OBJECTS

OF
SCHOOLING
ON VISUAL PEDAGOGIES
IN ARCHITECTURAL
EDUCATION
FROM 1945-1985

KU Leuven - Departement Architectuur

Kasteelpark Arenberg 1 bus 2431
B 3001 Heverlee
Room 1.29

PROGRAMME

11:00 INTRODUCTION: Rajesh Heynickx (KU Leuven)

PAPER SESSION 1

11:20 DE VOS Els (Faculty of Design Sciences at the University of Antwerp): Drawings of
Interior Architectural Education Investigated

11:40 BEDFORD Joseph (Princeton University): Phenomenology and the Re--Enchantment

of Architectural Pedagogy: Dalibor Vesely at Cambridge University, 1978-1988

12:00 COUCHEZ Elke (KU Leuven): Reading Space and History through the Square. Alfons
Hoppenbrouwerss Silent, Visual Pedagogy

12:20 DISCUSSION: moderator Filip Mattens (KU Leuven)

12:50 LUNCH TIME

14:15 KEYNOTE: Mari Lending (The Oslo School of Architecture and Design): "The Yale
Battle of Casts: Albers vs. Rudolph"

15:00 COFFEE BREAK

PAPER SESSION 2

15:30 WITTICH Elke Katharina (AMD Akademie Mode & Design, Department of Design):
Learning Mens Metes and Bounds The Bauentwurfslehre by Ernst Neufert

15:50 VOET Caroline (KU Leuven): Architecture as Discursive Practice. Dom Hans van der
Laans Diagrammatic Models

16:20 DISCUSSION: moderator David Vanderburgh (Universit catholique de Louvain)

16:50 DRINKS
INFORMATION

objectofschooling@asro.kuleuven.be
Elke Couchez: +32 (0)495 684163

GETTING THERE

From the Leuven train station, the department can be reached by bus lines 2
(direction Heverlee Campus) or 616 (direction Zaventem Melsbroek Parking
Noord), exiting at bus stops Kantineplein or Heverlee Campus Arenberg II.
Plan your journey by car or public transport with Google Maps or www.delijn.be.
There is car parking available next to the Castle (at the west side, entrance via
Celestijnenlaan).
OBJECTS
OF
SCHOOLING
ON VISUAL PEDAGOGIES
IN ARCHITECTURAL
EDUCATION
FROM 1945-1985

CFP

Within the international literature addressing the history of 20th century

architectural theory, the post-war period is generally seen as fluid and open-ended,
as giving rise to a diversity of coexisting or even contradictory paradigms. (Nesbitt
1996; Leach 1997; Crysler et al. 2012) Whereas these volumes have addressed a lot
of issues, they often ignore the question of how theory is produced and used in
different settings. Responding to this lacuna, this workshop explores how theoretical
knowledge was formed and transmitted through texts and objects in architectural
education between 1945 and 1985. Which kind of knowledge was cultivated through
for instance course notes, study books, architectural models, drawings, isometries,
axonometries, schemes, graphical representations and diagrams?
The workshop addresses the explicit transfer of theory in theory classes and
seminars, as well its implicit presence in the context of studios. We welcome papers
studying the Objects of Schooling during this period, which, according to Davide
Deriu, is marked by the rise and decline of the architectural model as a dominant
pedagogical tool. (Deriu 2012) The question thus addressed is: what form of theory
was transmitted in the postwar period, and what were its preferred media of
transmission? Was the architectural model indeed paramount until it was
rendered superfluous due to new digital possibilities in the late 1980s? What was
the role of diagrams? How did texts function in the classroom? Which materials and
techniques were used by architectural students to digest and generate theoretical
knowledge?
The aim of this workshop is to gain insight into the multiple functions of the objects
th
implemented in architectural education in the second half of the 20 century. In
particular, we hope to illuminate how these objects became pedagogical devices
through which practitioners engaged and developed knowledge.

When studying the double use of objects in the classroom or studio (being modeling
and construction devices as well as communicative tools), researchers can benefit
from the material or pictorial turn in humanities and social sciences. The recent
interdisciplinary material turn after all offers an answer to the haunting silence of
teachers work in historical documents and consequently to the inaccessibility of
past classrooms. Over the last few decades, historians of education have undertaken
considerable efforts to restage these former classroom practices and rituals of
 school life, which however intangible, were active and noisy in nature. Furthermore,
these studies aimed to pull down the hegemony of published textual documents by
establishing the material as a source for reshaping past learning environments.
Yet, the concept of materiality cannot be taken up lightly. Due to some persistent
misconceptions, the educational and discursive roles of objects have not been fully
understood. Photography, for instance, is too often relied upon by researchers as a
neutral and objective entrance to the past. Consequently, visual production in the
classroom often is approached as a) representative of its creators intentions and b)
as an unmediated representation of the real. However, attaching such truth claims
to objects leads to an instrumental view on materiality, assuming that objects are
passive conveyors of knowledge. What this (humanist) approach thus fails to do is
take into account the specificity of the material in the production of different forms
of knowledge.
The workshop therefore seeks to critically interrogate these conceptions attached to
objects and will discuss approaches which counter the object as a static given by
considering the life of images and their circulation in different contexts.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albarn, Keith and Jenny Miall Smith. 1977. Diagram: The Instrument of Thought. London: Thames and
Hudson.
Carpo, Mario and Frdrique Lemerle. 2007. Perspective, Projections and Design: Technologies of
Architectural Representation. London: Routledge.
Crysler, Greg, Stephen Cairns and Hilde Heynen. 2012. The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory.
London: SAGE publications.
Deriu, Davide. 2012. Transforming Ideas into Pictures: Model Photography and Modern Architecture. In
Camera Constructs: Photography, Architecture and the Modern City. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing.
Elser, Oliver and Peter Cachola Schmal. 2012. Das Architektur Modell: Werkzeug, Fetisch, kleine Utopie,
The architectural model: tool, fetish, small utopia. Zrich: Scheidegger & Spiess.
Evans, Robin. 1995. The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries. Cambridge Mass: MIT
press.
Evans, Robin. 1997. Translations from Drawing to Buildings. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.
Grosvenor, Ian and Martin Lawn. 2001. Ways of Seeing Education and Schooling: Emerging
Historiographies. London: Taylor and Francis.
Healy, Patrick. 2008. The Model and Its Architecture. Rotterdam: 010.
Lawn, Martin and Ian Grosvenor. 2005. Materialities of Schooling: Design, Technology, Objects, Routines.
Oxford: Symposium books.
Leach, Neil. 1997. Rethinking Architecture: a Reader in Cultural Theory. New York: Routledge.
Moon, Karen. 2005. Modeling Messages: The Architect and the Model. New York: Monacelli.
Nesbitt, Kate. 1996. Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: an Anthology of Architectural Theory,
1965-1995. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Prez-Gmez, Alberto and Louise Pelletier. 1997. Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge.
Cambridge Mass: MIT press.
Riedijk, Michiel and Else Marijn Kruijswijk. 2010. Architecture as a Craft: Architecture, Drawing, Model
and Position. Amsterdam: SUN.