O Archi­tec­ture, Where Art Thou?

A few weeks ago, dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about the pop­u­lar Myers-Brig­gs Type Indi­ca­tor test[1] with a for­mer stu­dent of mine, recent­ly grad­u­at­ed, an inter­est­ing argu­ment came up.

The test, through an intro­spec­tive self-report ques­tion­naire, estab­lish­es what your Psy­cho­log­i­cal Per­son­al­i­ty Type is, among a range of 16 typolo­gies depend­ing on how you per­ceive the world and make deci­sions. She asked me to take the test, which I had actu­al­ly nev­er heard of, to under­stand which cat­e­go­ry it would have assigned me to. Dur­ing the dis­cus­sion she told me that she did not want to repeat the test for fear of not con­firm­ing the result, of which she was par­tic­u­lar­ly proud, obtained in the first attempt: INTJ or the ARCHITECT. Smil­ing, pos­i­tive­ly sur­prised by the pro­found val­ue she assigned to the title, and by the pride that such a result had trig­gered in her, I had to con­fess that, even today, being able to put this title in my busi­ness card arous­es great pride in me. Being an Archi­tect means a lot to me too. But I also had to con­fess that the mean­ing of the word Archi­tect, and con­se­quent­ly that of Archi­tec­ture, varies great­ly depend­ing on the con­texts in which the word is used, espe­cial­ly if inside or out­side the dis­ci­pline. I rarely wear black, and often, in cer­tain con­texts, I have felt uncom­fort­able being called an archi­tect, in an almost, for me, deroga­to­ry sense.

If you do a sur­vey today, ask­ing a num­ber of com­mon Ital­ians what archi­tec­ture is, or—more precisely—what do they need an archi­tect for, most reac­tions will be weird faces and out of focus answers. In some cas­es the need for an archi­tect, at least in Italy, boils down to the sig­na­ture and the stamp need­ed to obtain build­ing per­mis­sions. As such, the archi­tect is only a bureau­crat­ic fig­ure who can val­i­date a con­struc­tion process, no regard for either the qual­i­ty, the mean­ing or the goal of that same process. This is the only ​“speci­fici­ty” that most peo­ple are will­ing to grant archi­tects. Nev­er­the­less, in Italy, the per­cent­age of projects val­i­dat­ed by the stamp and sig­na­ture of a pro­fes­sion­al archi­tect is still very low. The rea­son being, oth­er pro­fes­sion­als (main­ly engi­neers and ​“geometri”)^[2] can also affect the built envi­ron­ment. Unlike oth­er pro­fes­sions, prac­tic­ing archi­tec­ture can­not rely on a strong sci­en­tif­ic basis. It does not have (at least today) a sol­id ground or a set of com­mon­ly accept­ed cri­te­ria to guide actions and make deci­sions. It is incred­i­ble how unpop­u­lar this pro­fes­sion­al fig­ure has become in Italy, the coun­try with the high­est ​“den­si­ty” of archi­tects in the world. Accord­ing to data shared at the 2014 Bien­nale dell’Architettura in Venice,[3] there is one archi­tect for every 414 inhab­i­tants in the Ital­ian penin­su­la.[4] When I tell my stu­dents about this, they often ask me why we have so many archi­tects. Although I hon­est­ly do not know the answer, I can say that study­ing archi­tec­ture in Ital­ian uni­ver­si­ties paves the way for dif­fer­ent ​“inter­pre­ta­tions” of this pro­fes­sion. For instance, we have archi­tects work­ing in such con­texts as the­aters, movies, fash­ion, pho­tog­ra­phy, land­scape, edu­ca­tion, prod­uct design, and many oth­ers, but only a few of them are actu­al­ly involved in shap­ing the built environment.

In the past, in Italy, archi­tects enjoyed a high social sta­tus. To some extent, it still sounds good and fan­cy to prac­tice this pro­fes­sion, although the aver­age earn­ing is very low. Accord­ing to a 2023 report by Almalau­rea,[5] Ital­ian archi­tects (of which only 45 per­cent come from build­ing design)^[6] make less mon­ey com­pared to their col­leagues in oth­er coun­tries. On aver­age, it takes six years to become a licensed archi­tect in Italy and anoth­er five years for a licensed archi­tect to earn a month­ly salary of about 1,600 euros. A wide­spread lack of aware­ness about this dis­ci­pline is, in my opin­ion, the main rea­son for such crit­i­cal con­di­tions (more so than the incred­i­bly intense com­pe­ti­tion, as some suggest). 

