CW
C.J.R. Walker
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Making is Thinking
Poetic Pursuits in Architectural Design
The title of the research, and consequently the guiding principle behind the design, making is thinking, stemmed from a frustration with the often-held view that the latter is of greater importance than the former. That thinking, as our intellect of the mind, is of a superior motive to the things we do or make with our hands, and this is a condition which belongs to both society and the individual’s psychology. However, I believe this is not the case. I have the view that making is fundamental to our being and complements our thinking as its equal.
Part of the research was a search through history, to explore whether this distinction had always been made, and if not, why and how it had happened. The history of our intellectual developments is a long and very rich one, and it is the reason why we practice architecture the way we do today. It is essentially a question of representation: what architecture, and the other things of our making, represent, but also how those things are representative of the tools we use to make them. Yet the idea that the thing in question represents a larger, intellectual or philosophical field might not have always been the case. A contemporary art historian, makes an extraordinary case for an origin of architecture in the Archaic Greek temple which had to first exist before man could have the necessary perception of things to theorise about them. Like Heidegger before her, she reasons that it is in the beautifully made art work, through the human perception of depth, which belongs to all of our senses, that human beings can take the outlook upon themselves. In her argument, making is what allowed man to think.
But really, the most fundamental conclusion from the research, and essential to the project, was that things, and architecture most definitely is a thing—philosophically speaking—are defined by the matter from which they are made. Yet this is often a mistrusted truth. Our history has made us doubt this truth. That same history has given us the practice to which we adhere today, but for those of us who believe in the importance of things, and their importance as our frame of reference for a sense of being in the world, or as Heidegger would call it, a sense of dwelling, then how those things are made is an ethical and extremely important question.
However, to accept only our origin is to deny the rest of the human condition which belongs to the entirety of human history. Therefore, the scientific and political realm to which architecture now rightfully belongs, through our intellectual developments in representation, cannot be dismissed. Design then is about the mediation between the two—between our poetic, communicative origins, and our intellectual, instrumental present condition. In practice it is about the balance between thinking and making—our heads and our hands.
Along side the philosophical undertaking of the research a series of making exercises were undertaken. These four cubes were made with only two rules. Firstly, the shape, the cube. And secondly, the knowledge and potential of the material itself. These cubes were specifically about the making of things bound to their inherent material properties. They were made by the material guiding me, and not the other way around. This is the definition of making, thought of by its philosophical and etymological definition. In Greek poiesis means to make, but furthermore, and as Heidegger defined it, it means to bring something into being that did not exist before. It is the mimesis of nature. And so, the poet takes from the things that surround him and he makes them his own. This is how the architect acts ethically too—by making things appropriate to the place and for the people who they provide space.
And this was the very objective of the design thesis, Moments for Repose; Making Along the Pennine Way, to explore, through making, how one can act poetically.
...
Part of the research was a search through history, to explore whether this distinction had always been made, and if not, why and how it had happened. The history of our intellectual developments is a long and very rich one, and it is the reason why we practice architecture the way we do today. It is essentially a question of representation: what architecture, and the other things of our making, represent, but also how those things are representative of the tools we use to make them. Yet the idea that the thing in question represents a larger, intellectual or philosophical field might not have always been the case. A contemporary art historian, makes an extraordinary case for an origin of architecture in the Archaic Greek temple which had to first exist before man could have the necessary perception of things to theorise about them. Like Heidegger before her, she reasons that it is in the beautifully made art work, through the human perception of depth, which belongs to all of our senses, that human beings can take the outlook upon themselves. In her argument, making is what allowed man to think.
But really, the most fundamental conclusion from the research, and essential to the project, was that things, and architecture most definitely is a thing—philosophically speaking—are defined by the matter from which they are made. Yet this is often a mistrusted truth. Our history has made us doubt this truth. That same history has given us the practice to which we adhere today, but for those of us who believe in the importance of things, and their importance as our frame of reference for a sense of being in the world, or as Heidegger would call it, a sense of dwelling, then how those things are made is an ethical and extremely important question.
However, to accept only our origin is to deny the rest of the human condition which belongs to the entirety of human history. Therefore, the scientific and political realm to which architecture now rightfully belongs, through our intellectual developments in representation, cannot be dismissed. Design then is about the mediation between the two—between our poetic, communicative origins, and our intellectual, instrumental present condition. In practice it is about the balance between thinking and making—our heads and our hands.
