Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    What We Talk about When We Talk about Architecture
    What We Talk about When We Talk about Architecture
    What We Talk about When We Talk about Architecture
    Ebook148 pages1 hour

    What We Talk about When We Talk about Architecture

    By Diane Yvonne Francis Ghirardo

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    What We Talk About When We Talk About Architecture documents a series of conversations with some of contemporary architecture's most accomplished thinkers and practitioners. The conversations took place in 2018 and 2019 at the Melbourne School of Design (MSD), The University of Melbourne, with the hope of complementing lectures by visit

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUro Publications
    Release dateMar 16, 2022
    ISBN9781922601223
    What We Talk about When We Talk about Architecture
    Author

    Diane Yvonne Francis Ghirardo

    Diane Yvonne Francis Ghirardo is Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at the University of Southern California, a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, NEH Senior Fellow, and a Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation.

    Related to What We Talk about When We Talk about Architecture

    Related ebooks

    Architecture For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Architecture In Context

      Nov 23, 2020

      Architecture In Context
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Farnsworth House

      Oct 10, 2018

      Farnsworth House
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Design: Building on Country

      Aug 29, 2021

      Alison Page and Paul Memmott have written this timely and powerful book as part of a First Knowledges series, edited by Margo Kneale, which brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors in an act of reconciliation. Design: Building on Country

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      10th International Biennial of Landscape Architecture of Barcelona: Performative Nature

      Feb 4, 2019

      Celebrating its tenth edition in 2018, the International Biennial of Landscape Architecture held in Barcelona has, over the years, become a global point of reference for the landscape architectural profession. With the aim of investigating the discip

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Unbuilding Utopia

      Jan 24, 2021

      Most of the work produced by architects is unbuilt and part of the daily professional dance: concepts, strategies, options, sketches and storyboards. Architectural training places greater emphasis on the building of concepts and ideas than on the pra

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Prize for Unbuilt Work 2021

      Jan 24, 2021

      Prize for Unbuilt Work 2021
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Adaptive Reuse

      Sep 21, 2023

      Two opposing forces are planting architects in the middle of what one sustainable design expert calls a “built environment contradiction”. On the one hand, the United Nations estimates that three billion people will need access to adequate housing by

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Cox Architecture

      Jan 24, 2021

      Cox Architecture
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      This Is Not a Gi-wa House

      Jun 6, 2022

      This Is Not a Gi-wa House
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Making Time In Practice

      Jul 31, 2022

      Making Time In Practice
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Idea Proposal

      Jan 5, 2021

      Idea Proposal
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Heritage Value: What Is It, Who Decides And How Can We Respect The Past While Designing For The Present And The Future?

      Mar 7, 2021

      The question of architectural heritage, and what constitutes it, is an increasingly fraught one in our ever-changing built environment. The existence of a multitude of different organizations, each with their own criteria, might make decisions cut an

      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Microstorie

      Jan 25, 2021

      Microstorie
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for What We Talk about When We Talk about Architecture

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      What We Talk about When We Talk about Architecture - Diane Yvonne Francis Ghirardo

      Introduction by Scott Woods

      

      

      The informally named Japanese Room Conversations began with the hope of complementing formal lectures by visitors to the Melbourne School of Design (MSD) at the University of Melbourne. Where lectures gave insight into architectural building projects, whether they be in development or completed, the conversations in the Japanese Room dived deeper into the ideas and processes that supported the projects presented in lectures. Hearing about how projects came to be—the players, places, forces, cultural imperatives, ideologies, practicalities and most importantly the theory buttressing a project—is often overlooked with the presentation of rapid-fire image-heavy portrayals of a portfolio of works. The Japanese Room Conversations aims to excavate the back-story of these projects, plumb the depths of their coming into being, while also investigating the legacy of projects within the development of new work and future work. Importantly for us, the Japanese Room is the place for re-contextualising architectural research and architectural works via expansive and often laboratory-like enquiry into the ideas sheltering within the work or emanating from it.