What peo­ple think an archi­tect can do for them is far dif­fer­ent from what an archi­tect could (and should) do for them. Some­how, peo­ple lost track of Archi­tec­ture. As a con­se­quence, Archi­tec­ture is slow­ly slip­ping into obso­les­cence. Archi­tec­tur­al design is not an appeal­ing job any­more. Proof of this is the con­tin­u­ous­ly neg­a­tive trend of enroll­ment in archi­tec­ture schools. Once again, fol­low­ing a trend start­ed in 2010, in 2019 there were few­er appli­cants to Ital­ian archi­tec­ture schools than avail­able spots.^[7] The only sig­nif­i­cant out­come of the recent changes affect­ing the orga­ni­za­tion of Ital­ian aca­d­e­m­ic cur­ric­u­la has been the pul­ver­iza­tion of archi­tec­ture as a dis­ci­pline into myr­i­ad appar­ent­ly appeal­ing tech­ni­cal sub-dis­ci­plines like inte­ri­or design, urban plan­ning, prod­uct design, land­scape design and so on. Cen­turies of tra­di­tion stress­ing the holis­tic nature of archi­tec­tur­al design have been wiped out by cut­ting off all the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary ties that made archi­tec­tur­al design the cross­roads bring­ing togeth­er many fields of human expres­sion. By dis­in­te­grat­ing into a pletho­ra of spe­cial­ist (main­ly tech­ni­cal) dis­ci­plines, Archi­tec­ture lost its nat­ur­al voca­tion of inter­pret­ing of the dif­fer­ent forces active in the trans­for­ma­tion of the phys­i­cal environment. 

Con­se­quent­ly, the mean­ing and the essence of archi­tec­ture start­ed to be mis­un­der­stood. One result of these con­vo­lut­ed con­di­tions is that Archi­tects have lost con­tact with every­day life. They are often asso­ci­at­ed with glam­our and extrav­a­gance. Archi­tec­ture is seen as an exclu­sive lux­u­ry, a dec­o­ra­tive and unnec­es­sary con­tri­bu­tion to the built envi­ron­ment. It is expect­ed to live in high-def­i­n­i­tion pic­tures in mag­a­zines and webzines but is hard­ly capa­ble of influ­enc­ing col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion. In fact, it does not affect life any­more. Archi­tec­ture has become inac­ces­si­ble and exclu­sive not only phys­i­cal­ly but also, eco­nom­i­cal­ly (archi­tects increase cost and decrease lifes­pan of build­ings) and cul­tur­al­ly (archi­tects’ build­ings are cryp­tic and mean­ing­less). Archi­tec­ture doesn’t live in the present, even if it is of press­ing actu­al­i­ty. In a famous lec­ture he gave in Berlin in 1984,^[8] Gior­gio Gras­si com­pared archi­tec­ture to a dead lan­guage, like Latin or ancient Greek, a lan­guage out­dat­ed and obso­lete in its use, but able to give an incred­i­ble con­tri­bu­tion to under­stand­ing todays’ phe­nom­e­na. An inter­est­ing posi­tion, indeed. Yet, the risk here is a pes­simistic drift infused with nos­tal­gia, sug­gest­ing some sort of re-alpha­bet­i­za­tion of an obso­lete lan­guage as the only life jack­et. In fact, to be an archi­tect and an archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tor one must have a vision for the future; opti­mism, there­fore, must be a part of this mind frame. Some­times archi­tec­ture is asso­ci­at­ed with a tech­ni­cal prob­lem-solv­ing dis­ci­pline that man­agers, experts, and lawyers can mas­ter bet­ter than archi­tects can. This has led archi­tec­ture to lose part of the spe­cif­ic know-how that was learned in and from con­struc­tion sites.

In the same mean­while, archi­tec­ture as a whole dis­ci­pline and design as a mind­set, are not eas­i­ly mar­ketable by com­mu­ni­ca­tion strate­gists. Media need infor­ma­tion for imme­di­ate con­sump­tion, and data must be easy to con­sume and digest even with­out any knowl­edge. As we all know, archi­tec­ture is hard to define. Like with elec­trons in physics, it is only pos­si­ble to define an orbit, a field of ten­sion where archi­tec­ture can be met. For a long time, archi­tec­ture inhab­it­ed a space some­where between imag­i­na­tion and real­i­ty. It can­not be pre­cise, as it deals with both the­o­ry and prac­tice: Ea nasc­i­tur ex fab­ri­ca et rati­o­ci­na­tione,^[9] Prac­tice and the­o­ry, man­u­al and intel­lec­tu­al labor are its par­ents, as Vit­ru­vius said 2.000 years ago. More impor­tant­ly, archi­tec­ture must have a mutu­al rela­tion­ship with life. Sci­en­tists have pro­posed hun­dreds of ways to define life, but none of them have been wide­ly accept­ed. The only sure thing about life is that it must deal with evo­lu­tion and change, and it has a lim­it­ed time span. This is why the def­i­n­i­tion of archi­tec­ture, too, evolves con­stant­ly, thus requir­ing con­tin­u­ous updates, com­mit­ment, and faith.

