Abstract
'Building Insights' addresses 'knowing' in architecture by exploring traditional craftsmanship in
relation to codified knowledge systems. Focusing on an apprenticeship in traditional stone masonry
in Greece, it aims to recover overlooked architectural knowledge and to elucidate obscured aspects
of the cultural agency of architecture.
Through the apprenticeship, this project reveals how processes of building engage with 'lower'
levels of bodily disposition - the embodied knowledge of craft - and 'higher' levels of intellect and
intuition - architectural thinking. Within this tension, the experience of the craftsperson (and the
architect) is developed, as well as their intuition, their ability to think-in-action and to creatively
respond to real situations and problems. The close study of the apprenticeship unpacks how preand
early modern ways of building have yielded places with a strong evocative potential and a
distinct communicative power. By investigating the participatory reconstruction of a dry-stone
kalderimi (cobbled pathway), the project shows the value of an architecture that attunes different
spheres of experience, kinds of knowledge and areas of culture.
The project focuses on the role of habit and skill in practice-based knowledge. It utilizes Michael
Polanyi's concept of Indwelling to explain how a heuristic tension unfolds from the 'depths' of our
biological being to the 'heights' of ideas and cultural values, underlying all forms of knowing. The
spatial and temporal metaphor of Indwelling articulates how human consciousness is opened to
knowledge primarily through our physical engagement with the world, situated in space and time.
To unravel the different dimensions of architectural activity, the research employs tools drawn from
different epistemes of architectural theory (Avermaete 2021). The (auto)ethnographic study of the
apprenticeship shows a lived experience of architecture, which embraces practical, symbolic and
imaginary levels, while its discourses and epistemes tend to disconnect from these evocative
dimensions. By illuminating the steps from the 'lower' to the 'higher' dimensions of the built
environment, it shows how specific cultural contexts and value systems affect the fundamental
perspectives of architectural theory, even contradicting established perspectives.
As a whole, the project explores these instances of tacit knowledge embedded in a particular craft
and particular site, resulting in a better understanding of the role of tacit knowing and how
architecture can address new and pressing issues in the complex condition of the built
environment.
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