EDITING VS. BUILDING: AN ECOLOGY OF THE INVISIBLE. AMPLIFYING THE UNDERSTANDING OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN TECHNIQUES

Abstract

This article seeks to expand understanding of architectural design techniques, linking them to an “ecology of the invisible”: the attention to qualitative variables existing in the context, barely perceptible and often dismissed by value regimes in place. Following the economic-financial crisis, this procedure - which could be traced to architectural design throughout history - has acquired a new value, as a critique of the development models which predominated at the turn of the century, and also hindering its understanding. To clarify this point, we discuss the keys of this procedure in three projects pre-dating the crisis: Cedric Price’s proposal for the Design of Cities contest in Manhattan (1998), as well as the remodelling of Léon Aucoc Square (1996), and the School of Business Administration (2006), both in Bordeaux and by Lacaton & Vassal. While the first two have been interpreted as forms of “non-intervention” associated with a renunciation of design and construction, the last case has not, leading us to reconsider these examples in a propositional manner. The analysis methodology focuses on projects and how they have been shaped across channels and for different audiences, from specialized journals to the “poor images” shared in map server web applications. This analysis highlights the crucial role of editing, which subsequently guides architectural practices by prioritizing certain discourses over others