Architecture’s not dead! This is the vio­lent, inten­tion­al­ly ​“non-aca­d­e­m­ic” scream that is about to rise at this point of my con­tri­bu­tion. In doing so, I am quot­ing Wat­tie Buchan, lead singer of the Scot­tish punk band The Exploit­ed (cer­tain­ly very far from being a nos­tal­gic Latin schol­ar).^[10]

What if instead of being dead and buried archi­tec­ture has sim­ply hid itself some­where wait­ing for bet­ter times? In 2002, Rem Kool­haas stressed the notion of ​“Big­ness” in his sem­i­nal book S,M,L,XL[11]: as he put it, build­ing was try­ing to replace archi­tec­ture and ​“all these breaks with scale, with archi­tec­tur­al com­po­si­tion, with tra­di­tion, with trans­paren­cy, with ethics—imply the final, most rad­i­cal break: Big­ness is no longer part of any urban tis­sue. It exists; at most, it coex­ists. Its sub­text is fuck con­text.”^[12]

On the con­trary, maybe poor Archi­tec­ture (scared by Big­ness) ran away and was giv­en asy­lum by its long­time friend and ally Con­text, turn­ing on incog­ni­to mode. This would have made it pos­si­ble for Archi­tec­ture, as in a ​“moral fable,” to become invis­i­ble while host­ed by Con­text, with whom it had always enter­tained a mutu­al and fer­tile rela­tion­ship with intri­cate plots, where cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and tech­ni­cal demands insep­a­ra­bly merge. 

So is Archi­tec­ture alive? Yes, Archi­tec­ture is alive and it exists in Con­text. To redis­cov­er the beat­ing heart of Archi­tec­ture it is imper­a­tive to under­stand the con­tex­tu­al milieu with­in which it exists.

Con­text is an unfin­ished choral book from which Archi­tec­ture takes mean­ing and ener­gy. In turn, Archi­tec­ture, too, con­tributes its own ​“episodes” to it. Con­text is like a cloud, whose pre­cise form devel­ops from a pre­vi­ous form at a giv­en moment and is doomed to fade in the imme­di­ate future, thus lead­ing to a con­tin­u­ous evo­lu­tion. Archi­tec­ture oper­ates in this evo­lu­tion. There­fore, it is more impor­tant to take into account the struc­tur­al val­ues of the Con­text rather than chas­ing the exag­ger­at­ed indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and self-ref­er­en­tial­i­ty of the build­ing and its tech­nol­o­gy. Under­stand­ing the dialec­ti­cal rela­tion­ship between the struc­ture of the Con­text and the for­mal struc­ture of Archi­tec­ture is a press­ing, nec­es­sary ques­tion to revive Archi­tec­ture and make it fer­tile again.

Archi­tec­ture, its trans­dis­ci­pli­nary role saved by the shel­ter of Con­text, in turn gra­cious­ly sets Con­text as the focus of its own inter­ests. Archi­tec­tur­al design uses the built envi­ron­ment as a quar­ry of data to inform future projects, both from a con­cep­tu­al and a phys­i­cal point of view.

Under­stand­ably, the most phys­i­cal com­po­nent of Con­text is the envi­ron­ment, both built and nat­ur­al. Today more than ever the built envi­ron­ment needs design and the mul­ti­fac­eted char­ac­ter of Archi­tec­ture. It requires archi­tects not only as mere design­ers of good build­ings but main­ly as pro­fes­sion­als able to read, inter­pret, and fix. Due to eco­log­i­cal emer­gen­cies, sus­tain­abil­i­ty issues, and lack of sen­si­tiv­i­ty, there is not a sin­gle acre of vir­gin land that is worth ​“anthropiz­ing” by encrust­ing it with new buildings.

Archi­tects are need­ed for their learned capac­i­ty to envi­sion, thus pairing—entwining—theory and prac­tice. They are required to help and sup­port deci­sion mak­ing; to research build­ing mate­ri­als and tech­nolo­gies; to redis­cov­er the laws of nature hid­den behind codes; to con­sid­er and advise the so-called ​“infor­mal sec­tor”; to fix urban mis­takes; to restore and repur­pose his­toric build­ings; and to speak of style and aes­thet­ics. In oth­er words, they are need­ed to pro­mote con­cepts and ideas that can help the built envi­ron­ment evolve toward an acces­si­ble and enjoy­able place where life can happen.

The built envi­ron­ment is and will be the tar­get of Archi­tec­ture, whether we speak of the nat­ur­al expres­sion of the rur­al envi­ron­ment bru­tal­ized by inten­sive exploita­tion or the urban envi­ron­ment trau­ma­tized by a cen­tu­ry of eco­nom­ic speculation.

Archi­tects can con­tin­u­ous­ly reshape their abil­i­ty to read the built envi­ron­ment as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute a verse to its nar­ra­tive plot. Under these con­di­tions, read­ing, under­stand­ing, and inter­pret­ing the built envi­ron­ment become crit­i­cal design tools. Verbs like eval­u­ate, re-use, fix, re-cycle, get rid, clean-up, com­plete, re-pur­pose, wipe out, make room, occu­py, extend, imple­ment, reorder, sew up, and so on must become main actions for archi­tec­tur­al design.

