Architectural teaching as practicing innovation

Maybe we should turn to a definition in the first place. Or more precisely, to return to it: according to the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española (21ª ed.), we find, under the word innovación (that translates accurately innovation): acción y efecto de innovar (action and effect of innovate). This of course is obvious. But when we scan the word innovar (the verb), a sudden surprise arise. Because if the dictionary at first states the following: innovar. (del lat. innovare). Mudar o alterar las cosas, introduciendo novedades (to change or modify things introducing novelties), strangely enough as its second meaning we read: ant. Volver una cosa a su anterior estado (anciently. to (re)turn something to its prior state).
So innovation both could mean to introduce something new upon an established situation or to transform something into other thing by way of novelty, but at the same time, in a beautiful warp of language, to "un-innovate" by trying to return the same something to its former condition.
In the inextinguishable fire of the search for the new maybe we should cope now with innovation as returning, as the process of acknowledging the fractured condition of the present, in its struggle to anticipate, so to say, its own future, in the unending fight for making actual what is only a latency, and in so doing, destroying it.
Maybe teaching architecture now is teaching architecture as practicing innovation. And maybe what we need in the first place is to learn again what innovation means in architecture and what teaching architecture means. In the very play of innovation as throwing forward and returning the play of teaching and the play of architecture is accomplished. In the thin ice. Sans condition.
José Vela Castillo & María de la O del Santo Mora

AA/IE IMBA NOV 2010

Como en pasadas ocasiones, los días 10 y 11 de noviembre tuvo lugar el workshop cpnjunto entre la Architectural Association y el IE. Estupenda experiencia de nuevo. Estuvieron Ricardo de Ostos, Valentin Bontges, Theos Lalis y Liam Young por part de AA. Con Ricardo estupendamente, su dulce acento portugues (brasilero) en español siempre es adecuado! Por lo demás, muy buen trabajo.
josé vela castillo