Jordi Vivaldi

Pedagogies of architectural theory have in recent decades often endorsed modes of thought rooted in a metrical understanding of space and time. Within this framework, learning to think about architecture has frequently produced distance and estrangement by unfolding through unidirectional teacher–student relationships, dialectical structures grounded in oppositions, and rigid compartmentalizations organized along disciplinary territories.

This talk aims to open and ramify this model by articulating the feminist concept of “transcorporeality” as a pedagogical instrument for practicing architectural theory in medias res—in the midst of things. This involves drawing out the poietic dimension of thought in pursuit of articulating its situated condition in a participatory key: learning and practicing architectural theory as the cultivation of multiple literacies no longer exercised against other individuals, but crafted, written, read, and spoken among and with other corporealities—whatever organic or inorganic forms they may take.

Methodologically, the talk develops these considerations through the case study of a semester seminar in architectural theory offered at the Technische Universität Wien. The course favors flipped classrooms and peer-to-peer learning by encouraging each student group to develop a theater plot whose narrative revolves around a research question in architectural theory. The collaborative design of a scenario, narrative, and set of characters unfolds in dialogue with a curated bibliography, bringing together diverse academic voices on the architectural topic addressed by each group. The elaboration of such dialogical fictions mobilizes modes of imagination and hypothetical reasoning that grow and mature through the interplay of story-telling, academic works and horizontal interaction.