Hipo F / About the Operational

Jacobo García-Germán, Madrid, Septiembre 2010

Paradigm to strategy
We can summarize a general displacement from paradigm to strategy as an attitude in at least three parallel symptoms. Firstly, a partial desertion from the universal themes of the Modern Movement (light, space, form, materiality) in favour of design techniques drawn towards the production of effects plausible in actual use; not so much the application of pre-existing or imported paradigms from the outside but emerging strategies from factual conditions and limitations. Secondly, and rejecting other complex devices, a focus on the performative through organization as the most economical tool for activating those effects. Organization understood as the manipulation of basic architectural elements (walls, floors, rooms), paired with an un-neutral reading of programmes applied more as “scripts”, where events unfold, rather than “sets” as background for daily life. And finally, a rediscovered modesty about one’s own sense of contribution, again not immersed in any of the grand narratives and suspicious of most affiliations. A sense of modesty also aesthetically considered which responds to the trendy and over-emphatic with a kind of mute channelling of those effects through architecture, with an intricate relation with the invisible and the generic.




Projective and speed
Experimentation as an approach has been overrated in detriment of other methods of architectural production. Undoubtedly this is a residue of an on-going fascination with the Modernist interpretation of science and our subconscious need to implement discourse with a unidirectional sense of invention and discovery. The reconsideration of the notion of the archive as disposable material and the updating of strategies (to do with the organizational, typological or dispositional ) via other closer ones such as sampling, dubbing, etc., can cause a shift from the Laboratory to the Patent Office as a model for architectural production. This shift enables certain distancing from results, liberation from all-embracing dense processes, a renewed confidence in the ordinary and an overcoming of “the critical” as a position. Instead, “the projective” operates in a fringe between resistance and the market, substituting problems by opportunities and working through efficiency, realism, flexibility and redescription. In this way speed as a tool is recovered; the sheer capacity of intuition, narrowing the gap between programme and action.


Comentarios
Ciriacocd: Actions

Present: analysis of the actual moment where we are immersed. Taking in consideration the current environment, try to identify the gap and the space, where we can situate ourselves.
It is necessary to rethink the product; “classical” tools that architects have been using in the last period don´t have the expected result anymore. New tools, diversification, experimentation, interaction between disciplines, adaptive strategies...
We find ourselves back at the workshop in order to think .
We are looking for ideas.


emg: Las redes de lo público/privado
Current design and production mechanisms are being enhanced by technology, and that modifies the way we live. The use of digital tools for design and fabrication purposes shifts traditional mass production means to mass customization. Then, design and production strategies together with processes all gain importance regarding the final outcome understood as an “object”. Hence, a new design and production framework arises, where old paradigms are replaced by adaptiveness, emergences and opportunities.


Rafa: The value of reality
Reality is definitely the most complex scenario we can work upon. Using reality as a tool for our design process brings along an “all -information –you-can –incorporate” attitude to consider the majority of the system we are involved in. Old paradigms, the market and also our own selfishness can blind us when observing the real features we must take into account. Architecture should be a complex answer to a multilinked data question.

m00:
There is a special interest for ‘the process’ within the architectural community. ‘Process’ in architectural invention allows experimentation and changes the aim from results to strategies. Today’s architecture doesn’t need models but ways of understanding to make self-referenced architecture. This can be dangerous if we lose sight of the objective; outside the Community the only thing left is the result that man inhabits.

más info: http://www.hipo-tesis.eu/numero_hipo_f.html