How to Speak?: A conversation with Alberto Pérez-Gómez about the necessity of Language to Understand and Practice Architecture

Havik, K.M.; Mejia Hernandez, J.A.; Niculae, Lorin; Pérez-Gómez, Alberto

doi:10.7480/writingplace.5.5880

How to Speak?

Title

How to Speak?: A conversation with Alberto Pérez-Gómez about the necessity of Language to Understand and Practice Architecture

Author

Havik, K.M. (TU Delft Situated Architecture)
Mejia Hernandez, J.A. (TU Delft Situated Architecture)
Niculae, Lorin (Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism)
Pérez-Gómez, Alberto (McGill University)

Date

2021

Abstract

Elaborating on a host of historical and theoretical references, in this conversation Alberto Pérez-Gómez suggests a course of action for the development of the architectural discipline; opposing the banality of scientism and rationalism, and recognizing instead the need for a degree of obscurity and ambiguity as essential to the full exercise of our humanity in relation to what we build and inhabit. Metaphors, myths, stories and poems, he notes, are not only useful instruments to represent architecture’s aesthetics and purpose, but elemental human practices that define who we are and how we know. Tense between different polarities, the conversation explores architecture as a way to find sense and meaning by relying on timeless wisdom in the face of the many distractions and distortions that characterize our time.

Subject

architecture
language
human action
myth
linguistic imagination

To reference this document use:

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:cce2b8a3-6c57-45ac-acd7-8d7a126fb731

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7480/writingplace.5.5880

ISSN

2589-7691

Source

Writingplace: Journal for Architecture and Literature (5), 113-131

Part of collection

Institutional Repository