March 2011

Here's to

Learning and subsequently taught Art History, has been particularly one of the most complete pleasures that life has given me. Today, I am discovering a new pleasure in the academic order, to teach architecture. Undertake this task is indeed an honor for me, but not easy.

Led by Peter Zumthor, I share with you an excerpt from his book "Thinking Architecture", entitled: Teaching architecture, learning architecture. Enjoy the view of this renowned Swiss architect born in Basel and winner of the Pritzker Prize 2009; of his imagination and above all, his idea about how to teach and learn architecture.

Teaching architecture, learning architecture. By Peter Zumthor, excerpt from "Thinking Architecture" 1996.

Young go to college, want to be an architect or architects, they want to find out if they have the qualities to do so. What is the first thing they spread? The first thing I must explain is that will meet with any teacher who asks questions to which he knows the answer beforehand. Making architecture means asking yourself questions, means finding, with the support of teachers, a proper answer through a series of approximations and circular movements. Again and again. The strength of a good project lies in ourselves and in our ability to perceive the world with feeling and reason. A good architectural design is sensory. A good architectural design is racional.Antes to know even the word architecture, all of us and we have lived. The roots of our understanding of the architecture resides in our early architectural experiences: our room our house, our street, our village, our city and our landscape are things we have experienced before and then we compare with the scenery. The cities and houses were added to our experience. The roots of our understanding of the architecture are in our childhood, our youth live in our biography. Students must learn to work consciously with his personal experiences and biographies of the architecture, which are the basis of their projects. The projects are addressed so as to bring up the whole process. We wonder then what we liked, we were impressed, we moved into this house in that city, and why. How space was ready, place, how he looked, the smell was in the environment, how they sounded my steps, how my voice sounded, how he felt the ground under my feet, the doorknob in my hand, how was the light on the facades , the brightness of the walls. Was it a feeling of tightness or breadth, or breadth of privacy?. Flooring, wood strip as light membrane, heavy stone pots, soft fabrics, polished granite, leather, delicate, tough steel, burnished mahogany, crystal glass, soft asphalt warmed by the sun, here are the materials of the architects, our materials. We know them all, and yet not know them. To project, to invent architectures, we must learn to treat them in a conscious way.

This is a research, it is a work of remembrance. The architecture is always a practical matter, it is not abstract but concrete. A project on paper is not architecture, but only a more or less flawed than it is architecture, comparable with the musical notes. Music precise execution. The architecture needs to be executed. Then comes his body, which is always a sense. All work on the project's first year of architecture are based on the sensuality of the body and objectual architectures, their materiality. Experience the architecture of a particular form, ie, touching her body, seeing, hearing, smelling. Course topics are to discover these qualities and then know how to deal with them consciously. In all the years working with real materials, it always points, and a direct, specific objects, things and installations made of real materials (clay, stone, copper, steel, felt, fabric, wood, plaster, brick, etc.). No cardboard models. What should occur is not at all "models" in its usual sense, but concrete objects, plastic works to a certain scale. Even the figure (scale drawings you must always start from a particular object (here the usual order in architectural practice, idea, plan, model, specific object-reversed). First concrete objects are created and then are drawn to scale. Even understanding the different dimensions of the scale in architecture studies on specific objects (for example, taking measurements of a transverse or longitudinal section of a road layout, detailed drawings of existing interior space, etc.). We hold in our interior pictures of the architectures that have shaped us, and we can relive these images in our minds and ask questions, but this does not come even a new project, any new architecture. All project forward to having new images, our "old" pictures only can help us find new ones. Thinking in images by projecting something always involves thinking about the whole. Well, by nature, the image to show the overall structure of the sector under consideration imagined reality, for example, wall and floor, ceiling and materials, the luminous atmosphere and tone of a space. And even, as in the film, we see all the details in the transition from floor to wall and wall to the window. It is clear that often these elements are not there to start a project, when we try to get an image of the object we thinking. Most of the time, the picture is incomplete at the beginning of the project process, so we strive to conceive again and again and again to clarify the issue of our project, so that the missing parts fit into our image. Or, put another way: we project. The visibility of clear and specific images that represent us helps us to do, to not get lost in the sterility of abstract theoretical hypotheses, not to lose touch with the qualities of realization of the architecture. It helps us not to fall in love with the graphic quality of our drawings and not confuse it with what actually constitutes a quality architecture. Produce internal images is a natural process that all we know. Part of the thinking. Associative thinking, wild, free, orderly and systematic in images, architectural images, space, color and sensory definition here is my favorite project. I would like to convey to students the proper method to project is that thinking in images .