Along side the philosophical undertaking of the research a series of making exercises were undertaken. These four cubes were made with only two rules. Firstly, the shape, the cube. And secondly, the knowledge and potential of the material itself. These cubes were specifically about the making of things bound to their inherent material properties. They were made by the material guiding me, and not the other way around. This is the definition of making, thought of by its philosophical and etymological definition. In Greek poiesis means to make, but furthermore, and as Heidegger defined it, it means to bring something into being that did not exist before. It is the mimesis of nature. And so, the poet takes from the things that surround him and he makes them his own. This is how the architect acts ethically too—by making things appropriate to the place and for the people who they provide space.
And this was the very objective of the design thesis, Moments for Repose; Making Along the Pennine Way, to explore, through making, how one can act poetically.
...
The title of the research, and consequently the guiding principle behind the design, making is thinking, stemmed from a frustration with the often-held view that the latter is of greater importance than the former. That thinking, as our intellect of the mind, is of a superior motive to the things we do or make with our hands, and this is a condition which belongs to both society and the individual’s psychology. However, I believe this is not the case. I have the view that making is fundamental to our being and complements our thinking as its equal.
Part of the research was a search through history, to explore whether this distinction had always been made, and if not, why and how it had happened. The history of our intellectual developments is a long and very rich one, and it is the reason why we practice architecture the way we do today. It is essentially a question of representation: what architecture, and the other things of our making, represent, but also how those things are representative of the tools we use to make them. Yet the idea that the thing in question represents a larger, intellectual or philosophical field might not have always been the case. A contemporary art historian, makes an extraordinary case for an origin of architecture in the Archaic Greek temple which had to first exist before man could have the necessary perception of things to theorise about them. Like Heidegger before her, she reasons that it is in the beautifully made art work, through the human perception of depth, which belongs to all of our senses, that human beings can take the outlook upon themselves. In her argument, making is what allowed man to think.
But really, the most fundamental conclusion from the research, and essential to the project, was that things, and architecture most definitely is a thing—philosophically speaking—are defined by the matter from which they are made. Yet this is often a mistrusted truth. Our history has made us doubt this truth. That same history has given us the practice to which we adhere today, but for those of us who believe in the importance of things, and their importance as our frame of reference for a sense of being in the world, or as Heidegger would call it, a sense of dwelling, then how those things are made is an ethical and extremely important question.
However, to accept only our origin is to deny the rest of the human condition which belongs to the entirety of human history. Therefore, the scientific and political realm to which architecture now rightfully belongs, through our intellectual developments in representation, cannot be dismissed. Design then is about the mediation between the two—between our poetic, communicative origins, and our intellectual, instrumental present condition. In practice it is about the balance between thinking and making—our heads and our hands.
Along side the philosophical undertaking of the research a series of making exercises were undertaken. These four cubes were made with only two rules. Firstly, the shape, the cube. And secondly, the knowledge and potential of the material itself. These cubes were specifically about the making of things bound to their inherent material properties. They were made by the material guiding me, and not the other way around. This is the definition of making, thought of by its philosophical and etymological definition. In Greek poiesis means to make, but furthermore, and as Heidegger defined it, it means to bring something into being that did not exist before. It is the mimesis of nature. And so, the poet takes from the things that surround him and he makes them his own. This is how the architect acts ethically too—by making things appropriate to the place and for the people who they provide space.
And this was the very objective of the design thesis, Moments for Repose; Making Along the Pennine Way, to explore, through making, how one can act poetically.
Part of the research was a search through history, to explore whether this distinction had always been made, and if not, why and how it had happened. The history of our intellectual developments is a long and very rich one, and it is the reason why we practice architecture the way we do today. It is essentially a question of representation: what architecture, and the other things of our making, represent, but also how those things are representative of the tools we use to make them. Yet the idea that the thing in question represents a larger, intellectual or philosophical field might not have always been the case. A contemporary art historian, makes an extraordinary case for an origin of architecture in the Archaic Greek temple which had to first exist before man could have the necessary perception of things to theorise about them. Like Heidegger before her, she reasons that it is in the beautifully made art work, through the human perception of depth, which belongs to all of our senses, that human beings can take the outlook upon themselves. In her argument, making is what allowed man to think.