There are mul­ti­far­i­ous tools used to read the built envi­ron­ment, and to under­stand the oppor­tu­ni­ties it pro­vides for archi­tec­ture. They range from the ana­log­i­cal and tra­di­tion­al to the most advanced and dig­i­tal­ly pre­cise. They include such ​“areas” as sur­vey, mea­sure­ment, sketch­ing, tech­ni­cal draw­ing as plans and sec­tions, pho­tog­ra­phy, videos, and laser scan­ning. All of these instru­ments are nec­es­sary for a cor­rect under­stand­ing of the project. Yet, they are not enough. These high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed tools are very pre­cise but their results hap­pen to be too ana­lyt­i­cal and spe­cif­ic vis-à-vis the direct and phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence of the archi­tec­tur­al space. The fun­da­men­tal tool for read­ing the built envi­ron­ment is physical—haptic—experience; in oth­er words, a per­son access­ing that space, mov­ing in and react­ing to it or envi­sion­ing doing so. 

Teach­ing one to read the con­tex­tu­al nar­ra­tive means pro­mot­ing the impor­tance of the con­tex­tu­al expe­ri­ence, to become a user of archi­tec­ture and to be able to impart a lan­guage of Archi­tec­ture. As such, fic­tion is per­haps the most acute means to infil­trate mass media cul­ture and the dom­i­nance of the ephemer­al image. Archi­tec­tur­al design is, in and of itself, a form of fic­tion. Teach­ing stu­dents to appre­ci­ate the built envi­ron­ment and to speak of Archi­tec­ture through its lex­i­con of words and draw­ings is a first impor­tant step toward a new aware­ness. Edu­cat­ing stu­dents to devel­op a con­tex­tu­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty, means mak­ing them able to speak warm­ly of Archi­tec­ture in a pre­cise lan­guage that con­veys with exactitude.

Learn­ing to read, rec­og­nize, and eval­u­ate con­tex­tu­al issues will result in re-edu­cat­ing peo­ple about archi­tec­ture and what archi­tects can do for them.

Con­text exist­ed before, dur­ing, and after archi­tec­tur­al design; it is affect­ed by design and it should inspire design. With­in this frame­work, design is a con­tin­u­ous mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the Con­text and archi­tects, as sur­geons, will oper­ate in Con­text to accom­mo­date the new needs intro­duced by the evo­lu­tion of life, val­ues, and ideas. In surgery, a pro­found knowl­edge of the body and of its health state is essen­tial for a suc­cess­ful sur­gi­cal oper­a­tion and, more impor­tant­ly, to avoid rejec­tion phenomena. 

Con­text is a com­bi­na­tion of mate­r­i­al and imma­te­r­i­al sub­stances, some eas­i­er to sur­vey and report on a draw­ing, some ephemer­al and quite impos­si­ble to reduce to a Mon­gean pro­jec­tive real­i­ty. Sophis­ti­cat­ed and appar­ent­ly arbi­trary and bizarre tools need to be devel­oped to re-edu­cate spa­tial sen­si­tiv­i­ty and sen­si­bil­i­ty in the age of Glob­al Posi­tion­ing Sys­tems, live track­ing and, free access to data. 

Train­ing the capac­i­ty of see­ing, watch­ing and learn­ing from Con­text by extract­ing count­able and objec­tive data from uncount­able and sub­jec­tive per­cep­tions will result in a less scat­tered and con­fus­ing built envi­ron­ment, where respect and mean­ing will lead deci­sions instead of obses­sion for extrav­a­gant nov­el­ty and max­i­miza­tion of profits.

The fol­low­ing 10 exer­cis­es are attempts to train this capac­i­ty and also to trig­ger curios­i­ty and instill pas­sion for Con­text in inhab­i­tants of the built envi­ron­ment, but also rou­tines to devel­op skills and meth­ods to search Con­text for the fer­tile ideas with­out which design is just a mere and arbi­trary for­mal speculation.

Drifting in Context

Since we have become addict­ed on Google Maps as a tool to walk places, relearn­ing the art of get­ting lost becomes a more and more urgent archi­tec­tur­al expression.

From Baudelaire’s flâner­ie to Guy Debord’s drift[13], walk­ing places with­out any oth­er pur­pose than being an acute observ­er of urban life is an impor­tant learn­ing tool for archi­tects, a fun­da­men­tal method to have an idea of the con­text in which we will design.

By walk­ing a design site aim­less­ly you will under­stand how mutant con­text is and how con­tin­u­ous­ly var­ied and affect­ed it is by its inhab­i­tants as well as by time, weath­er and light.

The street view image pro­vid­ed by the smart phone is only a frozen impres­sion of its phys­i­cal appear­ance, use­ful to get to places but not to under­stand them.

_The Drift

Take a pho­to­copy of a map of the site and a stopwatch. 

