DCI 2021 Online Seminar 2021-Nov-4-6
Design as collective improvisation
Online seminar, November 4-6 2021
Co-organized by:
e[ad] Escuela de Arquitectura y Diseño, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso & Faculté d’architecture, d’ingénierie architecturale, d’urbanisme, Université Catholique de Louvain.
In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
Miles Davis
Call for papers
A poet stands in the open air and declaims. It is at once about the current situation, and about all situations. It’s about how every act is poetic, in the sense of making, poiesis, and also very local. Design and building are like this at their best.
Design starts from a situation where people, materials, and tools are gathered on a site. Relations between people are complex, mediated through language and body-language. Relations with materials are constrained by what the materials allow, through “affordance”, or as Louis Kahn asked the brick: “What do you want, brick?”. Relations with tools are perhaps the most complex. As Martin Heidegger affirmed, in an example concerning the humble hammer, when we are using it, it is “ready to hand”, meaning that it is simply an extension of our bodies, our arms. But imagine that the head flies off and it becomes unusable: suddenly it is “present-at-hand”, a mere object of no use, intruding on our consciousness.
On a construction site, co-designing and co-building in real time, all three of these dimensions are important. People interact, speak, work together, and influence each other mutually. Materials are available or not, resist or accede, and ultimately determine what is possible. Tools are essential, and either work with or against our developing purposes.
We are looking for contributions from researchers, teachers and practitioners that consider these subjects from multiple points of view. Among the themes that we would like to cover are, in teaching, research, and/or practice:
- 1:1 scale experimentation
- co-designing / co-building
- relations between artistic creation and scientific research
- alternative education methods
- linear vs. circular temporality in design
Chilean poet Carlos Covarrubias, Brussels, 2015.
If you wish to participate, please submit an abstract (200-300 words, english, french or spanish) and a 100-word CV by June 6th, 2021. The abstract (.pdf format) should not contain the author’s name, for blind peer review. The name of the pdf file should be the title of the abstract. If your abstract is selected by the scientific committee, you will be informed by June 30, 2021, and expected to submit a complete draft of your presentation by August 31, 2021. The seminar will be held online in November 2021. It is our intention to produce a publication of selected proceedings of the seminar.
submit your abstract
For more information, you can contact us at designcollectiveimprovisation@gmail.com. Download the call for papers in PDF.
Scientific Committee
Ana Betancour, Umea, Sweden
Murray Fraser, Bartlett School, UK
Penelope Haralambidou, Bartlett School ,UK
Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Bartlett School, UK
David Vanderburgh, UC Louvain, Belgium
Antoine Picon, Harvard, US
Luciana Saboia, Univ. Brasilia, Brazil
Paulo Dam, PUC Lima, Perú
Ana Valderrama, UNR Rosario, Argentina
Iván Ivelic, PUC Valparaíso, Chile
