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Sophia Journal

Theoretical Papers

Vol. 9 No. 1 (2024): Landscapes of Care: Public housing across multiple geographies: crossing theories and practices

Errante1: contemporary devices for heuristic reflexions on housing, Malagueira, Marselha, and La Borda.

  • Sérgio Miguel Magalhães

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Abstract

This reflexion makes visible the relationships between humans and the production of the built environment, proposing an exploration of the behavioural space between two collaborative narratives: the disciplinary, and the non-disciplinary.

The aim is to examine the position of architects and their practices in addressing the socioenvironmental crisis facing the planet today.

Questioning architecture predominantly through a disciplinary lens limits the integration of practices that fall outside dominant narratives. In pedagogical frameworks, it is crucial to venture beyond these boundaries and question how to learn from divergent practices that inherently function as educational tools. Non-disciplinarily (by wandering about how bodies are perceived in its social context), we understand how these devices work and unmistakably broaden the field of architecture from multimodal design practices.

However, divergent methods alone are insufficient for professionals to effectively engage with communities in addressing contemporary issues (within the built environment) due to formal constraints. This inadequacy suggests the emergence of an ideo-cultural crisis alongside the socio-environmental one, underscoring the urgent need to resolve a persistent educational paradox regarding the relationship between disciplinary, and non-disciplinary approaches.

Through the analysis of three cases (Unité, Malagueira, and La Borda), the article identifies approaches that operate both within, and outside dominant narratives, relating complex scenarios as catalysts for simpler, more inclusive, and sustainable heuristic decisions.

Positioned as a proposal for a viable landscape of sustainable social progression, the article engages in heuristic reflections to interrogate how robust mechanisms of loss - reconfigured as constructive actions - inform project activities. These activities, in turn, are examined for their capacity to steer architectural praxis toward an empathetic framework for architect-education, derived from the ethos of the field and practice of architecture.

Cover image: 2024 Behavioural space “as” a place. La Borda. Barcelona, Spain. author’s photograph

1 Errante (english (UK): wandering): author’s translation, selected from Caspar David Friedrich’s Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, 1818. A work set in the Romantic period; it depicts a man standing before a rocky gorge while observing a landscape characterised by a thick sea of fog. A relationship between the sublime and self-reflection, based on the evocation of the landscape and on the contemplation of the man situated within the realisation of his drift in the time of his life.

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