Go for a walk on the site in dif­fer­ent times of the day and dif­fer­ent days of the week.

Start from the same place being it home, stu­dio or anoth­er rel­e­vant urban position.

Start the stop­watch and record your itin­er­ary deci­sions and all the slow­downs imposed by your curios­i­ty (shop win­dows, col­ors, peo­ple), and by the impo­si­tions of the site (traf­fic lights, side­walks, fences) in short, all those things not eas­i­ly rep­re­sentable in a scale plan.

Rep­re­sent your drift in the map togeth­er with any dis­cov­ered points of inter­est, using a set of graph­i­cal con­ven­tions of your own invention.

Repeat the exper­i­ment in dif­fer­ent moments of the day, and dif­fer­ent days of the week, and under dif­fer­ent conditions.

Com­pare the results, tra­jec­to­ries and end­ing points of the dif­fer­ent drifts and try to iden­ti­fy vari­ables and invari­ables of the path.

_Urban Gambling

Make a site plan that cov­ers an area at least four times big­ger in dimen­sions than the actu­al site of inter­ven­tion for the project ex. (if the site is 50×100 mt, chose an area of at least 100 x200mt). 

Start walk­ing from a loca­tion on the edge of the map of your choice direct­ing your steps toward the site.

Each time you find your­self in front of an inter­sec­tion, roll the dice and let it deter­mine the direc­tion to go, and reg­is­ter it on the map.

Make your own rules and write them care­ful­ly, as 1–6 left, 2–5 straight, 3–4 right, or some­thing sim­i­lar, but once you start, fol­low strict­ly the sug­ges­tions of the dice. If you meet a con­di­tion not pre­viewed in the rules, stop and add a writ­ten rule to the list for that pecu­liar condition.

Each time the route address­es you to the edge of the map, bounce on the edge, go back on the oppo­site side of the street, and restart the route.

Map care­ful­ly your itin­er­ary, and see what the result­ing dia­gram can sug­gest in terms of area cov­er­age, means of access to the site and fre­quen­cy of rep­e­ti­tions and overlapping.

Capturing the Context

In any urban site, there is a dia­logue between his­to­ry, build­ings, and events that takes place over time. This dia­logue cre­ates a rich palimpsest of mate­r­i­al traces— marks on walls, pati­nas on door han­dles, demo­li­tions, re-build­ings, re-paint­ings, paint­ing overs, over­lays, inser­tions, exten­sions, mod­i­fi­ca­tions, — that reveal mul­ti­ple usage and over­lap­ping narratives.

In his essay ​“The Tell-the-Tale Detail”, Mar­co Fras­cari describes that while a plan draw­ing shows the ​“plot” of a build­ing, the design of the details crys­tal­lizes the ​“tale”.

Details artic­u­late the sto­ry of the archi­tec­ture. Fras­cari says that cer­tain impor­tant details are impreg­nat­ed with sig­nif­i­cance; these ​“tell-the-tale” details can give us an under­stand­ing of the whole.

This series of exer­cis­es aim to cap­ture small por­tions of the site using Frascari’s atti­tude of view­ing a detail as an indi­ca­tor of a larg­er condition. 

With the atti­tude of an urban crime-scene inves­ti­ga­tor, and using the skills and the tools typ­i­cal of such an atti­tude, you will orga­nize por­traits and iden­tik­its of the site, start­ing by col­lect­ing evi­dence in a sci­en­tif­ic way. The exer­cis­es will serve as the basis for a foren­sic and tax­o­nom­ic series of site stud­ies, able to ignite tales about our sites.

_Using a Camera as a Fishing Net

Take an old cam­era (ana­log or dig­i­tal) and cov­er the mon­i­tor or viewfind­er with paper tape. As an alter­na­tive, hold a smart phone back­wards and take frontal pic­tures (so you can’t see the screen).

Give your­self a set of rules as in ​“I will take a pic­ture every ten steps,” or ​“every walk­ing minute,” and start cap­tur­ing pic­tures of the ground from the same dis­tance— maybe help your­self with a cus­tom-made spacer.

Map the loca­tion of each shot on a site plan, try­ing to cov­er at least a sam­ple of all the dif­fer­ent soils of the site.

Once at your desk, down­load all the pic­tures and dis­cov­er care­ful­ly what end­ed up in them, by zoom­ing in and out and try­ing to name episodes and rec­og­nize col­ors and materials.

Re-orga­nize the pic­tures in an appeal­ing mosa­ic-style plan representation.

You can repeat the exer­cise with ver­ti­cal sur­faces at eye lev­el, cre­at­ing an atlas of build­ing mate­ri­al­i­ty and finishes.

_The Curio Cabinet

Find a box of Ziploc plas­tic bags of dif­fer­ent sizes and some tweezers. 

Print a map of the site in a handy for­mat, and bring some sheets of paper to take notes.

Go for an explo­ration of the site pay­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to things that can be found on the ground.

