold illus­trates the dif­fer­ence between sci­en­tif­ic and artis­tic approach­es. The first approach is com­pared to the hard-ball-metaphor: a hard ball hits a glass sur­face until it breaks to pieces. Then, sci­en­tists call this ​“a break­through”; they treat real­i­ty as a ​“series of resis­tant sur­faces” which should be tor­tured to reveal secrets (Ingold 2017). On the con­trary, the soft ball ​“takes the prop­er­ties of the sur­face” while the sur­face deforms accord­ing to the inten­si­ty of the touch: a kind of ​“mutu­al respon­sive­ness and cor­re­spon­dence” occurs (Ingold 2017). The hard-ball iso­lates the object of research from real­i­ty by vio­lat­ing and deval­u­at­ing its nature, while remain­ing rigid­ly unchanged itself; the soft-ball devel­ops a dia­logue with the wider con­text of the sur­face, while allow­ing itself to be mod­i­fied by the touch. The soft­ball metaphor exhibits artis­tic prac­tices, but also the ​“way­far­er” mode of being and research.

Why is the soft­ball metaphor impor­tant for the artis­tic dimen­sion in archi­tec­ture? The soft­ball approach can be named a way­far­ing through the design process. It is both sen­si­tive discernment—the under­stand­ing of spa­tial qual­i­ties (through experience)—and a poet­ic reviv­ing of their rel­e­vance in a present con­text (through imag­i­na­tion). Poem-draw­ing is a syn­ton­ic mode of artis­tic think­ing-through-doing in spa­tial design. It works as a soft­ball, a trans­for­ma­tive tool that inter­weaves the paths of the way­far­er and the place of research. It cul­ti­vates a will to under­stand a spa­tial sit­u­a­tion in depth and to care­ful­ly trans­late spa­tial val­ues into guide­lines for fur­ther design devel­op­ment. In research-through-design, it works as a ​“trans­duc­er”: a trans­la­tor and gen­er­a­tor of move­ments that come togeth­er as a ​“bundling of affects” named ​“enchant­ment” (Ingold, 2016). Thus, a spa­tial enchant­ment would mean ​“grab­bing” the atten­tion and offer­ing ​“a path” of that atten­tion that one can fol­low, in one’s own way, ​“in an affec­tive cor­re­spon­dence of move­ments” (Ingold, 2016). It demands wayfarer’s aware­ness in rec­og­niz­ing an exist­ing chant in the world, which is lat­er trans­lat­ed into an imag­ined place, preg­nant with new enchantment-possibilities. 

Poem-draw­ings are knots on the way towards such enchant­ment, although as proces­su­al modes they are works influ­enced by and/or evok­ing enchant­ment in them­selves. The aim of this essay is to empha­size how their epis­te­mo­log­i­cal soft­ness encour­ages: 1. a seri­ous immer­sion into wayfarer’s embodied/tacit knowl­edge (not only explic­it knowl­edge) as core fac­tor in design; 2. an inte­gra­tion of what is sensed, felt, known, desired and cre­at­ed through the self, in an authen­tic way­far­ing with curios­i­ty and care for the ​“per­son-world”1 inter­weav­ing (Sea­mon, 2000, 5). For that pur­pose, it is impor­tant to stress from the very begin­ning that we refer to ​“embod­ied knowl­edge” not as the low­er part of Polanyi’s pyra­mid2, but as ​“cur­rents of water flow­ing around” an ​“arch­i­pel­ago of islands” – the accu­mu­lat­ed data that form a net­work of sta­t­ic judge­ments and opin­ions (Ingold 2016). Hence, embod­ied knowl­edge is a field of action where poem-draw­ing allows a ver­tig­i­nous­ly tur­bu­lent review of what is con­sid­ered ​“known” and ​“famil­iar”. They work like a dis­turb­ing ​“eddy”, or ​“vor­tex” (Ingold, 2016) that makes one look at the spa­tial con­text of the design task as seen for the first time.

Knowledge that Grows from the Inside: Ingold’s Anthropology Against Objectivity

To under­stand the rel­e­vance of poem-draw­ing as a way­far­ing tool in spa­tial obser­va­tion and re-cre­ation, it is nec­es­sary to intro­duce the main con­cep­tu­al guide­lines in Ingold’s per­spec­tive of what think­ing-through-mak­ing or research-through-design should con­tain as modes of under­stand­ing the world and the self as an inher­ent part of that world. Let us elab­o­rate a few of them by con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing their rel­e­vance to the poem-draw­ing wayfaring.

Truth Against Objectivity

The core val­ue of any research should be the ​“appeal for truth”, not use­ful­ness or prag­mat­ic applic­a­bil­i­ty (Ingold 2017). This con­cept of truth expands beyond the rigid obses­sion with accu­mu­lat­ed data, iso­lat­ed from the expe­ri­en­tial and social con­text. In a sim­i­lar man­ner, Alber­to Pérez-Gómez intro­duced the term ​“poiesis” to explain the way in which human beings (unlike ani­mals) adapt to the envi­ron­ment; but this adap­ta­tion is always ​“aimed at more than pre­serv­ing life” (2006, 6). 

