Learning Architectural Design. Material and Immaterial Aspects

Abstract The following paper investigates the potentials of material based experiment in architectural education. In architecture, the term ‘design’ creates a distinction between the work of architecture in its materiality, and the representation of its underlying concept. At the Faculty of Architecture of KULeuven, campuses Sint-Lucas Brussels and Ghent, the material based courses Form & Colour, Expression and Mixed Media (ca. 1960–2015) challenge this split between idea and material, and argue that architecture can – rather than being taught – be learnt by experience through material based pedagogies. The question becomes twofold: what can students learn from the interaction with material, when it is neither ‘building’ nor ‘design’, and how do materials influence the way we think and depict our thoughts? Following the example of Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne, a ‘Mixed Media Atlas’ is created by placing images of student work next to a broad referential spectrum of formally resonating images.


Background and Objective
The following paper studies the design courses Form & Colour, Expression and Mixed Media at the KULeuven Faculty of Architecture. The course originated as Form & Colour in the 1960s, borrowing from the 'Vorkurs' or basic design courses of the Bauhaus in its art and material based pedagogy. Today, the course is called Expression and Mixed Media, still hinting at its relation to the applied and fine arts. The following paper studies student works produced between 1960 and 2015 in order to trace the formation and transformation of the courses.
When we trace back the origin of design education in architecture, we find that at the beginning of the twentieth century, the training of architects was almost everywhere transferred from the workplace of practicing architects, to academies, universities and schools of architecture. Architecture historian Adrian Forty argues that the training of architects became dematerialized as: "What the students 'produced' from their training was not 'architecture', but drawings, commonly referred to as 'designs'" (Forty, 2004, p.138).
Forty continues to describe how by appropriating the term 'design' for education, the separation between training and practice was made to seem normal; "In short, the category 'design' allowed architecture to be taught, rather than learnt by experience" (Forty, 2004, p.138).
Form & Color, Expression and Mixed Media are practice-based courses engaged with the material world, wherein students produce objects or spaces of experience. In doing so, the courses challenge the idea that students' work at an architecture school can only be a representation of architecture. The courses establish a spatial practice that generates works that are an independent final product, and could be called a work of architecture even though they are not buildings. The student work can take on various material and immaterial forms. What is it then that architecture students learn in these courses if it is neither 'building' nor 'design'?

The Mnemosyne Method
To gain an understanding of the courses Form & Colour, Expression and Mixed Media or what aspects of architecture students can learn in these material based exercises, this paper takes a closer look at the student work produced in these courses. The 'artefacts' take on a central position in the courses as the work is expected 'to speak for itself'. In the course it is not required that students present or explain their work i . The paper therefore explores the methodological possibilities of non-verbal communication of the objects under study. The starting point of the paper is thus not the teachers of the courses, curriculum, applied pedagogies or course circumstances, but the student work itself. These other aspects are touched upon in and through the student work. Following the example of Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne, a 'Mixed Media Atlas' is created in an associative process of placing images of student work next to a broad referential spectrum of formally related images. Aby Warburg's own Mnemosyne consists of a collection of images mounted on panels and serves as an 'instrument' of knowledge. By grouping of collected images, Aby Warburg investigates how images and signs travel geographically and historically ('Wanderstrassen der Kultur', or pathways of culture). The Mnemosyne serves as tool in his quest to understand how the pictorial world of antiquity had come back into the European cultural sphere, and how this rediscovery challenged the Medieval world. In Warburg's 'Bilderatlas', images that are historically inscribed and validated are displayed besides those that are not. The Mnemosyne knows neither hierarchy nor boundary within art: painting, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, architectural elements, everyday objects and jewelry are mounted on the panels in the form of photographs. In a similar way, my visual 'Mixed Media Atlas' places the diverse student output, which can be described as artefacts, installations, urban interventions, land art, design objects, performances, etc., next to historically valued references of various origins. As in Warburg's Mnemosyne atlas, the objects are reproduced in the form of images and miniaturized, which makes them manageable. Although Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne has been criticized for its subjectivity, it kept inspiring many researchers and artists as both a grammar of signs and a device of visual communication, which has resulted in the recent years in a series of exhibitions. ii Artist Taryn Simon for example created image atlases drawing from the picture collection of the Mid-Manhattan Library which holds advertising pictures and postcards as well as historically validated photographs and artist reproductions. Simon critically points at the invisible hands behind the seemingly neutral system of image gathering. Arist Henrik Olsen on the other hand criticized Art History in its exclusion of gay content by creating a Mnemosyne of sexual identity. Both examples draw out key aspects of the 'Mnemosyne method'; the flattening of hierarchies and the invisible yet regulating hand behind the image constellations.

