After successful completion of the course, students are able to approach the complexity of an architectural task in a critical and inventive manner. They will have gained experience in working within an abstract context, exploring specific aspects of it in depth, and developing an active stance throughout.
Room, Fragrance
“It surrounds us and penetrates us but we are barely aware of it. It is not a space: it is a subtle, transparent body, barely perceivable by touch or by sight. But it is from this fluid, which envelops everything, which penetrates and is penetrated by everything, that we have the colors, forms, smells, and tastes of the world. In this same fluid we can encounter things and let ourselves be touched by everything that exists and does not exist. It is this fluid that makes us think; it is this fluid that makes us live and love. The atmosphere is our first world, the medium in which we are wholly immersed: the sphere of breath” (Coccia) – the ‘vaporous realm’, and – the realm of scents. Breathing we move through the earth, and through smell we interact with its volatile interiors, rather than its surfaces. To smell is to breathe in color.
Exploring the ‘smell(s)oftheworld’, in ACT we will look at the act of olfaction as a way of going after ‘what is in the air’, which is to ‘learn to be affected’, meaning, put into motion by everything else. Thought to be our first and one of our chemical senses, smell is special: it blends the immediate and the abstract, “[…] slides from knowledge to memory and from space to time – no doubt from things to beings” (Serres); for some it is of a ‘half-formed nature’, for others it is the sense of the imagination. Following that, each of us will exercise to ‘become a nose’ (French. un nez, as in cosmetics) as a means to become active as an architect, and explore fragrances and odors – natural and synthetic – as airborne building materials; not only to engender new scents, but to explore what it can mean for something to be volatile today – to be open to new nature(s).
ACT combines lecture, exercise, and discussion – active participation in all three, as well as the consistent development and richness of the work submitted, will determine your final grade. In addition, our sessions are not recorded, so personal attendance (except in cases of illness or force majeure) is required for successful participation and completion of the course.
The course stands alone in its approach, but in its interest it is linked to a series of courses on 'Fruits' completed last semester at the ATTP. ↗
For coursework reference, see the final volume of the Daedalus Observatory – outcome of a research involving the ACT courses of W17-18. ↗
ACT combines lecture, exercise, and discussion – active participation in all three, as well as the consistent development and richness of the work submitted, will determine your final grade. In addition, our sessions are not recorded, so personal attendance (except in cases of illness or force majeure) is required for successful participation and completion of the course.