Critical Practices › 2022 › Prototyping Collective Gestures

Prototyping Collective Gestures: Reworking the Way and the Work of Architecture

Progress towards a viable development of the built environment entails a series of interdisciplinary challenges that needs to be addressed collectively. In architectural practice, these challenges necessarily call for a reworking of our ways of working (how and with whom do we collaborate?) as well as the work of architecture itself (how and with what do we build?). With this ‘Critical Practice’ submission, the prototype itself provides a view into how this necessary rework takes shape in the practice of David Chipperfield Architects: As the managing board created a space for transformation within the office opening a potential for Wiebke Ahues to develop a team with focus on integral and participative design processes, ‘collective practice’ began to take shape. By mapping out the interdisciplinary knowledge gathered in and of the prototype as a product of teamwork, we discuss its critical potential towards gradual change of the confining conditions of ‘usual practice’. The prototype in question, developed as a competition entry for Hufelandstraße in Munich, exemplifies how the individual competencies of each team member can be activated collectively in reworking the resourcefulness of the entire body of architectural construction.

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Contributors

M. F. Hvejsel
W. Ahues
M. Stumpf
M. Wyller

Aalborg University, David Chipperfield Architects & WHP
Denmark & Germany

Presented at ICSA2022, Aalborg University. Critical Practices 2022 booklet (PDF)