In research envi­ron­ments that are sen­si­tive to ​“poiesis”3 and arts in spa­tial design, one’s search for truth and one’s tying to the world, should devel­op as ​“an antithe­sis of prag­ma­tism” (Tarkovsky 1989, 40). Thus, the means for find­ing a per­son­al­ized way in the cre­ative process con­sti­tutes a ​“meta-lan­guage” that helps peo­ple ​“impart infor­ma­tion about them­selves and assim­i­late the expe­ri­ence of oth­ers” through spir­i­tu­al bond­ing far beyond the lev­el of phys­i­cal criss­cross­ing (40).

But what is the con­cept of truth in such a poet­i­cal approach to the built real­i­ty? Accord­ing to Ingold, truth is a ​“uni­son of imag­i­na­tion and expe­ri­ence” in a ​“world in which we are alive and the world is alive to us” (2017). As such, truth depends large­ly on our ​“full par­tic­i­pa­tion” in the world: in order to be truth­ful, all human knowl­edge must ​“grow from the inside” with our ​“par­tic­i­pa­to­ry and obser­va­tion­al involve­ment” in the places we are mov­ing through (Ingold, 2018). While objec­tiv­i­ty out­side the self is core val­ue in sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ment (aim­ing to ​“test” and ​“trick” the world), re-cre­ation of truth through the self is the core val­ue of the artis­tic exper­i­ment (“an expe­ri­ence enact­ed”) (Ingold, 2018). This state­ment echoes Tarkovsky’s rebel­lion against the abstract notion of order: his poet­ics of mem­o­ry and log­ic of dreams call for ​‘asso­cia­tive link­ing’ and both ​“affec­tive and ratio­nal appraisal” by the spec­ta­tor, mak­ing him ​“a par­tic­i­pant in the process of dis­cov­er­ing the life” hap­pen­ing in the art­work (1989, 20). Anoth­er anthro­pol­o­gist stress­ing this dif­fer­ence in a sim­i­lar way, is Ernest Cas­sir­er: in his view, while artis­tic approach­es offer an ​“inten­si­fi­ca­tion” of real­i­ty, sci­en­tif­ic views appear as ​“abbre­vi­a­tions” of real­i­ty (1994|1944, 184).

Poem-draw­ing allows the dia­logue between author’s expe­ri­ence and imag­i­na­tion to become core ingre­di­ent in dis­cov­er­ing the ​“true” way in design. It dis­turbs and re-cre­ates both explic­it and tac­it expe­ri­ence, the mem­o­ry of emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence and cre­ativ­i­ty in cycles of two (non-lin­ear) phas­es: moments of enlight­en­ment (duende/epiphany, a height­ened state of emo­tion, expres­sion and authen­tic­i­ty) and peri­ods of ​“elab­o­ra­tion” of that enlight­en­ment (Carafoli, 2016, 412). What makes poem-draw­ing an impor­tant alter­na­tive mode in the search for truth through the self, becomes clear only when it is observed in rela­tion to the objec­tive (con­ven­tion­al) tools of research and design: a knot along the way, where dif­fer­ent modes of knowl­edge are inte­grat­ed, it offers a reflec­tive view on the jour­ney in a cer­tain site-spe­cif­ic and time-spe­cif­ic moment. Poem-draw­ing grasps a rel­e­vant emo­tion­al con­di­tion, but its con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion and inte­gra­tion in the design process occurs as a con­struc­tive dia­logue between the sub­jec­tive and objec­tive dimen­sion in archi­tec­ture. Poem-draw­ings help the archi­tect to observe the design task not as a thing sep­a­rat­ed from himself/herself, but as co-cre­ative field of trans­for­ma­tive forces mov­ing through him/her, mold­ing the path in each moment of the process. 

