Dutch architect, author, and scholar Klaske Havik examines literature as an (un)common precedent for architectural design. She describes two approaches; the first uses literature as a source of knowledge by studying how buildings and places are described in literature. The second approach involves the use of literary writing methods as a mode of spatial analysis, foregrounding social and temporal dimensions, sensory perceptions, and everyday social practices. Havik engages in a dialogue with scholar Isabel Potworowski and the coordinator of the (Un)common Workshop on Literature and Architecture, scholar and architect Suzanne Harris-Brandts. In the workshop, fourth-year urbanism students at Carleton University studied the urban and sociopolitical history of their project site in Tirana, Albania by making large, collaboratively produced experiential collages based on selected narratives from Margo Rejmer’s 2018 book Mud Sweeter Than Honey: Voices of Communist Albania. The collages re-spatialized these narratives across the architectural, urban, and regional scales relative to the past, present, and future. ... Read more

This conversation unfolds around the question how his poems emerge
from observations of places. The poet explains that his poems are not representations of places, but rather sequences of place-related associations. When carefully brought together in poems, these fragments form an almost cinematic series of images, which are then complemented by the memories and associations of his readers. ... Read more

Wie denkt aan Brugge ziet wellicht een historische postkaart voor zich. Het is een krachtige toeristische aantrekkingspool, ooit gevormd naar het rolmodel van Neurenberg, waar het in stand houden van een middeleeuws beeld decennialang als aas werd uitgespeeld. [...] ... Read more

Hoe antwoordt de architect, via het ontwerp, op de vele vragen, de complexiteit van de architectuuropgave? Niet langer volstaat een eenduidig concept, een bepaalde beeldtaal, om architectonische keuzes verantwoord te maken. De mate van slagen van architectuur hangt samen met de wijze waarop de architectuur een antwoord vormt. In dit artikel zal ik ingaan op enkele antwoordstrategieën die ingaan op de veranderende condities voor het ontwerpproces, toegespitst op de sociale context en verschillende actoren die een rol spelen rondom het project (verbinden), de situatie, de specificiteit van een plek (doorgronden), en de onvoorspelbaarheid van het proces van opdrachtgeverschap en ontwerp (improviseren). ... Read more

This introduction to the proceedings of the PhD training school at the Estonian Academy of Arts presents the context and scope of the Training school on 'local urban stories', and tells the story behind the relocation of the Estonian Art Academy in Tallinn. ... Read more

Around 1661, Johannes Vermeer painted what has become one of the most famous city views: the View of Delft. The city of Delft is depicted from across the water of the River Schie. We see the city as a collection of brick buildings with lower and higher towers, peaking into the sky, and being reflected in the water of the river. The light looks alive: despite the clouds it is bright, setting the buildings of Delft and the riverbank in the foreground in a palpable warmth. Delft, an intermediate European city in the province of South Holland, between The Hague and Rotterdam, has featured quite prominently in Dutch city narratives, partially thanks to Vermeer’s paintings, which showed fragments of both spatial and social characteristics of the city in the sev-enteenth century. In the same period, biologist Anthoni van Leeuwenhoek experimented with lenses and built a microscope, which led to the discovery of the micro-world of cells and bacteria. The city’s small streets, the canals, the church towers and the market squares still remind us of the times of Vermeer and Van Leeuwenhoek. But Delft today, as a centre of trade, knowl-edge and art, is a very vibrant city, with the University of Technology as one of its most celebrated contemporary inhabitants. The TU Delft is recog-nized around the world for educating progressive thinkers and innovators in varied engineering fields, while its Faculty of Architecture has raised, and keeps raising, inspired generations of architects and designers. As Delft is the city where this Writing Urban Place network originated, and where many members of the network have lived, studied or lectured, or are still doing all the above, we have asked our Delft-related colleagues for their views on Delft, painting for our readers, in words, their accounts of the sociospatial characteristics of this city, their relationship with the water, their favourite urban places, their personal Views of Delft. ... Read more

