The course handbook suggests that in the current era, the focus may be more on the "consequences" rather than the causes of architectural forms. This implies that, from a design generation perspective, emphasis should be placed on the materiality, construction, and usage of buildings, rather than on abstractly generating architectural forms.
In this course, the unit approached construction in a more poetic manner. The last four stanzas of Philip Larkin’s poem "Bridge for the Living" cleverly convey a sense of something being constructed and experienced within us, representing a constructive and poetic construction. To achieve this, a series of factors were intertwined, shaping the final proposal’s construction logic, poetic combinations, and procedural space. This approach led to an enhanced understanding (or dialogue) between ecology and urbanism. Unlike the more straightforward description in the handbook, there exists a poetic ambiguity here. Although it begins abstractly, it genuinely concerns the consequences of the environment and architecture.
The ambition of this project was to address this issue from both poetic and scientific perspectives. Through previous learning and practice, it became clear that environmental conservation is central to the architectural industry, with emphasis on material usage and energy efficiency. This is reflected in environmental accounting methods like carbon footprints, material energy consumption, and lifecycle assessments such as LCA, LEED, and LBC. However, Braham in "Environments of Maximum Power" points out that these energy accounting forms are insufficient to provide a new ecological architectural form for the new century, as they fail to fully understand the operation of ecological systems. Additionally, it was observed that mandatory regulations often lead to mechanistic thinking, simplifying the pursuit of environmental sustainability into specific paradigms or data metrics. This approach risks entangling ecological architecture in scientific determinism.
This implies, to some extent, abandoning skill. As Gaston Bachelard declares in "The Poetics of Space," skilllessness is not a form of ignorance, but a difficult transcendence of knowledge. The greatest takeaway from the course is the ability to utilize "skilllessness" – deriving architectural forms from poetic ambiguity. However, the poetic elements in this context are definite, primarily the concern for environmental issues. Deriving architectural forms from these seemingly unrelated concepts requires a metaphysical bridge. Thomas Harrison suggests that standing on a bridge is like standing on uncertain ground, suspended between two places. Ultimately, exploring the tectonic requires determining how the bridge is suspended and its connection with the ground. This means that through exploration and design, a bridge was ultimately found from the concept of environmental issues to actual architecture. It is important to note that this process does not mean abandoning science but rather attempting to find a parallel route alongside it.
Phenomenological knowledge was incorporated into the design, specifically addressing environmental concerns not only on the ecological engineering level but also from a spiritual level. By combining poetics, an interaction between architects and building users was pursued, making buildings closer to poetry. If buildings are retold in usage like poetry, the purpose of intersubjective communication can be achieved, thus allowing concerns for the environment to be communicated through architectural forms.