Wayfaring as Attentionality Against Interaction as Intentionality

In a lec­ture in 2016, titled ​“Train­ing the Sens­es”, Ingold tries to empha­size the impor­tance of response-abil­i­ty as a core skill in way­far­ing: a capac­i­ty to ​“go along with what­ev­er is occu­py­ing your atten­tion” (2016). Two pre­con­di­tions for way­far­ing are need­ed: 1. sen­si­tiv­i­ty in con­cen­trat­ing your atten­tion in deep­er lev­els of read­ing and inter­pret­ing the qual­i­ties of the place (an eddy, a knot); 2. going along through time, instead of leap­ing across points (closed cir­cles) with blind­ed sens­es. The oppo­site of way­far­ing is inter­ac­tion: ​“back and forth” move­ment between ​“inten­tion­al beings” that share ener­gies out­side them­selves, using the hard­ball metaphor (2016). Way­far­ing, on the oth­er hand, cul­ti­vates a kind of cor­re­spon­dence: ​“two beings going along togeth­er and attend­ing to one anoth­er” (2016). While inten­tion­al­i­ty stems from the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of things, atten­tion­al­li­ty moves through things: it flows through and around them, per­vad­ing them with observer’s atten­tion and pres­ence. Hence: a self-alter­ing dia­logue is being estab­lished. It is not only about ​“cor­re­spond­ing” between the parts includ­ed in this dia­logue, it is also about dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing them­selves from the oth­er. This process of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion resem­bles Simondon’s or Jung’s indi­vid­u­a­tion process: nev­er com­plete, always on-going, a life-long trans­for­ma­tive process of self-dis­cov­ery and self-altering.

Addi­tion­al­ly, there is a dif­fer­ence between the anatom­i­cal human body and the body of atten­tion. An illus­tra­tive exam­ple of the sec­ond con­cept is the process of hear­ing: ​“the body is stretch­ing towards” the sounds com­ing from the out­side, so it becomes a ​“bun­dle of sen­sa­tions” that spread in dif­fer­ent direc­tion, inter­twin­ing inside the lis­ten­ing sub­ject (Ingold 2017). This is a much dif­fer­ent approach than explain­ing: ​“in order to per­ceive work as art, you have to let it be in you in its pres­ence”, while you, on the oth­er hand, are attend­ing it from the inside by pay­ing atten­tion to that pres­ence (2017).

A proces­su­al design tool, poem-draw­ing can cul­ti­vate an acute atten­tion and dia­logue. It is mod­i­fi­able accord­ing to the inner­ness of the archi­tect, and the time-spa­tial con­text of the design task. It meets the core require­ment of phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal research: the researcher must adapt his instru­ments accord­ing to his or her own truth and the ​“nature and cir­cum­stances of the phe­nom­e­non” (Sea­mon 2000, 11). A poem-draw­ing helps one pre­pare his or her being for lis­ten­ing to the cur­rent whis­per of a spe­cif­ic place on dif­fer­ent lev­els. The design­er cor­re­sponds with a place of inter­ven­tion not only by sens­ing and con­tem­plat­ing with its appear­ance from the inside, but also re-imag­in­ing this whis­per in an appro­pri­ate future sce­nario. He is attend­ing the whis­per by inhab­it­ing its pres­ence in dif­fer­ent time-frames.

Method Against Methodology: Integration Against Accumulation of Knowledge

Ingold uses the word ​‘method’ not in Feyerabend’s con­no­ta­tion — a reduc­tor of ​“the rich­ness of being” (Fey­er­abend, 1999). On the con­trary, he refers to ​“method” as a trans­for­ma­tive tool that allows going along with things, tak­ing its shape accord­ing to the way the things unfold in the moment of atten­tion. Unlike method, method­ol­o­gy is an ​“ene­my of cor­re­spon­dence”: it works by ​“keep­ing dis­tance from things” for the sake of pure ​“objec­tiv­i­ty” (2017). Method­ol­o­gy immu­nizes the object of atten­tion against (out of) its pres­ence, decon­tex­tu­al­iz­ing its ongo­ing life: the extrac­tion occurs in an insen­si­tive way that leads to an obses­sive ​“super­sti­tious over­es­ti­mat­ing of naked facts” iso­lat­ed from their rel­e­vance in the real world (Jung 1963, 361). Method­ol­o­gy does not offer any inte­gra­tion of ​“naked facts”; it accu­mu­lates them in an end­less assem­blage of out­ward­ly artic­u­lat­ed conjunctions.

Ingold’s dis­tinc­tion between method and method­ol­o­gy leads to anal­o­gous dis­tinc­tion between qual­i­ty and datum. Qual­i­ty is the way a thing ​“reveals itself to you, becom­ing a part of your per­cep­tion”, where­as datum4 is the moment when you trans­form that qual­i­ty into an abstrac­tion by ​“divid­ing a world of process, of flow” (2017). In trac­ing spa­tial val­ues, how is it pos­si­ble to reduce such vio­la­tion of the life process of the observed phe­nom­e­non to a min­i­mum? How to inter­pret a spa­tial qual­i­ty through intu­itive way­far­ing, avoid­ing dead ends of abstract notions of order? ​“Pure objec­tiv­i­ty is as illu­so­ry as pure trans­port … This illu­sion can be sus­tained by sup­press­ing the embod­ied expe­ri­ence of place-to-place move­ment that is intrin­sic to life, growth and knowl­edge” (Ingold 2016|2007, 105). The hard­ball approach gen­er­ates this sup­pres­sion, trans­form­ing the ​“erot­ic space between the known and the unknown” into a dry assem­blage of con­junc­tions (Perez-Gomez 2006, 69).

