Keywords: points of departure /
consolidation / transcendence
Literature: I would prefer not to, Iñaki Ábalos
Lectures: Marianne Lucie Skuncke, Nothing is for ever / everything is
Tone
Megrunn Berge, A sunny day at Fredriksberg
Reorientation is the act of
figuring out again where you are in relationship to your environment, or
changing direction. If you're lost in the woods, a compass and map are good for
reorientation.
Reorientation is often
related to location: figuring out where you are and pointing yourself in the
right direction. (…) But reorientation is also about rethinking, and maybe
changing, the way you approach something, like an idea or a project (Vocabulary.com
Dictionary)
Reorientation is a new start or an opportunity
to make things different – make it better based on new or deeper understanding
and knowledge, or because new situations or changes require other solutions. It
is also a moment of consolidation and a recognition that everything is in
continuous transition to something else. The moment of presence is so ephemeral
that in reality planning always deals with temporality, transformation and
continuation, more than conclusion and culmination. This means that everything
we do is time fragments with limited durability.
This is an attitude towards architecture
that is liberating, and stimulates to see architecture as means to accomplish
what is desirable. This requires not only knowledge and professional ability,
but more important; a standard that does not compromise to achieve goals beyond
architecture. Under the assignment of vulnerability, Herman Melville’s scrivener
Bartleby was introduced as a personality opposing the expected. I
would prefer not to was Bartleby’s unlikely answer
when asked to perform a certain job for his employer at the office where he
worked, on Wall street. Bartleby challenged the authority of his employer and
balanced his right to choose his tasks and make his own judgments about the
relevance and importance of the given tasks – to great indignation from his
employer, but; [a]s days passed on, I [the
employer] became considerably reconciled to Bartleby. His steadiness, his
freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry (..), his great stillness,
his unalterableness of demeanor under all circumstances, made him a valuable
acquisition. One prime thing was this,—he was always there;—first in the
morning, continually through the day, and the last at night. I had a singular
confidence in his honesty (Melville 1858).
Bartleby’s stubbornness is a reminder that
we need to develop a critical consciousness about why we do architecture, for
whom we work, on what basis we work, and certainly for the impact of our work.
In this studio, Layered Landscapes
Lofoten, we have studied the landscape from many angles and through a wide
spectre of concepts. We have walked the landscape and encountered different
practices enfolding in the landscape. We have dug into the historical shifts
and natural conditions for the habitation of Lofoten, and we have confronted
new challenges and forces that are at stake, both from within and from outside.
It is now time to analyze the experiences
we have had and the awareness achieved, and to use our deepest knowledge with
the humbleness, respect and critical distance we have learnt. We must approach
with the openness that is described by Richard Sennett as a bottom up
view giving places that belong to the people. He is stating the contrast
between the closed (city) as; over-determined, balanced, integrated, linear
- and the open (city) as; incomplete, errant, conflictual, non-linear, and
he is clear on what we need to do; to challenge unthinking assumptions now
made about urban life, assumptions which favor closure. (Sennett 2013: 14).
It is a point of departure that requires less re-assuring, more febrile
ideas of living together, those stimulations of differences, both visual and
social, which produce openness (IBID).
Herman
Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener, 1853.
Richard
Sennett, The Open City, talk at the Univerità degli Studio Milano-Biocca, 2013
Tudela Culip restoration project in Cap de Creus