Col­lect the objects or the mate­r­i­al sam­ples that you find of par­tic­u­lar interest.

Put each item in the Ziploc bag using the tweezers.

Label the object, with a code and locate it on the map. Maybe take a pic­ture and write some notes about the object in its context. 

Once at your desk, design and build a curio cab­i­net, some type of dis­play case or shelf to organize—hanging on the wall or lay­ing on a table—all the items col­lect­ed next to each oth­er to form a display. 

This dis­play of appar­ent­ly val­ue­less ran­dom objects will invoke curios­i­ty, and will become a pre­cious infor­mal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the site.

_ Tell-the-Tale Tile

Dur­ing a site vis­it, iden­ti­fy a detail that indi­cates a moment of change in the evo­lu­tion of the built envi­ron­ment of the project site and locate it on a map.

Please note that, for a detail to be a pos­si­ble sub­ject of your study, it should:

_show the inter­sec­tion of at least two dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als; and

_show ​“the pas­sage of time”, through weath­er­ing, the jux­ta­po­si­tion of old and new mate­ri­als, pati­na, or lit­er­al traces and mark­ings left on surfaces.

Make a mask made of heavy card­board cap­tur­ing a por­tion of sur­face equiv­a­lent to that of a com­mon ceram­ic tile, approx­i­mate­ly 30×30 cm.

Put the mask on the detail cho­sen, help­ing your­self if need­ed with paper tape.

Take a pic­ture keep­ing your cam­era straight to the sub­ject, in plan or in ele­va­tion min­i­miz­ing van­ish­ing points.

Think and take notes about why this detail reveals to you an impor­tant narrative. 

On a 30x30cm white sheet of Bris­tol board or water­col­or paper, at your desk with the help of the pic­ture tak­en or live straight on site, redraw the framed cho­sen detail at 1:1 scale. 

You may use what­ev­er medi­um is most appro­pri­ate for your sub­ject mat­ter and intent (pas­tel, pen­cil, col­ored pen­cil, ink wash, a com­bi­na­tion of media, etc.) as long as it is hand drawn.

The image should be com­posed full-bleed on the sheet and it must be as care­ful­ly and faith­ful­ly ren­dered as pos­si­ble in a hyper-real­is­tic way. 

In oth­er words the draw­ing should at first glance appear to be a photograph. 

As a set, these draw­ings will form an impres­sive read­ing of the project site, allow­ing you to see your sur­round­ings in a new way. 

Com­posed togeth­er as the tiles of a floor or of a wall, the draw­ings will have a spa­tial and visu­al impact in their own right.

_The Windows Atlas

Dur­ing a sur­vey, col­lect pic­tures and/or sketch­es of doors and win­dows that can be found on site.

Pic­tures and sketch­es, will be made as straight as pos­si­ble to the sub­ject in order to remove all the van­ish­ing points, or they will be used to abstract infor­ma­tion such as dimen­sions, pro­por­tions, col­ors and mate­ri­als. They will have the goal of reveal­ing the char­ac­ter and the iden­ti­ty of the built environment. 

Win­dows and doors are thresh­olds between inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or; through them spaces are made acces­si­ble and are lit. They are frames for both the views on the sur­round­ing land­scape as well as for the spa­tial­i­ty of the building.

How are they made? How big are they? Do they have shut­ters or cur­tains? How do they work in fram­ing light and views? How are the fix­tures pro­tect­ed from the ele­ments? Are there recur­ring themes and figures?

Once in stu­dio, print the pic­tures or open them in pho­to edit­ing soft­ware in the same scale and pro­por­tion and orga­nize a big fic­tion­al ele­va­tion of the site as if it were a whole building.

_Castings

Take some toi­let paper or paper towels.

Dip the paper into water mixed with a small amount of PVA glue for a while and then let it drip all the excess humidity.

With this pro­ce­dure paper will become soft­er, pli­able and eas­i­er to adapt and copy ​“phys­i­cal­ly” oth­er surfaces.

Lay the wet paper down and push it against a sur­face that you find par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing for tex­ture, plas­tic­i­ty, or aging. Use a tow­el or oth­er cloth to gen­tly press on top of the paper to soak up all the excess water. The paper will fol­low the form of the object.

Let the paper dry com­plete­ly before remov­ing it from the sur­face you want to reproduce.

The sur­face will leave marks on the paper that will solid­i­fy once the paper is com­plete­ly dry and stiff. This pro­ce­dure cre­ates a cav­i­ty that con­tains the exact imprint of the object. Paper has a remark­able mem­o­ry and dries to cre­ate very detailed imprints. 

Try using pas­tel, crayons or char­coal to pick up the tex­ture of the embossed paper surfaces.

The casts pro­duced, rem­i­nis­cent of fos­silized remains, will cap­ture the mem­o­ry and the tex­ture of the surface. 

Assem­bling them in a sort of three dimen­sion­al cat­a­log will result in an abstract sculp­tur­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion made of on-site textures.