The Architecture of the Atlas
The Mixed Media Atlas is conceived as an open ended instrument of visual comparison in the quest to grasp which aspects of architecture are expressed in the student works produced in the art and material based courses at the Sint-Lucas Schools. The Mixed Media Atlas sets out to find a revisionist method for studying design education that surpasses its understanding through language. Just like Andreas Beyer noted of Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne: "It is a matter of thinking in images (…) not through metaphors or lingual equivalent but through using the medium itself." (Beyer, 2008, p.67) The multi-part structure of imagery that is composed of disparate sources and timeframes in a variety of formats encourages the assumption that the elements are not truly fixed in their arrangement. The Mixed Media Atlas under study is a work in progress; it can grow with the input it triggers. The Atlas is built-up from spreads, facing pages mirror around the fold. An image from the left-page formally resonates with an image on a similar position on the right-page. The right page displays images of works produced by students and teachers at KULeuven Faculty of Architecture, while the left page gives an overview of visually associative references to these works.
The resonance I recognize between the works is not necessarily a direct echo since it develops from my observation. My selecting hand relies on a personal frame of reference and my personal experience as a student in the courses (from 2004-2007). It is important to note that the references form the art context I used are widely known and therefore certainly also know by the teachers iii . Still, the resonances I detect between student and artist work were perhaps unconscious. The structure of the lay-out has a built-in argument. Each spread groups images around a certain theme that is derived from the material under study. This is what Arnaud Hendrickx (2013, p.4) describes as: "'the method of good company', an "operational space that allows appropriation from one specific condition to another without the need for generalization." This method of compression in images helps in forming an overall understanding. Through written text, the paper explores what story is hidden beneath the images. The following chapters will focus on two thematic extracts from the Mixed Media Atlas: 'body' and 'colour'; and, their subcategories. The Colour and Composition panel explores the objectives of a course that, from the outset, was influenced by the Bauhaus school. Several of the works gathered on the 'Colour and Composition' spread can, in one way or another, be traced back to the Bauhaus. The Colour Sphere (image 4, 1921) by Johannes Itten and his theory of subjective colour experiences can be seen as a point of departure for the colour panel. Johannes Itten was a painter and art teacher, and an important figure in the early years of the Bauhaus. There, he initiated the 'Vorkurs' or preliminary course, which aimed at teaching students the basics of materials, composition and colour. Itten's combination of 'intuition and method', exploring the use and composition of colour, resemble the rectangular canvasses of artists such as Josef Albers who was an influential Bauhaus teacher (image 8), Max Bill (image 6) and Bridget Riley (image 5). In this context, the most important figure at the KULeuven Faculty of architecture, at the time known as the Sint-Lukas Schools, was Alfons Hoppenbrouwers, who in the 1960s founded the course 'Vormenleer' after the example of the Bauhaus 'Vorkurs', with reference to the ideas of 'Grundfarben' and 'Grundformen'. Exercises in abstract colour composition defined the early years of the Form and Colour course. In the 1980s, towards the end of his professional career as an architect, Alfons Hoppenbrouwers painted over 600 colourful abstract compositions (e.g. image E). The high number of paintings has to be understood as an exploration that was closely connected to his teaching practice at the Sint-Lucas campus in Brussels iv . His square colour compositions bear strong analogies to Josef Albers' series Homage to the Square of the 50s (e.g. image 8). Alfons Hoppenbrouwers's painting's where more varied in their exploration of mathematical compositions, whereas Albers' quasi concentric squares served his colour exploration:

