Research in Architecture: Looking Backward and Forward: Forty-Year Experience in Architectural Research at the Faculty of Architecture STU

The introduction of my contribution contains a brief information on the Faculty of Architecture of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava (FA STU) and the architectural research performed at this institution. Schemes and priorities of our research in architecture have changed several times since the very beginning in early 50’s. The most significant change occurred after “the velvet revolution” in 1989. Since 1990 there have been several sources to support research at universities. The significant part of my contribution is rooted in my own research experience since the time I had joined FA STU in 1975 as a young architect and researcher. The period of the 80’s is characterized by the first unintentional attempts to do “research by design” and my “scientific” achievements as by-products of my design work. Some of them resulted in the following issues: conception of mezzo-space, theory of the complex perception of architectural space and definition of basic principles of ecologically conscious architecture. Nowadays I continue my research by design within the application of so called solar envelope in urban scale with my students.

Researching and designing GREAT; the extremely condensed hybrid urban block

The fact that the hybrid building is an extremely condensed urban block which increases the city’s density and contributes to the public realm of the city – horizontally as well vertically - forms one of the key interests of this documentation, research and master studio work. The “ground scraper” is not only public because of the character of its plinth facing surrounding streets, but also in regard to its interior space that is partly accessible to public. As such the European hybrid building potentially extends the city’s public domain horizontally and vertically into the building’s interior and links the public domain inside and outside. Notwithstanding, the hybrid building due to its specific and unconventional character represents a truly urban architecture that was unfortunately often rejected in the name of ‘purity’ of form and function during the twentieth century. Or with other words, its rejection demonstrates the domination of the building’s plan opposed to the section. Today, new frameworks for the city, like the “compact city,” ask for innovative interpretations and designs of building types, worthy to be investigated and proposed. The architectural type of the hybrid building, (re)defines and expresses the relation between architecture and the city in a specific manner. To begin with, the city of Rotterdam forms the first test-case of the Hybrid’s project to document and discuss statements, such as “the hybrid building has a long- standing tradition within this ‘modern city”, “it is a machine for urbanity,” “it enlarges the city,” “it innovates because of its ambitiousness but also because of necessity,” “it combines to activate,” “it asks for extraordinary design intelligence and craftsmanship.” A special way of drawing is developed to document, analyse and compare historical and contemporary representatives of the species. The method includes panoply of scales ranging from the morphological arrangement on the scale of the city, the typologies of stacking diverse programs to the architectural features that establish the mutual relationship between the public space of the city and the interior of the building. Basically the features analysed within the series of drawings are also constitutional for (the success of) every future hybrid building.

The community museum: a space for the exercise of communal power

This paper discusses two key elements in the field of museums: a summary of the concept of the community museum, on the one hand, and, on the other, a proposal as to how this concept is put into practice, especially in the early stages of the creation of the museum, when the social basis for the project is being established. We will discuss how the community museum combines and integrates complex processes aimed at strengthening the community as a collective subject, asserting its identity, improving its quality of life and building alliances between communities. In the second part, which has a methodological focus, we will discuss how the museum is born out of community aspirations to strengthen its identity and integrity, the initial process of consensus-building, the roles of different agents, both internal and external to the community, as well as some factors that foster or prevent community appropriation. To conclude we will emphasize the potential of community museum networks as a strategy to generate a broader field of action, in which communities can exercise greater autonomy, by collectively developing and appropriating projects of regional and even international scope.

Representing traumatic pasts at the District Six Museum

Using this metaphoric framework as a starting point, I would like to focus on the characteristics of the District Six Museum which extend its work beyond being that of representation (of traumatic memory). Representation signifies in some ways distance and separation, a telling of a story depicted for others. The work of the Museum is more akin to what could broadly speaking be described as ‘engagement’. Although this is word is much over-used, it nonetheless indicates more closely an embodied practice which invites personal insertion, empathy and emplacement. It includes a whole range of sense-making practices by those closest to the Museum’s story – the dispossessed ex-residents – who participate in the memorialisation practices of the Museum in both harmonious and dissonant ways. The architectural metaphor of this seminar is key to this approach, indicating a practice which is constructed and layered, fixed yet changeable. It speaks to a spectrum of activities related to the imperatives to develop as well as conserve – elements which are central to the Museum’s work in relation to the process of return and restitution. To signify the unfinished business of representation, the permanent exhibition is called Digging Deeper, a framework which allows for an always further uncovering of facts, meanings and perspectives.