miércoles, 17 de noviembre de 2010

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

1 comentario:

jaime quintana dijo...

Hola.
Un saludo a los dos de jaime quintana, ex-alumno y hojeador periódico de vuestro blog, que de algún modo me mantiene todavía por ahí. Aprendo mucho. Tal vez debería traducir esto al inglés pero creo que no hace al caso.
Un abrazo, y a ver si paso por Segovia y ...