While observ­ing the poem-draw­ings of renowned archi­tects, we can under­stand their design deci­sions and spa­tial philoso­phies in a depth that goes beyond any method­ol­o­gy or prin­ci­ple (Kulper, Hej­duk, Le Cor­busier, Van Den Berghe, Holl). They exhib­it the architect’s dis­ci­pline of every­day spir­i­tu­al growth, life and knowl­edge cre­ation; they trace the cre­ative process by exhibit­ing moments of ​“pro­gres­sion­al order­ing of real­i­ty” (Jarvis 1997, 69 qtd. in Ingold 2016|2007, 91) or as ​“inte­gra­tion of knowl­edge along a path or trav­el” (Ingold 2016|2007, 91).

Varieties of Spatial Wayfaring Through Poem-Drawing

Poem-draw­ing can be con­sid­ered to open inti­mate win­dows between the self and the observed phe­nom­e­non (archi­tec­tur­al or urban set­ting) because it is, in itself, a ​“soft­ball” tool which tries to trace life itself, as felt by a way­far­er. Trans­lat­ing the move­ments of life, which nev­er have a clear final mean­ing, it aims to ​“clar­i­fy” an expe­ri­ence (felt, desired, designed) by grasp­ing its flow in a cre­ative knot in the design process: ​“the threads from which it is traced are lines of way­far­ing” (Ingold 2016|2007, 104). Depend­ing on the time peri­od in which the poem-draw­ing appears, it frames the inter­weav­ing of dif­fer­ent threads of knowl­edge: the inter­weav­ing vari­eties define influ­en­tial reflec­tions with­in the design process.

Gen­er­al­ly, we can dis­tin­guish three types of influ­ence: 1. emo­tive (instead of descrip­tive) re-read­ing of the place (cul­ti­vat­ing per­cep­tion through the self); 2. poet­ic gen­er­a­tion of spa­tial ideas, free from an overt­ly pre­cise lin­guis­tic and visu­al archi­tec­tur­al lan­guage; 3. reflec­tive defa­mil­iar­iza­tion from rou­tine per­cep­tion – artis­tic pro­ce­dure of cre­at­ing a res­o­nance between oth­er­wise dis­parate images, enhanc­ing of the per­cep­tion of the famil­iar through cycles of dis­tanc­ing from and immers­ing in the design-relat­ed prob­lema­tique. But these ​“types” – they nev­er occur lin­ear­ly; more often, we use com­bi­na­tion of two or three of them, accord­ing to the com­plex­i­ty of the spe­cif­ic Path-find­ing. Anal­o­gous­ly, we exhib­it three types of way­far­ing through poem-draw­ing: the design exam­ples via case stud­ies, and the author’s per­son­al works.

Re-Reading Places Through the Present Self: Wayfaring as Concretization / Topo-Empathy

We use the word ​“re-read­ing” to stress the impor­tance of vig­i­lant obser­va­tion of the place of inter­ven­tion. It means re-estab­lish­ment of the tie one has with a place by mov­ing fur­ther and clos­er to it, inhab­it­ing with fresh sens­es, ful­ly aware of inner and out­er change. Here, poem-draw­ings work as instants of grasp­ing such inhab­i­ta­tion, trans­for­ma­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion and aware­ness. They enhance, trace and devel­op two states: being-in-love con­di­tion (pas­sion­ate com­mit­ment) and cre­ative-process-con­di­tion (inter­pret­ing mean­ings through cre­at­ing). Both reflect an inten­si­fied capac­i­ty in the archi­tect to dis­cern and re-cre­ate ties, metaphors, analo­gies between seem­ing­ly non-con­nect­ed qual­i­ties.

Re-read­ing places is most inten­sive at the begin­ning of the design process: col­lect­ing pho­tographs, sto­ries, maps, tech­ni­cal draw­ings, inter­views – the entire body of extract­ed infor­ma­tion that should be fil­tered through a per­son­al mesh­work of under­stand­ing. The moment when rough data trans­forms into rel­e­vant knowl­edge, is when we include empa­thy as a mode of under­stand­ing: see­ing through the skin of the users, per­ceiv­ing spa­tial enti­ties as human beings (liv­ing Oth­er­ness), devel­op­ing a will to under­stand a spa­tial prob­lem from dif­fer­ent view­points. And, it is not always con­cern­ing a spa­tial design prob­lem: often, archi­tects find jour­neys, artis­tic and cul­tur­al expe­ri­ences, books and non-archi­tec­tur­al ref­er­ences a source of inspi­ra­tion that makes them dis­place their view­point and to see the world in the light of the new design task. In all cas­es, the architect’s inner self is the fil­ter through which the threads of influ­ence inter­weave and gen­er­ate mean­ings that cre­ate an order out of what is per­ceived as a myr­i­ad of impressions.

