F-2. The Discipline of Architecture and its Instruments
This group re-positions architecture as a field of expertise with its own specific logic, rationale and instruments. This entails an in-depth investigation of the material reality of architectural projects and their underlying rationale, but also how the project performs. This focus on the concrete project is guided by a study of existing design approaches, instruments and disciplinary boundaries. In the wake of an increasing dispersion of expertise (through such surrounding fields as economy, sociology, philosophy), architects have found an increasing need to identify what their own area of expertise is (as written by Willem-Jan Neutelings in an essay in 2008, NAi bulletin #5).
The group thus draws together a number of different areas of research in order to work more comprehensively on the question of architectural knowledge: what is it, how is it formed and how is it communicated? This includes questions on the learning process in the studio, the embodied forms of knowledge that become apparent in the design process, and a re-thinking of the relation between making and reflecting, between the discourse and the project, and between the expertise of the architect and the reception of the public.
