Re-play: interactions with history in the design studio

Abstract

Architecture has always established interactions with its history. However, as a discipline, it was only recognized as such in the 19th century, almost two hundred years after the emergence of the academic teaching system. In fact, the opening of the Académie Royale d’Architecture in 1671 has boosted many research projects that revealed an increasingly interest in a rigorous knowledge of the past. Nevertheless, it was only within the context of the Polytechnique, and paradoxically in a course for future engineers, that the relation between history and practice has it was understood, was definitely challenged. The theme acquires enormous importance in the architectural discourse, and a target of critical reasonings until very recently, being ostracized in most schools where the use of history in a technocratic and reductionist way is translated into inconsequential analyses and organigrammes. This paper intends to reflect upon the generative potential of historic precedents from a one week workshop developed in Salerno with 2nd year students. The title Re-play (modernism) aimed, simultaneously, to question the postmodern condition and to test the ways in which they can be used in creative ways from the process of representation, calling for new pedagogies within the design studio.