Colour and Composition
"For me, colour is the means of my idiom. It's automatic. I'm not paying 'homage to the square'. It's only the dish I serve my craziness about color in." v Although this abstract colour compositions originated in the early 20th Century, a continuous development of this theme can be seen in the work of artists such as Gerhard Richter (image 3), Agnes Martin, Sol Lewitt and Luc Hoekx (image F). When Alfons Hoppenbrouwers applied this style at the Sint-Lucas Schools, he was thus at once a late adopter of the Bauhaus pedagogy and still connecting to the contemporary art of his time. In more recent works by students, we can perceive a shift away from composition towards experiments with colour and space. Formal composition exercises on (flat) canvases and façades evolved to experiments testing how colour can influence or change our perception of (three dimensional) space and time. The attention shifts from formal aspects towards performative aspects of the object. The way in which experience and meaning are transferred becomes important. Overall, the courses developed further to a more experimental pedagogy. In the 1990s a shift of the course can be seen from composition to process, as will be shown in the 'body' panels of the Mixed Media Atlas. The Body & Limitations reference panel (left) includes images dating from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s from a context of architecture pedagogic and art. This period is notorious for its many student protests, such as the Paris student revolts of 1968 that rejected the curriculum of the Beaux-Arts schools. vi It was also a pivotal moment for the art scene, where the 'new art' extended the gallery from a space of presentation to a space of production and interaction. vii The body played a key role in this active exploration of limitation and liberation. Global Tools (1973-75) was a pedagogic experiment in the context of the Italian Radical Architecture. viii Global Tools, School of Popular Arts and Techniques, was "Imagined as a school of arts and crafts and an anti-disciplinary attempt to establish a platform for the free exchange of different ideas and experiences" (Borgonuovo, Franceschini, 2015, p.16). The anti-school was organized as a system of educational workshops, wherein the Body Group organized their first therapeutic workshop around the theme 'Body and Constraints'. The workshop tools produced were described as 'dysfunctional objects for a heretical inverse ergonomics' (Raggi, 2015, p.51). These 'improbable and inconvenient objects' out the body or parts of the body in surprising relationships. For instance, the 'constraining shoes for stable and obligatory frontal juxtaposition' (image 2) freeze two people in an uncomfortably close confrontational position thereby playing with notions of personal space and 'the gaze'. The textile artwork 'Closeness' (image 5) by German artist Franz Erhard Walther ties two people in a similarly frontal position. The body is part of the work, which "also means that the work is completed by the body." (Erhard Walther, 1996, p.97) Erhard Walther's textile works can be perceived as embodiments of interaction, formalizing the participative work. "I cannot go away -I can go away: I cannot go away because of my bond with the other participants. When I go away I disrupt the situation. When I go away the situation is changed. I cannot go away without destroying the situation." (Erhard Walther, notes on n°55, 2014, p.38) These bodies and limitations resonate with the images of student work produced for the Expression and Mixed Media courses. In more recent years, pairs of students experimented with duality, testing tension by confronting, balancing and connecting their own bodies (images A, B and E). Remarkably, most works are situated outside the institution of the architecture school or the museum. The student works seem to build on a resonance with generic backgrounds such as 'the beach' or 'the supermarket'. Franz Erhard Walther unfolds his work both outdoors in 'a naturally occurring extended field' and in the 'artificially occurring limit' of indoor (Erhard Walther, 1972, p.36). Similarly, the work of the Italian Global Tools group often developed on the public domain as it was a school without institutional infrastructure.