For exam­ple, Le Corbusier’s ​“Jour­ney to the East” (2007|1911), [ 1 ] is a trav­el­ogue of the young archi­tect, a tes­ti­mo­ny of way­far­ing – with­out inten­tion (not design-cre­at­ed obser­va­tion) but with full atten­tion towards read­ing the dif­fer­ent lay­ers of the envi­ron­ment he moved through. Only lat­er did these notes of inter­weaved vers­es and draw­ings become core guide­lines of his vision of the new archi­tec­ture. These ear­ly ​“poem-draw­ings” can be con­sid­ered tac­it knowl­edge; their impor­tance became vis­i­ble when the author trans­lat­ed their spa­tial qual­i­ties in his design solu­tion for the con­tem­po­rary world. Le Cor­busier him­self wrote “…to draw… to trace the lines… han­dle the vol­ume, orga­nize the sur­face… means first to look… to observe… to dis­cov­er” (cit­ed in Bolles+Wilson 2011, 20). The lessons in observ­ing archi­tec­ture are lat­er applied in his holis­tic notion of place-mak­ing.

Anoth­er exam­ple of re-read­ing a place is revis­it­ing the mem­o­ry of emo­tion­al expe­ri­ences relat­ed to their past appear­ance [ 2 ]. Jo Van Den Berghe opens a lec­ture at KU Leu­ven (2015) by read­ing a poem ded­i­cat­ed to his grand­moth­er. Then, he exhibits a body of research con­cern­ing the house in which he grew up with her; since the house does not exist any­more, way­far­ing is done through his embod­ied knowl­edge, lack­ing any dia­logue with the oth­er ​“users” of the house. By obses­sive writ­ing, re-draw­ing and recre­ations using work­ing mod­els, he suc­ceeds to rec­og­nize spa­tial frag­ments that are embed­ded in his inner self as uncon­scious pat­terns that influ­ence each of his designs. Sim­i­lar research has been made by the author in 2018: inspired by Tarkovsky’s Mir­ror (1975) (the inter­weav­ing of Andrey’s cin­e­mat­ic image and Arseny’s poems), an attempt to inves­ti­gate the embod­ied mem­o­ry of the grand-mater­nal home was done through poem-draw­ing (Bog­dano­va & Zupan­cic, 2018, 222–234).

The re-read­ing of places can revive his­tor­i­cal spa­tial val­ues through their con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion in ques­tions of the present. This is impor­tant because one can­not trace the val­ues of a place with­out tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the sto­ries of the peo­ple who were inter­wo­ven with­in that knot at dif­fer­ent time peri­ods. Here, we are not inter­est­ed in his­tor­i­cal facts or accu­mu­lat­ed chrono­log­i­cal data; on the con­trary, we are inter­est­ed in trans­lat­ing blind sen­sa­tions and infor­ma­tion into a liv­ing rel­e­vant ingre­di­ent of the present. To cre­ate this healthy degree of abstrac­tion5, empa­thy and imag­i­na­tion are need­ed. As Alber­to Perez Gomez has stat­ed, ​“Where­as his­to­ry recounts real facts from the past, poet­ry (fic­tion or dra­ma) opens up the future by tran­scend­ing the first order of ref­er­ence to real­i­ty. In oth­er words, fic­tion reveals what is essen­tial for humans in recog­ni­tion of our mor­tal­i­ty and tran­scen­dence, and thus opens up poten­tial real­i­ties for cul­ture” (2006, 152). We need to bring mere data into pres­ence by liv­ing through the skin of anoth­er human, plant, ani­mal, from anoth­er time-space. We can have a vision­ary and hermeneu­tic approach towards the spa­tial val­ues that sur­round us, only if we are able to inte­grate our own expe­ri­ences (and dreams), our com­pas­sion with oth­ers’ expe­ri­ences (and dreams) and the less-human fea­tures in our sur­round­ing into a sto­ry which is mean­ing­ful and under­stand­able as expe­ri­en­tial truth.

Fig­ure [ 3 ] is an exam­ple where per­son­al and bor­rowed mem­o­ries are inte­grat­ed with a poet­ic inter­pre­ta­tion of facts in a spa­tial nar­ra­tive. This is done through the skin of an imag­i­nary char­ac­ter: a young preg­nant woman from 1944. The aim is to dis­cern how (and if) spa­tial val­ues could vary through time in the cul­tur­al­ly com­plex place of research: Ohrid city. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, poem-draw­ings were gen­er­at­ed from two oth­er co-researchers who devel­oped sto­ries through two oth­er imag­i­nary char­ac­ters: an old lady in 2084 (dystopi­an sce­nario) and a 7‑year old girl in 2018. By com­par­ing poem-draw­ings from three time peri­ods, we aimed to ques­tion whether it is pos­si­ble to reveal which spa­tial qual­i­ties remain absolute, time­less, and derived from the speci­fici­ty of a par­tic­u­lar site. Fig­ure [ 3 ] belongs to the first phase of the tri­a­logues: re-read­ing the places by way­far­ing through the mem­o­ry of (lived and imag­i­nary) emo­tion­al experience.