But really, the most fundamental conclusion from the research, and essential to the project, was that things, and architecture most definitely is a thing—philosophically speaking—are defined by the matter from which they are made. Yet this is often a mistrusted truth. Our history has made us doubt this truth. That same history has given us the practice to which we adhere today, but for those of us who believe in the importance of things, and their importance as our frame of reference for a sense of being in the world, or as Heidegger would call it, a sense of dwelling, then how those things are made is an ethical and extremely important question.
However, to accept only our origin is to deny the rest of the human condition which belongs to the entirety of human history. Therefore, the scientific and political realm to which architecture now rightfully belongs, through our intellectual developments in representation, cannot be dismissed. Design then is about the mediation between the two—between our poetic, communicative origins, and our intellectual, instrumental present condition. In practice it is about the balance between thinking and making—our heads and our hands.
Along side the philosophical undertaking of the research a series of making exercises were undertaken. These four cubes were made with only two rules. Firstly, the shape, the cube. And secondly, the knowledge and potential of the material itself. These cubes were specifically about the making of things bound to their inherent material properties. They were made by the material guiding me, and not the other way around. This is the definition of making, thought of by its philosophical and etymological definition. In Greek poiesis means to make, but furthermore, and as Heidegger defined it, it means to bring something into being that did not exist before. It is the mimesis of nature. And so, the poet takes from the things that surround him and he makes them his own. This is how the architect acts ethically too—by making things appropriate to the place and for the people who they provide space.
And this was the very objective of the design thesis, Moments for Repose; Making Along the Pennine Way, to explore, through making, how one can act poetically.
Conference paper
(2018)
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J. R.G. Silva, B. Mirzaei, J. R. Gao, W. Laauwen, N. More, A. Young, C. Kulesa, C. Walker, A. Khalatpour, Q. Hu, C. Groppi
GUSTO will be a NASA balloon borne terahertz observatory to be launched from Antarctica in late 2021 for a flight duration of 100-170 days. It aims at reviewing the life cycle of interstellar medium of our galaxy by simultaneously mapping the three brightest interstellar cooling lines: [OI] at 4.7 THz, [CII] at 1.9 THz, and [NII] at 1.4 THz; along the 124 degrees of the galactic plane and through a part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. It will use three arrays of 4x2 mixers based on NbN hot electron bolometers (HEBs), which are currently the most sensitive mixers for high resolution spectroscopic astronomy at these frequencies. Here we report on the design of a novel 4.7 THz receiver for GUSTO. The receiver consists mainly of two subsystems: a 4×2 HEB quasi-optical mixer array and a 4.7 THz multi-beam LO. We describe the mixer array, which is designed as a compact monolithic unit. We show, for example, 10 potential HEB detectors with the state of the art sensitivity of 720 K measured at 2.5 THz. They have a small variation in sensitivity, being less than 3%, while also meet the LO uniformity requirements. For the multi-beam LO we demonstrate the combination of a phase grating and a single QCL at 4.7 THz, which generates 8 sub-LO beams, where the phase grating shows an efficiency of 75%. A preliminary concept for the integrated LO unit, including QCL, phase grating and beam matching optics is presented.
...
GUSTO will be a NASA balloon borne terahertz observatory to be launched from Antarctica in late 2021 for a flight duration of 100-170 days. It aims at reviewing the life cycle of interstellar medium of our galaxy by simultaneously mapping the three brightest interstellar cooling lines: [OI] at 4.7 THz, [CII] at 1.9 THz, and [NII] at 1.4 THz; along the 124 degrees of the galactic plane and through a part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. It will use three arrays of 4x2 mixers based on NbN hot electron bolometers (HEBs), which are currently the most sensitive mixers for high resolution spectroscopic astronomy at these frequencies. Here we report on the design of a novel 4.7 THz receiver for GUSTO. The receiver consists mainly of two subsystems: a 4×2 HEB quasi-optical mixer array and a 4.7 THz multi-beam LO. We describe the mixer array, which is designed as a compact monolithic unit. We show, for example, 10 potential HEB detectors with the state of the art sensitivity of 720 K measured at 2.5 THz. They have a small variation in sensitivity, being less than 3%, while also meet the LO uniformity requirements. For the multi-beam LO we demonstrate the combination of a phase grating and a single QCL at 4.7 THz, which generates 8 sub-LO beams, where the phase grating shows an efficiency of 75%. A preliminary concept for the integrated LO unit, including QCL, phase grating and beam matching optics is presented.