Body and Limitations
The limiting or reductive processes range from the relation of bodies to one another to sensory deprivation on the level of the individual. The Body Group for instance developed 'Blindfold masks to display a mouth, a nose, an ear' (image 3) thereby denying and making an abstraction of the rest of the body. At Sint-Lucas Brussels, at a similar time, we find physical explorations of body and space (image C and D). The constraining 'utensils' stress sensory and social limitations. Like the 'Body and Limitations' panel, the 'Body and Prosthesis' panel features works from both architectural and artistic backgrounds. In this context 'prosthesis' is understood as an artificial device that replaces or enhances a body part. Prostheses hold a two-sided nature, they highlight and, and at the same time enhance a weak part of the body. The prosthesis is part of the body and needs the body to attribute meaning. "Objects and installations that critically approach the human communication/relations and in doing so, take a stance." (MM-MAG, p.54, 2010) These bodily extensions for communication resonate with Rebecca Horn's body sculptures (images 2, 3 and 4). The artist first began to create body modifications after a long period of severe illness in order to quash her "loneliness by communicating through bodily forms". The prostheses originated in a context of health and social recovery. Such body extensions as these can in essence be perceived as non-verbal, bodily communication tools for self-expression. In the late 1960s Rebecca Horn began creating performance art and continued to use bodily extensions. Finger Gloves (image 4) is the main prop of a performance piece of 1972. Worn like gloves, the finger form extends with balsa wood and cloth. While the artist saw what she was touching, it felt as if her fingers were extended, creating the illusion that she was actually touching what the extensions were touching. In both the bodily prostheses made by the artist and by the architecture students, sensitivity and sensorial aspects are key elements. "Although gestures and bodily movements do not relate to anything beyond themselves, they are still tied to the specific course of action that is intended by the piece: remaining in a designated place, with or without direction; movement within the spatial field, with or without direction; time-related, space-related, bodyrelated. In the individual piece, the temporal reference can be grounded in the notion of duration or geared towards fluidity." (Erhard Walther, 1996, p.10) For Erhard Walther, space is given a three-dimensional articulation (form) through a sculptural approach to movement. The instruments used structure the movement of the human body, which allows form to appear. The Body and Space panel focuses on works where the moving human body traces, explores and creates space, sometimes with the use of props.

Body and Space
The first two images of the Body and Space panel that are strongly related in terms of form, show an image of Oskar Schlemmer's Stäbetanz on the left side (image 1, 1928) next to the result of a oneweek experiment at the beginning of the first year of architecture at Sint-Lucas on the right side (image A, 2004). In Stäbetanz, Oskar Schlemmer searched for a kinesthetic integration of the figure in its surrounding. The students at campus Sint-Lucas Brussels used similar props; black clothing with wooden sticks attached to upper and lower parts of arms and legs. These extensions exaggerate human movement. The resting body refers to a notion of static equilibrium, while the moving body, with sticks prolonging the directions of the movement, evokes motion. Furthermore the panel gathers images of dance and performance pieces by Bruce Nauman and Trisha Brown. In Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (image 2), Bruce Nauman is bare feet making repetitive steps on the perimeter of a white square taped on the floor. In 2008, a group of architecture students danced 'poème elastique' on the contours of the Philips Pavilion that Le Corbusier had designed in collaboration with Ianis Xenakis for the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels (image B). From the re-traced organic pavilion contour elastics span towards a point, corresponding with the highest point of the former tent like expo pavilion. Five bodies explore the lines marking the imaginary limits of the pavilion, thereby re-enacting the spatiality of the pavilion. The students' work resonates with another work on display in the Mixed Media Atlas. It's a draw (image 3, 2008) was a live performance by Trisha Brown at the Walker Arts Center. The recording of the performance shows Trisha Brown from above, moving over a white canvas on the floor. The first line on the paper develops as ¾ of a perfect circle, a pencil between her toes tracing the twist around her heel. Brown alternates a blue and black coloured pencil between toes and fingers. The spectator witnesses a nonconventional 'embodied way of drawing' where the reach of the hand is extended with the reach by the foot. Trisha Brown is well-known for her dance experiments, combining improvisation and preestablished structures, which she described as 'structured improvisation'. Brown noted: "In the beginning you set a structure and decide to deal with X, Y and Z materials in a certain way, nail it down even further and say you can only walk forward, you cannot use your voice or you have to do 195 gestures before you hit the wall at the other end of the room, that is improvisation within set boundaries." (Brown, 1976)

Conclusion
After studying images of artists' and students' works and arranging them in the Mixed Media Atlas, I have a few observations regarding the working mechanism and outcome of the atlas: Firstly, I observe that the material based courses Form and Colour, Expression and Mixed Media employ means of expression stemming from the arts (e.g. sculpture, installation, drawing, etc.). In the Mnemosyne Method I detect the potential to link art and architecture. Through the Mixed Media Atlas I use an artistic perspective to look at and think about material based architectural education. I take a curatorial stance towards an archive (under construction) of student works through arranging photographic representations. The formal 'resonance' I detect between the student works themselves and my collection of references is subjective; my persona is reflected in my selecting hand. This inherent ambiguity is seen as a quality, in line with the affect and material based knowledge building in the courses.