Translating Place Through the Present Self: Wayfaring as Abstraction / Heuristic Observation

By trans­la­tion of places we mean a meta­mor­pho­sis from an exist­ing con­di­tion to an appro­pri­ate design pro­pos­al. Way­far­ing here occurs as a design-ori­ent­ed read­ing of place and aims to con­clude with a new­ly com­posed spa­tial solu­tion. To do this, a degree of abstrac­tion of the spa­tial qual­i­ty out of con­text is nec­es­sary: the defa­mil­iar­iza­tion phase pre­vents the observ­ing sub­ject from pas­sive­ly re-think­ing the envi­ron­men­tal set­ting. This kind of learn­ing through doing requires an ​“inten­si­fi­ca­tion of all our ener­gies” and our ​“fullest con­cen­tra­tion” in inter­pret­ing the per­ceived qual­i­ties into rel­e­vant ingre­di­ents of the process in archi­tec­ture (Cas­sir­er 1994|1944, 210). ​“As soon as we fail to con­cen­trate, and we give way to a mere play of plea­sur­able feel­ings and asso­ci­a­tions, we have lost sight” of the design process as liv­ing art­work in itself (210).

Where­as in re-read­ing places a sen­si­tiv­i­ty towards lis­ten­ing was need­ed, here the require­ments are more com­pli­cat­ed – a sen­si­tiv­i­ty in cre­ation­al respond­ing is a pre-con­di­tion for suc­cess­ful read­ing. Fig­ure [ 4 ] is an exam­ple of sen­si­tiv­i­ty in the search for the beau­ty in the nat­ur­al land­scape. With min­i­mum inter­ven­tions between the stone mega­liths, Ishiga­mi designed eight vil­las in Dali: the design pro­pos­al was based on a pre­vi­ous painstak­ing exam­i­na­tion of the prop­er­ties of each stone as a liv­ing being. Only small adjust­ments of the stones were done, where­as the land­scape per­me­ates the vil­las as phi­los­o­phy of life close to nature. For this project, he uses poem-draw­ings to express the atmos­pheres he desires to achieve with the new site-sen­si­tive solu­tion: ​“Walk­ing the site, phys­i­cal­ly sens­ing / small places amid the vast fields of boul­ders, / man­age­able, liv­able spaces were found. / These are joined to form / a sin­gle large struc­ture” (Ishiga­mi 2018, 117). Through vers­es, the archi­tect aims to invite the read­er to look at the project by imag­in­ing his own way­far­ing through the place by encour­ag­ing an imag­i­na­tion of the first per­son expe­ri­ence instead of look­ing at the draw­ings two-dimensionally. 

Anoth­er exam­ple is Ishigami’s House with plants, a poem-draw­ing ded­i­cat­ed to that design pro­pos­al. Here, the author invites the read­er to imag­ine a nev­er-fin­ished world in which the desire—the imag­i­na­tion of the transformation—brings an aware­ness of a new con­cept of archi­tec­ture: the one that is dif­fer­ent from ​“shel­ter” that keeps us sep­a­rat­ed from the world. It soft­ens the bor­der between the inside and out­side and allows the nature, the snow, the sun, the rain to become a cru­cial co-cre­ator of its being. This is one’s way of free­ing archi­tec­ture when deal­ing with the innu­mer­able demands and chal­lenges of this world: inter­pret­ing it ​“more freely” and approach­ing it ​“more open­ly” (2018, 11).

The third exam­ple of a trans­la­tion of spa­tial val­ues into design solu­tions is the Botan­i­cal Farm Gar­den. A land­scape archi­tec­ture project, it exhibits Ishigami’s obses­sive analy­sis of each tree as an indi­vid­ual, as an ​“old friend” who changed its place of liv­ing in a new mesh­work of move­ments and rela­tions. The task was to relo­cate a for­est (a hotel-to-be-built loca­tion) in the adja­cent mead­ow, in order to pre­vent cut­ting of the trees. Ishiga­mi imple­ments the his­to­ry of the place by poet­ic re-think­ing of its mytho­log­i­cal past through the present: 1. long ago, it was a pad­dy field and a mossy for­est; 2. today, there is a stream and a sluice gate recov­ered in the new sce­nario. Hence, a super­im­po­si­tion of ​“all the lay­ers from past envi­ron­ments in the site’s his­to­ry” occurs (2018, exhi­bi­tion guide). A poe­t­i­za­tion of exist­ing qual­i­ties is devel­oped through the sen­si­tive re-think­ing through design.

