Mud on the Floor. Dirty Realities in Scholarly Work / EDAR, THEMA

The public lecture series Mud on the Floor looks at methods for studying construction sites. Although construction is required for architecture and cities to be built, it can be notably absent from scholarship. There are a few institutional reasons for this (architectural history developing as a subset of art history, for example) but also structural reasons for it: as ephemeral, chaotic, and literally dirt-y sites, construction can challenge our neat scholarly frames and methods.
The presentations will be from architects, historians, and anthropologists. The series encourages that we as scholars spend more time in the field or in the archives of the construction site as a way of bringing a bit more “mud” back into our institutions and, in doing so, better taking on questions of working conditions, improvisation, tacit knowledge, and even uncertainty, to name just a few of the ways that looking at construction can enrich our research work.

14 November / 12:30-14:00  / Paolo Tombesi, EPFL Far Laboratory
Why bother with construction? A taxonomy of scholarly utilities.
Actual construction processes do not enjoy much currency within architectural academia. Somehow, the perceived prosaicness of site operations seems to have combined with the inevitably commercial nature of many of the activities along the supply chain of building products to reduce architectural scholars' interest in the pedestrian intricacies of construction.  
But is it really so? Or is it awareness of construction a necessary component of true architectural scholarship? Is it possible fully to comprehend a building or to validate a building solution without comprehending its material realisation challenges? Is the very idea of authorship incomplete without a review of the decisions taken on the ground? In facilitating answers to these questions, the discussion will use literary and literal examples to reflect on how construction knowledge can infuse architectural debate, from design theory to historical exegesis, environmental analysis to social values.  

Mud on the Floor is coordinated by Sarah Nichols (THEMA Lab) and represents the 2024 SCHOLARS in Transition public lecture series. This established EDAR annual series of lectures aims at giving a voice to contemporary scholars who, within their ongoing research activity, are experiencing a « transition » condition: their contribution to new and emerging research topics, and to tentative interpretations and unconventional approaches, marks the intersection of their personal research agendas, the evolution of their discipline, the public debate, and the availability of sources and data.