Summer Holidays

Sunset at Segovia's Roman Acueduct

The Blog is going to be inactive for few weeks: summer holiday has arrived. I prefer to think that I am not going to post anything on vacation. Anyway, that just means that I will have some new experiences to feed this sort of intellectual diary that has become part of my life already.

Have a good summer

Miguel

Algorithms and Form Creation

Delanda’s lecture at Columbia clarifies the philosophical roots of algorithms in form creation. To begin with, you have to accept that there are two forms of considering the world: Rationalism (what Delanda calls European Idealism) and Empirism (what Delanda calls Materialism).

The thing is that that duality was the one Kant had to overcome and what allowed the birth of modern art more than a century later. Actually, the whole postmodern philosophy flourishes from the nostalgia of those days when pure reason ruled the world and Idea and Matter were one. In modern times (our time) that harmonious synthesis only occurs in art: no truth or desire can do so with complete legitimacy.

Manuel Delanda’s arguments are exposed in a rather attractive way, and are quite useful in order to relate form creation (generation?) to current philosophical debate.

Poetry and Politics in the Architecture of John Hejduk

Social Center Trisca

Towers in Gaigás

John Hejduk believed in the poetics of architecture. However, when his buildings are more architectonic is when they are simply buildings and not built statements. An example of this difference are the two buildings in Spain by him (thanks again, Clara): one is a built poem; the other a beautiful and useful building. Both are authentic jewels and both are in Santiago de Compostela. It is good, anyway, to read, watch and listen to his poetry first hand, and to contemplate his paintings-designs too.

Above all, Hejduk was a passionate professor of architecture:

" I believe in the social contract therefore I teach. I believe that the University is one of the last places that protects and preserves freedom, therefore teaching is also a socio/political act, among other things. I believe in books and the written word, therefore I fabricate works with the hope that they will be recorded in books. I am pragmatic and believe in keeping records. I believe to record is to bear witness. The book I wrote, Victims is to bear witness and to remember. I believe in the density of the sparse. I believe in place and the spirit of place."

John Hejduk

Reflexivity and transformative action (Margaret Archer)

Clear speech on various interpretations of reflexivity, but artistic. Archer defines reflexivity as:

mental capacity of normal people to consider themselves in relation to the social context, and the social context in relation to themselves.

Her patient review of other sociologist's definitions is worth spending 45' listening to her coherent and beautiful structured discourse. Wikipedia gives a rather comprehensive view of reflexivity in the social sciences.

Reflexive Architecture Laboratory (RAL), Laboratorio de Arquitectura Reflexiva (LAR)

Reflexive Architecture Laboratory (RAL), a paper related to the design studios of professors Miguel Jaime and Eugenia Lopez Reus, is going to be presented at an international congress sponsored by the Spanish Universities of Vigo, Santiago de Compostela and A Coruña. The I Congress of University Teaching is going to take place from the 2^nd to the 4^th of June in the beautiful city of Vigo, and it will gather together experts from various countries that are trying to build the European Space for Higher Education.

The RAL combines the reflexive theory of architectural creative process (JAIME, 2000), the importance of context in innovation (LOPEZ REUS, 2002) and modern pedagogical techniques that improve creativity, commitment and excellence.

The RAL has been assessed by the Quality Agency of Castilla León (2005-2008), Benchmarking meetings (2008), and, which is more important for the reflexive philosophy of the RAL, has been highly appreciated by the users of the laboratory, the students, in the surveys (2005-2009). The Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca is about to publish the paper “Las sesiones ECCC en el LAR”, one of the pedagogical techniques of the RAL.