'ARCHITECTURAL GAITS' - ARCHITECTURES AS TECHNOLOGIES AND TECHNIQUES

Abstract

Attempts to describe and define ‘the role of the architect’ or the notion of architecture ‘itself’, often inherit a displacement between the interests in processes and the interests in interpretations of, or preceptions for either the results as ‘good quality’ or for the practise as ‘good conduct’. They tend to produce rigid models of the design-process, sociologically reducing explanations or mere ethical judgements. (Lawson, Cuff, Lundequist, Effekt:42) With this blurred and blurring difference as a point of departure, the interest in the competencies and strategies performed in the processes gets difficult conditions. The quests for the essences of either ‘Architecture’ or ‘The Architect’ will inevitable show, that both architects and architectures are multiple and heterogeneous, and that the processes that stabilize them are messy an unpredictable.

The attempt in this article is to offer a suggestion for analytical practices that focus on the discursive manifold of ‘strategies, manoeuvres, tactics and technologies’ performed to produce, or obtain spaces and buildings with special or cultural relevant qualities. (Foucault:41) By acknowledging the discursive differences between practises, it becomes possible to ask questions like: in which ways do architects imagine, see and define distant objects that are meant to become buildings, and in which ways are the processes open for intervention? How do the building-to-become gets knowable, real? Are digital and parametric generations offering more designpossibilities or better participation than their analogue competitors?