      Originally conceived in 1963 by one-time faculty member Professor Shigeru Yura, the Japanese Room is situated on the top floor of the Glyn Davis Building, which houses the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. The room, often used for formal meetings and conferences, is unique because of its contemporary interpretation of traditional Japanese interior design. The space is removed from the everyday function of the building. Tucked away on the top floor and largely unknown by students, it is the perfect setting because it effectively doubles as a boardroom, while its cosy otherworldliness resists the typical institutionality of the spaces of learning that flank it. These qualities make for relaxed and good-natured discussion, yet simultaneously accommodate robust intellectual enquiry—a hallmark of the Japanese Room Conversations.

      The Japanese Room Conversations have taken on a somewhat mystical aura because of their irregular scheduling and the audience for each event is by invitation only, with some limited word-of-mouth publicity. The students invited to participate are generally interested in theory and are invited from undergraduate and graduate classes taught by me and my colleague Colby Vexler at the Melbourne School of Design. The idea was to develop a group of inquisitive students interested in talking theory. These students commonly invite friends and staff and students from outside the faculty often join. The Japanese Room is a small space and its size organically regulates student and faculty numbers. As many past students of the Japanese Room Conversations return after graduation to attend new conversations, there is the rare gathering together of a developing group of undergraduates, graduates, alumni and faculty.

      The three Japanese Room Conversations recorded in this book represent some of the best attended conversations and those with the most robust discussion. The conversations are with architects Joshua Bolchover and John Lin of Rural Urban Framework (RUF), architectural historian Beatriz Colomina of Princeton University and architect Peter Wilson of Bolles+Wilson. All were guests of the faculty and gave a Dean’s Lecture to a full house the evening before their Japanese Room Conversation.

      The Japanese Room Conversations are not scripted. Typically, Colby and I meet one hour in advance to discuss our own interests and interpretations of the guest’s work and research. We do not arrive with deep research or scripted questions that would make conversations too mechanical and that would therefore formalise discussions. Our interest is in letting the conversation develop with little to no guidance; for it to be as free-ranging and idea-inclusive as it could naturally be. In the beginning there was only a format: that we would talk conversationally with the guest and then open to the floor for questions. Progressively, however, invitees involved themselves earlier and a truly communal conversation ensued.

      Because we had no script, direction, or content to refer to, the guest had no departure point either. This is always interesting because inevitably the guest wants to understand the forum beforehand, to know what we wanted from them or what content we would want to hear about. So because there was no plan for discussing particular topics, the conversations, in most cases, inevitably produced a lot of new and diverse material.

      Reflecting on the forum of the Japanese Room, it is evident that unearthing links between the guest’s present-day scholarship or design practice, and their broader intellectual projects over time is central, even though there was never any intention to pursue these outcomes. Colomina and Wilson in particular demonstrate the importance of their present practices to their earlier work by identifying the persistence of the idea of a work in progress, despite Colomina’s changed cultural contexts, and Wilson’s changed geographical contexts. Colomina accounts for this ability to speak of the interconnectedness of past and present projects by explaining, ‘After all I am one and the same person’. The probability of embracing the idea of a lifelong project is no less feasible for Wilson even if, as he has recognised, he has experienced a profound shifting of thought brought about by the cultural differences of London, Tokyo and Münster, or, to put it another way, his sequential investigations in phenomenology, postmodernism and rationalism.

      The conversations tend to identify the significance of earlier work for the production of later work, which is not solely unexpected, but most excitingly opens up the possibility to explore a profound rereading of that early work through examination of the later work. These meandering conversations unearth reasons for work and the social, professional and inconsequential frames that make this intellectual production possible. The conversations within this book could therefore be thought of as akin to biographies of a project, in the broadest possible sense. Where Colomina and Wilson’s conversations traverse much wider temporal spaces, John Lin and Joshua Bolchover locate us in the compressed geographical space of the developing Asian metropolis. Their project exemplifies the social, practical and intellectual struggle

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1