Critic|all

Call for papers is now open: conference@criticall.es.

Critic|all is an initiative led by the Architectural Design Department of Madrid School of Architecture, UPM. The fifth edition of this peer-reviewed conference is organized in collaboration with the Department of Architecture & the Built Environment of Delft University of Technology. This research event aims to bring together both young and established scholars from every discipline dealing with architectural thought, including approaches from history, historiography, theory or design. 

The call for papers proposes to turn our attention to words as a basic instrument for the construction of architectural culture and theory. Its vocabulary is in constant evolution so it might be worth to critically address the uses and misuses, the creation and wearing, the transformation and timeliness of the words with which architecture is—or has been—described, historized or updated through time. 

e(time)ologies or the changing meaning of architectural words.

The study of the origin and history of words has played a central role in the recurrent search for a deep, allegedly forgotten, meaning of architecture. The strikingly persistent and often problematic influence of Martin Heidegger’s Bauen Wohnen Denken proves the fascination of architects with the ancestral power of words. The same fascination explains the equally recurrent urge to explore new meanings and invent new terms in architecture, in order to alleviate the weight of old cultural prejudices and connotations. Hence, etymological lines extend in two opposite time directions: one pointing to roots and sources, the other to future visions and transformations. Architectural thought oscillates between the illusory stability of conventional, present meanings, the mystery of remote, often obscure, connotations, and the poetic, creative drive of language invention. Choosing between communication (order) and noise (entropy), the opposite terms used by Umberto Eco, becomes a typically architectural problem, one which relates both to words and forms, terms and materials.

The heavy architecture-is-a-language fever of the 1960s is long overcome. Robin Evans’ “all things with conceptual dimension are like language, as all grey things are like elephants” might suffice to prevent its return. However, the multiplication and transformation of architectural words has probably accelerated since then, pushed by the development of competitive research production. In fact, every research problem is, at its core, a problem of language, of word use and word definition. Research on the contemporary urban and architectural condition can be no exception.

Meaningful arguments about the changing meaning of architectural words need to address the role of language in the description of current matters and realities as well as its potential to unchain innovative perspectives and actions. New situations call for new terms as much as new terms provoke new situations. Today’s interface of architecture with other disciplines is exemplary in this sense. The growing need to establish meaningful communication between experts from different fields fosters both codification and distortion of language, the homologation of terms and its expansion through translation and borrowing. In the first case, the descriptive precision is favoured to produce an objective (codified) system, whereas misunderstandings, metaphors and inaccuracies can lead to the generation of new knowledge and actions in the second. Such complexities are especially evident in the terminology emerging from practice-based or design-based research. In fact, the translation between visual and verbal signs, which is at the core of architectural practice, tends to obscure the distinction between descriptions and actions. 

While the transdisciplinary context might certainly lead to an intensified look, in the last decades architecture has engaged in a process of expansion and adjustment led, in part, by new combinations of old keywords (ecology, landscape, urbanism, infrastructure, logistics). Beyond disciplinary discourses, contemporary debates addressing the social, ecological and political connotations of architecture are providing a new set of critical words. Adjectives (“post-anthropocentric”, “non-human”, “inclusive”, “transcultural”) names (“decolonization”, “decarbonization”) and phrases (“climate change”, “race and gender identity”), have gained increasing visibility over the last two decades, both to inform and transform architecture’s critical thinking. The proliferation of prefixes in many of them (post-, de-, trans-), denotes the urge to build new words and concepts from existing materials, pushed by the speed of contemporary culture. The problem of meaning persistence and change, but also of the tacit positions inscribed in words, can be exemplified by the crucial differences between “post-colonization” and “decolonization”. 

These and other terms are generated by a sequence of adjustments and oppositions, distortions and borrowings. The study of such processes, not in strict etymological terms but in a broader sense including the complex relations between words, practices, disciplines, is key to unveil the cultural and ideological positions behind current architectural debates. We propose to carry out this critique as a tool to explore today’s emerging terminologies, and the ones to come.

Direction: Silvia Colmenares
Organizing committe: Roberto Cavallo (TU Delft), Silvia Colmenares (ETSAM-UPM), Vanesa Grossman (TU Delft), Sergio Martín Blas (ETSAM-UPM), Guiomar Martín (ETSAM-UPM), Nelson Mota (TU Delft).

On top of many distinguished members of the Scientific Committee, we are proud to count on Adrian Forty (UCL) as confirmed keynote speaker. All information can be found at criticall.es.