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The work of PG16 this year has focused on the exploration of an architecture that seeks to rediscover a more felt, emotional and physical engagement with the environments we choose to inhabit. To frame this investigation, students focused their explorations on the role of the poetic in architecture and the forms this can take – specifically its role in determining how buildings and landscapes should be formed and understood in relation to the current climate crisis. We have sought to explore how an architectural poetic can help to mediate the experience and meaning of matter manifested in the spaces, objects and materials that frame and formulate our understanding of urban, suburban and rural contexts, as well as to define our relationships with each other.
The poetic, derived from the ancient Greek notion of poiesis, can be broadly understood as the act of creating, imagining and making. It is often aligned with the creation of poetry, whether manifest in the written word, images or even architecture. Central to much investigation into, and understanding of, the poetic is the desire to find, through poetry, a means to celebrate the human ability (or spirit) to conceive, write, discuss, draw and build as a means to interpret and comprehend the world.
To understand the purpose and significance of the poetic in architecture in response to the current climate crisis, students undertook two main enquiries. Firstly, they explored ways in which the poetic can manifest in architectural design and consider how it can be an interface, acting as a political bridge to create a more emotional relationship between ourselves, and with the natural environment, as well as enhancing our understanding of objects and materials. Secondly, they sought to understand how processes of making, including the exploration of both the rigidity and indeterminacy of materials, can be understood as poetic and can form a greater reciprocity between us as individuals, other people and with the physical world.