_Rubbings

Take some sheets of white paper or sim­i­lar material.

Place a sheet over the sub­ject of your investigation.

Rub a mate­r­i­al of your choice that is able to deposit marks against the paper.

You can use char­coal or graphite pen­cil but also var­i­ous forms of blot­ted and rolled ink, chalk, wax, or oth­er exper­i­men­tal matters.

The marks left on the paper will make vis­i­ble tex­tures and sur­face dis­con­ti­nu­ities mea­sur­ing only a few thou­sandths of a mil­lime­ter and result­ing in a very pre­cise and accu­rate repro­duc­tion of the subject.

The draw­ings pro­duced using these two tech­niques will be com­posed in a series of abstract draw­ings and can be eas­i­ly trans­formed in pat­tern and tex­tures reusable in the design activity.

_Puddlecolors

Get good-qual­i­ty and weight water­col­or paper and a set of brushes.

Choose a view or part of the site that you find par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing or wor­thy of fur­ther study.

You can use latex gloves through­out the assignment.

Begin a draw­ing of your sub­ject; pen­cils are per­mit­ted unique­ly for small con­struc­tion draw­ings or for reference.

Make a water­col­or rep­re­sen­ta­tion of it using only mate­ri­als or sub­stances found on site, dip­ping the brush into pud­dles or oth­er sources of liq­uid, or spilling bot­tled liq­uid on dust or oth­er mate­ri­als near you, nat­u­ral­ly present on the site.

At the end of the draw­ing, as for the cap­tion of a paint­ing exhib­it­ed in a muse­um, add a descrip­tion of the mate­ri­als used to paint, with ref­er­ence to how that mate­r­i­al arrived at the site.

The paint­ing pro­duced will turn out to be a super con­tex­tu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the site.

Registering the Context

No mat­ter what preser­va­tion­ists and nos­tal­gists can think about it, the envi­ron­ment, as every­thing infused with or affect­ed by life, is char­ac­ter­ized by change over time. This series of exer­cis­es are tar­get­ing the effect of time and life on a spe­cif­ic site and the way such changes might be record­ed and mapped. 

A reg­is­ter is a device able to extract data capa­ble of rep­re­sent­ing and study how a space changes, espe­cial­ly when there are a num­ber of dif­fer­ent types of reg­is­ter, as those found in a weath­er station. 

Reg­is­tra­tion logs a sit­u­a­tion or phe­nom­e­non and makes it vis­i­ble, some­times through the pat­terns that emerge from a mass of data, or by com­par­ing found mate­r­i­al with an agreed scale (such as a ruler or thermometer).

Reg­is­ter­ing urban phe­nom­e­na can help us to under­stand a build­ing or space as an active organ­ism through mon­i­tor­ing changes to mate­ri­als, light, air move­ment, sound lev­els, struc­tur­al move­ment and dimen­sions. The data extract­ed by the reg­is­ter and orga­nized in an intel­li­gi­ble form can show how a site is used, by record­ing types and fre­quen­cy of use of dif­fer­ent spaces, move­ment pat­terns, occu­pa­tion lev­els and feed­back by the building’s users.

_The Register

You will be design­ing and mak­ing a device to reg­is­ter one or more ele­ments of the site that you are fas­ci­nat­ed by and think could be wor­thy of fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion, and how they change over time or across oth­er change agen­cies. The reg­is­ter can record the viewer’s analy­sis of a build­ing too, record­ing indi­vid­ual sub­jec­tive assess­ments of its spaces.

The length of time dur­ing which this device will reg­is­ter change is up to you, but it must be defined. The time scale of the reg­is­ter can be slowed, reveal­ing the his­tor­i­cal changes the site goes through.

The device must be made to exhi­bi­tion qual­i­ty, using inno­v­a­tive pur­pose-made or reusing ​‘found’ mate­ri­als or repur­pos­ing mechanisms.

The reg­is­ter may oper­ate invol­un­tar­i­ly, or may need an oper­a­tor. It will need to fit snug­ly into place with­in the site or be able to move along a des­ig­nat­ed route through the space.

It must pro­duce a durable result that can be retrieved and edit­ed where nec­es­sary to com­mu­ni­cate infor­ma­tion to oth­ers, (eg., as film, pho­togram, pho­tog­ra­phy, sound record­ing, phys­i­cal inscrip­tion, trace, auto­mat­ic draw­ing, numbers,diagrams, texts.)

Telling the Context

Remem­ber, there is not one cor­rect sto­ry, only cor­rect ways of see­ing what the sto­ries can be.

This cat­e­go­ry of con­tex­tu­al inves­ti­ga­tions is focused on the capac­i­ty typ­i­cal of nar­ra­tive tools to talk about places and spaces start­ing from the lived or imag­ined expe­ri­ence of them. Writ­ten lan­guage and sto­ry­telling can express the inex­press­ible, turn­ing the imma­te­r­i­al com­po­nent of spa­tial con­tents hard­ly rep­re­sentable in draw­ings, tan­gi­ble and transferable.

