Participant: Christiane M. Herr
Affiliation: Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Format: Poster and Conversation
Themes: paradigm, praxis

Humor, schizophrenia, religion, music, dreams and poetry can be described as areas of human activity whose expressions are characterized by a non-commitment on the spectrum that connects the prosaic and the poetic (Bateson 1971). Creativity seems to qualify for the same class, involving connections between the prosaic and the poetic. Designers regularly avoid commitment to either the prosaic or the poetic so as to allow themselves and others spaces necessary to cultivate and eventually realize ideas. Quite analogously, Glasersfeld (1998) describes mythical wisdom and rational knowledge as incommensurable, and shows how poets are able to make use of both realms and are experts in linking them. When conceiving rational models, scientists similarly need to draw on poetic imagination (ibid.), although this aspect of science is rarely made explicit.

Architectural education comprises both poetry and science and requires students to learn to move in between what Bateson calls the poetic and prosaic realms. The prosaic aspects of architectural education are typically taught in lecture courses, whereas students learn to deal with the connection between the prosaic and the poetic realms within the design studio, a form of education specific to design related disciplines. Within the design studio, students spend a large amount of time exploring, testing, discussing and reflecting on ideas, in close collaboration and dialogue with their teachers. In the proposed paper, I examine the establishing of links between the prosaic and the poetic realms by architecture students based on case studies taken from the specific context of my own practice as an architectural educator in China. In this context, an additional aspect of interest to me which I propose to examine within these case studies is the cultural aspect of perceiving the prosaic and the poetic.