Christopher Alexander’s 15 principles : 02

Student’s assignment from my theory class to illustrate Christopher Alexanders 15 principles in a more elaborate way. I have discussed this earlier too here. I feel it is a brilliant and useful structure with a potential to interpret in many ways. In this case the assignment was to relate each principle with 3 illustrations : a natural/scientific phenomena, a place/project visited, a palace/project studied. Krithika reinterpreted Christopher Alexander’s principles in a very comprehensive way. She uses this theory assignment as an ‘organising tool’ to structure her own experiences and ideas. She brings back her experiences from various study trips and measure drawing trips and weaves them to make her specific set of ideas which she can revisit. The tool of collage format (sticking photos + hand drawings) also enhances the value to this exercise of organising ideas.

Malcom Gladwell in an interview the phrase ‘theory as organising tool’, which completely aligns with this ordering of ideas in this assignment here.
“Interviewer : That’s why reviewers say you bring “intellectual sparkle to everyday subjects”. Is this a deliberate approach?
Gladwell : Yeah, it’s deliberate. I’ve often ob­served that people are experience­-rich and theory­-poor. All of us have an enormous wealth of stories and experiences. But what we lack is the means to make sense of all that, to organise it, to understand it and to comprehend it. My books are ad­dressing that. I’m not telling you facts you didn’t know before. You’ve all been in situations I’m describing. What I’m doing is saying, here’s a way of organising your thoughts.” (emphasis mine)
(Interview with Jinoy Jose P, The Hindu, Magazine, Dated Feb 23, 2020)

Credits : Krithika A Jain, Batch 2018, WCFA
Click on the images to enlarge.

Nuances of Blackboard : 2

Blackboard – Semester 4, Batch 2018, WCFA

This is a moment in class (Feb 2020) where i was introducing architectural theory to second year students. Some say it is early to teach theory in second year or some say it is never early to teach theory. This insight is helpful, if at all we agree what is theory. If you had ‘theory’ in your postgraduate title, like me, it is a different game as it comes with some amount of anxiety. I used these two brilliant definitions in this first class and quickly illustrated as above.

(Top right)- “The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger’s slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use – these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind offish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation”
E H Carr, What is History?

My argument is that we have only very few fisherman in the east (compared to the west) , but a lot fishes to catch. Side note : Are academics fisherman or cooks?

(Bottom right) – “The word ‘theory’ derives from the Greek ‘theoria’, which has the same root as ‘theatre’, in a word meaning ‘to view’ or ‘to make a spectacle’. Thus, it might be said that a theory is primarily a form of insight, i.e. a way of looking at the world, and not a form of knowledge of how the world is.”
David Bohm. Wholeness and Implicate Order

(Left)- The sketch happened serendipitously on the board, as an overlapping of the thoughts triggered by the two quotes. And since then this has been my go to diagram to the recurring and useful question ‘What is theory?’ – There are various positions (labelled as ‘T’) to look at architecture ( One can argue that ‘A’ should be ‘a’). Then there are theoreticians / critics have various positions on how to read these positions itself. These relationships form the premise of theory.

Nuances of Blackboard

Blackboard – Semester 1, Batch 2020, WCFA (Click image to enlarge)

After a cycle of teaching online, i am rediscovering the nuances of the blackboard. It has a certain slowness, and allows to grow thoughts collectively as the class proceeds. It traces the emphasis and the hesitations of the teacher, simultaneously. It is an evidence of overlapping thoughts and time, unlike a digital presentation which displaces time. Here the attempt was to summarise the learning outcome of the first semester drawing course. It traced all the things we spoke about the need to ‘draw’. There is a certain pleasure to look at the final mess, like the one we have when we cook our own food.