The last exam­ple of way­far­ing through poem-draw­ing as a trans­la­tion of site-spe­cif­ic spa­tial val­ues in an urban design project is exhib­it­ed in [ 5 ]. After cycles of tri­a­logues in re-read­ing Ohrid through three imag­i­nary char­ac­ters, site-spe­cif­ic spa­tial val­ues are rec­og­nized, and then trans­lat­ed in each of the three design solu­tions; one being the re-think­ing of a mahal­la street (a pedes­tri­an street in a dense­ly orga­nized tra­di­tion­al urban tis­sue) as a semi-pub­lic spa­tial enti­ty that exhibits site-spe­cif­ic ways of human life. 

Fig­ure [ 5a ] is a map of one of the cho­sen mahal­la streets. Frag­ments in black ​“mark struc­tures in decay”, and the pink sur­faces are green frag­ments ​“fram­ing the pedes­tri­an prom­e­nade” (Bog­dano­va, Spa­sevs­ka and Niko­va 2018, 140). Wound­ed places are traced and re-cre­at­ed into micro pedes­tri­an squares: ​“neigh­bor­hood mar­kets and semi-open struc­tures as knots of social­iza­tion between the neigh­bors” (140). Fig­ure [ 5b ] rep­re­sents a pos­si­ble way of heal­ing spa­tial wounds through desired atmos­pheres in per­spec­tive, sec­tion and axonom­e­try: ​“hang­ing cra­dles ori­ent­ed towards the city scape and the lake, per­go­las hold­ing creep­ers, vines and ros­es cre­at­ing a fil­i­gree shad­ow above the bench­es, bird cot­tages in the tree­tops, urban yards and craft-mar­kets con­nect­ing the prom­e­nade with the low­er city visu­al­ly” (140). The vers­es exhib­it feel­ings we aim to bring with the new­ly pro­posed sce­nario: ​“Float­ing tem­po­rary crea­tures above ground tracks…an invis­i­ble cor­po­re­al­i­ty … he took me through a fil­i­gree embroi­dered by porous tree­tops” (ibid.).

Place-Making: ​‘Alongly Integrated’ Knowledge of the Inhabitant

As inhab­i­tants of the world, crea­tures of all kinds, human and non-human, are way­far­ers, and … way­far­ing is a move­ment of self-renew­al or becom­ing rather than the trans­port of already con­sti­tut­ed beings from one loca­tion to anoth­er. Mak­ing their ways through the tan­gle of the world, way­far­ers grow into its fab­ric and con­tribute through their move­ments to its ever-evolv­ing weave. Ingold 2016 | 2007, 119

It is nec­es­sary to stress that way­far­ers should be con­sid­ered ​“suc­cess­ful inhab­i­tants” of a place (Ingold 2016 | 2007, 104). They are nei­ther nomads who fail to estab­lish a mean­ing­ful tie with a place, nor set­tlers who tend to ​“occu­py” a place due to their con­di­tion of ​“restrict­ed hori­zon of a life lived only there” (104). This metaphor by Ingold reminds us of the pre­vi­ous­ly empha­sized need of the bal­anced rhythm of close­ness and dis­tance from the object of atten­tion. There­fore, inhab­it­ing would be a con­di­tion in which there is a cor­re­spond­ing growth and becom­ing between the way­far­er and the places he / she is stretch­ing towards and through. This means that way­far­ing is nei­ther ​“place­less nor place-bound, but place-mak­ing” (104). Pro­ceed­ing along the dis­cern­ment of the world through simul­ta­ne­ous self-dis­cov­ery, the way­far­er ​“knows as he goes”, so the inhab­i­tant knowl­edge is ​“along­ly inte­grat­ed” (ibid. 91).

Relat­ed to the design­ers work­ing with poem-draw­ings as way­far­ing ​“meth­ods”, their inhab­i­tant con­di­tion allows coher­ence between what one feels, knows, remem­bers, recalls, reads, believes, desires and designs in a cer­tain moment of the cre­ation­al time­line. This way of dai­ly recon­struc­tion of knowl­edge through the inte­gra­tion of expe­ri­ence and imag­i­na­tion requires a sen­si­tiv­i­ty in con­struct­ing a the­o­ry through design, i. e., a vision of true archi­tec­ture that is built upon a high­ly indi­vid­ual (even anar­chis­tic) re-eval­u­a­tion of par­a­digms, man­i­festos, or any oth­er mode of col­lec­tive think­ing that harms the free­dom of deep thought. More­over, it asks for a meta-under­stand­ing of spa­tial qual­i­ties: an adapt­able and trans­formable approach accord­ing to the spa­tio-tem­po­ral con­text of the design task. And final­ly, it demands look­ing at, mov­ing through and re-cre­at­ing of the world ​“as a project, not as a sub­ject or object” (Jonas, 2018). 