Secondly, it is important to consider the dematerializing aspect of this method of visual association in relation to the radical material aspect of the courses. Rather than fetishizing images, the Mixed Media Atlas provokes me to 'imagine' the multi-sensorial aspect of the works. Although I am unable to perceive them first hand, as have not been present for the performances of, for example, Trisha Brown or the students' dance, I can still imagine textures, temperatures, sounds, rhythms and smells. The objects, interventions, installations, performances and experiments are not only a visual kind of pedagogy. They create and communicate an array of knowledge that is not always explicitly known, but on experience. Through the experience, act and making of exercises, an 'embodied knowledge' is developed that informs the students' ability to 'design space'. The student works are artefacts and pedagogical instruments, which through an artistic practice create and communicate architectural knowledge. To borrow Franz Erhard Walther's words describing his works: "This is not about a 'merely' sensory experience, about 'perception'; it is about production and creation, which presuppose perception and work with memory." (Erhard Walther, 1996, p.97) Thirdly, I detect a shift of focus in the student works from object to process. The learning experience of creating objects can be related to the Bauhaus tradition, with its preference for 'closed forms' in the modernist spirit of 'mastership'. More recent student works lean stronger on performative processes. In the work, body and 'prop' become inseparable. In this I detect a strong resonance with the radical pedagogies from the late 1960s to mid-1970s. Architecture historian Beatriz Colomina pointed out that; "If we are to think about what we do today in terms of pedagogical innovation, we have to go back to this period because it was the last time there was radical innovation in the field of architectural and design pedagogy." (Colomina, 2015, p.42) Colomina describes how students and teachers acted as activists, starting experiments outside the borders of the classroom, "schools became as active as streets" (Colomina, 2015, p.42). The composition oriented Form and Colour course developed into an experimental Expression and Mixed Media laboratory within the architecture school. This laboratory for architecture can be understood as a radical architecture practice in its own right, with a focus on design and materialization.
i I was invited to a mid-term jury in the second year of interior architecture. Studio tutor Marc Godts gave a short introduction and stressed there was no need for the students to explain their work to the jury, as "It needs to speak for itself." (Godts, 2015). In a personal interview, former Expression and Mixed Media professor Patrick Labarque mentioned how he marked the student projects without necessarily being able to connect the student's face to the project. Although the student works are highly personal, it is not their explanation that is jugged.
ii Several research groups have made efforts to reconstruct the physical panels of Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne and tried to decipher their content. vii Charles Harrison wrote about this period: 'In the history of art it is sometimes possible to connect substantial changes of direction and priority to relatively specific moments in time. The period of the late 1960s was one such moment; to be more specific I would say the period from the summer of 1967, when Artforum published its special issue, until the spring of 1969 when the exhibition "When Attitudes Become Form (Works -Concepts -Processes -Situations -Information)" ix The book was published as a sequel to an earlier work of the same title with student work from 1964 and 1971. Both books are known references in architectural education, while the first publication, an exhibition catalogue, arguably found access to a more diverse audience.