Editor’s Fore­word

There is a chal­leng­ing dif­fer­ence between the Slovene and Eng­lish ver­sions of the AR 2021 title. This dif­fer­ence derives from the attempt to avoid a lit­er­al trans­la­tion, which sim­ply doesn’t sound well. The title in Slovene empha­sizes the abil­i­ty to feel vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. The Eng­lish com­bi­na­tive phrase inter­pre­tive­ly sug­gests a reac­tion to that feel­ing, an act that responds to vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and to the nature of that act. In the con­text of archi­tec­tur­al design, in the broad­est sense, includ­ing its urban and inte­ri­or dimen­sions, we can dis­cuss design deci­sion-mak­ers’ aware­ness of socio-spa­tial vul­ner­a­bly that enable them to detect the moments and places where redress is need­ed: an aware­ness that fos­ters the abil­i­ty to crit­i­cal­ly enter into a dia­logue with the exposed vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and to define a form redress that can art­ful­ly reshape the sit­u­a­tion. AR 2021 address­es ques­tions con­cern­ing the sen­si­tive ges­tures need­ed in vul­ner­a­ble conditions. 

There is a need to devel­op a strong indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive ref­er­en­tial appa­ra­tus to detect the con­texts and the nature of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in (co-)designing. How to sense these con­texts and their dynam­ics, as well as the mul­ti­fac­eted nature of the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, immerse into the sit­u­a­tions and react time­ly — and crit­i­cal­ly — to the del­i­ca­cy iden­ti­fied? Where and when the sit­u­a­tion is too frag­ile to be touched? When and where not-touch­ing now would lead to future decay regard­less of the vul­ner­a­ble but flour­ish­ing sit­u­a­tion at the moment of obser­va­tion? Where and when not-touch­ing would lead to imme­di­ate destruc­tion? The devel­op­ment of this crit­i­cal back­ground requires per­son­al­ized meth­ods of defin­ing a design-ori­ent­ed aware­ness. This is not only about car­ing for vul­ner­a­ble places and peo­ple, but also about nur­tur­ing and enhanc­ing the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of those involved in deal­ing with vul­ner­a­ble places, peo­ple, moments and processes. 

The dif­fi­cul­ty to sense these con­texts may derive from the nature of their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Often frag­ile and ephemer­al, vul­ner­a­ble sit­u­a­tions are at times dif­fi­cult to iden­ti­fy. The abil­i­ty to inter­vene sen­si­tive­ly to the del­i­ca­cy iden­ti­fied is con­di­tioned by the abil­i­ty to immerse into the sit­u­a­tion. Ris­ing aware­ness of and enhanc­ing the per­son­al and col­lec­tive sen­si­tiv­i­ty of design deci­sion-mak­ers in rela­tion to vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty requires the devel­op­ment of com­mu­ni­ca­tion inter­faces able to car­ry the mes­sages of and about vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. In archi­tec­tur­al design, draw­ings, espe­cial­ly hand draw­ings, can assume such a role, where the poten­tial of draw­ing acts to inter­face with per­son­al mnemon­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and moments where the draw­ing is pro­posed as a bound­ary object to bind dif­fer­ent ben­e­fi­cia­ries. Anoth­er arti­cle sit­u­ates the line as a start­ing point, a moment of becom­ing that iden­ti­fies its own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty as a hold­er of doubts and uncer­tain­ties and as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the lim­i­nal, dynam­ic con­di­tion of insta­bil­i­ty and ambi­gu­i­ty. The draw­ing line thus becomes ​‘a prin­ci­pal agent of spa­tial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty’, it enables ​‘spa­tial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to be pre­served through­out the ambigu­ous­ness of draw­ing.’ What about the design deci­sion-mak­ers, who can­not use hand draw­ings to detect vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and respond to them sensitively? 

There are process­es of spon­ta­neous, grad­ual decay, delib­er­ate or acci­den­tal occur­rences of ruina­tion where restora­tion remains poten­tial­ly impos­si­ble or irrel­e­vant, and where con­struc­tion and decon­struc­tion process­es may even lead to the recon­struc­tion of ruins or sus­pen­sion of ruination.

What hap­pens in the cas­es of hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ty and even igno­rance of the design deci­sion-mak­ers? ​'Občutek za ranljivost' (abil­i­ty to feel vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty) is the key start­ing point for any socio-spa­tial inter­ven­tion. In the case of the ini­tial sen­si­tiv­i­ty weak­ness or igno­rant design posi­tion, the arti­fi­cial­i­ty of redress­ing may lead to the destruc­tion instead of recov­ery and a refreshed ener­gy. How to deal with sit­u­a­tions, almost impos­si­ble to pre­serve and acti­vate? What hap­pens in care­ful redress­ing the irre­versible? Are there cir­cum­stances when and where vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is or can become a strength? An exam­ple of an alter­na­tive flow to the demo­li­tion projects of the vul­ner­a­ble, ruined rur­al set­tle­ments indi­cates such a poten­tial: reac­ti­va­tion of obso­lete build­ings is rep­re­sent­ed as a mate­r­i­al anchor­age point of per­son­al mem­o­ries of a place to strength­en the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry. To pro­long, uphold, restore, rebuild that memory.

A failed attempt to shift the weak­ness of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty into strength may lead to the under­stand­ing of the con­tem­po­rary world whole­ness as a ful­ly ruined sit­u­a­tion, where frag­ments, places, the­o­ries and mytholo­gies are all in ruins. A ​‘rad­i­cal re-foun­da­tion’ before the world under­goes a defin­i­tive reset has been pro­posed in the idea of the archi­tec­ture of expec­ta­tion, a strat­e­gy of sav­ing the frag­ments and val­ues to be car­ried into the future. What may inte­grate those frag­ments and val­ues, includ­ing the frag­men­ta­tion of knowl­edge, remains an open ques­tion. Who can inves­ti­gate the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of exis­tence, deriv­ing from irre­versible traces of progress? Let us imag­ine a cre­ative col­lec­tive, inspired by cre­ative fig­ures of co-design, able to take care of the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty dis­cussed and to trig­ger the rein­ven­tion of ​‘more-than-human’ worlds.