Stroom School 'Another Reality': The Theory of Architectural Practice

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More information will follow soon...

Tuesday 21 June 2016, 14.00-17.00 uur, followed by book launch Volume Magazine at 17.30 hrs

Location: Stroom, Hogewal 1-9, The Hague

Part of Stroom School, a public program of lectures, tours and events accompanying the exhibition Another Reality. After Lina Bo Bardi.

An active study session with Lara Schrijver (Professor of Architecture at the University of Antwerp) about the essay The Theory of Architectural Practice by Lina Bo Bardi. In this essay Bo Bardi promotes an architecture that is in the service of everyday life. During the session the text will be brought into practice as a method of reseacrh, looking at the environment.

Launch Volume #48 at 17.30 hrs
The lecture is followed by the launch of Volume #48: The Research Turn.

Lara Schrijver:
"Bo Bardi's The Theory of Architectural Practice is steeped in a thorough sense of the professional conscience of the architect. Additionally, she positions the role of the architect as "interpreter of a vital ‘common sense'".

As such, she offers some handholds for addressing the transformed role of architecture in today's world. The position of authority portrayed in The Fountainhead has dissipated, and the recent celebrity status of the ‘starchitect' is also under fire. What might a theory of architecture that is founded on observation of the world around us provide?

Bo Bardi suggests that the fundamental role of the architect is to "construct within the world as it is, the world as he would have it". This intimates a heightened sensitivity to the underlying logic of what is already present, as well as still offering a crucial role to the designer, who brings a deeply felt professional conscience to bear on these concerns.

In this afternoon session, we will study the document of The Theory of Architectural Practice, particularly in terms of its imagery, to understand what is it that Bo Bardi felt was to be seen in the world at large. Additionally, we will go out into the direct surroundings, to see if we might similarly apprehend the underlying logic of the environment we inhabit."

The afternoon will close with the launch of Volume #48 The Research Turn. It is comprised entirely of interviews and conversations with a.o. Reinier de Graaf, Beatriz Colomina, Henk Slager, Sarah Rifky, Tim Ingold, Irit Rogoff and ruangrupa. We wanted to learn from those who have been instrumental in shifting the boundaries and shaping today's landscape of creative knowledge production. The issue also includes the catalogue for BLUE: Architecture of UN Peacekeeping Missions by Malkit Shoshan, the Dutch contribution to the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale.

"Today it's not so important what you know but rather how you think. Progress, in this sense, is predicated by critical reflection on ways of knowing and disciplinary traditions of thought. This issue of Volume - the second in our series on learning - is dedicated to mapping the contemporary field of research that is pushing processes of knowledge production forward in architecture, art and the social sciences."

Volume #48

photo: design: Studio Manuel Raeder