These exer­cis­es will demon­strate the impor­tant role of archi­tect as a sto­ry­teller, which has been man­i­fest­ed in archi­tec­ture since its beginnings.

These writ­ten assign­ments will show how fic­tion­al sto­ries can play an impor­tant role in design­ing archi­tec­ture, not just as a sep­a­rate and sup­ple­men­tary exer­cise, but as an inte­gral ele­ment of the design process. 

These nar­ra­tives will become tools for a deep­er under­stand­ing of the context.

_A Narrative

You are asked to write a two pages fic­tion­al nar­ra­tive sit­u­at­ed in or relat­ed to the site of your project.

It can be a descrip­tion, a sto­ry board, a scene for a movie plot, a car­toon, a fairy tale, a romance, a drama.

By writ­ing, you are asked to ​‘draw with words’ the site of their projects where the assigned pro­gram will be orga­nized sim­i­lar­ly to the appro­pri­ate dwelling of their char­ac­ters; in short to ​‘write this very place.’

Issues of mate­ri­al­i­ty, atmos­phere and char­ac­ter are para­mount, and must be expressed through ​‘word-designs’ and life episodes.

The nar­ra­tive writ­ings must express the expe­ri­ences and the imag­ined space, describ­ing it from the user's per­spec­tive rather than from the designer’s per­spec­tive. In doing so you will com­bine fic­tion­al and non-fic­tion­al aspects of space appro­pri­a­tion and you will envi­sion the poten­tial changes of the site induced by design and time agencies.

_Writing the Place

Spend a delim­it­ed gap of time on site (one hour, one morn­ing, one day, …) expe­ri­enc­ing the spa­tial qual­i­ty of it, observ­ing it and using it as the sce­nario for some infor­mal activ­i­ty, (e.g. read­ing a book, eat­ing a sand­wich, tak­ing a nap, mak­ing a phone call).

Do not take notes or sketch­es dur­ing the expe­ri­ence, just take what you get from it as a periph­er­al or back­ground presence.

Once you leave the site, using the mem­o­rized per­cep­tions try to describe in writ­ten form, with a prop­er lan­guage, as pre­cise as pos­si­ble, the site as expe­ri­enced dur­ing the visit.

Make sure, in your writ­ten descrip­tion to cov­er the fol­low­ing areas:

Phys­i­cal pres­ences such as con­struct­ed ele­ments (mon­u­ments, build­ings,), nat­ur­al ele­ments (green areas, trees, ani­mals,), traf­fic and trans­porta­tion mode (cars, bicy­cles, bus­es,) and peo­ple (pres­ence of tourists, residents).

Per­cep­tive pres­ence of smell, sound, taste, touch, tem­per­a­ture and oth­er visu­al sen­sa­tions, and of the glob­al feel­ings induced by the site.

In the writ­ten descrip­tion, you are allowed to use only your mem­o­ry of the site, no pic­tures, notes or oth­er tools. This exer­cise is using mem­o­ry as a fil­ter to select the most rel­e­vant aspect of the site. You can use sketch­es or oth­er forms of visu­al sup­port for the descrip­tion, only if they are made after the expe­ri­ence in a remote loca­tion, using mem­o­ry and not copy­ing sketch­es or pic­tures made on site.

_On‑Site Plots

This exer­cise is the sec­ond part of the so-called Curio Cab­i­net assign­ment devel­oped in the Cap­tur­ing the Con­text cat­e­go­ry. It will add a fic­tion­al com­po­nent to the foren­sic approach devel­oped there.

Take the curio cab­i­net devel­oped before and start to join nar­ra­tive­ly all the spec­i­mens col­lect­ed in a fic­tion­al plot.

The spec­i­mens col­lect­ed will be reused in the fic­tion­al plot with­out a par­tic­u­lar order but with the goal of root­ing them even more in the context.

The result will be a sto­ry with fic­tion­al char­ac­ters act­ing and mov­ing in a real con­text, using real objects found on-site for an imag­ined situation.

The exer­cise will force the writer to imag­ine every­day life tales trig­gered and host­ed by the spa­tial qual­i­ties offered by the site. The actors of your script will be less fic­tion­al than the scale fig­ures in a cross sec­tion, and they are poten­tial fruiters of the design activity.

Archi­tec­ture, to me, has a lot to do with mean­ing; with the rea­sons why things are done the way they are done. To be an Archi­tect is to be able to hide thoughts and mean­ing inside forms.

I final­ly took the Myers-Brig­gs test[14] and came out as an ENFP Tur­bu­lent Cam­paign­er per­son­al­i­ty type: ​“Enthu­si­as­tic, cre­ative, spon­ta­neous, opti­mistic, sup­port­ive, play­ful. Val­ue inspi­ra­tion, enjoy start­ing new projects, see poten­tial in others.” 

Not an Archi­tect? Fair, I take it.