After successful completion of the course, students are able to...After successful completion of the course, students are able to...After successful completion of the course, students are able to...After successful completion of the course, students are able to...
Architecture sees itself as a means of communication through which spatial and visual messages should appear self-explanatory to the viewer. In practice, however, other forms of expression are necessary, in particular the spoken word and written form, in order to express oneself clearly to colleagues, clients or laypeople. Self-critically, it should be noted that language is not necessarily the architect's strength. We therefore rarely read expressive and easy-to-understand texts from architects.
The quality of the writing and narration is further behind that of the buildings. It's a shame, because a lot of good stories aren't told, even though there's a lot that could be said.
The description of the architecture is an essential part of the project, from competitions to official construction documentation. Explaining the works or writing about architecture is therefore of great importance. Documented and published in newspapers, books and numerous new media, the texts survive the present and offer us insights into key moments in the architectural creative process. In many cases, texts only offer us an understanding of a lost or lost cultural epoch - Greek antiquity with its groundbreaking buildings is probably the best-known and most comprehensive example of this.
In the summer semester, the architectural text will be presented as a representation medium and transferred to a virtual architecture library (draft).
What must and can language do for art and architecture? In this context, there is also a planned collaboration with linguists and the writer Alexander Peer. In an accompanying workshop, the students research, develop and evaluate cultural, political, social and economic concepts and strategies that come together in architecture and are made possible by it.
The methodology should guide students to reflect and articulate the dialogue between architecture and language from the inside to the outside and vice versa. Using texts written as part of the event, the architectural interventions will be designed at three locations in Vienna:
Künstlerhaus / Musikverein,
MQ,
Karlsplatz
Sustainable alliance between architecture and language
The texts developed describe the various aspects of the places and the associated buildings in an aesthetically independent manner. The various framework conditions such as location, genius loci, semantics, morphology, city reading… will serve as a starting point. We are looking for an object that is closely linked to the location and its built environment.
What language makes architecture visible without us seeing it in front of us?
With the workshop under the direction of Alexander Peer, we expand the repertoire of how texts tell a tangible story about the material quality of a design on the one hand, and how we can give the architectural idea a sensual presence on the other.
To do this, Peer prepares brief theoretical inputs and gives animations to make texts more literary. We deal with rhetorical figures, properties of parts of speech, dramaturgical considerations and an interdisciplinary approach, because ultimately many disciplines come together in architecture, be it history or art history, social science and psychology as well as technology and natural sciences.
The writing workshop is aimed at students at the TU Vienna (led by Mladen Jadric) and is linked to the draft. It's about objects in Vienna's public space and different building typologies.
There are 4 steps for the workshop:
1) Letter of motivation explaining why you want to take part in this workshop (1 A4 page) – Submit to Mladen Jadric by March 5, 2024.
2) Workshop with Alexander Peer at the TU Vienna: on April 3rd or 4th, 2024 (e.g. 4 lessons of 50 minutes each)
3) Draft and text as well
4) Feedback round on the texts in the form of a second workshop day with Alexander Peer: on May 7th or 8th (e.g. 3 lessons of 50 minutes each) and then the final completion of the drafts and
Texts and submission together with draft.
Information by email to: jadric@h1arch.tuwien.ac.at