The special issue Writing Urban Places: New Narratives on the European City, marks the culmination of an international research network that delved into the intricate interplay between communities, urban spaces and narratives. At its core, this endeavour introduced an inventive approach aimed at deepening our comprehension of urban communities, their dynamics and their rootedness, all through the lens of narrative methodologies. This collection gives an account of the dynamics of this network of academics, which consists of over 175 individuals from 35 different European countries and a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. As such, the issue offers a conclusion to the Writing Urban Places COST Action while also, hopefully, providing a springboard for further reflections and discussions on urban narratives, and the role these could play in spatial developments in the European city. ... Read more

This issue of Writingplace Journal moves into the field, exploring the moment when reflection turns into action, and questions how knowledge produced via research is appraised and applied on the ground. In the articles, authors reflect upon their concrete experiences where insights regarding the city and its narratives have been made operational. Understanding the urban as a complex expression of social, historical, material, spatial and temporal relations between people and their built environment, we argue that this comprehension of places demands and envisions action, by which active and transformative processes take place in the real world. Fieldwork is in this sense both research and event, both investigative process and performative project. ... Read more

The concept of ‘tacit knowledge’ was formulated in 1958 by the Hungarian chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi. Polemical in nature, it was part of an effort to refute the idea that scientific knowledge can be reduced to closed sets of statements or logical propositions. For Polanyi, scientific knowledge implied a worldly commitment on the scientist’s part, manifest in the artisanal aspects of constructing experimental installations that involve the mastery of embodied non-explicit knowledge, or ‘tacit ways of knowing’. Beyond the mere mastery of technical skills, tacit knowledge could, in Polanyi’s view, also be found in the beliefs and traditions shared by a community of scientists. Generally transmitted in non-verbal form, these beliefs and traditions, Polanyi held, constitute the basis from which explicit knowledge can emerge, and explain why one always knows more about a particular subject than one can put into words. Polanyi thus positioned tacit knowing in between an idea of ‘embodied knowledge’ and ‘[socially] shared knowledge’ that remains unspoken. [...] ... Read more

This contribution takes the notion of situated experience as a starting point for explorations in practices of moving and making. Striving to privilege embodied experience and situated meanings, this contribution presents an experimental educational project at a former industrial site in Finland. The on-site intervention has been developed by the Master of Architecture research and design studio ‘Transdisciplinary Encounter: Choreographing Architectural Values’ by combining philosophical reflections on the experience of place and situation with a practical perspective. Twenty-four students from the studio based at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) worked in a context that encompassed a former pulp factory and a manor house in Tampere, Finland. Engaging this urban site in the direct vicinity of forests and lakes, and foregrounding our bodies’ capacity to ‘make space’, the studio explored research and making methods derived from the field of dance and choreography, particularly focusing on the relationship between movement and ‘situatedness’. ... Read more

This issue is an invitation to look beyond the definitions of meaningfulness, appropriation and integration, and explore the relations between them. We have liberally arranged the articles under the three main themes but, as it can easily become clear, there are overlaps among the themes. In that way, this issue offers not only a geographical journey along different urban narratives, but also an expedition into the network of interrelated terms and spatial practices. ... Read more

De professie van bouwkundig ontwerper kan op heel veel verschillende manieren
worden uitgeoefend. Er zijn ontwerpers die aan allerlei verschillende opgaven
werken, maar ook specialisten in bijvoorbeeld parkontwerp, de rehabilitatie van
achterstandswijken, woningbouw, verbouwingen, ziekenhuizen of publieke
gebouwen en noem maar op. In de keuze om aan bepaalde opdrachten te werken
spelen ook politieke en sociaalmaatschappelijke (en vroeger ook religieuze)
opvattingen en betrokkenheid. Bouwkundig ontwerpers hebben vaak hun eigen visie op het vak, en op hun taak om aspecten van de maatschappij ruimtelijk vorm te geven. ... Read more

This essay focuses on imagination as a crucial source of innovation and makes a plea for an approach to architectural education that enables imaginative thinking about new spatial and temporal realities. It starts by foregrounding the strong connections between imagination, stories, and language. It then proposes the reading, telling, writing, and making of stories as four approaches in introducing exercises of literary imagination within architectural education that touch upon such themes as meaning, empathy, temporality, and the poetics of making. The contribution unpacks these approaches in a twofold way, pairing an academic grounding of each theme with a short narrative piece describing a pedagogical example. By means of this sequence of thematic explorations and examples, we aim to tangibly illustrate the power embedded in stories for future architects’ education. ... Read more