Narratives of Tacit Knowledge

This TACK talk will bring to the fore a few, specific, place-related narratives of tacit knowledge in architecture. These narratives will focus particularly on how tacit knowledge manifests itself in architectural pedagogy. Through case-study examples from around the globe, Klaske Havik and Janina Gosseye will highlight how in different places and at different points in time, different (often unspoken, but nonetheless intelligible) ideas have emerged regarding what architecture is, and how it is to be practiced and taught.

Klaske Havik will open the session with an introduction to the notion of narrative, explaining how literary and spoken language may offer information about site-specific social spatial practices. Indeed, it is often through stories that knowledge about particular ways of doing can be shared. Taking this notion to the field of architecture, and specifically that of architectural education, she will show how in some architectural schools -particularly those of Valparaiso and Porto, narrative approaches to architectural education have been developed.

Janina Gosseye’s lecture will focus on the formation and operation of communities of tacit knowledge in architecture. Narrating the events that were staged by architecture students in Brisbane (Australia) between 1967 and 1972 – which confronted ‘the establishment’ and, in doing so, conceived of an architecture with new social and cultural values – Gosseye’s talk will demonstrate how communities of tacit knowledge are shaped by codes and conventions, as well as reactions against existing codes and conventions; against prevailing modes of architectural design and practice.

Prof. Dr. Janina Gosseye is Associate Professor of Urban Architecture in the TUDelft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. Her research is situated at the nexus of architectural theory, urban design history, and social and political history, and has been published in international journals, including the Journal of Architecture, the Journal of Urban History , and Planning Perspectives . Gosseye has edited and authored several books, including Shopping Towns Europe 1945–75: Commercial Collectivity and the Architecture of the Shopping Centre , with Tom Avermaete (Bloomsbury, 2017), Speaking of Buildings: Oral History in Architectural Research , with Naomi Stead and Deborah van der Plaat (Princeton Architectural Press, 2019), Activism at Home: Architects Dwelling Between Politics, Aesthetics and Resistance , with Isabelle Doucet (Jovis, 2021), and, most recently, Urban Design in the 20th Century: A History , with Tom Avermaete (gta Verlag, 2021).

Prof. Dr. Klaske Havik is Professor of Methods of Analysis and Imagination at Delft University of Technology. In in her book Urban Literacy. Reading and Writing Architecture (2014), she related architectural and urban questions about the use, experience and imagination of place to literary language. In recent years, Klaske Havik has worked with her students on social-spatial topics such as the commons and urban narratives in both European and Latin-American contexts. Her editorial work includes the books Writingplace, Investigations in Architecture and Literature (2016) and Architectural Positions: Architecture, Modernity and the Public Sphere (2009) and multiple issues of architecture journal OASE, such as OASE#98 Narrating Urban Landscapes (2018) , OASE#91 Building Atmosphere (2013), and OASE#85 Productive Uncertainty (2011). Klaske  Havik initiated the Writingplace Journal for Architecture and Literature , and is chair of the EU Cost Action Writing Urban Places.