The knowledge
paradigm in Architecture is asymptotic representation of imagined
communication. The relationship of codes and referents to their architectonics
facilitate the possibilities of the structuring of form, while repository of
memory provides the formal assemblage of architecture. The Architectural ideas
and knowledge is an ensemble of the notion of codes & system and their
relationships.
PRACTICE OF DISCIPLINE
In Architecture, traditionally,
the codes have been confined into a strict system of architectonics within
defined substitutions of knowledge. The means of practice within such framework
is an operation that interrelates the representation that is supposed to be
present in its codes and its permutation itself. The representation of codes
and systems and architectural competence were recognized within the set of
technological, geometrical and skills relating to form and its use.
PRACTICE OF KNOWLEDGE
Modernity consciously
imposed the notion of art and architectural synthesis as emergent necessities in
order to bring about assumed rationality and logic of two variables derived
from science with legible translation with legitimacy of codes, which is also an
architectonic code that was presumed to be subservient to production of
practice and consumption of knowledge for Utopia.
The domain of
communication in the contemporary mode moves away from immediate referents and
formulates itself in laissez faire modes of production of architecture. The
practice of knowledge is an allegory, may it be in different modes of process
of digital absurdity, randomness of city-ness, high technology & low key
architecture or low tech & high key architecture to architecture of surplus
or architecture of financial crisis, all seems to push the knowledge of
architecture & cities to a new episode of a strange fierce struggle of
representation.
The contemporary
modes also superimpose the idea of practice and production of knowledge within
the contradictory projects on representational series of oppositions namely
drawings and text, reading and writing, vision and perception. The
specificities of sets within the realm of the practice of knowledge are also representatives
of one of the many architectonic codes.
PRACTICE OF AUTONOMY
The practice and
knowledge in the process of being subservient to contemporary modes further
reinforced the idea of mutual exclusivity
and facilitated the autonomous process of ideation, while essence and
existence of each as a system of code lies in this assumed contradiction. The
constitution of codes in production of such architecture also maintained the
consumption of certain codes which brought about the strange configurational singularity
on the other hand rejection of other codes, which perhaps expanded into deliberate
abstraction of thought and an implied persuasive construction and system of
knowledge. The appearance together or simultaneous occurrence has expanded the
notion of pictorial space into pictorial form, which is evident in post -
structuralism literary work where as architecture has conveniently divided the
rich duality/plurality as a strange opposition of codes. These binary relations
have transformed the dynamic architectural pedagogy of relationships into a strange
question as if architecture and its channel of inquiry is actually a property
of architectural thought and object together or they exist in binary
oppositions?
The notion of such oppositions,
if assumed to be an independent thought
on architectural ideas and realm of knowledge then both aspects succumb
to the problem of representation because translation and production of
knowledge are a cumulative product of culturally bound competence of the specific.
Otherwise by definition it attempts to reinforce what are absolute (knowledge)
and what contaminated (practice) is?
If architecture is a
complex system of interacting relational codes of knowledge & practice with
a higher degree of cognitive corollary, then architecture of form is a product of
systems or condition of translational process. However, if the singular translational
domain is to be seen as a mere productions of the syntactic (form) ideas then
the knowledge is obliged or succumbs to translation as truncation of semantics.
It further destabilizes the imagination that architectural theory is found in
intellectual context of architecture and not as an appendage to the production
of architecture or its context.
Furthermore, if the
established archaic opposition of codes is allowed to develop independently the
codes of transformational structure, then
architecture can be aptly dismantled into a broad category of profoundly
prescriptive and obscurely descriptive on one side, it simultaneously reduces
the space for dialectic field of analysis within architectural competence. The
question of meaning gives away to the question of fixation.
But if production is
a translation or re-production of knowledge then architecture is an event
arising out of systematic intent with intellectual choice and principled
understanding of cultural codes. In such circumstances the demarcation of
production of architecture or production of knowledge or the notion of absolute
versus contamination is no longer problematic. If it holds true then the idea
of translation or notion of absolute is under critical shadow.
TRANSLATION &
CONTAMINATION.
Practice and
knowledge are two main processes and by virtue of their existence, we determine
or conceptualize, what is external (architecture). The translation of both
domains depends on a series of abstraction and extraction or conceptual clarity
and deductive generalization. The key word is translation, which is a powerful
source of greater insight. The mechanism of translation is easily refuted in the
general sense but not by critical framework, as translation is the grounded
condition of any architectural discourse, this is because the practice of
knowledge is a domain of theoretical act and the question of representation
lies within the realm of translation.
The translation embodies the dismantling of
connectedness. The translation as discussed by WALTER BENJAMIN’S ‘THE TASK OF
THE TRANSLATOR [1923]
“As a result, the task of translator is not to ‘assemble’
or express what is to be conveyed since the poet/writer has already done that
when writing the original text; the task of the translator rather ‘consists in
finding that intended effect [Intention] upon the language into which he is translating
which produces in it the echo of the original’ and his/her translation ‘instead
of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail
incorporate the original’s mode of signification, thus making both the original
and the translation recognizable as fragments of a greater language.’ Thus the
two texts, both the original and its translation, share what calls a ‘vital
link’ and from this linguistic harmony arises a greater language, a ‘pure
language’. This is the reason why the task of translator is something unique
and powerful because until he has released this greater language in his
translation, ‘it remains hidden in the languages.’
He further argued
that the translation is not transference, re-production or image of an original.
The original survives in translation. The translation constitutes the original
it is added to. The original calls for translation which establishes nostalgia
for innocence and the life it never had. The translation abuses the original or
it contaminates the original in the process of transformation.
Hence the system of
codes and processes of translation are embedded within the act of architectural
production. The theoretical ascent of practice of knowledge is an ascent of
transformational conditions that is necessary for survival of the logic of
knowledge. The architectural practice is a production of knowledge or
production of knowledge is an architectural practice & these relations are
symbiotic & co-related.
BROAD AND NARROW SCHEMA
In broader &
generic sense, any alternate format (of science variables) in form of an
object or intent that is brought into architecture from outside and interpreted
within architecture, which in turn shall act as an appendage of intellectual
narcissism, delimiting the process in production of knowledge pertinent to
architecture, and further that may not be able to articulate the theories that
are specific to architecture and aiming solely to realm of architectural
phenomena.
In narrower sense the
notion of practice and knowledge has regional perspective and region embraces
the knowledge on production, may it be practice or knowledge. It is perhaps
parochial conception to regulate the idea of alternate as being appendage to
knowledge & practice as being appendage to engineered objects. It is
perhaps appropriate to state that the production of architecture is to embrace
cultural ethos & its specificities.
It is also perhaps productive way of looking at practice from culture
and regional perspective instead of embracing the new means of linkages &
tortured its way into the reality of architecture of region.
AUTHOR: MANOJ PARAMR
PUBLISHED IN REFLECTION 2015, KRVIA, MUMBAI
References:
Benjamin, Walter: The Task Of The Translator [1923]
Chomsky, Norman:
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