Fig­ure [ 6 ] shows frag­ments of Le Corbusier’s vision of truth, com­posed by poems and draw­ings stand­ing close to each oth­er. Although they do not over­lap, their sys­tem­at­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion in a t‑shaped table of con­tent tries to make an order, a per­son­al guide­line of archi­tec­tur­al behav­ior which is not igno­rant towards the dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions in the time-space real­i­ty. The hermeneu­tic void of his poem-draw­ings invites the read­er to par­tic­i­pate in the co-cre­ation of the guide­lines; but unlike his ​“Jour­ney to the East”, here we are faced with a mature crit­i­cal reflec­tion of his own archi­tec­tur­al beliefs and archi­tec­tur­al prac­tice. We can find the sim­i­lar along­ly inte­grat­ed ​“the­o­ry” in John Hejduk’s ​“Vladi­vos­tok” (1989). The book begins with an ekphra­sis for Michelangelo’s sculp­tures; the main sto­ry devel­ops as a text-draw­ing the­ater of mythol­o­gy where the main char­ac­ters are urban ele­ments ani­mat­ed as human beings; the book ends with a sequence of poem-draw­ings titled ​“Eros”, radi­at­ing a spir­i­tu­al­ly preg­nant aura. In both cas­es, when sens­ing their prophet­ic char­ac­ter, we can say that Vladi­vos­tok and Poem of the Right Angle have for their authors the sig­nif­i­cance the Broth­er Kara­ma­zov (1880) has for Dos­toyevsky: a tes­ta­ment for his clear­est vision of truth as a holis­ti­cal­ly reflec­tive thought on all his pre­vi­ous artworks.

Doubts And Limitations – How to Make A Poem-Drawing Correspond with the Listener?

How does one read a poem-draw­ing aloud? What kind of per­for­mance is need­ed to express loud­ly the tie between the writ­ten and the draw­ing frag­ments? Can a poem be felt when read aloud with­out look­ing at the sketch­es as an insep­a­ra­ble part of it? We expe­ri­enced these doubts dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion and exhi­bi­tion, when asked to read aloud one poem-drawing. 

Two ​“dif­fi­cul­ties” were present: 1. it is impos­si­ble to under­stand a poem-draw­ing nei­ther by lis­ten­ing nor by read­ing if it is decon­tex­tu­al­ized from the design process in which it has been cre­at­ed; 2. in poem-draw­ings where the lines between vers­es and draw­ings inter­twine more organ­i­cal­ly, a del­i­cate slow­ness in study­ing the silent piece of paper is required, where­as the ver­bal per­for­mance was almost impos­si­ble. This can be seen as a lim­i­ta­tion of archi­tec­tur­al way­far­ing, but it can also be seen as a chal­lenge to dis­cern modes of expres­sion dif­fer­ent than the ver­bal in which a poem-draw­ing can be shared (dance, per­for­mance, pantomime…). 

Poem-draw­ing as a proces­su­al mode in design can encour­age cor­re­spon­dence in co-cre­ation between designer(s)’s inner­ness and the out­side envi­ron­ment in dif­fer­ent moments of the design process. But poem-draw­ing, as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al mode would demand an even more com­plex cor­re­spon­dence: the one between the author and the lis­ten­ing audi­ence: ​“True knowl­edge can be expe­ri­enced only through speech; it is nev­er gained for­ev­er and must always be reac­ti­vat­ed in the present” (Perez-Gomez, 2006, 66). In order to be under­stood and felt, a poem should be more and less than a poem at the same time: it needs to grow into a cor­re­spon­dent to draw­ing, a speak­ing light that reveals what is drawn from a dis­tance. It needs to grow from an authen­tic lan­guage of expres­sion and written/drawn com­mu­ni­ca­tion into a poet­i­cal­ly spo­ken lan­guage, a liv­ing word that makes the silent grain of wis­dom trans­fer­able to oth­er way­far­ers. Oth­er­wise, the way­far­ing through the self in the design process will remain unheard, hid­den in the silent hiero­glyph­ic sym­bols. Way­far­ing, a lone­ly process of self-alter­ing through Pathfind­ing, becomes mean­ing­less if it does not cor­re­spond to and inter­weave with the Paths of liv­ing wayfarers.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the organ­ic birth of poem-draw­ing involves emo­tions, mem­o­ries, dreams, beliefs, ​“unmea­sur­able” spa­tial qual­i­ties and gen­er­ates a chaot­ic mat­ter with­out eas­i­ly vis­i­ble ties. To be under­stood in the con­text of a design process, a rig­or­ous­ly sys­tem­at­ic way to exhib­it their mean­ing, impor­tance and place­ment in the process is nec­es­sary. Oth­er­wise, the way­far­ing through poem-draw­ing could not be explained well enough to be under­stood as mean­ing­ful mode of doing archi­tec­ture. This also means, that the recita­tion of a proces­su­al poem-draw­ing could hard­ly make a clear sense with­out a simul­ta­ne­ous the­o­ret­i­cal reflec­tion on the designed work.